This week's wrap of great new music features a couple of mighty comebacks, a couple of fresh voices you might not have heard, and a whole heap of excellent songs that are truly worth your time.
Dig into five of the best new albums of right now below.
Kylie Minogue — Tension II
She's long reigned as Australia's biggest pop monarch, but Kylie Minogue experienced a mainstream renaissance last year with the runaway success of 'Padam Padam'.
A TikTok-approved queer anthem, the mega-hit earned Minogue her first ARIA and Grammy awards in 20 years, and a charting in triple j's Hottest 100 for the first time in nearly 30 years.
Now, Madam Padam has released Tension II, a direct follow-up to capitalise on the momentum of last year's chart-topping Tension.
Where that record was a pleasurable pop blockbuster that refreshed Minogue's status and sound without pushing too far outside her comfort zone, its follow-up features nine new songs that focus on dancefloor-charged electro-pop, which was but one of Tension's several flavours.
As far as sequels go, Tension II isn't bigger or better. It's largely more of the same, but when that amounts to more playful, hooky fun, is that such a bad thing?
'Someone For Me' is an early highlight, using the pitch-bending synth so signature to Eurohouse music (ATB's '9PM (Till I Come)' anyone?) but then the refrain's gang chants take the Ibiza cliches somewhere else.
'Good As Gone' is Gloria Gaynor's 'I Will Survive' by way of 2000s French touch, with its hopping bassline and Minogue's sassy break-up lines: "Love the way I look ripped out of your arms/Who would think that losing you would be so much fun?"
The record's worst moments are 'Dance To The Music', as hackneyed as its title, 'Kiss Bang Bang' and 'Hello', which are both merely Padam Padam 2.0 retreads that fail to capture what made the original such a refreshingly weird slice of flirty, campy, OTT robo-voiced fun.
Meanwhile, 'Diamonds' returns to the blueprint of one of Kylie's earlier smashes — 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head' — with a little more success.
Much like Minogue's upcoming homecoming tour, Tension II is a victory lap. Less a standalone body of work than an extension in the vein of the industry standard 'Deluxe Edition' upsell that tacks on extra tracks to boost streaming figures. Or, if you grew up buying physical media, a 2CD 'Tour Edition'.
That feeling is emphasised by four previously released collaborations thrown on at the end, which include some of the album's most interesting material. Namely, 'Midnight Ride', a fun duet with masked country artist Orville Peck, and 'Edge Of Saturday Night', a deeper club team-up with The Blessed Madonna (whose own just-released debut album Godspeed includes the same track).
However, 'Dance Alone', with fellow Aussie pop export Sia, and the flirty 'My Oh My', featuring America's Bebe Rexha and Sweden's Tove Lo, are more by-the-numbers.
As far as epilogues go, Tension II is solid. But in Minogue's wider, legendary oeuvre, it's unlikely to be fondly remembered for much more than what it is: an excuse to keep the successful Padam Padam party going.
For fans of: Jessie Ware, Robyn, Sophie-Ellis Bextor
— Al Newstead
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The Offspring — Supercharged
This year marks 40 years since Californian pop punk chart-toppers The Offspring formed. It's 30 years since they released Smash, one of the biggest selling punk albums of all time. And it's a quarter century since Pretty Fly For A White Guy became one of the more polarising Hottest 100 winners.
While the band have done their fair share of reminiscing over the years, 2024 sees them energised, with their 11th album Supercharged showing that there's plenty in their tank yet.
Don't let the lacklustre opening track 'Looking Out For #1' dissuade you, when the band hit their stride — which they do fairly frequently here — it confirms they still make tuneful, mildly aggressive, sometimes soaring punk rock as good as anyone else.
The unrelenting blast of 'Light It Up', the powerful and anthemic 'The Fall Guy' and the goofy bubblegum pop-punk of 'Make It All Right' show the band at their best. They even get a little self-referential on 'Get Some', its energy, guitar riffs and "yeah yeah yeahs" reminiscent of puerile 1994 gem 'Bad Habit'.
It's not all so strong, though. When things get epic ('Come to Brazil') and emotional ('OK, But This Is The Last Time'), it feels like the band are changing things up for the sake of it. An album purely built on focused, straight-down-the-line punk tunes might have been a more compelling offering.
Supercharged shouldn't be taken too seriously, and it certainly doesn't break any new ground, but its best moments are genuinely salient reminders of the band's enduring strength after four decades.
For fans of:Fall Out Boy,blink-182,Green Day
— Dan Condon
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The Linda Lindas — No Obligation
On their second album, teenage punks The Linda Lindas follow their instincts and deliver a string of songs of different genres that show us where their broad musical interests lie at this point of their young lives.
