5 albums you need to hear this week
With music from Bloc Party, The Tubs, Ezra Collective, Bonobo, Sorcha Richardson and Ezra Collective
In the age of streaming, it’s never been easier to listen to new music — but with over 60,000 new songs added to Spotify every day, it’s also never been harder to know what to put on. Every week, the team at Rolling Stone UK will run down some of the best new releases that have been added to streaming services.
This week, we’ve highlighted records by Bloc Party, The Tubs, Bonobo, Sorcha Richardson and Ezra Collective.
Bloc Party – Anatomy of a Brief Romance
On their searingly honest seventh album, Bloc Party use infectious beats and hooks to dissect the end of frontman Kele Okereke’s latest relationship with searing honesty. “In the past, there’s been aspects of my life in songs that I’ve written, but I’ve never written this autobiographically before,” Okereke recently told RS UK. “I had to get it down to make sense of it for myself. Once I did that, it was like our chapter had been closed.”
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
The Tubs – Hard Life
“The subtext is me doing a hatchet job on myself,” The Tubs’ singer and songwriter Owen Williams told Rolling Stone UK of new album Hard Life’s beautifully written but conflicted lyrics. “The album was trying to take a quite harsh moral inventory,” of himself, Williams added. “It’s this weird reflexive thing where I’m constantly attacking and contradicting myself and looking for flaws in my own logic.” While the lyrics here are indeed self-critical and conflicted, the music behind them is simply joyous, indie-rock performed and produced perfectly, with singalong melodies in abundance.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Bonobo – Distance in Static
Bonobo has hinted that Distance in Static could be the last ever album from the UK producer. If that’s truly the case, this album is a glorious look at what went before, offering an eclectic celebration of his entire career and the high times of his club mixes. The result is a perfect encapsulation of everything that went before.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Sorcha Richardson – Draw the Outline
Draw the Outline, the latest album from Irish singer and songwriter Sorcha Richardson, emerged from a quietening down in her life. Moving from New York, where she’d spent a decade living, to the bucolic surroundings of coastal Kerry via Dublin, the album reflects on life becoming slower, more deliberate and more insular. “A lot of my previous stuff is me observing other people’s conversations, or me observing my conversations with other people.” she says. “A lot of this album is me observing my conversations within my own head.”
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Ezra Collective – Here Because of Hope
On their fourth album, Britain’s biggest jazz band offer up an exploration of joy emerging from pain and despair, played out across three movements. The voices of Leona Lewis, Pa Salieu and spoken-word sections from Letitia Wright play a major role in defining these. This record isn’t simply another snapshot of where Ezra are musically; it is a record of what they now understand about the events and circumstances that have carried them there.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music