Low-key supergroup Railcard are an indie pop lover’s dream ensemble. Not only does Rachel Love of the incredibly influential 80’s guitar pop band Dolly Mixture play guitar and singer, Ian Button of the criminally overlooked Papernut Cambridge plays drums and sings, and Peter Momtchiloff — legendary guitarist of Tallulah Gosh and Heavenly — holds down the bass job. Add in trumpeter/keyboardist Rachel Bennett, who has played with the brilliant Trash Can Sinatras, and it’s almost too much. How could a group with such an impressive CV live up to the expectations? Without a problem judging by the string of lovely EPs that incorporated Northern Soul, girl groups, and space age bachelorette pad music into the charmingly sweet melodies and chiming guitars.
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Get Mean is the third official studio album from cult darkwave duo Boy Harsher, marking their debut for major-label Atlantic. Active for over a decade, the pair have largely stuck to their signature sound of danceable gloom, with minimal beats and shadowy vocals dramatically expressing themes of pain and lust (to name two of their most popular songs). They haven’t drastically altered their style with the switch to a major label, as they’ve been gradually incorporating more ’80s pop influences into their music, making it no surprise that Get Mean sounds a bit brighter and more accessible than their past work.
A more significant change is the fact that members Jae Matthews and Augustus Muller split up as a romantic couple in 2024, leaving them…
Not all of us can afford beachfront property with a convertible Bugatti to match, but thanks to the new album by Argento, we no longer need to. Inspired by the riches of the Tuscan coast, Miraggi is as sultry as music tagged ‘Balearic’ gets. Breathy flutes wisp up and down, casting their ocean spray as they pass. Lithe basslines sway against windswept chimes, beckoning you to leave it all behind. New age, downtempo, and jazz fusion shimmer and swirl together like crisp white wine.
…If this all seems like fantasy, it’s just as much of one for Argento. The side project was conceived by German-Italian producer David August, who spends most of his time hovering…
Summer Magic 1985 is a 20CD collection featuring seven previously unreleased concerts from the legendary band’s 20 Years So Far tour.The Dead’s magic in the summer of ’85 was plentiful, and the large box will include all three of the band’s 20th anniversary concerts at Berkeley, California’s Greek Theater (6/14-6/16/85) which kicked off the tour, as well as dates from Saratoga Performing Arts Center (6/27/85); Hersheypark Stadium (6/28/85); and Merriweather Post Pavilion (6/30/85).
All of the gigs were recorded by the Dead’s longtime sound engineer Dan Healy and mastered for this release by David Glasser at Airshow Mastering. Typical for the Dead sets of this magnitude, it’s a lavish affair with original artwork by Marcos Alvarado…
Carrying on the legacy after the tragic passing of lifelong friend and co-founder Daniel Hutchens, influential roots-rock outfit Bloodkin released the downtrodden and poetic Flowers & Ash. The 10-song project is a cathartic, meditative listen on the idea that you never need a bigger picture to worry about if the little things are out of order, opting for slower melodies that punctuate the complexity of the songwriting.
…Rather than trying to replace an irreplaceable creative partner (the pair first met when Carter was 7 years old), Carter chose to embrace the album as both a tribute and a continuation, crafting a focused, 40-minute collection of songs meant to be experienced from beginning to end, with Hutchens’ spirit woven throughout every track.
Ringo Starr, Phil Collins, and Don Henley are just a few examples of drummers who have had successful solo careers. You could add Roger Taylor of Queen to that list. He may not have sold as many albums, but he has had a very healthy solo career. He has just released his seventh solo album, Violence Insane in a Beautiful World, his first since 2021’s Outsider. Taylor has created a very cohesive and strong album with a great deal of meaning throughout. It is a very positive album, with bits of anger, but it is a beautiful album.
The album opens with “A Beautiful World.” Anytime you combine a little science fiction with science fact, it works perfectly. The addition of The Ndlovu Youth Choir with their stunning backing vocals just makes it a great opening.
