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NAO’s third album blossoms
New album: Sunnily uplifting and defiant in style and lyrics, this third album by the 33-year-old east London soul and R&B singer features guest co-vocalists, but with the exception of a real beauty with Lianne La Havas, shines out best on her own
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The Lathums’ full debut LP How Beautiful Life Can Be
New album: Breezy, sunny, uplifting, melodically beautiful as well as melancholy songs in this full debut by the Wigan indie band reminiscent of The Smiths and The Coral with that impressive, if familiar, jangly guitar sound that still resonates
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Bess Atwell
New album: Intimate, intelligent and gorgeously beautiful in voice and writing, the now Brighton-based folk singer-songwriter's LP is exquisitely performed with piano, guitar and gentle orchestration, reminiscent of Marika Hackman and Julia Jacklin
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Witty, vivid, dramatic: Hamish Hawk
New album: Theatrical, wittily delivered and filled with wonderfully literate and emotive narratives and images, the new album by the Edinburgh indie singer-songwriter very much keeps up the striking, thrumming single Caterpillar, previously highlighted on Song of the Day.
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Spencer Cullum's Coin Collection
New album: An exquisite album, hauntingly beautiful by the London singer-songwriter and pedal steel guitarist re-located to Nashville is reminiscent of Nick Drake with added, electric guitar, organ, keyboards, flute and light percussion with a Tennessee twang
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Local Valley
New album: This fourth solo album by the Swedish-Argentinian indie folk singer-songwriter and guitarist is filled with beautiful stillness, gentle intimacy and acoustic playing, birdsong, a wonder of nature, and sense of how tiny we are in a vast universe
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New album: The Welsh trio’s 14th studio album is their first number 1 since 1998, contains their classic sound, defiant, power-rock melancholy and overt politics, but also a rippling piano sound that echoes some of Abba’s big hits
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New album: Superbly full-bodied, catchy, lyrically wry electro-indie-pop LP by the singer-songwriter and guitarist from Stratford-on-Avon whose songs have a wonderful juddery momentum enhanced by her strong, deep voice
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New album: A smooth, sophisticated silky and intimate fourth LP by the New Zealand-Australian multi-instrumentalist, high-voiced singer, producer, and songwriter that gradually moves from a soul and R&B to increasingly ethereal and experimental
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Elevated sound. Agustin White and Mike Stroud
New album: As groovy-funk-psych-pop as it gets. The single Frosty was previously a Song of the Day, and now this cosmos-themed album by by producers and multi-instrumentalists Mike Stroud (from Ratatat) and Agustin White (White Flight), follows keeps the fun, and the standard high
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K Bay is Matthew E. White’s third album under his own name
New album: Dynamic, diverse and undefinable, this first solo album for six years by the witty Virginia songwriter, producer, and founder of Spacebomb Records founder spans genres from funk, electronica, piano pop and disco to the playful and experimentally cinematic
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A Touma, the new gorgeous solo album by the kora master
New album: The Malian kora master returns with a new album of exquisite acoustic solo beauty with a title that translates as “now is the moment”
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Kacey Musgraves: veiled truth
New album: The acclaimed Nashville star’s follow-up to 2018’s Golden Hour comes on the back of divorce from fellow musician Ruston Kelly, so it’s a bittersweet but at times beautiful cross between country, rock, pop and R&B
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Low’s Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk
New album: The follow-up to 2018’s acclaimed, revolutionary Double Negative is another mesmerising work of brilliant sound distortions and beautiful vocals by Minnesota couple Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk
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Amyl and The Sniffers - Comfort To Me
Fabulous new LP from Amy Taylor and the Melbourne punk band that again captures their incomparably energetic live shows, here with a mix of humour, anger and some very frank and fertile self-analysis
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Lady Blackbird’s debut album
New album: Exquisite, slow, elegant jazz and soul in this beautiful debut by singer Marley Munroe, who has smoky power and control reminiscent of Nina Simone, in an 11-track album including seven covers, including, upright bass and Miles Davis’s pianist Deron Johnson
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Run to the record shops, and then to the hills, with Iron Maiden’s new apocalyptic album
New album: Epic, apocalyptically double, packed with changes of pace and power, elements of folk and prog, and filled with references to the ravages and ironies of history, ancient and modern, the time is ripe to indulge in the quintessential British metal band’s 17th studio album
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The Bug’s Fire
New album: This dystopian, violent portrayal of modern Britain by the British electronic producer Kevin Martin is compelling and powerful, with guest appearances from Daddy Freddy, FFSYTHO, Flowdan, Irah, Logan_olm, Manga Saint Hilare, Moor Mother, Nazamba, and Roger Robinson
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Little Simz returns with her fabulous fourth album
New album: London’s Simbiatu Ajikawo returns with her fourth album, a triumph of intelligent, tough-attitude socio-political lyrics and charisma, backed with epic orchestral soundtrack with old friend and longtime producer Inflo Sault), hopefully to propel her into world stardom
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Bendik Giske
New album: An extraordinary second album by the classically trained Norwegian saxophonist, who undermines the instrument’s showy jazz cliches by employing contact microphones around his tenor to amplify noisy fingers clicking against the keys and keypads for a new world of sound
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