What a lovely heap of little gems, June. The return of Lorde this month may have produced enough glare to blanch the hype around these smaller releases, so it’s lucky we’re here to gather them all together!
Our cover image stars A Giant Dog return after last year’s outstanding Pile with more irresistible gyrating on upcoming release Toy, and Vince Staples got Kendrick in for an incendiary verse on Big Fish Theory highlight ‘Yeah Right’. Katie Crutchfield is back doing her Waxahatchee thing and sounding as scrappy and fun as ever, while tape manipulation and vocal weirdness on fresh Tobacco and Laurel Halo tracks arrive as delegates from electronic’s remotest corners.
Of course there was also that big release. Lorde dropped Melodrama with such aplomb that it all but obliterated the notion of ‘the difficult second album’. And guess what? Queens of the Stone Age hip-shuffled back on the scene, too, abandoning the gurney prog of …Like Clockwork in favour of what sounds like a disco dancefloor sex pile. Nice.
Cover image: A Giant Dog – Toy