In March 2025, Berlin’s legendary Frannz Club became the setting for an unforgettable night as Mitch Ryder delivered a blistering live performance. That evening now forms the backbone of Songs from the Road, a brand-new live release that captures the raw power, emotion and urgency that have defined Ryder’s career for more than fifty years.
While the audio recordings were captured in Berlin, the accompanying DVD footage was filmed a month earlier in Lindewerra, Thuringia home base of Ruf Records. Two different locations, united in one compelling release, give Songs From The Road both its sonic punch and visual intimacy.
The album brings together electrifying performances of Ryder’s classic repertoire…
Category: rock
…Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment, and RCA Records release the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, a collection of 27 recordings heard in the upcoming film, featuring updated mixes of iconic live performances alongside new remixes and medleys of classic Elvis recordings.
…A follow-up to director Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 biopic of the singer starring Austin Butler in a star-making, Golden Globe-winning turn as the late singer, EPiC is sourced from scores of long-vaulted material utilized for film research. Warner Bros. Pictures unearthed unseen footage and outtakes from Elvis’ concert documentaries That’s the Way It Is (1970) and Elvis on Tour (1972)…
Staffed by Turkish, Indonesian and Dutch members, Altın Gün have always favored tunings and tonalities exotic to Anglo-American ears. Utilizing a saz (a long-necked lute played in Eastern Europe, the Levant and Asia) as lead instrument adds distinctive flavor to their respectful yet non-rote modernizations of Turkish folk classics and to their own serpentine compositions. It would be easy for Altın Gün’s recordings to come off as arid museum pieces, but through sheer virtuosity and zeal for the source material, they instead create vibrant renovations of these chestnuts.
Garip focuses on reimagining the work of Turkish troubadour/bağlama player Neşet Ertaş (1938-2012). Here, Altın Gün put supple muscle on the bones of Ertaş’ stripped-down songs,…
Compiling music from throughout continental Europe during the height of psychedelia and progressive rock, So High I’ve Been: A European Rock Anthology 1967-1973 touches on several different styles and movements, from Dutch Nederbeat to Krautrock. This ranges from more blues-based rock & roll and beat music to groups exploring the outer limits, either through cosmic jamming or more ambitious and conceptual means, like French Zeuhl legends Magma, who sing in a self-invented language. Selections by a few groups like the Rattles and Necronomicon are occupied with occult themes, but the music is closer to the dark side of prog, and not heavy enough to be deemed metal. Other material runs the gamut from druggy freak-outs to more…
It’s nearly nine years since U2 released a collection of original material, 2017’s Songs of Experience. They’ve hardly been idle since: two tours, two films, a 40-date residency at the Las Vegas Sphere, nearly three hours of stripped-down re-recordings of old material on Songs of Surrender, plus Bono’s autobiography, which spawned a solo tour, a stint on Broadway and another film. An impressive workload by any standards.
Still, you could take the gap between original albums – the longest in U2’s history – as evidence of a problem that’s bedevilled the band for nearly 20 years: where do U2 fit into the current musical landscape?
The obvious answer is to acquiesce to the “heritage rock” label, rest on the laurels of their…
…MOJO presents a bespoke CD of rare, live and previously unreleased songs from the mod icons, including storming live versions of ‘Whatcha Gonna Do About It’ and ‘Tin Soldier’, alternative takes, never-before-released tracks.
October 1965. ‘Whatcha Gonna Do About It’, the debut Small Faces single, is making its way up the UK charts. The four original members, only together for a few months, are learning how to be a band, and how to talk to the music press.
“We admire The Who,” bassist Ronnie Lane tells the NME’s Norrie Drummond, “but we have never tried to copy them in any way. We are Mods and appeal to mods, but that’s about all we have in common with them.”
Then Lane’s bandmate, drummer Kenney Jones…
Brisbane’s Ethan “En” Kernaghan returns with his fourth solo album. Recorded at home, this is a lo-fi affair with a 1960’s feel and more than a hint of Eastern mysticism. The music is instantly joyful, and the collection lives up to its title.
Opening with ‘Don’t Be Scared’, we are straight in with a jangly guitar and a call for people to change their perceptions and not be concerned to show peace and love. Kernaghan’s joyous vocals proclaiming “Just a little loving in your heart could do it / I’m your fan / I’ll swing on your ceiling”, which is one of the many clever and humorous lyrics in the set. Unfortunately, not included, but search for the piano version of this online; it gives the song a whole new perspective, not necessarily better, just very interesting.
There’s something electrifying about a record that feels forged in the cracks between shifts, under fluorescent lights, and in the ache of repetition. Muffled Ears, the World Sounds Bad Quality, the new full-length from Reading’s Sightseeing Crew, pulses with that energy. It’s a record that grabs modern disorientation by the collar and turns it into something cinematic.
Written over a year split between manual graft, bar shifts, and desk hours, this is a body of work that understands routine from the inside. You can feel the grind in its rhythm, but instead of sinking under that weight, Sightseeing Crew explode it outward. The result is a kaleidoscopic blend of swirling sax lines, expansive guitar atmospheres and melodies that feel slightly bent out of shape.
