• Jenny Hval – The Practice of Love

    September 14, 2019 - By 

    On the 13th of August, Jenny Hval shared an image of herself on twitter, with the accompanying caption; “a new song is out today – High Alice. This one is a labyrinth. Link on the internet. Suggested reading list: Clarice Lispector.”  Lispector was a surrealist, mystical Brazilian writer; broadly speaking, her work centres around women suspended in a moment of spiritual or creative crisis, often on the precipice of revelation. Lispector has a knack for warping the lens through which we view everyday objects – a flower, for example, or an insect – so that what is familiar is curdled…

  • Ty Segall – First Taste

    September 6, 2019 - By 

    When prolific Aussies King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard announced their intention to release five albums in 2017, their progress was understandably followed with a great deal of hype. But a year later, Californian garage rock wunderkind Ty Segall managed to match that tally across his various projects with little fanfare. For Segall, much like Robert Pollard, such an endeavour appeared to be no cause for celebration and merely a normal day at the office. 2019 has been a little quieter for Segall though. April’s live album Deforming Lobes could be considered a gap filler were it not so excellent…

  • Jay Som – Anak Ko

    September 5, 2019 - By 

    Depending on how you want to count them, Anak Ko (released on Polyvinyl) is either Jay Som’s second album, or her third. The Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter and producer gained some traction in 2015 when she released a series of un-named bedroom demos online. These were eventually re-released as an official debut, Turn Into – citing influences including Tame Impala, The Pixies and Yo La Tengo. Another influence Som – real name Melina Mae Duterte – has cited is her heritage. She is the daughter of Filipino immigrants and Anak Ko is Tagalog for “my child”.  Her latest outing, Anak Ko marks an opening up for the artist  – it’s more…

  • Lighght – Gore​-​Tex In The Club, Balenciaga Amongst The Shrubs

    September 3, 2019 - By 

    Lighght is no stranger to chaos. The Cork producer’s first tape, The Skin Falls Off The Body, was, as its title suggests, an exercise in nasty, bile-dripping body horror. Recorded a full three years prior to its release last December, it represented a direct response to a very specific personal trauma in the artist’s life. It’s vulgar sound design specialised in unrelenting syncopated drums, unseemly quicksilver whirring, and serrated, industrial buzzing, a pool of emotional sludge. Though impressively visceral and absorbingly unsettling, it ultimately lacked a sense of completeness.  It also provided no indication of what his future full-length debut…

  • The Hold Steady – Thrashing Thru The Passion

    August 27, 2019 - By 

    Back at the turn of the decade, The Hold Steady were on the top of their game. The self-described “best bar band in the world” had four phenomenal LPs under their belt and were poised to carve out their own niche and achieve the same level of devotion of someone like Bruce Springsteen. Their sound was a fusion of classic arena rock, mid ‘80s hardcore and hip-hop inflected beat poetry about drugs, drunks, and Christianity in Minneapolis. Everything was vital and taut and elevated to these wonderful theatrical heights by off-kilter time signatures, unconventional structures and a veritable hodgepodge of…

  • Fionn Regan – Cala

    August 23, 2019 - By 

    Wicklow boasts one of Ireland’s most varied coastlines. From Bray Head’s rocky outcrop to Brittas Bay’s rolling sand dunes, the landscape is almost limitless in its drama, and that’s before we even get to the mountains. In short, it’s the kind of landscape to leave romanticists salivating, and accordingly has been the subject of artists, musicians and storytellers for generations.  Its latest muse is Fionn Regan, who returned to the coastline of his home county for his sixth LP, Cala. Since recording his Mercury-nominated debut The End of History in Bray, it’s fair to say Regan has been on somewhat…

  • Bon Iver – i,i

    August 22, 2019 - By 

    Justin Vernon has written his most personal work in isolation, secluded in a cabin in Northern Wisconsin. In the span of 13 years, the Bon Iver project has empowered him to map his personal growth, archive periods of stress, and mediate addiction and trauma. The fourth iteration of this journey, i,i, reflects on the duality of the self as it navigates a turbulent political landscape. The inner and outer worlds communicate here, and seek to find peace. The band embraced a dramatic move towards experimentation on 2016’s 22 A Million, producing some of their most urgent and effective work. Here,…

  • Marika Hackman – Any Human Friend

    August 20, 2019 - By 

    A decade on from Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed A Girl’,  pop seems to have arrived at a place where girls kissing girls is no longer being treated as provocative or performative, or being fetishised for clout. Queer stars like Haley Kiyoko, Princess Nokia, Janelle Monáe, Christine and the Queens and St. Vincent are dominating the mainstream landscape, going beyond heteronormative boundaries and exploring what it means to be queer in 2019.  Marika Hackman’s latest release is a bold and brazen addition to the zeitgeist. Written in the wake of the English singer-songwriters break-up with fellow musician Amber Bain (The Japanese House),…

  • Clark – Kiri Variations

    August 9, 2019 - By 

    In 2018 a British TV miniseries, Kiri, was revered for admirably broaching the contentious topic of transracial adoption. Viewers and critics alike applauded the series bravura performances, so much so it went on to receive two BAFTA nominations. The composer of its score, Chris Clark (a.k.a Clark) clearly shares the same infatuation, feeling that he wanted to revisit and rework the series soundtrack for his tenth studio album.  On his first LP playing away from the ever-wonky Warp (home of Aphex Twin, Brian Eno, Oneohtrix Point Never), boundaries are tested. It’s clear that this ambition of Kiri was. Never one…

  • Purple Mountains – Purple Mountains

    July 25, 2019 - By 

    David Berman quit music in 2009. The reasons for retiring his two-decade spanning cult indie-country-rock project as Silver Jews were characteristically bleak. The disbandment, Berman revealed, was because he felt “the SJs were too small of a force to ever come close to undoing a millionth of all the harm” wrought by his Washington lobbyist father, known to many as Dr Evil.  He also, relatable, just wanted more time to read and work on his poetry. Surprisingly then, this year came the announcement of Berman’s first album in ten years, the unexpected eponymous Purple Mountains – and it’s a tentative…