Short

After a brief hiatus our best albums of the month round-up is back

Music went to sleep in November and December you see

It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these. We didn’t gather together our favourite albums from November (it was very quiet) and December (too busy doing our albums of the year), so there’s been a bit of a break. However, it’s January 2019, and we’re ready to hit the year like Gemma Collins face-planting on Dancing On Ice. In truth, like a car engine that doesn’t want to start first time in the pissing cold, things are still just getting going. February and March releases already look much busier. But here they are, our six favourite albums released in January 2019 and what our writers made of them.

Artist: Sharon Van Etten
Title: Remind Me Tomorrow
Label: Jagjaguwar
What is it? Five years on, the New Jersey artist delivers the synth/piano-leaning follow-up to the (almost) insurmountable ‘Are We There’.
L&Q says: “While the album may not be immediately striking it is one that makes an indelible mark on you over time.”

Read Sarah Lay’s full review

Artist: Deerhunter
Title: Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?
Label: 4AD
What is it? Eight albums into a diverse career, Bradford Cox still keeps us guessing with an Deerhunter album that does the unlikeliest of things – gets political.
L&Q says: “Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?’ justifies its own existence by taking a carefully considered and multi-faceted approach to the world around it.”

Read Joe Goggins’ full review

Artist: The Twilight Sad
Title: It Won/t Be Like This All The Time
Label: Rock Action
What is it? Half a decade since their last album the Scottish band have been through a turbulent spell. Far from shy away from it, they’ve turned that energy into their most vital LP to date.
L&Q says: “The kind of infectious songs built for performance in gargantuan outdoor stadiums, all instantly chantable choruses and heroically soaring guitars.”

Read Sam Walton’s full review

Artist: Lorelle Meets The Obsolete
Title: De Facto
Label: Sonic Cathedral
What is it? Prolific Mexican duo Lorena Quintanilla and Alberto Gonzalez continue to take psych rock to all manner of weird and wonderful places.
L&Q says: “There’s a hypnosis around their music, a buzzy resonance that makes you long for the physical immersion of a live show. Masters of cerebral transportation.”

Read Chris Watkeys’s full review

Artist: Gum Takes Tooth
Title: Arrow
Label: Rocket Recordings
What is it? Deft, carefully-crafted anxiety, repurposed as defiant, clinically fucked-off bombast from London electronic duo Jussi Brightmore and Tom Fug.
L&Q says: “Ten years on from forming, Gum Takes Tooth have produced easily their most emphatic statement to date.”

Read Brian Coney’s full review

Artist: William Tyler
Title: Goes West
Label: Merge
What is it? “While a lot of Tyler’s fourth album of pastoral instrumentals for guitar sticks to the same tried-and-tested widescreen elegiac melodicism, this time an uneasy sense of suspicion peppers proceedings – Trump.”
L&Q says: “He may have upped sticks and gone west as the title suggests, but that distance has imbued his interpretations of home with poignancy.”

Read Sam Walton’s full review