Much like Jack Harlow, JT’s loverboy shtick tends to work ’cause no one really buys it. And so he’s best when he embraces the cheese. Technicolour, a ’90s-inspired R&B slow jam, finds the singer going hard on the falsetto and sexy come-ons (presumably aimed at wife Jessica Biel) and clocks in over seven minutes for what I imagine is one reason only – this is bedroom music, JT channelling Jodeci.

No Angels and Infinity Sex, the sort of MJ-inflected club tracks Timberlake’s been making since he went solo, are equally appealing. Producer Calvin Harris gives the former a Dua Lipa-meets-Daft Punk slickness that should’ve taken over TikTok by now, if director Ti West’s bonkers music video had given JT room to flex his footwork; while on the latter, Timbaland’s ever-insane mouthy pops and clicks build luxuriously. My Favourite Drug is catchy Bee Gees-with-bass disco which perhaps suggests JT’s favourite drug is cocaine, lots of cocaine.

The tracklist’s second half is bogged down by sombre songs that lean closer to contrition and self-reflection of the nondescript kind, including single Selfish, the piano-led Alone, and closer Conditions where JT suggests he’s “less Superman, more Clark Kent… less Batman, more Bruce Wayne”. It’s pointless; might as well stick to the sex tracks.

At its best, it’s an enjoyably featherweight indulgence – which is surprising, considering he’s circumvented such meta-textual opportunity on the record. But maybe that’s an example Justin Timberlake, now 43, can offer a younger pop generation (uh, and Jennifer Lopez) who’ve been convinced that bearing all is their only option: sometimes you say it best when you say nothing at all? Who am I kidding, no one’s going to care about this album. Robert Moran

Kim Gordon, The Collective

Kim Gordon might be the world’s coolest septuagenarian. The 70-year-old, best known as the bassist, guitarist and singer for the seminal American alt-rock band Sonic Youth, has never done things by halves, nor what might be expected of her. Gordon’s output spreads across music, visual art, stage, fashion and film, and the common thread between all of her work is the singular vision that makes it so uniquely her own.

Her latest album and second solo outing, The Collective, is a strange and sprawling beast that defies easy categorisation. Gordon again teams up with Justin Raisen, who she worked with on her debut solo album, 2019’s No Home Record. The producer and songwriter’s credits include Charli XCX, Lil Yachty, Yves Tumor and Drake, so he’s an eclectic one, too, crisscrossing between pop, hip-hop and electronic worlds.

The collaboration is a fruitful and compelling one, marrying Raisen’s discordant sounds with Gordon’s spoken word-style musings. It’s up there with the weirdest of Sonic Youth’s work, eschewing traditional songwriting for something much more daring, experimental and often discomfiting.

Jennifer Egan’s 2022 novel The Candy House was an inspiration on this record – the album’s title is partially a riff on the book, and a track takes its name in full. That novel was about living life in the face of technological takeover, about how to retain the very essence of being human in a world that is increasingly not.

It’s not hard to see how Gordon might have been inspired by Egan’s worldview in the feel and composition of this record – it’s a mishmash of noise and sound collage, pushing the listener to the edge of their sonic limits. It feels as though she’s asking: how long can you listen for, and what might you find if you’re up for the challenge?

The opening track, Bye Bye, recalls Flume and Tkay Maidza’s recent single Silent Assassin, all ringing chimes and abrasive industrial beats. Gordon is literally rapping her shopping list – “Ear plugs, travel shampoo, conditioner / Eyeliner, dental floss, money for the cleaners / Sleeping pills, sneakers, boots, black dress / White tee, turtleneck, iBook, power cord, medications…” In anyone else’s hands this would surely not work, but in hers it’s terrifyingly magnetic and oddly poetic.

That song sets the tone for the record, which is more about texture and noise than it is about melody, memorability or convention. There are snippets of all kinds of genres here, from trap to sludge on the thudding closer Dream Dollar, tied together by Gordon’s drone-inspired vocals.

