Phoebe Bridgers, **Lost Weekend **

★★★★

On the opening track of Phoebe Bridgers’ Lost Weekend, we are wrenched from our body. In The Outside, Bridgers’ voice, icy and obfuscated by a harsh vocoder effect, lays out the funereal scene: we’re crying in a suit and tie, watching someone be carried away, throwing a fist through drywall.

The next verse takes us elsewhere: Bridgers held aloft while crowd-surfing at a gig, buoyant above the bodies, fist raised in the air. The contrasting, parallel scenes both dissolve in the same way, with the vocoder fading and Bridgers’ high, clear voice suddenly lifted by soft piano and guitar, swallowed up. We’re not in these moments, we’re floating above. Disconnected, unmoored.

It’s a fitting introduction for Lost Weekend, in which the Californian indie songwriter attempts to find her way through waves of grief and newfound love. It arrives a full six years after her second record, 2020’s vivid and sensitive Punisher. She certainly wasn’t idle in between, touring extensively for Punisher which included a stint on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.

She also joined up with her Boygenius supergroup mates Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker to make the Grammy-winning album, The Record. Plenty more touring followed, and plenty of life happened as well. Her father, with whom she had a strained relationship, died in 2023, and her high-profile engagement to Irish actor Paul Mescal came to an end.

All of this finds its way onto Lost Weekend, which is one of the finest representations of the mess of grief that you’ll find. Bridgers’ signature hyperspecific, visual songwriting is unleashed with ferocious power across its 16 tracks.

There are some gut-punch moments: “I found her bleeding over the sink/But when you said sorry, you were looking at me,” she sings on Still Standing, about her father. Later, when a voicemail from him asking for a call drifts into frame in Never Going Back!, it cuts like a knife. The gradual dismantling of a relationship is traced on The Governor’s Waltz (which also may contain a sideswipe at Mescal’s new partner, singer Gracie Abrams: “And she can pretend to be me/Since she took my place and bed on that stage/I have not lost anything”).

There’s plenty of widescreen, beautiful melancholy, but Bridgers is also careful to follow threads of optimism to give you a reprieve. The tracks Bobby and Liberty Tree are rushing alt-country turns in which Bridgers finds new love: “You were made in the image of God/But you look like your mum,” she sings on Liberty Tree.

As we heard on The Outside, much of Lost Weekend (produced with a team including Jack Antonoff, Alex G, Tony Berg and Ethan Gruska) is filtered through a feeling of dislocation and suspension. Bridgers has always been a fan of setting fire to songs and having them collapse around her – see Punisher‘s spectacular closer I Know the End. Lost Weekend is a masterful example of form following feeling: Bridgers’ voice is often smothered by effects, the instrumentation bursts through and changes in strange and eerie moments.

The track Kill Me (perhaps featuring the guttural vocals of Geese’s Cameron Winter?) ends so abruptly that I checked (more than once) that the stream hadn’t malfunctioned. The title track sputters with harsh breathing before cracking open with lashes of strings and guitars. It renders the brighter moments more impactful, like the clear bluegrass of Haunted.

Appropriately, the final song on the record, Lost Weekend (Reprise), in which Bridgers says goodbye to her father and addresses her new lover, is bluntly cut off halfway through a bar. A final throw into the abyss. Jules LeFevre

The Strokes, Reality Awaits

★★★

At Coachella in April, The Strokes made headlines after playing a politically charged video montage of military strikes in Iran and Gaza, as frontman Julian Casablancas chanted, “What side are you standing on?” Anyone expecting their new album to build upon this protest may be disappointed.

After all, this is a band whose first single back in 2001 was the controversial New York City Cops. But Reality Awaits lacks that urgency – The Strokes aren’t in a hurry at all, shambling through a broken world with weary bones and a strange affection for AutoTune.

Reality Awaits is often inscrutable, deeply nostalgic, occasionally profound, and sometimes cringe in a way that only the most charismatic voice of 21st century rock can pull off (no one else is talking about Josh Groban and John Legend in 2026, or still saying “YOLO”). Album opener Psycho Shit is a sinister slow build (one of four five-plus minute songs on the album), and our first taste of the off-kilter warbling that permeates the record.

The Fruits of Conquest is close to a powerful moment of protest, a thundering guitar riff and reverberating chant of “I’m a leech”. Falling Out of Love is transportive, shimmering in Casablancas’ delicate falsetto.

Lonely in the Future is a return to their garage-rock roots following the cheesy ’80s-dipped new wave of 2020’s The New Abnormal. And Going to Babble On is the most dynamic and fun The Strokes have sounded in years.

Elsewhere, the album meanders with little to say – Dine N Dash and Liar’s Remorse sound like droning latter-era Arctic Monkeys offcuts, and Tyrants of the Mellow Moon is an odyssey that wanders too far into the abyss and forgets to take us with it. Tom W Clarke

Jonny Chopps, Catalyst

★★★

Since emerging onto the Australian rap scene in early 2025, Sydney MC Jonny Chopps has gone supernova. Co-signed by the likes of The Kid Laroi and Ninajirachi, the dexterous artist has outworked many of his peers, crafting a sound that draws from sub-genres like rage, trap, pluggnb and more – while maintaining a distinctly Australian flair. It’s a particular source of pride for him, too.

On his 10-track mixtape Catalyst, which quickly follows the release of his Free Will EP in February, Jonny further establishes himself as a leader of Australia’s new generation of rappers.

Running with the ideas first expressed on Free Will, Catalyst does a far better job of conveying his artistic vision. It may not be an exercise in cohesiveness, with tracks like the hyperactive Garbage slotting in alongside the melodic Typa Guy, but when he truly finds his pocket, like on closer Motorola, he raps like a man possessed.

There are brief moments where his lyricism holds him back, but this feels more like an area for growth than an Achilles heel. In a scene where many artists can often appear overly lackadaisical, Catalyst offers a vision of what’s possible when an Australian rapper leans all the way in. Ben Madden

Yasmina Sadiki, Made for the past

★★★

With her debut EP Made for the Past, Eora artist Yasmina Sadiki doesn’t arrive searching for an identity; she arrives defining one. Across eight tracks, Sadiki refines the improvisational spirit that has long made her live performances so compelling into a body of work that feels deliberate, cohesive and deeply personal.

Rather than chasing immediacy, the record trusts careful songwriting, intuitive musicianship and spacious production to create an emotional arc that reveals itself more fully with every listen. The understated piano of opener Wounds establishes Sadiki’s preference for restraint over spectacle, while the lush harmonies and layered backing vocals of Give It To Me showcase the richness of the sonic world she has built.

Craving is the record’s defining moment. Built around a slow-burning crescendo, it unfolds with remarkable patience as Sadiki stretches the title refrain with effortless control, shimmering guitars gathering around her voice which remains the song’s unwavering centre.

Later, Keep You delivers the EP’s boldest turn. Beginning with an elegant blend of jazz, electronic textures and alternative soul, it transforms into pounding drums and distorted guitars without ever feeling abrupt. Even as the arrangement expands, Sadiki remains its emotional anchor. Ify Obiegbu

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