It is a ludicrously busy week for new releases. The albums at the top of this list deserve to be getting full reviews. We desperately need more time. Could someone kindly arrange to extend the week beyond its measly seven portions of 24 hours a piece!
Constant Smiles Moonflowers
Though the band gradually grew from existing as an amorphous collection of highly conceptual ideas and experiments into something easier to grasp, every step of their unlikely route has led to Moonflowers, a subtle piece of internally born ambient pop.
Hirons Future Perfect EP
Throughout five muted pop tracks recalling Sakamoto and Hosono, Bowie and Eno, Hirons conjures pop fantasy and confronts reality with bright-eyed steeliness.
Zig-Zag Band Chigiyo Music Kings 1987–1998
Hailing from the small Zimbabwean town of Kwekwe, Zig-Zag Band burst onto the scene in the 1980s with a sound they called Chigiyo—a vibrant fusion of reggae, traditional rhythms, brass arrangements, and mbira-inspired guitar.
Sunflowers You Have Fallen…Congratulations!
Noise-punk explorers refining their chaotic signature while letting go of structure altogether.
Kali Malone & Drew McDowall Magnetism
It brings together Drew McDowall’s roots in the industrial vanguard of Coil and Psychic TV with Kali Malone’s foundation in contemporary organ composition, just intonation, and electroacoustic music.
The Dears Life Is Beautiful! Life Is Beautiful! Life Is Beautiful!
In the words of bestselling author Jeff VanderMeer: “The Dears have made some of the most beautiful music of the past quarter century, but also some of the most defiant, with an attitude and emphasis that seems to blend the operatic with a punk sensibility.”
The Mountain Goats Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan
A full-on musical that stands as the most conceptually detailed and musically elaborate project in the band’s ever-expanding catalogue. It features appearances from Lin-Manuel Miranda, The Replacements’ Tommy Stinson, harpist Mikaela Davis and bassist, Cameron Ralston.
Stuart Moxham Winter Sun
A solo album from the founder of Young Marble Giants. His sense of minimalism is quite intact, the range of emotions quite wide.
Noura Mint Seymali Yenbett
A trance-inducing and ferociously evocative blend of ancient Northwest African musical tradition and searing, electrified Saharan future rock.
The Saxophones No Time For Poetry
Musically, the spectre of mid-period Leonard Cohen hangs over the record, and the band acknowledge this was a key inspiration – “that’s the biggest touchstone – the kind of dystopian songs he was writing with a satirical attitude helped set the darker political tone of this record”
Mavis Staples Sad and Beautiful World
It spans seven decades of the American songbook — a range nearly as vast as Mavis’ career — and includes reinventions of timeless songs as well as original music. It also includes cameos by artists who have become part of Mavis’ world, many of whom are legends in their own right: Buddy Guy, Bonnie Raitt, Jeff Tweedy, Derek Trucks, Katie Crutchfield, MJ Lenderman, Justin Vernon.
On The Loose Path to Serenity
Epic doom metal band from the Algarve
Quitter Bella Figura EP
This new 5-track release sees Quitter take their signature arm-wrestle dynamics of lo-fi dissonance vs melody into new guitar-free terrain.
Yukimi Yume
Little Dragons vocalist and co-founder entwines musical styles from jazz, soul and electronic pop to hip hop, roots and psychedelia on her new EP.
Charlotte De Witte Charlotte De Witte
Belgian DJ and producer
Jonathan Jeremiah We Come Alive
Musically, everything flows together: French chanson, Laurel Canyon folk, British wit, 60s film scores, and sweeping emotion.
White Lies Night Light
Their seventh album spans progressive rock, disco, and synth-driven soundscapes.
Blue Loop Cycles
Crafted during the treatment for stage 3 breast cancer in summer 2023, Cycles weaves together analogue synths, layered vocals, and found sound to trace a raw, non-linear path through illness, identity and transformation.
Portland Champain
It’s an album that wears the scars of recent years on its sleeves, but at the same time expresses an irrepressible zest for life.
Miniseries Pilot
London quintet channelling the epic sweep of TV themes and movie soundtracks into space rock.
CAPYAC Sobbing Ecstasy
Queer electronic trio whose playfulness and knack for melody mesh perfectly with members Delwin Campbell and Eric Peana, who have always had a penchant for oddball expressionism.
Sorry Cosplay
An album where a Guided By Voices track is reimagined into a song about celebrity seediness, the world’s most recognisable cartoon character becomes a shadowy figure in a siren song and theoretical physics becomes a heavy hitting rock song.
Paul Kelly Seventy
Described by Billy Bragg as “one of the greatest observers of the human condition working in rock music. His songs articulate the pains and pleasures of his people in a manner that affirms their sense of belonging.”
