Softening her sound without sacrificing her edge, Billy Nomates takes a great artistic leap forward on her third and best album to date. “Metalhorse” is presented as a concept album, based in a dilapidated funfair. The title track evokes a merry-go-round, while The Test takes us into a hall of mirrors. However, aside from those references and the odd rinky-dink keyboard flourish, the idea doesn’t really get in the way. The ambition and scope of this record will take many by surprise. Fierce humour was her initial trademark, but times have indeed changed: these days, a wider emotional range is required. When they bring the curtain down on 2025, expect Billy Nomates to stand tall among this year’s winners.
Tor Maries, to use her given name, burst on to the scene in the midst of the pandemic with her spiky debut release. It was a searing and scathingly funny despatch from life on the margins in the UK. With devastating precision, she chronicled dead-end jobs in factories, offices and supermarkets, while looking askance at the “hippy elite” who somehow floated above all the “happy misery” around her.
Her first attempt to expand her reach came with “Cacti” in 2023, which turned out to be a transitional album. The rage was still there on songs such as “Spite”, while others cried out for a fuller treatment than Maries’s multi-instrumental self-sufficiency could provide. Now, on “Metalhorse”, Billy Nomates has bandmates at last, as well as some ace melodies to sweeten her lyrical insights.
The sound is broader and smoother than before, with prominent piano and multi-tracked vocals, plus an array of sly sound effects. At the same time, rhythm section Mandy Clarke on bass and Liam Chapman on drums preserve the music’s grit and maintain its punky integrity.
The brooding, Hugh Cornwell-assisted “Dark Horse Friend” (“you struck a deal with the other side”) is one of the finest pop tunes you will hear all year. Other songs, particularly “Life’s Unfair” and “Strange Gift”, hint at the pain Maries has undergone in recent times following the death of her father. And her own personal struggle comes out in Nothing Worth Winnin, which portrays the music industry as a fairground where the prizes are worthless.
Yet for every darker moment, there is one of true transcendence, especially the sublime, uplifting Plans. While Billy Nomates’ “comedic timing” – still intact, for all that – allows her to laugh in the face of doom, the redemptive power of love wins out over the impending apocalypse.
“They’ve got plans for us/But while the city rusts/Let’s get away,” she sings. “I bet they’re really bad,” she adds, before snarling: “Sky high AI, World War Three, ah fuck it,” and concluding: “The end of the world should not come between us.”
Even so, disaster finally strikes in the closing track, just when we were all facing the other way. “Everything just goes/When the moon explodes/And all this time you spent looking at the sun.” No one can say Maries doesn’t think big.
“Metalhorse” is presented as a concept album, based in a dilapidated funfair. The title track evokes a merry-go-round, while The Test takes us into a hall of mirrors. However, aside from those references and the odd rinky-dink keyboard flourish, the idea doesn’t really get in the way.
The Fat Angel Sings 