Your Custom Text Here
Tamara Lindeman
New album: Nothing can compare to last year’s superbly crafted LP Ignorance, but Toronto’s Tamara Lindeman returns with a still powerful, if more pared-back LP of delicacy and intimacy of voice, piano and minimal orchestration
Read more
Nilüfer Yanya’s second album, Painless
New album: With a clever, pared back mix of guitars, beats, synths and distinctive vocals, the Londoner’s follow-up to 2019’s Miss Universe has a more focused musical identity and style, in this excellent set of variously twisted love songs
Read more
Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul: Topical Dancer
New album: Super-sharp electro-pop by the Ghent-based duo, packed with crisp, inventive sounds created in Soulwax’s Deewee studio and clever lyrics about race issues, political correctness and cultural identity
Read more
Another van load of great numbers from HMHB
New album: Few things are more likely to bring joy, laughter and indeed titular pain relief, especially now, than a new HMHB release, this 15th album decorated again with singalong tunes and Nigel Blackwell’s incomparably brilliant lyrics, though here with death as a black-humoured running theme
Read more
Things may get your goat, but let it go free … Superchunk’s Wild Loneliness
New album: The apocalypse may gradually be upon us, but this 12th album by the North Carolina indie-rockers is the perfect antidote, offering black humour and chin-up optimism with fabulous tunes, wry lyrics and a musical complexion of dappled light
Read more
Johnny Marr: four in one
New album: The favourite of all former Smiths releases a double album made up of four gradually released 4-song EPs written in isolated lockdown, showing his dynamic range of musicianship and a common theme seeking empathy and unity
Read more
The Tipping Point, the first album for 18 years by the Tears For Fears pair
New album: The first LP by Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal together since 2004 returns with a bang, including big melodies, drums, and production, some original twists, and an 80s sound very much in vogue again, perfectly timed
Read more
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
Read more
Metronomy’s seventh LP, Small World
New album: Crisp, breezy, sharply written pop accompanies the welcome return of Joe Mount and co with a seventh studio album that has bittersweet post-lockdown flavour, but ultimately is positively uplifting
Read more
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
Read more
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
Read more
Big Thief’s campfire of inspiration
New album: Brooklyn’s Adrianne Lenker, Max Oleartchik, Buck Meek, and James Krivchenia return with a fifth and landmark double album of gorgeous, intelligent, free-flowing songwriting, mixing folk, pop, rock and country
Read more
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
Read more
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
Read more
Los Bitchos are ready to party ….
Debut album: Break out the pisco and tequila! Produced by Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, a joyously fun debut album by the international all-female London band who play foot-tapping instrumentals fusing surf guitar, Turkish psych, Argentine cumbia and Peruvian chicha, sporting a chic 60s look
Read more
Mitski’s Laurel Hell
New album: The Japanese-American indie artist Mitski Miyawaki’s newest LP is her most mainstream pop release to date, with big 80s piano ripples and echoes of Abba and even Hall & Oates, but also brilliantly laced with dark images and emotions laid bare
Read more
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
Read more
EELS: Extreme Witchcraft
New album: Mark Oliver Everett, who always wrestles with personal demons in his music, returns with an album characterised with a sparky upbeat energy, buzzing guitars and pace with often wry, but very catchy numbers
Read more
Cult Leader Tactics
New album: An entertaining novelty release mixing rock, electro-pop and classical by the Former Mansun frontman, in the form of a satirical self-help manual on how to become a complete cult in the music industry or employ Machiavellian tactics in the entertainment industry and beyond
Read more
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
Read more