The duo of brothers, Pusha T and Malice, have reunited under the production of Pharrell to drop one of the tightest collections of songs this year.

In the music industry, it’s an extremely rare occurrence for a group to reunite after years of solo careers. It’s an even rarer occurrence when their first album in 15 years blows away listeners and critics alike. Consisting of brothers Pusha T and Malice, Clipse has done that on Let God Sort Em Out with Pharrell at the production helm.

Clipse was known for dropping some of the best hip-hop in the early 2000s, with slick bars about illicit drug dealing backed by the club-friendly production of The Neptunes, consisting of Pharrell and Chad Hugo. Their last record together, Til The Casket Drops, was released in 2009 to less commercial success than their previous projects. Shortly after, the brothers disbanded and began their solo endeavors, with Malice writing a memoir and releasing solo albums, while younger brother Pusha T found huge success signing to Kanye West’s label G.O.O.D. Music. Pusha T would spend more time in the spotlight and go on to release two of his best projects, Daytona and It’s Almost Dry, both receiving Grammy nods. It would be remiss not to mention his huge beef with Drake that ended with Push dropping the scathing diss track ‘The Story of Adidon,’ in which he exposed Drake for having a child.

Starting in 2022, the duo slowly made their way back to each other, beginning with a collaboration on Japanese fashion designer Nigo’s album I Know Nigo!, and eventually announcing their full-scale return with Let God Sort Em Out. The album’s much-discussed rollout began with the lead single ‘Ace Trumpets.’ On this track, Push and Malice take control with the demeanour of calculated killers. The booming bass and drum track mix well with a droning synth to elevate the brothers’ performances. Pusha T’s chorus creates a beautiful contrast, embodying the feel of porcelain.

The album’s opening track, ‘The Birds Don’t Sing,’ features a beautiful chorus from John Legend and is a heartbreaking tribute to the brothers’ late parents. Push details his experience in preparing for his mother’s death and his mindset during this time, while Malice talks about his memories of how his father raised his children. Malice’s lyrics, “See mine made sure he had every base covered, so imagine his pain finding base in the cupboard,” show the growth from him and his brother. Fans of the duo remember how much drug dealing was glamorised in their early releases. There is still a plethora of references to this illegal activity throughout the album, but in this song this it is reminisced about in almost a shameful way, as if this part of their life is like a skeleton in the closet.

John Legend isn’t the only hard-hitting feature on the track list. On ‘Chains & Whips,’ Kendrick Lamar shows off his ferocity and attacks his verse with a vengeance, showing off his mastery of hip-hop, with some creative alliteration as well. Pharrell’s production takes a note out of Kanye’s ‘No Church In The Wild’ with thick, rolling drums and haunting brass, guitars, and chops that make you believe when Malice says, “this is the darkest I’ve ever been.” On ‘P.O.V.,’ Tyler, The Creator drops one of the most memorable bars, saying, “Push keep dirty white moving like mosh pits.” Again, Pharrell’s production shines especially with the beat switch towards the end of the track. 

If you think of modern “coke rap”, one of the first names that comes to mind is Stove God Cooks, who has stood out on Griselda’s projects. It’s only right that he received a feature on ‘F.I.C.O.,’ delivering a standout hook in his iconic cadence. Nas also continues his very late career revival run with a feature on ‘Let God Sort Em Out/Chandeliers.’ The first part of the song has Push and Malice delivering chilling bars over an equally eerie beat. It then switches to a trumpet-heavy beat for Nas, combining the album’s sound with a track you would find on Nas’ King’s Disease III.

A lot of the album’s highs come from the mastermind of Pharrell leading the production. His rapport with the group stems from his days in The Neptunes and producing their early work, so it’s only fitting that he took the reins on the sonic direction of Clipse’s comeback album. Each song has a different feel to it, but they all mesh together in the scope of the album. Let God Sort Em Out sounds more modern when compared to their early collaborations, but it still delivers the same sonic appeal. The choir backing vocals on ‘E.B.I.T.D.A.’ sound similar to the track ‘Keys Open Doors’ off their 2006 record Hell Hath No Fury, but the addition of synths and keys pulls it into the current day of rap.

Pusha T and Malice also sound more refined, having 15 more years of experience under their belts. They show off their proficiency over the English language, finding more ways to rap about drugs that hasn’t already been said. Their flows are tight throughout the entirety of the album and have enough variety to keep the songs sounding unique. The brothers sound hungry, ready to show the world that Clipse is back with an exclamation point.

In the streaming era of 30-song albums, a solid collection of 13 hard-hitting songs is hard to come by. Each track is relentless with the trio of Pusha T, Malice, and Pharrell, each at their best, their chemistry palpable. For a comeback album, this is one of the best from some of the best to ever do it.

McKinley Dixon finds worth in living (and beyond) in compelling fifth, Magic, Alive!

McKinley Dixon's journey into the world of jazz rap has been one of great marvel. A Venn diagram of Neo-Soul and hip-hop abstracts, former literary student Dixon has been turning the wheel since his scheming began in 2016 with debut Who Taught You to Hate Yourself? Now, once again incorporating lyrics through pivotal vignettes in life with the sonic accompaniment of jazz, it solidifies his newest as being both real and vulnerable.

The album, rooted firmly as a conceptual project, is based on a grieving story where three close friends lose a fourth - and seek ways to bring him back. From contemplative pondering about his own mortality on 'Recitatif' to the passing of time on the slow stirring of 'All the Loved Ones (What Would We Do???)’ to landing on the Eureka moment on the horn-fuelled self-titled before discovering the reincarnation actually worked on 'Sugar Water'; it's another demonstration of Dixon turning his hard-fought experiences into joy and resolution.

It's this wide lense view that brings this album to new heights. From it's lush arrangements to its organic beats; Dixon has truly outdone himself here. Aside from the stellar, perfectly locked-in production, the album carries a kind of energy that only comes from genuine comfort in your craft.. Home is where the heart is, after all - which is perhaps why Dixon opted to record this in his hometown Richmond with lifelong friends he's known for years. These friends of mine, know exactly what they're doing. And it shows.

Full of lush instrumentals, skewed rhythms and reflections that span childhood to adulthood, Dixon’s album is a pursuit of endings, beginnings and quiet resurrections, all delivered with a restless energy that’s hard to contain.

A telescopic lean-in into what constitutes magic at all, the instrumentally rich imaginings of Dixon's fifth has firmly placed him in the crosshairs of both fans and field experts within the industry. Of course, his breakthrough For My Mama in 2021 and even Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? did gain traction amongst the sphere of global jazz rap musings but it's his latest here that has really made a lasting impression. For the masses perhaps, it's an album that's gone below the radar. And to many - including his diehard posse - that's unjustifiable.

Amongst its digestible chunks of lyricism, it's main thesis remains: does friendship end with mortality? If there's a story which is told and told well (as is the case here), nothing really ends. It merely lives on through spoken conversations, dreams and most importantly of all, art. It turns out that song and dance is really the only way to live forever. It turns out a few Mancunian brothers also got the memo on this one, too.

Music is a conversation and for Chicago-based rapper McKinley Dixon, it's the perfect heart-to-heart. A project that will once be defined as timeless against its genre backdrop, it shows a visionary artist truly coming into his own. 

Under Tangled Silence is intent and self-aware, slipping between categories and resisting definition, yet still rooted in soul, most clearly in the unadorned piano where the artist quietly shows himself.

“It starts with the piano”, says Felix Manuel describing his composition process, as does Under Tangled Silence, his 3rd album as Djrum. Tinkling gradually into life on the opening track A Tune For Us, like a living breathing organism amidst the sound of raindrops and birdsong, piano notes build and cascade until the instrument itself becomes like the sound of rainfall, nourishing and drenching everything it touches. Edited and layered breakbeats unobtrusively join the mix, creating a lush miniature symphony that rolls by with the easy motion of a landscape viewed from a moving vehicle.

Much of Under Tangled Silence consists in this interplay, between the rich organic sounds of piano, flute, string and percussion, and digitally generated glitches, chirps and squawks. Not that there’s ever a tension between the two elements - human and machine - as Djrum constantly weaves and plaits, threading his silky piano playing around chopped breakbeats in a way that never feels forced, but rather intuitive and exploratory.

This synergy could be thanks to the relationship Felix Manuel has with the tools of production. “I have a very emotional relationship with my machines”, he says, recounting an incident that saw him lose hundreds of hours of work when his laptop underwent a power surge that fried the hard drive. Although nearly everything he created during the pandemic lockdowns was lost, a few data files were salvaged. Some of these corrupted files, “broken robots” as Manuel describes them, can be found on Under Tangled Silence, manifesting as stuttering changes in tempo as the digital 4/4 grid tries to keep up with the fluid motions of a human player.

This catastrophe - surely the worst nightmare for any kind of creator - demonstrated the fragility of the machines and lines of code we place so much faith in, and for Djrum at least was a realisation of how fallible, how human, his machines really were. Although a lot of work was lost, the experience of creating the music was not, and he was able to recreate several ideas and entwine them into what became, Under Tangled Silence. 

Beguiling, entrancing, playful, at times overwhelming, the record moves with the exploratory, intuitive feel of an improvisation. Rolls and arpeggios of sumptuous piano form the constant thread, around which Djrum ties in elements from across the spectrum of contemporary electronic music. On early highlight Waxcap, a future-garage beat emerges from cymbal rushes and new-age windchimes, as if you’ve stumbled across a rave in a rainforest glade. Discordant piano is overwhelmed by snarling wails of distortion that transform into menacing dancehall on L’Ancienne. The hyper BPM of footwork can be heard in the rapidly syncopated beats that somehow emerge from more new-age tinkling and field recordings on Three Foxes Chasing Each Other. 

This carefree attitude to genre boundaries is reflected in Djrum’s approach to DJ-ing, for which he is at least equally well-known. Strictly vinyl-only, he spins across three decks, mixing dubstep, garage and UK bass with upper reaches of dance music’s BPM range: breakcore and gabba, and everything in between. To successfully transport the mix across such gulfs in tempo and vibe, he deploys ambient and drone-music, spinning out unique soundscapes with his fingers darting over the cross-fader or scratching records like a performer spinning plates. 

Manuel said it was a conscious effort with Under Tangled Silence to create something “timeless but futuristic”, which is probably why no track ever dwells too long on a sound that could pigeonhole it into a particular genre. So it almost feels jarring when the instantly recognisable amen break erupts briefly into focus on Let Me. For a few bars it feels as though it’s going to settle into a straight up jungle track - the genre with which the sample is synonymous - but just as soon as it appears, it vanishes again to be replaced by more virtuoso beat juggling.

