Bright Green Field is packed full of creative art-rock and post-punk bangers from front-to-back, with very little excess fat. Probably the most liberating album I’ve heard all year - try listening to how they build up these immense, monstrous (global) grooves without shimmying along

Olivia Rodrigo’s debut is... actually a lot better than I thought it’d be. There’s a tasteful blend of teenage pop-punk (or Disney-Rock, as I like to dub it) with soft piano ballads and shades of indie folk over its 11 tracks, also accompanied by some ‘top-40’-ready hits. She’s clearly got a natural knack and a passion for songwriting, and her musical excitement seeps into SOUR by the bucketload. It’s refreshing to hear a young artist with such ... read more

There might not be a great deal of DOOM on this project, but on his appearances he hardly misses a beat. Add this to several exceptional Inspectah Deck performances and you have a fairly solid sending off for one of the greatest MCs of all time

Fortitude isn’t quite as expansive as its hot singles allured to

Though sometimes airing on the side of caution, ‘Ignorance’ is an immaculately constructed piece of sophisti-pop

Underground jazz rapper McKinley Dixon boasts his smooth voice, colourful rhythms and poetic songwriting on this staggeringly great new album

Impressively, Ice Age have managed to condense 40 minutes of music into just a single word: safe. This is bread and butter rock ‘n’ roll, with a slight tang of 90s alt-rock. Even a pancake would think that this has flat progressions

I find this record far too difficult to get into, even for an album of this shoegaze ilk. There’s no grooves or rhythms which truly entice me, and associating with the songwriting is a fruitless task for me too. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s boring, but I’ll suggest that it’s far too much of an indistinguishable product

Big riffs ... even bigger predictability

Aside from “Bull in the Heather”, there aren’t too many other moments on here worth noting. I understand that the band wanted to move away from radio-friendly music by removing the hooks, but what I can’t understand is why a band would do such a thing and not inject a new point of interest. Where’s the crushing noise? Dynamic vocal performances? Intricate guitar play? Experimental arrays of foreign sounds and unorthodox instruments? It’s completely absent of ... read more

Sure, some parts could do with a little freshening up, but Florence Shaw’s humorously colloquial and bizarrely surreal lyrics and deliveries are more than enough to keep you entertained for over 40 minutes. Imagine Courtney Barnett mixed with a sprinkling of Sleaford Mods and seasoned with a teaspoon of Sonic Youth

Don’t even bother trying to get over the language barrier (if you’re a non-French speaker, of course) - I wouldn’t bother learning a new language just for the sake of an album, personally - just indulge yourself in 70 minutes of freewheeling, boundless art pop

It’s clear that the band lost that effervescent fizz which made their debut so thrilling when they became more textural and dark, but their sophomore attempt is still a credible art-punk project

I’m not sure how much longer such an inventive band can get away with this microtonal psych rock sound for, but LW is another solid release from the Aussies

Like all GY!BE, this new LP is best consumed in a dark and quiet environment, where you can just let the arresting compositions wash over you, leaving you in awe at this band’s other-worldly prowess

There’s a lot of cool grooves to sink your teeth into, but there’s a definite weakness in songwriting present on ‘sketchy.’ . The prettiness of the record doesn’t slip by unnoticed, but that’s exactly what the music does: it slips in one ear and then, 37 minutes later, it slips out of the other

For as far as Xiu Xiu goes, ‘Oh No’ is a disappointingly middling album, which never reaches the sinister highs of their previous works, nor is it their best display of noise pop capabilities. It seems to rely too much on ‘single power’, but aside from the two teaser tracks, there aren’t many cuts which are all too memorable. Washed-out production doesn’t help matters either, as it’s really difficult to grasp hold of large segments of the record.

I ... read more

This is the worst album art of the year - aside from that, Haram is an abstract trip into a spiralling, off-kilter world fuelled through experimental uses of jazz and psychedelia.

COCC can’t match the same scope as 2019’s near-impregnable ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell’, but the stripped-back, rose-tinted approach Lana takes on this new record serves as a much needed meditation on the busyness of modern life. The album is a step-back from the hectic everyday, instead focussing on the micro-interactions and personal tales of an individual who longs for liberty. Although the project starts to trail off slightly near the end, Lana maintains a delicate ... read more

Swans made massive steps of maturity on ‘Children of God’, with their tide turning away from harsh no-wave and moving towards gothic-rock infused post-punk, whilst maintaining the eerily downtrodden atmosphere of their earlier work. CoG is punishment, whipping you into submission before convincing you of your sinful worthlessness