It's taken me a while to get through this week's new stuff. Anyway...
Marina Allen - following on from the promise of her debut, this is a cracker. Really good, enjoyable, not easily categorisable.
Rina Sawayama - big pop sounds, very good indeed.
Gogol Bordello - gypsy punk sounds as always. Good songs, you'd not know whether it was an early or late Gogol Bordello album.
Suede - their much vaunted punk/post-punk album. Quality songs. Their return continues to go well.
The Proclaimers - their umpteenth album. It's good, folky pop.
Mark Peters - shoegazey stuff from the Engineers man. Its a little like Ulrich Schnauss, who he's often worked with. Very good.
Jesca Hoop - quirky, folky singer songwriter pop. Somewhere between Newsom and Spektor.
Death Cab For Cutie - it's a very good DCFC album, one of their best.
Crack Cloud - as mentioned above, probably not quite up to their debut. Still great fun and excellent.
The Mars Volta - technically brilliant but, on early listening, I'm not getting much fun/joy.
The Beths - good songs, grungey pop. A fun album.
The Black Angels - pysch rock, as expected. It clops along at a relentless pace. Up with their better albums.
The Harlem Gospel Travelers - really good. Gospel flecked vintage soul. Forget the religion and it's a cracking album.
No Age - they sometimes make some cracking alt rockstompers and sometimes tend toward the more experimental. This is more toward the latter but still has some good tunes.
Young Jesus - gentle folk, stonking tech bangers, weird quirkiness all in half an hour. Really good.
Al-Qasar - a hybrid of desert rock and indie rock. Terrific, all in all.
The Murlocs - more from the mates of King Gizzard. They continue to be like a slightly more normal Gizzard. Tis good.
Whitney - they've now settled into their country-soul falsetto vocalled thing for a couple of albums now. Decent.
The A's - quirky quirkiness. Two thirds of Mountain Man making a mix of country, doo-wap. Includes a song from Popeye (the movie). Magic.
Parekh & Singh - India's premier purveyors of sophisticated indie-pop return with an album of Satanic metal, motorik techno and dark Scandinavian folk. Not really, it's sophisticated indie-pop and is very good.
Album of the week: Al-Qasar is the one I'll keep leaping back to. Harlem Gospel Travelers get a special mention as do The A's and Young Jesus.
Marina Allen - following on from the promise of her debut, this is a cracker. Really good, enjoyable, not easily categorisable.
Rina Sawayama - big pop sounds, very good indeed.
Gogol Bordello - gypsy punk sounds as always. Good songs, you'd not know whether it was an early or late Gogol Bordello album.
Suede - their much vaunted punk/post-punk album. Quality songs. Their return continues to go well.
The Proclaimers - their umpteenth album. It's good, folky pop.
Mark Peters - shoegazey stuff from the Engineers man. Its a little like Ulrich Schnauss, who he's often worked with. Very good.
Jesca Hoop - quirky, folky singer songwriter pop. Somewhere between Newsom and Spektor.
Death Cab For Cutie - it's a very good DCFC album, one of their best.
Crack Cloud - as mentioned above, probably not quite up to their debut. Still great fun and excellent.
The Mars Volta - technically brilliant but, on early listening, I'm not getting much fun/joy.
The Beths - good songs, grungey pop. A fun album.
The Black Angels - pysch rock, as expected. It clops along at a relentless pace. Up with their better albums.
The Harlem Gospel Travelers - really good. Gospel flecked vintage soul. Forget the religion and it's a cracking album.
No Age - they sometimes make some cracking alt rockstompers and sometimes tend toward the more experimental. This is more toward the latter but still has some good tunes.
Young Jesus - gentle folk, stonking tech bangers, weird quirkiness all in half an hour. Really good.
Al-Qasar - a hybrid of desert rock and indie rock. Terrific, all in all.
The Murlocs - more from the mates of King Gizzard. They continue to be like a slightly more normal Gizzard. Tis good.
Whitney - they've now settled into their country-soul falsetto vocalled thing for a couple of albums now. Decent.
The A's - quirky quirkiness. Two thirds of Mountain Man making a mix of country, doo-wap. Includes a song from Popeye (the movie). Magic.
Parekh & Singh - India's premier purveyors of sophisticated indie-pop return with an album of Satanic metal, motorik techno and dark Scandinavian folk. Not really, it's sophisticated indie-pop and is very good.
Album of the week: Al-Qasar is the one I'll keep leaping back to. Harlem Gospel Travelers get a special mention as do The A's and Young Jesus.
