• Ben Howard – Noonday Dream

    June 18, 2018 - By 

    Unusual though it may seem, Ben Howard has never been a predictable artist. The Devon born singer-songwriter first emerged onto the scene in 2011 with the timely folk-pop LP Every Kingdom, followed up three years later with I Forgot Where We Were which sounded more like James Blake than Ed Sheeran. Subsequently, after cursing some of his gig attendees out of it in Norwich and declaring “I couldn’t give a fuck” in response to a journalist who claimed Howard might fall into “the New Boring” music scene, Howard seemed to disappear off into the shadows and it was unclear when…

  • Lykke Li – so sad so sexy

    June 17, 2018 - By 

    Lykke Li knows how to write a pop song. We all know this – every nightclub still religiously plays the Magician remix of ‘I Follow Rivers’. What the Swedish songwriter really knows though, is a sad pop song. Her latest release, so sad so sexy is no different. This follow-up to 2014’s I Never Learn, which saw her swing more toward the acoustic side of things, dips instead into R&B and hip hop spheres and feels like a matured throwback to her debut album, Youth Novels, released a decade ago now. However, while it’s an evolved departure musically, lyrically, it’s…

  • Ash – Islands

    June 14, 2018 - By 

    Ash’s seventh studio album Islands lets you listen once again to the corny soundtrack to your summer love affair. Wheeler scrapes towards the very bottom of the barrel in one final bid to transform that washing machine shift at a Gaeltacht Céilí into the idealised romanticised summer of sun, beach and surfing. Islands features a myriad of sun-soaked riffs, images of crisp, white beaches for miles and just about everything else you’d expect from an Ash album. Only this time, the summer lovin’ fallacy just isn’t working its charm the way it used to as the album falls just short…

  • Hilary Woods – Colt

    June 13, 2018 - By 

    The word colt is used to in reference to either a male foal or a young untried person. Universally, horses symbolise a spirited force and freedom without restraint. In that defiance, a passionate desire also pervades. Both The Rolling Stones and U2 sang about wild horses; Keith Richards was inspired to write a lullaby for his toddler to articulate the strain of having to leave him to tour the world. Bono pined for a “dangerous” but exhilarating woman on Achtung Baby’s ‘Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses’. On her gorgeously soothing debut Colt, Hilary Woods marries these feelings of varied…

  • Kanye West – ye

    June 11, 2018 - By 

    Kanye West’s ye is as harrowing, repulsive and morbidly fascinating as it’s creator. 2018 has been West’s most controversial year to date, almost impressive for a man who’s career has been characterised by outlandish and often toxic behaviour: for many fans who stood by him through bizarre interviews and turned a blind eye to his leering misogyny, his recent endorsement of Donald Trump and widely-reported ‘slavery is a choice’ comments have represented a bridge too far for many. How much his very public battle with bi-polar, and subsequent hospitalisation and struggle with opioid addiction has had to bear on his…

  • Just Mustard – Wednesday

    June 11, 2018 - By 

    Dundalk Co. Louth is becoming more and more of a creative hub, breeding a new wave of young acts paving their way through Ireland’s current music scene. From artists like Elephant and the now UK-based natives Video Blue and Trick Mist to staple venue The Spirit Store and local record shop Classified Records, the town is gradually becoming one of the country’s most vital hotbeds of talent. Testament to that, is the newly label Pizza Pizza Records, and with it – it’s first release, Just Mustard’s debut album Wednesday. Previous to this release, Just Mustard could have been considered a…

  • Oneohtrix Point Never – Age Of

    June 9, 2018 - By 

    With his tenth dense and knotty release, Oneohtrix Point Never (AKA Daniel Lopatin) has constructed a lysergic, glitched out rebuke of internet culture, mapping out the deepest recesses of our often cracked and wildly over stimulated minds. Tackling themes of knowledge and truth in the Internet age, Lopatin takes his lofty queue from ’70s Prog to create a dystopian concept album wherein a singularity of artificially intelligent entities have become all knowing, absorbing the entirety of the world’s information from the internet. Of course, the Internet being the Internet, the information they have absorbed is riddled with inconsistencies, contradictions and…

  • Robocobra Quartet – Plays Hard To Get

    June 6, 2018 - By 

    Hyperbolic as it is to say, Chris Ryan might well be the most important creative voice in the city of Belfast today. This bespectacled Robocobra Quartet bandleader has been quietly releasing some of the finest broadcasts that this landmass has heard for some years now. Cuts like ’98-01′ from 2014’s Bomber EP and ‘Album of the Year’ from 2016’s groundbreaking Music For All Occasions should be used by the Council as a demonstration of how indispensable and experimental the city’s art scene is. The outfit’s truly idiosyncratic fusion of punk and jazz is the sort of stuff that music fans should be…

  • Jenny Hval – The Long Sleep

    June 3, 2018 - By 

    What can one expect from Jenny Hval? To date, her career is comparable to one big game of whack-a-mole. At any one moment, the Norwegian artist could pop up in collaborations, most recently with Håvard Volden for the Lost Girls EP, or perhaps as the author of a novel (Paradise Rot, arriving October). Her solo work can largely be categorised under avant-garde, but flits between a range of electronic, jazz, pop, ambient and folk influences, making Hval one of the most freely creative artists of this generation. For someone so strikingly studious, it’s hard to imagine where the inspiration comes…

  • Father John Misty – God’s Favorite Customer

    June 5, 2018 - By 

    Nine years ago, Nardwuar The Human Serviette interviewed Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes and then drummer, Josh Tillman. The exuberant Canadian musician-turned-journalist acknowledged Pecknold’s penchant for performing in a seated position and commented that he had revived this style. Tillman, dissatisfied with the lack of attention, interjected, “I kind of resent being overlooked in this category because I also [perform] on a chair.” This casual exchange, small though it may seem, provided us with an early indication of someone unwilling to relinquish the spotlight. Nine years later, Josh Tillman’s ego abides. He’s transformed from the fabled “horny, man-child, Mamma’s boy”…