Welcome to the second part of our(by no means definitive) albums of the year so far list. Read part one here.
Patrick Wolf – Crying The Neck
There’s a very fine line between ‘feelgood’ and ‘cheesy’. Thankfully Patrick Wolf is able to thrive on the former and never even comes close to the latter despite the fact that the opening salvo of ‘Reculver‘ and ‘Limbo‘ are two of the most euphoric tunes you’re likely to hear this year, and probably even beyond that. These songs are simply huge and absolutely wrought with emotion. It’s a highly impressive start. The pretty, piano-led ‘Reculver‘ soon transcends into something vast sounding and magnificent, cinematic even – it’s no stretch of the imagination to hear this as the soundtrack to a classic Western, such is its panoramic exuberance. ‘Limbo‘, on the other hand, featuring the appealing contrast of voices between Wolf and featured artist Zola Jesus, holds an ebullience I can only compare to the chorus of Elbow‘s ‘One Day Like This’ – spiritual, impassioned and possessing an aura that gives you an unfathomably fresh feeling.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about Patrick Wolf, and indeed, of Crying The Neck itself, is that he rarely needs to resort to anything you could justifiably call a chorus, not in the traditional sense of the word, anyway. Plus, this is not a record you can just play in the background. It demands your attention. It doesn’t just command you to listen, it inhabits your whole being. (Loz Etheridge)
Pulp – More
A quarter of a century on from their last album, Pulp returned with a follow up. That’s the same length of gap between the Beatles’ final album and their 1995 Anthology documentaries. What could Pulp have to offer after all this time?
For starters, the four remaining members – following a death and a departure – still brought their same unique blend of the quality of vocals/lyrics, guitar layering, idiosyncratic keyboard playing and steady, capable-of-anything drumming.
The magnificent triple-whammy that would be highlighted at their recent Arena gigs set things off BIG. Firstly, there was anthemic statement of intent in first single ‘Spike Island,’ there’s the clever and filthy Pulp of old in ‘Tina‘ (the clever bits being that ‘Tina’ is someone that JC’s never spoken to, but keeps reappearing in his life, the filthy bits being the ‘screwing in a charity shop on top of black bin bags’ line). Third came the resurrection of 1997’s abandoned ‘Grown Ups‘, which is now masterfully finished and – while it’s still musically not dissimilar to Pulp of old – it also signposts the way to a more mature sound.
Elsewhere are slower, more mature songs….wait!…come back! ‘Slow Jam’ defies its, erm, slow jam with a bleak and excellent lyric. ‘Farmer’s Market’ ploughs a similar sound, but with a more upbeat message. ‘My Sex‘ is a magnificent concept and lyric that I’ve still not managed to totally unpack yet. Well-placed 2000 off-cut ‘Got To Have Love‘ kicks things up a notch (and still brings the party to the Arena floor) before the album does, for me anyway, begin to sag with three lesser tunes before rallying for the beautiful ‘A Sunset‘, which is currently the encore of their shows, and a gorgeous thing indeed. Overall, it’s a triumph. It brings something old to the party, as well as new sounds and feels, but with a good balance between the two. (Stephen Bray)
Lambrini Girls – Who Let The Dogs out
Who Let The Dogs Out is one filled with fiery politics at its forefront, and opening track ‘Bad Apple’ dives in at the deep end. Initiating the listener with blaring sirens and distorted bass, before splintering into a raging breakbeat as vocalist Phoebe Lunny proceeds to tear down the British police force, ensuring that no issue or problem with the institution is left undiscussed.
