January Roundup: Albums and EPs from PVA, Dry Cleaning and more.

By Hard of Hearing on February 2, 2026

Essential new collections also featuring Sleaford Mods, Pem and more.

Essential new collections also featuring Sleaford Mods, Pem and more.

PVA – 'No More Like This'

PVA have always been defined by their ability to process and rearrange aspects of their contemporary influences. In their early years, this amounted to a synthesis of post-punk's hard edges with the fervent energy of the electronic pop. This approach culminated in the more straightforwardly floor-filing debut album 'BLUSH'. 'No More Like This' seems to mirror that debut in an unexpected and inspired manner. Morning-after opener 'Rain' sets this up, quoting dance textures as if pulled out into the cold light of day, the rawness set up by the dry natural treatment of Ella Harris' spoken vocal. Even the more straightforwardly pop arrangements like 'Boyface' land closer to trip-hop than IDM, and more common are tunes where the danceability is abstracted, as on 'Enough' and 'Mate'. The allusive quality of the music across this record is matched by the free associative lyrical style, making for a record which, for all its synthetic materials, collects the band's most human and instinctual music to date. (Lloyd Bolton)

Dry Cleaning – 'Secret Love'

On 'Secret Love', Dry Cleaning are at their most textural, collaborating profitably with Cate le Bon as producer. These are not simply the abstract expressionist textures of wall-of-guitar post-punk which made the group's name. 'Secret Love' goes much further, seeming to draw from the greatest strengths of everybody involved. Vocalist Florence Shaw experiments with texture and metre, keeping the listener on their toes as lyrics shift between intense social commentary and a pointedly assumed ambivalent narcissism, while her bandmates create unexpected tonal contrasts. At times, Shaw's vocals recede into the middle background, serving as frays to guitar-driven grooves like 'My Soul / Half Pint'. That tune grows into something that perhaps speaks best of why this band-producer collaboration works so well. We hear that inspired synthesis in focus also on opener 'Hit My Head All Day', which incorporates the tropical flange and yearning saxophone of le Bon's more recent records. In sum, this record amounts to a brilliant meeting of artistic temperaments, fusing the best of both sides into an absorbing and original record. (Lloyd Bolton)

Sleaford Mods – 'The Demise of Planet X'

The latest album from the chief doomswayers of Brexit Britain adds to their canon of cultural commentary, bolstered by some exciting collaborations. 'The Demise of Planet X' is one of their less riveting collections, slowed down by repeated navel-gazing critiques of the music industry (appearing in various degrees of quality on 'The Good Life', 'Megaton', 'The Demise of Planet X'), repeated allusions to worms and maggots which feel a little on-the-nose within the band's well-established 'UK Grim' timbre, and a frustrated attempt to grapple with that artistically elusive subject of MAGA nonsense on 'Flood the Zone'. The record's textures are varied by some ambitious feature choices, including Aldous Harding and a memorably unhinged verse from actress Gwendoline Christie. Further, the occasional formalism taken to their simple compositional form proves fruitful, as on breakdown moments of 'Megaton'. That being said, this record does feel like simply more Sleaford Mods, rather than anything that pushes the envelope of their admittedly immersive universe. (Lloyd Bolton)

Pem – 'other ways of landing'

Pem has always written material that feels like it's been gently unearthed rather than composed, brushed free from soil, time and memory. Her new EP 'other ways of landing' continues to nurture her relationship with the natural world while deepening her exploration of grief, love and separation. Perched vulnerably on a tree branch, she reaches out toward the unknown searching for connection, for signs from those she's lost, and for meaning in the world growing around her. 'm4 windy' traces the emotional weight of journeys between home and elsewhere, loss treated as a shifting and cyclical landscape. Closing track 'milk, blue' is one of several that turns our attention upwards. An ode to the moon, it captures the ache of seeing beauty just out of reach: "You're the new moon that I can't get to this afternoon." Mysterious and expansive, there is connection within distance – the wondering, the longing. Yet the earth and sky remain separated, her landing incomplete. Grief can linger, but it does not always have to weigh things down. Instead, Pem considers what it means to fall back to earth after loss, and whether landing is ever quite the same twice. 'other ways of landing' does not offer neat conclusions. It coaxes us into sitting with uncertainty and learning how to deal with it. Landing can be tender, clumsy, and sometimes endlessly postponed, but the journey of loving one another is worth the turbulence. (Heather Collier) [Adapted from full review available here]

Another Country $$$$ – 'CURSED FRAME EP'

A glistering menagerie of silvery dance music transmutations, Another Country $$$$'s new EP 'CURSED FRAME' flutters with hope and vitality; its steely metallic mainframe enswathed in coursing claret veins and cast in a boundless spectral glow. Materialising through the luminous portal of Manchester's thriving underground experimental electronic scene, the duo's accomplished new EP arrives via UK tastemaker label Spinny Nights, thematically inspired by Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2001 Japanese techno-horror 'Pulse' and "the way ghosts invade the living world through the internet, leaving behind stains, residues, traces of themselves". Summoning up glitchy, club-ready breakbeats that dissolve seamlessly into stark, elysian ambiences and cybernetic spoken word interludes, 'CURSED FRAME' strikes a perfect balance between experimental production and pop sensibility, making for bountiful repeat listens that each uncover a new, glinting sonic dimension. In celebration of their EP launch, Another Country $$$$ are set to headline the Brixton Windmill, Leeds' Mabgate Bleach and The Rat & Pigeon in Manchester for a short stint of UK tour dates in February. (Hazel Blacher)

