⭐ ESSENTIAL
Turning to AI for a new lyrical perspective, the band’s sixth album brings together phrases from Beowulf, 4chan, the teachings of Confucius and the complete terms and conditions of LinkedIn. — musicOMH
Lucy & Aaron is, at its heart, a series of careful decisions about when to unleash humour and when to wreak havoc. — The Quietus
The whole thing glows with a particular late-summer energy, its precise, golden hour arrangements hinting at the wide-open chill of fall. — Exclaim!
Images and references are flung at us in every densely packed line, ensuring many attentive replays from red-eyed music enthusiasts with scraggly beards. — Earmilk
This album will be many a rabid rock fan’s introduction to one of Ireland’s most vital bands. — The Quietus
⭐ ESSENTIAL
‘Comfort To Me’ sounds like it could be played in a rowdy Australian pub the band are used to – or a colossal arena. — Clash
⭐ ESSENTIAL
This is a gem of an album. Personal, honest and highly emotive, it tackles big questions; but most of all, it dares to be vulnerable. — Clash
⭐ ESSENTIAL
Scotland’s greatest exporters of sadcore return after a 16-year break-up with an irresistibly strong and delightfully maudlin comeback album that stands tall as one of their greatest works yet. — Spectrum Culture
This is Arca at her most garish and entertaining. — Loud and Quiet
⭐ ESSENTIAL
The Pakistan-born, Brooklyn-based composer draws from jazz, Hindustani classical, and folk to create a heartbreaking, exquisite document of the journey from grief to acceptance. — Pitchfork
⭐ ESSENTIAL
Weird, wonderful, hypnotic and catchy with a few dancefloor bangers that will surely make them clubland hotshots in the ever so near future… — Louder Than War
The boundless debut from the London-based artist is a delirious tug of war between pleasure and unease, shuttling between club sounds and psychedelic mind states with a steely, unbridled intensity. — Pitchfork
Azmari are a steamy big band, as capable of intimate, floating interludes as polyrhythmic bustle, and with a sultry atmosphere honouring their heroes. — Uncut
🌱 GREW ON ME
Backxwash returns with a tour-de-force of harrowing and hellish songcraft. — The Needle Drop
A collection of songs that has its sights squarely aimed at toxic masculinity, sexism and the emotional strain of unreliable relationships. This is all enrobed in a sonic mixture of peppy-pop-punk, jerky tropical rhythms and quiet/loud grunge motifs. — Northern Transmissions
⭐ ESSENTIAL
A polychromatic affair that zaps between skewed soul, wobbly electronics, progressive jazz and baile funk, the whole of Open Arms… is much larger than the sum of its parts. — Mojo
⭐ ESSENTIAL
For The First Time comes off as a wildly successful experiment and, much like Slint, it’s easy to wonder if Black Country, New Road will ever make anything remotely similar ever again. — Loud and Quiet
If anything, Forever in Your Heart is the freakish magnum opus of Black Dresses, sure to inspire the next generation of experimental musicians and fans. — Exclaim!
There’s not a single predictable second to be found on Cavalcade. — Uncut
On Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night, he dials down the theatrics, dials up the vintage rock, and leans into his best Bruce Springsteen impression. Surprisingly, it’s not nearly as bad as you might think. — Sputnikmusic
🏆 ALBUM OF THE YEAR
‘Private Reasons’ is Pernadas most ambitious album to date. It’s also his most rewarding. The songs are filled with luscious melodies. They feel familiar, but they aren’t. — Clash
Everything comes together in one gigantic and highly danceable carnival of sound. Every inch of the record is pushed firmly and defiantly into the red to create the most overwhelming experience possible. It’s one hell of a ride. — Louder Than War
Centred around 140 BPM, the album shifts from experimental ambience to skippy garage through lumbering dubstep, all the while retaining elements of the distinct, highly musical drum & bass sound the Northern Irish producer and DJ has cultivated over two decades. — RA
Whether inverting an old song or sculpting a whirlwind from dust, Shaw’s work highlights the divine in the ordinary. With Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part, she reaches toward the peaceful bewilderment of feeling ensconced in the great web of everything, the mysterious force which exists in the words of a 300-year-old hymn, the open canvas of the sky, the pop song leaking through the radio. These things are not apart from us, she suggests; when we tune into the right wavelength, it is we who are a part of them. — Pitchfork
This is solipsism of the highest caliber: gentle, hypnotic, fastidious, but above all else, hard to resist. — No Ripcord
He likes to eat directly off the plant, he says—“I get down on my knees and graze. It’s nice to feel the vegetables in your face”—and the 13 songs on World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener were harvested with just such a spirit: in their raw state, young and vegetal, at the very moment, they were made. — Circuit Sweet
If listening to CHAI’s music is half as fun as its creation, then they’re one lucky band. WINK is a filling, nutritious meal: good for the soul and brimming with flavor. — Paste
