As we pass that halfway mark, the summer sun scorching and the smell of weekend barbecues still in the air, we run down, in no discernible order, some of our favourite albums of the year so far…
(Gare Du Nord Records)
Dan O’Farrell and the Difference Engine’s 4th album and indisputably their best. Packed with great songs. Bold production, fabulous instrumentation and emotional lyrical journeys. Fans of Elbow, REM and the like will love the songcraft and melodic swell.Have I got news for you. Post C86 veteran and sardonic songwriter O’Farrell discovers he can make a classic album that stands up against the Beatles Abbey Road and Lou Reeds Transformer whilst giving them little musical nods of appreciation. With the help of his trusty Engineers. Oddly, it’s as if, after ten years, hundreds of gigs, three albums and dozens of songs, Dan has got the knack of the catchy, repeated phrase as ‘ear-worm’…. to top off a beautiful song with a massive chorus…. that turns introspection into the warmth of a musical hug.
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(Rough Trade)
Sweary electro-punk veterans Sleaford Mods return with another confrontational take on our woeful zeitgeist. And they’ve come mob-handed, with more guest stars than ever before. Robert Plummer relishes the onslaught.Stay one step ahead, keep raising your game: no matter how big Sleaford Mods become, they still sound like they’re up against it. Last time out, they delivered a searing state-of-the-nation address with UK Grim, so how do they top that? The Demise Of Planet X gives a resounding answer to that question – they go global. Changes in their sound take place on an incremental basis. Vocalist Jason Williamson and instrumentalist Andrew Fearn operated for years as a self-contained unit, but since 2021’s Spare Ribs, guest appearances have enlivened proceedings. This time, no fewer than five of the 13 tracks are graced with additional contributions, adding new colours to the duo’s sonic palette.
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Elles Bailey: Can’t Take My Story Away
(Cooking Vinyl & Outlaw Music)
Multi award winning independent singer-songwriter Elles Bailey releases her fifth studio album, Can’t Take My Story Away, with UK and European tour dates to follow. It’s another inspiring collection of captivating, soulful and emotionally charged songs with strong leanings towards blues, roots and Americana, all of which provide an honest and vulnerable glimpse into Elles’ story over her ten year career. Elles last albumBeneath The Neon Glow in 2024 reached number one in both the Jazz/Blues Albums Chart and iTunes Albums Chart as well as reaching number 12 in the UK Official Albums Chart. Elles went on to win Artist of the Year at the 2025 UK Blues Awards as well as Vocalist of the Year and Broadcaster Of The Year. Now Elles starts 2026 with the release of her new album Can’t Take My Story Away which has a much different concept and approach than her previous albums.
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This is an album like no other and is an angry, gentle, heartfelt plea for humanity in a bewildering world, says Ged Babey, full of songs that are radical, sardonic, sometimes gentle, sometimes fierce, always melodic.This is a punk record… say the label…And it is, but punk as in ‘no rules’, complete freedom of expression, ‘truth’ rather than a style of music and a certain straitjacket of sound. What Skep Wax call the fearless phase of punk adventurism – TV Personalities, The Mekons, The Desperate Bicycles… Punk before it regressed to Rock. European Sun seem to me, to take inspiration from: the poetic depersonalisation of Devoto (I wandered loaded as a crowd...) the romantic vision of Shelley (I believe in..) the consumer consciousness of Poly Styrene, the frank honesty of the (Limp) Alternative TV and the fatalism of Young Marble Giants (Final Day) and marry it to the Punk As Ideas spoken by unique voices like Jonathan Richman and Patrik Fitzgerald. Not the caricature that Punk became: the Bash Street Kids playing rock’n’roll. And stretching the Beano analogy, Steve Miles is far more of a punk Walter the Softy than the standard issue Dennis the Menace… and we are 50 years on from the beginnings of punk as many an online and broadsheet features will remind us this year…
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Nika Ticciatti Record Club
A fist of mud grows inside the mouth, opens each finger at a time, and squashes your brain to a fistful of cold spaghetti. Liquids are secreted and smeared across your face. You’re prepared on a plinth by being embalmed in caustic snarls of feedback, sacrificed and engulfed in the hum from within. A new noise, a politicised jab-in-the-eye, a weaponised art of limitation of the sharpest calibre bent into the will of those who wield it…or, the sound of hanging out, apparently, there’s nothing special to be seen here. It’s just the sound of a few friends that found each other along the way, the sound of a room and the people in it, playing against and into the other, casting tribal silhouettes against collapsing walls with their warbling whirlpools of frenetic, post-punk ricochets. In that sense – there’s everything to analyse here. And everything to adore. It’s new. It came out of nowhere. A virus chanting from between the crooked propeller blades of a scum-stuck fan.
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Kind Violence Records
Ist Ist’s fifth studio album Dagger is their strongest and most complete body of work to date. Across ten songs they deliver a set of big bold confident anthems ready-made for the biggest stages. There’s a lot of talk recently in the press from many artists complaining about how difficult it is to make a living from the music industry – labels, promoters, PR all wanting their pound of flesh leaving little for the artist. Over the last decade Ist Ist have proved there is a way to make a go of this – self-release, partner with the right people, keep the fan base active with live releases and regular high-quality merch drops – and most importantly of course deliver music and concerts that connect. With a growing fanbase across the UK and especially Europe, they’re blazing a trail for others to follow.
