Trivium - The Sin and the Sentence (Album Review)

Up. Down. Up. Down. Sideways a little bit. Get off to throw up. A few people laugh. Get back on again. This is the rollercoaster of Trivium's career.

Written by: Alec Chillingworth | Date: Tuesday, 24 October 2017

Beck - Colors (Album Review)

Photo: Eliot Lee Hazel For Beck’s 13th album, the Californian singer-songwriter has eschewed the critically lauded musical introversion of his previous two records in favour of outright pop. The results are inconsistent, but when they deliver, they do so with an explosion of joyous swagger; all swinging grooves, smashy snares and production flare.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Monday, 23 October 2017

St. Vincent - MASSEDUCTION (Album Review)

St. Vincent, aka Annie Clark, has had a dramatic few years. Her eponymous fourth LP made her reputation internationally as a gifted musical auteur. Then, a romance with the world’s most famous supermodel, Cara Delevingne, catapulted her into the strange position of being a tabloid concern; one British paper branding her the ‘female Bowie’.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Friday, 20 October 2017

The Darkness - Pinewood Smile (Album Review)

“History will remember us as the apathetic generation who negligently ushered in a dreadful dystopian age that may or may not come to be known as ‘The Rise of the Arseclowns’.” With his unique take on Brexit and Donald Trump matching his group’s equally idiosyncratic and often hilarious new record, we’d like to say welcome back Sir Justin of Hawkins: may conformity and political correctness never darken your wonderfully unhinged door.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Thursday, 19 October 2017

Kele Okereke - Fatherland (Album Review)

Kele Okereke is well known as the talented, cool yet surprisingly shy Londoner who fronts Bloc Party - an indie band that was always a bit more jagged round the edges than their contemporaries.

Written by: Helen Payne | Date: Wednesday, 18 October 2017

Weaves - Wide Open (Album Review)

Photo:  Brendan George Ko Weaves’ debut hit home thanks to a stack of offbeat melodies and vocalist Jasmyn Burke’s wonderfully quirky vocals, which amounted to a diverse, genre-defying affair. ‘Wide Open’ finds them treading their own path once again, but this time the rough edges have been smoothed out even as the eccentricity is dialled up to 10.

Written by: Laura Johnson | Date: Wednesday, 18 October 2017

P!nk - Beautiful Trauma (Album Review)

Pink’s seventh album finds her cementing a seamless transition into the adult pop market. Having forged a successful career off the back of pop-rock anthems that championed the outsider, ‘Beautiful Trauma’ mainly drops that familiar sound for an album that seeks to align with current trends.

Written by: Jennifer Geddes | Date: Tuesday, 17 October 2017

H.E.A.T - Into The Great Unknown (Album Review)

There’s always been something heroic about H.E.A.T’s single-minded determination to bring 1980s arena rock back to the mainstream on their own terms, which makes the Swedes’ fifth album something of a surprise. More modern and diverse in presentation and scope, ‘Into The Great Unknown’ mixes an array of new flourishes with the band’s finest traits in a way that has unsurprisingly divided opinions.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Monday, 16 October 2017

Pale Seas - Stargazing For Beginners (Album Review)

It’s taken a while, but Southampton’s Pale Seas have finally conjured a debut LP after a disappearing act Houdini would have been proud of. The band, led by Jacob Scott, piqued interest with a handful of singles several years ago before vanishing, taking any thoughts of album one with them.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Thursday, 12 October 2017

Alex Lahey - I Love You Like A Brother (Album Review)

As we get older, there are things that take some figuring out. Love, work, money...they all take a toll. Alex Lahey knows that, and she’s no bullshitter. On ‘I Love You Like A Brother’ she is never less than candid while meandering between realisations.

Written by: Laura Johnson | Date: Thursday, 12 October 2017

Satyricon - Deep Calleth Upon Deep (Album Review)

Black metal is regressive. Far from the antagonistic, counter-culture beast it was upon its inception, it’s become so stringently adherent to its own rules that it’s now nothing more than a sea of people in facepaint croaking about how terrible religion is.

Written by: Alec Chillingworth | Date: Wednesday, 11 October 2017

Citizen - As You Please (Album Review)

‘As You Please’ eschews the extremes of Citizen’s most recent album, ‘Everybody’s Going To Heaven’, and features some of the band’s most mainstream sounds yet, with the production talents of Will Yip adding shine. But it is lacking in conviction.

Written by: Jennifer Geddes | Date: Wednesday, 11 October 2017

Kelela - Take Me Apart (Album Review)

Kelela’s 2013 mixtape, ‘Cut 4 Me’, introduced her to audiences through a blend of sexy future R&B and nu-soul minimalism. Her first album, ‘Take Me Apart’, builds on those foundations with a selection of sultry, lo-fi electronica, recorded with producers from the worlds of pop and avant-garde: Arca to Ariel Rechtshaid and key collaborator, Jam City.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Wednesday, 11 October 2017

Wolf Parade - Cry Cry Cry (Album Review)

Wolf Parade have returned to sum up our feelings about the last 18 months. And they want to make us put on our red shoes and dance away the blues. ‘Cry Cry Cry’, is the first album from the Canadian band since they entered an indefinite hiatus in 2011, and they have never sounded better.

Written by: Jennifer Geddes | Date: Tuesday, 10 October 2017

Liam Gallagher - As You Were (Album Review)

It’s been said before, but it’s worth reiterating: as long as he keeps chatting shit in interviews Liam Gallagher can release a solo album a month for the rest of time. The build up to his first outing shorn of a band - Beady Eye, his post-Oasis outfit, fizzled in 2014 - has been accompanied by a press blitz as deliriously entertaining as the record itself is beige.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Tuesday, 10 October 2017

The Weather Station - The Weather Station (Album Review)

The Weather Station are a Torontonian folk band led by actor and musician Tamara Lindeman. Their eponymous fourth album is a collection of meticulously arranged tracks that demonstrate Lindeman’s deft understanding of vocal blend, melody and tonal cohesion. It is a wonderful work of confident poise, with storytelling front and centre.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Monday, 09 October 2017

Marilyn Manson - Heaven Upside Down (Album Review)

Despite not doing anything truly culturally noteworthy in an awfully long time, Marilyn Manson remains a pop culture boogeyman, a haunting reminder to any mums and dads who lived through the '90s. Nothing can bury this man. He is here to stay, the God of Fuck looming large in an ill-fitting corset.

Written by: Alec Chillingworth | Date: Monday, 09 October 2017

Torres - Three Futures (Album Review)

“Lay off me would ya…I’m just tryin to take this new skin for a spin,” Mackenzie Scott sang on her second LP as Torres, ‘Sprinter’. The record was a leap forward from the bare-bones intensity of her self-titled bow and almost exclusively inhabited harsh, distorted rock shapes. Its new skin was a perfect fit.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Friday, 06 October 2017

Miley Cyrus - Younger Now (Album Review)

A few years back, country star Miley Cyrus reinvented herself as a chieftain of teen rebellion with the release of her fourth album, ‘Bangerz’. Miley 2.0 was a figurehead of neon vulgarity, a kind of Boudicca of sleaze-punk-pop.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Friday, 06 October 2017

Protomartyr - Relatives in Descent (Album Review)

Photo: Doug Coombe Protomartyr won a lot of plaudits in 2015 for their record ‘The Agent Intellect’ and with good reason. Except for perhaps the-band-formerly-known-as-Viet-Cong, no post-punk act that year managed to make something with such sonic depth and rhetorical power.

Written by: Jonathan Rimmer | Date: Friday, 06 October 2017