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Torres aka Mackenzie Scott’s fifth album
New album: Strong melodies and witty lyrics mark this powerful set of grunge-pop songs by the American indie rocker Mackenzie Scott, whose work has echoes of The Breeders and as well as her British counterpart Du Blonde
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Bobby Gillespie and Jehnny Beth: Utopian Ashes
New album: The Primal Scream frontman and former Savages singer collaborate in an unusually mellow set of heartbreak numbers that recall the country rock duos between Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris
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Seventh heaven: Modest Mouse’s The Golden Casket
New album: Sharp, witty, and highly entertaining, this dynamic new LP American indie rockers Isaac Brock and co with post-punk, psychedelia and pop on subjects from degradation of our psychic landscapes and invisible technology and fatherhood
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Garbage are back with their first album for five years
New album: Shirley Manson and co return with their seventh, a double LP filled with banging cyber-punk anger, dark, seething, atmosphere, politics and personal battles. It’s one of their best since the 90s and stylistically includes echoes of Roxy Music, Depeche Mode, New Order and The Human League
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Sleater-Kinney’s surviving members Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein
Album review: This fine 10th studio album by Tucker and Brownstein was recored in Portland the summer of 2020 and rails against a backdrop of social unrest, devastating wildfires, and pandemic with a sound that has echoes of Steely Dan to Talking Heads and B-52s
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Billy Gibbons - still drivin’ onwards
Album review: The 71-year-old veteran ZZ Top frontman returns with his third solo LP of catchy, drivin’ dirty blues rock with innuendo inspired by motors and femmes fatales, often sounding much like his original band, and better on the faster numbers
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Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend
Album review: Grasping mainstream pop and rock with cleverly constructed styles and influences, a shrewd, highly polished new LP from the London indie band 2018 Mercury prize winners, jumps from soft, whispery piano ballads to big guitar bangers
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Olivia Rodrigo is Sour about being a teenager and her her ex …
Album review: Brimful with anger, jealousy, and melancholy, an impressive debut LP by the 18-year-old American actress and singer-songwriter is startlingly mature, fuelled by a heartbreak, and mixes punk rage with power-ballad slow-boil spite
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Matt Berry’s latest LP. If Francis Bacon had painted the Elephant Man.
Album review: Like a boy in a music shop let loose with all the toys, a thoroughly enjoyable and musically impressive psych-prog journey full of sonic humour and riffing adventure in this latest LP by the popular British comic actor
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Paul Weller’s Fat Pop is an album of catchy singles
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
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Rocking the dance floor: Royal Blood’s Typhoon
Album review: Third album across a decade of of signature thumping bangers of big fuzz guitar, heavy drums and high rock from the Brighton duo of Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher is also given an extra disco kick alongside producer Josh Homme
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Epic scale: The Million Masks of God by Manchester Orchestra
Album review: The Atlanta indie-rockers’ latest LP is has an even more expansive, full-bodied sound of vocal harmonies led by frontman Andy Hull that echo Fleet Foxes with strong songwriting, psychedelic parts and a sense of epic scale that would fill large venues or festivals
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A cri de coeur on climate change: Gojira’s new album, Fortitude
Album review: Metal may not be to everyone’s taste, but there’s no denying the songwriting and musicianship of this seventh album by the French quartet which is a powerful, engaging and stormy cri de coeur about climate change
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Art D’Ecco’s 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
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Dinosaur Jr return with Sweep It Into Space
Album review: Packed with tender lo-fi to full-on rock numbers, the distinctive voice and playing of J Mascis joined Lou Barlow’s bass and Murph on drum, rolls out in the form of a very fine new LP, their first together for five years
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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
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Greta Van Fleet
Album review: This second LP by the quartet from Michigan will again raise Led Zeppelin comparisons, but the derivative 70s rock influence on the Kiszka brothers and drummer Danny Wagner also has vocal echoes of Rush, and especially Slade
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Silver Synthetic from New Orleans
Album review: This debut album by the New Orleans indie psych rock band is full of bluesy, catchy, snappy tunes and wistful lyrics, shades of 1970s Kinks, Richard Lloyd, Tom Verlaine, Ultimate Painting, Velvet Underground and Teenage Fanclub
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Du Blonde’s 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
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Nicely worn: Black Honey’s album
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
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