Archives for November 2011

BBC Album Reviews Editor Mike Diver selects his favourite LPs of November 2011...

Drum roll, please: Now, that's what I call the best albums of November... at least until I look back in a year and realise I've omitted a couple of humdingers. Happens all the time. Nevertheless, below are some of the month's very best new album releases. This is my last monthly round-up of 2011 - instead of a similar entry for December, the BBC Music Blog will host the BBC Music Writers' Best Albums of 2011, compiled from votes cast by our many critics. Look out for that at the end of this week.

My album of the month

Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica

(Software, released 7 November)

Recommended by: Late Junction

"Oneohtrix Point Never's Daniel Lopatin distinguishes himself from the current glut of analogue worshippers lazily setting their impotent tribute before the altars of John Carpenter and Cluster. While they seem content to wallow in shallow retrospection, Lopatin voyages on beyond the merely mimetic. Replica recognises the value of disenfranchised pasts, but redesigns our barely-there reminiscences to imbue a singular vision with the subliminal effects of the lost."

Read the full BBC review

Watch the official video for Replica (external YouTube link)

The best of the rest

Atlas Sound - Parallax

(4AD, released 7 November)

Recommended by: 6 Music Album of the Day, Marc Riley

"Parallax is Deerhunter vocalist Bradford Cox's most coherent solo record to date - but nothing is quite what it seems in his world. Yet, whichever way you look at him, he is currently the most gifted, fascinating and beguiling songwriter around, as well as the most prolific. There's only one Bradford Cox, but how badly we need more of his ilk."

Read the full BBC review

Listen to the track Terra Incognita on 4AD's official YouTube channel (external link)

- - -

The Dø - Both Ways Open Jaws

(Village Green, released 14 November)

Recommended by: Nick Grimshaw, Lauren Laverne, Bethan Elfyn, 6 Music Album of the Day

"An easy genre-tag is impossible, as this second album from the French-Finnish duo - tipped to wow Britain - leaps between hip hop and folk, rock and glitches. Strings, horns, chants and electronica interweave seamlessly. The Dø gracefully pull off the kind of intriguing 'oddness' the likes of Florence Welch strain and wheeze for, and with better tunes."

Read the full BBC review

Watch the official video for Too Insistent (external YouTube link)

- - -

Kate Bush - 50 Words for Snow

(Fish People, released 21 November)

Recommended by: Jarvis Cocker, Bethan Elfyn, 6 Music Album of the Day

"Six years after Aerial's bursts of summer sound, Kate Bush's winter album arrives, each track exploring the long Christmas months. They reflect a season which brings out the profound and absurd in equal measure - the feelings of longing and loneliness that emerge as the dark nights bed in, the party-hat silliness that pops up when the same nights stretch out. It treads an exceedingly fine line between the sublime and the ridiculous - but this is classic Kate behaviour."

Read the full BBC review

Watch the official still video for the radio edit of Wild Man (external YouTube link)

- - -

Luke Haines - Nine and a Half Psychic Meditations on British Wrestling of the 1970s and Early '80s

(Fantastic Plastic, released 7 November)

"Nine and a Half Psychedelic Meditations... is, perhaps, a work of art about the ordinary person's ability to reinvent themselves, and the sad fact that that achievement doesn't necessarily mean that they won't spend most of their lives eating bad egg and chips in grim Midlands towns and being screamed at by psychopathic old ladies."

Read the full BBC review

Watch Luke Haines @ The Greasy Spoon (external YouTube link)

- - -

Cass McCombs - Humor Risk

(Domino, released 7 November)

Recommended by: 6 Music Album of the Day

"Humour Risk is as gorgeous as it is disturbing. The opening Love Thine Enemy reprises that Velvets-y two-chord throb while paraphrasing Tim Rose's fatalistic folk-blues Morning Dew, and The Living Word taps McCombs' Big Star Sister Lovers/Third album gene, the quintessential 4am-and-lost vibe, deadpan but not masking the pain."

Read the full BBC review

Watch the official video for The Same Thing (external YouTube link)

- - -

Chris Watson - El Tren Fantasma

(Touch, released 14 November)

Recommended by: Late Junction

"It's during the points of human absence that El Tren Fantasma works best. Here Watson's ability to create whole worlds, entire lifetimes in the listener's imagination, beyond the moment of recording, comes to the fore. Brushwood and tall grass sway beneath the breeze crossing canyon slopes, while constant cicada chatter is punctuated by the distinctive calls of woodpecker and crow."

