The Flaming Lips - Oczy Mlody (Album Review)

Brexit, Boris, Syria...Trump. After a year spent teetering on the brink, it perhaps makes sense to want to lock away the outside world and retreat to some far away fantasy land. With titles like Listening To The Frogs With Demon Eyes and One Night While Hunting For Faeries And Witches And Wizards To Kill, ‘Oczy Mlody’, the Flaming Lips’ 14th LP, offers the chance to do just that, even if it’s not quite the magic potion it occasionally threatens to be.

Written by: Liam Turner | Date: Monday, 16 January 2017

Code Orange - Forever (Album Review)

We’re drowning in a sea of beatdowns, and Code Orange are the liferaft. A liferaft harbouring four ravenous punks from Pittsburgh ready to cave your skull in, but a liferaft nonetheless. Their third full-length, ‘Forever’, is an album capable of carving through the mediocri-sea of bands currently half-arsing hardcore and shredding them in its hulking engines.

Written by: Alec Chillingworth | Date: Thursday, 12 January 2017

Gone Is Gone - Echolocation (Album Review)

A group of moderately well-known musicians hang out and form a band. The internet goes mad, the hype train chugs through Supergroup Central and you think the result’s going to match the respective members’ day jobs. More often than not, though, such expectation ends with you listening in woeful denial. “He was really good in Faith No More, so this must be genius,” you think. But no, be honest, you don’t like Tomahawk’s ‘Anonymous’ album.

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

Brian Eno - Reflection (Album Review)

Reviewing ambient music is a difficult task, mainly because it operates in a different way to most other styles of the artform. It is sound intended to fade into the background; eschewing attention and directing the listener to alternative cognitive locations.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Tuesday, 10 January 2017

You Me At Six - Night People (Album Review)

You Me At Six have made it abundantly clear that their new record, ‘Night People’, is not like their others. Vocalist Josh Franceschi cited influences ranging from Frank Ocean to Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin when discussing its gestation and the result is a record that dips its toe in the deeper end of the rock pool without ever becoming fully submerged.

Written by: Laura Johnson | Date: Monday, 09 January 2017

Nine Inch Nails - Not The Actual Events (Album Review)

“New NIN coming in 2016. Other stuff, too.”

Written by: Alec Chillingworth | Date: Thursday, 05 January 2017

Run The Jewels - Run The Jewels 3 (Album Review)

Since Run The Jewels emerged in 2013, Killer Mike’s politicised aggression has slammed against El-P’s intergalactic production to craft something pretty special. Even the remix album they did full of cat noises was quite good.

Written by: Alec Chillingworth | Date: Thursday, 05 January 2017

Neil Young - Peace Trail (Album Review)

Following this year’s strangely mesmerising, yet decidedly oddball, pseudo-live album ‘Earth’, Neil Young has dispensed with backing band Promise of the Real to produce ‘Peace Trail’, a predominantly acoustic solo offering that was recorded in just four days.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Thursday, 22 December 2016

The Rolling Stones - Blue & Lonesome (Album Review)

They’ve certainly earned their reputation as the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band, but the Rolling Stones have always been, at heart, a terrific blues outfit. It’s the genre on which their empire was built and the bedrock of their swaggering identity. It’s their first, most abiding love. And now, over 50 years since they formed, Mick Jagger and co. have returned to mother on a youthful and exuberant album of blues covers for the connoisseur. That’s right, Stones purists: Christmas has come early.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Friday, 09 December 2016

Childish Gambino - Awaken, My Love! (Album Review)

Generally speaking, it's easier to glean pleasure from something you worked hard for than something you didn't. Except when you're talking pop songs, that is. Then, the prize is immediacy and a perfectly-packaged endorphin rush.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Wednesday, 07 December 2016

Slowcoaches - Nothing Gives (Album Review)

Never let it be said that a band's decision to play fast and loud masks a lack of finesse. An album like ‘Nothing Gives’, the debut LP by London-via-Leeds punk trio Slowcoaches, performs a thousand melodic tricks at a hundred miles an hour, which is just as hard as it sounds.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Monday, 05 December 2016

