Albums

“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.

Philadelphia/Chicago duo The Early have mastered a specific brand of improvised music that draws on jazz and hard-edged experimental rock. Across their latest EP, Cusp, and album, I Want to be Ready, Lewis and Nussbaum pass through landscapes, lighting them up and leaving them changed for the better. A resounding success.

The Wave Pictures fashion their touchstones into new shapes: rapid-fire surf-pop, sleazy garage blues, tender slow-burners full of weeping guitars. Tattersall’s playing remains immediately distinctive, incorporating desert rock and spiky proto-punk, sometimes sounding like both Television guitarists at once. From Proustian throbs of memory to blazing solos, “Gained/Lost” is accessible, varied, and endlessly rewarding—another bright star in their constellation.

My Days of 58 finds Bill Callahan embracing uncertainty — and it has made his songs wiser than ever. They are also funnier, sadder, deeper. Live energy, partly improvised performances, a spirit of collaboration: these are the things that make Callahan tick. Over three and a half decades into his career, he is still capable of adding more strings to his bow.

Seamus Cater and Norwegian guitarist Fredrik Rasten have an exceptional ear for space — knowing what to leave out as much as what to put in. Across six unhurried songs, Strange the Grass Grows breathes and blooms with quiet confidence, its traditional ballads and originals handled with such grace and elegance that it stays with you long after the final note.