We kick off this week’s bangers with Who Believes in Angels?, the debut collaborative album project from Elton John & Brandi Carlile. The album, which was co-written with Bernie Taupin and produced by Andrew Watt, includes ten new and original songs. This is Elton John’s 33rd and Brandi Carlile’s 8th studio album, respectively. Black Country,…
Sparks – brothers Ron and Russell Mael – are back with their 28th album. MAD! Most acts would, by their seventh decade in the biz, have slowed to a crawl, creakily playing their past hits on the heritage circuit and releasing nothing more than the occasional ‘greatest hits’ collection. This is not the case…
The first of our magical musical moments for this week comes from Alison Krauss & Union Station, who are known for an immaculately crafted but endlessly surprising sound that transcends the boundaries of roots, country, rock & roll and pop. Krauss is a 27-time Grammy winner who was inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of…
Following Mark Pritchard’s remixes for Radiohead, the pair struck upon an otherworldly synergy with the track ‘Beautiful People’, a centrepiece of Mark’s 2016 solo album Under the Sun. Now Tall Tales showcases Pritchard’s mastery of archaic machines that he had previously unearthed in synthesiser archives, guiding the music down unexpected and experimental paths. Thom…
The first of this week’s smashers takes us back to March 2011, when Catherine Anne Davies aka The Anchoress recorded her debut, Communion, at London’s legendary Church Studios with an all-female string section. Recorded live in a single afternoon, Communion is a collection of songs stripped of drums and modern technology. The mini-album was named…
Skeletà is the sixth album from Grammy-winning Swedish theatrical rock icons Ghost, a band on an inevitable path to world domination. This is the band’s most unflinchingly introspective work to date. Where previous albums dealt largely with chronicling and/or observing outward-facing subject matter – such as Impera’s meditations on the rise and fall of…
The first of this week’s hottest albums is Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation, the tenth solo album from Edwyn Collins. The 11-track album was recorded at his Clashnarrow Studio in Helmsdale, north-east Scotland, and was co-produced by Edwyn with Sean Read and Jake Hutton, who all play on the album. The album also features James…
Let All that We Imagine Be the Light is unmistakably Garbage. All the hallmarks and signatures for which they are known are present here: big angular guitars, precise, propulsive beats and cinematic soundscapes all lurk beneath Shirley Manson’s expressive voice, her lyrics bristling with attitude. It is the sound of a group at the…