Tape Deck Heart by Frank Turner

Tape Deck Heart, Frank Turner's fifth album, arrived in April 2013 with Rich Costey producing, and it's a break-up record through and through, written and recorded after a long relationship came apart. The former Million Dead frontman left post-hardcore behind years ago for acoustic folk and punk, and Costey gives these songs a bigger, glossier frame without buffing away the ache.

Lead single "Recovery" gallops in with the most urgent hook on the record, and from there Turner picks through loss and failure and a love that ran out of time, swearing hard enough on "Plain Sailing Weather" and "Good & Gone" to earn the album a Parental Advisory sticker. The title comes from a line in "Tell Tale Signs", the kind of confessional detail the whole record is built on.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.