Albums of the week: AJ Tracey, Neil Young & the Chrome Hearts, Turnstile and GoGo Penguin

AJ Tracey
Don’t Die Before You’re Dead
(Revenge)

Four years between albums is an eternity in UK hip-hop. West London rapper AJ Tracey’s album title points out that he’s been busy living his offline life, while 3rd Time Lucky – one of this personal album’s more personal tracks – reveals that his mother’s been battling cancer.

Most rappers worship their mums – Eminem is an outlier here – but a more pensive Tracey’s biggest love affair on this record is really with his homeland. There are few concessions to the market for international rap hookups; trap beats aside, Tracey is waving the flag for UK creativity with homegrown reference points and guest spots both A-list (Aitch, Headie One) and unexpected. Indie rock outlier Master Peace adds his imprimatur to the closing track, Red Wine, which really is one patriotic gesture too far.

The strongest outings here are loving throwbacks to the 00s, such as the sensational pre-album bangers Crush and Paid in Full, on which Tracey reunites with his former grime crew, MTP. It takes a moment to appreciate the dazzling range of the productions here, which swerve between trance hooks and tinny keys. Tracey, though, can ride anything; against the odds, he just about sustains an entire track – West Life – built out of puns on boy and girl band names. Kitty Empire

Talkin to the Trees
Neil Young & the Chrome Hearts
(Reprise)

Although Neil Young has played with dozens of groups, such as Pearl Jam or Booker T & the MGs, his legacy lies with Crazy Horse – rock’s second greatest backing band after Springsteen’s E Street. Now, after a trilogy of unexceptional albums drifting between elegiac and soporific, the Horse have been stabled. The Chrome Hearts’ debut with Young in January was the rambunctious Big Change, pointedly released during inauguration week, its urgency and desperation propelling Young’s ambiguous threats. He also roasts big auto on Let’s Roll Again, with brutal jabs including “If you’re a fascist... get a Tesla”.

You may miss Crazy Horse’s thick-cut, bovine basslines and six-string interrogations, or the piano, strings and harmonies that usually attend Young’s convocation of folk, country and rock. Yet there’s a powerful mix of delicacy and savagery that he hasn’t delivered since 2017’s The Visitor. Sparser, tender songs abound, such as the gorgeous title track and Thankful. Young’s voice has always sounded older than his years, and its fragility, exposed by a loose arrangement, suffuses Family Life. It’s an old man talking to his family, telling them how much he loves them. The pathos is palpable. Damien Morris

Never Enough
Turnstile
(Roadrunner)

With their third album, 2021’s Glow On, Baltimore’s Turnstile succeeded in transcending the at times insular world of hardcore punk, earning four nominations at the Grammys thanks to massive choruses and songs that refused to be hemmed in by simple genre definitions. Its follow-up finds them continuing down an evolutionary path, with the synths and keys of frontman Brendan Yates even more centre stage. Opener Never Enough switches between washes of keyboards and stadium indie; hymnal closer Magic Man is about as far from hardcore as it’s possible to get.

Throughout, there’s all kinds of understated shading so that when the punchy twin guitars of Pat McCrory and new recruit Meg Mills ­– once of British fellow travellers Chubby and the Gang – do kick in, it’s all the more powerful, as on the pummelling Sole and the lightning-fast Sunshower. Elsewhere, genres collide, but it always feels natural rather than forced: Dull recalls the melodic nu-metal of Linkin Park; I Care and Seein’ Stars bear traces of 1980s AOR; Slowdive’s intro riff, reminiscent of Black Sabbath’s Sweet Leaf, paves the way for some angsty alt-rock. Truly, all human life is here. Phil Mongredien

Necessary Fictions
GoGo Penguin
(XXIM/Sony)

Across their six albums since 2012’s debut Fanfares, Manchester trio GoGo Penguin have honed a quietly insistent jazz sound. Blending touches of electronic programming with lusciously melodic piano lines, textural drumming and loping bass, the group’s music is often described as cinematic, reaching emotive peaks without exploding in volume or rushing in pace. Yet on Necessary Fictions, their seventh LP, GoGo Penguin have produced some of their most forceful work to date.

Opener Umbra sets the tone with its fast-paced double bass line weaving into a thumping drum groove that sits atop pianist Chris Illingworth’s muscular phrases. Other numbers such as What We Are and What We Are Meant to Be move closer to the dancefloor with a synth bass loop anchoring Jon Scott’s punchy drumming, while the addition of the Manchester Collective strings ensemble on State of Flux adds another layer of percussive plucking to Nick Blacka’s frenetic lines. Album highlight Living Bricks in Dead Mortar, meanwhile, sees a growling synth bass build into a headbanging breakbeat, proving that, more than a decade into their career, GoGo Penguin still have the capacity to surprise. Ammar Kalia

Photographs by Sharmarke Abdi, Daryl Hannah, Phoebe Sinclair, Mark Gregson