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Luminescent Creatures, Ichiko Aoba (2025)

For the first time, Ichiko Aoba plays it safe. On Luminescent Creatures she falls back on sheer prettiness, forgoing textural and structural experiments in favour of pedestrian songwriting and a straightforward folk style – in doing so, she loses so much appeal. Aoba has never excited simply because she offers a wispy voice over delicately plucked guitar; her best records quietly upend the entire folk genre with radically boundary-pushing songwriting structures and crafted worlds of sound. Luminescent Creatures has very little of any of that.

Pick: ‘Coloratura’

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Nothing, Darkside (2025)

At their best, Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington can construct a song like few others; Nothing’s highlights skilfully meld funk, kraut, dub and more into hallucinogenic, loping rock. The main issue is that this skill isn’t always fully utilised, and that quite a bit of Nothing (like Darkside’s previous, Spiral) doesn’t quite come together.

Pick: ‘Heavy Is Good For This’

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New Dawn, Marshall Allen (2025)

As one would expect of such a long-term interplanetary adventurer, Marshall Allen’s solo debut straddles many jazz universes. Primarily between the spiritual and cosmic, there’s also a tad of the nu, a dash of bossa, echoes of bandstand, romantic cool; all contained in a way perhaps only possible to a centenarian mind. 

Pick: ‘African Sunset’

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Diamond Eyes, Deftones (2010)

One of Deftones’ heaviest, least relenting and most commercially successful records, Diamond Eyes retreated slightly from the sonic diversity of Saturday Night Wrist but ended up nowhere near so stagnant as Deftones. None of which is to say Diamond Eyes wasn’t developmental; gurgles of space rock and shimmers of shoegaze push this beyond flat metal. 

Pick: ‘Beauty School’

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Sinister Grift, Panda Bear (2025)

Sinister Grift is excellent in a pleasingly identifiable, tick-box sort of way. Sonically this is sunshine pop with seductive throbs of dub and slickly worked-in touches of psych, all drenched in Beach Boys worship; the songwriting is a marked improvement on Buoys, Noah Lennox finding lyrical depth in divorce but also writing better hooks and opening everything up to a little sprawl. All of which makes Sinister Grift’s achievements sound almost academic, but they’re real – this is the best Panda Bear release in a very long time (yes, since Person Pitch).

Pick: ‘Ferry Lady’

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Amor de encava, Weed420 (2025)

Amor de encava is a cacophony of sounds and thus also, in how it harnesses and brings all into one, an extraordinary technical achievement, but it is also so much more. Its scope is boundless, it captures not just a bus ride (according to the liner notes) but what is beyond the window, part of the experience: the weight of cities, the great power of nature, the immensity of culture.

Pick: ‘Maluca’

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Slash-&-Burn, Daoko (2024)

Once known not just for the energy and eclecticism of her dance-rap but for its listenability, quite a bit of Daoko’s edge appears lost on Slash-&-Burn. There aren’t the hooks or experiments I’ve previously enjoyed so much.

Pick: ‘Akame no buildings’

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End of the Middle, Richard Dawson (2025)

Richard Dawson, like so many folk musicians, is at heart a storyteller. End of the Middle, in eschewing his bolder progressive folk tendencies for a more straightforward, conventional style, relies on stories more than any of Dawson’s previous releases – which in itself is no bad thing, but the results don’t convince. These kitchen-sink tales, characters and scenes are among his most contrived and least compelling; I’m struggling to find much depth or impact.

Pick: ‘Bolt’

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Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory (2025)

Sharon Van Etten’s voice will always boast an element of wonder and power, but it’s the only remarkable thing about this otherwise straightforward indie rock record. 

Pick: ‘Live Forever’

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Census Designated, Jane Remover (2023)

Jane Remover’s second made a logical leap from Frailty’s scuzzy, fuzzy noise/glitch pop to more drawn-out, shoegazing post-rock. Elements are a step up (particularly the lyrics, and the general sense of reminiscence, melancholy) but there’s a flatness to the production that, with hindsight of Remover’s 2024 singles, feels like it could have been fuller, louder and more dynamic. 

Pick: ‘Idling Somewhere’

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Nine Types of Light, TV on the Radio (2011)

Nine Types of Light was the first TV on the Radio album that felt like the band was trying to make the music expected of them – put plainly, the first time they didn’t break boundaries and attempt anything different. Perfectly acceptable, of course, but not quite so exciting.

Pick: ‘Will Do’

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Computer Music, Kazumichi Komatsu (2024)

The aim of Computer Music is admirably ambitious, to create a disorientating mix of pop and fuzz, pretty ambience and absent-minded noise. At best Kazumichi Komatsu achieves rather a lot, music vaguely reminiscent of the grand muddle of the social human mind; some things grab your attention, others don’t. 

Pick: ‘Wrong’

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Ordinary, Valknee (2024)

Cram so much energy that your listener doesn’t have time to reflect; such seems the mantra of Valknee’s Ordinary, a fizzling, pacey and brilliant work of dance-rap that fashions big-beat hip-hop out of thumping dance music, clattering post-industrial and shiny hyperpop.

Pick: ‘LOOSE’

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Saturday Night Wrist, Deftones (2006)

On Saturday Night Wrist Chino Moreno attempts to break out, to soar beyond the weighty constraints of Deftones’ previous sound (and of that era’s metal), belting with more freedom and dexterity than ever before; but one shouldn’t discount the instrumentals, some of Deftones’ most dynamic and varied work to date.

Pick: ‘Hole in the Earth’

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No esperan por nadie, Cóclea / Canut de Bon (2025)

Two Chilean bands share a member and so decide to put out a split album, how delightful. Cóclea and Canut de Bon share drummer Joaquín Gonzáles but they aren’t particularly similar; the former is sort of progressive and funky, prone to drawn-out flair and sometimes-wacky experiments, the other is rawer and more brutal, emotional. My preference between them changes by the day.

Pick(s): ‘pol pot’, ‘rosa la rouge’

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All Hell, Los Campesinos! (2024)

Seven years will change even the most stubborn among us. As for Gareth Paisey? The man has calmed, ever so slightly, there are creaks in his voice (it belts, but not like it used to), he remains funny, insightful and poetic but he’s also more wistful, less brash. All Hell isn’t just another solid record from a solid band, it’s a poignant reflection on one’s 30s, of growing up and not, of the helplessness of things changing rapidly and for the duller.

Pick: ‘Feast of Tongues’

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Advanced Myth (2015), Gowanus Drifts (2015), Dialect 

Supreme craft transcends all, can render sublime any art of any form or style. Dialect’s 2015 releases Advanced Myth and Gowanus Drifts are proof, the most careful of musical constructions; physical and synthesised elements overlapping, intertwining, enmeshing in pieces at once a blur of influences and beyond them all.

Pick(s): ‘Hung Rose’, ‘Waterfront Epiphany’