Bass Persuades – Miley Cyrus (written 16/10/26)
Miley Cyrus’s Something Beautiful was an imperfect album, but it was vulnerable despite its highly-visual conceptuality, affording Miley much of her most sympathetic material. I think we all knew there was a songwriter capable of such vulnerability loitering around her skull, but that side of her had been displayed mostly in spurts over the years, via the occasional quality single – like Flowers! – rather than great albums. On Something Beautiful, there were more spurts.
This is a bit of a music review cliché, but Bass Persuades is somewhat of a victory lap, for better or worse. She’s got all the poignancy out of her system, and her new album is, whilst hardly empty-headed, a return to hedonistic dance-pop; a devotement to bangers, luckily a bit deeper than Bangerz, musically at least. Compared to Something Beautiful, it is impersonal. Its gestures are boring; Miley wants to marry her significant other on Let’s Get Married (I guess I like its directness, its forthrightness); she orbits around her significant other on Orbit (a straightforward analogy, though the blunt chorus melody is effective; this love is serious!).
Any adventuring comes in the album’s sci-fi elements – a continuation of Something Beautiful – and a full collaboration with Model/Actriz on Different Religion, which is a classic queer helping of getting silly with heresy. Otherwise, it’s just a thrill-seeking album, and not that thrilling a thrill-seeking album. The best it gets is the pumped-up trance of Aftermath, whilst the title track sums it all up; Miley says “let’s go” a lot, pseudo-raps, and attempts one of the album’s numerous tattoo hooks (“the kids don’t wanna dance”). Again, relatively impersonal, to the point of all effort on Redlights going to making the song sound as much like The Sound of Silence as possible – melodically, and she turns her face like Paul Simon turns his collar.
Rating – 6 out of 10
Zing Zing – Indio da Cuica (written 13/10/26)
Indio da Cuica is a mainstay of samba music who has been collaborating with other Brazilian artists as far back as the ‘70s, maybe even longer – don’t ask me, I’m not a doctor. He finally released an album of his own, entitled Malandro 5 Estrelas, in 2021. The album was joyous, composed of love, merriment, cavaquinho and cuica, in a hearty ode the samba’s traditions and hopeful future. Zing Zing attempts to marry traditional samba to multiple other genres and flares, as opposed to Malandro 5 Estrelas, even if Baile do bambu was MPB. This doesn’t stop Toca Luna / O Berimbau from sounding harmonically similar to the blissful Jogo de Malandro, though that is very much to its benefit.
The album’s freshest addition is its electric guitar, which manages to give Alguem Me Chama a sweeter, dreamier feeling. Plus, Ana Frango Eletrico is on it, so you know, good song. A bit of diversity, which still doesn’t cost Indio’s romanticism anything, forms a soothing, joyous and funny (he’s still got that yelping cuica, and stuff like Maneiro is so jolly it’s hysterical) second solo album for the multi-instrumentalist. Samba is often fuzzy and comforting, Indio da Cuica’s more-so.
Rating – 8 out of 10
Popstar – Tinashe (written 7/10/2026)
I’d say that Tinashe making such well-measured music – despite said music mainly being pop – should be no surprise, since she’s been doing so since 333 at the very most recent (great production, great sense of physicality despite introspection). But Popstar maybe is a bit of a surprise since Tinashe has claimed some virality in recent years, via sexy, salacious hit Nasty. She could’ve made Popstar an album that catered to a broader audience, or she could’ve used it to continue to use a flirtatiousness to her advantage – there are songs about running around naked and wrestling with your lover, but not only are they good songs, they’re just about what they’re about because they’re real, and Tinashe continues to be a real person, not a product of contrived mass appeal, sex or otherwise.
The production is, again, quite outstanding. Oftentimes, the instrumentals of Popstar are pretty haywire, but it’s a sophisticated haywire comprised of cared-for synth tapestries that are one moment skeletal and scattered, the next, crammed and dense. They are as partying as they are contenting, maybe even soul-searching.
Rating – 7 out of 10
Punching the Clown – Lambchop (written 30/9/2026)
Kurt Wagner has the voice for folk, but the humour for folk with a lil’ something more. I suppose it’s odd that I never found Lambchop’s indietronica stuff to be too interesting, but I think the ‘something more’ is pretty good on Punching the Clown, especially since, as I implied, it is born out of humour. He sings and emotes with grace and sophistication, and quite often, his jokey jokes walk the same path, breaking the fourth wall to comment on how moody his song is starting to sound on The New World Wave. Not-so-graceful, but even funnier, is the producer tag on opening track Just West of Nicollet, on which “LAMBCHOP NEW SHIT” is bombastically yelled as if it’s the intro of a Limp Bizkit song. Another plus for the ‘something more’ is the style of choir vocals utilised throughout the album, some of which are digitally cut-up and copied-and-pasted, rather than completely pure – though there are many, see those of Weakened, that are delightfully pure. And that’s not to mention the sporadic, out-of-nowhere sound effects.
Wagner is sixty-six now. Punching the Clown is glowing evidence that you should keep going as long as you have a song to sing and a joke to tell.
Rating – 7.5 out of 10
It Is Going to Get Dark – No Cure (written 22/9/26)
Following the passing of Andy Williams of Every Time I Die, I’ve reminded myself of how much I love metalcore bands disconnected from the metalcore norm, as opposed to whatever Code Orange copycats still lurk in the scene, if there is a scene – is there a scene? Not to use my eulogy of a great guitarist and better wrestler, who seemed to earn friendship wherever he travelled, to throw another band under the bus, but I feel No Cure teeters toward the side of the metalcore fence that fondles the status quo – too much teetering, too much fondling. It Is Going to Get Dark does have left turns – not to mention, a brutal sound that is as much beatdown hardcore as it is metalcore – that includes the dude from Bayway rapping on Brain Matter Displacement, slipping in nicely alongside the song’s down-tuned riffing, double bass drums and gnarly grunts, even if some of the lyrics are unpleasant.
I struggle with it, though there are likely a lot of genre heads out there that will find something in It Is Going to Get Dark that I’m not picking up on. Maybe vibes. Does the metalcore community like vibes? Boy, I really am a fish out of water. I guess some of the riffs are interesting, see the ear-pinching Slowly Turning Blue.
Rating – 5 out of 10
Thank You – Mike D (written 14/9/26)
Thank You is, surprisingly, a psychedelic, indietronica album on Mike D’s part. Or is it surprising? I’ve heard people argue the album isn’t very Beastie Boys, but who’s to say if Ad-Rock were still alive, that this isn’t the kind of music the Beasties would be making in 2026? They were never stuck on being one thing, much like this imperfect, but deeply fascinating, gift from one third of hip hop’s most creative units.
Songs like True Colours and the title track are downright dreamy, musically surreal, so if you listen to anything from the album above anything else, go with those and the boom-bappin I Don’t Care. Other tunes feature uncontrived uses of breakbeats and pseudo-glitch. It’s good to be different. Hell, the more rap-oriented songs on the album are its least interesting – see Secrets Pt. I.
Rating – 7 out of 10
There Near – Dinosaur Jr. (written 7/9/26)
Dinosaur Jr’s slightly muffled, slacker rock style still sounds good in 2026; a miraculous reminder that rock n roll is still alive so long as the new guys have it and the old guys don’t lose it. So many older bands, “dinosaurs”, if you will, either end up losing their touch, forgetting how to write songs, or perhaps their attention was elsewhere to begin with. Not Dino, proven by There Near’s nice, sentimental warmth despite being hard rock at its core. They’re sounding like how Foo Fighters always would’ve if they didn’t gravitate so freely to radio airwaves; grungy, dirty, no-fucks-given and sincere, retaining the emotional clarity that is the one constant the Foos have been able to brag about. The album is worn and rusted, and that’s what makes Dino’s sound so special in 2026. Plus, J. Masic actually has something to say – see Blowin’ Up’s dissection of bored edgelords – and his guitar playing is intricate, often defying convention, but none of this is anything new, just a lovely reminder that this great rock band still has it.
