They deliver one unforced, shout-out anthem after another—mirroring the immediate tunefulness of their Canadian counterparts Japandroids' Celebration Rock. Does the celebration get too rowdy for its own good? Well, sometimes. The hook-driven energy can get way ahead of you if you're not fully committed to it. Even so, there's a lot to ponder in their resistance with closer inspection.

Lyrically Wake Up The Nation is largely inscrutable, while sonically it remains a shambling and ungainly listen.

It’s unfortunate that the familiar sound of some of these tracks, the nagging suspicion that you heard this once before, is always hiding in the background, because there’s worthy enough material here.

There are four reasons why this album is necessary: firstly, it will make any party you happen to be soundtracking sound very clever. Secondly, following the samples and contributions will open up a whole world of modern and traditional music from the Southern Cone to you. Thirdly, both live and on stage, tracks like Pa'bailar rock a squeezebox like you've never heard. And, finally, Ry Cooder is nowhere in sight.

Route One or Die is many things--immense, joyful, weird and above all aptly titled, as you'd be hard-pressed to find another debut album released this year --British or otherwise--that sounds so completely vibrant and alive.

In spite of the album's wilfully hard-to-stomach intensity, [it] will appeal to fans of art music of many different backgrounds.

What I hear is basically a mildly enjoyable set of songs, whose lackadaisical delivery and spacey major second chords could easily accompany my Sunday afternoon nap.

For a debut LP that relies so heavily on a sound that is considered by some as fossilized, this is a very good effort. Urth is meticulously intricate in its more labyrinthine moments, and categorically barbarous for the rest of it.

With this record, there is Britpop, Radiohead, Spiritualized, grunge, trip-hop and more basking under an astral, space-rock umbrella, and Pumarosa have turned it all into a contorting, ornamental obelisk.

I Romanticize bobs around with a collage of springy trinkets that both confound and fascinate, though never without trying to make sense of his eccentric impulses.

With producer Andrew Schneider tweaking the knobs, his experience producing Unsane certainly applying here, KEN mode elevates their sonic outcry, hitting levels of discomfort with the subtly seasick Learning To Be Too Cold, thrash-bred Not Soulmates, and the manic combination of sounds in Fractures In Adults.

These remarkably self-assured ten tracks stand on their own with joyful inventiveness, as McGreevy tries to make sense of his past mistakes (Old Times) and alcohol-induced pseudo-intellectual babbling (Fit to Burst) through their joyous outbursts.

Fairweather Friend is a great record, a genre standout deserving of adoration and acclaim beyond the niche of specialist blogs and, let’s be honest, the No Ripcords of the world. Great songs are still great songs in 2024. If you like those, you’ll love The Umbrellas.

Only one year later and we have Two Dancers an album so laden with lush densities and provocative melodies that you would be forgiven for thinking this album had taken ten years to make.

Petals for Armor succeeds best at sustaining a mood throughout, capturing the chaotic ups and downs of depression. Some moments are sugary sweet, while others are biting and angry, but the album keeps things healthy by switching between infectious pop tunes and mellow art-pop parts.

Truly electrifying.

It’s a wondrous gem of an album that, even at its most lustrous, manifests itself with biting precision.

Magus captures well the force of its players throughout its near 90-minute runtime, the culmination of which occurs in the album’s final track, Supremacy.

Pierce commits to an intricately layered masterwork that brims with beauty at every turn. He has come close to writing a Motown-inspired ballad-like Let it Bleed (For Iggy) before, but here, in typically unorthodox fashion, Pierce nails down that aesthetic while serving up Britpop grandeur this side of Blur’s The Universal.

A glorious triumph.... The Decemberists deserve to become your new favourite band.

FLOTUS is much more than another genre effort, where Wagner deeply alters his usual country bearings and gives it a new and unexpected orientation.

Ekstasis abounds with originality and depth; soars and sinks; expands and implodes; evolves and dissipates; crackles and breaks all within one cohesive sound.

Celebration Rock's high-tempo riff rock concerns itself with energy and embraces our serendipitous run-ins with those good times worth remembering.

This isn’t political, but it is personal, comical, sad, satirical, intelligent and refreshingly honest.

She heads into more accessible waters —on tracks like Down on Me and Confessions, Davis softens her pop-meets-classical mishmash with a mellifluous inflection that gives clarity to her self-empowering message. And like a memoir of sorts, she goes through stories that range from her birth to the present day.

The record stands as the most shocking thing the Odd Future collective has put out to date: a R&B record with crossover potential without sacrificing soul that creates a complete picture of its author, warts and all.

Sheer Mag’s heady mixture of influences shouldn’t work. And yet, their tireless curiosity and genuine affection for rock song forms is what separates Need to Feel Your Love from sounding like a conventional tribute.

Despite Holter's all-around meticulousness, Aviary never comes across as careful or rigorous. She engages in artful replication, seeking to understand those voices she successfully reconstructs with a feeling of apprehension and anticipation. And in the process, leaving her own imprint for others to also discover in centuries to come.