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Olivia Rodrigo: you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love
New album: The 23-year-old American singer-songwriter, actress, and evidently big fan of The Cure returns with consummately crafted, smart, witty pop and indie rock, featuring an appearance by Robert Smith, and charting the arc of a romantic relationship from unbridled joy to bitter aftermath in her third 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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Kelsey Lu: So Help Me God
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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The elephant in the room: Liz Lawrence’s Vespers is a powerful album of grief
New album: More acoustic, stripped back and lo-fi than her previous four albums, yet with deeply powerful and moving songwriting and performance, the British artist’s latest is suffused with grief, reflection and devotion for the premature loss of her sister Jessie, capturing life and death, poetically expressing devotion and reflection
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Bedouine: Neon Summer Skin
New album: A serenely beautiful, but also nostalgically sorrowful fourth LP by American singer-songwriter Azniv Korkejian who has Armenian-Syrian heritage, with songs about displacement and identity, very mindful of Middle Eastern conflicts, atrocities and her family history, while broadening her sound into the lush mould of 1970s Carole King and Laurel Canyon
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Lee "Scratch" Perry and Mouse on Mars: Spatial, No Problem
New album: This wondrously eclectic and entertaining final official album project by the legendary Jamaican producer and artist, made before his passing in 2021, is a collaboration with the German electronic duo Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma, mixing reggae, krautrock, ambient, dub, jazz, New Orleans brass and more, alongside Perry’s distinctive voice
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Jalen Ngonda: Doctrine of Love
New album: Following his acclaimed 2023 debut Come Around And Love Me, the American UK-based impressive soul singer’s second LP is another classy collection of beautifully uplifting, sublime Northern soul and Motown-era love songs
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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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ear’s second album, Rumspringa
New album: Minimalistic, introverted, nuanced quirky laptop experimental electronica by the New York duo Jonah Paz and Yaelle Avtan, following last year’s debut The Most Dear and the Future, this one named after a a rite of passage for Amish adolescents translated as "running around" in Pennsylvania German
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Greg Mendez: Beauty Land
New album: A gently ironic title, but no doubting beauty of the sound, reminiscent of the late, great Elliott Smith, this new gem of a lo-fi LP is full of mildly tragic, sensitive, thoughtful 14 short numbers by the Philadelphia high falsetto singer-songwriter
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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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Boards of Canada: Inferno
New album: Scotland’s hugely influential electronic experimental sibling duo Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin return 13 years after their last LP, Tomorrow’s Harvest, with an epic 18-track collection that dissects the psychology of religion with distorted vocal samples and cut-ups across landscapes of dystopian synth textures and beats
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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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Magic Tuber Stringband: Heavy Water
New album: Mesmerically skilful, oddly beautiful expressive and sometimes powerfully disturbing experimental instrumental folk and bluegrass by the debut South Carolina trio of fiddler Courtney Werner, guitarist Evan Morgan and bassist/banjoist Michael Devito, together weaving extraordinary sounds within and beyond traditional on a dark and tragic ecological theme
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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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Aja Monet: The Color of Rain
New album: A mystical, spiritual fusion of jazz, soul, electronica and spoken word poetry in this second LP by the Los Angeles writer, poet, performer and activist, filled with sensual sounds and personal mantras to political and social commentary about her country and beyond, her delivery particularly reminiscent of the smooth and smoky Dana Bryant from the 1990s
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Marisa Anderson: The Anthology Of UnAmerican Folk Music
New album: Beautifully evocative instrumental interpretations of older folk tunes from Southeast Asia, the USSR and the Arabic and Islamic regions of the world, all areas subject to US conflict since 1970s, brought by by the American guitarist from the private 78rpm archive of the late Harry Smith
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