Juno Recommends Rock / Indie / Folk / Metal / Punk / 50s / 60s: March 2024

Review: Incomparable post-punk Bristolians IDLES return with their highly anticipated fifth "love album" Tangks, following on from the internal viciousness and midlife malaise of 2021's Crawler, with a collection of rough-throated, anthemic bursts of earnest gratitude. Re-uniting with exceptional hip-hop desk-man Kenny Beats, this time sharing production credits with Nigel Godrich (who's worked with the likes of Radiohead and REM) as well as the group's own eccentric former dentist-turned-crossdressing or perpetually half-naked guitarist Mark Bowen, the work exudes a creative camaraderie and sonic confidence only achieved over time through hard graft. Take one earful of disco-punk lead single 'Dancer', which features both James Murphy and Nancy Whang of LCD Soundsystem on backing vocals, and the post-punk-positivity balance the band are striving towards on LP5 should begin to take shape. As gravel-voiced vocalist Joe Talbot summarises their latest endeavour - "Love is the fing".

Review: Noah Kahan released his third album to critical acclaim in 2022, perfecting the sound of his full-bodied take on anthemic modern folk and Americana. 'Northern Attitude' sums up his approach perfectly, juxtaposing moments of tender fragility with powerful, driving surges of chorus that could fill a stadium. This balance of intimacy and bombast is precisely why he's such a success story, crafting the kind of songs that can burrow into your heart and wind up soundtracking an emotive scene in a future summer blockbuster. There's been a wait for this limited chestnut brown edition of the album, but here it is, pressed up and looking as fine as it sounds.

Review: The upcoming collaborative studio album between Liam Gallagher and guitarist John Squire is set to shine a refreshed light on the current state of Britpop. Consisting almost entirely of round-bellied rock, leading the charge is the arresting 'Just Another Rainbow' - here the pair are heard in neat unison, painting a picture of unfazed Gallagher-esque nonchalance in the face of a promised utopia - and 'Mars To Liverpool' - concerning the experience of realising a relationship is over before it's too late. Squire and Gallagher make for an exciting pairing, their synergy fleshed out by the album's stellar, full-bodied mix.

Review: Hyped at the time as 'the Suede record Brett Anderson raps on' - in fact, it's more of a spoken word monologue - 'Stay Together' followed the Britpop instigators' hugely successful Dog Man Star debut album and pointed the way forward for future experimentation away from their core Bowie/glam flash rock. It remains their highest charting single having peaked at number three in the UK charts (an honour it shares with 'Trash') and here, part of Demon's Suede singles reissue campaign, comes backed another non album track 'The Living Dead'.

Review: Electric life-givers, MGMT, return for their fifth album Loss Of Life. Shockingly, it's been six years since 2018's Little Dark Age, in which the duo proved their capacity to evolve beyond the pale of their earliest electro-pop singles. Here, they adapt even further, enlisting the help of a well-selected cast of familiar faces - Christine & The Queens, Danger Mouse, Dave Fridmann, James Richardson, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Patrick Wimberly - all while declaring the project to be the yield of a calculated fusion: "20% adult contemporary" plus an unspecified amount of hero's journey subversion. From the standout single 'Dancing In Babylon' through to more esoteric twin sonic flames like 'Nothing To Declare' and 'Nothing Changes', this feels like an album dedicated to lost causes, overobsession with singular life trajectories, and moving through hard times.

Review: Where's My Utopia? is the follow up to the Leeds band's critically-acclaimed debut record The Overload, which arrived in January 2022. A co-production between Yard Act and Gorillaz member Remi Kabaka Jr., this latest album comes across as a meditation on the contemporary post-Fordist condition of the creative worker. Speaking about 'Dream Job', the band's James Smith said: "'Dream Job' feels like an apt introduction to the themes explored on Where's My Utopia? - though not all encompassing. In part I was scrutinising and mocking myself for being a moaning ungrateful little brat, whilst also trying to address how the music industry is this rather uncontrollable beast that hurtles forward unthinkingly, and every single person involved in it plays their part." Echoing the conflicted inner turmoil of reluctant bandleaders such as Mark E Smith of the Fall - "it's a constant battle" - and the sonic affect of Talking Heads, the album addresses a question central to our times: what do you do when everything you've ever wanted suddenly lands in your lap, but the questions still keep on coming? How do you handle fame and success, when your fans secretly resent the structures that elevated you to that status? Despite these contradictions, all this doesn't stop James Smith, Ryan Needham and Sam Shipstone from delivering a rip-roaring album as expected. If they can find the motivation to make such effective music despite their doubts (meditating on present conditions of poverty while keeping up a smile), then so, perhaps, can you.

