Midwife - No Depression In Heaven (Album Review)

Photo: Alana Wool Brat summer is over, welcome to slowcore autumn. OK, it doesn’t have the same ring to it. But over the past fortnight, as the nights have started to darken that little bit quicker, a bunch of albums by high-profile slowcore acts such as Duster and 40 Watt Sun have also made their way into the world. Alongside them you’ll find Midwife’s arresting ‘No Depression In Heaven’.

Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Friday, 13 September 2024

David Gilmour - Luck and Strange (Album Review)

As one of the chief creatives in Pink Floyd, David Gilmour has cemented his place in the musical stratosphere with a guitar sound that is instantly recognisable and endlessly emulated. And despite a vicious subsequent relationship with Roger Waters, the band’s other post-1970 principal songwriter, Gilmour perhaps remains the main spiritual custodian of the Floyd sound.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Thursday, 12 September 2024

Hinds - Viva Hinds (Album Review)

Photo: Dario Vazquez The post-pandemic years have been rocky and uncertain for Hinds, but the arrival of their fourth album offers proof that it’ll take a lot to bring them down. On ‘Viva Hinds’, they sound revived and more vibrant than ever before.

Written by: Nieve Elis | Date: Wednesday, 11 September 2024

Enumclaw - Home in Another Life (Album Review)

You don’t need to Google who put out Enumclaw’s new record. All you have to do is listen. ‘Home in Another Life’ is Run For Cover right down to its fuzz-coated bones, slotting the Washington band into one of punk’s most reliable rosters alongside similarly-minded outfits such as Citizen, Turnover and Fiddlehead. But while their objectives and identity are clear, their second LP can’t always follow through on that promise.

Written by: Emma Wilkes | Date: Wednesday, 11 September 2024

Big Sean - Better Me Than You (Album Review)

Photo: Zamar Velez “The past few years making this album have been a journey to say the least, but I’m just glad we finally here,” was how Big Sean announced his sixth album ‘Better Me Than You’ in July, back before the album leaked and he delayed its arrival by another three weeks. At last, though, that journey has come to an end. 

Written by: Jack Butler-Terry | Date: Tuesday, 10 September 2024

Yannis & The Yaw - Lagos Paris London (Album Review)

Photo: Facebook Back in 2016, Yannis Philippakis received an unexpected invitation to join pioneering Afrobeat musician Tony Allen for a recording session in Paris. It would turn out to be a life changing moment for the Foals frontman, resulting in a blooming friendship and fruitful experience with an icon who remained creatively dialled in throughout the final years of his life.

Written by: Matthew McLister | Date: Monday, 09 September 2024

Jon Hopkins - Ritual (Album Review)

Photo: Imogene Barron Few musicians collapse the boundaries of ‘pop’ and ‘high’ art like Jon Hopkins, who is as comfortable working on ambient sound collages as he is producing tracks for Coldplay, never sacrificing his commitment to textured and emotive electronica.

Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Friday, 06 September 2024

Jónsi - First Light (Album Review)

Even on the darkest days, we can find radiant pockets of space in our minds. ‘First Light’, the fourth studio album from Sigur Rós frontman Jónsi, is studded with the momentary glimpses of bliss — it’s a meditative antidote to grey recesses and modern malaise.

Written by: Craig Howieson | Date: Friday, 06 September 2024

Illuminati Hotties - Power (Album Review)

Photo: Shervin Lainez On first listen, it feels like there’s a disconnect between the title of the new Illuminati Hotties record and the music contained within. ‘Power’ throws up a number of suggested meanings: all-consuming sound, empowerment, heaviness. But is that what we expect from Sarah Tudzin’s melody-led indie-rock? Certainly not in a standard way.

Written by: Emma Wilkes | Date: Thursday, 05 September 2024

Wunderhorse - Midas (Album Review)

Photo: Polocho Wunderhorse are a band defined by second chances. After the premature demise of punk outfit Dead Pretties in 2017, Jakob Slater retired from music altogether to work as a surf instructor in Cornwall. Over the years the creative itch would gradually return, rekindling his love as his focus shifted from fury to personal reflection in the form of his Wunderhorse project.

Written by: Matthew McLister | Date: Thursday, 05 September 2024

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - Wild God (Album Review)

Photo: Megan Cullen Analysing Nick Cave’s music has become an increasingly difficult proposition for two reasons. Firstly, his outspoken views reveal a deeply complex, contradictory man. Secondly, recent unfathomably tragic life events have lent an oppressive emotional intensity to his accomplished catalogue.

Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Wednesday, 04 September 2024

Mura Masa - Curve 1 (Album Review)

Photo: Dani Bastidas With ‘Curve 1’ Mura Masa (also known as Guernsey-born producer Alex Crossan) has embraced change. As well as being his first release on his own Pond Recordings label it’s also a departure from earlier pop-leaning works, ambitiously broadening horizons while focusing less heavily on high-profile features.

Written by: Nieve Elis | Date: Monday, 02 September 2024

Zeal & Ardor - Greif (Album Review)

Manuel Gagneux had a brilliant idea and could have spent his entire career cashing in on it. Ten years ago, the Swiss-American multi-instrumentalist started Zeal & Ardor in response to a 4chan troll telling him to mix black metal with “[n-word] music”. Instead of furiously hammering out a response, he decided a better riposte would be to try it and make it good.

Written by: Matt Mills | Date: Friday, 30 August 2024

Sabrina Carpenter - Short n' Sweet (Album Review)

If it seems like Sabrina Carpenter has only recently exploded into the public consciousness, then that’s likely more about you than her. It’s been a decade since she debuted as Maya Hart on Disney’s Girl Meets World and almost as long since the release of her first album. Fast forward to the present day and she is now far removed from her sickly sweet child star persona, with her sixth LP ‘Short n’ Sweet’ radiating confidence and sex appeal at almost every turn.

Written by: Issy Herring | Date: Thursday, 29 August 2024

Uniform - American Standard (Album Review)

Photo: Joshua Zucker-Pluda & Sean Stout CW: This review contains descriptions of eating disorders. Uniform have carved a career out of making disquieting sounds, and the ones that start ‘American Standard’ may be their most disquieting yet. “A part of me! But it can’t be me!” vocalist Michael Berdan snarls with no musical backing at the outset of the album’s 21-minute title track.

Written by: Matt Mills | Date: Wednesday, 28 August 2024

Fontaines D.C. - Romance (Album Review)

Photo: Theo Cottle Fontaines D.C. have earned a reputation as a band that won’t sit still, and yet ‘Romance’ still registers as a significant transformation. Since releasing 2022’s ‘Skinty Fia’, itself a reinvention of their earlier post-punk sound, there has been a shift from baggy T-shirts and trackie bottoms to sitting front-row at Milan Fashion Week, a change of record labels from Partisan to XL, and a switching out of producers, with James Ford tagging in after recent work with The Last Dinner Party, Depeche Mode and Blur. None of this would matter, of course, if the music fell flat. It doesn’t.

Written by: Katie Macbeth | Date: Tuesday, 27 August 2024

Tinashe - Quantum Baby (Album Review)

Tinashe has never been one to wait around. Since leaving girl group The Stunners in 2011, she has been a self-starter — she’s released seven albums in the past 10 years and ‘Quantum Baby’ is her second in 11 months.

Written by: Jack Butler-Terry | Date: Friday, 23 August 2024

Hamish Hawk - A Firmer Hand (Album Review)

Photo: Michaela Simpson It will soon be three years since the release of Hamish Hawk’s ‘Heavy Elevator’, which means it’ll soon be three years since everything changed for the young songwriter from Edinburgh. Despite the flashes of brilliance that had peppered earlier releases, and while acknowledging the small but loyal fanbase they brought him, his first full length proper lifted him to fresh heights.

Written by: Craig Howieson | Date: Wednesday, 21 August 2024

Post Malone - F-1 Trillion (Album Review)

Photo: Adam DeGross​ Red Wing boots, whiskey sour cocktails, and the cowboy-core resurgence: it’s never been cooler to be country. And even if he spends a lot of his time collecting cliches like Pacman gobbles up dots, ‘F-1 Trillion’ finds Post Malone doing what the genre’s legends have been doing for decades: outrunning the ghosts of their past and having the time of their lives doing it.

Written by: Jack Press | Date: Monday, 19 August 2024

Fucked Up - Another Day (Album Review)

Photo: Colin Medley Across a career that spans more than 20 years and a head-spinning amount of music, Fucked Up have balanced straight-up hardcore with a sideline as art-punk provocateurs. Their breakthrough album ‘The Chemistry of Common Life’ scooped the Polaris Prize — Canada’s answer to the Mercury — in 2009, while with ‘David Comes To Life’ they went full concept in 2011, setting out an experimental ethos they’d further develop on.

Written by: Matthew McLister | Date: Friday, 16 August 2024