Ben Chavasse – Boxing (13th Floor Album Review)
Tamaki-Makarau-based indie-folk artist Ben Chavasse is no stranger to honing his craft. Having won Smokefree Rockquest at age 16, he’s been slowly refining it ever since – and now, he’s stepped triumphantly into the open with his debut album, Boxing, an impressive 10-track compilation. The album is produced by Ben and Michael Luke Howell, who […]
The Third Mind – Right Now! (Yep Roc) (13th Floor Album Review)
From the opening notes of Right Now! it’s clear that The Third Mind have once again captured the thrill of discovery in real time. Their third studio album is a dynamic dialogue between musicians, eras, and every earlier version of these songs that these fearless improvisers now claim them as their own.
Joan Shelley – Real Warmth (No Quarter) (13th Floor Album Review)
Joan Shelley writes songs that feel like places you can step inside: quiet rooms, wooded trails, a friend’s porch at dusk. With Real Warmth she invites us into the most welcoming space she’s built yet. It’s an album of home, connection, and slow-burning growth, recorded live in the dead of a cold Toronto winter yet filled with […]
Carson McHone – Pentimento (Merge) (13th Floor Album Review)
Carson McHone’s fourth album Pentimento arrives like a living manuscript, its pages alive with shifting landscapes, salt air, and the grain of skin.
Scarlet Rae – No Heavy Goodbyes (Bayonet) (13th Floor EP Review)
Every so often an artist emerges who feels both familiar and utterly distinct. Scarlet Rae, born in Los Angeles and now based in New York, is one of those.
Dead Famous People – Wild Young Ways (Tiny Global) (13th Floor Album Review)
Dead Famous People… their story is a pop parable. Formed in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland in the mid-1980s by the singularly gifted Dons Savage, they quickly shone with two Flying Nun EPs and Savage’s backing vocals graced The Chills’ Heavenly Pop Hit.
BB & The Bullets – High Tide (Dixiefrog Records) (13th Floor Album Review)
It’s no mean feat to put out a debut long player, but to do so through a well-respected overseas indie label has to be viewed as a triumph.
Sydney Minsky Sargeant – Lunga (Domino) (13th Floor Album Review)
Sydney Minsky Sargeant, his debut solo album, Lunga, represents a sharp departure from the taut, electronic bite of his previous work as Working Men’s Club. Recorded over several years, it drifts between pastoral folk, ambient interludes, and occasional bursts of intensity. At its best, it offers a glimpse of Minsky Sargeant stripped back and vulnerable; […]
Rhian Sheehan & Arli Liberman -Traces (Loop) (13th Floor Album Review)
Sweeping, layered sound panoramas prevail on Traces, a collaboration between Rhian Sheehan and Arli Liberman. It’s all a wonderfully other-worldly journey: music to take us places beyond the usual.
IVY – Hush (Velvet The Label) (13th Floor Album Review)
Ivy is one of those bands whose beginnings may sound humble and ordinary, but whose debut album Hush, surges with scale and ambition.
Grant-Lee Phillips – In the Hour of Dust (Yep Roc) (13th Floor Album Review)
Grant-Lee Phillips is a songwriter who moves between the intimate and the expansive. From the widescreen alt-rock of Grant Lee Buffalo to the quieter folk of his solo records, he places private anxieties within a larger frame of history, myth and politics. In the Hour of Dust, his twelfth solo album, continues in that spirit.
El Michels Affair – 24 Hr Sports (Big Crown) (13th Floor Album Review)
Leon Michels and his El Michels Affair are about to release 24 Hr Sports featuring appearances from Norah Jones, Shintaro Sakamoto, Florence Adooni, Rogê, and Dave Guy, as well as a prominent sample of the late Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Is it worth waiting for? Here is The 13th Floor’s Jeff Neems with an advance listen.
Blood Orange – Essex Honey (Domino) (13th Floor Album Review)
Dev Hynes, otherwise known as Blood Orange, has made an impressive comeback with his freshest album, Essex Honey. His fifth studio album, this might be one of his most moving releases yet – from a sonic and lyrical standpoint, it’s for the most part a chill, contemplative masterpiece that seduces listeners.
Adam Hattaway & The Haunters – Hot Variety (13th Floor Album Review)
Adam Hattaway and the Haunters return with Hot Variety, a stripped-back, emotionally resonant collection that distills their genre-hopping journey from indie rock to country soul into one of their most immediate records yet.
Anna Tivel – Animal Poem (Fluff and Gravy) (13th Floor Album Review)
Anna Tivel has always blurred the line between songwriting and poetry. With each record she refines her ability to draw whole worlds in her lyrical stories, finding light and sorrow in equal measure.
Big Thief – Double Infinity (4AD) (13th Floor Album Review)
Big Thief… their Double Infinity is a record of continuity and rupture, intimacy and expansion. It feels like their most communal work, stitched together with the voices and playing of friends from the experimental, ambient, and folk underground, while also weaving the precise and universal into the lyric detail.
Captain Festus McBoyle – The Prose and Cons (Manic Music) (13th Floor Album Review)
Captain Festus McBoyle claims to be “NZ rockers and punks who are now producing palatable Family Music which offers More Grit, Less Sugar”. The 13th Floor’s Alex Robertson passes judgement.
Pearly* – Not So Sweet (Leather Jacket/Pinacolada)(13th Floor Album Review)
Otepoti/Dunedin band Pearly* have certainly made a splash since releasing their debut Pearly*EP in April 2024, and wowing crowds at nationwide festivals including Port Noise (March) and Junk Festival (June) both this year.
Georgia Lines – The Guest House (13th Floor EP Review)
Georgia Lines sings with a voice that feels both delicate and commanding, as quiet as a whisper caught between piano notes and as powerful as a line soaring above sweeping arrangements. With The Guest House, she reaffirms her ability to move between tenderness and strength while embracing new textures and greater rhythmic variety.
Margo Price – Hard Headed Woman (Loma Vista) (13th Floor Album Review)
“I’m high as the heavens and stubborn as hell. I ain’t ashamed, I’m just a hard-headed woman.” Margo Price states her case succinctly on the opening track of this, her fifth studio album, Hard Headed Woman.