Westerman — the London-born, Athens-based pop maverick — returns with his new album, An Inbuilt Fault.

The album’s nine songs took shape throughout the depths of the pandemic, and soundtrack Westerman’s reckoning with two years of intense isolation, loneliness, heartbreak, and dread. Through it all, the album is visceral and live-sounding, full of the sound of breath and the idiosyncratic gestures of acoustic instruments. It creates a spatial feeling, sounding like musicians assembled in a room, passing evolving ideas back and forth. Co-produced with producer and percussionist James Krivchenia (Big Thief), An Inbuilt Fault musically references everything from Talk Talk’s delightfully strange and ethereal brand of pop, David Byrne’s bag of rhythmic tricks, Cat Stevens’ fireside warmth and much more.

An Inbuilt Fault follows Westerman’s acclaimed 2020 debut Your Hero Is Not Dead, a graceful and self-reflective project which earned him a spot as one of the most talked about new artists of the year thanks to profiles from Pitchfork (‘Rising’), Stereogum (‘Artist To Watch’), and Rolling Stone (‘Artist You Need To Know’).