JUSTIN BIEBER – JUSTICE
BIEBER is back with an album combining his two favourite themes – his love for model wife Hailey and his transformation from troubled teen star to reformed empath.
The 27-year-old's attempts to imbue his songs with deeper meaning through Martin Luther King samples and allusions to a greater purpose and a higher justice fall a little short. It's a shame because Justice signals a return to the dynamic pop of 2015's all-conquering Purpose.
There are highs and lows. Forgettable fodder like Hold On could have be pruned from this 16-track behemoth. Unstable and Off My Face use clumsy metaphors but are rock solid pop songs. But the Biebs is at his best when he is his most experimental, if you can call it that.
Holy, which came out in September last year, combines a campfire singalong chorus with a genuine religious fervour. It's an unlikely triumph.
Justice ranks somewhere between the highs of Purpose and the disappointing homogeneity of last year's Changes.
Rating: 3/5
Alex Green
LANA DEL REY – CHEMTRAILS OVER THE COUNTRY CLUB
AMERICAN songstress Lana Del Rey has been mining ideas of doomed youth, troubled love and the price of fame for six albums now, with increasingly powerful results.
2019's Norman F****** Rockwell! was a career high, but the songwriting here is not as consistent. Long-standing collaborator Jack Antonoff facilitates her vision with gossamer 12-string acoustic guitar on the title track and dense but quiet percussion on the enticing if over-long Tulsa Jesus Freak.
Things tail off in the album's middle section before closing on a high note with a one-two punch with Dance Till We Die and a version of Joni Mitchell's For Free.
The folk heroine's 1970 song reflects on a busker who plays "so good" for free and herself – who plays literally "for fortunes". But now she recruits Zella Day and Weyes Blood and finds solidarity is female musicianship.
Rating: 3/5
Alex Green
THE ANTLERS – GREEN TO GOLD
AS THE days grow longer and sunnier, The Antlers provide the soundtrack to the better times ahead with their luminous sixth studio album, Green To Gold.
Instrumental opener Strawflower starts with some nine seconds of silence, before reverb, then a drum beat, and acoustic guitar. Another pastoral instrumental, Equinox, closes the album: these two tracks act as bookends for a celebration of the seasons.
Since the band's last album, 2014's Familiars, frontman Peter Silberman suffered health problems and moved to a quiet hamlet in upstate New York, where he worked with longtime drummer Michael Lerner to make his sunniest album yet, the gentle vocals and acoustic guitars supplemented by piano, strings and bass saxophone.
With Green To Gold, Silberman set out to make "Sunday morning music", finally sounds at peace with himself and has created a lowkey triumph that is his best album since 2009's heartbreaking LP, Hospice.
Rating: 4/5
Matthew George
TUNE-YARDS – SKETCHY
BACK after a couple of years to rediscover their love of making and performing music, Tune-yards hit hard on this fifth album.
Setting Merrill Garbus' soulful vocals against broken electronic beats and heavy percussion, the album unflinchingly tackles deep themes of gender equality, climate change and race – the duo have been open in examining their debt to black music.
That said, a surface-level listen offers up a funky, danceable set of tunes offering something for everyone. Starting and finishing strongly with Nowhere, Man and Be Not Afraid, another highlight comes in the form of the furious Homewrecker while the decision to insert a one-minute silent track Silence pt. 2 (Who Is 'We'?) in the middle of the album is an unconventional but arresting move.
Rating: 3/5
Tom White