Ryan Reidy Fringe Body Parts
The new album from Reidy is noisy, unhinged, and guitar-forward, yet it still maintains a strong pop sensibility–with soaring melodies filtered through a blood-pumping wall of sound.
Flypaper Forget The Rush
A timely reminder to stop and take a breath, expressed in the bittersweet, sun-dappled vernacular of the singer-songwriter tradition.
Westerman A Jackal’s Wedding
Written largely in Athens and recorded on the Greek island of Hydra, it is deeply influenced by place and the sensation of being a newcomer again and again.
Ata Kak Batakari
To some, Ata Kak is an early architect of Twi rap. To others, a symbol of outsider artistry who independently crafted a genre-defying album and waited three decades for the world to catch up.
Tristen Unpopular Music
Nashville-based recording artist who has built a reputation for crafting melody-driven songs rooted in clever, story-forward lyricism.
Midlake A Bridge To Far While
Midlake’s past records have often carried clear stylistic reference points, this one feels more distilled. “The reference and inspiration is Midlake,” Pulido says. “This album is less about referencing someone else’s sound and more about sounding like us.”
Jesse Harris If You Believed In Me
With lush, expressive arrangements, the album explores themes of memory, longing, and imagined possibilities – the “what ifs” at the heart of every dreamer. It’s orchestral pop full of warmth, melancholy, and quiet surprises
Floco I’ll Be My Own Mirror
EP rich with sounds found in the serene spaces of the world, it’s a mix of cyber-folk & ambient soundscapes.
Naked Lunch Lights And A Slight Taste of Death
A 14-track tour de force; demanding and harsh, yet tender and embracing. It’s an intimate self-examination, spanning grand ballads to sweeping, sky-storming pop anthems.
Iris Caltwait Again, For The First Time
Her writing favours emotional nuance over dramatic flourish. Taking cues from artists like Mitski, Adrienne Lenker, and Saya Gray, she crafts songs that don’t seek resolution, but coherence.
The Altered Hours The Altered Hours
The band has forged a distinct voice within the European alternative scene, at once fuzz-drenched, emotionally raw, and impossible to pin down.
Crimewave Scenes
A dizzying take on UK nightlife, obsessed with the misdemeanours, glitches and blurred visions that erupt in the club. Conceived as a continuous DJ set, it surges track-to-track with the volatility of a night always seconds away from collapse.
Mykel Hometown Runaway EP
With commanding vocals and sweeping, vast production over six tracks, Mykel bravely confronts a range of themes like ego death (and escaping death), self-worth, imposter syndrome, her layered relationship to faith.
The Maple State Don’t Take Forever
Return for Manchester band whose 2005 debut has since become a cult favourite and cultural touchstone for a generation of artists who followed, including The 1975’s Matty Healy, who recently named the album in his list of all-time favourites.
Willie Nelson Workin’ Man: Willie Sings Merle
New interpretations of 11 classic songs written by Merle Haggard, the latest in Nelson’s storied history of focusing entire albums on a single songwriter’s or artist’s work.
Del Water Gap Chasing The Chimera
The album features contributions from Arlo Parks and Clairo, and was produced by Sammy Witte (Harry Styles)
toso toso
The album delivers an exploratory vision of avant-pop, where free improvisation meets intricate form.
The Mommyheads No Quietus
The title, Latin for “No Death,” sets the stage for a record that doesn’t lean on cliché character narratives or overblown rock operatics, yet carries a unifying theme that pulses through every rhythm and strum.
AudioGust Falling From Down
The album showcases a harder-edged post-grunge and modern rock sound while retaining the melodic hooks and storytelling that have become his signature.
Emergence Collective Swimming in the early hours
Ten-piece collective operating in the liminal space between classical music, jazz and folk,
Magnetic Skies Fragments
It picks up where their 2023 debut left off, with their signature retrofuturistic sound creating more dramatic, synth-laden soundscapes.
Stella Donnelly Love and Fortune
The album is a collection of songs shaped by multiple endings: the dissolving of relationships, of hobbies started but never continued, the closing of chapters and the echo of things that once felt permanent. These are breakup songs, but not just of the romantic kind.
Gregory Corso Die On Me
Rerelease the final spoken word recordings from both the youngest and one of the most influential members of the Beat Generation.
Fuzzy Lights Fen Creatures
Psych-folk quintet offer a meditation on environmental crisis that uses the folklore and history of East Anglia as a lens to examine humanity’s fractured relationship with the natural world.
The Barons Le Chateau
Alt-rock band whose debut album is a humorous nod to the band’s broken high school French.
