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Stealing Sheep: GLO (GIrl Life Online)
New album: Always bringing effervescently quirky, original and experimental work, this is an especially vibrant, fizzing, percussive, witty and superb LP – and surely the very best yet by the excellent Liverpool electro-pop trio of Emily Lansley, Luciana Mercer, and Rebecca Hawley
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The Divine Comedy: Rainy Sunday Afternoon
New album: Sumptuously charming, filled with melancholy, wit, gorgeous melodies and songwriting, Neil Hannon and co bring a 13th LP of particularly tender, moving and humorous chamber pop with a vaudevillian feel, and running theme of time passing and mutability, all performed with classic panache
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Last Night I Heard The Dog Star Bark by Gwenifer Raymond
New album: A truly evocative and extraordinarily skilled instrumental album by the Wales-born steel string folk guitarist and banjoist whose finger-picking weaves intricate aural stories inspired by tales from occult folk horror, space, science fiction, and the tangled undergrowth of various landscapes
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Maruja - Pain To Power
New album: A impressively intense, emotional, passionate, energised, dark, philosophical-political cross-genre cosmic jazz-prog-punk-hip-hop-hardcore generational debut LP by the Manchester quartet with with lyrics spanning love, death, social issues, world affairs and mental health
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Titanic: HAGEN
New album: Following their 2023 debut Vidrio, the Mexico City-based partners Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti and guitarist Hector Tosta return with another mesmeric, exciting and highly eclectic experimental album, moving here from jazz into more pop and classic rock in combinations yet unheard
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Shame: Cutthroat
New album: The south Londoners return with a particularly musically polished as well as usually rowdy, raw post-punk fourth LP, angry at all sorts of social and political evils, and experimenting with other musical styles at the skilful hand of acclaimed producer John Congleton
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Gruff Rhys: Dim Probs
New album: After last year’s acclaimed Sadness Sets Me Free, the ex-Super Furry Animals frontman’s ninth solo LP (meaning ‘no problem’) is a fully Welsh language release, his first since 2019’s Pang!, filled with charming, soothing, catchy folk-rock tunes, but with some darker subjects for current times, the title is an ironic twist
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Sydney Minsky Sargeant - Lunga
New album: The Working Men’s Club frontman from Todmorden in West Yorkshire makes his debut solo LP, a melancholy yet beautiful collection of acoustic and gently reflective pastoral, psychedelic songs, with echoes of Elliott Smith, Syd Barrett and Nick Drake
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Jens Lekman: Songs For Other People's Weddings
New album: Borne from a 2020 novel-with-music side project idea with writer David Levithan, the Swedish singer-songwriter charts his 20 years’ experience of being an occasional and accidental wedding musician in this witty, profound double LP that among other issues and emotions, examines the role of love songs in our live
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Baxter Dury - Allbarone
New album: Alongside his usual droll, witty wordsmithery and distinctive dark, deep-voiced spoken delivery, the Londoner and son of Ian also brings a slightly different, more boisterous style of satirical and nihilistic misery with a collection of supremely catchy, danceable numbers in this ninth LP, produced Paul Epworth
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Saint Etienne: International
New album: Catchy retro, singalong electro-pop, soft, bouncy beats, simple melodies and a big dose of nostalgia? If this 13th really is the British trio’s final album across 35 years, it's a decent sign-off by Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs since that breakthrough LP Foxbase Alpha in 1991
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Junior Brother: The End
New album: Superbly strange, spectral, unearthly, raw, and striking, using traditional Irish instruments with twist, and a vocal delivery that’s idiosyncratic, passionate and primal, the County Kerry singer-songwriter Ronan Kealy’s new boundary-pushing alternative folk release distils the ancient and eerie folklore through a modern mangle
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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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Sabrina Carpenter: Man's Best Friend
New album: Mischievous, provocative, satirical, saucy, sexy, intimate, explicit, shiny, cleverly catchy relationship songs, packed with naughty whip-smart wordplay pop, musical echoes of 80s and Madonna, to Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, all by the US singer-songwriter, and expertly produced across a range of funky to country styles by Jack Antonoff
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Suede: Antidepressants
New album: Their tenth album over all and fifth since the 2013 reformation, is classic Suede with a post-punk feel by the British rock band, with searing, strong, raw Magazine- and Cure-style guitar riffs by Richard Oakes and dark yet energised and emotive, declamatory lyrics by Brett Anderson
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Big Thief: Double Infinity
New album: Brooklyn’s Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek and James Krivchenia return with a beautiful sixth album, joined by guest musicians including Laraaji on zither and percussion, with nine poetic, profound and elevating folk-rock numbers, all with exquisite, bustling, interwoven elegance
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David Byrne: Who Is The Sky?
New album: With his first since 2018’s acclaimed American Utopia and its performance film, the ex-Talking Heads frontman’s new LP is an antidote to dark times - brilliantly joyous, optimistic, catchy, variously eccentric and profound, accompanied by Brooklyn’s Ghost Train Orchestra and guests including St Vincent, Paramore’s Hayley Williams and The Smile drummer Tom Skinner
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Guedra Guedra: MUTANT
New album: A fabulous fusion of the traditional with the modern, a brilliantly infectious, mesmeric, polyrhythmic melange, created by the Moroccan producer Abdellah M. Hassak, who blends analogue synths, drum machines, and field recordings from Morocco, Tanzania, Guinea and more, exploring themes of themes of identity, Pan-Africanism, Afrofuturism, and decolonisation
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Nova Twins: Parasites & Butterflies
New album: Following 2022’s acclaimed Supernova album, south-east London’s Amy Love and Georgia South return with a third LP of banging boundary-pushing hybrid goth-rock-nu-metal-punk-hip-hop with feisty punch-the-air anthems as well as themes addressing mental health, confidence, negativity and the music industry
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Modern Nature: The Heat Warps
New album: Following 2023’s No Fixed Point In Space, Jack Cooper and his Cambridge-based lo-fi indie-folk band return with another insightful, poetic album, here with glimmers of gentle, offbeat hope as well as melancholy, exploring themes of collectivism, our relationship with the natural world and the weight of consciousness - but with greater directness and purpose
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