The White Buffalo - Year of the Dark Horse (Album Review)

‘Year of the Dark Horse’ more than lives up to The White Buffalo’s claim that he’s finally made his ‘headphones album’. Over the past two decades Jake Smith has strode across the nebulous Americana realm like a god among mortals. He’s a mysterious Emmy-nominated artist who conveys grim truths with either a mesmeric whisper or visceral, damaged roar.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Thursday, 24 November 2022

Brockhampton - The Family (Album Review)

Photo: Conor Cunningham It’s challenging for any artist to call it a day, but bowing out on your own terms is always preferable to an ignominious end. Enter alternative hip hop collective Brockhampton. Since forming in 2010 they’ve been a breath of fresh air, discussing sexuality, self-discovery and their own brotherhood in a world that has sometimes been dominated by hyper-masculine and misogynistic lyrics.

Written by: Will Marshall | Date: Wednesday, 23 November 2022

Nickelback - Get Rollin' (Album Review)

After a five year hiatus, everyone’s favourite musical punchline are back with an album that’s pulled off the unenviable feat of sounding dated the moment it was released. While the rest of the world was in lockdown, it appears Nickelback may have been hibernating in some kind of vacuum-tight stasis chamber. But whether that’s a bad thing or not will, like everything to do with this hugely polarising outfit, be very much subjective.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Tuesday, 22 November 2022

Christine and the Queens - Redcar les adorables étoiles (prologue) (Album Review)

Photo: Pierre-Ange Carlotti For his third full album the French performance artist known at various times as Chris and Christine and the Queens has created a new persona: the titular ‘Redcar’. The album, sung from Redcar’s perspective, picks up much of the pop melancholy of the singer’s first two albums while honing art-pop tropes successfully deployed on his most recent release: the 2020 EP, ‘La Vita Nuova’. The result is a bit of a mess, lacking focus in songwriting and structure, but which nonetheless contains flashes of the brilliant artist lurking within.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Monday, 21 November 2022

Neil Young and Crazy Horse - World Record (Album Review)

Photo: Joey Martinez Time can take an immeasurable toll. The passing years have the ability to dull the senses, and dampen fires that once burned brightly. It can be all too easy to become complacent, to allow each day to roll into the next. 

Written by: Craig Howieson | Date: Friday, 18 November 2022

Weyes Blood - And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow (Album Review)

Photo: Neil Krug It has come to light that Weyes Blood’s superb 2019 album ‘Titanic Rising’ was the first in a trilogy. It served as a warning shot from a world going wrong, with ominous tides and people becoming more detached from each other than ever before.

Written by: Matty Pywell | Date: Thursday, 17 November 2022

Bruce Springsteen - Only The Strong Survive (Album Review)

If you’re one of the greatest songwriters of all time, covering the work of others isn’t something you do out of necessity or on a whim. It has to mean something. So where 2006’s ‘We Shall Overcome’ found Bruce Springsteen passionately shining a light on folk numbers popularised by Pete Seeger, ‘Only The Strong Survive’ indulges his love for classic R&B and soul music to create a record that, although an entertaining curio, never feels as imperative as its predecessor.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Wednesday, 16 November 2022

L.S. Dunes - Past Lives (Album Review)

Photo: Luke Dicky In a year when emo nostalgia has hit a heady peak—from the comebacks of My Chemical Romance and Paramore, to the excitement around When We Were Young festival’s throwback line up—it only seems right that we should be greeted by a supergroup such as L.S. Dunes.

Written by: Jack Terry | Date: Monday, 14 November 2022

Big Joanie - Back Home (Album Review)

Photo: Ajamu X Big Joanie are well on their way to being big news. The London-based feminist-punk trio have already notched touring slots with IDLES and Bikini Kill, showing significant promise both in the UK and Stateside. Now striding forward with their second LP ‘Back Home’ they serve up a superb set of biting punk tracks with a few worthwhile surprises thrown in for good measure.

Written by: Rebecca Llewellyn | Date: Wednesday, 09 November 2022

Special Interest - Endure (Album Review)

War, the climate emergency, the cost of living crisis, combustible governments. TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. There is no shortage of harrowing aspects of existence in 2022. Nor is there a lack of ways to be informed, or misinformed, about them. As we reach for our phone for the hundredth time, to speed read the latest notification, interrupting the half thought that we were on the cusp of completing, it is little wonder our minds lose focus. When everything is a disaster until a bigger disaster comes along, and priorities are swallowed by bigger priorities, how do you move forward?

