For a band who were together for only five years, The Smiths left quite the cultural footprint. It seems as if Johnny Marr has spent the nearly 40 years since the band’s split throwing himself into everything – whether it be joining Modest Mouse or The Cribs, recording with fellow Mancunian legend Bernard Sumner in Electronic and even appearing on the panel show Would I Lie to You.
When it comes to Marr’s solo material though, there always seems something slightly missing. The Age of Everything is his fifth solo album, and one that the man himself has called the first record that he feels completely comfortable with. It definitely contains some of his best solo material to date, and while there may be no surprises contained within, it’s a very solid record all in all.
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Kris Davis returns to her boldly progressive, yet deeply swinging trio on 2026’s Lost in Geneva. The follow-up to 2024’s Run the Gauntlet, the album finds the daring New York pianist once again joined by bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Johnathan Blake. All three bring a deep wealth of experience to bear on the proceedings which largely find them interpreting a handful of Davis’ originals. That said, when Davis first introduced the trio it was a somewhat unexpected combination, especially given her close ties to the avant-garde and contemporary music scene. Both Hurst and Blake are widely celebrated for their hard-hitting post-bop and straight-ahead work, both as leaders and with icons like Wynton Marsalis, Diana Krall, Dr. Lonnie Smith, and Kenny Barron,…
London-based Swedish singer-songwriter Josefin Öhrn (previously of Grammy nominated Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation) is set to release her debut album Cherry featuring vocals from Bobby Gllespie (Primal Scream) and Anton Newcombe (The Brian Jonestown Massacre), with guitar from Andy Bell (Ride).
Josefin’s most intimate and self-defined album yet, Cherry explores themes of fresh starts, desire, love and grief. It taps into a new and very interesting phase of music, seen on recent releases from Robyn (Sexistential) and Lykke Li (The Afterparty), where the experiences of women are put out there without shame in colourful candidness, such records tap into a fascinating period of raw, intense and highly transformative self-actualization.
If you weren’t already aware that Have a Heart was the debut album from The Klittens, an all female five-piece from Amsterdam, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d discovered an obscure demo tape of a cult New Wave band from the early ’80s.
For The Klittens sound like they’ve been beamed in from another era. They specialise in fuzzy, off-kilter post-punk, and have spent the last couple of years building a reputation as one of the Dutch indie scene’s most promising prospects. While this debut may not be the most polished of finished products, that’s all part of the charm.
There are many bands that are brought to mind when you listen to Have a Heart. The confident strut of Hinds for one, and the brittle, abrasive style of one of Kurt Cobain‘s favourite bands,…
Rosetta Stone is a legendary gothic rock band that emerged in the late 1980s, capturing the dark and dynamic essence of the genre with their haunting melodies and powerful lyrics. Known for their innovative sound and striking performances, Rosetta Stone has left an indelible mark on the gothic music scene. Explore their collection for a glimpse into the atmospheric and intense world they have created, perfect for fans of moody and evocative rock.
The Executing Nostalgia LP by Rosetta Stone is being released on Cleopatra and brings the band together in familiar gothic sonic territory without lapsing into mere nostalgia. The production emphasizes dense arrangements and a clear, song-focused approach that combines…
At this point in their career, AJJ has little left to prove. The pop-punk outfit from Arizona has grown into an institution in the bubbling genre, which has recently seen a resurgence, and AJJ’s prints are all over it. The band’s longevity, stretching across two decades, stems from their stubbornly present songwriting.
As a band, AJJ has always tackled the world in front of them with a toothy grin and careful consideration, never trusting what they see but fearlessly reporting their findings through punchy punk and infectious melodies.
This time around, AJJ does the same, though there’s a palpable lack of hope. Not that previous releases like Disposable Everything and People Who Eat People Are the Luckiest People…
Conscious Party, Ziggy Marley & The Melody Makers’ Grammy-award winning album, is being reissued on vinyl and digital. This is the first vinyl pressing of the album since its initial release nearly forty years ago in 1988. Ziggy Marley & The Melody Makers was founded in 1979 by four of Bob Marley’s eleven children: Sharon, Cedella, Ziggy, and Stephen. They cut their third album at Sigma Sound in New York City with producers Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth (Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club.)
Conscious Party was released on April 5th, 1988, and charted at number 23 on the Billboard 200. It spawned multiple successful singles, including number one Billboard R&B chart hit “Tumblin’ Down” as well as “Tomorrow People”…
One of the highlights of the King Crimson 50th anniversary CD/Blu-ray editions to date has been King Crimson producer David Singleton’s series of Elemental Mixes as he uses the full spectrum of available studio sessions for each album to produce very different takes on the familiar songs and pieces.
Speaking about the Elemental Mix approach, David Singleton said: “Ever since the concept of an Elemental mix was first suggested, I have approached these with equal measures of hate, dread and love. Dread and hate because you are, in effect, staring at a perfect jigsaw (the finished version of the Mona Lisa) wondering how you might roll back the years and get closer to the moment of creation – often by finding…
There are live albums that document a band at a particular moment, and then there are those that feel like the closing statement of an entire era. Newly Sentient Being belongs firmly to the latter category. Capturing the final concert of Swans’ “Big Sound” era, this monumental release brings together more than two and a half hours of music that sound less like a farewell than the last transmission from another dimension.
