In 2016, Alex Turner received a piano for his 30th birthday and started playing seriously for the first time in over 20 years. Songs for Arctic Monkeys’ sixth album eventually emerged—a collection of brooding, cosmic lounge-pop that’s typical of the band only in its disdain for playing it safe. Here, light-years from their previous riff-driven adventures, melodies unspool slowly but stick faster with every listen. A watering hole on the moon provides the conceptual framework for Turner to muse on life, pop culture, and technology with heavy-lidded introspection. “I need to spend less time stood around in bars/Waffling on to strangers about martial arts,” he sighs on “She Looks Like Fun.” He shouldn’t be hasty: Wherever he finds inspiration, it takes his band to daring new places.
Such was the wildly imaginative brilliance of Let’s Eat Grandma’s 2016 debut, *I, Gemini*, that some refused to believe it was the work of two 17-year-old girls from England. “The worst \[response\] was: ‘There must be some guy behind this,’” Jenny Hollingworth told Britain’s *The Times* newspaper in June 2018. Still teenagers, Hollingworth and Rosa Walton shatter misogynistic and patronizing expectations even further with this follow-up. They continue to weave multiple genres into a beguiling alt-pop tapestry, where songs journey through excitingly unpredictable left turns and trap doors. This time though, the melodies are sharper and the rhythms more club-ready. The intervening years have also enriched their words and voices: They examine the frustrations of love with crackling emotion on “Falling into Me” and reach out to a lost soul on aching piano ballad “Ava.”
“I’m making pop records,” The 1975 frontman Matty Healy told Beats 1 host Matt Wilkinson. “When I say we’re a pop band, what I’m really saying is we’re not a rock band. Please stop calling us a rock band—’cause I think that’s the only music we *don’t* make.” It’s a fair comment: Thanks to their eclecticism and adventure, attempting to label The 1975 has been as easy as serving tea in a sieve. On their third album, the Cheshire four-piece are, once again, many things, including jazz crooners, 2-step experimentalists and yearning balladeers. What’s most impressive is their ability to wrangle all these ideas into coherent music—their outsize ambition never makes the songs feel cluttered. “I hate prog, I hate double albums, I hate indulgence,” said Healy. “I hate it when the world goes, ‘Hey, you’ve got our attention!’ and someone goes, ‘Right, well, if I’ve got your attention, how many guitar solos…’” Crucially, Healy’s lyrics add extra substance to—and bind together—the kaleidoscope of styles. On the neo-jazz of “Sincerity Is Scary,” he rails against a modern aversion to emotional expression. Broadly an album about love in the digital age, *A Brief Inquiry…* offers compelling insights into Healy’s own life. “It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)” provides an unvarnished account of his heroin addiction, while “Surrounded By Heads and Bodies” draws on his experiences in rehab and “Be My Mistake” examines guilt and compulsion. “Honestly, you can look at your work and be like, ‘What did I do there that someone likes?’” he said. “Me, when I’m, like, really personal or really inward, really honest, that’s when I get the best reaction.” Introspection needn’t breed a somber mood though. From the tropical pop of “Tootimetootimetootime” to the spry electro-indie of “Give Yourself a Try,” this is an album full of uplifting, melodic rushes. “My favorite records are about life,” said Healy. “It may be a bit of a big thing to say, but I like the all-encompassing aspect of life: You can have these bits, the sad bits, but don’t leave the dancing out, you know what I mean?”
If Robyn has found peace or happiness, you wouldn’t necessarily know it by listening to her first album in eight years. Opener “Missing U” sets the mood, with wistful lines about stopped clocks and empty spaces left behind. Yet it’s somehow one of *Honey*’s more upbeat tracks, with an insistent rhythm and glittery arpeggios that recall the brightest moments of 2010’s *Body Talk*. At its best, Robyn’s music has always straddled the line between club-ready dance and melancholy pop, and her strongest singles to date, “Dancing On My Own” and “Be Mine!,” strike this balance perfectly. But never before have we heard the kind of emotional intensity that possesses *Honey*; in the years leading up to it, Robyn suffered through the 2014 death of longtime collaborator Christian Falk and a breakup with her partner Max Vitali (though they’ve since reunited). A few one-off projects aside, she mostly withdrew from music and public life, so *Honey* is a comeback in more ways than one. Produced with a handful of collaborators, like Kindness’ Adam Bainbridge and Metronomy’s Joseph Mount, the album mostly abandons the disco of \"Missing U,\" opting to pair Robyn’s darker lyrics with more understated, house-influenced textures. She gives in to nostalgia on “Because It’s in the Music” (“They wrote a song about us...Even though it kills me, I still play it anyway”) and gets existential on “Human Being” (“Don’t shut me out, you know we’re the same kind, a dying race”). But for all the urgent and relatable rawness, *Honey* is not all doom and gloom: By the time closer “Ever Again” rolls around, she’s on the upswing, and there’s a glimmer of a possible happy ending. “I swear I’m never gonna be brokenhearted ever again,” she sings, as if to convince herself. “I’m only gonna sing about love ever again.”
Seven albums in, Parquet Courts deliver their most nuanced, diverse LP so far. While their raw, post-punk side is amply present on tracks like \"Extinction,\" with its Fall-evoking riffs, that\'s just one among many arrows in the Brooklyn band\'s quiver. Between the children\'s choir on \"Death Will Bring Change,\" the trippy, dub-inflected touches on \"Back to Earth,\" the G-funk synth lines on \"Violence,\" and the polyrhythmic, disco-besotted grooves of the title track, Parquet Courts deliver on more fronts than ever before.