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(Venn Records)
The long awaited second album from Bratakus packs a powerful punk rock punch. Nathan Brown argues it is more evidence that despite the media looking backward, punk is still moving forward. Sibling hardcore punk outfit Bratakus are a powerhouse and we’ve been fans at Louderthanwar since their first demo. Brèagha Cuinn’s guitar incises with razor sharp accuracy while her sister Onnagh’s bass growls away to give punch and power to the overall sound. Their raw and shouty vocals combine to great effect with the occasional bit of melody thrown in for good measure. You can tell they were brought up on a diet of punk rock and they’ve absorbed the attitude then spewed it back out in their own fashion. One thing that is immediately noticeable on this, their second album, is the inclusion of live drums – a departure for the duo. While there has been nothing at all wrong with their previous material (and live performances) using programmed drums, live drums bring an added vibrancy and I feel like the full potential of the songs is achieved.
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(self-released)
Yakkie unleash Kill The Cop Inside Your Head: a fierce punk rock debut album born of activism, anger and solidarity. Exactly what we need in 2026. “The cop inside your head will talk you out of your own power before you’ve had a chance to taste it. He wants your despair to calcify into defeat so you roll over for fascism and tell yourself there’s nothing you could have done to stop it. If you don’t kill the cop inside your head, you will become him.” It’s abundantly clear from the moment the album begins that Yakkie are a band with a fire – no, a raging inferno – in their belly. Punk can take many forms but if anger, passion and purpose were once deemed an essential prerequisite, then this London-based four-piece really are bringing it on home. While it effortlessly incorporates 90s alt-rock rock and grungy tendencies, Kill The Cop Inside Your Head remains unmistakably punk. If the genre – and what it stands for – still mean anything to you, then you’re in the right place. Yakkie are something of a punk supergroup with members from bands like Petrol Girls, Colour Me Wednesday, itoldyouiwouldeatyou and Personal Best. You can really hear that experience on the record too. Singer Janey Starling left Dream Nails after the bands excellent self-titled debut to focus on activism and co-direct Level Up, an organisation that focusses on ending imprisonment for pregnant women. Starling is pretty much the living embodiment of the walk-it-like-you-talk-it punk rock ethos and it’s that energy and activism that drives this album forward.
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(Fuzz Club)
Glasgow underground psych-rockers Helicon team up with L.A. DJ/producer Al Lover to release an album that layers in trip-hop beats through the band’s deep psych sound. The result is one of mesmerising glory. It sets out the stall right from the off, on the album title track. The song shifts through magic-eye depth, drawing you in through a myriad of sounds, each one layered over the last to create a zoopraxiscopic hypnosis. The beats roll underneath as sitars writhe over and through, interlacing themselves between a cascading rhythm, one that threatens to be enveloped by the sheer density of the guitars that surge constantly throughout. As an opening statement of Arise, Helicon build a truly majestic introduction. Having worked on over twenty tracks with L.A. DJ/producer Al Lover, the songs slowly fleshed out as they criss-crossed across the Atlantic, the nine-piece finally went into the studio with Lover in Glasgow with Tony Doogan (Mogwai, The Jesus & Mary Chain) to lay down the album, nine of those original demos making the final cut. As the final bars of Arise give way to the sweet Eastern groove of Backbreaker, that collaboration comes into full force. This is a song that should be filling dancefloors around the globe, trippy and entrancing, it pulses with communion, of coming together to block out the outside.
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TVAM: Ruins
(Invada Records)
TVAM (Joe Oxley) is back with another mind bending album three years after the excellent High Art Lite. It’s another lesson in clever psych electronica that flirts with genres like never before, cementing his place as the warped wizard of Wigan. Ruins, the follow-up to High Art Lite, Ruins is an album shaped by grief, reflection, and transformation; a record that captures both the weight of loss and the strange beauty that comes with it. Written after a self-imposed break from songwriting, it represents a shift in focus and perspective for Joseph Oxley. “I wanted to step away from what I thought I was supposed to make,” he explains. “The worst advice anyone can give you is, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ It’s always broken. It always needs fixing.” At its core, Ruins explores loss not as emptiness but as presence, something that reshapes the world around you. The album finds Oxley wrestling with the dualities of human experience: the tension between what’s said and unsaid, between humanism and nihilism, public and private, despair and acceptance.
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Lucy Kitchen: In The Low Light
(Bohemia Rose Records/Make My Day Records)
Folk songstress Lucy Kitchen knows what it’s like to be emotionally wounded. But as her third album demonstrates, she also knows what it’s like to live to tell the tale. Robert Plummer marvels at her ability to turn sour into sweet. The first snows of 2026 have fallen and the mood calls for bleak midwinter music. Something plaintive, something folky, something that features a small yet strong voice standing up to a harsh world. Something exactly like the music of Lucy Kitchen, in fact. For more than a decade, Kitchen has been plying her trade in and around the Southampton area, with occasional sorties further afield. Her two previous albums have earned her a bunch of devoted followers, charmed by her skilful blend of Anglo-Americana filtered through singer-songwriter culture. But in the nine years since her last full-length collection of songs, tragedy has cast a shadow over her life: her husband Stephen died of cancer in October 2022. In The Low Light is her response to the storm that threatened, but failed, to capsize her. Opening song Winter King sets the scene, with its air of aching absence and otherworldly foreboding. “I would drink you down like I’ve been parched for years/Oh if only you were here,” Kitchen intones mournfully over elegiac mellotron and a drumbeat that resounds like the crack of doom.
