Patrick Smith

This is the producer-songwriter’s first album as an independent artist – after he left Republic Records in 2024 – and the liberation is audible.

A viscerally entertaining album that never lingers for more than four minutes per song. Rock’n’roll isn’t dead: it’s just been sleeping.

Gotye's third album, Making Mirrors, is a dizzyingly restless mix of fuzzy electronica and Eighties pop.

When you’ve captured the hearts of indie boys and girls the world over with ingenious indie-folk paeans to Illinoise, Michigan, swans, life and death, your relationship with God, the Chinese zodiac, the child-like joys of Christmas... when you are the indie darling du jour, when you are Sufjan Stevens, you can do whatever the hell you want.