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

Johnny Blue Skies - Passage du Desir (Album Review)

Photo: Semi Song In a recent episode of the popular podcast ‘The Rest is Entertainment’, quiz show producer and all round brainbox Richard Osman presented his own study of UK number ones in the 21st Century. Though the exact stats were sometimes a little shaky the general gist was unmistakable: since the year 2000, popular music has pivoted wildly away from bands and groups, and towards individual performers.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Monday, 29 July 2024

Joe Goddard - Harmonics (Album Review)

Photo: Louise Mason In the mid 2000s, Hot Chip suddenly became ubiquitous in a music scene tired of landfill indie and macho rock. They brightened dancefloors with a particular brand of undemanding electro pop, and when Joe Goddard, one of the band’s founders, released his first solo album as a producer in 2009, it felt like a natural development for easy-going, clubbable music loved by hipster-accountants. 

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Friday, 26 July 2024

Los Campesinos! - All Hell (Album Review)

Photo: Martyna Bannister Los Campesinos! have returned just in time. The world feels like it’s going to hell in a handcart (or in a “handjob” as one of the punny titles on ‘All Hell’ suggests) so the Cardiff indie band’s compassion and intelligence feels all the more vital in these dark days.

Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Thursday, 25 July 2024

Speed - Only One Mode (Album Review)

Photo: James Hartley In case you hadn’t noticed, hardcore is having a moment. Between Knocked Loose playing eye-popping shows in huge rooms and bands such as Gel, Zulu and Scowl igniting the scene’s foundations with boundary-pushing records, the post-Turnstile glow up continues at breakneck pace. Another name to keep a very close eye on is Speed.

Written by: Jack Butler-Terry | Date: Wednesday, 24 July 2024

Childish Gambino - Bando Stone And The New World (Album Review)

Donald Glover’s creative output epitomises ‘metamodern’. His work bulldozes irony in search of complex, messy layers of emotional sincerity. As Childish Gambino, he crafts dense, ambitious albums, rife with self-awareness, juxtaposed genres and cautiously optimistic explorations of human identity.

Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Tuesday, 23 July 2024

Glass Animals - I Love You So F***ing Much (Album Review)

Photo: Lillie Eiger Glass Animals have been a popular band for a decade but the breakout success of their 2020 album ‘Dreamland’ – in particular the slow-burn smash hit Heat Waves – propelled them to unexpected heights. 

Written by: Adam England | Date: Friday, 19 July 2024