Ty Segall - Possession (Album Review)

Photo: Denée Segall A lot of artists strive for a retro sound, but scratch away the top layer and often there’s a lack of creativity lurking underneath. Not so with Ty Segall’s ‘Possession’. With this gem of an album, the prolific psych-rock songwriter has assembled a well-rounded, classic-sounding record that pays homage to greats such as Tom Petty, The Eagles and Neil Young alongside nuanced strings, commanding wind arrangements and electrifying guitar solos. It may be his best yet.

Written by: James Palaczky | Date: Friday, 30 May 2025

Joe Jonas - Music For People Who Believe In Love (Album Review)

Photo: Gleeson Paulino Joe Jonas has had his finger in various pies over the last two decades, with the former Diney star’s most notable outings coming with the Jonas Brothers and DNCE after his successful stint on Camp Rock. Having rekindled his sibling group a couple of years back, Jonas ends another long wait with ‘Music For People Who Believe In Love’, his second solo album.

Written by: Issy Herring | Date: Thursday, 29 May 2025

Sparks - MAD! (Album Review)

Photo: Munachi Osegbu Sparks’ Ron and Russell Mael first burst onto the scene more than 50 years ago with the smash hit This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both of Us and their accompanying 1974 LP ‘Kimono My House’. Since then they’ve found it hard to stand still, with a string of critically and commercially successful records setting the table for a late-career purple patch encompassing some of their finest work and cool side quests such as their FFS collaboration with Franz Ferdinand and Edgar Wright’s documentary on the group. ‘MAD!’ builds upon this run and, for a pair in their 70s, their creativity still astounds.

Written by: Chris Connor | Date: Wednesday, 28 May 2025

Skunk Anansie - The Painful Truth (Album Review)

Photo: Rob O'Connor Skunk Anansie will not accept a future as a relic. Although their Glastonbury-conquering commercial peak was decades ago, and there’s been a further nine-year drought without an album, there’s nothing about their comeback that indicates they’ve become rusty. 

Written by: Emma Wilkes | Date: Tuesday, 27 May 2025

Ezra Furman - Goodbye Small Head (Album Review)

Photo: Eleanor Petry Ezra Furman makes an unflinching, ebullient return to music with ‘Goodbye Small Head’, an album that chronicles feelings of losing control and becoming disillusioned with the world around you. 

Written by: Nieve Elis | Date: Friday, 23 May 2025

Rico Nasty - Lethal (Album Review)

Photo: Chris Yellen Rico Nasty’s ‘Lethal’ is an explosive blend of beats, bars and bangers — it’s loud and garish while also being tonally varied and carefully-crafted, stacking up as perhaps the Maryland rapper’s finest work to date.

Written by: Laura Mills | Date: Thursday, 22 May 2025

Kali Uchis - Sincerely, (Album Review)

Photo: Amaury Nessaibia ‘Sincerely,’ finds Kali Uchis luxuriating in a dreamy, sensual soundscape that feels intimate yet expansive. Across 50 minutes of lush, groove-laden R&B, she explores themes of love, family, and desire with a tone that oscillates between wistful reverie and euphoric joy. It feels like the soundtrack to a long, solitary drive — reflective, sultry, and tinged with the bittersweet glow of a love affair that, while it lasted, was heavy on sex.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Wednesday, 21 May 2025

MØ - Plæygirl (Album Review)

Photo: Betty Krag “Hold on, I don't understand / Where all the roads are going, man,” MØ sings during Meat on a Stick, the mission-statement opener from the genre-defying ‘Plæygirl’. A decade on from her breakout, the Danish pop icon is at her most introspective on her fourth LP, with its immediate drop into an atmospheric a capella intro and sparse instrumentation placing her meditative lyrics front and centre.

Written by: Sarah Taylor | Date: Tuesday, 20 May 2025

Wretch 32 - Home? (Album Review)

Photo: Frank Feiber It’s been a long time since Wretch 32 established himself as British rap’s new poster boy. In 2011 alone, he released a trio of top five singles with Traktor, Unorthodox and the chart-topping Don’t Go, all taken from ‘Black and White’, a second album steeped in tales of a reckless youth. Now aged 40, ‘Home?’ gloriously captures a sense of maturity that shows his attention is now driven in more worthwhile directions.

Written by: Jack Butler-Terry | Date: Monday, 19 May 2025

Billy Nomates - Metalhorse (Album Review)

Photo: Jack Dallas-Chapman ‘Metalhorse’ is the emotionally charged and sonically enriched third album from Billy Nomates, signifying a considerable transformation in Tor Maries’ creative approach. It is her first produced in a studio with a full band and was profoundly influenced by personal challenges, including the recent death of her father and her own diagnosis with MS. 

