New album: The acclaimed jazz saxophonist returns with a genre-hopping emphasis across funk, hip hop as well his excellent big band, an overarching spiritual theme, and collaborators including George Clinton, Thundercat and André 3000
Read moreDua Lipa: Radical Optimism
New album: Undeniably mainstream, but ahead of her Glastonbury headline slot, the north London British-Albanian megastar’s third LP is cleverly crafted, classy, catchy synth-pop, channelling funk, disco and Latin grooves about an up-and-down love life
Read moreThe Lemon Twigs: A Dream Is All We Know
New album: Almost exactly a year since their acclaimed Everything Harmony album, the New York all-singing multi-instrumentalist brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario return with sparkling selection of originals particularly influenced by the 60s and early 70s, echoing The Hollies to The Beach Boys to Todd Rundgren
Read moreFat White Family: Forgiveness Is Yours
New album: Lias Saoudi and co return with their first since 2019’s Serfs Up, one with that despite the troubled departure of founding member Saul Adamczewski during its creation, is an entertainingly sharp, ironic, aesthetic, literary release packed with stylish reference points, soundscapes and tunes
Read morePet Shop Boys: Nonetheless
New album: Mixing simplicity and lavish orchestration and a classic 80s synth-pop that made them so successful, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe return with their first LP for fours and one of their best for some time, with yet another traditional single-word title
Read moreIron & Wine: Light Verse
New album: A poetic latest release indeed North Carolina’s Sam Beam, packed with beautiful lyrics and melodies, articulate alternative folk, rock and country with flavours of Paul Simon and Cat Stevens, filled with vivid fictional and personal insights, desperate characters and wide-eyed optimists, heartache, tears and laughter including an appearance by Fiona Apple
Read moreSt. Vincent: All Born Screaming
New album: Annie Clark’s follow-up to 2021’s 70s-inspired Daddy’s Home is a striking, stylish self-produced LP, with a rawer, starker edge, fierce guitars, a theme of characters pushed between their true selves and how they’re perceived, an includes guests Dave Grohl and Cate Le Bon
Read moreLeyla McCalla: Sun Without The Heat
New album: A deliciously uplifting fifth solo LP by the American singer-songwriter and mult-instrumentalist, fusing folk, country, Americana, Afrobeat to Brazilian tropicalismo
Read moreLynks: ABOMINATION
New album: After a series of entertaining singles, the flamboyant, often masked south London artist Elliot Brett’s debut LP is full of bounce and thrust – a humorous, witty, catchy collection of stylish synth-electro-pop mainly about gay sexual adventures in the city
Read moreShabaka: Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace
New album: After 2022’s mini-album solo, Afrikan Culture, the acclaimed and prolific British jazz saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, known best for Sons of Kemet and the Comet Is Coming returns with a reset – swapping reeds for flutes, with an LP of delicate, experimental beauty, and featuring guests including Moses Sumney, André 3000, and Saul Williams
Read moreMelts: Field Theory
New album: Following 2022’s Maelstrom, a fabulous second studio LP from the Dublin quartet of electronic psych-rock with dirty fuzzy synth lines and layered guitars, searing vocals of frontman Eoin Kenny and percussion pushing it all along like unstoppable krautrock train of wizzing, fizzing new wave energy
Read moreTaylor Swift: The Tortured Poets Department - The Anthology
New album: The American omnipresent megastar returns with a surprise but also widely well-received 11th LP – a twisting, voluminous collection of 31 songs (Anthology version) of luxuriant pop, but packed with extremely caustic, often brilliantly dark, cutting break-up lyrics
Read moreA Certain Ratio: It All Comes Down To This
New album: Following last year’s 1984 album, Manchester’s pioneering and highly influential post-punk trio of Jez Kerr, Martin Moscrop and Donald Johnson return with a punchy, potent, stripped-back sound with a dark funk flavour, produced by the prolific and brilliant Dan Carey
Read moreLucy Rose: This Ain't The Way You Go Out
New album: The English singer-songwriter returns with her fifth LP, following 2019’s No Words Left, with a triumph-against-adversity comeback of beautiful piano-based songs fuelled by difficulty and yet also hope
Read moreKhruangbin: A LA SALA
New album: After the more energetic last LP, Mordechai, a return to slower, feathery, easy, seemingly effortless instrumental funk-jazz grooves from the super-cool American trio of bassist Laura Lee Ochoa, drummer Donald Johnson Jr and guitarist Mark Speer
Read moreStill House Plants: If I Don't Make It, I Love U
New album: This third album by the truly alternative experimental avant-garde rock-jazz trio brings them stretching to an even more unique sound, oddly free-forming, woozy, otherworldly, and abstract
Read moreCosmo Sheldrake: Eye To The Ear
New album: A mesmeric new experimental release of 21 short tracks by the British producer, musician and soundscape artist who uses field recordings of nature, human and “more-than-human voices”, traditional instrumentation and electronic production
Read moreGrace Cummings: Ramona
New album: Slow, inexorable, compelling beauty in the powerful voice of the Melbourne singer-songwriter and actor, here, following 2022’s extraordinary Storm Queen, with a less raw, more lavishly orchestrated sound and grandeur, to express themes such as grief and self-destruction and emotional violence
Read moreBODEGA: Our Brand Could Be Yr Life
New album: Smart, literary, packed with cultural references from film, books and art, the New York post-punk band’s fourth album is a more melodic release than the punchier of previous, being in part a self-reflexive reworking of much older songs from their previous incarnation as Bodega Bay
Read moreEnglish Teacher: This Could Be Texas
New album: An outstanding debut LP – subtle, original and experimental – by the Leeds quartet of Lily Fontaine, Douglas Frost, Nicholas Eden and Lewis Whiting, packed with intelligent, tender, rich, thoughtful, observational metaphor, and broad, inventive instrumentation
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