Bombay Bicycle Club - My Big Day (Album Review)
Photo: Tom Oxley ‘My Big Day’, Bombay Bicycle Club’s sixth studio album, is a collab-laden journey through the neon fairground of the soul, with guest appearances from Damon Albarn, Nilüfer Yanya and Jay Som, among others. The result is a tight and colourful record that keeps the band relevant, but doesn’t break new ground.
Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Monday, 06 November 2023
Taylor Swift - 1989 (Taylor's Version) (Album Review)
Photo: Beth Garrabrant Many songwriters will tell you that when their material is first written and recorded it’s like a baby who’s yet to develop a fully formed identity. That often comes over time due to performing them every night, where they begin to communicate to their creators who they are and what they mean. Having spent nearly a decade with ‘1989’, Taylor Swift’s latest re-recording project suggests she has developed a particularly nuanced, loving relationship with her mega-selling pop-opus.
Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Friday, 03 November 2023
DJ Shadow - Action Adventure (Album Review)
Photo: Koury Angelo On his seventh album, DJ Shadow has reined in the collaborations with vocalists and put his compositional nous front and centre. The result feels like a trippy 1980s mixtape with synths and boom-bap drums intersecting elegantly. Though it doesn’t quite have the emotional or commercial viability of 2019’s ‘Our Pathetic Age’, it lands in a pretty handsome sweet spot, with an awe inspiring degree of production versatility.
Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Thursday, 02 November 2023
The Mountain Goats - Jenny From Thebes (Album Review)
Photo: Jackie Lee Young Serious questions would need to be raised if anyone claimed to be the same person that they were 20 years ago. Time ultimately softens some aspects of our personalities while hardening others against the world. And, while there is no shame in being content with our own histories, most people would go back and make a few changes if they could.
Written by: Craig Howieson | Date: Wednesday, 01 November 2023
Duran Duran - Danse Macabre (Album Review)
Duran Duran are back with their sixteenth album and, given the season, it’s an appropriately ghoulish affair. Blending original tunes with classic covers and spooked-up versions of their own songs, ‘Danse Macabre’ has its roots in a Halloween show the band played in Las Vegas, and demonstrates the fun and silliness that they have made one of their defining characteristics over the past 45 years.
Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Tuesday, 31 October 2023
The Gaslight Anthem - History Books (Album Review)
Photo: Casey McAllister No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. Almost a decade on from the release of their last studio album, The Gaslight Anthem are back with ‘History Books’.
Written by: Adam England | Date: Monday, 30 October 2023
Dream Nails - Doom Loop (Album Review)
Dream Nails are a band of intention, fearlessly tackling topics that many avoid as they don’t have the mettle — not to mention the musical chops — to turn an unacceptable socio-political reality into something captivating and joyful.
Written by: Laura Johnson | Date: Friday, 27 October 2023
Offset - Set It Off (Album Review)
The best word to describe Offset’s career to date is turbulent. On one hand there’s being part of one of trap's greatest groups, Migos, and forming a rap power-couple with Cardi B. On the other is scandal and tragedy, including the loss of his bandmate Takeoff last year. Nothing has come easy, and so it is with his second solo album 'Set It Off'.
Written by: Jack Terry | Date: Wednesday, 25 October 2023
Sampha - Lahai (Album Review)
Sometimes life goes in circles. Sampha’s ‘Lahai’ is a long-awaited return that follows up a long-awaited debut, picking up where 2017’s ‘Process’ left off before journeying to a host of unexpected realms.
Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Wednesday, 25 October 2023
††† (Crosses) - Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete. (Album Review)
Photo: Brian Ziff For the past few years ††† (Crosses), the synthwave project helmed by Deftones frontman Chino Moreno and Far guitarist Shaun Lopez, have been drip feeding new material to fans. The slow-burn has been building towards a full length follow up to 2014's self-titled debut, and it's been worth the wait.
