Parquet Courts – Wide Awake!

We are conductors of sound, heat and energy. We are conduits of clear electricity. There were slight reservations about PC linking up with Danger Mouse for their latest record, especially as the first couple singles failed to stick. But, nah, no reason to panic at all. This is Parquet Courts at their punk-shouting best, tearing through chant-alongs in their refreshingly scathing way. But this is also a funky album. It’s one you can rock to. It’s also one you can punch a nazi too. Danger Mouse’s production keeps the band’s abrasiveness intact while also allowing them to flex a few ideas beyond their usual sounds. Nothing wrong with the tunes either, another batch of beauts from probably the best rock band in the business right now. And fuck Tom Brady.

La Luz – Floating Features

For a band whose name literally means The Light, La Luz have always had a way of making their songs shimmer. Purveyors of some proper decent garage-surf-twang in the past, this latest is probably their best record yet. Excellent tunes mixing between sweet reverbed vocals and bouncy instrumentals plus the whole lot of them can sing so the harmonies are top notch. You’ve gotta love those lead guitar knots. Tracks like Cicada, The Creature and California Finally are particular standouts. Just in time for winter to remind you what summer sounds like.

Janelle Monáe – Dirty Computer

That first single laid it all out there. Make Me Feel is funky, smooth, sexy and defiant in equal measures, sounding so much like Prince that it came as little surprise to find out that the late, great Purple One actually worked on the track before he passed. One of the songs of the year so far and the rest of the record holds up stunningly too, since you’re asking. Monáe is at her uninhibited best, dropping a sexy sci-fi pop record for the ages, celebrating love in all its forms (there’s only really one form, tbh) and daring you not to dance along.

Grouper – Grid Of Points

How to describe a Grouper album? A quick scan through the reviews bring up words like beautiful, painful, astonishing, immersive, meditative, intense, raw, visceral, pure, craft, fleeting, haunting, restless, sparse, fragmented, dreamy, unreachable and intimate. All of those things are correct. This album is all of those things. Listen late at night, ideally while its raining.  

Wooden Shjips – V

Some psych music is so damn good it makes you wanna strip naked and start dancing in the rain. Wooden Shjips’ fifth LP falls in such a category… particularly the middle of the album when a dozen minutes of Already Gone and Staring At The Sun commences and you can feel your glowing aura turn a bright and radiant yellow, shimmering like a diamond, warming you to the depth of your soul.

Pusha T - Daytona

All you need to know is that this is the record that re-sparked a beef with old mate Drake that’s currently got Drakey hiding under a rock somewhere in uptown Toronto. It started with the usual ghostwriting claims (on album closer Infrared) and somehow uncovered a lost child but you won’t find The Story of Adidon on Daytona. Instead we’ve got seven bangers, all excellently produced by Kanye West, a mere 21 minutes long. It has to be 21 minutes long. Not even Pusha could withstand this much fire and fury for any longer. Drake’s still cowering.

Courtney Barnett – Tell Me How You Really Feel

Much more introverted than her 2016 debut LP, without as much of the sardonic wit. But still very much Courtney, finding rhythm in the benign and peeling the skin back on the uncomfortable. The song title ‘Crippling Self-Doubt and a General Lack of Confidence’ about sums it up.

Emily Fairlight – Mother of Gloom

Second album here from the Wellingtonian poet/song-writer whose stuff walks a dark folkish pathway, remnants of a PJ Harvey influence in there. For whatever reason Aotearoa is producing a full on scene of these types of musicians (think Marlon Williams, Aldous Harding and Nadia Reid) and it’s pretty much amazing. Body Below and Sinking Ship are excellent tracks but Water Water was the one that lingered longest. This one’ll haunt ya.

Arctic Monkeys – Tranquility Base: Hotel + Casino

Woah, what even is this? Yeah… the Arctic Monkeys are making spacey lounge tunes now. Big shift from the chunky Lad Rock that they’re known for, but then who wants to a band trying to keep recreating the same old songs after more than a decade? It’s a big departure for them but… strangely compelling at the same time. Alex Turner knows how to sell a character and the band’s clearly having big fun on tracks like Four Out Of Five and The Ultracheese. Keep an open mind about it.

Ryley Walker – Deafman Glance

Bit of a departure for this bloke, whose hypnotic troubadour tales have often been too hit and miss to fill out a classic album’s worth, so now he’s ditched trying to imitate Nick Drake (albeit pretty well at times) and created something with more sonic variation, something that better reflects the person that he is. It’s jazzy and wild, risky but rewarding. That he pulls it off for probably his best album yet is all down to the quality of the songs that he’s crafted.

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