Blink-182 - NINE (Album Review)

Blink-182’s blend of juvenilia and earnest emoting has long been a high-wire act: one slip and the sense of balance is gone. But, given that they survived situating a song like Stay Together For The Kids at the heart of an album called ‘Take Off Your Pants and Jacket’, it’s one that they might boast to have mastered.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Thursday, 26 September 2019

Goo Goo Dolls - Miracle Pill (Album Review)

Goo Goo Dolls have more than 30 years of touring, producing and releasing music behind them. Formed in Buffalo, New York back in 1986, the rock band have sold over 10 million albums to date. And on their new LP ‘Miracle Pill’, there is an epic mood of acceptance and relief running smoothly through the music.

Written by: Milly McMahon | Date: Wednesday, 25 September 2019

Keane - Cause and Effect (Album Review)

While Keane frontman Tom Chaplin’s problems with drug addiction have been well publicised, it’s his bandmate Tim Rice-Oxley’s issues that form the backbone of ‘Cause and Effect’, the group’s comeback album seven years after the release of ‘Strangeland’.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Tuesday, 24 September 2019

Liam Gallagher - Why Me? Why Not. (Album Review)

Liam Gallagher is in a particular group when it comes to British indie singers. Like Ian Brown, Pete Doherty and (decreasingly) Morrissey, his artistic output is relatively critic-proof: large audiences still go to see shows irrespective of the quality of new releases. 

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Monday, 23 September 2019

(Sandy) Alex G - House of Sugar (Album Review)

Photo: Tonje Thilesen On ‘House of Sugar’, (Sandy) Alex G is more than happy to make us wait for our hit. A sprawling piece that slots endearing, wonky Americana songs between extended stretches of electronic navel-gazing, it is a record that must be appreciated as a whole if only for the deliberate nature of its construction.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Friday, 20 September 2019

Metronomy - Metronomy Forever (Album Review)

Joe Mount, the creative mastermind behind Metronomy, is thinking about his legacy. In the 10 plus years since the band’s ‘Nights Out’ era, he has grown up, had children and settled down in the Kent countryside. The music should have done the same, if it is to last as long as the title of their sixth LP, ‘Metronomy Forever’, suggests it might.

Written by: Helen Payne | Date: Friday, 20 September 2019

Charli XCX - Charli (Album Review)

Photo: Marcus Cooper Charli XCX embarked on her career as a songwriter by creating generic pop music engineered to occupy the upper echelons of charts worldwide. Formulaic, channelling girl-power, her unfussy, straight-ahead songs landed in the hands of Icona Pop, Iggy Azalea and Selena Gomez while she figured out how she functioned as a solo artist.

Written by: Milly McMahon | Date: Thursday, 19 September 2019

Pixies - Beneath The Eyrie (Album Review)

How many reunions have really worked? So few that you had to stop and think about it, that’s how many. Since their resuscitation as a recording band in 2013 Pixies’ victory lap has been particularly divisive, with the exorbitantly cool Kim Deal choosing to sit it out, leaving a void that her former bandmates have struggled to fill.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Thursday, 19 September 2019

Gruff Rhys - Pang! (Album Review)

Following 2018’s expansive and orchestral ‘Babelsberg’, Gruff Rhys has reined in his arrangements on ‘Pang!’, composing an album of tidy chamber indie that has its basis in British folk. Interestingly, this is offset by the handling of South African DJ and record producer Muzi, who has added a host of non-Western musical elements, including a few lines sung in Zulu. The rest of the album is delivered in Welsh.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Wednesday, 18 September 2019

Jenny Hval - The Practice of Love (Album Review)

Photo: Lasse Marhaug Jenny Hval is feeling reflective. Her previous offering, ‘Blood Bitch’ was a pointedly vexing record about menstruation and vampirism that won the Phonofile Nordic Music Prize—essentially the Mercury Music Prize for Scandinavia—in 2017.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Tuesday, 17 September 2019

