Rough Trade's Albums of the Year 2018

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.

It’s a good eight minutes and most of two songs into the second album from this Houston, Texas trio before you hear any vocals, and by that point they may well be superfluous. Khruangbin (the name translates from Thai as “flying engine” or “airplane” and the former feels particularly fitting) make immaculate instrumental tracks that effortlessly accommodates psychedelic rock, Thai funk, Caribbean grooves, vintage funk, and Middle Eastern riffs. What makes *Con Todo El Mundo* (another translation, this time from Spanish: “for all the world”) so pleasurable is the way those touchstones tie together to create a singular, gratifying sound. Bassist Laura Lee deftly moves in and out of the beat, guitarist Mark Speer supplies long and supple runs, and drummer Donald “DJ” Johnson places a funk kick on the rhythm as these songs unfurl without undue stress. Like gears on a car, the three-piece can shift up into the sharp, reverb-heavy bite of “Maria También” or slow into a nocturnal, jazzy drift on “August 10.” The feel is mellow, but it’s never merely easy listening; the shifting melodies and pinpoint drum parts keep you focused on the many possibilities of this sound.

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.

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.”

To record *All Melody*, Frahm designed his dream studio inside Berlin’s historic Funkhaus complex, rewiring the cables, installing a pipe organ, and building a custom mixing desk. Then, like a kid in a candy store, he created one of his most meticulous and adventurous albums yet. A delicate mix of ambient meditations (\"The Whole Universe Wants to be Touched”), wandering piano melodies (“My Friend the Forest”), and staccato, Latin-leaning grooves (“A Place,” “Kaleidoscope\"), it’s an absorbing study of atmosphere that\'s full of surprises.

For the past two years, Nils Frahm has been building a brand new studio in Berlin to make his 7th studio album titled All Melody, which will be released on January 26th, 2018 via Erased Tapes, before Nils embarks on his first world tour since 2015. Since the day Nils first encountered the impressive studio of a family friend, he had envisioned to create one of his own at such a large scale. Fast forward to the present day and Nils is now the proud host of Saal 3, part of the historical 1950s East German Funkhaus building beside the River Spree. It is here where he has spent most of his time deconstructing and reconstructing the entire space from the cabling and electricity to the woodwork, before moving on to the finer elements; building a pipe organ and creating a mixing desk all from scratch with the help of his friends. This is somewhere music can be nurtured and not neglected, and where he can somewhat fulfil his pursuit of presenting music to the world as close to his imagination as possible. His previous albums have often been accompanied with a story, such as Felt (2011) where he placed felt upon the hammers of the piano out of courtesy to his neighbours when recording late at night in his old bedroom studio, and the following album Screws (2012) when injuring his thumb forced him to play with only nine fingers. His new album is born out of the freedom that his new environment provided, allowing Nils to explore without any restrictions and to keep it All about the Melody. Despite being confined within the majestic four walls of the Funkhaus, buried deep in its reverb chambers, or in an old dry well in Mallorca, All Melody is, in fact, proof that music is limitless, timeless, and reflects that of Nils’ own capabilities. From a boy’s dream to resetting the parameters of music itself. Words from Nils, October 2017: “In the process of completion, any album not only reveals what it has become but, maybe more importantly, what it hasn't become. All Melody was imagined to be so many things over time and it has been a whole lot, but never exactly what I planned it to be. I wanted to hear beautiful drums, drums I've never seen or heard before, accompanied by human voices, girls, and boys. They would sing a song from this very world and it would sound like it was from a different space. I heard a synthesiser which sounds like a harmonium playing the All Melody, melting together with a line of a harmonium sounding like a synthesiser. My pipe organ would turn into a drum machine, while my drum machine would sound like an orchestra of breathy flutes. I would turn my piano into my very voice, and any voice into a ringing string. The music I hear inside me will never end up on a record, as it seems I can only play it for myself. This record includes what I think sticks out and describes my recent musical discoveries in the best possible way I could imagine.” The cover art was taken by photographer Lia Darjes in Nils’ new studio and designed by Torsten Posselt at FELD. A series of these in-studio photos will be included in a booklet with a copy of All Melody.

