Dua Saleh - Of Earth & Wires (Album Review)

Rightly or wrongly, the sleeve of ‘Of Earth & Wires’ suggests something earthy and organic — the kind of desert blues mysticism associated with Tinariwen or Ali Farka Touré. Instead, Dua Saleh’s second album arrives as a far more synthetic and digitally fractured experience: an ambitious collision of art-pop, experimental R&B, spoken word and dystopian electronics that often feels suspended somewhere between ecological collapse and a nightclub comedown.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Friday, 29 May 2026

Kevin Morby - Little Wide Open (Album Review)

Photo: Chantal Anderson For his eighth studio album, Kevin Morby has enlisted the help of Aaron Dessner, although it could be said the collaboration was the producer’s idea in the first place. Morby had been supporting Dessner’s band, the National, and there’s clearly a real connection between the two, founded upon mutual respect and appreciation. Intermittently, it’s as much fun for us as it clearly was for them.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Thursday, 28 May 2026

Cola - Cost Of Living Adjustment (Album Review)

If there’s been an aesthetic fault in the past decade’s post-punk resurgence, it’s been that so much of it has been too arch and lacking in feeling, particularly in contrast to the fragile emo and post-9/11 gloom that bands such as Bloc Party and Interpol brought to the first revival 20 odd years ago. 

Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Wednesday, 27 May 2026

Drake - ICEMAN / MAID OF HONOUR / HABIBTI (Album Review)

This feels like a big moment for Drake. Not commercially — he remains too enormous for that — but culturally. In the aftermath of his bruising defeat in a war of words with Kendrick Lamar, alongside the ensuing, increasingly messy, legal wrangling, ‘ICEMAN’ and its two surprise companions ‘MAID OF HONOUR’ and ‘HABIBTI’ arrive less like a victory lap than an attempt to drown out the noise through sheer volume.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Tuesday, 26 May 2026

All American Rejects - Sandbox (Album Review)

One of the most widely-adored pop punk bands of the ‘00s thanks to infectious hits such as Swing Swing and Gives You Hell, All-American Rejects are back after a long break. Some 14 years on from the release of ‘Kids In The Street’, their fifth LP ‘Sandbox’ is a desperate effort to encapsulate all the vibrant energy of their youth.

Written by: Issy Herring | Date: Thursday, 21 May 2026

Rostam - American Stories (Album Review)

Rostam Batmanglij is still perhaps best known as a founding member of Vampire Weekend, playing on and producing their first three albums, but in recent years he has quietly crafted a solo catalogue worth celebrating. His latest release is ‘American Stories’, an eclectic mix of lyrical tales worthy of the title, building upon the foundations of his previous work while tapping into his roots in Tehran. 

Written by: Chris Connor | Date: Wednesday, 20 May 2026

MUNA - Dancing On The Wall (Album Review)

Photo: Dean Bradshaw MUNA are back and better than ever. Four years on from their self-titled third LP, and two from vocalist Katie Gavin’s solo debut ‘What a Relief’, ‘Dancing On The Wall’ is packed with hip-shaking beats and jangly chords, switching deftly between high energy electro-pop and their signature indie cool.

Written by: Laura Mills | Date: Tuesday, 19 May 2026

The Lemon Twigs - Look for Your Mind! (Album Review)

Photo: Eva Chambers There aren’t many contemporary bands quite as productive as The Lemon Twigs. Brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario might have expected to take some much-needed time off following the release of critical favourites ‘Everything Harmony’ (2023) and ‘A Dream Is All We Know’ (2024). Instead, the creative motors inside the pop-rock revivalists had other ideas. 

Written by: Matthew McLister | Date: Monday, 18 May 2026

Broken Social Scene - Remember The Humans (Album Review)

“There's no need to hide here anymore,” Kevin Drew sings on Not Around Anymore, the opener from Broken Social Scene’s first album in nearly a decade. Crafted across two and a half years of recording, and underpinned by the loss of both Drew and returning producer David Newfeld’s mothers, ‘Remember The Humans’ is about memory rather than nostalgia, and learning to step out from its complex shadow.

Written by: Jack Press | Date: Friday, 15 May 2026

Lykke Li - THE AFTERPARTY (Album Review)

Photo: Chloé Le Drezen There’s something truly affecting about an album that arrives like the end of a night out that you’re not entirely sure you enjoyed. Across just 25 minutes, Lykke Li’s sixth record attempts to document the blurry emotional terrain between midnight bravado and sunrise regret: the revenge fantasies, the false euphoria, the sudden emotional honesty that arrives when makeup is smudged and someone’s crying in the smoking area.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Thursday, 14 May 2026

Basement - WIRED (Album Review)

Photo: Adam Powell Every time Basement disappear, their profile somehow grows. Eight years on from 2018’s ‘Beside Myself’, the Ipswich post-hardcore quintet return with ‘WIRED’, a record that’s both a return to old pastures, thanks to its arrival on their original label Run For Cover, and a serious recalibration.

