De Rosa - Prevention

How fitting that the artwork to De Rosa’s second album references that of their debut Mend, being as they are a band acutely aware of history and its impact, no matter how minute, on the present. There’s nothing quite so direct and scathing as Mend’s Hattonrigg Pit Disaster here, but singer Martin Henry is still looking for “communities that care and nurture" on the incongruous disco-fuelled Nocturne for an Absentee. Clearly the swelling from a trio to a quintet between albums reveals itself in a deeper creative pool from which De Rosa now dip into. However, Prevention is still very much a folk album, albeit one writ large. Their previous sojourns into scratchy guitar rock à la Camera have been jettisoned, giving the sense that the Lanarkshire lads are comfortable where they are, no longer subservient to ‘obvious single’ pretensions. De Rosa will remain on the fringes then. Join them. [Darren Carle]