Back catalogue: Rock (All)

Review: "I'd prefer it to be called just a country album," said TORRES of her collaboration with Baker, nearly a decade in the making, "but I'm proud to have made a 'queer country' album." TORRES had the initial idea to turn to the genre, inviting Baker to collaborate not only because of her shared southern roots but also because she'd also had a similarly religious upbringing that ultimately saw sexual orientation judged and condemned. The result is some deeply autobiographic songwriting on tracks like 'Tuesday', about a traditional family's rage at discovering their daughter was gay, the lilting 'Sylvia' and 'Sugar In The Tank', with pedal steel meeting acoustic guitar strum and very intimate sounding vocals. Bound to cause controversy in certain areas of the US, but it's got the quality and distinctive flavour to stand its ground.

Review: This is the seventh album by chamber pop titans Beirut. The group, who are led by Zach Condon, have created their largest album to-date and it's among their most profoundly beautiful. The music originated in 2023 when a contemporary circus director, based in Sweden, who was creating a show based on an adaptation of a novel by German author Judith Schalansky about loss and impermanence asked Condon to write music. And who better than Beirut to score that theme. Condon's vocals are starkly beautiful with the tenderness of early choir music. The track 'Caspian Tiger' is among the most cinematic of the tracks on here with resplendent Renaissance influences and direct lyrics that are tear jerking and feel genuinely moved by the extinction of the great mammal, but could so easily be about a close friend lost.

Review: BC, NR are now onto their third album. The Ninja Tune-signees gained attention for not posing as if they're in a band, but looking like an ordinary group of students, or twentysomethings house-sharing. Their bold look, where they're smiling in the press pics, as opposed to donning a moody pout, has thankfully been backed up with some terrific music. Their debut, For The First Time, earned them favourable comparisons to post-rock trailblazers Slint and their second album Ants From Up There is the Gen-z equivalent of Arcade Fire's Funeral, thanks to its grandiose anthemics. Famously, singer and lyricist Isaac Wood left the band on the even of the release of their second album, which sparked outcry and paranoia from their ever-growing army of fans about what that might mean for their future. But the band have kept at it and the remaining six members have chosen to share frontperson duties, thus relieving the added pressure that comes with being a designated frontperson. This third album - and first post Isaac Wood - is proving to be a striking new chapter, with the lead single, 'Besties', an immediately likeable way of introducing it to the world. Georgia Ellery, also of Jockstrap, takes lead vocals here and offers an unforgettable off-kilter indie pop cut reminiscent of Aldous Harding. Zutons-y sax stabs scattered in make for a beautiful touch and leave us feeling that this is the album that's going to send BC, NR onto a stratospheric level, where they're spoken about in the same breath as Radiohead as one of Britain's finest bands.

Review: James Ford is one of the most important unsung heroes of contemporary pop and rock. As a studio producer, he's helped craft and hone incredible work from Fontaines DC, Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode, Blur and more. As an artist in his own right, he's perhaps more incredible. So, his impact on the latest and long-awaited new addition to Black Country New Road's catalogue should not be underestimated. Nor should the result of splitting the songwriting and vocal duties between members Tyler Hyde, Georgia Ellery and May Kershaw. "It's definitely very different" said one of the trio about how this compares to preceding long form outings. We'd say it's definitely very different to most music you'll hear this week. It's folk, soft rock, experimental garage something, and none of the above, with tracks that almost seem at odds with themselves, chopping and changing, evolving and progressing, until you hear them as a whole.

Review: Every once in a while, you get a band emerge from the vibrant London music scene that you notice aren't like all the other bands. You sense they have something a bit special. BC, NR are like that - they offer something so rich musically that it appears immune to any potential threat that could come from changing trends. This third studio album of theirs comes under what looked like difficult circumstances from the outside. Their lead singer and songwriter Isaac Wood left the band shortly before the release of their second album. But they've withstood the pressure incredibly and are on top form here. There's more emphasis than ever on sharing the role of frontperson so the album is like a smorgasbord where you sample different voices and songwriting styles that exist within the group. Lead single 'Besties' is violinist Georgia Ellery's. It thrives off of its dynamism with explosive Phil Spector-esque wall of sound moments set in alongside elegant indie folk. A truly massive chapter awaits.

