The Format - Boycott Heaven (Album Review)
Photo: Carlo Cavaluzzi Before fun.’s carefree pop anthem We Are Young soundtracked the summer of 2012 and his voice became impossible to ignore, Nate Ruess formed one half of The Format. A collaboration with guitarist Sam Means, the duo released two studio albums before their 2008 split, and their return with long-awaited third full-length ‘Boycott Heaven’ proves that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Written by: Maddy Howell | Date: Friday, 30 January 2026
Louis Tomlinson - How Did I Get Here? (Album Review)
Louis Tomlinson’s third album surpasses expectations when it comes to assumptions around an ex-boyband member’s solo work. From the off, ‘How Did I Get Here?’ offers high energy, explosive indie-pop as, channeling every ounce of angst he has experienced in recent years to create something memorable. At a time when his former bandmate Harry Styles is everywhere, Tomlinson has claimed his own lane and it’s really working for him.
Written by: Laura Mills | Date: Thursday, 29 January 2026
Poppy - Empty Hands (Album Review)
Photo: Paris Mumpower Though Poppy has flirted with heavy music in the past, mixing her experimental alt-pop with gnarled sounds on records such as I Disagree, it was only with 2024’s ‘Negative Spaces’ that she caught the attention of the metal mainstream. Its followup Empty Hands is more experimental, on the surface at least, but the overall impression it leaves is of an artist erring on the side of caution where once they would have shot for something unique.
Written by: Will Marshall | Date: Thursday, 29 January 2026
PVA - No More Like This (Album Review)
Photo: Jak Payne Recently, a crop of bands have splintered off from the dominant UK post-punk sound of the past decade and pursued a darker, more electronic approach. Chalk, Scaler, Mandy, Indiana and overseas groups such as Model/Actriz are crafting punishing, danceable music that feels thrillingly new and alive.
Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Wednesday, 28 January 2026
Megadeth - Megadeth (Album Review)
Photo: Ross Halfin After 43 years and 17 albums, Megadeth bow out with a self-titled farewell that does exactly what it says on the tin. No bells, no whistles, no creative revolution, just high-speed riffs, anthemic choruses, and Dave Mustaine’s signature snarl. Expecting innovation from a band announcing their retirement feels misguided — especially when none of the Big Four have pushed boundaries in years — so a nostalgic victory lap steeped in mid-90s melodic thrash will do nicely.
Written by: Jack Press | Date: Tuesday, 27 January 2026
Anna of the North - Girl In A Bottle (Album Review)
Photo: William Spooner ‘Girl In A Bottle’, the fourth studio album from Norwegian singer-songwriter Anna Lotterud under her Anna Of The North alias, charts a break-up amid the euphoria of ‘80s synth-pop. Despite the dance grooves, the record is underpinned by Lotterud’s signature sadness and late-night nostalgia for a love lost.
Written by: Jeremy Blackmore | Date: Tuesday, 27 January 2026
Ari Lennox - Vacancy (Album Review)
Ari Lennox occupies a distinctive lane when considering her R&B peers, favouring classic soul warmth, jazz inflection and grown-up storytelling over shameless trend-chasing. ‘Vacancy’, her third album, largely doubles down on those instincts, delivering a polished, personable listen that plays squarely to her strengths even if it doesn’t quite push her forward.
Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Monday, 26 January 2026
A$AP Rocky - Don't Be Dumb (Album Review)
Photo: @pleckham At long last, A$AP Rocky has returned. His fourth outing ‘Don’t Be Dumb’ is an album that many hip hop fans will have had listed as one of their most hotly anticipated albums of 2024, but a string of leaks and sample clearance issues kept pushing the project back. Now, Rocky shows that the wait was worth it.
