St Vincent - MASSEDUCTION

With every subsequent album, St Vincent has gotten more experimental, more confident and more… well, pop. MASSEDUCTION takes that journey to its climax with a dark and bold yet immensely catchy selection of new tunes. Singles like New York and Los Ageless were pretty great already but within the record they shine even more while Pills and Young Lover are dead-set jams. The one complaint is that there isn’t enough of Annie’s brilliant guitar work but, damn, this thing is remarkably re-listenable.

Big K.R.I.T. - 4eva Is A Mighty Long Time

With Big K.R.I.T.'s new album waiting to get a full play and requiring a full album debrief, this blurb will instead be about the hype for K.R.I.T.'s latest release. The two disk album is split into 'Big K.R.I.T' and 'Justin Scott' which points to the Mississippi artist's duality and the album's trailer also hints at either K.R.I.T. putting Scott to death or vice versa. There's immense intrigue in how K.R.I.T. speaks on matters that apply to him and his social commentary has always been of the highest quality. As has his musicality, he can seamlessly morph between heavy bass-laced tracks and southern soulfood. 4IAMLT is also K.R.I.T.'s first release as an independent artist after he left Def Jam two years ago, giving it another funky perspective as well.

Jhene Aiko - Trip

A couple years in the making, even longer in the living, Trip is Aiko’s extremely personal account of how she dealt with her brother’s death from cancer back in 2012 – with a lot of it adapted straight from her journals. It’s a harrowing and ambitious work of R&B psychedelia but a thoroughly therapeutic listen too. There are tales of drugs, of relationships, of solitary escape, of human courage and empowerment. You can’t fake a record like this. Powerful stuff.

Kamasi Washington - Harmony of Difference

Wow, man. Just wow. Washington’s first album was almost three hours long, his second is a breezy 30 minutes or so but across the six tracks he crams in such a joyous and energetic amount of music that every time you listen to it you come out the other side like you’ve just run a spiritual marathon. Each track is titled for a virtue: Desire, Humility, Knowledge, Perspective and Integrity. There are the usual incredible saxophone flourishes, some vaguely Latin rhythms, a few strings, Kamasi’s gorgeous vocal choirs… all literal brilliance but then the sixth track, Truth, manages in 13 minutes to combine all those elements, all those other five tracks, into something that reaches all the way to heaven. What’s that, you don’t really like jazz? Mate, you just haven’t heard Kamasi Washington yet.

Wolf Alice - Visions of a Life

This lot are a big deal in England, the new faces of alt rock (whatever that means). Wolf Alice have already dropped a few things before and this is their second full length. It’s all the usual stuff, nice and heavy, lots of guitar noise, chirpy hooks and all that – but with the standard second album experiments. Hey and guess what? It’s really good. The songs are tight (Yuk Foo’s a rocker, mate), the band is superb (the title track, yo) and yeah: two EPs and two albums in and Wolf Alice are yet to drop anything short of great. More than a couple repeat listens earned here.

EarthGang - Robots

Hot off their 'Rags' EP a month ago, EarthGang re-up with 'Robots' and deliver a similar type of package just with a different vibe. There are six tracks and while Rags was weaved together of skits welcoming two guys to Atlanta (and buying dogs), Robots has skits where a guy is dealing with his baby mama. These are low key funny, but this encapsulates the theme of each EP and Robots definitely has a larger focus on love and females, although it's not restricted to that and is, overall, a joy of introspection.

Kurt Vile & Courtney Barnett – Lotta Sea Lice

Haha, Kurt & Courtney, geddit? This collaborative record ain’t a gimmick though. It’s not a high-reaching artistic culmination or anything either, it’s something way more grounded. It’s a hangout album, a chillin’ with mates album. Kurt brings his folkish wisdom boots and Courtney her laconic grunge hat and the product is probably a little more Kurt than Courtney since we don’t get the thump and fire of Barnett’s usual band but if you think that means that Vile gets to dominate then you haven’t heard her take on his Peepin’ Tom. It’s like two of the finest rock n roll musicians of the time had a Sunday barbecue and flipped us all an invite.

Margo Price – All American Made

Like all the best country outlaws, Margo Price is also a proper traditionalist. And she even manages to get the best of them, Willie Nelson, on one of her songs here (Learning to Lose). Price’s last album was a breakthrough, this one is a consolidating improvement. The songs are that little bit tighter, the songwriting fiercer and the daggers that much sharper as she goes all in on the political shambles of the USA on tracks like Pay Gap and All American Made. Now that’s outlaw, baby.

Frank Nitt and Dolemite Present: The Streaker

There's nothing more hip de hop than some of that righteous Detroit underground hip hop and Frank Nitt is one of the modern day soldiers. The Streaker has Nitt dropping classic bars on five tracks, there's an intro as well and then there are the instrumentals for those tracks rounding off the album. As if Nitt's witty rhymes aren't enough, there's a constant supply of Dolemite quotes and as someone who had no idea who Dolemite was before being graced with this, it was a lovely surprise.

Various Artists – Twin Peaks (Limited Event Series Soundtrack)

Twin Peaks is a world of its own and the new ‘limited event series’ took that into a whole new realm with its dreamscapes and surrealisms and mythology and sheer utter viewer dislocation. 17 and a half episodes of scraping for pieces to the jigsaw puzzle and then the last half of the finale completely reshuffled the deck – it was incredible. Hey and how good were the musical spectaculars at the Roadhouse? Dude, and here they all are. From Eddie Vedder’s stunning new track to the Chromatics’ electrodreams to Rebekah Del Rio’s tearjerker to Nine Inch Nails’ industrial threat. It’ll take you right back there, alright… but who is the dreamer?

Lydia Loveless – Boy Crazy & Single(s)

Lydia gets annoyingly classed in that ‘alt-country’ category, which mostly just means she’s got a bit of a twang in her voice because Loveless (real name, btw) is at her fiery best when she’s getting into that Drive-By Trucker southern rock territory. There’s a fantastic empathy to her lyrics that means she can write a killer ballad too, which is where her last two records started to trend, though this one is a re-issue of her 2014 Boy Crazy EP (as well as some assorted singles) and it takes things back to those thumping backbeats and general badass-ery. It’s so much fun, right down to the superb Prince and Elvis Costello covers.

Benjamin Clementine – I Tell A Fly

Somewhere between Tom Waits, Serge Gainsbourg and Nina Simone is where you’ll find Benny Clemmy. Although born in London, Clementine spent time living on the streets of Paris and that bohemian attitude is there to hear in his avant garde balladry. And he’s cutting no corners on this new record either, a self-produced effort full of classical influences and experimental vibes. There’s nobody else doing it quite like this right now.

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