Celeste, a US-born and UK-raised vocalist and songwriter, made her first powerful appearance in the sphere of music with her single Both Sides of The Moon. The single was released back in 2018 under Both Sides Records and has helped Celeste acquire a loyal following. In fact, Both Sides of The Moon was Celeste’s first noted appearance by the wider crowd; Celeste delivered a phenomenal performance which was primarily driven by her powerful vocals that lead the listener throughout the song.
Now a year has passed since Both Sides of The Moon was released, and further releases such Lately EP which includes the fan-beloved Father’s Son, and even equally noteworthy Coco Blood. In her latest song, Strange, one of her more subtle productions that feels like a reverie, Celeste brings us a melancholic mood through a melodious voice and soft ad-like piano. The song itself, according to Celeste, was inspired by the devastating wildfires in California, last year. Whilst, not the initial inspiration for the song, the loss of people and relationships that the fires caused, assisted Celeste in bringing out her past.
Celeste’s ability to explore an event that is so distressing to access her own past and personal experience of loss showcase a side of Celeste that has been previously visible in her previous work. Celeste has established herself as an artist who can mould and bring out authenticity and passion with fluency and maturity that not many artists can do so quickly in their careers, especially considering her first release was Daydreaming which was released back in 2016.
Lyrically, Strange isn’t a complex mind-boggling piece that will have one analysing for weeks to come and can be summed up in the chorus which goes: “Isn’t it strange? How people can change — from strangers to friends — friends into lovers — and strangers again.” Yet, it’s the vocal tone and dynamics that make the lyrics so much more convincing and attaching to the heart.
With Strange released, it will be interesting to see what is next for Celeste. Strange sounds like another critic-beloved song that will turn Celeste into a more prominent name than she has been. Celeste’s consistency in putting out thoughtful and quality music puts her on a positive track to becoming a vastly influential figure in the world of music.
Post Malone, Hollywood’s Bleeding: The latest release from superstar Post Malone is a 17-track follow-up to his 2018 album, Beerbongs & Bentleys. It features the already-released single, ‘Circles’, while the tracklisting reveals a track featuring Ozzy Osbourne and Travis Scott, as well as other contributions from the likes of Halsey, Future, SZA, Young Thug, Swae Lee, and more. Post Malone’s star-studded third album also features hits ‘Wow’ and ‘Sunflower’, the latter of which was featured on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
Iggy Pop, Free: This is the eighteenth studio album from American punk icon Iggy Pop following his critically acclaimed 2016 album Post Pop Depression. “This is an album in which other artists speak for me, but I lend my voice,” Iggy says. “By the end of the tours following Post Pop Depression, I felt sure that I had rid myself of the problem of chronic insecurity that had dogged my life and career for too long. But I also felt drained. And I felt like I wanted to put on shades, turn my back, and walk away. I wanted to be free.” As a result, the album is more “uniquely somber and contemplative” than his previous releases.
Bat for Lashes, Lost Girls: Singer-songwriter Natasha Kahn, aka Bat for Lashes, returns with her fifth studio album titled Lost Girls, her first since 2016’s The Bride. The album was teased on social media, with one video featuring a number for a hotline that, when dialed, asked callers to leave a message about a lost girl called Nikki. Kahn has drawn inspiration from 80s culture for the record, citing influences such as Bananarama, Cyndi Lauper, The Blue Nile and film composer John Williams.
Frankie Cosmos, Close it Quietly: Indie folk group Frankie Cosmos have released their fourth studio effort, Close it Quietly, out now via Sub Pop. Co-produced by Gabe Wax, a press statement describes the album, which follows last year’s Vessel, as “a continual reframing of the known, taking the band’s trademark micro-universe and upending it, spilling outwards into a swirl of referentiality that’s a marked departure from earlier releases, imagining and reimagining motifs and sounds throughout the album.”
If Lana Del Rey’s work has often felt like the definition of style over substance, then Norman Fucking Rockwell! is the album that changes it all. The pop singer-songwriter’s sixth full-length release is a record full of emotional substance – not only her best material yet, but also her bravest and most mature. Del Rey lays her soul bare on every single track here, and it feels painfully honest at times: “If you hold me without hurting me/ You’ll be the first who ever did,” she sings on ‘Cinnamon Girl’, as if whispering close to your ear, while a similar sentiment comes through on ‘Happiness is a butterfly’: “If he’s a serial killer, then what’s the worst that can happen to a girl who’s already hurt?” Producer Jack Antonoff, who has produced for the likes of Lorde, Taylor Swift, and St. Vincent in the past few years, doesn’t alter Del Rey’s sound all that much; but his subtle contributions provide the groundwork for her elegantly quiet voice to shine rather than drown in reverb as it often does, while adding instrumental embellishments here and there. It’s also Del Rey’s most musically coherent album, and at 67 minutes, rather than feeling overlong – another pop album full of filler designed for Spotify playlists – nearly every song (with the possible exception of ‘The Next Best American Record’, the weakest cut here), is impressively heart-wrenching and well-written. But Del Rey saves the best for last, a raw piano ballad with her voice front and center titled ‘hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but I have it’, where she likens herself to Sylvia Plath, takes a stab at her critics (“They write that I’m happy, they know that I’m not”, she sings, a reference to the discourse surrounding her previous album Lust for Life), pours her heart out, and holds on to a tiny glimmer of hope – just enough to rise from the ashes, like Lady Lazarus herself.
