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Bonnie "Prince" Billy: The Purple Bird
New album: A mischievously droll, but also tender, gently moving new release by Kentucky’s seasoned singer-songwriter Will Oldham, this time very much in Nashville-flavoured country mode, with numbers about community, relationships and the state of the nation, joined by producer and old friend David “ Ferg” Ferguson
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Victoria Canal: Slowly, It Dawns
New album: A striking, eclectic debut LP by the Spanish-American singer-songwriter, who, already with two Ivor Novello awards for songwriting, mixes mainstream pop with a variety of other styles, from close-mic Billie Eilish to drum’n’bass, intimate folk to Cuban rhythms
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Tunng: Love You All Over Again. Cover art: Lilias Buchanan
New album: A beautiful, celebratory album of the pioneering British ‘folktronica’ band’s 20 years of music, with an eighth LP of brand new songs fully capturing their distinctive, delicate, crisply poetic, agile style with a delicious feeling of circularity.
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FKA twigs: EUSEXUA
New album: Cheltenham’s Tahliah Barnett returns for a third LP edge-pushing electronica, techno and avant-pop with a self-created title fusing euphoria, ecstasy and sex to express that feeling of transcendent losing yourself in the moment
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Anna B Savage: You & i are Earth
New album: This third album of exquisite folk by the English singer-songwriter is a beautiful love letter to Ireland as a spiritual home as well as her Irish partner, flowing with delicious images, tenderness and intelligence
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Mogwai: The Bad Fire
New album: Glasgow’s finest experimental rockers return with their 11th studio album, another classic of dark-humoured, irreverent titles for their dynamic, quiet-to-stormy arpeggio-laden, always stirring songs and instrumentals
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Songhoy Blues: Héritage
New album: The Malian band return with a vibrant fourth LP exploring their desert musical roots with more of an acoustic and intricately rhythmic sound than their previous more electrified, distinctive African blues-rock, and includes an appearance on vocals by Rokia Koné and other more traditional instrument guest musicians
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Cameron Winter: Heavy Metal
New album: Released last month, the Geese frontman’s solo LP is nothing like its title in genre, but a brilliantly eccentric, eclectic, inventive, surreal mosaic of dream-like DIY oddness – blues, folk, pop and psych rolled up in droll humour, existential dread and creative patchwork streams of the sub-conscious and non-sequitur
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Jasmine 4.t - You Are The Morning
New album: An outstanding folk/rock debut by the Manchester-based singer-songwriter Jasmine Cruickshank, whose moving songs tackle ambiguous relationships, identity, tangled joy, heartache, camaraderie and isolation of trans-feminine life in an LP produced by the Boygenius trio of Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker
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The Weather Station: Humanhood
New album: Beautifully balanced, nuanced, delicate, intimate new experimental folk by Toronto’s Tamara Lindeman on a gorgeous seventh LP that goes to the individual and collective core of being alive, with a free-flowing semi-acoustic songs partly created by improvisation with her six-piece band, decorated with flurries of woodwind
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Ela Minus: DÍA
New album: A wonderfully eclectic, inventive, darkly ecstatic, introspective yet musically expansive electronica and dance music follow-up to 2020’s debut, Acts of Rebellion, on the theme of light and self-discovery by the Colombian singer-songwriter, musician and producer
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Franz Ferdinand: The Human Fear
New album: After a greatest hits tour and two recently new band members, the Glasgow art-rockers fronted by the sharp-witted Alex Kapranos return with renewed vim and vigour, with an unashamed air of going full-tilt on classic FF in their sound and style perky, pacy, hooky indie-pop
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Moonchild Sanelly: Full Moon
New album: Always infectiously fun and effervescently charismatic, the blue-haired South African star’s third LP bursts with witty, sex-positive braggadocio, sung in Xhosa and English, and spanning the rhythms and sounds of Johannesburg and Durban with electro-pop and cross-genre dance
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Ethel Cain
New album: Dark, challenging, otherworldly, experimental, ethereally oddball but at times alluring electronica and ghostly vocalisations? It’s the Tallahassee artist Hayden Anhedönia, who after the successful 2022 LP Preacher’s Daughter, pushes the musical envelope into most unusual territory
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Alice Hebborn: Saisons
New album: Released last month, a vivid, stirring, experimental debut LP of piano and electronica by the Belgian composer in seven movements, exploring humanity’s relationship with the natural world
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SAULT: Acts of Faith
New album: Released as usual without fanfare, and on Christmas Day, the London collective of by producer and musician Inflo return with an 11th LP – silky smooth, classy soul, funk and gospel, fronted by the voice of Cleo Sol
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The second part of our favourite albums of 2024
Favourite albums of 2024: Welcome to The Song Bar’s favourite albums of 2024 Part 2. Part 1 can be found here. There’s no such thing as ‘best of’ and everything is subjective, but please dig into this rich seam of originality and quality, and even suggest more of your own
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This year’s selections include some returning veterans at the top of their game as well as some fabulous newcomers
Favourite albums of 2024: Welcome to The Song Bar’s favourite albums of 2024 Part 1. There’s no such thing as ‘best of’ and everything is subjective, but rich seams of originality and quality are certainly here to be enjoyed. Peruse away …
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Aphex Twin: Music From The Merch Desk (2016-2023)
Album review: A decade since his last album, Syro, electronica’s brilliant British outsider and pioneer Richard D James returns with a surprise fan-pleaser, a mass compilation release of 38 numbers played at festivals, and previously only on limited-edition vinyl sold at the merch desk of select events
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Juniore: Trois Deux Un
Album review: Released in September, the French band’s latest LP is another sparkling gem of 60s psychedelic and “yéyé noir” surf pop – whisperingly seductive, witty, wistful, stylish and sophisticated, from the breathless paced to the songs like a coil of smoke - moody, slow and pithily philosophical
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