Written by: Jack Butler-Terry | Date: Thursday, 22 January 2026
Madison Beer - Locket (Album Review)
Photo: Morgan Maher Madison Beer’s third album is the moment a carefully cultivated presence attempts to fully exhale and speak plainly. After years of high‑gloss singles and uneven pivots, this record finds the Long Islander sounding more coherent, if still occasionally conflicted, while attempting self‑definition in a pop environment where a clear identity is crucial.
Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Wednesday, 21 January 2026
Sleaford Mods - The Demise of Planet X (Album Review)
For anybody who has followed Sleaford Mods over the past two decades, it won’t come as a surprise to learn that Jason Williamson is pissed off. But in our doomscroll-centric world, which seems to churn out misery and despair ad infinitum, that feeling has only grown more pointed.
Written by: Jack Butler-Terry | Date: Tuesday, 20 January 2026
Kid Kapichi - Fearless Nature (Album Review)
Photo: Chris Georghiou Somewhere in the lifetime of a political band, inner turmoil can become a more urgent matter to unpack than the chaos of the outside world. For Kid Kapichi, that moment is now. ‘Fearless Nature’ chronicles a rock-bottom moment for vocalist Jack Wilson after an eight-year relationship ended, his mental health nosedived and his band began to splinter, culminating in the departures of guitarist Ben Beetham and drummer George Macdonald last summer. Unsurprisingly, the political crackle of old has been papered over by deep melancholy.
Written by: Emma Wilkes | Date: Monday, 19 January 2026
The Kid Laroi - Before I Forget (Album Review)
The Kid Laroi’s ‘Before I Forget’ is a daring tilt at superstardom — an album centred around heartbreak and jagged melody that displays something unique in placing the Australian vocalist’s talent and versatility centre stage. It gets 2026 off to a flying start.
Written by: Laura Mills | Date: Friday, 16 January 2026
Dry Cleaning - Secret Love (Album Review)
Photo: Max Miechowski Over the course of two albums, Dry Cleaning have forged a distinctive sound and built a die-hard fanbase. Their third, ‘Secret Love’, has the usual blend of gnarly guitars and spoken word wit, but greater emphasis on post-punk hooks and producer Cate Le Bon’s input leads to a more mainstream-ready effort, albeit one that retains a spirit of experimentation at its core. It doesn’t reinvent their approach as much as it adapts it into something newly thrilling.
Written by: Chris Connor | Date: Thursday, 15 January 2026
Jenny On Holiday - Quicksand Heart (Album Review)
Photo: Steve Gullick The New Year period can provide a strange mix of emotions. We all have a resolution-making, gym-starting posi side, as well as an anxious, ‘what fresh hell is this?’ mood, particularly when viewing the news cycle of early 2026.
Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Wednesday, 14 January 2026
Zach Bryan - With Heaven on Top (Album Review)
Since releasing his first album in 2019, Zach Bryan’s earnest, unique spin on Americana has earned him acclaim and a rapidly growing fanbase. As prolific as he is popular, he returns with his sixth album, ‘With Heaven on Top’, which delivers more of what fans have come to love across 25 tracks, clocking in at over an hour.
Written by: Chris Connor | Date: Wednesday, 14 January 2026
Conway The Machine - You Can't Kill God With Bullets (Album Review)
Conway the Machine is not one for taking a rest. It’s where the ‘Machine’ part of his moniker comes from, after all, and as he continues his run of releasing an album or mixtape every year since 2014, it becomes clearer year on year what a supreme talent he is.
Written by: Jack Butler-Terry | Date: Tuesday, 13 January 2026
The Cribs - Selling A Vibe (Album Review)
Photo: Steve Gullick Brothers Gary, Ryan and Ross Jarman are no strangers to mixing a pop sensibility with garage rock, grunge and indie. It’s what earned The Cribs such a dedicated fanbase in the early noughties, and though they’ve been retrospectively pigeonholed into indie-sleaze, they have always encompassed so much more. ‘Selling A Vibe’ is no exception.