Made Out of Sound is a hybrid piece—improvised, but with advance warning of where the music is going, which brings an element of composition. And it turns out that this combination of approaches makes for some gorgeously life-affirming music. — Pitchfork
fuck man. Fuckin’ Clarence Clarity baby, yeah. The vocals, synths, wonky drums. Yeah baby, fuck. Fuckin’ EP, yeah! Friday night baby, fuck. This is what to make of your Friday, fuck. Any day, wh- wha- what makes it your day, make it a happy one, fuck man. Fuck. Fuckin’ Clarence baby, yeah. Fuckin’ Clarence. Yeah, fuckin’ Clarence baby! Fuckin’ Clarence. Fuck. Alright! Make Friday a good day, baby, yeah! — AOTY User
Exploring life in classic Middle England and its five-bedroom homes and artificial lawns, it’s the exciting early sound of a band trying on different outfits to see what fits. — Dork
I really wanted to somehow connect to the fact that there’s always a light at the end of whatever we’re experiencing. — TOKION
What Spiral achieves is no small feat; too much modern psychedelic rock crumbles into disposable pastiche under scrutiny. Jaar and Harrington have made an album that, despite its familiar foundation, is guided by their desire for invention and exploration. — FLOOD Magazine
Keith didn’t have to go this hard. — The Needle Drop
A manifesto that only Deerhoof could create, Actually, You Can is a perfect example of how they achieve what seems like the impossible time and time again – and with its heroic doses of fun and optimism, it reminds listeners that actually, they can too. — AllMusic
Doja Cat tries something new with almost every orbit on Planet Her. When the production magic keeps up with her boundless spirit, the songs reach a unique hotspot of fun and infectiousness. — AllMusic
⭐ ESSENTIAL
The London art-rockers’ outstanding debut is a droll album full of surreal images, bizarre obsessions, and sense memories. The cumulative effect of Florence Shaw’s narration is inexplicably wonderful. — Pitchfork
Flying Dream 1 is an album that rewards repeated listens, rather than giving an instant payout. Those expecting rousing guitar ballads with huge emotional squalls and buoyant belief might be left feeling short-changed. If they listen a little harder however, they’ll still find that optimism wrapped in bruised nostalgia. It’s less immediate, perhaps, but more considered and more interesting for it. — The Arts Desk
🌱 GREW ON ME
Though heavily inspired by ’90s and ’00s R&B, the Portugal-born, Danish musician grows into a quietly commanding presence of her own on her second album. — Pitchfork
Born of impromptu DJ sets broadcast from a forest clearing in New Hampshire, Drew’s latest album distills decades of dance-music history into an hour of joyous new standards. — Pitchfork
She knows she’s funny, but we think she’s pretty smart. — DIY
⭐ ESSENTIAL
They just are so French. — Sputnikmusic
Absolutely stunning and not at all atrocious. — mxdwn Music
⭐ ESSENTIAL
Listen in solitude if you can and its beauty will illuminate your life in ways that didn’t seem possible. — Albumism
It is like the musical soundtrack to wandering through an unfamiliar English forest under the influence of magic mushrooms. — The Arts Desk
Once it sinks its teeth in, this thing is packed with enough sweet syrup and grooves to get your hips gyrating and pelvis popping, while simultaneously dark and twisted enough to make you blow chunks. — Sputnikmusic
⭐ ESSENTIAL
La Mort du Sens (loosely translated as ’the death of meaning‘) needs to be celebrated. If this is the first Gnod album you’ve heard, then you are in for a treat. It contains a lot of the motifs that make it classic Gnod. Dense soundscapes peppered with biting social commentary. — God Is in the TV
Godspeed like to dirty things up, to sink their hands into the dirt and see what kind of mud gets stuck beneath the fingernails. This is resistance music, built off the back of the most difficult year in the modern era. — FLOOD Magazine
Fortitude is everything you wanted from Gojira and more: a breathtaking showcase of heaviness and dedication to the craft, teasing out tones, passages and emotional resonance other bands just can’t access. — Metal Hammer
The suite is separated into four movements and composed for piano, two violins, viola, and cello, with a super lineup of first chair violinist Tatsuo Nishie, cellist Waturu Mukai, violist Meguna Naka and violinist Sohei Birmann. — AllAboutJazz
Glass-gargling frontman Joe Talbot disinters his lifelong struggle with substance abuse over 14 songs, circling around a traumatic, drug-fuelled car crash. The band use everything they’ve got. — The Observer
⭐ ESSENTIAL
The Illuminati Hotties album we’ve been waiting for is anchored in glibly gregarious power-pop, but it’s the more earnest moments that reward repeat listening. — PopMatters
It’s simultaneously euphoric and angsty. — DIY
It is an abstract, melancholic and affecting body of work that is not only another incredible addition to a stellar discography, but a magnificent and moving tribute to a friend gone too soon. — Exclaim!
