New album: Lias Saoudi and co return with their first since 2019’s Serfs Up, one with that despite the troubled departure of founding member Saul Adamczewski during its creation, is an entertainingly sharp, ironic, aesthetic, literary release packed with stylish reference points, soundscapes and tunes
Read moreMelts: Field Theory
New album: Following 2022’s Maelstrom, a fabulous second studio LP from the Dublin quartet of electronic psych-rock with dirty fuzzy synth lines and layered guitars, searing vocals of frontman Eoin Kenny and percussion pushing it all along like unstoppable krautrock train of wizzing, fizzing new wave energy
Read moreA Certain Ratio: It All Comes Down To This
New album: Following last year’s 1984 album, Manchester’s pioneering and highly influential post-punk trio of Jez Kerr, Martin Moscrop and Donald Johnson return with a punchy, potent, stripped-back sound with a dark funk flavour, produced by the prolific and brilliant Dan Carey
Read moreBODEGA: Our Brand Could Be Yr Life
New album: Smart, literary, packed with cultural references from film, books and art, the New York post-punk band’s fourth album is a more melodic release than the punchier of previous, being in part a self-reflexive reworking of much older songs from their previous incarnation as Bodega Bay
Read moreGustaf: Package Pt. 2
New album: Whipsmart, clever, caustic, wonderfully crafted post-punk? It must be the return of the Brooklyn five-piece fronted by the charismatic, funny and fierce Lydia Gammill with another selection of excellent, angular numbers
Read moreBlue Whale: Last Immediate Images
New album: A brilliantly angular, experimental, partly instrumental prog-post-punk and jazz sophomore release by the Belfast quartet of riveting cross-rhythms, innovative guitar and bass work creating an oddball but ornate aural tapestry
Read moreYard Act: Where's My Utopia?
New album: With continuing appeal, the experimental post-punk Leeds quartet return with their second LP, with highly entertaining, broadened musical scope, frontman James Smith’s agile, candid, conversational wit musing on the ironies of success, the music business, resultant guilt, climate change, and titular worries about the future
Read moreTalk Show: Effigy
New album: A dark, arresting, gnarly, frenzied fusion of dance-funk post-punk by the south London quartet with an LP that feels like a gripping journey through a fictional night-club underworld, with echoes of the Prodigy and Baxter Dury-style vocalisations
Read moreRoyel Otis: Pratts & Pain
New album: Brilliantly vibrant, fresh yet oddly timeless indie-pop, post-punk by the Australian duo Royel Maddell and Otis Pavlovic, with echoes of 60s-90s garage rock, 80s indie, Velvet Underground to the The Strokes, and produced here by the acclaimed Dan Carey
Read moreIDLES: TANGK
New album: The fierce, rage-filled Bristol post-punk band’s fifth album has an unfamiliar, far more tender but wider selection of sounds, this dynamic range of love songs intriguingly experimental, less shouty, more melodious
Read moreErotic Secrets of Pompeii: Mondo Maleficum
New album: Gloriously theatrical, witty, panache-filled, this is a lavishly swaggering, swirling cauldron of excess, rock-pop, post-punk, prog, baroque indie, and classical, a debut whirlwind LP of history-spanning reference and energy, from Greek myth to Shakespeare and the apocalypse
Read moreBlack Grape: Orange Head
New album: Salford’s Shaun Ryder and Manchester’s Paul ‘Kermit’ Leveridge return with their first LP since 2017’s Pop Voodoo, and their fourth overall together, with an especially funk-filled laced with their classic banter, wit and talent for cleverly daft, surreal and addictive lyrics
Read moreSleater-Kinney: Little Rope
New album: With perhaps best yet, certainly since reforming in 2014, and 11th overall, a passionate, catchy, powerful, defiant LP by Portland-based singer-guitarists Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker with searingly brilliant postpunk, rock and pop
Read moreFolly Group: Down There!
New album: After a series of strong singles and a couple of EPs, the London quartet and Goldsmith’s graduates’ full debut LP is explosive, taut, dark, energetic, angry post-punk brimming with inventive, rhythmic dynamism
Read moreSPRINTS: Letter To Self
New album: After many strong singles and EPs, a bold, dynamic, blistering punk and post-punk debut by the Dublin four-piece, tackling turbulent existential crises with dark passion and wit
Read moreBound by Endogamy: Bound by Endogamy
New album: Released last month, dark, oddball and original, this electronica, industrial, post-punk LP is full of fantastic visceral sounds and droll, vocal delivery by the Geneva-based duo Shlomo Balexert and Kleio Thomaïdes
Read moreFavourite albums of 2023 Part 2: Anohni to Blur to Mitski, Ren to Sufjan Stevens
Welcome once again to the annual tradition of Song Bar’s favourite album releases of 2023. This is Part 2, and Part 1 was yesterday. There’s no such thing as a chart rundown or ‘best of’ here, and these come in no particular order …
Read moreFavourite albums of 2023 Part 1: Anna B Savage to Young Fathers
Welcome once again to the annual tradition of Song Bar’s favourite album releases of 2023. This is Part 1, and Part 2 is also out here. There’s no such thing as a chart rundown or ‘best of’ here, and these come in no particular order. This is all about quality and innovation …
Read moreProblem Patterns: Blouse Club
New album: Belfast’s answer to Amyl & the Sniffers pull no punches and leave no prisoners with their angry, shouty, catchy, feminist, caustically sharp and witty debut LP, their fast furious songs of social critique, from the energetic Riot Grrrl punk quartet of Beverley Boal, Bethany Crooks, Ciara King and Alanah Smith
Read moreLol Tolhurst x Budgie x Jacknife Lee: Los Angeles
New album: The ex-Cure drummer and the acclaimed percussionist of Siouxsie, Creatures and other bands team up with the Irish producer for a wonderfully rhythmic, sharply witty, krautrock-style/synth pop-punk fusion with guest vocalists including LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy
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