Underworld
Barbara Barbara, We Face A Shining Future
ELECTRONIC duo Underworld's ninth album, their first in six years, sees the now firmly middle-aged Karl Hyde and Rick Smith mostly slip away from the dancefloor in search of more eclectic, atmospheric offerings.
There's still plenty that's familiar in opener I Exhale with its pounding beats, chanted chorus and Hyde's laddish non sequiturs echoing the group's huge 1996 hit, Born Slippy .NUXX.
If Rah also pushes the pace with Hyde's sardonic spoken vocals and a minimalist Casiotone-crunch of music.
However, the meditative Santiago Cuatro is led by the liquid plucks of an acoustic guitar, mimicking the sound of raindrops during a tropical storm. It's mesmeric and quite unlike anything the band has ever done before.
Ova Nova and Nylon Strung replace the frenetic beats of the group's rave beginnings with a smoother, sexier sound. This is a grown-up, multi-layered and beautifully crafted album.
FOUR STARS
Mark Edwards
Christine And The Queens
Chaleur Humaine
HELOISE Letissier conceived the idea of Christine And The Queens as a student in London five years ago. Harnessing the influence of the city's most celebrated drag acts, she then took her art back across the Channel and become a fully-fledged pop artist, achieving that rare twin feat of delighting critics and consumers.
This, her debut record – its title translates as Human Warmth – is repackaged from its Francophone original for an Anglophone audience and sees Letissier return to her days stalking the subversively glamorous clubs of Soho, tackling gender identity (she identifies as pansexual, meaning attracted to people of any sex or gender identity), cultural inclusion and chequered romance.
Thematically audacious and uninhibited, France might have embraced Chaleur Humaine, but it was inspired by the sights and sounds of London. This is Britpop with a Tricolore twist, and quite marvellous.
FOUR STARS
John Skilbeck
Explosions In The Sky
The Wilderness
EXPLOSIONS In The Sky are an instrumental band from Texas who are probably best known on these shores for providing the atmospheric music that permeates the Netflix sleeper-hit, Friday Night Lights.
Though not as anthemic as some of their earlier albums, The Wilderness is a dark, melancholy record with plenty of little guitar riffs to get you humming along. If you like your songs with lyrics, this is not for you, but in opening tracks Wilderness and The Ecstatics there are plenty of catchy hooks that will keep you playing them again (often at the expense of the rest of the album).
I've found it's particularly good to work along to, and, if you shut your eyes, you can almost imagine you're in the wide plains of Texas, wearing a sheepskin-collared jacket and sipping a beer sitting in the back of your tow truck...
THREE STARS
Sam Priddy
Woodpigeon
Trouble
WOODPIGEON is, in effect, a one-man band fronted by Canadian Mark Hamilton. Hailing from Calgary, Hamilton's fledgling musical career actually first blossomed in Edinburgh before he flew home to record Woodpigeon's debut album, Songbook, a decade ago.
Four further albums have followed although Hamilton's low-fi songs have stayed predominantly under the radar. Woodpigeon's music certainly bears comparison with the likes of Bon Iver and Sufjan Stevens, that is, quirky and understated yet at the same time curiously compelling.
Trouble was recorded in Vancouver and Toronto with the sparse songs marking this out as Hamilton's best record so far. Notable highlights include the lovely meandering Fence, ode to his homeland, Canada, and closing track, Rooftops. Esoteric it most certainly is, yet undeniably charming too.
THREE STARS
Kim Mayo
White Denim
Stiff
WHITE Denim are one of those bands that seems to have slipped under the radar on this side of the Atlantic, but Stiff, their seventh album, could be the one that finally sees them make a deserved breakthrough.
Hailing from Austin, Texas, White Denim wear their musical influences proudly, with the southern boogie of The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd clearly having featured prominently in their youthful playlists... and that is no bad thing.
Indeed, Stiff is probably their most accomplished set of songs yet, the band getting down and dirty once more after the commercial sheen so evident on their last album, 2013's Corsicana Lemonade.
Reminiscent of The Black Keys at their best, lead single Holda You (I'm Psycho), the falsetto infused closer Thank You, and (I'm The One) Big Big Fun, exemplify a band at the peak of its powers. Long may they rock.
FOUR STARS
Kim Mayo
The Last Shadow Puppets
Everything You've Come To Expect
THE problem with The Last Shadow Puppets is largely Miles Kane. Anyone who propositions a female journalist mid-interview – jokingly or not – forfeits an unfettered, unclouded listen. But then, the mod-rocker's always been lugged along by his better half, Arctic Monkeys frontman, the slickly quiffed, skinny-legged Alex Turner.
Everything You've Come To Expect is the duo's second outing together. Languid yet smirking, with gravelly vocals that punch through layers of guitar, the whole lot of it clangs about in your ears.
The jaunty title track builds beautifully, while the raking of strings on Bad Habits raises its cinematic credentials, but it's jarring – much like the tinny You Used To Be My Girl. Turner's voice is darkly telegraphic on Sweet Dreams, TN and Miracle Aligner could be from the dancefloors of the early 60s. It's a boys club, but there's lyricism here too.
THREE STARS
Ella Walker
