Magic Arm – Images Rolling

Magic Arm is more or less the work of one man, who uses magic hands (plus a heap of helpful gadgets and instruments) to craft impressively full-bodied recordings from the comfort of his own home. Marc Rigelsford’s 2009 debut Make Lists, Do Something drew favourable and justifiable comparisons to Beck for its tendency to sandwich ideas and genres together with playful nonchalance, though a side effect of its scattered tactics was the occasional lame appendage – something which second album Images Rolling rectifies, albeit at the expense of filing away some of its creator’s idiosyncrasies.

Yet even with quirks depleted, enough pleasing left-turns pepper the album’s flow to keep things interesting, with Put Your Collar Up’s high-drama opening section breaking into a warmly familiar indie-pop canter; the woozy drift of Warning Signs introducing a gently psychedelic strand; and Lanes delivering a whimsically skewed suite of strings and echoed vocals. [Chris Buckle]