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Review: Glasgow indie pop sonic-photographers Camera Obscura have always been masters of subtlety and this sense of finesse only hears a bolstering on the new record Look To The East, Look To The West. After the sad loss of their former founding member and keyboardist Carey Lander in 2015, the group took the time out for a much-needed hiatus before reuniting for the recording of this personally redemptive full-length. Led by the soft, tambouring jangles of 'Big Love', the album's lead single, we're met with an elegiac but ultimately hopeful recollection, via its lovingly prodding lyrics ("it was a big love, she said, the kind of big love that made you easily led") and sonic resemblance of Waylon Jennings.

Review: Camera Obscura has emerged with their compelling album Look to the East, Look to the West, showcasing their evolution and confidence. This album unveils the band's core emotions, evoking both sadness and exhilaration. The album follows the loss of keyboardist Carey Lander and a hiatus, yet the band regrouped to craft a poignant work. With Donna Maciocia joining, they created tracks that explore themes of love, loss, and longing, leaving listeners emotionally stirred. This Scottish group's first new album in over a decade, it masterfully blends sadness and exhilaration, leaving listeners emotionally rearranged.

Review: "Anthology" serves as a celebration of The Clean, a band whose influence extends so far beyond their New Zealand home that even if you have never heard of The Clean before, you have surely heard of some of the bands (Pavement, Yo La Tengo, and Superchunk, to name a few) who have been influenced by their unique blend of homemade garage rock, hook-filled melodies and psychedelic experimentalism.

The album is a compilation from across The Clean's legendary career, which began in 1981 and continues today. Merge originally released the two CD "Anthology" in 2003, but now this collection is available on quadruple LP. "Anthology" kicks off with The Clean's call-to-arms debut "Tally Ho!"; the story of the infectious track's $60 recording bill is now legendary. It continues with the early EPs "Boodle Boodle Boodle" and "Great Sounds Great" in their entirety. The hits "Billy Two", "Anything Could Happen", "Beatnik" and "Getting Older", live favorites like "Point That Thing Somewhere Else" and instrumentals "Fish" and "At the Bottom" all serve up memories of the joyous noise that characterized The Clean of that time. These recordings, mostly made by the band with Chris Knox and Doug Hood at the helm of the 4-track, capture the bright, raw sound of a classic garage band.

After a brief breakup, the band recorded "Vehicle" in 1989, made in three days and engineered by Alan Moulder (Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, My Bloody Valentine). The sounds of "Vehicle" and the two albums that followed it, "Modern Rock" (1994) and "Unknown Country" (1996), make up the bulk of discs 3 and 4 of the vinyl "Anthology". In addition to selections from these full-length recordings, "Anthology" includes two songs released only on a US 7 inch and two that appeared on a bonus flexidisc with the "Modern Rock" LP.

Review: First released in 2005, Clientele's second effort crystallised their ability to both deal out wistful and reflective indie pop with style and elan and to summon up a peculiarly London-based style of melancholia. Somewhat akin to an collision of the baroque pop stylings of Love with the delicate strains of Luna, yet with its introspective lilt backed up by rich and delicate arrangements, 'Strange Geometry' is equal parts succour and somnambulism - these ballads for the midnight hour being all the more affecting for their understated nature.

Review: Hollie Cook, as well as being the daughter of a certain Sex Pistols drummer, is a modern-day lovers rock star who dropped her Happy Hour album last summer to great acclaim. It was the latest in a line of superb long players which now gets served up once more in dub form on both CD and vinyl. This heavenly set of dubs is Hollie's first since 2012 and is inspired by the fact she heard many parts of the album in isolation during the original mixing process and decided to use that as inspiration for these versions. Ben Mckone is the man on the buttons alongside Hollie while new vocal features by Josh Skints and Kiko Bun also make the cut.

Review: Hollie Cook's 2022 album Happy Hour was widely hailed as a standout entry in the UK singer's accomplished career to date, and now she's doubled down on her dub instincts by going back in with producer Ben McKone for a proper echo chamber revision which lets different ingredients in the album shine in a whole new, delay-soaked light. As well as stripping down some of the tracks and reworking the fundamentals, there's also space for some new ingredients from Rosie Turton on 'Golden Dub', Josh Skints and Jah9 on 'Kush Dub' and Kiko Bun on 'Dubbing On'.

