Tindersticks – No Treasure But Hope
Startingly beautiful and welcome return from Stuart Staples and co after 2016's The Waiting Room, with that consistent, characteristic style – perfectly paced, weighted, warm and sounding like a distinct, but differently warbly cousin of Lambchop. The emotional delivery almost breaks down into tears on For The Beauty, Take Care of Your Dreams and Carousel are deliciously slow and delicate, but there's greater passion on See My Girls and Tough Love. The Amputees uses lost limbs as a grim metaphor, but against the grain, Pinky In The Daylight is a lovely love song. Dreamily rich and delightful. Out on City Slang.
Tindersticks – Pinky In The Daylight
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy – I Made A Place
“I can still see the light of day," sings Will Oldham, on The Glow, Pt. 3, from his first album as the Prince of beautiful DIY Americana, punk-folk bleakness and depression, since 2011's The Wolfroy Goes To Town, although 2018’s Songs of Love and Horror did come out under his real name. On these 13 songs there's a renewed spring in his step, buoyed, most likely by life with wife Elsa and his two pet dogs, and this is certainly evident on the true love on You Know the One. The usual minimalism is also lifted throughout by flutes, organs, horns and strings. As he puts it on Squid Eye, "Give me a pile of hell, give me a minute or three, I do what I do well, get gown on my hands and my knees, and take from the awful and awesome, and find in the maelstrom a face." Out of the blackness he sees the light. Out on Domino.
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy – Squid Eye
DJ Shadow – Our Pathetic Age
A lively, slick and ironically tinged double-album project by the American DJ and producer is one of two halves. The first with instrumental works including his first fully composed orchestral piece. The second contains many vocal collaborations – Run The Jewels, Nas and Dave East to Sam Herring, Paul Banks and Wiki, Inspectah Deck, Ghostface Killah and Raekwon as well as old friends Lateef The Truthseeker and Gift of Gab (Blackalicious) among others. Out on Mass Appeal Records.
DJ Shadow - Rocket Fuel feat. De La Soul
Arthur Russell – Iowa Dream
Gorgeous, sparse and exquisite work now finally released by the singer who sadly died in 1992, taken from some of his 1970s output of quirky folk and country. There's a lovely sad innocence about him on the gentler I Never Get Lonely, and Everybody Everbody, to the rockier You Did It To Yourself and Come To Life. There's also brass band on the spoken word piece Barefoot in New York. A little bit of Dylan crossed with Elliott Smith. Out on Audika Records.
Arthur Russell – You Did It Yourself
Dog In The Snow – Vanishing Lands
A debut on the Bella Union label rarely disappoints and this is no exception from the beguiling, bright-voiced Brighton singer-songwriter Helen Ganya Brown, who brings an uplifting mixture of dream-pop, art-rock and electronica, euphoric melodies, laced with wry lyrics on such tracks as Dark, Roses or Dual Terror. Thrilling, trilling, and wonderful. Out on Bella Union.
Dog In The Snow – Dual Terror
Shanti Celeste – Tangerine
The Bristol DJ and producer's debut album as performer opens like an underwater ambient wonderland on Sun Notification and later Natura, before jumping into rave and dance numbers Infinitas, May The Day (very '89), Acqua Block, Sesame (more early 00s) while Want seems to find a genre all of its own. Refreshing and yet retro all at once. Out on Peach Discs.
Shanti Celeste – Want
Pumarosa – Devastation
The London indie band's second album has evolved from guitars (The Witch, 2017), to complex beats and synths. The overall sound and singer Isabel Muñoz-Newsome's delivery has melancholy, and no wonder after recovering from cancer, but there's a wealth of pulsing energy here, moving from trance to rock-goth, sounds reminiscent of anything from Kraftwerk to The Prodigy, not to mention dark lyrical humour. When will be learn to fall apart? Right here, right now. Out on Fiction Records.
Pumarosa – Fall Apart
Willie J Healey – Hello Good Morning
More of an EP than LP by the young Oxford's indie artist, whose influences include Parquet Courts and and Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Spritely, cool and catchy in a slightly arch, knowing sort of way, but a very promising, rockin' rollin' release all round. Out on Yala! Records.
Willie J Healey – Songs For Joanna
This week's selection is by The Landlord.
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