"Wide Awake!" is a groundbreaking work, an album about independence and individuality but also about collectivity and communitarianism. Love is at its center. There’s also a freshness here, a breaking of new territory that’s a testament to the group’s restless spirit. Part of this could be attributed to the fact that Wide Awake! was produced by Brian Burton, better known as Danger Mouse, but it’s also simply a triumph of songwriting. “The ethos behind every Parquet Courts record is that there needs to be change for the better, and the best way to tackle that is to step out of one’s comfort zone,” guitarist/singer A Savage says of the unlikely pairing. “I personally liked the fact that I was writing a record that indebted to punk and funk, and Brian’s a pop producer who’s made some very polished records. I liked that it didn’t make sense." It was Danger Mouse, an admirer of the Parquet Courts, who originally reached out to them, presenting them with just the opportunity to stretch themselves that they were hoping for. The songs, written by Savage and Austin Brown but elevated to even greater heights by the dynamic rhythmic propulsion of Max Savage (drums) and Sean Yeaton (bass), are filled with their traditional punk rock passion, as well as a lyrical tenderness. The record reflects a burgeoning confidence in the band's exploration of new ideas in a hi-fi context. For his part, Savage was determined not to make another ballad heavy record like the band's 2016 "Human Performance." "I needed an outlet for the side of me that feels emotions like joy, rage, silliness and anger," he says. They looked to play on the duality between rage and glee like the bands Youth of Today, Gorilla Biscuits, and Black Flag. "All those bands make me want to dance and that's what I want people to do when they hear our record," adds Savage. For Brown, death and love were the biggest influences. Brown has never been so vulnerable on a Parquet Courts record, and the band, for all their ferocity, has never played so movingly; it’s a prime example of Brown “writing songs I’ve been wanting to write but never had the courage.” For the two primary songwriters, "Wide Awake!" represents the duality of coping and confrontation. “In such a hateful era of culture, we stand in opposition to that — and to the nihilism used to cope with that — with ideas of passion and love," says Brown. For Savage, it comes back to the deceptively complex goal of making people want to dance, powering the body for resistance through a combination of groove, joy, and indignation, “expressing anger constructively but without trying to accommodate anyone.”
“I wanted to write an album that could give justice to being someone complex in the pop world,” the surging French star sometimes known as Héloïse Letissier tells Apple Music. “Pop music is so much recently about trying to simplify narratives, and I was trying to complexify mine. Christine is really me taking your shirt and talking to you really up close. I just want to make sure you actually meet me.” If you have not yet made his acquaintance, you are about to: his second album under the name Christine and the Queens takes his alter ego a step further with a bolder iteration named Chris. “The first album was born out of the frustration of being an aberration in society, because I was a young queer woman,” says the singer (who announced in August 2022 that he was gendering himself in the masculine). “The second was really born out of the aberration I was becoming, which was a powerful woman—being lustful and horny and sometimes angry, and craving for this will to just own everything a bit more and apologize a bit less.” While the new album, also named *Chris*, undoubtedly works as an exploration of identity and sexuality and power—and as self-aware performance art worthy of touchstones like David Bowie and Laurie Anderson—it is also a supremely danceable collection of synth-pop confections that never gets overwhelmed by its messages. “Doesn’t matter” makes something as heavy as questioning the existence of God feel weightless; “Girlfriend,” featuring LA producer/DJ Dâm-Funk, likewise aims for both the hips and the head. “I don’t feel like a girlfriend, but I’ll be your lover,” he says. “The song is basically me trying to steal a bit from the patriarchy. It’s purely empowering out of defiance and wittiness.” That flair for the dramatic comes naturally to this artist. “I wanted to be a stage director before I became a pop performer, and writing a record is kind of like staging a huge play in my head,” he says. “This is a mysterious job I have.”
After two concept albums and a string of roles in Hollywood blockbusters, one of music’s fiercest visionaries sheds her alter egos and steps out as herself. Buckle up: Human Monáe wields twice the power of any sci-fi character. In this confessional, far-reaching triumph, she dreams of a world in which love wins (“Pynk\") and women of color have agency (“Django Jane”). Featuring guest appearances from Brian Wilson, Grimes, and Pharrell—and bearing the clear influence of Prince, Monae’s late mentor—*Dirty Computer* is as uncompromising and mighty as it is graceful and fun. “I’m the venom and the antidote,” she wails in “I Like That,” a song about embracing these very contradictions. “Take a different type of girl to keep the whole world afloat.”
Hunter, the third long player from the BRIT award and double Mercury Music Prize-nominated Anna Calvi, will be released on 31st August 2018 via Domino. Produced by Nick Launay (Nick Cave, Grinderman) at Konk Studios in London with some further production in LA, the album was recorded with Anna's band - Mally Harpaz on various instruments and Alex Thomas on drums - with the addition of Adrian Utley from Portishead on keys and Martyn Casey from The Bad Seeds on bass. It has a new rawness, a primal energy into which Calvi pushes the limits of her guitar and voice beyond anything she’s recorded before. Hunter is the embodiment of the feeling of truly letting go. For the songwriter and virtuosic guitarist, it was a catharsis, an opportunity to be more truthful than ever. The first new music since 2014’s collaborative release with David Byrne, Strange Weather EP, her self-titled debut album and the 2013 follow-up One Breath, Hunter is a visceral album exploring sexuality and breaking the laws of gender conformity. A queer and a feminist record, it is galvanising in its hunt for freedom. It was important to Calvi that it was as vulnerable as it is strong; as beautiful as it is harsh; as much about the hunted as it is about the hunter. But she’s careful not to characterise any of these traits as “masculine” or “feminine” – the whole point is that one person, of any gender, can be both. The power is in the contrast itself; in the way she oscillates between extremes, sounding freer than ever before. She wanted to express herself while being “free from the story that either gender is given, free from worrying how people would judge me on what I want to do with my body and myself. For me, that’s quite a utopian vision.”
For the first time since 2007’s Our Love to Admire, Interpol have opened themselves up to the input of a producer. For two-week spells between December of 2017 to April of 2018, they travelled to upstate New York to work with Dave Fridmann – famed for recording with Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips, MGMT, Spoon, Mogwai, and countless more. In the run up to writing and recording, Sam found himself immersed in soul drummers such as Al Jackson Jr (Otis Redding’s drummer) and 80’s funk producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. “How can I make shit swing?” was the question Sam repeatedly asked himself, and the answer is in the striding gallop of opener “If You Really Love Nothing,” the embellished skip ‘n’ bounce of “Stay in Touch” and the R&B swagger of closer “It Probably Matters.” Interpol have always been world-beaters at creating a feeling, but Marauder is where the feel is just as crucial. Paul may have stepped out of the shadows as a bassist, but he’s stepping into an even brighter light as a songwriter. During Interpol’s previous albums, the singer largely kept himself out of his own work, preferring to fill his lyrics with detached thoughts, characters, and observations, often phrased in abstract. But more than 20 years on since forming at NYU, the frontman is finally allowing himself to play a role in his own stories.
