FEATURE:
One for the Record Collection!
IN THIS PHOTO: Beabadoobee/PHOTO CREDIT: Guen Fiore
Essential September Releases
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THE calendar is looking…
IN THIS PHOTO: Julia Jacklin/PHOTO CREDIT: Eva Pentel
pretty busy when it comes to albums due next month. I am recommending a selection that you will want to pre-order. I am starting out with albums due on 4th September. The first album I want to highlight is Dexys Midnight Runners’ LOVE. It is so great that Kevin Rowland (the group’s lead) is still making music. If you have been a fan for decades or are new to them, then you will want to check out this amazing album. Go and pre-order LOVE:
“LOVE, Dexys Midnight Runners latest, possibly last ever album, is a luminous collection of scenes and reckonings. Stories of family and friends, tales from past and present. All drawn from Kevin Rowland’s life, each an individual jewel, threaded together with love. Songs begun three decades ago sit alongside those written in the last year. A vivid depiction of Rowland's Irish immigrant childhood [‘My Life in England Pt 1’]; a moving letter to his grandchildren [‘You’re Alright’]; a wistful moment at the start of a love affair [‘I Want To Be Holding You Next Christmas’]; a pin-perfect portrait of time spent with a dying parent [‘Once A Man, Twice A Child’]; the difficulties of relationships when you're older [‘Old Love’]. All deeply personal, all true, all here; the full human span of relationships, family and intimate emotion.
The theme of this album - Kevin's ninth, Dexys' seventh - gradually emerged as the songs progressed. "I don’t remember when it happened, but I just thought, 'Hang on, these are all love songs, of different kinds',” he says. "I knew then: Call it LOVE." These are love songs, but not of the usual pop style. Not will-she-won't-she romance, but something more emotional and all-encompassing. Those small moments that illustrate a rollercoaster sweep. "Everyone came at this project with love," he says. To tell a lifetime of different loves. A love life.
LOVE is also their first album under the Dexys Midnight Runners name since 1985’s Don’t Stand Me Down. “We realised a couple of years ago that some young people know Dexys Midnight Runners from ‘Geno’ and ‘Come On Eileen,’ but some that we spoke to, were confused by the name, Dexys. And some, thought Dexys was a different outfit to Dexys Midnight Runners.,” says Kevin. “Since Dexys returned in 2012, we’ve always felt what we do is worthy of a young audience, so it was a no brainer to revert to Dexys Midnight Runners”.
Those familiar with Kevin’s wonderful autobiography, Bless Me Father, will recognise some of the people in these songs: his dad, his brother, his first love, more recent romances. But this is a Dexys Midnight Runners album, the group of players where Kevin began his music career, and where he works best. So his lyrics are explored and highlighted, lifted to greater heights by the songwriting and creativity of long-time collaborators Sean Read, Mike Timothy and Jim Paterson. There are strings, too, arranged by Brian Irving, originally from Belfast.
Fellow Belfast man, DJ and musician David Holmes, is the album's producer. Holmes had long wanted to work with Kevin and Dexys: “They were the first act I was ever truly obsessed with, the first I saw live”. David's older sister bought him a Walkman when he was 11, and his first cassette was Searching For the Young Soul Rebels. When Kevin sent him a demo of ‘Once A Man, Twice a Child’ (written with Sean soon after Dexys' triumphant 2024 Glastonbury appearance), David was captivated. "His song writing is so strong," he says”.
Another album I would recommend you pre-order is Ellie Goulding’s I Know Too Much. I have been a fan of Goulding for many years, and she is one of our greatest treasures. Her sixth studio album follows 2023’s Higher Than Heaven. I think that so many albums are let down by weak covers. Artists not thinking about the aesthetics. However, look at I Know Too Much and its striking cover. It is an album that really stands out for that reason. You can pre-order it here. There is not a great deal of detail out there regarding I Knew Too Much. I do want to include sections from a NYLON interview from earlier this year. In terms of changes in Goulding’s life since her previous albums, she has gone through a divorce. That ides whether I Know Too Much is impacted by that:
“Now that you’re on the other side: Are we getting what you would call a “divorce album”?