Following his recent signing to Ninja Tune, Leon Vynehall announces his debut album Nothing Is Still, released 15 June - a record that sees him digging deeper into the family history that has always inspired his most iconic tracks, whilst returning to his own musical roots. Nothing Is Still is, at its core, an album dedicated to Vynehall’s grandparents. Emigrating from a leafy south east U.K. to New York City in the 1960s, their seven-day journey via boat from Southampton to Brooklyn, and the stories that followed, have only truly come to light upon the passing of his grandfather four years ago. “I knew they had lived in the U.S. and heard many anecdotes, but it was only after Pops died and my Nan presented these polaroids of their time there; of her waitressing at the New York Mayor’s Ball in ’66, or Pops with horses on a ranch in Arizona, that she delved deeper into their story, and I started to become overtly inquisitive about it” Vynehall says, following in depth conversations with his Nan to find out as much as he could about this part of his family history that was - in a way that easily resonates with us all - seemingly hidden in plain sight. “I felt the need to document this period for her, and it all just sort of snowballed from there.” The result happened quite naturally, those early conversations going on to form an album of immense scale, physicality and wonder as well as two accompanying elements - a Novella and short films which expand the scope and context of the narrative. This is extended further through the use of visual artist Pol Bury’s ‘George Washington Bridge, NYC’ from his ‘Cinétisation’ collection as the album artwork; with permission granted to Vynehall by Bury's wife - the artwork was created in New York by Bury at the same time as the album’s story takes place. Clearly, that aforementioned feeling of exploration resonates with Vynehall creatively too. Vynehall has released two extended EP's so far, his 2014 breakthrough Music For The Uninvited (3024) - a record inspired by the funk, soul and hip-hop tapes his mum used to play on car journeys which finished the year on a plethora of 'Best of the Year' lists including Pitchfork, FACT and Resident Advisor who called it "one of the most eclectic and rewarding house records you'll hear all year" - and 2016's Rojus EP (Running Back) which saw Vynehall building more layers and broadening the depth of his music to widespread critical acclaim including DJ Mag's 'Album of the Year' and 'Best New Music' from Pitchfork for fan favourite single 'Blush'. On both, he was crafting luscious grooves that were destined to dominate dancefloors. Nothing Is Still however, is defiantly atmospheric and textural, and finds him harnessing his passion for early contemporary minimalist composers such as Gavin Bryars as well as records like Philip Glass’ Koyaanisqatsi and Terry Riley’s A Rainbow In Curved Air. Written and predominantly performed by Vynehall with additional musicians including a ten-piece string section arranged by Amy Langley, Finn Peters (saxophone and flute), and Sam Beste (piano) whom completed the final recording sessions that took place at Konk Studio’s - Nothing Is Still was mixed by Blue May in London before making its own transatlantic flight to New York, where it was mastered at Sterling Sound by Greg Calbi. As well as being respected for the strength of his musical output, Vynehall has a global reputation as a DJ and curator. He has hosted and curated all-night-long residencies worldwide and has become a mainstay at many festivals including Glastonbury, Field Day and Sonar. Much as Nothing Is Still explores new territory sonically, Vynehall will be performing the album with a brand new live set-up with dates TBA.

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).’

