AtoZ

Anglo-American agit-rockers Algiers dig deep into their Atlanta roots with this operatic, panoramic, maximalist meditation on trauma in all its forms. Enlisting an army of collaborators include Rage Against The Machine’s Zack de la Rocha, Future Islands singer Samuel T Herring and veteran rapper Ruben ‘Big Rube’ Bailey, the band’s core duo of Franklin James Fisher and Ryan Mahan deploy their signature “Lenin-McCartney dynamic”, layering political polemic and spoken-word sermons over pulverising beats, jazz-metal grooves and post-punk textures. Some of these experimental mash-ups feel ungainly, but when their chemistry ignites, Algiers sound indestructible.

STEPHEN DALTON

During lockdown the prolific, Amsterdam-based sextet released two homemade albums of synth-drenched retro electro-pop. Appealing as those records were, the more organic palette of Aşk feels like a liberation, busting out exuberantly in all directions as they boldly rework a set of ancient Turkish folk tunes with characteristic invention. “Badi Sabah Olmadan” is transmuted into an oriental space-rocker with some positively cosmic slide guitar, “Su Suziyor” is given a breathlessly psyched-up funk groove, “Güzelliğin On Para Etmez” is repurposed as a dreamy acid-folk reverie and the the sci-fidisco of closer “Doktor Civanim” sounds like an Anatolian take on Earth, Wind & Fire. NIGEL WILLIAMSON

On what is, effectively, only the fifth album in their 46-year history, Marc Hollander’s Belgian prog-punk collective have engaged in an ambitious song-cycle written by vocalist Véronique Vincent, invoking arthouse opera, German songspiel and Ewan MacColl’s radio ballads. Even if you don’t understand this fantastical story of a forest voyage (it’s mainly in French, with a few tracks in English and Spanish), the music is engaging and incredibly varied. Satie-esque piano miniatures mutate into acid house basslines and Steve Reich-style phased minimalism; field recordings are mixed with junkyard jazz; a Stravinsky-ish barrage of dissonant piano mutates into a pulsating Latin-house groove. A staggering sonic treat. JOHN LEWIS

The Nashville-based, Illinois-raised songwriter has a way of wrapping her social conscience in a melody, and though her fourth album begins with “Some Strange Notion” – a lament for the limited ambitions of the Biden administration – there’s a timelessness to her approach that allows the song to soar. At her brightest, as on the lovely “She Don’t Know What To Sing About Anymore” she displays the openness and the tough emotional logic of Nanci Griffith. “Old Flame” is a straight-up country tearjerker, and “Ways Of The World” closes the album with a lullaby of sweet reassurance. ALASTAIR McKAY

Ajay Saggar has worn many hats over the decades – bandmember of Dandelion Adventure and King Champion Sounds, sound engineer, production manager – but there’s something definitive about his solo project Bhajan Bhoy, as though he’s tying together the various threads that make up his creative identity. Both volumes of To Love Is To Love are ambitious and flush with ideas, from the ghostly electronics and shortwave crackle of “Lovely Day For Cricket” through the hazy shoegaze of “The Guiding Light”, but the peak is the sidereal dronology of “Eliane’s Conch” (named for minimalist pioneer Éliane Radigue, surely). They’re messy albums, but fabulously so. JON DALE

The post-metal band’s sixth album proper, and first since shifting from Southern Lord to Thrill Jockey, is an ample demonstration of their powers. Robin Wattie’s angry, anguished howl in the opener “Carvers, Farriers And Knaves” is every bit as intense as guitarist Mathieu Ball’s teeth-rattling riffage and raging waves of Sunn O)))-worthy noise and distortion throughout. Yet as on 2021’s Vital, there’s enough air in Big|Brave’s music to avoid any risk of suffocation. Likewise, the traces of blues and folk within the trio’s sonic assaults – as well as Wattie’s thorny ruminations on gender, identity and trauma – suggest a stylistic debt to PJ Harvey circa Rid Of Me, albeit with amplifiers cranked up far beyond 11. JASON ANDERSON