Tom Cunliffe – Spit Out Your Gum (13th Floor Album Review)
The Londoner turned music making New Zealander, Tom Cunliffe, is releasing his fourth outing, titled Spit Out Your Gum. It’s a warm and intimate album, glittering with folk sound.
Hoop — Wrap Me Up in Winter (13th Floor Album Review)
Hoop’s Wrap Me Up in Winter is a quietly resonant mini-album that offers warmth, intimacy and a clear social conscience.
Dropper – Be A Little Kinder (Particle Recordings) (13th Floor Album Review)
Te Whanganui-a-Tara band Dropper release their debut album Be a Little Kinder. The Particle Recordings release sees the band show resilience through despair (and plenty of raw guitars and melody).
The Salt Collective – A Brief History Of Blindness (Propeller) (13th Floor Album Review)
Power-pop supergroup The Salt Collective are due to release their sophomore album A Brief History of Blindness this week. With as many special guests on this release as there are tracks (if not more), you’ll hear collaborated guitar pop songs on here that might just give you a familiar taste of days come before.
The Bros. Landreth – Dog Ear (Birthday Cake) (13th Floor Album Review)
On Dog Ear, The Bros. Landreth continue their growth from a technically gifted roots outfit into something warmer, wider and more generous.
The Avett Brothers & Mike Patton — AVTT/PTTN (Thirty Tigers) (13th Floor Album Review)
Some collaborations feel engineered. Some feel accidental. AVTT/PTTN by The Avett Brothers & Mike Patton feels like a doorway opening between two worlds that never expected to meet. It is the kind of project that sounds improbable until you hear it, and then it feels strangely inevitable.
Pavement – PAVEMENTS OST (Matador) (13th Floor Album Review)
Legendary indie-rockers Pavement have made their way to the silver screen with the Alex Ross Perry directed experimental-musical-concert-biopic film Pavements. While the soundtrack has been floating around on streaming services for a few months, it is making its eventual release to LP and CD this Friday.
The Saints – ’73-’78 – Live Nights In Venice Vol. 1 (In The Red) (13th Floor EP Review)
The Saints ’73–’78 is an initiative driven by Ed Kuepper, focusing on the first three albums and debuting in Australia in November 2024.
Dick Move – Dream, Believe, Achieve (1:12 / Flying Nun Records) (13th Floor Album Review)
Unfiltered, Explosive, Political, Punk. Dick Move’s latest album Dream, Believe, Achieve, is a giant fuck you to the current political climate in Aotearoa and beyond.
Sabine McCalla – Don’t Call Me Baby (Gar Hole) (13th Floor Album Review)
Sabine McCalla released her debut album Don’t Call Me Baby last week. Released on the independent US label Gar Hole Records, the LP is a remarkable statement of multi-genre American roots music.
Beastwars – The Ship// The Sea (Destroy Records) (13th Floor Album Review)
The Ship// The Sea is Beastwars sixth album, as with previous offering, the artwork is once again by Nick Keeler, (a mighty image it is too) and the music produced by James Goldsmith and Nathan Hickey, who have handled members’ creative egos since 2016.
Paul Kelly – Seventy (Universal) (13th Floor Album Review)
Paul Kelly’s latest album, Seventy, arrives amid whispers that it may be his last, capping a spectacular 50-year career. If this is his final statement, how does it stand as an epitaph?
Portugal. The Man – SHISH (Thirty Tigers) (13th Floor Album Review)
Portugal. The Man are throwing their latest eclectic offering SHISH out into the world this Friday. The Grammy winning band, consisting of just two primary members, are back to their independent roots after their departure from Atlantic Records.
Sam Cullen – Sam Cullen (13th Floor Album Review)
If an album of music is a journey, then Sam Cullen’s self-titled debut album is a journey back in time.
Sorry – Cosplay (Domino) (13th Floor Album Review)
Sorry’s third album Cosplay feels like the moment they stop trying to explain themselves.
Theia — Girl, In A Savage World (13th Floor Album Review)
Theia doesn’t ease you in. Girl, In A Savage World opens with drone, breath, water and chant, and you feel as if you are entering a ceremony.
Mavis Staples – Sad And Beautiful World (Nonesuch) (13th Floor Album Review)
Rhythm-and-blues-meets-gospel-royalty Mavis Staples puts out her latest (and 14th) studio album Sad And Beautiful World this Friday. It’s a beautiful expression of the grim times we are living in and how love can bring us out of the fold.
Blair Morgan – Sunday River (Blair Morgan Music) (13th Floor Album Review)
Sunday River is Blair Morgan’s first studio album released under his own name and, you might ask, what took him so long?
The Charlatans – We Are Love (BMG) (13th Floor Album Review)
The Charlatans have returned with their 14th album, We Are Love, after an eight-year hiatus. The core question: Was it worth the wait?
Helium Project – Rino Tangi (Steel that Sings) (13th Floor EP Review)
On Rino Tangi (Steel that Sings), Tāmaki Makaurau’s Helium Project transform Gary Hunt’s hand-forged percussion sculptures, created by the former punk drummer, into instruments that gleam, sigh and resonate with a musicality that is central to the project’s warmth.