





6: Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation – Sacred Dreams
Rating: 7.5/10 – Read full review




10: Various artists – For The Throne (Music Inspired by the HBO Series Game of Thrones)
Rating: 7/10 – Read full review
6: Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation – Sacred Dreams
Rating: 7.5/10 – Read full review
10: Various artists – For The Throne (Music Inspired by the HBO Series Game of Thrones)
Rating: 7/10 – Read full review
Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation beat the not-too-stiff competition this week, while Game of Thrones pulled off yet anther of its trademark shockers by not producing a complete disaster of a pop album.
Spotify playlist at the bottom.
Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation – Sacred Dreams
A psychadelic trip through the realms of electro-pop and lazy, hazy country blues desertscapes.
Rating: 7.5/10 – Read full review
Various Artists – For The Throne (Music Inspired by the HBO Series Game of Thrones)
A collection of pop tunes based on the smash TV series. Provides an absolute shocker by not being a complete disaster.
Rating: 7/10 – Read full review
Otoboke Beaver – Itekoma Hits
Spiky Japanese girl-punk. It’s sometimes tricky to follow the thread of the tracks but satisfyingly aggressive at times.
Rating: 6.5/10
The Cranberries – In The End
Emotional farewell from the band that carries many of the sounds that made them famous, but with a more mature and sombre edge.
Rating: 6.5/10
Mammoth Penguins – There’s No Fight We Can’t Both Win
Catchy indie-pop from this Cambridgeshire tiro, but the hooks and vocals fail to set the band apart from their many contemporaries.
Rating: 6.5/10
Marissa Nadler & Stephen Brodsky – Droneflower
Initally promising sparse and atmospheric folk-rock, but the album fails to kick on as hoped.
Rating: 6/10
Catfish & The Bottlemen – The Balance
Radio-friendly indie rock, not unpleasant to listen to, but hardly inspiring.
Rating: 6/10
Guided By Voices – Warp and Woof
24 songs in 37 minutes on this soft alt-rock album with the occasional hint of Bowie and country.
Rating: 6/10
Bear’s Den – So that you might hear me
Bland indie-folk, heard it a thousand times before.
Rating: 5/10
Here’s a playlist of all of the above if you want to listen to this week’s selected new releases.
This is the third studio album from Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation, and while it’s not a perfect piece of pop, there’s enough sophistication here to make it stand out from the rest of this week’s releases.
Sacred Dreams takes us through the realms of electro-pop and lazy, hazy country blues desertscapes – all with a dash of psychedelia thrown in.
The album does feel a little front loaded, as most of the best moments feature early on. Opener Feel The Sun borrows heavily on the Goldfrapp model of crowd-pleasing blissful pop. Then follows an unnecessarily early keyboard and effect laden interlude before we are hit with standout track I Can Feel It, featuring a pounding bass drum, incessant keyboard tones and layered harmonics. The hypnotic chorus is fabulous.
The danceable electro-pop theme continues with Desire, Öhrn’s breathy vocal style working particularly well here with the french lyrics in the verses.
The second act of the album signals a change of pace – Hey Little Boy is a slower track with a country blues feel to the guitar work, though there’s still a hint of pulsating synth to be found.
Only Lovers leans heavily on a spacious folky acoustic guitar to match the echo-laden vocal and moves away from the beat-driven tracks before it. The tempo ups slightly with Baby Come On, a blues-rock number featuring some interesting keyboard work and good layering of sound.
However, things start to get a little flabby towards the end. New Horizons is a fairly standard low-key pop number, while Let It Come and Whatever You Want don’t really add anything extra.
The main saving grace of the latter part of the album is Caramel Head, that uses lazy, hazy slide guitar to let you drift away to another plane.
It’s not going to be my album of the year, or even the month, but I reckon some of these tracks will stay with me for some time.
Release date: 26 April 2019
Rating: 7.5/10
Standout track: I Can Feel It
For fans of:
A few more items of interest here than last week. Really looking forward to the new one from Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation after being impressed by their performance at Mutations Festival earlier this year. There’s also an emotional release from The Cranberries, completed after the untimely death of lead singer Dolores O’Riordan. I’ve literally no idea what I’m going to make of the Game of Thrones-inspired collection of artists on For The Throne, but it may be good for a laugh. Hope Ed Sheeran‘s little ditty is on there.
Spotify playlist at the bottom.
Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation – Sacred Dreams
The Cranberries – In The End
Various Artists – For The Throne (Music Inspired by the HBO Series Game of Thrones)
Catfish & The Bottlemen – The Balance
Otoboke Beaver – Itekoma Hits
Marissa Nadler & Stephen Brodsky – Droneflower
Guided By Voices – Warp and Woof
Mammoth Penguins – There’s No Fight We Can’t Both Win
Bear’s Den – So that you might hear me
Here’s a playlist of all of the above if you want to listen to this week’s selected new releases.