After an onslaught of features, including two on some of my favourite albums of all time (To Pimp A Butterfly and Malibu), Rapsody released her second album with her newfound audience, and it's extremely solid. She firmly establishes herself as one of the best female rappers in the game. Laila's Wisdom has excellently crafted beats, perfectly suited features from the likes of Kendrick, Anderson, Black Thought and more, and some incredibly solid lyrical foundations from the main woman herself. ... read more

Bjork does what she did in post but does it better in every single way. Pretty much every song is fantastic and trippy in its own way, apart from the boring closer which has less of an identity than the other tracks. Everything collates into a beautiful and strange experience, but it's not one that's inviting me to come back any time soon. The quality of this album is immaculate of course, but nothing's grabbing me to go for another listen. Still though, it's easy to see how Bjork is one of the ... read more

Rated R is a much more drugged up and strange journey compared to its legendary predecessor, and it's one that still retains Queens' classic catchiness and hard stoner rock nature. It's an album looming with mystique, with ominous noises and musical decisions that are very questionable. For example: the whispers and mutters all throughout the album, the really striking and tone deaf chorus on Monsters In The Parasol, the strange and pointless Lightning Song 2 minute instrumental track, and then ... read more

The Roots conjure up some conscious magic with this album, creating an incredible and important piece of music regardless of time period. The lyricism and technicality all throughout are amazing, and the beats are lavish and very well put together. My issues with the album is that it doesn't feel very memorable or rewarding upon further listens. It doesn't hook me in for another listening, partially due to its lack of solid singular tracks and its lengthy run time that definitely drags out. But ... read more

Dedicated's B sides are still better than most of the top recent pop songs. Carly breathes a refreshing amount of life and simplicity into pop which so many current artists lack with their repetitive trap influenced drums and annoying trends linked mainly to TikTok. Although this album doesn't innovate pop hugely or come up to the cohesive level that its predecessor reached, it's still a very enjoyable album. She just does not miss.

Favourite Song: Stay Away

Best: This Love Isn't Crazy, ... read more

Thank God we got DONDA.

Favourite Song: Follow God

Best: Every Hour, Selah, On God, Hands On, Use This Gospel

Worst: Water

SAWAYAMA sees the debut of a brand new fresh face in the pop scene. Rina's confidence, versatility and all out style help to bring this album to life and to mark her name in the industry. It also feels like some personal beginnings for Rina, addressing topics like old fizzled friendships and her linkage to the LGBTQ+ community. But in the end, this album is a nice and fun cut of pop which doesn't do anything new, but instead twists around some of the most recent popularised sounds and trends ... read more

Usually I love synth pop. I love the otherworldly and ethereal nature to it. I love its ability to transport you to another world. I love how the artists can either continue a mainstream-pop appeal with their songs or they can go all out ballistic cuckoo with it. But this... What the fuck is this? This sounds like an AI was asked to make a bedroom/synth pop album. It's one of the most generic and uninteresting pop albums I've heard as of recent, with no stand out tracks and a whole lot of ... read more

With a little hint of a global pandemic and a dash of Mick 'Doom Slayer' Gordon, POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR is a fun little EP from one of the most disputed bands in recent memory. With banger after banger, there's no hold backs and it's simply full force in-your-face metalcore hybridity. I love what Gordon brings to the songs he co-produced on, and you can easily tell what tracks he had an influence on which is pretty cool. The choruses are extremely catchy and potent, and the production is ... read more

Let The Sun Talk is quite simply just a solid hip hop album. With a Sweatshirt-esque method of rapping, MAVI feels depressing yet invigorating in his vocals, and the beats are lavish and excellently produced. Not much to say other than it is indeed very solid.

