The best and worst new music of the week

Howard is a big deal. Signed to Sony at 14, in 2021 he became the first Indigenous Australian solo artist to top the US Billboard Hot 100 with his single Stay. A year later he was blessed with his own limited edition McDonald’s meal (it featured chicken McNuggets and a cheeseburger with no pickles). He’s at the heart of the Gen Z pop mainstream and the message he has chosen to share with the world is that love has really messed him up.

“You used to wake up beside me. Now you post shit just to spite me,” he gripes on Me + You, a break-up ballad delivered in the phone-addicted teen vernacular while alluding to a lifestyle the average teenager will never get to experience, such as his former girlfriend driving across Los Angeles in her flash new car to meet him. Over the laid-back R&B of July he’s begging her to “just be real”, whatever that means, and for the falsetto-laden acoustic ballad Back When You Were Mine he’s reminiscing on the good old days when he spent all his money and time on the object of his affections.

What went wrong? He doesn’t tell us but now she’s “sittin’ back at home … feelin’ all alone”. Coming to the Kid Laroi for poetic insight into the mysteries of love is clearly a fool’s game but the young man’s anguish and the strained feeling he puts into his melancholic delivery is authentic. It’s just a shame the lyrics are so trite and the music so pedestrian, with its familiar blend of trap beats and pop melodies.

What’s really lacking is any of the lightness and humour the average 22-year-old uses to get through the day. You would think a song called A Cold Play might poke fun at the stadium-filling lords of inoffensive niceness but no — it’s just another soppy ballad. “It’ll always be easy to blame you, but it’s my fault for thinking I could fix you,” Howard sings.

There is one upbeat electro moment in I’m So in Love with You, but for the most part this is an album of slow to mid-tempo break-up songs of very little imagination. Howard is a charismatic figure and a pop phenomenon but after listening to him go on about his hurt feelings for 40 minutes you cannot help but wonder: aren’t there other things to sing about?

Blue

Reflections
Cooking Vinyl
★★☆☆☆
All boy bands must grow up sooner or later. Now Blue have joined Take That and Westlife as middle-aged men traversing the rocky road of adulthood while still clinging onto their youthful glory days. “We cannot go changing back to the days of when we were in our youth,” they accept on Find that Feeling but you get the impression they would really like to. “Blue’s in the house so it’s party time,” they announce on Souls of the Underground, and it sounds like a party in a branch of Welcome Break, while the acoustic guitar ballad Candlelight Fades recalls the days of clean-cut lads sitting on little stools on Saturday night television, singing for the mums and dads. The Robbie Williams-like epic The Vow proves there is life after boy bands yet, but for the most part Blue’s return makes you think of the most popular kids at school, wishing the good times never ended.

• Read more music reviews, interviews and guides on what to listen to next

Jenny on Holiday

Quicksand Heart
Transgressive
★★★★☆
Jenny Hollingworth started out as one half of Let’s Eat Grandma, teenage friends from Norfolk whose uncanny dream pop sounded like the musical equivalent of the film Picnic at Hanging Rock. Hollingworth’s debut solo album isn’t quite so arresting but there’s a lot of charm in her Kate Bush-like off-kilter approach. Dolphins is a highlight, with a repeated note over which Hollingworth captures the feeling of seeing the bigger picture after being wrapped up in her troubles, while Groundskeeping is a terribly sad country rock tune in which gardening becomes a way of dealing with grief, and the Cocteau Twins-like Good Intentions shimmers with bittersweet romance. Quietly uplifting, this is a smart pop album that wears its lyrical depths and musical eccentricities lightly.

Sleaford Mods

The Demise of Planet X
Rough Trade
★★★★☆
It is a sign of just how far an unlikely blend of surreal rants and unchanging electronic beats has brought this Nottingham duo that the screen star Gwendoline Christie has signed on for their latest album. “Like everybody else alive I think there’s only this pain in me!” Christie screams on The Good Life, a treatise from the singer/ranter Jason Williamson on the realities of perceived success. Elsewhere the Mods take on social media (Shoving the Images), Williamson’s memories of being taunted by girls about the size of his genitalia (Gina Was) and war footage being reduced to another doomscrolling diversion (Megaton), with plenty of pub humour and self-laceration thrown in. It isn’t all about the worst of life but the overall impression is of someone scrabbling about in the dirt and using whatever he finds down there for creative fuel. The result is totally captivating; a vision of everyday British absurdity in songs that are as catchy as they are disturbing.

The Cribs

Selling a Vibe
PIAS
★★★☆☆
The Cribs, aka the three indie-rocking Jarman brothers from Wakefield, were commissioned to write a song called Never the Same for the former One Direction pop star Louis Tomlinson. But they decided to make it a cheery highlight of their own album instead, underlining the fact that the Cribs specialise in catchy pop tunes, albeit ones couched in scuzzy guitar rock. Their latest is a typically economical affair, with 12 short songs about being in a band with your siblings (Brothers Won’t Break), making bad decisions (Looking for the Wrong Guy) and the way life unfolds in general (If Our Paths Never Crossed). A lot has happened in the 20 years since the Cribs’ breakout hit Hey Scenesters! but the Jarmans have stuck to their guns, retaining a fealty to classic indie.

Best new tracks

By Blanca Schofield

Robyn

Sexistential

The most awaited album in the next couple of months (for me anyway) is the Swedish star Robyn’s — she of the perfect pop anthem, Dancing on My Own — Sexistential on March 27. The first exhilarating single, Dopamine, released towards the end of last year, was as welcome as a break in these interminable clouds. Now she’s dropped two more: this title track, a burst of minimalist electro rap about sexuality as a single mum in your forties, and Talk to Me, a Max Martin-produced number that will satisfy any synthy needs.

Father John Misty

The Old Law

Joshua Tillman of Rockville, Maryland, rarely puts a foot wrong in his blend of romantic musicality and often satirical lyrics. His latest is a fan favourite formerly known as God’s Trash when he would perform it live — why the name change? Nonetheless listen out for hints of Sgt Pepper.

Bruno Mars

I Just Might

It’s a sign of the Hawaiian tenor pop crooner’s immense enduring popularity that within six hours of releasing his Sixties variety show music video for his first new solo music in ten years, it already had more than a million views. A future radio staple, it marks a big year for Mars, who has also announced a stadium tour.

Doechii & SZA

Girl, Get Up

In the space of less than a year, the Floridan rapper DJ has become many rap lovers’ favourite artist thanks in part to her flawless Glastonbury set — and only the third woman to win the Grammy for best rap album with Alligator Bites Never Heal. Now she teams up for the second time with R&B superstar SZA (see their first collab Persuasive) on a piece looking back at all this success and the impact on other dark-skinned women like her.

Mumford and Sons

The Banjo Song

The clue is in the name: expect plenty of banjo on the London folk rockers’ new single from their upcoming album Prizefighter. They are clearly experiencing a creativity boom after Winston Marshall’s departure as this is their second album in a year, following on from Rushmere.

Morrissey

Make-Up Is a Lie

The controversial former Smiths frontman is back with his first new single in four years, a haunting tale of boredom and Parisian jaunts. A new album of the same name is coming next month with a cover of Roxy Music’s Amazona, which he will no doubt perform at his O2 arena headline show on February 28.