Despite being one of the more forgotten post-punk bands, The Rapture certainly had a very fun album on their hands with Echoes. Outside of the eponymous track perhaps being the only song many would've heard from this album (which I recognised most prominently as the opening theme for Misfits), it's a 2000's dance punk good time, with certain stand outs like House Of Jealous Lovers highlighting an infectious and slightly synthy approach to dance punk, whilst still leaving room for some slower ... read more

After making the bold decision to release the same album after four years of waiting, one thing is supremely clear: the mystique that Glover keeps trying to build is really tiring, and the man just needs to make good music four years PRIOR to rereleasing the same album if he truly wants to be an enticing musical figure.

So suddenly, naming his songs, removing all of the weird alien shit in between the songs and adding one new track suddenly rids this album of all of its issues. Oh wait! It ... read more

Dula peep really went for the "if these walls could talk they'd tell me to swim good" on track four.

Radically inoffensive and lacking of the energy and intrigue of her last effort. I think as soon as I heard the extended version of Houdini and what the album could have been, I immediately dropped all hopes I had for this. The regular version of Houdini just misses a certain magic found in Dua's usual single power, and although it's catchy, the extended version simply just makes the ... read more

Drop the album, post-rock boys.

A pretty good EP following up from Knocknarea's wild success, but to me it's sadly just more of the same from their last effort when I wanted a little bit more of differentiation. It's still a good same sort of stuff don't get me wrong, but it's the same sort of stuff nonetheless. If you're going to continue this sort of style, finalising it in a full length LP instead of spreading it over two EP's would be the definitive option in my opinion, but hey what ... read more

Not Daft Punk are back at it again with a pretty good electronic album, part of which calls back to the Cross days and part of which reinvents the duo in a Random Access Memories kind of way, taking on far more collaborations than they're used to for perhaps more pop appeal. Though I far prefer when the duo are a bit edger and noisier, the experiments are still appreciated and it all turns out pretty good despite a stretch near the end which massively slows down the pace and kills all ... read more

Dirty, filthy and and SO vicious and unapologetically raw. Rid Of Me really does bring out the gunge within grunge and runs on nothing but lust and bitterness. This is certainly the strangest PJ album I've heard thus far and I really do enjoy how freaky she gets with things, at a sacrifice for overt catchiness.

Favourite Song: Rid of Me

Best: Missed, Legs, Rub 'Till It Bleeds, Man-Size Sextet, Highway '61 Revisited, 50ft Queenie, Yuri-G, Man-Size, Dry, Me-Jane, Ecstasy

Worst: Hook

Another good Smith album, but one that didn't strike me as much as Roman Candle or Either/Or. It's just missing that extra thing that pushes those other two albums forwards a bit for me, but again, it's an Elliott Smith album, so it's sad and beautiful.

Favourite Song: Southern Belle

Best: Needle In The Hay, Christian Brothers, Clementine, Single File, Alphabet Town, Biggest Lie

Worst: Satellite

Ahh, the sweet smell of post-punk in the morning. Spoken word vocals, riffs for days, socio-political themes, you've got to love it.

Protomartyr are a very strange band, largely because of the vocalist. Although I do like the majority of stuff on display, sometimes that voice does really distract from the otherwise incredibly solid production. Otherwise still a punky good time.

Favourite Song: Don't Go To Anacita

Best: A Private Understanding, My Children, The Chuckler, Windsor Hum, Male ... read more

A really pretty and at times otherworldly mix of psychedelics, pop and folk. Veckatimest is at its best when its songs envelop new worlds and shift around their sounds in small but sheer remarkable moments.

Favourite Song: Two Weeks

Best: Southern Point, Fine for Now, Cheerleader, Ready Able, About Face, Hold Still, While You Wait for the Others. Foreground

Worst: Dory

Really love how Chris Martin made seven beautiful songs about his divorce and then said 'Fuck it, let's make an EDM banger', and then had the album's most beautiful tracks straight after. What a power move.

