Confidence Man are a band who know exactly what they want; with a fucking excellent sense of humour to boot, they shouldn't be taken too seriously. Confident Music for Confident People is littered with unexpected flourishes, comical call-and-responses and an overriding element of fun. It's surely the party of the year.
She’s always been a powerful performer, but she’s nailed the careful art of crafting an album with Lavender; its stories, themes and tunes echo each other powerfully.
While the fruits of their reinvention aren't always compelling here, 7 is still a solid first step heralding Beach House's next phase.
The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs revels in keeping you off balance; it impresses, inspires and occasionally overwhelms, but it never outstays its welcome. A fantastic statement from an endlessly evolving band shouting louder than ever.
There’s rarely time these days to sit down and really listen to an album beginning to end, but that’s what Jon Hopkins wants you to do with Singularity, and if you can afford the just-over-an-hour-long runtime then you’ll get so much more out of this record than you thought possible.
In its 13 tracks and just shy of 40 minutes, Wide Awake! shows perhaps the band's broadest emotional range to date with a healthy dollop of anger on display. There is rather a lot to be angry about right now, but Parquet Courts remind us to, at least, dance and have a good time, despite the impending apocalypse.
Microshift utilises the band's propensity for psychedelia and takes it somewhere new: it's the band's most accessible record to date, but the subtle electronic idiosyncrasies keep it interesting.
Cocoa Sugar slaps sugary boy band choruses against tongue-twister rap, via surreal imagery borrowed from the Bible and a sprinkling of the kind of idioms your nan might use. It’s a potent mix, and their best album yet.