Album: Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - Land of Sleeper

★★★★★ PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS - LAND OF SLEEPER Geordie rockers, wild noise

Geordie rockers bring some wild noise

During the Dark Ages, it wasn’t unusual for people throughout England to raise the prayer “From the fury of the Northmen, deliver us, O Lord!”. Over a thousand years later, with the release of Geordie rockers Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs’ new album, it will be no surprise to hear the same cries from chart-pop lovers of a nervous disposition.

Album: dEUS - How to Replace It

Belgian indie big shots enter phase three of their career with style

Antwerp band dEUS – built around the core of Tom Barman and Klaas Janzoons – started out as a very interesting band. They fully leaned into the anything-goes sector of 90s music where the likes of Beck, Beastie Boys, Björk, Moloko and Super Furry Animals kicked away genre fences and got their weird on.

Later, they got a bit Big Indie, with big, sweeping, widescreen songs that put them closer to Doves and Elbow and guaranteed them nice festival slots. Significantly less interesting, but packed with accomplishment and emotional heft, and definitely deserving of ongoing success.

Album: Paramore - This is Why

★★★★★ PARAMORE - THIS IS WHY Superstar US band successfully expand their sound

Superstar US band successfully expand their sound on their sparkling sixth

I’ll admit it. When I first saw that noughties indie rockers Bloc Party would be supporting Grammy award-winning emo stars Paramore on their Spring stadium tour, it seemed like a perplexing choice. But, four minutes into hearing the return sounds from the Nashville natives and the crossover is palpable. Former single "The News" is just as sharp as Kele Okereke’s helicopter blades when it comes to cutting up the indie dancefloor.

Album: You Me At Six - Truth Decay

Emo/punk alt-rockers You Me At Six return with fresh, but ultimately safe new album

It would seem that we’ve been overdue a dose of that awkward teens years nostalgia as all three of Fall Out Boy, Paramore, and their UK Emo/Pop-punk counterparts You Me At Six come back bearing new, angst infused music.

For You Me At Six, their career so far has been forever attached to that unmistakable genre, yes, but to their credit they’ve always strived to expand their sound and develop as a band. To label them as the pre-eminent UK emo group doesn’t quite give them the right credit or tell the whole story.

Album: Amber Arcades - Barefoot On Diamond Road

★★★ AMBER ARCADES - BAREFOOT ON DIAMOND ROAD Poppiness with gauzy ruminations

Moody Dutch singer-songwriter puts indie archetypes behind her

In this context, what’s named “diamond road” is a metaphor for staying on course rather than, as the lyrics of the song “Diamond Road” put it, letting yourself go or sprawling all over the floor. Follow this route and life won’t be a mess.

DVD: Babylon Berlin, Season Four

★★★★★ DVD: BABYLON BERLIN, SEASON FOUR Golden threads in Weimar Republic labyrinth

Golden threads through a labyrinth of Weimar Republic corruption

It’s coming up for two years since some of us watched the first three seasons of what’s increasingly coming to seem like television’s greatest dramatic triumph. Babylon Berlin. So we might be excused for being in a bit of brainwhirl when it comes to the multiple plotlines sown early on in Season Four.

Album: Yo La Tengo - This Stupid World

Veteran cult band stay fuzzy

Yo La Tengo’s new disc would appear to be an homage to the indie scene of the mid 1980s: a place before baggy beats became the groove du jour and where dancing with wild abandon was somewhat of a rare occurrence. Indeed, in This Stupid World maudlin and distracted vocals, fuzzy guitars and spacey vibes predominate on tunes that seem to be, with a couple of exceptions, firmly aimed at the head rather than the hips.

Album: Shania Twain - Queen of Me

Music to frighten the horses

Shania Twain describes her sixth studio album as “a song of gratitude and appreciation. I was inspired that I still had air in my lungs” – and it certainly is a hi-energy affair, a long way from The Woman in Me, the sophomore outing that established her as “the queen of country-pop”. Twain’s come a long way from the mining and lumbering towns of her Ontario childhood – literally and metaphorically, for home is now on Lake Geneva.

Album: The Waeve - The Waeve

The debut album from Rose Elinor Dougall and Blur's Graham Coxon mingles the vital with the wafting

The Waeve is the debut album from life partners Rose Elinor Dougall (long ago in The Pipettes) and Graham Coxon (of Blur), working with James Ford (of Simian Mobile Disco), who co-produces and provides occasional bits of instrumentation. Their album is a woozy thing, underpinned with analogue synths and elegant Krautrockin’ rhythms, emanating a mystic melancholia. The sound is luscious but the whole could maybe do with a little more oomph.

Album: Lisa O'Neill - All of This Is Chance

The Irish singer-songwriter delves into the natural world for her magical new album

Lisa O’Neill is a part of the new wave of Irish contemporary folk artists, one that encompasses the likes of Lankum, Ye Vagabonds and John Francis Flynn, all of them putting their albums out on Rough Trade, which makes the venerable English Indie label something of a centre for what the present and future of Irish folk music sounds like. (Lankum’s Radie Peat and O’Neill have also sung together, on the excellent “Factory Girl”, part of the showcase This Ain’t No Disco.)