7.5
Dirty Beaches is the one-man labour-of-love of Taiwanese-born, Canadian-based musician Alex Zhang Hungtai. Drifters/Love is the Devil is Hungtai's double-album follow up to 2010's brooding Badlands LP and last year's well-received soundtrack EP, Water Park. For the uninitiated, Mr Beaches dr...[more]
6.5
Gone is the sound of raw bedroom recordings for Mikal Cronin. On MCII, he slips into a sound not far from Americana. Of course, across the whole album he can be picked apart as being a man of many influences and that is his downfall; a slight absence of originality.
The buzzing guitars remain and The Beach Boys...[more]
6
After three albums which successfully messed around with the traditional Fall template (on songs such as the spaghetti western mangle of 'Cowboy George', the metal thrash of 'Greenway', and the brain-battering epic rant of '50 Year Old Man'), Re-Mit is one of those F...[more]
8.5
Having delivered three of the most consistently high-quality albums of the last decade, Brooklyn's The National found themselves on a wave of both critical and commercial adulation following High Violet'more]
8
Vampire Weekend's third album comes at a time when indie music can be seen as going from strength to strength, but does this band really fit into that category anymore? Probably not. This is an album full of diverse songs, a nostalgic sensibility and a ton of soul and swagger. There's plenty of down-tempo sounds on here, ...[more]
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7.5
Noah and the Whale are back with their fourth album and it's one of real vibrancy. Punctuated by slick guitar and basslines, it's a release which suggests the band are maturing. By the end of the record you get the feeling the band have grown considerably since 2011's Last Night on Earth.
Frontman Char...[more]
9
Brooklyn-based Small Black's debut album New Chain was the scrappy underdog of the chillwave scene, with a bedroom-production sound and tinny, hissing beats. But it showed great promise and, in the trippy, gloopy 'Photojournalist' and the New Order-worshipping 'Search Par...[more]
6.5
After producing for the likes of Katy B and Example, forming the worlds first dubstep supergroup Magnetic Man, and touring the USA, Australia and beyond, Croydon boy and original dubstepper Benga is back with a wobbly-bassline-and-a-bang on his first major-label album, Chapter II. Despite insisting last year in an interv...[more]
8
One of the most endearing things about Primal Scream lead singer Bobby Gillespie is that he is and always has been a music fan first and foremost. Indeed, Gillespie often sounds most passionate discussing the music that inspires him, rather than the music he makes himself. Not for Gillespie the standard rock star pretenc...[more]
8
Something strange is happening in the world of Deerhunter. Over the last few years and albums, the band seemed to settle into an aesthetic and sound which was becoming their hallmark. This was reinforced by the recent albums from the group's side-projects, guitarist Lockett Pundt's Lotus Plaza and singer Bradford Cox'...[more]
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