My favourite releases from the week ending 08/11/2020

Halcyon is an aptly named album, bringing as it does a much needed breath of carefree optimism and melodic dreaminess to the chillier end of 2020.

Is "pandemic pop" a recognised genre term yet? Because if not then I think this is it.

I Don't Know How But They Found Me (or iDKHOW as it's stylised) are exactly the kind of band who will annoy almost as many people as they will be adored by, and Razzmatazz is exactly the kind of album you would expect a band like that to make.

Usually when sponsored ads stalk me on Instagram it leads to antipathy but in the case of the promo clip for sumptuous, retro tinged single ‘Mushroom Cloud’ it was an instant obsession.

After doing a three album (and one movie) tour of duty of the Gaga version of a midlife crisis (Jazz! Country! Brunette hair! JUST A REGULAR GIRL!)  and proving unequivocally that Gaga trying to be normal is just as weird as Gaga trying to be weird, Chromatica has now beamed down to earth in all it’s tecno-pinkness to bestow us with some classic Stefani bangers.

Notes On a Conditional Form (or NOACF as its merch-ified) is a beast of an album spanning 22 tracks and despite being written whilst on one of their seemingly never ending tours it is an ambitious and uncompromising release.

Maria Brink has always been a mesmerising live presence, a heady mix of Courtney Love, Lady Gaga and Marilyn Manson topped off with her own unique vision, that has rarely been captured on record in all its glory. However, there is a rawness to Mother that gets closer than anything since Blood and succeeds in doing justice to what the band are capable of without the watering-down process of studio recording getting in the way.