This week’s aural nuggets open with Crowded House’s seventh studio album, Dreamers Are Waiting, which was recorded in Valentine and United Studios in LA and then remotely during the first half of 2020. Crowded House is a long-standing and much-loved vehicle for the songwriting talents of Neil Finn, formed in Melbourne, Australia, in 1985 from…
Thirstier, the follow-up to 2020’s Silver Tongue, is TORRES’s most exuberant and daring record to date, showcasing her in thrilling freefall. “I’ve been conjuring this deep, deep joy that I honestly didn’t feel for most of my life,” says Mackenzie Scott. “I feel like a rock within myself. And I’ve started to feel that I…
Kicking off this week’s best releases, Scotland’s finest, Texas, make a very welcome return with their exhilarating new album Hi, flexing their rock soul muscle with a set of tracks that easily rank amongst the best of their stellar career. Texas are a band in their prime, fuelled by the swagger of their recent acclaimed…
The Ultra Vivid Lament is the 14th studio album from Manic Street Preachers. It is both reflection and reaction; a record that gazes in isolation across a cluttered room, fogged by often painful memories, to focus on an open window framing a gleaming vista of land melting into sea and endless sky. Musically, The Ultra…
We’ve got some special news for you this week. At long last, the three iconic albums released by My Bloody Valentine are being reissued, along with a collection of EPs and rare tracks! Their debut album for Creation Records, 1988’s Isn’t Anything, revolutionised alternative music, heralding a new approach to guitar music and studio production…
Animal was a word Laura Marling threw into a lyric simply to meet a rhythm. But it seemed to capture the mood of the new record, and of LUMP as a whole. “There’s a little bit of a theme of hedonism on the album, of desires running wild,” she says. “And also it fed into…
We open this week’s selection of tasty treats with a brand-new album from Paul Weller. We may be cursed to be in the midst a global pandemic, buffeted by all of its stresses and pain. But everyone knows that art provides succour, that music is the most reliable balm. And for many there is further…
Billie Eilish’s highly anticipated 16-track second studio album, Happier Than Ever, continues where her multi-Grammy Award-winning, record-breaking debut album When We All Go To Sleep, Where Do We Go? left off. Happier Than Ever features no outside songwriters or producers, and was written by 19-year-old Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas, who produced the album…