Album review: Woking’s finest returns with his own lockdown LP after 2020’s acclaimed On Sunset, and this 16th solo LP is a fun bag bursting full of catchy melodies and fabulous toe-tapping pop tunes
Read moreSt Vincent: Daddy's Home
Album review: This superb new LP by Annie Clark is inspired by the look, sounds and feel of grimy early 70s New York, creating a work of of sleazy sophistication, the sounds of electric sitar, a Steely Dan, and an edgy joke title referring to the release of her father from prison
Read moreJulia Stone: Sixty Summers
Album review: Third album leaning towards quirky, intelligent and inventively experimental pop by the artist from Sydney with oodles of brass, drums and funk guitar and electronica – by Annie Clark aka St Vincent and Thomas Bartlett
Read moreGirl In Red: If I Could Make It Go Quiet
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
Read moreTeenage Fanclub: Endless Arcade
Album review: This first album for five years by Scotland’s indie veterans as ever is wonderfully consistent, here marrying the musically sunny and uplifting with dark, tragic subject matter to reflect recent times
Read moreThe Coral: Coral Island
Album review: Themed loosely in setting, characters and narrative around a British seaside resort, this new double album by the Liverpool band glitters with beautifully relaxed, timeless tunes that shimmer with a late-60s psychedelia
Read moreArt D'Ecco: In Standard Definition
Album review: A stylish and charismatic glam-rock electro-funk-disco pop second album, echoing everything from early 70s Bowie or Bolan’s T-Rex to 80s synth New Romantics, by the wonderful Canadian androgynous singer
Read moreWasuremono: Let's Talk, Pt. 1
Album review: Refreshing, full-bodied vocal harmonies and almost messianic, upbeat lyrics make this new indie pop album by the West Country quartet a breath of positivity that also echoes the energy of Arcade Fire and The Polyphonic Spree
Read moreField Music: Flat White Moon
Album review: The eighth LP from Sunderland brothers Peter and David Brewis brings together a wealth influences and accessibility, cleverly marrying pop, funk and postpunk with echoes of the Beatles, XTC and Todd Rundgren
Read moreSharon Van Etten: epic Ten
Album review: A decade after the American singer-songwriter’s acclaimed second album, seven wonderfully written songs are reissued alongside versions by contrasting guests including Fiona Apple, IDLES, and Lucinda Williams
Read moreLa Femme: Paradigmes
Album review: The French band’s third album is an attractive, energetic mix of classic vintage sounds from 60s candy floss pop to 80s synth new wave, instrumentals that could TV themes, whispery and sensual hip hop, disco and dash of rave
Read moreDu Blonde: Homecoming
Album review: Beth Jeans Houghton returns, now under her label, continuing her more recent stripped back formula of great songwriting wrapped in fuzzbox guitar glam rock, this time with guests including Shirley Manson, Ezra Furman, and of Andy Bell of Ride
Read moreXiu Xiu: OH NO
Album review: This 12th album by the Californian experimental electro-pop, postpunk band led by Jaime Stewart may be the most unusual of year, an oddball set of diverse duets with many guests that sometimes has the melodramatic quality of later Scott Walker
Read moreBlack Honey: Written and Directed
Album review: Refreshing, energetic, upbeat big-chorus fuzzbox indie-pop by the four-piece from Brighton with echoes of big-sound styles ranging from Primal Scream to Girls Aloud to Garbage to Sigue Sigue Sputnik
Read moreLana Del Rey: Chemtrails Over The Country Club
Album review: Evoking big, wide landscapes with a slow, melancholic, wistful, nostalgic and semi-fictional narratives, the New York singer-songwriter’s eighth album is of uniform style and slow pace, but rich in powerfully strong melodies and memorable lines
Read moreTiggs Da Author: Blame It On The Youts
Album review: Sprightly, catchy and filled with hooks, the Tanzania-born London singer, producer and musicians full debut has something from many genres, from funk to African, jazz, pop, hip hop, reggae, gospel and soul
Read moreThe Anchoress: The Art of Losing
Album review: This emotional release by Welsh singer-songwriter Catherine Anne Davis, her first since 2016’s Confessions Of A Romance Novelist, brings piano-based songs with echoes of Tori Amos mixed with soaring guitar indie pop intensity
Read moreJane Weaver: Flock
Album review: The Liverpool and Widnes-raised artist returns with a mesmeric and uplifting 11th album that takes a variety of elements - electronica, psychedelia and acid folk morphing into fabulous alternative pop record that really takes flight
Read moreArab Strap: As Days Get Dark
Album review: Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton’s first album together since 2005 is as brilliant as ever – a mischievous, brooding, blackly humorous, whisperingly sinister and sweary exploration of love, sex, addiction, exploitation and death wrapped in beautiful, poetic music
Read moreAltin Gün: Yol
Album review: Wonderful third album by the Amsterdam-based Turkish, Dutch, Indonesian and British band who infuse traditional Turkish songbook material with elecro-pop, funk and disco sounds in a way that feels authentic and uplifting
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