I asked my friends about this. I sent them a folder of the songs and was like, “What do you guys think?” I trust my friends, and they’re real music lovers. One person said, "Wow, this is the divorce album.” And then most of the others were like, "This just sounds like you’re a new woman. It sounds like growing and rediscovery. It doesn’t feel like divorce.” I don’t think that divorce has to have this negative connotation anymore. We’re lucky to be in a position where we don’t have to be married and we don’t have to necessarily rely on somebody. I really like that most of them clearly picked up in the writing that it’s about something else.
I think the term “divorce album” is also just at the tip of everyone’s tongues following West End Girl.
Yes. [Lily Allen and I], we came up at the same time. I actually saw Lily the other day randomly in the cinema. I always thought she was a poet, a lyricist. She’s got a really great voice, but I felt like her thing was to be a storyteller. I also like to think myself a storyteller, but I like seeing myself as a vocalist.
Are you feeling anything ahead of this new music that you haven’t in past albums?
Honestly, a complete lack of expectation, which is so liberating. I’m like, “I believe in this music. I believe in my voice. I believe in my writing.” If you don’t, people know. Fans know. Higher Than Heaven, I didn’t really believe in it. I released it in a kind of post-pandemic panic. It was just an album of nice songs. Everything around it was beautiful, dressed up real nice. But the actual album, it didn’t even land for me, so how did it land for my fans? Whereas this one, I was fully behind”.
The penultimate album from 4th September you should check out is Mykki Blanco’s CAFE PARADISO. Blanco is an artist I have a lot of time and respect for. I am looking forward to hearing what comes from CAFÉ PARADISO. If you want more details about this album, then Rough Trade provide some assistance:
“On Cafe Paradiso, Mykki Blanco is completely reborn, trading the persona- driven theatrics of his previous releases for something more interior and exacting The record draws from the diverse, banal and yet idiosyncratic contexts of the artist's life in transit. "Chameleonic" is one way to describe the artist known as Mykki Blanco, who has played many roles through his storied career: a rapper, a poet, a magazine editor, an advocate. Perhaps "fearless" better describes him; with high profile collaborations from the likes of Charli XCX, Teyana Taylor, Basement Jaxx, Blood Orange, Big Freedia, Kelsey Lu, Michael Stipe, Arca and Anhoni, Mykki has been recognised as a pioneer of queer- centric hip- hop who resonates across musicians of many genres and generations”.
I am really looking forward to Natalie Imbruglia's Algorithm. Even though it is not released until 4th September, there is already this acclaim and buzz. I have been a fan since her incredible debut album, 1997’s Left of the Middle. Hard to believe that the album is almost thirty years old! I hope there is a big anniversary tour next year. One of my favourite artists, you should pre-order declared Algorithm their Best New Album for September. Awarding it four-and-a-half stars. I am keen to interview Imbruglia at some point, as she has had this astonishing career! The Australian artist is based in the U.K., but I have never seen her perform live. I shall try and right this soon:
“Natalie Imbruglia is known to millions as the star behind the global hit ‘Torn’ which remains one of the defining songs of the nineties. It started a phenomenal run of success which has included two BRIT Awards, three Grammy nominations, a Silver Clef, eight ARIA Awards, seven million sales of her debut album Left of the Middle, and a #1 for Counting Down The Days. Recent times have seen her back in the spotlight, having performed alongside Olivia Rodrigo. It’s the perfect time for a new chapter, which starts with the news that she will release her new album Algorithm.
Algorithm finds Natalie Imbruglia in a new era: one of empowerment, freedom and creative fulfillment. The Australian-British pop icon’s first album in five years is a tour de force, a deeply personal record to remind us precisely why we fell in love with her in the first place. It comes as the cultural zeitgeist shifts and pop edges back towards the dancefloor, its direction feeling in tune with the sophisticated pop, disco and house leanings of Robyn.
