…this Record Store Day, April 18, 2026, Merge Records is reissuing ‘Words of Wisdom and Hope’, the 2002 album by Teenage Fanclub and Jad Fair. Includes two bonus tracks that were originally part of a limited 7-inch single “Always in My Heart” and “Rock Me Tonight.”
The line of musicians waiting to work with Jad Fair goes around the block. But you can see the line move; such is the prolific nature of the subdued dude. Words of Wisdom and Hope is, not surprisingly, exactly the sum of its parts. Teenage Fanclub is probably the purest pop act to get involved with Fair, and the result is easily the most straightforward album to have his name on it in some time, possibly ever. Please note, though, that this doesn’t mean it’s particularly…
Category: *editions*
The landmark 1996 album reconstructed from BBC sessions and live recordings! Suede’s commercial high watermark came in 1996 with Coming Up. The 1995 addition to the line-up of lead guitarist Richard Oakes and keyboard player Neil Codling had given the band a new impetus and focus. At the very pinnacle of ‘Britpop’ – a scene they’d helped inspire but fiercely operated outside of – roared back with an adrenalin rush of new Suede classics.
The first missive from ‘Coming Up’ was the trailblazing ‘Trash’, which reached No. 3 in the UK chart – a joint career-best for the band. That was followed into the Top 10 over the next twelve months by four more hit singles from the album – ‘Beautiful Ones’, ‘Lazy’, ‘Saturday Night’, and ‘Filmstar’.
Liberation Hall delivers a compelling archival release with Live ’81–’85, a double LP celebrating the legacy of Romeo Void for Record Store Day. The collection presents the band in its natural habitat on stage capturing performances across Ann Arbor, Albany, London, and Berlin.
The album functions as both a time capsule and a reaffirmation of Romeo Void’s distinct place in early 1980s new wave. Across its 17 tracks, Live ’81–’85 draws material from all phases of the band’s short but influential career, including It’s a Condition (1981), Nvr Say Nvr (1981), Benefactor (1982), and Instincts (1984). The performances feel immediate and unpolished in the best sense—raw, urgent, and driven by the band’s signature fusion of post-punk tension, saxophone accents…
Music has long served as a space where emotions can be expressed and explored without the pressure of resolution.
For listeners and composers alike, it offers a rare place to contend with grief, anxiety, or despair without requiring those feelings to go anywhere or even mean anything in particular.
Meadowsweet (redux) is a case in point – a 20th anniversary remaster and rerelease of Yann Novak’s 2006 album Meadowsweet. A tribute to a family member who had just passed, the album represents both Novak’s struggle with the silence that rushes in when someone is gone, and how he chose to live in that emptiness rather than flee it.
Meadowsweet was recorded in a single take, glitches and all, as a musical representation…
As the time approached 10:30 Tuesday night — nearly three hours after Bruce Springsteen had marched onstage at Inglewood’s Kia Forum alongside 18 of his musical comrades — the 76-year-old rock legend told the crowd he hadn’t intended to be there.
“This is a tour that we never planned,” he said. “The E Street Band is here with you tonight because we need to feel your hope and your strength. And we want to bring some hope and bring some strength for you.” It wasn’t impossible to believe him.
After a two-year trek that finally wrapped last summer amid the release of a massive box set and a splashy Hollywood biopic, Springsteen might’ve been expected to spend 2026 counting his money and his accolades. Yet the way…
There are live recordings that capture an engagement, and others that seem to revive an entirely vanished room. This newly unearthed Verve Records release from Detroit’s Baker’s Keyboard Lounge, recorded over five sets in August 1960, clearly falls into the latter category. More than just a historical curiosity, it reveals atmosphere, temperament, and mastery. The Oscar Peterson trio at full strength in a venue that knew how to listen, playing as if elegance and fire were not mutually exclusive virtues but twin responsibilities.
