The upward trajectory of Lust For Youth’s sound has been in motion in since it started out as Hannes Norrvide’s raw and primitive synth project in 2009. While it’s initiation was full of harsh noise, trepidation and murk; across the five albums that span the Lust For Youth’s career (now a three piece band) this aesthetic has steadily given way to spacious, high-altitude atmospheres and shimmering grandeur that characterised 2014’s International.

Compassion reaches the crest of this transformation, abandoning any lingering remnants of dirt and claustrophobia, instead succumbing wholly to glossily produced, danceable new-wave. Opener Stardom sets the tone for the album and introduces us to a new era in Norrvide’s songwriting. Themes of conflict, tension and control are replaced by a heady and convincing sense of letting go. “All around life floats free/ from you into me,” he sings over crystalline, reverb-laden guitars and vapour-like production.

Compassion as a whole sees notions of fame, entitlement, dreams and aspirations tossed around with a kind of non-com- mittal melodrama. Other times he seems to be mining directly from personal experience, as on balearic ballad Sudden Ambitions, a track in which he vent doubts and regrets around a relationship, in plainspoken, diaristic terms.

While Compassion crosses over unapologetically into the realm of pop and new-wave, it still feels tethered to the post-punk and noise scenes from which Norrvide and synth player Loke Rahbek emerged, evincing a detailed and hard-won understanding of the relationship between these genres. And although it may have taken a matter of months to write and record; this album is an apex that has been reached through years of groundwork.

Steve Mallon