Back catalogue: All genres

Review: Waxahatchee is emerging, butterfly like, from a cocoon that has kept her safe for most of her career. There was nothing ugly or hidden about Katie Crutchfield's older output. But it was intimate, quiet, thoughtful, vulnerable and, at times, almost a little nervous. At least some of those adjectives became irrelevant with the last LP, Saint Cloud, and now she follows up that ten-foot-tall 2020 triumph with Tigers Blood, continuing in a similar vein. Having significantly increased the size of her audience with the preceding, infinitely rousing record, Crutchfield simultaneously looks to please those newcomers and win even more over here. The tracks are similarly open armed, proud and accessible, but the razor sharp songwriting - dealing with everything from trying to stay still without being bored, to self doubt - has lost none of its impact, and the instrumental arrangements have arguably never been stronger.

Review: 
Jane Weaver's Love In Constant Spectacle stands as a pivotal moment as it presents the artist's most heartfelt, direct, and personal collection yet. Bursting with vivid imagery, the album captures the very essence of the artist, pushing her distinct sound and poetic vision to unprecedented heights. While evoking the nostalgia of her early work, it boldly explores new realms, weaving intricate tales with vibrant hues, shapes, and languages. Teaming up with acclaimed producer John Parish, renowned for collaborations with PJ Harvey and Aldous Harding, the album strikes a delicate balance between familiarity and innovation. It's a surreal odyssey through the human experience that showcases the artist's ceaseless evolution.

Review: Following on from her latest Fenella project The Metallic Index, genreless folktronica oddity Jane Weaver, returns from the land of muted synth lines and hypnagogic instrumentals to deliver the first full-length baring her name since 2021's exceptional Flock. Her 12th album overall, Love In Constant Spectacle offers up Weaver's most succinct, direct and straightforward compositions in well over a decade, with the the beauty of these cuts lying in their simplicity. Motorik synth patterns, fuzzed out neo-psychedelic guitar lines and lush bubbles of digital fizz bounce around Weaver's melancholic musings on the trials and tribulations, big and small, of everyday life and love.

Review: Short-lived So Cal band Wheezing Maniac will bring back many nostalgic memories for those old enough to have been wooed by seminal skateboarding video H-Street's Hokus Pokus. Two of its most iconic tunes were by this outfit - 'Dollar on a Platter' and 'Don't Come Close' and both showcase their off-kilter invention and high-energy sound perfectly. The band only recorded 17 tunes in all and each one makes it onto this Shade Through the Night Door reissue on Putojefe Records. A fine remastering job brings them up to scratch and makes this an essential one for the collection for fans old and new.

Review: Returning with their first full-length since 1988's Laying Down Law, Australian art-rock auteurs The Wreckery (made up of former members of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Birthday Party, Plays With Marionettes) appear set to make up for their near four-decade absence with a macabre, city-lit jaunt through dingy clubs, bleak narratives, and the type of film noir soundtrack-indebted avant-garde post-punk quintessential to the 80s scene. While their original demise came from creative differences from certain members desiring a more mainstream direction and the others dully devoted to challenging art-rock experimentalism, this dichotomy and rift ultimately led to what made The Wreckery such a sonically uncertain and musically dangerous outfit. Fake Is Forever serves as a return to form, victory lap and dark new chapter for the band all at once, complete with scathing lyrics, fuzzed out atonal bedlam, bombastic baritone sax and minute flourishes of delicacy.