It is always interesting to see how bands develop in such short periods of time, and with Liverpool's Stealing Sheep (Rebecca Hawley, Emily Lansley and Lucy Mercer) you don't need particularly attuned ears to know just how much they have branched out from the psychedelic folk of their 2012 debut, Into the Diamond Sun.
Not Real sees the trio dispense with what has been termed "medieval kraut-folk" (Can with crumhorns?), and engage with a strain of music that takes its influences from as far afield as 1950s exotica, Grace Jones, John Carpenter and Delia Derbyshire.
The result is a charmer of an album; at a tad over 35 minutes, Not Real may be brief, but with songs as fertile and mellow as Sequence, Apparition, Greed, Evolve, Love, and She (one-title tracks a speciality, obviously) there is more than enough here to put it on repeat over and over again.