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(Kong)
Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett return with their 9th Gorillaz album, one that turns inwards in reflection, paused and plaintive, while still retaining moments of energy. This is not an album that hits hard from the first listen, and nor would you suspect that to be its intention. The mountain to climb is one that sets out in front of us a journey, one through which self-reflection and grief pull us. Conceived in the wake of the deaths of the Gorillaz’ creative duo’s respective fathers, and drawing heavily on the love of Eastern music of Albarn’s, the album sets as its backdrop a sprawling soundscape that draws a line from past to present. The final result is an album that feels raw, pain still present through the slow healing. Considering much of their previous output, here the songs are more paused, plaintive, each a considered rumination that elevates the album as a whole. The world of Gorillaz has always, through its sheer scope and variety, run the risk of hitting some bumps in the road, but, where the concept has been clearest, the songs have responded, and that still holds true on The Mountain. The wistful and downbeat songs here are those that tend to hit hardest as we are drawn into their inner world.
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Molly Vulpyne: Houndstooth And The Hum
(FOAD Musick)
Dublin firebrand Molly Vulpyne finally releases her debut album along with her punk brothers from Paranoid Visions and The Steve Ignorant Band, a melting pot of modern punk rock with a twist. Molly Vulpyne Band formed in 2024, when what was meant to be “just one gig” snowballed into recording an album and playing a rapid-fire run of festivals and gigs across the UK and Ireland. After releasing her solo EP Amortise in 2024, Dublin based songwriter Molly expanded her sound with a full band featuring Irish punk veterans Peter Jones (Paranoid Visions), Jay Bagnall (Paranoid Visions, Steve Ignorant Band), and Tony Carberry (The Lee Harveys). It’s a great record from start to finish with the building brooding Hook kicking in with great crisp drums and a dirty guitar riff complimented by the drawling rock vocals which have hints of PJ Harvey and Courtney Love without the screaming. A banging entrance full of punk melody. it Don’t Fit starts like Nirvana’s Heart Shaped Box, flipping into a fiery piece of rock that’s tight as fuck. It’s about that feeling of not fitting into the 9–5 world or the artistic one either, and not knowing where your place is. Inertia Right Hand Man is an early single from the Amortise EP back in 2024 which I described as ‘a beautiful tune with a psych acoustic guitar riff, while Molly’s vocals are an uncanny hybrid of Courtney Love (Doll Parts) and Kristin Hersh at her best. It just drags you in and hypnotises you.’
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(Six Shooter Records)
Saputjiji is the seventh album from Tanya Tagaq; singer, composer, actor, author, activist. Adam Brady, a long-time fan, reviews the latest from one of the moral compasses of the world. Nostradamus would not have seen this coming. Six Shooter could not have planned this better even if they had tried. Nobody could have guessed or wagered that in the week leading up to the release of Saputjiji, the seventh album from ostensibly Canadian but definitively Inuk multi-disciplinary artist Tanya Tagaq, that Donald Trump and Benjamin Netenyahu would illegally bomb Iran. For someone who has advocated for indigenous rights and against colonialism and violence, the stars could be said to have aligned. Saputjiji opens with Fuck War. Its message stark and without ambiguity, it hits you over the head with the force of a MOP (a bomb used in July 2025 against Iran, which has the rather sterile designation of GBU-57 MOP; MOP being a Massive Ordnance Penetrator, aka a ‘bunker buster’)Its electronic soundscape is as disorienting as that which the song rails against, with distorted guitar crashes (provided by Patrick O’Reilly) adding bite. Combined with Tagaq’s unique solo take on traditional Inuit throat singing it is a heavy way to start the album.If a song could be said to have a sibling, then Fuck War’s sister would be Foxtrot. Joined by Damian Abraham of Fucked Up, the repeated refrain of Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo, Yankee Oscar Uniform ranges from anger to despair, to outright indignation.
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(Tiny Global Productions)
Post-Fall giants House Of All return with their fourth album in four years. Inklings builds on the band’s singular mythology while delivering some gripping music. Robert Plummer follows the valiant heart. House Of All are not the first outfit formed of ex-Fall members, but with four studio albums and other side releases under their belts, they are certainly the longest-lived. Inklings is their most ambitious project yet, with forays into space-rock, downer-rock and other sub-genres. So is this when Martin Bramah and his trusty colleagues start to escape Mark E Smith’s immense gravitational pull and emerge as a band in their own right? Well, there’s one immense spanner in the works there: track eight is entitled Ours Is The Fall, to which one can only reply that the clue is in the name. Clearly the band are not ready to cut the umbilical cord to the mothership just yet. Even so, it’s their entrance, their own creation, and every successive release takes them further on their chosen path. Talking of entrances, the first words you hear on the first track, Spirit Salient, are “Tarry a little/I would lose all/Every man be master of his time.” There’s a slew of Shakespearean references there, a reminder that Bramah’s enigmatic lyrics are rooted in an old, weird England that lurks at the back of our minds. Musically, it’s the most low-key start to a House Of All album so far, a mid-paced opening gambit from a band with plenty of firepower in reserve.
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(Sour Grapes)
Debut album by Manchester garage-noise rockers Wax Head makes a claim for best garage album of the year, best debut, hell…best album! Hyperbole is only hype when it is bullshit. Wax Head have a debut album that smokes most other bands’ output. Drawing heavily on the Osees’ Death By Audio gut-ripping fuzz-rock, the Manchester band have made an instant and indelible impact with their debut album, GNAT. There is no way around it and no escape. It stings, through the skin and straight into the bloodstream. Blasting from the traps, the title track is an insane riot of mashed riffs, dense and battering as it speeds up into an intense climax. Like Primus fed through a wood chipper and scattered bloody across the tape, they just do not let up as they fly straight into early single Bug Doctor. The demented noise-rock is a manic two-and-a-half-minute siren-blaring blast of insanity. Wired and fired up. The vocals sit back in the mix, fighting to the fore, penned back by the sonics that shatter the eardrums. When it kicks into the battering assault in what I guess might be a, well, chorus, it is an untamed beast of a song.