⭐ ESSENTIAL
A trinket box of wounded feelings and musical invention. — The Quietus
This album is perfectly complete, hermetically sealed while suggesting any number of influences and reference points that never usurp the originality of the songs themselves. — PopMatters
This is an album that glistens and sparkles at every moment. Zauner is revelling in her musical step up as she employs synths, strings, saxophones, pianos, guitars and anything she can lay her hands on to take her evocative and richly detailed songwriting to a new level. — Dork
⭐ ESSENTIAL
Finally, the skankable version of NO DREAM we’ve all been waiting for. — The Needle Drop
Autumnal in its brooding, subconscious-scouring state, a deep dream diving fog envelops the record; Chalmers winding through lavishly macabre art-pop architecture. — The Line of Best Fit
It’s hard not to feel the energy that Kanye exudes on Donda. Though its creation process was an overarching performative event in itself, Ye still managed to (for the most part) control his narrative, and deliver his best body of work in recent memory. — Exclaim!
Kero Kero Bonito are a band who know how to pack a whole lot of punch into a small package. — Dork
This 18-track live album was recorded when the prolific Australian group descended on Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl on February 26th 2021. Comprised entirely of King Gizzard’s microtonal material, the album draws largely from their recent ‘K.G.’ and ‘L.W.’ albums (including the singles ‘Automation’, ‘Honey’, ‘O.N.E’, ‘Pleura’), as well as fan-favorites from ‘Flying Microtonal Banana’ (‘Rattlesnake’, ‘Billabong Valley’, ‘Sleep Drifter’) and ‘Gumboot Soup’ (‘All Is Known’). — Fuzz Club
Prog-psych-punk sextet take satisfying third bite of the microtonal cherry. — Mojo
An effervescent, sparkly collection of ten songs guaranteed to put a smile on your face. — Clash
⭐ ESSENTIAL
Who were these people? What in god’s name made them make music like this? Why on earth would you paste in a large audience? My Christmas wish is for more ‘archival’ recordings of Leather Rats to be ‘unearthed’ in 2022. — The Quietus
Though her individual lines are consistently on point, the real goss behind Lexie Liu’s flair is her alternation between vocal styles. It’s like she refuses to show off her pipes at the same register for more than two consecutive lines; she commands the voices of a slick pop diva, a feisty hip-hop hustler and an R&B heartache, and her writing channels recurrently solid hooks through each in turn. — Sputnikmusic
A colossal event release, ‘MONTERO’ excels the marketing spin by delivering one of 2021’s most daring, riveting, and honest pop statement. After months of anticipation, Lil Nas X speaks his truth – and the world is ready to listen. — Clash
⭐ ESSENTIAL
Warm, haunted, lovely and broken, this album provides you no roadmap to its secrets except the invitation to just fucking listen and find them for yourself. So yeah, why don’t we all do that? — Sputnikmusic
L’Impératrice might be a band stuck between eras, but it’s their unnerving awareness and disguised social commentary that keeps ‘Tako Tsubo’ very much within the moment. — DIY
This album is a drifting spirit in a wretched dress; beauty in its most horrifying form. Lower your gaze, and hurry along. — The Metal Wanderlust
⭐ ESSENTIAL
Hallelujah. — The Needle Drop
An introvert Simbi may be, but this album is the proof, it’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for. — The Forty-Five
It takes profound empathy to write an entire album about your own past and have it turn out to be about your love for others instead. — Slant Magazine
Nourishing batch of beat collages from the leftfield hip-hop auteur, assisted here by Kieran ‘Four Tet’ Hebden. — Mojo
Massive drums, glittering synths and dense strings land like jewels scattered across a velvet bedspread. — Exclaim!