By the summer of 1960, Oscar Peterson had established himself as one of the leading pianists in modern jazz, yet what these performances reveal is that the celebrated “will to swing” often associated with him was never merely about…
Surprisingly, singer-songwriter/harmonicist Curtis Salgado has never released a live album until now. Legacy Rewind: Live in ‘25 was recorded just over a year ago on April 5th at the Triple Door, Seattle, WA, on Salgado’s home turf. The genesis for the project dates to 2019 (pre-COVID), when a fan and producer, Randy Maag, suggested it at the very same venue. Maag suggested older Salgado tunes that are rarely played in his current show repertoire. Maag didn’t forget the encounter and resurrected it six years later. Some songs had never been performed live, while others were two decades old. So, this recording, with a 9-piece band, encompasses R&B, Funk, Soul, and Rock n’ Roll, curated by Maag and Salgado. Interestingly, there is no mention of blues, but we all…
Six years is a long time, about one-and-a-half generations in pop music and a fairly large chunk out of anyone’s life, two sentiments that come into play on the Beastie Boys’ sixth album, 2004’s To the 5 Boroughs. When the Beasties last delivered an album, it was in the summer of 1998 as the Clinton impeachment scandal was heating up, and just as that sordid saga closed the curtain on the swinging ’90s, Hello Nasty served as both a culmination of the New York trio’s remarkable comeback and as a capper to the alt-rock boom of the ’90s, the last album of the decade to capture what the ’90s actually felt like. Not only is the political and cultural landscape of 2004 much different than that of 1998, the Beasties are a different band in a different position.
This definitive new edition combines all 17 tracks from the UK and US versions of The Zombies’ 1965 debut album, remastered in its original mono mix. Begin Here (Mono Remastered) is the next chapter in the series of Zombies reissues via the band’s own label Beechwood Park Records, with the same team as Odessey and Oracle – again being overseen by Matthew and Jamie White, mastering by Reuben Cohen at Lurssen Mastering, and brand-new liner notes by the legendary David Fricke.
Begin Here, the British debut album by the Zombies, was released by Decca Records on April 9th, 1965. The LP, issued only in mono, was 14 tracks of beat-boom R&B and dynamic songwriting by one of the hottest young groups in the country. The band reprised “Summertime”…
As David Lowery, the director, was writing the fictional pop star Mother Mary for his new film of the same name, he spent a lot of time studying the last 25 years in music. He listened to Taylor Swift (whose Reputation concert film inspired the performances in the film), Lorde and FKA twigs, who appears on screen as a medium named Imogene. But as the film’s haunted love story between Mary (played by Anne Hathaway) and her former best friend and designer Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel) emerged, his listening habits shifted.
“The pop music fell away and other music started to enter that sphere,” he says in A24’s New York offices. He’s sitting beside twigs and Hathaway the day after the trio attended…
Brand new CD reissue to celebrate its recent 40th Anniversary in 2025 and due for a critical reappraisal.
Following the breakup of the Police, their drummer Stewart Copeland undertook a musical Odessey through the heart of Africa in search of the roots of Rock & Roll. Originally released as both a film, (directed and produced by Jean-Pierre Dutilleux) and album in 1985, The Rhythmatist preceded amongst other albums, the release of ‘Graceland’ by Paul Simon which was to follow in 1986.
The album produced by Stewart along with Jeff Seitz, featured the singles ‘Koteja (Oh Bolilla)’ featuring Ray Lema a major figure in world music himself as well as ‘Gong Rock’.
This brand new edition comes with…
Live in Köln 1976, this special edition release is exclusive to RSD (Record Store Day) 2026 and catches both the Rainbow and the band at their creative and blistering energetic peak.
The album was originally released a few years back as a one of three double CDs, and more recently as part of the excellent Temple Of The King 9CD set, also by Demon. This is the first time on vinyl and wonderful it is too.
The classic Rainbow line-up of guitarist Blackmore, vocalist Ronnie James Dio, keyboardist Tony Carey, bassist Jimmy Bain and drummer Cozy Powell came together soon after the band’s 1975 debut, and in fact drew Cozy out of attempted retirement. Touring to support the classic (and equally ground breaking) Rainbow…
First ever CD release for this incredible live concert from Ian Dury & The Blockheads at London’s Dominion Theatre on Christmas Eve 1980. Originally transmitted as a special TV performance for the ‘Old Grey Whistle Test’ on BBC2 TV and for John Peel on BBC Radio 1.
Following on from the run of singles “Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3”, “I Want to Be Straight” and “Sueperman’s Big Sister” 1980 saw the release of new album ‘Laughter’ by Ian Dury & The Blockheads. The ‘Laughter’ tour took place in December 1980 and on Christmas Eve Ian Dury & The Blockheads performed at London’s Dominion Theatre live on Radio 1 and on TV via BBC2’s ‘Old Grey Whistle Test’ – introduced on TV by Annie Nightingale and on radio by John Peel.