To match the massive hype surrounding their first new album in 13 years, Tool understandably had to make Fear Inoculum their most ambitious effort yet. Every Tool album so far has been more than an hour long, but this one clocks in at nearly 90 minutes, with most tracks being 10-minute-plus progressive metal epics. And yet, it’s somehow sadly their most disappointing album as well; although almost every song here would sound impressive on its own, in the context of the record, the band’s approach starts to grow stale, as they rehash a lot of the same ideas over and over to the point where the album becomes monotonous, frequently repetitive, and at worst, exhausting. There are certainly stand-out, solid moments here, like the track ‘Invincible’, where Maynard James Keenan express the band’s concern with staying relevant in the contemporary music scene through familiar war metaphors (“Warrior struggling to remain consequential”), or ‘7empest’, which remains hypnotically engaging throughout its 15-minute runtime. But, utilizing similar structures and themes, other tracks just aren’t exciting enough to justify their length, while the interludes don’t offer much either. Tool’s comeback feels a little bit like the latest Quentin Tarantino movie: technically masterful, characteristically aggressive (though the violence – or heaviness – is curiously watered down), featuring some undeniably virtuoso performances (drummer Danny Carey shines the most on the album) and a morbid sense of humour, but ultimately overlong and occasionally vapid.
Legendary Chicago rapper Common comes through with a breezy, soulful, and mostly laid-back album to accompany his recently released memoir. There’s nothing really extraordinary here, but it’s not trying to be – unlike his previous full-length release, 2016’s upbeat and politically charged Black America Again, Let Love is an easy-going, occasionally inspirational affair (despite what lead single ‘Hercules’ would have you think), with reliably competent rapping from an experienced artist who comfortably acknowledges and incorporates the new generation of hip-hop into his sound (he references the likes of Cardi B while featuring artists like Daniel Caesar and BJ the Chicago Kid alongside older souls like Swizz Beatz and Jill Scott). You can probably guess the main theme of the album from its title – or the title of nearly every song here, which includes the world ‘love’ – be it love for hip-hop masquerading as romantic love (‘HER Love’), or a generic love for God on ‘God is Love’. But the most heartwarming moment is ‘Show Me that You Love’, where Common sings about his relationship with his daughter with admirable honesty, admitting his mistakes and trying to view things from her perspective in the chorus: “Show me that you’re there/ Show me that you care/ I’ve been looking for you/ But you don’t wanna share,” Jill Scott sings on the chorus. This is dad rap at its finest. Unfortunately, much of the album is ultimately forgettable, but it’s a pleasant, sometimes moving listen while it’s on.
If Ezra Furman’s previous album, Transangelic Exodus, was an angry but meticulously crafted and ambitious concept album, Twelve Nudes channels that same kind of societal fury, this time in a raw and manically brief fashion. A ‘spiritually queer punk’ record, as Furman aptly described it, the indie songwriter’s eighth full-length release is filled with exhilarating, frantic garage rock tunes with the distortion cranked up and Furman’s unbridled, howling vocals as impassioned as ever. It’s a short but fun ride, with infectiously catchy songs like the opening single ‘Calm Down aka I Should Not Alone’ or the fast-paced ‘My Teeth Hurt’, but there’s a lot of personal pain behind these deceptively simple tunes. “Remember I tried to ask what it means to be a man? They threw me in the back of a truck and they tied my hands,” Furman laments on ‘Transition from Nowhere to Nowhere’, while on ‘Trauma’ he maturely proclaims, “Years roll on and they still have not dealt with our trauma”. It’s not as if there aren’t any playful songs here, though; the tongue-in-cheek ‘I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend’, by far the most musically accessible song on the record, is also the most lyrically subversive, making the impact of Furman’s gender-defying lines all the more potent: “All my friends are writing their resumes/ My responsible friends are applying for jobs/ But me, I was considering ditching Ezra, and going by Esme”. At the end of the day, despite all the pain and frustration, Furman suggests with the title of the closing track, ‘What Can You Do But Rock n’ Roll?’.
