First out of the gates this week is Intercepted Message. A pop record for tired times. Sugared with bits of shatterproof glass to put more crack in your strap. At long last, verse–chorus. A weathered thesaurus. This is Osees’ bookend sound. Early-grade garage pop meets proto-synthpunk suicide-repellant. Have a whack at the grass or listen while flat on your ass. Heaps of electronic whirling accelerants to gum up your cheapskate broadband. Social media toilet scrapers unite! Allow your 24-hour news-cycle eyes to squint at this smiling abattoir doorman. You can find your place here at long last. All are welcome from the get-go to the finale … a distant crackling transmission of ’80s synth last-dance-of-the-night tune for your lost loves. Suffering from Politic amnesia? Bored of AI-generated pop slop? Then this one is for you, our friends. Wasteland wanderer, stick around.
Back on planet Earth, multi-platinum British singer-songwriter Birdy is back with her fifth studio album, Portraits – a new chapter and confident change in direction for an artist who has achieved an unbelievable amount since releasing her eponymous debut album in 2011. Her most confident album yet, Portraits sees Birdy take a liberated leap into the unknown, her timeless songwriting style now infused with a fresh, exuberant rush of energy and inventive, off-kilter production flourishes. It’s the sound of a creative step into a new world and, thrillingly, finding her true voice.
Recorded on 15 November 2002, the concert featured on Live at Acton Town Hall was a benefit for striking firefighters and would be one of Joe Strummer’s last performances – he passed away a month later. The performance reunited Strummer on stage for three songs with former bandmate from The Clash, Mick Jones, for the first time in almost twenty years. It would also be their last time on stage together.
Unreal Unearth is the incredible third album by Hozier. The peerless singer-songwriter recorded this remarkable album with a stellar cast of producers, including Bekon (Kendrick Lamar, Drake), Jennifer Decilveo (Miley Cyrus, Bat For Lashes), and Jeff Gitelman (The Weeknd, H.E.R.). The sounds, style and influences throughout the record range from folk to rock, to blues, to soul, to anthemic pop, and all that’s in between.
Echo the Diamond, the third album from Margaret Glaspy, emerged from a deliberate stripping-away of artifice to reveal life for all its harsh truths and ineffable beauty. Like the precious gem of its title, the result is an object of startling luminosity, one capable of cutting through the most elaborately constructed façades. “This record came from trying to meet life on life’s terms, instead of looking for a happy ending in everything,” says the New York-based musician. “The whole experience of creating it felt like effortless catharsis.”
Our release of the week is You’re the One, the third solo studio album by Grammy- and MacArthur-winning singer, composer and instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens, which follows 2017’s critically acclaimed Freedom Highway. This collection of 12 original songs written over the course of Giddens’ career bursts with life-affirming energy, drawing from the folk music that she knows so deeply, as well as its pop descendants. The album was produced by Jack Splash (Kendrick Lamar, Solange, Alicia Keys, Valerie June, Tank and the Bangas) and recorded at Criteria Recording Studios in Miami with a band featuring Giddens’s closest musical collaborators from the past decade alongside musicians from Splash’s own Rolodex, topped off with a horn section, making an impressive ten- to twelve-person ensemble.
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