We kick off this week’s sparkling six with Oochya!, the brand new studio album by Stereophonics, which features 15 tracks including the brand new single ‘Hanging On Your Hinges’. As Stereophonics celebrate 25 years as one of the UK’s most loved bands, Kelly Jones continues to cement his place amongst the great British songwriters with Oochya! Having now achieved 7 number 1 albums and more than 8 million albums sold in the UK alone, Stereophonics stand as undeniable giants of British music.
How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars is the album The Weather Station made during Covid lockdown of 2020. This is a ballads album, containing songs that are quieter, more subdued, than TWS’ breakout success Ignorance.
John Illsley, bass player of Dire Straits, returns with his 8th solo studio album, the aptly named VIII. Following the publication of the successful autobiography My Life in Dire Straits, John’s new album instantly evokes the sound of the band and will be a delight to fans old and new. The album features 8 brand-new songs plus a newly recorded studio version of the classic Beatles track ‘I’m Only Sleeping’ which John performed at the virtual Dear John concert in 2020 to celebrate John Lennon’s 80th birthday.
Since the demise of his previous band, Ultimate Painting, Jack Cooper – under his Modern Nature guise – has never stopped looking ahead, exploring, and reaching for something further. Since 2019, he’s released an EP, mini album Annual, one full-length LP, one 7″ and three live cassettes – in the process mapping out astonishing new terrain. Island Of Noise presents an obvious new peak in his discography.
Artifacts began humbly as a means of compiling a few early Beirut EPs for a proper physical release. However, as Zach Condon explains in album’s excellent liner notes, reconnecting with old recordings through fresh ears turned a simple reissue project into something much more expansive. “When the decision came to re-release this collection, I found myself digging through hard drives looking for something extra to add to the compilation. What started as a few extra unreleased tracks from my formative recording years quickly grew into an entire extra record’s-worth of music from my past, and a larger project of remixing and remastering everything I found for good measure.”
Our release of the week is Things Are Great, the sixth studio album and first record in more than five years from Band Of Horses. This is a return to the sonic landscape of their earlier work and the kind of raw ethos that lies at the band’s heart: emotionally intense, both on a personal and elemental level. On Things Are Great we find founder Ben Bridwell more autobiographical than he’s ever been on record, detailing the nebulous frustrations and quiet indignities of relationship changes and what a person will do to make things right.
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