Steven Wilson - The Future Bites (Album Review)

When Steven Wilson’s last solo album, 2017’s ‘To the Bone’, posed the very real threat of topping the UK charts, there was an explosion of press buzz that led to a rather unsavoury moniker. “The most successful British musician most people have never heard of,” became a common phrase in the papers. It was bizarre, because the LP the ex-Porcupine Tree star was promoting would soon break the top five in eight countries.

Written by: Matt Mills | Date: Monday, 01 February 2021

You Me at Six - SUCKAPUNCH (Album Review)

Photo: Daniel Harris The charts are always welcoming to a rousing, anthemic banger, and You Me at Six know that all too well. The Surrey quartet's seventh LP ‘SUCKAPUNCH’ is a charged and provocative album perfectly suited to achieving that goal.

Written by: Milly McMahon | Date: Thursday, 28 January 2021

Kiwi Jr. - Cooler Returns (Album Review)

Indie-rock is full of carefully disguised traps designed to ensnare posers and almost-there tribute acts: bands can be too clever, or too dumb, sound too much like their influences, or sound too little like themselves after a couple of records. By accident or design Kiwi Jr. stray into these crosshairs all the time, but whenever the moment to pull the trigger strikes they ricochet off into some other thing entirely.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Wednesday, 27 January 2021

Lande Hekt - Going to Hell (Album Review)

‘Going to Hell’, the debut solo LP from Lande Hekt, displays all of the songwriting nous that has made her one of the most reliable practitioners in UK punk with her band, Muncie Girls. Melodically savvy and scalpel-sharp lyrically, she has transferred that skillset neatly to a batch of songs that skew gauzy and reserved in comparison to the chunky power chords of her day job.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Monday, 25 January 2021

Rhye - Home (Album Review)

Photo: Emma Marie Jenkinson For Rhye’s fourth full-length album, Canadian singer-songwriter Mike Milosh has leant into dreamy disco, delivering a record of effervescent melodies and sticky beats. It’s a good LP that manages to be versatile and listenable despite never quite achieving liftoff.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Friday, 22 January 2021

Sleaford Mods - Spare Ribs (Album Review)

If there’s one word that encapsulates Sleaford Mods’ ‘Spare Ribs’, it’s ‘bleak.’ A 21st century plague has intensified the worst qualities of this island and in case this wasn’t kick-in-the-balls obvious, vocalist Jason Williamson plainly spells it out for us in his characteristic Midlands sprechgesang. 

Written by: Alex Myles | Date: Wednesday, 20 January 2021

Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou - The Helm of Sorrow (Album Review)

In June 2018, esoteric label Sacred Bones began its Alliance Series: an ongoing adventure involving two unrelated labelmates banding together and seeing what manner of unpredictability they can cook up. The range began when noise-rock enigmas Uniform and the Body joined forces for the acerbic ‘Mental Wounds Not Healing’. 

Written by: Matt Mills | Date: Tuesday, 19 January 2021

Shame - Drunk Tank Pink (Album Review)

The bug-eyed intensity of Shame’s breakthrough is the sort that can be weathered by time, and set upon by the mundanity of everyday life. They confront that reality on their second album, ‘Drunk Tank Pink’, in a manner that suggests they will never be a group for whom half measures will suffice.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Monday, 18 January 2021

Kacy & Clayton and Marlon Williams – Plastic Bouquet (Album Review)

Photo: Janelle Wallace Collaboration is a complex process, even between artists who share a mutual admiration for one another. But on ‘Plastic Bouquet’, the Canadian retro-country duo Kacy & Clayton combine with silken-voiced Kiwi artist Marlon Williams to startling effect. They play off one another with lived-in certainty and a mode of melodic expression that feels as though it has been beamed into the present day from a radio station stuck in the early 1960s.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Wednesday, 13 January 2021

Viagra Boys - Welfare Jazz (Album Review)

Photo: Marcus Wilen With the future of global democracy in a perilous, yet darkly comic, place, it’s probably a good time for a new release from Stockholm-based satirical edgelords Viagra Boys.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Tuesday, 12 January 2021

The Dirty Nil - Fuck Art (Album Review)

The belief that rock music should be fun has taken its share of beatings over the years, humiliated by oafish novelty bands and dismissed by pseuds sitting atop intellectually satisfying record collections. But Canadian power-trio the Dirty Nil fervently believe that rock music should be fun, and that understanding is the cornerstone of their outrageously enjoyable third LP ‘Fuck Art’.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Tuesday, 05 January 2021

Paul McCartney - McCartney III (Album Review)

By now we’ve become used to the idea of a lockdown album. But one from Sir Paul McCartney? Well, that is a lovely surprise.