Some may find this restlessness a little much to bear. And the record’s sequencing seems to guard against that, with the more chilled and linear pieces stacked at the front, building to a dense and frenzied crescendo. By the time we reach the closing track Sycamore, the music seems to fold over on itself and the track could almost be the entirety of the album compacted into 11 minutes. At this super-condensed level, the drum hits are so close the BPM blows right past 200 to become more like a buzz. This ultimately disintegrates into pulses of reverb and the piano re-emerges once again, tying the thread back to where it all began.

Under Tangled Silence is an intentional and self-aware record, almost wilfully slipping between categories and resisting definition. But for all that artful poise, it’s also a record with a soul, and particularly in the unadorned piano, the sound of an artist daring to show something of themselves in their music.

Ninajirachi’s debut is a kaleidoscopic, nostalgia-soaked sugar rush that maps out pop’s future while paying tender tribute to the internet culture that shaped her and the strange, luminous feeling of growing up online.

Ninajirachi’s I Love My Computer might be the most purely joyful release of 2025, and it lands as the year’s strongest debut album. It is drenched in mid-2000s dance nostalgia, pulling from Crystal Castles, chiptune textures, Nintendo and PlayStation sound palettes, nature ambience and scattered field recordings. It taps into early-internet aesthetics too, channelling MySpace, iPod nostalgia and the days of LimeWire, clutter into a record that feels young, bright and buzzing with energy. At times it feels like a lost soundtrack to an episode of Skins (the original Euphoria - if you’re not familiar with it), all rush and colour and impulsive adrenaline. The record never really slows down. It’s sharp, abrasive and crafted with a meticulous ear for the tiny details: those glinting edits, the micro-glitches, the clever sequencing that lets the whole album surge as one continuous hit of energy and emotion. Beneath the maximalism, there is the sense of someone who has thought very carefully about how each song is constructed.

Running through it all is a streak of escapism and fantasy. Ninajirachi has long cited nature, sci-fi, magic and the occult as part of her imaginative wiring, and those influences flicker through the album’s digital glow. She has spoken often about growing up making music entirely on her laptop, teaching herself FL Studio and Ableton through YouTube tutorials, and I Love My Computer doubles as a tribute to the machine that raised her.

The album opens with “London Song,” a ferocious jolt of glitchy euphoria that immediately sets the pace for everything that follows. Lyrically, it plays with fantasy and projection, imagining a place she’s never been and offering to go only with the person she’s singing to, blurring desire with early-internet escapism. Lines like “anything is possible with fingers, eyes, a mouse and a screen” frame connection as something mediated by her computer, folding intimacy and distance into one. It’s hyperpop-adjacent, coarse and playful, the perfect entry point into a record obsessed with how love, fantasy and identity get filtered through screens.

‘iPod Touch’ works as Ninajirachi’s most direct invocation of adolescence, using hyper-specific details to tap into a universal kind of digital nostalgia. The song traces the origins of her creativity back to a single secret track she found online at twelve, a song that “nobody knows” yet somehow changed her entire world. Each verse piles up sensory memories: school gates, beach days, cracked screens, late nights lost in FL Studio, a Pikachu phone case tucked under her pillow when she should have been asleep. They sketch the formative ecosystem that shaped her as an artist, where early internet discovery, emotional escapism and cheap DIY tools braid themselves into the foundation of her sound.

One of the most striking things about I Love My Computer is how openly emotional it is beneath all the chaos. “Fuck My Computer” is a perfect example, turning a provocative line like “I want to fuck my computer, because no one in the world knows me better” into something surprisingly tender. Rather than cynicism, the song carries a sweetness that reflects her own upbringing on the Central Coast, where the computer wasn’t just a tool but a lifeline, a friend and a creative partner. The lyric lands because it feels true: in a digital age, the machine we spend our whole lives with often knows us more intimately than anyone else. Here, that intimacy becomes both the punchline and the beating heart of the track.

‘Delete’ is where the Skins reference lands most clearly, its quieter moments echoing the hazy mood of the show’s theme song. The track hinges on an instantly sticky, singalongable vocal melody, but the sweetness of the hook sits in sharp contrast with what the lyrics are actually doing. They sit right in the tension between desire, self-exposure and the strangely public intimacy of online life. The narrator performs for one person, yet the stage is the entire internet. When she repeats “I’ll delete it” and “I only posted it so you would see it”, it exposes the self-consciousness behind the gesture, as if she is torn between embarrassment and the desire to be noticed.

Immediately after ‘Delete’ the album drops straight into another banger. The melody on “ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ” is ridiculously catchy, and it flows so neatly into the lead single ‘All I Am’ that the two almost feel like one continuous track. The hook in ‘ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ,’ “choose me the way I want it” forms the emotional centre of both songs. It suggests a new kind of confidence, or at least the desire for agency, a shift from wanting to be chosen to wanting control over how she is seen.

‘Infohazard’ carries a faint 90s Underworld quality, with staccato synths that drive the track forward at a quick, almost breathless pace. Over that pulse, Ninajirachi drops one of the album’s most memorable melodies, pairing it with lyrics that feel like a shard of early internet horror. Her image of “the man without a head” reads like something stumbled onto online long before she had the emotional framework to make sense of it. It is the kind of accidental encounter that lodges in the subconscious, resurfacing years later in dreams and intrusive flashes. The song’s loop between “in my dream” and “on my screen” blurs memory with imagination, capturing that eerie confusion between what you actually saw and what your mind has been replaying and reshaping ever since.

‘All At Once’ closes the album on a surprisingly shadowy note. It begins as an instrumental, almost as if withholding the thing Ninajirachi does best, which is write melodies that lodge themselves instantly in your head. Chopped, spectral vocal samples move through the mix like synth textures, creating a sense of unease before her real voice finally arrives. Lyrically, it pulls the curtain back on the album’s emotional core. She sings about the hours spent alone at her desk, the late nights lit only by a screen, the strange mix of devotion and isolation that shaped her life as a young producer. It feels like a final acknowledgement of how much her computer has given her, and how much it has taken in return. As an ending, it is darker and more reflective than the sweeter moments on the album but it makes perfect sense, a closing moment that recognises both the freedom and the loneliness baked into the digital world she came of age in.

Taken as a whole, I Love My Computer is a coming-of-age story told through circuits and late-night screens, a portrait of an artist who grew up online and learned to turn that strange, private world into something loud, bright and communal. Every song is built from the textures of her past, yet the album never feels backward-looking; it feels like someone using nostalgia as raw material to carve out a future. This is an album fizzing with feeling and imagination, and it confirms Ninajirachi as one of the most exciting new pop producers working today.

A patient, dreamlike record that expands Juana Molina’s universe in subtle but striking ways.

It’s been eight long years since Juana Molina’s last full-length album; in that time the world has lurched through pandemics, political storms, climate chaos and an unnerving tech boom, yet Juana Molina’s sonic universe seems to exist solely to herself and has only become more refined since Halo. DOGA distils everything that makes Juana Molina’s work so distinctive, then pushes it further into her own private terrain. The record feels untraceable in its influences, built from drifting melodies, ghostly textures and small, intentional movements that unfold through repetition and restraint. Her harmonies sit in this beautifully austere place, shifting without ever drawing attention to themselves, while her lyrics layer and circle back like fragments of a dream. For longtime listeners, it’s a landscape they’ll recognise but still find full of surprises; for anyone new to her catalogue, it’s a striking invitation into a world only she could create.

DOGA traces its origins back to 2019, when Molina and keyboardist Odín Schwartz prepared a run of “Improviset” shows built entirely around spontaneous performance. Working largely with analog synths and sequencers, the pair documented everything, knowing the music would be impossible to recreate. Some of those improvisations became the seeds for DOGA.

The album opens with “uno es árbol,” a piece that works almost like a mantra, its looping phrases shifting in meaning as Molina toys with the tension between being rooted and coming loose. Her invented word desárbol, an “un-treeing”, suggests a soft unraveling of identity and sets the record’s meditative tone from the outset. From there, every track on DOGA sinks into a hypnotic, slightly uncanny groove, a rhythmic pull that feels delicate on the surface yet quietly disorienting just beneath it.

‘caravanas’ pairs its plucked strings with shifting, ghostly synths and Molina’s processed vocals, creating one of the album’s most quietly transportive moments. The lyrics read like a protective chant, calling on caravans to carry someone north, to warm them, hide them and heal their pain with penas de otros colores, sorrows of different shades. It feels like a ritual for care and safe passage, wrapped in a melody that hovers between comfort and unease.

Lead single “siestas ahí” carries a cutesy, almost lullaby-like charm, but there’s a deeper tenderness running beneath it. Molina’s lyrics circle intimacy and drift, singing about moving closer to another’s softness and dissolving in their presence until she’s left floating, light and dazed. As the song unfolds, those sentiments are mirrored in the arrangement: slinky guitars slide up and down like a gentle sway, while soft synth gurgles give the whole thing a dreamy, slightly jaded glow. It’s both sweet and quietly disorienting.

As the album moves into its second half, DOGA opens up even further, stretching Molina’s ideas across longer, slow-burning structures. ‘miro todo’ is the album’s first long descent into deep focus, a nine-minute piece that starts like a slow exhale before gradually tightening into something stranger and more forceful. Molina threads together jagged, crunchy guitar lines and reverbed vocals that feel half sung and half incanted, eventually letting a loose, proto folk-punk drum pattern nudge the track forward in its own crooked rhythm. The lyrics read like flickers of consciousness, moving from earthy, tactile actions to surreal images of martians, shadows and shining frogs. There is a sense of constant becoming in these lines, a cycle of growing, burning, doubting and glowing that mirrors the music’s patient unfolding. By the time the bassline starts to snake through the mix, ‘miro todo’ has shifted from meditation to invocation, a slow build that feels both rooted in the ground and lifted slightly above it.

The final nine-minute piece, ‘rina soi,’ pushes even further into abstraction. The song opens with hollow, almost watery synth tones that swell and drift like something forming in real time. Molina’s vocals arrive in a made-up language, processed and slightly distorted, giving the impression of a voice reaching through mist rather than delivering words. The track feels almost entirely improvised, carried by bleeps, broken arpeggios and vaporous textures that wobble at the edges. As it builds, a kind of chaotic choir forms out of those warped fragments, creating a sense of communal murmur inside an otherwise solitary space. It is one of the most meditative pieces on the record, and its deconstructed sprawl feels like a quiet summary of the album’s mood as a whole.

