Since 1964, there have been numerous interpretations of The Beatles’ music. Stax, jazz, classical, Motown, country, Bing Crosby, Laibach, and easy listening have all had a go at Beatles cover albums. Mystic Liverpool: The Beatles’ Psychedelic Psongbook may be the most original, and after 60-some years, that is a huge accomplishment. Jah Wobble and his sons, John T and Charlie Wardle, have collaborated on a dub/drone version of Beatles songs, focusing on their more psychedelic tracks, which makes great sense.
…On paper, this might look like it would not work. The complete opposite is true. The use of traditional Chinese instruments, alongside Wobble’s distinct and trademark bass, creates an unusual yet fascinating take on these songs.
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1973 was a pivotal time for Lee “Scratch” Perry, as it was the year he built his fabled Black Ark studio, where he created much of his most celebrated work, and he released Upsetters 14 Dub Blackboard Jungle, often noted as the first full-length dub album. Up until then, he worked as a freelance producer, often recording at King Tubby’s studio. Flashing Echo, part of Doctor Bird’s comprehensive series of Perry’s single productions, compiles one last batch of material before he had fully switched over to recording at Black Ark. During this period, Perry was working with deejays and toasters like Dillinger, I-Roy, and U-Roy as well as singers including Leo Graham, David Isaacs, and Junior Byles. Several of these tracks appeared as singles on Perry’s own Black…
There are inherent pitfalls for a band when they set about recreating a sound from the past with exacting precision. It’s far too easy for their work to sound like a hollow pastiche if they don’t play with undeniable energy or come up with a brilliant batch of songs. On their second album Was It Always This Way, Real Numbers do everything they can to sound exactly like a band who would have recorded for Sarah Records in 1989. Except for when they sound like they wanted to be signed to Creation in 1986. The order of the day is echoing guitar jangle, vocals that express powerful amounts of melancholy, synths that moan like faraway ghosts, and a rhythm section that sound like they studied every move the Cure made in the early ’80s. They have the sound down dead to…
André Cymone is here to let you know that the rumors of funk’s extinction have been greatly exaggerated. He would know. Cymone was not only central to Prince’s sound as the Purple One’s bassist in the early years, he was also a major part of the Minneapolis funk scene even before Prince was crowned. And he’s had an impressive run on his own ever since, including not only some killer solo albums, but production and songwriting for Jody Watley, Adam Ant, and loads of others.
In recent years, though, Cymone’s solo outings have been few and far between, so The Resurrection of Funk works as a welcome reintroduction to the guts and grandeur of his groove kingdom. That there’s more than a passing sonic similarity to Prince in Cymone’s…
The contemporary blues community is densely populated with posers long on affectation and short on authenticity. Not so Peter Parcek for whom the blues carries truths that resonate in such a deep and abiding way that his own musical articulations, plus those of kindred spirits within and without the genre, become expressions straight from the heart and the soul.
In fact, as demonstrated on Most of the Time, this native of Connecticut — who moved to England in the Sixties just in time for the blues boom to echo throughout the British Isles — may very well suffer for an embarrassment of riches; the surfeit of considerable talent at his disposal renders moot the blemishes pockmarking this 78-minute-plus album.
Kelly Doyle is a Telecaster-favoring guitarist based in Houston, Texas, whose eclecticism has led him to play for a variety of acts in a range of musical styles. A musician whose use of ambient textures is at least as important as his guitar technique, Doyle has released Thieves, an album that plots a scenic route through the open terrain of his musical world. While his EPs Okay Okie, In the Weeds, and Stranger Danger are draped in ambient backgrounds, Thieves opens with the title track and a great deal of intention, driven by Doyle’s focus on making an album where the melodies really stand out. Mission accomplished, although it may require the listener to adopt a broader definition of melody. We’re not talking about something you would hear on a pop song, but…
In the last few years, Getdown Services – the duo of Ben Sadler and Josh Law – have gone from being an underground outfit with a cult following, to selling out entire tours, playing Later… With Jools Holland and being selected to perform as part of Harry Styles’ Meltdown festival. Since forming “accidentally” in lockdown, the pair – originally from Minehead and now based in Bristol – soon grew a reputation for playing raucous high-octane shows, usually shirtless and dripping in sweat, while performing a concoction of genre-fluid tunes that range from slick electro to lo-fi garage rock, with lyrics that are ironic and irreverent, as well as surreal and silly.
