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LoneLady - standard bearer for brilliant electro-pop
New album: A wonderful new LP by Manchester electro-pop artist Julie Campbell, created in the 18th-century Somerset House shooting range studios, with sparkling numbers that perfectly combine influences from Cabaret Voltaire to Neneh Cherry
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Garbage are back with their first album for five years
New album: Shirley Manson and co return with their seventh, a double LP filled with banging cyber-punk anger, dark, seething, atmosphere, politics and personal battles. It’s one of their best since the 90s and stylistically includes echoes of Roxy Music, Depeche Mode, New Order and The Human League
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Dean Blunt
New album: This follow-up to the 2014 album by the East Londoner frontman of the mischievous alt-pop duo Hype Williams (named after the video director) is a bizarre, offbeat collection of 10 short songs mixing droll, deep-voiced delivery with a range of almost cinematic instrumentation
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Dynamic debut: Cola Boyy’s Prosthetic Boombox
New album: Uplifting and also poignant 70s style disco-funk-soul debut by the Californian artist who is disabled by spina bifida and scoliosis since birth, but shakes his tail feathers with style, panache, very much like “a time-travelling Delorean with Prince in the passenger seat”
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Francis Lung’s Miracle
New album: A splendid new LP by the Manchester singer-songwriter packed with strong pop, variously with echoes of Elliott Smith in vocal delivery and the Beatles or Jeff Tweedy in classic melody and structure, and wry, humorous lyrics
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Consequences is Joan Armatrading’s 20th studio album
New album: Now 70, her voice is as strong as ever, and this 20th studio album in a five-decade career is filled with strong songwriting, more in the style of her 80s pop than 70s folk, but with impressive moments of emotional power
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Peace or Love is KoC’s first album for 12 years
New album: The Norwegian duo of Eirik Glambek Bøe and Erlend Øye return with their first LP since 2009, and fourth in 20 years with a collection of beautiful indie acoustic guitar-based folk, perfectly blended voices and barely drumbeat to be heard
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Sleater-Kinney’s surviving members Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein
Album review: This fine 10th studio album by Tucker and Brownstein was recored in Portland the summer of 2020 and rails against a backdrop of social unrest, devastating wildfires, and pandemic with a sound that has echoes of Steely Dan to Talking Heads and B-52s
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Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend
Album review: Grasping mainstream pop and rock with cleverly constructed styles and influences, a shrewd, highly polished new LP from the London indie band 2018 Mercury prize winners, jumps from soft, whispery piano ballads to big guitar bangers
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Japanese Breakfast’s Jubilee
Song of the Day: This third album by the American alt-pop singer-songwriter Michelle Zauner is full of tasty textures and ethereal melodies, inspired by the likes of Bjork, with songs, as she says “about recalling the optimism of youth and applying it to adulthood”
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Jorja Smith’s new release Be Right Back
Album review: It’s about the voice. A classy, silky smooth minimalist new mini-album of eight songs heralds the return of the 23-year-old soul and R&B singer-songwriter from Walsall, following up from her acclaimed 2018 album Lost & Found
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Beautiful and strange: Long Lost by Lord Huron
Album review: Serene, dreamy, beautifully melodic alt-country-folk by the Michigan-bred, LA-based group, their fourth and perhaps best yet album is awash with road imagery, rich cinematic inserts and classic retro guitar sounds
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Wink is Chai’s third studio LP
Album review: Cheeky, squeaky and quirky pop from the Japanese quartet of Mana, Kana, Yuuki, and Yuna from following their previous LPs Punk and Pink which were much more, punk, Wink has a theme of feeling uninhibited and free
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Sounds of an approaching apocalyse - Gary Numan’s Intruder
Album review: With his trademark sci-fi dystopian sound, the electro-pop veteran, who has rekindled his career of late, returns with doom-laden concept album about climate change seen from the point of view of Earth itself
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Olivia Rodrigo is Sour about being a teenager and her her ex …
Album review: Brimful with anger, jealousy, and melancholy, an impressive debut LP by the 18-year-old American actress and singer-songwriter is startlingly mature, fuelled by a heartbreak, and mixes punk rage with power-ballad slow-boil spite
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Still growing: Flora Fauna is Billie Marten’s third album
Album review: We’ve previously highlighted her single, Garden of Eden, and the singer-songwriter from Ripon in Yorkshire’s third LP of folk-pop lives up it with its hushed, intimate vocals and an understated maturity that echoes Fiona Apple and Billie Eilish
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Gruff Rhys – Seeking New Gods
Album review: This seventh solo album by the Super Furry Animals frontman set out as conceptual biography of East Asian active mountain volcano Mount Paektu, but this piano-led set of songs with a 70s psych-pop grandeur also has personal elements, and is produced by Beastie Boys producer Mario C
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Paul Weller’s Fat Pop is an album of catchy singles
Album review: Woking’s finest returns with his own lockdown LP after 2020’s acclaimed On Sunset, and this 16th solo LP is a fun bag bursting full of catchy melodies and fabulous toe-tapping pop tunes
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St Vincent: Daddy’s Home now …
Album review: This superb new LP by Annie Clark is inspired by the look, sounds and feel of grimy early 70s New York, creating a work of of sleazy sophistication, the sounds of electric sitar, a Steely Dan, and an edgy joke title referring to the release of her father from prison
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Julia Stone’s Sixty Summers
Album review: Third album leaning towards quirky, intelligent and inventively experimental pop by the artist from Sydney with oodles of brass, drums and funk guitar and electronica – by Annie Clark aka St Vincent and Thomas Bartlett
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