We've passed all of those midsummer milestones — the summer solstice, Fathers Day, Glastonbury, World Milk Day — and we are now officially over half way through the year. Time for another quarterly look at the best albums the past three months have given us...
See the list of the very best from January, February and March here (and below), and then read on to find out what April, May and June have given us...
deathcrash - Return. Charli XCX - CRASH. Confidence Man - TILT. Jamie Webster - Moments. Black Country, New Road - Ants From Up There. Mitski - Laurel Hell. Los Bitchos - Let The Festivities Begin!. Hippo Campus - LP3. Foxes - The Kick. alt-J - The Dream. Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You. Bad Boy Chiller Crew - Disrespectful. Gang of Youths - angel in realtime. Nilüfer Yanya - PAINLESS. Peach Pit - From 2 To 3.
Perfume Genius - Ugly Season
Key Track: 'Eye In The Wall'
Designed to accompany a dance performance, the album collapses and comes back together. Moving between the formlessness of largely instrumental tracks like ‘Cenote’ and ‘Teeth’, into something solid and recognisable, moments of pure Perfume Genius avant-pop poke through. Taking shape with strong melodies in unexpected moments, the 2019 tracks 'Pop Song' and ‘Eye In The Wall’ sit in the score perfectly, offering something structured and realised. Regularly providing solid rafts of recognisable ‘music’ in a sea of sound, this is what makes this score so approachable, keeping it tied closely enough to the Perfume Genius identity to allow it to float. (Lucy Harbron)
Foals - Life Is Yours
Key Track: '2001'
Each time Life Is Yours fades out I have to reach over and play it again in full. The album has a real timeless feel to it. It is an absolute joy to hear Foals take the bold step of branching out their sound even further. Their commitment to experimentation and ability to effortlessly conjure up everlasting festival anthems are just two of the many reasons they have been such a strong and lasting force in the industry over the past decades, and long may it continue. (Philip Giouras)
Nova Twins - Supernova
Key Track: 'K.M.B.'
Having begun the album with ‘Power (Intro)’, with synths putting you in mind of the opening of a spaceship and monotonous addresses saying: “Supernova own your power, supernova, you are power”, it’s unsurprising that power is central to the following 10 tracks. Nova Twins are proud of who they are and Supernova is a visceral vehicle in which they express this.
In a fairly barren landscape of heavy guitar-led groups in the mainstream, Nova Twins buck that trend and Supernova (with the tracks perhaps standing out better on their own rather than as a collection) is an excellent second step in the band’s journey which promises so much more to come. (Andrew Belt)
Kendrick Lamar - Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers
Key Track: 'Savior'
It had been 1,855 days and it turns out that we weren’t alone in counting. “I’ve been going through something / 1,855 days / I’ve been going through something / Be afraid” are the lines marking the return of one of the most influential rappers of our time. Half a decade in the making, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers sees Kendrick Lamar take us through the rollercoaster ride that has been the last five years. Over a double album spanning 73 minutes, Kendrick tells us about overcoming writer’s block, becoming a father, comments on cancel culture and opens up about his struggle with his mental health – it’s personal, it’s ambitious and it was well worth the wait.
1,855 days is a long time. A long time to wait but also a long time to reflect. Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is a lot, does a lot and wants a lot, and perhaps we need another 1,855 days to try to unpick it all. One thing is clear though, few storytellers, if any, are able to deliver a comment on society that is both as observative and introspective as Kendrick’s. (Sofie Lindevall)
Porridge Radio - Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky
Key Track: 'The Rip'
Porridge Radio and Dana Margolin have an exceptional, unique trait among their peers: the feelings and emotional content of their music is delivered with such intensity and relatability. Tracks on Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky — as with Every Bad — are complex yet completely intelligible. Porridge Radio have an uncanny knack for writing songs that tear your heart out. The lyrical content is pared wonderfully throughout Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky with a Pixies-esque loud and quiet style: Porridge Radio have picked up from where they left us on Every Bad, now with added maturity and vulnerability. (Charlie Brock)
Ethel Cain - Preacher's Daughter
Key Track: 'American Teenager'
This is not an album to be listened to with only one earphone in: it was created with the express purpose of inspiring a full-body experience, the same kind of experience that Hayden Silas Anhedönia had when she assumed the role of Ethel Cain: “I swear to God, Ethel Cain, like, possessed me” she told the New York Times in an interview. The production on this album is otherworldly in its precision and in its symbiosis with the lyrical content: together, the music and lyrics create a startlingly evocative whole.
