This month…
ADELINE HOTEL
Hot Fruit
RUINATION RECORD CO
8/10
Instrumental folk-jazz with impressionistic range
Adeline Hotel is Brooklyn-based guitarist and songwriter Dan Knishkowy, whose music traverses a winding road between the folk sensibility of fingerpicked guitar and improv melodies of jazz. His latest LP is the scintillating Hot Fruit, instrumental folk-jazz augmented with the cinematic sweep of an ensemble that includes strings, harp, and woodwinds – Jim O’Rourke meets Joanna Newsom. Knishkowy is joined by fellow experimentalists, including the members of trio Scree, whose guitarist Ryan El-Solh co-produced and wrote additional arrangements. The seven-minute “Seeing Yourself Seen” is all acoustic elegance and shifting emotions, while the pleasantly limber “Little Chili” is almost too short. Twang blends with the ethereal throughout.
ANA GAVRILOVSKA
ALLAH-LAS
Zuma 85
INNOVATIVE LEISURE/CALICO DISCOS
7/10
Californian indie-poppers’ fifth explores a darker side
Perhaps fittingly for an album recorded during and after the Covid-19 lockdowns, Zuma 85 finds Allah-Lahs parking the exuberant surf-sloshed indie rock which has been their principal stock in trade in favour of something more downbeat and contemplative. It’s still recognisably Allah-Las – one suspects they couldn’t suppress their melodic instincts if a hefty bet was riding on it – but they’ve located some intriguing new depths.
“The Fall” and “Fontaine” are not alone in recalling the more sombre moments of post-Parklife Blur, “GB BB” embraces the pugnacious monotony of late-’80s Lou Reed, and “Pattern” reassures that they have not altogether lost interest in sun-splashed psychedelia.
ANDREW MUELLER
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
Isn’t It Now? DOMINO
9/10
The best AnCo album since Merriweather Post Pavilion
A keen sense of childlike wonder has always been central to Animal Collective’s appeal, but sometimes it has felt like they’re refusing to grow up. Last year’s lockdown album Time Skiffs was a more mature, reflective effort, but Isn’t It Now? is even better: consistently inventive rather than merely quirky, it makes a sincere effort to get to the emotional core of what they do, encompassing both the breezy psychedelic calypso of “Gem & I” and the haunting yet ultimately life affirming Miltonesque epic “Defeat”. Still a completely unique proposition, it’s good to hear one of this century’s most significant bands back on top of their game.
SAM RICHARDS
ARMAND HAMMER
We Buy Diabetic Test Strips
FAT POSSUM
8/10
New York duo’s existential rap trip
Armand Hammer are heirs to the underground crown of Company Flow and Cannibal Ox, whose producer El-P helms one tune here, the punchy history lesson “The Gods Must Be Crazy”. Rappers Billy Woods and Elucid keep it particularly real, unafraid to defy hip-hop orthodoxy by rapping about how little money they have (“my Dunks secondhand”) or how fragile they feel (the stunning “Woke Up And Asked Siri How I’m Gonna Die”). The music reflects this stark, witty chronicle of precarious modern living with a queasy tableau of churning beats, one minute harsh and industrial, the next lush and dreamy – “Total Recall” references Sun Ra and features the flute-playing of Shabaka Hutchings.
SAM RICHARDS
ASH
Race The Night FIERCE PANDA
7/10
Bright-eyed guitar pop, but with a beefier backbone
Five years on from their last release, Islands, the Ulster three-piece remain confident purveyors of hook-happy indie anthems, although there’s a harder rock edge to elements of their new collection. The opening one-two of the soaring title track and the minor-key “Usual Places” suggests business as usual, but the scowl and stomp of “Double Dare” finds them trespassing on Beastie Boys territory, while the six-and-a-half-minute “Crashed Out Wasted” flirts simultaneously with psych and prog, culminating in a manic guitar solo befitting a Be Bop Deluxe record. The teenage tyrants of “Girls From Mars” fame may now be chasing the tail-end of their forties, but they’ve lost little of that youthful vigour.
TERRY STAUNTON
AXIS: SOVA
Blinded By Oblivion
GOD?
7/10
Psych shredding by Ty Seg all produced Chicago trio
With a human drummer joining the band’s usual drum machine to fill out the beat, Axis: Sova have now become a bona fide power trio. The competing rhythms make for a heady mix on opening track “People” and the springy “Trend Sets”. But you are really listening to an Axis: Sova record for Brett Sova’s guitar skills, which can be both bludgeoning (“Hardcore Maps”, “I’m A Ghost”) or more subtle, as on the raga-like “Metallic Hearts” or the cascading psych-pop “Persuasion”. Or, at times, both, with
