Across 13 keenly observed and beautifully orchestrated songs, Julian Cope’s new album Self Civil War heaves with unrest and the spirit of 2020. Pure Cope: compelling earworms of barbarian intelligence. Crammed with songs that reach deep inside you, each possessed of its own micro-worldview, Self Civil War showcases Cope’s songwriting at its most searching since Jehovahkill. Road-testing the zeitgeist with kitchen sink psycho-dramas like ‘A Dope on Drugs’, ‘Your Facebook’, ‘My Laptop’ and ‘Billy’, Self Civil War also showcases the insightful heroic ballads ‘Einstein’, ‘You Will Be Mist’ and ‘The Great Raven’. In typical Cope stylee, the 13 songs of Self Civil War brim with sound FX, enormous orchestral arrangements, timeless uprisings of…

168 MB  320 ** FLAC

…Ur-folk and hefty near-Krautrock anthems.

1. That Ain’t No Way to Make a Million
2. A Cosmic Flash
3. You Will Be Mist
4. The Great Raven
5. Berlin Facelift
6. Immortal
7. Einstein
8. Billy
9. A Dope on Drugs
10. Your Facebook, My Laptop
11. Requiem for a Dead Horse
12. ‘Self Civil War’
13. A Victory Dance

Australian-born, London-based musician Jorja Chalmers gained international recognition as the show-stealing saxophonist and keyboard player for Bryan Ferry’s live band, which she’s been an integral part of since 2007. While constantly busy touring throughout the world, she’s been writing and recording her own songs, and following a string-laden 2016 EP, Human Again is her synth-heavy full-length debut.
Fitting squarely within the Italians Do It Better aesthetic, this is a rich, haunting set of dream pop tunes and cinematic instrumentals that seem to emerge out of a misty late-night haze. The lyrics artfully express the loneliness, anxiety, and homesickness faced during endless stretches of touring, with highlights “Human Again” and…

104 MB  320 ** FLAC

…”She Made Him Love Again” evoking ideas of soul replenishment. These tracks weave dusky saxophone lines throughout chilling synth clouds and Julee Cruise-like vocals, providing a cold yet comforting atmosphere. “Red Light” and “Black Shadow” are both filled with suspenseful, Carpenter-esque melodies and slow, spellbinding drum machine patterns, adding a sense of doom to the album. “Copper Bells” makes excellent use of heart-racing arpeggios, and sounds tenser without any beats. The suite-like second half of the album drifts rather than prowls, with the synths sounding more washed out, yet the saxophone melodies are clearer and more romantic. After a ghostly reprise of “She Made Him Love Again,” the album recedes into the night with the solemn, funereal “Ship in the Sky.” Human Again is a carefully composed, gorgeously evocative narrative.

With her violin and voice at the center of her music, Kathryn Claire weaves together stories and melodies rooted in her classical and traditional musical background while infusing each song and composition with an energy and electricity that is palpable. Her musicality and joy on stage is infectious. Honest and poetic writing, crystalline vocals, impassioned violin compositions, and an ability to move seamlessly across genres, are the hallmark of Kathryn Claire’s original and diverse sound.
Eastern Bound For Glory. The masterful 10-song release signifies a homecoming to her solo career and back to her beloved home state of Oregon. Intriguingly, it’s an aesthetic departure from her previous work in that the record explores…

96 MB  320 ** FLAC

…bold indie rock instrumentation and vibey spaghetti western atmospherics. Kathryn was inspired by her life on the road over an intense period of touring internationally. “I caught a lot of these songs during sound checks, while in green rooms, and while staying in other people’s apartments. It was a blur, but, throughout it, it was like my voice was calling to me,” Kathryn shares.
Kathryn has previously issued five solo albums over 20 years. In that time as a songwriter, violinist, guitar player, and singer, she’s homed in on an elegant folk aesthetic that recalls the literate and sophisticated musicality of Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, and traditional folk music. Outside of her solo career, Kathryn has toured, performed and taught extensively in the US, Japan, The Netherlands, India, Belgium and France.
Utilizing the immense talent of her band featuring Allen Hunter on bass, and Sid Ditson on violin, Don Henson on piano and Micah Kassell on drums, Kathryn Claire delivers her own unique brand of harmonic indie-folk music with her latest release, Eastern Bound For Glory.

