The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die. If such a name was not reason enough to include this band in this week’s music picks, then the work on their most recent album, Harmlessness, is. The big emo-indie band formed in 2009 and have gone through dozens of band members, each seemingly introducing new influences along the way. Their earlier work is fairly repellent, consisting of bland spoken word poetry spat over lacklustre instrumentals. This album swings in a new direction however, using softer acoustic sounds and reflective and, importantly, sung lyrics. Tracks such as ‘Rage Against the Dying Light’ contain some of the fight of their earlier work, but it is now supported by an immaculately-woven patchwork of walking bass lines, riffs and orchestral strings. Just as the Connecticut accent of the lead singer begins to grate, the beauty of his lyrics and raw nostalgia in tracks like ‘Gig Life’ and ‘I Can Be Afraid of Anything’ make it easy to forgive his emo twang. The album in its entirety is not much short of unmissable.

One that you probably could miss, though I would still say it is worth a listen, is the latest from Disclosure, Caracal. It would be too easy to let a review of anything by the duo slip into a rant about the sorry state of British dance music and the blurring of lines between pop, dance and EDM. But this is Varsity not Vice, so instead let’s all just take Caracal on its own for what it is: easy to listen to, reliant on some interesting and bold collaborations, and probably what all Disclosure fans wanted. More interestingly, none of the tracks stand out as being too obviously ear-marked as club-fillers, with each instead exploring neatly patterned synth lines and reassuringly tripping beats straight from the pop-house rulebook. It’s still the vocals that really bring the album to life though, most notably those of Gregory Porter on ‘Holding On’, and up and coming R&B artist Kwabs on ‘Willing & Able’.

Next up is another rising star, Angel Haze. The American rapper and singer appeared with their first releases a few years ago, and is now back with a truly sophisticated record, Back to the Woods. It throbs and fizzes with energy and soul-crunching vocals, especially at the moments Haze provides their own melodic interludes. Their lyrics are searingly honest and unapologetically furious, focusing on their own identity as non-binary and their experience of race, as in, for example, ‘Impossible’: “I flew out the states / Laid on a beach with a view of my face / Considered suicide, I do that these days… I got my middle finger up to white America / But tryin’ to whitewash my blackness / Fuck you, you could never break me”. Dark backing vocals and militaristic drum beats accompany most tracks, but it is those that break from these formulas that surprised and delighted me, not least the last, ‘The Woods’, and earlier, ‘Moonrise Kingdom’. The latter is a truly beautiful track, especially juxtaposed with the harsher sounds of surrounding songs. The lyrics hold a fragility that complements the venom of other tracks (“They don’t know nothing / Nothing about us / Nothing ‘bout love or the fears that surround us”), especially when delivered with Haze’s unbelievable voice and laid over such involving beats. The album achieves everything it set out to, and leaves me anxious for more from this artist.