Given the project was originally based as much on trying to crack each other up as on musical…
How to honor women? Nina Winder-Lind, the Swedish songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, follows that exact question throughout her debut album, Wild Love. Comprised of songs so ephemeral that they refute their own existence, as if they had emerged ex nihilo and could disappear again. Like an interlocutor, Winder-Lind listens to her ancestors’ tales, tracing a lineage from them to her to the past she will become to someone else. When performing as a member of the Brighton-based, post-punk band the New Eves, Winder-Lind inveighs against a patriarchal society, backed by three other steadfast Eves. What you will hear is her guttural, quivering vibrato reverberating over a bowed cello, played with such verve and stridency it could be the rumbling of earth…
In the music industry, rawness is a commodity. Struggle and hardship alone are not enough. They have to be tapped into. They have to be shaped. This process of shaping is sometimes called art, but it also results in a product fit to be sold and consumed, however ragged, however scratchy it may seem. Some artists understand that they are trapped in this paradoxical bind, but they don’t necessarily know how to escape from it. Elliott Smith and Kurt Cobain fall into this group. Others have successfully learned to laugh at it from the outside, using surreal humour as a distancing technique even as their music leans into the lo-fi. Think early Stephen Malkmus.
Sometimes a new artist emerges, a fresh voice with a fresh take on confession and…
In 2024, Hovvdy released their most ambitious album yet, a nearly hour-long eponymous double LP that experimented further with the duo’s combination of earthy, earnest lo-fi pop and reality-bending atmospheric effects. It was produced by Hovvdy’s Charlie Martin and Will Taylor, along with Andrew Sarlo and longtime collaborator Ben Littlejohn. It was also their most personal album to date, with Martin remarking that he could be heard crying on some of the songs. While still inhabiting the intimate spaces and loose performance style they’re known for, Hovvdy took a distinctly different approach to the follow-up, Big World, which was recorded with Littlejohn. The album, their sixth, reflects a deliberate attempt by the duo to make something…
t would be hard to find a more arresting opener to any album of 2026 than the jarring discordant flutes and blast of brass which announce Grace Cummings’ fourth LP, Bloodhorse! In fact, let’s push that further and boldly say it would be impossible. Opening track ‘The Hills are Alive …’ arrives with a sudden impact of unusual sounds from all directions; there’s no chance of giving this music only half your attention. If you had hoped to press play, sit back and let the music fill your background, you’ll be disappointed. Cummings belts out “The hills are alive with the sound of – ” and, as the subject of the song appears, the music develops into a big, bold orchestral journey; it’s a clichéd epic presented in an entirely serious juxtaposition with the subject matter.
…Recorded between 1988 and 1989 in a small 8-track home studio in Amman, Jordan, Pieces of a Dream captures a side of the Arab music scene rarely documented: a group of musicians deeply inspired by jazz, soul, yacht rock and city pop, creating music that sounds closer to late-night LA or London than what most would associate with Jordan at the time.
Nechazz was formed by Palestinian-Jordanian musician Basim Said & Khaldoon Nasser and Iraqi singer and guitarist Kassim Sabounchi. While the trio became locally known for their live shows at the iconic Amman club Rumours, the music they wrote and recorded together was never officially released and remained unheard even among friends and family of the band.
Coming from a historic lineage, The Womack Sisters’ self-titled debut album is a throwback to the heyday of soul. Expansive and luxurious, focused on interlocking, ardent vocals, the trio of Kucha, Zeimani, and BG makes a strong career opening statement with these eleven efforts.
Perfectly paired with the retro-soul label Daptone Records, the backing music supports the vocals at every step, swelling when called upon or receding when needed. As the granddaughters of Sam Cooke, daughters of Womack & Womack (Zekkariyas & Zeriiyaa), and nieces of Bobby Womack, this music is their heritage.
