Kate Tempest: Everybody Down

Spoken word artist, playwright and poet Kate Tempest's move into music-making is, as you'd expect, heavy on the lyrics. Tempest has made a name for herself as an insightful, gritty and effective storyteller. With Dan Carney producing, Everybody Down gets right into the swing of things, as Tempest turns out tracks full of rich detail, sharply observed characters and rhymes that are precisely sculpted to fit. She has a great ear for what happens on both public and personal stages, with Marshall Law and The Heist full of astute notions and carefully noted insights. If there's one drawback, it's that Tempest's delivery still lacks the bounce and ballast to make these tracks work in this setting. It'll take a little more time for the spoken word artist to become the rapper. katetempest.co.uk

Download: Marshall Law, The Heist