Yet you’d be hard pushed to find a moment over the past few years where Simz has commented on this issue herself. (RO)It’s been a long wait for Flying Lotus’s new album. (Roisin O'Connor)The record frequently switches in tone: Banks can be both formidable and vulnerable, accusatory or filled with regret. It’s a masterclass in narrative songwriting. Each track is a standout, none more so than “Ladbroke Grove”, a hat-tip to classic garage in which Tracey switches up his flow to emulate a Nineties MC. This is Metronomy at their most ambitious and pleasurably weird. Despite the quality of this album, it wasn't accepted very well by the general public, as many of them couldn't get the "freestyle artist," label out of their head when it came to Noel.September, 2001 brought us Noel's new one, a collaboration with producer FORD. “Voices” has him singing over an old-school garage beat, fighting off personal demons. Musically, she’s developed her arrangements and become bolder, too. It’s a thrilling work.
But you don’t come away from this record feeling downcast. His 2 daughters of whom he had not seen in 7 years decided to surprise their famous dad as his back up dancers. Their debut album, 2017’s About U, was raw, poignant and just the ride side of melodramatic, queering the mainstream, one sad-pop anthem at a time. After years making peace with drift and uncertainty, she’s never sounded more sure of anything. Slide guitars give way to violas, which usher in eerie synths. The production here is superb. And if any two records could portray how quickly someone can grow from a boy to a man, it’s these.
Just as the preceding art installation invited viewers to enter its vast head of LED lights and wonder, this album does the same. Please A cornucopia of instrumentation is woven into its brisk 42-minute yarn. She sings of the late rapper as a “wingless angel” with featherlight high notes that will drop the sternest jaw. (Elisa Bray)Rose – who found fame in the UK’s indie-folk scene as an unofficial member of Bombay Bicycle Club in 2010, only to walk away amid the band’s growing hype – is darkly compelling on No Words Left. “Gotta live for something besides yesterdays,” Gallagher snarls on “Be Still”. Often, Lenker offers the same kind of symbolic fatalism as the poetry of Christina Rosetti: “We both know/ Let me rest, let me go/ See my death become a trail/ And the trail leads to a flower/ I will blossom in your sail,” she sings on “Terminal Paradise”.
Silent Morning was the first song Noel wrote. Familiar faces and themes serve as his trademarks.
03-02-0221. (Roisin O'Connor)On Deerhunter’s eighth album, frontman Bradford Cox takes on the role of war poet, documenting the things he observes with a cool matter-of-factness, and heart-wrenching detail. "Will I Find True Love." In a way, Grim Town portrays the journey from adolescence into young adulthood – with all the introspection, resignation and wide-eyed forays into love that entails. It’s the classic pop plotline of Bacharach and David’s “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?”, and it’s a tale Springsteen taps repeatedly here, on his sumptuous, cinematic 19th album, which is nothing short of a late-period masterpiece. (Roisin O'Connor)For all the album’s eccentricities, the vibe is earnest fairytale rather than tongue-in-cheek – save for the sound of a strangled feline mirroring the lyrics “when you stepped on your cat” on “How Many Times”.
To Believe, however, feels more expansive in reach. After years making peace with drift and uncertainty, she’s never sounded more sure of anything. (Roisin O’Connor)(Photo credit should read GUILLAUME SOUVANT/AFP/Getty Images)On her third record, Aldous Harding combines the gothic folk of her self-titled 2014 debut with the dramatically intimate tones of her follow-up album Party. (RO)It’s been a long wait for Flying Lotus’s new album. On it, O’Riordan, who recorded demos for the album’s 11 tracks before her death in January last year, sings: “Fighting’s not the answer/ Fighting’s not the cure/ It’s eating you like cancer/ It’s killing you for sure.” Written in the aftermath of Hackman’s split from fellow musician Amber Bain – aka The Japanese House, who released her own reflection on their break-up on her debut album Good at Falling – Any Human Friend is a satisfyingly dismal affair that is certainly not suitable for the four-year-old who inspired it. Feel free to contribute! Familiar faces and themes serve as his trademarks. Khan once again demonstrates a knack for uncanny storytelling.
(Jack Shepherd)Two years after the release of his Mercury Prize-nominated debut Yesterday’s Gone, the south London hip-hop artist unveils its follow-up, Not Waving, But Drowning.