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Loaded Honey: Love Made Trees
New album: Like a huge soft-focus swoon, fabulous 70s retro Philly soul and sixties pop made new by the British duo of Lydia Kitto and J Lloyd (Josh Lloyd-Watson), better known from dance-pop band Jungle, with this debut side project, exploring and inspired by their own up-and-down romance with panache and a glorious sense of irony, melodrama, and style
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Shura: I Got Too Sad For My Friends
New album: With her first music since 2019’s acclaimed album forevher, the British singer-songwriter and producer Alexandra Denton returns with a third LP, one that embraces melancholy and addresses the self, capturing six years of uncertainty with a gentle, intelligent perspective, wrapped in refined, matured indie, pop, folk and Americana
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Pulp’s More - their first studio LP in 24 years
New album: The beloved Sheffield Britpop band return triumphantly with their first LP in 24 years, bringing familiar themes – nostalgia, sex, life changes, chance encounters, time passing, also wrapped in metaphors of celestial astronomy, all now from a candid, middle-aged perspective, but still with some crowd-pleasing bangers as well as Jarvis Cocker’s whispery, witty intimacy
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Caroline 2
New album: The London eight-piece experimental group return three years after their self-titled debut, with a stop-start, meandering, sometimes challenging but also magical album of interweaving vocals and analogue instruments – guitars, trombone, violins and more, but also electronica – and a guest appearance from Caroline Polachek
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Léa Sen: LEVELS
New album: A classy, cool, effortlessly stylish, soulful, experimental electro-pop, R'n'B, and trip-hop debut LP by the south London-based French singer, songwriter and producer, whose vocal delivery has a warm, woozy, mellifluous style, with a smudged, muted and soft guitar sound, scattered, subtle electronics, jittering percussion and nuanced, philosophical lyrics
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Foxwarren: 2
New album: This new studio LP from the band project of Canadian singer-songwriter and solo artist Andy Shauf from Regina, Saskatchewan, is a charming, warm, experimental indie-rock and chamber-pop release that collages snippets of dialogue and music from old movies, between and within songs
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Sports Team: Boys These Days
New album: A clever, satirically witty, catchily entertaining mish-mash of styles from pop to country by the Cambridge-formed London band in this third LP, heralding a change of label and a nod to reaching the end of their twenties, an a sense of wondering what the future holds
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Skunk Anansie: The Painful Truth
New album: A first LP for nearly a decade by the acclaimed London rock band, back after two members have undergone cancer treatment, and with a bold, stylish, more experimental sound inspired by producer David Sitek of TV on the Radio, but still packing plenty of articulate, passionate, defiant, candid punch, especially with singer Skin at their forefront
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Sparks: MAD!
New album: LA’s beloved veteran brothers and international treasures Ron and Russell Mael return with their 28th studio LP , filled with various styles of their pioneering pop, new wave, art-rock, chamber, operatic – various amusing, mischievous, satirical, trivial and declamatory, dipping into subjects such as branded backpacks, tattoos, and performative devotion
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Matt Maltese: Hers
New album: A dreamy, languid, beautiful and darkly humorous sixth LP release by the British-Canadian singer-songwriter with songs drenched in yearning, pain and self-deprecation, heavily influenced by Leonard Cohen, and a voice that at times echoes the resonant sighs of Chet Baker
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Tune-Yards: Better Dreaming
New album: Clever, quirky, upbeat, funky experimental pop by the Oakland, California married duo of Merrill Garbus and her bassist husband Nate Brenner with an LP borne out of lockdown, one filled with joy, serious insights, musical oddness, but also designed to loosen up the joints and get the whole body wiggling
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Billy Nomates’ third LP, Metalhorse
New album: British artist Tor Maries returns with her third indie-postpunk LP, and perhaps her best yet – as ever strong of voice and sharp of lyric, but this time with powerful, new, dynamic pop-rock sound – her first using a live band – and with running theme of churning love-song emotions on a metaphorical broken fairground
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The Real Tuesday Weld: Late Flowering Reveries
New album: A charming, wistful, beautifully serene, gentle, poignant and possibly farewell album by the cult lo-fi cult London-based vintage-style pop-art band fronted by singer-songwriter Stephen Coates in a release themed around late night and early morning, hope, regret, memory and longing
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Lucius
New album: Strong, inspiring, back-to-roots, catchy original, dynamic, lush, shimmering indie pop by the Los Angeles quartet of Jess Wolfe, Holly Laessig, Dan Molad and Peter Lalish who with this new release return to their original, fresh method of writing and recording together bringing beautiful melody and nuanced, candid lyrics
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Deradoorian: Ready For Heaven
New album: Quirky, creative, clever, eclectic, lo-fi experimental pop by the American singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist and former Dirty Projectors member Angel Deradoorian, with a new LP about the erosion of humanity, and mental struggles in the ongoing degrading age of destructive capitalism
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Arcade Fire: Pink Elephant
New album: A musically strong seventh studio LP by the acclaimed Montreal band, perhaps in part because it is more sensitive and subdued than the 2022’s full-on We, with lyrics that appear ambiguous, cautious and cathartic in the shadow and aftermath of frontman Win Butler’s sexual misconduct allegations scandal
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Maria Somerville
New album: This wonderfully absorbing, otherworldly second album from the Irish musician from Connemara in Galway, is a fusion awash with slow, gentle, misty shoegaze and folk, and rewards multiple listens with its many sonic textures and atmospheric layers in what feels like expansive celebration of solitude
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Jenny Hval: Iris Silver Mist
New album: Named after a perfume created in 1995 - not merely expressing that of the flower but a milky fog, it also describes a LP of ghostly, fragile, fragrant beauty by the Norwegian musician and novelist work scattered with field recordings and tricks of memory
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Prima Queen: The Prize
New album: A playful, bright, shimmering, witty indie-pop debut LP by the transatlantic duo of Louise Macphail and Kristin McFadden, who, following a series of strong singles and EPs, present a variety of clever, nuanced, vivid songs about all kinds of difficult and dysfunctional relationships and self-deprecatory insecurity
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The Moonlandingz: No Rocket Required
New album: Seven years since their last LP together, and many different projects in the meantime, Fat White Family’s Lias Saoudi and Eccentronic Research Council’s Dean Honer and Adrian Flanagan return with their clever, witty electro-dance satire on a dystopian world, with guests including Iggy Pop, Nadine Shah, Jessica Winter and actor Ewen Bremner
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