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Arlo Parks’ second album My Soft Machine
New album: After the acclaimed Mercury Prize-winning 2021 debut Collapsed in Sunbeams, the much anticipated follow-up by the now LA-based British artist is filled with poetic self-reflection, intimate, intelligent, gentle pop-soul, but at times falls short of that debut’s initial impact, edge and melodic power
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Brix Smith: Valley of the Dolls
New album: Fizzing with energy, a blistering album of feisty brilliance à la Hole or Breeders, this is possibly the ex-Fall and The Extricated singer’s finest work yet, a debut solo LP featuring a female supergroup that includes My Bloody Valentine’s Deb Googe on bass
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Cloth: Secret Measure
New album: Gently spun, delicately understated and cleverly crafted, dreamy, angular guitar pop-rock with a light touch of synths from the Glasgow twins Rachael and Paul Swinton
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The Lemon Twigs’ fourth LP, Everything Harmony
New album: Rolling back the years to classic 70s Laurel Canyon songwriting with echoes of the Byrds and Beach Boys, the multi-talented New York brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario return with a fourth that’s perhaps their best since 2016 debut Do Hollywood
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Skinny Pelembe: Hardly The Same Snake
New album: The eclectic experimentalist from Doncaster, aka Doya Beardmore, with roots also in Birmingham and Mozambique, comes up with a powerful, visceral new LP, spanning indie, avant-pop, hip-hop, rock, electronica, gospel and soaring soul
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The National’s ninth LP: First Two Pages of Frankenstein
New album: The ninth studio LP by the Brooklyn-based Ohio five-piece of the Dessner brothers co, is slow, reflective and beautifully poetic, capturing singer Matt Berninger’s hopefully winning battle with depression, and includes includes guest Taylor Swift, Phoebe Bridgers and Sufjan Stevens
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The Bloodstreams: How To Be A God
New album: With oodles of swagger, theatricality and panache, a wonderful debut by the seasoned Deptford quartet, with witty, black-humoured 60s garage rock and stylish echoes of Siouxsie, Birthday Party-era Nick Cave, Stones, the Doors and the Kramps
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Fire-Toolz: I am upset because I see something that is not there
New album: Like a bizarre recipe filled with flavours that should not mix, but by some strange alchemy really work, an extraordinary fusion of electronica, ambient, drum’n’bass, jazz, prog, pop, and blasts of dark metal by the Chicago producer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Angel Marcloid, a heady fusion that must been heard to be believed
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Deerhoof: Miracle-Level
New album: A 19th studio album by San Francisco the prog-punk-jazz experimentalists drummer Greg Saunier, guitarists Ed Rodriguez and John Dieterich, and bassist/singer Satomi Matsuzaki is another blast of brilliant musicianship, but also the first entirely sung in Matsuzaki’s native Japanese
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HMLTD …
New album: Apocalypse: The Musical? This highly entertaining second LP by the British art-rockers could be thus described, but the concept is “an anachronistic version of medieval England” and features a 16-piece string orchestra and gospel choir
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Blondshell aka Sabrina Teitelbaum
New album: Strong, confident indie rock debut by Los Angeles’ Sabrina Teitelbaum, with a set of powerfully candid numbers of full-on guitar, tender, emotional vocals, wrestling delusion and self-destructive relationships
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Daughter’s third album, Stereo Mind Game
New album: The London-formed trio of Elena Tonra, Igor Haefeli, and Remi Aguilella return with their third album in a decade with a selection of powerful, breathy, indie-folk-shoegaze, their first since 2016’s Not To Disappear
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Desire Marea: On The Romance of Being
New album: An extraordinary, beautiful, passionate, spiritual and erotic new solo LP by the South African multidisciplinary artist, sangoma (Nguni spiritual healer), and previously part of queer gqom group FAKA, now with a 13-piece orchestral ensemble mixing soul, jazz, rock and Zulu chants
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Altin Gün’s fifth album, Aşk
New album: The Amsterdam psychedelic and electro-pop-funk rockers make a fabulous fifth LP with their special interpretations of traditional Turkish and Anatolian folk, echoing the heavier sound of their earlier albums On and Gece
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Fully immersive: Jen Cloher’s fifth album - I Am The River, The River Is Me
New album: Brilliantly passionate and powerful, this fifth LP by the Melbourne indie singer-songwriter celebrates their matrilineal line of wāhine Māori heritage in songs of heartbreak, defiance and joy
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Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus together as boygenius
New album: After 2018’s EP, a fabulous LP debut of folk, Americana and indie combining the talents of American singer-songwriter trio of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus, who have each also released three successful solo LPs
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Caroline Rose: The Art of Forgetting
Black Honey’s third LP, A Fistful of Peaches
New album: Frenetic, fuzzy-guitar shoegaze and punchy riot grrrl indie pop by the Brighton quartet in this strong third album with a running theme of fighting for good mental health
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Yves Tumor’s latest album: Praise A Lord Who Chews …
New album: A mouthful of a title but another striking, genre-spanning fifth LP by the unique Knoxville-raised Sean Bowie, whose extraordinary non-gender presence adorns this mix of thrumming postpunk, indie R&B, trip-hop, funk, glam, sensual soul and psychedelia
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Unknown Mortal Orchestra: V
New album: New Zealand’s Ruban Nielson and co return with a post-lockdown double album, a fifth LP keeping that distinctive dirty mic vocal filter, and a mixture of the upbeat and downbeat
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