Written by: Jack Terry | Date: Tuesday, 24 October 2023
Blink-182 - One More Time (Album Review)
Photo: Jack Bridgland There’s a new Blink-182 album featuring the unmistakable drawl of Tom DeLonge and puerile humour that drips from song titles such as Edging. The year is, somehow, 2023. Following Mark Hoppus’s recovery from cancer the pop-punk titans are back in the configuration that conquered the world two decades ago — with Travis Barker still behind the kit and DeLonge’s return meaning the exit of Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba — and ‘One More Time…’ is their chance to take one more stab at things.
Written by: Will Marshall | Date: Monday, 23 October 2023
The Streets - The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light (Album Review)
Mike Skinner, clipper lighter aficionado, DJ and the mind behind The Streets, has been slipping in and out of the zeitgeist for decades, soundtracking lost nights and reflective mornings. On ‘The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light’ he shows his words have lost none of their potency.
Written by: Jack McGill | Date: Friday, 20 October 2023
Creeper - Sanguivore (Album Review)
British punks Creeper arrive at their third studio album with a sweeping sense of gothic grandeur now a vital part of their sound. On ‘Sanguivore’ the band plays into every tongue-in-cheek spooky narrative and arterial fountain with total confidence and an unshakeable sense of self.
Written by: Rebecca Llewellyn | Date: Wednesday, 18 October 2023
The Menzingers - Some Of It Was True (Album Review)
Photo: Danielle Dubois On the surface, heartland rock is a lot like buses. You wait years for a band to bring it back, and suddenly The Gaslight Anthem have reformed while Bruce Springsteen is on the road racking up stadium show after stadium show. In the background, though, The Menzingers’ wheels never stopped spinning.
Written by: Jack Press | Date: Tuesday, 17 October 2023
Troye Sivan - Something To Give Each Other (Album Review)
Photo: Stuart Winecoff It has been a long five years since Troye Sivan released ‘Bloom’, an album that received praise for vulnerable, defiant tracks that honestly discussed his experiences of being a queer man, enabling Sivan to situate himself as one of pop’s most essential voices. Its follow up, ‘Something To Give Each Other’ adds further colours to his palette: it is a 10 track celebration of sex, community, queerness, love, and friendship.
Written by: Katie Macbeth | Date: Tuesday, 17 October 2023
The Drums - Jonny (Album Review)
Photo: Qiao Meng Critical darlings during the early 2010s, The Drums have always exuded an effortless sort of charisma. Their plaintive and irresistibly catchy brand of indie-pop, which grafted a west coast vibe onto a krautrock backbone, was a welcome reprieve from much of the overwrought, overly serious music of the time.
Written by: Craig Howieson | Date: Friday, 13 October 2023
Sufjan Stevens - Javelin (Album Review)
There are some things in life that feel almost too precious to experience. They offer moments of such clarity that you are tempted to shield yourself from their candour lest you break the spell in some way. ‘Javelin’, the latest record from Sufjan Stevens, is one of them.
Written by: Craig Howieson | Date: Wednesday, 11 October 2023
Drake - For All The Dogs (Album Review)
Photo: UMG As if his book of poetry Titles Ruin Everything — 160 pages of pettiness and misogyny — wasn’t enough for 2023, Drake’s accompanying album ‘For All The Dogs’ is the cherry on top of a cake liberally flavoured by toxic masculinity.
Written by: Jack Press | Date: Tuesday, 10 October 2023
Slow Pulp - Yard (Album Review)
Releasing their first album, ‘Moveys’, during the pandemic didn’t seem to hinder Slow Pulp’s rise all that much, with critical acclaim settling on a record that felt fitting for gloomy autumn nights. Now, with the release of their second LP, ‘Yard’, the Wisconsin indie-rockers delve further into a sense of isolation in order to deal with the subsequent feelings of re-learning to trust and love others.
Written by: Katie Macbeth | Date: Monday, 09 October 2023
Armand Hammer - We Buy Diabetic Test Strips (Album Review)
Billy Woods is on fire. His stellar solo releases, output as the head of Backwoodz Studioz and as one half of Armand Hammer prove that he is the most vital experimental rapper in the world right now.
Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Friday, 06 October 2023