In the hushed monologues that fill Wayne Phoenix’s debut album, the pianist, composer, and producer describes his stormy inner life with halting half-thoughts. He “doesn’t know what it means to be secure.” He’s “been living without the earth beneath [him].” He rejects the grandiosity of romantic love; he mulls the nature of loneliness. He doesn’t expand much on the circumstances that inspired these ruminations — nor has he publicly offered much biographical information about himself — which lends the record a ghostly quality. It’s a bit like finding an old photo album with most of its pages torn out. Phoenix trusts you to fill in the empty spaces.
soaring wayne phoenix story the earth is mostly muted and forlorn. Phoenix intones gravely…

40 MB  320 ** FLAC

…at the start of the opening track “Mood” that he’s “singing the story of my life so far,” accompanied by washes of white noise, lapping electronics, and a vocal sample stretched and warped into an inhuman wail. Occasionally, he evokes the rain-slicked desperation of Leyland Kirby, and some of the synth work feels as cold and gleaming as those of his compatriots on Rabit’s Halcyon Veil label. But the way Phoenix treats his samples and sounds, swaddling them in blankets of hiss or warping them into unrecognizable forms, makes them feel personal and unique.

Only three of the record’s nine tracks are longer than two minutes, which lends the record a flickering, quicksilver energy, as if Phoenix’s mind is working too quickly to stick to a single thought. You can hear this restlessness in his vocal passages, the way he gives up on sentences halfway through, grasping for the right ideas, then undercutting himself by fading the volume in moments where it seems like words might fail him. This energy is what separates soaring wayne phoenix from ambient music; for as much meditating as Phoenix does on this record, he rarely sits still.

This approach allows Phoenix to try out more emotions than the overwhelming sadness of these compositions might suggest. While his spoken-word pieces often mirror the music, he also strikes notes of peace and hope. “Burn False Messages” opens with the assertion that he doesn’t “want to be anyone’s beloved,” but it closes with a reflection on the necessity of interdependence and the endurance of the human spirit. “Alone,” surprisingly, considers the happiness and sense of ease one can find in isolation.

According to an account provided to Boomkat, this music spent 10 years “filed away in a drawer.” Whether this was meant literally or not, there’s something poetic about these pieces sitting forgotten for so long. They are full of the complicated wisdom that only reveals itself with time. It’s the sound of a person slowly figuring the world out for themselves.

Less than two years after their debut, Chicago-based psych rock quintet Post Animal have returned with Forward Motion Godyssey. Despite former member (and Stranger Things star) Joe Keery being reduced to a contributor, the band seem more confident than ever.
Post Animal still sound incredibly indebted to their influences — which range from the Australian psych scene to Black Sabbath — but on Forward Motion Godyssey these influences are channelled into generally stronger songwriting. The band also pull from new influences, like early ’70s prog rock, on tracks like opener and highlight “Your Life Away.”
On standout cut “Post Animal,” the band showcase their heavier side, one that continually rears its head on tracks like “In a Paradise”…

112 MB  320 ** FLAC

…(which sounds like King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard collaborating with Ozzy Osbourne).

Sometimes, Post Animal’s eclectic genre-bending psych tendencies don’t pan out as well. “How Do You Feel” and “Private Shield” are psychedelic alt-R&B cuts that feel like awkward attempts to blend the Weeknd’s style with their own, while “Safe or Not” is psych-disco that bands like Tame Impala have already mastered.

Despite the lesser tracks on the record, Forward Motion Godyssey is a strong sophomore attempt from Post Animal. The band still have yet to truly define their unique identity, but as they are now, they are one of the stronger genre-bending psychedelic rock groups around.

New York band The Men have always been genre-morphic and unpredictable, but on their eighth album Mercy they have truly done something new as a band. For the first time since forming, they have now created three straight records with the same lineup, and the result is a sound that feels developed and continuous despite running the gamut of mood, in true Men fashion. Having this lineup stability has allowed the band to deepen and finesse the sounds they were exploring on 2017’s Drift and produce tracks that have a unique and distinct voice.
Mercy was recorded live at Serious Business studio to 2″ tape with Travis Harrison. The band did minimal overdubs, contributing to the urgent feel of the recording. The album is simply…

83 MB  320 ** FLAC

…the sound of a band that has a deep and unjaded passion for songwriting and creation, working at the peak of their collaborative connection.

There is something deliciously normal about Tennis, the Denver husband and wife team of Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley. Steeped in the best pop of a bygone age, the couple’s lyrics seem so simple and yet unpack hidden depths on repeated listening. Moore and Riley met as analytical philosophy majors – with a shared love of great and often little-known music – and they bring to their crystalline songs of love a sophistication that never gets too clever.
This is their fifth album, and they never let up. As time goes by, Tennis seem to refine their art, leaving most traces of indie rock behind. and purifying the overall feel of their sound. The good thing about the best pop is that the hooks are perennial, and work their magic…

75 MB  320 ** FLAC

…outside the rollercoaster of fashion. The production, as ever, is deceptively straightforward. Each song displays moments of grace, beautiful guitar textures -nothing grandiose – and that is perhaps the key to the Tennis sound. Alaina’s seductive and dream-like voice, innocent, soothing with a touch of yearning, feels a million miles from the darkness, anger and violence that characterises so much rock and rap.

