From the Garage fueled shadows of upstate New York, The Chesterfield Kings have returned this Halloween with Loose Ends: 1989–2004 Rare, B-Sides & Unreleased that is out via Wicked Cool Records. This anthology cracks open the vault to deliver a fuzz-drenched feast of rarities, forgotten gems, and unreleased recordings spanning the band’s wildest years. For the first time ever, these deep cuts and obscure one-offs, many previously scattered across hard-to-find vinyl and CD pressings, have been digitally remastered and compiled into one explosive release. It’s a time capsule of pure Rock swagger: stomping rhythms, snarling guitars, and that signature Chesterfield Kings attitude that has influenced generations of garage revivalists and true believers.
Category: indie
Witch Fever weave doom, punk, goth and noise into the fabric of their second album, FEVEREATEN. Alongside Chris W. Ryan’s production, the four-piece band sounds balanced and unified. Continuing on from their debut, Congregation, FEVEREATEN unpacks religious (and other) trauma through allegory and personal narrative.
Amy Walpole’s raw, nearly feral vocals anchor the album in its emotional core. At the centre of it all is a steady, driving heartbeat: great for screaming into the void about our disenfranchisement. The album builds a familiar sense of otherness, underwritten by experiences coming of age – and now living as adults – under authoritarianism. At the midway point, SAFE features a haunting and ethereal cello theme.
Radioactivity took ten years to follow up their 2015 album Silent Kill, but the wait was worth it. 2025’s Time Won’t Bring Me Down does everything the group’s previous records did but adds new layers of sonic adventurism and lyrical maturity on the way to being top notch punk rock for grown ass adults. The band can still knock out sweaty rockers perfect for bopping round the room to; the jacked-up title track and raucous “Watch Me Bleed” kick off the album with a one-two punch that’s like a blaring wake up call. Once the band have everyone’s attention, they start to peel off in different directions that are just as invigorating, while also packing some serious emotional punch. Singer and songwriter Jeff Burke isn’t interested in starting parties or rocking out…
Two years after he first appeared on Balmat with 1977, Mike Paradinas returns with 1979. The sense of continuity between the two records is clear, and not just from their titles. Both capture the Planet Mu head venturing into the wilderness, seeking something-half-formed memories, thoughts caught in midair-in some of the most abstract, searching music he has released.
Just like 1977, 1979 surveys a synth-heavy array of ethereal soundscapes, ominous crevasses, and strange, psychedelic fugues. Like its predecessor, the new album’s atmospheric cast sets it apart from much of the work Paradinas has released as µ-Ziq on Planet Mu. It’s not strictly an ambient record, but it’s close, as close as this famously mutable artist ever comes to inhabiting a particular genre.
This 12-track companion album to the documentary about the band features 2023 remasters of such songs as “Whip It,” “Girl U Want,” and “Beautiful World” plus covers of “Working in the Coal Mine” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”
Acclaimed filmmaker Chris Smith (Wham!, Fyre, 100 Foot Wave, and Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond) captures the gloriously radical spirit that is DEVO – a rare band founded by a philosophy; a Dada experiment of high art meets low, hellbent on infiltrating American popular culture. Through never-before-seen archival and interviews with Mark Mothersbaugh, Bob Mothersbaugh, and Jerry Casale, DEVO relishes in the highs, lows, surreal moments and incredible performances of a 50-year career, embracing the spectacle…
Collaborative albums are a tricky undertaking that can often result in clunky material that tries too hard to appeal to two separate audiences.
In the case of Chat Pile and Hayden Pedigo, however, In the Earth Again showcases a seamless connection of artists that appear to be on polar-opposite ends of the sonic spectrum, while simultaneously showcasing a logical next step in the band’s trajectory.
