The most anticipated albums of the year have been named: Moneskin surprises, Shaman intrigues

A full-length album is not the most popular way to communicate with fans right now, but even in the era of short thoughts, musicians are still ready for big statements. In the coming year, new albums will appear even from those whom, it would seem, everyone has forgotten. “MK” made its rating.

Iggy Pop

The grandfather of alternative rock failed to become an artist who will release the first album of the year (American electronic artist Moby has already done this), but the release from Iggy Pop will definitely be a resonant record in its genre. Every Loser comes out on January 6th and is Iggy’s twentieth solo album. It must be admitted that the 75-year-old musician is clearly not thinking about retirement. Last year, he toured extensively, taking an impressive punk cabaret around the world, where provocations, trademark decadence, toothy irony and hits formed a mix that lifted even a gray-haired audience to their feet. The contents of the new release may be hinted at by the already published singles Strung Out Johnny and Frenzy. To many, they seemed very close to pop music, however, Iggy’s voice still inspires to remain informal as long as possible.

Depeche Mode

After the death of keyboardist Andy Fletcher, only two members of the original line-up remained under the Depeche Mode label. The upcoming album, in the context of Fletcher’s death, received the bitter name “Momento Mori” (remember death). Andy managed to participate in the creation of a significant part of the release, however, the tour, which will probably be largely dedicated to the memory of the musician, vocalist Dave Gahan and keyboardist, guitarist and main songwriter Martin Gore will go together, accompanied by session musicians. Momento Mori is Depeche Mode’s seventeenth album and comes out after a six-year silence. There is a largely reasonable opinion that in the twenty-first century all the releases of the group were rather routine compared to albums from the eighties and nineties. In any case, the tour, which starts together with the release in March (the first without Russian dates in the last twenty-five years), the musicians go not only with a supply of nostalgic numbers, but also with new material.

Gorillaz

Gorillaz began as virtual fun for Blur frontman Damon Albarn, but the seven-million-selling debut album turned joke into serious business. Since 2001, Albarn and all his numerous assistants have released seven albums, and at the end of February of this year they will publish the eighth release of ten new tracks. Demon is probably the most environmentally friendly music creator on the planet in the sense that sometimes it seems that his compositions are collected from some kind of sonic garbage. But in the end, it all adds up to a groovy and maximally adventurous mixture, which is hard to resist. The band’s new album was called “Cracker Island”, and in addition to Damon Albarn himself, artists from seemingly completely different musical universes took part in its recording. However, Albarn has always been able to combine what seemed to have nothing in common. This time Tame Impala, Bootie Brown, Thundercat, Bad Bunny and others worked with him.

Metallica

At the end of November last year, the members of Metallica released the single Lux AEterna and announced their eleventh album, 72 Seasons. Judging by the first song from the new release, the cult band does not intend to put to the test the mood of its audience, which is very capricious in terms of experiments. The sound of the single is very recognizable by Metallica and many fans hope that the whole album will be the same. The first record of heavy legends was released in 1983, and since then the band has clearly not sought to overwhelm the fans with releases. In total, there are ten studio albums in Metallica’s discography, and this is clear evidence of the group’s very serious attitude to their records. In support of 72 Seasons, a tour is planned, which will not be built in the most usual way. In each city where the concerts will take place, the musicians promise two shows with completely different set lists.

Uriah Heep

Probably, you need to have an inexhaustible faith in hard rock in order to play it in more or less its original form for more than fifty years. The legendary Brits have this belief if they release their twenty-fifth album and still regret that the pandemic has pretty much crumpled their plans. The single Save Me Tonight, which is available now, features all the classic tricks of the genre, as well as Mick Box’s well-recognized guitar. It’s not certain that “Chaos&Colour”, as the album is called, will become global music news, but fans of old-fashioned rock will certainly be pleased with it.

Moneskin

The heroes of Eurovision steadfastly withstood the stream of bullying that they are more like actors playing in a film about a rock band than a rock band itself, and rather quickly subjugated both America and Europe. Now that the bar is high, their new album ‘Rush’, which comes out in January, is likely to get a lot of attention. Apparently. The musicians themselves understand this well, so they are already rocking the album with the help of singles. Three of them have already been released, and all of them claim to be hits. Here, however, there is nothing surprising. Swedish producer Max Martin worked on the record with Italian rockers, who wrote hits, it seems to all the inhabitants of the world charts. The musicians say that they tried to make the album very colorful in sound, and listened to Arctic Monkeys and Radiohead for inspiration.

Jennifer Lopez

For the past nine years, Jennifer’s fans have been deprived of the opportunity to re-evaluate her musical talent and watched only films with the participation of the actress and singer. It seemed that the artist was waiting for the right occasion, and now it happened. Two decades after the first meeting, she is again paired with actor and director Ben Affleck, and this time their wedding did not fail. The twentieth anniversary of her album “This Is Me” also arrived here. The new release is called “This Is Me Now” and many songs are dedicated to Jennifer’s famous husband. It has long been noticed that secular flair can contribute to the good promotion of songs. But Mrs. Lopez, of course, does not hope only for the love story replicated by all the world’s tabloids. Latino, turbojet pop, ballads, in general, everything that fans of mass music need now is presented in the album.

Lana Del Rey

She seemed to promise not to record anything else, but, as you know, it is better to divide all the oaths of the artists by ten. When the singer released the single Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, fans were hopeful that there would be a sequel. And here it is planned for release in early March. As Lana herself notes, the main driving force in writing new songs was the desire to pass lazy Sunday evenings. As a result, the most intricate melodies became orchestrations, and the simpler ones sound like pop music. According to a long-established tradition, almost all singers call new songs very personal and describing a difficult life experience. It’s not entirely clear what this really means, but Lana classifies the new album as nothing more than a diary.

Alena Sviridova

“This is energetic electronic music,” Alena Sviridova described her new album in an interview with MK last year. The singer had an intention to release it before the New Year, but Alena stopped setting deadlines for herself, because, according to her, she works exclusively for her own pleasure. The last album of the singer called “City-River” was released in 2017 and we can say that the fans are already bored. The promised turn in the sound can partly be explained by the fact that the dance cover version of the classic hit “Pink Flamingo”, thanks to the joint efforts of Alena and Cream Soda, received a considerable response. Sviridova in the new arrangement sounded cheerful and organic, so this experience can be repeated. According to rumors, the degree of completion of the album is such that there are hopes to hear it in the new year.

Shaman

The turmoil that the songs “I am Russian” and “Stand up” brought to the charts gave rise to many questions in the spirit of “can Shaman make the whole album the same”. The singer seemed to be ready to give an answer this spring, promising to add new songs by that time. But then talk about more specific dates stopped. Apparently Shaman is trying to fully fulfill his title of sensation of the year, so his tour is constantly updated with new dates. Perhaps the main intrigue lies in how the artist’s patriotic doctrine will work in the format of an entire album. If this succeeds, then Shaman will give an impressive master class in creating music in new conditions.