Love and creative freedom has coaxed grand art-pop from the former WU LYF frontman. Disillusioned by the artistic compromises of a band set-up, Ellery Roberts quit the Mancunian epic-indie collective in pursuit of something more “experimental and joyful”. LUH, his collaboration with artist/girlfriend Ebony Loorn, delivers squarely on that aim. Drama, intricacy and Roberts’s activist spirit are writ large in gothic R&B (“$oro”), space-rock balladry (“Future Blues”) and cosmic folk (“The Great Longing”). There’s joyfulness too, with the music’s euphoric crescendoes lending catharsis and defiance to Roberts’s ragged howl and Hoorn’s steady cool.