“STAMPEDE” has the energy a song needs when it channels TV on the Radio. When the album has energy, it is very strong. “LIFE KEEPS GOING” has a great beat, a great beat shift and a fun dash of Robyn. “THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE” raps well and has fun voiceovers. “DEATH CULT ZOMBIE” is a fun Clash-style song. Unfortunately, the energy flags too often and so an album with lots of styles and lots of ideas sags under its own weight.
In “the cure”, Olivia sings the tremendous couplet “Used to play a game in my head when I’d date a guy / Tally up the girls that he fucked ‘til I started to cry” and she sings it softly as she matches an indie rock backing and indie twee music video to it. This rock swells and grows as she does over until it crests in self-acceptance. This is why you seem pretty sad is exceptional. She matches music to emotion masterfully and so crafts a spectacular narrative across the entire album.
Her flexibility allows for this. “the cure” could be a Phoebe Bridgers cut, “stupid song” shows her in Taylor mode, “expectations” draws from Madonna. When she brings in Robert Smith for “what’s wrong with me,” their vocal harmony is a pleasure.
I do wish however that she was able to transcend her influences. She keeps each song within genre lines and none of her forays truly approach the best of each of their respective classes. She often comes close though. I love the riot grrl of “my way” and her caustic lines are expertly placed in her narrative of the shaping and reshaping of her own personality. “u+me = <3” is very well crafted pop and “I know everybody changes but I hope we don’t / Carve our names into the carseat leather” are great lines.
More saliently, does it make sense to quibble over whether the songs are genre-bending when the album moves so freely? Does it make sense to say that the songs are merely very good when the album is exceptional? It is no matter, for you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love is truly an exceptional album.
Even if you haven’t yet heard their music, you might have seen clips of Angine de Poitrine around social media already; their polka-dotted, masked presence is hard to mistake for anything else. In the same vein as Daft Punk and Glass Beams, Angine de Poitrine materialized from the outset with their own lore – the stated story here being that they are a pair of space-faring, music-loving aliens called Khn and Klek de Poitrine.
So, behind the mystery, what are they really? At the heart of it, Angine de Poitrine is a math rock band that deals primarily in microtones – the notes outside of the traditional 12-note Western system. The duo combines the inherent jaggedness of microtonal music with a phenomenal sense of melody and rhythm to result in a free-flowing yet utterly groovy cacophony of sounds; think alien jazz-rock. Throw in the looping skills of the guitarist-slash-bassist plus their inimitable visual presentation, and you’ve got yourself a viral band indeed.
The duo released their first album, Vol.I, back in 2024, and are now back with Vol. II in April of this year. Over a thirty-six minute run-time on Vol.II, Angine de Poitrine take us on a kaleidoscopic, frenetic journey unlike anything else.
“Fabienk” opens with the sparse squawks of what could be an alien spaceship; gradually, layer by layer, the song unfolds into a hard-charging banger that could, say, soundtrack the boss level of an indie video game. “Mata Zyklek” is a firecracker of a rock song – one could easily imagine Cadillac using this for new commercials in place of Led Zep’s “Rock and Roll”.
With “Utzp”, the aliens go in a totally different direction: a simple melody set against staccato upbeats could remind the listener of a Greek wedding song, or perhaps Eastern European polka. “Sarniezz” opens with a thick bass riff that eventually takes center stage, shaping and molding the guitar and drums.
The psychedelic “Yor Zarad” masters the art of hypnotic repetition, interspersed with just enough melody to imbue the track with a sense of irrepressibility. “Angor”, the final track of the album (although we found that the order of listening doesn’t really matter), utilizes switches in rhythmic pattern and a mesmerizing microtonal melody that snakes into your brain and keeps you locked in.
Just as a side note (and this is purely a matter of opinion), Vol. II does get a little overwhelming in the second half of the album, especially if one is listening all the way through; there’s just too many ideas, snippets, concepts that the band brings up through the interminable layers, leading to a sort of mental fatigue trying to process everything. However, your mileage may vary; perhaps you’ll listen to Vol. II and wish for a Vol. III that’s twice as long.
Aside from the microtones and the masks, there’s another reason that Angine de Poitrine went viral this year. The band came into the limelight in early 2026 with an extremely well-received KXEP set, at the same time when AI had started looming, like a Death Star birthed by evil billionaires, over anything creative or human. Ironically, this duo of so-called aliens became a symbol of anti-AI – because no AI model could ever produce something as creative, random and unusual as Angine de Poitrine.