DOGA ultimately feels like both a continuation and a renewal, shaped by years of wandering through ideas until the right ones rose to the surface. It carries the spontaneity of its “Improviset” roots but turns that raw material into something focused, intimate and unmistakably hers. After eight years away from full-length work, Molina hasn’t returned with a reinvention so much as a deepening, a reminder that her music evolves on its own timeline. It’s patient, immersive and deeply idiosyncratic, the work of an artist shaping a world that never plays by anyone else’s logic but her own.

The state of rock in the internet era remains that of displacement. While file-sharing and music forums innovations have been far-reaching, their impacts have always seemed to extend more towards the world of rap and electronica. The rock band has always been a thing of the scene, and even though more teen garage bands than ever in the history of music will be citing the likes of Swans and Throbbing Gristle as influences, these still seem a few steps backwards. For all the knowledge the internet era has brought, it's rare to find a guitar band innovating, at least not without a clear lack of emotional involvement. But of course, there are exceptions; there are young artists whose takes on art rock exist fully immersed in the small remaining slivers of radical potential within the internet. On their debut, i expect the same of u, Limerick’s some images of paradise haven’t positioned themselves as innovators, this is a record far too immediate and emotionally cathartic to be taken as anything but a work of pure passion, but in their approach to form, innovators they’ve proven themselves to be. It’s a work radical in both its sonics and its sincerity.

At their core, the band are capturing a sensation as old as time. The dissociation of the modern age. The sensation of being lost between the spaces of the world, though now restructured to represent the moment we live in. While earlier screamo releases nailed the sensation of small-town us misery, the brief catharsis found within scenes, and the reaping intensity of adolescent emotion, Paradise transplants those feelings into the internet era. Opener ‘When I’m Gone’ is a work of dissociative blues. Its ambient pop captures the dreamy melancholia of classic indie, only to bring in a subtle electronic throb that rephrases the sensation from the sound of a lonely, windswept room into the isolation of the internet world. The throbbing synths, glistening keys, and pulsing drums capture both the infinite glimpses offered by a computer screen and the moment when it goes black and you're faced with your reflection.

Much of the album is built around displacement. The jangly slacker folk of ‘Angel Fossil’ hurtles the listener into a reflective country walk, only to be followed by the gasping indietronica riffery of ‘Team Deathmatch’. The band's keen ear for production is one of their strongest tools; their subtle layering of sounds causes ‘Team Deathmatch’ to sound like a quiet breakdown in the middle of an alt metal gig. Often, they’ll alternate in the midst of a track, such as the pristine acoustic guitar interlude between the walls of hyper-emo that make up ‘Kwaidan’. Yet these moments are never gimmicks; the contrasts instead reaffirm each emotion rather than fully displacing them. In doing so, they capture the near schizophrenic rush of sensations that lie at the core of the internet age. When music and feelings overwhelm us as much as news and images, sticking to a singular genre or sound feels like a lie. Rather, through this sound collage-like approach, all the noise is captured. But through their songwriting, that noise is given momentum and clarity.

And noise really is a focus here, because for all their genre-shifting experimentation, Paradise are always capable of reminding the listener that they can be one of the best screamo bands around. The excellent ‘Reach Heaven By Violence’ is pure feedback, catharsis, its rippling machine gun drums combining with rippling bass lines and charged guitars to launch lead singer Autumn’s screams like cannonballs. The clanging post-hardcore rhythms slow to let the lyrics echo out with raw sincerity; if heaven can be reached through violence alone, then Some Images Of Paradise might be making it to the gates.

Yet to view that ferocity as sheer anger would displace Some Images Of Paradise’s intent. Billed as ‘a love letter to someone specific, to ourselves, and the world at large,’ i expect the same of u isn’t an album of anger but rather passion. A raw attempt at grasping the intense emotions that end up buried underneath the nausea of isolation. The rush of jangling guitars on ‘untitled (dove)’ combines with the screams to locate a desperation that doesn’t seek catharsis but rather understanding. The band's music constantly aims to reaffirm a sense of self. To seek a lost core buried under the screeching obliteration of modern malaise. It isn’t forgiveness or retribution that the band seek so much as it is themselves. i expect the same of u is an album of exposure. It’s when the band slow down and allows the beauty to pierce through the murk of distortion that their intent becomes most clear. On the gorgeous ‘wool gathering’ Autumn's vocals lie under a cutting bed of soft, slowcore guitar chimes, the lyrics are heard to discern brief images of ‘falling to my knees’ and ‘something bigger than me’ mix in with one word repeated over and over ‘I feel’.

i expect the same of u is the sound of a young band chasing the feeling through every method possible. Whether that be blaring screamo, tender-hearted folk or electronic experimentation, every decision is keenly designed around one goal: exposing that feeling. In that sense, it’s a truly modern piece of emotional hardcore. One which uses every angle to express a sensation of radical honesty and hope. Just because emotion and honesty feel harder than ever to occur in the post-irony malaise of the internet era doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. It means new strategies must be attempted to achieve it. In undertaking that weighty task, Some Images Of Paradise have made one of the best debuts of the year. A deeply emotional and experimental piece of art rock that’s eternally grounded in its emotional honesty. This is a record with a deeply human heart. One that beats rapidly and fiercely.

A record that reaches for intimacy on a larger scale, tracing the line between influence and identity with both confidence and uncertainty.

In the late aughts, La Blogothèque’s Take Away Shows stripped indie music to its bones. Grainy footage, stairwell acoustics, musicians in cramped elevators tearing pages from books for percussion, horns blaring into open air - the series carved out a feeling more than a format. What made those sessions powerful wasn’t the lo-fi novelty; it was the way they turned ordinary environments into temporary sanctuaries. You could feel the air in the room, the hesitation before a note, the sense that the moment could fall apart at any second.

Racing Mount Pleasant’s second album carries a faint echo of that intimacy. Not because the band is nostalgic, but because they write with the assumption that music should feel communal and authentic. In 2025, when so much indie is polished to an algorithmic shine or compressed into 28-minute bursts, this record chooses to breathe. On their self-titled LP, their first under the Racing Mount Pleasant name after releasing earlier work as Kingfisher, now on R&R, they lean into looseness and scale without treating either as affectation.

The Black Country, New Road comparison floats around them, and superficially it tracks: large ensemble, brass, escalating arrangements. But emotionally, they’re operating on a different axis. BCNR builds tension through narrative sprawl, verbal density, and technical execution. Racing Mount Pleasant builds it through movement - where a horn arrives, how group vocals push forward, when an arrangement tightens or suddenly gives way. Their emotional core leans more structural than lyrical.

You hear it immediately on the title track. The group-vocal climax arrives unpolished and breath-forward, the moment a producer would normally iron out. But that’s what gives it weight - you can hear people in the room, not stacked harmonies. It recalls the instinctive swell of a crowd catching a line at the exact same time.

When the band leans into that instinct, their influences come into sharper relief. The horn line closing ‘Your New Place’ feels lifted straight from the emotional arc of Beirut’s ‘Postcards From Italy,’ that gentle rise and soft collapse that lands like memory. ‘You’ opens with a pendulum-strum that echoes the dim, late-night calm of Blind Pilot’s ‘Oviedo.’ ‘Call It Easy, Call It Quits’ sits comfortably in the emotional register of Bon Iver, Bon Iver: the suspended lift of “Perth,” the humid falsetto haze of “Hinnom, TX.” These aren’t decorative references; they’re the emotional vocabulary the band works within.

But fluency doesn’t always equal identity. The album’s warmth is tied to the sounds it evokes, and sometimes those echoes cast longer shadows than the band’s still-forming perspective. Racing Mount Pleasant rarely slip into imitation, but they also don’t consistently outrun their influences. They sound like a band with a clear sense of what moves them, still figuring out how to make that sound unmistakably theirs.

The pacing makes this more noticeable. At nearly an hour, the record asks for sustained attention, and a few tracks can’t hold the weight. ‘Tensed Shallows’ and ‘Heavy Red’ contain thoughtful arranging choices but lose their tension after strong openings. ‘Seminary’ and ‘You’ drift by gently, pleasant but too soft-edged to anchor the album’s center. None of these songs falter individually; it’s the overall shape that starts to blur.

Then ‘Emily’ arrives and cuts through the haze. It’s the album’s most focused and emotionally coherent moment. Patient in its buildup, clear in its layering, and genuinely cathartic in its final minute as sax and trumpet collide with sharp intention. It’s the one place where Racing Mount Pleasant sound fully themselves, not because they’ve abandoned their influences, but because they’ve reframed them.

Even when the record wanders, its intent is unmistakable. Racing Mount Pleasant want arrangements to carry emotional weight, to let horns and strings behave like characters rather than ornamentation, to use group vocals as something other than a grand gesture. They want scale without spectacle and intimacy without shrinking. In a musical landscape that often rewards smallness, their sincerity reads as its own kind of ambition.

Racing Mount Pleasant doesn’t completely define who the band is in their post-Kingfisher era, but it points toward something promising. When everything aligns, the music feels human and immediate, big without being bombastic, loose without losing shape. And even when it misses, you can hear what they’re reaching for: a sound large enough to feel communal and human enough to feel real.

A brilliantly focused album that proves how far Water From Your Eyes have come, turning their experimental instincts into songs that feel clearer, bolder and more compelling than ever.

Water From Your Eyes have been Brooklyn-based for years now, long enough that the city’s art-rock DNA feels baked into their process. What’s changed on It’s a Beautiful Place, their second album for Matador, isn’t their location, but their role. They’ve quietly moved from the periphery of the scene to its centre, becoming one of the few bands in New York making experimental music that feels genuinely self-directed instead of strategically weird. This album doesn’t arrive with the posture of a breakthrough. It arrives like a band making the record they wanted to make, and trusting that to be enough.

The album opens with ‘One Small Step,’ a 26-second ambient flicker that barely registers before ‘Life Signs’ arrives and immediately reframes the record. The song has rightfully been called their most intense moment: jagged guitars grinding through a 5/4 rhythm, constantly pulling at the song’s center. Earlier WFYE noise tended to be sly or self-aware; here it’s direct and almost confrontational. Nate Amos has joked about once being “anti-guitar,” and you can hear the shift in how unapologetically he uses them now.

Rachel Brown keeps the song upright. Their voice doesn’t fight the arrangement; it stabilizes it. Brown’s delivery is calm, clipped, and melodic enough to give shape to everything happening around it. That interplay, Amos pushing outward, Brown clarifying the emotional line, is the dynamic that holds the album together.

