While there are a healthy number of inspired takes on beautiful heartbreak originals, Marika Hackman’s ‘Covers’ is too uniformly sombre.
Unlike his work with The National, it’s very much up to the listener with what they want to find in Matt Berninger’s debut solo album ‘Serpentine Prison’.
Despite being titled ‘ENERGY’, the Lawrence brothers’ third Disclosure album often lacks the creative spark of ingenuity, content to rest in autopilot.
Alicia Bognanno grows ever more confident on Bully’s third album ‘SUGAREGG’, a cathartic soundtrack to picking up the pieces and starting again.
Although poppy, melodic and immensely fun in its execution, Dream Wife’s second album ‘So When You Gonna…’ is held back slightly by the strength of its songs.
The first of a planned series of four albums, ‘KiCk i’ is the most ‘pop’ of all of Arca’s albums to date, yet retains the avant-garde cutting edge that has always made her music so compelling.
Even more confident than her accomplished debut, Phoebe Bridgers’ ‘Punisher’ elevates potentially depressing material into something life-affirming.
While there’s highlights aplenty, the slightly over-calculated nature of the production prevents ‘Chromatica’ from going full Lady Gaga.
In writing, recording and producing a masterpiece in conjunction with collaborators remotely during a lockdown, Charli XCX shows herself to be one of pop’s most industrious and imaginative stars.
Acknowledging that the truths about our existence exist in the grey areas that elude binary definitions, Moses Sumney’s ‘græ’ is his second masterpiece.
