Black Country, New Road

★★★★

Forever Howlong

NINJA TUNE. CD/DL/LP

London collective assume new form for album three.

Days before the release of their second LP, 2022’s Ants From Up There, Black Country, New Road’s compelling frontman Isaac Wood announced he was leaving the band. Moving on from 2023’s boldly transitional Live At Bush Hall, Forever Howlong shows the remaining six members settling into their striking new configuration. Violinist Georgia Ellery, keyboardist May Kershaw and bassist Tyler Hyde share out vocals and most of the songwriting, the album unfolding like a Slapp Happy musical about friends and other demons, or Roxy Music seizing control of a light opera society. Ellery’s delicately non-platonic Besties sets the curious tone, its baroque knots and twists picked up in Kershaw’s absurdist domestic fable The Big Spin, or the chamber-pop Coyote of Two Horses. Long-term fans might feel like they are grappling with indie’s own Grandfather’s Axe paradox, but Forever Howlong is a remarkably unified – and gloriously intriguing – piece of work.

Victoria Segal

Salif Keita

★★★★

So Kono

NØ FØRMAT!. CD/DL/LP

Don’t call it a comeback: post-retirement magic from Africa’s Golden Voice.

Though he announced his retirement in 2018, few were convinced Keita had sung his last and he now appears to be being coaxed back into the spotlight. Two years ago, aged 73, he played the Kyotoponie festival in Japan; and it was in his hotel room afterwards that he – reluctantly, as he said his playing would be substandard – picked up his guitar and, with the help of ngoni (lute) and calabash percussion, recorded these nine tracks. At its best Keita’s music had an extraordinary lushness; stripped of this, there’s still a brittle, unavoidable magic in the air. His voice is magnificent, the songs simple and moving. He revisits Tassi (from 2012’s Talé) and Laban (first heard on 2005’s excellent M’Bemba), but the highlight may be his tribute to the guitarist Kanté Manfila, who guided Keita for more than three decades. Wonderful.

David Hutcheon

Rhiannon Giddens & Justin Robinson

★★★

What Did The Blackbird Say To The Crow NONESUCH. CD/DL/LP

Eighteen banjo and fiddle tunes from Giddens and a former bandmate.

On her last LP American Railroad (2024), Giddens collaborated with a multi-ethnic orchestra to tell the story of the black slaves and immigrants who built it. This too is a collaboration, its impetus the unacknowledged importance of the traditional black Southern string bands in American old-time folk. Less epic than …Railroad, there’s just one other musician, Robinson – an original member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the all-black string band Giddens founded 20 years ago. The songs feature only two instruments, fiddle and banjo. They were recorded live outdoors, with added snippets of chirruping cicadas. Like its predecessor but more so, it’s mostly instrumental, besides an occasional verse sung by Robinson (Hook & Line; Old Joe Clark) and dabs of backing vocals from Giddens (Joe Henry). A bit of a pity given her great voice. An album for banjo/fiddle fans and music history buffs.

Sylvie Simmons

Butler, Blake & Grant

★★★★

Butler, Blake & Grant 355. CD/DL/LP

Ex-Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake and Love & Money’s James Grant mellifluously join forces.

After Scottish gig promoter Douglas MacIntyre suggested Butler, Blake & Grant could be ‘a thing’, some low-key acoustic shows hastened this striking country, folk and pop debut tracked at Blake’s Clydeside home and mixed at Butler’s London studio. There’s an egalitarian ‘you sing mine, I’ll sing yours’ vibe reminiscent of late-’90s BBC TV show Songwriters’ Circle, with stand-outs such as Blake’s timeless-sounding, Dillard & Clark-esque Writing’s On The Wall and Grant’s succinct Byrdsian gem One And One Is Two immediate and invigorating. Lead guitar aces both, Grant and Butler mostly rein in chops in service of the songs, but get excited towards the end of Bring An End, wherein Butler, Blake & Grant could be Crosby, Nash & Young. What’s certainly clear is that this spin-the-bottle project has legs, its relaxed meeting of minds a mellifluous triple-threat.

