"An LP determined to conjure kinetic joy while staring down our present cultural fright show" - Rolling Stone ★★★★
"Music that feels thrilling... it makes you want to dance." - The Guardian (Album of the Week) ★★★★
"An album of spark and creativity... brilliant songwriting" - The Times (Album of the Week)★★★★
I can feel you creep into my private life is the fourth studio album from Tune-Yards, now a fully collaborative effort between Garbus and Nate Brenner who co-wrote and co-produced the album. Garbus' lyrics explore her place in the world, and ruminating on race, politics, intersectional feminism and environmental prophecies.
"Meg Remy is a narrative savant and her glorious, danceable new album is a righteous collection of razor-sharp songs, full of spit and fury, a high-water mark for political pop music." - Pitchfork - 8.6 Best New Music
"The pop album for our times, right on time... Remy manages to tackle domestic violence, sexual intimidation and suppressed female anger within a glorious sweep of cinematic pop songs." - Q *****
"Powerful, potent and bloody good for dancing to, In A Poem Unlimited might just be the soundtrack to the revolution."
- NME ****
The sixth studio album from U.S. Girls, the protean musical enterprise of multi-disciplinary artist Meg Remy, arrived in February 2018 in the form of In a Poem Unlimited.
A dizzying buffet of live grooves, the 11 songs form a disco Trojan horse for messages of subversion and character studies of women grappling with power. Brought to life by an impressive body of talent - including Toronto collective The Cosmic Range and long-time collaborators Max Turnbull and Louis Percival - In a Poem Unlimited may well be Remy's most individually distilled protest to date.
"As vital as any of their previous four LPs...The Breeders have proved themselves more consistently thrilling than almost any other band in indie-rock." - Uncut 9/10
"Music that is rich and deep and repays repeated listening." - The Guardian – Album of the Week ****
"Heroic" - MOJO ****
"Startlingly fresh." - Q ****
In March, The Breeders released All Nerve, the group's first record in a decade. Their fifth album features the singles 'Wait in the Car', 'Nervous Mary', and 'Spacewoman' - with the latter seeing the band team up with BAFTA award-nominated director, and long-time fan, Richard Ayoade for the official video.
All Nerve reunites band members Kim and Kelley Deal, Josephine Wiggs and Jim Macpherson - the line-up behind the iconic and platinum-selling record, Last Splash. Recording took place at Candyland in Dayton, Kentucky, with Mike Montgomery; Electrical Audio, Chicago, with Steve Albini and Greg Norman; and with Tom Rastikis at Fernwood Studios in Dayton, Ohio.
"Like Arthur Russell before them, they give equal floorspace to the spiritual and the sensual." - Pitchfork
"A triumphant album." - NME ****
"Magical." - Q
Kazuashita, Gang Gang Dance's long-awaited sixth studio album, was released in June 2018.
The band's first record together since the acclaimed Eye Contact in 2011, Kazuashita is an intoxicating mix of shoegaze and electronic ambience.
Founded by Lizzi Bougatsos, Brian DeGraw and Josh Diamond, Gang Gang Dance has consistently blurred the boundaries between the New York art and music scenes for nearly two decades. They are as comfortable performing rare improvisational sets at the Whitney Biennial as they are at Coachella and count Dash Snow & Dan Colen, Tinchy Stryder and the Boredoms as previous collaborators.
"Brilliant. A glorious mix of cheerful pop innocence, vaudevillian musical theatre and progressive-rock complexity with a touch of punk attitude thrown in for good measure." - The Times (5/5)
"A once-in-a-generation epic." - The Line of Best Fit (9/10)
"Cherish The Lemon Twigs because they are a rare proposition in today's conformist pop culture." - The Independent (4/5)
The Lemon Twigs' new album, Go To School, was released in August.
Go To School is a musical that tells the coming-of-age story of Shane, a pure of heart chimpanzee raised as a human boy. Conceived by brothers Brian and Michael D'Addario, the 15-track opus was written, recorded, produced and mixed by the pair at their home in Long Island. Todd Rundgren and D'Addario's mother Susan Hall play Shane's parents, with further contributions on the album from Jody Stephens (Big Star) and their father Ronnie D'Addario.
Ex:Re, the eponymously-titled debut album by the solo project of Elena Tonra, guitarist, vocalist and lyricist of Daughter, is out now on all digital services, and released on LP/CD on 1st February 2019.
Running parallel to Daughter, Tonra has assumed the pseudonym Ex:Re (pronounced ex ray) for her eponymously-titled debut solo album, a deeply personal record that was made with both a sense of urgency and a cathartic need.
Tonra's candid solo songs document the time after a relationship ended and are written like unsent letters to herself and others. Taking on a creative moniker, she chose Ex:Re to mean 'regarding ex' and also 'X-Ray' as a way to look inside and see what is really there. Writing took a year but the recording process lasted mere months, turning to Fabian Prynn (4AD's in-house engineer and producer) and composer Josephine Stephenson on cello to help bring Ex:Re to life.
Beirut will return with their new album Gallipoli on 1st February 2019, with the title track out now. The long-awaited record will be accompanied by a worldwide tour.
The 12-track Gallipoli started life in the winter of 2016, with Condon returning to his old Farfisa organ, the same one used to write the first two Beirut albums (2006's Gulag Orkestar and the following year's The Flying Club Cup). Following recording stints in New York and Berlin (where he now calls home), Condon settled in Sudestudio, a studio complex deep in rural Puglia, southern Italy. It was here that he rediscovered the old joys of music as a visceral experience which became the founding principle for Gallipoli.
Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared by Deerhunter is released 18th January 2019, and anticipated by the release of lead single 'Death in Midsummer'.
Deerhunter's eighth LP forgets the questions and makes up unrelated answers. It gets up, walks around, it records itself in several strategic geographic points across North America. It comes home, restructures itself and goes back to bed to avoid the bad news.
What they spend their time doing instead is reinventing their approach to microphones, the drum kit, the harpsichord, the electromechanical and synthetic sounds of keyboards. Whatever guitars are left are pure chrome, plugged straight into the mixing desk with no amplifier or vintage warmth.
The result is as thrilling, haunting, and unpredictable as anything in their roughly 15-year career.
Methyl Ethel release their third record on 15th February - Triage - preceded by singles 'Real Tight' and 'Scream Whole'.
With his thirtieth birthday, and the ceremonial cap on three records and three EP's, Webb felt a sense of closure in the making of Triage. Methyl Ethel has always been a surrealist outfit - a dark and obscured expression of life set to the backdrop of dream pop hooks. But Triage is a more reflective album - one that explores the notion of coming of age, only to reference it for the snapshots and passing memories that it has become.
2018 saw the return of Grimes, and new single 'We Appreciate Power'.
In December Holly Herndon shared her collaboration with Jlin; 'Godmother (feat. Spawn)'.