LUMP was born of good timing and predestined compatibility. It began one night in mid-June 2016, when Mike Lindsay – founding member of Tunng and Throws, and a prolific, Mercury prize-winning producer – was introduced to Grammy-nominated, Brit award-winning singer-songwriter Laura Marling after her show supporting Neil Young in London. On meeting, Lindsay and Marling discovered they had long been admirers of each other’s work. Lindsay had been busy for some months composing an intricate, ambitious new sound cycle. His compositional style had evolved over the course of years of musical experimentation with Tunng, and during his time spent producing other people’s records while living in Iceland. He had arrived at a remarkably visual, colourful sound – a heady blend of wonked-out guitars, Moog synths and pattering drums, set against droning, coiling clouds of flutes and voices. With the project in need of a lyricist and vocalist, Lindsay and Marling's meeting of minds seemed all the more fortuitous. He quickly invited her to step into his world, and a few days later they retreated into his subterranean London studio in order to unite their energies and create LUMP.  That world turned out to be somewhere Marling felt instinctively at home. Inspired by early-20th-century Surrealism and the absurdist poetry of Edward Lear and Ivor Cutler, she wanted to slice through the apparent emptiness of contemporary life. Her resulting creation is a bizarre but compelling narrative about the commodification of curated public personas, the mundane absurdity of individualism, and the lengths we go to escape our own meaninglessness. Perhaps the most direct manifestation of the album’s concept is its central song, Curse of the Contemporary. A steady, pulsing bassline divines a road snaking off towards the horizon -– a sense of gazing out of a car window as mountains and palm trees rush by. Marling begins: “If you should be bored in California / I’m sure I’m not the first to warn you,” and as the song goes on, her words drip with ever more cynicism for the new age: “We salute the sun / Because when the day is done / We can’t believe what we’ve become / Something else to prey upon.” Elsewhere, opening track Late to the Flight tells of a man dreaming about his own death – or perhaps the death of his carefully curated persona – after being advised not to dress in a manner he might regret: “Don’t wear your smiley face T-shirt tonight.”   The composers are keen to stress that LUMP is a creation that passed through them, and they look upon it parentally. It is their understanding that, now it has come into being, LUMP is the artist, and it will continue to create itself from here on. Lindsay and Marling will assist it as necessary. 

Composed of eight international artists recruited from all over the globe, London-based cooperative Superorganism made waves with 2017’s woozily addictive hit “Something for Your M.I.N.D”. For their debut the octet lift city sounds and place them center stage—expect revving engines, arcade clatters, and fizzing soda cans. It’s a hybrid of laidback dream-pop (“Reflections on the Screen”) and sunshine-soaked psychedelic jams (“Everybody Wants to Be Famous”) that radiates pure joy. These weird and wonderful anthems are ready to transport you to summer, whatever the weather.

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.

