Into the Diamond Sun

The debut album from Liverpool girl-trio Stealing Sheep strips the style of all Wicker Man cheese and stuffs it full of modern relevance.

It is, all in, a fantastic first effort.

Hugely impressive debut LP from the Liverpool trio.

When these three Liverpool lasses let their freak-folk flag fly their abandon is contagious. Their voices are great, which helps, but it's the unexpected instrumentation that really seals the deal.

A marvelous record packed with charm.

For all Stealing Sheep's maverick influences, it's the small details that stand out on this beguiling debut.

An album of wonderful surrealism.

There are times when Into The Diamond Sun hits a lull, most notably around the midpoint.

Into the Diamond Sun shows the trio has its own ear for how to combine and recombine those elements [moody psychedelic jamming, entrancing female vocals and slow-burn tunefulness], not least thanks to a balance of sprightly clarity and sudden shifting in the arrangements that feels more like a hip-hop mix transposed onto past approaches than just a jam.

With this first album, Stealing Sheep join that weird and wonderful place inhabited by Warpaint, Bat For Lashes and The Raincoats. [Oct 2012, p.94]

Into the Diamond Sun is clearly not a record for curmudgeons or people with OCD. It's colourful, chaotic, intoxicating, daft, pretty, odd, often enchanting but sometimes too saccharine sweet... but go the distance and I guarantee you'll be somewhat charmed.

Into The Diamond Sun takes a fistful of seemingly incongruous influences and hammers them into something akin to pop music. [Oct 2012, p.111]