*“Excited for you to sit back and experience *Golden Hour* in a whole new, sonically revolutionized way,” Kacey Musgraves tells Apple Music. “You’re going to hear how I wanted you to hear it in my head. Every layer. Every nuance. Surrounding you.”* Since emerging in 2013 as a slyly progressive lyricist, Kacey Musgraves has slipped radical ideas into traditional arrangements palatable enough for Nashville\'s old guard and prudently changed country music\'s narrative. On *Golden Hour*, she continues to broaden the genre\'s horizons by deftly incorporating unfamiliar sounds—Bee Gees-inspired disco flourish (“High Horse”), pulsating drums, and synth-pop shimmer (“Velvet Elvis”)—into songs that could still shine on country radio. Those details are taken to a whole new level in Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos. Most endearing, perhaps, is “Oh, What a World,” her free-spirited ode to the magic of humankind that was written in the glow of an acid trip. It’s all so graceful and low-key that even the toughest country purists will find themselves swaying along.
Speaking to *The Guardian*, British singer-songwriter-producer Dev Hynes described his fourth LP under the Blood Orange name as “an exploration into my own and many types of black depression, an honest look at the corners of black existence, and the ongoing anxieties of queer/people of color.” Recorded on-the-go in studios around the world (Tokyo, Florence, Copenhagen) with whatever was lying around at the time (“If I go to a studio and they only have an acoustic guitar, then I’ll go with that.”), *Negro Swan* splices Hynes’ impressionistic R&B with recorded conversation and spoken word, the most haunting snippets taken from writer and transgender-rights activist Janet Mock (“Family”) and a surprisingly vulnerable Puff Daddy (“Hope”). The result is dreamy but incisive, melancholic but alive, lonesome but communal. “When you wake up/It’s not the first thing you wanna know,” he sings on “Charcoal Baby,” a highlight. “Can you still count/All the reasons that you’re not alone?”
Producer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, songwriter and vocalist Devonte Hynes returns with his fourth album as Blood Orange, Negro Swan. Raised in England, Hynes started out as a teenage punk in the UK band Test Icicles before releasing two orchestral acoustic pop records as Lightspeed Champion. In 2011, he released Coastal Grooves, the first of three solo albums under the moniker Blood Orange. His last album, Freetown Sound, was released to critical acclaim in 2016, and saw Hynes defined as one of the foremost musical voices of his time, receiving comparisons to the likes of KendrickLamar and D’Angelo for his own searing and soothing personal document of life as a black man in America. He has collaborated with Solange Knowles, FKA Twigs, and many other artists, and was recently one of four artists invited to the Kennedy Center to perform alongside Philip Glass. In addition to his production work, he scored the film Palo Alto, directed by Gia Coppola and starring James Franco. Hynes’ newest album, Negro Swan, was written and produced by Hynes. Says Hynes: "My newest album is an exploration into my own and many types of black depression, an honest look at the corners of black existence, and the ongoing anxieties of queer/people of color. A reach back into childhood and modern traumas, and the things we do to get through it all. The underlying thread through each piece on the album is the idea of HOPE, and the lights we can try to turn on within ourselves with a hopefully positive outcome of helping others out of their darkness."
In an interview with the BBC in 2018, Iggy Pop called Mitski “probably the most advanced American songwriter that I know”—a rave that briefly tempted the Japan-born, New York-based singer to call it a career. “I thought maybe it would be best to quit music now that I’d gotten to the whole point of it, which is to be known by your personal saints,” Mitski tells Apple Music. “Very unfortunately, I can’t seem to quit music.” But even with a widening chorus of cosigns—and a recent stint opening for Lorde in stadiums and arenas—Mitski revels in solitude on her fifth album. The 14 tracks feature precise thoughts on loneliness and self-discovery, encased in ambient textures (“Blue Light,” “Come into the Water,” “A Horse Named Cold Air”) and tempos that range from dance music (“Nobody”) to pensive balladry (“Two Slow Dancers”). On the latter—one of her favorites on the album—she put old anxieties to rest. “For once, I didn’t let my deep-seated fear of losing someone’s attention interfere with doing what I felt was best for a song,” Mitski explains, “which was to make it slow, long, and minimal.” “Washing Machine Heart” uses the metaphor of laundering a partner’s soiled kicks for sonic and lyrical inspiration. “I imagined that’s the sound of someone’s heart going wild,” she explains, “and I thought about what would create that painful sort of exhilaration.” From the dejected sigh that opens “Me and My Husband,” an unflinching peek into relationship doldrums and suburban ennui, to the alone-on-Christmas levels of “Nobody” that Morrissey himself would eat a bacon sandwich to reach, Mitski knows her album is a mood: “I guess I\'m just incredibly tapped into that specific human condition.”