To accompany the scathing lyricism that Lunny lays down throughout the album, the instrumentals of each track can be equally as ferocious. It certainly seems as though bassist Lilly Macieira has grown increasingly more confident, with a willingness to explore a breadth of styles that helps to diversify each track from the others. The anger on display in the opener doesn’t dissipate soon either, ‘Company Culture’ discusses the gross actions of men in professional environments, while ‘Big Dick Energy’ tackles men that pose as caring about women’s issues, but as a ruse to try and make themselves more attractive.. For all of the album’s anger, the album does have a humorous underbelly, almost designed to help relieve some of the crushing weight held by the topics that the duo frequent, but this wit and humour is well-balanced, and does well not trivialise the severity of these issues either. Akin to their namesake, Lambrini Girls can be somewhat tough to digest for the uninitiated, but Who Let The Dogs Out is a serious punk album that does well to remain witty and smart even when faced with the world’s biggest issues. It should and hopefully will put the duo right at the forefront of modern punk trailblazers. (Josh Allen)
Welly – Big In The Suburbs
Fresh from appearing on seemingly every publication’s (including this one) ‘ones to watch in 2025’ list, Welly went early in the year with their long awaited debut long player. There’s no pomp or ceremony here, they are going straight for the indie-pop jugular. I’ll get the obvious Britpop comparisons over with here, they are very much a Blur rather than Oasis (thankfully), but at times with their simple bargain-basement production values and use of samples, they are more of a Carter USM for the Temu generation.
This is the musical equivalent of eating three big Twix’s with a two litre bottle of Cherry Coke, it’s not going to sustain you for days, but the rush you get from it is instant and sizeable. To badly paraphrase Public Enemy, do believe the hype. There’s a joie de vivre here that is to be worshipped and enjoyed, and an excellent album to boot (sorry). (Steven Doherty)
McKinley Dixon – Magic Alive!
Magic Alive! is inventive, unique and addictive. Maryland artist McKinley Dixon is a wordsmith whose fleet-footed rhyming skillfully marries autobiography, fiction, wit and rapier satire into jazz-blasted lines that are lush yet pointed, echoing with the old school hip hop sounds, and the work of Kendrick Lamar and A Tribe Called Quest, at the same time. “It is the story of three kids who lose their best friend and wrestle with the subsequent turmoil. The essential twist, though, is that the trio wonder what they can do to bring their pal back or, at the very least, reconvene with him, so that their friendship does not end with mortality.” Magic, Alive! is riven with refreshing, lush and off-beat tunes and brought to life through Mckinley’s glowing bars that are existential, investigative and constantly asking “What is it that keeps magic alive for you?” (Bill Cummings)
Smerz – Big City Life
It’s wonky like Björk, bratty like Charli XCX, hard-hitting like Model/Actriz, post-everything like caroline, lush like Chanel Beads, but really, any comparison is reductive. Smerz have hit the perfect sweet spot that all pop musicians aspire to – the hooks so sticky you have to floss to get them out of your teeth, and the execution so fascinating that you’ll probably never want to. Big city life captures a post-Brat sense of maturity, like an observer looking back at the heightened emotions of youth, produced with immaculate delicacy. hough mostly grouped in with experimental pop, deconstructed club – HEAVILY deconstructed, and a bit chopped and screwed too – would be more appropriate. Especially on the opening Mattafix-interpolating titular track, the album sounds like it could be sung from the perspective of a fly navigating the smokey haze of a club, unable to make sense of the abstract bass and obfuscating lights, hovering from one half-heard conversation from another (“I heard that the trip was great, I heard that they broke up”). It’s essentially music for the afters following a night of post-hyperpop scenester-ing. The centerpiece of the album, ‘You got time and I got money’, may be one of the most beautiful songs ever created. From the sensual ethereality of the synths to the effortless trip hop beat, it is a track which could charm even the most cold-hearted listener. There is a sense of the onlooker, the bystander, to Big city life, like watching youthful memories pass by from a high altitude. Big city life tells a bittersweet story but does so with such elegance and attitude that it affirms the life it describes.
