Tament is a personal translation, an audio diary of sounds created and heard. Glinca calls it “the audio of the everyday.” The timbre is warm and welcoming: the tenderness of thumb piano, music box and chime set against the click-clack of rail lines and the blur of unfocused conversation. One walks through this life as if it is a dream, or as the cover photo suggests, the memory of a life. On “Swoq,” one hears what seems to be a modified clock. The gorgeous Fluid Audio packet includes survey maps, slides, prints and photos, travel tickets and reel-to-reel snippets. The combination of material objects and collected sounds creates a hazy glow, suggesting that the pleasant feelings of the past can be recreated, or at least re-experienced, in the present.
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The antepenultimate date of the Land of Hope and Dreams Tour brought Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band to its penultimate stop, concluding the year’s trilogy of shows in Germany with a trip to Gelsenkirchen’s Veltins-Arena.
Slotted in-between that sensational night in San Sebastián and the long anticipated finale shows in Milan’s San Siro, this one may have flown under the radar for many. Add to that the fact Springsteen and the E Street Band were still without Little Steven Van Zandt following his emergency appendectomy, would this be one where everybody in the house had a point to prove?
While the thunderstorm on June 24th made for a much looser performance than we’re used to on the 2023-2025 World Tour, expectations…
Bruce and the E Street Band perform a 32-song set on night two in San Sebastian.
…Springsteen and the E Street Band had already included the tour debut of “Prove It All Night” when rain overtook San Sebastian, Spain during “House of a Thousand Guitars.”
They ended up waiting 35 minutes for the skies to clear. Then Springsteen and company went on a tear as they played four more songs for the first time on this tour. Included were “Growin’ Up” from 1973’s Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ; and “Darlington County,” “Working on the Highway” and “I’m on Fire” from 1984’s Born in the U.S.A. “Prove It All Night” originally appeared on 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town.
The Reale Arena stop on Springsteen’s…
The partnership of guitarist Blake Mills and bassist Pino Palladino continues four years after 2021’s Notes with Attachments, and That Wasn’t a Dream is markedly different. Wherein the former album was cut in several cities and studios, this one was recorded entirely at Studio City’s Studio A. Further is the introduction of the fretless baritone sustainer guitar, which Mills developed with luthier Duncan Price in 2021. He’s used it sparingly in sessions, and on the road with Joni Mitchell, but never on an entire project. Given its physical construction, the fretless instrument is a challenge to control — it’s quite difficult to form consistently pitched chords, for instance. Its sound, according to Mills, is “between a woodwind, brass, and bowed string instrument.” Guests — drummer…
…featuring live cuts and an alternate version of the song “One to Fall” called… “One to Fall (Again)”.
Willie Watson has always operated on the periphery. Even in the making of his own story. First, he was harmonizing on early versions of “Wagon Wheel” in high school, as a founding member of Old Crow Medicine Show. After he left the band in 2011, he drifted into various projects with The Watkins Family and David Rawlings and Gilian Welch. He even showed up in the Coen Brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, both on-screen and on the film’s soundtrack, singing “When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings.”
As a solo artist, he’s released two albums, both produced by Rawlings and both titled Folk Singer. Comprised of traditional songs and…
Listening to the powerful and joyous declaration that is Billionaire it is almost impossible to believe that Kathleen Edwards ever doubted her peerless station in the American firmament. Edwards ‘break’ from music between 2014 and 2020 is well documented, as are the issues that presaged it. Part of which coalesced around the “pressures of other people’s expectations” and worries about her audience “…no one cares. I’m just not good enough. The only reason I sold two hundred tickets is because Bon Iver fans are coming to see if Justin might show up” (she was in a relationship with Vernon at the time).
These days, thankfully, Edwards is much kinder to herself, viewing her earlier work with a relaxed detachment “… I might check in on…
Listening to Fade Away Blue, Pete Droge’s emotionally stirring latest effort, it’s hard to believe this is the same songwriter who perfectly captured 1990s snark and cynicism with the witty earworm, “If You Don’t Love Me (I’ll Kill Myself)”.