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(Fire Records)
Cult hero Nick Salomon returns with the 27th Bevis Frond album in a 30-year career. Horrorful Heights is another magnum opus crammed with neo-psych rock and insightful songwriting. Robert Plummer is happy to be dragged into his world. “I was king for a day, king for a day, they gave me a crown then they took it away,” sings Bevis Frond frontman Nick Saloman on the closing number of this typically generously proportioned 20-track album. It says a lot about the man and his music: he sounds so damned genial while delivering his “I-wuz-robbed” tale of music biz treachery. And of course, it’s a compulsively catchy piece of chugging classic rock with plenty of Neil Young-style freak-out guitar. Horrorful Heights is big music trapped in a small world, like an ocean-going cruiser bound in shallows. And yet you sense that Saloman wouldn’t have it any other way. He has no time for the trappings of stardom – he much prefers to steer his own course, unencumbered by the pressures that major success would bring.
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Angine de Poitrine: Volume II
(Spectacles Bonzai)
Quebecois mysterions strike while the iron is decidedly sizzling and release new music hot on the heels of their inevitable viral prominence. The upcoming UK tour is sold out, and MK Bennett is completely sold.Taking over the internet with music is no easy feat these days, even less so if your music is as angular as a mathematician’s lunch box. Add in a lack of a singer to sell or look at and you are essentially pushing your luck unless you have something to set you apart. Angine de Poitrine have two things and one of them is their music. The other is an aesthetic of such magnificent seeming simplicity that it is a marvel. Part Marcel Duchamp, part Frank Zappa and the nostalgic air of a million kids’ TV shows. Low culture meets high with a nod and a wink and the greatest alien funk of some future science fiction that you have ( n ) ever heard of. Fabienk starts us off, as the sound of early Talking Heads falling down the stairs of a Parisian café zooms into view, impossibly rhythmic and jazz adjacent & hyper-focused, loops within loops swirl around each other before the brief moments of respite, then return slightly changed, a little more frantic, a little more distorted. It’s a potpourri of clashing sound, jazz-tinged solos appear like radio static and everything but the drums disappear until a very funky bassline and a nonsense vocal emerge blinking into the light, dancing away like an organic/analogue Daft Punk. If it eventually turns out that is exactly the case, it simply proves the Punk’s genius. You don’t need electronica to produce the insanely danceable. Krautrock via the self-belief of Joan of Arc, momentous and motorik.
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(Jangleshop Records)
Shapes Like People, husband and wife duo, Carl and Kat Mann return with their second album, Under The Rainbow, hot on the heels of 2025’s Ticking Haze. In some ways this could be considered the ‘real’ first Shapes Like People album, as much of the debut album was written by Carl whilst taking a break from his band The Shop Window following the release of their 2024 double album Daysdream. Those tracks on Ticking Haze initially being sketches for someone else until he drafted Kat in to provide some guide vocals. Following the experience of those sessions and the reception the debut received it was only natural that there would be a follow up. Keeping in with Carl’s high work rate we haven’t had to wait too long, Under The Rainbow arriving just 13 months later than its predecessor. Having had the fortune to listen over the last couple of months the thing I first noticed was how more balanced the collaboration feels, shaped by contrasting creative instincts but united by emotional honesty. From the outset, Carl positions the opening Spiral Back in Time as a cornerstone, describing it as one of three tracks that ‘triangulate the album… and hold it all together on its journey.’ Rather than opting for an obvious opener, he leans into something more reflective, exploring, ‘the tangle the human race seems to have got itself into.’ Kat admits there was some initial hesitation as she thought ‘it was a little depressing,’ however quickly gave way, now admitting it’s ‘a dream to sing.’
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(Scratchy Records)
South London singer-songwriter Simon Bromide continues his quest to become the music-obsessed, drinking man’s songwriter of choice. Following his well received album Following The Moon and single Not That Type (2022) with Forest Mountain Forest a single, with the same title as the album, he’s making the best music of his career and trading as Simon Bromide and The Bromides – to reflect a settled band line-up for his second LP, which is an artistic triumph says Ged Babey. Warning: There is a song called ‘Clouds’ on this album. (I have to say that as I have a Big Punk Following and he don’t like that kinda thing.) This is old-school, singer-songwriter stuff: camp-fire anthems… West Coast Country Rock style but with grooves and sounds that you’d hear on Blur, Charlatans and Happy Mondays tracks. Mainly upbeat and summery it is the kind of album which gets called ‘a feelgood album’ because it literally does. So there is a distinct need for it…
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(Sour Grapes)
Manchester’s Dead Stilettos make good on their early promise with a debut album packed full of wired Detroit-proto-post-punk-inspired garage. Shorn of any fat, stripped of any excess, Dead Stilettos are a shot of grit-trampled adrenaline straight to the sinoatrial node. Response kicks in, fight or flight and, in the case of this visceral Mancunian band, they are definitely up for a ruck. The songs blister under the pressure they apply, every one of them seething with an intensity that is drawn from the personal to the political, the straining of relationships, the crumbling of the old world order. On opening song, and recent single, Creeping Offence, they deftly draw a line between domestic trials, the inability to progress, to follow the societal rat race laid out before us, and global invasions. Battlelines are drawn. They spit back the faux-motivational lines delivered down from those who have already cashed in and made their lives, those who belittle the next generation as they attempt to navigate the shit-show delivered on a daily basis. The despair felt by the many is laid bare, but the band twist that feeling, make you look beyond your own limits, your own lives, to the real tragedies, the ever-growing massacres conducted by fascist global forces, enabled by domestic politicians and media that bend to the will of their puppet masters.
