Opening this week’s slammers are Amyl & The Sniffers, who have seen their horizons broaden exponentially in every way since the release of Comfort to Me. And it’s this attitude – bigger, brighter, smarter, sharper – that’s fuelling their third album, Cartoon Darkness. Recorded with producer Nick Launay at Foo Fighters’ 606 Studios in Los Angeles, on the same desk that captured Nirvana’s Nevermind and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, the latest Amyl offering is full of surprises. This is The Sniffers’ most musically diverse album yet, stretching from classic punk to the glammy strut of recent single ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’ and the stormy balladry of ‘Big Dreams’ (which is a sonic gear shift worthy of the title).
The Night the Zombies Came is the tenth album from Pixies – if you count their classic 1987 4AD mini-LP Come on Pilgrim – and their first new music since 2022’s acclaimed Doggerel. The 13 songs here find Pixies looking ahead on the most cinematic record of their career. Songwriter, vocalist and guitarist Black Francis explains that these are “fragments that are related and juxtaposed with other fragments in other songs. And in a collection of songs in a so-called LP, you end up making a kind of movie.” Druidism, apocalyptic shopping malls, mediaeval-themed restaurants, 12th-century poetic form, surf rock, gargoyles, bog people and the distinctive dry drum sound of 1970s-era Fleetwood Mac are just some of the disparate wonders that inform the new songs.
Songs for a Nervous Planet, the new album from Tears For Fears, features four new studio tracks plus live recordings of Tears For Fears on tour and at their best, including performances of hit songs like ‘Shout’, ‘Head Over Heels’, ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’, ‘Mad World’ and more. Spanning all eras of the band from The Hurting to The Tipping Point and beyond, this record takes you on the incomparable sonic journey that is a Tears For Fears live show and through their career to date.
Empathy can sometimes be a superhuman power; it can connect you so deeply with people, and that bond brings an acute level of trust and love that can sometimes be unparalleled. However, with the energy and emotion transferred into that moment, that feeling can come with a fragility that walks a tightrope. When you can majestically dance along that line, it looks mesmerising to all, but the falls can really hurt. So on the title track of Beth Hart’s new album, You Still Got Me, when she sings “He asked me if I need a hug, I said I got nothin’ inside left to love and then he said, But baby ya still got, baby you still got me,” you feel it. If you have ever seen Beth Hart live or immersed yourself in her music, you know she puts every ounce of her being into her songs. For all of those empathetic superpowers, she also needs someone to catch her when she falls.
On Strawberry Hotel, gleaming tensile techno forms clean, straight lines while scratchy acoustic guitars scuff up edges to produce ghostly audio. Poetry is snatched from the overhead, removed from the overheard; words borrowed from the ether are spun into dizzying new shapes, sometimes reappearing in new settings, twisted back to front, side to side. Each track is a very different room – some soundtracked by little more than metronomic kick drum and robotic voice, others deep in layer upon layer of melody and euphoric noise – and each room unmistakably, uniquely Underworld. Their only advice upon entering: “Please don’t shuffle.”
Our release of the week comes from Laura Marling, who is back with her latest studio album, Patterns in Repeat. Now eight albums and more than 15 years into her career as one of the most acclaimed, prolific and respected songwriters of her generation (multiple Grammy nominations, Mercury nods, a Brit Award and more), Laura aims to occupy different spaces and continues to surprise: Laura Marling is not quite who you might think she is. Written after the birth of her daughter in 2023 and recorded while she was in the room beside Laura, Patterns in Repeat now finds Laura reflecting on her own experience becoming a mother. The sounds are grounded in a specific and revelatory time in Laura’s life, but more broadly the album dives deeper into her reckoning with the ideas and behaviours we pass down through family over generations.
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