Charlie Puth - Whatever's Clever! (Album Review)

A decade ago, Charlie Puth told Meghan Trainor to “Marvin Gaye and get it on” and the world loved him for it. Written and co-produced with Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber-collaborator BloodPop, ‘Whatever’s Clever!’ battles some old chart-topping demons by embracing yacht rock tropes and ‘80s pop pastiche, while claiming “I used to be cringe” on the song of the same name. But, what if your cringe era was better?

Written by: Jack Press | Date: Thursday, 02 April 2026

RAYE - This Music May Contain Hope. (Album Review)

Photo: Aliyah Otchere Given RAYE’s established status as one of the pre-eminent voices in pop, it’s odd to think of ‘This Music May Contain Hope’ as a levelling up, but that’s exactly what it is. An album packed full of emotion, with musical versatility and lyrical relatability, this is the vocalist’s finest work to date and, surely, catnip for awards panels in the coming months.

Written by: Laura Mills | Date: Thursday, 02 April 2026

Flea - Honora (Album Review)

Quality albums by career bassists are rare things. The instrument’s genius tends to lie in propulsion rather than melody, which is perhaps why Red Hot Chili Peppers talisman Flea has pivoted to the trumpet on ‘Honora’, an instrument that allows his famously restless musical brain a little more room to roam.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Wednesday, 01 April 2026

Central Cee - All Roads Lead Home EP (Album Review)

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it is a useful idiom when something is working and changing course  can only cause problems. It’s advice that has seen millions of people stay on the right path and, in the case of London rapper Central Cee, it has helped him break America and become the international face of UK rap through collabs with Drake, J. Cole, Ice Spice, Raye and, most notably, his lauded ‘Split Decision’ EP with fellow UK rap vanguardsman Dave.

Written by: Jack Butler-Terry | Date: Tuesday, 31 March 2026

Snail Mail - Ricochet (Album Review)

Photo: Daria Kobayashi Ritch Snail Mail’s ‘Ricochet’ arrives carrying the weight of genuine change. Coming five years after Lindsey Jordan’s previous full length ‘Valentine’, this collection of songs was written after a move from New York to North Carolina and shaped in the wake of Jordan’s vocal polyp surgery and the speech therapy that followed.

Written by: Maddy Howell | Date: Monday, 30 March 2026

Courtney Barnett - Creature of Habit (Album Review)

Photo: Lindsey Byrnes Who needs therapy when you have Courtney Barnett? A standout in an already stellar discography, Barnett’s fourth LP ‘Creature of Habit’ feels like your heartbeat returning to normal after a panic attack. It’s the perfect accompaniment to a guilty midnight cigarette, or a remedy to settle the nerves if you’ve drunk too much coffee on an empty stomach.

Written by: James Palaczky | Date: Friday, 27 March 2026

Luke Combs - The Way I Am (Album Review)

Photo: Robby Klein Luke Combs might just be country music’s most reliable hitmaker — an artist who can take a cliché you have heard a thousand times and sell it like it is entirely his own. ‘The Way I Am’, his sixth studio album, is the most complete showcase yet of this skill, but at 22 tracks and 73 minutes long, that uncanny ability is also its most glaring limitation.

Written by: Jack Press | Date: Wednesday, 25 March 2026

Kim Gordon - Play Me (Album Review)

Photo: Moni Haworth Since the end of Sonic Youth, Kim Gordon has continued to innovate. In 2024 her second solo record ‘The Collective’ earned rave reviews and multiple Grammy nominations and she returns with the hotly anticipated ‘Play Me’, a rambunctious effort that is rich and frenetic across a clipped 30 minute running time.

Written by: Chris Connor | Date: Tuesday, 24 March 2026

Iron and Wine - Hen's Teeth (Album Review)

Photo: Kim Black Like the proverbial ‘Hen’s Teeth’, the eighth release from Iron & Wine is a rare beast. A record that wasn’t meant to be, it’s a collection of songs that arose as a happy accident from the same productive sessions in Laurel Canyon that birthed 2024’s Grammy-nominated ‘Light Verse’.

Written by: Jeremy Blackmore | Date: Monday, 23 March 2026

Yonaka - Until You're Satisfied (Album Review)

Photo: Joel Palmer Arriving nearly seven years after their explosive debut full-length ‘Don’t Wait ‘Til Tomorrow’, it’s easy to assume that Yonaka’s second album didn’t come easily. It’s likely that any member of the Brighton trio would confirm that assumption, but despite any hardship in its creation, ‘Until You’re Satisfied’ lands with the emphatic force of a band that have stared their own ending in the face, and still opted to push forward.  

