Albums of the week: Tyler Ballgame, Sébastien Tellier, Annabelle Chairlegs, Airelle Besson & Lionel Suarez

For The First Time, Again

Tyler Ballgame

(Rough Trade)

It often feels as though gentleness is in short supply these days; so Tyler Ballgame’s supple voice is a balm. The American singer-songwriter learned his craft singing Roy Orbison covers at open mics, and though he at times recalls the New Zealand alt-country singer Marlon Williams, Ballgame is very much his own man: a Berklee College of Music dropout who struggled to find his mojo until he moved to LA during the pandemic.

On this debut album, produced by analogue studio man Jonathan Rado, lovely songs such as I Believe In Love and Got a New Car are reminiscent of the 1960s-70s cusp. “I want to be the one to let you into the light!” he sings.

Down So Bad is an irrepressible, classy song about unrequited love, but there is darkness and depth to all the elegance. Ballgame, who struggled with depression, found solace thanks to the help of a body image therapist; Got a New Car is about that newfound sense of ease, not a set of wheels. Sing How I Feel, the product of a rich musical collaboration, is a tender ode to the power of art. Kitty Empire

Kiss the Beast

Sébastien Tellier

(Because Music)

The eighth album from the Parisian pop philosopher Sébastien Tellier provokes both intrigue and bemusement. Exploring the tension between civility and instinct, Kiss the Beast lurches between absurdist electropop and lush orchestration.

Long a fringe figure in French music, Tellier veered from the velvet melancholy of his big hit La Ritournelle to the surreal synth-pop with which he represented his country at Eurovision in 2008, a performance complete with golf buggy and helium balloon. Now 50, he seems determined to embrace his contradictions.

Bleating sheep open Mouton, only for the album to swerve into the gleaming, Nile Rodgers-assisted disco rush Thrill of the Night, which is sweetened by Slayyyter’s Studio 54 vocals. By the closing track, Un Dimanche en Famille, Tellier is unusually grounded, domestic.

Kiss the Beast isn’t as outrageous as its premise suggests, but there are flashes of brilliance. Copycat is a prime example: an identity theft ordeal is transformed through sleek synths into an elegant, poignant story. It is proof that Tellier’s eccentric charm can still carry weight. Georgia Evans

Waking Up

Annabelle Chairlegs

(TODO)

The project of Austin-based singer-songwriter Lindsey Mackin, Annabelle Chairlegs has self-released two albums over the last decade, but three might be her magic number. On Waking Up, she teams up with the garage rock hero Ty Segall on a record of fuzzy, free-spirited tracks with one foot in lo-fi rock’n’roll and the other in retro-leaning, 1960s girl group pop.

The album conjures a coherent, claustrophobic world of sweaty basement shows, weed and thrift store clothing, but Mackin shows impressive range, from the howling vocals and psych-blues riffs of Shoo Fly to the fairground keyboards of Ice Cream On the Beach.

Elsewhere, Patty Get Your Gun sounds like Courtney Barnett if she had a Velvet Underground obsession and a lava lamp, while the title track contains a lolloping, Beck-like bassline and curious split vocals through which Mackin duets with herself.

These references might have been pulled from decades past, but Waking Up gives them an exciting new voice. Lisa Wright

Blossom

Airelle Besson & Lionel Suarez

(Bretelles Prod/Papillon Jaune)

For a decade, Airelle Besson has been the ruling queen of French jazz, put there by trumpet playing that combines bell-like clarity with a delicate lyricism, and by her compositional talents. She infrequently plays as part of a duo, but has always maintained a simpatico relationship with the accordionist Lionel Suarez; this is their first album together.

It seems an odd pairing, but one that proves more than the sum of its parts. There is a spurt of double-tracked horn here and there, while the versatile Suarez provides percussive codas and growling accompaniments, then soars into solos steeped in French tradition.

No matter the inspiration for the music – a foggy day in Japan’s imperial city for the wistful Kyoto Dans la Brume, for example – we are never far from the moody Parisian skies captured on the cover. Suarez’s Le Jour J à l’heure H is a valedictory blast for the occupied Paris of a celebrated 1963 wartime film Le jour et l’heure (The Day and the Hour), while Buster Keaton’s silent movies inspire the quirky La Course. The standout of three covers is Ida Lupino, Carla Bley’s elegant tribute to the trailblazing female film-maker; it is rendered as catchy as ever. An unusual, entertaining slice of European jazz. Neil Spencer

“I’m lighter than a feather, don’t you know” sings Momoko Gill on River, from her debut album, about the giddy highs of romance. But the lyrics could just as easily be a mantra for her musical style. A British-Japanese drummer, producer, composer and vocalist, Gill’s approach is delicate and her songs nimble. They have a jazz sensibility – all lithe flute, deep double bass and the dainty skip of bossa nova – but also the introspection of neo-soul and adventurous scope of left-field electronics.

Gill has been quietly assembling Momoko for years as part of a vibrant London underground scene, many members of which she’s invited to join the 50-strong choir on the powerful track When Palestine Is Free. Those players include Shabaka Hutchings, Alabaster DePlume and Matthew Herbert, with whom she released a collaborative album, Clay, as Herbert and Momoko.

The record topped many Best Of 2025 lists, though Gill’s role was often sidelined, igniting an age-old bias within the music industry that women only sing the words, while men write the beats. It prompted Gill to release a satirical video entitled “Hacks to being acknowledged as a music producer whilst being female-presenting”, in which she films herself exaggeratedly pushing up the faders on a mixing desk. Her production chops on Momoko are not up for dispute: marking her out as a singular new voice, the album is a defiant call for softness in a harsh world. Kate Hutchinson

Momoko by Momoko Gill is out 13 February via Strut; she plays Jazz Cafe, London, on the same date

Photographs by Jonas Unger, Pooneh Ghana, Mathilde Favre