…includes 9 bonus tracks of ‘Midnight Versions’ and rarities.
Marius Lauber’s debut album is in itself a feat of many surprises. The Cologne, Germany-based artist, who records and produces under the moniker Roosevelt, takes measures to make sure that this initial self-titled offering feels far from conventional, yet remains accessible to those who crave new sounds.
Upon first listen of the self-titled debut, Roosevelt’s origin should not surprise many diehards of electronic music, as the genre is very much rooted in the land of the Rhine, with forerunners of synthpop such as Kraftwerk and Neu! both hailing from the country. Roosevelt takes what made those early electro artists special and…
Category: pop
Communication often has multiple angles: at the beginning of Is affect real?, the third song on Frances Chang’s new album, she sings “Sometimes I want to wear / A head of light blonde hair / I don’t care if that’s unfair / Or makes me ordinary”, and she’s being vulnerable while also putting up a defence against being judged. It’s an interesting mix of defiance and insecurity, and Been Thinking Bout Confession sees Chang delivering this kind of lyrical material over idiosyncratic, contemplative instrumentals.
The piano melodies that run through I can feel the waves are sweet and playful, contrasting nicely with the song’s rickety, distorted drum machine loop. Strings add some harmonic layers, sometimes lush, sometimes uneasy, and Chang’s…
Sounds Like Art is an exciting new concert initiative that invites musicians to perform amongst works of art in a European museum of their choice. World-renowned artist Sting performs in the beautiful surroundings of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum amongst paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer and Judith Leyster, and reflects on the works of the old masters.
The 17-time Grammy Award winning artist performs a unique concert amongst masterpieces in the Gallery of Honour. Playing a rare 17th century guitar, Sting, managed by Martin Kierszenbaum/Cherrytree Music Company, reveals his love for the Old Masters and revels in the power of books and reading, while performing in the museum’s spectacular library.
Who would have thought, 40 years ago, when we watched the Claymation figures of The Housemartins dancing in the ‘Happy Hour’ video, that at least two of that band would be well-respected national treasures by 2026?
Norman Cook’s transformation into Fatboy Slim is well documented of course, but his former bandmate Paul Heaton has had an equally impressive, if more low-key, career. Last year, he even performed a sell-out gig at his beloved Sheffield United’s ground, making him the country’s most down to earth stadium rocker.
The secret to Heaton’s success is consistency. The majority of Jenius would fit easily next to anything in his former band The Beautiful South‘s canon. Rianne Downey, who first appeared…
Black Marble has always had a core of melodic brilliance, and each album has peeled away another layer of glum obfuscation. The earliest releases were cavernous and lo-fi, their harsh sound showing reverence to the coldwave revival of the 2010s that helped inspire Black Marble mastermind Chris Stewart to launch the project. Fifth studio album Life in Small Spaces still has smudges of the tape hiss and analog glow of the project’s roots, but there’s a new vibrancy which has been creeping slowly into the sound for years and seems to fully arrive with these songs.
Opening track “It Always Comes to Me” is almost shockingly unlike the Black Marble of the past, with snappy, live-sounding drums and bright, chorus-coated guitars front and center.
“My Lost One”, Materia’s second track, is remarkable. Exemplifying the Julia Holter ethos to the max, it begins wispily with interweaving rippling electric piano figures, a whispered, echoey vocal and slippery acoustic bass. Gradually, grandeur is assumed: a sonic architecture soaring into and beyond the clouds, and outwards into the wider cosmos.
Despite the next track “Fantasy” having a similar, though much more brief exposition, nothing else on Materia is so strikingly consummated. The rest of the album is more muted, foggy, out of focus, restrained. Etiolated, even.
Overall, Materia is line with Holter’s adopted style. Her seventh album is very beautiful, and has a contrasting undertone of disquiet,…
Over the last few years Kurt Wagner has increasingly used Lambchop as a vehicle for musical exploration, with albums like This (Is What I Wanted to Tell You), Showtunes and The Bible reimagining the sound traditionally associated with the name. Much of the experimentation in sound was centred around his vocals, which were often processed through software and devices such as vocoders and autotune.