Read the full BBC review

(No official video material available)

- - -

Tiny Ruins - Some Were Meant for Sea

(WooMe, released 14 November)

Recommended by: Gideon Coe, Tom Ravenscroft

"Whether or not you're sick of craning your neck to hear moulding singer-songwriter tales, there are pockets of interest aplenty to enjoy here. There are also forerunners aplenty to the style, but if anything works in Fullbrook's favour it's that she's obeyed the rules of the genre and managed to tautly weave her stories within it. So lean in close and pay attention to all those gorgeous vignettes - you'll be glad you did."

Read the full BBC review

(No official video material available)

- - -

Zomby - Nothing

(4AD, released 28 November)

Recommended by: Benji B

"A nebulous set of hyper-stoned musings on bass tethered together in the hard drive of one man's mind. Zomby loves overtly leaving his finger marks across the DNA of our dance scene, and it's becoming increasingly fun dusting his path for prints and watching his obsession swell with every break-in."

Read the full BBC review

(No official video material available)

- - -

Peter Broderick - Music for Confluence

(Erased Tapes, released 28 November)

Recommended by: Tom Ravenscroft

"Who would have thought the musical accompaniment to a film about a series of Idahoan murders could be so beautiful? There's such an abundance of fragile sweetness here - delicate piano arpeggios, whispered tones, glacial strings - that the incremental creep of wickedness pervading beneath the sleepy surface can go undetected, until you find yourself fully entangled in its hex."

Read the full BBC review

(No official video material available)

Ahead of the announcement of The Sound of 2012 longlist, coming soon, BBC Album Reviews Editor Mike Diver takes a look at the fortunes of the acts that made up The Sound of 2011...

Want proof that us music critics aren't always in the right with our opinions on who's hot and who's not? Look no further than the yearly Sound of..., the winner of which is announced every January. While many winners - including Ellie Goulding, Little Boots, Adele, Mika and 50 Cent - have enjoyed success, albeit to very different levels, there are a number of names amongst the runners and riders that haven't exactly been bothering the charts on the regular. Anyone remember Air Traffic, tipped for big things in 2007? Their sole studio LP failed to break the top 40, and the Bournemouth band announced a hiatus in 2010. Dan Black and VV Brown were tipped beside Lady Gaga and Florence and the Machine in 2009 - guess which two of the four haven't really been heard from since. And in 2008 Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong made the list, but their debut album was scrapped shortly before its proposed August release and the band split in 2009. After NME had already reviewed it. Whoops.

As the music industry looks forward to the announcement of the longlist for 2012, published on bbc.co.uk/soundof/ this side of Christmas, let's look back at the 15 that made up 2011's list. Which have followed Adele into superstardom, and which have had less-than-brilliant years? You already know, don't you...

Nb. Metacritic is a website which collates scores from a number of album reviews to present an average score. BBC reviews are included in these scores. Find the website here (external link).

1: Jessie J

BBC Profile

Album review - Who You Are

Then: The Sound of 2011 winner, Essex girl Jessie J (real name Jessica Cornish) began the year surrounded by almost impenetrable buzz, generated by her single Do It Like a Dude - after the announcement that she'd won, the track climbed to a peak position of two, kept from the top spot by Bruno Mars' Grenade. By February it'd sold 300,000 copies. Prior to Do It Like a Dude's breakthrough success, Cornish had co-written tracks for the likes of Chris Brown and Miley Cyrus, and had seen an earlier album recorded but scrapped when her then-label, Gut, went bankrupt.

Now: Cornish's debut album, Who You Are, was released on 25 February and peaked at, like its lead single, number two in the UK. Twice-platinum, it's sold in excess of 600,000 copies - a figure higher than the rest of The Sound of 2011 longlisted artists' albums combined. It might not have fared brilliantly with the critics - Metacritic lists its average score as 51/100 - but Who You Are spawned two further top 10 hits, and the track Price Tag went right the way to the top with a little assistance from US rapper B.o.B. In August 2011 it'd sold 900,000 copies - one would guess that, by now, it's broken the million mark.