Rating – 7 out of 10
The Thread – Willow (written 28/8/26)
I’ve been on holiday this past week. Did you miss me? No? Regardless, I’m back and ready to finally talk about Willow’s wildly unpredictable new album The Thread, which is a step up from Petal Rock Black mainly because it actually has ideas. Petal Rock Black was released earlier this year. On it, Willow and all her mates took whatever they could get their hands on and threw it against a wall, hoping the sound it made would be good or presentable. It seldom was, but The Thread takes a similar urge to experiment and fleshes it out with some of Willow’s best songwriting to date, featuring numerous acoustic guitar stings, urgent choruses, flamboyantly-constructed harmonies and semi-operatic vocal melodies. It’s a weird album (which, to me, is a good thing) but she’s not just being weird (which, to me, is a good thing). She’s being a musician, a musician seemingly inspired by St. Vincent’s early work, which she then advances by exploring Latin American folk, including some bossa nova-like passages and unconventional percussions. She’s a good kid.
I recommend The Present Moment.
Rating – 7 out of 10
Petal – Ariana Grande
There is often a feeling of struggle or deep introspection on Petal, no matter how poppy or sexy the moment that the feeling occupies is. Case-in-point, Ariana sings “no one fucks you like I do” on Like I Do as the earth seems to shatter around her into a dead void. I’m not going to lie and claim there is any symbolic intent where Ariana’s personal struggles, which have led to her taking a sabbatical, are concerned, but it does serve as a reminder of how beautifully Ariana has placed her real experiences, of grief and suffering and longing and perseverance, into past albums such as Thank U Next. Maybe it’s easy to forget, given that she is a popstar/big name actor, just how much emotional profundity Ariana is capable of. The album is still non-rebellious, still pop, sure, but full of real human juice.
She’s constantly doing it, son. Thank her, thank her producers. Her fluttery, pentatonic vocal melodies on Kiss Me and Hate That I Made You Love Me are some of her most evocative, in this case, of the transition of Summer to Autumn; the blissful change in weather coupled with uncertainty. Sharp, metallic synths appear like razors in Krusty-O’s on Freak. Crippling rhythmic blasts combine with Ariana’s disenchanted lyrical-vocal combos on Petal – “tell me who’s to blame, is it the people or myself?”. The mixing of her vocals helps; so echoey and distant, seemingly removed from self yet somehow powerfully sentient.
And hey, there’s still time to party, no matter how sobering the drinking session. Ariana and producers have fun with 2-step beats on Oh Well (with more pained vocal takes) and Nowhere, Nobody (with alien, yet wistful vocoded vocals). And Bad Thing (Bunny Hop) is one of the better Blinding Lights clones around.
Rating – 7 out of 10
RX – Rico Nasty
Rico Nasty is a one-of-a-kind rapper whose combo of charisma, humour and viciousness pulls its weight even when her producers do not. Luckily, on RX, her producer is Kenny Beats and he matches her energy. Put her over any of his beats and you’re having fun. Put her over a drill beat (CDG Foams / Rituals, which is mashed up to all hell, real abrasive treat for the ears), a pumped-up southern beat (Rotation / Butthead, which freakin’ rules), or hyphy claps (Runway, also fun), and let her go wild, and she’s pretty darn good at the rap lark.
Cupcake contains Streets of RAGE (GET IT? THE SUBGENRE!) style bit synths in its leads. Its rhythms could belong to anyone or anything, just kind of poppy and electronic and pseudo-industrial, but they ooze through the ears nicely. Blow Your Nose contains one of the best beats used on a Rico Nasty song, based around a catchy, electrifying synth line as Jane Remover as it is Ken Carson.
Lyrically, Rico lets it all out, sometimes funny, sometimes ignorable in favour of bombast, which comes in handy when the non sequitur doesn’t land. The lyrics are better than they were on Lethal, which was quite good, but RX better represents her snappy lyrical strengths, particularly where chucking profanity and sexual references at the wall is concerned. It also better represents her unwavering charisma and personality.
Rating – 7 out of 10
Music, Fashion, Film – Charli XCX
I watched The Moment. As unrevolutionary as the film is – you know, mockumentary about popstar struggling with popstar stuff – I thought a lot of Charli XCX’s acting performance, and found her discontent of the ‘Brat’ era of her career to manifest likemindedly on new album Music, Fashion, Film. Whilst hardly sans emotion – see songs about Sophie and feminine difficulty – Brat was hedonism overdrive, brainlessness with a pulse, and became a cultural phenomenon in the process. Everyone had a Brat summer; nobody thought about anything, just took loads of pills.
But Music, Fashion, Film – much like Charli’s Wuthering Heights soundtrack – is not brainless, nor does it endorse brainlessness. The album is a brain growing in a petri dish, much like The Moment, a blueprint for something bigger, a work in progress, one I’m rooting for, like I’m the proud papa of *checks Charli’s age* someone who is two months older than me. Its lyrics might satirise brainlessness – SS26’s millennial nightmare, notes app apology et al; Wink Wink’s fucking of your dad, its jumping on trampolines with no underwear on – but the music is downright eccentric. I wouldn’t have blamed Charli for using the Brat style as a crutch, but I commend her for not, and while I do think that the indietronica-alternative rock-alternative dance style of MFF is something that needs a little more ironing out, I’m glad she’s decided to try such an overlap of styles. The album is anti-pop; slouchy, unpredictable, a little bit weird, with far more diverse feeling than Brat, including the mega heartbroken moments of Card Declined, Camera, I’m Afraid and Yeah. She has ideas, and when she doesn’t have ideas, she at least has David Cronenberg.
Rating – 6.5 out of 10
Statica – Avenged Sevenfold
Avenged Sevenfold has released an electronic industrial album (well, EP), and the band seems to think industrial means muffling your mix as violently as possible, and using as much vocoder and autotune as possible, because robots. I dug the experimenting of Life Is But a Dream – imperfect but devotedly ambitious – and I like the fact that Avenged is continuing to show some creative yearning beyond basic metal, but right now, it seems as though the band lacks any real know-how where its favourite non-metal genres are concerned. I suppose it shouldn’t be that surprising, given Avenged’s track record with trying out country rock (Gunslinger / Dear God). Whenever the band tries anything different, it sounds as gimmicky as a Human Monies on a Pole Match. But hey, keep trying.
Apparently, the EP is a prelude to a full album of this foolishness, released not under the Avenged Sevenfold name, but Statica.
Rating – 3 out of 10
My Skyscraper – Nirosta Steel
It’s kind of crazy how cohesive My Skyscraper feels, given that the album is composed of bits and bobs that Steven Hall worked on over the last four decades. It is, therefore, not an album built on deliberate intentions, yet My Skyscraper is still far more complete than your skyscraper. And that is with its uncertain genre crossovers – I’d say the mutant disco side of it shines brightest of the many selections, like the shiniest of Saturn’s moons – which are experimented with much like Hall’s lo-fi synth textures.