Written by: Laura Johnson | Date: Tuesday, 13 January 2026
Alter Bridge - Alter Bridge (Album Review)
Photo: Chuck Brueckmann Hard rock luminaries Alter Bridge have been making waves for more than two decades at this point, with their 2004 debut ‘One Day Remains’ catapulting them out of Creed’s shadow towards an arena-filling identity of their own.
Written by: Issy Herring | Date: Monday, 12 January 2026
Nas and DJ Premier - Light-Years (Album Review)
Photo: Danny Clinch Spit in the air and it’ll land on someone with Nas in their list of all-time rappers. If not, it’ll land on someone with DJ Premier in their top five producers. Needless to say, their new collaborative album ‘Light-Years’ has been a hotly anticipated prospect, especially as fans have known of its existence for two decades.
Written by: Jack Butler-Terry | Date: Monday, 12 January 2026
Sorry - Cosplay (Album Review)
Sorry’s third album is the sound of a band fearlessly throwing off the shackles and refusing to be pigeonholed as Asha Lorenz and Louis O’Bryen explore a diverse and overlapping range of styles, recorded with various collaborators in multiple studios. The production on ‘Cosplay’ veers from lo-fi to full-on multilayered anthems.
Written by: Jeremy Blackmore | Date: Monday, 05 January 2026
Fred Again.. - USB002 (Album Review)
Photo: Theo Batterham Fred Again..’s ‘USB002’ is a massive undertaking. Signalling his status as one of the world’s pre-eminent DJs, it pulls together cuts from his set into an upbeat, high-energy collection of club-tested beats. It’s versatile, with an assortment of massive artists featured across its whopping 34 songs, but the fluid project’s current incarnation doesn’t offer anything unique or particularly fresh.
Written by: Laura Mills | Date: Monday, 22 December 2025
Dove Ellis - Blizzard (Album Review)
Dove Ellis’s eagerly-awaited debut ‘Blizzard’ occupies two states. It’s an album that switches between sheer emotion, his vocals cracking while delivering the lyrics, and upbeat jangle, his roots in Irish folk always visible beneath it all.
Written by: Laura Mills | Date: Thursday, 18 December 2025
Zac Brown Band - Love & Fear (Album Review)
Photo: Tyler Lord If Zac Brown Band are aiming for a late-period Dave Matthews Band pivot — towards bigger stages, bigger feelings, a bigger sense of ‘togetherness’ — then ‘Love & Fear’ is the part where they try to turn a decade of arena muscle-memory into something spiritual and widescreen. The problem is that, for all the talk of duality, the album often confuses scale for substance, piling on glossy showpiece moments until the emotional centre buckles under the production’s weight.
Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Wednesday, 17 December 2025
Mavis Staples - Sad And Beautiful World (Album Review)
Photo: Elizabeth De La Piedra Mavis Staples stands as one of the defining and most enduring voices in gospel, R&B and soul, her legendary status assured having started singing in family group The Staple Singers more than seven decades ago. At the heart of ‘Sad and Beautiful World’, her 14th solo studio album, is that remarkable voice, which, at 86, exudes quiet gravitas and compassion, offering solace amid heartbreak. Her family were key players in the civil rights movement, and she sees familiar dangers today, vowing to stand alongside those who are fearful. Grim days call for fierce love, she says.
Written by: Jeremy Blackmore | Date: Tuesday, 16 December 2025
Tom Smith - There is Nothing In The Dark That Isn't There In The Light (Album Review)
Photo: Edith Smith Tom Smith is best known as the lead singer and rhythm guitarist for Editors, releasing seven studio albums with the post-punk band since 2005. His first solo LP is a departure from the indie sounds of his day job, with ‘There is Nothing In The Dark That Isn’t There In The Light’ incorporating elements of folk alongside his signature vocal style.
