First out of the starting blocks this week is Dim Probs, which echoes the warmth and closeness of Gruff Rhys’s career-defining first solo album (2005’s Yr Atal Genhedlaeth) and the stargazing melancholy of 2021’s Seeking New Gods. Written and performed entirely in Welsh/Cymraeg, featuring fellow Welsh artists Cate Le Bon and H. Hawkline on backing…
There’s a strong opener to our recommendations for 2024: Little Rope (out 19 Jan) is one of the finest, most delicately layered records in Sleater-Kinney’s nearly 30-year career. To call the album flawless feels like an insult to its intent: it careens head-first into flaw and brokenness, a meditation on what living in a world…
Gruff Rhys and his band piled into a van driven by late, legendary tour manager ‘Dr’ Kiko Loiacono and raced from Dunkirk, where they had just played the final show of a tour of Spain and France, to the outskirts of Paris in the early hours of a March morning in 2022. There, in La…
We’ve got some special news for you this week. At long last, the three iconic albums released by My Bloody Valentine are being reissued, along with a collection of EPs and rare tracks! Their debut album for Creation Records, 1988’s Isn’t Anything, revolutionised alternative music, heralding a new approach to guitar music and studio production…
Seeking New Gods, the seventh solo album from Gruff Rhys, was recorded following a US tour with his band and mixed in LA with superstar producer Mario C (Beastie Boys). The album concept was originally driven to be the biography of a mountain, Mount Paektu (an East Asian active volcano). However, as Gruff’s writing began…
This week’s happy hexad opens with No Shame, a return to form for Lily Allen, a candid account of the breakdown of her marriage, depression, loneliness and fears about her children. The first of two debuts this week is the eagerly awaited Lost & Found, full of street-smart R&B sung in Jorja Smith’s classic voice…
Babelsberg is the fifth album by Gruff Rhys, his first record for Rough Trade since 2007’s classic Candylion. The album features orchestral scores by Swansea-based composer Stephen McNeff and the incredible work of the 72-piece BBC National Orchestra of Wales. The result is Gruff’s best record to date – a ten-song gazetteer of modern times,…