Fade Away Blue, his first solo release in almost 20 years, is an emotionally heavy album, spurred on by Droge’s efforts to reconnect with his birth mother. Sixteen years ago, he started his search only to find an obituary for her. Across 10 songs, the delicately beautiful record soundtracks Droge dealing with the news, but also discovering his surviving relatives, an appreciation for his adoptive parents, coping with his adoptive father’s passing, and his adoptive mother’s declining health, all while contending with a mysterious illness of his own.
Falsetto in Jamaican music carries more weight than its airy nature suggests. Alton Ellis, Cornell Campbell, and Horace Andy all wielded it like a weapon wrapped in silk. Influenced by the sounds of soul music coming out of the U.S. in the ’60s — particularly Curtis Mayfield — the vocal technique was used to soften the impact of the music’s social and political commentary, adding vulnerability and sensitivity to cutting lyrical missives.
Junior Murvin understood this power intimately. Best remembered for his breakthrough hit “Police and Thieves,” produced in 1976 by Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and later covered by The Clash, Murvin’s high register became the sound of the summer in Jamaica and England, both countries caught in intense racial unrest. But the track…
“Waiting: More Recordings 1968-1976 can be thought of as a before-and-after follow-up to the Tompkins Square release, Partly On Time: Recordings 1968-1970. For that record we stuck with the mono recordings my high school friend Carter Redd and I made at WDCR radio in Hanover NH in those years.
When Tompkins Square brought up the idea of doing a follow up collection we turned to some even earlier material, five songs Carter and I previously made that were kindred in spirit but more primitively recorded. There had been one more WDCR era song which there wasn’t room for before, and there were two other recordings I made a few years later including one I did with another friend, Bob Stein. All of these were…
Reissue of Turtle Rock, the debut release from Sharp Pins, the solo project from Kai Slater of Chicago, IL. The album is full of DIY bedroom pop pearls of the highest order which call to mind the underground sounds of the past from labels like Blackbean and Placenta Tape Club and March Records, and artists such as Kleenex Girl Wonder, GBV, and Big Star. Originally released on limited cassette in March 2023 on Hallogallo.
13 tracks Sharp Pins is the super solid lo-fi noise pop project of talented Chicago musician Kai Slater of Lifeguard and Dwaal Troupe. What does the future sound like? play loudly and see… Sharp Pinstouring with Lifeguard in June and july. Sharp Pins will touring the U.S.A. UK, and SPAIN in 2025. Also it’s Great. Really.
For two decades, Will Hoge has carried the torch for American rock & roll, carving out his own blue-collar sound rooted in amplified guitars, melodic hooks, southern soul, and rootsy stomp. It’s a sound that nods to the best moments of the past – while still pushing forward into new territory, with Hoge’s storytelling and larger-than-life voice leading the charge.
Will Hoge release 15th studio album Sweet Misery. On Sweet Misery, Hoge reminds listeners that he isn’t afraid to break new ground – all while giving a keen nod to his rock and roll roots with the kind of grace and purpose that only comes with experience – without the baggage of predictability.
In Will’s own words – “…I found myself really wanting to make a louder, hooky…
Stripping away excess layers, Dispossessed lives up to its title. The band went into Causa Sui’s Jonas Munk’s studio on the last day of February 2025. In an a priori session, the first note played together since 2023’s Dens – the conclusion of a trilogy and a live album all in less than a year. Has something shifted during the silence? Added aggression? Faster tempo? Darker ambiance? The feeling of losing time? Or is it simply the listener who’s world has tilted? In a fast paced world, Edena Gardens shows us how to resist and tune to our own inner chord.
Edena Gardens deals in subtle shifts that can only be summoned from something played for the first time. From the sludgy blasts of opener Hiraeth to the droning ambience of 10-minute…
Those already familiar with Scott Lavene will know his terrain: pin-sharp, kitchen-sink observations, rites-of-passage vignettes, musical snapshots of a lost – if fondly remembered – Essex youth.