He experiments well, but also melodises with the best of ‘em – see English Party (vocals and guitar leads each boast unique melodies), My Name is Night (oh sweet Zeus, they just pour out of his mouth as if he naturally breathes musical notes), and Fresh Feeling (kind of just him nutting around with vocal melodies for over nine minutes). Also, his guitars are constantly grooving – see Boss Trix (Benny’s Song) (good, flickery lead lines), Yhema (if Ween made mutant disco-synthpop), Lost in Music (a lot more hidden), and Thaitanium (fuzzy and exotic and fuzzily exotic).
You’ll get your fair share of lulls and moments of complacency on an album this long and experimental, but OH WELL. I’d suggest listening to My Name is Night above all else, but its spot in the tracklist, in the album’s flow, is so delicate and contemplative, that listening to – at least most of – the album itself is warranted, despite the probability that you have better things to do than listen to an eighty-minute album by some guy called Nirosta Steel. But again, I can’t stress enough just how cohesive the album actually is, no matter how accidental.
Rating – 8 out of 10
Who Asked? – DOMi & JD Beck
I never thought an internet sweetheart nu jazz-crossover duo would become one of the best examples of ‘just because it’s super technical, doesn’t mean it’s good’, but here we are. You’ve got your metal guitarists playing too fast for their own good, unable to write or pump any emotion into their playing, and now you’ve got DOMi and JD Beck throwing random chords at the wall and drilling through complex time signatures just because they can. I’m rooting for these crazy kids, but Who Asked undoes the potential set by 2022’s Not Tight with some of the showiest music of the year, and nothing else alongside. The album is woodenly performed, whether instrumentally or vocally, and there is little cohesion in its arrangements, just silly, atonal rubbish that gets frustrating very quickly. Jazz is not about resting on one’s laurels. Who Asked doesn’t realise this, and ends up being crazy predictable as a result. Same fucking drums on every song too.
Rating – 4 out of 10
Caribenya – Lido Pimienta
I admire anyone who is able to pull off combining ancestral folk music and futuristic, electronic sounds, but Caribenya is merely an example of how badly the practice can go. While Miss Colombia – Lido Pimienta’s richest, smartest balance of the two aforementioned characteristics – felt respectful and homely, like a respectful homeowner, Caribenya is as irritating as a bad guest overstaying its welcome. Annoying, inhuman production places the balance, not in favour of electronics, but in how persistently overwhelming electronics can be in these kinds of fusion albums. Badly compressed, perhaps to make up for the fact that not that many instruments tend to be used at once, the album sounds careless, too concerned with broad listenability. At least, if I really want to, I can go back to Miss Colombia and have a nice time. Who’s joining me? No one? Okay.
Rating – 4 out of 10
Florida Water Blues – Twisted Teens
The sincerity of Twisted Teens continues on Florida Water Blues, now reserved for genre and southern agriculture (mainly the titular Floridian liquid, that damn Florida water, gives me them blues). It is their second album of 2026, and basically extends each faculty of Blame the Clown without the sheer quality of each faculty; the bursts of adrenaline, the bursts of emotion in the chords, melodies and harmonics. That’s why I haven’t given it a full review, not that you were wondering.
But it is sincere, especially CPN Hollywell’s vocals, which encompass so much worry and joy, sometimes at the same time, somehow. And I do love its vow to combine punk with flattering intakes of country, blues, and other older, traditional genres. The best part is that while there is quite a lot of humour on a Twisted Teens record, the duo takes these styles very seriously, and they don’t just exist for the sake of parody, satire, or a non-sequitur, sort of like Ween on Chocolate and Cheese, but also sort of not like Ween on Chocolate and Cheese. The best example is Weather the Season; an honest-to-god doo-wop song with Hollywell’s rough, punk vocals blasting in your ear full-heartedly (and the melodies rule!). If Sid Vicious had covered Earth Angel, he’d have done it for the bit; if Hollywell had, goddangin’, son.
Rating – 7 out of 10
Eraserhead Xiu Xiu – Xiu Xiu
I think Plays the Music of Twin Peaks was my first Xiu Xiu album, despite how long I’ve been into alternative music, and despite how much of their quintessential work predates it. I always felt that a David Lynch tribute suited Xiu Xiu, whether the aforementioned covering of themes from Twin Peaks or this here new endeavour; a 2026 companion piece to Lynch’s most abstract film, Eraserhead, which comes ten years after the Twin Peaks album, and over a year following the passing of David Lynch.
I do think that these are two worlds that belong together, especially with this album as the tribute. Eraserhead is like the visual equivalent of musique concrete, and Eraserhead Twin Peaks is, well, it’s that, genre-wise, also dark ambient and sound collage with field recordings. The atmospheres are desolate, foreboding, occasionally intrusive, weird, and then camply at odds with the far more musical curveballs the album throws your way. Themes that emerge like jingles from dilapidated ice cream trucks and cheap keyboards that need new batteries give unexpected, extra nervous twinges as if you just caught a stray bullet when you didn’t even know there was gunfire happening at the time, and coming from urban Birmingham, this has happened to me often. Maybe my description sounds more like zombie apocalypse than it does a body horror about caring for a mutant baby that made my friend cry without her understanding why, but it still fits, I guess. There are a lot of cartoony sound effects too, which provide an extra contrast, like clipart used in an eviction notice, or John Waters’ explaining his idea of camp to the Simpsons family. I suppose that’s the Xiu Xiu way; a little further camp amid the haunting, which is Jamie Stewart’s equivalent to David Lynch’s ‘surreal on top of real’, which I’ve always felt lurks in the shadows of their music to some extent, like a peeping tom.
I’d definitely say that the Twin Peaks album is better than the Eraserhead album, but Jamie Stewart always seems to know what they’re doing with the Lynchian hijinks. Good actual cover of In Heaven too.
Rating – 7 out of 10
Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive – Horse Lords
Is Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive too weird to be considered spiritual without the considerer being laughed out of the bike shop they’re making the consideration in? I wouldn’t say so, and I’m quietly judging you for thinking such things.
Much of the album’s merit as the supremely weird Horse Lords album stems from its newfound use of vocals, particularly female vocals that sound a bit like robot woodwinds, like a forgotten droid from Star Wars that doubles as a piccolo. That’s not to say every other Horse Lords album hasn’t been plenty weird due to daft time signatures that’d make Angine de Poitrine blush, and nods to Krautrock that’d make Angine de Poitrine blush. But I’d say the band is now doing more and more to scare the hoes whilst keeping their music realistically meditative, and it works, unlike my Uncle Frank after he was made redundant. Those aforementioned vocal snippets are freaky; saxophones burst in and out of frame like scary boys; sci-fi motifs zap around the bike shop; most semblances of melody are dissonant in one way or another; and sometimes, it doesn’t feel like one object really belongs there with another object, like intentional misplacement. Thanks to those saxophones, thanks to the fact that each piece is a constantly-moving, unflinching vibe, you can actually chill out to this album and find something spiritual in it. There, I’ve explained myself.
Rating – 7 out of 10
Inferno – Boards of Canada
Much of Inferno warrants multiple relistens. On these relistens, I’m not sure what I enjoy more, the retro synthesisers – coupled lovingly with live drums – or haunting voiceovers that relate primarily to religion. There is, sorta, a full-scale inquiry into religion – the sanctity and darknesses – and the album throws it at you with no thesis, letting you come to your own conclusion like a ‘choose your own adventure’ album. But if there is a ringing endorsement for theism, it arrives in the more spiritual-sounding instrumentals, which are some of the album’s best. Those include Blood in the Labyrinth’s mystical sitars, and the kaleidoscopic, psychedelic, multi-synth textures of Age of Capricorn, Somewhere Right Now in the Future and You Retreat In Time and Space. My other favourite is Naraka – god I love how bright and immersive its main synthesiser section is.