Gordon’s thoughts on gender have long been part of her artistry (see Girl in a Band, her 2015 memoir). On this record it manifests in I’m a Man, a snarl of a song that sends up toxic masculinity over screeching, distorted and insistent guitars. “Don’t call me toxic just ’cause I like your butt,” she growls. It’s an interesting look into the mind of a woman who’s seen it all over the decades of her career in a male-dominated industry – to how much, and how little, has changed.

The Collective is brimming with intriguing ideas and sounds, but these are songs that are quite harsh on the ear – it’s not the kind of thing you’d put on in the background to relax. Experiencing this record in all its messy glory is more a case of paying close attention; it’s a cerebral collection that rewards careful, rather than casual, listening. Safe to say this one won’t be for everyone, but if deconstructing all the small aspects and details that make up a big picture is something you enjoy doing, there’s plenty to dig into here. Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

Yard Act, Where’s My Utopia?

That album title is a question worth asking for this Leeds four-piece. Two years ago, their debut album The Overload announced the arrival of a band that post-Brexit Britain needed. Using a post-punk template that was equal parts the Fall and Gang Of Four – sinewy bass lines, wiry guitar, funk-flecked rhythms – they topped their sound with the largely spoken-word vocals of James Smith, who skewered class, money, status, nationalism and prejudice with equal parts bitterness and humour, channelling English motormouths such as Mark E. Smith, John Cooper Clarke, Jarvis Cocker, Mike Skinner and Alex Turner.

Their songs and videos depicted a Britain that was a cross between the grotesquery of The League of Gentlemen and the “we’re virtually living a nightmare future right now” horror of Black Mirror.

But then there were moments like 100% Endurance, which looked at the futility of existence and instead of throwing his hands in the air in despair, Smith advised: “Death is coming for us all, but not today, today you’re living it, hey, you’re really feeling it, give it everything you’ve got knowing that you can’t take it with you, and all you ever needed to exist has always been within you.”

The fact that Elton John – the band’s most high-profile fan – agreed to play piano on an updated version of the track, and the uplifting video (filmed in black and white on a grim English council estate) starred David Thewlis, who played the ultimate English misanthrope in Mike Leigh’s 1993 film Naked, tells you how this band can look into the abyss and build a bridge.

So, after tasting success, now they’re asking “Where’s my utopia?”

And the answers are manifold. For a start, it doesn’t lie in repeating yourself. Musically, they’ve kept the groove but made a big shift, working with Gorillaz drummer/producer Remi Kabaka Jr., incorporating dance-pop, strings, horns and loops and introducing samples of dialogue to amplify the songs’ themes in sharp and playful ways.

They make their aims obvious on We Make Hits, as Smith states: “There was one singular ambition we had that most musicians of our ilk weren’t willing to admit, and it was to this mantra we would commit – we make hits!”

In fact, Smith has grabbed the mirror he was holding up to Britain on their debut and turned it on himself on much of the second album. This is tricky territory, as anyone who has had to review dozens of second albums about how hard it is being in a band on the road will attest. But Yard Act are better than that.

Down By The Stream starts out as a memory of childish high jinks, but soon develops into a mea culpa about the way he teased and bullied a boy. “Johnno,” he says, after detailing how terrible he feels about it now, “I never said sorry to your face, but I’ll say it in this song.”

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Blackpool Illuminations burrows even further. It’s a hall of mirrors that goes for seven and a half minutes, starting out with a story about being a kid and having an accident on a family trip to the English seaside resort. Halfway through, this plainly spoken reminiscence starts to rhyme and morph into something else, and eventually Smith addresses his own infant son, telling him that he and his wife also took him to Blackpool, and on the way home in the car, he squeezed his wife’s hand as his child slept in the back seat, and felt for a moment that he’d attained perfection. And then he adds: “So why the f--- was I wondering what wankers would think of album two?”

True, the notoriously fickle English press may jump on Yard Act for daring to expand their horizons instead of doing the same thing that made them who they were in the first place. And they’d be wrong. Because this band is proving they’re not a one-trick pony. They’re in it for the long haul, and they’ll keep changing. And maybe, ultimately, that’s where their utopia lies. Barry Divola

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