Leon Blanchard, a name perhaps faintly echoing from the mid-noughties indie surge, returns not with fanfare, but with a solitary signal flare titled "Astronaut". Hailing from Grimsby, a town known more for its fishing heritage than its celestial aspirations, Blanchard's new song does not really feel like a return, but more like a personal gearbox picked up after years of chatter. In 2007, his old band,...

Listening to John Keenan’s “Wreckage of the Past” feels like being handed the audio diary of a ghost who is not yet dead. This is an 18-song excavation of a psyche at war, made all the more intense by the knowledge that Keenan is the sole architect—producer, writer, mixer, and tormented protagonist. The whole project has the hermetically sealed, slightly feverish quality of a...