The Bellwether

To enter the world of Kimosabè, the resplendent, golden-hued fourth album by Dope Lemon, you have to board a plane. It’s a vintage Cessna called Susie Q, and its interior is decked out with crushed red velvet. It only flies to one place: an old sugarcane farm in the middle of nowhere, at the centre of which is a grand old manor, a time capsule filled with arcane treasures from across the world. Step in and relax; sit down, have a drink, remember all the memories you thought you’d forgotten from your past – and imagine the roads you might take from there.

All those details are real, and do exist in real life – Angus Stone really did record his latest missive as Dope Lemon at a luxurious, perfectly preserved rural manor with its own tricked-out plane. Stone wasn’t planning to record a new album so soon after Rose Pink Cadillac, but the expansive mystery of Sugarcane Mountain lured him in. A time warp right in the middle of nowhere, it’s the kind of place that begs you to uncover its secrets – and rediscover some of your own.

Although not everyone can visit the real Sugarcane Mountain Studios, anyone can dive into Kimosabè’s expanses. It’s an album of classic songcraft (some of Stone’s best ever) and lush, rolling grooves, road anthems for a psychic journey into the cosmos. There are vignettes set in sun-soaked dens of sin (‘Miami Baby’) and inside beat-up old trailers (‘Derby Raceway’) and songs like ‘Just You and Me’ and ‘Slinging Dimes’, which dredge up stories from Stone’s youth like bottles of rare shipwreck champagne. It’s a rare beast, this fourth Dope Lemon album – a memoir of his life and a perfect soundtrack to yours.