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

Exactly three years since the release of his last solo LP, JOHN GRANT returns with his new album Love Is Magic, released 12th October via Bella Union. “Each record I make is more of an amalgamation of who I am,” says John Grant. “The more I do this, the more I trust myself, and the closer I get to making what I imagine in my head.” Even when the Michigan-born man released his debut solo album Queen Of Denmark in 2010, Grant laced sumptuous soft-rock ballads with an array of spacey, wistful synthesiser sounds, increasingly adding taut, fizzing sequencers, nu-synth-disco settings and icy soundscapes to the mix on 2013’s Pale Green Ghosts and 2015’s Grey Tickles, Black Pressure. Now, with his fourth solo album Love Is Magic, Grant continues to evolve, creating his most electronic record yet, in collaboration with Benge (Ben Edwards), analogue synth expert/collector and a member of electronic trio Wrangler, Grant’s collaborators earlier this year under the collective name of Creep Show on the album Mr Dynamite. Produced by Grant (together with Benge and Paul Alexander), and engineered by Benge at his Cornish studio, the diamond-hard, diamond-gleaming Love Is Magic, “is closer still to how I’ve always wanted my records to sound, but I didn’t know how to go about it,” Grant says. Already mentioned above, he also called on bassist Paul Alexander of Denton, Texas maestros Midlake, renewing a working relationship that began on Queen Of Denmark. “Paul trained in music theory at UNT in Denton, Texas with an emphasis in Jazz and I knew he would come up with beautiful harmonies, so I unleashed him on the backing vocals,” Grant enthuses. “He comes up with interesting angles rather than the obvious and also plays some of the best bass lines I’ve ever heard.” Besides the quest for sound, “the lyrics, of course, continue to be very important to me,” says John. “They’re just snapshots of everyday life where myriad moods and every sort of horrible and hilarious occurrence one can imagine mix with the pedestrian resulting in the absurdity and beauty of life.” Anyone familiar with Grant’s story will recognise his battles - with addiction and health, with trusting love and relationships. From this turbulence he’s forged another riveting collection of often brutal diatribes and confessionals, where humour, fear, anxiety and anger overlap as Grant, with trademark candour, figuratively exposes the machinations of his saturated brain. It’s epitomised by the album’s brilliant opener ‘Metamorphosis’, almost as if his warring psyches are facing up to one another, as impervious synth-pop and brain-on-fire imagery melts into dream-ballad introspection and back to synth-backed mania. The human mind is further discombobulated by the concept of love – we crave it, obsess over it, and are invariably traumatised by it, as the album’s title track explores. “Love’s a shitshow that requires work, it’s not all lollipops and rainbows and ’67 Dodge Dart Hemis and STDs and macaroni and cheese and John Carpenter. But nothing can distract from the fact that, in spite of it all, love is still magic.” The magic of love also pervades two gorgeous, magisterial ballads toward the end of the album: ‘Is He Strange’ and ‘The Common Snipe’ - referring to the wader bird that makes a unique ‘bleating’ sound by rubbing its tail feathers together: “it’s about truly seeing another human being and not projecting onto them what you want them to be” says Grant. In the same elegant, eloquent fashion, the album’s heartbreaking finale ‘Touch & Go’ is another kind of love story, centred around Chelsea Manning, the former US soldier turned WikiLeaks activist who transitioned to a woman while in prison. “I was very intrigued by her incredible story,” says Grant. “What kind of strength does it takes to survive something like that while being decried as a traitor and a pervert for whom death is too good”. There’s much else to tell about Grant: how the demise of his first band The Czars led him to abandon music for five years before an instantly acclaimed solo career, chart success (Grey Tickles… went Top Five in the UK) and a Best International Male Solo Artist nomination at the 2014 BRITS alongside Eminem and Justin Timberlake. Sinead O’Connor and Tracey Thorn have guested on Grant’s records, he’s sung live with Alison Goldfrapp and Kylie Minogue, performed at the 2017 Songs Of Scott Walker (1967-70) BBC Prom, and co-written/sung on Hercules & Love Affair and Robbie Williams albums. Last Autumn he recorded the “Kindling” duet with Elbow then went on to tour with them this Spring. His music has been used in films such as Andrew Haigh’s drama Weekend and Daisy Asquith’s Queerama. In 2016, he fronted BBC Radio 4's Reimagining The City, taking listeners around Reykjavik, where Grant has lived since 2012; in April 2017 he curated North Atlantic Flux: Sounds from Smoky Bay in Hull, showcasing thrilling and innovative musicians from Scandinavia and Iceland. But that is the past, just as Grant’s autobiography, for publishers Little, Brown, is the future. The present is Love Is Magic, the latest installment in Grant’s astonishing story.

In November 2017, Young Fathers announced that they’d completed work on a new album. The trio – Alloysious Massaquoi, Graham ‘G’ Hastings and Kayus Bankole – marked the news by previewing a brand new song, ‘Lord’ and a subsequent accompanying video. Just like their previous standalone 2017 single ‘Only God Knows’ (written for the Trainspotting T2 film and described by director Danny Boyle as “the heartbeat of the film”), ‘Lord’ provided an enticing glimpse of what to expect from Young Fathers’ third full album; something typically unique and exhilarating, but leaner, more muscular and self-assured than ever before. Today, Young Fathers announce full details of that album. Titled Cocoa Sugar, the twelve track album will be released on 9th March 2018 via Ninja Tune and follows the group’s previous two albums; 2014’s Mercury Prize-winning DEAD and 2015’s White Men Are Black Men Too. Written and recorded throughout 2017 in the band’s basement studio and HQ, Cocoa Sugar sees Young Fathers operating with a newfound clarity and direction, and is without doubt their most confident and complete statement to date. To celebrate news of the new album, Young Fathers today reveal a brand new single ‘In My View’. Accompanied by a video directed by Jack Whiteley, ‘In My View’ is available now. Cocoa Sugar will be available on CD, LP, limited LP and via all digital services. It features a striking visual aesthetic, with cover photography from Julia Noni and creative direction from Tom Hingston.