Natalie says, “On this record I chose to work with collaborators who also co-produce so from start to finish we were all so invested in every song. I really hope that people get as much joy from listening to this record as we did making it. And that they dance their arses off.
This was by far the most fun I’ve ever had making a record. It also happened to coincide with the most challenging time I’ve had with my mental health. This is the beauty of music and artistic expression. You can take something dark and turn it into light.”
The single ‘Upside Down’ opens with a flourish of bright synths and energetic percussion, with Natalie’s distinctive lilt floating above. As she reaches the chorus, it grows brighter – kaleidoscopic, shimmering – and we hear her relinquishing control, and ultimately finding clarity in a song which came from a feeling of shame surrounding her mental health.
She explains, “The inability to control my emotions, wrestling with fight or flight mode, was awful, and I was reaching this critical point with it. In a way, the song is about how sheer willpower – trying to force your way out of something – doesn’t always work. You need tools, support. So that’s where the song was born from, that fight to maintain a semblance of what some might consider normality”.
There are some decent albums due on 11th September, though there is one I will spotlight. Not connected to music, but 11th September is going to be a sobering day for many Americans. Especially those in New York who were affected by the terrorist attacks twenty-five years ago. I digress! The album I want to recommend is Ibibio Sound Machine’s Chopping Mountain. Go and pre-order an album that is going to sit alongside the most essential of this year:
“Chopping Mountain, the new record by Ibibio Sound Machine is the clearest rendering yet of the London collective’s longstanding mission to promote love, unity, and resistance through music. It is the band’s sixth full-length record, and the first to feature the band’s Max Grunhard as producer since 2019’s Doko Mien. Following their Hot Chip-produced breakthrough Electricity (2022) and the darker, clubbier inflection of the Ross Orton-produced Pull the Rope (2024), Chopping Mountain feels like it was pulled directly from the hearts and experiences of the Eno Williams and Grunhard-led band.
Williams, as always, is a siren — a once-in-a-generation frontwoman whose call, both to the dancefloor and for a better tomorrow, is impossible to resist. How she does it is a mystery. Take a song like “Return to Sender,” for instance. Inspired by a car accident in which she felt the steering wheel of her vehicle literally jump out of her hands — which she likened to “a spiritual attack by unseen forces” — the track is a sinewy, cathartic rager, a full-body workout and full-throated rejection of evil in multiple tongues, English and her native Ibibio.
She is, of course, hardly alone at the foot of Chopping Mountain. Ibibio Sound Machine — Grunhard (saxophone, keyboards), Alfred Bannerman (guitar), PK Ambrose (bass, keyboards),Joseph Amoako (drums), Afla Sackey (percussion), Scott Baylis (trumpet, keyboards), and Tony Hayden (trombone, synth) — are supernaturally tight, drawing on their roots and inspirations in highlife, disco, afrobeat, funk, post-punk, and electropop to build towering cathedrals of sound around her voice.
Continuing on the path they first charted on Pull the Rope, many of Chopping Mountain’s songs started out in jam sessions, locking in on a groove or an instrument or a lyric. “Give Me Peace,” featuring Dele Sosimi of Fela Kuti’s Egypt 80, found its way to bliss once the chant-sung lyrics “Give me peace, give me freedom, give me love with a kiss” tumbled out of Williams’ consciousness. The dub-inflected, breakbeat heavy soul that stirs to life beneath them — an entirely new sound for a band that has mastered blending a seemingly endless array of sounds — came naturally. “It’s about finding calm in a world that is trying to tear us down,” Williams and Grunhard explain. “Once we established that direction, the song seemed to write itself.”
This is, at its core, the spirit of Chopping Mountain. Against the backdrop of a dispiriting world, Ibibio Sound Machine remain hopeful, seekers of consciousness and connection. On tracks like “Concept of Love,” they are direct and earnest, sculpting an Afro-disco song around Williams’ repeated question of “What is your concept of love?” They have their theory (“When you love someone / Let them love you back”) but the song passes the idea from member to member — a thrilling guitar solo from Bannerman, Baylis’ horn stings, vocoders, and precision drumfills — in a way that creates, almost paradoxically, a space in which one can meditate on the answer or move through it. Exploring the concept further on “Love,” they deliver an ethereal slice of highlife.