Mitski Miyawaki has always been wary of being turned a symbol, knowing we’re quick to put women on pedestals and even quicker to knock them down. Nonetheless, after the breakout success of 2016’s 'Puberty 2', she was hailed as the new vanguard of indie rock, the one who would save the genre from the white dudes who’ve historically dominated it. Her carefully crafted songs have often been portrayed as emotionally raw, overflowing confessionals from a fevered chosen girl, but in her fifth album, 'Be The Cowboy', Mitski introduces a persona who has been teased but never so fully present until now—a woman in control. “It’s not like it just pours out,” she says about her songwriting, “it’s not like I’m a vessel. For this new record, I experimented in narrative and fiction.” Though she hesitates to go so far as to say she created full-on characters, she reveals she had in mind “a very controlled icy repressed woman who is starting to unravel. Because women have so little power and showing emotion is seen as weakness, this ‘character’ clings to any amount of control she can get. Still, there is something very primordial in her that is trying to find a way to get out.” Since 'Puberty 2' was released to widespread acclaim, ultimately being named one of the best albums of 2016 by Rolling Stone, TIME, Pitchfork, The Guardian, Entertainment Weekly, New York Times, NPR, and SPIN, Mitski has been touring nonstop. She’s circled the globe as the headliner, as well as opening for The Pixies, and most recently, Lorde. The less glamorous, often overlooked aspect of being a rising star is the sheer amount of work that goes into it. “I had been on the road for a long time, which is so isolating, and had to run my own business at the same time,” Mitski explains, “a lot of this record was me not having any feelings, being completely spent but then trying to rally myself and wake up and get back to Mitski. I was feeling really nihilistic and trying to make pop songs.” We want our artists to be strong but we also expect them to be vulnerable. Rather than avoiding this dilemma, Mitski addresses directly the power that comes from appearing impenetrable and loneliness that follows. In 'Be The Cowboy', Mitski delves into the loneliness of being a symbol and the loneliness of being someone, and how it can feel so much like being no one. The opening song, “Geyser,” introduces us to a woman who can no longer hold it in. She’s about to burst, unleashing a torrent of desire and passion that has been building up inside. While recording the album with her long-time producer Patrick Hyland - “little by little in multiple studios between tours” - the pair kept returning to “the image of someone alone on a stage, singing solo with a single spotlight trained on them in an otherwise dark room. For most of the tracks, we didn’t layer the vocals with doubles or harmonies, to achieve that campy ‘person singing alone on stage’ atmosphere. We also made the music swell louder than the main vocals and left in vocal errors like when my voice breaks in “Nobody,” right when the band goes quiet, all for a similar effect.” Not a departure so much as an evolution forward from previous albums, Mitski was careful this time to not include much distorted guitar because “that became something people recognized me for, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t repeat myself or unintentionally create a signature sound.” The title of the album “is a kind of joke,” Mitski says. “There was this artist I really loved who used to have such a cowboy swagger. They were so electric live. With a lot of the romantic infatuations I’ve had, when I look back, I wonder, Did I want them or did I want to be them? Did I love them or did I want to absorb whatever power they had? I decided I could just be my own cowboy.” There is plenty of buoyant swagger to the album, but just as much interrogation into self-mythology. The music swerves from the cheerful to the plaintive. Mournful piano ballads lead into deceptively up-tempo songs like “Nobody” where our cowboy admits, “I know no one will save me/ I just need someone to kiss”. The self-abasement of desire is strewn across these 14 songs as our heroine seeks out old lovers for secret trysts that end in disappointment, and cannot help but indulge in the masochistic pleasure of blowing up the stability of long-term partnership. In “A Pearl” Mitski sings of how intoxicating it is to hold onto pain. “I wrote so many songs about being in love and being hurt by love. You think your life is horrible when you’re heartbroken, but when you no longer have love or heartbreak in your life, you think, wasn’t it nice when things still hurt? There’s a nostalgia for blind love, a wonderful heady kind of love.” Infused with a pink glow and mysterious blue light, the performer in Be The Cowboy makes a pact with her audience that the show must go on, but as we draw nearer to the end, a charming ditty recedes into ghostly, faded melancholia, as an angelic voice breaks through to make direct communication. “Two Slow Dancers” closes out the album in a school gymnasium, though we’re no longer in the territory of adolescence. Instead, we’re projected into the future where a pair of old lovers reunite. “They used have something together that is no longer there and they’re trying to relive it in a dance, knowing that they’ll have to go home and go back to their lives.” It’s funny how only the very old and the very young are permitted to indulge openly in dreams, encouraged to reflect and dwell in poetry. In making an record that is about growing old while Mitski herself is still young, a soft truth emerges: sometimes we feel oldest when we are still young and sometimes who we were when we were young never goes away, leaving behind a glowing pearl that we roll around endlessly in the dark. --Jenny Zhang
"Freedom's Goblin" flies us around the soundworld of Ty Segall in nineteen tracks, allowing him to do a bit everything for the free and the goblins of Freedom alike! Deep impact rock of all shapes and sizes and some of the most violent, passionate, funny and free pop songs of 2018.
German electronic producer DJ Koze has always been a self-selecting outsider, the kind of artist who sits blissfully on the sidelines of the big picture while the world passes him by. His third proper studio album unfolds like a daydream: breezy, sunny, and strangely beautiful, filled with ideas that don’t make sense until they suddenly—thrillingly—do. As with 2013’s *Amygdala* (as well as his endlessly inventive DJ sets and remixes), the style here is curiously out of time, touching on house (“Pick Up”), hip-hop (“Colors of Autum”), and downtempo soul (“Scratch That”), all with a slightly psychedelic twist that keeps everything hovering an inch or two off the floor. Fashion is fine, but it’s no match for a muse.
Back when he was still one-half of Clipse, Pusha-T dazzled listeners of the Virginia duo\'s mixtape series *We Got It 4 Cheap* by annihilating popular beats of the day. The project\'s sole criticism was that the production was already so good, it could carry anyone. *DAYTONA*, copiloted by hip-hop production genius Kanye West, upends that conceit, with contemporary boom-bap built from luscious soul samples that would swallow a lesser MC. With Pusha at the absolute top of his game, *DAYTONA* is somehow more than the sum of its parts, a fact the rapper acknowledges proudly on “The Games We Play”: “To all of my young n\*\*\*\*s/I am your Ghost and your Rae/This is my Purple Tape.”
The title of Spiritualized’s eighth album is the back half of a line from Kurt Vonnegut’s *Slaughterhouse-Five*: “Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.” In a tweet, Pierce explained that starting with *And* “presupposes that something, or everything, has happened before.” After almost four decades making music—often in response to personal crises including heartbreak, addiction, disease, and near-death experiences—everything *has* happened to Pierce before. *And Nothing Hurt* was born from a different kind of upheaval. In the flush ’90s, labels could let a band like Spiritualized splurge on ample studio time, 120 live musicians for a single track, and entire choirs. No longer afforded those luxuries, Pierce learned to use Pro Tools, painstakingly sampling sounds from classical recordings, and managed, with just a handful of backing musicians, to create an album every bit as gargantuan and emotional as ever. Pierce deftly moves between intimacy and maximalism, combining shoegaze, free jazz, somber ballads, lavish orchestration, and synths in ways that shouldn’t work, but do. “Let’s Dance” begins wistful and dainty, gradually building into a wild, brassy carnival. Likewise, the joyful “On the Sunshine” morphs from warm flutes into a cacophony of squealing horns and ecstatic jazz. *And Nothing Hurts* is a profoundly self-aware album acknowledging age, loss, and mortality. On “The Prize,” Pierce sings, “Gonna be shooting like a star across the sky/Gonna burn brightly for a while/Then you’re gone.”
