Owen Maxwell

The Beths – Expert in a Dying Field (Auckland, New Zealand) Mixing a rustic charm with a lot of shoegaze elements reminiscent of Veronica Falls, The Beths continue to make brilliant indie rock with a 90s charm. With so many addictive hooks and production details layered into their effervescent [...]

Stella Donnelly – Flood (Perth, Australia) After one of the most contrastingly sunny-sounding yet biting records in recent memory, Stella Donnelly ups the scale of her writing on this latest record. Digging into a fully realized sound and exploring the pains of honesty and starting over, [...]

Muse – Will of the People (Teignmouth, U.K.) In recent years, Muse has drifted between over-the-top jock rock and playing up their dystopian themes for the pure protest energy, but feeling more akin to pastiche than their earnest past. With the production a little thin and the mood a little [...]

Hot Chip – Freakout/Release (London, U.K.) As a fun wild card of the dance and electronic world, Hot Chip always tweak their ratios of grime, funk and heavy bounce to make something fresh. Maintaining a sense of frantic energy and grit in their bones after all this time, Hot Chip leave us [...]

Lykke Li– Eyeye (Ystad, Sweden) The pains of love (romantic or among friends and family) can utterly devastate some, resulting in albums from artists that feel like a naked reveal of a human desperately trying to come to terms with feelings. More subdued than ever, Li is using her range [...]

Orville Peck – Bronco (Johannesburg, South Africa/Toronto) Ever since taking the country genre in a mystifying new direction, Orville Peck has remained an enigma within the genre. His newest release blurs the lines between serious and pastiche-driven revival, and it’s in that [...]

Jack White – Entering Heaven Alive (Nashville, TN/Detroit, MI) After his last album in 2022 played to both the riffing and experimentation of modern Jack White work, this new release by the guitar virtuoso is a journey through his early solo work and more of his White Stripes days. Unpredictable, [...]

Superorganism – World Wide Pop (London, U.K./South Korea/New Zealand/Japan/Australia) A few years on from their top-notch debut, Superorganism is leaning into their weirdness and pop centre more than ever, creating songs that are even more acoustically wild but actually very familiar at [...]

Run the Jewels has been on a high for a decade now, and it’s meant that Michael Render, better known as Killer Mike, has put his solo work on hold. Along with serving as one half of Run the Jewels, Render has started a chain of barbershops, co-founded a Black-run bank, launched multiple TV shows [...]

Regina Spektor – Home, Before and After (Moscow, Russia/New York City) While Regina Spektor has played with marvellously complex structures in the past, her expansive sound on her latest record all starts with the core of her voice and her magical piano. A mix of everything you want out [...]