Album: Loyle Carner - Hopefully!

★★★★ LOYLE CARNER - HOPEFULLY! The rapper takes a deep breath

The rapper takes a deep breath with his latest release

Loyle Carner’s Hopefully! is a luminous, deeply personal exploration of fatherhood, identity, and artistic reinvention, marking the south London rapper’s most tender and experimental work yet. Building upon the introspection of Hugo (2022), this record takes listeners into Carner’s emerging domestic world.

Album: HAIM - I Quit

★★★★ HAIM - I QUIT The Californian trio continue their ascent to the top of the pop-rock tree

The Californian trio convincingly continue their ascent to the top of the pop-rock tree

Haim’s profile just grows and grows. Since their last album, youngest sibling Alana’s starring role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s whimsical Seventies L.A. nostalgia-fest, Licorice Pizza, has done them no harm. I Quit is, the band says, thus titled because its songs are about “quitting something that isn’t working for us anymore”.

Bonnie Raitt, Brighton Dome review - a top night with a characterful, very American blues rock queen

★★★ BONNIE RAITT, BRIGHTON DOME The US star concludes her UK tour with a rockin' south coast send-off

The US star concludes her UK tour with a rockin' south coast send-off

If you walked into a bar in the US, say in one of the southern states, and Bonnie Raitt and her band were playing, you’d have the best night of your life. They are the kind of purely American rhythm’n’blues experience, tempered with FM radio balladry, that somehow works best, and perhaps only, on those endless highways and dusty plains.

Pulp, O2 Arena review - common people like us

★★★★ PULP, O2 ARENA Jarvis Cocker's mature muse ready to follow fans through their lives

Jarvis Cocker's mature muse proves ready to follow fans through their lives

Jarvis Cocker is proudly holding the No 1 trophy handed to him on the day Pulp topped the album chart for the first time in 27 years with More, their first album in almost as long. “It’s nice they’ve got something to do when they’re getting on a bit,” Cocker says, acidly imagining the response. “Fuck that!”

Sam Fender, St James' Park, Newcastle review - Geordie Springsteen scores with celebratory homecoming

★★★★ SAM FENDER, NEWCASTLE Geordie Springsteen scores with celebratory homecoming

The singer's set was a passionate, emotional display of rock music

Had a passer-by from outwith Newcastle been asked to guess what was taking place at St James' Park, football would have been the likely answer. It felt like nearly every person walking to see Sam Fender was clad in a replica top, bearing the name of club legends past and present or, most commonly, the official kit released to mark Fender's newest album.

Album: Yaya Bey - do it afraid

★★★★★ YAYA BEY - DO IT AFRAID Her continued maturation, and that of modern R&B dazzles 

The continued maturation of Yaya Bey and of modern R&B dazzles and nourishes at every turn

One of the great untold stories of the past decade is just how potent a cultural force R&B has been. It might not have had the wild musical innovation it did in the 2000s when the likes of Neptunes, Missy Elliot, Timbaland and Rodney Jerkins reigned supreme as producers – but through the 2010s and ‘20s, it has established a whole set of performers who are able to exhibit extreme range in subject matter, style and seriousness, held together with force of artistic personality.

Music Reissues Weekly: Pilot - The Singles Collection

How there’s more to the Seventies hitmakers than ‘Magic’ and ‘January’

"It was really strange. Really quite conflicting, the sort of thing most bands didn't have to deal with. At the front, we'd have the kids who'd come along to scream and at the back were the people who'd come along to hear the music. We didn't know whether to talk to the kids at the front or to speak over their heads to the other people.”

Album: The Young Gods - Appear Disappear

★★★★★ THE YOUNG GODS - APPEAR DISAPPEAR A techno-metal monster

Swiss electro-rockers unleash a techno-metal monster

Swiss electro-rockers, Young Gods have been around for 40 years, but this in no way should suggest that they’ve gone soft in their old age. These days, vocalist Franz Treichler looks like the psychopathic Bob from David Lynch’s original Twin Peaks TV series and still exudes a certain malevolence – which is more than reflected in their new album Appear Disappear.

Album: Sam Binga - Sam Binga Presents Club Orthodontics

A thrilling whirlwind tour of bass culture across decades and continents

When I was writing the introduction to my book, Bass, Mids, Tops: An Oral History of Soundsystem Culture, I came up with a phrase, which I ended up putting on promotional badges: “BASS CULTURE IS FOLK CULTURE”. It referred to the way riffs, refrains, ways of acting were passed down the generations, from reggae to rave to grime and on. But it also quickly took on more meaning, about where soundsystem and club music exist in society.