And through it all, an undiluted sense of Americanness emerges. Having lived in Florida and Alabama, and refusing to even consider moving to New York or L.A., Cain feels like the most authentic of instruments for telling such stories. “On the side of the road in my torn up clothes with a pistol in my pocket” she sings on ‘Thoroughfare’, evoking an entire scenario just as easily as if she had really stood there. Because she has, and the magic of Ethel Cain is her ability to translate that lived experience into soundscapes. Preacher's Daughter is an American epic. (Jessie Atkinson)
Florence + the Machine - Dance Fever
Key Track: 'King'
Yet while the album can find you dancing round the maypole like Dani in Midsommer, it’s not all horror films and characters. Underneath it all, the album feels incredibly vulnerable with tracks like ‘The Bomb’ and ‘Back In Town’ failing to find any fiction to hide behind. In the midst of its aesthetic world, the core questions tackle some deeply tender topics. Amongst the impressive instrumentation come heart-wrenching lyrics about love, reclaiming your body and your mind, rectifying your art with the effect it has on your mental health and recovery from addiction, all of which feel personal and most definitely Florence’s story. Weaving her life with pieces of myth and fiction, the choice to open with ‘King’ feels different by the end, as the prelude track serves as a shield, like only members of the cult who will dance alongside her can stick it out and access the tenderness within. (Lucy Harbron)
Rammstein - Zeit
Key Track: 'Zick Zack'
Standing as the band's eight studio album, there’s something extremely distinctive about this album cover. Pictured on Berlin’s stone cold and minimalist monument Trudelturm, Rammstein exude a cold, isolated energy. There’s something so brilliantly final about this image, that really makes you feel like Rammstein are concluding their chapter out with a bang.
“Ticktack, ticktack, du wirst alt,” Till Lindemann repeats across personal favourite ‘Zick Zack’. The music video for this is a quintessential Rammstein masterpiece, mocking plastic surgery culture and Instagram Face. Rammstein gimmick as they pose as rock stars on stage to a crowd of old age pensioners whilst their failed surgeries drip off their bodies like burning candle wax. ““Ticktack, ticktack, du wirst alt,” translates as “tick tock, tick tock, you’re getting old”, perhaps a reference to the band's own mortality. Might Rammstein be putting their instruments to rest after spending three whole decades spreading the wackiest, most unconventional material across metal? (Laviea Thomas)
Kelly Lee Owens - LP.8
Key Track: 'Olga'
The richly-textured atmosphere of the album could be attributed to the influence of labelmate, Lasse Marhaug, the avant-garde composer who has worked with harsh noise and drone artists such as SUNN O))) and Merzbow but perhaps more pressingly, the producer of three folky dream-pop albums by Jenny Hval. The combination of his ideas and Owens’ music is certainly a triumph. Marhaug wanted to bring a Throbbing Gristle influence while Owens wanted to channel Enya, and the end result is a perfect show of Coil-esque moon musik.
LP.8, while feeling like a somewhat sonic departure, still feels like a complete Kelly Lee Owens album. If anything, this album has allowed Owens to expand herself as an artist in the most complementary of ways. Rather than overstep into oblique, Owens glides through greatness. LP.8 is a definitive album of the year. (Rhys Delany)
Let's Eat Grandma - Two Ribbons
Key Track: 'Two Ribbons'
The trance-like, nursery rhyme quality of Let’s Eat Grandma’s 2016 debut I, Gemini had that naïve, outsider quality and youthful idiosyncrasy which endeared them to critics and consumers alike: the reviews were generally positive and there was genuine excitement in terms of where the pair (Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton) could take their music in the future. The 2019 follow up I’m All Ears was a little more radio-friendly, perhaps, but still full of charm, showcasing a more mature electropop sound that still had the duo’s trademark character.
They’ve been around for a while now, so it can be easy to forget just how young Let’s Eat Grandma actually were when they started out. Friends since the age of four, they started making music at 13, and released their debut before they could legally order a pint in the venues they were headlining. Now in their early twenties, they’ve been through a lot in recent years, and that’s something that’s reflected on new album Two Ribbons. (Adam England)
Bob Vylan - Bob Vylan Presents The Price of Life
Key Track: 'Health Is Wealth'
The London-based grime-punk duo understands the reality of being Black and/or poor in Britain, conceptualising current social issues into a scathing, obnoxious, and unapologetic LP. You understand Bob Vylan Presents The Price Of Life is more than just music, right? It's a fucking protest. (Ken Wynne)
Fontaines D.C. - Skinty Fia
Key Track: 'I Love You'
Their turn of phrase remains their greatest strength, but Skinty Fia has a bolstering musical elasticity to it. It flexes those now well-refined guitar skills to create a crawling, loitering presence (‘Big Shot’, ‘Jackie Down The Line’), their percussive section a relentless figure as it meanders and pulses with intensity. The addition of ‘The Couple Across The Way’, with its sole accordion and melancholic, late-night river walk visuals, show the band’s capacity for far-out features that only they could successfully pull off. (Neive McCarthy)
Vince Staples - Ramona Park Broke My Heart
Key Track: 'Rose Street'
Released back in July, his self-titled album was concise and to-the-point. Masterfully produced by Kenny Beats, it was a thrilling and introspective 22-minutes that marked Vince’s most personal work to date. However, now we're presented with RPBMH, it seems like that album was merely a prelude for this new 16-track odyssey and tribute to Vince’s hometown community, the Ramona Park neighbourhood of Long Beach, California. Written at the same time as the self-titled record, this is the direct sequel that sees Vince broadening his scope and giving listeners even greater insight into his West Coast upbringing.
This is easily Vince’s strongest and most ambitious work since Big Fish Theory. An album that sounds great, but also offers an intricately crafted and at times brutally honest portrait of his hometown, highlighting the maze of social traps from which he was lucky enough to escape. Without a doubt, one of the hip-hop projects of the year thus far. (Karl Blakesley)