Clémentine March – 'Powder Keg'

Named for a Bonnie Tyler lyric, 'Powder Keg' is an expansive new collection from Clémentine March, the depths of her writing magnified by an illustrious range of collaborations. On opener 'After The Solstice', her voice is paired with that of Naima Bock for a tune that recalls their time touring together around the UK and elsewhere she duets with Evelyn Gray on the joyously heady 'Fireworks'. Across the albums, folk tinges reflect the influence of the current revival of traditional forms of music across the UK scene, while other tracks reference indie touchstones from the rough edges of Husker Dü ('Upheaval') to the meticulous precision of Cate le Bon ('Powder Keg'). Like all of March's work, this record is defined first and foremost by a joy in creativity itself, each track making the most of possible new avenues of inspiration offered by a song's initial form. At the same time, there is a particular wholeness to these recordings, the ensemble cast magnifying the finer details of the songs in a continuously inspiring set of songs.

Mumbles – 'The Mumbles Book of Hell'

Released to commemorate Blue Monday, supposedly the most miserable day of the year, Manchester's Mumbles once again team up with Divine Schism to release 'The Mumbles Book of Hell'. The proposition is less doomy than you might imagine. Sure, guitars scream over clattering drums and we catch lyrics like, 'Everything is stupid, getting stupider'. But Mumbles has always been about affirming humanity and the value of life and resistance, in the face of its greatest challenges. The impossible pace of their music, driven by impossibly frenetic guitar-playing, makes for a kind of epic, searing wall of noise through which a tone of uplift guides us toward some kind of serenity. And though epic closer 'The Penguin Book of Hell' deals with some thoroughly depressing subject matter, even that works through those aspects of life to find reasons for positivity… 'the clarinettist plays on'. This whole collection captures that intent: that the joy written into Mumbles' music is never escapist, always a source of power for the downtrodden and disheartened. (Lloyd Bolton)

Skiving – 'The Family Computer'

While artists are typically cautious at releasing work in the murk of January, some gems emerge fully formed as a balm to the onslaught of a new year. London's Skiving (formerly known as Human Resources) have built a reputation as a fierce live unit, full of lyrical spite and art-punk jank critical of the lies sold to millennials and zoomers within a late capitalist machine that consumes itself and everything in its path. On their debut LP, 'The Family Computer,' the agile, pensive quintet combine their penchant for pithy and prescient narratives with jolty post-punk bite to create a release that is bright, conscious and wildly catchy. From the driving, existential outcry of opener, 'Ich Bin Ein Beginner' and the bouncy humour of 'The National Lottery', to the damning critique of centrist Britain on 'Things Made Of Metal' and the petty argumentative outbursts of 'Conversations With David Berman (Was That Civilised?)' Skiving deliver a tightly wound snapshot of contemporary Britain under the threadbare blanket of neoliberalism. (A. L. Noonan)

Shaking Hand – 'Shaking Hand'

Upon the release of their self-titled debut album, Shaking Hand take their place as one of Manchester's most impressive current offerings in a crowded field. There's no particular throughline in the comparisons that the trio will provoke with this. Admirers of the likes of Ought, Ulrika Spacek and Omni should find plenty to like in the tightly-wound guitar work that the Manchester trio employ across the record, there's a melodic ease that recalls Yo La Tengo and Big Thief and conversely some really impressive slowburn post-rock straight from the Mogwai playbook. It's impressive that Shaking Hand are able to mesh such an array of sonic references across the album, but what is even more striking is that they do so whilst always looking forward. There is an inherent tension in that the band are excellent at writing infectious taught guitar motifs and also very handy at building out pretty elaborate sonic landscapes. That way in which that tension is channeled is ultimately what makes this the first great debut album of 2026. There are few new guitar bands with more ambition than Shaking Hand. Last year, they set about establishing themselves as one the best bands in one of Manchester's best crops of bands in decades. At the start of this one they have released a record which will not only strengthen that claim but should bring fanfare from much further afield too. This debut is a masterclass in toying with tension, pressure and release. (Marty Hill) [Adapted from full review available here]

zosia on a hill – 'green is the shadow'

Weaving together intimate folkloric mythologies, 'green is the shadow' is an evocative ode to Arcadia. This debut release from Brighton-based zosia on a hill (aka Zosia Szymanoska) – who some will know as part of big long sun's live setup – brims with melodic charm, evoking the mountains, broken hearts, memories, and the mysterious threads of human connection. Flowing between reflections on the pastoral and impassioned pleas, Zosia captures love in its quaking entirety. A lo-fi acoustic sensibility resonates throughout the EP, emphasising the music's reflective intimacy. An acoustic performer par excellence,zosia on a hill's debut is a tender meditation of the pastoral and devotional. 'green is the shadow' marks an exciting introduction to an artist capable of beautifully channelling folkloric solace. (Grace Palmer) [Adapted from full review available here]