Bolted

On his first studio album since 2017, Matthew Barnes details the inner mechanics of loneliness and frailty, mapping them onto lurching rhythms and agonized, alienated cries.

Bolted sounds like Forest Swords making a pilgrimage away from the production line towards purity. It’s also an album which feels pointedly designed for our moment.

There has always been a terrific sense of place in Forest Swords’ music. An artist who allows the environment he created in to seep into his audio