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Fluid songwriting: Bret McKenzie: Songs Without Jokes
New album: A solo release by half of Flight Of The Conchords presents a challenge to escape the comedy schtick, but the New Zealander manages tuneful seriousness, particularly on eco themes, by echoing Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson and Dory Previn with mix of 70s piano pop, showtunes and jazz styles
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Unloved’s third album, The Pink Album
New album: This third LP by trio behind the soundtrack to TV series Killing Eve, Belfast producer David Holmes alongside singer Jade Vincent and musician Keefus Ciancia, is a huge, sprawling cinematic 22-tracker filled with alluringly oddball, woozy, dark pop, electronica, 60s French noir and psychedelia
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Stella Donnelly: Flood
New album: Second album by the Australian brings a refreshingly simple, humorously ironic indie-pop with cutting, personal songs about relationships, provocative but honest lines metaphorical themes of the world
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The Lounge Society: Tired of Liberty
Debut album: Restless sparking, energy, seething anger and ironic lyrics, intricate, swirling, interwoven guitars, bass and drums, and produced by Dan Carey on the ever vibrant Speedy Wunderground label, this full debut LP by young Hebden Bridge band is more than a breath of fresh indie
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New album: This third LP by the Australian artist typifies her intelligently written, nuanced, taut, intensely performed dream pop and alt-country, packed with confessional hidden narratives and subtleties, her expressive, fragile voice with stripped back accompaniment
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Laufey knows all about …
New album: An exquisite debut by the Los Angeles-based Icelandic-Chinese jazz-pop artist, whose pure voice, alongside mostly acoustic guitar or piano backing, brings a timeless collection of gentle, old-school, charming, candid, singer-songwriter love songs reminiscent of Karen Carpenter to Peggy Lee
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The infinitely inventive Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith with Let's Turn It Into Sound
New album: Wondrously inventive, mesmeric, ingenious experimental work by the electronic composer from Orcas Island, Washington State, whose tools include a range of Buchla and other modular synthesizers, woodwind instruments and clever layering of her own vocal samples
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Ezra Furman’s superb All Of Us Flames
New album: The sixth LP by the brilliant, visceral, angelic American is perhaps the finest to date, an impassioned, tour de force, Springsteen-esque cri de coeur for the LGBTQ and Jewish communities, but also stirs hearts of all who feel oppressed or alienated
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The shapeshifting Phoebe Green
Debut album: Vibrant, inventive, mischievous pop first LP by the down-to-earth Manchester singer, whose songs offer a humorous, unpretentious twist on the usual heartbreak and love song material, and a palette of pleasingly original electro-pop beats and synth sounds
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Oneida return with the appropriately titled album, Success
New album: The veteran (25 years) New York indie rock band’s first album since 2018’s Romance is a refreshing bounce back of unpretentious joy, krautrocky rhythms, Ramones strums, and rasping guitar Sonic Youth-type squawls, with and LP that’s a throwback that also feels fresh
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Delicately melancholy: Cass McCombs’ Heartmind
New album: This tenth LP by the American folk, psych and alt-country singer-songwriter brings songs of perfect, effortless poise and weight, with touching, melancholy, moving, philosophical tales of musicians and soldiers, karaoke machines and fast-food restaurants, and is dedicated to departed musicians Chet JR White, Sam Jayne and Neal Casal
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Panic!’s irrepressible Brendon Urie
New album: “If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing,” once remarked Queen’s Brian May, and this entertainingly over-the-top seventh LP from Brendon Urie channels that philosophy in a rock-pop extravaganza channelling the genre turned up to 11
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LIFE: North East Coastal Town
New album: A celebration of their home city of Hull by the quick-witted, passionate indie post-punk band in a set of songs filled with humour, anguish and anger, but also a love letter to the area, and even all instruments played were locally bought
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Hot Chip return to reach out with Freakout/Release
New album: This eighth LP by the London synth-pop band of Alexis Taylor, Joe Goddard and co is filled packed with Prince-inspired funk, and catchy melodies, and though not as wild as the title suggests, is still a slick, liquidly fun release that ticks the Hot Chip boxes
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Chopper by Kiwi Jr
New album: Third LP in three years after Cooler Returns and Football Money by the four-piece indie band from Toronto, with wistful, melancholy, carefully observed flighted numbers packed with images from tales of corrupt mayors, Kennedy curses, sex tapes, and deer rifles
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AHudson Mohawke: Cry Sugar
New album: A vibrantly energised otherworld, an innovative concoction of experimental electronica, trash-pop to classical, gospel, 70s soul, house and more by the prolific LA-based Glaswegian DJ and producer Ross Birchard in his fourth LP and first for seven years
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Panda Bear and Sonic Boom: Reset
New album: An ingeniously fun collaboration Animal Collective founder Noah Benjamin Lennox, English producer Peter Kember in a project that takes the intros from 1950s pop songs to create new ones with added vocals and electronica
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Cheat Codes by Danger Mouse and Black Thought
New album: A superb collaboration between two hugely influential innovators – producer Brian Burton and rapper and co-founder of The Roots, Tarik Luqmaan Trotter – packed with fabulously sharp hip hop, soul and funk samples and guests, including a lost verse from the much missed MF DOOM
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Kokoroko: Could We Be More
New album: Variously mesmeric, chilled, smooth, staccato, slow then pacy, after many gigs and smaller releases the eight-piece London jazz and Afrobeat band finally have an LP of stirring (mostly) instrumentals that mix a variety of influences from Lagos to London
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Fable’s debut album, Shame
Debut album: An outstanding debut of powerful, intimate songs by the English singer-songwriter Holly Cosgrove from Paignton, Devon, who, with co-writer Jonas Persson, brings an aura of innovative, tender menace with echoes of Portishead, Billie Eilish and Fiona Apple
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