Albums of the week: Gorillaz, Lala Lala, Buck Meek, Katherine Priddy

The Mountain

Gorillaz

(Kong/The Orchard)

During their 25-year tenure, Gorillaz have buried many friends, many collaborators and, in the run-up to this album, both Damon Albarn’s and Jamie Hewlett’s fathers. The Mountain – an album, as one lyric puts it, about “running to the exit” – proves beyond doubt that Gorillaz have long been more than just a mischievous cartoon band.

The voices of the late Mark E Smith, drummer Tony Allen, rapper Proof and singer Bobby Womack ring out from beyond the grave, while Bollywood star Asha Bhosle (92) graces The Shadowy Light. Although the median contributor age is high, the Argentine rapper Trueno and UK-based Jalen Ngonda make this a thoroughly 2026 release, one that embraces resonant themes with elegance and verve.

The interest in India is not tokenistic. Hewlett’s mother-in-law had a stroke in Jaipur, while Albarn’s father’s ashes are scattered in Varanasi. Musicians such as Anoushka Shankar and flautist Ajay Prasanna bring a richness to much of the score, while the songs grapple with reincarnation, gods and gurus. And when the Syrian singer Omar Souleyman and rapper Yasiin Bey duet on Damascus, or when Smith collides with beats on Delirium, this wake turns into a rave. 

Heaven 2

Lala Lala

(Sub Pop)

“Get me out of America / Something in the water makes me sick,” are the striking first lines of Car Anymore, but by the end of this opening track, Lillie West has changed course: “Give me one last chance America.” Heaven 2, her fourth album as Lala Lala (and first on the alt-indie label Sub Pop), is one of such transitions and big questions, written as West began to settle in Los Angeles after years of wandering. A sense of reaching out into the often terrifying unknown is present everywhere. “Should I miss my flight? Should I crash my car?” asks the title track. “I know I can’t go backwards but I don’t believe it yet,” she sings on Does This Go Faster?

Co-produced by Melina Duterte, AKA Jay Som, Heaven 2’s palette of bright, woozy synths amplify the image of something just becoming tangible. Even Mountains Erode employs trip-hop swagger as West’s changing vocal octaves play out like a conversation. The pillowy notes and tenacious lyrics of Anywave land somewhere between Sky Ferreira and Caroline Polachek. It is clear this album is a journey not a destination. 

The Mirror

Buck Meek

(4AD)

The Big Thief stable is nothing if not prolific. Over the last decade, the alt-country outfit has released six albums, while chief songwriter Adrianne Lenker and guitarist Buck Meek have churned out seven more under their own names. The Mirror, Meek’s fourth solo record, finds him ploughing the band’s same furrow of gentle acoustic-driven songwriting, and in the same loved-up mood as on his previous record, 2023’s Haunted Mountain.

On the opening track, Gasoline, he evocatively introduces the object of his affection: “She drew Orion on my belly with her finger,” he sings, before asking: “Will it be me or will it be her / To say I love you first?” That song, along with Demon and Ring of Fire, would sit comfortably alongside Lenker’s on Big Thief’s Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, aided by her voice and production by the band’s drummer, James Krivchenia. But The Mirror is held back by Meek’s limited vocal abilities. His narrow range pens him in, and too often he drifts into the background. The result is a record that reminds us of the magic Meek has helped to create as a foil for Lenker without possessing it outright. 

These Frightening Machines

Katherine Priddy

(Cooking Vinyl)

Katherine Priddy has been a class act since she first arrived with her Wolf EP in 2018. Since then her talents have unfolded sweetly over two albums and a host of live events and collaborations, among them setting to music two lyrics by poet laureate Simon Armitage. Priddy has always had a literary penchant, able to tie a classic myth to an everyday situation, as she does here on Atlas, a gentle chide to someone – possibly herself – not to carry the world on their shoulders. Her songwriting on These Frightening Machines – the title cut refers to human bodies that won’t behave – remains characteristically precise and poetic. There’s a tirade against the witching of women, and in Hurricane a torrid love affair (“The pill you shouldn’t swallow / whispers words so sweet and hollow”).

Musically it’s a giant step forward. Producer Rob Ellis (a favourite of PJ Harvey) has given Priddy’s voice more heft, foregrounding it in front of an array of guitars before it sinks into an artful melange of orchestration. There is also a poignant duet with American singer Torres. A keen self-observer, Priddy says the album reflects the perilous transition from her 20s to her 30s. “Drive off into your year/Hard on the gas,” she advises, a grownup album presumably coming right along. 

If you’re looking for a guide to the UK’s soulful electronic underground, Shy One can provide it: her music has been released on tastemaking imprints including Rhythm Section, Eglo Records, DVA Music and, for her debut album, Touching Bass. The forthcoming Mali (her name is Mali Larrington-Nelson) embodies a sense of community: of London’s interconnected labels and club scene, and the links that ignite musical passions across generations.

A DJ before becoming a producer, Larrington-Nelson learned how to mix at a youth club in west London and by 14 was DJing with a grime collective (almost settling on the alias DJ Malicious). She was inspired by the experimental early London grime scene and its DIY ecosystem of illegal broadcasts, white labels and rap battle DVDs. Closing track Live Dis Ting (Belt Drives) echoes this, as the grainy voice of her godfather, Jazzie B from Soul II Soul, muses on the tangibility of records.

Larrington-Nelson credits her mother with introducing her to British club sounds such as UK funky, and features a recording of her discussing her love affair with pirate radio and a tape she made of Soul II Soul on Kiss FM (Larrington-Nelson’s father, DJ Trevor Nelson, started at the station). The young DJ is herself a resident on NTS Radio and her album includes guests from that world, from the poet James Massiah to R&B singer George Riley. Taking in broken beat, dub and Detroit techno, Mali is a sophisticated, adventurous body of Black electronic genres. Kate Hutchinson

Mali is out on 12 March via Touching Bass

Photographs by Germaine van der Sanden/Matty Deveson/Ariel Fish/Ronan McKenzie