We open our run-down of this week’s finest releases with Luck and Strange, the brand-new album by David Gilmour and his first album of new material in nine years, which was recorded over five months in Brighton. The record was produced by David and Charlie Andrew, best known for his work with Alt-J and Marika Hackman, with lyrics mostly written by Polly Samson, Gilmour’s co-writer for the past thirty years. The album features eight new tracks along with a beautiful reworking of The Montgolfier Brothers’ ‘Between Two Points’, which sees Romany Gilmour, who performs backing vocals across the album, on vocals and harp.
Stark, striking and bewitching, Tristwch y Fenywod’s self-titled album is their debut studio recording, following just 10 gigs and a live demo. Formed in 2022, Tristwch y Fenywod (‘The Sadness of Women’) record exclusively in the Welsh language, conjuring an eldritch, subterranean, alien folk music played on dual zither, electronic drums and bass guitar. With towering, siren-like vocals curling around the Welsh consonants, accompanied by stark, martial rhythms and swirling claw-plucked strings, Tristwch y Fenywod feels like an early 4AD recording dredged from the waters of an Anglesey swamp. The effect is simultaneously chilling and stirring.
Spiritually, literally, psycho-geographically: where else does Mercury Rev’s ninth album, Born Horses, spring from? This cascade of gleaming, glistening psych-jazz-folk-baroque-ambient quest that searches its soul but can never truly know the answer? A sound and vision linked to their exalted past while quite unlike anything they have created before? The answer is somewhere between the homes of founder members Jonathan Donahue (the hamlet of Mt Tremper) and Grasshopper (the town of Kingston), in their veins and brains of their now-legendary tapping of musical cosmology, and the vital presence of new permanent member Marion Genser (keys), plus long-term ally Jesse Chandler (keys) and guests Jeff Lipstein (drums), Martin Keith (double bass) and Jim Burgess (trumpet).
Irish post-rock masters God Is an Astronaut unleash a captivating post-rock trip! For over two decades, the Wicklow-based trio have enthralled listeners from all over the world with their unique sonic universe. Now they return with their eleventh studio album, Embers, which from its first tone to the last proves why God Is an Astronaut are masters of their craft. The band, founded by brothers Torsten and Niels Kinsella, have created yet another exceptional masterpiece of art designed to allow listeners to form their own interpretations. From psych-rock to excellent krautrock trips, driving rhythms by drummer Lloyd Hanney and the captivating use of the sitar, cello, zither, shamanic drums, bowed psaltery, chimes and tanpura, God Is an Astronaut outdo themselves with the post-rock epic that is Embers.
Nala Sinephro’s second album, Endlessness, expands her scope from the inward journey of Space 1.8 into widescreen orchestral ambient jazz compositions. The 10 tracks on the album were composed, produced, mixed and recorded by Sinephro and feature contributions from James Mollison (Ezra Collective), Morgan Simpson (black midi), Sheila Maurice-Grey (Kokoroko), Nubya Garcia, Lyle Barton, Natcyet Wakili (Sons of Kemet) and Dwayne Kilvington (Wonky Logic).
Our release of the week is The The’s first studio album of new songs in a quarter of a century! The 12 songs on Ensoulment encompass characteristic topics ranging from love and sex, war and politics, life and death, to the meaning of what it is to be human in the 21st century. Singer-songwriter Matt Johnson is joined by long-standing The The members James Eller (bass), DC Collard (keyboards), Earl Harvin (drums) and Barrie Cadogan (lead guitar). The album also marks the return of co-producer and engineer Warne Livesey, who previously worked on landmark The The albums Infected (1986) and Mind Bomb (1989).
Click on an image to order your copy.