Back catalogue: Pop

Review: The first entry in Numero's Margo Guryan series arrives as a limited edition pic sleeve 45. Side A features the previously unreleased 1966 ye-ye inspired burner 'I Ought To Stay Away From You', paired with her latter-day viral smash 'Why Do I Cry'. The American singer-songwriter's breathy ahhs and lackadaisical delivery is on full display here, making for a notable contrast with the songs' needy tone of voice. Pleasing baroque pop backings, tempered by chirrupy flute and skipping drums, make for an equally surreal effect.

Review: Mumford & Sons drop a surprise single release alongside Pharrell Williams, 'Good People', delivering on a long-awaited promise to hop in the studio together after years of knowing each other. Finally falling back on their immediate instincts, 'Good People' hears the band and the solo wunderkind sing of tiredness and revelation, making adept use of a dry, driving, sportsmanlike instrumental palette (think hand claps, stomps, gospel harmonies). Though cryptic in theme, the mood on this one-off is one of triumph and impending miracle works to come.

Review: Whisper it quietly, but 40 years into the career, the Pet Shop Boys might be about to release their best album in decades. We'll have to wait for that set, Nonetheless, but this taster single - produced, like the LP, by James Ford - certainly suggests we're in for a treat. 'Loneliness' is prime PSB, with sweeping strings, soaring orchestration and double-tracked Neil Tennant vocals rising above a Giorgio Moroder style bassline, metronomic electronic drums and smart synth-work from Chris Lowe. Grandiose, polished synth-pop excellence, basically. As always, the accompanying B-sides are excellent, too, with the cowbell heavy 'Party In The Blitz' (a kind of Pets-do-LCD soundsystem workout) being followed by the moody, analogue-rich electronic chug of 'Through You (Extended Mix)'.

Review: Gustav Ahr, better known as Lil Peep, was one of the pioneering voices of the emo-trap movement that ballooned out of the underground over the past decade, with its insidious influence stretching to the mainstream with the likes of Machine Gun Kelly, Olivia Rodrigo, Willow (Smith) and even Demi Lovato embracing punk and emo compositional motifs in their most recent output. With Peep's tragic passing at the end of 2017 due to an accidental fentanyl overdose cutting short an immensely promising career which had seen him just release his debut album Come Over When You're Sober on Columbia; efforts have since been made by the late artist's mother and extensive team to clear the sample rights to his extensive back catalogue of highly influential mixtapes. Most notable of all is 2016's Hellboy, released right around the time of his joining the GothBoiClique collective, and boasting features from several of its most prominent members such as Lil Tracy and Horse Head, while the project distilled the young artist's knack for consistently sourcing a unique sonic intersection between the swagger of hip-hop, the unhinged energy of trap, the aggression of punk and emo's earnest, almost uncomfortably honest vulnerability. In essence, an underground internet classic that's been in dire need of physical media ever since it first reared its seminal head on Soundcloud almost a decade prior.