WORTH A LOOK?: *****
OUT: now
Hurts reveal their best song since the track that launched them – Wonderful Life in 2009 – from a new album out in just over a month.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
OUT: now
Both Dua Lipa and Lady Gaga have enjoyed rapturously received returns to releasing music in 2020 during a curious pandemic period when their euphoric and uplifting dance albums have proved just the tonic that the world is looking for.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2
OUT: now
We saw Little Boots (pictured above) twice in May 2012 (once headlining at XOYO and once supporting the Scissor Sisters at 02 Shepherds Bush Empire) and since that happy fortnight we’ve not seen her perform live again.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
OUT: now
‘I’ve known Youth for 20 years or so. We live up in the same mountain here in southern Spain in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. I’m not mad on industrial, metal dub and trance so it seemed only right and proper that, at weird times like this, I would do something unthinkable, like work together with Youth’, says Blow Monkeys frontman Dr Robert.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
OUT: now
If debut Hurts album Happiness was about love and loss and its follow up (Exile) about sex and death, then the new material we’ve heard from fifth album Faith (out 4/9/20) feels like a return to the lyrical themes that made their name.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
OUT: now
Folk singer Anne Briggs may seem a curious choice to cover for the first solo single by Scritti Politti lead singer Green Gartside.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
OUT: now
Last year Ella had a top 10 hit with Jax Jones as a featured artist on his song This Is Real and the tropical house of this new self-penned single feels like a conscious decision to try to repeat that success.
WORTH A LISTEN?: ****
OUT: now
Former Alcazar frontman Carlsson references two of his biggest Melodifestivalen hits in this positive, high-energy tale of coming out and finding happiness which is, appropriately, this year’s Stockholm Pride anthem.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
OUT: now
Regular readers of monstagigz will be familiar with Swedish singer songwriter Dotter, real name Johanna Jansson, not least through bringing her idiosyncratic brand of indie pop to the last four Melodifestivalens.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
OUT: now
Lockdown might mean there’s a great deal of life people are missing out on but dealing with it by declaring ‘bring it on’ through gritted teeth might be the best way to sum up the sentiment here.
