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Marika Hackman: Big Sigh
New album: This visceral, hypersensitive, alternative folk-pop fourth album by the Hampshire-born singer-songwriter digs deep and dark into the psyche through personal crisis and relationship trauma as one of her best to date
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Bill Ryder-Jones: lechyd Da
New album: Merseyside’s former Coral guitarist and founder returns with a peach of an LP – a warm, musical embrace of and melancholy, opulently produced in his Yawn studio in West Kirby with piano, orchestral strings and a touch of brass
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Bound by Endogamy
New album: Released last month, dark, oddball and original, this electronica, industrial, post-punk LP is full of fantastic visceral sounds and droll, vocal delivery by the Geneva-based duo Shlomo Balexert and Kleio Thomaïdes
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Favourite LPs of 2023, Part 2.
Welcome once again to the annual tradition of Song Bar’s favourite album releases of 2023. This is Part 2, and Part 1 was yesterday. There’s no such thing as a chart rundown or ‘best of’ here, and these come in no particular order …
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Part 1 selection of 2023 favourite albums
Welcome once again to the annual tradition of Song Bar’s favourite album releases of 2023. This is Part 1, and Part 2 is also out here. There’s no such thing as a chart rundown or ‘best of’ here, and these come in no particular order. This is all about quality and innovation …
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Soema Montenegro: Círculo Radiante
New album: The Argentinian singer, poet-shaman and social activist’s fifth album brings out her powerful, passionate voice with a backdrop of traditional folk alongside electronica in a beautiful, entrancing release radiant with the sun and South American music
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Haiku Hands: Pleasure Beast
New album: A gloriously anarchic, energetic fusion of hip-hop, post-punk, vogue pop, electronica, bouncy 90s dance music and interwoven skits by the vibrant Australian trio of sisters Claire and Mie Nakazawa and Beatrice Lewis
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Peter Gabriel: i/o
New album: Strong, powerful, broad in scope, but also warm, tender emotional songs abound in this impressive, expansive return by the British artist with his first LP of new work in 21 years, with many great collaborators including co-producer Brian Eno, each of the 12 tracks has both Bright-Side and Dark-Side stereo mixes
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André 3000: New Blue Sun
New album: The actor and former half of superstar hip-hop duo Outcast makes a very surprising return after 17 years – a lengthy low-key, instrumental album built around his love of flute playing – minimal, meditational and relaxing
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Raze Regal & White Denim Inc
New album: The virtuoso experimental Texas rock band fronted by James Petralli join old friend and singer/ guitarist formerly of Oakland’s Once and Future Band in a pacy tapestry of cleverly interwoven psych, prog, funk, jazz and rock, with added echoes of Steely Dan
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H31R: HeadSpace
New album: Pronounced ‘Air’, the duo of Brooklyn rapper Maassai and New Jersey producer JWords serve up a stylish mix of bleeps, beats, industrial sounds, with clubby to woozy, inventive, minimal, alternative electronica marked by free-flowing hip-hop/spoken word
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The Polyphonic Spree: Salvage Enterprise
New album: The Dallas, Texas choral-folk-rock ensemble fronted by Tim DeLaughter return with a first set of originals since 2014’s Psychphonic , here with a bright, uplifting, evocative return that characteristically echoes the gentle psychedelia of Pink Floyd and The Flaming Lips
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Jaakko Eino Kalevi: Chaos Magic
New album: With echoes of classic sounds from The Human League to Air and even a dash of Wham!, the Finnish electro-pop artist’s cleverly textured, stylish double album also contains cosmic jazz, dub reggae, neon synthpop, tender ballads and psych-rock
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Bas Jan: Back To The Swamp
New album: This third album by the quartet fronted by singer and harpist Serafina Steer, is another wittily droll, darkly humorous collection about love and modern life’s absurdities and mundanities, with influences from The Pet Shop Boys, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Kate Bush, Heaven 17 and even a referential shake of Salt N Pepa
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Vince Clarke: Songs of Silence
New album: The legendary synth-pop songwriter best known for Depeche Mode, Yazoo and Erasure releases, at last, his first solo album, a mesmeric, ambient, darkly sci-fi cinematic work made from modular synthesisers
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Sen Morimoto: Diagnosis
New album: The Chicago-based Japanese singer, rapper and jazz multi-instrumentalist’s new LP comprises a richly eclectic, dynamic selection of songs with an overriding theme of seeking the right direction in life
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Aesop Rock: Integrated Tech Solutions
New album: The prolific and incomparably articulate American rapper returns with another sharpener, this time an intelligent, irony-laden, highly detailed concept-style album dissecting absurdist, infinitely excessive consumerism
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Anjimile: The King
New album: A breathtaking, beautiful, powerful, intimate fifth album by the American experimental folk singer Anjimile Chithambo whose rich, rangey, deep and high voice has an alluring androgyny, somewhere between Nina Simone and Sufjan Stevens
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Beirut’s Zach Condon at the Norwegian church organ
New album: A joyous, tremulously beautiful, restorative new LP by New Mexico’s Zach Condon, the title after old wooden church on the Norwegian island of Hadseløya from which he recovered his physical and mental health after pre-Covid career-threatening throat problems
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David Holmes: Blind On A Galloping Horse (featuring Raven Violet)
New album: After many collaborative projects, a brilliant first full solo album by the Belfast producer and musician since 2008’s The Holy Pictures, here featuring the vocals of Raven Violet throughout, this passionate, powerful, often political noir-synth pop release charts the unravelling of British society over the past decade
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