In 2018, Low will turn twenty-five. Since 1993, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker—the married couple whose heaven-and-earth harmonies have always held the band’s center—have pioneered a subgenre, shrugged off its strictures, recorded a Christmas classic, become a magnetic onstage force, and emerged as one of music’s most steadfast and vital vehicles for pulling light from our darkest emotional recesses. But Low will not commemorate its first quarter-century with mawkish nostalgia or safe runs through songbook favorites. Instead, in faithfully defiant fashion, Low will release its most brazen, abrasive (and, paradoxically, most empowering) album ever: Double Negative, an unflinching eleven-song quest through snarling static and shattering beats that somehow culminates in the brightest pop song of Low’s career. To make Double Negative, Low reenlisted B.J. Burton, the quietly energetic and adventurous producer who has made records with James Blake, Sylvan Esso, and The Tallest Man on Earth in recent years while working as one of the go-to figures at Bon Iver’s home studio, April Base. Burton recorded Low’s last album, 2015’s Ones and Sixes, at April Base, adding might to many of its beats and squelch and frisson beneath many of its melodies. This time, though, Sparhawk, Parker, and bassist Steve Garrington knew they wanted to go further with Burton and his palette of sounds, to see what someone who is, as Sparhawk puts it, “a hip-hop guy” could truly do to their music. Rather than obsessively write and rehearse at home in Duluth, Minnesota, they would often head southeast to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, arriving with sketches and ideas that they would work on for days with Burton. Band and producer became collaborative cowriters, building the pieces up and breaking them down and building them again until their purpose and force felt clear. As the world outside seemed to slide deeper into instability, Low repeated this process for the better part of two years, pondering the results during tours and breaks at home. They considered not only how the fragments fit together but also how, in the United States of 2018, they functioned as statements and salves. Double Negative is, indeed, a record perfectly and painfully suited for our time. Loud and contentious and commanding, Low fights for the world by fighting against it. It begins in pure bedlam, with a beat built from a loop of ruptured noise waging war against the paired voices of Sparhawk and Parker the moment they begin to sing during the massive “Quorum.” For forty minutes, they indulge the battle, trying to be heard amid the noisy grain, sometimes winning and sometimes being tossed toward oblivion. In spite of the mounting noise, Sparhawk and Parker still sing. Or maybe they sing because of the noise. For Low, has there ever really been a difference?
On their first full-length the Melbourne five-piece take the world’s chaos and confidently transform it into something to feel sunny about. Named after an immense mine in Australia, *Hope Downs* is a debut with electrifying immediacy. But like its vast namesake, it holds depth and darkness beneath the surface. On “Mainland,” Tom Russo reflects on the plight of refugees, singing “We are just paper boats” beneath dreamy vocal harmonies. “An Air Conditioned Man,” meanwhile, juxtaposes the tyranny of consumerism with top-down, road-trip rock.
It's rare that a band's debut album sounds as confident and self-assured as Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever's Hope Downs. To say that the first full-length from the Melbourne quintet improves on their buzz-building EPs from the last few years would be an understatement: the promise those early releases hinted at is fully realized here, with ten songs of urgent, passionate guitar pop that elicit warm memories of bands past, from the Go-Betweens' jangle to the charmingly lo-fi trappings of New Zealand's Flying Nun label. But don't mistake Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever for nostalgists: Hope Downs is the sound of a band finding its own collective voice. The hard-hitting debut album is a testament to Rolling Blackouts C.F.’s tight-knit and hard-working bonafides. Prior to forming the band in 2013, singers/guitarists Fran Keaney, Tom Russo, and Joe White had played together in various garage bands, dating back to high school. When Rolling Blackouts C.F. started, with Joe Russo [Tom’s brother] on bass, Marcel [Tussie, Joe White's then-housemate] on drums, the chemistry was immediate. After a split EP with You Yangs (another Russo brother's band), released in the form of a frisbee, they self-released Talk Tight in 2015, which Sydney-based record label Ivy League gave a wider release the following year. Talk Tight garnered plaudits from critics, including legendary rock scribe Robert Christgau. In 2017, Sub Pop released The French Press EP, bringing the band's chugging and tuneful non-linear indie rock to the rest of the world as they settled into their sound with remarkable ease. Hope Downs was largely written over the past year in the band's Melbourne rehearsal room where their previous releases were also written and recorded. The band's core trio of songwriters hunkered down and wrote as the chaos of the world outside unavoidably seeped into the songwriting process. "We were feeling like we were in a moment where the sands were shifting and the world was getting a lot weirder. There was a general sense that things were coming apart at the seams and people around us were too,” Russo explains. The album title, taken from the name of a vast open cut mine in the middle of Australia, refers to the feeling of “standing at the edge of the void of the big unknown, and finding something to hold on to.” With the help of engineer/producer Liam Judson and his portable setup, the band recorded Hope Downs live, and co-produced ten guitar pop gems over the course of two weeks in Northern New South Wales during the winter of 2017. Hope Downs possesses a robust full-band sound that's all the more impressive considering the band's avoidance of traditional recording studios. If you loved Talk Tight and The French Press, you certainly won't be disappointed here—but you might also be surprised at how the band’s sound has grown. There's a richness and weight to these songs that was previously only hinted at, from the skyscraping chorus of “Sister's Jeans” to the thrilling climax of album closer “The Hammer.” Hope Downs is as much about the people that populate the world around us—their stories, perspectives, and hopes in the face of disillusionment—as it is about the state of things at large. It's a record that focuses on finding the bright spots at a time when cynicism all too often feels like the natural state. Rolling Blackouts C.F. are here to remind us to keep our feet on the ground—and Hope Downs is as delicious a taste of terra firma as you're going to get from a rock band right now.
Father John Misty’s fourth LP is not a happy one. *God’s Favorite Customer* was written during a two-month period when singer/songwriter Joshua Tillman was, as he sings on the glum title track, “on the straits.” Temporarily separated from his wife and struggling, he delivers a literal plea against suicide on “Please Don’t Die” and unravels in a hotel lobby on the twisted folk-pop song “Mr. Tillman.” Heartache has produced his most honest, anguished work yet—but even at its most morose, Father John Misty\'s music is still captivating.
Written largely in New York between summer 2016 and winter 2017, Josh Tillman’s fourth Father John Misty LP, 'God’s Favorite Customer', reflects on the experience of being caught between the vertigo of heartbreak and the manic throes of freedom. 'God’s Favorite Customer' reveals a bittersweetness and directness in Tillman’s songwriting, without sacrificing any of his wit or taste for the absurd. From “Mr. Tillman,” where he trains his lens on his own misadventure, to the cavernous pain of estrangement in “Please Don’t Die,” Tillman plays with perspective throughout to alternatingly hilarious and devastating effect. “We’re Only People (And There’s Not Much Anyone Can Do About That)” is a meditation on our inner lives and the limitations we experience in our attempts to give and receive love. It stands in solidarity with the title track, which examines the ironic relationship between forgiveness and sin. Together, these are songs that demand to know either real love or what comes after, and as the album progresses, that entreaty leads to discovering the latter’s true stakes. 'God's Favorite Customer' was produced by Tillman and recorded with Jonathan Rado (Foxygen), Dave Cerminara (Jonathan Wilson, Foster the People, Conor Oberst), and Trevor Spencer (FJM). The album features contributions from Haxan Cloak, Natalie Mering of Weyes Blood, longtime collaborator Jonathan Wilson, and members of Misty’s touring band.