@anginedepoitrineofficiel have been breaking the internet for weeks now. Is surreal art and music like this going to proliferate in a world where anyone can create music and media with the push of a button? Is it a coincidence that this is happening at the same time as AI-produced music is going mainstream? Are there echoes of past art movements such as Impressionism, Abstract Art, Dadaism? #AI#anginedepoitrine#aimusic#genai#arthistory#arthistorytiktok#microtonal#artificialintelligence
As with all well-crafted instrumental music, this album stays with you. Angine de Poitrine are experts at weaving in intricate melodies, counter to and in between motifs that they’ve been building for some time. It’s those melodies that stay with you and keep you coming back for yet another listen.
I find myself surprisingly emotional listening to The Boys of Dungeon Lane. The best of the Beatles albums, Revolver, turns 60 this year and the best of the Beatles will turn 84 and somehow Sir Paul is still making music. He’s more bluesy than in his youth and his rock is harder and his voice is rougher. He’s often searching for the beauty of his truly great melodies and he never finds them and the rock never gets as complicated as one would like. It doesn’t matter. This is Paul McCartney, making music that he clearly enjoyed making and that I truly enjoyed hearing. This is a delight.
This is very competent indie rock. “What’s Right” is well done, well constructed music. Similarly, “Burn It Down” is crafted well. It’s good a good instrumental break and lots of nice sparkles in the sound. It’s unfortunate then that it has nothing to say. “At Peace in the Hundred Acre Wood” has some nice music but doesn’t match the wit of an incredible title. I come to indie rock like this for the epigrams and the razor blades and without that cleverness, an album like this sounds hollow.
Singer-songwriter RAYE has had a long journey to releasing her second album, This Music May Contain Hope. From a young age, her eyes were set on the famous BRIT School, a few miles away from her home in South London. At 14, she finally joined the school, immediately began creating music, and soon after that, was signed to Polydor Records. A few EPs followed, but she was jerked around by the label for years without letting her release her debut album. At that point, then in her early 20s, RAYE quit the label in 2021 to become an independent artist; her debut album My 21st Century Blues, happily enough, turned out to be a big hit. For the new album, RAYE continues to be an unsigned, independent artist, once again working solely with the distribution company Human Re Sources to get her music out to the world.
Just a cursory glimpse through her independent-era music makes it clear that RAYE was always meant to be an independent artist. This Music May Contain Hope brims ambitiously with ideas, genres, topics galore – often to the point of warranting a savvy editor to trim things back – but you cannot deny her originality.
RAYE’s skill lies in setting catchy music to the angst of being a young woman in an increasingly transactional, digitally-native world. The album kicks off with a spoken word intro, where a woman in her late 20s (presumably herself) is drunk, alone and belittled by men; and just when things are looking irretrievably bleak, receives a rescuing call from her grandmother. Similarly, on “The WhatsApp Shakespeare”, a 90s-era R&B track, she’s in the grips of a modern-day smooth-talking playboy until her family helps her get out. On “Nightingale Lane”, she belts her heart out, like a modern-day Mariah, about the greatest heartbreak of her life (so far). And of course, there’s the break-out “WHERE IS MY HUSBAND”: a maximalist, big-band track where RAYE is unapologetically needy about a man who may not even know she exists.
If you’re noticing a pattern here: RAYE has a lot to say, and does so by whipping between genres and topics like a Spotify playlist set to random shuffle. Although every track on the album is well-produced – owing to her hard-earned skills as a truly independent artist – the album, taken as a whole, comes across as overstuffed. You just don’t know where to look. Should you pay attention to the orchestral “Click Clack Symphony”, arranged by Hans Zimmer? Should you take in the showtunes vibe of “JOY” that features her sisters? Or the gentle guitar strums of “Fields”, a paean for her grandfather Michael?
RAYE deserves all the commendation in the world: for managing to be a successful independent artist at a time when pretty much anyone has access to unlimited music; for unabashedly wearing her heart on her sleeve on every single track; for basically being her true self at all times. She has all the hardest parts of her job down pat, whether it’s writing, singing, producing, or promotion. One just hopes that, before her next album, she partners with a good editor to help the listener understand just what to take out of the boggling kaleidoscope of her mind.
For nearly the past three decades, Gorillaz have been a mainstay of culturally popular music. There were their groundbreaking initial releases such as the debut Gorillaz (2001) and Demon Days (2005); then the well-received Plastic Beach (2010); and finally the COVID-era Song Machine (2020) – an album we particularly liked in that especially singular year. With The Mountain (2026), the multimedia band of Blur’s Damon Albarn and the illustrator Jamie Hewlett have done what few bands accomplish – a late-career masterpiece.
