Bristol is firing on all cylinders, and Masca are one of the city’s most unique voices. Love Letters is a bright, bouncy and radiantly positive pop rock album full of radio-friendly bangers that refuse to play it simple. Masca want you to dance and think at the same time, and they pull it off with tremendous confidence. Tina’s experience touring the world with IDLES is audible on every track, with huge songs that sound like a band that’s already played big stages and knows exactly what it takes to fill them.

The album opens with a confusing meter that’s hard to count on Act My Age with Tina delivering a crunchy math rock guitar part whilst her vocal melody is immediately catchy and easy to follow. Elevate follows as a more straightforward banger about influencer culture and the hollowness of living for social media with massive fuzz, a big funky bridge and a slamming chorus. It’s enormously fun. The whole album radiates love, friendliness and positivity, and the emotional heart is Oxytocin, a gorgeous, tender tribute to Tina and Jack’s baby boy. Cry Baby is more pop than rock, and Sucker has a disco groove running through it alongside a swagger and sense of scale that recalls the great country pop frontwomen like Dolly Parton, Shania Twain and Sabrina Carpenter in the attitude, confidence, and ownership of the room. Doing What I Want is an absolute highlight about pulling a sickie complete with the phone message left for the boss that builds to a tremendous breakdown before the final chorus arrives surrounded by a huge tremolo-picked guitar line, joyful, ridiculous and completely irresistible. Rock music fronted by women tends to deal in mess, chaos and self-destruction with the tortured anti-heroine as a well-worn archetype but Tina is sure of herself with a wry smile. Love Letters is a warm, confident and enormously endearing debut.