Bill Callahan - YTI⅃AƎЯ (Album Review)

Cult singer-songwriter Bill Callahan, formerly known as Smog, is a modern alt-country auteur. His literary and often slyly funny lyrics are backed by meticulous musical arrangements, which take root and gradually bloom like delicate desert flora.

Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Friday, 21 October 2022

Plains - I Walked With You A Ways (Album Review)

Photo: Molly Matalon Nothing lasts forever. Often, life's sweetest moments are defined by their fleeting nature. Plains, the new collaborative project between Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield and solo artist Jess Williamson, is billed as a one time only event. This fact lends the duo's new record ‘I Walked With You A Ways’ a bittersweet quality, as over the course of its 10 tracks they prove themselves to be an impressive songwriting combination.

Written by: Craig Howieson | Date: Thursday, 20 October 2022

Boston Manor - Datura (Album Review)

Night time has a different energy about it, a sense of intrigue or adventure, perhaps, and something about the sky turning indigo heightens every emotion. On album four, Boston Manor seem to have bottled this feeling and doused their music in it, creating a beautifully immersive atmosphere. 

Written by: Emma Wilkes | Date: Thursday, 20 October 2022

The 1975 - Being Funny In A Foreign Language (Album Review)

Arriving at the crest of their fifth album’s wave, The 1975 can reflect on a spellbinding, sometimes confrontational, time in the spotlight. On ‘Being Funny In A Foreign Language’ we can feel the band stride into a more mature sound, comfortable with those experimental edges from prior releases, but headstrong when it comes to making music that ticks the right boxes.

Written by: Rebecca Llewellyn | Date: Wednesday, 19 October 2022

The Cult - Under the Midnight Sun (Album Review)

Photo: Juan Azulay The Cult cemented their place in the annals of rock history in 1985 with their career-topping sophomore collection ‘Love’. Many of their following studio albums—totalling 11 with the arrival of new LP ‘Under the Moonlight Sun’—were hit and miss as the band strived to replicate its perfect storm of memorable guitar riffs and spot on melodies.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Tuesday, 18 October 2022

Brian Eno - FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE (Album Review)

Photo: Cecily Eno What a thing a career is. On Brian Eno’s 22nd solo studio album, the English composer-producer has delivered 10 ambient songs focused on the climate catastrophe. It is a slow and thoughtful treatise on the end of the world, that offers meditative sunrays through the doomy clouds, possibly intended for the species, be it flora or fauna, that remain once humans have done themselves in.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Monday, 17 October 2022

Paul Heaton And Jacqui Abbott - N.K-Pop (Album Review)

How do you capture the essence of lockdown without making an album that screams ‘lockdown record’ from every note? And how do you subsequently make it sound like a celebratory shindig while exploring the underlying emotional impact? On a typically excellent romp that smuggles wise life lessons, gallows humour and plenty of acerbic barbs into a series of literate pop-rock gems, former Beautiful South duo Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott have done just that.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Friday, 14 October 2022

The Orielles - Tableau (Album Review)

One of the most intriguing young acts on the UK indie scene, The Orielles do not lack ambition. Their shimmering 2020 breakthrough ‘Disco Volador’ was as confident as it was unique. The trio followed it up with the sort-of remix album ‘La Vita Olistica’, an off-kilter oddity that soundtracked the band’s short film of the same name.

Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Friday, 14 October 2022

Bonny Light Horseman - Rolling Golden Holy (Album Review)

There is an invitational warmth to folk music that is hard to resist, an allure that, when done well, draws you into a safe place where common fears and heartaches are shared, and triumphs celebrated together. It is one of the reasons Bonny Light Horseman’s self-titled debut was such a success. A nuanced and respectful reimagining of folk standards that had lain dormant for far too long, it was a simultaneously modern yet timeless masterclass in American folk. 

Written by: Craig Howieson | Date: Thursday, 13 October 2022

Lamb of God - Omens (Album Review)

Photo: Travis Shinn There are precious few metal bands who have scaled similar heights as Lamb of God by packaging genuine extreme tendencies with more hooks than a butcher’s shop. But on their ninth album ‘Omens’ they have apparently opted for a curveball, assembling what they call the most diverse record of their career.