From the very start, Pedigo’s guitar playing fits right into the Chat Pile universe. Dreamy instrumental opener of “Outside” and onward, his finger-picking style conjures imagery of a dusty, desolate rural American landscape — a familiar concept, both lyrically and sonically, for the band. (Pedigo grew up in the Texas Panhandle,…
Shortly following the noisy ambient Americana of no floor, claire rousay‘s 2025 collaboration with more eaze, rousay remained on Thrill Jockey with the solo effort a little death. On this album, the composer mixes numerous found sounds and field recordings with droning strings, rustic guitars, stirring pianos, and electroacoustic processing. It feels very autumnal, like crunchy leaves underfoot, but also like a warm jacket in the crisp night air. When spoken samples are clearly audible, such as on the brief opener “i couldn’t find the light” or the comforting drone of “somehow,” they directly relate to topics of disassociation and mental illness. On “just,” M. Sage’s delicate, considered piano notes give way to swelling, gliding strings and curdled tape distortion, packed with…
British composer and multi-instrumentalist Roger Eno’s releases his 3rd album for DG Without Wind, Without Air. The project follows on from the success of The Turning Year (2022) and the skies, they shift like chords (2023). The latter was described by Spectrum Culture with the words: “a remarkable release that unsettles with haunting lines and simultaneously makes one tingle with warmth at a display of beauty”.
The new album includes both solo piano pieces and tracks orchestrated for various combinations of clarinet, guitar, bass, strings, synths, percussion and electronics. There are guest vocal appearances from soprano Grace Davidson and Roger’s daughters Cecily and Lotti Eno, with Roger himself singing on The Moon And The Sea.
On Virtue Falters, Ritual Howls made a significant leap forward, pairing their sweeping gestures with songwriting that was just as compelling. They continue their evolution on Ruin, delivering a set of even more tightly constructed songs that reestablish pounding, pulsing industrial beats as the backbone of their sound.
From the first notes of their sixth album, it’s clear Ritual Howls’ mastery of atmosphere remains. The glowering twang of “Follow the Sun” conjures images of long black leather jackets and swirls of clove cigarette smoke, but it also boasts hooks that claw their way into listeners’ heads and stay there. Ruin is also a showcase for Paul Bancell’s increasingly commanding baritone: on “In the Morning,” his booming delivery…
On “Radio Seance,” Puritan Themes‘ strangest and most surreal song, Emil Amos intones “They always leave me on the shelf/ I live my life all by myself” like some starry-eyed sunshine popper broadcasting from some alternate dimension; the jaunty, optimistic vocals washing up like so much driftwood on a sea of guitar feedback, insomniac field recordings, epic Pink Floyd synths and dyslexic beats. It’s like the lost masters of some would-be ’70s pop star slowly going mad on black mold, cobwebs and isolation, the earthy folksiness growing soft and haunted around the edges.
On Puritan Themes, Amos found himself inspired by late-night broadcasts of “this bizarre, ’70s AM radio station that plays these sleazy, obscure/lost hits,” as he put it in an interview…
Snocaps are a new band, but not really. They’ve only been together a matter of months, and they’ve just surprise-released their debut, but the two mainstays – twins Allison and Katie Crutchfield – have been singing together for most of their lives. Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, they were active in the local DIY scene, forming their first band, The Ackleys, when they were in high school and only splitting up when the other members went off to college. They rechristened themselves P.S. Eliot in 2007, released two well-praised albums of earnest, anxious indie rock, then disbanded in 2011 when they simultaneously realised, with twin intuition, that they needed to go in different directions for a while.
Allison quickly formed the scrappy indie-rock…
California’s The Neighbourhood are on a mission to make goth R&B a touchstone in the musical lexicon. It’s a sound they championed on their debut album, 2013’s I Love You, and continue to explore on their sophomore effort, 2015’s Wiped Out! Once again working with producer Justyn Pilbrow, the Neighbourhood expand upon the moody synth, heavy bass, and echoey guitar-based style of I Love You with a collection of tracks that, while not mind-blowing, will pleasingly remind most fans of the group’s 2012 breakout track, “Sweater Weather.” While other artists have flirted with the darker side of R&B, including Lana Del Rey, the xx, and Halsey (who also worked with Pilbrow on her similarly inclined 2015 debut, Badlands), the Neighbourhood commit to…
This fifth studio album from Admiral Fallow is their first in four years, with at least one track (‘The Shortest Night’) dating back further, to the early days of the pandemic. Clearly, the Glasgow five-piece are the kind of band happy to allow their ideas room to breathe, to crystallise at their own pace, which is something palpable on First of the Birds; the best songs here are stately and refined, unfurling at their own pace.