Favourite Song: Eye/I and I/Nation

Best: Daylight Savings, Self Love, Ghost (In the Shell), Love of Money, Sense, Chiasma, Guernica, Omavi

Worst: Moonfire

I don't know why but Dummy sounds like the most messed up James Bond soundtrack ever. Something about the jazz and the trip hop gives it an eerie yet elegant edge, and listening to it feels like a weird sort of trip. It's pretty good at painting a certain aesthetic, but in terms of musicality pretty much all but two of the tracks blend together. Only Sour Times and Glory Box do something slightly different and provide more of an edge to them than the other 9 tracks. The bleeps and drums get ... read more

Dedicated is a fitting sequel to Carly's infamous release of Emotion, and it showcases some more of that incredible synth pop that she helped to innovate in mainstream pop. This albums biggest strength is its addictive nature, with every song feeling perfectly encapsulated in a certain pop magic, and even though the topic never changes (which is, to no surprise, strictly about love), each song still feels fresh and bubbly.

My favourite tracks are definitely those that have Carly adding a ... read more

Amnesiac is the result of some spillages from Kid A, forming a mismatched collection of tracks that somehow come together to form an album. It's a solid collection of songs that feel like Kid A tracks in their weirdness and their ambience whilst having more of an acoustic edge, but just like the 'big left turn album', it suffers from aimlessness in the form of filler and no furtherment to the ideas that Radiohead create. Despite this, it's another weird misadventure from the rock band that's ... read more

Grimes is an extremely polarising and confusing figure, being (previously) married to one of the most influential men in the world and having this strange ever changing political spectrum, alongside a desire of wanting to be an anime pixie fairy thing. All of this bizarre set up makes for an expectation for her music to be one huge miss, but Art Angels proves this wrong. Grimes has a knack for using her very strange yet encapsulating style to conjure some great choruses and all around great ... read more

Dave Grohl's drum sticks. 10/10

Songs for the Deaf is an example of how a straightforward story can make fantastic music even better. The concept is as simple as a road trip across the U.S, but the tuning in to different stations and the subtly suggested struggles of our protagonist all culminate to a cohesive yet diverse album that features some of the most iconic and important stoner rock anthems of all time. From screeching bangers to catchy tunes, there's a lot to love within an hour of ... read more

A Moon Shaped Pool sees Radiohead at its strangest since the Kid A/Amnesiac era, but instead of strange ambient and electronic noises, the band utilises strings and ethereal noises to curate an atmosphere of tension and mysteriousness. It's a fascinating album that definitely delivers on the aesthetics front, but it lacks a little on the singles front, having only a couple of tracks that really stand out amongst the track list.

I think Burn the Witch is easily one of the bands' best songs to ... read more

Concept albums can go one of two ways: they're fantastic due to their cohesive nature between the songs whilst still telling a story with the quality of individual tracks still being able to shine, or the artist goes too heavily on the concept and it impacts the singular tracks and the whole album in general in negative ways. Splendor and Misery takes the second approach, due to clipping trading out their capability to make incredibly creative and enjoyable experimental hip hop tracks for the ... read more

Yeah this is probably one of my hottest takes. Loveless is boring, and I mean really boring, to me. It's droney, it's samey, and although the riffs can be considered cool I guess, they drag on for 5 minutes for no reason and they bore me to absolute death. The vocals, if you can even call them that, are just moans of nothing, mixed terribly with the repetitive and overbearing guitars. It's an absolute mess of an album, and it proposes nothing interesting other than some promise ... read more

This is like the best album that I never want to hear again. The experimental side of Injury Reserve is in full fruition, and they make something that's bombastic and other worldly. I haven't heard much like this, but at the same time I don't want to hear much else like this. It's in its own realm of creativity and individuality which I think is really cool, but at the same time there's only three or four songs which could actually resemble somewhat normal songs, and the rest of the track list ... read more

200 reviews woohoo!

So MONTERO dropped on my birthday and I guess there were worse albums that could've been dropped. Lil Nas X is a very likeable character due to his cheekiness and his entire persona, but when it comes to his music it's either been hit or miss. Old Town Road is extremely polarising and overrated and it set him up to be a one hit wonder, but I'm glad that he didn't just fade away and that he's retained relevancy throughout the pandemic. The lead single for this album ... read more