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Broken Bells: Into The Blue, their third album since eponymous debut in 2010
New album: Acclaimed producer Brian Burton aka Danger Mouse and James Mercer of the The Shins reconvene for their third duo BB album in 12 years, and first since 2014, with strong, slow, unhurried, smoky numbers of thrumming indie reverberation
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Goats and glory: TSHA’s debut album Capricorn Sun
Debut album: After a series of strong singles and her EP, Dawn, a cleverly crafted, and at times elegant dance music debut by the Tottenham-based DJ and producer Teisha Matthews, fusing 80s and 90s era styles with soul, steel band, orchestral and much more
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The Orielles’ fourth LP, Tableau
New album: This fourth, sprawling, ambitious, cinematic, genre-spanning double LP by the Halifax trio of singer/bassist Esmé Hand-Halford and co is an enthralling, constantly morphing mix of psychedelia, prog, jazz, funk, R&B, indie, space pop, electronica, house and disco
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Lambchop’s 16th studio album, The Bible
New album: Tender, strange, eclectic, Kurt Wagner returns with a 16th album a long way from those earlier heady day releases of of Americana and alt-country, but one filled with fascinating oddities, reflections on mortality, with fusions of jazz, electronica, soul, classical and modulated sounds and voices
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Temperatures rising and falling: Yeah Yeah Yeahs return with their fifth album Cool It Down
A welcome return from the New York trio of Karen O and co, with a fifth studio album and their first since 2013’s Mosquito, one filled with sonic menace and tenderness, with a running theme of embracing the natural world and raging against climate change and its deniers
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Pixies’s eighth album
New album: Meaty, strong new LP by the legendary Black Francis and co, a mischievous, punchy ode to absurdism, with a sound that harks to earlier material than the more polished more recent LPs, with some tracks sitting more in line with their classic 1987-91 era
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Gabriels’ debut album, including the extraordinary voice of Jacob Lusk
New album: Since their breakthrough Love and Hate In A Different Time EP in 2020, the trio of Ari Balouzian, Ryan Hope and most especially the voice of Jacob Lusk continue to soar, now with this new, short debut LP of transcendent, timeless soul and gospel
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Björk’s 10th Fossora, inspired by fungi, grows on the listener
New album: The Icelandic iconic pioneer returns with a 10th LP, mesmeric, strange, beautiful, sometimes challenging, but always original, inspired by fungi, the death of her mother, oodles of woodwind, rich vocal harmony and some Dutch techno
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Dreams is the second part of an album trilogy, the preceded by Blood, and followed by Bones
New album: Oozing old-world charm with quirky invention and wistful beauty, this second thematic LP in a Swan Songs trilogy, the first of which was last year’s Blood, before the forthcoming Bone, is another delicious mix of acoustic and electronica by London’s Stephen Coates and co
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Courting: Guitar Music
New album: Short, snappy, sharp and caustically ironic, the Liverpool indie post-punk band’s 30-minute, eight-track LP follows their excellent 2021 EP Grand National with biting lyrics, catchy melodies and ferocious energy
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Sports Team’s second LP, Gulp!
New album: The Cambridge-formed London-based band return with their follow-up after lauded 2020 debut LP Deep Down Happy with catchy, strongly written, swaggering guitar indie, bubbling with energy and an upbeat, arch humour aimed at life’s insecurities
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The playfully inventive Tim Burgess returns with Typical Music
New album: One of music’s most positive, self-effacing and affable characters – as frontman of The Charlatans and host of Twitter Listening Parties – returns with a inventive, richly adventurous new solo LP of 22 tracks recorded over 30 days with a classy mix of catchy pop, rock and psychedelia
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Crack Cloud: Tough Baby
New album: Eclectic, original, energised and experimental, this is an enthralling third post-punk, pop, rock and thunderous concoction release by the Vancouver collective led by drummer and lead vocalist Zach Choy filled with the passionate and oddball
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Jake Blount
New album: After his acclaimed 2020 solo debut Spider Tales, the American bluegrass fiddler, banjo player, Afrofuturist and historian returns with a starkly beautiful, atmospheric album drawing on old spiritual numbers and set in a climate-changed, apocalyptic world
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Beth Orton’s Weather Alive
New album: The first album for six years by the British singer-songwriter brings an exquisite fragility and mature beauty, suffused with her delicate, sometimes ghostly vocals and sparse but perfectly weighted instrumentation
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Jesca Hoop: Order of Romance
New album: An exquisite new release by the American singer-songwriter with a collection of crisply perfect lo-fi folk-pop acoustic numbers, wrapped in intriguing, intricate yet pared-back instrumentation, and sharply intelligent, vividly imaginative lyrics
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Always a fresh perspective: Death Cab For Cutie: Asphalt Meadows
New album: The absurdity and irony of modern life, anthemic existentialism, panic attacks and more come in this 10th fine, witty, wry new indie, rock and post-punk pop album by the Washington band fronted by Ben Gibbard
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The Mars Volta return with their first LP in a decade
New album: After a decade of omertà and schism, the eclectic Texanprog-rock experimental duo of Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and band finally reunite with a mesmerically unique blend of funk, rock, psychedelia, Cuban and Afro-Cuban drumming and English and Spanish lyrics
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Rounded pop sound but still with an edge: Rina Sawayama’s Hold The Girl
New album: With her 2020 debut, Sawayama, the British-Japanese singer’s career was predicted on this site to go up and up, and so it has proved with this dazzlingly strong new album of high-octane pop opowerfully voiced melodies and intelligent, candid lyrics
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The Beths’
New album: Deliciously enjoyable new album by the New Zealand indie quartet, with strong melodies, lyrics that carefully balance the melancholy, thoughtful and feelgood, not least the title track which ponders the irony of knowing in great detail someone you are no longer in a relationship with
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