2: James Blake

BBC Profile

Album review - James Blake

Then: A rising dubstep producer with a handful of highly acclaimed tracks under his belt, not least of all the still-fresh CMYK, James Blake was an unlikely second-place act behind the overtly pop-centric Jessie J. But the combination of critical adoration in niche circles, plus an alluring cover of Feist's Limit to Your Love, which just cracked the UK top 40 in late 2010, ensured his place in The Sound of 2011.

Now: Blake's eponymous debut LP charted at nine domestically, and earned itself a Mercury Prize nomination. But despite a selection of positive appraisals - Metacritic scores it a highly respectable 81/100 - those who yearned for the upbeat side of Blake's catalogue were left cold by a collection that emphasised downbeat cuts over floor-fillers. A collaboration with Bon Iver, Fall Creek Boys Choir, was released in August. Blake stepped further away, still, from the dubstep scene with the Enough Thunder EP, released in October, which was closer to the electro-soul of fellow Sound of 2011 artist Jamie Woon than the fare that'd established his reputation in 2010.

3: The Vaccines

BBC Profile

Album review - What Did You Expect from the Vaccines?

Then: So fresh that they'd only formed in the January of the same year, London indie-rockers The Vaccines released their debut single in November 2010 - Wreckin' Bar (Ra Ra Ra), backed by the track Blow It Up, picked up support from Radio 1's Zane Lowe and Q Magazine and charted at a respectable 157. Their second official single, Post-Break-Up Sex, was released on 24 January, a few weeks after they'd placed third on The Sound of 2011; it broke the top 40, and the band followed this success with a nomination in the Critics' Choice category at the BRIT Awards.

Now: The quartet's debut LP, What Did You Expect from the Vaccines?, debuted at four on the UK albums chart in March. Attracting generally favourable reviews, the record has a Metacritic score of 67/100. Its final single, Wetsuit, is to be released in December. Live, the band supported Arctic Monkeys at their massive Don Valley show in June; were the NME's favourite band of the Reading & Leeds weekend; and are currently on a year-end headline tour taking in two nights at London's Brixton Academy. A second album is expected in 2012.

4: Jamie Woon

BBC Profile

Album review - Mirrorwriting

Then: New to the mainstream perhaps, but at the turn of the year Jamie Woon was already well-known to those with their ears rather closer to the underground. An EP, Wayfaring Stranger, was released in 2007, and Woon's tasteful single Night Air, co-produced by Burial, came out in October 2010, charting within the top 75. Seen as an innovative artist taking soul in new directions, Woon's placement at four in The Sound of 2011 wasn't all that surprising: he was overdue such exposure.

Now: Woon's debut LP, Mirrorwriting, was released in April and peaked inside the UK top 20 - a Metacritic score of 69/100 represents a majority of favourable reviews. Since then, though, new recordings have been rather conspicuous by their absence - his last single, Lady Luck, charted at 76 in February. He earned a MOBO nomination in the best newcomer category - the award went to Jessie J. After playing the iTunes Festival in the summer, Woon had to cancel a number of live appearances due to a ruptured Achilles tendon. But now he's back on the road, taking in cities including New York, Barcelona and Amsterdam between now and the end of the year.

5: Clare Maguire

BBC Profile

Album review - Light After Dark

Then: Solihull singer/songwriter Clare Maguire signed to Polydor back in 2008, and soon began, alongside Ellie Goulding and Kylie Minogue collaborator Fraser T Smith, writing and recording what would eventually be her debut album, Light After Dark. An EP, Let's Begin, was released in October 2010, and Maguire's first single proper Ain't Nobody - certainly not to be confused with the Rufus classic - charted at 78 ahead of her placing at fifth on The Sound of 2011.

Now: Maguire's second single, The Last Dance, charted at 23 in February - her highest place on the UK singles chart to date. Its parent LP landed on 24 February and broke the UK top 10, but it was met by a largely negative critical response - 2/10 from NME, 3/10 from Drowned in Sound, 2/5 from the Guardian (it has a Metacritic average of 50/100). Her third single, The Shield and the Sword, barely made it into the top 100 in May. In the summer, Maguire road-tested a number of new songs expected to feature on her second album, which she claims will have a blues and soul sound, influenced by the likes of Johnny Cash.

And the rest...

