Foxes are not a girl band, as the name might suggest, but 25-year-old Louisa Rose Allen from Southampton, whose debut album has already received good notices in all the right places, suggesting that she might be something more than this year's model on the catwalk of chart cliches.

To these ears, however, she's merely an acceptably lighter version of Florence or Marina, although not even the tribal drum battering of Talking To Ghosts or Youth can convince me she has enough drama in her DNA to rise to their levels. For a start, her singing style seems to squeeze a yodel into every bar, rendering each song as overwrought, regardless of the blandness of their generic choruses. There are some interesting quirks to the production but the singles Let Go For Tonight and Holding On To Heaven simply conform to what passes for classic pop in our post-Adele world: ornamented vocals supported by string arrangements and the hint of a choir (not mere backing singers) to create, you know, a sense of emotional substance.

Alan Morrison