Flying Lotus (or Alice Coltrane’s great-nephew) proves that Plug Research is the perfect home for him with his debut full-length, 1983. Sounding like a mix between Ammoncontact and Dntel, Lotus layers spacy keyboards over bass-heavy beats, clearly very much influenced by the whole free jazz-based electronica and hip-hop Sa-Ra craziness that’s prevalent in the L.A. area (he also takes a cue from Stones Throw producers Madlib and J Dilla, using fractured rhythms and subtle chords to propel the songs forward). However, unlike many of his labelmates, Lotus doesn’t drag out his pieces; instead, all but two of them fall neatly under four minutes, keeping 1983 from becoming a masturbatory exercise in keyboard lines and instead making it very…
On Friday, March 20 as new Tedeschi Trucks Band album Future Soul made its way into the world, the Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi led twelve-piece powerhouse returned to New York’s Beacon Theatre for night six of a ten-date residency and show number 70 overall for the group at the storied venue.
To begin the night, band officially welcomed the crowd to the age of Future Soul with a full performance of the eleven-track album culminating in the live debut of “Ride On”, the last of its songs to break into the live rotation. To fill out the remaining minutes of the Future Soul set, Susan led the group through longtime staple “I Want More” before passing the baton to Derek to channel some “Soul” from the past-that is…
Featuring new member Simon House on synths and violin, and following the departure of Robert Calvert and electronic effects man Dik Mik, Hall of the Mountain Grill feels like something of an interim album for Hawkwind. Despite their cosmic pretensions, they were wary of the commercial success they had enjoyed with 1973’s Space Ritual and pondering which direction to go in next.
The album was named after a restaurant in London’s Portabello Road in which the group used to convene, a self-effacing title at odds with the grandeur of the cover, depicting a derelict spaceship in the mists of an alien lagoon; in 1974 we were two years into the post-space age. Tracks like The Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear In Smoke) are quintessential Hawkwind space…
Hearing a classic R&B song like “Money (That’s What I Want)” originally by Barrett Strong in 1959, the Beatles in 1963 & quirky in 1979 by the Flying Lizards, it’s amazing to hear a bluesy rendition in 1960 by blues-great John Lee Hooker (1912-2001). But here it is. Hooker’s voice is the attraction, with its deep tones & dark storytelling manner. “Come and See About Me” is nearly a whisper, but with John’s presence, it resonates as a tune he could sing personally to you if you’re wearing headphones.
This 12-track studio set was recorded in Feb.1960 as That’s My Story: John Lee Hooker Sings The Blues produced by Orrin Keepnews, who also wrote the liner notes. Despite the blues tag, the songs are recorded with a whispery personal application.
Stevie Nicks had much to prove when she stepped out on her own for the first time and crafted Bella Donna. Despite attaining superstar success with Fleetwood Mac, the singer often took a back seat to the band’s other members — and, due to the group’s approach, faced limitations in getting her songs on an album. Along with Nicks’ status as a significant artistic force in her own right, that all changed with the timeless Bella Donna.
Sourced from the original analog master tapes, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition hybrid SACD of the 1981 benchmark plays with superb transparency, dynamics, and detail. Benefitting from extraordinary clarity, openness, and separation, it captures what went down in the studio with tremendous realism…
…deluxe anniversary reissue features 11 new tracks, including unreleased demos and remixes with artists Cody Votolato (The Blood Brothers), Youth Code and Kerry McCoy (Deafheaven).
On the second track of Touché Amoré‘s emotional and complicated fourth effort Stage Four, vocalist Jeremy Bolm addresses his late mother — as he does throughout the album, written out of grief, guilt and regret over her passing due to cancer two years ago — and tells her, “I haven’t found the courage to listen to your last message to me.”
The album is a passionately written and deeply moving meditation on loss, and Touché Amoré have never been better as a band. Bolm’s throat-shredding yell tears through most of these lines, reminding us that although…
There was a time when Djax-Up-Beats was spoken of in the same breath as Tresor, R&S, Soma and Peacefrog: a cohort of labels that shaped the sound of European techno. Founded in 1989 by Saskia Slegers, AKA Miss Djax, the Eindhoven label operated as a vital transatlantic conduit, connecting sounds from Chicago and Detroit with a rapidly expanding rave infrastructure in Europe. The cultural exchange went both ways, as US producers found eager audiences while Dutch and Belgian artists pushed that raw machine funk into harder and faster territories.
This storied legacy isn’t at risk of erasure — Dekmantel reissued Djax-Up-Beats material as recently as 2019, after all. But a new retrospective compilation series from another…