Claud sounds nothing like a monster when they sing – quite the opposite – but upon learning that their debut album ‘Super Monster’ is named after a Daniel Johnston painting, and subsequently hearing their offbeat take on pop, the...
It’s difficult to separate ‘Who Am I?’, the second album from Pale Waves, from the several pockets of trauma that the Manchester quartet has endured in recent years. In February 2020, while touring across Europe as the support act...
For somebody who wasn’t much into school, on his second record ‘Tyron’, Slowthai hands in a project spanning subjects from history to psychology and philosophy: the Northampton rapper could earn A-grades for his breadth of references alone. Not just...
Less than a year ago, Hayley Williams lightened the first weeks of lockdown with 'Petals for Armor', two powerful, experimental EPs exploring her vulnerability and loss. She accompanied the release with a series of videos tracing themes of death...
Cardi B – 'Up'
Cardi B is back and the monster success of ‘WAP’ certainly hasn’t changed her. ‘Up’ is exactly the kind of follow-up you’d expect: bold, braggadocious and delightfully provocative. Cardi’s first solo release in some time weaves...
“I’m in my room and that’s all there is.” It’s hard not to give a wry chuckle upon hearing the final line of ‘Trying’, the first single from The Staves’ new record, ‘Good Woman’. Though it was written and...
“I’ll be your mirror,” wrote Lou Reed in 1966, capturing the role of musical artist in four words. On the cover of her fifth record ‘Ignorance’, Tamara Lindeman, the Canadian musician behind The Weather Station, embodies Lou’s line. She...
‘For the first time’ is not a considered, conceptual album, say Black Country, New Road, but “a true document of what we were doing in our first year” – or as they put it in the final track, “what...
Would any artist take on the mantle of “next big thing” if they had the choice? There’s a certain alchemy at play when music critics bestow this honour – part wisdom, part taste, and more often, sheer luck –...
“I see myself sitting beside you,” Arlo Parks says on the spoken-word opener to her debut album. And that’s exactly how it feels to listen to ‘Collapsed In Sunbeams’: as if the poetic, multifarious London artist is sat right...