Albums to look forward to in 2022

There are loads of proper exciting new albums coming out in 2022, here’s a list of those we’re most excited about and where you can see these acts live!

Years & Years – Night Call – Out January 21st

From its iconic artwork to its euphoric, rejuvenated sound, ‘Night Call’ is a thrilling new chapter for Years & Years. Throughout, Olly Alexander uses his platform to push the boundaries of mainstream superstardom, with a sound as inspired by pioneering figures like Sylvester as it is the club-ready world of French House. At the centre of it all is that mermaid of a muse: a beautiful icon luring men to their death, on an album partly about those searching for love (or a lover) but ultimately finding power in themselves. Embodying the new perspective of a character – like Ritchie in ‘It’s A Sin’ – also deeply influenced Olly’s songwriting, with songs that blur the line between fantasy and reality but are bound together by their explorations of queer life. Hedonistic and escapist, ‘Night Call’ captures that joy and anticipation of going out precisely because, says Olly, “I was writing from a fantastical space, stuck in the same four walls. I wanted to have as much pleasure as possible in the music.”

The Wombats – Fix Yourself, Not The World – Out January 14th 

Recording remotely over the past year from their respective homes, the band have been working hard to produce some of the most captivating, inventive and forward-thinking music of their career to date. With frontman Matthew “Murph” Murphy in Los Angeles, bassist Tord Øverland Knudsen in Oslo and drummer Dan Haggis in London, they discussed each day’s plan via Zoom, then recorded separately, sending individual files to producers Jacknife Lee (U2, The Killers), Gabe Simon (Dua Lipa, Lana Del Rey), Paul Meaney (Twenty One Pilots, Nothing But Thieves), Mark Crew (Bastille, Rag‘n’Bone Man) and Mike Crossey (The 1975, The War on Drugs, Yungblud) to mix into the finished tracks. “It was pure madness, to be honest,” explains Murph.

Miles Kane – Change The Show – Out January 21st via BMG Records

Following a chance “no frills session” with psych-rock duo Sunglasses For Jaws at the band’s Hackney studio, Miles’ fourth solo album Change The Show really began to take shape. “I saw myself in their energy, but also their taste and their knowledge of music,” Miles explains. “It was the first time I’d felt old!”

Opening with the honest soft croon of ‘Tears are Falling’, the album is a joyous ride from start to finish and features a surprising, but spectacular appearance from Grammy-nominated singer Corinne Bailey Rae for a duet on ‘Nothing’s Ever Gonna Be Good Enough’. It’s an album that best represents Miles himself: charmingly authentic, and like nothing else you’ll hear in pop music today.

Band of Horses – Things Are Great – Out January 21st via BMG

Band of Horses will release their sixth studio album and their first record in more than
five years, Things Are Great on January 21, 2022 via BMG. Sonically the album is a return to their earlier work and the kind of raw ethos that lies at the heart of Band of Horses.

MICHELLE – AFTER DINNER WE TALK DREAMS – Out 28th January via TRANSGRESSIVE

The songwriting on AFTER DINNER WE TALK DREAMS has been elevated, as there is a depth and prowess at work that makes good on the promise of the band’s early songs, something they admit was learned by reflecting and allowing room for artistic growth.

Bastille – Give Me The Future – Out February 4th

Give Me The Future is a tribute to humanity in a tech age and reflects on the strangeness of living through times that can feel like science fiction. Exploring both the opportunities of new technology and the dark side of lives lived online, it’s as playful and fun as it is thought-provoking, as dystopian as it is dancefloor-friendly, and as electronic as Bastille have ever been.

Foxes – The Kick – Out February 11th via PIAS

Of the album, Foxes shares: “The record was written from a place of wanting to escape the walls of my own apartment, I wrote it imagining freedom and dancing and people being able to hold each other again. I spent so much time on zoom day and night just writing words and melodies and before I knew it I’d written an albums worth of material. I felt a wild and animalistic feeling of needing and wanting to socialise again come out whilst writing and the feelings just didn’t stop. I felt like being in my apartment and being so isolated made me really dig deep into my mind and my imagination just ran wild. Most of the music is a celebration but some of the music comes from a painful place, of loss and heartbreak. I felt trapped and almost like my insides were dancing but I couldn’t express it, but in writing it allowed me to feel free again. This record feels like a new start and the ability to come back to life after such a strange time of us all being alone.”

