Love, Burns: Pavement Drawings
LP | CD | DL
Out 29th May, 2026
Third album from Love, Burns, led by Phil Sutton, revels in the adoration of jangle-pop at its most beautiful.
There is something wonderful that floats from the speakers as soon as the needle drops, something plaintive and yearning. As the new album from Love, Burns (led by Pale Lights’ Phil Sutton) opens and sets out its jangle-pop stall with the marvellous You Have To Be Sad, neurons fire, the mind disconnects, and you float away on the lush arrangements and beautiful vocals. It drifts in from a world inhabited by the more recent Teenage Fanclub, by Dead Famous People, Belle and Sebastian; those who took the lamenting sound of Nick Drake and blended it with the best of The Byrds. The song tumbles through plaintive yet uplifting melodies, Kyle Forester’s guitar work fitting perfectly at every moment. Be it the light acoustic backing, the jangle arpeggios, or the slight drive of the solo, his sunshine-pop work with The Ladybug Transistor complements every turn. That said, it is when Jo Roman’s backing vocals come in that the song truly melts, and you are hooked.
Songs such as Pavement Drawings have an ephemerality, just as the story within, that wisps by, a blend of Americana-psych much akin to that of Beachwood Sparks, Sutton’s voice laying out a tale of lost light. The fact that Sutton is English-born and transported almost two decades ago to Brooklyn imbues the songs with two sides of the Atlantic coin. His phrasings are still clearly English, despite his many years away, and yet many of the references dropped are of his new home. It is in that bridge where the songs find their strength.
On Wallflower, especially when the great brass line lifts the song higher, the band sound close to Blackburn’s finest turn-of-the-millennium almost-rans Tompaulin. A band that should have reached greater heights, like many before and since, but one that was destined for cult fandom. Through Sutton’s bands, he has trodden much the same path – songs of greatness, albums to be poured over, revealed to close friends as guarded secrets. His prolificness has marked him out, along with his storytelling approach. It is that which pulls you into the songs, each time a closer listen to gleam another line, another detail of the tale.
His love for bands like Felt and The Chills also comes out over and again, above all on the wonderful One More Night In The Park, the tumbling guitar work of Forsester, alongside his deft organ work elevating the song further. The DIY approach to this bedroom-indie brings a rawness to the songs, and it is by no coincidence that they choose to close the album with a cover of Linda Smith’s Emily’s House. The rough cassette recording of Smith’s original is stripped away to reveal a fresh beauty to the song, one that glistens and glimmers.
Pavement Drawings is a door opened into the wonders of Phil Sutton. For those who have never explored his work, and I will, up to now, put myself into that category, this feels like no better place to start. I’ll see you on the other side of the rabbit hole.
Pavement Drawings will be released in the UK through Spinout Nuggets and in the US through Jigsaw Records.
Love, Burns are on Bandcamp.
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Words by Nathan Whittle. Find his Louder Than War archive here.
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