Category 2020s

San Francisco’s Avalon Emerson made her reputation as a DJ. But she used the advice of Jeff Tweedy’s book How To Write One Song to start a career as a vocalist and songwriter, her ethereal voice floating over dream-pop melodies. 2023’s & the…

Dina Ögon are a smooth Swedish supergroup. Lead vocalist Anna Ahnlund, drummer Christopher Cantillo, guitarist/keyboardist Daniel Ogren, and bassist Love Orsan had played in various projects before joining forces. The band’s name translates to “your eyes”. Dina Ögon describe their…

The Last Dinner Party were the breakout UK stars of 2023, with the release of the single ‘Nothing Matters’. They’d already enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame, opening for Nick Cave and The Rolling Stone. Their sound leans heavily on…

Hayley Williams is best known as the lead vocalist of Paramore. However, she has also released three solo albums, two of which stand proudly along Paramore’s best work. Hayley Williams Album Reviews Petals for Armor 2020, 8.5/10Paramore’s After Laughter is my favourite…

Isle of Wight’s Wet Leg were breakout stars in 2021, when their innuendo-laden hit ‘Chaise Longue’ went viral. Their name comes from an Isle of Wight expression denoting visitors to the island, recognisable because they’d have wet legs from getting…

Sabrina Teitelbaum flirted with musical success in a different guise. Between 2017 and 2019, she released singles as the pop artist BAUM. Her grandfather, Randall D Smith, is known as the pioneer of vulture capitalism. Dissatisfied with the results, she…

Michael Gordon grew up in New Jersey, where he played in bands but gravitated to making solo music in his bedroom. He grew up in the age of music piracy and was inspired by the eclectic range of music that…

Gabriela Jimeno Caldas was born in 1990 in Bogotá, Colombia. She spent her teens as the drummer for Colombian hardcore band Ratón Pérez. They played at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. She moved to the US, where she studied…

Mark Jacob Lenderman was born in Asheville, North Carolina. He’s a busy fellow—in addition to his solo career, he’s a member of the band Wednesday. He’s also carved out a career as a solo performer, releasing four solo albums in…

New York’s Cassandra Jenkins comes from a musical family. Her parents worked on cruise ships as musicians, and her brother is in the band Morningsiders. As a teen Jenkins played folk festivals with her family, touring in a giant silver…

There hasn’t been a new Radiohead album since 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool. The Smile might be the next best thing. The two most distinctive members of Radiohead – vocalist Thom Yorke and guitarist Johnny Greenwood – formed The Smile in…

In the heady days of the 1990s, it felt like Beck was the apex of post-modern innovation, blurring the lines between genres on projects like Odelay. Los Angeles band Glass Beach take this approach about six light years further on their…

Smooth R&B artist Erika de Casier was born in Portugal to a Belgian mother and a Cape Verdean father. She’s now based in Copenhagen, Denmark, starting her career working in a kindergarten. She spent time as part of the duo…

The duo of Tom McGreevy and Evan Lewis met on the Toronto scene, bonding over their shared love of vintage indie jangle-pop. They now split their time between Toronto and Geelong, Australia. It makes sense because their jangling recalls Antipodean…

Katie Pruitt grew up in Atlanta and was raised Catholic. She attended Catholic school and mass. She got into music in middle school, learning the guitar and enjoying musical theatre. But she quickly became interested in songwriting, using it to…

A crop of young, critically acclaimed post-punk bands emerged in the UK around 2020. It’s tough to keep up – I can barely differentiate Dry Cleaning from Black Country, New Road. My favourite of the crop is probably Squid, a…

Olivia Isabel Rodrigo first came to prominence as an actor. She appeared in Bizaardvark and High School Musical. In 2020, she signed a recording contract and quickly became a pop superstar. Her debut single, ‘Driver’s License,’ debuted at number one on…

Female solo artists Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker, and Phoebe Bridgers had never all been in the same room together when they decided to form a band. The three had collaborated on tours – Dacus and Bridgers had both opened for…

Arooj Aftab was born in Saudi Arabia to Pakistani parents. She taught herself guitar and became a viral sensation in Pakistan, an early adopter of the internet with hits ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Mera Pyaar’. Aftab moved to the US at 19…

Caroline Polachek grew up in Connecticut and was formerly the vocalist for the indie-pop duo Chairlift. Chairlift enjoyed a surprise hit in 2008 with ‘Bruises’, featured in an Apple commercial. Polachek previously flirted with a solo career, releasing albums under…

British collective Sault have eschewed all the usual rules of music-making in their brief and eventful career. They’ve veiled their identities, never played a live gig, never released a music video, and have produced material at a breakneck pace. Sault…

Margaret Debay Rogers grew up in Maryland, the daughter of a Ford salesman and a nurse. She began learning the harp at seven and writing songs by thirteen. In high school she indulged a wide range of musical interests, playing…

Indie artist Nilüfer Yanya was born in Chelsea, West London. She’s the daughter of two visual artistsmwith Turkish, Irish and Barbadian heritage. Yanya grew up listening to her father’s Turkish music and her mother’s classical music but gravitated to the…

The consequence of reviewing new releases each week is that I already have too many records for one page. Here’s part two, continuing from part one. Manchester Orchestra The Million Masks of God 2021, 8.5/1021st-century arena rock is often problematic…

Pop music has become a much more respected art form in the past decade. Records like Taylor Swift’s 1989, Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion, and Robyn’s Honey have attained the acclaim usually reserved for more critically favoured musical genres. Dua Lipa’s an obvious candidate to…

Born in London, Cleopatra Nikolic’s parents met in a jazz band – her Jamaican dad plays bass and piano, while her Serbian/Spanish mother sings and plays guitar and flute. Cleo Sol was inspired to take up music by Stevie Wonder’s…

Miami synth-pop duo Magdalena Bay consists of songwriter/vocalist Mica Tenenbaum and musician/producer Matthew Lewin. The pair met as high school students, first playing together at Live! Modern School of Music. They formed a progressive rock band, Tabula Rasa, before going…

Lindsey Jordan grew up in Baltimore also home to Beach House and Wye Oak, while at one point her guitar teacher was Helium’s Mary Timony. Seeing Paramore at the age of 8 made Jordan question her previously held assumption that…

Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell was the first musician born in the 21st century to score a number-one single in the United States. Eilish had already been building a profile for a few years, debuting on SoundCloud and building a…

Natalie Hemby was born in Illinois, the daughter of a Nashville studio guitarist. She almost signed a record deal with Sony in her early 20s but it fell through. Instead, she worked in marketing but started collaborating with Miranda Lambert…

The members of Black Midi met at the BRIT School in London, a performing art college whose other alumni include Amy Winehouse, Adele, FKA Twigs, and Imogen Heap. With access to the studio during school, they were able to get…

Producer and musician Kelly Lee Owens grew up in a small Welsh village. She sang in her school choir and played bass and drums in indie bands. She became an auxiliary nurse at a cancer treatment hospital in Manchester, but…

This page collects album reviews for 2020s artists of whom I’ve only reviewed one or two albums. This page became too long to edit easily so there’s a second part covering M-Z. Florence Adooni A.O.E.I.U. 2025, 7/10Florence Adooni was born…

Indie singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers was born in Los Angeles and studied vocal jazz at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. Bridgers grew up with parents who were involved in the entertainment industry – her mother encouraged her…

Sophie Allison was born in Switzerland and grew up in Nashville. She self-released guitar-pop as a teenager on Bandcamp, before releasing her official debut, Clean, in 2018. While she records with a band, Soccer Mommy is effectively an alias for…