Before and After contains some of Neil Young’s favourites from his playbook, which he performs mostly alone on a solo acoustic journey into his music history. The songs blend into each other and morph with mesmerising clarity into a continuous flow of music, creating a pure and intimate 48-minute listening experience. The 13-track album spans…
The first of our six stormers for the next two weeks to blow in is Substance (out 10 Nov), which compiled the 12″ versions of all of New Order’s singles from 1981 to 1987 with many of their respective B-sides (on the CD and cassette versions), including specially recorded new versions of ‘Temptation’ and ‘Confusion’.…
Where’s My Utopia? is the follow-up to the critically-acclaimed Leeds band Yard Act’s debut record The Overload, which was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize after a slew of positive reviews, national radio playlistings and a placing at #2 in the Official Charts. Frontman James Smith has said that lead single ‘Dream Job’ “feels like an…
A quarter of a century since his self-inflicted coronation and self-released debut solo album, Kenny Anderson – DIY pop voyager, ancestral seaside home restorer, squeezebox lothario, Fife for lifer, diamond miner, hijacker of hearts, and the man also known as King Creosote – brings us I DES. While the record’s kaleidoscopic musical terrain plots vibraphones,…
More than 20 years in the making, this December finally sees the release of i/o, the first album of new material from Peter Gabriel since 2002’s Up. During 2023, Peter has been releasing a new song from the album on the occasion of every full moon. Being revealed roughly every four weeks, each track has…
The first of this week’s smashers is Chronicles of a Diamond, the hotly anticipated second album from Black Pumas. When the Austin-bred duo made their self-titled debut in 2019, they set off a reaction almost as combustible and rapturous as their music itself. Along with earning a career total of seven Grammy Award nominations (including…
All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade is the first new album in nine years from The Libertines and opens with the infectious new single, ‘Run Run Run’. On the album, the quartet of unlikely lads have gathered from their new-found homes in France, Denmark, Margate and London to solder a stronger-than-ever internal bond, and scale…
The first of this week’s gems comes from Israel Nash – hailed as a “master of sonic textures” by Rolling Stone and a “folk-rock visionary” by Uncut – who first rose to fame in Europe, where he built a loyal following with a series of critically acclaimed albums that landed him a deal with renowned…
Little Rope is one of the finest, most delicately layered records in Sleater-Kinney’s nearly 30-year career. To call the album flawless feels like an insult to its intent: it careens headfirst into flaw and brokenness, a meditation on what living in a world of perpetual crisis has done to us and what we do to…
The first of this week’s windfall wonders is Zuma 85, which signals the start of a new era for Allah-Las, with the band reinventing itself in defiance of algorithmic categorisation and robotic sterility. Recorded in the midst of the shift from the old world to whatever branch of reality we’re on now, it’s a return,…