Written by: Chris Connor | Date: Friday, 12 December 2025
Isobel Waller-Bridge - Objects (Album Review)
Isobel Waller-Bridge has enjoyed success as a film, television and theatre composer, having previously formulated scores for Fleabag, Black Mirror and The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse. Written over a period of four years, her new solo album ‘Objects’ provides a sense of stillness, gaining musical inspiration from simple household objects such as a shoe or glass while forcing you to shift into the present moment.
Written by: Issy Herring | Date: Thursday, 11 December 2025
Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - Live God (Album Review)
Photo: Megan Cullen Nick Cave has spent the past decade evolving from vampiric soothsayer to gothic preacher, and ‘Live God’ feels like the document of that transformation. Captured across the Wild God Tour of 2024-25, it packages Cave’s late-career evangelism into 18 tracks that blur the lines between rock concert and secular gospel service.
Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Wednesday, 10 December 2025
Melody's Echo Chamber - Unclouded (Album Review)
Photo: Diane Sagnier ‘Unclouded’ is the latest chapter in Juliana Melody Prochet’s ongoing attempt to put her own distinctive spin on neo-psychedelia with Melody’s Echo Chamber. It is another dreamy, inviting soundscape that crams plenty of textures and rich detail into its 30-minute runtime, with many of its sub three minute tracks still painting vivid pictures.
Written by: Chris Connor | Date: Tuesday, 09 December 2025
Ella Eyre - Everything, In Time (Album Review)
‘Everything, in time’ is a fitting title for Ella Eyre’s first full length release in 10 years; a bold, spirited record infused with retro soul, funk and R&B vibes. Not that the years since 2015’s ‘Feline’ have been fallow. After hitting number one with her debut release, as featured artist on Rudimental’s 2013 megahit Waiting All Night, she enjoyed a run of singles chart success.
Written by: Jeremy Blackmore | Date: Monday, 08 December 2025
Jessie J - Don't Tease Me With A Good Time (Album Review)
Photo: Ashley Osborn After becoming a household name in the early 2010s thanks to hits such as Price Tag, Jessie J has ridden waves of uncertainty in the wake of 2014’s ‘Sweet Talker’, which housed her last genuine smash in the form of the Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj collab Bang Bang. Some level of critical acclaim followed with ‘R.O.S.E.’, but her profile remained at a simmer. That might change with ‘Don’t Tease Me With A Good Time’, a record that’s deeply personal and accomplished.
Written by: Issy Herring | Date: Tuesday, 02 December 2025
Keaton Henson - Parader (Album Review)
Photo: Danielle Fricke For an artist who’s long served as one of indie-folk’s most reliable confessors, Keaton Henson sounds remarkably uncertain on ‘Parader’. But that gnawing feeling proves to be its greatest asset.
Written by: Jack Press | Date: Monday, 01 December 2025
Haley Heynderickx & Max García Conover - What of Our Nature (Album Review)
American folk music’s heyday was the 1960s — a moment of collective yearning when Woody Guthrie’s protest spirit collided with a mass cultural awakening. Haley Heynderickx and Max García Conover are acutely aware of that lineage on ‘What of Our Nature’, a record that consciously throws back to that era’s campfire radicalism while interrogating what’s happened to the country since.
Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Thursday, 27 November 2025
Glitterer - erer (Album Review)
Photo: Alex Szantos Over the past few years, what began as a solitary experiment in bedroom synth-pop for Title Fight’s Ned Russin has crystallised into a fully-fledged band with real heft. Leaning into evolution with intent on their first full-length for Purple Circle Records — the new label co-owned by Russin — ‘erer’ is Glitterer’s most focused, immediate, and thematically pointed release so far.
Written by: Maddy Howell | Date: Wednesday, 26 November 2025
Kelly Lee Owens - Kelly EP (Album Review)
Photo: Adam Titchener Following up her masterful 2024 LP ‘Dreamstate’, a lush, lucid and airy collection of club music, was always going to be a tricky task for Kelly Lee Owens. But, instead of trying to strictly emulate its effervescent, emotionally-charged tone, the Welsh electronic musician and DJ has instead come up with a heavier, harder follow-up.
Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Tuesday, 25 November 2025
AVTT/PTTN - AVTT/PTTN (Album Review)
Photo: Crackerfarm Mike Patton has never been an artist afraid of the weird, the abrasive or the wilfully obtuse, so the former Faith No More frontman’s team-up with folk-rockers The Avett Brothers always felt primed for some kind of combustion, creative or otherwise. What we get instead is a record stitched together remotely over several years that sits in an uncanny midpoint: oddly intimate, strangely anonymous, occasionally brilliant, intermittently baffling.
Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Wednesday, 19 November 2025
FKA Twigs - Eusexua Afterglow (Album Review)
Photo: Jordan Hemingway Growing out of the prospect of a deluxe edition of this year’s ‘Eusexua’, FKA Twigs’ fourth LP is about digging deeper. Instead of throwing a few extra tracks on streaming services we have ‘Eusexua Afterglow’, an avant-pop electronic record packed with dance anthems, picking up from where its predecessor left off with its celebration of the underground rave scene in Prague.
Written by: Laura Mills | Date: Tuesday, 18 November 2025
Whitney - Small Talk (Album Review)
Photo: Alexa Vicious With a title like ‘Small Talk’, you’d expect Whitney’s fourth LP to take place amid the mundane parts of life, but this album shows the Chicago-formed duo in a different light as they lay love and loss on the table. The results are wonderful. This isn’t meaningless chatter and preamble — it’s two artists opening up every ounce of their thoughts for the world to see.
Written by: Laura Mills | Date: Monday, 17 November 2025
White Lies - Night Light (Album Review)
Photo: Jono White White Lies’ bleak-yet-infectious riff on ‘80s synth-pop stood out among their late ‘00s indie-rock peers. The trio's cinematic gloss and euphoric energy felt nostalgic and fresh at the same time, propelling their 2009 debut ‘To Lose My Life…’ to number one on the UK albums chart.
Written by: Matthew McLister | Date: Friday, 14 November 2025
Stella Donnelly - Love and Fortune (Album Review)
Photo: Nick MckInlay On her third album, Stella Donnelly offers up a meditation on heartbreak. But, while she wears her heart on her sleeve throughout her most vulnerable collection yet, ‘Love And Fortune’ struggles with inconsistent song development, where some tracks feel worryingly shallow and others as deep pools to navigate.
Written by: Jack Press | Date: Friday, 14 November 2025
Westerman - A Jackal's Wedding (Album Review)
Photo: Eric Scaggiante When ‘A Jackal’s Wedding’ opens with a peal of wedding bells, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a concept record. What follows, though, is closer to the loose stream-of-consciousness writing we’ve come to know and love from Westerman.
Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Thursday, 13 November 2025
Del Water Gap - Chasing The Chimera (Album Review)
Photo: Anthony Wilson On ‘Chasing The Chimera’, Brooklyn-based songwriter Samuel Holden Jaffe steps out from the indie-pop darkness of 2023’s ‘I Miss You Already + I Haven't Left Yet’ into warming, indie-folk sunlight. His third album as Del Water Gap trades moody, synth-driven atmospherics for strummed acoustics and jazz-inflected arrangements, navigating territory between Father John Misty’s baroque-pop wryness and Phoebe Bridgers’ emo-folk vulnerability.
Written by: Jack Press | Date: Thursday, 13 November 2025
Portugal. The Man - Shish (Album Review)
Photo: Nathan Perke Portugal. The Man’s career has been fascinating. Having formed in 2004, they didn’t become a household name until the release of Feel It Still in 2017, a gargantuan smash that propelled its parent record ‘Woodstock’ to sell more than a million copies in the US alone. Now, the band return with ‘Shish’, a record that seeks to show you all the places they’ve been by amalgamating the sounds they have dabbled in over the years.
