Penny Sparkle4AD ****

Blonde Redhead's new album Penny Sparkle is the fascinating follow-up to its breakout 2007 release 23. The American alt.rock trio has softened the signature phased-guitar angularity of earlier albums (such as Fake Can Be Just As Goodand Misery Is A Butterfly) with laconic beats and sinuous electronica. Building on the artistic and commercial success of the Alan Moulder- produced 23, the self-produced Penny Sparkle(with DJ and producer Van Rivers) finds the 15-year-old band not quite leaving the bedsit and hitting the clubs, but infusing its new album with an urgent lyricism, as idiosyncratic as before but more intimate – think edgy, shoegazing dream pop. Blonde Redhead has finally come of age.

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Download tracks: Here Sometimes, Love or Prison