The Avalanches
Wildflower
[Modular, Astralwerks, XL, EMI]
Australian plunderphonics group the Avalanches spent 16 years working on Wildflower, and it shows. This is an expansive, euphoric album, effortlessly blending genres and styles, structured around samples but constantly shifting and mutating, with the help of guest vocalists and rappers. The sound is nostalgic, dreamy and full of positive vibes, although there is a darker edge underpinning the free-spiritedness. The Avalanches are at their best on the weirder tracks, like the warped calypso Frankie Sinatra or the joyously bonkers cereal-themed The Noisy Eater. – Naoise Murphy
Globelamp
The Orange Glow
[Witchita]
Elizabeth Le Frey’s Globelamp shines in its minutiae. Seemingly innocuous elements – the effects on a multi-tracked backing vocal or the stuttering quality of the keys on Washington Moon (easily the best track here) – often end up being some of the record’s most arresting moments. The fact that the most memorable aspects of the record are essentially window dressing *around* the songs attests to a somewhat wanting degree of quality control in the writing process. For fans of bedroom-hued, faintly witchy, hippy shit. –Danny Wilson
The Julie Ruin
Hit Reset
[Hardly Art]
Kathleen Hanna’s departure from public life due to health concerns was a serious blow to a many. Frankly, aside from anything else, it’s just good to hear that singular, wonderful, pissed off, hyper-smart Valley Girl squawk again. Little on here can hold a candle to her monumental work with Bikini Kill but, crucially, Hanna’s disdain for your opinion or mine is plainly evident in her continued generic tinkering and lyrical snark to spare. “Fuck you” rarely sounds this sweet. – Danny Wilson
Dinosaur Jr.
Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not
[Jagjaguwar]
All anyone wanted from the reanimated fossil rockers was more songs that stick to the Dino Jr. playbook and once again, they deliver in that regard. Some of the more schmaltzy, Lou Barlow-led tracks are undoubtedly misses, but it’s hard to criticise the rest by sheer virtue of the fact they’re achieving what seems to be their only goal. Though, this being the fourth album going through the motions, one wonders just how far the backward-looking goodwill can extend. – Danny Wilson
Ensemble Ériu
Imbas
[Ensemble Records/Raelach Records]
Interpolation traditional Irish music into foreign settings is often a fruitless task. This is largely because (a) it works so well on its own, and (b) often the element extracted and applied elsewhere is nauseating Celtic mysticism. On this exquisitely recorded collection, Ériu succeed where others have failed before by successfully entangling the repetition of Irish melodies with some of the tropes of contemporary, minimalist composition. That said it has not strayed too far from home and still places far closer to the Chieftains than it does the Philip Glass Ensemble. – Ian Lamont
Wild Beasts
Boy King
[Domino Record Co.]
Already on their fifth record, these productive Beasts have roped in John Congleton to produce Boy King, and it’s tempting to draw a direct line between this record and another of Congleton’s productions, 2014’s self-titled St. Vincent album. Like that record, Boy King swaggers with a high-definition futurism, replete with machine-like sounds – ultra-distorted bass lines and clipped, electronic-sounding percussion – but with the feel of human players. Their peppiest step in some time. – Ian Lamont
Grumbling Fur
Furfour
[Thrill Jockey]
Rarely will two heads (Daniel O’Sullivan and Alexander Tucker) pegged as cornerstones of the experimental music scene – with collaborations with Charlemagne Palestine and Sunn O)))’s Stephen O’Malley on their resumés – have produced such a pleasantly digestible album of future pop. Unless of course, the two experimental heads you’re talking about are Brian Eno and Karl Hyde, whose pair of 2014 records (Someday’s World and High Life) Grumbling Fur sound completely in league with. And that, by the way, is an extremely good thing. – Ian Lamont
Samaris
Black Lights
[One Little Indian]
I’m sure Icelandic female singers probably get as sick of being compared to Björk by foreign journalists as Irish rock bands did (eventually) of getting compared to U2, so the ear has be to be trained to listen past the very presence of an Icelandic accent to give it a fair shake. On Black Lights vocalist Jófríður Ákadóttir and co. deal in ultra spaciousness and play with nu-New Age tropes, and while it’s very pleasantly atmospheric, there’s no urgency and it can drift by a bit anonymously. And there’s not nearly enough thunderclaps. – Ian Lamont
