Putting a fresh twist on love

Declaring one's love in song is possibly the oldest trick in the bag.

Unsurprisingly, it is also the most difficult to pull off without once resorting to R. Kelly's little black book of cornball come-hithers.

This week's albums of the week show you can still nail it, with originality.

From Totnes, England, comes Joseph Mount, the singer-songwriter of Metronomy, the Mercury Prize-nominated quartet who skewer love with extra-terrestrial ambition on their fourth studio release Love Letters.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, statuesque Oklahoma polymath Annie Clarke - aka St. Vincent - opens her heart in her fourth and self-titled album.

Both artists have questioned, toyed with and poked at love. Your synapses fire with wild abandon. Love sucks, love bites, love thrills, love kills.

Listen to the first single off Love Letters, the lovesick disco ditty I'm Aquarius, which takes the age-old habit of matching a couple's horoscopes to a new level.

"You said our love was/Written in the stars… Cause you're a Taurus/and I'm Aquarius," Mount keens on a song about the struggle of maintaining a long- distance relationship. (Appropriately, the 1970s-styled sci-fi music video, directed by Edouard Salier, shows the singer piloting a spaceship and landing on a planet, and meeting hairless felines and sexy-scary aliens.)

The melody itself is chilled lounge-downtempo with gurgling basslines and a retro "shoo-doo-doo-ah" backing vocal by band member Anna Prior.

That's the beauty of Metronomy's latest work: Belying demure synths and keys are raw, brittle emotions. You can almost hear his heart crack a little, as his voice aches.

That "man lost in space" trope is also beautifully realised in the album opener The Upsetter. Over gentle acoustic strums and a knock-on-wood drumbeat, Mount sends his paramour a "message… straight from the satellite".

It ends with the man repeating the line "You really giving me a hard time tonight", as a lonely electric guitar riffs aside.

Comparatively, Clark has always sounded out of this world.

This time around, her strangeness, exemplified by her new gerontophile- nodding peroxide white do, is underscored by some of her most straightforward, unadorned vocals.

The songs are short, sharp, shocking. In I Prefer Your Love, a dedication to her mum who was briefly ill, she pours out her most soulful confession - "But all the good in me is because of you" - over synths and a bare-bones beat which may well be cribbed from Sinead O'Connor's Nothing Compares 2 U.

Bring Me Your Loves is more aggro, a sado-masochistic tussle between martial drums and haywire synths as she snarls and purrs: "I thought you were like a dog/But you made a pet out of me."

Love, pain, pleasure, loathing - Clark takes these emotions by the horns and rides with them.

Alt rock/country rock / MORNING PHASE / Beck / Capitol

The last time Beck went languorous - in 2002's Sea Change - he had a broken heart.

This time round, Morning Phase ebbs and flows, like emollient waves, over a patient nursing a spinal injury - which the musician did suffer.

Yes, you wouldn't expect to leap into the air, or over a steeple like a Komondor (the ridiculously matted dog on Beck's 1996's breakthrough dancey hit Odelay).

But don't mistake this for a laidback album. There's an undertow here - "If I surrender and I don't fight this wave/I won't go under/I'll only be carried away," he purrs, floating along on plangent synths in Wave.

"Follow the avalanche," he coos in Turn Away, his float multi-tracked in a spiritual seance.

Flecks of country and folk permeate this memorial. Come in, strip and let it wash over you.

Indie pop / IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE? / A Great Big World / Epic

Gleeks love them, and no wonder: The New York pop duo A Great Big World belt, keen and play piano like baby Billy Joels, and all can feel good or bad altogether.

Christina Aguilera lends her too-arch emotions to Say Something, and you almost sniff.

Ian Axel's voice is pinched like a nasal teen, and while it's precise, it can wear thin in a pristine clean production.

Think Ben Folds Five but without the emotional mess.

Admittedly, the whole thing sounds like a pitch-perfect soundtrack to a 12-step programme, with song titles such as There Is An Answer and Cheer Up!.

The track Everyone Is Gay feels somewhat smarty-pants, even if the intention is admirable.

Indie pop / SUPERMODEL / Foster The People / Columbia

Pumped-up kids would scratch their heads over Los Angeles indie popsters Foster The People's latest album, Supermodel.

Sure, it's a pity that none of the tunes here comes close to the superb catchiness of their 2011 monster hit Pumped Up Kicks. Still, you wouldn't begrudge their bravado in shifting artistic signposts.

This time round, the sound goes worldly, mixing Afro-pop, Beach Boys and even whiny Adam Levine-styled pop funk.

A stint in Morocco has apparently opened frontman Mark Foster's eyes, and he's running around like mogwai after midnight.

Pseudologica Fantastica is Animal Collective gone woozy pop.

Goats In Trees even goes languid Beck, with Foster switching to a baritone midway.

Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.