I can see why most people may stray away from Ghost Stories' direction. Coldplay is at their best when they're either full maximalist pop rock like on Viva La Vida, or when they're toying with emotions on their alt rock cuts like on their first two albums. But I've come to really get Ghost ... read more

Silver Cord is alright, it's an interesting and different direction for the band but it's too short. No I'm not listening to the extended mixes, if you wanted me to you should've made that the main meat of the album. Besides, I've just made my way through 24 other albums and an EP, I am now never going to listen to 97.4% of this band's discography ever again.

Favourite Song: Gilgamesh

Best: Theia, Set, Swan Song

Worst: Extinction

Roman Candle is an extremely intimate effort from Mr. Smith with some stunning guitar work and a general atmosphere of a tangible, addictive type of sadness. Where Either/Or takes strides with more tracks of infatuation, this album has a subtle grit to it that, for me personally, makes it preferable to Elliott's most popular piece. I like the love-fuelled aimlessness of the No Name tracks, but this album really comes into its own with the songs Roman Candle and Last Call. The former is possibly ... read more

My god, she should see the look on our faces. There's bags under our eyes and we've been hearing the name 'Taylor Swift' too much recently.

It's really hard to feel as if pop music is being authentic at the moment, which does pose the question of was it ever within the last decade and a bit. I mean, when most of pop is just mindless love songs with big electronic 'beats', it's particularly hard to gel with a lot of stuff that has proposed messages when the surface is so... yeah, just that, ... read more

God I'm such a sucker for this band. I'm already a big fan of when artists slow down their songs, whether it be through acoustic renditions or other stylistic variations, so taking four already great songs from a band with a great capability to tone down their sound, and then doing just that for those songs, predictably results in a pretty good EP.

Favourite Song: Itch - II

Best: Excuse Me - II, If I Get High - II, Ban All The Music - II

Worst: N/A

Dear God, please bless me with the ability to review a King Gizzard album without repeating myself for the 25th time. My mind cannot comprehend the English language anymore when describing their music. Words are not forming and my mind cannot structure a single coherent thought piece about this band without completely trailing off into monotony that I've already dabbled in. There is no new discourse I can add. There are no more personal opinions about this band that I can muster. Half of their ... read more

Did you know that if you rearrange the letters in 'Laminated Denim' backwards you get 'Mined Det Animal'? Holy shit these guys are on another astral plane.

In what I thought would've been just another compilation of more bland live show interludes ended up being a genuinely stellar showcase of Gizz's usual psych style. After a couple of mindless psychedelic efforts followed by a few more experimental albums, it's great to hear them back on form again. That being said, it's a form I'm all too ... read more

I'd like to think that I'm young, but then I hear shit like this and it sets me back a generation.

The songs are hilariously stunted, but there's still a lot of appeal in the overblown nature of User's style. There's a first half of hyper pop x ultra cloud rap glory and a second half of slower and more pretty stuff, but it can feel a little slapped together at points especially due to the very short run times of the songs. A fairly cool listen, but one that lacks any form of returnability. ... read more

I have firmly accepted that every King Gizzard song over 7 minutes long that isn't called Timeland or Smoke & Mirrors is going to essentially be just a random jam session they decided to record which ends up being better than the vast amount of their catalogue. This is, of course, no bad thing whatsoever.

As hinted above, this album is possibly the band's most loungey and jazzy effort yet, mixing their usual formulas with extended periods of simply just jamming out, and it works wonders. ... read more

Lahai certainly lacks the immediacy of its predecessor, but for the most part it's still a good continuation of Sampha's sound. I was a little sad that only approximately half of the album made me transcend to another astral plane compared to essentially the entirety of Process, though I do respect the slightly different direction that this one takes. My main takeaways are that Spirit 2.0 is an incredible track, and the promise of more music from Sampha will always remain exciting.

Favourite ... read more

Everything you'd expect from an indie pop album. Nothing endlessly inspirational but definitely nothing too bad either.

Favourite Song: You Can Be Mean

Best: Time Back, Losing, All of This Will End, Smog, The Water, Younger & Dumber

Worst: Wasting Your Time