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In a branch of their own: Destroyer
New album: Full of surprises and changeability, a truly alternative, at times eccentric, meta-lyrical but also powerful new album by the Canadian rock band fronted by Dan Bejar, mixing everything from ambient, techno, spoken word and rock
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Barrie’s sophomore album, Barbara
New album: Strong second album by the Brooklyn-based songwriter and producer Barrie Lindsay, filled with musical invention but also fuelled contrasting emotions – the loss of her father, but also falling in love with and marrying fellow musician Gabby Smith
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I am a rock: Pictish Trail’s Island Family
New album: Johnny Lynch returns with a beautifully eclectic release and an alternative love note to his adopted Hebridean home the Isle of Eigg – psych folk, acoustic pings and crashes mingling with dance electronica in this search for the euphoric in the bucolic wrapped in the eccentric
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Man in the corner: Bakar – Nobody’s Home
New album: This eclectic LP of hybrid hip hop, soul, pop, indie, R&B, and even a dash of folk by the North London rapper singer-songwriter Abubakar Baker Shariff-Farr is full of influences from Blur to King Krule, Tame Impala to Amy Winehouse, and his Tanzanian immigrant mother
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Acres of dreamy sky: Jenny Hval’s Classic Objects
New album: An ethereal journey of personal stories through the prism of art and philosophy by the Norwegian avant-garde pop experimentalist with music that evokes wide, sky-filled landscapes and strangely matter-of-fact lyrics
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Binker Golding and Moses Boyd’s fourth album as a duo
New album: The fourth studio album by saxophonist Binker Golding and drummer Moses Boyd are embellished by modular synths of Max Luthert in six inspiring, atmospheric freeform jazz numbers of expert flutters, breakbeats and evoked birdsong.
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Sasami’s Squeeze - appearances may deceive
New album: This second LP by the LA-based American Sasami Ashworth is one of strikingly eclectic genre contrasts of shade and light, from full blast nu-metal and rock, to gorgeous melodies of country-pop and folk, and even a coda of classical music
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OKI: Tonkori In The Moonlight
New album: Evocative, eccentric, strange and inventive album by the veteran Japanese musician of Ainu ancestry, Oki Kano 加納 沖, brings together the traditional stringed five-stringed harp, the tonkori, into a fusion with other instruments and styles, from folk to electronica and reggae
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Capturing challenging times: Sea Power’s eighth album Everything Was Forever
New album: Superbly defiant and telling eighth LP, the first in in five years, by the alt-rock band who last year dropped the British part from their name, not to disrespect their own nation, but to disassociate themselves from any form of upsurging Brexit-related nationalism
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Once Twice Melody is the eighth Beach House album
New album: A fabulous double LP 18-track return by the Baltimore duo of Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally of dreamy, serene electro-pop, with a suddenly broadened scope of psychedelia and folk rock, gradually and now fully released across four chapters
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Alynda Segarra
New album: Wonderfully engaging eighth LP by New Orleans’ Alynda Segarra of “nature punk” electronica and lo-fi indie, with songs variously intimate, grand, sensual, and emotionally powerful, taking a hands-on, eco-aware vivid walk through our planet
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Raveena; smooth, cross-cultural blending
New album: Eclectic, striking mainstream label debut LP for the 27-year-old American pop artist Raveena Aurora who mixes rhythms and more from her Sikh Indian heritage with traits of R&B, soul, funk, 00s trip-hop and ambient electronica
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Shamir’s ironically titled new album, Heterosexuality
New album: The latest from Las Vegas-born artist 27-year-old Shamir Bailey is perhaps his most powerful LP to date – tumultuous emotions, huge production range from synth pop to metal, and explorations of queer gender issues via uncompromising lyrics and his expressive, rangy countertenor voice
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The Dream: alt-J’s fourth studio album, and the first since 2917’s Relaxer
New album: After a five-year break, the British trio return with a more free-flowing, experimental, but musically relaxed album than their previous three, but still brimming with oddness and some dark, stark, deathly references
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It’s definitely in the bag, but where next for Black Country, New Road after Ants From Up There?
New album: Second LP by the London young experimental, baroque-pop theatrical troupe, and many ways far stronger than their much applauded, arguably over-hyped 2021 debut, ironically now having greater intensity as frontman and singer Isaac Wood quits on release date
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Animal Collective’s 11th album Time Skiffs
New album: Two decades after their first, the 11th album by the American alt-pop experimentalists has a running theme of time passing, with a quieter, slower more lo-fi accessible approach, gentle intricate sounds, even those echoing wind, water and bamboo
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Cate Le Bon’s sixth album, Pompeii
New album: The brilliant Welsh musician’s follow-up to 2019’s Reward is a low-key, slower paced affair, simmering with lockdown’s solitudinous lyrics, sparse keyboards, spongy bass, sax and little brass blasts, with echoes of Bowie and Talk Talk
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Wasuremono’s Let's Talk, Pt. 2
New album: With a big, exuberant, joyously upbeat sound, this follow up to last year’s excellent Part 1 LP by the Bradford on Avon quartet is rich in vocal harmonies with an overlying theme of human connection
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Bonobo: Fragments
New album: The moniker of Simon Green returns with an eclectic mix of electronica, dance, ambient and clever sampling, with guest appearances from Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Kadhja Bonet, Joji, O’Flynn, Jamila Woods and Jordan Rakei
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The prolific Deerhoof’s latest as ever original LP: Actually, You Can
New album: Released late in 2021, San Francisco indie-prog experimental quartet’s 18th studio LP is a frenetic, pace-changing, daredevil record, challenging social and political norms, laced with interwoven and blistering guitar, bass, and drums alongside Satomi Matsuzaki’s distinctive vocals
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