Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - Wild God (Album Review)

Photo: Megan Cullen Analysing Nick Cave’s music has become an increasingly difficult proposition for two reasons. Firstly, his outspoken views reveal a deeply complex, contradictory man. Secondly, recent unfathomably tragic life events have lent an oppressive emotional intensity to his accomplished catalogue.

Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Wednesday, 04 September 2024

Mura Masa - Curve 1 (Album Review)

Photo: Dani Bastidas With ‘Curve 1’ Mura Masa (also known as Guernsey-born producer Alex Crossan) has embraced change. As well as being his first release on his own Pond Recordings label it’s also a departure from earlier pop-leaning works, ambitiously broadening horizons while focusing less heavily on high-profile features.

Written by: Nieve Elis | Date: Monday, 02 September 2024

Zeal & Ardor - Greif (Album Review)

Manuel Gagneux had a brilliant idea and could have spent his entire career cashing in on it. Ten years ago, the Swiss-American multi-instrumentalist started Zeal & Ardor in response to a 4chan troll telling him to mix black metal with “[n-word] music”. Instead of furiously hammering out a response, he decided a better riposte would be to try it and make it good.

Written by: Matt Mills | Date: Friday, 30 August 2024

Sabrina Carpenter - Short n' Sweet (Album Review)

If it seems like Sabrina Carpenter has only recently exploded into the public consciousness, then that’s likely more about you than her. It’s been a decade since she debuted as Maya Hart on Disney’s Girl Meets World and almost as long since the release of her first album. Fast forward to the present day and she is now far removed from her sickly sweet child star persona, with her sixth LP ‘Short n’ Sweet’ radiating confidence and sex appeal at almost every turn.

Written by: Issy Herring | Date: Thursday, 29 August 2024

Uniform - American Standard (Album Review)

Photo: Joshua Zucker-Pluda & Sean Stout CW: This review contains descriptions of eating disorders. Uniform have carved a career out of making disquieting sounds, and the ones that start ‘American Standard’ may be their most disquieting yet. “A part of me! But it can’t be me!” vocalist Michael Berdan snarls with no musical backing at the outset of the album’s 21-minute title track.

Written by: Matt Mills | Date: Wednesday, 28 August 2024

Fontaines D.C. - Romance (Album Review)

Photo: Theo Cottle Fontaines D.C. have earned a reputation as a band that won’t sit still, and yet ‘Romance’ still registers as a significant transformation. Since releasing 2022’s ‘Skinty Fia’, itself a reinvention of their earlier post-punk sound, there has been a shift from baggy T-shirts and trackie bottoms to sitting front-row at Milan Fashion Week, a change of record labels from Partisan to XL, and a switching out of producers, with James Ford tagging in after recent work with The Last Dinner Party, Depeche Mode and Blur. None of this would matter, of course, if the music fell flat. It doesn’t.

Written by: Katie Macbeth | Date: Tuesday, 27 August 2024

Tinashe - Quantum Baby (Album Review)

Tinashe has never been one to wait around. Since leaving girl group The Stunners in 2011, she has been a self-starter — she’s released seven albums in the past 10 years and ‘Quantum Baby’ is her second in 11 months.

Written by: Jack Butler-Terry | Date: Friday, 23 August 2024

Hamish Hawk - A Firmer Hand (Album Review)

Photo: Michaela Simpson It will soon be three years since the release of Hamish Hawk’s ‘Heavy Elevator’, which means it’ll soon be three years since everything changed for the young songwriter from Edinburgh. Despite the flashes of brilliance that had peppered earlier releases, and while acknowledging the small but loyal fanbase they brought him, his first full length proper lifted him to fresh heights.

Written by: Craig Howieson | Date: Wednesday, 21 August 2024

Post Malone - F-1 Trillion (Album Review)

Photo: Adam DeGross​ Red Wing boots, whiskey sour cocktails, and the cowboy-core resurgence: it’s never been cooler to be country. And even if he spends a lot of his time collecting cliches like Pacman gobbles up dots, ‘F-1 Trillion’ finds Post Malone doing what the genre’s legends have been doing for decades: outrunning the ghosts of their past and having the time of their lives doing it.

Written by: Jack Press | Date: Monday, 19 August 2024

Fucked Up - Another Day (Album Review)

Photo: Colin Medley Across a career that spans more than 20 years and a head-spinning amount of music, Fucked Up have balanced straight-up hardcore with a sideline as art-punk provocateurs. Their breakthrough album ‘The Chemistry of Common Life’ scooped the Polaris Prize — Canada’s answer to the Mercury — in 2009, while with ‘David Comes To Life’ they went full concept in 2011, setting out an experimental ethos they’d further develop on.

