Live and Acoustic presents Trey Anastasio at his most stripped-back and introspective, capturing a series of performances from his sold-out 2025 Spring Acoustic Tour. Produced by Vance Powell and featuring longtime collaborator Jeff Tanski on keyboards, the album offers a focused and intimate listening experience.
Spanning 22 songs drawn from across Anastasio’s four-decade career, Live and Acoustic highlights the strength of his songwriting in its purest form. Without the expansive arrangements often associated with his work, the songs are allowed to breathe, revealing their melodic core and emotional depth. Fan favorites such as “Stash,” “Waste,” “Divided Sky,” and “Pebbles and Marbles” take on a new dimension in this setting…
Category: rock
U2’s second surprise six-track EP of 2026, Easter Lily arrives six weeks after Days of Ash – the period in the ecclesiastical calendar known as Lent. For U2 fans, it’s a case of feast rather than fast, with both releases standing alone and distinct from the band’s new studio album, for which recording sessions remain ongoing.
As The Edge explains in the new accompanying edition of the band’s Propaganda ’zine: “We wrote some songs meant for our album, but they started to assert themselves in some unexpected ways, demanding special attention, their own devotional world, suggesting they didn’t feel part of our album. So we folded… agreed to their timeline… the songs are the boss.”
These are certainly boss songs – Easter Lily…
After a five-year run of musically intrepid and critically acclaimed studio LPs – Absolute Zero, Non-Secure Connection, ‘Flicted, Deep Sea Vents – as well as entire albums’ worth of still-unreleased material, the virtuoso pianist suddenly found himself “creatively fried.”
Despite his best, well-intentioned efforts to step away from songwriting for a brief time, his creative musings ultimately prevailed. One particularly tenacious song idea led to several months of sleepless nights before Mr. Hornsby finally relented, resulting in the incredibly satisfying title track to his latest release, Indigo Park.
Within the ten tracks of Indigo Park, Mr. Hornsby and his uber-talented musical cohorts, The Noisemakers, this time…
8-CD Box Set – Newly mastered albums with bonus B-Sides and live shows.
After leaving Deep Purple, Ian Gillan retired from the music business to pursue other business ventures including ownership of the Kingsway studio, where in 1974 he began to work on his first post-Deep Purple solo tracks. This combined with a warm reception to his appearance at Roger Glover’s Butterfly Ball live show prompted him to form a new band.
Initially called Shand Grenade, Ian was persuaded by the management to change the band’s name to the Ian Gillan Band. He recruited guitarist Ray Fenwick, bass player John Gustafson, keyboard player Mike Moran and Mark Nauseef on drums, using Roger Glover as producer…
During the late ’70s, the beginnings of a wave of music heavily inspired by the garage rock and psychedelia of the 1960s began to swell. Chalk it up to many factors — the availability of a number of reissues, especially the Pebbles series, a disillusionment with the restrictive rules of punk rock, the passage of enough time so that the era seemed glamorous, the chance to get cheap vintage gear — but the result was an underground that evolved in many interesting directions and even went quite overground at different times. Cherry Red’s 2026 collection This Can’t Be Today: American Psychedelia & the Paisley Underground 1977-1988 looks to document the scene, gathering together the many strands and sounds of the time to present a comprehensive view.
The storied, three-decade (and counting) career of American visual and performance artist, sculptor, photographer, filmmaker, costume designer, and musician Marnie Weber (b. 1959) began with gigs paid in beer at an LA trucker bar in 1977. Her band, Party Boys, formed in artists’ hangout spots in downtown LA’s semi-abandoned industrial zones. Weber was then 19 and had just left home. After a handful of shows, the bar’s owner asked if she and her female bandmate would perform nude. Taking this as a sign to leave LA, they promptly took off to London. However, their search for more ethical trade there was arrested by a harrowing experience. The band were violently assaulted following a cancelled gig, resulting in the destruction of their instruments, their singer’s…
The Beatles are a singularly iconic rock band. While plenty of classic rock groups, like the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and, most successfully, Queen, continue to rack up tens of millions of monthly Spotify streams, no other band remains as relevant as the Beatles. Many YouTubers build popular channels by explaining musical theory through their songs or by delving into the supposed mysteries of how their music was created.
That makes it increasingly more challenging to find a new perspective on the group. With a Little Help from My Friends: Covers of the Beatles 1967-1970 may well provide some interesting new points of discussion. Does it make for an equally enjoyable listening experience?
This 3-disc box set from Cherry Red Records…
Matinee Acoustic Live at the Prince Albert finds Johnny Moped taking an unexpected turn with an acoustic set that, against all expectations, proves both engaging and highly entertaining. The very idea of a Johnny Moped acoustic performance might raise eyebrows among longtime fans, but the results speak for themselves.
Historically known for their chaotic and unpredictable shows, Johnny Moped have, in recent years, evolved into a far tighter and more dependable live act. That doesn’t mean the band have lost their edge—mistakes still happen, but within the Moped universe, they only add to the charm. What truly drives the performance is the same energy and excitement that has always defined them, and it remains fully intact here.
Paul Carrack is releasing a concert album recorded at Royal Albert Hall in London on Oct. 24, 2024, in celebration of 50 years of his first hit, “How Long,” recorded with Ace in 1974.
