Parting ways with Brian Burton on production, The Black Keys’ first album in five years is a very obvious homage to classic rock and blues.
While it’s concerned with well-trodden dystopian themes, ‘ANIMA’ is the first time Thom Yorke has properly expressed his identity outside of the context of Radiohead.
The intense hype around experimental noise-rockers Black Midi is justified by the breakneck mania of their debut album ‘Schlagenheim’.
With their latest EP ‘Life Goes On’, Geoff Barrow’s side-project Beak> quietly affirms itself as one of Britain’s most boundary-pushing bands.
Reforming for the first time in over a decade, Jack White’s The Raconteurs opt to play it comparatively safe on ‘Help Us Stranger’, notwithstanding some moments of weirdness.
A significantly more varied effort than last year’s ‘Sugar & Spice’ EP, Harriette Pilbeam’s debut album as Hatchie shows that dream-pop is a world with almost unlimited possibilities.
Two Door Cinema Club’s fourth album ‘False Alarm’ sees them effortlessly turn the same indie-pop bop-along tricks – but it becomes grating after a short time.
Stripped back and emotionally direct, it’s difficult not to see the bar-room rock leanings of ‘An Obelisk’ as an over-correction in reaction to last year’s ‘A Productive Cough’.
Another charmingly inconsistent collection strewn with incredible highlights from Hot Chip on seventh album ‘A Bath Full Of Ecstasy’.
Anarcho-punks Bad Breeding display more sonic ambition on third album ‘Exiled’, but their masterpiece is still out of reach.
