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Melody's Echo Chamber: Unclouded
New album: A fourth album, here full of delicious uplifting, dreamily chic, psychedelic soul pop by the French musician Melody Prochet, with bright, upbeat, optimistic numbers and a title lifted from a quote by the acclaimed Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, about achieving equilibrium
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Devotion & The Black Divine by anaiis
New album: Following a summer Song of the Day - Deus Deus, a review of the autumn release and third LP by the London-based French-Senegalese singer-songwriter of resonantly beautiful, dynamic, sensual soul, gospel, R&B and experimental and chamber pop, with themes of new motherhood, uncertainty, religion, self-love and acceptance
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Mavis Staples: Sad and Beautiful World
New album: A timelessly classy release by the veteran soul, blues and gospel singer and social activist from the Staples Singers, in a release of wonderfully moving and poignant cover versions, beautifully interpreting works by artists including Tom Waits, Curtis Mayfield, Leonard Cohen, and Gillian Welch
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Celeste: Woman of Faces
New album: The outstanding British singer returns, a long four years after her acclaimed debut Not Your Muse, with a classy, passionate set of nine, simmering, smoky, rippling dramatic, timeless numbers in which her vocal prowess is magnificently on show on songs playing on the theme of self and identity
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Yazmin Lacey: Teal Dreams
New album: A classy, colourful, beautiful and emotionally intelligent second album by the London-born artist following the acclaimed 2023 debut Voice Notes, her rich vocal tones blending soul with jazz, ska, reggae, lover’s rock, R&B and and pop
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Olivia Dean: The Art of Loving
New album: Mainstream but perfectly composed and polished pop and soul with a 70s retro style by the London singer-songwriter, this new LP is an unquestionably classy affair with her smooth, golden voice, gliding effortlessly through a series of songs about love, friendship, change and heartbreak
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Joy Crookes: Juniper
New album: With a style that’s sometimes stripped back, but always silky and smoky, the hugely talented, golden-voiced artist from Lambeth of a Bangladeshi and Irish heritage returns with her first LP since the acclaimed 2021 debut Skin, with smart, emotional, classy, beautiful soulful songs about heartbreak and other life struggles
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Curtis Harding - Departures & Arrivals: Adventures of Captain Curt
New album: The Michigan-born, Atlanta-based golden-voiced artist returns with uplifting, classy retro-soul funk, rock and pop with an extra layer of takeoff - he plays the cinematic thematic role of a space travelling astronaut expressing how much he misses his true love on Earth
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Blood Orange: Essex Honey
New album: Eclectic, dream-like, transitional and reflective with a late-summer smooth ambience and an over-riding theme of looking back on his Ilford childhood days, the 39-year-old British NY-based multi-instrumentalist and producer Dev Hynes returns with a fifth LP as Blood Orange, joined by a variety of other artists including Caroline Polachek and Lorde
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The Black Keys: No Rain, No Flowers
New album: A 13th studio album in now 25 years by the Ohio/Nashville rock and soul duo of singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney, here with a fuller, broader rock sound, keyboards and musical dimension in collaboration with fellow songwriter and producer Rick Nowels and others
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Natalie Bergman: My Home Is Not In This World
New album: This stylishly retro second solo album by the Chicago-born LA-based singer-songwriter follows her acclaimed 2021 LP Mercy, and channels psychedelic soul and alt-60s pop, packed with beautiful, classic-feel, heartbreak songs, and with a title that yearns for that past era and sense of place
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Barry Can't Swim’s second album, Loner
New album: Dance music bangers with an eclectic twist by the popular Scottish electronic musician, DJ producer aka Joshua Mainnie from Edinburgh, who with this second LP after 2023’s When Will We Land?, explores themes of identity amid the beats and clever crate-digging soul samples
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Africa Express Presents ... Bahidorà
New album: The collective that brought Blur’s Damon Albarn together with Malian musicians 20 years ago now assembles artists from four continents, though particularly plants the roots of this superb 21-track double album in Mexico, with a feast of numbers spanning cumbia, hip-hop, kuduro, soul, salsa, pop, reggaeton and more
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Durand Jones & The Indicators: Flowers
New album: Pure, sweet, sublime retro soul by the band from Bloomington, Indiana made of the core trio of vocalist Durand Jones, Aaron Frazer on drums/vocals, and guitarist Blake Rhein, here blooming again with their fifth LP in a decade in a release inspired by the idea of expressing personal vulnerability
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Van Morrison: Remembering Now
New album: After a series of cover albums, Belfast’s legendarily brilliant but also difficult, controversial, moody and mercurial singer-songwriter returns with an LP of love-song originals, full of much of the soulful warmth, tenderness, nuance and mellow fluidity many of his past classics
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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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McKinley Dixon: Magic, Alive!
New album: Classy, literary, cultured, narrative-rich, experimental, dramatic, dynamic and stylish hip-hop by the Richmond-born, Chicago-based rapper in this follow-up to the acclaimed Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? (2023) in a release exploring the fate of key characters and the idea of what constitutes magic in the turmoil of daily life
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Little Simz: Lotus
New album: The Mercury prize-winning London rapper and actress Simbiatu Ajikawo brings a powerful, playful as well as personal issues, defiant rage-filled articulate new sixth album, broadening her musical scope with collaborator and producer Miles James with a title inspired by the flower that blooms, despite a harsh environment in mud and swamp
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MRCY: Volume 2
New album: Wonderfully uplifting, stirring, classic, soaring soul and dynamic jazz by the UK-based duo of singer Kojo Degraft-Johnson and producer Barney Lister, in this follow-up to 2024’s Volume 1, adding some more contemporary music elements but still with a positive energy to address our troubled times
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Valerie June: Owls, Omens, and Oracles
New album: Stylish, catchy, charismatic, effervescent, uplifting, retro, Memphis soul, Americana and country by the singer-songwriter from Jackson, Tennessee whose distinctive, bright resonant voice has some echoes of Eartha Kitt and Macy Gray
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