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Du Blonde’s Homecoming
Album review: Beth Jeans Houghton returns, now under her label, continuing her more recent stripped back formula of great songwriting wrapped in fuzzbox guitar glam rock, this time with guests including Shirley Manson, Ezra Furman, and of Andy Bell of Ride
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Dry Cleaning
Album review: Dry by name, extra dry by delivery, the post-punk south London band’s debut LP, laced with the spoken word vocals by Florence Shaw, is darkly hilarious fusion of stark guitar and stream-of-consciousness sardonicism
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OH NO …
Album review: This 12th album by the Californian experimental electro-pop, postpunk band led by Jaime Stewart may be the most unusual of year, an oddball set of diverse duets with many guests that sometimes has the melodramatic quality of later Scott Walker
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Two peas in a pod: cover art art from Deacon by serpentwithfeet
Album review: An unusually delicate, tender and eccentric affectionately album of gospel-infused R&B about a black gay relationship and friendships, the second by Baltimore-born Brooklyn-based singer Josiah Wise
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Promises more than fulfilled
Album review: This transcendent, astonishingly beautiful work, from a five-year collaboration, culminates in genre-spanning exquisite music over nine continuous movements that could easily top the best of the year
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Sketchy: Tune-Yards
Album review: Rhythmically complex, and restlessly clever, the latest release by California’s Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner wrestles with a variety of issues from gentrification to gender privilege and climate disaster
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Circularities and patterns in nature: Hannah Peel’s Fir Wave
Album review: The electronic music composer’s mesmeric LP is inspired by the cyclical and fractal patterns of nature with access to and reinterpretations of the original music of the celebrated 1972 KPM 1000 series: Electrosonic, the music of Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop
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David Balfe
Album review: Moving, passionate, angry, grief-stricken and tender, this mix of beats, samples and striking spoken word lyrics by the Dublin performer and producer David Balfe is a powerful tribute to a lost friend
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Wondrous wallowing: Great Spans of Muddy Time by William Doyle
Album review: Inspired by the work of Robert Wyatt, early Eno, Berlin-era Bowie and Syd Barrett, this is intriguingly experimental, challenging but at times beautiful electronica work by the artist previously known as East India Youth
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Ideas constantly sprouting: Chad VanGaalen’s latest album
Album review: An inventively eclectic homegrown release of tasty psychedelia, krautrock and folk by the Calgary songwriter and eccentric animator who uses a huge variety of instruments including his own invented lithophone
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House Music is Bell Orchestre’s first album in a decade
Album review: A wondrously absorbing and beautiful first release in a decade by the Montreal-based group of musicians with 10 tracks flow seamlessly into each other via coalescing classical and electronic instrumentation.
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Nicely worn: Black Honey’s album
Album review: Refreshing, energetic, upbeat big-chorus fuzzbox indie-pop by the four-piece from Brighton with echoes of big-sound styles ranging from Primal Scream to Girls Aloud to Garbage to Sigue Sigue Sputnik
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A wonderful vocal new version of Gazelle Twin’s 2018 album Pastoral
Album review: An extraordinary reworking of one of the most brilliantly evocative albums of recent times, Elizabeth Bernholz’s 2018 LP Pastoral is re-animated with electronic drone choir NYX to create equally profound and disturbing versions of seven songs and a new title track
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Ladies of the canyon … the cover of Lana Del Rey’s eighth album
Album review: Evoking big, wide landscapes with a slow, melancholic, wistful, nostalgic and semi-fictional narratives, the New York singer-songwriter’s eighth album is of uniform style and slow pace, but rich in powerfully strong melodies and memorable lines
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Sunburned Hand Of The Man’s latest album
Album review: An eclectic and fascinating album of newly edited tracks by the prolific Boston Massachusetts collective, covering everything from gentle acoustic to thrash metal, indie, psych, electronica, krautrock and everything in between
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Tiggs Da Author’s album covers almost every style under the sun
Album review: Sprightly, catchy and filled with hooks, the Tanzania-born London singer, producer and musicians full debut has something from many genres, from funk to African, jazz, pop, hip hop, reggae, gospel and soul
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Israel Nash
Album review: The Texas singer-songwriter’s latest LP indeed is a gem – infused with slow country, prog rock, southern gospel-soul, the folk and ‘70s psych-rock, with more than a dash of Neil Young, slide guitar and geographical reference
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Many stories to tell: Witch Camp (Ghana)
Album review: A unique collection of field recordings of extraordinarily moving and evocative songs performed by women accused of witchcraft, taken from where they have escaped to special safe-haven settlements
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Valerie June
Album review: This sublime fifth album by the soul singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Memphis, Tennessee includes a guest appearance by the legendary Carla Thomas
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Catherine Anne Davis aka The Anchoress
Album review: This emotional release by Welsh singer-songwriter Catherine Anne Davis, her first since 2016’s Confessions Of A Romance Novelist, brings piano-based songs with echoes of Tori Amos mixed with soaring guitar indie pop intensity
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