Maverick Sabre: Lonely Are the Brave – review

Michael Stafford is a hard man to place. A Londoner raised in the south-east of Ireland, he crams reggae, no-holds-barred soul and jazzy hip-hop into his repertoire when he sings as Maverick Sabre. His slickly produced debut album seems precision-tooled for crossover success – the next single "No One" brazenly echoes Amy Winehouse's "You Know I'm No Good" – but somehow it doesn't feel cynical. Stafford is closer in spirit to his tough-talking mentor Plan B than the likes of James Morrison, mercifully, and his views on police stop-and-search powers, for example, haven't been toned down to protect this album's considerable commercial appeal.