There is something both healing and deeply relaxing in this clear-eyed music of light. It is perhaps indicative that the couple have spent a great deal of time seeking inspiration on long and courageous sea-voyages, and yet Alaina only recently learned to swim and hates being in the water. Tennis’s songs barely allude to the phantoms of the deep that haunt other songwriters. They prefer to float along on the gently rippling surface, in a warm and comforting reverie.

The most touching song “Matrimony II” refers – subtly – to the recent episode in a Whole Foods Market, when Alaina collapsed, and her husband was convinced she had died. A hymn to the longevity of their marriage – which clearly thrives on creative partnership as much as anything else – this is one of the rare moments when double-tracking of vocals and reverb bring to the production echoes of Phil Spector and an almost anthemic quality. This is superlative and timeless pop, a collection of well-honed tracks or, as Spector called them, “little symphonies”. — theartsdesk.com

Beach Bunny’s Lili Trifilio wasn’t familiar with TikTok until after her song went viral on the video-sharing app last summer. The self-released “Prom Queen,” a protest of Euro-centric beauty standards, has soundtracked 14,000 TikToks and counting, many of which feature a girl posing in front of a phone camera to illustrate Trifilio’s opening lines: “Shut up, count your calories/I never looked good in mom jeans.” Those lyrics distill the Beach Bunny formula: sentimental and wistful, with a plainspokenness that prompts immediate sympathy. TikTok is better known for surfacing meme-ready rap bangers than indie rock, but Trifilio’s heavyhearted charm struck a nerve.
For almost two years, Trifilio was Beach Bunny’s only member. In 2017, eager to compete…

59 MB  320 ** FLAC

…in a battle of the bands competition near her home in Chicago, she began putting together a group. On “Prom Queen” and its eponymous 2018 EP, she delivered teen-diary anecdotes in a bright voice that complimented the sticky hooks of her band’s twee-leaning pop-punk. With Beach Bunny’s debut LP, Honeymoon, Trifilio—now 23—levels up from Prom Queen’s wide-eyed stories of heartbreak, though the fears instilled by past romantic blunders continue to creep in. “You stay, you go, you say ‘I’m sorry’/I’m sorry too, for wanting you,” she hollers in “Colorblind.” “I’ll change the channel/I’ve seen this show before.”

Trifilio cites Marina Diamandis as a songwriting inspiration, though Beach Bunny’s sound more often echoes the sun-kissed garage rock of Best Coast or the fired-up power-pop of Charly Bliss. While Prom Queen often luxuriated in grief and resisted the notion of moving on, Honeymoon’s most rewarding moments come when Trifilio swaps the insecurities for a newfound assurance: “If you’re gonna love me, make sure that you do it right,” goes the chorus of early single “Dream Boy.” “Cuffing Season” combines a therapy session and a pep talk as Trifilio’s narrator attempts to remain resolute in a case of “are we, or aren’t we?”

At other times, Honeymoon’s lyricism can feel too slight: “She’s your girl, she’s in all your pictures/California girl, I wish I was her,” Trifilio laments in “Ms. California,” rehashing a tired trope of female jealousy. “But I’m confident when I’m with you… When he calls me pretty, I feel like somebody,” she sings in closer “Cloud 9,” lines that feel superficial even as the insecurities they describe ring true. Thankfully, the rich, surfy melodies help to distract from the weak points.

Like Crazy For You before it, Honeymoon isn’t especially singular or groundbreaking—but Beach Bunny’s raucous spirit means it never goes stale, either. Trifilio excels in straightforward, recognizable experiences of heartache, while still leaving space for listeners to attach their own nuance. Even as we get a little older, Honeymoon suggests, the adolescent anxieties of earlier Beach Bunny songs never fully wane; we just get a little better at handling them. As long as there are heartbreaks and insecurities, albums like this will have purpose. — Pitchfork

In many ways, the UK’s political and social climate has mirrored that of the U.S.’s in recent years: a rise in hate crimes and violence, cuts in social welfare benefits, incompetent politicians, and ever-weakening prospects for the young. While it may seem like every UK or US-based artist one reads about these days is “responding to our political reality,” Leeds-based quartet Mush fit into a long tradition of critically-minded post-punk, and they’re ready to vent their frustrations with their lives using sharp words and music that feels as off-kilter as the world around them.
On their debut full-length, 3D Routine, Mush leans further into experimentation than on their previous EP Induction Party, like a jammy, more rock n’ roll cousin of Trash Kit.