Anna Calvi released her debut eponymous album (BBC review) on 24 January - it went on to be nominated for the 2011 Mercury Prize, and reached the UK top 40. A big critical hit, the album has a Metacritic score of 80/100 and is likely to feature in many of the year-end best-of lists soon to spread across the internet. Calvi has been busy on the live front in 2011, appearing at a wealth of festivals home and abroad.

Daley had a very quiet 2011, but has been active lately with his mixtape, Those Who Wait, receiving a PR push ahead of an album proper in 2012. The Manchester soul singer also appeared on Wretch 32's album, Black and White, released in August.

Esben and the Witch released their debut album, Violet Cries (BBC review), a week after Calvi's - a handful of great reviews have given it a Metacritic score of 64/100. The Brighton trio played festivals including Glastonbury, Latitude and South By Southwest in 2011, and released the Hexagons EP, featuring non-album material, in November. A second album is expected in 2012.

Jai Paul, like Daley, was quiet in 2011. Signed to XL, clearly he's not being rushed to deliver the goods. His track BTSTU, made available in April and his only official release of the year, was sampled by both Drake and Beyoncé, so clearly he has fans in high places. Only time will tell with regard to what he can achieve in 2012.

Mona, it's safe to say, bombed in 2011. Despite their Sound of 2011 placing and victory in MTV's Brand New for 2011 award, The Nashville four-piece failed to deliver on the pre-release promise of a band to genuinely rival Kings of Leon's good-time chart-friendly rock'n'roll. Replete with lyrical clichés and packing all the compositional inventiveness of an under-11s battle of the bands competition, Mona (the album) was slaughtered in the press. NME, the Guardian and the Independent called it out for what it was: quite, quite rubbish. Despite this, it charted at a respectable 39 in the UK, and Mona headlined London's Shepherds Bush Empire in October, so perhaps all is not lost. If they crawl back from the brink of irrelevance in 2012, Mona may win themselves several new friends.

Nero, active since 2004, took dubstep and drum and bass right to the top of the UK albums chart with their Welcome Reality debut of August (BBC review). The London duo's run of singles leading up to their LP pointed the way to such success, with the track Promises topping the chart just ahead of the album's release (albeit with the lowest first-week sales of any number one for almost two years). A Metacritic score of 67/100 for Welcome Reality illustrates that critics, as well as the general public, were quite taken with it.

The Naked and Famous' Passive Me, Aggressive You album (BBC review; Metacritic 72/100) was already a hit in their home country of New Zealand ahead of their appearance in The Sound of 2011, having topped their domestic albums chart in September 2010. The indie-rockers couldn't repeat the feat in the UK, but their well-received debut set still made a very respectable 25, and their great live performances have kept them in the thoughts of this country's gig-going public.

Warpaint were another indie outfit on The Sound of 2011 longlist to have a debut album already available, but the Los Angeles quartet had already seen their set, The Fool (BBC review), chart in the UK. Eventually peaking at 41 and with a Metacritic score of 77/100, The Fool propelled its makers through 2011, with them taking in festivals including Glastonbury and Leeds/Reading. A deluxe edition of The Fool was released in September, including the band's pre-album EP Exquisite Corpse (BBC review).

Wretch 32 has had an amazing year, with the Tottenham MC taking his rhymes into the mainstream, entering the UK singles chart top five three times in a row and bagging a number one with Don't Go. Said track's parent LP, Black and White (his second album; BBC review), peaked at four and has a very decent Metacritic score of 72/100.

Yuck had critics of a certain vintage clamouring to stamp their seals of approval all over their fresh faces, as the London-based four-piece evoked strong memories of Dinosaur Jr and Sonic Youth throughout 2011. Their retro-inspired but highly accomplished rock keeps itself on just the right side of pastiche, and a Metacritic score of 81/100 for their eponymous debut LP (BBC review) proves they had enough bite to win over the doubters.

Read more album reviews at BBC Music

The Sound of 2012 longlist will be published on bbc.co.uk/soundof/ soon

BBC Album Reviews editor Mike Diver selects his favourite LPs of October 2011...

October's always been a great month for new albums, and 2011's crop is another really rather brilliant one. So much so that I'm extending this round-up from 10 releases to 15, to accommodate a handful of extra treats for the listening gear.

My album of the month...