As Albarn and Hewlett have mentioned throughout the press tour leading up the album’s release, The Mountain came about at the intersection of visits to India, and the deaths of both members’ family members in the span of a few short weeks. As a result, The Mountain resonates with a sort of emotional poignancy that spreads to the music, lyrics, and collaborators alike.
“It was all like, ‘This is fucking weird, there’s a reason why we’re here,’” Hewlett explains. “Losing our fathers, and losing my mother-in-law, and then being in India as an artist. Visually, if you’re an artist and you go to India and it doesn’t blow your mind, then you must be blind, you know? Everything is insane and rich and colourful and mad and tragic and beautiful. – Rolling Stone UK, Sep. 2025
India certainly takes center-stage throughout the album. It could have been very tempting to layer in the India influence at a surface level – vaguely Eastern sounds and so on. However, Gorillaz have thankfully gone in a different direction. The album features not only true classical musicians – Anoushka Shankar, of course, but also the flautist Ajay Prasanna, and sarod player brothers Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash – but also renown popular singers such as Asha Bhosle and disco star Asha Puthli. Of particular mention is the opening title track where Prasanna’s flue and Shankar’s sitar meld wordlessly to express the hope-through-grief pathos that forms the backbone of the album. And throughout the album, there are diegetic sounds of India all too familiar with anyone who has lived there or spent a lot of real time there – for example, the temple sounds at the start and end of “The Happy Dictator”.
That’s not to say it’s an entirely India-specific album. There are plenty of tracks on The Mountain that would fit well on any Gorillaz album with their rich collaborations and unique sonic mixtures. Take, for example, the standout track “Damascus” – where the sounds of Syrian singer Omar Souleyman and rapper Yaslin Bey merging together better than you would expect. The resulting sound is an intoxicating Arabic-disco banger that immediately brought to mind “QYURRYUS” by the Voidz – another favorite of ours. The single “The Manifesto” has some Hindi music flavors, but the Argentinian rapper Trueno truly carries the song with his rapid, rhythmic rapping style. IDLES make their mark on “The God of Lying”, with Joe Talbot’s monotonal, slightly off-kilter vocals meshing perfectly against the tight percussion. And the aforementioned “The Happy Dictator” is a quintessential Gorillaz song – Albarn’s vocoder-style voice layered on upbeat synthpop beats.
The one downside to this album is that it’s probably about 20 minutes too long. Don’t get us wrong – the first half of the album is a no-skip situation. We go from that poignant opener to Asha Puthli’s disco-influenced symphonic stunner “The Moon Cave”, to the “The Happy Dictator”, to the grief-to-acceptance pathway on “The Hardest Thing”, to the supremely catchy “Orange County” and finally to “The God of Lying”. However, several tracks in the second half – whether it’s the floaty “Empty Dream Machine” or the ephemeral “Casablanca” – felt like they could have been cut, but probably stayed on due to their significance to the artists. The Asha Bhosle track “The Shadowy Light” feels like a rare collaborative miss; her vocals feel artificially added in just for the name-drop.
Ultimately, apart from these few misses, The Mountain is a striking album that meets the brief – an honest exploration of grief, acceptance and much more. Gorillaz’s musical style shines through despite the vast universe of collaborators on here (some of which, by the way, are posthumous recordings, which is very on-brand for this album about death and creativity). Strong recommend to listen, and listen multiple times. You’ll be rewarded for it.
Rating: 8.5/10
P.S. Major shout-out to Hewlett’s beautifully illustrated, Jungle Book-inspired 8-minute animated short film introducing the album and its story. As several of the YouTube comments have mentioned, just the existence of an entirely hand-illustrated video in the era of AI slop is to be commended to the highest order.
London-based post-punk band Dry Cleaning first came to our attention during SXSW 2025 at an event featuring tens of British bands. While other acts aimed to create a strong first impression on the stateside audience, Dry Cleaning stood out for their complete nonchalance. Singer Florence Shaw’s vocals were barely what one would call singing; her lyrics and style are closer to a particularly sing-song voicemail message, say, and delivered in a tone that suggests that no one’s going to listen to her message anyway. The other three band members – Nick Buxton on drums, Tom Dowse on guitars, and Lewis Maynard on bass – provided a well-synced backdrop; idiosyncratic as Shaw’s vocals may be, they seem to be enveloped perfectly within the instrumentals.
