Albums

Spell Songs’ third studio album, In Thin Air, is a creative reaction to Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s The Book of Birds. Fifteen songs deal with different aspects of avian life, from nest-building to migration, building up a noticeable narrative thrust. Again and again, this album cleverly conflates the lives of birds with human experience. It is an album in constant fluttering movement, one that soars and sings.

On “Black Duck with Elena Setién,” Chicago’s experimental trio team up with Spanish-Basque singer and multi-instrumentalist Elena Setién, recording after just a few hours of rehearsal to capture the direct energy of their live shows. The music shifts from tightly composed to improvised — exciting, adventurous, and full of character. A joy to listen to.

Captured live over a Valentine’s Day weekend in Los Angeles, Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s “Ghosts of American Psychonauts” finds familiar songs dismantled and rearranged by an expanded band. The great trapeze artist of the human experience has eviscerated and recapitulated his own songbook once more — a compelling addition to an ongoing project of self-actualisation.

Hollow Hand deliver a fully harmonious union of folk and indie pop on ‘Wish Road South’, their best album to date. It’s a vibrant record in which you can feel the fun coursing through it, as the zest of a reconfigured and tightly knit group of musicians burns as brightly as the beautifully melodic and unique songs that they’ve forged here.

Marvin Tate’s “Controlled Burn” is a hallucinogenic portal into a world that’s similar to ours, but the furniture is rearranged. Recorded as duo improvisations with longtime collaborator Leroy Bach, then remodelled and refined into the tightest 12 tracks, the method is brave, and the results speak of the angelic geometry of the universe within.

Alex Dupree’s “Talking to the Dog” is outsider-folk made with a completely unique eye for lyrical detail. Dupree moves between country twang, cosmic psychedelia and soulful confession with the ease of a picaresque poet-jester-troubadour. You could pick any couplet and it would stand against the best lyric writing of the last sixty years. Let’s hope he finally gets the credit he deserves.

Elanor Moss’s debut “The Knife, The Needle” balances a quiet, subtle mode of expression with a searing intensity of feeling. Arrangements create an all-enveloping sound in which the little lyrical razor blades are skilfully hidden. There is nothing loose or mild about her artistry. She is in full control of every moment, exposing the soft tissue of human emotion with unerring accuracy.

Tiarn is a gorgeous sophomore record by Australian ambient-folk producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Hana Stretton. Like its predecessor, it comes alive off the record, a living and breathing tapestry of sound. Where Soon found its focus on the Australian bush, this latest project casts its gaze on the endless shores of the Pacific Ocean, where Stretton’s boundless textural explorations reflect a world suspended in blue. 

Rowena Wise’s “Bad Things Feel Good*” expands on her impressive debut with quiet sincerity and intimacy as calling cards. She moves between swooping maximalism and spine-tingling closeness, juggling contradictory elements. The mess has been transmuted into something beautiful, with a skillfully directed emotional sting—the bigger picture without losing sight of small details—the perfect soundtrack to contemporary emotional life.

Max Subar’s “Anything Could Be” started with ten days alone in a house on a frozen Wisconsin lake — just a mobile rig, live vocals and guitar. Back in Chicago, a small cast of collaborators gave the recordings flesh without crowding them. Loose, lived-in and radically patient, Subar walks us through his Merge Records debut track by track.

Nora Stanley’s “Glass” is a quietly gorgeous debut. Previously known as an instrumentalist, Brooklyn-based Stanley has found her feet as a songwriter with remarkable speed and apparent ease, her primary muse the poet Anne Carson. As the album progresses, personal and political themes twine inseparably around each other. Perfectly timed and executed with a grace and lightness extraordinary for a debut.

Blake Hornsby’s “Brugmansia” leans heavily into British acid folk, styling its creator as a pointedly anachronistic lysergic troubadour. Songs stretch out as if baking in the sun, existing somewhere between traditional song, avant-garde composition and ancient rite. A strange and beguiling songwriter’s album, “Brugmansia” is a living record defined by real musical ingenuity.