Kelsey Lu, Olivia Rodrigo, Jon Spencer, Sublime: The pop albums of the week in the sound check

Olivia Rodrigo: „You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love“ (Universal)
In these dark times, there is little that makes you as happy as Olivia Rodrigo’s second joint performance with Robert Smith of The Cure, this time at the Primavera Sound Festival. But it still gets a bit complicated: On Rodrigo’s new album, Smith isn’t on the song “The Cure”, even though Rodrigo plays an acoustic guitar here that is definitely reminiscent of the band The Cure, but he sings another song with Rodrigo called “What’s Wrong With Me”.

Apart from this fantastic collaboration, Olivia Rodrigo has of course long been a star in her own right. Most recently she played the most successful tour of an artist born in the new millennium. Now their third album, which, according to Rodrigo, is inspired by Manchester Rave, “Sex and the City” and Lana Del Rey and is also a concept album about love. Torsten Groß, moderator

Kelsey Lu: „So Help Me God“ (Dirty Hit)
Kelse Lu – non-binary singer, cellist, and Vogue favorite – spent seven years working on her second album at home in Los Angeles. Dey’s recipe for experimental pop through introspection works again – this time even more sophisticated. Kelsey Lu elegantly rolls out an ambient downtempo carpet on which pop, chamber music and electronica are juggled, occasionally the whole thing escalates into more experimental eight-minute tracks or heavenly, airy pop hymns.

Lu seems like a conductor, always aware of every facet of his own art. Pop producer Jack Antonoff, FKA Twigs collaborator Yves Rothman as well as Kim Gordon, Sampha and Kamasi Washington were also involved. In any case, it doesn’t seem as if support from the top is necessary. Sandra Gern, freelance music journalist and radio presenter

Jon Spencer: „Songs of Personal Loss and Protest“ (Bronze Rat)
“The blues is my bible, rock’n’roll is our battle cry!” Such sentences only sound cringe if you’re not Jon Spencer, the coolest and at the same time angriest fuzz and punk rocker that New York’s Lower East Side still has to offer.

When Spencer, with a new band but old energy of defiance and resistance, complains about a “vermin attack” and a bad “hangover,” you know that the grief over Trump and Maga, but also personal tragedies in the musician’s life, are to be dealt with with explosive feedback noise. Andreas Borcholte, Der Spiegel

Sublime: „Until the Sun Explodes“ (Atlantic)
Anyone who does anything with media knows: animals get clicks. In this respect, the Californians around Bradley Nowell were ahead of their time in the 1990s with their love of Dalmatians. The dog named Louie graced record covers, went on tour and was allowed to move freely on stage at concerts.