Sea Power – Everything Was Forever – Out February 11th

Everything Was Forever is heralded by new single ‘Two Fingers’, one of many highlights from the album. ‘Two Fingers’ is a potential anthem for these troubled times.

alt-J – The Dream – Out February 11th via Infectious Music

alt-J are one of the most successful British bands of the millennium. Joe Newman, Gus Unger-Hamilton and Thom Green have released three studio albums that, between them, have sold in excess of two million copies and their songs have been streamed over two and a half billion times.

Metronomy – Small World  – Out February 18th via Because Music

Metronomy’s new album Small World is a return to simple pleasures, nature, and an embracing in part of more pared down, songwriterly sonics, all while asking broader existential questions: which feels at least somewhat rooted in the period of time during which it was made – 2020. Finding appreciation in nature and our roots, while reappraising the things we value as we get older are all things that are part and parcel of the human experience: though it has all felt accelerated and emphasised in this past year or so. Through the tumultuous ebb and flow of the years, Metronomy continues to endure, and Joe Mount’s ability as a songwriter, arranger and producer shines through on Small World, evergreen.

White Lies – As I Try Not To Fall Apart – Out February 18th via PIAS

Recorded at Sleeper and Assault & Battery studios in West London, the album sees long-term collaborator Ed Buller, who has worked on many of their albums including their debut To Lose My Life…, return to produce several tracks along with Claudius Mittendorfer (Weezer, Panic! At The Disco) also producing and mixing the entire album.

Tears for Fears – The Tipping Point – Out February 25th via Concord Records

Arriving on the 25^th February The Tipping Point is the band’s first album since their reunion album Everybody Loves A Happy Ending in 2004. Since then, the band have toured extensively, including a sold-out UK arena tour and in 2017 released Rule The World, a best-of compilation that returned the band to upper reaches of the album charts once more. In September of 2022 the band were honored with the Outstanding Song Collection Award at the 2021 Ivor Novello Awards.

CMAT – If My Wife New I’d Be Dead – Out February 25th via AWAL Recordings

Few artists manage to blend bountiful hooks with such humour and wit; the 12 songs that make up this idiosyncratic, captivating and rather extraordinary debut album reveal an artist brimming with confidence and verve. It has been quite a year for Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, one of the year’s breakout stars, earning critical recognition as well as a legion of new fans.

Stereophonics – Oochya! – Out March 4th via Ignition Records

‘Oochya!’ follows Stereophonics’ previous album ‘Kind’, which went to Number One in the UK album charts in 2019, outselling nearest competitor Kanye West by over 10,000 copies. It became the band’s 7th UK Number One album in the process. The release of ‘Oochya!’ will also see the Welsh rockers return to the road for what’s sure to be another eagerly anticipated sold out UK Arena tour.

Franz Ferdinand – Hits To The Head – Out March 11th via Domino

The seminal Scottish rockers will release their ‘Best Of’ album in 2022, featuring hits such as ‘Take Me Out’,  ‘Do You Want To’, ‘No You Girls’ and more.

The Mysterines – Reeling – Out March 11th via Fiction Records

The Mysterines debut album ‘Reeling’ was made under the watchful eye of acclaimed producer Catherine Marks (Wolf Alice, The Big Moon, PJ Harvey) over three weeks in between lockdowns at Assault & Battery studios in London, recorded live to capture the intensity of the songs. “It’s a pretty ambiguous title for most people, but for me ‘Reeling’ sums up every emotion of the album in just one word,” says Lia. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” she explains.

Charli XCX – CRASH – Out March 18th via Warner

On CRASH, Charli XCX says: “I was able to possess and persuade an incredible group of producers and collaborators to contribute to CRASH by using my femme fatale powers and a multitude of dark spells and curses. Some of these include A. G. Cook, George Daniel, Deaton Chris Anthony, Lotus IV, Caroline Polachek, Christine and the Queens, Oscar Holter, Digital Farm Animals, Rina Sawayama, Ian Kirkpatrik, Jason Evigan, Justin Raisen, Ariel Rechtshaid, Ilya, Oneohtrix Point Never, Jon Shave and Mike Wise. They will all remain locked in my basement forever.”

