The press release which came with Mackenzie Roark’s second album tells us, “after years of working her way into prominence in Richmond’s thriving music scene as a solo artist and as part of many other bands, Mackenzie Roark formed her own band the Hotpants in 2023 to bring her songs to life in a live setting”. And the thing that strikes you immediately is the live feel of the first song, ‘Take My Money.’ A mix of contemporary country with Springsteen style “heartland rock,” it blasts along in the way a side one track one should do, drawing you in to want more. Cooling the pace down with a vaguely Tex-Mex introduction is ‘Late Bloomer.’ The fiddle adds something different to a tune, which settles into modern country territory quickly. The scratchy guitar solo…
Category: rock
After 50-plus years, you’d expect the genre of psych rock to be played out. There are many examples of cookie-cutter groups relying on the same rusty old toolkits, attempting to be some third-rate Pink Floyd or the Grateful Dead.
However, there are also bands like Daisychain, a female-led Chicago-based trio that merges soulful blues elements, crafty pop songwriting, and psych-rock guitar licks and effects. Though a few slower-paced songs miss the mark, overall, Daisychain’s debut, All in a Name, is impressive, illustrating that there’s still untapped potential to explore within the genre.
Daisychain’s music stands out partially due to the band’s construction. By having two female singers, Nickole Regala and Sophia Williams,…
Colin Hay has managed that rare pivot, segueing nearly seamlessly from 1980s New Wave One-Hit-Wonder status (though admittedly, Men at Work had several hits) to being a prolific solo artist, writing some of the best songs of his career decades later.
In 2003, he put out Man @ Work, a career retrospective of both his time as frontman of Men At Work as well as his solo catalog up to that date. The record eschewed the predictable ‘best of’ route – simply re-releasing his old music in new packaging. Instead, while some of those songs were the same, he reworked many of the classic songs acoustically, completely reinventing many of them, as well as offering remixed and revised versions of other songs.
Dave Stewart, Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, Songwriter Hall of Famer, Eurythmics co-founder, producer, and renowned songwriter — has released the album “Dave Does Dylan“. Featuring just Stewart on vocals and guitars recorded in one take, the album finds him performing seemingly inspired renditions of Dylan’s songs.
Dylan has said of Stewart: “Captain Dave is a dreamer and a fearless innovator, a visionary of high order, very delicately tractable on the surface but beneath that, he’s a slamming, thumping, battering ram, very mystical but rational and sensitive when it comes to the hot irons of art forms. An explosive musician, a deft guitar player, innately recognizes the genius in other people and puts it into play without being manipulative.“
…re-mixed by the legendary Sylvia Massy (Prince, Johnny Cash, Tom Petty)
Jason Isbell’s 2013 breakthrough album Southeastern was written and recorded in the wake of Isbell’s newfound sobriety, and it often sounded and felt like a musical version of the Fourth Step, in which Isbell took a long, hard look in the mirror as he came to terms with the emotional wreckage he left in his wake during his years as a drunk. By comparison, Something More Than Free, Isbell’s 2015 follow-up, plays out as the work of a man a year or so into his recovery, grateful but still working with the nuts and bolts of living as a better and more mature man while the shadows of the past remain faintly but clearly visible. The opening tune, “If It Takes a Lifetime,”…
Circling From Above isn’t a concept album, despite initial reports of an avian theme. Styx sticks with that about as long as the Beatles did with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Instead, this is a love letter to classic rock, as seen through the prism of Styx.
They played their role in that story, so this album fittingly includes a handful of songs that recall Styx’s career-making late-’70s records. These principally belong to stalwarts Tommy Shaw (“Michigan,” from a song idea dating back to 2011, “Only You Can Decide”), Chuck Panozzo (“Ease Your Mind,” with a turn on bass that’s somehow both airy and firm) and James “J.Y.” Young (“King of Love,” featuring both his signature baritone and a typically bonkers solo).
01. The Drowners (Live at Brixton Academy, 1993)
02. Brass in Pocket
03. Just a Girl (Very Early Demo, 1990)
04. Have You Ever Been This Low?
05. Graffiti Woman
06. Europe Is Our Playground (Live from The Paradiso, Amsterdam, 1996)
07. Poor Little Rich Girl (feat. Raissa)
08. Outsiders
09. Manipulation
10. Personality Disorder
11. Black Ice (Live from The Paradiso, 1996)
12. Shadow Self (Demo)
13. Disintegrate (Demo)
14. Antidepressants (Live, Manchester, 2023)
15. Criminal Ways
Bill Rieflin’s ride cymbal ushers in the rhythm of a song that Ian Wallace first played in 1971 and loved to do so because, as he said, “I got to play all my Tony Williams stuff.” While Bill takes the lead role initially during the intro and Mel’s solo, he switches to Mellotron for the guitar solo. And what a guitar solo!