Not to be confused with Stranger Things: The WSQK Collection — a fun, in-world treat from the same season — this official soundtrack for the fifth and final season of Stranger Things includes much of the same that fans have come to expect: beloved classics and forgotten throwbacks that tie neatly into the plot of the show. While there’s no big “Running Up That Hill” moment here, the mixtape feel of the track selections makes it a decent compilation. One can imagine — if one is old enough — sitting in front of a boombox with the pause and record buttons compressed, waiting for just the right moment to bridge an early Michael Jackson gem with a Tiffany smash hit. Meanwhile, ABBA, Bowie, and Iron Maiden weave seamlessly with Pixies, Butthole Surfers,…
A live album capturing their first Japan tour in 2005, realized 33 years after their formation, is finally being officially released 20 years after the recording!
Emerging from the Canterbury, England musical community that also launched Gong and Kevin Ayers’ the Whole World, the whimsical progressive rock unit Hatfield and the North formed in 1972. Named in honor of a motorway sign outside of London, the group’s founding membership brought together a who’s who of the Canterbury art rock scene – vocalist/bassist Richard Sinclair was a former member of Caravan, guitarist Phil Miller had tenured with Robert Wyatt in Matching Mole, and drummer Pip Pyle had served with both Gong and Delivery. After a series of lineup…
The guys who make up the country group the Mavericks began their professional music career performing together at rock clubs in Florida. Now you might think that’s a long ride from Nashville, but they found their way easy enough. Once they did, they didn’t leave everything they learned in those rock clubs behind though, and listeners won’t miss the rock & roll flavor that the Mavericks stir into a number of the songs on this 1998 album, It’s Now! It’s Live!
As the title foretells, this is a live album. It was made during a couple of shows the group did in Canada. This is great country-rock music done the way the Mavericks do it best, but the album is a little short with only seven tracks. The songs are fan favorites though, like…
Callum Beattie speaks truth to the people. The Scottish artist’s penchant for connection has taken him from dusty barrooms to the biggest venues his homeland can offer, including a packed-out night at Glasgow’s epic OVO Hydro. New album INDI kicks off another mammoth year for the songwriter, and it’s packed with huge amounts, music that unashamedly aims for big crowds, and wide open spaces.
Produced alongside Joe Cross, comparisons range from Bruce Springsteen in his prime to Sam Fender or Stereophonics; honest songwriting rooted in everyday experience, Callum has a tendency to keep things raw, and not to over-think his studio arrangements.
As such, every track on here could be a…
Not quite a new album and not quite a compilation, Bobby Charles‘ 2004 release Last Train to Memphis is closer to a clearing-house for little-heard recordings than a proper album. Billed as a single-disc release paired with a bonus disc, the two-CD set contains a total of 34 songs, and since there is no distinct difference between the two discs, it only seems appropriate to treat it all as a sprawling double album. Jim Bateman says in his perfunctory, largely biographical liner notes that this album “fills in the years between his critically acclaimed 1972 Bearsville release and today,” which is certainly true, since all 34 songs on the two discs were recorded sometime between 1971 and 2001. The liners do detail the individual recording dates and lineups for the tracks, but it’s hard to tell when and where…
Albatross didn’t begin as a Big Wreck project. The band had broken up after the poor commercial showing of 2001’s The Pleasure and the Greed, and lead singer Ian Thornley had gone on to form his own successful band, simply called Thornley, and life as we know it went on. Thornley is a fine singer, with a voice that mirrors Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, and he certainly didn’t need Big Wreck to continue on with his career, but he reconnected with Big Wreck guitarist Brian Doherty after some years, and the two went into the studio to record with Thornley’s current band.
Albatross is the result, and the album was released under the Big Wreck moniker, even though it was essentially Thornley (the band) with the addition of Doherty as a third guitarist.
Guitarist and composer Mike Johnson has co-led or led Denver-based avant-rock ensemble Thinking Plague since 1982. The band’s music has been roughly within the aesthetic orbit of Henry Cow and Art Bears, but with a distinct compositional bent. In that sense, it is arguably a more “American” sound based on tightly notated angularity, abrupt pivots, and timbral choices that are influenced as much by 20th-century classical as rock.
This is Johnson’s first solo album that he seeks to distinguish from his work with Thinking Plague. While a number of familiar collaborators from that outfit contribute on The Gardens of Loss (e.g., Elaine diFalco, Dave Willey, Bill Pohl, and Mark Harris), so does an 11-piece orchestral section of strings, reeds, and brass.
Long before Sister Hazel become a platinum-selling name, its future songwriters Ken Block and Drew Copeland are just two friends chasing small gigs, harmonizing for the sheer love of it. That early spark finally surfaces with Ken & Drew’s: Lost Cassette Covers, a lovingly restored time capsule that pulls ten cover songs from tapes the duo recorded back in 1993.
These early sessions—now presented as Recovered Recordings: The Pre-Hazel Tapes—capture Ken and Drew in their most unfiltered form. There’s no polish, no grand ambition, just the sound of two voices locking in and discovering their chemistry in real time. The first two tracks to surface, tender takes on “Closer to Fine” by Indigo Girls and “Peaceful Easy Feeling” by Eagles, immediately…
