Laura Marling and Mike Lindsay’s second album as LUMP is our recommendation of the week. It can be easy to dismiss these songs as scraps from whatever doesn’t find their way into Marling’s “main” albums. But those ideas, coupled with Lindsay’s marvellous synth work, come to have a life of their own here, and “Animal” has some of the best tracks we’ve heard from both musicians in a while.
YĪN YĪN’s debut album is another gem coming from the same vibrant Dutch scene that brought us the great Altin Gün. But instead of looking at Turkish folk and psychedelia for influence, the lads from Maastricht infuse South East Asian textures in their Moroder-inspired disco – with a nod to the Ghanaian institution that is Kiki Gyan’s “24 Hours in a Disco” in their single “Dis kô dis kô”. Plus: new tracks by 10 000 Russos, Heavy Lungs, Ancient Shapes, Battles, PAUS, Maria Reis, Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek, Hop Along’s Frances Quinlan, Sarah Pagé, Destroyer, Mikal Cronin, Why?, Common Holly, Simone White, Andy Shauf, Frazey Ford, Courtney Barnett, Youbet, Lankum, Leonard Cohen, and Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster.