On their fourth album ‘Cody’, Californian punks Joyce Manor produce their most mature and emotionally profound effort so far.
Recorded in London, ‘Utopia Defeated’ is a well-travelled record that borrows from many palettes to paint a splendid picture.
As with almost every other Feeder album, ‘All Bright Electric’ lacks that special something to truly segregate it from the ‘average’ zone.
‘The Midnight Sun’ is an impressive and relaxed album, and one that hasn’t seen Duncan’s musical integrity tainted by his rise to success.
‘Stay Together’ is admittedly fresh and clean sounding, but Kaiser Chiefs have surrendered so much of their identity with the step into such territory that it makes for a very unconvincing makeover.
‘Requiem’, for all its attempted restraint, is the most ambitious-sounding GOAT record to date.
On ‘Friends’, it’s hard to determine a direction at which White Lies might be going with their music, since they seem to have been stuck in the same place for quite some time now.
Green Day’s fire is still alight, but while they aren’t exactly neutered, they do sound diluted.
‘Remember Us To Life’ goes some way to changing that, but though there are new layers of sound, the album feels too disjointed to really take hold.
Expanding the palette of their influences for album two, ‘Take Control’ sees Slaves doing exactly that.
