Mambo On That Jukebox Explosion!!! (2020)

The folky side of Bibio's music is always lovely, whether Stephen Wilkinson submerges it in blunted beats and decaying tape ambiance on Vignetting the Compost or lets the sun shine on it, as he did on Ribbons. Sleep on the Wing is a companion to that gorgeous 2019 album, and though it has a smaller scope, it's just as winning. A few songs pick up where Ribbons left off: With their airy melodies and twining violins and acoustic guitars, "Sleep on the Wing" and "Oakmoss" are pastoral dreams as captivating as anything that appeared on the album. More often, though, Wilkinson revels in taking Ribbons' elements - lilting melodies, wide-ranging acoustic instrumentation, and electronic washes - in different directions…

You don’t make a 22-track album without experiencing doubts—even when you’re Britain’s biggest band. “We kept laughing to ourselves,” The 1975’s Matty Healy tells Apple Music. “‘Can we really put out a record like this? Can we really be where we are?’ The success of [2018 album A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships] didn’t change us, but it certainly made us think, ‘God, this is a lot of responsibility. To be compared to Radiohead. F**king hell. What are we going to do?’”They way they saw it, there were two options. The first was to play to expectation and try to become even bigger. The second—the path they chose—was to return to when they were smallest.