Albums of the week: Foo Fighters, Julia Cumming, Noah Kahan, Gabrielle Cavassa

Your Favourite Toy

Foo Fighters

(Roswell Records and RCA Records)

Say what you will about Dave Grohl – and, over the past couple of turbulent years spanning infidelity and unexplained band member sackings, many commenters have – but there are few rock vocals that hit as satisfyingly as his when he is in full wild-eyed chaos mode with Foo Fighters.

The unhinged abandon of the American titans at their most fired up and fat-free rages through much of Your Favourite Toy, from the snotty punk vitriol of Of All People (“You know you should be dead / But you’re alive instead”) to the howl of Spit Shine. Evidenced most clearly on the title track, with its curiously distorted, lo-fi vocal production, there’s the sense of the Foos going back to basics with their 12th LP: they recorded it themselves, at Grohl’s home studio in LA, and the result is notably faster and more furious than the stadium-sized outlook that has become their hallmark.

Even the anthemic moments still have bite – whether in Child Actor’s refrain “Turn the cameras off” or the rootsy swagger of If You Only Knew. Grohl sounds exciting, with something to prove again. Lisa Wright

Julia

Julia Cumming

(Partisan)

Julia Cumming thinks of her band Sunflower Bean as family. After 13 years and four albums as frontwoman for the New York rockers , she enters her backpack and Young Persons Railcard phase: this self-funded debut solo project was assembled over a few years in between band duties. Julia – album and person – follows lightly in the steps of Sunflower Bean’s quieter tunes, aspiring to the open-hearted, piano-led songwriting of Burt Bacharach or Carole King, with a keynote of finding and accepting herself as a woman in a judgmental world.

Though the contrast of her pure tone with the swagger of Sunflower Bean’s best music is missing here, Julia is always a tasteful if unremarkable listen; the lead single My Life is probably the most successful attempt at what she’s trying to achieve. Yet there’s also real promise in the acerbic final song Forget the Rest: boasting lyrics such as “You let your goldfish drown / Cause you went and fucked that guy”, it is a gloriously unhinged millennial take on drivetime classics. Damien Morris

The Great Divide

Noah Kahan

(Mercury)

The Vermont-born singer-songwriter Noah Kahan struck a chord with his third album, 2022’s Stick Season. Its sensitive and unflinching exploration of mental health gave it a certain universality – evinced by its worldwide success. Given that, it is perhaps not a huge surprise that the follow-up finds him chronicling his struggles with the pressures of fame: the isolation, the strain it puts on relationships.

It may be his lived experience, but he is on ground that has already been extremely well trodden, a problem exacerbated by the fact that there’s very little new or revelatory about his delivery of his message. His banjo-led hoedowns evoke a more palatable Mumford & Sons on the likes of Doors and Downfall; elsewhere, such as on We Go Way Back, insipid balladry abounds. Marginally more engaging is American Cars, which owes much to the motorik Americana of Adam Granduciel but comes across more War on Placebos than War on Drugs.

A bit of quality control wouldn’t have gone amiss either: well before the end of its 77-minute running time, The Great Divide feels like a titanic test of endurance. Phil Mongredien

Diavola

Gabrielle Cavassa

(Blue Note)

“Discovered” in true showbusiness fashion while singing at a wedding, 31-year-old Gabrielle Cavassa is poised to become what Blue Note boss Don Was terms “a major musical presence for years to come”. Heady stuff, which Cavassa goes some way to justify on an album produced by Was and the saxophonist Joshua Redman, whose manager was among the guests at that wedding. Redman has become a mentor for Cassava, featuring her on his own album, Where We Are, and playing here.

She brings a quixotic presence to Diavola’s mix of standards and originals, especially to Prisoner of Love, a much-covered torch song from the 1940s whose angst-laden melodrama she mutates into two and a half minutes of sultry seduction, set to a low-key backing. She does something similar to Bacharach’s Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, the jaunty original becoming the complaint of a long-suffering lover. The mix of material is eclectic. Cavassa wears her Italian heritage proudly, with an intimate take on Mario Lanza’s operatic Be My Love and a version of Luigi Tenco’s Angelo (from 1966), while her own Diavola (Devil) presents an opposite character – Cavassa says she can leave neither aside. A classy piece of work. Neil Spencer

Could Newcastle in 2026 be the Harlem of 1958? Knats certainly think so. The artwork for their new album is a group shot that seems to pay homage to Art Kane’s legendary picture of the most important American jazz cats of the era assembled in front of a New York brownstone. When a new wave of jazz erupted in London nearly a decade ago, it sounded distinct, dovetailing with genres such as dub and grime. But UK jazz is now a nationwide phenomenon, with improvisational music gaining traction in emerging regional scenes.

Knats beam with hometown pride: they call their style of punk jazz-fusion and art-rock “Geordie noir”. Their forthcoming album, A Great Day in Newcastle, is a snapshot of northern working-class life that interpolates a BBC interview with the Durham miners for its closing track. Black Midi fans will be pleased to see Geordie Greep on the production credits, along with Ride’s Andy Bell.

The LP quickly follows the band’s debut last year – pointing to the great deal of momentum behind them. Originally a duo of childhood friends Stan Woodward (bass) and King David Ike-Elechi (drums), Knats are now a live quintet featuring the local poet Cooper Robson. And if clips of them performing at a recent South by Southwest showcase in Austin, Texas, are anything to go by, they bring a gust of fresh air straight off the River Tyne. Kate Hutchinson

A Great Day In Newcastle is out on 1 May via Fontana. Knats are touring the UK from 22 April

Photographs by Elizabeth Miranda/Ebru Yildiz/Patrick McCormack/Roeg Cohen