The Moonlandingz – No Rocket Required (Transgressive)
Some eight years on from their inspired, if rather rough and ready, garage rock-influenced debut album, No Rocket Required is like a template for a new kind of 21st century pop. From the wonderfully camp synthpop meditation on masculinity, ‘Sign of a Man’, to the tragic theatricality of ‘Roustabout’, the band’s core of Adrian Flanagan(Acid Klaus), Dean Honer (All Seeing I) and Lias Saoudi (Fat White Family) nail everything an album should be in 2025, namely mysterious, accessible, catchy and emotionally vulnerable. And the cherry on top? Iggy Pop lending ‘Where I’m From’ a touch of ancient sounding class, like Johnny Cash living out the cracked Vegas years he never had. Top notch. (Ben Willmott)
Self Esteem – A Complicated Woman
As if a new album wasn’t exciting enough, ahead of its release, Self Esteem teamed up with director Tom Scutt to bring A Complicated Woman to the West End stage – a bold live show that shared its name with the upcoming record. She was joined by a chorus of female vocalists, whose presence is felt throughout the album. A Complicated Woman is about taking back control – a theme that comes into sharp focus on the album’s powerful lead single, ‘Focus is Power’. The track stuns from the outset: a graceful, slow-building ballad underscored by gentle piano and enriched by a choir of predominantly female voices. As it unfolds, confidence and determination rise to the surface, reaching a spine-tingling crescendo in a raw, a cappella moment that lingers long after the final note. In a bold display of Rebecca’s versatility, ‘Mother’ bursts forth with an irresistible beat and cheeky confidence that instantly grabs attention. With whispered vocals that playfully chastise a love interest while asserting independence, the wry, house-infused track has fast become a fan favourite, stealing the spotlight during her 2023 live performances. (Laura Dean)
Casper Skulls – Kit-Car
On their third album Kit-Cat, Casper Skulls are as comfortable referencing 1980s wrestling rivalry as they are 1890s female liberation – a clever, fun, grunge pop delight. (Neil Laurenson)
Oscar Jerome – The Fork
The Fork keeps the dexterity displayed from his previous two records – polyrhyhmic drums, soft mellow guitar and vocals that seamlesly switch from soulful to rapping – but keeps it measured, enjoyable and accessible, and thus avoids clouding his creed. Even with the addition of guests; Zimbabwean/Polish poetry duo M.A MOYO (‘Borrowed Other’), London rapper Hak Baker (‘Worth Nothing’) and French-Senegalese singer-songwriter anaiis (‘Smell The Daises’), the album flows and soothes well together without unecessary disturbance. It’s a good template on how best to ultilise featured artists to serve an album.
The Fork is the first time Oscar Jerome has produced an album by himself. ‘Desert Belly’ displays Oscar Jerome’s experimental D-I-Y freedom. The album opener features a loop that begins with a striking synth punch that when resonating has a guitar performed in a oud-like style that closes the cycle, giving an otherwordly aura. It samples an audio from an Instagram video that Jerome had posted and has lyrics that sound both like a innocent nursery rhyme (“Row, row, row your boat down stream”) and as if it is the preceding line of “…The girl from Ipanema goes walking” from the famous Astrud Gilberto song. It’s about seeing the first flower grow at the beginning of spring and Jerome informing us to use that as a sign to start a new chapter. (Matt Hobbs)
Decius – Decius Vol II: Splendour & Obedience (The Leaf Label)
There’s something deliciously dirty and deviant about Decius, the kinky dark disco crew formed by Luke and Liam May – the brothers behind Trashmouth Records – Quinn Whalley of Paranoid London and the seemingly ubiquitous Lias Saoudi of Fat White Family fame. They’re named after a Roman emperor and they make music that sounds like the soundtrack to the fall of empires; slithering, quivering, tremulous dancefloor moves rooted in the rawest fundaments of 80s Chicago and Detroit warehouse, completed by Saoudi’s desperate and delirious falsetto vocals. ‘Walking In The Heat’ – like Kraftwerk mistakenly turning up at a chem sex party – is the obvious entry point, but once you’re in, you’re never coming out. (Ben Willmott)
Tim Hickox – The Orchestra Of Stories
This is the third album by Tom Hickox, and with each release, it’s harder and harder not to mumble the word ‘genius’ at some point. He worked with Chineke! Orchestra, Europe’s first majority black and ethnically diverse orchestra, on this record, along with Onyx Brass, and both give it such an expansive sound that it becomes arguably his most accomplished work to date.
