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Favourite LPs of 2023, Part 2.
Welcome once again to the annual tradition of Song Bar’s favourite album releases of 2023. This is Part 2, and Part 1 was yesterday. There’s no such thing as a chart rundown or ‘best of’ here, and these come in no particular order …
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Part 1 selection of 2023 favourite albums
Welcome once again to the annual tradition of Song Bar’s favourite album releases of 2023. This is Part 1, and Part 2 is also out here. There’s no such thing as a chart rundown or ‘best of’ here, and these come in no particular order. This is all about quality and innovation …
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No hiding places: CMAT re-enters with her second album
New album: Following her acclaimed 2022 debut, Dublin’s Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson returns with luxuriant, catchy country-pop decorated with her biting, candid, self-deprecatory wit on relationship fragility, packed with highly specific pop culture or British references
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Genesis Owusu
New album: A stylish, punchy, truly eclectic release by the Ghanaian-Australian singer from Canberra, (real name Kofi Owusu-Ansah) with a potent mash of hip-hop, punk, funk, metal, soul and electro-pop, and a running lyrical metaphor of cockroaches
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Hak Baker: Worlds End FM
New album: Vibrant, witty, energetic debut by the east London rapper and musician, presented like a pirate radio station the mixes hip hop and storytelling with echoes of The Streets’ Mike Skinner and Ian Dury, as well more conventional, yet pointed indie about troubled Britain
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JPEGMAFIA x Danny Brown: Scaring The Hoes
New album: A frenetic, eclectic, mischievously ironic and culture-bashing collaboration between iconoclastic Brooklyn rapper Barrington DeVaughn Hendricks, and his Detroit counterpart Daniel Dewan Sewell in a crazed mish-mash of samples, voices and rhythmic restlessness
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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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Debut album: Wonderful debut by the Irish pop-country singer – Dublin’s Ciara Mary Alice Thompson has the melodies of Dolly, the panache of Glen Campbell, the range of Kate Bush, but above all a searing wit powered by self-deprecation and a caustically humorous instinct for tragedy
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Girl In Red
Album review: “Honey, I’m not doing so well". Impressively candid, clever pop debut capturing a variety of emotional, relationship and sexuality traumas through catchy songwriting by Norway’s Marie Ulven who has already become a bedroom-produced YouTube star
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A bit of everything: from the cover of Gabrielle Aplin’s Dear Happy
The first of two roundups this week, this includes a return for the postpunk pioneers Wire, pop singer-songwriter Gabrielle Alpin, and electronica indie quartet Holy Fuck teeming up with Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor
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Cutting edge? Bat For Lashes’ Natasha Kahn
This latest roundup includes Natasha Kahn’s return with vampiric battiness, Chrissie Hynde’s alternative American Songbook, Iggy Pop intoning poetry, and beautiful work from Mali’s Tinawiren and a Madagascar compilation
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