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This year’s selections include some returning veterans at the top of their game as well as some fabulous newcomers
Favourite albums of 2024: Welcome to The Song Bar’s favourite albums of 2024 Part 1. There’s no such thing as ‘best of’ and everything is subjective, but rich seams of originality and quality are certainly here to be enjoyed. Peruse away …
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The Smile: Cutouts
New album: Following January’s Wall of Eyes, the trio of Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke, alongside Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, return with a second LP this year, and third overall – of intricacy and invention – with dark, moody lyrics, and musical excellence
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The Smile: Wall of Eyes
New album: Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood join again with jazz drummer Tom Skinner for a second LP of cerebrally inventive, dark tracks, tinged with ghostly melancholy, at times almost more Radiohead than Radiohead
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Clark - Sus Dog
New album: Themed around ideas of trust, enthralling, intelligent experimental electronica alt-pop by the British artist Christopher Clark in a work that has occasional echoes Radiohead, flavoured by guest vocalist Thom Yorke who is also executive producer
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Philip Selway: Strange Dance
New album: The Radiohead drummer’s third solo studio LP is awash with slow, cinematic, lush orchestration, his almost whispered voice with a steady flow of sensitive, melancholy but also hope-filled songs
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A selection of favourite LPs for 2022. See the lists below to go from top row left to right onwards
Favourite albums of 2022: Welcome to the first part of a selection for this year, many of which continue to come to terms with pandemic, climate change and other current issues but also show how music can continue to innovate, surprise and entertain
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The Smile trio’s first album
New album: Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, and Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner join forces in album of vivid, eerie, ghostly beauty, packed with fabulous guitar and bass riffs and rhythms, reminiscent of cinematic work as well as In Rainbows
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Radiohead’s KID A MNESIA
Reissue albums: An anniversary edition of two landmark albums, Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001) combined, but with a difference, with added tracks and alternate versions, harking back when the band expanded from rock into more experimental, krautrock and electronica territory
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Fiona Apple. Her new album is finally cut free after eight years since the last
This week’s roundup includes an extraordinary, viscerally non-digital return by Fiona Apple, Scottish singer-songwriter Gerry Cinnamon, Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, and Japanese pop star Rina Sawayama
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From Paul Thomas Anderson’s film to Thom Yorke’s Anima
The latest roundup includes the Radiohead frontman’s collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson, a return for The Black Keys, beautiful heights by The Tallest Man On Earth, plus a variety of indie, pop and mostly folk in many forms
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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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Songhoy Blues
This week's highlights include a re-release with extra tracks on the 20th anniversary of Radiohead's OK Computer, plus Songhoy Blues, Algiers, Jeff Tweedy, and a Mississippi John Hurt compilation
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Farewell, Mr Bowie. And thank you.
Bowie? Beyonce? There's no such thing as the best album of the year. But instead we round up favourites, apt and lesser known new albums as suggested by readers in part 1 from a profound 2016
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