After following up her alienated alt-rock debut with the darker, more existential If You Asked for a Picture, Blondshell (singer and songwriter Sabrina Teitelbaum) headed to the studio for the third straight time with producer Yves Rothman (Kim Gordon, Cherry Glazerr). The resulting Violins — so titled to capture the coexistence of violence and beauty in the world, its overarching theme — is her most ruminative set of songs yet. While the album includes quite a few fuzzy rockers, they’re of a midtempo, melancholy nature, including the opening title track, a borderline power ballad about the slow nature of healing from trauma (“It takes all my focusing/It’s like watching paint/Wait, what’d you say?”). Also falling in this category is lead single “Heart Has to Work So Hard,”…
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Smidley, the project named after Conor Murphy’s childhood dog, is back with its third LP, Murphy Horse. The project is a blend of genres and styles, emphasizing his creativity and experimentation. He masterfully dances between jazz, indie pop, acoustic music, ’80s new wave, and more, creating a tension that draws you deeper into the record, wondering what will be revealed on the next track.
Take the opening song, “Corpse Flower.” It has so much texture and tension. Just when you feel like you have its direction pinned down, it switches and swaps. Beginning on saxophone with elements of jazz, a subtle genre undercurrent that runs throughout the album, it braids into this hazy, atmospheric blend before settling into a beautiful moment on the keys.
Two minutes into “The Juice,” a standout from the Mary Wallopers’ third album Paddywhackery, Andrew Hendy delivers a manifesto: “Dance to your daddy, and rosin the bow/ This is Irish rock’n’roll.” The line namechecks two old Irish trad songs, and recontextualizes them in the world the Mary Wallopers have spent the 2020s building, one where the long history of Irish folk is not a curiosity or an academic exercise, but a vital and living form of defiance. As soon as Hendy delivers the line, the band lights into an extended, intensifying instrumental passage proving that jigs and reels can, in fact, rip.
Anyone who’s been to Ireland and come across a raucous session in a pub knows that already. But in their career thus far, the Mary Wallopers…
The MOFO Project/Object is an album by Frank Zappa. The album was announced by the Zappa Family Trust in mid-2006. It commemorates the 40th anniversary of Zappa’s first album, Freak Out!.
It documents the making of Freak Out! featuring previously unreleased material. Critics and hardcore fans widely praise The MOFO Project/Object as an essential archival release.
It brilliantly highlights Zappa’s pioneering studio genius and avant-garde vision well before the era of modern digital editing. While casual listeners might find the deep-dive session tapes and raw component tracks a bit heavy for a single sitting, for prog-rock historians and dedicated Zappa aficionados, it is a masterclass in musical archaeology.
Craft Recordings reissue The Bluegrass Album, the 1981 debut studio recording from The Bluegrass Album Band, in a remastered edition on vinyl and digital platforms. The release brings together guitarist Tony Rice, banjo player and vocalist J.D. Crowe, mandolinist Doyle Lawson, fiddler Bobby Hicks, and double bassist Todd Phillips, marking the first vinyl reissue of the album since its original release. The new edition arrives in what would have been Rice’s 75th year and features all-analog mastering with lacquers cut from tape by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, alongside standard and hi-res digital audio. The all-star project features a who’s who of bluegrass luminaries, including Rice, J.D. Crowe, Doyle Lawson, Bobby Hicks, and Todd Phillips (collectively known…
Pop music is a game where reinvention is a vital part of the process in the 21st century, and Orville Peck knows that as well as anyone. Transforming himself from a talented but unknown Canadian indie rocker to a bigger-than-life gay cowboy icon with a voice and a swagger as big as all outdoors was no small accomplishment, and as strong as his work has been (especially 2019’s Pony and 2022’s Bronco), the albums were about a character he created as much as the man who actually created them. 2026’s Mule represents a significant change for Peck, as he’s opted to give us a look at the man literally and figuratively behind the mask. He was hardly the first artist to discover fame is harder work than expected, and he found himself struggling with drug and alcohol…
…features early recordings, demos and previously unheard material from the original album era, alongside the new “Let Me Heal You (demo)” and alternate versions of songs including “Running with the Wolves” and “Runaway.”