Written by: Craig Howieson | Date: Tuesday, 08 November 2022

Joanne Shaw Taylor - Nobody's Fool (Album Review)

Photo: Chris Wilson In 2021, Joanne Shaw Taylor dazzled and delighted with an album of life affirming blues covers, delivered in tandem with producers Joe Bonamassa and Josh Smith. Hope was kindled that this chemistry-rich trio might bring the exact same magic to her next batch of original material, which they have done in some style.​

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Monday, 07 November 2022

Phoenix - Alpha Zulu (Album Review)

Photo: Shervin Lainez Phoenix’s music has always displayed a sprightly elegance. A clean-cut, immaculately capable group, they have from the outset had their own unique take on indie-rock, embracing pop and electronics without falling into electroclash. Slowly, they became as synonymous with French alternative music as Daft Punk were with French house.

Written by: Craig Howieson | Date: Friday, 04 November 2022

Simple Minds - Direction of the Heart (Album Review)

With much of Simple Minds’ most recognisable line-up having departed at various points during the past 40 years, Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill are now the only mainstays who provide the face of the band as they head into their 60s. It’s not just the two of them these days, of course, but those who were there with them at the start will likely see it that way.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Thursday, 03 November 2022

Pinkshift - Love Me Forever (Album Review)

Before the pandemic, the members of Pinkshift were three college students who played in a band for fun. They came out the other side as viral sensations after their feisty yet tormented grunge-pop hit I’m Gonna Tell My Therapist on You punctured the internet in the depths of the Covid shutdown.

Written by: Emma Wilkes | Date: Wednesday, 02 November 2022

Show Me The Body - Trouble The Water (Album Review)

It's hard to find the words to accurately categorise New York's Show Me The Body. These DIY masters have long delivered their anti-establishment protest songs in raucous, raw settings, and their previous albums, 2016's ‘Body War’ and 2019's ‘Dog Whistle’, displayed a band that was willing to push hardcore in experimental and challenging directions. And on ‘Trouble The Water’ they sound more potent and pissed off than ever before.

Written by: Jack Terry | Date: Tuesday, 01 November 2022

Arctic Monkeys - The Car (Album Review)

Photo: Zackery Michael Everyone’s heard of the great rock ‘n’ roll swindle, and the way Arctic Monkeys’ career has veered off in totally non-rock directions has left fans of the raw, edgy guitar onslaught of earlier albums scratching their heads. It began with ‘Tranquillity Base Hotel & Casino’, a collection of, for want of a better term, space-lounge music. Little remained of the old fire, and its successor ‘The Car’ follows in the same vein.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Monday, 31 October 2022

Dry Cleaning - Stumpwork (Album Review)

Photo: Guy Bolongaro For Dry Cleaning’s second album, the South London quartet have refined the post-punk sound they delivered on their breakthrough record, ‘New Long Leg’, while expanding the topical range of vocalist Florence Shaw’s deadpan singing. Actually ‘singing’ doesn’t quite feel right. What Shaw is doing is closer to spoken word poetry, Sprechgesang, or even sports commentary without the sport. It’s pretty distinctive stuff.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Friday, 28 October 2022

Lightning Seeds - See You In The Stars (Album Review)

Photo: Tom Oxley There’s much to love about Ian Broudie’s Lightning Seeds. He is one of the best British songwriters of his generation, reaching his ‘Dizzy Heights’ in the mid-1990s, and the genius of his band was found in the fact that melodies were everything: Sugar Coated Iceberg, Lucky You, The Life of Riley, the list goes on. Now, 13 years since their last album, 'See You in the Stars’ attempts to keep the goods coming.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Friday, 28 October 2022

Architects - The Classic Symptoms of a Broken Spirit (Album Review)

It’s barely been a year since Architects topped the UK charts with their ninth album ‘For Those That Wish to Exist’, but the Brighton metalcore troupe haven’t rested on their laurels. The ideas that became ‘The Classic Symptoms of a Broken Spirit’ arrived as the band were completing a victory lap of UK arenas celebrating its predecessor.

Written by: Will Marshall | Date: Thursday, 27 October 2022

The Big Moon - Here is Everything (Album Review)

The Big Moon have returned with their third studio album, ‘Here Is Everything’, serving up their most emotive work to date. An introspective work that has ties to a period of deep personal change for the band, as well as the wider world around them. 

Written by: Rebecca Llewellyn | Date: Thursday, 27 October 2022