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No sooner had Nikki Lane set up a suitable career path with 2017’s Highway Queen, mixing her country-gal emotional songs with a sassy indie vibe, than she was off duetting with rude country comedian Ben Hoffman, aka Wheeler Walker Jr, on his song Fucking Around, admittedly disguising herself as ‘Kacey Walker’.

She then reverted to her own name to help out Lana Del Rey on her 2021 album Chemtrails Over The Country Club, as well as Australian alt.country singer Ruby Boots.

Now she’s back, tracking down her youthful follies with a rockier edge supplied by producer Josh Homme and some of his Queens Of The Stone Age mates.

On Denim And Diamonds, First High and Born Tough seek out her adolescence, while the title track and Black Widow stress her continuing defiance. This girl is not just following the satnav. She’s older, but wilfully no wiser.

Hugh Fielder has been writing about music for 47 years. Actually 58 if you include the essay he wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking time off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont in 1964. He was news editor of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor of Tower Records Top magazine from 1992 to 2001. Since then he has been freelance. He has interviewed the great, the good and the not so good and written books about some of them. His favourite possession is a piece of columnar basalt he brought back from Iceland.

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