7/10

Joshua Woo's debut album 'Remove The Name' is built around the deceptively difficult question: how much of the person we become is actually ours? Across its ten tracks, the London-based singer-songwriter approaches identity as something continually rewritten by ambition, relationships, memory, failure, technology and time. But instead of forcing those ideas into a single mood, he allows the album to move between optimism and unease, giving the record the feeling of someone examining different versions of himself from several angles.

'Someone's Star' opens that conversation through ambition. Its imagery of reflected moonlight, fame and a face becoming unfamiliar in the mirror turns the desire to be noticed into something more complicated. 'Wings' moves in the opposite direction, offering reassurance to somebody struggling simply to exist comfortably in their own life. Its promise that perspective will eventually come gives the album one of its most hopeful moments, while 'I Try (But I Fail)' accepts limitation with refreshing simplicity.

Throughout the release, love is also approached with similar variety. 'Any Other Kind Of You' is openly devoted, while 'Work Of Art' uses references to famous paintings and artists with a playful directness, eventually deciding that no gallery can compete with the person standing beside you.

But 'Remove The Name' becomes particularly interesting when memory and technology enter the picture. 'Don’t You Forget It' watches familiar colours, places and faces gradually become harder to recognise, turning the inevitability of change into something quietly unsettling. Meanwhile, 'The Typewriter' considers permanence from another direction. Typed words cannot simply be erased, yet the repeated instruction to "remove the name so anyone can claim" them introduces an intriguing tension between authorship and universality.

Closing track 'Cut Me Loose', featuring Avo Winter, then brings a welcome sense of release, replacing self-examination with images of flight, sunlight and surrendering to the moment.

Self-produced by the artist himself, 'Remove The Name' is ambitious in concept without becoming weighed down by it. Names, memories, successes and failures may shape us, but Joshua Woo leaves open the possibility that none of them has to define us permanently.