107 MB  320 ** FLAC

Frontperson Dan Hyndman’s vocals are nearly unhinged; he jeers in an almost sing-song manner, sometimes becoming breathlessly frustrated. 3D Routine starts off energetic and upbeat. Long-running opener “Revising My Fee” is classic post-punk, with a driving bass line and lyrics bemoaning a constant state of debt. In its last two minutes, the guitar fights to out-weird itself, with bending notes, feedback, and blunt noise. The album gets a bit more tame mid-way through, with the soft “Fruits of the Happening” and the proggy title track. The catchy “Gig Economy” is a clear standout, using raucous, atonal instrumentation and wobbly vocals to make tangible the confusion and nonsense of being a worker with little to no protection.

Bambara‘s second release on Wharf Cat Records isn’t a radical departure from the first, 2018’s Shadow on Everything, but it is most certainly a refinement. Active for over a decade, the Brooklyn-based trio’s sound has evolved from shadowy noise rock to a much more focused, direct sort of gothic post-punk, foregrounding Reid Bateh’s bitter, brutal lyrics about seedy characters who constantly seem to be one wrong move away from a horrible, unforgiving tragedy.
Stray is the band’s longest album to date, at 43 minutes, but it actually feels more concise. The ten-song outing is more developed than the group’s previous records, and the songs seem to have more bite to them. Bateh is clearly coming into his own as a writer of brilliantly evocative…

103 MB  320 ** FLAC

…miniature street dramas, and his pacing and delivery are sharper and more charismatic than ever. Even when he sounds like a stoned rambler, there’s so much conviction to the way he describes filthy city scenes and despicable back-room antics that it drives the narratives rather than derails them. He punctuates many of the verses with an exuberant “Huh!,” and it sounds like he’s casting demons outward. One can just imagine him performing these songs, bashing around and projecting sweat everywhere, yet maintaining a cool sense of composure. Bambara seem more versatile, effortlessly moving from the woozy, low-down noir of opener “Miracle” to the twangy death-surf of songs like “Heat Lightning” and “Ben & Lily.”

The production gives everything a hazy, ethereal glow, but it makes all of the blazing guitar riffs and pounding drums resonate, rather than washing them out. Easily the band’s most accomplished album to date.

After a few seconds of mysterious noise that sounds like distant waves crashing, Silhouettes, the debut album from Detroit trio Shadow Show, begins with a bassline a few notes removed from “Taxman” and a kaleidoscopic explosion of tremolo guitars and mod pop vocal harmonies. It’s a strong start to an album that channels several different generations of both British pop and Detroit rock without ever directly mimicking any specific influences. Vocalist/guitarists Ava East’s haunted guitar tones on songs like “The Machine” find the middle ground between pensive, late-night loner jams from Fred Smith’s Sonic’s Rendezvous Band and the sinister energy of Primal Scream. The slide guitar riffing of “Glass Eye” offers a far more psychedelic reading of Detroit’s…

101 MB  320 ** FLAC

…ongoing fixation with the blues. Shadow Show’s songs call on familiar elements — layered vocal harmonies, the occasional driving punky bassline, melodies laced with garage rock attitude — but song structures take unexpected turns. Rarely moving from verse to chorus and back, Shadow Show instead maps out strange navigations for their songs. New riffs are introduced mid-song, a wildly catchy part shows up out of nowhere and is never repeated. These unpredictable moves keep the album interesting and add to the air of mystery Shadow Show spends much of the album establishing. Production from bassist Kate Derringer is wonderfully raw, conveying power and presence while keeping the mixes sharp. The distant perspectives and strange sonic shifts of Silhouettes keep both the band and listeners actively engaged, leaving the album with the feeling that you’ve just wandered all night through some weird dream.

It’s been a long time since we’ve heard from Elizabeth Sankey and Jeremy Warmsley, collectively known as Summer Camp. Nearly five years in fact, since their third album Bad Love was released. But the duo have hardly rested on their laurels: Warmsley released a single every month of 2019, and made a move into soundtracking films, TV shows and computer games, while last year Sankey released her first film.
That film, an affectionate if occasionally biting documentary/essay about the genre of romantic comedies, is where Romantic Comedy, the band’s 4th album, springs from. This is not a soundtrack per se, although you will hear many tracks from it if you see Sankey’s film. It’s more a mix of tracks used in the film and songs inspired…

107 MB  320 ** FLAC

…by romantic comedies, threaded together by short instrumental sections.

Love Of My Life, which was originally released as a single last year, sounds like classic Summer Camp straight from the off. With more than a nod to Saint Etienne, its swirling strings, carefree energy and pitch-perfect vocals from Sankey add up to one of those songs that sounds like an instant classic the moment you hear it.