It appears that much of Three Dog Night’s catalogue has quietly moved to Primary Wave Music; now comes a new physical release on CD and vinyl of the band’s fifth album, 1971’s Harmony. It features two top ten hits: Paul Williams’ “An Old Fashioned Love Song” and Hoyt Axton’s “Never Been to Spain.” Harmony has been remastered for this release.
The release of Harmony in the fall of 1971 gave Three Dog Night their seventh gold record in less than three years, yielding two Top Ten singles with Paul William’s “Old Fashioned Love Song” (number four) and Hoyt Axton’s “Never Been to Spain” (number five). In addition, William’s “Family of Man” would just fail to crack the top of the charts, rising as high as number 12 by March of 1972.
Before his death in 2012, American singer/songwriter Terry Callier experienced a career resurgence in the U.K. where he was championed by artists ranging from Paul Weller and Beth Orton to Massive Attack and Michael Kiwanuka. BBE’s Live Peace is drawn from two intimate live performances from the period at The Yardbird Suite/The Underground, both in Leeds, in 1998 and 2001, backed by his Family Band: guitarist Jim Mullen, keyboardist Chris Kibble, drummer Nic France, bassist Dave Barnard, Brazilian percussionist Bosco D’Oliveira and saxophonist/flutist Gary Plumley. The shows were taped by Martin Dixon who created desk reference cassettes. They were restored using AI-assisted audio tools and assembled by Greg Boraman of Impressive Collective.
Over her 40 years as a musician and three decades as a solo artist, Kristin Hersh has built a body of work that’s as consistent as it is unmistakable. Her serpentine chords and rhythms, surreal yet earthy songwriting, and singular rasp have always set her apart – but so do the subtleties that make each of her albums special. On Sugar on Blackstone, Hersh takes a darker, dreamier turn than she did on 2023’s Clear Pond Road. Like its watercolor artwork, its songs are heightened but also impressionistic, with the mesmerizing drone from her guitar and Pete Harvey’s cello making everything lulling and unreal; on songs such as “Dom in Orange,” Hersh’s wordplay (“The water’s fine/The water’s fire”) shifts as much as the music surrounding it.
This short but very sweet eight-track vinyl release represents one of the milestones in the career of the least typical of British punk bands. Though they’re generally classed as post-punk, the Fall were technically more “parallel punk,” having formed in 1976, and not under the influence of the Sex Pistols or Ramones, but the Stooges and Can. For many bands of the era, the spartan recording conditions and strict timetable of the BBC studios where sessions were recorded for John Peel’s radio show were a challenge, but for the Fall this was actually a step up or, more typically, a step sideways. 1978 turned out to be the band’s year or at least a fairly strong start – they had made their only studio recordings to date, the Bingo-Masters Break-Out!
In 1995, amidst the alternative rock-osphere of sincere boys with angst to spare, entered Ben Folds Five. The misnomered trio of Ben Folds on piano and vocals, Robert Sledge on bass, and Darren Jessee on drums, Ben Folds Five interjected a bit of much-needed whimsy into a scene that was rapidly becoming stale. The band’s debut album was an explosion of pop-filled tunefulness, endearing silliness, and musical jubilance that set the band apart from its peers and catapulted them into the limelight.
Now, upon the 30th anniversary of Ben Folds Five’s eponymous release (or the 31st anniversary to be exact), the band’s vaunted debut is being reissued, on double vinyl and CD, with a special bonus. Before the band recorded…
Over a decade into his career, Jake Xerxes Fussell remains peerless in the world of folk music. The North Carolinian’s interpretations of songs, both familiar and arcane, sound unlike anyone else’s, and more often than not, unlike themselves. There is plenty of blues, folk, and country in his fingerpicking style and his baritone voice radiates Southern warmth, but he doesn’t really come across as a roots artist, at least not in the ways people have come to expect. Fussell is too idiosyncratic and curious for so common a label. With a relaxed delivery completely devoid of striving, he circumvents both staunch traditionalism and the eager pathos of the indie folk crowd. Songs simply marinate in the fields of his imagination, then flow through his voice…
The most useful thing to know about Pure Confusion is how it was made. King Ayisoba flew to England in November 2024, sat down in Adrian Sherwood’s studio in Ramsgate, and played the whole record in one afternoon.