Written by: Katie Macbeth | Date: Friday, 16 May 2025

Billy Woods - Golliwog (Album Review)

Photo: Natalia Vacheishvili ‘Golliwog’ is a bruising and impactful body of work that takes after the best horror films, trudging through the forest no matter how creepy it may get. The central theme on Billy Woods’ eighth solo album is discomfort — the New York rapper is an expert in weaving lyrical tapestries and here, the threads are all blacks, greys, browns and reds. It’s an ugly, uncompromising affair, a festering wound that becomes more and more intriguing for those with the stomach for it.

Written by: Jack Butler-Terry | Date: Friday, 16 May 2025

Arcade Fire - Pink Elephant (Album Review)

Photo: Danny Clinch Arcade Fire emerged as giants of the ‘00s indie scene with their acclaimed debut, ‘Funeral’, which remains a baroque-rock masterpiece. Subsequent albums, up to 2013’s ‘Reflektor’, earned strong reviews and revved up a huge, adoring fanbase. Since then, it’s been harder to keep things on the rails.

Written by: Chris Connor | Date: Thursday, 15 May 2025

Låpsley - I'm A Hurricane, I'm A Woman In Love (Album Review)

Låpsley celebrates polyamorous love on her fourth album, ‘I’m A Hurricane, I’m A Woman In Love’, exploring the period of time when the singer-songwriter was in an open relationship, and in love with two people at once. 

Written by: Jennifer Geddes | Date: Thursday, 15 May 2025

Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke - Tall Tales (Album Review)

Photo: Pierre Toussaint While Thom Yorke needs no introduction, his ‘Tall Tales’ collaborator, Mark Pritchard, perhaps does. A veteran British electronic musician now based in Australia, Pritchard has been crafting beats of all genres since the early ‘90s, but is still a figure that few will know, other than those who’ve closely followed the releases of Warp Records.

Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Wednesday, 14 May 2025

Sleep Token - Even In Arcadia (Album Review)

Sleep Token’s rise from cult metal oddities to Download headliners has generated plenty of buzz, but in a creative sense the band reaches fresh heights with ‘Even In Arcadia’, a record that shatters genre boundaries with breathtaking confidence.

Written by: Jack Press | Date: Tuesday, 13 May 2025

Mclusky - The World Is Still Here And So Are We (Album Review)

Photo: Damien Sayell Mclusky’s return with their fourth record after a mammoth 20-year dry spell will doubtless thrill die-hard fans, but for anybody looking in from the outside the main question to ask is simply: why now? There are a lot of typically sardonic answers scattered throughout ‘The World is Still Here and So Are We’ but perhaps the only one that matters is: because everything’s broken.

Written by: James Palaczky | Date: Monday, 12 May 2025

Blondshell - If You Asked For A Picture (Album Review)

Photo: Daniel Topete On ‘If You Asked For a Picture’, Blondshell’s Sabrina Teitelbaum assembles a scrapbook of the significant moments that have shaped her in an attempt to give form to the album’s title. Duly, its songs encompass painful memories of past romantic relationships, fraught family bonds, and a confrontation with her own inner critic. But, like the Mary Oliver poem that inspired its name, there is also room to contemplate the extent to which she should share parts of her life through her music.

Written by: Sarah Taylor | Date: Friday, 09 May 2025

Lights - A6 (Album Review)

Lights has always existed in a space between gentle indie-pop and dancier electronic music, with her later albums growing more confident in the array of influences displayed. With her sixth album, the aptly and simply titled ‘A6’, the Canadian songwriter doesn’t so much push herself in new directions as she does bring everything full circle, combining her various eras under one umbrella.

Written by: Will Marshall | Date: Thursday, 08 May 2025

PUP - Who Will Look After The Dogs? (Album Review)

Photo: Vanessa Heins Indie-punks PUP can seem like the ultimate dysfunctional family bound by proximity and complementary neuroses. Following 2022’s ‘The Unraveling of PUPTHEBAND’ there were a series of shifts in their world that suggested a balancing out — guitarist Steve Sladkowski got married, bassist Nestor Chumak became a dad, and drummer Zack Mykula moved away. For a band who thrive on being at each other’s throats in a creative sense, the idea of any of them settling down could spell the death knell.

Written by: Jack Press | Date: Thursday, 08 May 2025

Davido - 5ive (Album Review)

Davido may not occupy the same space at the forefront of Afrobeats’ global domination as Burna Boy and WizKid, but he has been steadily backing up the vanguard with a string of rock-solid records. Now, his fifth album tries to capitalise on that groundwork, but the results are shaky.

Written by: Jack Butler-Terry | Date: Wednesday, 07 May 2025