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Field Music: Limits of Language
New album: After various side and solo projects, Sunderland brothers Peter and David Brewis return with their very own inventive brand of classy, clever, quirky, and funky experimental pop
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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 …
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Dutch Uncles: True Entertainment
New album: Vibrant, tight, bright, excellent toe-tapping indie electro-pop with a darker undercurrent by the Manchester quartet in their sixth full LP and first for six years, echoing influences such as Yellow Magic Orchestra and The Blue Nile
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The Go! Team: Get Up Sequences Part Two
New album: Ian Parton’s Brighton band return, in their follow-up to 2021’s Part One, with a truly joyous, upbeat and vibrantly colourful, wham-bam wonder tour of worldwide cultural vocals and samples ranging from Benin to Japan, France, India, Texas and Detroit
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Rozi Plain: Prize
New album: Beautifully textured, gentle, sensitive, understated, mysterious, stripped-back alternative folk by the English singer-songwriter, also joined by colleagues from This Is The Kit, saxophonist Alabaster DePlume and harpist Serafina Steer
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Jesca Hoop: Order of Romance
New album: An exquisite new release by the American singer-songwriter with a collection of crisply perfect lo-fi folk-pop acoustic numbers, wrapped in intriguing, intricate yet pared-back instrumentation, and sharply intelligent, vividly imaginative lyrics
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Memory Device is Baba Ali’s debut album
New album: A catchily eclectic debut by the singer-songwriter drawing on his Nigerian heritage, his adolescence absorbing hip hop and new wave in New York, the techno scene in Berlin, and now disco, punk and electronica in his London base
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The Go! TeamGet Up Sequences Part One
New album: The Brighton sextet return with their sixth LP and their distinctive brand of joyous sound clash, syncopated big drums, female singing and rapping, flutes, glockenspiels, steel drums and the full kitchen sink
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Francis Lung’s Miracle
New album: A splendid new LP by the Manchester singer-songwriter packed with strong pop, variously with echoes of Elliott Smith in vocal delivery and the Beatles or Jeff Tweedy in classic melody and structure, and wry, humorous lyrics
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Flat White Moon
Album review: The eighth LP from Sunderland brothers Peter and David Brewis brings together a wealth influences and accessibility, cleverly marrying pop, funk and postpunk with echoes of the Beatles, XTC and Todd Rundgren
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Mush’s second album Lines Redacted
Album review: The second album by the Leeds-based band extends their distinctive, sonically idiosyncratic style of excellent angular art-rock with mind-bendingly alternative guitar riffs and scales, sharp lyrics and the oddly likeable nasal delivery of songwriter Dan Hyndman
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This week’s big nine
This week’s selection includes classic Rufus Wainwright, a return for Mike Skinner collaborating on each Streets song, powerful ambience from Julianna Barwick and a selection of eccentric, eclectic pop releases
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From the cover artwork for Tame Impala’s The Slow Rush
This week’s selection includes some smooth funk pop from Slow Impala, pioneering jazz from Moses Boyd, extraordinary electronica from Katie Gatley, and refreshing indie from Mush and Beach Bunny
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Pet Shop Boys
The second of this week’s roundups includes the return of the Pet Shop Boys, raw emotion from Sarah Mary Chadwick, eccentric pop from OKay Kaya and laid back electronica from Jim Noir
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Conjuring up new magic: David Devant & His Spirit Wife
The opening roundup of new LPs for 2020 is a heady mixture of electronica, indie, pop and even a concept album about the aftermath of the First World War. From clean living to death and destruction, anything is possible
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New art … Ty Segall
A bumper selection includes a lauded 13th album by the Californian rocker, Mancunian musician Francis Lung, Mabel the daughter of Neneh Cherry, and a project for a new electronica soundtrack to a Buster Keaton film
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Sparkling ideas? Chance The Rapper
Bright sparks of the 80s attempt past glories, as do Kaiser Chiefs, Nigeria’s Burna Boy brings Africa to grime, but a Trump satire, Chance The Rapper’s wedding album and Karine Polwart’s covers are this week’s standout releases
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Trash Kit arrive at new Horizons
The latest roundup includes more collaborations via Damon Albarn’s African Express, sharp postpunk from Trash Kit, sensitive songwriting from Jesca Hoop, a classical masterpiece, and more from veteran country singer Willie Nelson
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Natalie Mering aka Weyes Blood
Exquisite vocals and electronica and female vocalists decorate this weeks list, from Weyes Blood to Jess Ribeiro and Shana Cleveland, plus sharp postpunk from Pozi, beautiful songs by Ratso with Nick Cave, and rare, early Bowie
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Back in business: Glasgow’s Bis
Alongside full funk and pop from Prince’s great friend Chaka, experimental, indie and electronica dominate this week’s roundup, including Australia’s Methyl Ethel and long due return from Glasgow’s catchy popsters Bis
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