Albums of the week: Geese, Richard Ashcroft, Marta, Jacob Collier

Getting Killed

Geese

(Partisan)

Until their lead singer Cameron Winter released an acclaimed solo album, Heavy Metal, last year, the band Geese still operated under the radar in the UK. Focus has now swivelled back to the Brooklyn foursome, whose chops, it turns out, are just as impressive as Winter’s bohemian tenor.

On their knockout third album, Geese alchemise the played-out tropes of guitar rock into something unexpectedly electrifying, occasionally sounding like the Strokes covering Captain Beefheart, but with a panache audibly all their own.

“There’s a bomb in my car!” screams Winter as the band detonate around him on their album’s snaggle-toothed opener, Trinidad. Thereafter, the gen Z schoolfriends veer from off-kilter, grimy funk on 100 Horses to tense, romantic misery on Bow Down, a track where the insistence of its guitars are offset by scattershot, evolving drum patterns.

This band’s rhythm section rarely does the obvious thing, while somehow remaining in the pocket throughout. All of this versatility and swagger is anchored by tunes you can sing along to, and Winter’s racked vulnerability. “I will break my own heart from now on,” he gargles defiantly on Taxes. Unmissable. By Kitty Empire

Lovin’ You

Richard Ashcroft

(Virgin)

So musically conservative he makes Noel Gallagher seem like imperial-phase Prince, Richard Ashcroft’s post-Verve solo career has hardly been a shining beacon of imagination. His first new material in seven years follows his profile-enhancing support slot with Oasis – and you wonder whether this is the only reason it’s being released now, because it’s distinctly underwhelming.

Comeback single Lover is at least funny, albeit unwittingly so, clumsily appropriating Joan Armatrading’s Love and Affection and adding inane lyrics (“It’s just like lover, why we so strong together?/ I’m like lover, oh-oh, maybe we just birds of a feather”, indeed) and excruciating dad-rap stylings. I’m a Rebel is more interesting, as Ashcroft digs out his disco shoes, adopts a falsetto and occupies similar ground to Hot Chip. Most of the remainder, however, is precisely what anybody who’s experienced his previous solo work might expect: an awful lot of watered-down ballads that provide conclusive evidence that the homeopathic drugs don’t work. The more animated Heavy News proves that it’s not just insipid balladry Ashcroft can ruin with dreadful lyrics; he can do it to boilerplate drivetime hard rock as well. Inessential. By Phil Mongredien

Out the Way

Marta

(False Idols)

Polish singer Marta Złakowska has been Tricky’s collaborator for eight years, which is longer than most manage with the gnomic Bristolian. His 2020 album Fall to Pieces was a decent start to their partnership, and her 2023 record When It’s Going Wrong showed promise among its restless two-note, two-minute tracks. This joint album is the pair’s best work yet, displaying a rewarding rigour that often eludes Tricky. There’s been a slow shift from the magpie-eyed, colourful flair of his early work into something more practical, monochromatic, easier to make and more profitable to tour.

Still, Marta’s temperate, thin-bladed tone suits the edgy claustrophobia of these songs. Never far from a Bladerunner quote, preoccupied with running away – an excellent topic for pop, with its promise of reinvention. Try Way Up In, an elliptic tale of their road trip across the American south, or the relentless electronic thunder of the title track and Leave the Lights. It’s still unclear how the duo works, yet even as Tricky’s raps fade away – mixed down to the level of myth or imagination, somewhere between daydream and night terror – his wayward genius persists. By Damien Morris

The Light for Days

Jacob Collier

(Interscope/Decca/Hajanga)

Maximalist is a term that often springs to mind when listening to the music of the 31-year-old British multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier. Since his 2016 debut album, In My Room, the jazz-influenced prodigy has put out five studio records traversing everything from stacked choral harmony to heavy metal headbanging and orchestral arrangements. Almost all Collier songs are likely to have dozens of vocal harmonies, intricate layered rhythm and a mind-bending array of chords.

Yet his latest release, The Light for Days, takes a delightfully different tack, focusing only on the guitar and voice with minimal embellishment. It’s a brave move, and one that showcases Collier’s songwriting skill. Lullaby-like vocals accompany the soft strumming of You Can Close Your Eyes and Heaven (Butterflies), while finger-picking virtuosity comes to the fore on the polyrhythmic playing of Sweet Melody. Covers such as the Beach Boys’ Keep an Eye on Summer and the Beatles’ Norwegian Wood put a quietly forlorn spin on instantly recognisable melody, but it’s in the original compositions that this record shines, culminating with the gentle, swelling Something Heavy. Unadorned, Collier delivers a downbeat, intimate collection perfect for the introspection of winter. By Ammar Kalia

One to watch: Upchuck

As first impressions go, the sleeve for the Atlanta punk band Upchuck’s 2022 debut album, Sense Yourself, takes some beating. It features a photograph of frontwoman Kaila “KT” Thompson in the immediate aftermath of a particularly chaotic live show, covered in blood after being hit in the face by a speeding shopping trolley. “A lot of things could have gone differently for Upchuck if I didn’t get that cut, or even if we’d stopped playing after I was hurt,” she told Crack magazine.

Three years on, the five-piece (featuring guitarists Mikey Durham and Alex “Hoff” Hoffman, bassist Ausar Ward and drummer Chris Salado) have thrown a curveball by deciding to embrace melody on their Ty Segall-produced third album, and first for Domino, I’m Nice Now. They haven’t commercialised their sound quite as radically as fellow travellers Turnstile – there’s still a visceral rawness to the likes of Tired, Lost One and the Salado-sung Un Momento. But there’s a more gentle side to New Case, with a looser feel and KT singing softly.

“I’m kind of getting over yelling the same shit over and over again... and watching real-time shit get worse,” KT explained. “The way that they have things set up over here in the States is just back-to-back-to-back bullshit, to break you down.” Vive la résistance! Phil Mongredien

I’m Nice Now is out now on Domino

Photograph by Dean Chalkley