You know, I was looking forward to July. I'd been looking forward to July for months and months, because I knew that July meant new Arcade Fire. I had high hopes. High, high hopes. Reflektor may have been uneven and bloated, but Funeral and Neon Bible and The Suburbs all remain peerless classics. So I was like, okay. So they went a little … Continue reading The Niche Nine: Our Favourite Albums of July 2017

I really had to resist the temptation to just list Melodrama nine times this month. Don't get me wrong - it was a great month for new music, but Lorde is the zeitgeist, singing the song of my anchoritic soul. We'll get to all that in due course. Let me recommend eight other shiny new releases first. 9. Portugal. … Continue reading The Niche Nine: Our Favourite Albums of June 2017

So this is only the second instalment of The Niche Nine, because it's been a weird couple of months and I couldn't get my act together in March or April. That's a real shame, too, because April saw Kendrick drop what's probably going to be my AOTY, along with superb EPs from Young M.A and Animal Collective. … Continue reading The Niche Nine: Our Favourite Albums of May 2017

So, I listen to an absurd, excessive amount of music. According to my last.fm, I've listened to 2,357 songs in the last 30 days alone. And a lot of what I listen to is very, very niche. Thus, with the blessing of the other editors here at the Niche, I am launching the inaugural edition of … Continue reading The Niche Nine: Our Favourite Albums of February 2017