PJ Harvey - The Hope Six Demolition Project
3 Stars
This isn’t the best or the bravest music of her career, but Harvey continues to pave new ground.
11th April 2016
Album Reviews
Future of the Left - the peace & truce of future of the left
4 Stars
This is a band tight enough and confident enough to know they can take anything, and anybody, on.
8th April 2016
Tim Hecker - Love Streams
3 Stars
Hecker has once again shaped something that feels weighty and important, shafts of light illuminating the dark landscape.
8th April 2016
Teleman - Brilliant Sanity
4 Stars
Loaded with more jingles than a sleigh at Christmas, ‘Brilliant Sanity’ is synth pop at its most intentionally addictive.
8th April 2016
M83 - Junk
2 Stars
What ‘Junk’ lacks alongside its bonkers, anything-goes mentality is any real purpose.
8th April 2016
Frightened Rabbit - Painting of a Panic Attack
3 Stars
This album may declare itself a painting, but there’s a much bigger picture to see here.
7th April 2016
Deftones - Gore
4 Stars
Balancing their sound on a knife edge, this is an album that sees their own heaviness redefined.
5th April 2016
Parquet Courts - Human Performance
4 Stars
A tightrope walk between impulse and laser-point precision.
4th April 2016
Pet Shop Boys - Super
4 Stars
Frequent, frantic builds and drops, whooshes and exultant crescendos abound throughout.
1st April 2016
Bleached - Welcome The Worms
3 Stars
All too often ‘Welcome The Worms’ lacks the bite that’d make it Very Good Indeed.
1st April 2016
Frankie Cosmos - Next Thing
4 Stars
Laying everything on the line, Frankie Cosmos scrutinise every ounce of who they are and what they know.
1st April 2016
Three Trapped Tigers - Silent Earthling
4 Stars
‘Silent Earthling’ is far from an reinvention: it’s simply Three Trapped Tigers adapting and tinkering.
1st April 2016
Mogwai - Atomic
4 Stars
The biggest achievement of ‘Atomic’ is that it can stand on its own musical merit.
1st April 2016
Andrew Bird - Are You Serious
3 Stars
This is the strongest Bird has sounded in some time, but it’s not quite a monumental breakthrough.
1st April 2016
Yeasayer - Amen & Goodbye
4 Stars
A brilliant, breathless, great big bundle of weird.
31st March 2016
Explosions In The Sky - The Wilderness
2 Stars
Explosions hit autopilot when they enter uncharted airspace
31st March 2016
The Last Shadow Puppets - Everything You’ve Come To Expect
2 Stars
The classical instrumentation isn’t the only relic of the past clinging onto The Last Shadow Puppets.
30th March 2016
Teen Suicide - It’s the Big Joyous Celebration, Let’s Stir the Honeypot
3 Stars
The Maryland clan haven’t left any path untrodden in their tenure as Teen Suicide.
29th March 2016
Weezer - Weezer (The White Album)
4 Stars
This is no pastiche of so-called ‘classic’ Weezer.
29th March 2016
RJD2 - Dame Fortune
3 Stars
The album features some reliably masterful beat work and production, but falls somewhat short.
25th March 2016
The Thermals - We Disappear
4 Stars
The Thermals can do empathy as well as they do energy — on all fronts, this is a stirring return to form.
25th March 2016
The Joy Formidable - Hitch
4 Stars
If the songwriting on ‘Hitch’ is, to coin an old music hack turn-of-phrase, ‘mature’, it’s also concise — in a good way.
25th March 2016
White Denim - Stiff
3 Stars
The quartet are capable of just about anything they turn their hands to.
24th March 2016
Iggy Pop - Post Pop Depression
3 Stars
It’s comfortable, casual and — as is Iggy — a little bit weird at times.
18th March 2016
Featuring Yard Act, Death Cab For Cutie, Graham Coxon, Maisie Peters and more.