Secret Love, the band’s third album, keeps this uniqueness intact while tightening up the instrumentals into an even more solid rock sound, along with Shaw’s otherworldly lyrics that get deeper with time. It’s a great outing for the band, and a good first album if you’ve never given this band a spin before.
“Blood” opens with a tinny guitar riff that transitions into a metronomic drumbeat, clashing well with Shaw’s unhurried spoken-word dialog. “Rocks” is a haze of jagged sounds set to a relentless beat from Buxton. The Porcupine Tree-esque title track features beautiful guitarwork (even a mandolin), and Shaw legitimately sings a chorus; after hearing her deadpan voice note-style lyrics for so long, the effect is quite striking.
And maybe we’re overthinking it, but Shaw has a way of making her lyrics just random enough that you see metaphors everywhere. For instance, the second track “Cruise Ship Designer” initially seems to simply describe a ship designer who doesn’t particularly like designing ships but does it anyway. But the more you listen to it, the more you can interchange that specific occupation with any BS corporate job (“I need to serve a useful purpose / I desire very much a place in society”). The lead single “Hit My Head All Day” makes you think about how overwhelming life is as an adult – wasn’t it easier when, like Shaw, you were a child and wanted to be a horse or something silly like that? She goes overboard on “Evil Evil Idiot” describing the way she likes her food deeply burnt, before flipping her stance thirty seconds later to say that heating leeches chemicals into food. Is she really talking about food, or is it perhaps about idiotic and dangerous diet influencers?
What’s immediately apparent, though, is that Dry Cleaning is never trying to be unique; this is just the way they sound. A lot of this relates back to their origins. In their 20s, all the members except Shaw bounced around in various London bands, and then, somewhat atypically, transitioned into fully grown-up jobs in their 30s. Most importantly, Dowse became a visiting arts lecturer and eventually connected Shaw, a fellow arts lecturer, with Buxton and Maynard. These four artistic individuals decided to turn an adult band hobby into the main act – and you can hear that depth and self-assuredness throughout their music.
Dry Cleaning’s Secret Love is an interesting mixture of solid sounds and idiosyncratic vocals that truly sounds like nothing else, in a good way. Give it a spin if you’re looking for something new and effortlessly cool.
Wet Leg is fundamentally a band that thrives on absurd, catchy songs. It’s a little awkward for a band as cool as Wet Leg but it is nonetheless the engine that makes the whole project go. moisturizer has plenty of catchy, absurd songs like “pillow talk” and “catch these fists.” The chorus of these songs will sneak up on you when you’re distracted in a day and have you repeat them until you scratch their itch. There is, however, nothing quite as infectious as “Chaise Longue.” It’s an album that once exorcized is unlikely to return. It’s still a fun ride while you’re on it.
Kpop Demon Hunters
I really liked both the movie and the soundtrack. I was honestly surprised by how much I liked the soundtrack outside the container of the film. Andrew Choi’s singing stands out. “Soda Pop” was comfortably the song of the summer and “Your Idol” was the song of the movie. “Free” does really well to strip down the song to just him and EJAE and let them shine.
EJAE herself has crafted the big setpieces of the album very well. “Golden”, “Takedown” and “What It Sounds Like” revel in their maximism and so sell the ritual narrative beats that they punctuate which in turn justifies the traditional KPop in a moment where bands like LE SSERAFIM and KATSEYE are redefining the genre.
The soundtrack is really helped by the movie providing both a narrative backbone and the necessary connective tissue. When Rumi sings “This is what it sounds like”, the movie has already provided the stakes. It also provides a strong visual for each song. “Soda Pop” does better for having the candy colored visuals behind it. Now all I need is for them to do the Gorillaz maneuver and create the fully animated bands.
Tunde Adebimpe – Thee Black Boltz
TV on the Radio is still a must-play whenever it shows up on my YouTube page. They’re an eminently likable band and Tunde Adebimpe’s solo project changes none of that. This is dirty, unapologetic rock. It’s tremendous fun in “Something New,” it’s layered and emotional in “Drop,” it’s clean in “ILY.”
It’s unfortunately also too formulaic. There’s a lot of rock that’s done very well here but there’s little that surprises or sticks. It’s still very likable though.
Blondshell – If You Asked For A Picture
There’s a lot to be said for an album that does its job well. The craft of If You Asked For A Picture is impeccable. Blondshell has razors to spare throughout the album. “23’s a baby / Why’d you have a baby?” needs no ornamentation.
