By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****

TRACKLIST: Everything Changes; OCD; Balance; Bodies; Seasick; Not Another Travelling Song; California; Cocaine; Hope For The Best; Caroline; Underdog; Empire; Manchester; Cost Of Living

When Spraggan released opening track Everything Changes last year incorporating her X Factor hit Beer Fear it wasn’t quite clear what she was referring to when she sang: ‘I think of things that happened 10 years ago and I feel much better letting them go.’

• Read on for reasons including how to see Spraggan on tour including a London gig

Last month she publicised the release of her book Process: Finding My Way Through, which we are currently reading, by waiving her anonymity and revealing she withdrew from The X Factor in 2012 because she had been raped.

We interviewed Spraggan in 2021 as last album Choices was about to chart at her highest ever position (5) and she said of fellow 2012 X Factor cast member Ella Henderson who was charting with Tom Grennan duet Let’s Go Home Together which couldn’t be further in tone from Lucy’s own Sober: ‘It’s a great song. Not everyone in the world has a problem with alcohol like I do.’

There wasn’t a hint that there was much more to tell about her X Factor journey but 7th album Balance is very much about coming to terms with a difficult past and developing resilience.

Spraggan has been very open about her OCD, so perhaps it’s no surprise there’s a song here with that title and that it’s quite so brutally honest with lyrics including: ‘I doubt I learned to think before I speak’ and ‘Brain’s not normal you might have noticed … I’m still a little temperamental.’

Balance muses on the stability she’s seeking with the heartfelt and almost child-like plea: ‘But I might need a hand and if you could be that I might need some help to find my Balance.’

Elsewhere there are some jaunty songs which give a sense of what went wrong particularly Cocaine with its list hook: ‘I just wish you loved me more than Cocaine, red wine, late nights and good times, fast cars, pink pills, Mary Jane and cheap thrills.’

She’s a sense of humour too eulogising the city where she lives in Manchester with its ‘sticky’ dancefloors and ‘it might look grey coming out the station but you’ll see rainbows everywhere.’

Musically, the sound is more band than we’ve ever heard her and it is, of course, live where she excels. She won our 2020 Best Gig monsta and the book gives an insight into a psyche that has absolutely no problem exuding charisma, engaging and putting on a show despite a definite need to work on her own mental health.

Spraggan has been releasing an album every 2 years since 2011 and she’s a terrific and perhaps the UK’s most underrated songwriter able to be utterly authentic while crafting insightful and honest lyrics with pop songs that lodge their way into your brain.

The platform she’s creating to call for better mental health support for those featuring on reality TV is hugely important, she’s been incredibly brave in being so open about her own experience and we can’t wait to see her live again – and soon.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Lucy Spraggan Tickets
• Have you seen Lucy Spraggan live or heard 1 of her albums? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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