This heady brew of disparate styles and points of origin melds and pulls itself apart across the whole of Chopping Mountain, its songs united in that they are the sharpest tools Ibibio Sound Machine can bring to bear in the present moment. They present the struggle for freedom as a communal one, in which even the smallest movement contributes to the end game. As Williams sings in the title track, “When pebble disturbs the water / Ripples over yonder / Force of a sling shot hits you / Chopping mountain rock asunder.” The work of liberation is long and difficult, but it is not without joy — here is an album bursting with it”.
Five 18th September-due albums I want to put on your radar. The first is from the amazing beabadoobee. Pylon is shaping up to be an essential release. An artist is never quite given the exposure and celebration she deserves, I hope that her new album creates this space and new interest. Not a tonne of detail around this album, I will bring in a recent(ish) interview instead. Pre-order Pylon, as it is going to be a spectacular album! In March, NYLON spent time with one of our greatest artists:
“I can hear Beatrice Kristi Ilejay Laus, known to the world as beabadoobee, before I can see her. We’re meeting outside the Cat & Mutton pub, on Broadway Market in Hackney, for an afternoon stroll and tea. The sky is light grey, with the sun breaking through the clouds. It’s a welcome change from the dark, rainy skies of the last few days. Bea is laughing with her publicist as they reminisce about taking shots in Eastern Europe; they were in Lithuania last week filming the music video for her new single, “All I Did Was Dream of You”. The 25-year-old, sporting a white puffer and a brown beanie that covers her black-and-blonde mullet, brings out a spliff as she leads me around London Fields. She loves this park, she explains while smoking. She loves London. She loves her cats, Kimchi and Miso, and this other cat she found being chased by a fox the other day, now christened Moo. She loves her boyfriend and collaborator Jake Erland, her friends and family. “I’m loving life right now,” she says.
This wasn’t always the case for Bea, especially not when she began releasing music in 2017. Her first single, “Coffee”, got her signed to Dirty Hit Records and grabbed the attention of depressed and anxious teenagers everywhere (myself included) as she sang, “I promise that one day I’ll feel fine / And I promise that one day I’ll feel all right.” At 18, I would cry while listening to these lyrics, with the firm, melodramatic belief that I would not be able to keep the promises she sang so softly about. “I thought I was born sad,” she tells me as we wait for our drinks to arrive at Market Cafe. “I went to CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) and they were like, ‘You did so many drugs, you’re just permanently sad.’” She can laugh now, but at the time, she thought she had “fucked” herself up, that she was always going to be a sad person. “Not true,” she says with a grin. “Not true.”
Now the Filipina-British artist is a Brit Award nominee with three albums (Fake It Flowers, Beatopia and This Is How Tomorrow Moves) and six EPs under her belt. She has been the supporting act for some of the biggest artists on the planet, including Clairo, the 1975, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter, and after a year without releasing any music, she’s dying to come back. Will we receive something more upbeat this time? “The next album is still pretty sad,” Bea laughs. “But it’s about accepting the sad times and understanding that you have to feel every single fucking feeling. Happiness, sadness, anger – all of it.”
Are you a forgive-and-forget type of person, then?
beabadoobee: Back in the day, I was definitely out for revenge. I was on my Blair Waldorf shit. Nowadays, I don’t have the time. I low-key wish I did. I forgive, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget.
When do you find yourself lying the most?
beabadoobee: When I was younger, I used to lie about being OK a lot. But not so much now. Also, honestly, it’s fun to lie sometimes. I once lied to my Uber driver that I was in a Nine Inch Nails cover band, ’cause why not?
