Album Review: Abbe May - Fruit

For some, pop might have a reputation for being shallow, cute and fluffy. But for Abbe May it's a beloved medium with which she has managed to articulate in ways she never could with rock. It's been a gradual, organic process as May has slowly shed the skin of her old blues-rock incarnation, collaborating with local Perth artists such as Odette Mercy and Joni In The Moon to create an altogether new sound.

May's unabashed fondness for R&B, both vintage and new, shines through here, not least on the dazzlingly smooth opener Love Decline, which boasts the kind of sophisticated writing an artist like Prince might have once been responsible for. Elsewhere May explores issues of sexual identity, detailing the effects of stigmatisation felt by some at an early age. Now a year and a half old, the single Doomsday Clock remains a spellbinding achievement, mixing as it does an earworm chorus with a cautionary tale that chimes with the current global mood of apocalyptic gloom.

Despite the occasionally confronting material, Fruit remains a seductively smooth product that all but drips with pheromones on the likes of Make Love Not Sense and No 1 Killa.