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Public Service Broadcasting: The Last Flight
New album: Inspired by the same subject as Laurie Anderson’s Amelia album earlier this year, a the experimental news archive-digging British rock group formed by J Willgoose Esq return by paying tribute to the pioneering female American aviator Amelia Earhart
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The Hard Quartet's debut LP
New album: This seasoned pro supergroup of Stephen Malkmus (Pavement and Jicks), Matt Sweeney (Chavez), Emmett Kelly and Jim White create a marvellously muscular debut collection of indie, rock, blues punk, but also beautiful Byrds-like numbers
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Being Dead: EELS (artwork: Julia Soboleva)
New album: As a title not to be confused with the indie band of Mark Oliver Everett, this new LP by the Austin, Texas band of Falcon Bitch & Shmoofy (fka Gumball), is a different sort of fresh sounding, catchy quirkiness - a throwback 60s garage rock and produced with the mark of quality by John Congleton
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Godspeed You! Black Emperor: No Title ...
New album: Explosive but also expressive innovation by the returning veteran Canadian post-rockers, with a title that explicitly references the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, but on a larger scale expresses an apocalyptic vision through some extraordinary, prog-rock experimental instrumentals
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Geordie Greep: The New Sound
New album: The former Black Midi frontman’s debut LP is a brilliant swirl of guitar rock, jazz, prog, funk, pop and a big dash of Latin, channelling Frank Zappa, a dramatic Scott Walker delivery, Broadway musicals, cello, a punchy horn section, his distinctive voice, clever, humorous, soliloquy-style lyrics
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The Smile: Cutouts
New album: Following January’s Wall of Eyes, the trio of Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke, alongside Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, return with a second LP this year, and third overall – of intricacy and invention – with dark, moody lyrics, and musical excellence
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The WAEVE: City Lights
New album: This second, very strong and striking LP by the couple duo of Blur guitarist Graham Coxon and Rose Elinor Dougall strikingly embraces a variety of indie rock, synth pop and psyche-folk styles, again produced by James, and, as well as guitar, featured Coxon’s reborn love for the saxophone
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Bright Eyes: Five Dice, All Threes
New album: Equal measures of toe-tapping catchiness, poignantly sharp, intelligent lyrics, intensity, tenderness and moving melancholy come in this excellent new LP by the US indie-folk rockers fronted by singer-songwriter and guitarist Conor Oberst, and featuring guests Cat Power, The National’s Matt Berninger, with co-writing by Alex Orange Drink of New York punk band The So So Glos
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The The: Ensoulment
New album: The distinctive rich toned, talking-singing vocals of Matt Johnson and band return with their first studio album of new songs for 24 years, with some echoes of those excellent songs of 1983’s Soul Mining period while capturing a current time of disconcerting change
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Paul Molloy: The Madmen of Apocalypso
New album: Fabulously perky, catchy, snappy, witty, doomsday gallows humour songs in this second solo release by The Coral guitarist, drawing on styles from ragtime, New Orleans dixieland jazz, vaudeville, Kinks-style 60s baroque pop and more
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Gia Ford's debut LP, Transparent Things
New album: Heartbreak, murder ballads, an Americana-Laurel Canyon smooth, beautiful pop sound, there’s superbly powerful maturity to this debut by the Sheffield/Cheshire raised alt-pop singer-songwriter simmering with dark, tragic stories
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MJ Lenderman: Manning Fireworks
New album: Engagingly easygoing alt-Americana-country-rock drawl underpinned by darkly humorous, droll lyrics in this excellent fourth LP by the sharp 25-year-old Asheville, North Carolina singer-songwriter in this follow-up to 2022’s Boat Songs
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Yannis & The Yaw: Lagos Paris London
New album: An EP rather than LP, this project by the Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis is still a high five of top-quality Afrobeat, crossover funk and rock rhythms and riffs, drawing from sessions with the late great drummer Tony Allen
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Spirit of the Beehive: You'll Have To Lose Something
New album: Pennsylvania’s and Portugal’s Zack Schwartz, Corey Wichlin, and Rivka Ravede return with another bewildering collection of abstract, feverish dream weirdest deconstructionist experimental rock, with a collection of 12 songs that at times feel more like a hundred
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Los Bitchos: Talkie Talkie
New album: After 2022’s Let The Festivities Begin!, the London-based international female four-piece return with a vibrant second uniquely stylish set of surf, psychedelic and exotic instrumentals that infectiously traverse many genres
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The Bug Club: On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System
New album: A highbrow title heralds mischievously delightful collection of extremely catchy but deliberately silly songs filled with trivial observations in this third indie garage fuzz pop-rock LP by the Welsh trio fronted by Sam Willmett (vocals/guitar) and Tilly Harris (vocals/bass)
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Illuminati Hotties: Power
New album: Filled with thoughtful, tuneful, breezy, and cleverly crafted numbers, this is the third LP of indie pop project of LA producer Sarah Tudzin (known for boygenius and Weyes Blood) and is also co-produced with John Congleton
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Melt-Banana: 3+5
New album: Totally bananas, but enormous fun and oddly brilliant, this pithy, high-pitched and squeakily energised new release by the experimental, eccentric, eclectic Japanese noise rock band is their first over a decade, since 2013’s Fetch
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Malice K: AVANTI
New album: Angsty but beautiful, reminiscent of the whispery, intimate style of the late, great Elliott Smith, but also the occasional punk scream eruption, this darkly mesmeric, candid, introspective indie-folk-grunge-punk LP by New York-based visual artist and songwriter Alex Konschuh is a vivid, ghostly, and deeply emotional
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Fontaines D.C.: Romance
New album: With a new look, the popular Dublin post-punk band return with their fourth LP, one with a much broadened scope of sounds, poetic but also at times cinematic in musical image and in lyric, with big-time producer James Ford at the controls
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