Art Brut - Wham! Bang! Pow! Let's Rock Out!
First album in seven years for one of London's best-loved guitar pop bands fronted by the charismatic, declamatory talking-singer Eddie Argos, who is now based in Berlin. The band, who are perhaps best known for self-referential humorous songs such as Formed A Band, are very much back doing what they do best, with joyful singalong pop that has a theme of refusing to give up the ghost, especially with tracks such as Hospital!, and the Pulp-style album title track. A big bounce back in all sorts of ways. Out on Alcopop Records.
Art Brut - Wham! Bang! Pow! Let's Rock Out!
Ed Harcourt – Beyond The End
Eighth studio album from the English singer-songwriter, but his first fully instrumental LP, and for the Point of Departure label. Written mainly in his new Oxfordshire home in a shed studio, it is full of serene, mainly piano-based music inspired by a variety of subjects - wolves in Yellowstone Park, a diving bell, and ghosts who revisit her. Uplifting, clam, spiritual work. Out on Point of Departure Recordings.
Ed Harcourt – Duet For Ghosts
Vessel – Queen of Golden Dogs
Rapidly pace-changing complex, rich sometimes, ghostly otherworldly electronica from Bristol musician Sebastian Gainsborough and his third album, created in Wales. Knobs and loops turned to excess, but also wonderfully beguiling in so many styles, directions and changes, this is the full kitchen sink of ideas, a fascinating odyssey of oddness. Out on TriAngle Records.
Vessel - Paplu (Love That Moves The Sun)
Laibach – The Sound Of Music
A strong contender for the most eccentric album of the year (there have been a few), the Slovenian (originally Yugoslavian in the 1980s) avant-garde band's latest project is another oddball collection of covers from the famous musical. They've previously the Stones' Sympathy For the Devil in different styles, the Beatles' Let It Be, and to add an extra twist to their dark humour and parody of fascist imagery, they also also toured, going down like a lead balloon, North Korea, with a hilarious documentary to match. The gruff voice of frontman Milan Fras is weird enough here, never mind there. Fun, if not always rewarding musically, highlights of the album include My Favourite Things and Sixteen Going On Seventeen. A loss of innocence indeed. Out on Mute Records
Laibach – The Sound Of Music
Jeff Tweedy - Warm
Straight up guitar, bass and drums singer-songwriting by the man from Wilco and Uncle Tupelo, and warm it is. His 18th studio album in various guises is fireside, intimate, mixing country, sometimes autobiographical, echoes Neil Young-style work. The melodies are strong, easy-flowing, and appears to be quickly written. A grower. Out on dBm Records.
Jeff Tweedy - Some Birds
The 1975 – A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships
Will rock'n'roll save the world? Frontman Matt Healy seems to hope so in a bit of a Bono way on this album, and in some of the band's experimentation with Auto-Tune, Drake-style, the voice of Apple tool Siri doing an entire song, they also want to be Radiohead. But this is neither, more of a Twitter feed sort of music, a mixture of love songs and oversharing on sexual conquests, stadium rock and shallow political and media commentary. Interesting but cringeworthy too, and even if faintly satricial, it's one more for existing fans, rather than converts.
The 1975 - Love It If We Made It
This week's selection is by The Landlord.
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