Titus Andronicus - A Productive Cough

Score: 6.8 

The fifth album from the Patrick Stickles'-lead collective Titus Andronicus is excessively focused on performing as a bar band; so excessively that you can actually see them losing their identity in the process. The songs aim for epicness and grandiosity, but most of the times they end up feeling exhausted and exhausting.

Tracks I like the most: Real Talk

Tracks I like the least: Home Alone

Artist: Titus Andronicus

Country: United States

Album: A Productive Cough

Released: 02/03/2018

Genres: Indie Rock, Heartland Rock, Singer-Songwriter

Length: 46:43

Gorillaz - The Now Now

Score: 7.4 

The Now Now, the latest release from the British animated band Gorillaz, is a huge step forward compared to their previous record. It is a compilation of relatively uplifting synth-pop songs that nonetheless carry a tremendous heavy weight of melancholy and longing. The album takes off when it allows itself to be more varied, instrumentally complete and dance-floor oriented, but the union between these parts and the slower ones comes out as a mixbag. This is the closest we can get to an acoustic version of the band, and it's not that bad after all.

Tracks I like the most: Souk Eye, Tranz, Lake Zurich, Humility

Tracks I like the least: Magic City

Artist: Gorillaz

Country: United Kingdom

Album: The Now Now

Released: 29/06/2018

Genres: Indie Pop, Synth-Pop, Funk, R&B, Electronic

Length: 40:49

Death Grips - Year Of The Snitch

Score: 8.5 

The latest full-length album from the experimental hip hop band Death Grips fulfils every single condition for another successful record of them: chaotic at the verge of schizophrenia, playful at the edge of delirium and prolific at the stake of excellence. Minimal at times, exploded with details at others, Year Of The Snitch feels urgent, depressing, desperate and helpless; but must of all, addictive.

Tracks I like the most: Streaky, Flies, Black Paint, Linda's In Custody, Shitshow, Disappointed

Tracks I like the least: Dilemma

Artist: Death Grips

Country: United States

Album: Year Of The Snitch

Released: 22/06/2018

Genres: Experimental Hip Hop, Synth-Punk, Noise Rock, Glitch Hop, Electro-Industrial, Digital Hardcore

Length: 37:13

Vive La Void - Vive La Void

Score: 8.1 

Vive La Void is a side-project from Moon Duo's Sanae Yamada, and her debut full-length album was recorded while on tour, constantly moving out and changing perspectives. Despite how it was built, the record itself feels tremendously cohesive and uniform in its own thickness and claustrophobia. Fulled with banger electronics, humming drums and drones and spacey atmospherics, Vive La Void is engrossing and embracing all at once.

Tracks I like the most: Matter, Death Money, Blacktop

Tracks I like the least: Smoke, Atlantis

Artist: Vive La Void

Country: United States

Album: Vive La Void

Released: 04/05/2018

Genres: Electronic, Experimental, Drone, Psychedelic Rock, Synth-Pop, Krautrock

Length: 37:20

Ginger Root - Mahjong Room

Score: 7.8 

After a couple of promising singles, the artist Cameron Lew under the name of Ginger Root delivers his debut album packed with synthy, bubbly and lo-fiy songs about love, loss and melancholy. Though the sepa-like atmosphere is perfectly visible all throughout, there's a sense of euphoria and energy going on; youth at its finest peak.

Tracks I like the most: Call It Home, Jeanie, Shmoopie, Hazel Street

Tracks I like the least: Ohio

Artist: Ginger Root

Country: United States

Album: Mahjong Room

Released: 29/06/2018

Genres: Indie Pop, Synth-Pop

Length: 34:36

Cullen Omori - The Diet

Score: 6.6 

The second full-length studio album from singer-songwriter Cullen Omori is lackluster in its attempt at creating/recreating indie rock/pop/folk ballads. His knack for easy-candy melancholic lyricism, his psychedelic touches and his jammy personal guitar riffs aren't enough to propel the album, unfortunately. Some tracks shine more than others, but it's a generally forgetable experience.

Tracks I like the most: Four Years, Quiet Girl, Natural Woman

Tracks I like the least: Master Eyes, Queen

Artist: Cullen Omori

Country: United States

Album: The Diet

Released: 17/08/2018

Genres: Indie Rock, Indie Pop, Indie Folk, Psychedelic Rock

Length: 38:21

Mildlife - Phase

Score: 7.5 

The debut full-length album from the Melbourne-based quartet is a pretty captivating mixture of improvisational jazz, disco, funk, soul and futuristic psychedelia. Some songs are wonderfully intertwined and composed; some others fall a bit too redundant or over-repetitive. Far from being a mixbag, though, Mildlife emerges as a powerful voice from far Australasia to bear in mind while talking about cutting-edge, heatseeker contemporary instrumental music.

Tracks I like the most: The Magnificent Moon, Zwango Zop

Tracks I like the least: Phase

Artist: Mildlife

Country: Australia

Album: Phase

Released: 23/02/2018

Genres: Contemporary Jazz, Jazz Fusion, Funk, Soul, Disco, Psychedelia, Experimental

Length: 40:01

Ariana Grande - Sweetener

Score: 7.4 

The fourth record from massive pop star Ariana Grande might be her most fully realized material yet. With production cooperation from Pharrell Williams and a bunch of recognised sound mixers, the Top 40-aspiring songs that compose it feel sweet and easy on the ears but also a bit challenging and surprisingly elevated with some micro-twists and winks for the more demanding listeners. The artist feels emotional, vulnerable but, most of all, in complete sense of her powers and enforcements. It's a giant step into a technically interesting direction.

Tracks I like the most: the light is coming, sweetener, no tears left to cry, God is a woman

Tracks I like the least: everytime, borderline

Artist: Ariana Grande

Country: United States

Album: Sweetener

Released: 17/08/2018

Genres: Pop, Electronic, R&B, Trap, Vocal, Synth-Pop

Length: 47:25

We Out Here - We Out Here

Score: 7.7 

The collective formed by the most arresting and talked-about new voices of London contemporary jazz scene known as We Out Here delivers its first full-length project. It surely demonstrates a community of genre-pushing, rhythm-addicted and flow-mesmerised performers that mix what makes the best of both the old times and the new. Syncopated and perched at delirium as it usually is and stands for, the exquisiteness and psychedelia submerge but never dive too deep in the songs, and maybe that's why the majority of them succeeds in showcasing their first and most prominent aim: to express how 21st-century England music tends to be and seems it will continue to be.

Tracks I like the most: Pure Shade, Once, Brockley, Walls

Tracks I like the least: Black Skin, Black Masks

Artist: We Out Here

Country: United Kingdom

Album: We Out Here

Released: 09/02/2018

Genres: Contemporary Jazz, Jazz Fusion, Instrumental

Length: 54:38

Izaak Opatz - Mariachi Static

Score: 7.6 

The newest release from folk singer-songwriter Izaak Opatz is an enduring, enhancing collection of trepidations and misfortunes retold in the shape of cantics and whiskey-driven anecdotes about a past loved one, one that possibly failed to commute or connect with the artist. For the most part of its almost 40 minutes, the pace of the record is calmly maintained by stiff, raw and pastoral instrumentation, playful lyricism and a strange bittersweet relief at the venerations of solitude and loneliness. 

Tracks I like the most: Not Yet, Read Between Your Lines, Got To Me Since

Tracks I like the least: One Way Or Another

Artist: Izaak Opatz

Country: United States

Album: Mariachi Static

Released: 27/07/2018

Genres: Indie Rock, Indie Folk, Americana, Singer-Songwriter

Length: 37:56