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Wet Leg’s hotly anticipated self-titled debut is no slapped-together producer’s vision of what the kids should like. Its authenticity is what makes it so addictive, so accessible.
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Nilüfer Yanya draws strength from her emotional resilience on PAINLESS. If the title to the West London singer-songwriter's second LP states otherwise, it's the sort of defense mechanism she's developed since 2019's breakthrough debut album Miss Universe.
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To borrow a turn of phrase, Big Thief focus on, quite literally, the journey and not the destination. The result is the most compelling case in years on the potential of the journey—the insights to be gleaned, the friendships to be strengthened, your own potential waiting to be untapped. Albums like Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You make you believe in magic again.
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Lucifer on the Sofa could be considered a more straight-ahead, minimalist affair. That said, it also retains Spoon's ability to reshape classic rock sounds and color outside the lines.
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Despite getting out their humorous side in song titles and social media, Ovlov nonetheless funnel all their passion and expertise into their exhilarating sound.
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Steeped in alt-rock and new wave influences and "you can't prove this is about you" vagaries, Vu's full-length debut is just the right balance of melodrama, defiance, and inhibition.
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With Prioritise Pleasure, Rebecca Taylor has likely coined enough slogans to retire on t-shirt sales alone, but it’s also one of the most insightful pop records this year.
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Cheekily titled Let Me Do One More, the album stays true to Tudzin's self-proclaimed promise of delivering “all riprs and no more skiprs”—brimming with a joyful energy that feels equally confident and empowered. The album is a powerful declaration coming from a pop savant who is upping her songwriting chops behind deceptively simple songwriting.
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The immeasurable talent that hides behind Simbiatu Ajikawo's fourth LP's nineteen tracks confirms that she's one of the greatest artists of her generation. Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is an open window into the deep and private thoughts the London-based wants to share with us, aware that there's strength in being vulnerable.
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Enter Spiral, Darkside’s triumphant return after an eight-year hiatus. Announced at the tail-end of 2020 with the release of lead single Liberty Bell, the album comes as both a pleasant surprise and a much-needed shot in the arm for 2021, pun completely intended. After two years of global turmoil (or, if we’re being more brutally honest, universal misery), hearing what these two virtuosic artists had been concocting whilst holed up in the studio with nowhere much else to go is, put bluntly, life-affirming. And that’s exactly what Spiral is: an alchemical concoction of beats, textures, sonic flourishes, and melodies that sound like they were recorded in a world that had no precedent.
