Think of this not just as a regular round-up of all the new album releases from the week, but also a regular catch-up between you the reader and us the website. A place where we can come out from behind the curtain and say “hey, how are you? How’s your week been?” and you can reply “oh my fucking Christ what were you doing behind my curtain!? Get the fuck out of here you sick creepo!” Leaving us with no other option but to leave your house and shout the following reviews through your letterbox until you call the police.
Foals – What Went Down
Foals are never going to make a bad album, however they do seem to be releasing less and less interesting ones. What Went Down is their fourth in seven years, and although it’s certainly more consistent than previous album Holy Fire it doesn’t reach the furious ‘wind-up and release’ of ‘Inhaler’ or the outright pop joy of ‘My Number’, and we’re definitely a long way from the intricate (dubious music genre alert!) math-rock fanciness of their earliest singles. Nobody’s asking them to stay rooted in a now dated sound, but ‘Cassius’ was a slam-dancing masterpiece and it would be nice to hear them top it every so often. Oddly What Went Down follows almost the same template as Holy Fire: gruffly energetic opener which promises much in the way of exhilaration but is followed by a disappointingly bland collection of Foals-lite ballads and overly familiar funky shuffles. I think I’d like it more if I had a shorter memory or didn’t think Foals were capable of much, much better. 7/10
THE WEEKND – BEAUTY BEHIND THE MADNESS
It wasn’t too long ago that The Weeknd was an anonymous sexual predator, uploading mix-tapes to the internet full of intriguingly leftfield samples and dark tales of oxycodone fuelled encounters with attractive strangers in surprisingly lavish bathroom stalls. He was a pan-sexual danger to anyone with an open ear or a drink left unattended, and was therefore nothing to be lauded by the mainstream. Three years later he’s hanging out with Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande and Stevie Wonder is singing his latest hit ‘I Can’t Feel My Face (Because of All the Cocaine I’ve Had, Do You Get Me?)’ during his live shows. It’s a bizarre trajectory, one that’s only paralleled by Bret Easton Ellis being asked to write a new sequel to The Jolly Postman. Mistr Weeknd’s second proper studio album is a fairly dull affair, that replaces all the grim, mascara stained exercises in self-loathing with a duet featuring Ed Sheeran. Awful, obviously. 3/10
Destroyer – Poison Season
Dan Bejar’s idiosyncratic vocals are part lounge singer, part 70s David Bowie attempting rap music for the first time, and this has certainly been an acquired taste over 11 albums of varying degrees of quality. However on 2011’s gorgeous and mainstream accepted Kaputt, Bejar found the perfect backing for his oddball delivery. The louche saxophone, lazy percussion and hangdog atmospherics of Kaputt brought to mind the hazy, pot-addled groove of Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, if The Long Goodbye was the filmic equivalent of glamorous yet quietly sordid yacht rock. Poison Season carries on this sumptuous, yet seamy trajectory but adding a Bruce Springsteen pomp, some beautifully arranged strings and the odd bit of Blaxploitation syncopation. The whole thing sounds incredibly lush and expensive, like a decades old Broadway show brought out of time to the present and given total control to an overly romantic lunatic. It’s nothing less than terrific. 8/10
Deradoorian – The Expanding Flower Planet
Angel Deradoorian not only has the most unlikely name in all of alternative LA pop music, but also the one that’s the most fun to try and pronounce. There is no way that the current permutation I have cycling through my brain is in any way correct, but it’s a fun thing to think about while the hypnagogic rhythms of the former Dirty Projectors bassist take me off into a world of timeless grooves and Middle Eastern transcendence. Yes there’s a threat of it becoming a bit ‘I turned hippy just for my gap-year’, but it manages to balance experimental artfulness with taut psychedelic pop to remain never less than intoxicating. Plus some of it sounds like it came straight out of The Wicker Man. 8/10
Beach House – Depression Cherry
Apparently drowning is quite a relaxing, if not an almost pleasurable way to die. I imagine it’s not far off the audio equivalent of listening to Beach House’s fifth album Depression Cherry. It’s not something I would choose to experience, and there are many things I’d rather do than listen to a Beach House album or drown to death, but if I have to go through with it, it might as well offer absolutely no surprises and lull me into a blissful, never-ending sleep. 7/10
Check out all the latest music releases in our new album reviews section, including Iron Maiden – The Book of Souls.