What’s your advice for mending a broken heart?
beabadoobee: Alcohol! [laughs] No – don’t listen to sad songs. People say you should so you can get it all out, but I disagree. When I was going through my first heartbreak, which was intense, I only listened to happy music and I had the best time.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
beabadoobee: Epic.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
beabadoobee: For ages, I was always terrified of being alone, of being away from someone and missing them. It was a massive problem for me on tour. My greatest achievement is realising all of that is necessary. I am grateful I have someone to miss. I feel the most stable I’ve been right now, and all the things that I’ve had to do this year have led me to this point. I don’t feel the need for validation from social media or from other people; I’m completely and passionately focused on my art. I know that things can change and I might feel different tomorrow, but it’s the fact that I can right now accept that I feel OK. I’ve never had that acceptance before”.
The amazing and always-brilliant Beck releases Ride Lonesome on 18th September. I have been a fan since the 1990s, so I am definitely going to check out his new album. Though the vinyl is a little pricey, I think that it is good value, as Beck always delivers something special! You can pre-order Ride Lonesome here:
“Beck returns with Ride Lonesome, his first album of all-new material since the Grammy-winning Hyperspace. Harkening back to the rich, atmospheric sounds of Morning Phase and Sea Change, the album reunites Beck with musicians from those acclaimed releases. Produced by Beck and mixed by Nigel Godrich, Ride Lonesome marks a compelling return to the intimate, cinematic style that defines some of his most celebrated work”.
A few more from 18th September to get to. Carly Rae Jepsen’s Day and Night is a stunning double album that is also going to challenge for album of the year, I think. You can pre-order it here. In June, NME interviewed Carly Rae Jepsen. She discussed, among other things, her upcoming double album:
“For ‘Day And Night’, which is set for release on September 18, she worked closely with trusted collaborators including Noonie Bao, Patrik Berger, Tavish Crowe, Markus Krunegård and Pontus Winnberg. She also co-wrote songs with musician-producer Cole M.G.N., whom she married last October and welcomed a daughter with in March.
“At the time, he was just my boyfriend, and a lot of this album is really about that relationship: [us] falling in love and deciding to make a family together,” Jepsen said. “There’s nothing wilder than writing a love song about your husband, then showing it to him, and having him participate in it! It was honestly a really beautiful process.”
Check out the rest of the interview below, where Jepsen recalls how the ‘Day And Night’ concept took shape, outlines her future touring plans, and explains how her new single ‘On Wires’ reflects the tensions of pop star life.
NME: Hi Carly! So, did the songs inform the album concept, or did the album concept inform the songs?
Carly Rae Jepsen: “You know, the honest truth is it was a little bit of both. I never want to have constraints on what the album is supposed to be until I allow myself to play a little bit and just reach for what I’m attracted to. Then there’s a point where I stop and look at it, usually with my close friend and collaborator, Tavish Crowe.
“I write a lot, so even in the beginning phases, I still had a pretty hefty body of work on my hands. So I flew Tavish to New York and said, ‘I’m really torn. I love this and I love this, but I don’t know how to make it go together.’ What I had was obviously the beginnings of ‘Day And Night’. The ‘Day’ songs were a bit more organic in nature, with more live instruments and a little hint of my roots in folk music. But then I also wanted to go in this darker, more experimental, synth-based direction, which is [what became] the ‘Night’ songs.
“The mix wasn’t making sense to me, but Tavish just said: ‘It’s like this amazing house party with an upstairs and a downstairs’. I was like, ‘That sounds a little like Downton Abbey, but I feel you’. And then later on, when I was back in LA, the idea of ‘Day And Night’ really got formed in my head. And we all got excited about the indulgence of not having to decide, and just getting to do everything that you want. I’ve released B-sides projects in the past, so I was like, ‘You know what, with intention, at age 40, let’s just do a double album.'”
How do you see the project as a whole, now that it’s all finished and ready to go?
“As two full bodies of work that in my mind really belong together; it’s 12 songs for ‘Day’ and 12 songs for ‘Night’. They’re kind of the full spectrum of my musical tastes. I started to show up at sessions and be like, ‘Today I’m in a ‘Day’ mood, so let’s do something that feels Minnie Riperton-inspired.’ Or, ‘I just got back from London and saw ‘ABBA Voyage‘, so I really feel like we should do our version of ABBA, but with synths.’ But it wasn’t necessarily that LA thing of like, ‘Here’s the catchphrase [for the song], here’s the jingle.’ It was more like ‘I’m working with friends here, so let’s throw it all together and see what happens”.
