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Tindersticks: Soft Tissue
New album: Markedly different the 2021’s lockdown sample-heavy Distractions album, the Nottingham band’s 14th LP is a beautifully mature release with Memphis soul, Latin-American and other influences, but as ever, the distinctive understated sound of Stuart Staples’ voice
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Los Bitchos: Talkie Talkie
New album: After 2022’s Let The Festivities Begin!, the London-based international female four-piece return with a vibrant second uniquely stylish set of surf, psychedelic and exotic instrumentals that infectiously traverse many genres
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Jessica Pratt: Here In The Pitch
New album: Gracefully ghostly, dream-like, sensual, gentle and deliciously paced, this fourth LP by the American singer-songwriter floats like a perfect timeless acoustic folky boat stirring ripples of wistful emotions, profoundly complex lines and vivid images
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Vera Sola: Peacemaker
New album: Oozing style and sophistication, the smoky, velvety-voiced American singer-songwriter returns with a follow-up her 2018 debut, Shades, with a sublime set of vivid, poetic, atmospheric songs, laced with a Nashville-recorded country, folk and ghostly, theatrical twang, and influences from Tom Waits to Dvořák
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SPRINTS: Letter To Self
New album: After many strong singles and EPs, a bold, dynamic, blistering punk and post-punk debut by the Dublin four-piece, tackling turbulent existential crises with dark passion and wit
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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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Sen Morimoto: Diagnosis
New album: The Chicago-based Japanese singer, rapper and jazz multi-instrumentalist’s new LP comprises a richly eclectic, dynamic selection of songs with an overriding theme of seeking the right direction in life
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McKinley Dixon: Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?
New album: A short but poetically vivid and emotionally stirring fourth album by the articulate, flowing Richmond, Virginia rapper and musician, a title inspired by Toni Morrison’s book trilogy, and filled with city-inspired jazz soundscapes and great guest vocalists
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Anna B Savage’s second album
New album: Following 2021’s superb debut LP, A Common Turn, the London-based singer-songwriter returns with an exquisitely beautiful, bittersweet, intimate, candid personal set of songs about the difficulties of love
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Gold Panda: The Work
New album: A first album for six years by the London electronic artist Derwin Dicker, and it’s a welcome return with a distinctively lovely palette of twinkling sounds, loops and textures, with Japanese and other influences
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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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Los Bitchos are ready to party ….
Debut album: Break out the pisco and tequila! Produced by Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, a joyously fun debut album by the international all-female London band who play foot-tapping instrumentals fusing surf guitar, Turkish psych, Argentine cumbia and Peruvian chicha, sporting a chic 60s look
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Imarhan’s beatiful new album, Aboogi
New album: Mesmerically beautiful third LP by the Algerian tuareg desert quintet, all atwirl with superb vocals, clever layering, intricate guitar work, and a somehow wonderfully entwined guest vocal appearance by Gruff Rhys
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Local Valley
New album: This fourth solo album by the Swedish-Argentinian indie folk singer-songwriter and guitarist is filled with beautiful stillness, gentle intimacy and acoustic playing, birdsong, a wonder of nature, and sense of how tiny we are in a vast universe
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Sophia Kennedy’s Monsters - impossible to control or define
Album review: An unholy, beguiling and at times mischievously brilliant mixture of pop, Tin Pan Alley, vintage showtunes, hip hop, abstract electronica and horror film culture, the Baltimore-born, Hamburg-bred artist is just as impossible to define as to not enjoy
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Moses Sumney
The latest roundup includes a multi-genre double by Moses Sumney, melancholy electronica from Caribou, funk-indie-pop from the Orielles as well as Scandinavian selections from Denmark’s black metal queen doing folk
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FKA twigs
The second part of this year’s LP favourites again includes several superb female artists. Also check out the first part published yesterday
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From the cover of Tindersticks’ new album No Treasure But Hope
Kings of beautiful misery Tindersticks and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy return with some startlingly uplifting numbers, and some great debuts by Dog In the Snow and Shanti Celeste are among this week’s roundup picks
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Angel Olsen
This latest roundup includes a seismic album of emotion turmoil from Angel Olsen, a stripped-back release from Wilco, snappy hip hop from Danny Brown and gritty Brooklyn postpunk from Wives
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Strong likeness: detail from the cover of Bill Callahan’s Shepherd In A Sheepskin
A mellowness touches the landscape of this week’s releases, with various artists taking a more reflective, gentler direction, with a beauty from Bill Callahan, a more personal Kate Tempest, a lusher Bruce Springsteen and more
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