Opener ‘First Names (Storms)’ is a case in point, as is the stunning ‘Dead in the Water’ along with gorgeous closer ‘All the Distractions’ – all tracks where the sparse, elegant instrumentation provide a foundation for frontman Louis Abbott’s stirring vocals to wash over. Elsewhere, there’s experimentation, with mixed…
One day, will Saintseneca’s new record, Highwallow & Supermoon Songs, do for another worn-down, listless folk musician what painting did for bandleader Zac Little? Toward the end of the 2010s, Little suffered a prolonged period of creative doldrums, thus explaining the seven years or so it took his band to follow up Pillar of Na. Touring and recording and writing and practicing all take a toll; even artists need time to fill their cups, contrary to preconceptions that art is easy and those who make it their vocation are blessed with ever-flowing goblets. (This is very much not the case, for artists as well as for arts and culture critics. We all identify as “tired.”)
It fits that Little plugged into painting to recharge his spirit. Highwallow & Supermoon Songs…
While singer/songwriter Christian Kjellvander certainly has a niche in the angsty, earthy corners of music, his output has traversed the alternately ambling and gritty lo-fi rock of his group Loosegoats, and moody solo fare that touches on dusty Americana, sinewy rock, and spacey balladry. After releasing his eighth solo LP, the dark and more experimental Wild Hxmans, in 2018, he delivered a pair of discontented, confessional sets, About Love and Loving Again (2020) and Hold Your Love Still (2023), the latter of which took on existential, sociopolitical challenges as well those of a romantic nature. Arriving two years later, Ex Voto/The Silent Love is a brooding, even rawer final entry in an unofficial trilogy on love. Originally conceived as a set of sparse…
Night CRIÚ evokes clandestine ceremonies in forest glades, covert rituals taking place in the depths of a cave. Crepuscular and ghostly, this is a realm where an intoned, reverberant voice meshes with ritualistic choirs, undulating brass, methodically bowed strings and unhurried percussion.
Musically, the lineage could be the solo work of Dead Can Dance’s Lisa Gerrard or Anna von Hausswolff at her most reductive. If the fifth solo album from the Ireland’s Hilary Woods were employed as the soundtrack to the 1967 Czech film Marketa Lazarová or Werner Herzog’s 1976 Herz aus Glas, it would be a seamless transposition – this music exists beyond place and time.
For Woods, getting to this point has not been linear. From 1999, she was the bassist of…
James Chapman envisions Welcome to the Tudor Gate as a horror-fantasy soundtrack, a score he wrote for a half-remembered film, then misplaced for over a decade. Recorded in 2014, it evokes the tone of classic ’60s and ’70s maestros like Dario Argento and John Carpenter, yet rests easily within the wintry synth-pop oeuvre he’s created under the name Maps.
It’s a foreboding follow-up to Counter Melodies, Chapman’s overtly dance-inspired 2023 album, yet its overriding sense of menace is fused with electricity and action rather than outright doom. In other words, it sounds like a Maps record, albeit one made for the witching hour. 40 minutes in length, Tudor Gate is presented in eight chapters, the first of which plays like…
‘Leftovers (1970-1988)’ compiles the “accidental” Leftovers trilogy of limited edition Record Store Day-exclusive vinyl releases, ‘Leftovers Again?!’, ‘Leftovers Again?! AGAIN?!’, and ‘Leftovers Again?! Again!?! (Again)’ (released between 2021 and 2025) into a two disc pREServed CD collection.
Formed in the early ’70s, The Residents have now been charting a unique path through the musical landscape for over half a century now. From far-out, experimental recordings to highly conceptual, innovative multi-platform projects, the band refuses to stand still, and continues to move in several different directions at once.
Combining new RDX mixes produced by The Residents using their original multitrack tapes under lockdown conditions during 2020,…