The trio work best when all take turns singing lead and harmonizing, such as on the head bopping opener “Chauffeur”, grounding…
There is no questioning actor Morgan Freeman’s lifelong dedication and connection to deep, organic blues. Even before co-founding the now iconic Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 2001, Freeman has been an outspoken proponent of the music. The club is also home to the Ground Zero Arts Foundation, which helps local blues artists with healthcare and other economic support. Freeman spearheaded this effort combining the rugged, raw blues he promotes, with full orchestrated accompaniment. Even though there doesn’t appear to be much common ground between the classical orchestra’s strict adherence to printed music and the blues’ more earthy freeform tendencies, the concept is unique and challenging. Some may remember…
The multi-talented musician, bandleader, and entertainer Jon Batiste gets so much acclaim as a pop-jazz headliner that his piano talents are sometimes overlooked. Yet, this four-part series of solo piano recordings has already begun to change those perceptions. Batiste issued his first volume, the highly acclaimed and top-charted Beethoven Blues, in 2024. To follow, he now presents three more volumes: Black Mozart, Vol 2, and Monk Mediations and Monk Movements, comprising Volumes 3 and 4.
Batiste is by no means the first jazz pianist or jazz artist to draw the linkage between classical composers and Thelonious Monk. Yet, given Batiste’s New Orleans upbringing, he brings a more comprehensive palette to the music.
James Ellis Ford’s second solo album joins a small and exclusive list of records that were made in hospitals. There’s J Dilla’s Donuts, there’s The Wind by Warren Zevon, and now there’s Lost in Another World, in this case recorded at Saint Barts in the City of London between intensive sessions of chemotherapy over a nine month period. At times it’s heartwrenching, but never mawkish, and throughout there’s a sense of dignity that often comes with the knowledge that death could be just waiting around the corner. Given a less than 30% chance of survival, it’s heartening to report that Ford is still with us and seemingly making good progress.
Perhaps most striking is the stark honesty of these songs, where irony falls away and there’s…
There’s something so refreshing about Sweeping Promises. A Kansas-based two-piece, Lira Mondal and Caufield Schnug specialize in short, sharp slices of punk-inflected garage-pop. Their first two albums cut through the pandemic-induced uncertainty of early-2020s US underground music almost by sheer force of will, their hooks too insistent and their performances too committed to be ignored. On You Say I Romanticize, we pretty much get more of the same, with some minor developments; it reflects well on them that, for the most part, this is a very good thing.
Sweeping Promises’ lean, unapologetic style revives certain elements of the US post-punk tradition in a remarkably vivid and straightforward way. There’s so much gusto and verve in their…
The giddy, clever Canadians in Kiwi Jr. named the the first song on their fourth full-length “Photos of the Reenactment” which has to be an R.E.M. reference (i.e. Fables of the Reconstruction), however subtle. And yes, pinwheeling 12-string licks frame this surrealist fantasy and jangle hems in its ebullience, and early, punk-y R.E.M. is a fair enough reference.
…Cheerful mayhem balances precariously against angsty uncertainty in these tracks, which wobble and keen as much as they bang on forward. There’s a bit of Canadian self-effacement at work — “You are here as the first class entertainment/You are here because it’s Drag-your-daughter-to-work Day” warbles Jeremy Gaudet — and existential angst tucked carefully into bopping…
On September 12, 1966, television audiences first met The Monkees. Under the auspices of creators Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, the zany foursome of Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork pushed the boundaries of the American sitcom format with their musical misadventures.
The Emmy Award-winning comedy only lasted two seasons and 58 episodes on NBC but endured thanks to Saturday morning repeats, syndication, cable, DVD, Blu-ray, and – most notably – the albums recorded by the four young men cast as The Monkees who went on to assume the roles in a real-life group.
On August 14, Rhino celebrate Season 1 of The Monkees just in time for its 60th anniversary.
The Everything But the Girl reissue campaign continues with 2CD deluxe editions of Walking Wounded and Temperamental.
Originally released in 1996, Walking Wounded peaked at No 4 on the UK Album Chart and includes two Top 10 hits, the title track and ‘Wrong’. The 2CD deluxe sees the album mastered at Abbey Road Studios by Miles Showell, with a tracklisting that follows the out-of-print Edsel 2015 deluxe edition with album and bonus tracks on CD 1, plus remixes and demos on CD 2. It’s actually not identical because for, some reason, the new reissue loses the Dilinja Remix of ‘Before Today’ (29 tracks in total versus 30 on the Edsel).
Temperamental was issued in 1999 and was Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt’s ninth studio album.