It’s not only Manchester Orchestra’s crowning achievement but also one of the finest amalgamations of indie rock/Americana/indie folk in years. — Consequence of Sound
For the first time, they have written songs on piano instead of guitar, and the result is an artfully realised exercise in melancholic, grown-up pop with textures that owe much to the Swedes’ [Abba] later work. — The Observer
The EP only clocks in at just over 13 minutes but the group milks every ounce of blood and tears shed over the last year into every single second of its running time. — Northern Transmissions
It’s an outrageous album; preposterous, attitude-laden, camp, romantic, strident, gorgeous, gutsy, opulent, girl-powered, arch, hammy, ridiculously tuneful, vocally slipping between operatic soprano and belligerent sass-mouth, every song a killer. — The Arts Desk
Trying to identify the genres in Sena’s music is less interesting than surrendering to it, or dance to it. Sena floats across this sonic miscellany comfortably, her voice conducting the voyage in such a sassy way, you almost feel like she’s tricking you into places you hadn’t agreed on going to. — Ana Ribeiro
⭐ ESSENTIAL
Four Assignments is a totally unexpected listen, bearing little resemblance to anything an audience might reasonably expect to hear. This is an exciting prospect. It is extremely rare to come across a record that baffles, confounds and delights in the way this does. As an expression of a completely unfettered individual vision it is a triumph, and it strongly suggests that the experimental music scene in Glasgow in general, and at GLARC in particular, is a thriving, creative force. — The Quietus
⭐ ESSENTIAL
It’s music for mending the soul and opening the eyes of skeptics to what music – what really good music – can do for us. No matter what walks of life we come from, there’s legitimate emotion attached to Mdou Moctar’s music, and it should shake any living, breathing being right to their core. — Beats Per Minute
A night-time desert opera, staged in the listener’s subconscious, echoing its own kind of ancient knowledge, squeezing its inspirational juices from starlight, porous desert limestone and peyote-and-tequila dreams. — God Is in the TV
The Melvins’ winning combination of riffs and black humor is in full force on Working with God, making the album recommended listening for longtime fans and newcomers alike. — Consequence of Sound
With layered synths and rich bass tones that feel simultaneous full-bodied and feather-light, Untourable Album is a meticulously made album that is perfect for late-night headphone listening. — Exclaim!
⭐ ESSENTIAL
Centered on Medellín’s accordion, the resulting album draws heavily from traditional vallenato, an Afro-Indian-European music from Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Fans of outre-cumbia are treated to the folkier forebear of the ’60s-and-onward cumbia canon Alvarez usually sounds like he’s drawing from. — Afropop Worldwide
⭐ ESSENTIAL
In the final analysis, perhaps the only real question is, “Would Yeti like Yeti Season?” I am thinking Yeti would be delighted. — PopMatters
⭐ ESSENTIAL
With his new modular project Microcorps, Alexander Tucker blurs the lines between human and humanoid as he investigates how language can shift our perception. — The Quietus
⭐ ESSENTIAL
An all-time standout for vtuber content—this may be a low bar for the reader. However, I think it’s important for rubberneckers and fans of the nascent genre/social-media phenomenon to consider Tsukino Mito, whose seniority, creativity, and charisma have established her position at the tip of the spear, where she consistently charts new ground for vtubers. — RYM User
⭐ ESSENTIAL
These 14 songs run the gamut from rancheras and mariachis to boleros, bandas, and corridos tumbados. Laferte bookends the set with contrasting versions of her harrowing commentary on gender violence titled “Se Me Va A Quemar El Corazón.” — AllMusic
Un Canto por México, Vol. 2 is a touching homage to the wide–ranging influence that Mexico’s music has had on the world. Though Lafourcade is the main voice behind the songs, the album is more than just hers: It’s also the collection of the stories of Veracruz and Mexico, both past and present. The loss of one of Veracruz’s cultural centers is devastating, but Lafourcade has achieved her goal in capturing the liveliness and complexity of Mexico’s past. As the title of the project implies, Un Canto por México, Vol. 2 is full of songs for Mexico, its future, and its constant transformations. — 34TH STREET