For fifteen years, Swans developed an increasingly immense musical language built on repetition, volume, tension and transcendence. Newly Sentient Being brings that journey to a powerful conclusion. The performance constantly shifts between passages of almost heavenly beauty and brutally physical eruptions of sound…
For his accurately titled fifth album, Leon Bridges linked with producers and multi-instrumentalists Lydia Kitto and Josh Lloyd-Watson, two-thirds of Jungle. Mutual admirers, Bridges and Jungle had been running into one another at festivals and other gigs. Coming off two of his most ballad-heavy efforts with Gold-Diggers Sound and Leon, Bridges had an eye toward making a more uptempo set of material to get him dancing on-stage again. Who better to enlist than members of a high-profile band known for creating a party-like atmosphere with lively material that is essentially modern disco? Kitto and Lloyd-Watson brought their knowledge of vintage dance music, the high energy, the horns — the organic works, essentially — and Happiness Anytime…
Following the much-loved Library Music: Volume One (2022), and hot on the heels of this year’s critically acclaimed After the Rain, Strange Seeds, London group The Leaf Library return with a second journey through the margins of their catalogue. Gathering together rare recordings, compilation tracks, limited edition releases, collaborations and hidden gems from their ever-expanding musical world, Library Music: Volume Two is another vibrant and varied collection of electronic indie pop, in all its guises.
Far from a conventional odds and ends collection, the double LP compilation reveals another side of a band who have always treated the spaces between albums as places to explore. These are the moments where ideas stretch out; there…
Following the pop-dance showcase ‘EFM’, Jack Latham returns to his Jam City project with stripped down funk, chewed-up Prince-style R&B, vintage electro and simmering disco house.
We’ll tell you now, My World isn’t a follow-up to 2012’s landmark ‘Classical Curves’, but it’s an enjoyable enough listen – even if you weren’t convinced by its predecessor. Latham’s kept himself busy since 2023 jobbing as a producer, working with Kali Uchis and Olivia Rodrigo after architecting Yachty’s move towards psychedelia on ‘Let’s Start Here’. So his world in 2026 is very different from ours – and certainly different from the landscape that inspired ‘The Courts’. Latham’s current reality is best summed up by the brief instrumental ‘Cash Fast Interlude’…
Mary Gauthier was something of a late starter, delivering her first album when she was in her late thirties but she has become one of americana’s most distinctive songwriters over the years since she started recording her songs in 1997.
But let us go back for a short resume of her life, because it informs her songwriting and her later music. Mary Gauthier was born in New Orleans in March 1962 and adopted as an infant by a couple in Thibodaux, Louisiana – the father was an alcoholic and there was little emotional attachment to her as a child. She ran away from home at fifteen and stole her parents’ car, spending the following years passing through drug centres, so-called halfway houses, and friends’ couches, often under the strong influence of drink and…
Northern California–born songwriter Meg Lui has lived in the rural Catskills for over a decade, but her classic-rock and freewheeling folk-pop songs are pure West Coast sunshine.
Her debut album Instant Validation finds Lui partnering with Asthmatic Kitty Records head Sufjan Stevens beyond the record’s production and instrumental work: Over the course of a full year, Lui and Stevens—who also moved Upstate a few years ago—worked on the perky LP whenever they had stretches of time together. The song suite has a dreamy ’60s and ’70s breeziness to it, largely due to Lui’s voice, which may be familiar to listeners from her backing vocal work on Stevens’ Javelin, John Legend’s My Favorite Dream, and labelmate Denison Witmer’s Anything at All.
Over the course of twenty recordings as a leader, JD Allen has consistently pursued new avenues of musical exploration. For his fifteenth release for Savant, he has chosen a path that is at once new and ancient. Inspired by NEA Jazz Master pianist-composer Randy Weston’s explorations, JD has immersed his artistry in the musical culture of the Gnawa, the vibrant spirit-music brotherhood of North Africa. About the Gnawa, Weston told this writer for his autobiography, AFRICAN RHYTHMS (2010, Duke University Press), “The Gnawa people and their music represent one of the strongest spiritual connections I’ve ever experienced. The Gnawa actually have a close kinship with African Americans; they’re our brothers and sisters. Their ancestors came from the same…
Though still in her twenties, Caged Bird by New York-based vocalist, songwriter, and bandleader Ekep Nkwelle‘s (Eh-kep In-kweh-leh) — her Mack Avenue debut album — has been a long time coming. Her startling multi-octave range has appeared with a range of artists including the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Kenny Barron, Joel Ross, and New Jazz Underground.
The title references Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, but also Abbey Lincoln’s “Caged Bird” that’s interpreted here. Throughout, the music crosses jazz, gospel, and blues, connecting standards and other material through distinctive phrasing. Nkwelle is accompanied by her touring band that includes pianists Luther S. Allison (tracks one and two only) and…
…features five “brand new recordings based on original folk tales handed to The Residents by The Mysterious N. Senada” in the 1970s, as well as a bonus sixth track, “The Arctic Fox”.
In the 1970s, as The Residents worked on their ‘Eskimo’ masterpiece, their mentor The Mysterious N. Senada sent them a collection of handwritten Inuit folk tales, suggesting they incorporate them into the album. But the group shelved them, having gathered more than enough stuff themselves by that point, leaving them to gather dust.
Here and now, almost 50 years later, The Residents have revived those folk tales as part of their forthcoming ‘Eskimo’ live performance, blending them with familiar elements of the original ‘Eskimo’ album and new music to produce…
Chloé Caillet‘s career as a dance music producer and DJ took off during the 2020s, as she landed residencies at Ibiza and released several floor-filling club anthems rooted in classic ’90s house and rave, including collaborations with SG Lewis and Luke Alessi. Dance Again marks her first release for Ninja Tune, and it adds to her repertoire of fun, ecstatic dance tracks with a bit of a French touch, as well as traces of surging Euro-trance and propulsive electro.
Opener “Lemme Dance” is a commanding, “get on the floor”-type song featuring Ed Banger affiliate Myd, and “Bad Bara” is a perky number with playful, tongue-twisting vocals from Yuuko that bring to mind the Tom Tom Club’s “Wordy Rappinghood.” Alessi returns for “Change,”…