This week’s hot six starts with Strawberries, the new album from Robert Forster – co-founder of the Go-Betweens and one of Australia’s most acclaimed singer-songwriters. This album is on the softer, more melodic side of indie pop; but ultimately, it’s hard to argue against that as an approach to songwriting. Trip-hop royalty Morcheeba make a…
Sparks – brothers Ron and Russell Mael – are back with their 28th album. MAD! Most acts would, by their seventh decade in the biz, have slowed to a crawl, creakily playing their past hits on the heritage circuit and releasing nothing more than the occasional ‘greatest hits’ collection. This is not the case…
We start this week’s super six with the twice Grammy-nominated, Mercury Prize- and Brit Award-winning artist Arlo Parks, who returns with her second album, My Soft Machine. This is a deeply personal body of work: a narration of Parks’ experiences as she navigates her 20s and the growth involved. She explains articulately in her own…
Our fantastic five for 3 July start with A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, the latest from propulsive pop perennials Sparks – brothers Ron and Russell Mael – lift the lid on their new album, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, with the release of ‘Self-Effacing’, in which the evergreen masters of the musical vignette show no…
Album of the week is Ten Songs from Live at Carnegie Hall by Ryan Adams, and there are new albums from Muse, Of Monsters & Men and Tremonti, plus debuts from collaboration projects FFS (Franz Ferdinand and Sparks) and Simpson/Cutting/Kerr (Martin Simpson, Andy Cutting and Nancy Kerr), Leftfield’s first release for 16 years, and a…