This week’s lovelies kick off with Zeit, composed and recorded by Rammstein during 2020’s lockdowns. Flake Lorenz confirmed that the recording sessions for the album were unplanned and that the quarantine caused by the pandemic had allowed for ‘less distraction’ and ‘more time to think of new things’. In October 2021, a song from the album was premiered on the International Space Station to French astronaut Thomas Pesquet. Now is the time for Zeit to appear, prior to the slated resumption of Rammstein’s Stadium Tour that has been postponed to 2022.
Let’s Eat Grandma – the duo of songwriters, multi-instrumentalists and vocalists Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth – release their third full-length album, Two Ribbons, co-produced by the duo and David Wrench. The album concludes with its stunning title track: a slow, melancholic moment of quiet that contrasts with their almost industrial dancefloor fillers and contains reflections from Jenny on how the pair are still bound together through their compassion for each other, tight as ever, although slightly frayed and world-worn.
Emotional Eternal, the third studio album from Melody’s Echo Chamber, is a deeply human collection of songs full of prolonged moments of sonic transcendency – a record that clearly exhibits maturity but still regards the world with a childlike wonder. Having swapped Paris for the clean air of the Alps, Melody hopes the record has an uplifting quality. “I made some big and impactful decisions and changes to my life. It took me to where it is peaceful, and I think the record reflects this.”
Speaking about the new album, Blossoms’ Tom Ogden says: “While on tour in 2019 in Mexico, I visited Frida Kahlo’s house. Looking at her paintings on show, someone had described one of them as being like a ‘ribbon around a bomb’. I immediately thought that it was a great title for a song and album because of the imagery that it evoked in my mind. I thought about how lots of things in life could be described as being a ribbon around a bomb in the sense that as people we often dress things up which have a darkness lying beneath them.”
Eli “Paperboy” Reed pays homage to country legend Merle Haggard by putting a soulful spin on some classic tunes. Recorded in Brooklyn with long-time collaborator Vince Chiarito (Black Pumas, Charles Bradley), on Down Every Road Reed taps into all the heartache of Haggard’s iconic catalogue and channels it into explosive, high-octane performances that blur the lines of genre, geography and race to reveal the common, distinctly American threads tying them all together.
Our release of the week is Alpha Games, the sixth studio album from Bloc Party and their first since 2016’s Hymns, and the first album written and recorded by the current Bloc Party line-up, with the musicality of Justin Harris (bass) and Louise Bartle’s unbridled energy and power on the drums combining to capture the spark of their live shows and deliver the most exciting Bloc Party album yet.
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