New album: A heartfelt, visceral, both powerful and gentle LP by the Swinomish/Iñupiaq singer-songwriter Katherine Paul inspired by her 2020 journey to her ancestral lands from Portland to the Skagit River on Puget Sound in Washington State
Read moreAndy Shauf: Norm
New album: Following 2020’s The Neon Skyline, the Canadian singer-songwriter returns with beautiful, crisp, meticulous folk-pop, filled with narrative, clever philosophy and his delicate, engaging, falsetto voice
Read moreEmily Breeze: Rapture
New album: Wonderfully engaging, darkly humorous, catchy, clever noir pop by the self-deprecatory but talented Bristol artist presenting “a collection of coming-of (middle) age stories which celebrate flamboyant failure, excess and acceptance.”
Read moreParamore: This Is Why
New album: The Tennessee rock band fronted by Hayley Williams return with their sixth album, a more angular guitar affair influenced by Bloc Party and Foals, marrying post-punk with edgy, angry restless indie pop
Read moreLiv.e: Girl In The Half Pearl
New album: A dizzyingly indefinable and innovative debut by the Dallas-born singer-songwriter Olivia Williams, mixing experimental R&B, gospel, neo-soul, spoken word, electronica, cosmic jazz, and pop
Read moreQuasi: Breaking the Balls of History
New album: A welcome return with clever, punchy, alternative indie and a wry look at the world, from the Portland, Oregon indie duo of Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss, in their 10th album, and first for a decade
Read moreYo La Tengo: This Stupid World
New album: Nearly four decades into the New Jersey trio’s prolific career, Ira Kaplan Georgia Hubley and James McNew’s 17th studio LP one of their best, mesmeric, krautrock-inspired, semi-improvisational, shoegaze indie
Read moreHifi Sean and David McAlmont: Happy Ending
New album: Crisp, soulful, lush, soaring pop, with a Bollywood flavour, as one of the finest ever British vocalists releases a first collaborative full LP with producer and musician Sean Dickson
Read moreRobert Forster: The Candle and the Flame
New album: This eighth solo LP by the former Go-Betweens man brings powerful, intelligent, emotional bittersweet songwriting in a largely acoustic home setup involving his family members, and foreshadows his partner’s diagnosis with cancer
Read moreM(h)aol: Attachment Styles
Debut album: They’ve been pacing around with singles for several years, but this debut by the Dublin post-punks (pronounced male) is powerful, funny, dark, feminist, funny and dirty, filled with fabulous thumps, bangs, crashes, guitar clangs and killer lyrics
Read moreThe Go! Team: Get Up Sequences Part Two
New album: Ian Parton’s Brighton band return, in their follow-up to 2021’s Part One, with a truly joyous, upbeat and vibrantly colourful, wham-bam wonder tour of worldwide cultural vocals and samples ranging from Benin to Japan, France, India, Texas and Detroit
Read moreHamish Hawk: Angel Numbers
New album: After the lauded Heavy Elevator LP, further fabulously crafted, numbers by the witty, articulate, smooth-voiced Edinburgh singer-songwriter, with a set of sensitive, moving and gently humorous songs about patterns of destiny and the future
Read moreYoung Fathers: Heavy Heavy
New album: There’s nothing quite like them. Joyous energy and endless invention, the Edinburgh trio’s fourth LP is filled with soulful, emotional vocals, fabulous oddball, dynamic beats and sound textures, and already an album of the year contender
Read moreThe WAEVE: The WAEVE
New album: Fantastically original, eclectic and melodious eponymous debut by the duo of Blur’s Graham Coxon, and ex-Pipettes’ Rose Elinor Dougall, packed with an indefinable mix of indie pop, folk, post-punk and much more in a free-flowing tapestry of sounds and textures
Read moreJadu Heart: Derealised
New album: A third album from the British duo of Diva-Sachy Jeffrey and Alex Headford brings an eclectic, innovative mix of indie and electronic and dream pop, with a strong flavour of shoegazey My Bloody Valentine
Read moreJW Francis: Dream House
New album: The upbeat, wryly humorous New York singer-songwriter returns with a collection of super-catchy, perky, jangly indie pop songs inspired by a project requesting Valentine’s love song requests from fans on Twitter, resulting in “an album about caring for others, and the way we express it”
Read moreL.T. Leif: Come Back To Me, But Lightly
New album: Slow, measured, pared-back and beautiful, this creative concoction of cosmic country and folk is a gorgeous gem by the Glasgow-based Canadian artist
Read moreComplete Mountain Almanac: Complete Mountain Almanac
New album: A uniquely beautiful, complex, layered project of 12 monthly releases created by Stockholm-based singer/songwriter Rebekka Karijord and the poet, artist and dancer Jessica Dessner, who also brings her younger brothers Aaron and Bryce of The National
Read moreThe Arcs: Electrophonic Chronic
New album: Classy rockin’ psychedelic soul from the Black Keys man Dan Auerbach’s side project, returning with a stellar supergroup of musicians including co-founder Leon Michels and members of the Dap-Kings, as well as a moving tribute LP to the Arcs’ late singer Richard Swift
Read moreMozart Estate: Pop-Up! Ker-Ching! And The Possibilities Of Modern Shopping
New album: The legendary Lawrence of Felt, Denim, and more recently Go-Kart Mozart, rebrands the latter with a new name and trolley-load of perky, cheeky, catchy sometimes pub-style electro-pop tunes roughly themed around the joys and mini-tragedies of retail therapy
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