Rating – 8 out of 10
Castle Park – Graham Coxon
I admire Castle Park for a number of reasons, firstly as a do-all, British classic rock style album that bounces along genres and motifs like rubber balls atop waves, secondly as a Blur-adjacent album that actually sounds like a classic Blur album to some degree. Is Graham Coxon’s songwriting as strong as that of a ‘90s Blur album? Or a Kinks album (which he does seem to try to emulate)? Not really. The chords are blasé, the lyrics are mostly either uninteresting or soppily romantic (see There’s a Little House), but exceptions such as Alright and Easy prove that Graham’s world of whimsy warrants revival having been shelved for fifteen years. The former contains a silly vocal take that gives Graham some individuality, even if it might be mistaken for a Spinal Tap piss-take, and the latter is a weepy, but uplifting ballad with chords that aren’t quite as ordinary as some others of the album.
Sort of on par with Damon Albarn (or Alex James when he sang that song about all those moons), Graham manages to set himself apart via the humour in his voice, and the occasional bounce or flamboyant instrumental. But despite this, and despite Graham being really determined to not make any two songs sound the same, Castle Park comes off compositionally ordinary. I did think I’d find a Blur member’s album with a spaghetti western song (Dripping Soul) on it a little more engaging, but argh, here we are.
Rating – 6 out of 10
Cry Baby – Vince Staples
You can stick to your guns and rest on your laurels and still perfectly lambast the deepening cesspit of America under Trump. Where Cry Baby is concerned, that never would’ve been enough for Vince Staples. It’s not even a rap album. Sure, there’s a happy enough level of rapping on Cry Baby, but not only is it done kinda differently – see the way his rapping calmly, almost defeatedly, slots its way into Do You Know the Devil – but he also opts for post-punk revival and funk rock just as much as he does hip hop. Either the album was influenced by Genesis Owusu or Vince just got sick and tired of the same old shit, just like how he’s sick and tired of the current state of his country.
Vince Staples has always been thought-provoking, but on Cry Baby, he really puts himself out there in an effort to remain thought-provoking. He puts his all into it, stylistically, lyrically etc.
Rating – 7.5 out of 10
Whack’s Museum – Tierra Whack
When Tierra Whack started out, she was writing silly, minute-long raps; it was purely up for her audience to decide how seriously these raps must be taken. I thought it was a pretty good niche – a hook, if you will! – but I’m enjoying her even more on Whack’s Museum than I did on Whack World. It’s appropriate that she released Whack’s Museum as a mixtape, because it seems to exist as a series of headshots; a set of profiles that showcase Whack’s range, yearnings and ambitions. Occasionally, she settles, snuggly, into an old school style, from boom bap that leaves me expecting Inspectah Deck to butt in at any point (Wax Paper), to the jubilance of late ‘90s-2000s east coast shit (Brazilian Wax and Queen’s Crown, which both feature Kanye-esque sampling).
She tells you what she’s all about, works on her flows (Totem), does some quaint rap-singing (Siren). In and of itself, that offers some sense of throwback “I’m so dope” rap motivation, as does Tierra’s wit on Whack Job (“they call me whack, luckily it’s my government”), but the song’s contemplative sampling is more accurately part of the modern abstract pack, very MIKE. Hell, I’d consider Wiggidy Whack to be a bit like Open Mike Eagle; a quirky, idiophone instrumental as nerdy as it is alarming. I guess this is just me namedropping some of my favourite rappers and then confirming how Tierra Whack reminds me of them, but honestly, that alone makes for a pretty darn good mixtape. Ya hear that fellas? It’s darn good!
Best tracks – Whack Job – Brazilian Wax.
Rating – 8 out of 10
You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love – Olivia Rodrigo
I like how, on her new album, Olivia Rodrigo goes from referencing Just Like Heaven to titling a song ‘The Cure’ to actually collaborating with Robert Smith. The good news is that she isn’t egomaniacally championing her own taste or airing her taste superficially; You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love is a genuinely great pop album that subverts the meaning of pop music the way that we’d like all pop singers to at some point. I’ve never had a problem with Olivia’s music in the first place, but I love how mature and emotional it is now, whilst retaining her youthful quirks, an act that makes her that bit more human, and less formal. Hell, she still does her white girl rap-singing (e.g. My Way, Expectations).
The album is paced – and occasionally produced – like the kind of thoughtful alt stuff we music dorks hold dear. I still get these ‘holy shit’ moments in my head when u + me = <3’s popping, textural intro properly kicks, The Cure’s major sevenths and scared vocals open the track (she also may never write a better song, and that’s perfectly fine, it’s incredible), and Cigarette Smoke’s build gives it an Arcade Fire ‘In the Backseat’ vibe. It may not be as natural-sounding as it could – audiophiles may not have their itches scratched, and The Cure isn’t quite Sometimes by My Bloody Valentine – but considering the expectations one will have of an album by a pop sensation, I’d say Daniel Nigro did a good job with the production.
It unravels like a carefully-sequenced album – which it literally is; first half is intentionally lovestruck, second half is intentionally heartbroken. Along this ride, we get some of Olivia’s best vocals to date (motherly on Honeybee, remarkable leads and harmonies on Begged, the gusto of an old traditional pop singer on Less), and some of her best imagery and allegories (Maggots for Brains’ disturbing imagery is pretty cool for a love song, and I like Purple’s meaning of opposites coming together). This is guilt-free pop, which Drop Dead embodies through its texture and maturity, despite being the closest the album comes to being capitalistic. The albu, gives me Lorde ‘Melodrama’ vibes, firstly for that advancement in emotion and maturity, secondly for songs like Stupid Song (it’s a little like Supercut) and What’s Wrong with Me (enrichened by Robert Smith) having actual Lorde-like qualities.
Best tracks – Drop Dead – Stupid Song – u + me = <3 – The Cure.
Rating – 8 out of 10
Bitch – Lizzo
Waiter, there’s a hair in my soup.
It’s just a pop album – and not one with much emotional or writing depth – so there’s no real discussion warranted by this album, but I wanted to mention it because there’s a song called Whose Hair Is This, which is about finding someone else’s hair on the floor and getting suspicious of one’s lover. If it were a satire of irrational suspicion – or of those people who go on Four in a Bed and pull back carpet and go “AHA! I FOUND A HAIR!” – I’d understand, but it sounds like it’s supposed to be relatable, like universal candy for people to shovel into their mouths and “get” because lol we’ve all been there am I right. What a weird thing to write a song about. Otherwise, it’s just a pop album, but if you can stomach Lizzo in 2026 (or any year that isn’t 2019), listen to her play the flute on Too Nice.
Rating – 4 out of 10
Cum Songs – Ada Rook
I always end up with a few noisy, angry, passionately melodic favourites on any Ada Rook album – she even killed it on covers-reliant album 59 Nights. The highlights of Cum Songs are a little more scattered over its hourlong runtime, but the album is still engrossing, through that noise, that anger, that passionate melody. A large chunk of that hour belongs to the epic Night Mover, which indeed encompasses that noise, that ang oh never mind. Stunning composition, beginning with a black metal-style guitar-drum combo, but with the bonus addition of a fretless bass sample creating an unsettling, emotive riff alongside. There are multiple sections that act as makeshift hooks, allowing that trademark mix of digital wrath and analogue heart.