The song that accompanied Love Of My Life, the Warmsley-sung Danny & John (here re-christened When Danny Met John) is, by contrast, a total about-turn from the usual Summer Camp sound. Inspired by one of Sankey’s film’s observations that the romcom genre can be stultifying hetero-normative, it’s a bittersweet tale of two men who can’t get their one kiss many years ago out of their heads, with lines like “as he inched closer to 40, his only friend was regret”.

What’s so delightful about the album (and indeed, Sankey’s film) is the way it both pays tribute to and subverts various tropes from romantic comedies. Song titles like You Complete Me, Nice Guy and Mr Wrong will be familiar to anyone who grew up with Jerry Maguire and Pretty In Pink, while the swooning Women In Love is about the various personas that women are given in such films – whether it be a woman who “drinks coffee after midnight and never cuts her hair” or swims in the sea every Friday after work. The fact that it’s set to a gorgeous melody that can imagine accompanying the roll of credits is a bonus.

The arrangements seem more muscular than before too – Warmsley has described Romantic Comedy as the first album they’ve recorded as a live band, and on tracks like The Ugly Truth, you can really tell: when the chorus of The Ugly Truth kicks in, it’s the cue for the band to step up a gear and the song feels like it’s about to rise up into the air. It Happened One Night (another nod to a famous rom-com) is a gorgeously lush piano ballad, while Barefoot In The Park (ditto) has a lovely Bruce Springsteen-ish driving energy to it which already sounds like a future live favourite.

Unlike their previous ‘soundtrack’ album (the score to Charlie Shackleton’s Beyond Clueless), Romantic Comedy feels like a standalone album in its own right – even the little instrumental interludes don’t feel like they’re slowing the album’s momentum down. In fact, it’s an album that, to paraphrase the 2005 classic of the genre, The Wedding Date, you’d miss even if you’d never heard it.

Multi-award-winning drummer, producer and composer Moses Boyd grew up in South London, spending much of his time studying the work of master drummer Tony Allen while also immersing himself in the production and values of the new genres that were emerging in the city. Mixing his drumming and production skills with contemporary jazz, Boyd’s artistry has allowed him to produce, collaborate, and tour with a multitude of artists, including Sampha and Little Simz, and even drop a track with South African gqom artist DJ Lag for the recent Lion King soundtrack.
As with previous releases, his debut solo album Dark Matter also finds its way onto Boyd’s own label, Exodus. Dark Matter beautifully showcases the crossover and nuance Boyd has…

117 MB  320 ** FLAC

…squeezed into the album through recorded swatches of rhythms, creating a tapestry of grime, Afrobeat and sounds of the London underground, combined with his years of training in jazz.

Tracks like “What Now?,” with its loosely held melody constructed of flute, soft brass, lithe guitar and slow hits of percussion sit perfectly alongside the brass ensemble and percussive double time and jazz meanderings of “Stranger Than Fiction” and “BTB,” as they do the darkly energized synth and cacophony of symbols on “Only You.”

As the artist has noted himself, Boyd has finally stepped out of his label as a jazz musician to embrace himself as a producer who also plays jazz.

Following their respective stints in funky DJ group Beat Buffet, and alt-rock band Jefes del Desierto, siblings Raul and Paulina Sotomayor came together as an outfit under their surname in 2014, releasing their debut, Salvaje, the following year. The Mexico City-based group now includes two additional members on keys, guitar, and bass. On their third full-length album, Orígenes, Sotomayor nails a dynamic and accessible pop sound without sacrificing complexity. The recipe? Strong pop vocals in tandem with inventive, dance-oriented electronic beats. Their ambitious sound is a mixture of influences from across the Latin music spectrum, drawing inspiration from dancehall, cumbia, merengue, Afrobeat and a variety of other genres, and is written entirely in Spanish.

75 MB  320 ** FLAC

There’s an undeniable commercial quality to their music, but it’s delivered with striking soul.

There’s a hypnotic quality to the songs on Orígenes. A large part of this is Paulina’s captivating vocals, which can morph from breathy like in “Tu Cuerpo y el mío” to commanding like on “Latin History Month,” over the course of the record. Lyrical repetition and ever-present, thumping percussion add to the effect. “Menéate pa’ mí” stands out with its relentless tempo, Paulina’s rapid singing, and catchy army of horns, while the groove, bouncy synths and spirit of “Quema” brings to mind Sofi Tukker, even right down to the vocal delivery. Album closer “Ella,” is expansive; the pace significantly slowed with a sparing beat that’s more atmospheric and spatial while Paulina stretches out her words rather than her quick fire delivery in the preceding songs. It’s a whole new tone that leaves the listener to imagine it’s a taste of what to come. The song stakes a line in the sand for the territory they’ve charted and for new frontiers to come in the future.