What you notice after a few listens is how much of the album hides in its details. The record plays smooth on the surface, but it’s built from tiny edits and small choices that don’t call attention to themselves. A rhythmic stutter that only happens once, a synth line that folds back into itself, a guitar harmonic that flashes by in a single beat, none of it is showy, but all of it matters. The band has said the record grew from thinking about whether “nothing is important or everything is important,” and the production clearly leans toward the latter. The closer you listen, the more the songs open up.

After the volatile opening stretch, the album slips into a more diffused, exploratory mode. ‘Spaceship,’ which opens the B-side, is one of the most expansive things they’ve ever made. Reviews have described it as psychedelic and backmasked, and those descriptions track: the guitars literally run backward through the mix, the beat keeps subtly shifting, and Brown slips in a line that feels like a thesis for the whole record: “So you dream, you build, you change / The cage looks like a window pane.” It’s not a grand statement, but it reframes the song’s drifting unease into something closer to transformation.

‘Playing Classics’ is the album’s focal point, a frenetic dance-punk sprint partly inspired by Charli XCX’s “Club Classics.” It’s the closest WFYE get to a big, outward-facing track, but even here, they don’t make the obvious choices. Piano stabs glitch out, the bass keeps escalating, and the guitars sound like they’re trying to keep pace rather than lead. Brown’s deadpan delivery makes small lines feel loaded, especially when the arrangement swells around them. It’s the closest the album comes to a big tentpole moment, but it still operates within the band’s instinct-driven framework rather than any commercial logic.

The title track follows, and its placement says a lot about the band’s sense of humour. ‘It’s a Beautiful Place’ is essentially one exaggerated guitar solo over a synth bed, funny in concept, but also effective as a hinge between the album’s biggest song and its most free-form one. For a band that once avoided the guitar as a central voice, dedicating an entire interlude to a solo feels knowingly tongue-in-cheek, but it also clarifies the album’s internal architecture.

‘Blood on the Dollar’ and ‘For Mankind’ close the record in a more diffuse way. The former plays like a decayed country-rock sketch; the latter circles back to the opener by using many of the same sonic elements. Loop the album and the transition is seamless. Nothing about the structure feels like a gimmick, it’s simply the most natural way for these songs to connect.

What makes It’s a Beautiful Place stand out isn’t that Water From Your Eyes have leveled up or pivoted toward accessibility. It’s that they’ve deepened their own language. They’re still writing dense, detail-heavy music built from instinct, but the clarity of their ideas has sharpened. They’ve been in Brooklyn long enough that the city’s experimental lineage is part of their DNA, but this album is the moment where they feel like they’re actively shaping that lineage rather than orbiting around it. The record isn’t trying to be definitive. It’s trying to be expressive, and that clarity of purpose is what makes it their strongest work yet.

It seems as if Sharp Pins took to an intensive study of the history of British rock and punk greats, presenting the album as a thorough post-grad level dissertation on the subject, adding a youthful take on the sound of yesteryear. 

As the first notes of ‘Popagangout’ rang out, I scrambled to hit pause. I knew this was an opportunity to take Sharp Pins’ new record, Balloon Balloon Ballon, out on a walk. The day was the first truly cold day of the year and by the sound of the first track, it was one to be spent outside on a rare sunny London morning. I trekked toward one of my newly favourite spots in the city, Hampstead Heath, and clicked play again. I was instantly transported into a nostalgic 60s Britain. 

Despite feeling rather British, Sharp Pins hails from the DIY rock scene of Chicago, USA. It is the solo-project of musician Kai Slater, who is also the guitarist/vocalist of the band Lifeguard. Slater’s project Sharp Pins is a melding of bright, jangly guitar riffs, with nostalgic and melodic vocals. Slater’s music is not only nostalgic, his image is also reminiscent of 60s rock-n-roll and particularly British. The project definitely plays a holistic homage to the sound of the beginnings of rock-n-roll. 

Balloon Balloon Balloon, set to be released November 21, 2025 via K Records, is the latest Sharp Pins installment following albums Radio DDR and Turtle Rock. The new album still embodies Slater’s self-defined mantra of “Youth Revolution”. The album follows a similar punchy, jangly guitar forward sound of the previous albums, but sounds a bit more stripped back from the earlier albums. Nodding to more of the traditional 60s sound as opposed to the 90s lo-fi inputs on previous albums. The album also boasts 21 tracks, although tracks named ‘Balloon 1’ and ‘Balloon 2’ marking interludes, and ‘Balloon 3’ ending the album with some scratchy drums cassette tape sounds.  If your tastes are more akin to the likes of Donovan and The Beatles, Balloon Balloon Balloon is a fresh new go-to album to satisfy your nostalgia, with a youthful spirit. 

The album's single and the longest song on the album ‘(I Wanna Be Your Girl)’ gives off an analog pop feel with reverbing vocal harmonies, along with metallic carvings of catchy guitar progressions. The track definitely has a retro underpinning, as if you are listening to it through your grandparents old tape player. Tracks like ‘Stop to Say Hello’ and ‘Gonna Learn to Crawl’ follow a similar pattern. Sharp Pins pumps up the distortion with tracks like ‘I Don’t Have a Heart,’ ’(In a While) You’ll be Mine,’ and ‘Ex-Priest/In a Hole of a Home.’ Each reminiscent of punchy lyrics and drums, fitting for 60s dance halls. ‘Serene Haus of Hair’ had me thinking of The Beatles and a few tracks later with ‘Takes So Long’, I felt like I was dancing to the beats of The Clash. It seems as if Sharp Pins took to an intensive study of the history of British rock and punk greats, presenting the album as a thorough post-grad level dissertation on the subject, adding a youthful take on the sound of yesteryear. 

‘Maria Don’t,’ is the album's most acoustic and lyrically raw track. The track shows Slater’s versatility moving from vocals hidden within crunchy guitar chords and drums, to a softer track where he really wants you to hear what he is saying and feeling. The track seems deeply personable. “Oh Maria don’t hide yourself away,” was one line that struck me as I was atop the Heath overlooking Central London. The following track ‘Crown of Thorns’ follows suit with introspective lyricism but rather than acoustic, Sharp Pins returns to the scratchy tape recorder sounds.  I will say the last two tracks somewhat left me wanting to hear more of the acoustic side of Sharp Pins. But overall, it’s definitely an album I will listen to again, especially on walks out in London. 

So on November 21, take Balloon Balloon Balloon with you on a long and cold British walk. 

Unpicking the strange, messy and magnetic chapter where Lennon stepped out of Beatlemania and into something far less predictable.

Many moons ago, in a prehistoric age before streaming services were a thing, my mate lent me a dodgy CD-ROM containing the entire Beatles back catalogue. So, on a desolate winter’s eve, in the midst of teenage morosity, I booted up our mountainous family computer and, over the following weeks, methodically worked my way from the frenetic verve of ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ all the way through to the controlled groove of ‘Get Back’. It was quite a journey, and like most rational people with blood still pumping through their veins, I became a Beatles fan.

However, for a long time, the Beatles’ solo careers remained uncharted territory, with only the occasional song entering my field of hearing. Harrison’s ‘My Sweet Lord’, McCartney’s ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ and Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ were obviously all well known to me (sorry, Ringo), but beyond that I knew little of what the Fab Four got up to after the sixties had stopped swingin’ and songs like McCartney’s ‘Frog Chorus’ made me think it was probably best it remained that way.

Of course, this was nonsense. John, Paul and George all thrived creatively without the shackles of Beatlemania weighing them down. McCartney might have racked up the most hits, and Harrison’s solo output is probably the most critically acclaimed, but Lennon’s solo career is arguably the most fascinating. Seemingly fuelled by a desire to distance himself as far from The Beatles as humanly possible, while simultaneously bringing himself closer to Yoko Ono, his first iteration as a solo artist was less a band and more a conceptual art project.

Formed in 1969, shortly before Lennon officially left The Beatles, the Plastic Ono Band featured a revolving cast of musicians, writers, friends and artists drifting in and out of Lennon and Ono’s activistic orbit. To get a good flavour of Lennon’s post-Beatles vision, look no further than debut single ‘Give Peace a Chance’ a song which serves as a kind of mission statement for the Plastic Ono Band. Recorded in Room 1742 of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal during Lennon and Ono’s now-infamous Bed-In for Peace, the track features a rabble of contributors including Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Petula Clark and even a local chapter of Hare Krishnas. A few overdubs aside, it was captured live on a portable tape recorder using just four microphones positioned around the room a world away from the meticulous, workmanlike studio discipline McCartney had propagated in The Beatles.

By today’s standards, the image of two fabulously wealthy celebrities singing for peace from their luxury hotel bed might seem a little trite, but at the time it was a genuinely powerful statement both politically and musically. Okay, so they might not have brought about world peace, but the song became an anthem for the anti-war movement and gave Lennon his first solo hit.

The Plastic Ono Band would go on to release several albums in the early 1970s, as well as conceptual films, art projects and live shows that were pivotal to Lennon’s early years as a solo artist. It’s still considered one of his most prolific periods, with songs like ‘Instant Karma!’, ‘Mother’, ‘Cold Turkey’ and ‘God’ all becoming Lennon classics.

The Plastic Ono Band & Elephant’s Memory - Power to the People (The Ultimate Collection) is a behemoth-sized 12-disc box set that attempts to harness and celebrate this era. The set centres around the 1972 One to One benefit concerts held at Madison Square Garden, Lennon’s only full-length solo concerts and his final shows with Yoko Ono. Compiled and produced by Sean Ono Lennon, Power to the People also includes jam sessions, home recordings, demos and early takes that capture Lennon adjusting to a world without McCartney.

The lesser-known Elephant’s Memory, mentioned alongside the Plastic Ono Band, refers to a scrappy New York outfit whose countercultural outlook impressed Lennon enough to make them his backing band. True to the Plastic Ono Band ethos, their playing was spontaneous, under-rehearsed and a little rough around the edges, all of which is present here. Sometimes it works, but often you’re left thinking a couple more practice sessions might have benefitted some of Lennon’s better-known songs. Still, there’s an undeniable electricity in these recordings, and Power to the People offers a fascinating snapshot of one of the most intriguing periods of Lennon’s solo career.