Neko Case’s ‘Hell-On,’ an indelible collection of colorful, enigmatic storytelling that features some of her most daring, through-composed arrangements to date, is available now. Produced by Neko Case, ‘Hell-On’ is simultaneously her most accessible and most challenging album, in a rich and varied career that’s offered plenty of both. ‘Hell-On’ is rife with withering self-critique, muted reflection, anthemic affirmation and Neko’s unique poetic sensibility. Neko enlisted Bjorn Yttling of (Peter Bjorn & John) to co-produce 6 tracks with her in Stockholm, Sweden where she mixed the 12 track album with Lasse Martin. ‘Hell-On’ features performances by Beth Ditto, Mark Lanegan, k.d. Lang, AC Newman, Eric Bachmann, Kelly Hogan, Doug Gillard, Laura Veirs, Joey Burns and many more.
For some, Gaz Coombes is just the mutton-chopped likely lad who peaked with Supergrass mega-single “Alright”. Those people are missing out. The trio were perhaps Britpop’s most underrated band (the mature, but commercially modest, later releases deserve rediscovery) and their talisman’s solo career has continued to burnish a robust and quietly brilliant talent. *World’s Strongest Man* is Coombes’ most confident solo album yet—a satisfying coalition of *Here Come the Bombs*’ trippy chutzpah and Mercury Prize-nominated *Matador*’s melodic sure-footedness. Highlights abound (the Berlin electro shuffle of “Deep Pockets”; “In Waves” and its sinister groove), but this is a carefully layered record to play right through.
“Before, I thought I ran on a chaos engine,” Florence Welch told the *Guardian* in June 2018, shortly ahead of the release of *High as Hope*. “But the more peaceful I am, the more I can give to the work. I can address things I wasn’t capable of doing before.” This newfound openness gives her band’s fourth LP an unvarnished vulnerability. “Hunger” will sit proudly among her most personal and beautiful songs, while “South London Forever” and “Grace” both make peace with the excesses that decorated her rise to fame. Such lyrical heft affords the Londoners a chance to explore a more delicate, restrained sound, but there’s still space for Welch to blow the roof off. A fiery confessional that majestically takes to the skies and forms the album’s centerpiece, “100 Years” uncorks some vintage Florence. No one, we’re reminded, chronicles sadness quite so exquisitely, or explosively.
Music for the weak. Comprised of vocalist Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty, and drummer Charlie Forbes, the London-based five-piece began as school boys. From the outset, Shame built the band up from a foundation of DIY ethos while citing Eddy Current Suppression Ring and The Fall among their biggest musical influences. Utilising both the grit and sincerity of that musical background, shame carved out a niche in the South London music scene and then barrelled fearlessly into the angular, thrashing post-punk that would go on to make up Songs of Praise, their Dead Oceans debut. From “Gold Hole,” a tongue-in-cheek take-down of rock narcissism, to lead single “Concrete” detailing the overwhelming moment of realising a relationship is doomed, to the frustrated “Tasteless” taking aim at the monotony of people droning through their day-to-day, Songs of Praise never pauses to catch its breath.
Aviary is an epic journey through what Julia Holter describes as “the cacophony of the mind in a melting world.” Out on October 26th via Domino, it’s the Los Angeles composer’s most breathtakingly expansive album yet, full of startling turns and dazzling instrumental arrangements. The follow-up to her critically acclaimed 2015 record, Have You in My Wilderness, it takes as its starting point a line from a 2009 short story by writer Etel Adnan: "I found myself in an aviary full of shrieking birds." It’s a scenario that sounds straight out of a horror movie, but it’s also a pretty good metaphor for life in 2018, with its endless onslaught of political scandals, freakish natural disasters, and voices shouting their desires and resentments into the void Aviary, executive produced by Cole MGN and produced by Holter and Kenny Gilmore, combines Holter's slyly theatrical vocals and Blade Runner-inspired synth work with an enveloping palette of strings and percussion that reveals itself, and the boundless scope of her vision, over the course of fifteen songs. Holter was joined by Corey Fogel (percussion), Devin Hoff (bass), Dina Maccabee (violin, viola, vocals), Sarah Belle Reid (trumpet), Andrew Tholl (violin), and Tashi Wada (synth, bagpipes).
Swapping producer Chris Coady for Spaceman 3\'s Pete \"Sonic Boom\" Kember, Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand fully embrace their bliss on *7*, their haziest, dreamiest album yet. They move seamlessly from meditative to trippy, adopting swelling, stately, Spector-swilling-martinis-with-Eno arrangements on \"Last Ride\" and entering a reverb-drenched citadel of synths on \"L\'Inconnue.” Seeming more unabashedly themselves than ever, this is the sound of Beach House doubling down on the aqueous dream-pop perfection that made them indie heroes in the first place.