It begins with the dramatic horns of ‘The Clairvoyant‘ (apparently inspired by inspired by a news story about a bereaved man conned out of his savings by a bogus psychic), and we are enticed by a stabbing piano motif that briefly recalls ‘A Rush And A Push And The Land Is Ours‘ from The Smiths‘ final album Strangeways Here We Come. The second half of the record is somewhat more sombre in feeling, with ‘Lament For The Lamentable Elected‘ sounding like if Nick Cave did an orchestral number as the theme tune to a James Bond film, whereas The Waterboys‘ enduring classic ‘The Whole Of The Moon‘ is stripped down for a more solemn version, though still beautiful and no less relatable than the original. After the affecting ‘Man On The High Road‘ brings to mind the late great Scott Walker, we finish with ‘The Port Quin Fishing Disaster‘, which is quite possibly one of the most downbeat album closers in the history of the long player. Tom Hickox has really surpassed himself with The Orchestra Of Stories. It’s an outstanding record. (Loz Etheridge)
Blondshell – ‘If You Asked For A Picture’
Two years on from Sabrina Teitelbaum’s (aka Blondshell) self-titled 2023 debut album that turned trauma into tragedy and Blondshell into a confessional indie flagbearer. Thee follow up If You Asked For A Picture expands her vision to craft a record that burrows deeper into autobiography, and hits harder, delivering wide screen anthems built for bigger stages, infused with emotive potency and packing big riffs like punches, if anything it tops her debut and banishes the idea of the difficult second album.
The lucid songs of If You Asked For A Picture dig into familial relationships and plumbs the depths of emotions — parents who pass on their trauma on the galloping epic anthem ’23’s A Baby’, that’s hooks and emotive diaristic rawness outdoes Sharon Van Etten , ‘T&A. is about there’s a meditation on the loyalty of a sister who won’t forget how a man wronged you on the crushingly catchy accidental-love story. ‘In The Event of a Fire’ is a slow-burning epic that starts in a hush and ends in a howl. Written in the haze of tour-life burnout and sparked by a real 4 a.m. hotel fire evacuation outside Boston, the song begins with a lone guitar arpeggio, intimate and unguarded, before piercing vocal harmonies flicker in and the whole thing ignites. It’s a confessional torch song for when you are at the end of your rope. (Bill Cummings).
Sam Akpro – Evenfall
With an opening track (‘I Can’t See The Sun‘) whose rhythm section vividly recalls The Specials‘ classic 1981 chart-topper ‘Ghost Town‘, and instrumentation more in line with Bristol’s trip-hop scene of the early nineties, Evenfall grabs you from the very first instant. It’s not necessarily representative of the rest of the record though, as ‘Death By Entertainment‘ is more confrontational, going head to head with the listener and incorporating elements of The Prodigy, Asian Dub Foundation.
The title track is a woozy, yet intense, eerie foray through the late-night tunnels of your mind (if they even exist. I mean, I never even considered they did until I heard this album. See? It’s a mind-expanding record too! Tunnel Vision‘ kicks off side two, a trance-like two-word mantra repeated amongst a dizzying backdrop that, somehow, lies somewhere between Faithless and Pere Ubu. ‘Cherry‘ is arguably the most uptempo of the ten tracks on Evenfall, and no less fruitful. This is the track that half makes you want to hit the dancefloor, and half makes you crave to speed along, top-down, around the vast canyons of America. It’s almost a relief when the gentle lullaby of ‘Cornering Lights‘ sees us out but we’re left more than satisfied, and with a sense that we have just witnessed the work of a true genius. Evenfall is quite simply an absolutely spellbinding record. (Loz Etheridge)
The Gentle Good – Elan
The Gentle Good’s psychedelia-glazed new album Elan, is the creative conclusion of Gareth Bonello living in an off-grid cottage in the Cambrian Mountains for a year. Cwm Elan (the Elan Valley) was flooded to provide water for Birmingham at the beginning of 20th Century. The new record is a contemplation and reflection of the landscape, history and politics of this remote area.
‘Stunning Location’ leaves no room for ambiguity. Holiday and second homes and every Airbnb in areas of Wales are problematic, with local youth struggling to get on the housing ladder as a result, forcing them to settle in urban areas and not return. The record is a wide palette, a remote and in the flesh collaborative work with fellow musicians Rajasthani folk pioneers SAZ, Laura J Martin on flute, and Radnorshire guitar virtuoso Toby Hay. ‘Fleet’ is a tribute to a sheep dog. Gareth did a 20 mile walk to the next valley during his stay, mirroring the journey taken by a shepherd in a book he read about the place. The shepherd went to a wedding and for some reason, left the festivities in the middle of the night to go back to his farm. And got lost in a snowstorm, ended up on The Monk’s Trod, which is one of the most isolated parts of the valley. (Cath Holland)