He says the songs were already finished in his head. Nothing about his performance was altered after the fact. The bass, the cello, the saxophone, the harmonica, the dub processing on the desk: all of it was added later, to a recording of a man who was alone in a room with a two-string lute made from a calabash and goatskin.
That order of operations explains what the album sounds like. Ayisoba does not adjust to anybody. He plays the kologo as rhythm and melody at once, hard and unbroken, and Sherwood’s…
Punch Card delivers android funk of the highest order. The Stoke-on-Trent trio raises the ghosts of Hearpen Singles Pere Ubu and robot-funky Devo. The main flavor though is the earliest version of the Talking Heads (think “Psycho Killer”). Formal Sppeedwear moves with the herky-jerky, stutter-stepping assurance of the very earliest Talking Heads, before the incorporation of Afro-beat, all thumps and yelps and manic rants. They raise rickety architectures of post-punk syncopation, the bass plunking forward and doubling back, as fizz bombs of trebly guitar go off, synth stabs rattle and wobbly rants unfold. The music shakes like jello and bangs like junkyard metal.
…This is the band’s first album, following a hotly tipped EP from 2024. It’s a disciplined…
Best-known for the giddy throwaway pop of ‘Wake Up Boo’, Merseyside outfit The Boo Radleys influences spread much further, as even a cursory listen to their sprawling 1993 masterpiece, Giant Steps, will attest.
Older, wiser, and without original songwriter-in-chief Martin Carr, the Boos have been back tearing up stages for the last few years, with original members Simon ‘Sice’ Rowbottom (vocals, guitar), Tim Brown (bass) and Rob Cieka (drums) rolling back the years, alongside a couple of touring members to bring the average age down.
In Spite of Everything finds the band doing what they do best, crossing genres without a by-your-leave as they embrace searing guitars (‘Affected/Rejected’)…
As Madelyn Byrd’s Through Damp Canyons opens, the camera is still. It’s a hot, dark night on the Sonoran Desert where they came of age – so dark that the arid landscape immediately disappears into the backdrop as thousands of insect wings buzz like uninterrupted static. Then, a motorcycle revs into the foreground, and the camera begins to move with it. Over the course of Night Rider’s next 50 minutes, Byrd’s amorphous soundscapes transmogrify in unpredictable and cinematic ways.
Byrd’s production has evolved since Transcorporeal Portal, and the title of second track Of Nature, Of Bodies, Of Dreams acts as a kind of thesis statement for their psychedelic minimalism. In the edges and cracks between key and vivid details – spoken word, more traditional…
One of the central queercore pioneers of the 1990s, Portland, Oregon’s Team Dresch released just two albums, 1995’s fiery Personal Best and 1996’s more crisply produced but no less visceral Captain My Captain, before dispersing into solo and side projects. The group never fully deactivated, however, releasing the odd single and appearing in various iterations at festivals and anniversary celebrations over the years, including participating in the reissue of their entire catalog (including a non-album singles compilation) by Jealous Butcher Records in 2019. Something that set the band apart somewhat from their contemporaries on the scene, and perhaps helped foster continued interest, is an embrace of rock, grunge, and metal influences in addition to the more typical…
After landing a record deal on the strength of early EPs, ’90s alt-rock and 2000s indie beneficiaries Slow Pulp delivered a well-received full-length debut, Moveys (2020), before expanding their sound on the follow-up, Yard (2023). Both albums were produced by the band’s guitarist, Henry Stoehr, and featured lyrics primarily by singer/guitarist Emily Massey. Their third album, Melodie, finds the Chicago/Madison group continuing to grow in other ways, including having Stoehr taking a larger role in songwriting and sharing production duties for the first time with Massey and an outside producer, Elliot Kozel (Rosalia, MØ, Indigo De Souza). The album opens with a pair of drum-less, brooding reflections steeped in ennui, “Yellow and Green”…