Abstract Mindstate - Dreams Still Inspire (Album Review)

Photo: Mike Quain With Kanye West’s new album ‘Donda’ delayed for another week (or whatever) greater focus has been thrown on a different project connected to the rapper-producer-magnate: the return of Chicago hip hop duo Abstract Mindstate.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Friday, 13 August 2021

Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever (Album Review)

On her second album Billie Eilish stays with the emo mumble-pop that made her a global star, while making something a little more sombre and, in certain ways, confident. The result is a record of great poise, intelligence and currency, but still lacking world-beating songs.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Wednesday, 11 August 2021

Laura Stevenson - Laura Stevenson (Album Review)

The life of a singer-songwriter can be punishing, with listeners expecting to be served neatly-appointed slices of your inner workings in a timely fashion. Your pain, your trauma, becomes shared history. Laura Stevenson has never shied away from this exchange, writing with great specificity and sensitivity about domestic abuse, self-harm and depression in a discography that now comprises six LPs, but on ‘Laura Stevenson’ she has pulled down a shade, cutting out a direct line of sight.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Tuesday, 10 August 2021

Prince - Welcome 2 America (Album Review)

Some buildings are more than bricks and mortar. Prince’s Paisley Park complex is one of them. Located 20 miles or so outside Minneapolis, it’s where Prince recorded the majority of his albums and, day after day, poured music out of himself tirelessly.

Written by: Rebecca Llewellyn | Date: Thursday, 05 August 2021

Bobby Gillespie and Jehnny Beth - Utopian Ashes (Album Review)

Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie and Savages vocalist Jehnny Beth aren’t necessarily a coupling most would piece together, but in truth neither have stuck rigidly to any sort of boundaries during their careers. To see their names side by side on ‘Utopian Ashes’ is a curiosity, and yet it works.

Written by: Jessica Howkins | Date: Tuesday, 03 August 2021

John Mayer - Sob Rock (Album Review)

In an interview with Zane Lowe that walked the line between pretentious and insightful, John Mayer went full Christopher Nolan and claimed “the idea of ‘Sob Rock’ is to implant false memories into your brain. Can you go back in time and synthesise a piece of work that’s so true to the era that, when you hear it, your brain goes ‘nah nah nah this exists, I’m gonna find it,’ but you can’t.” Down the rabbit hole we go.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Monday, 02 August 2021

Dave - We're All Alone in This Together (Album Review)

Dave has come a long way in a very short space of time. The south London rapper’s debut album ‘Psychodrama’ was a critical and commercial triumph, securing the Mercury Prize, hitting number one in the UK Album Charts and scooping Album of the Year at the 2020 Brit Awards. His second record may do similar business.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Friday, 30 July 2021

Faye Webster - I Know I'm Funny haha (Album Review)

Photo: Pooneh Ghana Defying genre norms can be a thin wire to walk across. But the Atlanta-based singer-songwriter Faye Webster makes it look easier than buttering a slice of bread.

Written by: Jessica Howkins | Date: Thursday, 29 July 2021

Anne-Marie - Therapy (Album Review)

Photo: Bella Howard The streaming era may have its foot on the throat of artists and songwriters, but its reshaping of the landscape has also paradoxically been a boon for pop stars who favour a scattergun approach to album sequencing. Anne-Marie’s ‘Therapy’ is all over the place—stylistically uneven and retrograde—but it feels precision engineered for the times.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Wednesday, 28 July 2021

Leon Bridges - Gold-Diggers Sound (Album Review)

For Leon Bridges’ third album, the Texas soul singer has holed up in a bar-venue-residential studio, the titular Gold-Diggers, on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles. The result is a work of elegant soul with a deep sense of place, if not quite time, for ‘Gold-Diggers Sound’ is a record aiming at timelessness, and occasionally succeeding.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Tuesday, 27 July 2021

The Wallflowers - Exit Wounds (Album Review)

Photo: Yasmin Than Whether celebrated or resisted, craved or feared, wilful or enforced, the untameable beast that is change affects almost every aspect of our human experience on a near daily basis.  Providing more than enough fuel for The Wallflowers’ long overdue return, ‘Exit Wounds’ finds Jakob Dylan ruminating on all things transition over the band’s most sparkling Americana effort to date.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Wednesday, 21 July 2021

Clairo - Sling (Album Review)

Your early 20s are not always seen as a time geared towards domesticity, but it’s a dynamic that Clairo realised was much needed within her life following the breakout success of her debut LP.

Written by: Matty Pywell | Date: Tuesday, 20 July 2021

The Goon Sax - Mirror II (Album Review)

Photo: Hugo Nobay Brisbane trio The Goon Sax have returned with a third album comprising sharply observed post-punk tales of millennial angst. The 40 minute record—their first with venerable indie label Matador—takes us on a journey through low stakes emotional trauma and digital ennui.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Monday, 19 July 2021

Vince Staples - Vince Staples (Album Review)

Photo: Zamar Velez Vince Staples always seems to have the upper hand, or at least to have something in reserve that we, his listeners, have to figure out on our own. His self-titled new record, a collaboration with producer Kenny Beats, revolves around glitchy production that would be mellow if the whole atmosphere wasn’t so stifling. The real world hangs heavy over Staples’ loose flows, which invariably have a sting in the tail.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Friday, 16 July 2021

Quivers - Golden Doubt (Album Review)

On ‘Golden Doubt’ Quivers trade in an unabashedly romantic strain of jangle pop, adding colour to the wiry blueprints of their 1980s forerunners with scenes from bruised relationships and terrible loss, set against four part harmonies and rich guitars.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Thursday, 15 July 2021

Jack Savoretti - Europiana (Album Review)

Photo: Chris Floyd If albums were rated according to best intentions, even the most bitter listener would happily give Jack Savoretti’s sojourn into the worlds of disco, funk and ‘80s synth-pop a big thumbs up. Designed as a soundtrack to the summer holidays we’ve recently been denied, the singer wanted ‘Europiana’ to provide much needed escapism after a year of turmoil and to celebrate the music that binds citizens of Europe together. A lofty goal.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Wednesday, 07 July 2021

Squirrel Flower - Planet (i) (Album Review)

As any artists’ career picks up speed there is a sense of things coming into focus—of rough edges being sanded smooth—and yet it’s rare that the listener is able to share in that process almost as it happens. But with only 18 months separating it from Squirrel Flower’s debut LP, ‘I Was Born Swimming’, that is the lasting impact of spinning the excellent ‘Planet (i)’.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Tuesday, 06 July 2021

John Grant - Boy From Michigan (Album Review)

Photo: Hörður Sveinsson Blue pill or red pill? If it’s blue, you can wake up in your bed and go on believing that the world is a wonderful, warm place full of rainbows and gumdrop smiles. The red pill will mean you dig into the toxic systems of patriarchy and capitalism that underpin everything…do you want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes?

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Friday, 02 July 2021

Lucy Dacus - Home Video (Album Review)

Photo: Ebru Yildiz Nostalgia for one’s teenage years might also be accompanied by the feeling that your teeth are on edge, with the syrupy goodness of reminiscing offset by the many false starts, awkward pauses and permanent endings of youth. 

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Wednesday, 30 June 2021

Rose City Band - Earth Trip (Album Review)

Ripley Johnson’s third album under his Rose City Band guise is another to have benefited from lockdown restrictions. Johnson took advantage of the lull to connect with nature—sleeping under the stars, doing a spot of gardening and bathing outside. ‘Earth Trip’, therefore, feels like an album title with a purpose.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Monday, 28 June 2021