Lauren Auder‘s journey from Soundcloud uploader to embracing pop sensibilities has been a long one, but by the sound of Whole World As Vigil, it could be one that’s coming to fruition.
Auder has been recording music for over 10 years now, working with the likes of Slowthai and Jeshi and self-publishing a variety of demo songs. This led to a series of EPs, and eventually a support slot with Christine and The Queens. Her debut album The Infinite Spine showed that she was a dab hand at baroque electronics but her second album feels like a massive step forward – a record that finds the sweet spot between industrial grit and arena-sized ambition.
Having apparently started off life as a series of voice notes recorded while walking round…
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Arlo Parks has long made a home in vulnerability and poetic lyricism, and on Ambiguous Desire, she doubles down on that instinct with confidence. The album is full of psychedelic textures, punchy basslines, and dreamy vocals that blur together into something hypnotic but anthemic.
…includes several ‘cuts’ reimagined by friends and collaborators, as well as previously unreleased demo drafts from the original recording sessions.
Dream pop is a genre that takes a great deal of attention to perfect. It’s not enough to write idiosyncratic lyrics set to a jangly beat; there are holes to be filled between drum cymbals and bass chimes. Burning at Both Ends aims to hit that sweet spot between wakefulness and drowsy activities. The finished work is a more palatable equivalent to My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, a facet that will enthrall some and disappoint others. Nonetheless, 
Opening the album emphatically, ‘Flowers in the Water’ is a refreshing return from The Boxer Rebellion. Brimming with optimism and positivity, lyrics such as: ‘Don’t obsess, be an optimist/ The glass half full is bottomless’ feel like an ode to overcoming adversity and living in hope rather than submitting to despair. Their first album in six years, The Second I’m Asleep is “10 songs mapping the emotional landscapes of life – moments of clarity in chaos, letting go of old ghosts and the art of understanding ourselves in a rapidly changing world”, as the band put it themselves in the album’s press release.
They say timing is everything. The time to meet the right person. The right time to start over. Blink, and you might miss them. But is there ever really a perfect time? Or does timing just feel perfect when we’re finally ready to listen? The release of Full Circle at the first hint of spring feels almost too on the nose: an album about retreat and renewal arriving just as the world thaws out. For Tom Misch, timing does a lot for narrative work. After years of constant motion, his long-awaited second studio album captures the lightness of transformation and the undeniable bounce of realising you’re once more in bloom.
…features the original album plus ‘Live at Third Man Records’, a 10-song live album.
It’s been a long journey for Lindsey Jordan, better known as 
It’s taken Sealed records more than five years to put this release together but finally it’s here. The one and only Bikini Mutants. The Bikini Mutants were from Yeovil, Somerset and part of the All the Madmen world. In their short life as a band they recorded two demos at Monitor Studios, Milborne Port in Somerset in 1982.
The ousting of Bassvictim from Berghain feels like a Biblical prophecy: Of course these electroclash expats, who fucked around and crystallized a fried twee-pop resurgence, would be banished from the Garden of Eden. Just two years ago, Maria Manow and Ike Clateman were heirs apparent to “indie sleaze,” a catch-all whose constraints, musically and aesthetically, boiled down to “kinda Crystal Castles coded.” Here was a photogenic boy-girl duo with two wonderfully wubby albums, a vague air of disaffected cool, and a very active Instagram account. “I’m not joking/I’m being hella serious,” Manow had drawled on “Air on a G String,” their silly-sexy breakout hit. Even with the explicit clarification, the canon they seemed to be entering — sleaze first, sincerity second…
One of the clearest examples of an album that crafts a strange and beautiful world not quite like any other is Rocketship’s 1996 full-length debut 
Otracami, the project of Brooklyn-based songwriter and composer Camila Ortiz, releases her album 
Girl Scout tweak Scandi indie pop’s rich tradition to match the singularity of their stories. They do so by referencing the zenith of 90s jangle-pop and elements of the Cranberries’ cathartic output to engineer a scuzzy alt-rock coded exploration of ennui, parallel possibilities and existential longing amidst the flux of upbringing.
Across numerous releases since they formed in the mid-2000s, London’s