Albums

It is more in-your-face than much of their recent work, thematically if not musically. More engaged and more engaging. The sound of a band alive to the changing world with all its problems and all its wonder. News from Planet Zombie is another important dispatch from the Notwist’s entirely unique corner of the musical world, an album full of closely-observed detail that warrants rapt attention.

Bill Orcutt follows up the celebrated “Music for Four Guitars” with “Music in Continuous Motion,” his second studio album for four guitars. If anything, Music in Continuous Motion is a more enjoyable album, with soulful compositions working alongside the gnarlier playing. A fully realised and finely honed set by a master of experimental guitar, this is unmissable. Bring on the live shows.

The latest in the Folklore Tapes Ceremonial Counties series pairs AHRKH — the solo venture of Gnod’s A P Macarte — with Scottish/Turkish singer and sound artist Bell Lungs. Macarte delivers a satisfying slab of arhythmic, amelodic drone inspired by the Isle of Wight’s Mottistone longstone, while Bell Lungs weaves an extraordinary fifteen-minute folk opera from the cursed legend of Raggedstone Hill.

Canadian songwriter Cat Clyde comes flying in like a midnight courier, express‑delivering through Concord Records the most intimate dispatches of her life. Mud Blood Bone crackles with urgency even as Cat bares her soul. It is her most personal record yet and also her most electrifying, a pulse‑quickening rush, wrapped in confession.

“Seven Lefts” is a mammoth, tangible album of improvised drone, muscular riffs and deep-thinking ambition — unlike anything Nathan Bowles has done before. While on paper, it’s a real challenge with over an hour of improvised, scuzzy sound and insistent, burly refrains, it’s a surprisingly listenable, addictive set that demonstrates the range and ambition of this meticulous musician. Boom.

Gregory Uhlmann’s ‘Extra Stars’ is a fluent and fluid album of thirteen brief, breezy, deceptively light tracks that flow over diverse territories while retaining their identity. An album obsessed with natural processes — some organic and cellular, others more cosmic — it showcases Uhlmann as guitarist, arranger, composer and improviser, his musical curiosity working in tandem with his expansive imagination.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s “We Are Together Again” sees Will Oldham slip into folky singer-songwriter mode — sometimes confessional, sometimes gnomic, always intriguing. A conservative estimate suggests this is his thirty-first studio album, and while he still circles themes that have preoccupied him since his Palace Brothers days, he has become wider reaching and more approachable. This is some of his best work.

Katherine Priddy’s third album, These Frightening Machines, marks a bold shift in energy and intent. No longer anchored by the standard tools of her genre, Priddy moves between folk tenderness and fierce, pop-inflected urgency with rare confidence. From the powerful opener Matches to the devastating closer Could This Be Enough?, this is her most fully realised work to date.

Sons of Town Hall’s Of Ghosts And Gods is intricately, beautifully and never ostentatiously arranged, the voices full of quiet emotion as the music and the words draw you in. Across its richly orchestrated sweep — brass, strings, woodwinds and acoustic guitar all woven together with quiet precision — it is at once an adventure story, and something genuinely haunting and divine.

In their debut album, Hookahs of the Cave, Danny Riley and Noah Radley deliver an addictively listenable collection of electric guitar and drum excursions. From the acid-tinged, eastern raga-esque grooves of ‘Smoking the Bone’ to the pensive, sparse atmosphere of ‘Enclave of Parisian Cash’, the duo showcases immense depth. Whether through muscular drumming or patient restraint, this collaboration is consistently exciting and atmospheric.

Iron & Wine’s Hen’s Teeth is decidedly darker than its sibling album, admitting emotional ambiguity at every turn. Sam Beam knows that a lot can happen in the span of a single song, and here he leans ever further into the South’s musical traditions, surrounding himself with collaborators who double the vulnerability at the heart of his most open-hearted work in years.

Tōth has always been somewhat genre-slippery; it’s proof of his unwillingness to stay in one place for too long, and that’s something to be celebrated. There aren’t too many musicians making heart-on-sleeve emotional rollercoasters with this much control, poise and skill. ‘And The Voice Said’ moves in all directions at once, and ends up exactly where it should be.