Other highlights include Risk Repeater (uncontrolled if not for its millisecond in which Ada stops to take a breath), I Am Not Alive (containing some house elements), and Whatever Grace (panicking, heart-racing post-industrial).
Rating – 7 out of 10
Superbloom – Jessie Ware
I tend to have this image in my head where Jessie Ware is concerned; I’m about to listen to this overly sophisticated form of pop/disco, so inoffensive in its classiness that I’ll feel like I may as well be listening to actual shallow pop music, which at least might come with a few bumpy edges, even if those edges relate to the singer singing about their genitalia. I always feel as though I’m in for music for moms the eccentricity of whom entirely derives from the fact that they drink wine.
But then I listen to her and I enjoy her, and I probably enjoy Superbloom as much as I enjoy What’s Your Pleasure or That Feels Good. Jessie Ware ends up doing everything better than she has any right to; even when getting silly with an interpolation of a famous melody (the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly on Ride), she isn’t embarrassing or contrived, she just makes kind of makes you forget yourself, and you’ll end up having a good time. As much she is just sophisti-disco, she is very good at honouring the classic disco sound whilst applying her own embellishments, for instance, the red hot, gasping hook of I Could Get Used to This. Also, the arrangements are – mostly – lovely; see the modernised Marvin Gaye nod implied by the pianos of the title track, or the very ‘70s countermelodies of Don’t You Know Who I Am, which is basically her take on I Will Survive, but my god does her voice kill.
Rating – 7 out of 10
The Horizon Spirals / The Horizon Viral – OOIOO / Lightning Bolt
I’ve mainly been listening to the Lightning Bolt portion of The Horizon Spirals / The Horizon Viral. OOIOO are fun, and their semi-pastoral, instrumentally diverse approach to psychedelic rock is unique, but Lightning Bolt are as interesting as ever on their end of the split, which is really saying something, because they’ve been interesting since Ride the Skies. What grabs me most of all is Brian the drummer’s performances, as opposed to Brian the bassist’s performances. They give what is essentially pure instrumental rock a ‘drum and bass’ type feel, and I’m not just saying that because Lightning Bolt literally consists of a bassist and drummer. I’m saying that because his beating of his snare completely transforms Wavers, his dictating of The Runners 2’s accelerando gives its rough, distorted noise a mutated club effect, and his near-arrhythmic approaches to Wow 13 and Headless Horsefolk sound like crazy drug trips. Brian the bassist is cool too, particular as a sort-of conductor, a role he takes to on Cloud Core as his angular riffing makes each note sound like an individual spasm; a boom BAM urgh ARGH hum HAM. Post-pragmatic noise rock at its finest.
Rating – 7.5 out of 10
Born to Kill – Social Distortion
There came a point – it happened sometime in the ‘90s – that Social Distortion decided to start making very basic rock music. They lost the more anarchic components of punk, they lost both parts of cowpunk (the punk and the cow), and these losses have followed the band into its first album in about fifteen years. Such no frills music can still come with a lot of heart – the melodies and old-fashioned chord progressions of The Way Things Were help to assemble its theme of nostalgia – but Born to Kill is just so bare bones and passionless for the majority of its forty-five minutes; woefully serious and musically unspectacular, unfeeling when all one can do is play power chords and solo classically without showing any real personality, basically where the band was headed on Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes. The piano on Crazy Dreamer actually feels like ice water on a humid day; it’s that against-the-grain where the album’s sense of formality is concerned. Still good to have them back though, I guess.
Rating – 5 out of 10
Peaches – The Black Keys
A gritty return to the garage blues of yesteryear. Black Keys have fished out the ‘70s blues rock poise, with multiple hints of Delta, that fit them like a glove in their earlier days, and the result is one of their muckiest, most enjoyable, most fantastically listenable albums in fifteen years. The sound of Peaches is, essentially, what 2024’s Ohio Players touched on – you know, nostalgia – and what last year’s No Rain, No Flowers discarded. It’s pretty bad to make an album full of songs that sound like they were made for commercials for NFL video games – the kind of shit that Royal Blood – but Peaches is rectification: the album! You like your rock music dirty? Go ahead, dirty yourself up with Keys, then move to the country, eat a lot of peaches.
Rating – 7 out of 10
FENIAN – Kneecap
I won’t throw anybody under the bus – and I’ll commend anyone for believing in a good cause – but I appreciate Kneecap for never settling for the bare minimum, for going above and beyond standing onstage at an awards show and saying “free Palestine”, not that they get invited to many award shows. However, I don’t think FENIAN really represents their fight. As the group descends – or I guess, ascends – into maximalist production, the meaning of their music occasionally shifts. There is plenty of cruciality on the album – there is a song called Palestine that directly goes into detail on the practice of foreign colonisers, and subsequent resistance – and plenty of great instrumentals – see Liars Tales’ splendid electro beat that sounds like the distorted synth version of T. Rex’s 20th Century Boy, not to mention Headcase’s jungle beat. But the problem I have is that a few too many of these songs seem to be about Kneecap themselves rather than their cause, congratulating their own successes over police run-ins on Smugglers & Scholars, interpolating Mo Chara’s terrorism charge on Carnival, going into detail on their branding on Big Bad Mo. They should know this better than anyone: this is not the time for ego. At least Cold at the Top seems to satirise this. Don’t get me wrong; just because an artist is deeply anarchistic, it doesn’t mean all of their lyrics have to be, but FENIAN’s tendency to go in the opposite direction, focussing on self, did trip me up.
Rating – 6 out of 10
The Afterparty – Lykke Li
Lykke Li dramatically jumps from the darker singer-songwriter-isms of a reclusive Lana Del Rey to indulgent commercial cravings. She did so whilst going from I Never Learn to So Sad So Sexy, and has now followed the excellently gloomy rebirth of Eyeye with a cowardly successor called The Afterparty. There are some sprinklings of former magic – the combination of gloom and bright lights on So Happy I Could Die, for example – but the album mostly reads as a desperate quest for broader appeal, finding ill-fitting, dime-a-dozen Euro-Disco with no sonic flare on Lucky Again (god, its main riff is lazy), contrivedly-placed breakbeats on Happy Now, and a St. Vincent rip-off on Knife in the Heart. I don’t think the album is as desperate as So Sad So Sexy, but it follows its now-established tradition of succeeding a passionately smart, passionately teary album with baby food.
Rating – 3 out of 10
MUSICK – Laibach
If you’re going to make a Eurovision album, just make a Eurovision album. Laibach attempting to mesh a gimmicked, commercial sound with their own gravelly edginess is not only an off-putting clash, but the former always manages to overwhelm the latter; it’s cool that the edge is there – especially when coinciding with activism – but the overproduction towers over it. I do wonder if that’s the point, if MUSICK is supposed to sound corny, is supposed to make fun of music as saccharine, but if your way of sticking it to something you think is shit is superimposing that shit, you’re just presenting even more shit to people. It’s still badly produced, still painful.
The lowlight is Singularity, which interpolates the famous melody from Mozart’s A Little Night Music, atop a a silly dance beat and cheesy goodtime vocal harmonies. Extremely gimmicky rubbish that I thought Laibach were above.
Rating – 2 out of 10
Fidelity – Yaya Bey
Fidelity is a particularly smart album where tackling grief is concerned. Questioning where Blackness fits in with grief, only to then consider her recovery the apex of her race, Yaya Bey takes vulnerability itself to never-before-seen destinations on her latest album. Her vulnerability is boosted by quality vocals, proving chops whilst supplying imperfect harmonies on Me and Mine and Dream Girl, going ‘how low can you go’ soulful on Slot Machines, remaining intimate in a clubby terrain on The Towns (Bella Noche Pt. 2) and The Great Migration – hell, jazz clubby on the latter. Yaya’s voice is somehow both assured and ponderous in its wisping vibrato on Forty Days; a good fit for psychedelic soul.