Written by: Alex Myles | Date: Wednesday, 23 December 2020

The Avalanches - We Will Always Love You (Album Review)

Photo: Grant Spanier Twenty years ago, the Avalanches set out to showcase the boundless possibilities of sampling with their debut LP ‘Since I Left You’, repurposing fragments of old songs into cohesive new tracks with completely altered personalities. On 2016’s long-awaited ‘Wildflower’ they added guest performers including Danny Brown to the mix. Now, with ‘We Will Always Love You’ the Australian duo have turned their gaze upwards, beyond our skies.

Written by: Matty Pywell | Date: Thursday, 17 December 2020

Taylor Swift - Evermore (Album Review)

​ Taylor Swift’s music has always walked in lockstep with its backstory: the Nashville star-in-waiting and born romantic breaking big, breaking bad, apparently always breaking up at the end of a telephoto lens. But ‘Evermore’ does away with a chunk of that preamble in much the same way as blockbuster sequels shot in tandem might.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Wednesday, 16 December 2020

Rico Nasty - Nightmare Vacation (Album Review)

Rico Nasty’s first full album is a punk-trap melange of squawking, whooping and spitting. With that barrage the Maryland wordsmith is sort of delivering on the early promise of mixtapes ‘Nasty’ and ‘Anger Management’, and while ‘Nightmare Vacation’ is inconsistent in quality, there is little doubt that she has what it takes to be a superstar.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Tuesday, 15 December 2020

Sigur Rós - Odin's Raven Magic (Album Review)

Photo: Eva Vermandel Behold, ye mortals! The end is nigh! But not because of a no-deal Brexit. This is ‘Odin’s Raven Magic’, the latest record from Icelandic post-rock masters, Sigur Rós. It’s an opera based on Norse mythology and ancient Edda poetry, and if you ever tried to envisage what the previous 26 words would actually sound like, fear not. You’re spot on. 

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Thursday, 10 December 2020

Deafheaven - 10 Years Gone (Album Review)

Photo: Bobby Cochran June 1, 2020 marked a decade of Deafheaven. It was on that date 10 years ago that the experimental black metal darlings made their first dent, emerging with their shimmering, untitled demo. Little did anybody know that their grassroots debut was the dawn for one of the 21st century’s most important metal bands.

Written by: Matt Mills | Date: Wednesday, 09 December 2020

Alex Maas - Luca (Album Review)

This year has been a good one for new ventures from seasoned musicians. Among so many lowlights, 2020 has been home to fine debut solo albums from the likes of Andy Bell and Matt Berninger, while Alex Maas’s ‘Luka’ is another welcome aside from today’s continuing troubles. But, while his peers occasionally nodded to earlier work with their famous bands, ‘Luca’ does little to remind us of the Black Angels.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Tuesday, 08 December 2020

Gone Is Gone - If Everything Happens for a Reason…Then Nothing Really Matters at All (Album Review)

Gone Is Gone have always been understandably wary of the ‘supergroup’ tag. Nowadays, the term invokes memories of showbiz flops like Damnocracy as much as it does a band like Temple of the Dog, and that kind of mainstream cash-in has always clearly been the last thing on this four-piece’s mind.

Written by: Matt Mills | Date: Friday, 04 December 2020

Palm Reader - Sleepless (Album Review)

When we talk about new records the same set of cliches often pop up. Is it a complete about face? The result of a new blend of influences? Or perhaps a case of a band digging their heels in with the tried and tested sounds of the past? But such an approach simply won’t do for an album as exciting as Palm Reader’s ‘Sleepless’. Four albums in, these UK hardcore heavyweights have found their zenith.

Written by: Alex Mace | Date: Tuesday, 01 December 2020