I am a fan of Gia Ford, and this is an artis that more people need to discover. A Room Within a Room has this mysterious title that compels greater scrutiny. She is a singular talent who I want to turn people on to. You can pre-order A Room Within a Room here:
“This album is the manifestation of a desire to make something real, in a world and artistic landscape that increasingly favours convenience over craft.
My producer and I wanted each player to leave their mark on the album, to hear everyone's personality in their performance; hear the room we recorded in, and the evidence of life within it. I miss hearing that stuff in recordings. This is the antithesis of that hyper-clean, optimised sound that is so abundant now. It's almost optimisation in the opposite direction, making it clear that some people made this music together in a room somewhere.
A Room Within A Room is about the local atmospheres we own that hang around us. It's about the private rooms within us, the expansiveness of our experience, the force of our inner worlds and imaginations. It's also about the importance of process, and overall, the significance of human creation”.
Before ending with four albums from 25th September you need to know about, I will conclude the best of 18th September with Tove Lo’s Estrus. There is not much information again about this album, so I will just drop in a little bit from Rough Trade:
“Tove Lo’s sixth studio album Estrus, is an emo chic moment, leaning into the contradictions that have long defined her work — euphoria and melancholy, desire and doubt — without trying to resolve them. Balancing visceral, body-moving production with sharply observed writing, the LP captures the full spectrum of feeling in real time across 13 new tracks. Rather than offering answers, Lo stays inside the mess, continuing her core mission: making people feel everything all at once”.
The first of four albums out on 25th September I am mentioning is Blondshell’s Violins. Go and pre-order this album. This incredible American artist is another who I do not feel gets talked about as much as she deserves. It might be the case that Violins is a moment that sees her truly get the widespread conversation and love that her brilliant music warrants:
“Violins, the third album from Blondshell, finds Sabrina Teitelbaum digging in. Following her acclaimed 2023 self-titled debut and 2025's If You Asked For A Picture, the 11-track Violins trades the veil of bad romantic relationships for something braver, asking how we balance the world's violence with its beauty across songs about troubled friendships, religion, the body, and the long, unglamorous work of healing. It's an album of grandeur, drama, and tragedy, built on virtuoso hooks, swelling guitars, and big lead lines, pulling in fresh touchstones from Gang of Four, Teenage Fanclub, The Go-Betweens, and Sade, alongside lyrical nods to Leonard Cohen and Pavement. From the anthemic frenemy portrait of "Heart Has To Work So Hard" to the sunny, insomniac daydream of "Lucky" and the disarming closer "Fur Elise," Violins captures the sound of an artist who has stopped overexplaining and started rendering art on her own terms”.
I love everything that Julia Jacklin puts her name to! Another Australian queen, The Gem is an album I am looking forward to hearing. A songwriter that melt the heart, I think this is someone who will be making music for decades more. Go and pre-order her upcoming album here. I do want to highlight The Forty-Five and their recent interview with Jacklin:
“Releasing an album as a diaristic songwriter – giving people the full Julia Jacklin experience, as she admits to sometimes being aware of (and now actively trying to resist) – seems to necessitate that every expression on a record be completely true to its author’s feelings at the time. “But it’s a good song, so do I not put it out because I don’t feel that way now? I never said I was being honest,” she questions wryly.
“It’s funny, every time I’m making a record, I always worry that it’s not coherent. But I think about myself differently every day. I have a centre that follows me, but my sense of self is changing all the time based on where I am, or who I’m around. The thing about being a human being is sometimes you feel like the coolest, strongest person in the world and the next day you feel like the bigger loser on the planet. That’s what my experience of life is like. I think all of these things coexisting at the same time is more of a reflection on what it means to be alive than having a more coherent album.”