It opens with its title track, two minutes of venomous hardcore featuring Eloise Wong spitting lines like: "You'd like me better if I wasn't a mess / You'd like me better if I'd put on a dress." That leads into album highlight 'All In My Head', a tuneful piece of power-pop that couldn't be further removed from what came before it.
From here, it's a parade of different sounds and moods: 'Too Many Things' is grungey, 'Excuse Me' is riotous, 'Resolution/Revolution' sounds like a punked up B-52's, and 'Yo Me Estresso' marries guitarist Bela Salazar's love of corridos tumbados, banda and Duranguense music with the band's style of punk.
You'll also hear shades of early 80s hardcore, 2000s emo-tinged pop punk, 90s indie rock and more in the mix here, to name but a few. This breadth of sound might be an issue if every single song, every single note, wasn't delivered with striking aptitude and thrilling attitude. They are brilliant songwriters and musicians already, and they put everything they've got into these songs.
The world fell in love with The Linda Lindas after a performance of their song 'Racist, Sexist Boy' went viral in 2021. Virality is all well and good, but it only brings fleeting fame if you don't have the talent, determination, and mental strength to deal with life in the spotlight and a job in the music industry. So far, the band have met every challenge with aplomb.
If The Linda Lindas choose to stay together as they grow into adults, the world will be better for it. But there shouldn't be any pressure. For now, it's enough of a joy to have records like No Obligation that sparkle with ambition and unabashed love for rock 'n' roll in its many forms.
For fans of: Paramore, Teen Jesus and The Jean Teasers, Bikini Kill
— Dan Condon
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Custard — Suburban Curtains
I feel a little left out whenever people lose their minds about new episodes of the cartoon dog show. I just couldn't care less. Thankfully my cold heart does have space for some excitement, and a new album from (spiritually, if not geographically) Brisbane band Custard is one of them.
On Suburban Curtains, their fourth album since reforming after a decade-long hiatus and ninth overall, they offer an hour of pop perfection that stands up with anything they've released across their illustrious career.
Custard's appeal is not complicated: their songs are catchy, their lyrics wry and relatable. They play with a looseness that reveals a thrilling natural energy that's generated when these musicians are together. They never take themselves too seriously, yet never feel like a novelty band.
While 21 songs is a lot for one album, good luck finding one worth cutting. From the glorious jangle of 'Getting Over You', to the spiky, punkish 'Dear Weddos', to the compelling 'Vegetarian Squeeze', this is Custard in every form that we love them. Sadly, there's not enough space here to illustrate just how great the lyrics are across the board: they're sweet, funny and heartbreaking, sometimes all at once.
What its members do with their time outside of Custard is their business. So long as they keep pumping out records as good as Suburban Curtains, they'll keep even the stoniest of us happy.
For fans of: Ball Park Music, Even, Courtney Barnett
— Dan Condon
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LP Giobbi — Dotr
Oregon-born, Austin-based Leah Chisholm isn't your average DJ and producer.
Sure, as LP Giobbi, she's played electronic mega-festivals like Tomorrowland and Electric Forest, but she's also a jazz-trained pianist who splices the Grateful Dead with house music.
Those varied disciplines are mixed into LP Giobbi's music, which will appeal to anyone who likes their dance music with an emotional pulse as much as a literal one.
Dotr(pronounced 'daughter'), this week's Double J Feature Album, has plenty of club beats and house breaks to move your body to, but augments the polished grooves with lush piano, string arrangements, and collaborations with artists outside the electronic realm.
The disco-dipped 'Bittersweet' features indie rockers Portugal. The Man, while 'Until There's Nothing Left' is a flip of Alabama Shakes' 'Don't Wanna Fight', fusing frontwoman Brittany Howard's impassioned hollering to mournful piano and surging rhythms.
'Is This Love' is a cinematic banger driven by the powerhouse vocals of R&B/soul singer Danielle Ponder, while Texan singer-songwriterMadlyn Rhuebrings a folksy flavour to 'Two Days Older'.
There's unapologetically feel-good material, like the warm, summery 'So Nice To Be In Love' and 'Really Good'. But other tracks pay tribute to the women important to LP Giobbi's life and career who died during the making of the record.
The voices of her mother-in-law and a close family friend who was a professional singer are sampled. But most moving of all is an ode to Chisholm's late piano teacher, 'Carolyn', which — rather than be consumed by grief — is a fitting celebration of life well lived, scored by rich piano and a warm bottom-end.
It's a great example of how Dotr consistently straddles the line between sadness and life-affirming sweetness.
For fans of:TSHA,Logic1000,Sofia Kourtesis
— Al Newstead
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