Mom & Pop Music US Vinyl & CDs

Review: On her new album, End of The Day (Music From The Film Anonymous Club), Courtney Barnett opted to score music to the candid documentary she made about her personal travails and hard-fought triumphs. It documented her journey from the bottom to the top of the indie rock scene over the course of the last ten years and follows a classic redemption arc with the score adding all new levels of emotional intensity and narrative. Alongside collaborator Stella Mozgawa, she made a series of instrumental improvisations which have been reworked into one impressionistic sound-art collage.

Review: Electric life-givers, MGMT, return for their fifth album Loss Of Life. Shockingly, it's been six years since 2018's Little Dark Age, in which the duo proved their capacity to evolve beyond the pale of their earliest electro-pop singles. Here, they adapt even further, enlisting the help of a well-selected cast of familiar faces - Christine & The Queens, Danger Mouse, Dave Fridmann, James Richardson, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Patrick Wimberly - all while declaring the project to be the yield of a calculated fusion: "20% adult contemporary" plus an unspecified amount of hero's journey subversion. From the standout single 'Dancing In Babylon' through to more esoteric twin sonic flames like 'Nothing To Declare' and 'Nothing Changes', this feels like an album dedicated to lost causes, overobsession with singular life trajectories, and moving through hard times.