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Blood Orange  Essex Honey

‘Essex Honey’ is delicately constructed – immediately, there is a whirlwind of influences at work, but it never feels like a tug of war between them Dork

Blood Orange  Essex Honey

Hynes’ melodies and arranging experiments make for a replayable, effusive record whose insight comes in waves and poetry arrives in short, meaningful doses Northern Transmissions

Blood Orange  Essex Honey

It takes in all the avant-garde and otherwise out-there influences Hynes has encountered along his meandering way The Arts Desk

Blood Orange  Essex Honey

The album explores loss and loneliness, but Dev Hynes finds ways to break through the fog Slant Magazine

Blood Orange  Essex Honey

Gorgeous melodies ground Dev Hynes’s questing fifth album, via dancefloor rhythms, indie pop and languorous funk – and cameos from Lorde and Zadie Smith The Guardian

Royel Otis  hickey

The Australian duo's ping-ponging sound is just familiar enough to hook you in and just offbeat enough to feel fresh and compelling Paste Magazine

Royel Otis  hickey

With their sophomore LP, Royel Madden and Otis Pavlovic deliver strong hooks and cosmic instrumentals en masse, but sometimes play it too safe NME

Royel Otis  hickey

LP 2 is the sound of a band taking everything that’s worked so far and refining it with style, taste and precision Clash

Royel Otis  hickey

Lead single ‘Moody’ caused controversy over lyrics that played into tired stereotypes of the nagging girlfriend – other tracks riff on themes of dark distrust The Independent

Royel Otis  hickey

It’s still two lads making music for the fun of it, most likely on a bedroom floor, but with just enough added sparkle to send them stratospheric. ‘hickey’ is just good old-fashioned fun music, and we could all use some of that right now, eh? Dork

The Beths  Straight Line Was A Lie

There’s no doubt that it doesn’t reinvent any wheels. In fact, it quite happily gets pretty close to repurposing the indie wheels of circa 2014, but it’s unpretentious enough to celebrate that fact proudly and picnic upon the lesser-known alternative patch of being delightfully pleasant Far Out

The Hives  The Hives Forever Forever The Hives

The Hives may well be trying to last forever, and we, thankfully, will forever have The Hives Far Out

The Hives  The Hives Forever Forever The Hives

The Hives have never claimed to be anything other than a guaranteed good time Dork

The Hives  The Hives Forever Forever The Hives

Strap yourself in for a white-knuckle thrill ride with the Hives; their new album is just about as life-affirming as it gets Northern Transmissions

Earl Sweatshirt  Live Laugh Love

Earl’s blatant disregard for drum kits, hooks, and common time signatures connects the sampling antics of MF DOOM to the mood-over-form impulses of MIKE and Medhane, strengthening the argument that he is, in fact, still one of the coolest and most-inventive MCs alive Paste Magazine