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(INH Records)
It’s been almost a decade since Loud Women’s first brought Bugeye to LTW’s attention and more than 5 years since their debut album, Ready Steady Bang, was included in our Top 100 albums of 2020. While it’s been a few years, new album, The Shape Of Things is well worth the wait and Bugeye are firing on all cylinders. The record pulls together numerous themes, including those of identity, control, and pushing back against systems that try to box us in. The Shape of Things is a journey through the modern world that explores media manipulation, isolation, and distraction, as well as our obsession with technology, self-improvement, and societal pressures as well as examining love, desire, rebellion, and the contradictions of contemporary life—from anger and frustration to hope and defiance—there’s a thread which runs through the record of questioning what we’re told to be, and choosing something more honest and self-defined instead. Speaking of the album, frontwoman Angela Martin explains, ‘The Shape of Things’ feels like a real moment of clarity for us. As a band, it reflects us stepping into who we are without apology. We’ve always been DIY and outspoken, but this record feels more focused and intentional, like we’re not asking for space anymore, we’re taking it. Sonically, it’s bigger, more direct, and more confident, but still keeps that raw edge that defines us.’
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(Grow Your Own)
A double dose of anarcho-punk uses the suppression of gatherings at Stonehenge as a central theme to explore how we are controlled, and how lies keep us playing our part in maintaining the system. Nathan Brown writes. I love it when a split album has a shared theme, and with this record Stonehenge, the right of people to travel, to visit ancient sites, to gather and festivalise is at the centre of that shared focus but it is really used as a prism through which to examine how the government and corporations coerce people into being a subservient cog in their machine (You know, The System). Both bands feature samples from news reports/documentaries about the “Battle of the Beanfield” (hardly a battle as cops in riot gear and batons attacked unarmed people and their homes) and the fold-out poster is resplendent with plenty of black (mainly) and red, barbed wire, knotwork, images of the stones and the circled A.
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(Mexican Summer)
Iceage return with album six, a fantastic ride through a myriad of wonky post-punk grooves. This could just be their best album to date. As a band that have constantly developed and expanded their sound across their previous five albums, the arrival of For Love of Grace & the Hereafter sees Danish post-punks Iceage hark back to the more stripped-down urgency of their debut. However, where New Brigade fuzzed with the urgency of youth, 15 years on, the band have honed their craft through constant twists and turns on their sound. Their restlessness was already in full flow by the time their third album, Plowing Into the Field of Love, landed, and has been brought back around here on an album that, at times, simply dazzles. It is their first in five years, and the freedom that singer Elias Rønnenfelt found through his solo album, Heavy Glory, has clearly impacted the band as a whole. While there is still a bleakness to the lyrics, the eschewing of the constant post-punk barrage of their debut for a more varied palette, at times surf-tinged, dashes of shoegaze, and a flutter with wonkier grooves, makes for an uplifting ride.
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(Epitaph)
It felt like no sooner had The Bobby Lees hit our LTW radar with their third album Bellevue, than the band called an indefinite hiatus, a time out. Ged Babey waxed lyrical about the album; “the most inspirational cult-level, gut-instinct, kick-ass band,” he said. But he also inadvertently touched on the exact reason for that hiatus.“I fear that they may go up a level, onto the business treadmill and tear themselves apart.”It was the business side of show that had kicked the band to the curb. Endless touring, pushing promotion, driving to step things up to a higher gear, while the industry’s reluctance to tackle the financial shitstorm caused by the abusive practices of the streaming giants, the band, of course, calling out Spotify, in the end, was just too much. Drained, they stepped aside. But help can often come from the most unexpected places. In stepped Jason Momoa. Anyone who has seen his HBO show On The Roam will know that he enthusiastically pours his support into the things he loves, shining a spotlight on the artists he feels inspired by. And so The Bobby Lees, who feature in the second season, had been offered the lifeline they so needed to keep going. But don’t think that the album has become a glowing adoration of everyone’s favourite sea-bound hero. The scars of exploitation run deep, and on New Self they surface often.
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(Landline Records)
Follow up to 2023’s Le Vice Anglais and the third album by the London-based art-pop band built around Micko Westmoreland and his songwriting. The best of the trilogy or just more curious, literate works of idiosyncratic genius? Ged Babey decides.This is a fantastic album. It’s the best album that Micko and co have released. Each one has seen subtle improvements on the last. It’s one of those albums which is a cohesive whole – ironically, despite having no less than six ‘single’ tracks available in the lead up to release. It’s like Coming Up, Dirk Wears White Sox, Ziggy Stardust, Elastica’s or The Smiths eponymous debuts, the Correct Use of Soap, any of your favourite albums where every single song hits the spot. (I’m not gonna say ‘all killer/no filler’ because that is a cliché, but I just did and in this case it’s true.) The guitars on this album just gleam: jagged but fluid, sharp yet tuneful. The rhythm section are solid, muscular yet lithe. No song outstays its welcome. Precision and conciseness are Micko’s trademark. And of course his lyricism.
