Album: Perfume Genius - Glory

Album seven from an artist carving out his own space in the most modernist of ways

I can’t stop reading and re-reading the review copy I got of a new book, out next week. Liam Inscoe-Jones’s Songs in the Key of MP3: the New Icons of the Internet Age is one of those books where you’ll find yourself shocked that it didn’t exist before: it’s a mapping out of the modern musical and subcultural landscape on terms defined by the millennial artists who’ve come to define it.

Lauren Mayberry, Barrowland, Glasgow review - solo star stays too close to the day job

★★★ LAUREN MAYBERRY, BARROWLAND, GLASGOW Solo star stays too close to the day job

The Chvrches singer mixed some great tunes with an overly heavy sound.

It took until the last song before Lauren Mayberry started to well up onstage, which was good going. The singer had mentioned early on the prospect of a hometown Glasgow gig for her solo career had left her emotional all day, both with joy and fear.

Album: The Horrors - Night Life

A new line-up proves no hindrance to a band bringing electro-rock zip to the darkness

For fans of The Horrors, the headline here is that, 20 years into the career, for their sixth album, the band have lost two of their founding members. Original keyboard player Tom Furse has gone, as has drummer “Coffin” Joe Spurgeon, to be replaced, respectively, by Amelia Kidd of Scottish synthy post-punkers The Ninth Wave and Jordan Cook of alt-indie Welsh outfit Telegram.

Mercury Rev, Islington Assembly Hall review - the august US psychedelic explorers cover all bases

Balance is maintained between the anticipated and the spontaneous

The body language fascinates. Mercury Rev’s frontman Jonathan Donahue could be playing a theramin. The arm movements fit the bill, yet the putative instrument is absent. At other points, his arms are outstretched, palms down. He might be projecting invisible rays in the manner of a silent-screen magician or, when he's in front of the band’s guitarist Grasshopper, absorbing invisible energies.

Album: The Loft - Everything Changes, Everything Stays The Same

Belated debut album from the early Creation Records mainstays

“Sitting on a sofa, cigarettes and beer, ten years disappear…agreeing to agree, just to get along.” By going into the difficulties of resuscitating the past, the lyrics of “Ten Years,” the fourth song on The Loft’s first album, neatly sum-up the band’s current situation. The final line gives the 10-track set its title: “Everything changes, everything stays the same.”

Album: bdrmm - Microtonic

★★★ BDRMM - MICROTONIC Post-shoegazing quartet’s third album evokes the communal musical experience

Post-shoegazing quartet’s third album evokes the communal musical experience

Microtonic comes into focus on its third track, “Infinity Peaking.” Album opener “Goit,” featuring a guest vocal by Working Men’s Club’s Syd Minsky-Sargeant, is doomy post-Balearic impressionism with spoken lyrics seemingly about the loss of self. Next, the distant-sounding rave-shoegazing hybrid “John on the Ceiling.” “Infinity Peaking” is the point of coalescence; where beats-bedded, drifting electronica is suited to the comedown experience.