More than clashing sonics or soaring hymns or pervasive anxiety (and the quest to overcome it), the quality that best defines Carnage might be Cave’s reckoning with the unknown, or his recognition of the unknowable. — Mojo
This previously hidden live set, recorded in Austria in 2009, captures the German showman at his most minimal, his gift for fluid lines and rapturous melodies catching the emotions in unexpected ways. — Mojo
There’s a kind of soft, sleepwalking sensuality, of the sort explored in Tsai Ming-Liang movies, that permeates the album. — Bandcamp Daily
⭐ ESSENTIAL
Despite its economical runtime, this record is saturated with thought-provoking and occasionally challenging ideas, equal parts sizzling crucible and desolate wasteland. — Sputnikmusic
Palberta5000 is a fragmented noise punk rock record that hypnotized itself into believing its pop music meant to be sung to the masses, and performed with the same kind of bluster. — Beats Per Minute
⭐ ESSENTIAL
This is a bona fide Bandcamp gem in every sense of the phrase. — Consequence of Sound
A record to get your freak and thought on. — Northern Transmissions
Modern-day reflections on disco euphoria and Canyon contemplation. — Uncut
⭐ ESSENTIAL
The cynic in me isn’t convinced that Chip Perkins and Uli Federwisch are real people, but the role they play in setting the quirky context for this music is undeniable. — The Quietus
‘EAT’ complements a driving chorus with tortured screams and spoken sections, effectively evoking its imagery of the destructive nature of eating disorders and subsequent declining mental health. — Sputnikmusic
To put it simply, it’s a great rock album. — DIY
Perth-based psychonauts Psychedelic Porn Crumpets are coming for King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s crown as the kings of oddity. — Dork
Remi Wolf’s debut album is an explosion of color, and I don’t just mean the music videos. Listening to Juno is like being in an arcade room, jumping excitedly from one machine to another, simply having to try them all. — The Young Folks
A sprawling epic written from the perspective of a seed and a lament for an ancient tree are highlights on this inspired collaboration. — The Observer
Youngs has set up limitations that make CXXI pleasing to the ear, if not wholly satisfying to the pattern-craving mind. In a sense, this makes the music more transgressive: like Eno or Bryars before him, Youngs has a knack for taking challenging concepts and making them palatable to those who might not otherwise seek out being challenged by music. An invaluable skill, that, and one that’s undoubtedly pried open many a mind over these last few decades. — The Quietus
Awe and unease are conveyed by Careil’s pallid, processed vocals – sometimes virtually liquified, or sucked backwards like Carole Anne calling out through the TV in Poltergeist – and these gradually unfolding pieces with their scraped, clattered rhythms. — The Quietus
⭐ ESSENTIAL
Exploring his own internal identity crisis, Sam Fender’s Seventeen Going Under showcases insecurity, socio-political confusion and imposter syndrome against a whirling background of Americana rock. — RIOT
⭐ ESSENTIAL
Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a record that made me say ‘what the fuck is this?!’ and ‘what the fuck is that?!’ so many times with such an increasingly pleasant and positive intention and tone behind each utterance. — Scene Point Blank
The elusive UK group’s third album in just over a year—to be made available online for only 99 days—renders Black trauma in the eerie, sing-song cadences of children’s rhymes. — Pitchfork
For all its heaviness, its stylistic diversity, and the way Ishihara shapes individual instrumentals to suit that track’s particular collaborator, the entire thing is shot through with a unifying sense of playful exploration. — The Quietus
With huge choruses and head-flicking 90s dance moves, Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s performance is a maximalist pop triumph. — The Observer
‘DEACON’ is a triumph because it realises and relives love’s quiet, archived moments, be it romantic or spiritual. It’s a triumph because it reminds us R&B exists on a vast continuum, forever a source of inspiration and innovation. — Clash
Not only has SG Lewis provided an accurate portrait of the times he finds himself in but as the ever forward-thinking artist he is, brought his Nu-Disco sound into a new era. — Gigwise
Drunk Tank Pink bristles with the pent-up aggression of men who aren’t allowed to be loud and shirtless in public any more. — Evening Standard