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.

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.”

Having sprung from L.A.’s Odd Future collective, Matt Martians and Syd innately understand the dynamics of collaboration and ego management. So when The Internet’s third album, *Ego Death*, was nominated for a Grammy in 2016, all five members of the alt-R&B band dove into solo projects rather than crank out a follow-up. “I had a lot of music I needed to get out of my system that wouldn’t have made sense coming out under The Internet,” Syd told Beats 1 host Zane Lowe. “It just made us all feel a lot more free and open to each other’s ideas.” The result is a more sonically inventive and personally assured record, and the cohesiveness is evident in everything from the lyrics to the title. “Going out on our own got us battle wounds that we can all relate to,” said Syd. “We all move in a unit now.”

The Aussie dance-pop group know exactly how to start the party. In darkened bar just near heart of London, there’s a cartoon that’s come to life. While the rest of the city toils away watching the clock and waiting for home time, the bar staff here are working overtime to provide enough shots for their only customers – the living illustration that’s sprawled across table number 5. It’s a scene that needs to be seen to be believed. On one side, there’s a statuesque chap clad only in a pair of nothing-to-the-imagination hot pants sat next to a woman in a custom designed babydoll dress and shorts combo, it’s 6° outside. Facing them are two figures sat in silence; each veiled secretively in what look like a satanic beekeeper’s hat made of a material so black, the light seems to fall into it. The bar staff can’t work fast enough for them, shot after shot is delivered then downed but the demeanour never changes. Although the carnage going on is controlled for the time being (it’s 3pm after all – these people aren’t animals), there’s an air of nonchalance that seems to suggest that for them, it’s business time, all the time. It’s pure confidence, man. If Janet Planet, Sugar Bones, Clarence McGuffie and Reggie Goodchild weren’t a band already you’d be snapping at their heels demanding they form one before they left the bar. Fact is, they are. From Melbourne by way of Brisbane, Confidence Man are unarguably one of the hottest acts on the planet right now. A portable party that’s levelled dance floors and flattened festival crowds as it’s rolled out across the world, they are a machine custom designed to make you dance and lose your cool. How they formed is a matter of debate. Janet: “These guys (points to Clarence and Reggie, the veiled men) were real saddoes playing by themselves and I needed someone to play music with me. They were obsessed with trying to find someone cool and they saw me dancing in a club and were like, “We want that girl!” I knew if we were going to get anywhere, we needed a hot dude with a six-pack at the front of the stage to even things out because they were so damn ugly themselves. We were hanging out at the public pool one day and there was this hot pool guy cleaning the pool and dancing to the music in his head. He looked pretty good in hot pants and while his moves weren’t conventional, they had a certain flare. And now, we’re like mum and dad and these two are just our petulant kids.” *muffled disagreement from the veils* Sugar Bones: “Man, we’re all just trying to make it in this crazy world. *another shot goes down* It’s hard to work out what’s truth and what’s fiction when talking to Confidence Man – reality seems to bend around them with every glug of alcohol. They formed in Brisbane, four veteran musicians with no prior knowledge of the music scene they were entering. They moved into a big house together 1600 km away in Melbourne where the band took off at astonishing speed, thanks mainly to their full-force, unrelenting live show and their studio is in the study of their shared house. Even the factual information they share sounds outlandish – take, for instance, the tale of when they first realised the band had legs… Janet: “Golden Plains at the Meredith Supernatural Amphitheatre in Victoria. They’re incredibly picky about who they book. They initially didn’t want to book us because they didn’t think we were cool enough. Our manager convinced them to come see us and they booked us on the spot. We were playing at 2 in the afternoon and there was no one there, it was blazing sunshine. Then the arena started to fill and before we knew it there were 10,000 people in front of us, screaming, getting down, jumping back up.” Perhaps then the best way to drill right into the band’s psyche is through their debut album. Confident Music for Confident People sets eleven tales of 21st century ennui to irresistible, irrepressible dance music. The opening lines of Try Your Luck (“I must confess/I’ve been sleeping with your ex/’Cos I heard he was the best/I must confess/I never would have guessed he would get so obsessed… I’m not surprised”) set the tone perfectly for what follows. Here is a set of songs that take the kind of all-consuming interior monologues that bored, disaffected youth are wrestling with the world over and places them square in the middle of the dance floor before adding call-and-response choruses for good measure. You’d almost think it was made in some kind of sonic laboratory by crazed muso-scientists if you weren’t sat in front of the record’s unflappable, gloriously flamboyant creators on a wet Tuesday afternoon. Elsewhere, Sugar Bones effortlessly nails the snorting and cavorting lifestyle of fantasist rock stars “who think they’re hot shit” (Don’t You Know I’m In a Band) while on C.O.O.L. Party, Janet coolly brushes off her obsessive partner (a guy called Dave – “a dick surfer boy drug dealer who works on Wall Street”) to what sounds like a rocket powered futurist Tom Tom Club backing track. On Out the Window, the band reluctantly emerge blinking into the bleachy sunlight from a darkened house party while a driving Balaeric backing track that’s worthy of imperial phase Happy Mondays rolls out behind them; Better Sit Down Boy presents three and a half minutes of the most perfect pop music you’ll hear all year, a track so urgent you can almost feel the wind whipping past your head as it speeds by. Confident Music for Confident People is big and brash and bright as hell, like Dee-Lite tooled up and ready for our berserk modern times. The perfect embodiment of the characters that made it, the album manages to be both wildly ambitious and deceptively simple. Listening to it, one gets the impression that Confidence Man could go anywhere from here. Janet: “Eventually we want to record an EP for each person. You know… Clarence McGuffie takes you down memory lane, Sugar Bones sings the blues, that kind of thing. Five tracks from each person’s perspective. The series would keep going and getting darker when you get to the veil guys. Reggie’s tales from the world’s least glamorous toilet cubicles…” Sugar Bones: “We’re obviously pretty confident, and real confidence knows no bounds. I don’t think there’s any end to the ambition really. Janet Planet for President. She could run on the slogan ‘I’m The Best’.” Janet: “Basically, we’re all wankers. Nice wankers.” Sugar Bones: “Loveable wankers.” Clarence and Reggie: Nod agreeably It takes real confidence to speak up and say that. They’ll go far. Now, more shots please, barman.