7 is our 7th full-length record. At its release, we will have been a band for over 13 years. We have now written and released a total of 77 songs together. Last year, we released an album of b-sides and rarities. It felt like a good step for us. It helped us clean the creative closet, put the past to bed, and start anew. Throughout the process of recording 7, our goal was rebirth and rejuvenation. We wanted to rethink old methods and shed some self-imposed limitations. In the past, we often limited our writing to parts that we could perform live. On 7, we decided to follow whatever came naturally. As a result, there are some songs with no guitar, and some without keyboard. There are songs with layers and production that we could never recreate live, and that is exciting to us. Basically, we let our creative moods, instead of instrumentation, dictate the album’s feel. In the past, the economics of recording have dictated that we write for a year, go to the studio, and record the entire record as quickly as possible. We have always hated this because by the time the recording happens, a certain excitement about older songs has often been lost. This time, we built a "home" studio, and began all of the songs there. Whenever we had a group of 3-4 songs that we were excited about, we would go to a “proper” recording studio and finish recording them there. This way, the amount of time between the original idea and the finished song was pretty short (of the album’s 11 songs, 8 were finished at Carriage House in Stamford, CT and 2 at Palmetto Studio in Los Angeles). 7 didn’t have a producer in the traditional sense. We much preferred this, as it felt like the ideas drove the creativity, not any one person’s process. James Barone, who became our live drummer in 2016, played on the entire record. His tastes and the trust we have in him really helped us keep rhythm at the center of a lot of these songs. We also worked with Sonic Boom (Peter Kember). Peter became a great force on this record, in the shedding of conventions and in helping to keep the songs alive, fresh and protected from the destructive forces of recording studio over-production/over-perfection. The societal insanity of 2016-17 was also deeply influential, as it must be for most artists these days. Looking back, there is quite a bit of chaos happening in these songs, and a pervasive dark field that we had little control over. The discussions surrounding women’s issues were a constant source of inspiration and questioning. The energy, lyrics and moods of much of this record grew from ruminations on the roles, pressures and conditions that our society places on women, past and present. The twisted double edge of glamour, with its perils and perfect moments, was an endless source (see “L’Inconnue,” “Drunk in LA,” “Woo,” “Girl Of The Year,” “Last Ride”). In a more general sense, we are interested by the human mind's (and nature’s) tendency to create forces equal and opposite to those present. Thematically, this record often deals with the beauty that arises in dealing with darkness; the empathy and love that grows from collective trauma; the place one reaches when they accept rather than deny (see “Dark Spring,” “Pay No Mind,” “Lemon Glow,” “Dive,” “Black Car,” “Lose Your Smile”). The title, 7, itself is simply a number that represents our seventh record. We hoped its simplicity would encourage people to look inside. No title using words that we could find felt like an appropriate summation of the album. The number 7 does represent some interesting connections in numerology. 1 and 7 have always shared a common look, so 7 feels like the perfect step in the sequence to act as a restart or “semi-first.” Most early religions also had a fascination with 7 as being the highest level of spirituality, as in "Seventh Heaven.” At our best creative moments, we felt we were channeling some kind of heavy truth, and we sincerely hope the listeners will feel that. Much Love, Beach House
“But there’s a fortune to be had/From telling people you’re sad,” Bill Ryder-Jones sings on pensive opener “There’s Something on Your Mind.” As sardonic as that lyric is, the former Coral guitarist has said he writes better songs when he’s unhappy—and his solo career has been a compelling testament to that. After 2011’s *If…*, an orchestral score inspired by Italian novelist Italo Calvino’s *If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler*, he retired to his old bedroom in his mother’s house to record the hushed, soul-baring folk of 2013’s *A Bad Wind Blows in My Heart* before adding ’90s alt-rock to the palette for *West Kirby County Primary* in 2015. On *Yawn*, he kneads that mix into beautiful, expansive reflections on loss and regret. Softly struck drums and sighing cellos accompany hypnotically persistent guitar riffs as each track unfolds carefully and slowly—sorrow this unresolved takes time to express. His words are candid, occasionally barbed and witty: “I remember what we did and when/And the smell of your breath/And even all the names of your d\*ckhead friends” (“Time Will Be the Only Saviour”). With his fractured whisper, Ryder-Jones draws you so intimately into his world that it’s startling to finally hear another voice glide into the background of “John.”
Yawn is the fifth studio album. It was released in November 2018 under Domino Recording Co Ltd. “But there’s a fortune to be had/From telling people you’re sad,” Bill Ryder-Jones sings on pensive opener “There’s Something on Your Mind”. As sardonic as that lyric is, the former Coral guitarist has said he writes better songs when he’s unhappy—and his solo career has been a compelling testament to that. After 2011’s If…, an orchestral score inspired by Italian novelist Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, he retired to his old bedroom in his mother’s house to record the hushed, soul-baring folk of 2013’s A Bad Wind Blows in My Heart before adding ’90s alt-rock to the palette for West Kirby County Primary in 2015. On Yawn, he kneads that mix into beautiful, expansive reflections on loss and regret. Softly struck drums and sighing cellos accompany hypnotically persistent guitar riffs as each track unfolds carefully and slowly—sorrow this unresolved takes time to express. His words are candid, occasionally barbed and witty: “I remember what we did and when/And the smell of your breath/And even all the names of your d*ckhead friends” (“Time Will Be the Only Saviour”). With his fractured whisper, Ryder-Jones draws you so intimately into his world that it’s startling to finally hear another voice glide into the background of “John”.
If *ye*, Kanye West’s solo album released one week prior, was him proudly shouting about his superpower—bipolar disorder—from the peak of a snowcapped mountain, *KIDS SEE GHOSTS* is the fireside therapy session occurring at its base. Both Kid Cudi and West have dealt with controversy and mental illness throughout their intertwined careers. It’s all addressed here, on their long-awaited first joint album, with honesty and innate chemistry. Kanye’s production pulsates and rumbles beneath his signature confessional bars and religious affirmations, but, centered by Cudi’s gift for melodic depth and understated humility, his contributions, and the project overall, feel cathartic rather than bombastic and headline-grabbing. On “Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2),” the sequel to *ye* highlight “Ghost Town,” both men bellow, “Nothing hurts me anymore…I feel free” with such tangible, full-bodied energy, it feels as though this very recording was, in itself, a moment of great healing.
Lykke Li’s fourth album shifts away from the dream-poppy breakup ballads of 2014\'s *I Never Learn* toward airy, melancholic takes on trap and R&B. Despite the contemporary framing (the idea of sadness itself has become a topic of campy, meme-driven internet fascination), *so sad so sexy* feels less like a bandwagon jump than the work of a singer/songwriter committed to exploring blue moods in all their musical forms. It hints at girl-group pop (“utopia”), power ballads (“bad woman,” “so sad so sexy”), prewar torch songs, and the gilded ennui of artists like Lana Del Rey and Drake (“hard rain,” “deep end”). Wounded but quietly triumphant, *so sad* is the sound of the cloud—and its silver lining.