James McNair

Japanese Breakfast

★★★★

For Melancholy Brunettes (And Sad Women)

DEAD OCEANS. CD/DL/LP

Sonically ambitious fourth from South Korean singer/author.

Following her bestselling 2021 memoir Crying In H Mart (tackling the death of her mother, which sparked an exploration of her Korean identity), Michelle Zauner has upped her game, recording at Sound City Studios in LA, with Blake Mills (Feist, Laura Marling) in the producer’s chair. The result veers between artful ’90s slacker rock (Honey Water) and beautifully ornate balladry in the vein of the glittering harp-and recorder-adorned Here Is Someone and Orlando In Love, which holds some of the epic sweep of Poses-era Rufus Wainwright. Even Jeff Bridges pops up, sounding like a weathered Michael McDonald on Men In Bars, wherein he and Zauner enact an infidelity narrative with a murderous end. Throughout, there’s a newfound sophistication evident, and repeated plays only reveal more layers of melody and sonic nuance.

Tom Doyle

Destroyer

★★★★

Dan’s Boogie

MERGE. CD/DL/LP

Vancouver’s man of mystery cuts an existential rug.

“X marks the spot/The whole thing’s an X,” sings Dan Bejar on The Ignoramus Of Love, a typically lush, cryptic song on Destroyer’s excellent 14th album. While it’s a line in keeping with Bejar’s songwriting mission – a treasure hunt for meaning in a world overloaded with symbols and significance – Dan’s Boogie has a lightness absent from its superbly dread-soaked predecessor, 2022’s Labyrinthitis. His concerns remain heavy but the dank paranoia is supplanted by visionary rapture – especially on Hydroplaning Off The Edge Of The World, or Travel Light’s Laura Nyro vamp. Sun Meet Snow sounds like Flaming Lips in guided meditation with Popol Vuh, while there’s a New Age private-press shimmer to Cataract Time, even as Bejar declares “every day we give up time/We pour the drink into a vast glass”. Dan’s Boogie remains fascinatingly obscure in places, but these songs are full of buried gold.

Victoria Segal

Peter Holsapple

★★★★

The Face Of 68

LABEL 51 RECORDINGS. CD/DL/LP

The dB’s’ master craftsman’s spirited rock of ages.

Rattling through some of the many spines in his record collection on That Kind Of Guy, Peter Holsapple sings: “I got A Love Supreme, I got a Soft Machine, I got The Dave Clark Five, I got Slade Alive!.” An expert listener, Holsapple’s childhood passion for Big Star and British Invasion pop prepared him well for a free-wheeling career – as a dB, a solo artist and a sideman for R.E.M. and Hootie & The Blowfish. His latest adds an unlikely cock-rock strut to the tricks he learned from the first Move LP as he expertly repurposes time-served sounds to make a smart self-portrait. Having turned 68 in February (hence the album title) Holsapple considers ageing (High High Horse) and fallen comrades (Sad About Sam), but finds consolation in autumn-toned love (She And Me). Lovers of Teenage Fanclub, XTC and heavyweight gatefold sleeves will appreciate it hugely.

Jim Wirth

Dean Wareham

★★★★

That’s The Price of Loving Me

CARPARK. CD/DL/LP

Former Galaxie 500 frontman reunited with production guru Kramer. Backing includes wife Britta Phillips.

The last Wareham solo album was 2021’s I Have Nothing To Say To The Mayor Of LA, the title’s ironic self-importance suggesting Leonard Cohen circa First We Take Manhattan. With Wareham’s voice now deeper than the compellingly quasi-Kermit tones he unveiled with Galaxie 500, the Cohen mood is even stronger. You Were The Ones I Had To Betray has a melody so strong it feels like you’ve heard it before. The lyrics have love’s intimacies and infelicities blurring into the kind of deception you might find in some distant and dangerous nation state. The album is produced by Kramer who brought such sumptuous gauziness to Galaxie 500. There’s less reverb this time, but it all sounds great, befitting a set of excellent songs that range from the Galaxie-ish New World Julie to the “parallel inlays” and “polymer pearl” of the madrigal-sweet We’re Not Finished Yet, an ode to a guitar.