As we ring in the new year, The Observer’s chief music critic Kitty Empire looks ahead at the artists with big releases and tours in the works, from Ms Banks’s debut studio album to the live return of Elvis Costello.
Listen to The Observer’s playlist of the week here.
Celebrating the texture of Afro hair, the lead track from Ms Banks’s forthcoming debut studio album, South LDN Lover Girl, is a banging party tune, juicy with Afro-Caribbean beats and attitude. It’s produced by Hargo, who has worked with Central Cee among others, but the vibes are all Banks’s own.
A rollicking love song set against the backdrop of a haunted Cork, this track features both “the south gate and the barbed wire fences”, along with an enticing cocktail of “Aperol and THC”. The next great band out of Ireland release their debut album on 7 March.
Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett have been to The Mountain and returned with an album about death and the afterlife. Damascus, though, is a lively bop powered by the Syrian wedding rave producer Omar Souleyman with guest flows by Bey (fka Mos Def): “Turkish coffee, Starbucks, you’re corny!”
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Touring his early work this year for (whisper it) possibly the last time, Elvis Costello’s ascendant era is effectively encapsulated by this driving fan fave. A new wave take on Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues, Pump It Up satirises and luxuriates in rock’n’roll appetites.
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One of the most long-awaited hip hop albums of recent years is A$AP Rocky’s Don’t Be Dumb, scheduled to drop next week. A controversial first instalment finds Rocky singing over guitars – not the first time the rapper has swerved genre, but further evidence of his versatility.
Illustration by Charlotte Durance