There had always been a burning sense of resistance baked into SOPHIE’s experimental soundscapes, which simultaneously honored and rejected the tropes and rules of mainstream pop. But the Scottish producer’s visionary debut album is an exhilarating escalation—a work that not only exploded expectations around song structure and form but conventional notions of gender, identity, and self, as well. *Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides* is sweeping and defiant, pinballing from glitchy rave cuts (“Ponyboy”) to ethereal pop elegies (“It’s Okay to Cry”) to ambient passages that feel practically spiritual (“Pretending”). Each left turn is an invitation to slip further into SOPHIE’S neon universe. In the hands of any other artist, such dizzying digital distortions would appear to warp reality. Here, though, they clarify it. Every synthetic vocal, slithering synth, zigzagging beat, and gleefully warped sample brings us closer to SOPHIE\'S truth. Some of the project’s headiest questions—those about body, being, and soul—seem to rest on a distant horizon the rest of the world hasn’t caught up to yet. “Immaterial,” a fizzing, maximalist hat-tip to Madonna, moves the goalposts even further, proposing a version of consciousness in which the material world is, in fact, only the beginning.
Theatricality has long been a part of Panic! At the Disco’s DNA. But following a 10-week run playing entrepreneur Charlie Price in *Kinky Boots* on Broadway, Panic!’s lone full-time member, Brendon Urie, has infused his unique brand of emo-pop with renewed song-and-dance-man vigor. Each track feels humongous, swirling with strings and shiny horns and topped with Urie’s now theater-tested voice. “Say Amen (Saturday Night)” and “(Fuck A) Silver Lining” are on par with PATD’s most grandiose hits, while “High Hopes” and “Hey Look Ma, I Made It” take inspiration for their brassiness from Urie\'s mother (“Mama said, ‘It’s uphill for oddities/Stranger crusaders ain’t ever wannabes’” goes one memorable line). Even the piano-and-strings ballad “Dying in LA” radiates enough charisma to reach the top deck.
On “Hurt Feelings,” the second song from his fifth studio album, *Swimming*, Mac Miller raps, “I paid the cost to see apostrophes, that means it’s mine/Keep to myself, taking my time.” The Pittsburgh-born MC has always been clever; on *Swimming*, he\'s also direct—particularly about the distance he’s kept from the public eye following a high-profile breakup and other troubles. But this isn\'t a breakup album; Miller says *Swimming* is a more complete picture of his life. “I\'m just talking about things that I\'m proud of myself for, things I\'m afraid of, or things that are just thoughts and emotions,” he told Beats 1 host Zane Lowe. “And I\'m like, \'Why is this interesting?\'” That same curiosity is freeing for Miller, who leans further into the singing he displayed on *The Divine Feminine*. Production-wise, he’s riding ultra-funky basslines courtesy of Thundercat and an altogether jazzy and danceable set overseen by producer Jon Brion (Kanye West, Fiona Apple).
Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow,” the most chantable song of 2017, introduced the Bronx MC’s lively around-the-way-girl persona to the world. Her debut album, *Invasion of Privacy*, reveals more of Cardi\'s layers, the MC leaning forcefully into her many influences. “I Like It,” featuring Bad Bunny and J Balvin, is a nod to her Afro-Caribbean roots, while “Bickenhead” reimagines Project Pat’s battle-of-the-sexes classic “Chickenhead” as a hustler’s anthem. There are lyrical winks at NYC culture (“Flexing on b\*tches as hard as I can/Eating halal, driving a Lam”), but Cardi also hits on universal moments, like going back and forth with a lover (“Ring”) and reckoning with infidelity (“Thru Your Phone”).
In the wake of the EU Referendum, Damon Albarn decided to travel around Britain to get a sense of a nation plunged into dramatic change. After reconvening with his The Good, the Bad & the Queen bandmates—Paul Simonon, Tony Allen, and Simon Tong—those meditative journeys fed into their second album, *Merrie Land*. It’s an impressionistic portrait of a conflicted, confused land, with funfair organs, choirs, and tugging melodies folded into eerie but beautiful blends of folk, dub, and pop. Albarn talks Apple Music through his pilgrimage and the “strange emotions” that inform the album. **It’s hard not to feel real sadness listening to this record. Is that the point?** I think so, maybe, but I think it’s, if you could call something this, a beautiful sadness. I don’t know what that kind of means. **On the title track, you sing, “This is not rhetoric/It comes from my heart/I love this country.” This record is trying to not be angry or bitter or take sides, right?** No, no, no, I’m not trying to break the family up. I’m trying to be honest and deal with those strange emotions, like love of place. Even though I’ve traveled, it’s fair to say, around the whole world, I always come back home. What’s driven me as a creative person to explore other climes and cultures is what I grew up with in this country. That was what’s special about this country: the sense of openness. That’s what we’re missing with all this hastiness to get stuff done because we decided we had to get it done by this point. That’s all I feel. **You visited various parts of Britain to get a sense of the nation, going beyond the big cities to towns, including ones from British folk tales such as Banbury. Is this record your pilgrimage?** I’d never been to St. Albans or Luton or Banbury. I hadn’t even really been to Oxford. There were things I was very aware of—big cultural landmarks—that I’d never visited. So, in that sense, *pilgrimage* is a good description. I found ghosts everywhere. *Merrie Land* is a ghostly record. You just have to tune into the dissonance and the resonance in each place and work from there, especially if we’re going to try and give an impression. **The songs take us from train rides past World War I cemeteries in France to heavy nights in Blackpool pubs. You’ve packed a lot in here.** Yeah! I’ve never written so many lyrics, so that was a breakthrough for me. It’s something I’d like to explore—more words. I suppose it goes back to Jack Kerouac. Back to Betjeman on the train, it’s got a strong sense of kinship with that, and people like Patrick Hamilton and George Orwell. **Three weeks before the release of *Merrie Land* you were still on tour with Gorillaz. How easy is it to switch between bands?** I just love making music, so it’s not that difficult. I had a strange four days: I finished the massive, euphoric gig in Mexico City \[with Gorillaz\] and then came back to a little room \[in the UK\] to rehearse for eight hours and go on national television. The only thing I regret is that we didn’t have a “work in progress” sign hanging over the microphone stand. Or cones and tape round us. We should’ve been wearing hi-vis jackets: “We haven’t quite built this place yet, but we’re definitely working at it.”
From the first jangling sunshine chords on opening track ‘Mango’, Silver Dollar Moments announces itself as a proper piece of indie pop goodness. Then, across 45 minutes, it takes all kinds of turns, into ESG-ish yips and funk, dreamy-arch harmonies, disco synth-pows and stoner bongos, unsettling submerged voices - with all that and more it still flows like a fountain of indie pop, fresh and catchy and altogether. The album features the singles ‘I Only Bought It For The Bottle,’ ‘Let Your Dogtooth Grow’ and ‘Blue Suitcase (Disco Wrist).’