Björk - Biophilia

(One Little Indian; released 10 October)

Recommended by: 6 Music Album of the Day, Jo Whiley, Radcliffe & Maconie, Lauren Laverne

"Biophilia is a mesmerising album which confirms that Björk can weave dumfounding wonders from Silly String - whatever's placed before her, she can turn to her advantage, taking her audience on a trip the likes of which no other contemporary artist is capable of planning, let alone embarking on. In a word: amazing. Again."

Read the full BBC review

Watch the official video for Crystalline (external YouTube link)

The best of the rest...

Emika - Emika

(Ninja Tune; released 3 October)

Recommended by: Tom Robinson

"Though she's strongly influenced by dubstep, a movement the Anglo-Czech musician watched develop while living in Bristol, Emika's music doesn't require an intimate knowledge of underground dance culture, owing as much to the atmospheric experiments of another of Bristol's finest exports, Portishead. Mysterious and provocative, this album leaves you wanting more, even though you know it's sometimes rather troubling."

Read the full BBC review

Watch the official video for Professional Loving (external YouTube link)

- - -

9th Wonder - The Wonder Years

(It's a Wonderful World Music Group; released 10 October)

Recommended by: Semtex

"Charting his rise from the early days of jamming to Public Enemy at high school, to being picked up by Jay-Z, to winning a Grammy with Mary J Blige, to producing for Erykah Badu and Common, each rung of the ladder is reinforced by his sumptuous trademark soul samples and self-propelled loops. It's not simply a retrospective affair, but a calling card illustrating why this beat-maker wears a crown on his album cover."

Read the full BBC review

Watch a trailer for the documentary The Wonder Year, following a year in the life of 9th Wonder (external YouTube link; contains language which may offend)

- - -

Modeselektor - Monkeytown

(Monkeytown; released 3 October)

Recommended by: Tom Ravenscroft

"Modeselektor, in this writer's rave-ravaged opinion, forge the most intelligent, progressive, well-constructed dance music in the contemporary scene. Few dance albums can keep their soul for the duration, but with tracks featuring this many facets, ideas, genres and tempos, the duo romps home. Monkeytown is the sound of two men working in harmony, perfectly in control of their machines. And it may just be one of the albums of the year."

Read the full BBC review

Watch the official video for Shipwreck (featuring Thom Yorke) (external YouTube link)

- - -

New Look - New Look

(!K7; released 3 October)

Recommended by: Nick Grimshaw

"New Look's debut album is rare in how natural and effortless it sounds. Its structure is immaculate - its order so that influences are reimagined as a dream. Clipped beats and pop hooks come together with heart-wrenching power. This is an essential record made by two people with astonishing control, skill and knowledge; one which makes us proud of what music has done in the past 20 years, and just what it can now create."

Read the full BBC review

Watch the official video for Nap on the Bow (external YouTube link)

- - -

Wild Flag - Wild Flag

(Wichita; released 10 October)

Recommended by: Lauren Laverne

"Wild Flag's craft - honed and perfected during a spate of well received club shows - and the magic of this long-time-coming collaboration (the band's members have known each other for well over a decade) is here for all to hear. All of these tracks were captured live, except for the vocals, and the unabashed joy Timony, Brownstein, Weiss and Cole clearly experienced when finally playing together really comes across in the recordings. They practically sizzle when played."

Read the full BBC review

Watch the official video for Romance (external YouTube link)

- - -

Coldplay - Mylo Xyloto

(Parlophone; released 24 October)

Recommended by: Radio 2 Album of the Week, 6 Music Album of the Day, Greg James

"A brilliant, shiny and emphatic reinstatement of the euphoric hooks and cuddly ballads that have served the band so well. Case in point: Paradise, where melting strings and church organ feed into a brilliant chorus line that equal parts Fix You and Viva la Vida's title-track. But the main vocal chorus doesn't arrive until over two minutes in, building the tension; the pay-off is both simple and devastating. It's the equal of Yellow, and when Coldplay return to Glastonbury it will take the roof off the sky."

Read the full BBC review

Watch the official video for Paradise (external YouTube link)

- - -

Youth Lagoon - The Year of Hibernation

(Lefse Records; released 24 October)

"Youth Lagoon is Trevor Powers' outlet for explaining aspects of life he otherwise has a hard time discussing. So, typical problems to befall the confused and curious arise; the anxieties of a man not long out of childhood manifest in solid beats and crunching production. It's full of motifs that catch one off guard, which halt the progress of fingers on keys and steps on a street alike; lyrics that float like a knee-high mist around bare-bones arrangements of crackling delicacy."