Our gnarled protagonist’s daydreams may be of girls, glitz and glamour – see the brilliant Sadly I’m Not Steve McQueen, from 2024’s Disneyland in Dagenham – but his heart belongs firmly to the A13: the DNA that snaps him like an emotional bungee cord back to memories of cars, girls, budget booze, and mad-cap adventures. Three albums deep and the novelty of Lavene’s comic-tinged schtick could easily have started to lose its appeal. It’s testament to his talent – and co-producers Stew Jackson and Ryan Rogers’ sympathetic approach – that the ten…
…Ostensibly tied to the ongoing reunion tour, Complete Studio Album Collection is exactly what it says: the band’s seven studio albums issued between 1994 and 2008, plus 1998 B-sides collection The Masterplan.
Available on CD and vinyl, the releases include 1994 breakthrough album ‘Definitely Maybe’, 1995’s ‘(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?’, 1997’s ‘Be Here Now’, 2000’s ‘Standing On the Shoulder of Giants’, and 2002’s ‘Heathen Chemistry’. Later releases like 2005’s ‘Don’t Believe the Truth’ and 2008’s ‘Dig Out Your Soul’ are also included, as is the iconic B-sides album ‘The Masterplan’.
With the exception of that rarities collection, which settled for No. 2, all of these releases topped the U.K. album chart and represent…
London’s The Lo Yo Yo was conceptualized by John “Alig” Pearce in 1984 after his primary group, the deservedly legendary Family Fodder, went dormant. Soon enough a few others were enlisted to round out the quartet, including Mick Hobbs of The Work and Officer! fame, alongside friends Joey Stack and Carrie Brooks. The Lo Yo Yo took elements from their other groups and, in the tradition of somewhat like-minded acts like The Raincoats, Naffi and Amos & Sara, added a strong dub/reggae element.
Shortly before their lone studio LP, which was recorded by Charles Bullen of This Heat fame, the band self-recorded a demo tape at home on an eight track reel to reel, reissued here on vinyl for the first time by Concentric Circles.
With a 30-day window to return gear bought with a “borrowed” credit card, young wannabe rock stars Jeff Whalen and Dan Kern were on a mission in 1998 to record the songs they had been kicking around for a few months. Those tunes were a winning mixture of shimmering power pop, strutting glam rock, and non-clichéd alternative rock that eventually became the basis of Tsar’s self-titled debut album. The two guys called in favors from friends for more gear as needed while fighting off a faltering 8-track recorder and racing to the finish line with one goal in mind: scoring a record deal. These tapes have circulated before in less official channels, but Omnivore’s 2025 release of The Drugboy Tapes is their official coming out party, and it’s a blast to hear…
…contains the brand-new track ‘Perfect Lies’ plus exclusive new remixes and acoustic versions.
While undeniably a step forward in Alison Goldfrapp’s tentative solo debut, Flux remains distant from the heights scaled alongside Will Gregory as Goldfrapp. Despite impeccable craftsmanship provided by the likes of Richard X, Flux frequently feels mired in its own lushness, burdened by a strange inertia. The mid-tempo monotony accentuates this lethargy, diluting shimmering beauty into something laboured rather than effortless. Goldfrapp’s vocals too often sit groggily atop the mix like lactoderm, hampering the livelier textures beneath.
‘Reverberotic’, here, is the thumping and brilliant exception that proves the rule, all nonsenical…
The power of three has had a great press for a long time, embedded as it’s been in the tenets of Christians, witches, Buddhists, or just the beginnings, middles and ends of fireside stories.
And in the thrifty music-making years after the second world war, the economical appeal of the jazz trio – often led by piano virtuosi such as Bill Evans or Ahmad Jamal, occasionally by such sax giants as Sonny Rollins – also revealed just how much spontaneous creativity could fly from minimal gatherings.
Linda May Han Oh, the Malaysia-born, New York-based Australian bassist and composer whose star employers have included Vijay Iyer and Pat Metheny, leads this standout example, composing everything except for covers of…