Trauma and the everyday collide on honest, therapeutic ALEX THE ASTRONAUT release
How To Grow A Sunflower Underwater seems to be a progression of Alex’s mental health journey, as seen by upfront mentions of her therapist throughout the album.
buzz album review
WORKING MEN’S CLUB’s FEAR FEAR thumpingly echoes today’s troubled times
Bristling with edgy energy, the LP is as much a product of its troubled times – pandemic, political divisions, social tensions – as it of its precocious creator.
IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT’s maximalist approach pushes extreme music to nth degree
To say Spirit Of Ecstasy is an album bursting with creativity and boiling over with fresh ideas would be a major understatement.
THE KOOKS find inspiration in the 70s on crowd-pleasing new album
10 Tracks That Echo In The Dark will undoubtedly be a hit with Kooks fans old and new, as well as a festival favourite.
SNIFFANY & THE NITS make a play for the year’s best UK punk album
Sniffany & The Nits, three-quarter Welsh ambassadors moored in London, follow two pre-pandemic releases with a debut LP that’s fast, powerfully efficient, clattering and oddly tuneful.
… AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD’s pandemic-era album is DOA
... Trail of Dead's heart remains in the right place, unfortunately, you suspect the US band had a label boss breathing down their neck at all times.
In FOUND LIGHT, Americana mainstay LAURA VEIRS finally finds clarity
There’s a definite clarity to Found Light that has, maybe at times, been lacking in Laura Veirs’ previous releases over the past 20+ years.
NICK CAVE’s SEVEN PSALMS: faith, rage, love, mercy… and LEONARD COHEN, of course
Nick Cave has been positioning himself as the next Leonard Cohen for some time now. With Seven Psalms, Cave almost goes a step beyond Cohen.
NEIL YOUNG album ‘too sad to release’ 20 years ago is finally here – and worth the wait
In 2001, Neil Young and his band Crazy Horse recorded Toast but declared it too sad to release – until now.
Thrash metal champs MUNICIPAL WASTE still top of their game over 20 years in
With new album Electrified Brain, Municipal Waste have put together another collection of riffy headbangers that will keep circle pits rotating for a long time to come.
Afrofuturism & jazzy hip-hop create free-flowing alchemy on MOOR MOTHER’s JAZZ CODES
Can an LP this unapologetically cerebral, this relentlessly out-there, find Moor Mother a wider audience? If Kendrick Lamar can turn a Glastonbury headline set into rapturously received politically charged performance art, then there’s a chance.
Challenging & remarkable, THE NORTHMAN OST stands tall on its own
As challenging as this music can sometimes be, it certainly succeeds in matching the film’s blood-soaked visuals blow for epic blow.