Read the full BBC review

Watch the official video for Montana (external YouTube link)

- - -

Summer Camp - Welcome to Condale

(Apricot; released 31 October)

Recommended by: Rob da Bank, 6 Music Album of the Day

"With Pulp's Steve Mackey on production, Welcome to Condale has a stern bite, all bristling synths and ramped up, classic guitar licks soundtracking the artists' own world of twisted youth. And there's no doubting the intent that blazes through the individual songs on the record. The pair acts out power struggles between characters, dominating and demeaning, breaking up and getting back together with the cavalier flamboyance that fades in adult relationships. A debut that marks a sincere, wryly appealing turning point in the art of romanticised retrospection."

Read the full BBC review

Watch the official video for Better Off Without You (external YouTube link)

- - -

Real Estate - Days

(Domino; released 17 October)

Recommended by: Tom Ravenscroft, Huw Stephens, 6 Music Album of the Day

"This is a yearning, winsome thing, drenched in autumnal colour and a sweet, almost blissful nostalgia; a sonic leap forward from their homespun self-titled debut. It is the kind of record that might drift by unassumingly lest you lend it a careful ear, but really: the second you do, it rewards unequivocally. Occasionally a lyric or an image jumps out at you - a frozen sea, the frequency of an internal debate, mountains of maple leaves. Days somehow manages to reflect on growing up with startling clarity while exhibiting youthful innocence and exuberance in spades."

Read the full BBC review

Watch the official video for It's Real (external YouTube link)

- - -

Lisa Hannigan - Passenger

(PIAS; released 10 October)

Recommended by: The Late Show with Stuart Bailie, Dermot O'Leary

"For all its deft arrangements and catchy chorus hook lines, Passenger feels unforced, spontaneous and timeless; indeed, such is its unaffected delivery that it might have been recorded 30 years ago or last month. Like all good actresses, Hannigan is not just telling stories here, she's mapping the absurd, mischievous, troubling but always potentially transcendent landscape of human emotion in which we are all journeying."

Read the full BBC review

Watch the official video for Knots (external YouTube link)

- - -

Rustie - Glass Swords

(Warp; released 10 October)

Recommended by: Vic Galloway

"Glass Swords is undeniably self-indulgent. Effectively the sound of Web 2.0 information overload set to music, it finds Russell Whyte categorically refusing to reduce the breadth of his tastes into a manageable, coherent vision. Instead he simply piles everything on top of each other, often jamming five or six recognisable influences into a single four-minute track. But it shows just the right amount of restraint to prevent total disarray. Even if the album weren't half as much fun as it is, that feat would be worthy of celebration in itself."

Read the full BBC review

Watch a preview of Glass Swords (external YouTube link)

- - -

Nils Frahm - Felt

(Erased Tapes; released 10 October)

Recommended by: Tom Ravenscroft

"It's not just the soft, warm clunks of piano keys against strings that give this sense of having fallen inside Frahm's instrument in a bucolic daze. There's the quiet ambient hiss throughout, the rattle of the piano's movement, the squeal of what sounds like fingers along metal strings in Kind, the odd flick and knock from elsewhere in the room. This is a transportative album, a balm for troubled minds."

Read the full BBC review

Watch the official video for Unter (external YouTube link)

- - -

Kuedo - Serverant

(Planet Mu; released 17 October)

Recommended by: Rob da Bank

"With a wealth of feeling and shimmering soul running throughout, Kuedo's music cannot be pigeonholed as mere intelligent dance music; it's more emotionally intelligent dance music. While it won't please those expecting a selection of aggressive dubstep workouts, Severant is a stunning debut that gives up more secrets with every listen."

Read the full BBC review

(No official videos available)

- - -

Magazine - No Thyself

(Wire-Sound; released 24 October)

Recommended by: Jarvis Cocker, Marc Riley, 6 Music Album of the Day

"No Thyself is less about Howard Devoto refusing to grow old gracefully, and more about the unsung genius asking darkly comic questions about what that cliché means. The surprise excellence of the songs and the music makes this the long-overdue fourth great Magazine album. Thirty years ago, Devoto sang of wanting to burn again. And here he is, doing exactly that."

Read the full BBC review

Watch a trailer for No Thyself (external YouTube link)