I’m a little disappointed in the lack of reggae influence on this album. It’s something that Yaya had never been super loud about, but previous albums would either provide a helping of dub or rocksteady, or at least bang out one really good reggae-adjacent cut. Higher is inspired by dub, and Egyptian Musk opts for reggae with a bit of wah, but these songs are far from the album’s best offerings. Still, her stylistic choices are generally good fits for her singing, as mentioned above; usually neo-soul – Cup of Water has those D’Angelo grooves – and whatever additions might go with. The production is excellent, the best example being Simp Daddy Line Dance’s extrovert beat, stray violin interjections, minimalist basslines and vinyl crackle.
Rating – 7 out of 10
Honora – Flea
I think this is, kinda, what I expected Flea’s jazz album to sound like. If he were to try to concoct some sort of spiritual, out of body experience, he’d be quite dignified about it, despite the humour he has fuelled himself on for over four decades with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I expected this of him because I expected him to view Honora as an opportunity to show that he isn’t a one trick pony, and that his virtuosity contains multitudes. And it’s not just about the seriousness of the themes (including healing in the face of division on A Plea), or about his seriousness as a musician; it’s about just how far he’s willing to take it all. I expected lots of trumpet playing as well as bass – he also plays the flumpet on Wichita Lineman – and I expected him to fill these instrumentals with the extent of his talent, without being zany like his bass-playing with the Red Hots.
That said, I didn’t expect his take on jazz fusion to go as deep as it does, moulding some very original-sounding covers, which I know is oxymoronic. The aforementioned Wichita Lineman stages a particularly soulful guest vocal from Nick Cave with bold double bass, sinister piano keys and a daydreaming trumpet, taking a country pop song on a jazz album as far away from those two genres as they’ll possibly go. And his take on Maggot Brain is particularly startling; those famous guitar arpeggios exchanged for vibraphone; Eddie Hazel’s greatest guitar solo replicated by woodwinds and a trumpet take from Flea that reimagines it as the soaring symbol of rock n roll that the electric guitar is supposed to be. He even does Frank Ocean’s Thinkin Bout You.
Rating – 7 out of 10
Ambiguous Desires – Arlo Parks
Soul-searching introspection is something you will have to uncover a little more on Ambiguous Desires, compared to previous Arlo Parks albums. You’ll have to root through the dance pop vibes to find deeper meaning, whereas the emotional strengths of Collapsed in Sunbeams were right there in the songwriting. And that’s fine; Ambiguous Desires is a smart album in that regard; it doesn’t spoon-feed, and does a much better job at serving deeper meaning through dance vibes than most albums that attempt similar things. There’s also a noticeable amount of palpability; you can get lost in the numb nocturnality (Senses, supplied partially by Sampha’s breathy vocal, and Heaven), cry a little to some pretty decent, wailing choruses (Get Go), and sometimes, both in one go (Jetta).
The album isn’t as cutting as Collapsed in Sunbeams, but that’s maybe because Collapsed in Sunbeams was so eager to be cutting, synchronising the emotional displays that usually come with singer-songwriter music, and Arlo’s unique version of alternative R&B.
Rating – 7 out of 10
Sexistential – Robyn
Eh, you know, it sounds like how I’d expect sex-confident dance pop to sound, and that’s a good thing, because it’s a vibe Robyn has always gotten on well with. I don’t think the melodies are as strong as those of Body Talk, but Robyn compensates by opting for a slightly more ambitious style of presentation that includes glitches, blown-out synths, and a few outlandish hip hop interpolations.
I’m wondering if the album was influenced at all by Fever Ray? Not to foolishly compare a Swede to a Swede, and Robyn does embargo the extent of her freakiness unlike Fever Ray, but the whole ‘pulling vitality from sexuality/sexual hedonism’ thing, through a European synthpop lens, suggests as much.
Rating – 6.5 out of 10
An Undying Love for a Burning World – Neurosis
It’s been ten nail-biting years since Neurosis released Fires Within Fires. As good as Fires was, An Undying Love for a Burning World blows it out the water. New vocalist Aaron Turner (of Isis and Sumac) shouts “the dissonance is deafening” and then he and Steve Von Till come out with some of the best dissonant metal riffs, like ever, not to mention some of the most philosophical-sounding atmospheres produced solely by guitars. Like landmark Neurosis releases (Souls at Zero / Through Silver in Blood), the album is also progressive and mightily-structured, giving it a particular feeling of suspense akin to the classics. It is ridiculously mournful, entrenched in suffering; its sense of argh is cathartic.
Rating – 8 out of 10
To Whom This May Concern – Jill Scott
Jill Scott could’ve coasted at this point in her career. She could’ve put out a conventional R&B record just to put something out, but doing that after an eleven-year gap would’ve been imprudent, especially when you consider that 2015’s Woman was one of her more conventional albums by Jill standards. If To Whom This May Concern is conventional in any way, it’d be due to some of its earlier cuts ditching the “neo” in “neo-soul” in favour of smooth ‘70s-style arrangements, but when you consider how well those arrangements resemble those of, say, Marvin Gaye, their traditionalism feels less-so, especially in this day and age. The album is otherwise packed with modernistic neo-soul, but even so, my favourite way that Jill detaches herself from any norms is with her vocal performances alone. She sings, with unembarrassed confidence, some of her wildest falsetto snaps (Be Great), tongue-in-cheek yet congruently faithful jazz (Pay U on Tuesday), slickly crazy harmonies (BPOTY), affectionate exchanges with oddly mystical chords (The Math), some of the best ‘soul vocals over a house instrumental’ since the ‘90s (Right Here Right Now), and some of the best ‘I can’t be fucked with showing any restraint’, heartbroken vocals since forever (Ase).
Rating – 8 out of 10
‘Strictly 4 the Scythe’ by The Scythe / Denzel Curry
I wasn’t expecting Strictly 4 the Scythe to be so casual or shoestring. Once you consider how well Denzel Curry grooved with these same collaborators on King of the Mischievous South Vol. 2 (sick, aggressive hardcore rap mixtape), it’s easy to feel shortchanged by The Scythe’s very entry-level, uncommitted approach. The sound, in general, is fine (the sort of evil, torturedly loud southern hip hop Denzel can drum up in his sleep at this point), but the flows sound unmotivated – just ‘this is my style, this is what I bring to the table’, outline raps – and none of the hooks stand out. The first hook that actually comes to mind is the first hook; the contrivedly hot-headed “TRYNA FUCK WITH THE SCYTHE, YOU GET SLICED, HO” warcry motto of The Scythe, like let’s see how cornily we can introduce ourselves. The only verse with much personality is A$AP Ferg’s on Phony. These are all great rappers with far more personality than what is displayed here.
Rating – 5 out of 10
‘My Days of 58’ by Bill Callahan
Mr. Smog, ol’ Billy Boy, is back, and My Days of 58 is one of one of his prettiest albums. I’ll take as much pretty as I can get from Bill Callahan, because I don’t always enjoy his intimate vocal style, which sounds a little too self-satisfied for my enjoyment. The worst of his vocal style does crop up on My Days of 58, stopping to talk to the listener like he’s Jiminy Cricket, but I won’t let that ruin what is an undeniably enlightening record that captures the value of life amid aging remarkably well. Just listen to Stepping Out for Air; really lovely harmonies of precious chords played on a crinkling acoustic guitar, inviting the majesty of its horns. It’s like its being played into the air of night whilst acknowledging just how beautiful and important said night is once you’re in your late fifties.
