The new edition of our Album of the Week format – in which we present the three most exciting record releases of the week every Friday – features the releases of Soft Cell, Belle And Sebastian, Warpaint and Sharon Van Etten. The reviews come from RS authors and editors who have dealt extensively with the respective albums.
Check out the new issue of Albums of the Week here:
“I remember a future‘ is the first line Marc Almond sings on the new soft cell record Happiness Is Not Included. Unfortunately, this is not about the future, the soft Cell 40 years ago with her yearning entered electro-pop. but dhe track “In the Not A Friend Of god‘ is a reminder of how stunning Soft Cell’s ballads (‘bed sitter“!) was. Here’s a glimpse of that.
Belle And Sebastian – the Scottish long-term project for fine guitar songs – are back. The last album was released in 2015, and almost 20 years have passed since Dear Catastrophe Waitress. Stuart Murdoch and his crew indulge in a mix of styles without losing their bearings. A sovereign flow holds the whole thing together.
“Radiate Like This” feels like a dip in warm water. Warpaint’s new songs wash over you with well-tempered harmonies and blur with electronic loops. The band gently dips you into a bath of indie, synth and electro-pop, through which the voices of the female singers sound siren-like, ethereally soft.
Just take a closer look into the darkness, advises Sharon Van Etten, who presents herself musically confidently on her sixth album “We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong”. The record ranges from a pure voice-guitar dialogue to rich electro-pop and a few orchestral maneuvers with well-dosed industrial sounds.