Miranda Lambert - The Weight Of These Wings (Album Review)

Country fans may have been eagerly anticipating Miranda Lambert’s retort to ex-husband Blake Shelton’s ‘If I’m Honest’ album, but this double disc opus is too mature and classy to file anywhere near petty mud-slinging. Although both inspired by their divorce, Shelton’s alleged truth teller was workmanlike, occasionally underhanded and mostly written by other people. ‘The Weight Of These Wings’, on the other hand, is a wilfully artistic, authentically expressive and emotionally complex confessional from a very gifted songwriter.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Friday, 02 December 2016

Solange - A Seat At The Table (Album Review)

Some records take a hammer to their surroundings. They show us the world and then tear it down before our eyes, eager for us to understand and embrace their rage. Solange’s ‘A Seat At The Table’ almost does the opposite. She relates lyrics driven by anger and repeated pleas for understanding over songs that are very rarely less than palatial and, to the last note, immaculately constructed. This is a record of remarkable poise and a rare example of an artist speaking with absolute conviction as both a lyricist and musician.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Tuesday, 29 November 2016

The Weeknd - Starboy (Album Review)

It’s been just over a year since Abel Tesfaye released ‘Beauty Behind the Madness’, the record that truly launched the Weeknd as a mainstream concern and exposed the masses to his brand of dark, moody alt-R&B. Its follow up has now arrived in short order, with the appropriate amount of hype. But ‘Starboy’ is a sizeable body of work that works hard to justify its lengthy running time.

Written by: Liam Turner | Date: Monday, 28 November 2016

The Neal Morse Band - 'The Similitude Of A Dream' (Album Review)

If there were such a thing as the prog rock Oscars, 2016 would be a fairly fruitless year for every group that isn’t the Neal Morse Band. ‘The Similitude Of A Dream’ is a double concept album that’s as grandiose and intense as it is subtle and playful. It’s Ben Hur.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Thursday, 24 November 2016

Sad13 - Slugger (Album Review)

Photo: Shervin Lainez Nestled at the heart of Speedy Ortiz’s tangled web of riffs are melodies that look like the best moves of pop’s biggest names reflected in a circus mirror. The band’s vocalist and guitarist, Sadie Dupuis, is a writer with a knack for delivering hooks that are sickly, memorable and ever so slightly strange all at once and on ‘Slugger’, her solo debut under the Sad13 moniker, she finds a rich vein of inspiration in the comparatively low-key world of bedroom synth-pop.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Wednesday, 23 November 2016

Justice - Woman (Album Review)

Over the past 20 years, French EDM has gone from a hipster specialism to full-blown mainstream concern. But while Grammy awards, Hollywood soundtracks and festival headline slots may have blunted the genre's inherent edginess, producers like Daft Punk and DJ Snake have managed to maintain a high degree of integrity while collaborating with a host of blue-chip artists on mind-bogglingly popular tunes.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Wednesday, 23 November 2016

Metallica - Hardwired...To Self-Destruct (Album Review)

Last time we had a new Metallica album, we were in the last thrashings of George W. Bush’s presidency, Michael Jackson was still alive and everyone was convinced e-books were just a flash in the pan. Times change. So do Metallica.

Written by: Alec Chillingworth | Date: Friday, 18 November 2016

Sleigh Bells - Jessica Rabbit (Album Review)

‘Jessica Rabbit’, the new album by Sleigh Bells, is an ambitious beast. It takes the brutish contradictions present in their all-or-nothing noise pop and amps them up even further, venturing deeper into mainstream waters while offering concrete reminders of their distorted power. It wants to bludgeon and caress in equal measure, but ends up keeping its twin ambitions at arm’s length from one another.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Friday, 18 November 2016

Bowling For Soup - Drunk Dynasty (Album Review)

As any pop-punk fan knows, three things are certain in life: death, taxes and Bowling for Soup creating infectious as hell, up-tempo songs about girls, drinking and getting into trouble. 

Written by: Jon Stickler | Date: Thursday, 17 November 2016