Of course, it’s impossible to talk about the Plastic Ono Band without mentioning its namesake, Yoko Ono. Like much of Lennon’s solo work, her presence remains a dividing line: on one side, people who despise her musical output; and on the other, people who, well, tolerate it. Ono’s abrasive vocals have always been polarising, and on some tracks they can feel like an obstacle between Lennon’s songwriting and its full potential. However, the Plastic Ono Band doesn’t exist without her, and what she lacks in musical talent she makes up for with her artistic ideologies, elevating the Plastic Ono Band into something far more interesting than just another rock and roll band. The problem is that most people tend to listen to albums for the music, not for their chin-stroking attributes. Thankfully, Lennon’s ever-reliable ability to pen a decent tune more than picks up any overly conceptual slack.

Today, we’re a little more forgiving of Ono’s contributions, and it’s only fair to acknowledge that she was an essential catalyst for Lennon’s creative awakening. Like her or loathe her, it’s impossible to separate the “Ono” from the “Plastic Ono Band”. She embodied the avant-garde freedom that powered the group and to a larger extent, Lennon himself, even if her musical contributions still left a lot to be desired.

The Plastic Ono Band represents Lennon’s seismic shift from mop-topped Beatle to politically charged activist. Whereas McCartney strived for perfection, Lennon always seemed to be searching for a higher truth. The Plastic Ono Band was an essential component of that journey, a cavalcade of activism, poetry, songs, films and primal screams. 

For those Beatles fans who’ve yet to venture into Lennon’s solo territory, Power to the People (The Ultimate Collection) isn’t the worst place to start; though to be honest, it probably works better as a collectable accompaniment for those already in the know.

John Lennon remains a divisive character. To some, his early post-Beatles output was a brutally honest self-examination of a man (quite literally, at times) screaming into the void. To others, it was self-indulgent and erratic. The truth, I imagine, lies somewhere between the two.

Minneapolis-based folk-indie artist Runo Plum presents her debut album Patching, a vulnerable project exploring heartbreak and healing.

After a successful run of various EP and single releases, Minneapolis-based singer-songwriter Runo Plum is releasing her debut album on Friday 14 November, titled Patching, via Winspear.

Inspired by a breakup and the subsequent healing process, the project sees Plum dive into the complex and turbulent feelings we experience while going through a period of change - in the form of soft-edged, introspective, indie rock. Departing from her usual set-up of just acoustic guitar and voice, Plum was joined by collaborator, instrumentalist and girlfriend Noa Francis and fellow Winspear producer Lutalo Jones for the making of the record - their added instrumentation and production elevating Plum’s lyrics and melodies.

Speaking on the meaning of the album, Plum says that “every song is an emotional fragment during my healing process patched together into one project, while I was also patching myself together in real time.” It's a project dedicated to healing and transforming, but also remembering to embrace the messiness of the process.

Through 12 carefully-crafted and delicate songs, Patching explores themes of heartbreak, friendship, social anxiety, hypochondria spirals, and finally moving on. Speaking on the opening track, ‘Sickness,’ Plum says “I was scared of having COVID and dying or having some disease, but it could also easily be seen as being lovesick.” ‘Lemon Garland’ explores Plum’s dreaming and longing for friendship, with the chorus singing lyrics “give me company, barefoot and muddy.” The artist says “it's just me naming what I want. Connection, playfulness, being barefoot in a backyard with friends.” The addition of a 12-string guitar also adds to the fullness of the song, representative of the theme of friendship and community.

The next track, ‘Alley Cat,’ is all about social anxiety and what it truly feels like to live with it, with the long outro symbolic of an anxious spiral - Plum commenting: “[it makes me] feel like it's 4am, in my room laying on my back on the floor in a starfish position, and I'm astral projecting or something.” Towards the end of the album, Plum moves into a contemplative space where she's trying to understand her heartbreak and move on - ‘The Quiet One’ featuring candid lyrics like “I wanna be strong, but didn't you do me wrong?, but we got along so well, and it seemed like you really cared about me, told me I was mesmerising and it makes it even more surprising, now that you’re gone.” With simple guitar accompaniment, these honest lyrics resonate even more. The album closes with ‘Outro (Angel),’ a short track where Plum allows herself to fall in love again. Singing for only a brief minute and 50 seconds, Plum paints a beautiful picture of a new love coming towards her: “Golden hour, light rain, showering, like a baptism. Sunshine, angel, halo, on her head, coming from, or maybe sent from, heaven.” The singer frees herself of her past and experiences an awakening. The gentle guitar accompaniment combined with Plum’s warm vocals wonderfully closes the album.

Patching is intimate and vulnerable, with honest lyrics and beautiful melodies. Runo Plum continues to establish herself as a songwriter to watch in the indie-folk world.

Rosalía ascends to new artistic heights on Lux, a breathtaking and deeply spiritual album that fuses classical grandeur with emotional vulnerability.

Rosalía is someone whose ability to outdo herself with every single release should never be underestimated. Unafraid of being adventurous with the music she makes, she has spent her career pushing genre boundaries to their very limit: jumping from pop and hip-hop infused flamenco on her first two albums to the combination of electronic music and reggaeton on 2022’s Motomami. On her fourth album Lux, she dives head first into more classical territory and the listening experience is entirely different. 

Rosalía doesn’t need to make an album like Lux. With her status as one of the most streamed and recognisable artists on the planet, she could have easily delivered another sleek, radio-friendly record and still dominated the charts. Instead, she’s chosen to create something far riskier and more intricate, an album that challenges the listener as much as it rewards them. It’s a reminder that pop’s true power lies not in repetition but in reinvention, and that Rosalía is one of the few artists operating at her level who continues to treat her success as a platform for genuine artistic exploration rather than a safety net.

This album isn’t the kind to be stuck on whilst you get on with mundane tasks, instead it demands your full attention as she shifts between 13 languages across four movements with glorious backing from the London Symphony Orchestra. Whilst it would be incredibly shallow to declare Lux strictly a breakup album, it’s clear to see how much heartbreak and its aftermath have shaped its contents with the singer turning towards the divine and the stories of female saints to guide her through the things she has experienced. 

On ‘Reliquia’ she ultimately declares herself an unforgettable figure as she recalls all the places she left parts of herself, strings mimicking this idea as they cut through a flamenco beat. She doesn’t hold back elsewhere either, ‘La Perla’ sees her really dig into an ex as she throws insults his way left, right and centre in a way that doesn’t quite match the instrumental that lies beneath them. Without listening to ‘Berghain’ you would perhaps expect it to be a diversion into the techno sound that the world-famous German club is known for, rather it’s a nod to Rosalía’s classical training by way of a three minute opera featuring a grand arrangement of strings  before Bjork makes an appearance to break the listener out of song’s repetitiveness only to remind them that the only way they can truly be saved is through believing in a divine power. 

It’s also possible to suggest that some of the tracks on Lux are a glimpse into Rosalia’s view of the female celebrity and how society places them on a pedestal like on ‘Dios Es Un Stalker’ where she plays into this idea, positioning herself as a God and demonstrating fascination with others the same way fans do celebrities. ‘Sauvignon Blanc’ finds her happy enough to reject a life of luxury as long as she has her faith, a nice circle back to the declaration that her relationship with God trumps all in the opening track. 

Lux unfolds like a full-scale cinematic experience, each track swelling with the kind of drama and grandeur usually reserved for the big screen. The orchestral arrangements crash and shimmer, guiding the listener through moments of heartbreak, revelation, and transcendence.

There’s probably no better way to close an album like this than with ‘Magnolias’ where death is so openly accepted. It’s a build up of strings, echoing drums and finally the organ for that last bit of wow factor. By the end of the record, it’s impossible not to be in total awe of Rosalía’s genius. Lux stands her on an entirely different level to her peers in modern pop music.

On their sophomore album moisturizer, the band leans into what made the English rockers so interesting and fun to listen to, sometimes to a fault.

Wet Leg are no strangers to the bizarre and uncanny, displaying a provocative, weird style that was captured explosively on their self-titled debut album. On their sophomore album moisturizer, the band leans into what made the English rockers so interesting and fun to listen to, sometimes to a fault.

During the three-year gap between albums, the band underwent major internal shifts. Originally just the duo of Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers, they expanded into a five-person unit for moisturizer, beefing up their sound and production. On a personal level, Teasdale found her queer identity, saying in a Billboard interview it’s, “like a veil has been lifted.” Throughout the album, Teasdale’s vocals feel giddy, reflecting Teasdale’s “newfound sense of freedom.”

moisturizer kicks off with a 1-2-3 punch, starting with the band’s second single, ‘CPR.’ The track is punchy, the riffs are gritty, and Teasdale’s vocals are playful and witty. It’s a great reminder of what made Wet Leg such a prominent band in the first place; they can take serious topics like the vulnerability of love and somehow not take themselves seriously. Immediately after, ‘liquidize’ comes in with a groovier track. Lyrics of “marshmallow worms” make you laugh as the track makes you want to dance like no one’s watching. Then comes the knockout punch of the band’s lead single, ‘catch these fists.’ This is a song that thrives in a live environment. It’s fun, it’s catchy, and it makes you want to get in a weird costume and mosh with other Wet Leg fans.

After these three songs, you can accurately anticipate what the rest of the album will be like. It’s not exactly a formula they’re following, but rather a loose blueprint of eccentricity and either watery or distorted melodies, depending on the mood the band wants to set. This blueprint obviously works, but leads to a somewhat repetitive listening experience. The band’s final single, ‘davina mccall,’ is a perfect example. It’s a decent song, but it doesn’t do enough to set it apart from songs of similar genres, or even from both the band’s own albums.

One song that holds its own in the album is the smooth ‘pokemon.’ The track is on the more laidback side but is just as infectious as some of their best works. It perfectly paints a picture of going for a drive with the wind in your hair, watching the sun set on an ocean horizon. The juxtaposition of the next song, ‘pillow talk,’ is a funny and enjoyable moment on the album. It is easily one of the most aggressive songs in the band's discography. The track is raunchy but not too over-the-top and even includes a cute shoutout to the American frontierswoman Calamity Jane.

The weakest moment on the album comes towards the end of the track list on ’11:21.’ It’s not an offensive song, but it just feels lifeless. This song could have been cut from the final product, especially when compared to the rest of the album. Thankfully, things pick back up on the closer ‘u and me at home.’ Wet Leg goes for a grand finale and sticks the landing. It is a bit of a slow burner, but it’s a catchy song that gradually builds up throughout its runtime. It concludes with a satisfying release of tension that marks a fitting end for the band’s sophomore album.