Written by: Will Marshall | Date: Wednesday, 12 October 2022

Alvvays - Blue Rev (Album Review)

On Pharmacist, the opening track from Alvvays’ third record ‘Blue Rev’, Molly Rankin sounds as if she is swimming back to the surface, having sprung off a 10 metre diving board. The ensuing Easy On Your Own? shares its submerged, disorienting aesthetic. Synth fuelled shogazing and serrated guitars add intrigue to the band's often pristine sound, making you work that little bit harder for the lyrical rewards Rankin offers up. 

Written by: Craig Howieson | Date: Tuesday, 11 October 2022

Broken Bells - Into the Blue (Album Review)

Photo: Shervin Lainez and Nikki Fenix ‘Into the Blue’ is the third album from Broken Bells, the eye-catching duo of artist-producer Danger Mouse and Shins troubadour and bandleader James Mercer. It’s nine tracks of dreamy space rock with shuffling midtempo beats, landing somewhere between Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd and Portishead. It demonstrates a high degree of expertise on the part of its creators—the production in particular is excellent—but doesn’t quite set the world alight with its songwriting.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Tuesday, 11 October 2022

The Snuts - Burn The Empire (Album Review)

Photo: Edward Cooke Now this is how you follow up a chart-topping debut album. By trimming some fat, pushing forward into new sonic realms and delivering an unfiltered socio-political attack, The Snuts have made good on their promise to take bigger risks on a bold, bar-raising successor to 2021s ‘W.L’.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Monday, 10 October 2022

Björk - Fossora (Album Review)

Björk’s 10th studio album is her most arresting and relatable in years, deploying 13 tracks of avant-garde music based around key themes of familial loss, emotional complexity and fungi. It finds the Icelandic singer in extremely confident and innovative form, dodging obvious genres or even song structures. Whatever this music is, it feels a long way from pop.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Monday, 10 October 2022

Kid Cudi - Entergalactic (Album Review)

When Kid Cudi announced his animated Netflix movie Entergalactic and an accompanying soundtrack album of the same name, there was cautious optimism for a man whose back catalogue has been largely maligned unless it’s called ‘Man On The Moon’. As it turns out, this pattern has continued.

Written by: Jack Terry | Date: Thursday, 06 October 2022

Shygirl - Nymph (Album Review)

Photo: Jacqueline Landvik ‘Nymph’ is the debut album from London rapper and singer Shygirl, and it sees the 29-year-old take us on a late night voyage through club genres, collabing with a host of bleeding edge producers along the way. With Mura Masa, Arca and Sega Bodega on board it’s a splendid record that jinks around with great confidence while Shygirl herself delivers vocals that are versatile and skilful, blending beautiful digitised melody lines with abject pop filth.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Wednesday, 05 October 2022

Editors - EBM (Album Review)

Photo: Rahi Rezvani  Since the release of ‘Violence’ in 2018, the dynamic within Editors has changed. Benjamin John Power of Blanck Mass and Fuck Buttons, who had partially produced that album, has now joined the band on a full time basis. Unsurprisingly, the resulting ‘EBM’ sounds more attuned to his electro-industrial style than Editors’ post-punk brand.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Tuesday, 04 October 2022

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cool It Down (Album Review)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs occupy a particular space in pop music. In the early 2000s they were at the forefront of the New York indie scene and, along with The Strokes and Interpol, were key players in a unique cultural moment that combined intellectualism, thrashy guitars and a kind of punk hedonism.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Monday, 03 October 2022

Alex G - God Save The Animals (Album Review)

Photo: Chris Maggio Alex G has established a reputation as one of American indie music’s great experimenters. Crafting lo-fi realms that change scenery at a moment’s notice, he has developed a knack for writing songs that are rewarding listen upon listen.

Written by: Matty Pywell | Date: Friday, 30 September 2022

Slipknot - The End, So Far (Album Review)

Photo: Jonathan Weiner Three years ago, Slipknot got up off their knees and started running again. ‘We Are Not Your Kind’, their first album in half a decade, was met with open arms thanks to its intriguing experimental touches and a renewed sense of thrill about their clattering percussion and growling riffs.

Written by: Emma Wilkes | Date: Thursday, 29 September 2022