Delivering on all his potential with the sort of nonchalance and assurance we’ve come to expect from the young man, 6 Feet Beneath The Moon is a special album, from a special artist.
Beneath the pop sheen, melodic influences and club grooves lies something much stranger and curiously disconnected. These characteristics might see Pull My Hair Back elevated to cult status given the right audience and the power of word-of-mouth.
With just enough of a gothic, deadly touch to give the album a sense of urgency but not enough absurdly dark matter to derail from its focused and nuanced sense of woe, Pain Is Beauty hits all the right notes.
The Inheritors is a rich and vivid work that is as mysterious as it is compelling.
There is no doubt that Prism will do exactly what it’s been created to do ... but it’s safe and cold where it should have been daring and involving.
If you admire The Knife’s music for its incredible unpredictability and off-the-scale inventiveness, you are likely to consider this to be at least amongst their best work yet.
There’s something deeply relevant about Sunbather, as if it touches a sort of inner anxiety and insecurity that currently lingers in many of us.
In The Shadow Of Heaven, Money have unveiled themselves as an ambitious band, who owe a fair bit to the influences of the city they live in as well as the generations of artist who have been inspired to write thoughtful rock music there.
It’s perhaps a risk for Cronin to take a partial step away from hazy psychedelic rock in favour of plaintive emoting, but it’s a risk he navigates extremely successfully.
It’s neither too deliberately lo-fi sounding nor too glossy, and there’s a complete lack of bullshit about it.
If anything prevents it from being an instant classic, it’s that it’s simply not risky enough to be a game changer.
With the lightweight numbers up front and the centrepiece dominating the lacklustre cast around it, the album is surely one of the most uneven and unsatisfying in recent memory from Callahan.
With Skyer, the Swedish trio have created their own dreamlike gossamer world where the exaltation to “take me to the clouds above” is almost realised.
There are many treasures to be found here, with the songs positively fizzing with a gleeful ingenuity.
R Plus Seven is as singularly compelling as any of his previous releases, but in his desire to transcend glossy hyper pop and introspective electronica into something new and fascinating, Lopatin has delivered a masterful debut for his new label.
This is an album that seeks to explore a shifting in spiritual planes, and the music reflects this by twisting its source material into something entirely other.
Somewhere in this eclectic mix is a talented songwriter bursting to get out and show the world what he’s really made of.
Sandblown and enigmatic, these are English folk songs that at times sound as if they’ve been established in the canon for umpteen years, yet the filter of tradition yields strangely enigmatic results; songs that are readily self-aware, but also conjure something unknown.
You’re Nothing is as obtuse, noisy, amateur, and sometimes thrillingly good as its predecessor.
This is unpretentious music that demands dancing and speaks to the same primal senses that no doubt inspired someone to start banging sticks and rocks together however many hundreds of thousands of years ago music was invented.
This is real music, about real people, dealing in real emotion. That it sounds so gorgeously lush too is mere icing on a very rich cake.
Waxahatchee’s second album is one to immerse yourself in, to lose yourself in and generally marvel at the raw emotion that’s so beautifully expressed.
Sudden Elevation is yet another solid display of Arnalds’ talents and is arguably the LP that most newcomers to the singer-songwriter should arrive at first.
Whether each track in question happens to be weaker of stronger, a richness that speaks out with a singular voice remains throughout; gently, measured in its tones. It feels like a voice you can trust.
There’s the archetypical vulnerability lurking beneath each track, but their sound suggests something everyone from that mid-2000s period has (hopefully) done – matured and become more assured.
Pedestrian Verse should easily continue Frightened Rabbit’s upwards trajectory and, as with the characters who populate the album, you can’t help but root for their success.
Fans will adore it, but beyond that there’s the lingering suspicion that OMD will remain ‘that group’ you go to when you want to relive fading memories of yesteryear.
Their strengths lie within rocky, repetitive grooves and guitar wizardry, with Johnson’s own appearance aptly resembling that of a wizard.
It seems impossible that a band can so consistently produce such output full of lyrical ingenuity, social commentary, and musical quality while retaining a sense of humour.
Whether Sempiternal actually betters There Is A Hell… is a difficult question to answer. It’s certainly slicker, at any rate; infinitely more accessible and offering melodies more readily primed for daytime radio audiences.
This is a solid, enjoyable solo debut that’s certainly worth investigation if you’re a long-term Marr watcher.
Nightmare Ending, like Cooper’s best work, combines orchestral shoegaze with ambient piano-led tracks to create a shimmering, worthwhile listen from front to back.
Cupid’s Head is hardly designed for immediate, cursory consumption but instead makes thorough and purposeful demands of its audience. Yet Willner is more than prepared to reward any investment of faith and time.
Factory Floor is also a lot more fun than you might have imagined, without sacrificing any of what made them so exciting and immersive in the first place.
It politely demands your attention; it wants to transport you elsewhere, to a place in which to daydream and reflect.
What it is ... is an album of bona fide radio hits in an ideal world, a fine example of mainstream rock at its most tasteful, music that’s going to be popular and sell a lot but that’s not afraid to subtly defy expectations of what its makers are.
This is possibly her most satisfying album to date; it is, at times, quite spellbinding.
While Mvula has a great voice and is a skilled musician, she plays it far too safe on her debut LP.
The density of its production and the slipperiness of its song structures ensures that this album isn’t for everyone.
While the album is weakened a little by an aimless middle, the majority of II shows just how good Unknown Mortal Orchestra can be when Nielson knows which direction he wants to take.
This album is the full realisation of his talent as a bass player, musician and, most importantly, a songwriter. Apocalypse is, in short, a supreme triumph.
We knew Sky Larkin had potential. It’s been more than followed up on with Motto, surely one of the best albums of the year.