CDs/DVDs
Guy Oddy
On her latest Melody’s Echo Chamber album, Unclouded, gentle Gallic psychedelicist, Melody Prochet wastes absolutely no time in setting out her stall, making clear her chosen style right from the first bars of opening track “The House That Doesn’t Exist”. Featuring spaced out, dream pop sounds with airy, helium-tinged vocals, a shuffling groove and an orchestral backing – and it’s, without a doubt, a beautiful accompaniment to drifting off into the distant stratosphere.Prochet has released three previous albums in her Melody’s Echo Chamber guise, some to great acclaim – particularly the self- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The voice is fluting, translucent. The melodies it carries are linear yet sinuous, their rise and fall akin to undulating terrain. The instrumentation – acoustic guitar, bass guitar, some keyboards – is unobtrusive. Spíra is about the voice. It is also timeless – sounding as if it were recorded at any point in the last 60 years.However, getting to grips with what is being sung is less straightforward as the lyrics of Spíra are in Icelandic – a demonstration of the bond of trust between non-Anglophone songwriters and listeners who are not from their home territory or do not speak their Read more ...
peter.quinn
Named after and dedicated to his wife, filmmaker and director Shiraz Fradi, Tunisian vocalist and oud maestro Dhafer Youssef's first album as leader on the ACT label is a thing of great beauty.Youssef leads a dynamic ensemble featuring pianist Daniel García, trumpeter Mario Rom, bassist Swaéli Mbappé, and drummer Tao Ehrlich. Guitarist Nguyên Lê joins as a special guest on four tracks, enriching the textural palette with his distinctive guitar work and sound design. The album's delicate, chamber jazz-inspired aesthetic creates an intimate space that showcases the depth and versatility of Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Rufus Wainwright has long expressed his admiration for “pop music with an operatic sensibility, the profane with the divine”, inspired by The Unknown Kurt Weill and Stratas Sings Weill, the albums recorded by Greek-Canadian soprano Theresa Stratus whose final performance at the Met thirty years ago was as Jenny in Brecht-Weill’s opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Recorded live with the Pacific Jazz Orchestra under the baton of Chris Walden, who is also responsible for the arrangements, I’m a Stranger Here Myself was recorded live in March 2024 at the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Strings swirl. A flute drifts like a bird floating on warm air. The melody is subdued, its tonality evoking The Smiths’ “Please, Please, Please, Let me Get What I Want.” A wistful, French-accented voice sings “I’ve always been so cruel, Hard on myself, You say I’m just a fool, Trying to be somebody else.” Mood set with opening track “Bluer Than Blue,” How and Why subsequently showcases nine more similarly moody, acoustic-centred songs.The dreamy, slightly husky, voice is recognisable. Since 2003, Mélanie Pain has been a main vocalist with France’s Nouvelle Vague, Marc Collin and Olivier Read more ...
joe.muggs
One of this year’s best music books, Songs in the Key of MP3 by Liam Inscoe-Jones, paints a picture of musicians of the “streaming era” having a different relationship to the past, compared to those of… well, the past. He shows how artists like Dev “Blood Orange” Hynes have adapted to mass availability of culture by indulging not in nostalgia for something vague, but using the endless micro detail at their fingertips for reconstructing, picking up unfinished business, creating “alternative presents” from which new lineages might branch off.So it is with a lot of this year’s best records. Read more ...
Guy Oddy
In all honestly, 2025 has not been a vintage year for new recorded music and there certainly seems to have been a significant paucity of high-profile album releases that are likely to be viewed as stone-cold classics in years to come. Nevertheless, there has been gold for those prepared to look hard enough.Swiss electro-rock veterans, the Young Gods unleashed a techno-metal monster, Appear Disappear, that dug deep into an intoxicating malevolence with their muscular, sample-heavy electronics and live percussion. Soulwax brought us the gritty electro-pop flavoured All Systems Are Lying. While Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Among millennials, Taylor Momsen is likely to be primarily remembered as an actor of things relatively sweet and family friendly. She appeared in Spy Kids 2 and TV’s Gossip Girl, but most notably as Cindy Lou Who with Jim Carrey in How the Grinch Stole Christmas at the turn of the century.Since then, of course, she’s reinvented herself as the post-grunge front woman of the very successful Pretty Reckless. As a rock’n’roller, she may like people to believe that she’s something of a replacement Courtney Love but actually she really inhabits Avril Lavigne-like territory. Still, she’s not Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
According to the fifth song on their first Christmas album, seasonal shenanigans in Old Crow Medicine Show’s family are boozy and raucous. Step aside Santa because “Grandpappy's been a-brewing since before the war” and is “the best bootlegger for a Georgia mile”. The result is the riotous barndance fiddlin’ of “Corn Whiskey Christmas” (which brings “good cheer to all the gals and the fellas). I’m in!The song is a highlight of OCMS XMAS, a 13-track set which showcases the light-hearted side of a Nashville outfit who’ve been at the forefront of the US bluegrass revival for over two decades. Read more ...
joe.muggs
Well, this is a surprise. Not so much that the Sunderland band should do a Christmas album, mind. Despite their raw and spiky hardcore framework, which channelled heavyweights like Gang Of Four and Fugazi, they were always capable of being gentle, dreamlike, flirting with but never tipping over into the whimsical, as on their huge breakthrough cover of Kate Bush’s “Hounds of Love”. And maybe even more relevantly, their harmony singing bordered on the choral from the start, something made explicit on their a capella reworking folk songs and their own work on their 2012 Rant album.No, it’s not Read more ...
Tim Cumming
American R&B singer Eric Benet is the latest star to throw Santa’s hat into the ring and spin a Christmas album out of the seasonal market – the cover has him in 1950s mode, in a deep leather armchair in front of a coal fire in magnolia jumper and slacks and a pair of Christmas socks. Cosy.Guests to Benet’s Christmas party include Nina Nelson, sharing vocals on a Christmas cut with a Hawaiian bent from the Bing Crosby stable, “Mele Kalikimaka”. Elsewhere Stacey Ryan shares the mic on one of Benet’s own songs, getting the tone just right for the jazzy, sprightly gait of “It’s Christmas”. Read more ...
Ibi Keita
Nightmares On Wax’s new album Echo45 Sound System feels like the soundtrack to a twilight walk through memory and possibility. At its core is a deep reverence for sound system culture. The album title refers to a battered old speaker box called Echo45 that first sparked George Evelyn’s love of music when he was young.Released on 14 November 2025 through Warp Records, the project spans 13 tracks along with a continuous mix version. It features a wide collection of collaborators including Yasiin Bey, Greentea Peng, Oscar Jerome, Liam Bailey and others.The opener, “Echo45, We Are!” featuring Read more ...