And that’s moisturizer. Although it doesn’t change course too much from their commercially successful debut, it serves as a reminder of why the band became so beloved. Their quirkiness maintains its charm, and it does feel like there is more depth than Wet Leg. The production feels grander, and it’s just a bit more heartfelt and genuine. These most likely stem from the evolution that the band underwent between albums. It’s a fun listen with a lot of standout tracks, but once you’ve heard a couple of the songs, you’ve pretty much heard the whole album. Since the album is so similar to their debut, that lightning in a bottle the band managed to originally capture feels fainter on this release. For a second album, it does a good job of following up such an acclaimed first album, but I would love to see the band expand and experiment more on future releases. One thing is for sure though: Wet Leg isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Clever, disconcerting, and dreamlike, Sorry’s Cosplay surprises at every turn.

Alas, we will never know what a David Lynch movie soundtracked by London’s own Sorry would have sounded like, but if you too have toyed with the question, a first listen to their third studio album, Cosplay (out November 7th for Domino), may come very close to providing the answer. There is something in the tone it sets for itself, in the rarefied atmospheres it conjures, and in the unexpected twists and turns it injects into its eleven tracks that makes the listening experience feel close to a mild hallucinatory state. Not that the record feels trippy; more so, it feels like a soundtrack to a dream, or, to the original point, something Lynch never directed but might have wanted to. Sorry have, after all, always been very strong when it came to storytelling through music, although here it is a little bit harder to pinpoint what story is being told. The album’s very title seems to admonish that nothing within is quite exactly what it seems, and fittingly with it, the music too is less straightforward than it was in the band’s two prior studio LPs, although the distinctive voice that makes Sorry’s music immediately recognisable remains the same: just used, here, to different effect.

Where the previous albums led from the gut - 925 was especially visceral, Anywhere But Here deeply emotional - Cosplay again does something unexpected in coming across distinctly guided by the brain. There is something thinly neurotic and mercilessly analytical, both in the lyrics and in the way the sound is curated throughout, that makes it feel like the album is somehow caught in its own head, dragging you in there with it. Part of this lies with the deconstruction of the very musical building blocks Sorry have used in the past as their trademark sounds. ‘Antelope’, for instance, starts off as the familiar kind of mellow, melancholy ballad that makes an appearance in most of their past work; but then the song glitches, distorts, becomes something else altogether, like the dropping, albeit temporary, of a mask. ‘Love Posture’ has the serrated rhythms of some of the band’s early demos, but brought to a greater maturity, with a depth that makes it feel intense and unsettling. ‘JIVE’, not by chance the closing track on the record, seems at first to go back to a more classic structure, only to left-turn into something unexpected once again, leaving the door open to the unanswerable question of what a future album from this band might sound like. 

Even when the innovative elements are less prominent, the record feels like it has attained a maturity that is the product of self-awareness even more than of greater confidence. ‘Candle’ is a good example of this: a track that plays cleverly with words and chords alike, imbued with the kind of sharp irony that can only be conveyed through the starkly straight-faced delivery Asha Lorenz is giving us here. The lyrics are on point throughout the album, full of imagery that feels in turn haunting, airily poetic, bitter-laugh-inducing. This too has always been a strength with this band, but it is more polished now, doing more with less. There is less here of the interplay between the vocals from Lorenz and fellow band founder Louis O’Bryen, and that is perhaps missed: when it comes to the forefront, as in ‘Life In This Body’, a track that feels like a maudlin modern-day siren song, it does so to great effect. It feels like an element that in places got lost in the mix of the many things the record, no doubt an ambitious one, was attempting to do. 

Elsewhere the album is doing something new altogether, and this is perhaps where it feels most fully realised. Opening track ‘Echoes’ is a warning that something different is happening here, from its very first bars, with its impressionistic handling of sound and its deliberately disorienting structure. ‘Today Might Be The Hit’ comes completely unexpected as a Sorry song, and this might be precisely why it hits so hard, incorporating elements drawn from blues and Americana in a cavalcade of a track that feels like Fontaines D.C. should cover it someday. ‘Waxwing’, easily the standout track in the album, is a tense, layered mirror-house of a song where the clever use of light distortion and the shift in pitch of the vocals makes that lucid dream feeling come across the strongest.

For a record that is doing so many things at once, and doing them from a remarkably analytical point of view, it is almost surprising that Cosplay feels as cohesive as it does, and this is perhaps its most surprising achievement. One might have expected it from a band that even from their debut came out the gates with a fully formed idea of what their voice sounded like, but it is still impressive considering how much that voice has morphed and evolved through time. If this album makes one thing clear, it is that Sorry are setting the bar for themselves higher and higher with each new effort, even as the risks this entails also become greater. Here those risks feel like they have been averted, through meticulous attention to detail but also through a sincerity that comes through both in the lyrics and in the delivery. All of Sorry’s music, after all, has always felt like a form of self-portraiture: here it just takes the form of a portrait of the many masks one wears. 

A tender return from The Lemonheads that bridges past and present, Love Chant refines their 90s charm into something wiser, warmer, and quietly triumphant.

There are few bands from the last few decades who have been as quietly influential as the Lemonheads. Artists such as Mj Lenderman, Courtney Barnett and Waxahatchee have all released covers of their songs and cited them as influences. They are a band that toes the line between charming folk and angst-ridden grunge, poppy hooks and bluesy riffs all attached to tongue in cheek lyrics about love and life. In the twenty five years since releasing their last album of original music, the band and particularly frontman Evan Dando have matured, grown and started to become reflective, looking back on lives lived, mistakes made and thinking about what advice to offer the next generation. 

What sticks out first about this album is the fact that it is that it feels like it's from a different era of music, at its core it is a 90s rock album, the Lemonheads have retained the style that they cultivated in the 90s, but instead of having it evolve and change, they have refined and sharpened it to a razor’s edge. It feels almost like an homage to a bygone era of rock, but it doesn’t come off as derivative or disingenuous. 

There is an abundance of love and respect for both their early work as well as the music of their contemporaries in this album, first made clear in ‘Deep End,’ a song made in collaboration with Dinosaur Jr’s J Mascis. The repeating, almost undulating riffs are classic Mascis and the drums are uncomplicated, but tear through the very fabric of the song. This is also where the band’s age and maturity starts to shine through. The lyrical tone of the album is actually quite dark all things considered, the band is older, they have seen more and gained perspective on their lives and it comes through in ‘Deep End’ which is a song about addiction and recovery. While addiction is very often a theme in music and especially 90s rock, the recovery aspect is something that is touched upon far less frequently and it is interesting to see how it is incorporated into the song. It contributes to the more mature, refined feeling of the album.

That being said, it is still bursting with youthful joie de vivre. Dando manages to maintain the folksy college rock and soft grunge vibes of his early work while shifting the tone of his lyrics to more mature, existential themes. The best example of this is ‘Wild Thing’ which sounds at first like a classic 90s rock anthem, but Dando’s deeper vocal cadence combined with the heavier guitar tone creates a slightly darker feeling throughout the song, granting it a more wizened, cynical edge. This continues in ‘Be In’ which is one of the heaviest songs on the album that makes use of its more simplistic but catchy bass riffs and powerful, but relatively slow drumming to draw attention to both Dando’s voice, which is nearly a whisper, quietly pleading, and the nearly distressing lyrics to create perhaps the most powerful song in the album.  

The intensity of those last two songs are alleviated wonderfully but ‘Cellphone Blues,’ a folk rock track that drips with bluesy joy from its clean toned guitar full of blues licks to its crisp drumming. Even the lyrics aren’t quite as dark as some of the album’s other songs. The song is catchy, upbeat and fun, perhaps the song in the album you could dance to most easily. The backing vocals by Juliana Hatfield are a welcome addition as she harmonises seamlessly with Dando, they are however a little understated in the mix, which is consistent throughout the album and largely quite good, however the use Lo-Fi production does mean that it can at points feel a little flat. This is most evident during the album’s titular song: ‘Love Chant’ which feels rather rushed and while the mixing does not help, it is also let down by its simplistic lyrical composition which throttles the instrumental section’s ability to do anything especially interesting. 

The standout song on the album is unquestionably ‘Togetherness is all I’m after’ with its heavy opening riffs and pounding drums that transitions gracefully, but quickly into a slower, more melodic number that wraps you in a warm blanket of soft, grungy blues rock. It is another song about the passage of time, a wistful look back while offering advice to the next generation. The guitar almost weeps during the solo, accentuating the sad, almost regretful tone of the song. Lyrically speaking, this is also the best written song on an album full of well written songs, it compassionately offers advice while bemoaning past mistakes and looking back on a life lived, placing a little more substance and credibility behind said Dando’s words of wisdom.

This album is an utter delight, it pays homage to 90s rock while maintaining its original essence, the lyrics are well written and each member of the band does their part to a tee, at no point does one instrument overwhelm or dominate and while the Lo-Fi production does make it feel a little flat at points, it adds some indie charm to the album and serves as a reminder of its roots and collaboration with generational talents such as J Mascis is really just the cherry on top. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about this album is that you can feel that it has been inspired and influenced by contemporary work that was influenced by The Lemonheads earlier work, take for example, MJ Lenderman, to create a sensational melding of both past and present, new and old rock, made for both newer, younger rock fans and those who have been around for a little while longer.

The seven-piece London stalwarts deliver a satisfying continuation from their last project, as well as tinker with their sound in the studio.

The Orchestra (For Now) have been together for two years, and they've been worth listening to for two years. Seemingly arriving onto the burdened London pub circuit with impeccable musicianship and about half-a-dozen memorable melodies in hand, they were destined for a quicker route to the top than most bands. They knew what they were doing, and cultivated the correct amount of intrigue with interesting artwork, cryptic lyrics, and their eponymous website — which contained various oddities, goodies, and a forum for TOFNheads (they haven't really come up with a good fanonym yet) to discuss the band's progress. It was wonderfully crafted, with all of their early posters and artwork being produced by members of the band, making a cohesive multidisciplinary package that doesn't feel amateurish at any stage.

They're impossible to miss if you're London-located. They gig with insistence, often with a fixed setlist. Most bands have to change the ordering of their songs to see what works, but with TOFN, the variation came from the band members themselves. The seven-person lineup is perhaps unwieldy for a new band to hold together, but they have the liberty of not having to cancel gigs if their guitarist drops out; they simply switch out the sounds and make it work, regardless of who is there! Plan 76 digs into this compositional flexibility, as there are a lot of dynamics between frontperson Joseph Scarsbrick's piano/vocals and the powerful instrumentals of the band.