Review: The world may feel dark and depressing right now, but mercifully there are still artists whose escapist instincts can help lighten the gloom. Hollie Cook, daughter of Sex Pistols' Paul Cook and long a purveyor of soul-fired dub and reggae, is one such artist. Happy Hour, her first album in four years, is a glorious, life-affirming distraction in this summer of discontent - a colourful, groovy, bass-heavy and sugary-sweet riff on lovers rock capable of putting a spring in your step. Our picks of an especially strong bunch include the weary-but-uplifting title track, the jaunty 'Kush Kween' (featuring the distinctive vocals of guest Jah9) and the immersive, sonically kaleidoscopic 'Full Moon Baby'.

Review: Hollie Cook's new Happy Hour album has been previewed with lead single 'Full Moon Baby' which came with a great new video hot with her backing band, General Roots. It is a lush and soulful roots sound that is indicative of the wider albums sound overall. It is lyrically inspired by new life, the moon, friends who have recently had babies and lots of love and hope. As such it has a tender feel, with airy and uplifting vocals that warm you right to your core. This album reasserts Hollie as a queen of modern day lovers rock with her lushly harmonic sound.

Review: Hollie Cook's superb new album Happy Hour sees the modern day lovers rock star really mature her sound and come good on everything she has promised before now. She has a happy, feel good and lush singing style that has, since the 70s, become a British reggae signature and it is laid bare here for all to enjoy. Her lyrics are also hugely personal and really invite you in deep to her world with her General Roots band members Ben Mckone and Luke Allwood, and executive producer Youth, all in fine form.

Review: Famed for their thrilling, dancefloor-friendly fusions of West African funk and disco, American electrofunk and post-punk pop, Ibibio Sound Machine is one of the most exciting and essential bands of recent times. It's for this reason that "Doko Mien", the Eno Williams fronted band's first album for two years, is so hotly anticipated. Happily, we can confirm that it's another stunning set, with Williams and company charging through a set of sizzling songs that wrap kaleidoscopic synths, rubbery bass, fiery horns and off-kilter funk-rock guitars around grooves that variously doff a cap to '80s electro, Italo-disco, jazz-funk, Tony Allen and thrusting, mind-altering mutant disco. In other words, it's another must-have collection of cuts from the London-based band.

Review: Pan-African supergroup Ibibio Sound Machine return with Pull The Rope, a tonal shift compared to their earlier full-lengths like Electricity; this one veers more on the side of acid house, highlife and disco, compared to the more histrionic electronics of the eponymous sound machine of that album, as well as Uyai and Doko Mien, heard thus far. As heard on the lead single 'Got To Be Who U Are', we are importuned with the command to be ourselves, as everybody else is already taken; such an injunction is met with a driving, time-of-your-life, weighty acid house production, which comes to neat effect when paired with Eno Williams' passionate soul vocals.

Review: If Electricity is anything to go by, Eno Williams and his Ibibio Sound Machine band were particularly productive during the various pandemic lockdowns of 2020 and '21. The resultant album, the rightly acclaimed group's fourth studio set to date, is predictably inspired, with hired-in producers Hot Chip wisely choosing to subtly tweak rather than totally overhaul the band's distinctive trademark fusion of kaleidoscopic synth-funk, West African disco and boogie, '80s electro and the more electronic end of the post-punk spectrum. Highlights include the throbbing, polyrhythmic Afro-electro of 'Electricity' and the acid-sporting nu-disco brilliance of 'All That I Want', but it's the set's overall feel - described by Williams as "Moroder meets Afro-futurism" - that really delights.

Review: 69 Love Songs by The Magnetic Fields is an audacious feat that toes the line between brilliance and sheer audacity. Clocking in at three hours, this magnum opus is a sprawling exploration of love in all its forms. Stephin Merritt and his collaborators craft a diverse sonic landscape, ranging from giddy lust to resignation and despair, and from genre exercises to archetypal Magnetic Fields songs. The album's sheer scale may initially seem daunting, but Merritt's exceptional songwriting and the band's eclectic instrumentation ensure that each track holds its own. The individual songs offermany moments of small epiphanies and emotional resonance. 25 years since it was first released, 69 Love Songs continues to gain new fans and make original ones keep coming back.