Rating – 7 out of 10
‘Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.’ by Harry Styles
I’ve started watching Crazy Ex Girlfriend. In the second episode, there is a joke in which the main character assumes that Vampire Weekend is “a weekend away with vampires”, which leads to a funny pre-credits scene. I imagine that up until very recently Harry Styles thought the same thing, only to eventually discover the band and have them take over his life. Basically, his new album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally (stupid fucking name), has an overriding Ezra Koenig influence. That’s the bit that Harry actually does fairly well; the Gotham hipster looking for the nearest falafel vendor vibe, mildly sexy and melodic when it needs to be, despite its softness and warmth.
But if you’re going to borrow so heavily from indie music (and this isn’t to say Vampire Weekend are some obscure underground darlings), you may as well borrow more of the bits that make the source material alluring in the first place. Vampire Weekend, typically, have colourful instrumentals – the baroque stuff, the organ stuff, the Graceland stuff – but Harry, despite his surname, refuses to branch out and reserves himself to mild-mannered alt-pop, which is a shame, as he generally tries. Despite Vampire Weekend having their own stereotypes, you never really know where they’re going with their songs/albums, whereas Harry only has one direction. I’m so proud of myself.
Funnily enough, the album was actually inspired by a different New York outfit, that being LCD Soundsystem. As implied by its stupid fucking name, it is, first and foremost, a dance-oriented album, but the dance vibes are chilled and underwritten, seldom propulsive, but that slant at least results in a pretty nice, cuddly tune in the form of Taste Back, and the album’s LCK/VW mix-up finds a home in the African rhythms and outgoing bass loops of Are You Listening Yet?
Rating – 5 out of 10
Converge – Love Is Not Enough
Nothing particularly unexpected from Converge at this point, or inventive unless you consider these combos of metalcore and sludge inventive, but Love Is Not Enough is good, hellish fun. Jacob Bannon’s screams are death-defying, and the album hardly runs its course in its nutty, unrelenting, action-packed half-hour. Sometimes, that’s all ya need, baby.
So that this isn’t the most pointless thing I’ve ever written, I will recommend a few tracks, including untiring mid-album tracks Amon Amok and Force Meets Presence, then the final two: the barbarically hardcore Make Me Forget You and the intensely-structured We Were Never the Same, which feels much longer it is, in a good, epic way.
Rating – 7 out of 10
Willow – Petal Rock Black
Willow is genuinely very good at making grounded songs out of her urge to constantly be at least a little experimental or theatrical. She’s a good, emotive songwriter, which, pardon the pedantry, is impressive for a nepo baby. She capitalised on her potential on 2024’s Empathogen, containing such great feats as “I HAVE SUCH BIG FEELINGSSSS”. Petal Rock Black isn’t Empathogen; it is, in its best moments, a window into making selectively melodic pop out of idiosyncrasies, respect for jazz, and tips one may have picked up from working with St. Vincent – see the sophisticated vibrato and subtle ambience of Not a Fantasy. It is, largely, a scatterbrained album full of non-songs, released on a fairly major record label because of Willow’s existing star power, presented in such a fragmented, ‘whatever idea pops into your head’ kind of way because nobody’s going to tell Willow otherwise. It’s far more ambitious than her emo crossovers, but she at least had the application to pull that off. Petal Rock Black just sounds like she’s visited a hippie retreat where everything is encouraged as long as it’s in the name of art.
Should’ve got her dad to spit some bars on it. That was a joke.
Rating – 5 out of 10
Danny L Harle – Cerulean
Cerulean disputes Danny L Harle’s reputation as an ideas man, which admittedly, is probably a reputation that exists mostly only in my head. I loved hearing the guy fuse bubblegum bass with nostalgic ‘90s house on 2015’s Broken Flowers EP (still his best work), and while he may have dedicated much of debut LP Harlecore to butchering the project (see any track with MC Boing involved), you could chalk that up to Danny going out on a limb. Cerulean is just drab trance music with ordinary-sounding beats and synthesisers, sans personality. There are no original ideas, which Danny himself emphasises by using very similar arpeggios on multiple tracks – it sounds a bit like Clocks by Coldplay, or that David Guetta song that sounds a bit like Clocks by Coldplay. He also has a tough time accommodating his impressive list of features, from PinkPantheress to Caroline Polachek to Dua Lipa.
Rating – 4 out of 10
Charli XCX – Wuthering Heights
Credit where it’s due: Charli XCX took her assignment seriously. If she has become synonymous with any of her albums, it would be Brat; her wonderfully shameless party album that took the world by storm back in the summer of 2024. Obviously, nobody really expected her soundtrack for a film adaptation of an Emily Bronte novel to be anything like Brat, but it’s easy to underestimate Charli’s ability to make music so dignified and emotionally towering whilst remaining as striking as she did on the album that is now her quintessence, especially when said album was so happy to not be thought-provoking outside of a couple of reflections (see So I). When you think about it, Wuthering Heights probably is what we should’ve expected from a Charli XCX soundtrack album; mind-bending production that fuses cinematic music with unique genres, all to match the complexity the human condition. There is hardly a moment where a disharmony of violins isn’t clawing its way through your ears, introduced on terrifying opening track House; a darkwave-adjacent buildup of noise that features John Cale, seething from his exclusion from Brat and It’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat.
She already captured the ambience of the bustling nightclub in which people pressure one another to take so many drugs that they wake up in hospital (or worse yet, the bed of somebody who didn’t go to college), so who’s to say she can’t capture the ambience of nineteenth-century, northern English moorlands? Hell, the album is downright stately at times, what with its use of chamber orchestration, though its embellishments are mainly those of synthy power balladry, one-upped by the boldness of Charli’s voice. As these motifs mix like a bowl of party peanuts, the album produces a number of heart-stopping moments; the sudden synth-string pound on the hook of Out of Myself; the “one is not the loneliest number” tearjerker of Altars which confirms Charli’s ability to dedicate a project to sadness and dead-eyed romanticism. Wuthering Heights presents a sort of Russian doll of artistry; more dignified than Brat, but despite Brat being so deliberately unchallenging, its bombast could be deemed more challenging than Wuthering Heights, but this is more challenging for those that loved Brat so much. I’ll just say something “clever” and call it lamb dressed as mutton and move on.
Best tracks – House – Out of Myself – Altars.
Rating – 7 out of 10
Lord Jay-Monte Ogbon – As of Now
Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon is one of those ‘committed to the studio’ rappers who seem to be constantly releasing new music – think Boldy James or Blu. That said, he has been absent since 2023, during which he released three albums. As of Now proves just how essential either taking a break or putting a bit more time into an album can be. The album is almost an hour long, and is by far the Charlotte emcee’s most grounded effort, despite being as eclectic as what one may have come to expect from the guy. There is not a beat Ogbon won’t rap over, from the earthy flutes of I’m Signed to Lex Now I’m Up (probably the best track) to the nocturnal jazz of Drunk Nights in Edgewood (IMYSM). His charisma is a constant, displayed beautifully on the regrets-heavy So You Really Don’t Miss Me, which sounds like a freestyle during a lonely night at a bar. Ogbon is tipsy and multi-minded, like somebody whose best ideas – and performances – come after taking something or drinking something. He will, just as easily, go a few tracks without a deadly hook, without displaying his eagerness or taking a risk, and if you only heard these tracks (for instance, I’m Getting Too Famous (This Time Last Year)), you might consider Ogbon the diluted form of a slightly more bonkers rapper. But overall, As of Now is a pretty crazy album. It may or may not hold your attention for its entire duration, but its presentation of Lord Jay-Monte Ogbon, in his most complete form, is at the very least commendable.