Admittedly, the soft vs. hard dynamic that pervades the EP does wear a little thin by the time you get to ‘Deplore You/Farmer's Market’, because when the band kicks into overdrive, it tends to sound similar each time. When they performed this song live at the start of their career, it was more subtle. Sure, the piano twinkled along to start the song, and it ended up as a full Slintian crescendo, but it got there via a long and winding route, with Lingling's beautiful violin piece accompanying the grounding piano. But in the recorded version, Scarsbrick sounds like he's getting a little too familiar with the microphone. Compared to their live mix (Live at the Windmill, 31/1/24), it feels like they've turned the saccharine emotions of the song up a little too high. But that's not to say that it's badly produced; it’s just a bit ASMR-y. Everything sounds crystal clear, and even in the loudest moments on the record, you can hear all seven players.

But enough of that. The EP is laden with catchy motifs, great melodies, and has a great sense of flow. There's motif-based callbacks to earlier songs on their Plan 75 EP, and the shape of a narrative could be pieced together like well-crafted poetry. Threads of "the plan" are present — but what does it all mean? There's so much left in the dark, but filled with glimmers of story and a smorgasbord of colourful metaphors. All open to interpretation.

‘Impatient’ is a classic intro to the TOFN sound, the seamless blending of loud and soft, with the aggression and bravado of early-era MCR and the subtlety of Bark Psychosis or some of the more ambient Radiohead cuts. The middle section of the track keeps the momentum going, but almost at a subsurface level. ‘Hattrick’ contains yet more of the repeating ideas present throughout their discography thus far, staccato piano riffs juxtaposed with thrashy guitar-violin lead parts. The addition of violins and vocal samples halfway through really brings the piece together, setting up a deserved buildup to the crescendo — with cryptic lyrics abound; "Smokey Jack, Trader Joe, the president is going slow". All lending yet more credence to the band's more poetic side. The band have honed their sound in live sets, so when transplanted into the studio, they have to be careful not to lose that crowd-surge energy. The whooshing round of cheers behind the vocals at the end of ‘Hattrick’ is a perfect solution.

Next up is ‘Amsterdam’, which has less rollercoaster-like dynamics than the rest of the EP, which is necessary to counteract the stop-start feel of some of the other songs. It's still got drop-outs where the piano dominates, of course. The weird doggish yelp that marks the start of the song's midway is perhaps not Joe's finest vocal delivery, but the rest of the track is excellent, and culminates with the same melody as ‘Wake Robin’ (of their previous EP) — a fantastic callback that had me smirking in my seat.

The intro to ‘The Administration’ feels like the offspring of the intro to The Voidz's ‘Human Sadness’ and some of black midi's more subdued songs. It lulls you into a sense of solemnity before doing the classic clattery rug-pull and drops you into the instrumental racket that you (by now) have come to know and love. With a lot of ‘Paranoid Android’ influences coming through towards the end of the first climax of the track as well, the lead guitar sings a wonderful coda before the song collapses into itself. 

At last comes long-term setlist staple, well-earned closer, and fan favourite ‘Deplore You / Farmer's Market’. Five songs in (ten if you're bunching Plan 75 within this as well), the sound of The Orchestra (For Now) reaches its apotheosis here. Whenever it's deployed live, the audience sways along to Scarsbrick's smooth melodies, but the rest of the band doesn’t feel too absent. Now, in this version, it's been stripped back perhaps a little too far. Most of the first four minutes of the song don’t even use four of the band members! And then the song retreats, before culminating in the loudest peak of their short discography, perhaps their own version of BCNR's ‘Basketball Shoes’.

It’s not to say it's bad at all, no, it's a very pretty and perfectly-executed song, but the formula of piano & vocals (soft) → every instrument crashes in at once → repeat is perhaps finally wearing me out by this point. As an individual song, it's great, but the melodic and dynamic overlap with the other songs makes it feel less great, even at the end of the EP's brief runtime. Similar criticisms could be levied at BCNR, sure, but even then they have just about enough variety.

The mix of their live set was much less staccato and perhaps better-executed. But it seems that the heightened peaks and lowered troughs are what they were going for, as well as what works best in a studio environment that avoids trying to sound too 'live' and unfocused, or unfinished. They’ve executed their two EPs with grace and a knowledge of what they want from their sound. Hopefully, they will fill the Black Country, New Road-shaped shoes which they have been subtly expected to fill. But what would be better is that they forge on to create their own sound, which they're definitely on track in doing.

In short, The Orchestra (For Now) continues to operate at full throttle. At their gigs, new songs arrive on the setlist and make you feel like they've always been there, crowd-pleasers, songs to really get up and pogo to — and they've translated very well to the studio. Lovely stuff, guys.

Australia's best kept secret The Belair Lip Bombs uncover new sounds and new ideas with their second full length record.

Aussie favourites The Belair Lip Bombs are back with their eagerly awaited sophomore album Again. Consisting of guitarist and vocalist Maisie Everett, guitarist Mike Bradvica, bassist Jimmy Droughton and drummer Daniel Devlin, the Melbourne quartet have begun making a name for themselves on the international stage, and with the release of their second full length album, look to become a household name in the UK and EU scene. Since the band's humble beginnings in 2017 the Belair Lip Bombs have built a cult hometown following, but it wasn't until the release of their 2023 debut Lush Life where they gained some serious traction. Everett said “When we recorded Lush Life, I felt it in my bones, something's gonna happen here”. Unbeknownst to them, this album would trigger their signing with the iconic Third Man Records, the first Australian signing on Jack White’s reputable record label.

Now, ahead of their highly anticipated return to the UK and Europe, The Belair Lip Bombs begin a new chapter, their first release on the big stage with more eyes on them than ever.

Opening track ‘Again And Again’ catapults listeners straight into the album, upbeat and fun, a clean cut ‘Lip Bombs’ tune with their familiar yet fresh sound. The track features a playful string section, something not familiarly heard in their catalogue but not out of place. The tight rhythm guitar and chaotic lead parts perfectly ground the song into the band's signature style. We’ve broken the seal of the album and there’s no signs of disappointment.

Second track ‘Don’t Let Them Tell You It’s Fair’ quickly uncovers the real underlying themes of the record, delving into tropes of self love and self-assurance. Maisie said on the track: “It’s about not letting anyone walk all over you. Have confidence in what you’re doing and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” This quote perfectly encapsulates the feelings around the entire album, not only does Maisie open up about her thoughts and feelings of self appreciation, musically ‘Again’ shows bounds of confidence from a band that’s clearly hit their stride and are set on the path they want to take the band.

‘Another World’ hits listeners with another dynamic and fast paced tune, riddled with chaos in the best possible way. Led by an assertive bassline, Everett jumps in and out of raw and distorted vocal sounds; it's almost hard to keep up with what's happening before the band jumps back in unison for a tight and fun chorus. 

‘Burning Up’, is where The Belair Lip Bombs display just how much they've grown as a band. The vulnerable number is musically the outlier on the record, however in no way is it out of place ; Everett puts on show a unique vocal approach different to anything fans have heard in the past. She sings about her fear of being alone and her acknowledgment of past mistakes or experiences, she mutters “If you ask me baby, for a second chance, I will hold on to it, until my final breath”. The entire song feels like a metaphor for the band as a whole, despite the subtle tones of sadness, it almost feels like the hopeful dawning of a new age for The Belair Lip Bombs, the turning of the page that's faced with huge amounts of excitement and anticipation.

The album in its entirety almost acts as an audio-only ‘coming of age’ film, riddled with contrasting feelings and ambivalent notions. Just like an internal argument, Again takes listeners through ideas of love and hate whilst trying to come to terms with unrequited love. Unlike Lush Life, The Belair Lip Bombs are facing facts and ultimately accepting the idea that not everything is lush and perfect. With this being the first record with Devlin on drums, it’s reassuring to see that a change in image hasn’t affected the outfit, rather helped pursue a new sound that’s so confidently theirs.

Alice Phoebe Lou has tapped into her most authentic and gentle work yet. Oblivion finds her stripped-back, intimate and truly blossoming into a new-found radiance. 

Singer Songwriter Alice Phoebe Lou opens up about Oblivion being her “Treasure chest of personal storytelling songs” that she’s built over the last decade. The project, so gentle in form and articulate in feeling, falls nothing short of a goldmine of Lou’s personal anecdotes, and odes to since-buried memories. From the soft acoustics of track ‘Sailor’ to the ‘ballroom dance for one’ track ‘Sparkle’, Oblivion pays off as one of Lou’s most intimate, and stripped-back records yet, establishing her new-found radiance, and delicate poeticism. 

A standout moment peaks its head out in the track titled ‘Pretender’, one of Oblivion’s lead singles. Lou sings “I’m stronger now that I’m softer too”, a phrase that feels like the spinal cord of the project. Between the playful poetics and hypnotic dreamscapes, Lou finds herself relentlessly letting go, and beautifully practicing her admittance to authenticity. There is strength in the presence of vulnerability, and Oblivion seeks to personify that.  

‘Pretender’ continues with “I’m glad I stayed myself, even when I wanted to be someone else”, reflecting the image of an honest, and grown Alice Phoebe Lou. Most of the songs on the album are rung dry of heavy production and are left with simple-cut acoustic landscapes where Lou’s lyricism takes charge. She remarks on multiple occasions the retrospective desire to be invisible, yet all 11 tracks pose as a testament to her standing centerstage with a sparkling confidence.  Track ‘Sailor’ opens up the album by enlivening a gentle optimism for any hopeless romantic in earshot. Lou remarks “How did we get it so right? I’m usually a hopeless romantic” alongside her sunkissed hums and lightly plucked guitar strings. 

‘Sparkle’ digs its heels into the track sequence as one of the most empowering songs off the project. Over a beautifully simplistic piano chord, Lou softly sings “If you should see me, as I sparkle in the night, don’t be a fool, it’s not for you, it is for the divine”. Anchored by a fragile calm, this track finds a luminous power in charting the journey towards inner growth, leaving those behind who are unworthy of such light. Lou’s velvety cadence couldn’t sound braggadocious even if it tried, and the empowerment is embedded in that notion; Confidence delivered in such satin poise is potent and untouchable.

Another tantalizing piano track, ‘Oblivion’, also took the name of the project itself. A personal favourite, the song is deeply hypnotic in nature, confronting thoughts that are bigger than what Lou is capable of feeling. She sings “When I opened my eyes she was there and her skin was golden”, painting such brilliantly vivid imagery that feels as if it’s personifying a dream. Here, Lou faces nostalgia, memories, and seemingly late characters in her life. Her ominous and reflective verses transform a simple listening experience into what feels like an endless fall into a darkened dream-like state of unconsciousness. It’s one of those irrevocable tracks of Lou’s that hits in such a way you need to keep pressing replay. 