Jake Owen Dreams To Dream
When Owen was a boy down in Vero Beach, Florida, he used to pick out country tunes by the likes of Hank Williams Jr. and Merle Haggard on back porches for his adoring fans (a.k.a. his parents). It’s that kind of easy, familiar comfort that is woven throughout the album.
The Gnomes The Gnomes
The album captures the young band’s energy and killer chops with an honest and pure rock’n’roll sound.
Leilani Patao Daisy
Their ambitious production requires the listener to find the emotion within the cracks, as their range, biting words, and ear for melody push through the wash of sound in fragments.
Helado Negro The Last Sound on Earth EP
Initially inspired by the question – what will the last sound I hear before I die will be? – the EP unfolds as a collection of songs embedded with ominous, often frenetic energy. This unease is amplified by Lange’s heavy use of electronics, echo and distortion, which lend a dazed, shell-shocked quality to his words.
St. Panther Strange World
EP collection of soulful modern pop songs layered with elements of R&B, jazz, hip-hop and alt-pop, narrating and confronting the wider climate of uncertainty and oblivion.
EarthBall Outside Over There
An ecstatic phantasmagoria of noise, free jazz & psychosis from one of Canada’s most vital experimental exports, ft. a cameo from iconic comedian Stewart Lee + liners by John Olson (Wolf Eyes)
Ruth Mascelli & Mary Hanson Scott Esoteric Lounge Music Now
A new collaborative LP of vaporous, intimate & multi-dimensional noir; melted power ballads, slo-mo hi-NRG, blunted trip-hop, seductive croons & cloud-like ambient.
Zihua Tan & no hay banda what came before me is going after me
The disc begins with a gong-driven solo percussion piece for Noam Bierstone, before moving to the longer titular composition, a bewitching quintet for voice, violin, cello, percussion and Ondes Martenot.
Orchard Mantis In Airports
A multi-genre project, drawing inspiration from 90s bands like Low and Slowdive.
Jaime Rosso Away EP
House, soul and dub form the foundations, morphed into something wholly singular through Jaime’s own psychedelic production style.
Cosmic Psychos I Really Like Beer
40 years+ of stupid, clever punk rock continue with a brand-new “concept” album about beer.
Bastion Rose Traces of Gold
Hard rock band whose sound blends the darker side of classic rock legends like Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd with the modern edge of post-grunge and metal acts such as Soundgarden and Tool.
Tenebris Kochanowski
A cult Polish metal band formed in 1991. They began as a death metal act before incorporating progressive and jazz influences into their sound.
Allie X Happiness Is Going to Get You
Self-produced and written largely on piano, the collection explores the idea of existing in multiple places in time, weaving baroque instrumentation with digital production to reflect a world caught between nostalgia, hope, and dread.
Galina Juritz One Weird Trick
Serpentine music of dreamlike classical minimalism, time-dilated ambient, florid techno, stoned r’n’b & more – RIYL Louis Cole, Matthew Herbert, Darkside, Thundercat, Eiko Ishibashi, ECM, Oliver Coates.
The August List Sun Pinned On Ghost Sky EP
The songs started out as rough sketches during the pandemic, when the world seemed to be teetering off its axis. Vocalist and guitarist, Martin Child believed that if the world is turning into a crackling bin fire with folks shouting at each other over the top of it, they may as well “get loud, get psyched and find lots of effects pedals that sound like our brains”!
Das Kope Brutamonte
The 10-track album blends kaleidoscopic influences from psychedelia, krautrock, bossa nova, and post-punk.
WizTheMC Yebo EP
His music seamlessly weaves notes of indie, hip-hop, and contemporary sounds, effortlessly merging afrobeats and amapiano.
Omnium Gatherum May the Bridges We Burn Light the Way
Formed in 1996 in the coastal town of Karhula, the band has long stood at the crossroads of traditional heavy metal, Gothenburg-inspired melodic death and progressive sophistication.
Mini Trees Slow It Down
Rooted in indie and alt pop, it balances intimacy with expansiveness: layered harmonies and textured background vocals weave through grooves that merge live drums with sampled loops, while guitars shift between bright melodic riffs and heavier walls of sound.
Louis O’Hara A Peaceful Kind of Fun
A 14-track collection that distils O’Hara’s poetic lyricism, tender folk roots, and subtle chamber-pop flourishes into a deeply personal yet quietly universal debut.
Various All Things Go: 10 Years
Charity compilation album benefitting the Ally Coalition. In addition to a collaboration between Jasmine.4.t and Jacob Allom, it includes ATG artists past + present, including: Kesha, Maren Morris, Rachel Chinouriri, Medium Build, Bartees Strange, Maude Latour, Joy Oladokun, EMEI.