Placebo – Never Let Me Go – Out March 25th via SO Recordings

As great masters in cataloguing the human condition, Placebo’s unique way of examining both its flaws and beauty finds fertile ground in 2021. Crawling out of the pandemic into a landscape of intolerance, division, tech-saturation and imminent eco-catastrophe, theirs is a voice that has rarely felt more significant to contemporary discourse, and more appropriate to sing these stories to the world. Within the magnetic slow-burn of new track ‘Surrounded By Spies’ no punches are pulled in confronting the erosion of civil liberties, as Brian Molko’s deft lyrical delivery is married to a creeping sense of claustrophobia that fittingly makes the walls feel as though they are closing in from all around.

Basia Bulat – The Garden – Out 25th March via Secret City Records

The Garden reimagines songs across Basia Bulat’s five studio albums with stunning classical string quartet arrangements by Owen Pallett, Paul Frith, and Zou Zou Robidoux. While she has been known to play live with small chamber ensembles and full orchestras–including the Ottawa National Arts Centre Orchestra and Symphony Nova Scotia–The Garden marks Bulat’s first recording to capture this spellbinding configuration, which further showcases her singular voice and timeless songwriting. Across the 16 songs, produced by herself and Mark Lawson (Arcade Fire, Beirut), she revisits and gives new life to beloved originals alongside a handpicked group of string players, as well as bandmates Andrew Woods and Ben Whiteley on guitar and bass, respectively.

Confidence Man – Tilt – Out April 1st via Heavenly Recordings

Confidence Man are unarguably one of the hottest acts on the planet right now. A
portable party that’s levelled dance floors and flattened festival crowds as it’s rolled out
across the world, their performances are custom designed to make you dance and lose
your cool.

Wet Leg – Wet Leg – Out April 8th via Domino

After releasing two of the best singles of the 2021, Wet Leg’s Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers were catapulted from their confines on the Isle of Wight to sold out venues across the UK and packed-out tents at festivals causing giddy excitement wherever they went.

Wet Leg was recorded and produced in the main by Speedy Wunderground’s Dan Carey (“Chaise Longue” and “Angelica” were produced by Jon McMullen and Josh Mobaraki respectively). The album was mostly recorded in London, in April 2021, meaning they had a finished album before the world had even heard debut single “Chaise Longue” or played live. “I guess how it happened was unconventional,” admits Hester.

Bloc Party – Alpha Games – Out April 29th via BMG

‘Traps’ is the first single lifted from their forthcoming sixth studio album Alpha Games, due April 29 2022 via Infectious / BMG.

Produced by Nick Launay & Adam Greenspan (Nick Cave, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, IDLES), ‘Traps’ sees the band returning to the raucous, high-octane sound of their earliest work in an outburst of propulsive post-punk.

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Liam Gallagher – C’mon You Know – Out May 27th via Warrner

C’MON YOU KNOW follows the huge success of Liam’s previous studio albums As You Were (2017) and Why Me? Why Not. (2019), which established his iconic status for a whole new generation. His ‘MTV Unplugged’ also went straight to #1 on the Official Album Chart. Between his triumphs as a solo artist and his phenomenal success with Oasis, Liam has spent a combined total of almost six months at #1 across eleven chart-topping albums.

Porcupine Tree – Closure / Continuation – Out June

Porcupine Tree on Harridan and CLOSURE/CONTINUATION: “Harridan and a few of the other new songs have been in play since shortly after the release of The Incident. They initially lived on a hard drive in a slowly growing computer file marked PT2012, later renamed PT2015, PT2018, and so on. There were times when we even forgot they were there, and times when they nagged us to finish them to see where they would take us. Listening to the finished pieces, it was clear that this wasn’t like any of our work outside of the band – the combined DNA of the people behind the music meant these tracks were forming what was undeniably, unmistakably, obviously a Porcupine Tree record. You’ll hear all of that DNA flowing right through Harridan.”

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