‘The Gem’ might range in outlook, from the willing supplicancy of ‘Walk On Me’ to the hard-won grit of ‘I Wish’, but there’s a confidence that emanates from both the record and the way that Jacklin speaks of it. We tell her that, on the singer’s Reddit channel, we posted a call out for fan questions and comments. The top voted response was a riff on the meme, ‘Did you kiss the brick before you threw it’ – a modern update on sweetening the pill before digging in the knife.
“Well I think that my greatest strength as a writer is not the devastating lyrics, guys!” she quips. “I think I do great melodies. Melody to me is way more important than the lyrics; I know for a fact that I would not be still doing this four albums later if I wasn’t a good melodist. That’s why my music is good. So be grateful that the sad lyrics are encased in those beautiful melodies and that’s the kiss!”
Her melodies might be a winning smooch, but you can imagine Jacklin’s lyrics inspiring the sort of devoted, intense fanbase that other similarly sucker-punch-inducing singers like Phoebe Bridgers or Mitski have earned in recent years. It’s a high-stakes level of fame that Jacklin, who performed her song ‘Don’t Know How To Keep Loving You’ on stage with Lana Del Rey back in 2019, has seen up close. But having a level of anonymity, and prioritising the other areas of her life alongside her career, is something she’s loath to give up. “I feel like that seems like a pretty traumatic experience. The way that Phoebe’s going about it now, she’s trying to rein that in surely with the no phones [at gigs policy]? Because it can get pretty out of hand…” she considers.
“It’s hard to talk about it because I don’t want to throw any fans under the bus. I understand that the music industry is so different to the way it was when I was growing up and I couldn’t even begin to understand what it’s like to be young now. But I think a lot of musicians would agree that a 500-capacity room is kind of the best, and once it gets bigger than that it becomes something different,” she says carefully. “And I think for me, I’m ambitious and I want people to hear my music, but I like being close to people and not feeling scared for my safety. And to me, it seems like [in some situations] you have to be scared for your safety as a woman and I don’t want to live my life like that”.
Leon Bridges’s Happiness Anytime is an album I have no hesitation in recommending. This incredible talent has one of the best voices in all of music, you can pre-order the album here. I have been a fan for a while now, so I am going to check out Happiness Anytime:
“Leon Bridges presents Happiness Anytime, his highly-anticipated fifth studio album produced by J. Lloyd and Lydia Kitto of Jungle. The album's title serves as both a mission statement and an invitation. It's music you can put on no matter how you're feeling and be immediately transported somewhere coastal and warm. In crafting the album, Leon Bridges focused on feeling, storytelling, and his vocal performance. Lydia Kitto brought melodic intuition and harmonic detail, and J. Lloyd shaped the production, arrangements, and sonic structure. The result is an album that feels unusually cohesive, like three musicians discovering a shared vision, drawing inspiration from Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat, Brazilian music, soul, disco, and South American rhythms”.
I am going to finish off with Soft Cell’s Danceteria. It is bittersweet, as this is their final album. A group who have been releasing music for decades, it will be sad to see them come to an end! However, make sure you pre-order Danceteria. Rough Trade provide some information about an album that sounds like a perfect thing to own:
“The final album is both a love letter to early 80s New York and a tribute to the late, great Dave Ball.
Electronic music legends Soft Cell, aka singer and frontman Marc Almond and multi-instrumentalist and producer Dave Ball, release Danceteria, their sixth and final studio album.
Danceteria the album is a big, classy and playful farewell to 47 years of Marc and Dave making music as Soft Cell and features career-defining performances from our electronic pop legends. Reminiscent of Sparks and Pet Shop Boys and with lyrics Lady Gaga would kill for, the album takes you on a vivid journey through a day in early 80s New York, bouncing round the clock from night to bleary daybreak and headlong back into the club”.
That is quite an extensive and detailed look at albums out next month I feel are well worth ordering. There are more to look at, but I can appreciate we need a cut-off point – and people’s budgets are limited! From the sublime Natalie Imbruglia to beabadoobee, Julia Jacklin and Soft Cell, there is an assortment. Something for anyone. September looking like it is going to deliver…
QUITE a few treats.
