Pop

Just a year after picking up instruments and forming Sheffield band Potpourri release their debut album, First Dance. Potpourri formed in Summer 2019 to play a gig at the inaugural Bingo Fest, and have been cultivating their off-kilter brand of pop since - incorporating the Broadcast-esque electronic sounds, motorik rhythms and chanteuse-style vocal harmonies.

Cream vinyl includes zine.

The Best of the B-52’s: Dance This Mess Around is an excellent summation of the group’s late-’70s/early-’80s heyday, featuring such staples as Wig, Give Me Back My Man, Song For A Future Generation, 52 Girls, Private Idaho, Strobe Light, Devil in My Car, Planet Claire and Rock Lobster.

It is arguably the best compilation of the group’s work. Dance This Mess Around is a first-rate survey of the band’s best (and most groundbreaking) years.

The multi-media project Kraftwerk was started in Düsseldorf, Germany 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. They set up their electronic Kling Klang Studio where they conceived and produced all Kraftwerk albums.

The Freakbeat Scene brings together 25 remarkable tracks, virtually all of them much sought after on original Decca/Deram 45s. Save yourself money and buy this loving compiled 2 x LP set in heavyweight 180 gm vinyl. The Freakbeat sound, was mainly a sub-genre of late 1960s UK rock and roll, which many of the artists, and their styles, went on to become a larger part of British music history. Includes early recordings from the Attack, the Birds, Marc Bolan and the Small Faces.

The baroque pop band The Left Banke formed back in 1965 in New York City. With their debut album Walk Away Renée/Pretty Ballerina they hit the charts and both title songs became hit singles in the US.

Stealing Sheep are an electro pop band from Liverpool, England, who formed in 2010.

The debut studio album ‘Into the Diamond Sun’ was released in 2012 by Heavenly Recordings

Manchester darling Songs for Walter returns with his second LP, An Endless Summer Daze.

Songs for Walter, otherwise known as Manchester-based songwriter Laurie Hulme, is rapidly becoming one of the city’s unsung heroes thanks to his seemingly whimsical, but often deeply touching brand of folk-pop.

Ed’s No.6 Collaborations Project follows the release of Cross Me featuring Chance The Rapper and PnB Rock and I Don't Care with Justin Bieber, which shot straight to No.1 in the UK; and has remained there for four consecutive weeks. The album is a collection of the most exciting collaborations on the planet.

Present Tense is the first Sagittarius album, released in 1968 by Columbia Records. Though the record was basically a Gary Usher solo project, he enlisted many top LA session musicians, and heavily utilized Curt Boettcher as a songwriter, musician, vocalist, and producer (even going so far as to include two tracks that Boettcher had produced on his own as the leader of the group The Ballroom).

When Poliça’s Channy Leaneagh fell off her roof while clearing ice in early 2018, she smashed her L1 vertebrae and battered her spine, leaving her in a brace with limited mobility for months. Yet Poliça’s fourth album, When We Stay Alive, is not about one debilitating accident. It’s about the redemptive power of rewriting your story in order to heal, and reclaiming your identity as a result.

When We Stay Alive possesses a new confidence in its sound, reflected in its fierce, determined songs and anchored by the heavy synths and punctuating beats of Poliça co-founder and producer Ryan Olson. Over the last several years Olson and Leaneagh have widely collaborated with musicians from all over the world: both with Bon Iver, and Leaneagh individually with Boys Noize, Lane 8, Sasha, Leftfield, and Daniel Wohl; Olson with Swamp Dogg in addition to countless musicians from the Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon’s 37d03d collective. As a result, When We Stay Alive features one of the largest musical casts of any Poliça record to date. To create the album, Olson brought his favourite collaborators into his studio for all-night sessions. He’d then send Leaneagh the files to write lyrics to while recovering at home, which she’d record alone or with engineer Alex Proctor. Drummers Drew Christopherson and Ben Ivascu colored the songs with a new approach – drastically changing the rhythmic dynamic from previous efforts by creating an indistinguishable hybrid of live and electronic instrumentation - and bassist Chris Bierden provided a melody-laden low-end as well as more layered backing vocals than ever before.

What praises haven't been lauded the immortal singing talent of the late, great Patsy Cline? She died at the height of her career, at age 30, with two other stars of the Grand Ole Opry, and her manager, in a private plane crash near Camden, Tennessee, on the group's return to Nashville from Kansas City. Before that ill-fated flight, though, she left a musical legacy as one of the most influential and successful female vocalists of the 20th Century.

The eagerly awaited fifth album from the ever-brilliant Paramore. Following up from 2013's self-titled record, the album sees the return of drummer Zac Farro after leaving in 2010. Lead single Hard Times offers us a more tropical and electro-pop tinged sound in comparison to previous albums, but it is still the same instantly recognisable and irresistibly infectious Paramore.

UK four-piece Metronomy ready their fourth LP Love Letters on their familiar outpost Because Music. The release is a classic electronic-pop album, carrying a warm sound and laced with nostalgia. The piece’s title track ‘Love Letters’ is a playful, sing-a-long track with a catchy, piano riff and a steady tambourine to keep the beat in check. More futuristic is ‘I’m Aquarius’, unfolding over a simplistic drum machine beat and celestial synth patterns.

'Entr'acte' is a concept album which tells the story of a neglected wife who embarks on a one night stand, and was Hardy's reaction to her complicated and troubled relationship to the singer and actor Jacques Dutronc, the father of her then one year old son, Thomas.

Pulp had been kicking around since 1981, but for all intents and purposes, their 1994 major-label debut, His 'n' Hers is their de facto debut: the album that established their musical and lyrical obsessions and, in turn, the album where the world at large became acquainted with their glassy, tightly wound synth pop and lead singer Jarvis Cocker's impeccably barbed wit.

Apparently, if you listen to Placebo you don’t actually feel the effects of their music, be they visceral or cerebral, you just think you do. Or perhaps if you turn it up loud enough, you will. Their eponymous debut album originally landed in 1996 and featured some androgynous alt. rock bangers such as Nancy Boy, Come Home and Teenage Angst. It is now reissued on vinyl for you delectation and reappraisal.

Who Knows Jenny Jones is the new album from surreal indie act Mr Ben and The Bens, the brainchild of polymath Ben Hall. The record is an experimental pop exploration of a kitchen sink narrative with a celestial twist. Originating from Lancaster’s thriving co-operative scene, Ben is now based in Sheffield and his adopted city has had a profound influence on the concept of the new album. With Who Knows Jenny Jones, he tells the tale of a shrinking violet called Jenny from an area of Sheffield called Pitsmoor in the 1970s, who gets abducted by aliens and becomes the best disco dancer in town.

The album comes accompanied by a riso-printed 8-page zine. This includes a story, by Lloyd, which is to be read in conjunction with listening to the songs to get the full story of Jenny Jones.

Channeling boundless self-confidence through a downright earth-quaking voice, colorful persona, and undeniable star power, Lizzo struts into the spotlight and steps up with a whole lot of sass, spirit, and soul. Embracing her vocal range like never before and celebrating herself to the fullest, she speaks her mind, censors nothing, and delivers an enviable level of honesty, pure passion, and fresh fire. In doing so, she reaches the precipice of a personal and creative breakthrough in 2019 as evidenced by a string of new releases for Nice Life Recording Company and Atlantic Records.

Filled with the hits that shot Lady Gaga to superstardom, her second studio album Born This Way is a staple gift for any Gaga fan. Featuring the critically acclaimed The Edge of Glory and collab with Queen guitarist Brian May. 2011, Interscope Records.