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Graham Coxon: Castle Park
New album: With delightful echoes of the The Jam, The Kinks, The Bees, Small Faces and other classic 60s pop and mod influences, the Blur guitarist’s resurfaced and unreleased solo LP was actually recorded in 2011 at the time of his 2012 album A+E, and made with producer Ben Hillie
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Fruit Bats: The Landfill
New album: Written as usual with his first-thing-in-the-morning, stream-of-consciousness technique, the singer-songwriter Eric D. Johnson, also one-third of the folk trio Bonny Light Horseman, returns with a new collection of melodic, often beautiful, and profound, reflective, gentle, folky rock now 30 years since the first album
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Horse Lords: Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive!
New album: The Berlin-based, Baltimore quartet return with their special brand of mesmeric, experimental rock, weaving a rich maze of African polyrhythmic patterns and fascinating tessellations of percussion, guitar, bass, saxophone, microtones, electronic and voice loops
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Widowspeak: Roses
New album: Deliciously gentle-paced and languid, warmly twangy and romantically nostalgic, poetic indie-country-rock by the New York band of spouses vocalist Molly Hamilton and guitarist Robert Earl Thomas, with delicate musical echoes of Tom Petty, Rolling Stones, REM, Neil Young, Yo La Tengo and Cat Power in this finely crafted seventh LP
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La Sécurité: Bingo!
New album: Fabulously fun, vibrant, feisty, catchy, wittily droll post-punk, new wave and art-punk in this pacy, vivacious sophomore LP by the Montréal collective with themes from mental health, dysfunctional relationships, food to enjoyable elderly activities, with styles reminiscent of The B-52s and Devo
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Vince Staples: Cry Baby
New album: The Compton/ Long Beach, Californian rapper returns with a potent, punchy, overtly political rock-hip hop seventh LP that heavily critiques American society and power, racism, police violence, gun culture, media and the music industry, largely accompanied by a tight, riff-heavy electric guitars, bass and drums
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Death Cab For Cutie: I Built You A Tower
New album: Elegantly expressed emotional turmoil unfolds across 11 cleverly crafted songs in this 11th album by the Seattle indie rock band fronted by Ben Gibbard and produced by the brilliant John Congleton around a metaphor for post-marriage grief
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Zoh Amba: Eyes Full
New album: The NY-scene free jazz saxophonist forms an indie-folk-country-rock-muddy-blues trio with fabulously strong results in this passionate, raw, free-flowing debut as guitarist-singer-songwriter, lyrics themed around their original hometown of Kingsport, Tennessee, and coloured by Appalachian roots
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Iceage: For Love of Grace & the Hereafter
New album: A stylishly ramshackle, brilliantly brash’n’breezy punk-shoegaze feral sixth studio LP, streamlining sounds from 50s rock’n’roll through to early 00s indie by the Copenhagen band fronted by Elias Rønnenfelt, successfully fulfilling their aim on this to be “immediate, urgent, raw and fast” across themes of romantic devotion with violent chaos and nihilism
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Kurt Vile: Philadelphia's Been Good To Me
New album: A selection of fond love-letter songs to the city where he was raised and has remained by the 46-year-ld American singer-songwriter, in this deliciously laid back 10th LP of songs of interweaving guitars, folk, rock, country and psychedelia, all with his inimitably relaxed vocal delivery
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Paul McCartney: The Boys of Dungeon Lane
New album: His voice now may be thinner and weaker, yet his genius for melody remains in this warm, tender LP, inspired by vivid childhood reminiscences in the Speke area of Liverpool and beyond, with references to friends, parents, girlfriends, his bandmates, and includes a duet with Ringo Starr
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Little Barrie: Gravity Freeze
New album: Classy, catchy psychedelic rock and 60s blues grooves come thick and fast in this sixth LP from the British band fronted by Barrie Cadogan, and their first under their name since the death of drummer Virgil Howe in 2017
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Bleachers: Everyone For Ten Minutes
New album: With a title that point to the very transitional nature of contemporary culture, Jack Antonoff and co return with a sixth album of harmony-laden folk rock, synth and indie pop with that specifi sax-rich New Jersey sound, expressing personal memories and mixed feelings of insecurity and optimism
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Ed O'Brien: Blue Morpho
New album: Emanating from a period of dark depression during lockdown 2020, the Radiohead guitarist’s solo album is a meditative, soothing, catharsis piece, beautiful uplifting at times, found through experimental rock, jazz, drone, psychedelia, and of course, a flavour his career band
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Assikel by Tamikrest
New album: An evocative, stirring, atmospheric and moving sixth album of desert blues and rock by the Malian Kel Tamasheq (Touareg) band whose name means ‘connection’ or ‘union’ in Tamasheq and this title pointing to ‘voyage’ to chart their two-decade journey
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Rostam: American Stories
New album: The Iranian-American singer-songwriter, star producer and Vampire Weekend co-founder Rostam Batmanglij’s third solo LP mixes Americana with Persian sounds in a mellow, beautiful reflection of love songs also inspired by challenging, changing times
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Kevin Morby: Little Wide Open
New album: The Kansas City-raised singer-songwriter’s eighth solo LP of folk, rock and country is inspired by Missouri’s vast space, and features guests including Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Katie Gavin, Lucinda Williams, Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) with production by The National’s Aaron Dessner
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Cola: Cost Of Living Adjustment
New album: A third album of clever, angular, abstract, oddly appealing and also retro indie postpunk by the Montreal trio of former Ought members Tim Darcy (vocals/guitar) and Ben Stidworthy (bass), along with Evan Cartwright (percussion) with a title reflecting their name as an acronym and a call to re-appraise the way the the world should work
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The Lemon Twigs: Look For Your Mind!
New album: With a title for calling for sanity in crazy times, this latest LP by the multi-instrumental New York brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario is a pristine release of beautiful new songs inspired by a 60s rock and pop sound, echoing artists from the Hollies to Byrds, mid-career Beatles, Beach Boys and the Who
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Broken Social Scene: Remember The Humans
New album: Driven by a sense of reunion, renewal, collaboration, community and re-finding values lost, a superbly stirring, emotionally uplifting, profound and dynamic return by the Toronto indie rock collective with their first in almost a decade
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