Chanel Beads, Alewya, Ibeyi: This Week’s 5 Albums

Alewya Zero (LDN Records/Because)

Zero, the striking debut album, confirms the breadth of talents of an artist capable of harbouring multiple emotions within a single sweeping creative surge. It has taken nearly five years for Alewya to finally release her first full-length. Not that she was idle: at the start of the 2020s, she collaborated with fearless figures from the London scene (Little Simz, Moses Boyd), she did modeling, she unveiled her drawings, and she asserted her status as singer-producer during a first EP that bridged London and the Caribbean (Panther in Mode).

Across the album, the artist crafts a sonic world where vulnerability and resolve fuse into a single forward-driving energy. The record traverses themes of identity, love, and resilience, all anchored by a keen sense of rhythm and a voice that shifts from intimate murmurs to defiant, soaring declarations. The result is a cohesive debut that feels both intimate and expansive, a personal statement that nonetheless reads as a universal invitation to feel more deeply.

Note: this is a translation of a previously published review; the original byline and publication context have been omitted here.

Chanel Beads Your Day Will Come (Jagjaguwar/Modulor)

Always in good company, American Shane Lavers continues to astonish with his mystic pop. Déjà vu? Even before diving into Chanel Beads’ new album, we circle back to its title twice: Your Day Will Come (“your day will come”), the same title as his predecessor released in 2024. Not a reissue, nor a covers record, not even really a spiritual sequel, this reuse speaks to the power of that maxim for the New Yorker Shane Lavers.

Across the new work, Lavers maintains the same spellbinding balance between dreamlike arrangements and punchy hooks, inviting listeners to linger in a cinematic haze where melodies drift and lyrics bite. The result feels inevitable, as if the artist has found a way to distill the lingering optimism and ache of life into a sound that is both intimate and anthemic. The album doesn’t chase novelty for novelty’s sake; instead it refines a familiar luminosity, offering something both comforting and electrifying in equal measure.

Note: this is a translation of a previously published review; the original byline and publication context have been omitted here.

E.Vax Just Like Fire (Because)

Since the release of Ratatat’s fifth and most recent album to date, Magnifique (2015), Evan Mast, one of its two creative minds, has used this extended hiatus (and its indefinite nature) to look back. Symbolically, he issued, twenty years after the first Ratatat, a second solo album under the alias E.Vax (E.Vax, 2021): a youthful elixir after he had stretched his creative muscles beside his partner Mike Stroud. The question of this revived vitality lies at the heart of this third album. As the artist himself confesses, Just Like Fire is the product of an attempt to reconnect with the intuitive spark of creation and the intensity of his earliest musical affection. Initially a homage to sampling, before being curtailed by rights issues, the record evolved into a personal quest at the core of his musical DNA.

Note: this is a translation of a previously published review; the original byline and publication context have been omitted here.

Ibeyi Offering (Awal)

For their fourth album, Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Diaz reinvent their hybrid, twin, and mystical pop, more enchantingly than ever. Four years after their third record, , the Ibeyi sisters—having carved out a notable path in the illustrious lineage of their father Anga Díaz, the percussionist of Buena Vista Social Club—have stepped away from XL Recordings, their longtime label since 2014: “We wanted to reclaim the energy, freedom, and assurance of the first album,” they explain. “To do this, we had to lose ourselves.”

Note: this is a translation of a previously published review; the original byline and publication context have been omitted here.

Beth Orton The Ground Above (Partisan Records/PIAS)

Across eight superb tracks bathed in chiaroscuro, the British singer-songwriter stands out and enchants in a mode of stark clarity. The cover image, conceived with Victorian-era devices and techniques, was crafted by Polish photographer Kasia Wozniak and presents a double vision: on the left, a blurred, almost ghostly profile contemplates a clearly defined Beth Orton facing us, as serene and enigmatic as an ancient oracle.

Note: this is a translation of a previously published review; the original byline and publication context have been omitted here.