There’s a thrilling physicality to Pool. Skee Mask’s 808s run as hot as a laptop laid across your thighs; omnipresent dub delay gives the feeling of pushing through viscous liquid, actually swimming through the music. — Pitchfork
We’re here … mostly for the sardonic, sweary, sweaty, swaggering belligerence of a man who writes his verse while sat in the car outside his home. — The Arts Desk
Sloppy Jane recorded Madison, a masterpiece of baroque art pop, in some creepy old cave with a creepy old piano and you can tell. — Sputnikmusic
Jordan’s influences – music, literature, life – are all evident on these sensitive, erudite songs, as she shows her scars and reclaims her narrative. Along with the likes of Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, Jordan is part of a rising school of young American women making some of the most original, compelling and accomplished music in indie rock today. — The Sydney Morning Herald
⭐ ESSENTIAL
Their scope has expanded, resulting in this riotous takedown of eco-hypocrisy and corporate greenwashing to the accompaniment of rhythms so wildly exuberant they could rearrange loins. — Mojo
Soda Blonde’s debut album Small Talk is a criminally underrated 2021 release. — Paste
⭐ ESSENTIAL
Ferocious and exhilarating, the new album from Sons Of Kemet is beyond jazz. The message is compelling, the music hypnotic and unforgettable. It’s an album for the times and of the times. — Louder Than War
Working with synthesizers and samplers from the 1990s, the Tokyo producer channels the uncannily ersatz sounds of vintage video-game music into a post-vaporwave take on deep house. — Pitchfork
Wall-to-wall enchantment. — The Needle Drop
⭐ ESSENTIAL
An uncompromising debut that fulfils every ounce of the band’s potential. — NME
Even if its heart is in the ’70s, Daddy’s Home is a keeper for the decades to come. — Mojo
Conceptually, the album revolves around a post-apocalyptic vision of an overly materialist society, and while the electro-pop trappings are almost never “happy,” they serve as a slick backdrop to the dystopian landscape Wilson envisions. — Slant Magazine
The production is so perfectly soft at the edges that it might sometimes feel as if these songs are bleeding out of the tired old speakers of a rest stop jukebox in a nowhere town, the old barstool crew looking into their black coffee and thinking of nothing in particular. — Spill Magazine
The Ballad of Dood and Juanita, a bluegrass concept album recorded with the stunning group he has dubbed the Hillbilly Avengers, is an even more audacious salvo in Simpson’s back-to-the-roots campaign. By turns romantic, playful, sympathetic, and solemn, The Ballad of Dood and Juanita is a compelling update on American frontier mythmaking, delivered by a band good enough to push lovingly against genre conventions. — Pitchfork
It’s majestic and ritualistic stuff that brings a whole new dimension to the heaviness of these kings of drone metal. — The Arts Desk
The Witness is a consumptive listening experience, designed with precision and purpose in the same way as the immersive albums that came before it by Portishead, Talk Talk, Radiohead, and other artists willing to take their time systematically disassembling and rebuilding their music. — AllMusic
Quattro is pretty monumental – the shortest track is just over seven minutes, the longest clocks in at over 26, but what’s striking isn’t so much duration as the tension between savagery (of the drones and the see-sawing fiddle) and the poise of the milky guitar arpeggios, plunking bass and rumbling drums that draws you in as the grooves intensify and trails of synth start to glow like comet tails. — The Quietus
⭐ ESSENTIAL
By pushing their anger towards the sexism, homophobia and racism that lingers like a dark, poisonous fog around Moroccan culture, Taqbir play a very dangerous game. They are putting themselves on the frontline, risking potential imprisonment, death threats and more, just to escape the cultural prison they’ve grown up in. — The Quietus
Drawing on Mediterranean folk, Georgian laments, and the 12th century mystic Hildegard von Bingen, the Catalan duo’s debut album is musically unique yet emotionally familiar. — Pitchfork
😳 GUILTY PLEASURE
If the matte crimson lipstick she wore in the original artwork represented its sound, then imagine it now with an added touch of lipgloss and liner – perhaps that shade brighter, the jawline beneath it more determined. — The Independent
Tirzah Mastin’s loopy, drowsy, sultry avant- soul lullabies continue to explore the fuzzy dreamspace between experimental sound art and R&B on this sporadically bewitching second album. — Uncut