Although I had never been to a Crimson gig, I already knew Fripp’s stance on photography, i.e. that he “sweetly requests” that there should be none of it. So I’ll be a little more descriptive than usual in terms of the stage set-up, and all the photos featured here are taken by bassist Tony Levin before and after the show. I would never get to see King Crimson. Being from Australia, I lived too far away, and the band hadn’t released…
Post grunge is a genre that has always seemed fascinating to me. It is not rock, it is not metal, and it most certainly is not punk. But just like how this grunge subgenre stands out, so does Bush. This band, with 30 years of experience to their name have become iconic for their version of post grunge, and with I Beat Loneliness, their latest studio offering, they have managed to push the boundaries of post grunge and create an album that is at times electronic, and at times slow, but with all of the hard-hitting elements remaining. Even though the second half of the album feels drastically slower to the first, there are a bunch of highlights throughout that make even the most boring songs, enjoyable. I Beat Loneliness starts off extremely strong with ‘Scars’.
Having spent the last couple of years quietly building a cult following through electrifying live shows and genre-teasing singles that flirted with surf pop, Krautrock and garage-pop, Chaos Era is the long-form statement that Nottingham psych-pop collective Midnight Rodeo have been teasing all along. Jumping into a full-length debut with only four singles to their name, the result is a technicolour explosion that revels in dissonance, danceability and – most crucially – the joyful disorder that defines their sound.
The band may be tight-knit, but there’s creative tension buzzing beneath every track. Rather than strive for sonic cohesion, Midnight Rodeo lean into the chaos – mirroring the turmoil they experienced in their personal lives while…
Remastered and beefed up with an extra disc of archival tracks and unreleased live recordings
Flags of the Sacred Harp is a comeback album of sorts, released after a hiatus in the band’s activity and a lineup reconfiguration that sees the return of Nudge leader Honey Owens and the arrival of guitarist Adam Forkner. The break was beneficial, because this is the group’s tightest, most pleasant album to date. What strikes first is the song orientation: at least five of the seven pieces can be rightfully called songs. That said, fans of the group’s experimental side need not worry.
The 16-minute instrumental “Spirit” aptly illustrates that persona of Jackie-O, while a song like “Nice One” develops into looser sections that surely couldn’t be interpreted as a sellout decision.
Steve Hackett proudly presents The Lamb Stands Up Live At The Royal Albert Hall, a stunning audio/visual document of his show at the iconic London venue in October 2024, is released on the 11th July 2025.
Steve and his live band celebrate the 50th anniversary of the legendary Genesis concept album ‘The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway’, with a selection of his favourite tracks from that album including ‘Fly On A Windshield’ & ‘Lilywhite Lilith’. The live set also includes other Genesis & solo classics, including music from his most recent acclaimed album ‘The Circus And The Nightwhale’. This special evening saw the band joined by guests including Ray Wilson, Steve Rothery, Amanda Lehmann & John Hackett.
The Police never really broke up, they just stopped working together — largely because they just couldn’t stand playing together anymore and partially because Sting was itching to establish himself as a serious musician/songwriter on his own terms. Anxious to shed the mantle of pop star, he camped out at Eddy Grant’s studio, picked up the guitar, and raided Wynton Marsalis’ band for his new combo — thereby instantly consigning his solo debut, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, to the critical shorthand of Sting’s jazz record. Which is partially true (that’s probably the best name for the meandering instrumental title track), but that gives the impression that this is really risky music, when he did, after all, rely on musicians who, at that stage, were revivalists just developing…
Guest appearances from Brian Wilson, Mike Love, America, Robert Lamm (Chicago), Christopher Cross, Los Straightjackets, and more on this first-ever anthology of Jeffrey Foskett.
Born and bred in the Golden State of California, Jeffrey Foskett and his angelic voice were destined to be part of the California Sound forever. An early acolyte of The Beach Boys and the music of Brian Wilson, Foskett was serendipitously “discovered” by Beach Boys lead singer, Mike Love, in a bar in Santa Barbara in the early 1980s. Foskett would later describe this “chance meeting” as “opportunity knocking” and he seized it with every ounce of talent he possessed.
Soon after meeting Love, Foskett joined The Beach Boys on the road.
Chris Rea’s 1988 compilation, New Light Through Old Windows, will reissued in June. The ‘best of’ was unusual in that Rea re-recorded most of the songs (hence the title) and it also featured a brand new song called ‘Working On It’.
New Light Through Old Windows capitalised on the success of Chris Rea’s previous studio album, 1987’s Dancing With Strangers, which had reached number two in the UK, and the re-recording of ‘On The Beach’ was released as a single, reaching No 12 in the UK. The collection went triple platinum, peaking at No 5 in the UK album charts and paved the way for the massive success of 1989’s The Road to Hell. For this reissue, the compilation has been remastered and is issued on CD and as a 2LP set pressed on recycled black vinyl.
An early, classic compilation by Jethro Tull will be remixed, expanded and wildly reconstructed by engineer Steven Wilson.
Still Living in the Past, available July 11 from Rhino, will reinterpret the group’s odds-and-ends compilation from 1972 as a 5CD/1 Blu-ray set boasting some 35 unissued mixes and versions alongside just about every one of the 21 original tracks that appeared on the original double album. Alongside the original mixes of the non-album material that comprised Living in the Past, Wilson has compiled his mixes of those tracks – both versions done for box set editions of This Was, Stand Up, Benefit and Aqualung and a few new ones – as well as a newly remixed and properly sequenced presentation of a 1970…