They add spectacular, dreamy indie rock to this. “Strange” has very compelling guitar lines and then shifts into an incredible emotional breakdown that all pays off with “I’m sorry for changing.” The two pieces don’t always come together like this. Sometimes, like in “Event of a Fire” and “Model Rockets”, the lyricism makes up for unimaginative music but it’s much more frequent that both sides click at once like in the excellent “He Wants Me.”
If You Asked For A Picture is beautiful dream pop throughout. It’s excellent music and clever lyrics and an unmissable album.
Nubya Garcia – Odyssey
Odyssey ends up disappointing slightly. There are excellent spots in here. “The Seer” has good solos from both the sax and the keys and the percussion puts down excellent fills. “Water’s Path” is beautiful nature jazz. The album as a whole lacks challenge however and so ends up a little unsatisfactory. Neither the groove in “Triumphant” nor the sonorousness of “We Walk In Gold” are enough to make up for how easy both are to anticipate and so the album’s virtuosity is undercut by its mildness.
There’s no holding Amaarae back. She’s evolved her sound into rave music and kept going. Black Star has a singular, compelling sound and Amaarae is able to integrate a wide range of artists into the album seamlessly. PinkPantheress is a standout in the excellent “Kiss Me Thru The Phone pt. 2.”
At every step in the album, one clear fact stands out; there’s only one Amaarae. This is her at her most club friendly and I hope that her music takes them over. It’s too good to not hear in the streets.
Sleep Token – Even In Arcadia
There’s a lot in Even In Arcadia. “Provider”, for instance, is very interesting. It’s an emo-rap track but Vessel blurs genre well. The song itself changes pace halfway in. Sleep Token at their best make each song the combination of three or four very different ideas and their ability to stitch these ideas together is incredible.
This comes through most in the magnificent “Caramel.” Vessel’s emotional reflections on fame are a great fit for the music and startlingly honest. He wallows in the contradictions and in the self-pity and it fits really well with both the early trap and the pivot into death metal that the song makes midway through. Vessel absolutely sells the emotion of the track.
Some of the other music is less genre-bending. “Gethesemane” is essentially early 00s alt-rock. The lyrics take emo into comical, probably unintentionally and the music is fine. For four minutes , it doesn’t do anything novel. It does have some interesting percussion after that but the song stays pretty standard. It’s still a decent song, it’s just not the most interesting.
“Even In Arcadia” is also not the most interesting song but the maximalism is done very well. “Damocles” is similarly emo alt-rock but it’s willing to thrash a lot more than its forebears and keeps multiple modes running and that makes it much more compelling. The melodicism of “Past Self” is great and showcases what the band does well.
Even In Arcadia is a spectacular album. I wasn’t thinking about the modern evolution of death metal before now but Sleep Token have exceeded anything I could have imagined with this album.
Nourished By Time – The Passionate Ones
The Passionate Ones is spectacular music. Nourished By Time’s first great strength is his fantastic synth work. They’re varied, textured and atmospheric but above all, they are seductive. It’s wonderfully easy to fall into them. His second great strength is how beautifully his voice complements the grooves.
“BABY BABY” would be the best song Tame Impala ever made and simultaneously drops the line “If you can bomb Palestine / You can bomb Mondawmin.” This is spectacular music.
Dijon – Baby
It’s definitely unfair, but I start with Prince when thinking about BABY. Of all the Prince inheritors, Dijon feels the closest here despite very forgivably having less funk and less fire than one of the funkiest and most fiery pop musicians. He does very well with the Prince cuts too. “Yamaha” is quite a good song.
The album is most interesting when he updates the formula to add modern sounds. “FIRE!” Is excellent for this and “(Referee)” has a strong spikiness. “my man” is maybe the most interesting cut in the album though, not for the innovation, but for the heartfelt singing that grounds the whole project.
Rosalia – LUX
A dirty secret about artists across creative fields is that a lot of them really don’t know that much about the artform. There are writers who don’t read that much, directors who don’t watch films and countless video game designers who don’t play games. Rosalia not only knows music well, she knows herself too.
She pulls expertly from a dizzyingly broad range of sounds. It’s no surprise that the opera in “Berghain” and the fado in “Memoria” are good fits but also in the details like the synth pop that ends the wonderful “Reliquia” or the sweeping strings of the excellent “Porclena” playing against industrial notes.
LUX is clever, it is full of interesting pieces and it is spectacular music. Rosalia really can do it all.
Top Five Records 