Black Ticket Day

Parts of Black Ticket Day feel like an extension of 1991’s Honey Steel’s Gold – Kuepper is taking more time to patiently develop his songs, as with the nine-minute “Blind Girl Stripper”, which gives him scope to experiment, bringing in a string section on the aforementioned song, using found sound on “All My Ideas Run To Crime”, and desolate sax phrases at the start of “Walked Thin Wires”. He’s an explorer by nature, though the terrain he covers here doesn’t always jibe with the drollness of his writing. That said, Black Ticket Day’s best moments, the ones that catch you off-guard, are when Kuepper makes pop an act of scepticism, as on “Real Wild Life”, or essays a lovely, direct melody – see “There’s Nothing Natural”.