Bob Mould

Here We Go Crazy

★★★★

GRANARY MUSIC/BMG. CD/DL/LP

Frills-free 31-minute blast of post-hardcore pop.

Aside from intermittent acoustic meditations and a short-lived early-’00s electronic dalliance as LoudBomb, Mould has largely remained in lane as the growlingly angsty punk whose nippy fuzz-guitar tunes fuelled both Hüsker Dü and Sugar. Following the furious anti-conservative broadsides on 2020’s Blue Hearts, HWGC taps deeper into the contemporary mood of mental health crisis in the face of end-times politics, climate change and even, on Lost Or Stolen, smartphone addiction. Second up, Neanderthal charges on a “fistfight riff” (in Bob’s words) to explore memories of his toxic upbringing, while Fur Mink Augurs erupts with Minnesota winter desperation. Latterly locked into another robust trio alongside Jason Narducy (bass) and Jon Wurster (drums), Mould talks of having stripped away late-career compositional finery in favour of emotional punch, and When Your Heart Is Broken indeed packs all the melodic thrill of prime Hüsker. All but unchanged aesthetically at 64, this alt-icon’s rockin’ on.

Andrew Perry

The Loft

Every thing Changes, Every thing Stays The Same

★★★★

TAPETE. CD/DL/LP

Back up the hill and down the slope for indie-pop nearly men.

Magpie eyes hungry for the prize, early Creation Records golden boys The Loft released just two singles before splitting on-stage in 1985. Now reconciled, their debut has arrived 40 years too late for singer Pete Astor to wear his leather trousers on Top Of The Pops, but Everything Changes… (more easy-going Adventure than sharp-cheekboned Marquee Moon) does not pine for lost youth. Storytime and Greensward Days showcase Andy Strickland’s thoughtful guitar work, Dr Clarke essays a home counties kind of Pebbles psychedelia while Ten Years celebrates the quiet joys of 60-something man chat (“divorces and cars… money and teeth”). Youthful hubris meant The Loft never became the British Go-Betweens, but closer This Machine Is On reckons with any lingering lost dreams. “I’ve known the answer all along but I’ve been resting getting strong,” sings Astor. The long game, it seems, is one The Loft have played rather well.

Jim Wirth

My Morning Jacket

★★★★ is

ATO. CD/DL/LP

Louisvillians’ tenth polishes the production while leaving room for jams.

More than a quarter of a century into their career, and after suffering a collective crisis in the latter half of the past decade that nearly saw them split, My Morning Jacket have found fresh impetus with is, following their self-titled 2021 album. The big change here is their drafting in of an outside producer, Brendan O’Brien (Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam), and a sharper focus on melodies. O’Brien’s involvement also helps to bridge the distance between MMJ’s heavy rocking live shows and their generally more contained sound on record, and the result successfully veers from radio-friendly gems Everyday Magic and Time Waited (built around a tumbling piano sample from pedal steel player Buddy Emmons’ 1969 LP Emmons Guitar Inc) to Free-styled riffer Squid Ink and bluesy closer River Road.

Tom Doyle

Sam Fender

People Watching

★★★★

POLYDOR. CD/DL/LP

Third LP from the Boss Of Byker land.

This (North) Shields Springsteen isn’t messing about – three nights on sale at Newcastle United’s stadium and production here from The War On Drugs’ Adam Granduciel, plus Markus Dravs (Arcade Fire, Björk, Wolf Alice). The result is a vast, bittersweet communion – like the ghost of Wilfred Owen leading a sweeping terrace incantation. There’s also communion with music past. The title track ripples with Don Henley’s The Boys Of Summer. Nostalgia’s Lie invokes The Stone Roses’ Ten Storey Love Song. But these echoes seem more reverential than theft, part of the emotive reach in a poignant portrait of post-industrial Britain – one that’s meditative rather than defeated, leavened by some less-than-commonplace vocabulary (kittiwakes, embryonic, “hypothesise a hero’s rise”). The closing Remember My Name is just soulful vocals and cloistered horns but sounds like a mass epiphany at a future Glastonbury headline slot.

Roy Wilkinson

Bryan Ferry & Amelia Barratt

Loose Talk

★★★

JESMOND DENE ENTERPRISES LTD. CD/DL/LP

Ferry’s first new songs since 2014’s Avonmore , featuring Barratt’s sprechgesang .

The first intimation that Roxy Music’s ever-suave crooner was collaborating with artist and writer Barratt arrived last autumn via an inclusion on his 81-track Retrospective: Selected Recordings. Titled Star, it implied he’d ‘gone Ladytron’ – as in, the female-fronted techno-pop band named after track two on Roxy’s debut – thanks to his synthy backing, and her frostily spoken voicing. The pair’s collaborative LP is less clear-cut: Ferry’s music was often built upon long-abandoned demos, usually speculative piano with the odd distantly mewled vocal; you’ll often even hear the cassette recorder clicking on or off, but Ferry upgraded with synths and faint rhythms, notably on the title-track finale here. Barratt’s plummy texts present fragmentary narratives a-quiver with unresolved tension and hyperreal detail. Her compadre is talking them up as In Every Dream Home A Heartache rebooted, but Loose Talk is surely but an intriguing distraction compared to that pop-cultural landmark.

Andrew Perry

Going crazy: Bob Mould packs an emotional punch.

Kevin Westenberg

Edwyn Collins

★★★★

Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation

AED. CD/DL/LP

Top-drawer country, soul and balladeering on Collins’s first in six years.

Edwyn Collins’s fifth solo record since suffering two life-changing strokes in 2005 once again speaks of the marvels of creativity over grim health-related adversity. If, on rousing opener, Knowledge, he sings of finding it “so hard to let my old self go”, it’s a message delivered with characteristic defiance and verve. On the title track (referencing the BBC’s mission motto since 1927) he reflects upon a time “back when the words came easily”, before relating his own difficulties in rediscovering his communication skills to the blabber of social media. Sound As A Pound, meanwhile, employs a very British idiom to convey his current state of impressively rude health. The result is a set of assured and often beautiful songs that would have been considered a highpoint at any stage in his near-50-year career. Reflective, yet joyful, it’s an absolute triumph.

Tom Doyle

The Tubs

★★★★

Cotton Crown

TROUBLE IN MIND. CD/DL/LP

Peggy Sirota

Second album of nervy, sad and funny confessions from south London indie misfits.

Tubs frontman Owen Williams is, by his own admission, a chronic over-sharer, the unflinching, forensic honesty of his lyrics recalling the similarly unguarded outpourings of Lou Barlow of Sebadoh. That group’s melodic, ramshackle indie-rock is a good reference point for The Tubs’ own turbulent jangle, which galvanises Williams’s angst with folky tunefulness and punkish vim. But it’s Williams’s confessions, delivered with an intensity worthy of Richard Thompson, that makes their second album so compelling. His self-lacerating introspection is often characterised by bleak wit, describing himself as “a scammer in the world of love” and “the mould on the bathroom wall” on adrenalised Chain Reaction, and admitting “I’ve been an arsehole, baby” on Fair Enough. But the affecting Strange, a measured meditation on the emotional fallout following his mother’s suicide, showcases an insight and maturity that promises much for his future as a songwriter.