Spoon - Hot Thoughts (Album Review)

Despite having amassed an impressive back catalogue that now runs to nine studio albums, Spoon remain unsung heroes. A lack of radio airplay probably accounts for part of that in the UK, but the amount of critical acclaim afforded to them is considerable. According to the review aggregator site Metacritic, in fact, the Austin band were the best reviewed of the ‘00s.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Thursday, 23 March 2017

Depeche Mode - Spirit (Album Review)

With their tenure as a band now approaching 40 years, Depeche Mode are still undeniably one of the biggest acts on the planet. ‘Spirit’ is their 14th studio effort and arrives following a period of outside experimentation following the release of ‘Delta Machine’ in 2013, during which both Martin Gore (‘MG’) and Dave Gahan (‘Angels & Ghosts’ with Soulsavers) put out records under their own steam.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Wednesday, 22 March 2017

The Shins - Heartworms (Album Review)

For any band that enjoyed a close association with a certain scene or moment in time it can be difficult to separate the ongoing job of making music from fan expectations and the spectre of reviewer snark.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Tuesday, 21 March 2017

Conor Oberst - Salutations (Album Review)

The band name Bright Eyes inspired immediate mistrust. It conveyed shoe-gazing egotism and a kind of phoney introversion peddled by spoiled suburbanites on college campuses. Maybe that's why Conor Oberst retired the moniker in 2011 and decided to double down on solo albums. ‘Salutations’ is his third since the band split, and his eighth in total.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Tuesday, 21 March 2017

Hurray For The Riff Raff - The Navigator (Album Review)

“Now all the politicians, they just squawk their mouths, they said: ‘We’ll build a wall to keep them out.' And all the poets were dying of a silence disease, so it happened quickly and with much ease.” Mounting an artistic resistance against those who seek to trample over basic social liberties, Alynda Segarra and Hurray For The Riff Raff have arrived with one of the most lyrically resonant and musically splendid records of 2017.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Monday, 20 March 2017

Idles - Brutalism (Album Review)

Prior to their debut LP taking shape, Idles’ journey was a slow burn. With two EPs in their back pocket, 2012’s ‘Welcome’ and 2015’s ‘Meat’, they should have been running into it head first, but instead they found themselves stagnant until logistical changes and the passing of vocalist Joe Talbot’s mother led to renewed urgency and ‘Brutalism’ becoming a cathartic release.

Written by: Laura Johnson | Date: Thursday, 16 March 2017

Circa Waves - Different Creatures (Album Review)

Circa Waves frontman Kieran Shudall has made it no secret that the band want to see their name at the top of the biggest festival bills. It’s an understandable goal, but if you want to sell millions of albums, play to thousands of people and get those coveted headline slots then you’ve got to come up with the goods.

Written by: Liam Turner | Date: Wednesday, 15 March 2017

Laura Marling - Semper Femina (Album Review)

Is there a better contemporary English folk songwriter than Laura Marling?

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Tuesday, 14 March 2017

Grandaddy - Last Place (Album Review)

Photo: Dan Cronin Apparently, ‘Last Place’ marks the return of Grandaddy after 11 years away. But, if we’re all completely honest with each other, it’s not really been that long as much of the pre-hiatus music released as Grandaddy remains interchangeable with the solo material put out by frontman Jason Lytle in the interim. And, while we’re at it, we can agree that 2006’s ‘Just Like the Fambly Cat’ was also a Lytle solo project, given that the rest of the band had pretty much given up the ghost by then.

Written by: Ben Gallivan | Date: Monday, 13 March 2017

Alison Krauss - Windy City (Album Review)

Whenever Gotham City is in peril, the bat signal is projected into the sky and the caped crusader comes running to save the day. Nashville isn’t exactly a crime-ridden dystopia, but its musical heritage certainly needs rescuing from the gangs of villainous bro-country acts who’ve distorted and devalued the genre. So beam Alison Krauss’s name above the city’s skyline, because the queen of bluegrass is here to rescue us from their evil clutches with the magnificent ‘Windy City’.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Friday, 10 March 2017

Ed Sheeran - ÷ (Album Review)

Ed Sheeran is the immensely likeable prince of pop. A gentle, diligent and very British talent, his warm ordinariness feels so familiar that the whole world has invested in his success. That has continued with the release of his third LP, ‘÷’.

