Quick Reviews: Courtney Marie Andrews, Robbie Williams, Al Green, Sleaford Mods, Bob Weir's Ace
Plus the James Hunter Six, Richard Marx croons standards, Langhorne Slim works with Greta Van Fleet's bassist.
The first full week of new releases of 2026 brings an excellent album from Courtney Marie Andrews, a surprise EP from soul legend Al Green, a self-referential jape from Robbie Williams and a reliably satisfying retro-R&B LP from the James Hunter Six. Even with all these, I am sure I listened to Bob Weir’s Ace more than any other record this week. It’s an album I’ve never reviewed before, so I took a stab here.
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Courtney Marie Andrews—Valentine [2026]
★★★★
Valentine finds Courtney Marie Andrews continuing down the path she opened up with Loose Future (which I reviewed for Pitchfork back in 2022), accentuating her uncannily perceptive songs with a fuller production that enhances their complexity of feeling. Where Andrews kept her eye on the horizon throughout Loose Future, Valentine can drift toward introspection, a place where the melancholy and optimism intertwine. The essential dreaminess of the production means “Cons and Clowns” and “Little Picture of a Butterfly” can play differently according to mood or the time of day, or whether they’re heard in conjunction with the ache of “Outsider” or the daybreak hope of “Keeper.” The gentle, nuanced additions of echo, synths and harmonies lets the shifts in mood on Valentine feel natural even when the juxtapositions are strikingly artful, bearing only a trace connection to the unadorned Americana of Andrews’s earliest records. In many ways, the extra texture makes her stark songs feel even more compelling.
Robbie Williams—Britpop [2026]
★★★
“You get to talk to Jesus, I get to talk to God” boasts Robbie Williams on “Cocky.” It’s a couplet worthy of his rakish reputation, a persona he intends to cultivate on Britpop, which he claims is the album he wished he could’ve released when he left Take That back in 1995. Williams wandered into the Britpop mainstream anyway, but Britpop does deliberately conjure the ghosts of Cool Britannia in a fashion that Life Thru A Lens couldn’t in 1997; it’s a conscious nostalgia trip, not a product of its time. It can be fun to play spot the reference here: “Rocket” has a chorus half-swiped from the Buzzcocks’ “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays,”