Written by: Maddy Howell | Date: Wednesday, 13 May 2026

Aldous Harding - Train on the Island (Album Review)

Photo: Kate Ellen Meakin There’s a particular kind of critical darling — John Grant has flirted with it, so too PJ Harvey — who is adored by arts pages and festival programmers while also being intensely annoying at times. It’s safe to say Aldous Harding sits in that lineage — the New Zealander’s fifth album is brilliant, mannered, elusive and occasionally so self-consciously quirky you want to bite the device you’re upon which you are listening to it.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Tuesday, 12 May 2026

Little Simz - Sugar Girl EP (Album Review)

Photo: Jeremy Ngatho Cole Little Simz is developing an intriguing habit of following up acclaimed albums with experimental EPs. Her usual vibe is jazzy, eclectic and broadly golden age-inspired. Think live drums and string samples. However, on 2024’s ‘Drop 7’ and now ‘Sugar Girl’, Simz reveals a more innovative side to her musical vision.

Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Tuesday, 12 May 2026

American Football - LP4 (Album Review)

Photo: Alexa Viscius On ‘LP4’ it takes Mike Kinsella seven words to say more than most songwriters manage across an entire record. “I made my bed and I lied in it,” he intones to open American Football’s latest self-titled opus, which finds the emo icons doing what they’ve always done: holding the unbearable up to the light and making it beautiful. The difference is that, this time, the wounds are fresh. 

Written by: Jack Press | Date: Monday, 11 May 2026

The Black Keys - Peaches! (Album Review)

For the past 25 years, The Black Keys have largely been on a similar trajectory — upwards, initially steeply, then more gradually. But lately things have been rockier, with cancelled tours and recent dabblings in electronica slowing their roll. It comes as a refreshing surprise, then, to find them returning to a sound that evokes memories of their earliest years together on ‘Peaches!’, their 14th studio album. 

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Friday, 08 May 2026

Maya Hawke - Maitreya Corso (Album Review)

It’s always felt like Maya Hawke has had more to say than her music has let on. ‘Maitreya Corso’ — named after a Buddhism-inspired fantasy heroine — is the record that proves it. Her fourth album, co-produced with husband Christian Lee Hutson, is a semi-autobiographical song cycle about ambition, ego, and the slow, unglamorous work of becoming yourself. It is, by some distance, the best thing she’s made.

Written by: Jack Press | Date: Thursday, 07 May 2026

Kacey Musgraves - Middle of Nowhere (Album Review)

Photo: Kelly Christine Sutton Having spent some time wandering, making the soft, introspective folk of 2024’s ‘Deeper Well’ following several albums that explored poppier sounds, Kacey Musgraves has come home. ‘Middle of Nowhere’ is a return to her country roots, its title a partial reference to her home town of Golden, Texas and a sign there that inspired her. 

Written by: Will Marshall | Date: Wednesday, 06 May 2026

Lip Critic - Theft World (Album Review)

Photo: Justin Pietropaoli Affixing a label to Lip Critic feels like you’re doing a disservice to the boundless sense of artistry that has made them one of the most exciting bands on the planet. ‘Theft World’ is one of the most tumultuous releases of the year, thrashing out from its beginnings in hardcore to take in a smorgasbord of audacious, defiant genre-blending by incorporating elements of post-punk, electronic noise-rock, and straight up rave carnage.

Written by: James Palaczky | Date: Tuesday, 05 May 2026

Tori Amos - In Times of Dragons (Album Review)

Photo: Kasia Wozniak Tori Amos understands the theatre of survival. Her 18th album, ‘In Times of Dragons’ once again folds autobiography into allegory, wandering  a mythic America where the lizard elite breathe fire over democracy’s dying embers. It’s a heavy conceit but a familiar one: Amos dramatises her inner life through strange roles, half‑witch, half‑oracle, always sitting at the piano as both witness and combatant.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Friday, 01 May 2026

Metric - Romanticize the Dive (Album Review)

Photo: Mark Hunter Metric’s 10th album is, in some ways, a reckoning with the idea of a lengthy career as well as a way of looking forwards. With two albums reflecting on societal upheaval caused by a pandemic behind them, ‘Romanticize the Dive’ is no less reflective but it turns its gaze inwards. 

Written by: Will Marshall | Date: Thursday, 30 April 2026