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.”

Nothing is ever straightforward with Connan Mockasin, and nothing should ever be straightforward with Connan Mockasin. This riddled rule has never resounded more than on Jassbusters, Mockasin’s third album and first in five years. An unclassifiable, unconventional album that neither picks up from nor abandons the modes of 2013’s widely-embraced Caramel or its 2010 predecessor Forever Dolphin Love, Jassbusters foreshadows a five-part melodrama titled Bostyn ’n Dobsyn, directed by and staring Mockasin. Jassbusters soundtracks the unpredictable narrative of the television series in eclectic, electric ways. Whether bending genres for shits n’ giggles or collaborating with artists like James Blake (who might just appear on a Jassbusters track), MGMT, John Cale, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, Connan Mockasin has always maneuvered in mysterious ways. After touring with the likes of Radiohead and Neil & Liam Finn (Crowded House), the Kiwi R&B surrealist continues assembling a cult around his theater, nay spectacle, of life with Bostyn ’n Dobsyn screenings and Jassbusters performances throughout October and November 2018.

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.”

Clean presents Sophie Allison as a singular artist, wise beyond her years, with an emotional authenticity all her own. “It feels like my first real record,” says Allison. “It’s my first real statement.” It’s an emotional album, heavy on themes of growth, isolation, and change, but balanced by a lightness of touch, and with hooks to spare. Clean is a true step forward, a mature, powerful album from an artist just coming into her power.

