Olafur Arnalds & Talos – Dawn
Icelandic musician/producer Olafur Arnalds spanned many musical styles, including neoclassical, punk rock, and TV and film scores. Dawn is an inspired collaboration, celebration of the spirit of relatives, and a deeply moving commemoration. Arnald began working with poetic Irish singer-songwriter Talos (aka Eoin French) when they met at an independent music festival. However, the French fell ill from cancer and died at just 36 years old before the album was completed. These songs will undoubtedly become meditations on mortality and sadness, but are essentially shaped by love. Arnald’s instruments are sensitive and unaffected, sincerely heartfelt, including ambient electronica and delicate strings. The French sound is fierce, his gorgeous, gloomy vocals are with you, even a bittersweet folk harmony of closed numbers that we didn’t know weren’t ready. (ah)
PinkPantheress – I fantasize about it
Few artists hope for as brilliantly as 24-year-old British singer-songwriter producer Victoria Beverly Walker (aka Pink Panzales). However, this second mixtape, although not a small amount, runs in a total of 20 minutes, is part of the alchemy of sound. There are garage, drums and bass beats, hooks borrowed from old school house tracks such as Groove Armada and Basement Jaxx, and vocal lines with admiration. What’s fascinating is the lyrics, with Pink offering a small, conversational quest for romantic pain, from annoyed crashes (tonight) to toxic exes (girls like me). If she is at this stage of her career this is strange and confident and confident in this, you will wonder in the best way she can go from here. (HM)
Cody CritcheloePerfume Genius – Glory
L.A.-based Seattle-based Mike Hadreas had found the strength of the vulnerability before wellness influencers made the idea popular. His seventh album is his seventh album as a perfume genius, the art-pop moniker who introduced himself on MySpace in 2008, and sounds more powerful than ever. Working with his multi-instrumentalist partner Alan Wyfels and longtime producer Blake Mills, Hadreas has created a deeply moving reflection on his anxiety in the face of aging, relationships and the outside world. “What do I get from being established? I’m still running and hiding when the guy is at the door,” he sings around the countryside, which is a mirror. He has similarly influenced the soft piano ballad Me & Angel, perhaps the most intimate and realistic love song of the year. The more you listen to this incredible Ortrock record, the more fragments of its truth and beauty come to the forefront. (NL)
Rose Gray – Please loudly
Following the mixtape and two EPS, Grey’s full-length debut is a great dance album and also a great pop album. Once, the beloved singer worked the doors on London’s Super Club Fabric, so there’s a cool conviction in how she pings between the Balearic Anthem (free, tectonic), tumbling drums and bass (first), and pounding piano house (wet & wild). Along the way, she finds a sweet spot between the galvanized mantra that “kisses the sky until morning” and acquires cultural idiosyncraticity. In Hackney Wick’s outstanding track, she guides us through a messy night in East London, mentioning local landmarks. There is also a longing for emotional connections that are ingrained in the album’s hedonism. “It all changes, but when the party stops being fun, I don’t,” she sings about all the changes (but I don’t). That all leads to hearing the best, as Gray recommends in the title: Louder, please. (NL)
Turnstyle – It’s never enough
Baltimore’s hardcore rocker turnstyle occupies unconventional space. They are increasingly expanding their range, both in terms of creative expression and commercial reach, leading to their underground punk roots. Their fourth album, Never Sonout, is a natural advancement from the excellent sparkle of 2021, but also pushes even more vision from the surged synths and powerful guitars in the opening title track. Rousing Vocalist Brendan Yates leads a strong catchy melody. The turnstyle sound is thrilled with thrashy riffs and blissful respect (sometimes on the same track), and is a multi-genre collaborator that includes Dev Hynes, Hayley Williams and Uk Jazz Don Shabaka Hutchings (playing flute on Sunshower). It’s a brilliantly unpredictable and exhilarating headlash on the record. (ah)
Iris LessWet legs – Moisturizer
There’s something beautifully and instantly about this UK-led indie band rock crafting about returning to the fore in 2022 with Single Chis Longoo. This follow-up to his self-titled debut album is not undergoing a fundamental shift, but rather a more tighter and more exciting listening with confidence, refined the formula. Lyrically, the big changes are their previous, funny complaints with romance, and the life of 20 lives in general, are being replaced by frontwoman Rhian Teasdale’s new relationship. And they can still do a great takedown: the highlight of the moisturizer is the manget out, and they call the unspecified man a “bottom feeder” and tell him to “get lost forever.” Overall, it makes a record of ferocious wit and inattentive riffs. (HM)
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Source: BBC Culture – www.bbc.com