There’s a strand of magic realism that’s typically European, focusing on the metaphysical and a sort of estrangement from the world. You’ll find it in the novels of Franz Kafka and Angela Carter – approached from entirely different worldviews, of course – an irreducible quality which can’t be explained by the general laws of nature, redefining the everyday via the fantastical.
Nineteen year old Norwegian and native of Bergen Aurora Aksnes, AURORA to the pop music world, lives in this world. In portraits and…
…The expanded collection features 13 extra tracks, consisting of 7 brand-new original Daphni productions — including the lead single “Catch 23” — alongside remixes from artists like Kelbin, Aasthma, Peder Mannerfelt, and BRUX.
Dan Snaith’s evolving relationship with dance music has been fascinating to watch over the years. As Manitoba — renamed Caribou after a legal snafu in 2004 — he incorporated all manner of experimental electronics alongside dreamy, band-based psychedelia. Sometimes those aspects were woven together, which loosely aligned him with the folktronica movement at the time; but more frequently, as on early anthem “If Assholes Could Fly This Place Would Be an Airport” or his remix of Seelenluft’s “Manila,” he would make…
Radiator Hospital has taken many forms since it began as a home-recorded solo project for the emotionally driven songs of Sam Cook-Parrott. The sound moved from heartbroken bedroom punk poured directly out of Cook-Parrott’s heart into his four-track on his earliest releases into the tightly wound full-band experience that toured often and collectively tracked some of his most memorable songs. There have even been dips back into solo material and expansions on the full band sound along the way, such as the Eno-esque synths and cantankerous drum machines of 2023’s Can’t Make Any Promises.
With Distorting Time, Cook-Parrott is on his own again, back at home with the four-track, but he also brings some new ideas in as he…
As Jawdropped tell it, Los Angeles isn’t such a bad home for aspiring musicians. Practice spaces are generally easy to come by. Transporting gear to the gig is no problem — you’re already used to sitting in your car all the time. For every DIY venue that shutters, there’s a new one ready to pop in another neighborhood just a touch less gentrified. And most importantly, cutting your teeth in such a sprawling creative hotbed means there’s a good chance of crossing paths with likeminded people who each have their own complicated feelings about what it means to “make it.”
That creative hotbed is where Jawdropped met, anyway, and its characters serve as the nexus for the quartet’s debut album, Secret to Spare. Vocalist Kyra Morling, vocalist/guitarist…
On their sophomore effort, Ontario-based trio Among Legends keep the punk rock tradition alive for another generation. Drawing influence from classic American bands like Bad Religion and Alkaline Trio, Lose My Grip is steeped in blistering tempos and melodic vocals.
The opening track and first single, “H/A/C/K,” kicks off with a steady bass line and rapid-fire drumming before the aggressive chants of “Make it hurt, make it ache, make it burn, lacerate” make it clear that the fuse has been lit within the record’s opening seconds. Clocking in at under two minutes, the song delivers a concentrated burst of adrenaline, propelled by surprisingly strong vocal harmonies. “Sound the Alarm” maintains that relentless pace with circle-pit rhythms and…
Following a four-year hiatus as a solo artist, Todd Rundgren relocated from the US East Coast to California to record and release the album ‘Nearly Human’ in 1989. The album was the result of live studio sessions involving a host of musicians. To promote the album Todd embarked on an extensive US tour with one of the early highlights being a memorable performance at The Ritz in New York City in August 1989.
The concert was Todd’s first performance in New York for two years and featured a ten-piece backing band. The live set featured classic tracks such as ‘Love In Action’, ‘Real Man’, ‘Can We Still Be Friends’ and ‘Hello It’s Me’ along with contemporary material from ‘Nearly Human’. The concert on the 6th of August…
“After a highly successful string of 7 albums in 16 years – including two with prominent UK sax player Andy Sheppard – Almost There is yet another melodic masterclass from pianist and composer Espen Eriksen. Captivating and lyrical, always melodic and often melancholic and uplifting at the same time, these are all real tunes, whether instantly catchy or needing a couple of spins to grow.
