Good Luck and Do Your Best is so far out there but at the same time feels right at home; making it one of Panda’s most thrilling pieces to date.

The result is a sharpening of Speedy Ortiz’s axe to grind. Succinct, wry, and in tune with its context, there’s plenty to unpick, here.

Last Building Burning is Cloud Nothings embracing a harsher component to their sound--almost recalling the likes of recent Oh Sees releases--which has grown into something unsettled, bold and reckless.

There isn’t much range across the record; the last few tracks merge into one. Which is disappointing given Peter’s track record for one, but overall there are plenty of highs and the downsides should be sorted by the next installment.

Tackling interesting ideas and putting rock through an avant garde filter, Mattiel Brown’s powerful vocals once again impress too on what ultimately feels like a significant step forward.

Beneath the familiarity, Tame’s fourth is operating in a subtly different world. Where ‘Currents’ doffed its cap heavily to R&B within its pop smarts, creating his most commercial work yet, ‘The Slow Rush’’s ingredients feel slightly more disparate.

The leap has definitely paid off - her inimitable voice thrives in the woozy dancehall and afrobeat-inspired ‘First’ and the big pop confidence of ‘Womxn’, but also knows when to take a step back, peppering the record with spoken word segments and heartfelt mantras that tie the whole thing together.

As something cooked up on short notice, it’s a glorious postcard from an unprecedented global moment, and a wonderful teaser for what is to come.

It should come as little surprise that Lydia has spent time on the standup circuit, and it’s this ability to send up any notions of seriousness that’s Gustaf’s greatest trick. Add some suitable spiky, metronomic riffs and ‘Audio Drag…’ is anything but.

The maximalist production on show is boundless, and in turn, is a celebration of daine’s spiritual transformation.

Homely and familiar in its sound for the most part, ‘My Mind Wanders…’ is a smooth ride of buttery emotional grandiosity and infectious London pop that sits somewhere between Paloma, Adele and Jess Glynne, with enough attitude and bravery to modernise these prevailing and reliable British tropes within soul-pop.

An album that does absolute justice to her status as a new, genre-defying voice in rock. From the drum and bass drive of ‘Sex Metal’, through to the more bubblegum pop of ‘Sugar Rush’, via the reflective epic of ‘Over It’, these fourteen tracks swerve through different iterations of the genre with confidence and ease.

It’s in the less expected that ‘Lagos Paris London’ offers most; the sheer softness of ‘Under The Strikes’ displays a vocal turn that in other contexts may prove completely unrecognisable; and in particular the introspective, sparse yet groove-laden ‘Night Green, Heavy Love’, on which a staccato bassline contrasts with Yannis’ high-pitched vocal to create a wholly disorienting mood.

‘Felt Better Alive’ isn’t going for high art, he’s not looking to create another masterpiece, as evident in the nursery rhyme stomp of ‘Out of Tune Balloon’ and ‘Fingee’, a song that can be best described as Chas n Dave-meets-Lankum that barely lasts two minutes. But this is the sound of one of rock’s most enduring survivors exhaling and having fun, which is ultimately all that matters.

With ‘Worldwide’, Snõõper continue to capture their bizarro universe, at the core of which is the same erratic intensity that many fell in love with two years ago.


It’s really mature songwriting, and makes for a lovely, reflective listen.

There is no reinvention of the wheel here from Tigers Jaw, but when they do heart-on-sleeve emo this convincingly, that doesn’t matter.

‘Miss Anthropocene’ is undoubtedly the singer’s darkest album yet, the result perhaps of a rollercoaster half-decade or maybe just of an artist who’s never really given two fucks about playing the radio-friendly commercial game.

Tip of the Sphere is Cass McCombs’ most elegiac and profoundly literary album, a eulogy for the end of times and a mass articulation of the absurd world of modernity.

This is handsome, but not essential.

Iit goes deeper and sees our protagonist at his most mellow and introspective.

Lanterns on the Lake are making rock music that, in terms of how vital it feels in 2015, is virtually without equal. Beings just about confirms that.

Big Grrrl Small World is an intentionally intense listen – Lizzo’s physical presence (a black woman,“statuesque and big as hell”) is placed meticulously front and centre.

Here joins the rest of the group’s catalogue in being consistently enjoyable, yet on this occasion not without flaw.

A little change of pace and a tad more sonic variety admittedly wouldn’t have gone amiss, but nevertheless, ‘…Frankenstein’ is a solid addition to The National’s canon.

It paints a picture of a leading songwriter with even more to come, one that can piece together exceptional art from personal turbulence and insecurity, effortlessly reaffirming her position at the top of UK pop… if we can even call it that.

‘Deep States’ provides, perhaps unsurprisingly, a difficult listen at times, weighed down as it is by its overwhelming lyrical bluster. Penultimate track ‘Legal Ghosts’ is however an unexpected moment of melodic tenderness - this elusive tale of loss revealing a soft underbelly beneath this otherwise bristly, tough-skinned offering.

Sophisticated yet uncomplicated, misty yet vibrant, luxurious yet disquieting, 'Melody's Echo Chamber' is a lovely record full of dualities.