HELP(2)

Released in 1995, the Brian Eno-curated War Child charity compilation <i>Help</i> was a timely response to the turmoil unfolding in Bosnia and Herzegovina back then, with the songs recorded and the album released in less than a week. But <i>Help</i> was also a timeless document of a magical moment in UK music when Britpop, trip-hop and electronica were all blowing up internationally, and it remains the one place where Oasis and Blur peacefully coexist. Arriving more than 30 years later, <i>HELP(2)</i> sees producer James Ford corralling another all-star cast at Abbey Road Studios to benefit humanitarian efforts in Gaza, Sudan, Yemen and Ukraine. And like its predecessor, this edition gathers the buzziest UK artists of its moment (Wet Leg, beabadoobee, The Last Dinner Party) and a few non-UK ones (Cameron Winter, Fontaines D.C.) alongside a cast of veterans like Arctic Monkeys, Pulp and Depeche Mode. While we’ve come to expect nothing less than shrewd social commentary from Pulp, you’ve never heard them sound so punky and spunky as they do on “Begging for Change”. But <i>HELP(2)</i> is really about bridging geographic, genre and generational boundaries: Nowhere else will you find Pakistani singer Arooj Aftab enlisting Beck for a candlelit communion with “Lilac Wine”, or Olivia Rodrigo backed by Blur’s Graham Coxon on a stirring, string-swept rendition of The Magnetic Fields’ “The Book of Love”.