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Dead Pioneers: Wagon Burner
(Hassle)
Dead Pioneers stretch their musical reach as they continue to expound a powerful message of indigenous experience on their third full-length release, collaborating with some big names. Nathan Brown recommends the new album Wagon Burner, full of righteous anger. It’s a bit of a cliché to say that for some bands the message is more important than the music, but in this case it is arguable. Giving voice to indigenous experiences of the American dream, Dead Pioneers’ message is vitally important. However, they’ve got the chops as well, which you need to get people to listen to what you have to say. The core message that Dead Pioneers have addressed front and centre throughout their short but impressive lifespan is the impact of 5 centuries of colonisation, occupation and genocide on indigenous people in North America. They continue to explore and exorcise different angles to this subject and shine a light on hidden truths. Musically, Dead Pioneers are experimenting with their sound even more than before. With every album they grow and expand. They’re not completely neglecting their hardcore numbers which is good, but they are less frequent. Their second album Po$t American had seen more post-hardcore moves but they aren’t just pushing in a post hardcore direction. There are mellow monuments, dark gothic undertones and anthemic pop-friendly rabble rousers.
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River Shook
(Independent Release)
On her debut solo release River Shook steps out of the Disarmers shadow and shows there’s no drop in song writing excellence as she documents the past ten years and looks ahead. It’s been ten years since Sarah Shook and the Disarmers released their debut album Sidelong, which we reviewed here, to critical acclaim, and Shook was hailed as a rising star in the alt-country scene. In the following years the Disarmers released three more albums, toured extensively in the US and Europe, gathering fans along the way, and Shook even found time to release a side project with an indie rock band called Mightmare. Then, to many people’s dismay, Shook announced the band was splitting up. In that decade Sarah Shook became a respected songwriter and now, known as River Shook; they are releasing their debut solo album. It’s not only been an intense musical journey over that decade of releases, but a highly charged personal one for River. They have always documented their struggles and triumphs on record, and the debut album is no exception. There are bad relationships, guilt, heartache, regret, but also joy and hope, all related with that precision eye of an artist on top form. What also remains is that voice. How to describe the voice? The trills, the range –a voice that hits you on an emotional level and sends shivers down your spine and raises the hair on your head. It’s a voice that weaves a tapestry of emotions from a life that has seen its fair share of ups and downs.
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(Kraupop! Records)
Brighton-based psych-garage trio Oral Habit arrive with their debut album, A Broken Chord, already carrying a growing reputation for intensity and unpredictability. Released via Falmouth’s Krautpop! Records, and ahead of a full UK tour, the record captures a band who have honed their craft and, while still building on everything they’ve achieved so far, are unafraid to experiment and push the boundaries of their sound.Reinforced by a recording process that leans heavily on live takes and the imperfections that come with them, the album packs heavy, unyielding sounds: amps pushing hard, tape saturating, instruments bleeding into one another. These processes give the record a murky depth and, importantly, a striking sense of momentum and purpose.The album opens with its title track, A Broken Chord, a dark yet playful introduction that immediately establishes the band’s character. A pulsing, subterranean synth creates a bubbling backdrop for a boxy, tongue-in-cheek deconstruction of the term “broken chord”, punctuated by sporadic crashes of noise that hint at the band’s intense, fuzz-drenched sound. From there, Surface Breaker kicks the album into gear. Influenced by fast-paced 1960s psychedelia, the track fizzes with energy, driven by choppy rhythmic shifts, a commanding central guitar riff, and barked vocals. Just as it finds its footing, it unexpectedly veers into a rapid instrumental passage, capturing the band’s experimental spirit and willingness to follow ideas wherever they lead.
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(Tapete Records)
The LTW review ofEverything Changes Everything Stays the Same called it: Absolutely perfect in every way – Can the follow-up possibly be as good? An album of existential contentment in the form of guitar/pop music made by veterans competing against no one but themselves, writing about camper vans, ex-lovers and long-lost brothers and Sad Comedians? Yeah, it’s even better. Only ten songs, seven of them under 3 minutes, so the running time of exactly 30 minutes. Yet you will NOT feel ripped off as every second counts. Every note, beat and syllable is vital. I know it sounds like exaggeration, but this really is another perfect album from a great band making up for lost-time. Maybe it IS just me. Maybe it’s because the band are roughly the same age as me: born-in-the-Sixties, white, punk-inspired as teens, bookish, left-leaning, soft-arses… under-achievers but who have kept their sanity and ‘out of prison… the madhouse and the grave’. Or maybe they are just a great pop group whose existentialism is more acceptance and contentment than angst.
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Cracked Ankles Records
Lovely Northern gentlemen fresh from a triumphant sort of homecoming at the inaugural Louder Than War all-dayer return with album number 5, a significant upping of the musical stakes. All bands should start with a wonderful name and work forward from there. Evil Blizzard has a perfect name, suggestive of one of Dario Argento’s Giallo movies from the 70s, a bloodthirsty operatic spectacle enacted in the snow. It gives them an enormous amount of space within the aesthetic and gives very little away in terms of what they actually sound like. That, though, is a wonderland in itself. Bands with massed influences can sound untethered and disparate, pulled into different directions that cannot work, but not these fellas, who manage to coagulate perfectly, letting the song dictate.The thing about a band clearly in love with music is that you cannot pin them down, box them in, or decipher an easy genre for them to fit into. Off With Their Heads is Krautrock via Bontempi, but arguably even better than that sounds. It starts with the pitter-patter of synthetic drums and builds towards a climax of motorik splendour, while simultaneously sending out signals to Underworld and Hawkwind, somehow. It is a mighty opener that also recalls that brief moment in time ( Vanishing Point, to be specific ), when Primal Scream were cool and being remixed by the guy in the cardigan from My Bloody Valentine. Picture yourself in a venue with this coming from an overloaded PA system, and you’ll smile yourself into stupidity. Down Down Down is a beautifully 70s chug along with a sinister face and an immediacy that’s striking in an era of the overly programmed. Organic, bucolic, euphoric, and a set phasers to stun riff with a sound that could stun wildlife.
