VV Brown: How do you like them apples?

Here's a sentence I never thought I'd write again: The new VV Brown single is astonishingly good.

To be honest, I hadn't even realised she was still recording. To all intents and purposes, it seemed like she'd resigned herself to a career in modelling after her first, rockabilly-tinged record failed to take flight.

But no! VV has ditched the roll-top hairdo (technically called a pouf, apparently), set up her own label and gone for a darker, bolder sound. You can visualise the difference in the promo pictures above, which look like a before-and-after shot for lithium.

The album, out next month, is a concept record based around biblical hairdresser disaster story Samson and Delilah; and it'll come with its own black-and-white film. The whole enterprise has been produced, exquisitely, by Dave Okumu of Jessie Ware's Devotion "fame".

Which brings us to that astonishing single. The Apple channels the voice of Grace Jones and the melodrama of a Homeland season finale, as VV intones: "Don't testify me, don't bring me down. Don't hold me captive... The apple of my eye".

Oo-er.

VV Brown - The Apple

NB: This song also comes in French.

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