Albums of the week: Bruce Springsteen, Sudan Archives, The Last Dinner Party, Laura Jurd

Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition

Bruce Springsteen

(Sony)

Bruce Springsteen released a curveball in 1982: a bleak, bare-bones record made up of acoustic home demos. Initially, Nebraska was met with confusion, but it would later be celebrated for its nuanced portraits of lives going wrong; it was essential listening rather than a side quest.

Until recently, the existence of full-band studio versions of the Nebraska songs was myth, not fact. Scrapped in favour of Springsteen’s original demos, these recordings now make up the heart of this extraordinary vault release timed to coincide with the arrival in cinemas of Deliver Me from Nowhere, the Nebraska-era Springsteen biopic. It’s a fascinating alternative reality in which the intimacy of the known Nebraska becomes poignantly fleshed out by the E Street Band.

This counter-factual object comes together with a remastered version of the original album, live takes of the songs and a number of alternate versions of other tracks demoed during that era, plus four previously unheard tunes. Of the latter, the acoustic On the Prowl sounds like Jerry Lee Lewis played by Suicide. Of the former, a roustabout, bar-band take on what would become Born in the USA is absolutely riveting. Kitty Empire

The BPM

Sudan Archives

(Stones Throw)

For her third album, LA-based singer, rapper and violinist Brittney Parks inhabits the role of Gadget Girl, a future-facing musician who embraces technology to enhance her sound. But as well as looking forward, Parks takes a deep dive into her family history: she is inspired by the club sounds of her parents’ home cities of Detroit and Chicago, and enlists her twin sister, her cousins and assorted friends to help.

In the process, she has created her most ambitious record to date, the constantly startling production (by Parks and Ben Dickey) brimming with ideas and taking EDM to bold new places. Her lyrics are not quite as arresting, but they’re still frequently thought-provoking: the flirtatious My Type drips with sexual ambiguity; there’s tongue-in-cheek lewdness on Ms Pac Man (“Put it in my mouth / Then my bank account”); A Computer Love addresses the pressures women face when it comes to marriage. Ultimately, though, The BPM is an album to be felt as much as listened to: a maximalist tour de force. Phil Mongredien

From the Pyre

The Last Dinner Party

(Island)

The Last Dinner Party are no strangers to drama, winning both the BBC Sound of… award and the Brits Rising Star in 2024, and swiftly triggering rumours they were “industry plants” with connections behind the scenes. But the five-piece silenced naysayers with their debut, Prelude to Ecstasy. Blending baroque pop and modern prog, it explored addictive, painful love through woodwind flourishes, extravagant guitar solos and rococo vocal leaps.

From the Pyre continues this vision. Set in a fictional world of violence, destruction and rebirth, its songs are character-driven yet grounded in raw emotion. A new grittiness tempers the fantasy: lead single This is the Killer Speaking leans into rough western textures and pairs grief-stricken lyrics with staggered organ chords. Rifle unfolds as a slow-creeping rampage of harmonised screams and glam-rock crescendos, confirming the band as masters of fearless theatricality and emotional excess. Georgia Evans

Rites and Revelations

Laura Jurd

(New Soil)

Trumpeter Laura Jurd has never been one to keep to the confines of genre. As part of the electronic-influenced jazz outfit Dinosaur, Jurd was nominated for the Mercury prize in 2017, while her solo records have spanned string quartet compositions on 2012’s Landing Ground to spoken word on 2005’s lively Human Spirit. Rites and Revelations is just as expansive, drawing on folk tradition, modal jazz and free improvisation to deliver 10 tracks of virtuosic fusions.

Lilting folk motifs dominate on tracks such as You Again, on which violinist Ultan O’Brien and accordion player Martin Green double Jurd’s melismatic trumpet lines, producing an entrancing, circular sense of melody. Bassist Ruth Goller and drummer Corrie Dick provide an anchor, laying down a swinging groove on Step Up to the Altar.

Yet it’s when Jurd’s quintet fully cuts loose that the album dazzles. The dark distortion and cymbal cacophonies of Life, clattering free jazz rhythms of Back to Life and the swelling crescendo of St James Infirmary all showcase Jurd’s talent for soaring self-expression regardless of tradition or form. Ammar Kalia

Photographs by Yanran Xiong/Laura Marie Cieplik/Celie Nigoumi