Written by: Milly McMahon | Date: Friday, 10 March 2017

Little Big Town - The Breaker (Album Review)

Nashville is famously situated on the Cumberland River, but were it located next to an ocean you could probably gaze out and see the members of Little Big Town perched astride the crest of its largest wave. The quartet are arguably the biggest and most beloved modern country act right now and represent a perfect balance between independent cool and mainstream polish, carefree fun and meaningful depth. So why, then, does this eagerly anticipated album feel like a slight disappointment?

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Thursday, 09 March 2017

Sleaford Mods - English Tapas (Album Review)

If you’ve never seen Sleaford Mods perform (either in person or on YouTube or whatever) it will be difficult to get your head around ‘English Tapas’, the Nottingham duo’s latest album. If you have seen them, you’ll probably appreciate that their live show is less a traditional gig and more a situationist performance-poetry rave attended by devotional working class fans and worried-looking hipsters.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Wednesday, 08 March 2017

Temples - Volcano (Album Review)

It seems like only yesterday that Temples’ debut album, ‘Sun Structures’, wooed us with its poppy psychedelia. The young Kettering quartet became another band to jump on the psych revival bandwagon, generating plenty of column inches and breaking the top 10 of the UK album chart. Incredibly, it’s now over three years old.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Wednesday, 08 March 2017

Zeal & Ardor - Devil Is Fine (Album Review)

Photo: Matthias Willi Black metal has all the best one-man projects. They represent uncompromised vision, and the greatest solo endeavours from this icy, frostbitten genre are born from experimentation and genuine desire for change. So it makes some sense that Zeal & Ardor’s label as a black metal act is contradicted by the actual music. There’s very little black metal on ‘Devil is Fine’. And, well, that’s just fine.

Written by: Alec Chillingworth | Date: Tuesday, 07 March 2017

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - The Tourist (Album Review)

In 2005, getting your music heard by listeners outside the usual mix of friends, family and local fans was pretty much only possible if you were signed. Then the internet came along and turned that theory on its head. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah made hay once the goalposts shifted, beginning with a critically lauded self-titled debut.

Written by: Ben Gallivan | Date: Monday, 06 March 2017

Ryan Adams - Prisoner (Album Review)

If the dictionary employed sounds to define words rather than written descriptions the music of Ryan Adams would feature repeatedly, most likely next to entries for heartbreak, pain and most of their downbeat derivatives.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Friday, 03 March 2017

Syd - Fin (Album Review)

The term might sound tacky and unnecessary now, but ‘alternative R&B’ was an exciting and innovative concept at the turn of the decade. After years of silver-tongued heartthrobs dominating the charts, artists like Frank Ocean represented a welcome change of pace.

Written by: Jonathan Rimmer | Date: Thursday, 02 March 2017

The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Don't Get Lost (Album Review)

With Anton Newcombe promising to “review the reviews” of ‘Don’t Get Lost’, the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s 16th full length release, it’s tempting to cower in the corner or heap it with praise without even hearing it. Alternatively, you could give it a single cursory listen and write it off as sheer self-indulgence, such is its eclectic nature. To do so would be a big mistake.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Thursday, 02 March 2017

Los Campesinos! - Sick Scenes (Album Review)

There was a heaving, sweaty pile of indie landfill clogging up the airwaves during the mid-to-late ‘00s. You couldn’t breathe for deliberately specific lyrics, lo-fi keyboard lines, chinos and unkempt hairdos that took an hour to perfect. In 2017, a lot of those bands have fizzled out, changed course or just broken up. Los Campesinos!, though, have weathered the storm and clambered from the wreckage mostly unscathed. 

Written by: Alec Chillingworth | Date: Thursday, 02 March 2017