New releases last two weeks: Indie/Alternative

Review: Tune-Yards return with their sixth album, and it's one of their most rhythmically infectious to date. Created by Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner in a post-pandemic haze, Better Dreaming embraces danceable liberation, self-love and anti-fascist joy and it is all inspired by a desire to move, both physically and emotionally. Grooves run deep here as lyrics confront modern chaos and encourage dancing through the dark and dreaming of better futures. The duo let songs flow with raw instinct and reconnect with their early drum-loop roots, meaning that the result is a fresh, funk-laced art-pop record that works on the body as well as the mind.

Review: Xmal Deutschland commemorate their influential 4AD years (1983-1984) with a brand new release, literally presenting us with Gift. The collection celebrates the band's profound impact on British audiences in the early 80s, marked by a unique and half-devised lyrical language, as well as a magnetic feminine mystique commandeered by the women in the group. Their breakthrough support slot with Cocteau Twins accompanied the first two albums to come out via 4AD, which grabbed audiences by the collective ear with a painter's stroke of hard-graded darkwave and goth. Gift brims with a penumbral presence, while the titular "gift" is intended as pharmakon, both a present and a poison; Xmal's music is appropriately contradictory and complex, skating thin ices of beauty and elusivity. This limited-edition 3xLP boxset includes Abbey Road remasters of their albums Fetisch and Tocsin, along with tracks from related releases like Incubus Succubus II and Qual, packaged with striking artwork and a photo booklet. The magic of Xmal Deutschland lingers like radiation and has an indelible half-life.