New Music Round-Up: Cloakroom, Bdrmm, Andy Bell, Panda Bear

So many releases, so little time.

It’s a huge week, with comfortably the biggest line-up of new releases of 2025 so far. I want to flag up a few highlights, but I won’t attempt to cover everything. If I miss anything of note there’s a strong chance it might feature in my Best Releases of February round-up next week.

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Bdrmm
“Microtonic”
(Rock Action)

The third album from the Hull shoegazers is such a departure from their original sound, that it seems inaccurate to even label them a shoegaze band at this point. Microtonic sees the East Yorkshire outfit embracing the electronic flirtations of 2023’s I Don’t Know. It’s a blissful, ambient delight, resembling the hazy soundtrack to a post-club gathering, with soothing melodies and the faintest echo of the band’s noisier roots. It also sounds exactly like its album artwork suggests it will — take note, Ex-Vöid.

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Andy Bell
“pinball wanderer”
(Sonic Cathedral)

You probably know Andy Bell as an integral member of the legendary shoegaze band Ride, or for his bass-playing duties with Oasis. The less said about Hurricane #1, the better. Over the past five years, he’s also released a series of very respectable solo records, of which pinball wanderer is the fifth. It’s a lovely album, the highlight of which is a rather wonderful collaboration with singer Dot Allison and German legend Michael Rother (Neu!, Harmonia), “i’m in love…”.

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Panda Bear
“Sinister Grift”
(Domino)

Of all the artists I loved twenty years ago, few have fallen further in my estimation than Animal Collective. I just really can’t bear to listen to more than the occasional song of theirs these days. If anyone asks me if I have any No Ripcord related regrets, I usually point them in the direction of our gushing review of Merriweather Post Pavilion. I touched upon this in a middling review of 2022’s Time Skiffs:

I listened to Merriweather Post Pavilion again recently, the taste of the complimentary Kool-Aid that accompanied its phenomenally overhyped release all but a distant memory. It’s a decent enough album, sure, but 'myriad treasures’ reads like pure hyperbole. Its ‘extraordinary legend’ is the bizarre tale of a music press losing its collective mind over a seven-out-of-ten kind of record. What seemed timeless in early 2009 now sounds very much of its time. To be brutally honest, I think it’s one of the more egregious 10/10 ratings in our history.

Of the group’s principal members, however, Noah Lennox has made the best solo work. 2022’s Reset, his collaboration with Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember, was arguably the best thing he’s released since 2007’s Person Pitch (yes, I’m including Animal Collective material). Sinister Grift isn’t quite as strong, but it is a substantial work, with Lennox’s occasionally saccharine vocals balanced by the darker themes of his recent divorce.

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ALBUM OF THE WEEK

Cloakroom
“Last Leg of the Human Table”
(Closed Casket Activities)

Cloakroom’s phenomenal Dissolution Wave helped pull me out of a back pain-induced funk in 2022. In retrospect, it re-energised my passion for music after (understandably) getting lost in work over the pandemic. I’m thrilled that Cloakroom’s follow-up is just as good. It trades relentless heavy shoegaze for a more restrained collection of sounds, with nods to post-punk, jangle, and alt-country. And when those monstrous guitars do spring into action, they feel even more impactful. February has been very kind to us and this record is up there with the very best of the month’s releases.

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