Lily Allen has always been one of pop’s most absorbingly forthright stars. But the singer herself now criticizes her third album, 2014’s *Sheezus*, for lacking that honesty, telling Vulture.com that she was “writing music for people’s expectations rather than for me.” Follow-up *No Shame* redresses the balance by reflecting on her recently revealed divorce, parenthood, and the celebrity lifestyle with startling candour. Cloaked in dancehall-mottled pop and emotive balladry, her lyrics remain pin-sharp, evoking the scrutiny and isolation of fame: “If you go on record, saying that you know me/Then why am I so lonely?/’Cause nobody f\*cking phones me” (“Come On Then”). Lily’s clearly experienced difficult times, but they’ve helped inspire her most revealing album yet—and she still finds galvanizing energy in new love (“Pushing Up Daisies”) and the fight against the patriarchy (“Cake”).

Singer-songwriter Matthew Houck’s seventh studio album opens with a similar desert incantation as 2013’s *Muchacho*, but what he summons differs dramatically from the heartbreak that panged throughout his last album. For starters, parenthood has shifted his perspective, and he explores the experience on the ebullient, country-pop-rock of “New Birth in New England” as well as the meditative, pedal steel-twined “My Beautiful Boy.” But more than those milestones, he revels in his long-fought-for stability. “I stood out in the rain like the rain might come and wash my eyes clean,” he sings on the synth-driven “C’est La Vie No. 2.” Rather than wait for an answer from the heavens, Houck gets on with living, asserting, “I don’t stand out in the rain to have my eyes washed clean no more.” 

In the five years since Matthew Houck’s last record as Phosphorescent he fell in love, left New York for Nashville, became a father, built a studio from the ground up by hand, and became a father again. Oh, and somewhere along the way, he nearly died of meningitis. Life, love, new beginnings, death— “it’s laughable, honestly, the amount of ‘major life events’ we could chalk up if we were keeping score,” Houck says. “A lot can happen in five years.” On C’est La Vie, Houck’s first album of new Phosphorescent material since 2013’s gorgeous career defining and critically acclaimed Muchacho, he takes stock of these changes through the luminous, star-kissed sounds he has spent a career refining. By now, Houck has mastered the contours of this place, as intimate as it is grand, somewhere between dreamed and real, where the great lyrical songwriters meet experimental pioneers and somehow distill into the same person. It is Houck’s own personal musical cosmos, a mixture of the earthy and the wondrous, the troubled and the serene, and by now he commands it with depth and precision. When you ask Houck about the cumulative effect of all this life happening in such a short time, he turns philosophical: ”These significant moments in life can really make you feel your insignificance,” he says. "It's a paradox I guess, that these wildly profound events simultaneously highlight that maybe none of this matters at all..." On this album, Houck reckons with that void — the vanishing point where our individual significance melts into the stars — and sums it up thusly: C'est La Vie. From the album’s opening moments, Houck sings of this newfound landscape. Of the discovery of new paradigms and the disposal of those no longer useful. After the wordless, haunting Houck-choir opener of “Black Moon / Silver Waves”, he pointedly begins the title track “C’est La Vie No. 2” with the albums first lyrics: “I wrote all night / Like the fire of my words could burn a hole up to heaven / I don’t write all night burnin’ holes up to heaven no more.” "I was always pursuing this thing of Phosphorescent and becoming the artist that I wanted to become, that sometimes I didn’t even have a second for reflection,” Houck says of the hectic years spent creating, releasing and touring Muchacho. "I was plowing forward—just do, do, do and all else was secondary.” Not that this album exhibits any sense of settling down into complacency. On the contrary, this collection contains some of Houck’s most devastating works to date, but there’s a refreshing measured confidence that radiates throughout C’est La Vie. Sonically, C’est La Vie is his masterwork: Every sound, including his famously frayed, bemused voice, rings out as inviting and clear as a koi pond. Working in a studio he built from scratch (which certainly came with its own set of challenges) Houck once again set off to produce his own record, calling in musicians from his crack live band as well as friends new and old, and enlisting veteran Vance Powell to help mix the completed project. The writing process was more intuitive, less cerebral and with fewer revisions than anything he'd written before. It was a scary, liberating new approach, like painting with his eyes closed. "I let go of a lot of my writer-poet tricks, and let the lyrics be what they wanted to be,” he says. These lyrics marvel at life’s ability to uproot and re-deposit you into alien, revelatory landscapes: “If you’d have seen me last year, I’d have said, ‘I can’t even see you there from here.’” he sings, wryly, on “There From Here.” This has been one of Phosphorescent’s constant themes—the ever-present possibility for transformation. But for the first time, Houck seems to be laying down some burdens. “These rocks, they are heavy/I’ve been carrying them around all my days,” he sighs on the album’s closing ballad “These Rocks.” On that same song he also muses, with disarming forthrightness, about drinking: “I stayed drunk for a decade/I’ve been thinking of putting that stuff away.” The lyric makes Houck somewhat uncomfortable, both in its direct simplicity and its capacity to distract listeners into thinking he’d written a stereotypical “battle with the bottle” song. “I'm aware of how that verse resonates, but for me those lines take a backseat to the main driver of that song,” he says. “I originally assumed I'd rewrite and re-sing that lyric,” he says. "But the bones of that song were recorded live and it was the first time I ever played it. It was the first time the band ever heard it and I think it captured something perfect. And it was, y'know, true." So I had to ask myself, again, ‘Well, what is the point of what I’m doing here? I could re-record it but why not just let it be?” To hear Houck, he confronts this moment of mystery every time he records. “Oh yeah, this process is positively filled with moments where you go ‘What exactly the hell is it that I'm doing here?’” Houck laughs. “And the answer always comes back a resounding, ‘I don’t know.’” Ain't that just how it goes, C’est La Vie