Often overshadowed by his singular lyrical style and manner of delivery, Aidan Moffat has been developing an increasingly idiosyncratic style of instrumentals under his L. Pierre moniker for almost as long as he’s been releasing records. Here, under his new Nyx Nótt alias, Moffat doubles down on the unease that has lay beneath the beauty of his previous instrumental work. This is an earthier sound, that of music creaking under the weight of its own horror.
The majority of the record is built around gently rolling jazz drums that give the record, particularly on openers ‘Mickey Mouse Strut’ and ‘The Prairie’, a stumbling, queasy rhythm of moving through unfamiliar environments into something unknown. Things are initially hopefully on…

101 MB  320 ** FLAC

…the former, then increasingly fearfully on the latter.

‘The Prairie’, in particular, shines. With its Morricone guitar line and clusters of synth stabs it has some of Forest Swords’ nocturnal drift, but the tune develops in a looser, less straightforward way, instead being completely overwhelmed by mournful strings. This seemingly intuitive structuring gives the songs a quiet unpredictability akin to dreaming, leaving you tentative to connect with every groove knowing full well it could dissipate at any moment. It’s a truly uneasy feeling.

This is not to say there isn’t beauty on the record, far from it. The organ coda on ‘Shirley Jackson On Drums’ is a gleaming, wondrous thing, but, set against the sinister piano runs and two-note string wail that precedes it, it feels like the half-imagined oasis of some beleaguered protagonist. Similarly, the momentous brass on ‘Long Intervals of Horrible Sanity’ has an epic scale to it but the way it trails off and slips into dissonance makes the whole composition feel like a marching song for an army who can’t even pretend they’re going to win.

Moffat has talked of the record being simply about the night, or ‘crepuscular music’, but it never feels like an escapist project. It becomes an expression of the bleed between the unconscious and the world around us, through often beautiful, always unsettling music. — theskinny.co.uk

Brooklyn’s Habibi brought an explosive and celebratory fun to their self-titled 2014 debut. That brief collection was overflowing with bubblegum melodies, upbeat pop, and the kind of giddy excitement that bands only revel in during their earliest stages. Six years later, sophomore album Anywhere But Here retains some of that excitement, but sees the band expanding into moodier expression, more complex songwriting, and an expanded instrumentation that includes occasional Middle Eastern touches. This kind of progression was hinted at on the band’s 2018 EP Cardamom Garden, which saw them incorporating Persian hand percussion and lyrics sung in Farsi into shadowy rock tunes. Anywhere But Here splits its track list between higher-energy…

89 MB  320 ** FLAC

…power pop songs like the attitude-heavy “Misunderstood” and more simmering, downtempo slow burns like “Flowers.” On the moodier songs, spindly surf-rock guitar leads blur into reverb-coated vocal harmonies. The relaxed pace and sun-dazed atmosphere of “Angel Eyes” sounds like the Allah-Las at their most subdued, but just moments later, Habibi calls on the jittery fire of their earliest material for the dancey garage pop of “Bad News.” Both Habibi’s pop-friendly and atmospheric sides grow on Anywhere But Here, with more direct hooks on songs like “Hate Everyone But You” and a daring willingness to explore outside of their known parameters on songs like album-closer “Come My Habibi.” Along with auxiliary percussion from a tombak player, the song finds a droning riff stretching into a psychedelic workout, taking the band further out than they’ve ventured before.

Being able to break new, more serious ground without losing any of the pop core that made the band so fun to begin with is the album’s key strength. Anywhere But Here not only has some of Habibi’s most adventurous songs, but also some of their best yet.

Following two albums of generally bouncy, soul-inflected indie pop that looked to ’80s movements such as the 2-Tone ska revival, sophisti-pop, and jangle pop for inspiration (2007’s Matinee and 2009’s Everything Is New), Londoner Jack Peñate decided to take a deep dive into the recording and production end of things in order to, as he saw it, better express his songwriting. No less than ten years and, per Peñate, over a thousand songs later, he re-emerges with After You.
Perhaps surprisingly, the album was co-produced by Peñate, Alex Epton (David Byrne, Holy Ghost!), Inflo aka Dean Josiah (the Kooks, Tom Odell), and Everything Is New producer Paul Epworth (Paul McCartney, Beck). Together, they significantly update his sound, opting for more…

190 MB  320 ** FLAC

…expansive, choir-fortified arrangements and sleek electronics, bringing him into the home-studio era of electro-pop. Importantly, it still sounds like Peñate — ever catchy and hummable — if a more serious, didactic version of himself informed by world events in the interim decade.

