Warhaus

“People do crazy things to get laid,” drawls Belgium’s foremost alt-crooner, Maarten Devoldere, speaking with a definite tone of experience. For his second solo Warhaus album in as many years, the songwriter – and core member of acclaimed indie act Balthazar – comes on like a millennial Leonard Cohen, singing deep, dark and groove-ridden songs of love and hate, managing to be both romantic and searingly brutal at the same time.

The self-titled Warhaus follows 2016’s celebrated We Fucked A Flame Into Being: a lush, moody confessional art-jazz offering named after a particularly sensual line in D.H. Lawrence’s classic novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover. For Warhaus however, Devoldere has ditched the highfalutin’ literary references – mostly. “The big difference is I quit reading for this album!” he laughs. “I literally haven’t touched a book for the last year – it felt liberating.”