No Frills Reviews

10. Oracle Sisters – Hydranism

The debut album from Oracle Sisters begins and ends with twinkling keys, as if easing you in and out of a magical dream. The Parisian trio (who are neither actually French, nor siblings, and only 1/3 female) transport you back in time to a place you’ve never actually been to, yet that feels familiar. It’s a world as imagined through an idealised lens of pop culture history – a world of carefree psychedelic wandering, smoke-filled jazz bars, and folk troubadours whiling away time in hip cafés.

That’ll give you a sense of the key musical touchstones here; this is folky, jazzy pop with hints of psychedelia and Americana, and all laced with sweet, sweet Beach Boys-style harmonies that’ll have you getting your falsetto on right alongside them. The album’s first half contains the most immediate tunes, filled with elation and excitement. There’s just the subtlest hint of tension lurking beneath the surface, as if there’s a rollicking rock & roll band waiting to be let loose. They mostly remain tamed, but the short bursts where they emerge provide some the album’s best moments, like where they turn into The E Street Band for 10 seconds on Hot Summer.

The second half is still filled with joy, but it’s a much more laid-back affair; it’s a sense of perfect contentment. The lyrics aren’t always immediately clear, yet the vocals convey exactly what they need to; snapshots of lazy afternoons spent daydreaming and watching the world go by; a world where everything feels comfortable.

While everything could be falling apart around you, all will be ok while you’re listening to this album.

Top Tune: Cigale Song

9. The Dream Machine – Thank God! It’s The Dream Machine

The Dream Machine sound something like you might expect from a group of young Merseyside lads who have spent time learning under the tree of The Coral. Like their fellow scousers, they’re just as capable of moments of pop beauty as they are of offbeat freakouts. It’s this sense of contrast that runs through the heart of this album; as they seamlessly switch between baroque pop love stories and late 60’s-influenced garage rockers which would slot right in on an old Nuggets compilation.

Tales of life and love in small English towns merge into nightmarish scenes and mythical western landscapes. The songs can feel fuelled by wild-eyed youthfulness. But frontman, Zak McDonnell, can also possess the quality of a wise and weary old storyteller; there’s a timelessness to lines like “If heaven is with you, I’m in hell”. And for all their tendencies toward psychedelic weirdness, some of the highlights come in lovelorn ballads like Sweet Mary and This Time Around.

The real standout is Children, My England, a tune they knocked up because they wanted something catchy enough to be played on Radio 1. It builds what really should be a modern indie anthem around a Love Will Tear Us Apart-style synth line. And that’s part of their power; while they may borrow heavily from music’s past, they manage to formulate this into a sound of their own. An exciting debut, that leaves you equally excited to hear where they might go next.

Top Tune: Children, My England

8. Stik Figa x The Expert – Ritual

This album felt like a breath of fresh air; a counter to a mainstream rap landscape overran by interminably long attempted-epics, which often exposed their stars’ insipidness or just outright dick-ishness. Ritual breezes by at 35 minutes and is much more impactful in never striving too hard for greatness.

Stik Figa, an underground hip-hop fixture of over a decade, begins by setting his sights on the bigger picture; an indictment of the black American experience. But rather than aiming for grand statements, he instead narrows his focus for the remainder of the album; seeking positivity in doing what you can to make a difference. He can get introspective, reflecting on depression or his relative obscurity, but with his laid-back flow and easy-going charm he acts as an almost calming presence throughout.

That allows the scattering of features from other underground stalwarts to really shine, most notably Blu and Solemn Brigham of Marlowe. The strength of the guest spots owes much to the album’s other star, Dublin-based producer, The Expert. He crafts the beats as if to bend to the will of each guest. Like the way the smooth soul of Uknowhut? drops out for the arrival of Blu, adding extra gravitas to his verse. Or on the excellent, Zambezi Zinger, which completely transforms with each new verse. The selection of beats is always varied and uniformly great; taking in old-school boom-bap, eastern psychedelia, soft jazz, orchestral pop, and much more.

More epic than some of those big albums and achieves it in about half the time.

Top Tune: Zambezi Zinger

7. Billy Nomates – CACTI

On CACTI, Tor Maries AKA Billy Nomates builds on the promise of her 2020 debut with a leap forward into something more varied, more ambitious, and more personal. The music ranges from the anthemic to the claustrophobic. The default of her sing/speak vocals are at turns calming and confrontational, she can explode with throat-crackling fury but also retreat into the gentle hush of a traditional folk songbird.

The album is like an exploration into the many facets of her psyche, where there’s always hope, but it never quite prevails. Many of the songs feel like a small victory being rescued from struggle. Where defiance emerges from dejection. But, where rebellion fades back to resignation. Where a big fuck you of a break-up anthem can sit amongst snapshots of haunting, disorienting paranoia like roundabout sadness and same gun.

Previous singles, spite and blue bones (deathwish) highlight what she does well; really personal and kind of dark songwriting turned into big radio-friendly singalongs (well, for Radio 6 Music at least). But just as powerful are the likes of the closing moments where she’s left screaming into the void; part catharsis, part desperation. It seems to encapsulate the album’s mood; glimpses of light emerging from the dark, but that darkness never quite rises…

That feels like too bleak of a closer…so, yeah…there’s some great tunes on this.

Top Tune: blue bones (deathwish)

6. JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown – SCARING THE HOES / Danny Brown – Quaranta

Ok, I’ve cheated a bit here by doubling up, but these albums just make sense together. They become more powerful as complementing, or rather competing, forces. Their releases sandwiched a stint in rehab for Danny Brown; if the SCARING THE HOES collaboration was the party, then Quaranta represents the comedown. Just look at the juxtaposition of the artwork; it’s like peak Danny Brown on the (fantastic) blaxploitation cover for STH, as he takes the role of gun-toting cowboy. Whereas Quaranta is Danny laid bare, a peek into the darker side we don’t usually see.

STH felt like a natural combo as Brown is almost a human embodiment of JPEGMAFIA’s production style; hyperactive, unorthodox, borderline unhinged. The album demands attention, just to keep up with what’s going on. Hooks disappear as quickly as they came, with anything familiar (samples from the likes of MJ, Kelis, and P. Diddy) quickly washed away in a sea of abrasive unfamiliarity. For a noted wrestling fan like JPEG, it feels fitting that he could characterise his philosophy with a Roddy Piper quote: “Just when they think they know all the answers, I change the questions”. This is some of the most inventive hip-hop of the year as encapsulated on Run The Jewels, which crams more ideas into a minute than you’d get across many full albums.

Brown has always been a bit of a difficult proposition with his high-pitched squall. But on Quaranta (and I hate to say this because it seems like such a cliché) he tones thing down about 50%, does a ‘grownup’ album and it really is his most accessible and affecting work to date. There are still glimpses of ‘party’ Danny, most notably on Tantor, and those moments are stronger for their scarcity. But the bulk of the album is concerned with somber reflections, bittersweet love songs and spacey slow jams; the album’s opening line setting the tone: “This rap shit changed my life and fucked it up at the same time”.

On STH, lines which initially came off as carefree throwaways – “I been drinking all day/I can’t feel my face off these narcotics” – take a darker turn with the knowledge of Brown’s struggle with addiction. Similarly, Quaranta was actually recorded years earlier, and there’s an added poignancy knowing Brown was documenting his rock bottom yet unable to break the cycle until recently.

Two albums showcasing rap at its experimental and emotional best.

Top Tune: Run The Jewels / Bass Jam