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Pushing new boundaries with Kim Gordon’s Play Me
New album: Following 2024’s The Collective, the former Sonic Youth frontwoman’s fourth solo LP continues her extraordinary experimental, innovative journey, moving to more melodic beats and shorter tracks with a motorik krautrock-style driven coloured by strange sounds, intense emotions and sharply angled, dark, droll social commentary
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ELIZA: The Darkening Green
New album: The London artist Eliza Caird (formerly under the mainstream pop moniker Eliza Doolittle) returns with more of the cool, slow, sensual, gentle, sophisticated experimental soul-funk style evolving from her 2022 album A Sky Without Stars, here with particularly polished, silky, stripped back grooves and vocals
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Andrew Wasylyk: Irreparable Parables
New album: The Scottish multi-instrumentalist and composer returns with a new selection of soothing, meditative mix of experimental classical and jazz, but this time joined with six different singers represented by the birds on the album artwork
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waterbaby: Memory Be A Blade
New album: A delicate, experimental, understated soulful chamber pop debut by the pure-voiced Stockholm-born singer-songwriter (aka Kendra Egerbladh) in 25-minute, eight-track release of lo-fi, lyrically semi-improvised numbers about heartbreak and self-renewal in a world of gorgeous musical sensations
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Joshua Idehen: I know you're hurting, everyone is hurting, everyone is trying, you have got to try
New album: With a strikingly long title, a euphoric and honest full debut LP by the British-born Nigerian poet, spoken word artist and musician based in Sweden, working with his musical partner Ludvig Parment’s sonic layers, packed pacy dance and hip-hop grooves, clever sampling, slower reflections, and articulate expressions of positivity through the ups and downs of grief and hope
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Fruitfully back together: CeeLo Green and Danger Mouse
New album: Finally, after an 18-year gap since their last collaboration in the heady days of the hit Crazy, with the St Elsewhere and The Odd Couple LPs a third and supposedly final album from fabulous singer CeeLo Green and producer and musician aka Brian Burton with a mix of soaring soul, hip-hop, pop and RnB with songs filled with vivid lyrical memories and strong, emotive melodies
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DEADLETTER: Existence Is Bliss
New album: This second LP by the South Yorkshire/London six-piece expands their post-punk sound palette with a collection of arresting, thrumming songs, often dark and challenging, with richly exploratory lyrics across dystopian and existential questions, yet despite a climate of difficult, shows how gasping for life’s oxygen is essential
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Lala Lala: Heaven 2
New album: Moving from Chicago to New Mexico, Reykjavík, then London and now Los Angeles, the UK-born artist Lillie West’s experimental indie dream pop is a fascinating release about restless escapism while trying to stay where she is
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Mitski: Nothing’s About To Happen To Me
New album: Following 2023’s acclaimed The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, now an eighth LP of sublime beauty, wit and melancholy and silken vocal tones from the American singer-songwriter, mixing pop, rock, echoes of Laurel Canyon era, and stories and metaphors of love and loss, insecurity, independence and solitude all set at home – and no shortage of cats
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Gorillaz: The Mountain
New album: Released with an art book, new games, and extended videos, a multicultural, multifarious and multilingual return for the collective cartoon pop-hip-hop project led by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, with many intercontinental guest appearances, and a particular Indian musical and visual flavour centred on fictional Himalayan peak as metaphor for life’s journey and illusionary truths
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Bill Callahan: My Days of 58
New album: His first since 2022’s REALITY, and one of his finest for several years since his many albums under the Smog moniker, the Texan, rich-voiced, witty, droll, singer-songwriter returns with lo-fi, resonant, frank reflections from his 58 years, on songwriting, family life, touring and death, with a free-flowing, sometimes improvised sound that refreshing, stripped back and direct
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The Wave Pictures: Gained/Lost
New album: A very warm return from the very likeable, prolific British trio of David Tattersall (guitar and lead vocals), Franic Rozycki (bass), and Jonny Helm (drums) with finely crafted, clever and emotional songs in flavours of 60s garage rock, 70s classic rock and 90s American indie
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Hedera: Hedera
New album: A beautiful, delicate, minimalist debut of finely crafted chamber folk by the Bristol quintet of Lulu Austin, Maisie Brett, Tamsin Elliott, Beth Roberts and Isis Wolf-Light mixing originals and the traditional with flavours and influences from England to Egypt, Bulgaria to Bali, Afrikaans to Arabic, Ireland to Georgia
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Altin Gün: Garip
New album: The Grammy-nominated Turkish psych-groove quintet from Amsterdam return with a stylish and expansive sixth LP — a heartfelt tribute to the work of the legendary Turkish folk bard Neşet Ertaş (1938–2012), a legend of Anatolian music
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Momoko Gill: Momoko
New album: A classy, clever, subtle, experimental jazz and soul debut by the London-based singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, part of the east London scene at Total Refreshment Centre, rich in grooves, personal and poetic reflections
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Peaches: No Lube So Rude
New album: Unapologetically brash, overtly sexual, crazily catchy and entertaining, the charismatic, colourful Canadian electroclash and musician and performance artist Merrill Beth Nisker returns with her seventh LP and first for 11 years, a striking mix of sex, gender identity, freedom of expression, and an antidote to miserable times
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Apparat: A Hum of Maybe
New album: The sixth LP and the first for six years by the German experimental electronic artist Sascha Ring (Grammy nominated for 2019’s LP5), on the theme of flux and uncertainty, balancing family and work life, and built on the back of stressful three years of writer’s block but filled with unusual sonic textures, sonic and acoustic and vulnerable emotions
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Hen Ogledd: DISCOMBOBULATED
New album: Wonderfully colourful, mystical and socio-political, the British psychedelic-folk-rock quartet return with their special brand of eccentric, oddball originality, here including Welsh poems, ‘bard rap’ and an a protest manifesto for social change and mental wellbeing in a world gone mad
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Kula Shaker: Wormslayer
New album: Following 2024’s Natural Magick, the British rock band fronted by Crispian Mills continue their late-career purple patch with their third album in just four years and eighth across their three decades with a kaleidoscopic, unabashed high-octane dive into 60s-style psychedelia
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Hemlocke Springs: The Apple Tree Under the Sea
New album: Lauded by the likes of Chappell Roan and Doja Cat, and now with a big Tiktok fanbase for her oddball videos, a quirkily original, humorous, melodious DayGlo DIY-ethic 80s-influenced synth pop debut LP by North Carolina’s Isimeme Udu
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