New releases for 29 June 2018

This week’s super six starts with High As Hope, the long-awaited new album from Florence + The Machine and, although sprinkled with collaborators, it’s still at its core a very Florence album: confessional, poetic lyricism is very much the order of the day and this album will come to rank amongst her very finest. The…

Pre-sale of the week: Low – Double Negative, out 14 September

Low turns twenty-five in 2018. Since 1993, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker – the married couple whose heaven-and-earth harmonies have always held the band’s centre – have pioneered a subgenre, shrugged off its strictures, recorded a Christmas classic, become a magnetic onstage force and emerged as one of music’s most steadfast and vital vehicles for…

New releases for 22 June 2018

We kick off this week’s six of the best with No Sounds Are Out Of Bounds, the 16th studio album from ambient house pioneers The Orb. Their previous two albums were creations of the duo at the band’s heart, but this time they have thrown their work open to a number of collaborators, including Youth,…

Pre-sale of the week: Spiritualized – And Nothing Hurt, out 7 September

And Nothing Hurt is the eighth album from Spiritualized, the follow up to 2012’s Sweet Heart, Sweet Light. From the opening lullaby of ‘A Perfect Miracle’ through to the fading Morse code at the close of ‘Sail On Through’, it painstakingly wraps layer upon layer of gloriously transcendent sound together to create a mesmerizing and…

New releases for 15 June 2018

Our first of the week – squeezed in just before the World Cup – is Wilko Johnson’s first album of new material for 30 years! Anyone expecting Wilko’s particular brand of R&B to be softened by age and circumstance is in for a surprise – if anything, his ‘chop’ guitar style on is even more…

New releases for 8 June 2018

This week’s happy hexad opens with No Shame, a return to form for Lily Allen, a candid account of the breakdown of her marriage, depression, loneliness and fears about her children. The first of two debuts this week is the eagerly awaited Lost & Found, full of street-smart R&B sung in Jorja Smith’s classic voice…