Although it’s only one day before Record Store Day, 15 April is a startling good week for new releases. A mere 45 years since the classic Santana line-up last recorded together, here they are with IV, simply its everything you’d think it would be. The unstoppable Hawkwind forge relentlessly on with The Machine Stops, a concept album based around EM Forster’s classic sci-fi novel, and the wonderful Lush return with an EP which represents their first new music for 20 years! Sam Beam and Jesca Hoop collaborate on the rather wonderful Love Letter For Fire, Cate Le Bon’s Crab Day infuses her Welsh roots with a North American sensibility to lovely effect, and Margo Price’s excellent debut really does announce the arrival of a new, real voice in country music. A Sailor’s Guide To Earth is the next staging post of Sturgill Simpson’s development into an artist of real significance. In spite of all these goodies, my release of the week has to be The Hope Six Demolition Project by P J Harvey, one of the most important artists active and working in the past 10 years. Buy it!
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