CD Review: Greg Summerlin, All Done In Good Time: The Life And Times Of Polly Shields

All Done In Good Time: The Life And Times Of Polly Shields by Greg Summerlin is a concept-y rock opera. No, come back - we didn't mean to scare you off. It's good. Promise.

How good? Good enough for us to assure you that All Done In Good Time: The Life And Times Of Polly Shields by Greg Summerlin is the best The Who and New Order-influenced concept album about a rebellious young girl and someone called The Paintaker of the year, and maybe ever.

No, come back, It is really good, honest.

Regular readers of hecklerspray will know that we've got something of a musical crush on Greg Summerlin. His last album The Young Meteors was a powerhouse collection of deceptively simplistic anthems, possibly the best Britpop album Alabama ever produced. But while The Young Meteors was a collection of great songs, All Done In Good Time: The Life And Times Of Polly Shields is a great album. Out are the songs about going snowboarding and in is a surprisingly poignant narrative a girl rebelling against her father.

That's right - you could say that in All Done In Good Time: The Life And Times Of Polly Shields, Greg Summerlin has created a rock opera. And if that doesn't immediately make you think of The Who, then at least some of the songs on the album will. But, far from being a cheap rip-off, the flashes of recognition you'll get listening to Summerlin's album act like a reassuring hand on your shoulder. Like the old films in When Harry Met Sally, the occasional use of The Who's trademark sounds just make All Done In Good Time feel like it's part of a lineage. Ad to some extent, it is.

We're not going to spoil the story of All Done In Good Time: The Life And Times Of Polly Shields for you - partly because it's not fair and partly because we're not sure we properly understand it - but even without the throughline Greg Summerlin has crafted a set of knockout songs; wider in perspective and with a much lusher production than anything he's put together before. Take away the allusions to (we think) drugs and The Paintaker is still a stadium-sized slab of dynamic dynamite. And Shine On Where You Want and It's My Life might just be the best things that Summerlin has ever done.

All Done In Good Time: The Life And Times Of Polly Shields is by no means the perfect album - with projects as ambitious as this there's always a chance that the artist will over-reach somewhat - but for solid, fat-free tunes and good old-fashioned heart, there's not a lot of negatives you hurl at Greg Summerlin for making it. Now go and buy it, or else he won't get round to touring Britain again.