These shifts are well-reflected on the dramatic opener, “Prayer,” a gospel-charged anthem that layers electric guitar, distorted keyboard timbres, fluttering strings, and spacy interjections before landing on its spacious, clap-along chorus. This quality of having extraneous manipulated sounds and effects as well as room to breathe is persistent throughout an album where listeners will likely be able to distinguish most all of the voices in play while, at the same time, some curiosity is typically throwing off perfect symmetry. In another seeming contradiction, though Peñate’s voice breaks as he wails and sighs “I need a little prayer” over choir-style backing singers, the song somehow comes across as distinctly restrained. An unofficial sister song to “Prayer,” the menacing “Murder” appears midway through the track list and puts a different spin on the church tent revival, combining it with club tropes like blurting synth tones, a syncopated bassline, and four on the floor. More-atmospheric, reflective tracks like “GMT” and “Loaded Gun” still have that articulate glitchiness to them as well as soaring, lyrical vocal lines. If there’s an outlier here, it’s “Gemini,” an elegantly unsettling track that features the brutal poem “The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb,” written by Peñate’s grandfather, Mervyn Peake, and read with Shakespearian finesse by his uncle Fabian. Both fatalistic and romantic, “Swept to the Sky” closes the album with a dramatic death scene.

Arguably heavy-handed but regrettably timely, even if allegorical, After You marks an ambitious return for the long-absent musician, one that ultimately rewards with musicality.

Disc 1
1. Prayer [03:20]
2. Loaded Gun [03:27]
3. Round and Round [04:22]
4. Cipralex [04:21]
5. Murder [04:39]
6. Gemini [03:05]
7. Let Me Believe [04:17]
8. GMT [04:14]
9. Ancient Skin [03:52]
10. Swept to the Sky [04:42]

Disc 2
1. Prayer (The Church Studio Session) [03:01]
2. Loaded Gun (The Church Studio Session) [03:48]
3. Round and Round (The Church Studio Session) [03:42]
4. Cipralex (The Church Studio Session) [04:09]
5. Murder (The Church Studio Session) [04:43]
6. Gemini (The Church Studio Session) [03:02]
7. Let Me Believe (The Church Studio Session) [04:08]
8. GMT (The Church Studio Session) [03:48]
9. Ancient Skin (The Church Studio Session) [03:36]
10. Swept to the Sky (The Church Studio Session) [06:37]

As on their striking 2018 EP Lies After Love, Drama‘s debut album, Dance Without Me, proves why their name is so fitting for their ultra-smooth blend of R&B, dance, and pop. The moods that Via Rosa and Na’el Shehade create are as relatable as they are unmistakable; on the opening track, “7:04 AM,” the way Rosa sings “Everybody’s got somebody to call when the night is young” over gliding piano chords evokes reaching for someone in an empty bed. Rosa’s sultry, quietly assured voice is the star attraction of Dance Without Me. Like Sade, Tracey Thorn, and the xx’s Romy Madley Croft, she knows that a simple approach is often the most powerful, and she’s never less than commanding when she confronts the doubts that trickle into long-term relationships…

93 MB  320 ** FLAC

…on “Years” or subtly tells a lover it’s their loss if they leave (“What if this is it? What if this is all that you get … Who will you love?”). While Shehade’s productions justifiably showcase Rosa’s voice, they’re interesting in their own right. He often uses simple elements in clever ways, as on “Days and Days,” where a nagging guitar line tiptoes over a crunchy, room-filling beat to hypnotic effect. The blend of restless rhythms with melodies and instrumentation that are so soft that they melt into listeners’ ears on tracks like “911” reflects Drama’s growth since Lies After Love. Shehade and Rosa’s music has expanded to combine joy, sorrow, togetherness, and solitude in complex yet engaging ways. On the sparkling “Gimme Gimme” and the sunny, disco-tinged “Hold On,” they find the hopeful side of heartache; on “Lifetime,” they bring out the sexiness of truly committing to someone.

Exquisitely crafted and emotionally genuine, Dance Without Me is a strong, self-assured debut that sounds like the work of an act that’s much more seasoned than this duo.

Floridian smooth jazz reboot artist Tristan Whitehill (aka Euglossine) is known for crafting genre-fluid electronic tunes that fit somewhere between the fusion lite of Pat Metheny and the hyper-intense gleam of late ’80s videogame music. His stylistically promiscuous music has slithered its way into the rosters of a number of equally adventurous small-run tape labels: Beer on the Rug, Housecraft, Phinery, Moss Archive and Hausu Mountain.
Whitehill’s perennial home is Orange Milk Records, who specialize in non-specialization. The only consistency to be found in their catalogue is a sense of the interesting, the exploratory and the boisterous. Euglossine fits right in amidst the deviants, the virtuosos and the cracked geniuses that grace the label’s docket.

