Olafur Arnalds & Talos – A Dawning
Icelandic musician/producer Olafur Arnalds has spanned numerous musical styles, including neo-classical, punk rock and TV-and-film scores. A Dawning is an inspired collaboration, a celebration of kindred spirits and a deeply poignant commemoration; Arnalds began working with poetic Irish singer-songwriter Talos (aka Eoin French) when the two met at an independent music festival. However, French fell ill from cancer and died aged just 36, before this album could be completed. These songs undeniably become a meditation on mortality and grief, but they are also essentially shaped by love. Arnalds’s instrumentation is sensitive and unaffectedly heartfelt, including ambient electronica and delicate strings; French sounds intensely present, and his gorgeously brooding vocals stay with you, through to the bittersweet folk harmonies of the closing number We Didn’t Know We Were Ready. (AH)
Pinkpantheress – Fancy That
Few artists leave you wanting more quite as masterfully as 24-year-old British singer-songwriter-producer Victoria Beverley Walker, aka PinkPantheress, whose whirlwind, sample-heavy songs often just reach over two minutes. Far from slight, though, this second mixtape of hers – running to just 20 minutes in total – is a piece of sonic alchemy, whose constant, exhilarating rush of melodic momentum belies its rich patchwork of influences and references. There’s garage and drum-and-bass beats, hooks borrowed from old-school house tracks by the likes of Groove Armada and Basement Jaxx, and yearning, high-pitched vocal lines. Beguiling, too, are the lyrics, with Pink serving up a pithy, conversational exploration of romantic pains, from frustrated crushes (Tonight) to toxic exes (Girl Like Me). If she’s this inimitable and self-assured at this stage in her career, you wonder, in the best way, where she can go from here. (HM)
Cody CritcheloePerfume Genius – Glory
Seattle-raised, LA-based Mike Hadreas was finding the strength in vulnerability long before wellness influencers made this idea commonplace. With Glory, his seventh album as Perfume Genius, the art-pop moniker with which he introduced himself on MySpace back in 2008, he sounds more powerful than ever before. Working with his multi-instrumentalist partner Alan Wyffels and longtime producer Blake Mills, Hadreas has crafted a profoundly moving reflection on ageing, relationships and his anxiety in facing the outside world. “What do I get out of being established? I still run and hide when a man’s at the door,” he sings on the country-flecked It’s a Mirror. He’s equally affecting on the tender piano ballad Me & Angel, perhaps this year’s most intimate and realistic love song. The more you listen to this remarkable alt-rock record, the more its shards of truth and beauty come to the fore. (NL)
Rose Gray – Louder, Please
Following a mixtape and two EPs, Gray’s full-length debut is a great dance album that’s also a great pop album. The rave-loving singer once worked the door at London superclub Fabric, so there’s cool conviction to the way she pings between Balearic anthems (Free, Tectonic), tumbling drum and bass (First) and pounding piano house (Wet & Wild). Along the way, she finds a sweet spot between galvanising mantras – “Kiss the sky until the morning” – and winning cultural specificity. On standout track Hackney Wick, she guides us through a messy night out in East London with references to local landmarks. There’s also a yearning for emotional connection threaded into the album’s heady hedonism. “Everything changes, but I won’t when the party stops being fun,” she sings on Everything Changes (But I Won’t). It all adds up to a life-affirming listen that’s best enjoyed as Gray recommends in the title: louder, please. (NL)
Turnstile – Never Enough
Baltimore hardcore rockers Turnstile occupy an unconventional space; they’re connected to their underground punk roots while increasingly extending their range, both in terms of creative expressions and commercial reach. Their fourth album Never Enough is a natural progression from 2021’s excellent Glow On, but it also pushes their vision further, from the surging synths and mighty guitars of the opening title track. Rousing vocalist Brendan Yates leads the powerfully catchy melodies; Turnstile’s sound is thrillingly unconstrained, embracing thrashy riffs and blissed-out reveries (sometimes on the same track), and multi-genre collaborators including Dev Hynes, Hayley Williams and UK jazz don Shabaka Hutchings (playing flute on Sunshower). It’s a gloriously unpredictable, exhilarating headrush of a record. (AH)
Iris LuzWet Leg – Moisturizer
There’s something beautifully immediate about the rock-craft of this British, female-led indie band, who came to the fore back in 2022 with the single Chaise Longue, which captured the imagination with its nagging, post-punk guitars and surreal lyrics, delivered deadpan. This follow-up to their self-titled debut album doesn’t see them undergoing any radical shifts but instead confidently refines their formula, being both a tighter and more pumped-up listen. The big change, lyrically, is that their previous, amusing disaffection with romance, and twentysomething life in general, has been supplanted by frontwoman Rhian Teasdale’s new relationship, which results in some love songs, albeit ones rushing with anxiety: opener CPR has her wondering “is it love or suicide?”. And they can still do a brilliant takedown: Moisturizer’s highlight is Mangetout, in which they witheringly call an unspecified man a “bottom feeder” and tell him to “get lost forever”. Altogether, it makes for a record of ferocious wit and unassailable riffs. (HM)
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