“Music with a rich sense of melody coupled with a poignant lyricism that is infectious”.All About Jazz “A wonderfully plaintive jazz record, abandoned to the lost art of melodic minimalism, stripped back and beautifully near bare. No smoke and mirrors, just the graceful chemistry of superb musicians at the top of their game”.
Better Living Through Chemistry wasn’t just Fatboy Slim’s breakthrough – it helped redefine what electronic music could be in the mainstream. Released in 1996, the album arrived at a pivotal moment in UK club culture, fusing big beat, acid house energy and sample-heavy experimentation into something irreverent, accessible and unmistakably British. Tracks like “Everybody Needs a 303,” “Going Out of My Head,” and “The Weekend Starts Here” captured the anarchic spirit of the era while laying the foundation for a sound that would dominate late-’90s pop culture.
Three decades later, Norman Cook remains one of dance music’s most enduring and influential figures. From the Brighton Beach Boutique…
Originally released in September 1996, ‘Coming Up’ represented the creative and commercial peak for a rejuvenated Suede… some debut indeed for new band members guitarist Richard Oakes and keyboardist Neil Codling. A UK No. 1 album which spent just shy of an entire year in the album chart, the vivid, electrifying ‘Coming Up’ spawned five UK Top 10 singles – ‘Trash’, ‘Beautiful Ones’, ‘Saturday Night’, ‘Lazy’ and ‘Filmstar’. Elsewhere, grimy glam stompers met elegiac ballads and stadium anthems… and 30 years on, ‘Coming Up’ still packs all its original punch.
For the anniversary, Coming Up has been expanded into an all-encompassing 5CD edition, in Deluxe 7”X 7” packaging. On CD1 ‘Coming Up’ has been newly mastered from the original…
Following his acclaimed 2020 album The Red Planet, Rick Wakeman makes a triumphant and inevitable return to Mars with Return to The Red Planet, a sweeping new progressive work that fuses science, imagination and musical virtuosity into one of the most ambitious recordings of his career.
At a time when space exploration has moved back to the forefront of human endeavour – with missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond once again capturing the world’s imagination – Return To The Red Planet feels both timely and visionary, rekindling the cosmic spirit that helped define progressive rock’s golden age.
Where its predecessor opened the story, this album explores the planet’s ancient lakes, vast canyon systems, shifting dust storms…
For more than four decades, Antietam have occupied a singular place in American underground rock. Formed in New York City in the mid-’80s by guitarist and vocalist Tara Key and bassist Tim Harris, and joined in 1990 by drummer Josh Madell, the trio have built a body of work that spans punk, indie rock, experimental music, and guitar-driven improvisation while remaining fiercely independent and unmistakably their own.
…Antietam has continued more or less ever since, making 14 records over a 40 year run. This latest missive, the Counting Game, is less wild and more melodic, tinged with folk and alt.country, but still forceful. It veers much further into indie rock and even pop than Antietam’s early recordings did, and incorporates Americana sounds…
On the cover of Furlongs is an illustration of a young man with not a whisper of a beard on his smooth chin. The hair is a W H Auden-era short back and sides with an unruly cowlick fringe. He is dressed neatly, in a shirt and tie, waistcoat or possibly sweater vest, a sketch pad and pencil in his hand. The man is framed by a pebble-dash wall and a slated windowpane from which he peers out at the world. Reflected on the glass are the green downland hills and the white chalk figure of the Long Man of Wilmington. Though that chalk has since the 1960s been augmented by concrete kerbstones to help prevent its outline from fading away, and long before had assistance from mortar and brick. Just as Avebury’s ancient stones are propped up on b-road bollard-like plinths.