67 MB  320 ** FLAC

Psaronius is a new direction for Whitehill; these tracks have veered away from the minimal prog rock stylings of past releases, instead arching in a more abstract direction. There is an immediate sense of the push-pull of the analogue and digital at play, as if there’s a wrestling match going on between computer music and electroacoustic composition.

Yet, as Whitehall has done on previous efforts, his soundscapes describe environments. There are flora and fauna being catalogued, and soil samples being taken. Rocks are being overturned and mysterious insects are slithering out from beneath them. Barring the occasional glitch in the matrix, the sense of the organic hasn’t completely evaporated from Euglossine’s sound. His jelly-like structures have merely been slathered in a delicious coating of experimentation.

It’s sometimes tempting to speculate on the exact terms of the Faustian pact Alex Neilson has signed in order to get so much work of such quality done in such a short time. Aside from his most famous project – the wonderful folk-rock monster that was the Trembling Bells – he has been a member of Lucky Luke, avant-folk supergroup Black Flowers, and drum-and-sax noisemakers Death Shanties amongst many others. Add to this the countless collaborations with everyone from Jandek and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy to Isobel Campbell and Mike Heron, his seemingly never-ending tours with the likes of Alasdair Roberts, his recent work with folk superhero Shirley Collins, his liner notes for various friends and colleagues and his occasional reviews for The Wire, and you start to…

103 MB  320 ** FLAC

…wonder whether Neilson doesn’t experience time in a different way to everybody else.

In many ways, these apparently frantic working patterns are reflected in the fraught emotional fervour of Neilson’s ever-improving songwriting. But that fervour may have another, much more personal cause. Much of his recent work – including the excellent Otterburn, released less than a year ago – is informed by the death of his brother, and that same energy of sadness and anger finds its way into Andromeda. Handfuls Of Hair, for example, deals with that family tragedy and the end of a relationship, weaving together those two strands of grief to create a kind of tapestry where longing and despair are primary colours. Then there is I Am Happy, which achieves a kind of sublimation through irony, its backing vocals spat out as if by singing gargoyles, its musical backdrop a storm of guitars, crunching and squealing. And Funeral For Alex Rex is delivered like a pagan sermon to a congregation of bemused psychiatrists. Drums clatter like falling earth and death is summoned with an almost gleeful eagerness. It would be easy to call this sort of performance cathartic, but there is something darker and more compelling than catharsis going on here: Neilson is staring into the void and we don’t know if the void will stop staring back.

He rarely deals in subtlety, but when he does it is all the more poignant. Album opener Song Of Self Doubt calls in a favour from Shirley Collins, who recites a disturbing spoken-word fragment over a collage of glassy chimes and field recordings of birdsong. It barely lasts a minute but it is one of Neilson’s most beautiful recorded moments. And Oblivion has a hushed country-rock feel to it but is nonetheless replete with infernal images. Like much of the album it is a brutal self-examination and an examination of the validity of creativity in the face of disillusionment.

While at times Andromeda is a willfully bleak affair and its songs seem to imply that the very act of songwriting is effectively pointless, its own existence eventually contradicts that. There are moments of melodic sweetness that permeate even the darkest or bitterest songs, like Coward’s Song, where the gentle lilt of a waltz pulls the listener in one direction while the lyrics – full of recrimination, doubt and lines from Richard III – go the opposite way. The harder-edged sound of Rottweilers, full of warped electric guitar, and the grind of Alibi Blues with its unsettling repetitions have an irresistible kinetic energy. These songs are more than glimpses into a despairing mind: the hand of the artist is visible, we can hear Neilson alchemising suffering into songs without ever losing the rasping closeness of that suffering.

The piano-led Haunted House is a further example of the growing range of Neilson’s writing. The lyrics are, by his standards, abstract but the melody is somehow familiar, a classic rock ballad dredged up from the depths of a fevered mind. The Uses Of Trauma, while more direct and personal, has a similar feel. At the other end of the scale, musically, is I’m Not Hurting No More, a spiky spoken-word monologue on a bed-of-nails guitar part, like The Fall with feelings.

At some point in the future, it will become possible – necessary, even – to define Alex Neilson’s place among the very best songwriters of this still-young century. Like many of the greats he is instantly recognisable by his distinctive voice, his idiosyncratic turn of phrase, even the melodic choices he makes mid-song. But right now the rawness and immediacy of his work means it would be difficult and unfair to rank it alongside other established albums. Andromeda, like its predecessor, is a difficult, brilliant, rewarding snapshot of human turmoil. It’s final song, Pass The Mask, ends with the paradoxical refrain ‘nothing can heal or destroy you better than time’, and while it’s not for us to speculate on how time will treat Neilson, its seems certain that the stature of this formidable album will continue to grow even as the scars it describes begin to heal. — folkradio.co.uk