HOPEFULLY you saw Steven Adams and his new group The French Drops at The Fulford Arms last Saturday. More likely, you didn't, which is your loss.

He kind of goes under the radar, and always has, whether singing in a faux American accent in The Broken Family Band, the best band since The Wedding Present at getting under the skin of love, romance and the debris and detritus of it all, or The Singing Adams or latterly as Steven James Adams, his solo venture that brought him to Miller's Yard off Gillygate one sunny York day. Were you there? Probably not.

Even Steven grew tired of listening to his own voice, playing alone, he says, and so he has put together a new Adams' family with drummer Daniel Fordham and bassist David Stewart, the rhythm section with psych-folk oddballs The Drink, and Singing Adams guitarist Michael Wood, plus Laurie Earle, from Dan Michaelson & The Coastguards.

These names could be washing over you, but the point is, it really is never too late to discover why Adams is one of our best singer-songwriters, who puts the singe into singer with his stinging yet romantic lyrics, here aided by Ben Nicholls, who put the album together with Adams and his band in a little over a week, in September 2017, at Half Ton Studios in Cambridge after a year of song-writing.

Virtue Signals rails against the iniquities of the world, albeit wittily with Adams' righteous anger wrapped inside his trademark sweet melodies. "I found myself writing about that feeling you get when you’ve just woken up and seen what the idiots have done overnight," he says.

"Like a lot of people, I’m angry and confused about some of the mean, spiteful, cowardly things being said and done in the name of patriotism and cultural identity and economic prosperity. Some of these things can be defused by calling them out, by singing about them, and by laughing at them." When will a politician make such an honest speech in 2018?

How right Adams is, as exemplified by Bad Apples, Imprinted and Desire Lines, three signals of his abiding virtues.