Icelandic composer Olafur Arnalds mixes synths with acoustic strings and piano for his fourth solo album, the title track of which showcases pioneering new Stratus software that controls two self-playing, semi-generative player pianos. It’s a dreamlike soundworld that Arnalds juxtaposes with racing minimalist rhythms and pulsing electronic beats. The now-familiar use by post-classical artists of a muffled, close-miked upright piano has never sounded so sweet as it does in “saman,” while hypnotic, fluid textures of “they sink” envelop the velvet sound of a solo cello. Electronica provides the beating heart for the gently oscillating “ypsilon” before the final \"nyepi,\" one of Arnalds’ most introspective, affecting soundscapes.

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.”

Alex O’Connor’s 2017 debut is a work of remarkable maturity, but loaded with the blunt honesty of a teenager. His lyrics are candid confessions (“Untitled”) set to floaty jazz chords (“Waiting Room”) and florid soul grooves that betray a colorful musical imagination, as in the bossa-nova glee of “Apricot Princess.” Always on the move, his strange, unfolding song constructions, such as “Television / so Far so Good,” contain nimble and seamless leaps from rolling rock to chamber pop, with occasional rap interludes.

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?

“AAARTH” marks a transformative, near-psychedelic rebirth that channels long-held anger, soundtracking a chaotic global period of injustice and division, setting it against a deeply poignant backdrop of personal experiences and healing. Although the album came into being as the band travelled the globe and recorded in their mobile recording studio, the music intertwines the whispering hills of Wales with the otherworldly rainbow canyons of the Utah / Arizona border. “AAARTH” unites the personal with the mythical and symbolic, as Bryan continues; “We’ve definitely made a colourful, mystical collage with this record, partly because of our surroundings. Those multi-coloured sunsets & the primeval elements of nature in the Southwest – it’s emboldened our imaginations in the songwriting and the production. I love stories and seeing symbolism and meaning change with different cultures and interpretations. I see it in my lyrics, a lot of the imagery plays on being ambivalent because I’m often expressing a lot of things at once. That’s true of the title; it falls somewhere between a scream, an exaltation, a play on words, and then this motif of the bear (“arth” in Welsh) that spiritually represents strength, wisdom & healing.”