On Punching the Clown there’s still an on ongoing preoccupation with the human voice but the approach is different, primarily being focused on how voices complement each other rather than how they can be manipulated into different shapes. Alongside the human voice another key sound on the album comes from the banjo,…
Released via Transgressive Records, Sparks Live On the Moon, the band’s first full live album, captures Sparks at the very peak of their live powers. The 20-track album recorded at the end of their 2025 tour, in the moon’s Taruntius Crater, comes complete with an introduction and closing narration by Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett.
The songs on the live album cover material from Sparks albums as early as A Woofer in Tweeter’s Clothing (1972) up to their most recent album Mad! (2025), and it includes a notable songs such as “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us”, “The Number One Song in Heaven” and “When Do I Get to Sing My Way'”.
Louder Than War described the 2025 show as “a hundred minutes of energetic, thrilling…
Most artists will say their music is shaped by their environment, but for London trio Night Tapes, it’s nothing short of fundamental. portals//polarities’ is a deeply immersive journey that travels through the places and sounds of its creation across the globe. From a bubbling swamp in Tallinn, Estonia, to birdsong in Mexico and even a Los Angeles police helicopter, this debut boasts a wildly exploratory soundscape. Made quietly in a shared South London house – where Iiris Vesik, Max Doohan and Sam Richards had to keep volume low to avoid disturbing neighbours – these songs are time capsules of the band’s experiences, both direct and indirect. Take ‘pacifico’ – a trip-hop-tinged nod to a mythical mindset inspired by stories of Mexico’s San Jose del Pacifico, with…
Sometimes, all you need is a change. When Nora Stanley, an accomplished saxophonist who has worked with, among others, Beth Orton and The New Pornographers, moved to New York City from Oakland, California, she didn’t know she’d be inspired to write so many songs that she’d release an album of her own. “It’s a very unique and specific experience to live in a city that’s hyper-stimulating,” Stanley says.
Her songs are elegant, poetic, and lush, more of a retreat from the city’s chaos. They act as a way for Stanley to “slow things down and process them.” An experienced collaborator herself, Stanley enlisted a wide range of musicians for her debut album, including Shahzad Ismaily, Benny Bock, and Nate Mendelsohn.
…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.
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.
L’Rain, the genre-defying project of musician and artistic curator Taja Cheek, broke through with the bewildering 2021 full-length Fatigue, which was followed two years later by the “anti-breakup” album I Killed Your Dog. Fourth release Fata Morgana addresses themes of alienation and self-doubt, with Cheek questioning how to prosper in a world that wasn’t meant for her. Co-produced with frequent collaborators Ben Chapoteau-Katz and Andrew Lappin, along with appearances from other musicians including Cibo Matto’s Yuka Honda, the album often feels dreamier and more nebulous than other L’Rain albums, with Cheek’s vocals often emanating from a cocoon of ethereal effects. Even still, there are numerous unexpected shifts into different genres, all of which are…
As unlikely as it sounds, Carly Simon’s first paid gig was singing jingles for her uncle’s company: one of the pre-eminent singer-songwriters of a generation not short on pre-eminent singer-songwriters cutting her teeth on adverts for cold cream, household mops and local banks. Fast forward a few years and she’s winning her first Grammy for Best New Artist with a debut single, “That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be”, which dared to question the preferred currency of popular music: love and romance. Jac Holzman, initially her sole cheerleader at Elektra Records, was vindicated: Simon staked her place in the slipstream, but not the shadow, of Carole King and Joni Mitchell, her seductive alto honey-dripping lyrical scepticism, wit, rapture and realism…
Omnivore Recordings and The International Pop Overthrow Music Festival present International Pop Overthrow: Volume 27, a three-disc compilation featuring 68 tracks by artists from all over the world who have played the International Pop Overthrow (IPO) festival, along with some who haven’t — at least, not yet! The IPO compilations go back as far as the festival, to 1998 when Volume 1 was a single disc. Since then, the collection expanded to two discs the following year, and then three discs in 2002 for Volume 5, and it has remained a three-disc set since. International Pop Overthrow: Volume 27 showcases artists from across the globe, doing just about every sub-genre of pop music, including power pop, pop/rock, folk/pop, psychedelic pop, garage,…
