Image: Graham Tolbert

Welcome to the new music review where we connect you with some of the best new music spinning on Breakfast, The Daily and Drive programs.

ALBUMS:

Tune-Yards – sketchy. (FEATURE ALBUM)
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Anna Fox Rochinski – Cherry
Bull – Discover Effortless Living
Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg
Flock of Dimes – Head of Roses
Nathan Roche – Drink Up, Rainforest Sinatra
Moontype – Bodies of Water

SINGLES:
The Holy Soul – 747
John Grant – Boy from Michigan
LT – Hold Ya
Ratboys – Go Outside
Ryan Downey – Contact
Telenova – Bones

When asked in a recent New York Times profile how she could be so prolific and inspired during lockdown, Jenn Wasner (aka Flock of Dimes) recommended that other artists “try being completely eviscerated by heartbreak“. Head of Roses – Wasner’s second solo album outside of her work fronting Wye Oak – is a complex and moody break-up album, full of complex time signatures and dense arrangements of horns and synth, that explores love and melancholia in a year of isolation. Brimming with intelligence and striking at the heart of a relationship’s end, this is Wasner’s most accomplished yet.

Dry Cleaning frontwoman Florence Shaw didn’t have experience making music before being asked by her band to speak-sing her poems over their music – and, to a certain extent, you can tell. Her emotionless sprechgesang over icy basslines and electronic drums will almost certainly remind you of the dourness of Joy Division, but Shaw’s sense for humour and storytelling lifts this post-punk record into something much more fun and danceable.

If David Bowie had been born in far north Queensland, he’d probably make an album like Drink Up, Rainforest Sinatra. Though now based in Marseilles, there’s an Australian swagger in Nathan Roche’s stoner-logic lyrics, big fuzzed-out guitars, and sultry vocals that give this psychedelic rock album an infectious charisma.