Written by: Maddy Howell | Date: Friday, 20 March 2026

Crack Cloud - Peace and Purpose (Album Review)

For all the retro imitators out there, of late indie-rock has been pushed into some interesting new territories by loose scenes such as the dance punk-inflected acts coming out of Brooklyn, see YHWH Nailgun and Model/Actriz, and London’s Windmill, which now has its own haphazardly-defined post-punk strain.

Written by: Tom Morgan | Date: Thursday, 19 March 2026

James Blake - Trying Times (Album Review)

Photo: Robbie Lawrence James Blake, like Laura Marling, emerged in the early 2010s as a kind of poster child for a particular strain of elevated British pop: austere, emotionally literate, faintly academic music that seemed to hover somewhere between cutting edge modernism and traditional singer-songwriter confession. 

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Wednesday, 18 March 2026

Lamb of God - Into Oblivion (Album Review)

Photo: Travis Shinn After exploding out of Virginia in the early 2000s Lamb Of God quickly found their groove — quite literally in a musical sense — and put out a string of good-to-great metal records. ‘Into Oblivion’ is their 10th, arriving off the back of a run of lukewarm releases that have threatened to upset that balance. The question is whether they continue that streak or if there’s fuel yet left to keep them going — the answer isn’t a simple yes or no.

Written by: Will Marshall | Date: Tuesday, 17 March 2026

The Scratch - Pull Like a Dog (Album Review)

There has perhaps never been a better time to be an Irish band. This is the era of Kneecap and Fontaines D.C., of Sprints, NewDad and The Murder Capital. But none of those groups sound remotely like The Scratch, who have created a fusion of metal and trad that’s aggressive and driving, with a quirky sense of joy to it too. At its full-throttle best, it ignites an urge to drink and dance that simply cannot be fought. 

Written by: Emma Wilkes | Date: Monday, 16 March 2026

War Child Records - Help(2) (Album Review)

Photo: Damon Albarn, Grian Chatten, Kae Tempest by Lawrence Watson Thirty years on from the first War Child charity LP ‘The Help Album’, which featured Suede, Massive Attack, Paul McCartney and Portishead, among others, ‘Help(2)’ brings together a similarly impressive ensemble spanning several generations and genres. The result is an eclectic mix of new material, unreleased tracks, and, in the case of Oasis, a huge live version of Acquiesce taken from their triumphant Wembley shows in 2025.

Written by: Chris Connor | Date: Friday, 13 March 2026

Harry Styles - Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally. (Album Review)

Photo: Johnny Dufort Inspired by time away from the spotlight, some of it spent dancing in Berlin nightclubs, and being a participant in the live music scene rather than a spectacle, Harry Styles’ ‘Kiss All The Time, Disco Occasionally’ is a shimmering record that promises to “let the light in”.

Written by: Sarah Taylor | Date: Thursday, 12 March 2026

Morrissey - Make-Up Is A Lie (Album Review)

Morrissey hasn’t really updated his sound since the 1990s. Even then, it often seemed slightly out of step with the moment. ‘Make-Up Is a Lie’, his 14th solo album, does little to change that impression: the same swooning croon, the same melodramatic arrangements, the same sense of a performer locked inside a self-constructed world.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Wednesday, 11 March 2026

Book of Churches - Book of Churches (Album Review)

There is something disarming about the naivety at the heart of ‘Book of Churches’, the debut solo record from Divorce guitarist and co-vocalist Felix Mackenzie-Barrow. Written in a day, recorded the next, and left largely untouched until mixing, its 10 songs possess an unguarded quality, with the sense of a songwriter thinking aloud. It is both its greatest strength and its central limitation.

Written by: Jack Press | Date: Tuesday, 10 March 2026

Mitski - Nothing's About to Happen to Me (Album Review)

Photo: Lexie Alley With a sound that spans jazz, rock and indie-folk, Mitski has proven to be one of the most eclectic artists of her generation. Fresh from the huge acclaim that greeted 2023’s ‘The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We’, her eighth album is, once again, a genre-hopping masterwork that shows a wonderful songwriter at her very best. 

Written by: Chris Connor | Date: Monday, 09 March 2026

Buck Meek - The Mirror (Album Review)

If 2023’s ‘Haunted Mountain’ was Buck Meek arriving at the summit, ‘The Mirror’ reflects what he found when he got there: a world so alive with warmth, curiosity, and human feeling that you never want to leave it. The Big Thief guitarist’s fourth solo record, and finest to date, treats love not as a destination but as an ongoing act of study: patient and searching, equal parts heartache and joy.

Written by: Jack Press | Date: Thursday, 05 March 2026