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Geordie Greep: The New Sound
New album: The former Black Midi frontman’s debut LP is a brilliant swirl of guitar rock, jazz, prog, funk, pop and a big dash of Latin, channelling Frank Zappa, a dramatic Scott Walker delivery, Broadway musicals, cello, a punchy horn section, his distinctive voice, clever, humorous, soliloquy-style lyrics
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The Smile: Cutouts
New album: Following January’s Wall of Eyes, the trio of Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke, alongside Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, return with a second LP this year, and third overall – of intricacy and invention – with dark, moody lyrics, and musical excellence
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Naima Bock: Below A Massive Dark Land
New album: Wonderfully delicate, deliciously paced, lo-fi indie folk by the British artist of Greek-Brazilian heritage and former member of Goat Girl, with her second album, following 2022’s Giant Palm
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The final, posthumous SOPHIE album
New album: This posthumous and final album by the extraordinary, innovative, experimental electro-pop and trans artist Sophie Xeon, who tragically died in 2021, is here finished by co-producer Benny Long and with a huge cast of guest vocalists, but also leaves the question of how much more there could have been
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Mustafa: Dunya
New album: This tenderly delivered debut LP by Sudanese-Canadian performance poet, film-maker, and singer-songwriter is a hushed-voiced, acoustic form of folk, the title translated as “the world in all its flaws” in Arabic, and variously touches on religious devotion, childhood trauma, gang violence to romantic intimacy
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Ezra Collective
New album: The 2022 Mercury Prize-winning London Afrobeat-jazz ensemble fronted by Femi Koleoso return with a wonderfully infectious, warm and engaging LP inspired the idea of unself-conscious movement and a themed around narrative set across a night in the city
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Anna Erhard: Botanical Garden
New album: Following several great singles, brilliantly amusing, quirky and marvellously melodic debut by the Berlin indie-pop artist, whose talent for wry, ironic humour and talk-sing delivery really tickles on variety of unusual and highly specific subjects
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Honeyglaze: Real Deal
New album: A wonderfully innovative, sharp, agile, pace-changing, dynamic postpunk and indie rock debut LP by the London trio of singer-songwriter, and guitarist Anouska Sokolow, bassist Tim Curtis and drummer Yuri Shibuichi
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The WAEVE: City Lights
New album: This second, very strong and striking LP by the couple duo of Blur guitarist Graham Coxon and Rose Elinor Dougall strikingly embraces a variety of indie rock, synth pop and psyche-folk styles, again produced by James, and, as well as guitar, featured Coxon’s reborn love for the saxophone
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Nubya Garcia: Odyssey
New album: The acclaimed British tenor saxophonist, bandleader, composer and a star in the bright constellation of the London jazz scene returns with a cosmic creation of complex, beautiful blends and orchestral arrangements with added sparkles of R&B, jazz and dub with a stellar cast of players
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Thurston Moore: Flow Critical Lucidity
New album: The prolific Sonic Youth guitarist, singer and songwriter returns another solo album, an entrancing, meditational lo-fi experimental release of fascinating string textures and poetic lines, with guests including Laetitia Sadler, and lyrics by the London-based writer Radieux Radio
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Bright Eyes: Five Dice, All Threes
New album: Equal measures of toe-tapping catchiness, poignantly sharp, intelligent lyrics, intensity, tenderness and moving melancholy come in this excellent new LP by the US indie-folk rockers fronted by singer-songwriter and guitarist Conor Oberst, and featuring guests Cat Power, The National’s Matt Berninger, with co-writing by Alex Orange Drink of New York punk band The So So Glos
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Joan As Police Woman: Lemons, Limes and Orchids
New album: New York’s Joan Wasser returns with fabulously classy, intelligent, stylishly stripped-back LP, her first set of new songs since 2018’s Damned Devotion, and all centred on love and loss
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Katy J Pearson: Someday, Now
New album: A beautiful third LP following 2020’s Return and 2022’s Sound of the Morning, by the indie-pop Bristol singer-songwriter packed with gorgeous melodies, thoughtful lyrics. and backed by Heavenly Recordings label-mates including producer Bullion
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The The: Ensoulment
New album: The distinctive rich toned, talking-singing vocals of Matt Johnson and band return with their first studio album of new songs for 24 years, with some echoes of those excellent songs of 1983’s Soul Mining period while capturing a current time of disconcerting change
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Paul Molloy: The Madmen of Apocalypso
New album: Fabulously perky, catchy, snappy, witty, doomsday gallows humour songs in this second solo release by The Coral guitarist, drawing on styles from ragtime, New Orleans dixieland jazz, vaudeville, Kinks-style 60s baroque pop and more
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Gia Ford's debut LP, Transparent Things
New album: Heartbreak, murder ballads, an Americana-Laurel Canyon smooth, beautiful pop sound, there’s superbly powerful maturity to this debut by the Sheffield/Cheshire raised alt-pop singer-songwriter simmering with dark, tragic stories
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Tindersticks: Soft Tissue
New album: Markedly different the 2021’s lockdown sample-heavy Distractions album, the Nottingham band’s 14th LP is a beautifully mature release with Memphis soul, Latin-American and other influences, but as ever, the distinctive understated sound of Stuart Staples’ voice
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Jónsi: First Light
New album: Beautiful experimental classical and electronica by the vocalist and multi-instrumentalist from Iceland’s Sigur Rós, in his latest solo release, a cinematic, evocative work capturing the landscape of his homeland but also a utopian vision in a climate threatened world
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Nala Sinephro: Endlessness
New album: Mesmeric, experimental new work and the follow-up to 2021’s meditative Space 1.8 LP by the Brussels-born, London-based pedal harpist who mixes jazz and electronica and with extraordinary and unconventional results
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