Musically speaking, not much is new on Pond’s eighth album ‘Tasmania’, except for Nick Allbrook’s weighty cynicism about the future of humanity.
Frog Eyes’ eighth and final album ‘Violet Psalms’ feels suitably like the culmination of a career’s work.
On his seventh album ‘Be More Kind’, a collection of highly polished pop-rock anthems, Frank Turner’s idealistic political venting finally becomes tiresome and grating.
Trading in hooks for warmer pop textures but retaining the lo-fi feel of their debut, Hinds’ second album ‘I Don’t Run’ is another understated success.
The first Hot Snakes album in 14 years, ‘Jericho Sirens’, does a magnificent job in living up to the cult reputation that their first three records built up in their absence.
Too much of ‘American Utopia’, the first solo album from David Byrne in 14 years, sounds hopelessly outdated for it to pass as anything other than okay.
With limited but highly enjoyable successes on their fifth album ‘Always Ascending’, Franz Ferdinand can still claim to have relevance in 2018.
‘White Light/White Heat’ may have been made without Andy Warhol and Nico, but contains six tracks of raw, ugly but compelling garage-rock. Sadly, it would be the last album by the classic Velvet Underground line-up.
Psychedelic garage rock veteran John Dwyer continues his prodigious output rate by returning to his OCS moniker on ‘Memory Of A Cut Off Head’.
Jamison Isaak delivers the second of two Teen Daze albums of 2017, both focussed on ecological and environmental issues, but ‘Themes For A New Earth’ is notably more optimistic.
