Pre-sale of the week: Amanda Shires – Take It Like A Man, out 29 July

Take It Like A Man is a fearless confessional featuring 10 emotionally raw tracks from Amanda Shires, produced by the talented gender-fluid singer-songwriter and producer, Lawrence Rothman (Angel Olsen, Girl in Red, Courtney Love). Upon hearing Amanda for the first time Lawrence said: “I was just mesmerized. I thought she was the new Dolly Parton;…

Pre-sale of the week: Death Cab For Cutie – Asphalt Meadows, out 16 September

Formed in Bellingham, WA in 1997, Death Cab For Cutie almost immediately entered the ranks of the era’s definitive bands, fueled in large part by the remarkable power of co-founder, vocalist, guitarist, and lead songwriter Benjamin Gibbard’s complex, often bittersweet songcraft. Asphalt Meadows, their tenth studio album, finds them exploring further into their own unique…

Pre-sale of the week: black midi – Hellfire, out 15 July

black midi’s new album, Hellfire, builds on the melodic and harmonic elements of last year’s Cavalcade, while expanding the brutality and intensity of their debut, Schlagenheim. It is their most thematically cohesive and intentional album yet. Note: The LP is initially available on clear red vinyl with a bonus flexi, exclusive to independent shops. Click…

Pre-sale of the week: Kathryn Williams – Night Drives, out 15 July

Her first official album since Hypoxia in 2015, Night Drives opens with some of Kathryn Williams’s most immediately electronic tracks to date, such as the nihilistic ‘Human’, big ballad ‘Answer In The Dark’ with all its bold, layered production, and the dynamic, infectious ‘Radioactive’. Elsewhere, on the likes of ‘Moon Karaoke’, ‘Magnets’ and ‘The Brightest’,…

Pre-sale of the week: Interpol – The Other Side Of Make-Believe, out 15 July

Rather than be sent scrambling like so many other musicians on tour or promoting enhanced music, when lockdown clamped in March 2020, Interpol quickly got into a productive mood. Coming from a group whose early work was characterised by Polish knife-wielders and incarcerated serial killers, you might expect Interpol’s pandemic record to be an emotional…

Pre-sale of the week: Fleet Foxes – A Very Lonely Solstice, out 1 July

A Very Lonely Solstice, the new album from Fleet Foxes, captures a poignant moment in time. The recording was originally broadcast as a live-stream event on the winter solstice of 2020, just days after New York declared a state of emergency tightening restrictions again in response to increasing COVID-19 cases. Pecknold describes the set as…

Pre-sale of the week: Muse – Will Of The People, out 26 August

Muse frontman Matt Bellamy says: “Will Of The People was created in Los Angeles and London and is influenced by the increasing uncertainty and instability in the world. A pandemic, new wars in Europe, massive protests & riots, an attempted insurrection, Western democracy wavering, rising authoritarianism, wildfires and natural disasters and the destabilization of the…