Written by: Matthew McLister | Date: Friday, 16 August 2024

Beabadoobee - This Is How Tomorrow Moves (Album Review)

Photo: Jules Moskovtchenko / Creative Direction: Patricia Villirillo Beabadoobee — real name Beatrice Laus — has spent the past seven years growing up in the spotlight. Along the way there has been viral success, critical acclaim and high profile gigs, as evidenced by recent support slots on Taylor Swift’s enormous Eras tour. Underpinning it all has been a reverence for ‘90s alt rock, shoegaze and grunge, retrofitted with a gooey indie-pop core.

Written by: Will Marshall | Date: Wednesday, 14 August 2024

Orville Peck - Stampede (Album Review)

Orville Peck’s ‘Stampede’ is an ambitious departure from his previous work. In stark contrast to 2019’s ‘Pony’ and the ensuing ‘Bronco’, both of which foregrounded his masked cowboy aesthetic and hypnotic baritone voice, here this lone cowboy has company on a record that, as its title suggests, comprises starry duets.

Written by: Nieve Elis | Date: Tuesday, 13 August 2024

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Flight b741 (Album Review)

Photo: Maclay Heriot Some bands are content to release an album every two or three years, but others have no time for the norm. Australian psych-rockers King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, for example, have released a remarkable 25 studio albums since 2012, with ‘Flight b741’ making it 26.

Written by: Chris Connor | Date: Monday, 12 August 2024

Wand - Vertigo (Album Review)

Wand are one of the most underrated rock bands of modern times. Over the past decade, the Los Angeles four-piece have built a reputation as an ambitious yet accessible outfit without receiving the mainstream praise they deserve.

Written by: Matthew McLister | Date: Thursday, 08 August 2024

X - Smoke & Fiction (Album Review)

Photo: Gilbert Trejo X will be remembered as one of the most important American punk bands of all time. Their 1980 debut ‘Los Angeles’ nailed their flag to the mast geographically and spiritually, becoming a formative west coast record and paving the way for a discography that took its share of fascinating diversions across almost half a century. 

Written by: Chris Connor | Date: Wednesday, 07 August 2024

The Smashing Pumpkins - Aghori Mhori Mei (Album Review)

Photo: Paul Elledge The Smashing Pumpkins’ back catalogue has more highs and lows than a mountaineer’s career. Their early output scaled mountains, planting their flag at alt-rock’s summit, but since original members Billy Corgan, James Iha, and Jimmy Chamberlain made peace in 2018, they’ve struggled to reach base camp.

Written by: Jack Press | Date: Tuesday, 06 August 2024

Crack Cloud - Red Mile (Album Review)

Photo: Megan-Magdalena Bourne Some bands bank on being difficult, building thought experiments disguised as songs. Like their post-punk peers in Courting before them, Crack Cloud are happy for us to decide whether they’re geniuses awaiting a Nobel Prize or the result of a high school science project gone wrong.

Written by: Jack Press | Date: Thursday, 01 August 2024

Ice Spice - Y2K! (Album Review)

Photo: Coughs Ice Spice’s debut does everything you want it to, but too often it does plenty of things you don’t. At its most accomplished, ‘Y2K!’ oozes confidence at every intersection, silencing haters each step of the way. At its worst, the album is brash and unnecessarily boastful with lacklustre songwriting at its heart.

Written by: Issy Herring | Date: Wednesday, 31 July 2024

Denzel Curry - King Of The Mischievous South Vol. 2 (Album Review)

Just two years after a foray into jazz-rap on ‘Melt My Eyez See Your Future’, Denzel Curry has upended expectations once again with ‘King Of The Mischievous South Vol. 2’, serving up an ode to the music that raised him.

Written by: Jay Fullarton | Date: Wednesday, 31 July 2024

Soft Play - Heavy Jelly (Album Review)

Photo: Jude Harrison With their first album as Soft Play, Isaac Holman and Laurie Vincent have flipped a switch. Having ditched their problematic former name and emerged from a hiatus sparked by devastating life events and music industry malaise – Vincent’s partner died of cancer in 2020, while Holman struggled with his mental health, at one point considering quitting the band altogether to become a gardener — ‘Heavy Jelly’ is an attempt to wring the fun out of things again.

Written by: Emma Wilkes | Date: Tuesday, 30 July 2024