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(Skep Wax Records)
Heavenly are seen as the originators of a whole genre of music – known to some as ‘jangle’, others as ‘twee’ and to the band themselves as ‘indiepop’. As fiercely independent as any punk band, but as sweetly melodic as any chart-topping act, Heavenly combine sharp-edged politics with shamelessly joyful pop music… (says the Press Release). It’s 30 years since their last album and they sound just the same – and are still one of the most under-rated, overlooked and influential of pop groups, says Ged Babey, because Heavenly have always existed in-opposition. Always a soft target for the English music press inkies back-in-the-day, “Heavenly just need Timmy the dog and they are Enid Blytons ‘Famous Five form a Band’…”. Cynical smugness based on seeing a photo of the band rather than actually listening to the music. The beautiful written interview with Heavenly published a few days ago on LTW puts the record straight and confirms everything the cool kids knew about them. That they were and still are the most quietly influential of bands and the ‘missing link’ between punk, Riot Grrrl, C86 and the purist spirit of genuinely Indie (as in independent) music. They never achieved the fame and fortune or even the critical acclaim they deserved – because they never compromised and fate intervened – but they carried the flame of pure independence, brilliant, smart songs with a musicality that was sunshine and optimism and more ‘for real’ than any Corporate Indie careerist band you care to mention.
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Extinction of Mankind: Slaves To No One
Thirty-four years since forming in Oldham, UK crust titans Extinction of Mankind return with their fifth full-length assault, Slaves To No One. Neil Crud discovers that the band’s legendary fire hasn’t lost an ounce of its devastating heat. One word: Thumping! Extinction of Mankind (EOM) seamlessly bridge the gap between raw, socio-political UK punk and the devastating weight of extreme metal. From the opening track there’s nothing to hide. EOM are slaves to no one as they lay down their marker and dare you to cross it… Go on – I dare you! You’ll get zero points for realising there is absolutely no nonsense here! In fact, their tour van should be sign-written: Extinction of Mankind – We don’t fuck about. Call it crust, call it hardcore, go ahead punk: call it what you want. In a genre flooded with sub-genres, this is the one that excites me the most. I love the remorseless brutality of it; you feel like you’ve done the proverbial twelve rounds with either of the Tysons, yet you’re still willing to go in again, and Extinction of Mankind are more than willing to extend that same courtesy.
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(Reckless Yes Records)
Tiger Island bare their teeth with Let’s Go Out, their fierce garage punk debut album. Andy Brown hits the town for Louder Than War. Let’s Go Out comes on like an energetic thrill ride through neon-lit backstreets, littered with empty bottles and broken hearts. Over the course of a breathless 30-minute runtime, the Tiger Island debut doesn’t just paint the town red, it burns it to the goddamn ground. This metaphorical blaze is fuelled by great tunes and garage punk soul. Urgent and close to tumbling over the edge, it’s an album about grabbing life by scruff of the neck. One thing is abundantly clear… No one’s going home until the last place throws us out. The album follows on nicely from their 2024 EP Looka Looka Looka, providing all the snarling riffs and attitude that your garage punk loving heart could possibly desire. Vocalist Penny Brazier and Matt Colmer provide the finger bleeding guitars while Matt Perrot (bass) and Kev Sanderson (drums) keep the albums raw, impassioned and defiantly human heart pumping. AI could never replicate this kind of heartfelt hullabaloo. Kath Hartley’s keys are the cherry on the – booze soaked and highly flammable – cake. Tasty!
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(Spinout Nuggets/Jigsaw)
Third album from Love, Burns, led by Phil Sutton, revels in the adoration of jangle-pop at its most beautiful.There is something wonderful that floats from the speakers as soon as the needle drops, something plaintive and yearning. As the new album from Love, Burns (led by Pale Lights’ Phil Sutton) opens and sets out its jangle-pop stall with the marvellous You Have To Be Sad, neurons fire, the mind disconnects, and you float away on the lush arrangements and beautiful vocals. It drifts in from a world inhabited by the more recent Teenage Fanclub, by Dead Famous People, Belle and Sebastian; those who took the lamenting sound of Nick Drake and blended it with the best of The Byrds. The song tumbles through plaintive yet uplifting melodies, Kyle Forester’s guitar work fitting perfectly at every moment. Be it the light acoustic backing, the jangle arpeggios, or the slight drive of the solo, his sunshine-pop work with The Ladybug Transistor complements every turn. That said, it is when Jo Roman’s backing vocals come in that the song truly melts, and you are hooked.
