We are living after the end of the end of history—both in the sense that Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 theory of a democratic finish line has come and gone, and that it feels disconcertingly like we’re living through the end times themselves, alive after everything and left to make a life in the wreckage that optimism left behind. We are living post- everything: post-liberalism, post-language, post-hope. On “Culture,” Greg Freeman adds two more to the list: post-culture and post-rock-and-roll. The current moment, he says, is simply beyond analogy. When all our words are “plagiarized before they’re written,” as he puts it on “Loser’s Prize,” even art itself begins to feel mind-numbingly futile. Everything that’s worth saying has already been said, but if we say nothing at all…
Category: indie
After Gary the fibreglass gorilla (and the wildly successful 2024 album named after him) took indie icons Blossoms far and wide, for their sixth studio effort the band have opted to shift their focus to something a tad closer to home. Named after the local moniker for Stockport Town Hall where frontman Tom Ogden tied the knot, Songs From The Wedding Cake sees the band addressing the many elements of love and loss (the latter being of a no-claims insurance bonus, rather than a relationship, mind you…).
Recorded live to tape by the five-piece with Shawn Lee (Young Gun Silver Fox) on production duties, Songs From The Wedding Cake sees Blossoms further straying from synth-pop to go full force with rollicking guitar and bass…
The idea that an album could be made piecemeal, in different countries, via the internet, would have been inconceivable forty years ago. Such technology would have seemed strange; stranger still might have been the idea that the traditional method – that is, recording a series of songs in one place during a set period of time – is far less viable these days. The logistical demands of creative practice in 2026 mean a piecemeal approach is an all-too necessary solution for many artists. Studios and practice spaces are expensive to rent. It’s difficult to organise a group of busy people (who may not have made music their full-time profession) into one place to record. Vanishing Twin’s excellent new album, Archives, was created in a so-called “virtual studio space”,…
Famously, in life Mark E. Smith never played by the rules, and the same seems to continue in his psychic afterlife. Put together by Smith confidants Ed Blaney and Simon “Ding” Archer, the album takes nine leftover vocal and lyrical pieces from the iconic frontman and reimagines them in new soundscapes — a process that somehow feels entirely in keeping with Smith, who may even have preferred this method, sidestepping the graft and grind of keeping a band together.
It’s not just any two chancers cobbling this together, either. The backing tracks are excellent: grinding, metallic slabs of industrial noise that stand up in their own right, way beyond any Fall-related flag of convenience. And, in truth, whether it is or not is pure distraction.
…features 104 tracks, demos, outtakes, live performances, interviews, and other rare recordings half of which are previously unreleased.
Year Zero, 1976. While his punk contemporaries were at least pretending to hate old music, D.P. Costello had fewer qualms about negotiating with the past. He unpicked the mysteries of Mississippi John Hurt; channelled Bruce Springsteen and Van Morrison; was “completely unnerved” rather than contemptuous when he spotted Bert Jansch in the audience at one of his early gigs. Taking The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo as a gateway drug, he studied the heartbreak and nuance of country and dreamed of becoming a Nashville songwriter. He even tried his hand at Vaudeville whimsy. A fleet-footed 1976 demo called…
For a band who were together for only five years, The Smiths left quite the cultural footprint. It seems as if Johnny Marr has spent the nearly 40 years since the band’s split throwing himself into everything – whether it be joining Modest Mouse or The Cribs, recording with fellow Mancunian legend Bernard Sumner in Electronic and even appearing on the panel show Would I Lie to You.
When it comes to Marr’s solo material though, there always seems something slightly missing. The Age of Everything is his fifth solo album, and one that the man himself has called the first record that he feels completely comfortable with. It definitely contains some of his best solo material to date, and while there may be no surprises contained within, it’s a very solid record all in all.
London-based Swedish singer-songwriter Josefin Öhrn (previously of Grammy nominated Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation) is set to release her debut album Cherry featuring vocals from Bobby Gllespie (Primal Scream) and Anton Newcombe (The Brian Jonestown Massacre), with guitar from Andy Bell (Ride).
Josefin’s most intimate and self-defined album yet, Cherry explores themes of fresh starts, desire, love and grief. It taps into a new and very interesting phase of music, seen on recent releases from Robyn (Sexistential) and Lykke Li (The Afterparty), where the experiences of women are put out there without shame in colourful candidness, such records tap into a fascinating period of raw, intense and highly transformative self-actualization.
If you weren’t already aware that Have a Heart was the debut album from The Klittens, an all female five-piece from Amsterdam, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d discovered an obscure demo tape of a cult New Wave band from the early ’80s.
For The Klittens sound like they’ve been beamed in from another era. They specialise in fuzzy, off-kilter post-punk, and have spent the last couple of years building a reputation as one of the Dutch indie scene’s most promising prospects. While this debut may not be the most polished of finished products, that’s all part of the charm.
There are many bands that are brought to mind when you listen to Have a Heart. The confident strut of Hinds for one, and the brittle, abrasive style of one of Kurt Cobain‘s favourite bands,…
Rosetta Stone is a legendary gothic rock band that emerged in the late 1980s, capturing the dark and dynamic essence of the genre with their haunting melodies and powerful lyrics. Known for their innovative sound and striking performances, Rosetta Stone has left an indelible mark on the gothic music scene. Explore their collection for a glimpse into the atmospheric and intense world they have created, perfect for fans of moody and evocative rock.
The Executing Nostalgia LP by Rosetta Stone is being released on Cleopatra and brings the band together in familiar gothic sonic territory without lapsing into mere nostalgia. The production emphasizes dense arrangements and a clear, song-focused approach that combines…
At this point in their career, AJJ has little left to prove. The pop-punk outfit from Arizona has grown into an institution in the bubbling genre, which has recently seen a resurgence, and AJJ’s prints are all over it. The band’s longevity, stretching across two decades, stems from their stubbornly present songwriting.