Review: After 2015, Bon Iver began to fuse ambient glitch with folk, a style which now reaches a head on his latest LP. It expands on 2024's taster EP 'SABLE' in the form of an 11-track sonic parable: waxing introspective on difficult themes such as memory and identity, 'THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS' and 'S P E Y S I D E' indulge typographic play and fragmental lyrics, the latter especially paradigm-shifting in lyrical perspective. 'Awards Season', also, deals in the problematics of recognition, peeking behind and thus part-dissolving the veil of success in public life. With signature passion yet quarrelsomeness, Justin Vernon has crafted yet another glistening, glitching folk odyssey for us to enjoy.

Review: It has been some five-plus years since the last full Bon Iver album but the wait has been well worth it. This one follows the introspective SABLE, a sparse, vulnerable EP born from isolation and inner turmoil. Where that was shadow, this is light-a lush, radiant celebration of love, connection and emotional rebirth. Written at April Base in Wisconsin with collaborators like Jim-E Stack and Danielle Haim, the album leans into clarity and intimacy and gets rid of the signature dense abstraction for more honest and heartfelt pop. The vocals are delivered with openness and purpose as they explore desire, hope and devotion. While still acknowledging lingering shadows, this full-length is a story of growth that isn't about fairytale endings, but about the lessons love teaches.

Review: Indie singer-songwriter and folk experimentalist Bon Iver follows up his 2024 EP 'SABLE', expanding upon the EP's concept with a full-length in 11 tracks. Diving into themes of memory, longing and transformation, the record feels like a deciduous psychic regrowth, processed and refined from an initial uncontrolled burl of raw feeling and expression. Layering experimental sounds and organic textures, it hints at Iver's change in direction kept steady ever since 2016's Jagjaguwar debut 22, A Million. The style was continued and redeveloped on 2019's fourth album, i,i, and now returns in its fullest resplendency, with modern symbolic bricolage of effulgent soundscapes and querulous singing. This is the latest in a string of records that cements Justin Vernon stature as an artist and not a mere musician: increasingly, we hear the work of someone clawing back greater and greater shares of aesthetic control.

Review: An experimental dark folk group from Wurzburg, Germany, Brannten Schnure's 2017 release gets a well-deserved reissue, retaining its distinctive experimental dark folk essence. The duo, Christian Schoppik and Katie Rich, crafts immersive soundscapes where traditional instruments, eerie vocals, and looped, crackling recordings converge. Tracks like 'Das Jungfrauliche Ohr' and 'Die Milchlinse' set the tone, blending atonal elements with haunting, dreamlike atmospheres. 'Die Geschandete Venus' takes a darker, more melancholic turn, with its slow, creeping build. On the B-side, tracks such as 'Der Kleinere Mit Gefleckten Linien Umgebene Papillonsflugel' offer intricate compositions that evoke a surreal, almost cinematic quality. With influences from Nico and Novy Svet, their music pours out and creates a world that's both unsettling and strangely beautiful.

Review: If any album comes close to the beauty of Crosby, Stills & Nash in 2025 it's this. It's difficult to imagine anyone else nailing melodic, acoustic guitar-oriented music that treads in gospel, blues and pastoral psychedelia better than this supergroup. Could Bernard Butler be on his way to another Mercury Prize nomination with this? They've got a strong case for it. The band itself is something a little different and formed by popular demand. Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub) Bernard Butler (Suede) and James Grant (Love and Money) originally got together for one occasion, at Saint Luke's in Glasgow in 2022 for Celtic Connections, but the power of them together was so great they've been talked into putting an album out. They've gone about it in quite a pragmatic way, with each member labelling which songs theirs, as opposed to all trying to write the same song at the same time. Makes sense really.

Review: Two British pop legends unite for Who Believes in Angels?, a new record spot-checking our faith in divinity. Having connected through a mutual admiration and shared love of music, Elton initially became a fan of Carlile through her effusions of folk, rock and country, which matched the former's megastar's sometimes pained, moving songwriting. Their friendship deepened over the years, with Carlile performing at Elton's annual AIDS Foundation events and joining him on stage for special collaborations. Now blending Elton-led and Brandi-led tracks, the album contains lyrics from longtime collaborator Bernie Taupin alongside Carlile's own contributions, with production by Andrew Watt. This marks Elton's 33rd studio album and Brandi's eighth.