The Bevis Frond: Horrorful Heights
Released 3 April 2026
CD | Vinyl | DL | Streaming
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
Cult hero Nick Salomon returns with the 27th Bevis Frond album in a 30-year career. Horrorful Heights is another magnum opus crammed with neo-psych rock and insightful songwriting. Robert Plummer is happy to be dragged into his world.
“I was king for a day, king for a day, they gave me a crown then they took it away,” sings Bevis Frond frontman Nick Saloman on the closing number of this typically generously proportioned 20-track album. It says a lot about the man and his music: he sounds so damned genial while delivering his “I-wuz-robbed” tale of music biz treachery. And of course, it’s a compulsively catchy piece of chugging classic rock with plenty of Neil Young-style freak-out guitar.
Horrorful Heights is big music trapped in a small world, like an ocean-going cruiser bound in shallows. And yet you sense that Saloman wouldn’t have it any other way. He has no time for the trappings of stardom – he much prefers to steer his own course, unencumbered by the pressures that major success would bring.
It’s an approach that inspires loyalty among his dedicated band of followers: come for the savvy blend of folk-rock and neo-grunge, stay for the often poignant lyrical narratives. Sometimes Salomon goes the whole psychedelic hog, as he does on the sitar-tastic title track and the West Coast-adjacent Space Age Eyes. On other occasions, the mood is more pastoral and downbeat – such as on Quietly, the sad tale of an intensely focused music collector who alienates women with his talk of rare vinyl.
Fortunately, Salomon has the wry sense of humour that such obsessives tend to lack. Take his acerbic observations about a doomed marriage on Best Laid Plans: “Everyone said they were a magnificent match/With her collagen smile and his mahogany thatch.” Or the unfortunate architect whose Grand Designs dream becomes a nightmare in Square House: “It’s just a cube perched on a cliff/And I confess I cannot live in the square house.”
Salomon often seems like a man of indeterminate time and place: a 73-year-old who rocks as fiercely as any young ‘un, an advocate of rural life who is also drawn to urban brutalism. “I can tell you’re sick and tired/Of sewage leaks and forest fires,” he sings in the back-to-nature paean Naked Air. Yet as befits someone who likes to put pictures of tower blocks on his album covers, he sings movingly of life in such hulking edifices.
“The shops are a mile away, there’s nowhere for kids to play, it’s next to a motorway,” he sings as a young parent in third-rate council accommodation on Sink Estate. Plainly recalling the Grenfell Tower tragedy, he adds: “It’s rumoured that someday soon/The cladding will be removed/I hope that can be addressed/Before we all burn to death.” He sums up the existence of many unfortunates when he concludes: “It’s not how we wanna live/But there’s no alternative.”
Other choice moments include the slow-burning, sinister confessional waltz of A Simple Pursuit (“If I gave you my soul, would you burn it or bless it?”) That’s followed by out-and-out headbanger Hiss, propelled by the buoyant bass of new recruit Louis Wiggett, who further extends the band’s range with occasional pedal steel parts. Second guitarist Paul Simmons and drummer Dave Pearce complete the line-up.
What an embarrassment of riches, what a kaleidoscope of moods. Wistful melodic pop gem Romany Blue exhibits all the qualities that have made Salomon such an influence on the likes of Teenage Fanclub. Meanwhile, the prowling Mossback’s Dream exudes a genuine air of menace as its seven tense minutes unfold: “You’d better hold your breath/Hope that it’s not your last/Things are declining fast.”
The nearest that Salomon gets to a conventional love song is I’m Gonna Drag You Into My World, a gorgeous Byrdsy duet with daughter Debbie Wileman. “Ooh I’ve got an allergy to being by myself/There’s every chance that you might be a danger to my health,” he sings, before deciding to take the plunge anyway. “I’d rather gamble everything than stay here on my own,” he resolves.
Horrorful Heights is unlikely to bring Salomon the mainstream fame and fortune that, frankly, he’s not exactly pursuing. But it’s a record that stands a good chance of enriching your life, should you be minded to let it into your home. If you’ve never heard the Bevis Frond, this is an excellent place to start – a career highlight from a man who really should be a national treasure.
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You can find The Bevis Frond’s latest music on Bandcamp here. You can also read Louder Than War’s 2021 interview with Nick Saloman here.
All words by Robert Plummer. More writing by Robert can be found at his author’s archive. He is also on X as @robertp926.
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