As a band, AJJ has always tackled the world in front of them with a toothy grin and careful consideration, never trusting what they see but fearlessly reporting their findings through punchy punk and infectious melodies.
This time around, AJJ does the same, though there’s a palpable lack of hope. Not that previous releases like Disposable Everything and People Who Eat People Are the Luckiest People…
There are live albums that document a band at a particular moment, and then there are those that feel like the closing statement of an entire era. Newly Sentient Being belongs firmly to the latter category. Capturing the final concert of Swans’ “Big Sound” era, this monumental release brings together more than two and a half hours of music that sound less like a farewell than the last transmission from another dimension.
For fifteen years, Swans developed an increasingly immense musical language built on repetition, volume, tension and transcendence. Newly Sentient Being brings that journey to a powerful conclusion. The performance constantly shifts between passages of almost heavenly beauty and brutally physical eruptions of sound…
Following the much-loved Library Music: Volume One (2022), and hot on the heels of this year’s critically acclaimed After the Rain, Strange Seeds, London group The Leaf Library return with a second journey through the margins of their catalogue. Gathering together rare recordings, compilation tracks, limited edition releases, collaborations and hidden gems from their ever-expanding musical world, Library Music: Volume Two is another vibrant and varied collection of electronic indie pop, in all its guises.
Far from a conventional odds and ends collection, the double LP compilation reveals another side of a band who have always treated the spaces between albums as places to explore. These are the moments where ideas stretch out; there…
Following the pop-dance showcase ‘EFM’, Jack Latham returns to his Jam City project with stripped down funk, chewed-up Prince-style R&B, vintage electro and simmering disco house.
We’ll tell you now, My World isn’t a follow-up to 2012’s landmark ‘Classical Curves’, but it’s an enjoyable enough listen – even if you weren’t convinced by its predecessor. Latham’s kept himself busy since 2023 jobbing as a producer, working with Kali Uchis and Olivia Rodrigo after architecting Yachty’s move towards psychedelia on ‘Let’s Start Here’. So his world in 2026 is very different from ours – and certainly different from the landscape that inspired ‘The Courts’. Latham’s current reality is best summed up by the brief instrumental ‘Cash Fast Interlude’…
Northern California–born songwriter Meg Lui has lived in the rural Catskills for over a decade, but her classic-rock and freewheeling folk-pop songs are pure West Coast sunshine.
Her debut album Instant Validation finds Lui partnering with Asthmatic Kitty Records head Sufjan Stevens beyond the record’s production and instrumental work: Over the course of a full year, Lui and Stevens—who also moved Upstate a few years ago—worked on the perky LP whenever they had stretches of time together. The song suite has a dreamy ’60s and ’70s breeziness to it, largely due to Lui’s voice, which may be familiar to listeners from her backing vocal work on Stevens’ Javelin, John Legend’s My Favorite Dream, and labelmate Denison Witmer’s Anything at All.
…features five “brand new recordings based on original folk tales handed to The Residents by The Mysterious N. Senada” in the 1970s, as well as a bonus sixth track, “The Arctic Fox”.
In the 1970s, as The Residents worked on their ‘Eskimo’ masterpiece, their mentor The Mysterious N. Senada sent them a collection of handwritten Inuit folk tales, suggesting they incorporate them into the album. But the group shelved them, having gathered more than enough stuff themselves by that point, leaving them to gather dust.
Here and now, almost 50 years later, The Residents have revived those folk tales as part of their forthcoming ‘Eskimo’ live performance, blending them with familiar elements of the original ‘Eskimo’ album and new music to produce…
Chloé Caillet‘s career as a dance music producer and DJ took off during the 2020s, as she landed residencies at Ibiza and released several floor-filling club anthems rooted in classic ’90s house and rave, including collaborations with SG Lewis and Luke Alessi. Dance Again marks her first release for Ninja Tune, and it adds to her repertoire of fun, ecstatic dance tracks with a bit of a French touch, as well as traces of surging Euro-trance and propulsive electro.
Opener “Lemme Dance” is a commanding, “get on the floor”-type song featuring Ed Banger affiliate Myd, and “Bad Bara” is a perky number with playful, tongue-twisting vocals from Yuuko that bring to mind the Tom Tom Club’s “Wordy Rappinghood.” Alessi returns for “Change,”…
After following up her alienated alt-rock debut with the darker, more existential If You Asked for a Picture, Blondshell (singer and songwriter Sabrina Teitelbaum) headed to the studio for the third straight time with producer Yves Rothman (Kim Gordon, Cherry Glazerr). The resulting Violins — so titled to capture the coexistence of violence and beauty in the world, its overarching theme — is her most ruminative set of songs yet. While the album includes quite a few fuzzy rockers, they’re of a midtempo, melancholy nature, including the opening title track, a borderline power ballad about the slow nature of healing from trauma (“It takes all my focusing/It’s like watching paint/Wait, what’d you say?”). Also falling in this category is lead single “Heart Has to Work So Hard,”…
Smidley, the project named after Conor Murphy’s childhood dog, is back with its third LP, Murphy Horse. The project is a blend of genres and styles, emphasizing his creativity and experimentation. He masterfully dances between jazz, indie pop, acoustic music, ’80s new wave, and more, creating a tension that draws you deeper into the record, wondering what will be revealed on the next track.
Take the opening song, “Corpse Flower.” It has so much texture and tension. Just when you feel like you have its direction pinned down, it switches and swaps. Beginning on saxophone with elements of jazz, a subtle genre undercurrent that runs throughout the album, it braids into this hazy, atmospheric blend before settling into a beautiful moment on the keys.