A stupendous week of new releases both in terms of quality and quantity. Here is our guide:
Annie Dressner I Thought It Would Be Easier
A singer-songwriter conveying a multitude of emotions with songs that feel open, welcoming and understanding of how complex being human can be. The album ranges from soothing gentle ballads to fast-paced Americana, showcasing Dressner’s skill in crafting relatable songs. The quality of her voice and songwriting brings to mind Laura Cantrell. Highly recommended.
Dana Gavanski Late Slap
Her third album gives voice to the highs and lows of the mindscape in all its joys and terrors, injecting some much-needed playfulness into the process of writing about emotionally hard things while utilising a Yamaha DX7 synth to conjure an atmosphere of digital warmth that recalls the Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s meditative masterpiece Keyboard Fantasies.
Ella Ronen The Girl with no Skin
Swiss-Israeli singer-songwriter with songs that read like a work of magic realism.
Drahla Angeltape
Controlled chaos, melding off-kilter guitars with erratic sax lines and harmonious yet metallic vocals, the new album is an avant-garde document of the events that unfolded over the five-year gap between records which saw a variety of changes – good and bad – steer their professional and personal lives down unfamiliar territories.
The K’s I Wonder If The World Knows
The debut album from a fast-rising indie band with a knack for epic, earworm-worthy indie rock melodies with relatable lyrics laced with smart social commentary.
The Libertines All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade
The title is a nod to their hotel’s street address and their enduring love of Erich Maria Remarque’s landmark anti-war novel. It contains 11 new songs with writing credits shared among their four members.
Caleb Landry Jones Hey Gary, Hey Dawn
The music is Jones’s heaviest to date, and though often reticent about direct influences and resistant to categorisations, he weaves a sonic tapestry that hints at punk and grunge elements within his signature kaleidoscopic symphonies.
Y Dail Teigr
Bi-lingual Welsh artist with a collection of songs written in his bedroom between the ages of 16 and 19, high on lapsang souchong tea and jaffa cakes, bearing the influece of Gorkys, Joe Meek and early Prefab Sprout.
Sinkane We Belong
A love letter to Black music, taking cues from gospel, Afrobeats, 70s funk and foundational soul of the rhythms of Sinkane’s native Sudan.
Annie-Claude Deschenes Les Manieres de Table
Canadian multidisciplinary artist who has been a key figure on the Montreal independent music scene for the last two decades, she has left her mark as a performer & visual artist with Duchess Says & PyPy.
House of All Continuum
The second album from Martin Bramah’s ex-Fall members.
A Lily Saru l-Qamar
Archival Maltese home recordings set to new music for an album of nostalgic quasi-ambience and cross-generational dialogue.
Cock Sparrer Hand on Heart
Eighth album from punk legends is full of their trademark anthemic sound; hooks, singalong melodies and strong mob choruses.
Pernice Brothers Who Will You Believe
Recasting classic American pop, this album includes lush string and horn arrangements, the Toronto-based choral group Choir! Choir! Choir!, as well as Neko Case.
Feeder Red/Black
Their first double album is as bold as optimistic as they have sounded and is packed with songs of self-discovery, overcoming challenges, and grand cinematic sonics.
Ingested The Tide of Death and Fractured Dreams
Manchester death metal band that pummels listeners with double-bass rolls, blast-beats, and grinding rhythm; breaking it all down with jagged, staggered riffs, and piercing harmonics
X Ambassadors Townie
Across these 12 deeply personal tracks, the group crafts an intricate portrait of their hometown’s most mundane aspects and the community that shaped them.
Cuffed Up All You Got
Anthemic LA trio whose album is filled with dreams of bigger stages, a more open heart and a more equitable society.
Palace Ultrasound
While writing the first batch of songs for the album, frontman Leo Wyndham’s partner suffered a late miscarriage. Ultrasound naturally became an open diary of a year-long struggle from devastation to deliverance.
Dog Unit At Home
A combination of evocative instrumentals and frantic bangers, earworms and riffs, and grooves and atmosphere.
Bnny One Million Love Songs
Melodic psych rock songs written in the wake of a breakup that prompted a period of deep introspection and a grappling with her own self-destructive tendencies.
Phosphorescent Revelator
Matthew Houck finds himself grappling with the quiet obstacles and unspoken truths that come with the gravity of navigating home, partnership and family. His collaborators include Jack Lawrence of the Raconteurs and Jim White of Dirty Three.
Joey Pollari I’ll Be Romance
Album that burrows into the minutiae of the title with classic songwriting DNA rooted in folkish introspection as well as experimental synth experiments.
Maquina Prata
Lisbon trio drawing from minimal krautrock repetition, pounding industrial techno and EBM.
Hawkwind Stories from Time and Space
Their 36th studio album features Dave Brock’s trademark vocals and chugging guitar riffs to roaming solos, gradual melancholic crescendos and rapturous peaks.
Lo Moon I Wish You Way More Than Luck
Psych pop four-piece who have toured with the likes of The War on Drugs, Phoenix, Glass Animals, Air, London Grammar, Chvrches, Metric, Muna and The Lemon Twigs.
Fyear Fyear
Montreal avant-garde ensemble that fuses spoken word, out-jazz, post-hardcore, ambient metal, avant-rock and modular synthesis into a genre-bending multi-movement work that channels our collective polycrisis.
Silverplanes Airbus
Psychedelic-tinged alt-rock from band including the son of Aerosmith’s Joey Kramer.
Cedric Burnside Hill Country Love
A record that explores the subset genre of Hill Country Blues, infused with Burnside’s singular experiences and musical heritage from the rolling hills of Northern Mississippi.
Faust Momentaufnahme Vols III & IV
Two albums present a selection of recordings from 1971 to 1974, documenting their creative versatility and explosive dynamism.
Then Comes Silence Trickery
Swedish post-punk, alternative and goth rock band who claim every album contains an ABBA moment, a Ramones moment and a Judas Priest moment.
Adam Wiltzie Eleven Fugues For Sodium Pentothal
Solo record from Stars of the Lid artist whose album as a whole was in part inspired by Adam’s recurring dream where “if someone listened to the music I created, then they would die.”
