Top 5 Albums of the Week
Culture Calling's Top 5 albums of the week, an eclectic mix of records from across genres and decades. Come discover weekly albums to bulk out your collection.
By Charlie Walker | Updated Jun 30 2025
Beach Boys – The Smile Sessions (1967)
The last few weeks have been very much spent thinking about the life and work of Brian Wilson, who passed away this June. There’s a lot to unpack – the abuse from his father that channelled him into being a musician, the groundbreaking, contemporaneously-under-appreciated Pet Sounds, his worsening mental state from childhood trauma, pressure, and unfettered use of psychedelics, his miserable conservatorship under Eugene Landy – but what’s been really getting me is his lack of trust, and his peers lack of trust, in his musical vision. Smile Sessions was the first glimpse into Brian Wilson’s last period of Beach Boys era creativity, as all of these sessions were shelved for nearly 40 years as Beach Boys went into a new direction, without Brian.
The Smile Sessions is, for lack of a better word, very weird: lots of disconnected fragments and vignettes, highly unconventional, childish lyrics ranging from loving your children to chowing down your vegetables, Hawaiian-American genre-melding complete with chants, and very little in common with familiar, commercial Beach Boys, beyond a tongue-in-cheek reference like ‘Surf’s Up’. There is absolutely no chance that this album would have done well if it were released in 1967 as it was supposed to. If Pet Sounds was too forward-thinking for American audiences, Smile would have fried their brains.
Of course there are parts intended to make you laugh a bit, and try not to take it all so seriously, but when the chords roll in for a track like ‘Surf’s Up’, ‘My Only Sunshine’, ‘Cabin Essence’, or ‘Wind Chimes’, their gravity stands out even more, balanced by the variety of human emotion. After all the confusion, the pressure, the abuse, the money, and the drugs, these studio glimpses into Wilson’s vision painted a picture of a man who only wanted to seek out the pure and the beautiful. There is nothing quite like happy-ish music made by broken people. Rest in Peace, Brian Wilson
Paulo Cesar Pinheiro – Capoeira de Besouro (2010)
Veteran poet, songwriter, and session musician, scarcely seen on an album with his name on it, culminates a life’s work spent on the folk musical forms of Brazil, on Capoeira de Besouro. Something of a concept album, its tracks dedicated to saints, animals, countries, and the moon, Pinheiro puts the berimbau front and centre, driving tracks with its rumbling, rattling notes, achieving notable depth and importance despite its tonal limitations.
Those unfamiliar with Brazilian samba or folk will note how African the record sounds - call and response, shakers, polyrhythmic drums, major key guitar riffs - where of course the influence of African music and culture on Brazil from slavery is absolutely massive. Pinheiro, releasing this record in 2010, sounds identical in arrangement and composition to many of his 70s albums, which themselves resisted trend to hone in on the real music of Brazil (samba) that came from those slave cultures.
Pinheiro’s sole dedication to the national music of Brazil has made him possibly the greatest living master of samba, and hearing a master at work on this record, using decades of knowledge to craft such a delightful, well-paced, sunny, beautifully textured ode to simplicity and joy.
Hayden Pedigo – I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away (2025)
Country music, as we know, is having its day in the sun again, and as with all musical trends, it comes with a sea of grifters, poseurs, and labels looking for a cash-in. This destroys the trend (and sometimes even the genre, RIP UK drill), but it doesn’t destroy the music, and as we also know, only real music is going to last, all that other nonsense is here today and gone tomorrow.
Hayden Pedigo is real music. Country and folk is his sound, although he’ll happily throw in the odd effect or electro-gimmick to enhance his sound, which he does so tastefully and without alarm. Largely, his atmospheric, often moody instrumental pieces are remarkably artful and varied, especially in such a vocals-dominated era of music, with just a humble violin and his simple steel string providing the melodies. With a few ingredients he vividly evokes the pastoral, of open rolling fields occupied by no one, of towns with one general store and a field of dandelions. He’s working with a world of connotations, of course, but to evoke such imagery with just a guitar is a sign of great talent.
It's country for people who say “I don’t like country, but I do like folk though” without realising that that at one point they were the same genre. It’s country music for those who like the atmospheric rolling-into-town tunes from their favourite westerns, but don’t much like the lyrics about saving the confederacy. It’s country music for people who don’t want to be ashamed about liking country music. There’s nothing wrong with being a lil country from time to time.
Soichi Terada – Sounds From The Far East (2015)
From a country that paved the way for electronic music, it’s surprising that this record stands out as a speciality. Terada’s work remained relatively obscure for years, until about 2015 when this compilation, Sounds From The Far East, was released, compiled by one of our favourite DJ’s, Hunee.
He has since found himself touring on a regular basis, even coming to London next month, attracting the UK’s lo-fi house audience with his retro-style, Japanese-inspired house. If you thought the record went too hard on stereotypical Japanese elements, you’ve got good hearing; Terada says he intentionally uses stereotypes of Asia in his work.
While mostly known for his work in video game soundtracks, this compilation record has given him a new lease of life as a musician. And well deserved, since Sounds is now a staple record in any house DJ’s library, digital or analogue.
A.R. Kane – Sixty Nine (1988)
Indie rock and indie-pop come with - mostly substantiated - connotations of being, quote unquote, a white man’s game, but this sort of thinking is only really a result of listeners not looking hard enough.
A.R. Kane, comprised of two Black British lads from East London, one of Nigerian descent and one of Malawian, are amongst the best-known pop acts of the era, with Melody Maker’s Simon Reynolds describing Sixty Nine as “the outstanding record of ‘88”.
It even sounds fresh; ‘Crazy Blue’ sounds like it could be believably early 2010s, King Krule-esque in its baritone wails. But there’s an edge that modern indie acts lack; with their backgrounds in dub Soundsystem culture and jazz-funk, there’s an authentic Black Atlantic influence, picking up where The Clash crashed and burned. Mostly dreary and ethereal, it was actually one of the two members of the group, Ayuli, who coined the term ‘dreampop’. So much for an indie apartheid.