Review: Nadine Shah releases her fifth album Filthy Underneath on EMI North. The follow up to 2020's critically acclaimed Kitchen Sink and 2017's Holiday Destination, Filthy Underneath chronicles a period of unprecedented turbulence in Shah's life. And yet, the experience of listening to it is oddly life-affirming - a parade of ghosts spanning the entirety of Nadine's thirty-seven years, moving with balletic beauty to the music that Nadine and long-time co-writer and producer Ben Hillier have created around them, with renewed emphasis on placing melody and movement front and centre.

Review: Roberto Lange is back with a new album for 4AD which feels in stark contrast to his previous outing, 2021's Far In. That album was a definite lockdown record, and now Lange is in the mood to reach out and celebrate the sunshine, funnelling his dense and dusky production and playing into some wonderfully varied songs. There's a unique sentimentality to the Helado Negro sound captured in the huge reverb tails which spiral out of songs like 'LFO (Lupe Finds Oliveros)', but there's no immediate fix for the curious charm of his dusty indie rock sound.

Review: Gothic songstress Chelsea Wolfe makes her illustrious return on the much anticipated seventh full-length She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She. Following on from 2021's immense collaborative project with artcore auteurs Converge, the album shall serve as Wolfe's first solo endeavour since the minimal, folk-centric Birth Of Violence released in 2019, while serving as her first output since departing long-time label-home Sargent House (following a diatribe of controversies best saved for another time) in favour of Loma Vista; home to outsider artists of numerous sonic shapes. As this new chapter appears to be marrying elements of industrial fury with complex trip-hop motifs akin to Merzbow producing for Portishead, all the while maintaining her sultry, Wiccan hypnotism; 2024 looks set to be the year of the Wolfe.

Review: Originally released as a bootleg live album in 1986, Walls Have Ears was a rare window into one of Sonic Youth's earliest UK tour appearances. Though notorious on the band's black market, the album has only recently been given the band's green light, who've now licensed it in agreement with Goofin' Records. Containing early versions of later Sonic Youth fixtures like 'Expressway To Ur Skull', this is a key record for any would-be aficionado; made up of recordings of one of their final shows with Bob Bert at London's Hammersmith Palais, this is a great addition to your music-historical arsenal.

Review: Les Claypool is of course best known for spearheading Primus, the twisted funk metal pioneers that put slap bass at the top of the agenda. As a virtuoso musician with the most inquisitive of minds, Claypool naturally explored many other musical avenues beyond Primus' oddly-angled jams, and this box set does a damn fine job of summarising those exploits through the lens of his Prawn Records label. Spread across seven LPs, we're treated to remastered versions of projects such as The Fearless Flying Frog Brigade, Colonel Claypool's Bucket Of Bernie Brains and The Fancy Band. You're as likely to wind up in weirdo jazz hoedowns as funked-out rock music, but in between these niches there are so many other undefinable surprises in store.

Review: Canadian singer, songwriter and visual artists Allie X - real name Alexandra Ashley Hughes - is a great representative for the resurgent live electro-synth scene. Emerging from the Toronto indie circuit in the mid-2000s, it was a relocation to Los Angeles, a heartland for neon sounds, and early work with producers Circuit and Billboard that first saw an identity begin to form, which is as retro as it is futuristic, picking up scores of fans along the way, including Katie Perry no less. Girl With No Face is her latest long form, and sees the artist again stick her flag confidently in the ground. Tunes bounce, track, soar, step, pump and - at times - fall apart, emotionally speaking, with clear references to the likes of Ladyhawke, Madonna, Kraftwerk, Cocteau Twins and a-Ha, among others. Definitely one to watch, if you're not already.

Review: Milk & Kisses proved to be the final studio album by the inimitable Scottish band Cocteau Twins, the band that made the 4AD label long before the likes of Dry Cleaning and Future Islands graced their roster. By the time in 1996 that they'd released this, however, album number eight, they'd moved on to major Fontana Records and were well into the period of their career where singer Elizabeth Fraser had switched to singing words rather than expressing herself through sounds alone. Not necessarily the happiest time for the band, who reportedly avoided each other during its recording, but still some of the dreamiest dream pop about at the time. Includes the song 'Rilkean Heart' which was penned about the late Jeff Buckley, a lifelong devotee of the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke.