On Rotation: Our pick of September’s Album Releases

Sometimes it feels like there’s no way out of the mad maze of the world right now. Thank God for the music, right? Last month saw some outstanding albums released, some looking inwards, others seeking to address the insanity around us. So, without further ado, here’s September’s On Rotation.

The Black Angels
Wilderness Of Mirrors
(Partisan)
They know the push and pull of the world around us and that, to confront and take down a system that binds us, we must come together. There is a fire ready to burn within the heart of the band, the embers are still glowing, sparks flickering, ready to ignite in an inferno and burn the modern horrorshow to ashes. Although guitarist Christian Bland has said that they leave their music open to interpretation, this time they are spelling it out – a reflection on exactly where we are, and the dire consequences that we face. The album straddles perfectly the divide between impenetrable fuzz-punching drive and scintillating psych, reverential to their home city’s musical heritage, a torch passed that continues to light fires.
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Suede
Autofiction
(BMG)
Ever since their resurrection in 2013, with the first of the trilogy, Bloodsports, Suede have been consistently the best ‘cult band’ in the UK. Although Britpop stars, they retain an outsider quality, yet can sell-out tours in minutes and overshadow bands with bigger ‘profiles’ at festivals. A loyal, passionate fanbase and a wider appeal, Suede are in a unique position: veterans and survivors who genuinely seem to be at a second creative peak that has lasted nine years now. Autofiction is every bit as good as you imagined it would be. Better even. An album of the year and an album to treasure for life. It really does contain all the bombast, swells and drama of the orchestral classical music so beloved by Brett’s father, but also an intimacy wrapped up in the intensity.
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Experiment 637
Sleepwater
(Learn Fear)
A year that’s flying by has seen some great releases this year and Experiment 637’s debut easily drifts in to the flock of beautiful music that is gracing our ears in these times. An astonishing piece of craft that floats along with fractured melody. This album is the drug you need. No side effects, just a shot of spine-tingling numbers that take the worries from life away in the form of nine excellent tracks of pleasure. At times it borders on what Thom Yorke does with later Radiohead and his new project The Smile. Haunting stuff. The brilliantly named Experiment 637 have fired themselves into the ring of contenders of great future bands breaking the old mould of the “lad bands’. One of the albums of the year.
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The Beths
Expert In A Dying Field
(Carpark)
Bursting with exquisite harmonies, chiming, fizzing guitars and drums, poignant, articulate lyrics, and enough hooks to snag fleet of flying fish, Kiwi quartet, The Beths’ 3rd album, Expert in a Dying Field, is another 12-track platter of peerless indie power-pop, infused with a haunted poet’s insight. Both as joyous as morning sunlight and as melancholic as the first fallen leaves of autumn, featuring a band at the height of their powers, and a singer/songwriter and lyricist in Liz Stokes of rare melodic skill, empathy and insight, The Beths’ third album shifts between frentic panic attack paranoid punk pop and lilting ballads beguiled no doubt by a voice that bonds the listener to the song and to the band with a rare intimacy.
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Armoured Flu Unit
The Mighty Roar
(Grow Your Own)
Grow Your Own Records is the gift that keeps on giving – and the brand new album from Armoured Flu Unit is no exception. The Mighty Roar is exactly that; a rip-roaring ten-song charge that kicks against the pricks, poking all and sundry in the eye with a shitty stick. Armoured Flu Unit are a fascist killing machine from the south coast and they don’t fuck about. The Mighty Roar is an intense call to arms, pent-up bottled anger that spills over and ignites the frustration within you. There’s an anticipated excitement as soon as the needle hits the wax, and there’s no disappointment from start to finish – all killer, no filler.
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Karen
Karen
(Raving Pop Blast/Old Bad Habits)
Perfect, old-school indie guitar pop – from an English variation on the Modern Lovers perhaps. Maybe the whole idea of Karen -the band, was to recapture something of the ‘early days’ of The Brilliant Corners, that buzz of turning off-the-cuff ideas into proper songs and having fun with it before the whole ‘business’-side came in… Maybe it was just three middle-aged men mucking about with song ideas Davey Woodward rejected for his ‘serious’ band the Winter Orphans…. (mere conjecture M’lud – why doesn’t the writer actually ASK Mr Woodward?) Whatever Karen is – it’s an overwhelming, life-affirming success and just a brilliant album for and by veterans of the Indie-Pop Wars.
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For all our album reviews and our On Rotation monthly roundups, head over here.

Source: louderthanwar.com