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Polypores: Wrigglers
(Crackedankles)
The artist always known as Stephen James Buckley releases his next opus as Polypores, a rich-sounding beast of ambient techno that sets the bar high in this world of ever-changing music soundscapes. If you’re a collector of Cracked Ankles stuff you’ll know that Polypores is not the normal. For fucks sake, on one hand you have the bands like Yaang, Chum, Whinge, TV Face, Dead Things, Michael, Pyncher, Hotwax and other talents that some have fucked off to acclaimed fame. Yet Polypores is a standout and a testimony to the releases from this label that keep on giving us top talent. Ste Buckley does his own thing with his imaginative electro stuff that stands apart from anything you’ve heard yet. Opening track Memespawn is just bizarre as fuck, giving off floating crazy noise from the start. A futuristic, melancholic piece of beauty that gives you vibes of the early eighties computer games that messed with your head. Mario Kart and Donkey Kong on acid. Wrigglers is just daft wonky madness. A techno beat filled with some of the weirdest sound effects on the planet. It’s like AI with a virus. Just type in ‘what sounds bonkers’ on any app and they’d never get close. Troublebath is astounding noise from Buckley, which brings to mind Orbital on mind-altering drugs, which I’m sure the Hartnoll brothers never touched. Honest. A sprawling piece of acid wonk if I’ve ever heard it. Naut goes a bit mellow and wobbly with fluid-type noise and a bit of Rolf Harris (nonce) stylophone backed with crashing side effects that fuck you up into a Spiritualized / Spacemen free frenzy. Utter madness.
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(Self-released)
Soulful folkie Ella Clayton takes a deep emotional dive on her second full-length album. It’s a warm bath of a record, with an organic sound that refuses to be defined. Robert Plummer immerses himself in the lushness. How do you solve a problem like Ella? Well, if we’re talking musical quality, there’s no problem at all: the East London singer-songwriter’s majestic voice and mastery of multiple styles mark her out as a rising star. No, the difficulties arise if you’re one of those people who insists on pigeonholing talented performers, because nobody puts this woman in a stylistic box. Opening song Please Me, delivered down-home fashion in three-four time, might lead you to expect a whole collection of R&B torch songs. Clayton sounds both confident and guarded as she challenges a potential suitor: “I ain’t never let a lover linger long enough to give me what I want and that’s no lie.” Meanwhile, sidemen Alex Crawford and Malcolm Edmonstone accompany her lilting yet impassioned tones in the manner of Steve Cropper and Booker T Jones, giving a spine-tingling Memphis vibe. However, the mood changes immediately with the dirty-ass rock groove of Mouth Said Money. Psychedelic reverse guitar and Fabio De Oliveira’s splashy drums tee up a tale of a music biz impresario prone to talkin’ loud and sayin’ nothing. Clayton’s voice takes on a new shrillness as she recounts the experience: “Her mouth said money and I kissed the word/I really wanted to get to work.”
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Jim Jones All Stars: Cat Fight
(Silver Arrow Records)
The unstoppable force that is Jim Jones All Stars fire up their engines once again to deliver their second majestic album, Cat Fight. Forged at the crossroads where James Brown and Little Richard collide headlong into The Stooges, the album is a glorious sonic fusion of soul-powered rock’n’roll, garage rock, gospel and gritty rhythm and blues, with sheer class oozing from every groove as it plunders classic influences from the past and drags them kicking and screaming into the 21st century…..so hold on tight, this is a wild ride ahead. Even with the rapid passage of time that seems to engulf us all, it’s hard to believe that it is now almost four years since Jim Jones first gathered the embryonic All Stars to start creating some dazzling rays of soul drenched sunshine to overcome the gloom infested times that heralded the dawning of this new decade. And it wasn’t long before Jim crystalised this intense, soul-infused and highly energised wall of sound into their debut albumAin’t No Peril in 2023 giving us real belief again in the future. All seemed well with the world and it was definitely time to dance again.
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Sunn O))): Sunn O)))
Sub Pop Records
Drone Metal titans Sunn O))) release their tenth studio LP on Sub Pop. Stripped back to the duo of Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley and backed up by a tour of the States and Europe, 2026 is a big year for the band. It’s frighteningly easy to fall into the trap of pretension with Sunn O))). To lean into the robes, the volume, the avant-garde fearlessness – of the listener, as much as the band – and assign inappropriately cerebral worth to their masterful sound. I do it myself. Constantly. It’s natural to seek meaning and presence in their abstraction. But it might be unnecessary. I have read in promotional guff and articles (that regurgitate said guff) how this album is a return to pure Sunn O))). After several LPs that have included special guests, team-ups and other musicians to augment their sound, Sunn O))) sees the band pared back to the core duo of Greg Anderson and Stephen O’ Malley. Live. Nude. In the raw. Doing what they do best. Fab news. Exciting.
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Birds Flying Backwards: Lovebirds
(Real Love Recording Co.)
London-based six-piece Birds Flying Backwards arrive with a quiet confidence on their debut album Lovebirds. Previously earmarked as psych folk, the full-length leans much more firmly into an Americana-come-alt-country sound, wrapped in a 70s-inspired aesthetic with its warming, vintage production. Recorded live over just four days in early 2025, the album leans into immediacy and connection, foregrounding the band’s natural chemistry and emotional clarity. Speaking about the album, the band explains: “Lovebirds is an ode to love in all its forms — romantic love, love for friends, familial love, heartbreak, and the process of learning to love yourself. Love feels more important than ever to us. Love, compassion and solidarity are powerful tools with which to oppose oppression, dehumanisation and a political elite intent on dividing us. Recorded entirely live over four days in early 2025, Lovebirds stands as a testament to the unifying power, enduring beauty and the profound but life-affirming sadness that love, in all its forms, inevitably brings.” From the opener One Heartbreak To Another, the band’s warming blend of Americana, tight, layered country vocal harmonies and the emotional sincerity within the songwriting shines brightly. With boxy, strikingly dry and understated, yet beautifully crisp and clean production, the track captures the essence of the band’s live sound, affirming their undeniable ability as musicians.
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