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 …
Read moreBas Jan: Back To The Swamp
New album: This third album by the quartet fronted by singer and harpist Serafina Steer, is another wittily droll, darkly humorous collection about love and modern life’s absurdities and mundanities, with influences from The Pet Shop Boys, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Kate Bush, Heaven 17 and even a referential shake of Salt N Pepa
Read moreRozi Plain: Prize
New album: Beautifully textured, gentle, sensitive, understated, mysterious, stripped-back alternative folk by the English singer-songwriter, also joined by colleagues from This Is The Kit, saxophonist Alabaster DePlume and harpist Serafina Steer
Read moreBas Jan: Baby U Know
New album: Whimsical, humorous, profound, inventive, silly, ephemeral, ethereal – all this and more in the latest LP by the band featuring Serafina Steer and co with talky-singing internal monologues about everything from sex to politics and social media
Read moreNew albums: Lianne La Havas, JARV IS (Jarvis Cocker), The Pretenders, The Chicks, Ellie Goulding, Sault, Wilma Archer, Protomartyr, Oumou Sangaré
Latest albums include exquisite soul and gospel with the divine voice of Lianne La Havas and the mystery band Sault, plus mischief from Jarvis Cocker, The Pretenders roll back the years, the return of the (no longer Dixie) Chicks
Read moreNew albums: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Sturgill Simpson, Black String, Girl Band, Serafina Steer, Jarvis Cocker various, Kejaya and Elaha Soroor, Temples, Young MA, Tegan and Sara
The latest album roundup includes a new level of beauty from Nick Cave, a new style for Sturgill Simpson, Afghan eclectic music from Kejaya and Elaha Soroor, and scary scratchy postpunk from Ireland’s Girl Band
Read more