While released posthumously, the record is not burdened by thanatological considerations, but rather feels like an inspirited spark of creation. — The Quietus
With ‘Thirstier’, Torres has delivered her most varied set of songs yet; trying on so many different costumes suits her. — DIY
Sketchy is a bold album in so many ways but it’s also incredibly, comfortingly Tune-Yards: High energy, offbeat movements, looped vocals, powerful cries, incredible rhythms, a belief that fighting for what is right is the only option. — The Line of Best Fit
Both vital and respective of the listener’s time at just under 35 minutes, Glow On rolls in like a violent, late-summer storm and pummels the power grid but mercifully leaves the lights on. — AllMusic
While self-titled albums often imply that they contain the definitive take on an artist’s style, in Twin Shadow’s case, it feels more like a redefining. — AllMusic
The tireless psych rocker’s latest is simultaneously sleek and sludgy. It’s not quite his cleanest-sounding album, nor his heaviest, but it stands close to the top of both categories. — Pitchfork
While labelled as a mixtape, ‘Rōnin I’ is more like a template to how UNKLE sound and feel during a live setting. — MYSTIC SONS
The One Last Kiss EP is a pretty sweet deal: it’s got all of the themes Utada’s sung over the past 15 years – “Beautiful World,” “Sakura Nagashi” and “One Last Kiss,” her cover of “Fly Me to the Moon” and all the remixes in one place. — MuuMuse
Reverently synthesizing Can’s left-field funk, Piero Umiliani’s lush spectral pop, and the deep-space jazz of Sun Ra, Vanishing Twin transmit from a dimension where big-tent optimism is the law of the land. — Pitchfork
Vapour Theories is one of several side projects that Bardo Pond co-founders John and Michael Gibbons have been involved in, and the only one that consists of both brothers as a duo, without other collaborators. Their occasional recordings, boiled down from lengthy jam sessions, display a brotherly sort of energy, with both guitarists in tune with each other on a cosmic level. Celestial Scuzz is the fourth Vapour Theories release, and it’s an aptly named set of hypnotic pieces filled with dual currents of guitar fuzz that intertwine like flames dancing skyward. — AllMusic
Some years ago, Willner recalled how Reed’s highest musical compliment praised the sheer effort of a musician. Listening to records, he would turn to his Tonto and say, “Hal, you’ve got to listen to this! They’re really trying!” Perhaps, then, this is the greatest way to recommend I’ll Be Your Mirror: you’ve got to listen to this, because they are all really, really trying. — Uncut
⭐ ESSENTIAL
Their sound is a Tennessee-flavoured, rock’n’rollin’ electro blues, pumped up with grubby distorted bass-end riffing and occasional Krautrock tints. Welfare Jazz pushes this stew into all sorts of shapes and corners. — The Arts Desk
Otherworldly strings, music box melodies and ambient atmospherics coalesce to bring Conor O’Brien’s hallucinatory alternative reality to life. — NME
It’s not easy to write an album about yourself without seeming egotistical, and it’s also not easy to write one which touches on themes of gang violence and poverty without falling into braggadocio or morbidity. On this album, Vince Staples has pulled off both. It may be a short album, but it’s an incredibly deep one. — Clash
The War on Drugs continue to make the classic feel timeless and the earnest feel earned. — Northern Transmissions
A masterful record that sounds like a full flowering of a remarkable talent. It is true: Ignorance can indeed be bliss. — The Line of Best Fit
OK Human is an oddity and a warm digital hug; it’s Weezer reacting to an endless, nerve-shredding, social-life-destroying period of isolation the way only Weezer can, drawing further inwards to themselves but somehow inviting us along for the ride. — Sputnikmusic
⭐ ESSENTIAL
This is music of depression without ever giving into it; music of depression refusing to be depressive. Instead, it has its sights firmly marked on emerging from it, towards an inevitable, if perhaps grimly distant, return to normalcy and life anew. — Beats Per Minute
‘Blue Weekend’ is another stone-cold masterpiece that further cements their place at the very peak of British music. — NME
⭐ ESSENTIAL
Jamie Stewart duets with more than a dozen indie, punk, and experimental music colleagues, and what results is a surprisingly sweet meditation on friendship, with nary a try-hard shock to be found. — Pitchfork
Sleek, soulful, intricate, and anthemic, Stand For Myself serves as evidence that in her life, Yola may have loved and lost, but through her art, she has everything to gain. — Under The Radar