Written by: Chris Connor | Date: Wednesday, 12 November 2025
Tortoise - Touch (Album Review)
Photo: Heather Cantrell Three decades after they first stretched the term post-rock into something supple, strange and Chicagoan, Tortoise return with ‘Touch’, their first album in nearly a decade and, perhaps, their least cohesive. Once the blueprint for instrumental experimentation, the group’s spidery interplay has here become something more distant and deliberate, a collaboration assembled across time zones rather than assembled face-to-face.
Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Wednesday, 12 November 2025
Rosalía - Lux (Album Review)
Rosalía’s versatility is a given at this point. Whether she’s revamping flamenco on ‘El Mal Querer’ or serving up reggaeton with an avant-pop twist on ‘Motomami’, the Catalan songwriter is always ahead of the curve. ‘Lux’, though, is an entirely different beast even when viewed in that shape-shifting context; an odyssey through all things feminine and divine, complete with classical flourishes.
Written by: Sarah Taylor | Date: Tuesday, 11 November 2025
Kings of Leon - EP #2 (Album Review)
It’s been a prolific period for Kings of Leon, fresh from strong reviews for their most recent album ‘Can We Please Have Fun’ and several collaborations with Zach Bryan. Their first EP in more than 20 years marks a return to the raw sound of their early work and, while it might only amount to four tracks, it shows the group haven’t wholly abandoned the formula behind Molly’s Chambers for stadium anthems.
Written by: Chris Connor | Date: Monday, 10 November 2025
Witch Fever - FEVEREATEN (Album Review)
Photo: Frank Fieber Three years on from their debut ‘Congregation’, Manchester quartet Witch Fever have returned with a record that’s both more refined and more in hock to doom-metal — ‘FEVEREATEN’ brims with creativity, catharsis, and a sense of atmosphere. Amid its tumultuous guitars, brooding instrumentals, and sense of rage, it showcases new depth that keeps the listener on their toes.
Written by: Sarah Taylor | Date: Friday, 07 November 2025
Creeper - Sanguivore II: Mistress Of Death (Album Review)
Photo: Harry Steel While Creeper’s 2017 debut LP ‘Eternity, In Your Arms’ propelled the horror-punk band towards the mainstream, they haven’t sought to replicate its crossover blueprint in the intervening years. Their latest effort, ‘Sanguivore II: Mistress Of Death’, is a tantalising theatrical successor to the critically acclaimed ‘Sanguivore’, taking musical inspiration from heavy metal legends Judas Priest and Iron Maiden.
Written by: Issy Herring | Date: Friday, 07 November 2025
Skullcrusher - And Your Song Is Like A Circle (Album Review)
Photo: Adam Alonzo Skullcrusher’s ‘And Your Song Is Like A Circle’ is a gorgeous, shimmering slice of folk with layered, ghostly harmonies. With songs built around elegant piano and acoustic guitar, plus scattered electronics and beats, New York singer-songwriter Helen Ballentine creates a dreamscape as she probes the way grief turns itself out, the feeling itself becoming as real and substantial as what’s been lost.
Written by: Jeremy Blackmore | Date: Thursday, 06 November 2025
Cat Burns - How To Be Human (Album Review)
Following a Mercury Prize nomination for 2024’s ‘Early Twenties’, Cat Burns confronts grief and heartbreak with unflinching honesty on her second album. Across 16 tracks, ‘How To Be Human’ documents the loss of her grandfather and post-breakup devastation alongside the blossoming hope of new love, trading sonic ambition for emotional directness.
Written by: Jack Press | Date: Wednesday, 05 November 2025
Claire Rousay - A Little Death (Album Review)
Photo: Katherine Squier Fittingly, given its Halloween release date, ‘A Little Death’ is one of those rare albums that you don’t really notice at first, before it creeps up on you and worms its way inside your body and, finally, your soul.
Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Tuesday, 04 November 2025
