Your Custom Text Here
Snail Mail: Ricochet
New album: American indie singer-songwriter Lindsey Jordan returns with a third LP, awash with natural tendency for shoegaze-y melancholy, but also with a warm embrace of jangly and acoustic guitars in this introspective release about time, fading friendships, mortality, the afterlife, and the quiet terror of watching the things you love slip away
Read more
Pushing new boundaries with Kim Gordon’s Play Me
New album: Following 2024’s The Collective, the former Sonic Youth frontwoman’s fourth solo LP continues her extraordinary experimental, innovative journey, moving to more melodic beats and shorter tracks with a motorik krautrock-style driven coloured by strange sounds, intense emotions and sharply angled, dark, droll social commentary
Read more
Match album artwork to the titles below from favourites of 2025 Part Three (in no particular order)
First selection of 25 favourite albums in no particular order …
Welcome to the first part of Song Bar favourite albums of 2025. There will also be a second and third part this week. There is no countdown nor describing these necessarily as “best” albums of the year, but they are chosen by their quality, originality and reader popularity
Read more
New album: Named after Billy Wilder’s 1959 hit comedy film, which is also centred around three musicians and lead characters (two male, one female) the London indie-rock trio return, gig-hardened from extensive touring, with a stylish, dynamic release filled with tales of strange romance, lust, identity, self-destruction, emotional vulnerability and modern-life mayhem
Read more
David Byrne: Who Is The Sky?
New album: With his first since 2018’s acclaimed American Utopia and its performance film, the ex-Talking Heads frontman’s new LP is an antidote to dark times - brilliantly joyous, optimistic, catchy, variously eccentric and profound, accompanied by Brooklyn’s Ghost Train Orchestra and guests including St Vincent, Paramore’s Hayley Williams and The Smile drummer Tom Skinner
Read more
Water From Your Eyes: It's A Beautiful Place
New album: Indie Brooklyn-based duo Nate Amos and Rachel Brown unleash a highly original fusion of experimental art-rock, pop, and shoegaze, mixing musical dynamism with the vocally deadpan abstract through thematic portal of otherworldly science fiction
Read more
Car Seat Headrest: The Scholars
New album: This first album in five years by the band fronted by Virginia singer and songwriter Will Toledo is a flamboyant, grandiose concept piece, a galloping, epic, theatrical, dynamic, multifarious rock opera inspired by the likes of The Who’s Tommy, but set in a fictional Parnassus University campus, each song representing a character and perspective in the story
Read more
Julien Baker & TORRES: Send A Prayer My Way
New album: The American singer-songwriter, guitarist and, one-third of Boygenius joins withTorres, aka indie singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott in a long-planned collaboration in musically straight pedal-steel country narrative love songs, but threaded with queer narratives
Read more
Perfume Genius: Glory
New album: The shapeshifting, enigmatic US singer-songwriter Mike Hadreas returns with his distinctive brand of polished, beautiful chamber pop, with themes of the body and its decay, of domesticity and love, identity, and also features a guest appearance by Aldous Harding
Read more
Circuit des Yeux: Halo On The Inside
New album: Dark, vivid, pagan, hedonistic, carnal goth-dancefloor experimental electronica and more by the Chicago-based multi-disciplinary superbly alternative artist Haley Fohr and her otherworldly, mesmerically rich, four-octave voice
Read more
DARKSIDE: Nothing
New album: Filled with infectious, mystifying oddball but at times brilliant grooves across a range of styles – krautrock, funk, Latin, indie, psyche, prog rock, warped pop, contemporary classical and jazz among others, this third LP by New York’s Nicolás Jaar and Dave Harrington sees an expansion of their eclectic experimentation now joined by drummer and instrument designer Tlacael Esparza
Read more
Horsegirl: Phonetics On and On
New album: Minimalistic, pithy, nostalgically twangy, wistful, undersyated indie-folk-pop by the Chicago/New York trio of Nora Cheng, Penelope Lowenstein, and Gigi Reece in this second LP with a refreshing sound produced by Cate Le Bon
Read more
The Hard Quartet's debut LP
New album: This seasoned pro supergroup of Stephen Malkmus (Pavement and Jicks), Matt Sweeney (Chavez), Emmett Kelly and Jim White create a marvellously muscular debut collection of indie, rock, blues punk, but also beautiful Byrds-like numbers
Read more
Mdou Moctar: Funeral For Justice
New album: After 2021’s acclaimed Afrique Victime album, the brilliant Tuareg guitarist and band band from Agadez, Niger, return with explosive, powerful, emotive numbers, impassioned songs about his culture and social wrongs, wrapped in a frenzy of drums, guitars, bass and vocals
Read more
Kim Gordon: The Collective
New album: Dark, crashing, whispering, abstract, deadpan internal monologues, dreamlike off-beat poetry, trip beats, crunchy electronica and industrial grunge-guitar noise, the ex-Sonic Youth frontwoman, bassist and visual artist’s new LP is a challenging, truly innovative release
Read more
Part 1 selection of 2023 favourite albums
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 more
Queens of the Stone Age’s eighth LP, In Times New Roman
New album: After a six year absence, Josh Homme and co return with an eighth blistering, brutally brilliant, meaty loud rock LP, returning to more to their roots too – dark, powerfully emotional, ironic, sharp, witty and powerful, here with some elements of Scary Monsters-era Bowie, Cream, epic glam rock, and all fuelled by various personal tragedies
Read more
Water From Your Eyes: Everyone's Crushed
New album: Uncategorisably ear-catching, experimental indie-pop by the Brooklyn duo Rachel Brown and Nate Amos, in a fifth LP filled with oddball, interweaving sounds, textures and landscapes, electronica to distorted guitar rock, absurdist clever lyrics and melodies
Read more
Yo La Tengo: This Stupid World
New album: Nearly four decades into the New Jersey trio’s prolific career, Ira Kaplan Georgia Hubley and James McNew’s 17th studio LP one of their best, mesmeric, krautrock-inspired, semi-improvisational, shoegaze indie
Read more