Sam Fender - Hypersonic Missiles (Album Review)

Sam Fender is an interesting artist. His debut LP, ‘Hypersonic Missiles’, arrives amid plenty of hype from industry figures who have already anointed him as a future star, but it’s also a lacerating, frank odyssey into its creator’s fears and anxieties.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Tuesday, 17 September 2019

Bat For Lashes - Lost Girls (Album Review)

Well, the new Bat for Lashes album is superb. Natasha Khan has mapped out a magical synth voyage into 1980s teen sci-fi horror, which marries her Home Counties purr with the 35mm joy of a Hollywood sound stage.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Friday, 13 September 2019

Whitney - Forever Turned Around (Album Review)

There are few more grievous insults in music than to describe a record as ‘nice’. It implies a lack of bite, a play-it-safe approach, even a paucity of craft. Whitney’s second LP ‘Forever Turned Around’ is nice, but somehow it manages to be so while just about pushing things forward creatively.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Friday, 13 September 2019

Iggy Pop - Free (Album Review)

Photo: Harmony Korine Iggy Pop is one of America’s greatest living rock artists—a stage performer whose visceral public persona is immediate and undeniable. However, that doesn’t always translate into recognisable hits...or even high quality music. Like his late contemporary Lou Reed, sometimes his songs seem deliberately shoddy so as to disappoint and frustrate his audience.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Thursday, 12 September 2019

Post Malone - Hollywood's Bleeding (Album Review)

With two successful albums to his name, Post Malone has now released his most thought-provoking work to date with ‘Hollywood’s Bleeding’. Taking time to reflect on his direction and values, it feels like an epiphanous moment in the multi-platinum artist’s 0-100 career. 

Written by: Milly McMahon | Date: Wednesday, 11 September 2019

Sheryl Crow - Threads (Album Review)

Sheryl Crow’s always been good at what she does. No more, no less. She’s crafted the occasional moment that might be deemed great, but although a Grammy-winning superstar who’s sold tens of millions of albums, her songs  have rarely threatened to attain classic status or reshape the musical landscape. Unlike the work of the legends she’s drafted in for this enjoyable, albeit indulgent and flawed, duets record.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Tuesday, 10 September 2019

Brockhampton - Ginger (Album Review)

It’s been a frenetic few years for the DIY rap outfit Brockhampton. Having met through online hip hop forums, the self declared boyband released three well received albums throughout 2017 (‘The Saturation Trilogy’), before key member Ameer Vann was kicked out of the group in light of sexual misconduct allegations. 

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Monday, 09 September 2019

Tool - Fear Inoculum (Album Review)

Photo: Travis Shinn If you’ve waited a long time for something, you might as well spend a long time with it once it finally arrives, right? Tool’s return, after a 13 year absence that amounted to torture for their committed following, is a slow moving, dense work defined by its patient approach. Its steadfast insistence on hitting its marks in its own time, and skipping zero pages in the band’s playbook, will delight diehards.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Friday, 06 September 2019

Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell! (Album Review)

When Lana Del Rey’s Video Games attained viral status in 2011, it felt entirely plausible that her success would be a flash in the pan. Many critics (often male) derided her as a contrived, inauthentic pop star whose cinematic melancholia could not translate to long term appeal. Eight years and four albums later, they’ve been proven wrong about her longevity, and yet Del Rey’s multi-textured inauthenticity has flourished, and become a kind of defining brand. Sometimes you can be wrong and right at the same time.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Thursday, 05 September 2019

Ezra Furman - Twelve Nudes (Album Review)

Seeking to stay true to a punk aesthetic, Ezra Furman and band recorded ‘Twelve Nudes’ at a rapid pace with creative help from booze and cigarettes. And it shows. It doesn’t deliver the production finesse of 2018’s ‘Transangelic Exodus’, but that’s kind of the point.

Written by: Helen Payne | Date: Wednesday, 04 September 2019