For One Night Only (Live in London) comprises two halves with Carrack joined by special guests SWR big band and orchestra playing songs from the album Don’t Wait Too Long and the second half featuring Carrack with his own band playing all his big hits. They’re joined on two tracks by a 150-piece choir, Funky Voices.
Dubbed by the BBC as “The Man With the Golden Voice,” Carrack’s breakthrough moment came when he wrote and sang “How Long” from his days with Ace. Paul also enjoyed great success as the voice behind numerous hits for…
Morning Star finds Këkht Aräkh arriving at a truer, more refined version of himself. Recorded between Berlin and Stockholm, the album emerges from a period of intense personal and artistic growth, blending aggressive black metal passages with immersive, textured soundscapes that feel both intimate and vast.
Since his origins in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, Dmitry (a.k.a. Crying Orc), the sole mastermind behind the project, has sought a distinctive path within black metal. This vision unfolded through his debut Through the Branches to Eternity EP (2018) and the albums Night & Love (2018) and Pale Swordsman (2021), establishing a signature tension between ferocious, visceral black metal and delicate, introspective ballads.
The initial plan for guitarist Robben Ford’s first solo studio album in about five years was supposed to be a tribute to Jeff Beck. But a move to the UK changed direction for what became Two Shades of Blue. The title references not just the locations (London and Indiana) and different musicians used to support jazz, blues, soulful singer/songwriting guitarist Ford (ex-Tom Scott’s LA Express, Yellowjackets and others), but how his approach to the blues genre is wider and more inclusive than most.
Three US recorded songs aim at a Jeff Beck-inflected ‘Blow by Blow’ and ‘Wired’ instrumental groove. He’s joined by veterans bassist Daryl Jones (Rolling Stones, Miles Davis) and drummer Gary Husband (John McLaughlin,..
This is a huge undertaking, an eight-CD set comprising all the band’s official studio albums released between 2006 and 2014, with a few added extras. It features not just the original albums, remixed and remastered (and notably not by Steven Wilson, prog’s ‘go-to’ man for this task), but also rarities, bonus tracks and acoustic reinterpretations, as well as new stereo and immersive mixes. Together, these highlight the journey The Pineapple Thief has been on since taking their early formative steps.
Retracing Our Steps is the second such release commemorating the legacy of The Pineapple Thief, following on from 2023’s How Did We Find Our Way, 1999–2006, which serves as almost the definitive guide to the band and their early…
Lou Gramm revisits his past with a compelling archival release that offers fans a ten-track glimpse into a formative creative period. Drawing from recordings made in the late ’80s—now remastered and, in some cases, newly completed—the collection feels less like a set of leftovers and more like a missing chapter in his solo career.
Much of the material appears to originate from the period between his first two solo albums, Ready Or Not and Long Hard Look, with at least one track tracing back to the underrated Shadowking project. The opening track, featuring Vivian Campbell on guitar, immediately sets a high standard. “Young Love” stands out as a quintessential Lou Gramm performance—strong, melodic, and instantly memorable—raising questions about…
Hopes and Dreams is the title of the brand new compilation series from Tramp Records. This new series draws on the music selection of ‘Praise Poems’, not only in terms of obscurity, but also in terms of genius. Similar, but anything but a poor copy, the focus is on rare grooves from the 1970s. The album contains genuine rarities that definitely deserve more attention. Take, for example, the opener by Guamanian Frankie & the Karter’s Peanut Organization. The protagonist comes from Guam, a tiny island in the western Pacific, a good 5000km north of Australia. The previously unreleased ‘Back In Time’ comes from an acetate pressing. As far as we know, it is the only existing copy. Easy and Carrie Chaplin & Mark Perron delight us with light folk soul, and fans of Terry Callier will…
At 75, Suzi Quatro is still shaking her ass – and, crucially, there is no silence. There is instead the same devil-gate drive that propelled 14-year-old Susan Kay Quatro to join all-female garage rock band the Pleasure Seekers with her sister before most of us had worked out how to tune a transistor radio. Precursor to The Runaways, to Pat Benatar, to Courtney Love. Bass slung low, chin set high. Suzi didn’t so much kick down the door of rock’s boys’ club as remove the hinges and pawn them for (17 bottles of) Schlitz.
Freedom, her third album in collaboration with her son LR Tuckey, knows all this. How could it not? This is a record about identity, legacy, survival. About Suzi being Suzi. ‘I remember walking along, dreams in my pockets/Singing my songs…
In 1974, Merle Haggard released Merle Haggard Presents His 30th Album. Having released thirty albums is in itself a remarkable accomplishment, but it was all the more impressive that Haggard cut those LPs in just nine years. It’s a shame Haggard never talked to Billy Childish about productivity; In 1991, Childish brought out a compilation, I Am the Billy Childish, that included one track each from the fifty long-players he’d put out between 1977 and 1991. Of course, Hag had the resources of Capitol Records behind him as he cranked out his recordings, while Childish cut his music for tiny indie labels, mostly on his own dime, and was also making lots of non-LP singles, publishing poetry, and creating various sorts of visual art at the same time.