After unpacking a few of the album’s heavier emotional threads, Lou leans into a few tracks that feel grounded, and relatable in nature. Cryptic becomes conversational in ‘The Surface’ when Lou complains “I wish my arguments were as good as in my head”. Although not drenched in words that sting, the track still provokes an unguarded and honest listen. The struggle of not feeling seen pulsates in “Was I being obvious? I thought I was see-through”, and the ever-hopeless “If you looked at me closely, you’d see.” 

‘Darling’ dances with a simple, glowing sweetness- the kind that only a girl in love could hum along to. Lou’s lyrics imagine meeting a lover at the pearly gates, painting a version of love that is timeless and suspended in a sunlit melody. ‘With or Without’ allows Lou’s instrumentation to blossom with lightly drowning synths and strong chord progression. Her poetics take a backseat here, but this doesn’t falter the tracks' intensive yet harboring nature that enlivens the confidence to take on what’s next; With or without you… 

The longest, and arguably most confessional track ‘Old Shadows’ lays the artist's heart out bruised and bare. The song unravels her old wounds from past relations and opens up both the beauty and pain of new, healthy love. Lou finds a way to tenderly place emphasis on the power in strength and vulnerable intimacy, casting a spotlight on one who is blossoming into an able-bodied recipient of nurturing love. “It takes some getting used to” Lou remarks, and how truer could that be in the face of something you’ve always wanted, and never felt you deserved? 

Oblivion finds Alice Phoebe Lou, after a lengthy two years, blossoming into her truest self. Her power as a story-telling wordsmith, and a diehard lover shine beautifully in this project. The album is a simple listen, with a heavily-pronounced lullaby-esque structure as opposed to a highly produced and complex work of art. But there’s indeed beauty in simplicity. We hear Alice Phoebe Lou for who she really is, playful poetics and all.

Three decades on, Oasis’ Britpop behemoth still looms large over British music, but its 30th-anniversary reissue raises an inevitable question: how much more can be squeezed out of a record that already defined an era?

Reviewing (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? is a Sisyphean task. Like it or loathe it, it’s already a well-established classic, lauded by many as a kind of cultural monolith that landed in the dead centre of the ’90s and helped send Cool Britannia into the stratosphere. It’s a key ingredient in a curious melting pot bubbling with Geri Halliwell’s Union Jack dress, a stack of Loaded magazines, Jim Royle’s cardigan, Tracey Emin’s bed, Tony Blair’s nefarious grin, and Gazza’s goal against Scotland - all mixed together with an overwhelming sense of misplaced optimism. These days, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? seems less an album and more an intrinsic part of the seemingly endless, paradisiacal summer that was the 1990s.

On a personal level, it was the album I listened to on my Walkman during long car journeys to Skeggy. For reasons unknown, it was the only thing that stopped me feeling travel-sick. I was twelve, and these were more innocent times. When Liam sang, “All your dreams are made when you’re chained to the mirror and the razorblade,” I thought he was singing about having a shave. Since then, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? has been elevated into the pantheon of rock and roll royalty, firmly cementing its status as an all-time classic.

But it wasn’t always like this. On its release, Morning Glory was largely dismissed by critics. Q Magazine gave it an underwhelming 3/5, while Melody Maker went even further, suggesting Liam’s vocals were off, the songs were disappointing, and the band sounded knackered. The media’s response to (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? remains one of the biggest missteps in music journalism history, one many attempted, and failed, to atone for when Be Here Now came out a couple of years later, showering it with all the plaudits its predecessor should have got.

Originally released in October 1995, Morning Glory spent ten weeks at the top of the UK album chart and went on to sell over 20 million copies worldwide, becoming one of the top five biggest-selling albums of all time in the U.K. A million of anything might not seem like much in today’s world of likes, listens, follows, and shares, but this was the ’90s and Tim Berners-Lee’s world-wide-web-sized Pandora’s box had only just been opened. Oasis were about to ascend from the front pages of the music press to the front pages of just about every newspaper in Britain. This was the album that catapulted them to Knebworth and beyond. To put it mildly, it was a big deal.

Of course, just because something is very popular doesn’t mean it’s good. Ginsters pasties, Brewdog beer, The Big Bang Theory, Maroon 5, and Jamie Oliver are all very popular - and all terrible.

So what about (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? Is it an overhyped product of its time? Or is it as good as its legacy suggests? The quick answer is - obviously, yes, it’s great. Any album containing gargantuan mega-hits like ‘Wonderwall’, ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’, ‘Some Might Say’ and ‘Champagne Supernova’ deserves to be as big as it is. And judging by the popularity of this year’s reunion tour, with a set-list containing all but two of the album’s ten tracks, it’s clear time has done little to dent its appeal.

However, as good as it is, Morning Glory isn’t perfect. ‘Hello’, though a strong opener, is retrospectively tarnished by its Gary Glitter associations. ‘Hey Now!’ feels more like a B-side than any of the actual B-sides from that period, namely ‘Acquiesce’ and ‘The Masterplan’. The album is also famously devoid of any real experimentation, though that seemed more of a problem back then than it does now. And overall, it’s not quite as cool, or arguably as good, as its predecessor, Definitely Maybe. But these are minor gripes; a bit like complaining that the glovebox in your Rolls-Royce is too small. Something I’ll never have to worry about.

So, now we’ve (re)established that the album is still great (you see, a Sisyphean task), what of the extras included on this 30th-anniversary reissue? Now that we live in the age of the prophesied “extra track and a tacky badge,” do we really need another version of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? The main draw here is the “newly released” unplugged versions of ‘Cast No Shadow’, ‘Morning Glory’, ‘Wonderwall’, ‘Acquiesce’, and ‘Champagne Supernova’. And to be fair, instead of the usual stripped-back “Noel demos” that tend to appear on these kinds of anniversary editions, these are fully formed versions in their own right, with Liam himself on vocals.

At first, they sound pretty good. Liam’s vocals are more exposed in the mix, and all the more impressive for it. ‘Morning Glory’ has a neat little piano solo, and ‘Cast No Shadow’ even makes a case for being better than the album version. The inclusion of bongos on Wonderwall is a bit unnerving, but otherwise, they’re all pleasant enough. The problem is that these aren’t hidden gems unearthed from the Oasis vaults, they were mostly recorded and mixed earlier this year by Noel in his home studio. A few sources use the term “reworked takes,” but as far as I can tell, only Liam’s vocals are from an actual bygone studio session, with everything else newly recorded. It creates a kind of Frankenstein’s Monster conundrum: Liam’s retro vocals crudely stitched onto Noel’s box-fresh backing tracks. These versions are nice enough, but something genuinely lifted from the vaults, or even a few live tracks from back in the day, would have been more interesting. Their inclusion feels tacked on, little more than an excuse to slap “deluxe edition” on the sleeve of your marble-effect vinyl record. I also lament having to use Oasis and bongos in the same sentence.

And what of the remastered album itself? A good remaster of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? would surely justify this anniversary edition’s existence. The good news is that it’s a fairly solid remaster: it pries apart and somewhat polishes a tangled deluge of instruments while retaining that infamous wall of sound. You can even hear Guigsy’s (or Noel’s) bass much better than on the original mix. The bad news is that it’s actually just the same remaster released back in 2014. In fact, the 2014 reissue of Morning Glory is superior in almost every way, with live versions, demos, and all of the B-sides included. As a result, this 30th-anniversary edition feels a bit impotent. 

Personally, I’d have liked a few more extras beyond the aforementioned unplugged versions, but I imagine they’re saving those for the 40th-anniversary Mega Deluxe Biblical Edition. 

(What’s the Story) Morning Glory? remains a seminal album and will do regardless of which version you listen to. But if you’re looking for the definitive version, I’d recommend listening to it on cassette, in the back of your parents’ car, on the way to Skegness.

Tame Impala’s fifth album finds Kevin Parker diving into house-inspired production, but the result feels hollow, marking his weakest and least inspired work yet.

15 years ago Kevin Parker introduced Tame Impala to the world with Innerspeaker. It was every music nerd and stoner dude’s dream: Parker’s vocals channeled Sgt. Pepper era John Lennon and melodically, it was the arguably more accessible modern answer to the psychedelic rock sound that dominated most of the late 1960’s. However, it was the transition into psych-disco infused pop on Currents that propelled the musician toward real stardom. It was clear he’d found his groove in the soaring combination of guitar and wildly distorted synth beats that defined the album so it was really no surprise when 2020’s The Slow Rush took the accessibility of its predecessor, combined it with elements of hip-hop and house and produced another musical earworm. 

You’d think that such success would drive the singer to create another album in a similar vein, instead Deadbeat teeters into territory that lies somewhere between mid house and mid techno. Perhaps this transition was to be expected given ‘Neverender’ and ‘One Night/All Night’, the songs Parker made in collaboration with French electronic duo Justice last year but it still feels a world apart from the Tame Impala we’ve all grown to know and love. Where his previous works were better suited to be played to fields of people under the warmth of the evening summer sun, this record feels like it was made for shit bros, designed to boom loudly out of club speakers as the night slowly blurs from one too many expensive plastic cups full of spirit-mixer combo. 

Previously, Parker’s writing centred on his experiences of loneliness and isolation, the transformative period that follows after a breakup and the passage of time. His life has changed quite drastically in the five years since he last released an album, thanks to the birth of his two children and it’s perhaps parenthood that is largely responsible for the fact that on this album, he has turned the lens inward to examine the behaviours of his past selves and how they’ve shaped who he is now.  Naturally, it’s some of his most vulnerable writing to date: ‘My Old Ways’ sees him be overly self aware of his tendency to fall back into old habits despite actively trying to change his behaviour and on ‘No Reply’ he battles with the internal struggle of wanting to make a good impression but simultaneously worrying about being too much or inauthentic. 

In fact, this album despite the mostly upbeat tinkerings that back the musings on it, is largely ruled by a kind of melancholy. Maybe the novelty of adulthood and suddenly not being as young and spritely as he once was has finally worn off. ‘Dracula’ is centred on partying all night, running from the daylight in an effort to keep the momentum going, this in tandem with promotion tactics falling to DJ gigs across the world rather than a normal touring schedule feels like the singer doing his very best to cling on to the most normal life he can fathom now his world has changed completely. 

There are stand out tracks like ‘Piece of Heaven’, ‘Obsolete’ and ‘Oblivion’ but ultimately, Deadbeat as a whole leaves the listener yearning for something more. Change is always great and welcomed with open arms but connecting with the music that makes up this record feels much harder than with previous efforts.