Although he claims to be influenced by dance music, the world’s foremost ginger-dreadlock-sporting singer/songwriter Sam Newton Battenberg Faulkner, to give him his full name, has been pigeon-holed as an acoustic folky pop-rocker. And it’s a tag he’s unlikely to lose anytime soon, despite the fact this latest single covers Massive Attack’s classic, ‘Teardrop’. Yet whilst Faulkner may be no match for Elisabeth Fraser on the vocals front, his decision to go as maudlin as the former Cocteau Twin pays off.

(3½/5)