Best tracks – I’m Signed to Lex Now I’m Up – So You Really Don’t Miss Me.
Rating – 7 out of 10
Ratboys – Singin’ to an Empty Chair
I’m always going to think the name “Ratboys” feels like a contradiction. The band’s bright, shiny, good-natured brand of acoustic indie pop – a slide guitar often added for some Americana warmth – feels at odds with the mucky, diseased idea of a “rat boy”. I’m not going to give up on a band for this reason, but Singin’ to an Empty Chair pushes cuteness to the front to the point of exhaustion; fifty minutes of clean production and the same overly-romantic guitar-picking patterns, with the only alleviation supplied by its modest country undertakings, the fact that Ratboys are good enough at writing fairly conventional love songs, and the towering Just Want You to Know the Truth; an eight-minute stallion that shows a lot more grit and guts than most – love its climactic use of distortion. Following Just Want You to Know the Truth up with What’s Right was a good idea too; a fast-paced frolic that fills the pitfalls of the album’s samey, clean disposition with, you know, something not that. Otherwise, Ratboys keep their wits about them; they’re not doing anything wrong on a fundamental level, but they are sounding the safest they ever have. I’d say the album sounds like ‘Hayley Williams does Adrianne Lenker’, but that’d be too big a compliment.
Rating – 6 out of 10
Quadeca – i.ii.iii
For all of us plebians who aren’t quite so clued up on the ins and outs of ambient music practicality – ya know, the what goes into it, the academiaaaaa – without making basic assumptions, it feels nice and contented to just ask yourself how this music would feel if used in a video game; a Zelda dungeon; a Donkey Kong Country water level. There are certain dynamics to the textures Quadeca uses, some ascensions in volume that might feel like crescendos, but i.ii.iii is quite stationary, for the most part. To go back to the whole video game thingy, the EP might serve a tranquil or icy environment, so it is perfectly atmospheric, and Quadeca likely put more planning into it than holding down chords on a keyboard, but if you want more than that from your selected ambient works, look for someone with more experience such as Tim Hecker or Grouper.
Rating – 6 out of 10
Mydreamfever – 4. Mountain Still Breathing
A ‘rock goes ambient’ project isn’t always going to end up as imaginative as it looks on paper. I suppose the same goes for any crossover project – we’re living in an era in which Andre 3000 simply owning a piano constitutes high art, apparently – but Mydreamfever has enough practicality alongside his ambition to not just point a microphone towards the local nature reserve. 4. Mountain Still Breathing isn’t a stellar ambience-oriented album simply because Mydreamfever – who otherwise makes shoegaze music under the name Parannoul – does more than the bare minimum; it’s a genuinely picturesque series of recordings that captures the agriculture of rural Korea; undisturbed mountains, small villages that share space with nature. Recorded as one piece split into fourteen, the album feels like an uninterrupted journey. And then there’s the most important aspect; this is still an organised recording, hardly conventionally rocky or poppy, but full of crisp, folksy guitars, delicate musical atmospheres commissioned by woodwinds or simply things that sound like woodwinds, and voyaging, post-rock builds. The bare minimum would irk Mydreamfever; the fourth instalment in his ‘Music to Relax’ is devoted and plentiful.
Rating – 7 out of 10
The Molotovs – Wasted on Youth
I was most of the way through Nothing Keeps Her Away and said, out loud, “okay, can I turn this off?”. I was the only person in the room; the contrived Paul Weller singing was so bad it caused me to not only start talking to myself, but ask myself for permission to stop listening to music. I suppose I can imagine somebody dieting and asking themselves for permission to eat a biscuit or something, so maybe this is my equivalent, though in this case the action was the healthy option. If we’re trying to form a food-based analogy or comparison from The Molotovs, it’d be, well, to make the obvious joke, something with jam in it. If you like The Jam so much that the only other music you like is stuff that tries to emulate them, this might be your bag, alongside The Futureheads and any other band whose lead singer’s voice sounds like lager.
Their Doc Martens are probably knockoffs.
Rating – 2 out of 10
Zach Bryan – With Heaven on Top
With Heaven on Top revisits the uncontroversial, safe-sounding side of Zach Bryan that prevented me from getting into the Oklahoma singer-songwriter’s 2023 self-titled album. While the occasional experience is a little more animated (big horns on Appetite, big growls and choir vocals on Always Willin’), it certainly feels as though most of the emotions that went into the album come out passive-aggressively, which would be bad enough if it wasn’t eighty-minutes-long – warning, the album is eighty-minutes-long. 2024’s The Great American Bar Scene was a bit rowdier, albeit inconsistently, which is an approach I feel benefits Zach’s music far more than writing and singing the same ol’ country song – in this case for eighty minutes. So many songs have similar melodies, differentiated only by the varying sadness of Zach’s lyrics. I admire the grit of anti-ICE tune Bad News, definitely one of his least filtered performances; singing about agony requires agony in the voice, and he succeeds. I also feel as though Zach keeps the more emotive performances going – to some extent – on the back-end of the album (see All Good Things Past), but it all comes just a little too late.
Best tracks – Appetite – Bad News – All Good Things Past.
Rating – 5 out of 10
Poppy – Empty Hands
Poppy has no fixed address, but on albums such as I Disagree and Negative Spaces, she has displayed a preference for emulating wayback alternative metal, and occasionally metalcore. Thanks to her ability to bundle her preferences with her eccentricities and some decent songwriting chops (I Disagree, in particular, is full of earworms), those albums were pretty darn good. On Empty Hands – a natural new edition of metal Poppy – she has become boring, which she rarely has been in the past. Poppy has turned into her own manufactured revival of metal styles that were popular in the 2000s and early 2010s, completely style over substance in a way that evokes the era whilst shunning original songwriting. Some songs are a little more out-there than that – Public Domain is; a Harley Quinn vocal; a weird industrial motif that evokes Kanye West’s Black Skinhead – but much of the album is underwritten. The titles of Guardian and Unravel seemed to come before the music and lyrics, as if a few RNG buttons were mashed and these are the songs that came out, albeit slightly industrially on the latter. The best moments are simply those that Poppy hits with undeniable commitment and efficiency; the sheer hardcore/screamo of the title track, for example. Otherwise, we’re in for oblivious alt-metal, and oblivious metalcore – credit for the pig squeals though.
Best track – Empty Hands
Rating – 5 out of 10
Ari Lennox – Vacancy
Ari Lennox, alongside her many producers and musicians, is able to maintain a number of musical relationships on Vacancy, primarily those that apply to contemporary R&B. Her instrumentals focus on melding R&B with jazz; she sings with incredible flexibility, as early as opening track Mobbin in DC, whilst saxophones, trumpets, splashy organs and low-key guitar reverb achieve that perfect jazz/neo-soul sound. Her not-so-subtle lyrics and presence maintain her genre’s relationship with erotica – one could easily praise Vacancy by using the word “sensual” over and over again. This is about as interesting as the album gets; the compositions don’t stand out like they did on Age/Sex/Location’s mix of nonlinear adventuring and sheer catchiness, but Under the Moon and Twin Flame should at least stick with you.
Best tracks – Mobbin in DC – Under the Moon – Twin Flame.
Rating – 6.5 out of 10