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For anyone familiar with Schitt’s Creek, the show’s stripped-back Tina Turner cover (and Patrick’s declaration of love for David) marked a wonderfully emotional moment – an opinion clearly shared by Canadian singer Billianne. What she likely didn’t expect, however, was that her tender 2022 take on that same ‘The Best’ would soon translate to over 70 million streams.
Now, three years on from that huge turn, she’s taking that same delicate warmth and channelling it into a debut album that’s evocative and moving, dealing with the upheaval and changes that surround early interior lives. From the finger-picked opening vignette of ‘Modes I’ through to the more breezy indie-pop of ‘Baby Blue’ – via the harmony-drenched ‘Cassiopeia’ – her…

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Listening to Prefaces’s Acqua Marina is like attending an eclectic international film festival wearing a blindfold.
The second album by the Beirut-based trio doesn’t just feature evocative instrumentals, it’s overtly influenced by library music — the stock soundtrack recordings that were licensed to film and TV productions back in the day.
And while some of the styles that make their way into Prefaces’s mix are indigenous, Acqua Marina sources ideas from all over the globe. Stirred together, those ingredients become a summery cocktail perfect for a breezy beach hang. That seaside feel is underlined both by the album’s title and by the band’s quirky decision to name all the tracks after regional varieties of fish.

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Black Honey’s fourth continues on their well-travelled path of taking influence from the silver screen, following the Tarantino-inspired Written & Directed, and the hints of Wes Anderson that came sprinkled across A Fistful of Peaches.
This time, the artwork for Soak alludes to Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, while ‘Psycho’ name drops one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous pictures. The track itself is a fizzing, synth-laden number, buoyed by its huge hook and Izzy B. Phillips’ Gwen Stefani-esque intonations, before giving way to a spoken-word interlude in which she denounces “the big time producers who tear your scripts to shreds”.
Another recurring theme for the band is their blurring of the lines between tell-all and fantasy.

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…features the 2018 remasters by Chris Thomas for tracks from the first three albums and brand-new remasters for the singles from ‘Get Close’. The 16-track compilation includes all the band’s hit singles up until ‘87, such as “Brass in Pocket,” “Back on the Chain Gang,” and “Don’t Get Me Wrong.”
The Pretenders burst on the scene in the early ’80s with one of the most compelling presentations of rock & roll ever seen. This collection, which highlights their A and B sides up until the mid-’80s, shows that Chrissie Hynde and co-conspirators were true masters of the rock single.
Tracks such as “Brass in Pocket,” “Middle of the Road,” and the highly underrated “Message of Love” are spectacularly performed, written, and produced. The early band, especially with…

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The Kingston Lions’ self-titled debut is a chance for some legendary reggae session musicians to step into the spotlight, covering classics from the genre. Produced by Ralph Sall and recorded at Anchor Studios in Kingston, guitarist, bandleader, and arranger Mikey Chung brought together a group of musicians who have played with everyone from Peter Tosh and Bob Marley to Lee “Scratch” Perry and Burning Spear.
Joining Chung are bassist Boris Gardiner, keyboardists Robbie Lyn and Franklyn “Bubbler” Waul, drummer Mikey “Boo” Richards, guitarist Patrick McDonald, and percussionist Uzziah “Sticky” Thompson. They are joined by vocalists Karell Wisdom, Roger “Mitch” Mitchell, and Andrew Cassanova.

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Before they had even settled on a name, Pool Kids stayed afloat by doing things themselves.
As a duo, vocalist/finger-tapping shredder Christine Goodwyne and drummer Caden Clinton entered Florida’s well-oiled emo pipeline by booking house shows while scouting for dive bars that would entertain their cold calls. Then, one fateful day in April 2019, Pool Kids’ collective fortune changed overnight when a ringing endorsement from Hayley Williams turned the tides of Twitter onto their spunky debut. Once bassist Nicolette Alvarez and axeman Andrew Anaya from You Blew It! fame climbed aboard, the band’s fleshed-out follow-up created an even bigger splash with critics and promoters.
But just because Pool Kids have risen atop…

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Throughout the past 15 years, Pile has woven a web that ties the loose ends of post-punk, indie rock, and experimentation together in a knot that would make Henry Rollins proud. All the while, Pile never abandoned the DIY ethos that made them the band they are, keeping a prolific release schedule intact with six albums in the last decade alone, and embodying the spirit of road dogs from the past with a tireless touring schedule. The most miraculous aspect of Pile, though, is how they continually evolve with every release.
The band has released an album every two years starting in 2015, with two LPs being released in 2021 alone, and each one brings another dimension to the shining diamond that is Pile’s discography. This year, we hit…

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The Cranberries are celebrating the 30th anniversary of their second album, No Need To Argue, by giving fans a whole new way to experience it. A new, 3LP vinyl edition of the album featuring new remixes of beloved classics and one rare demo.
First released in 1994, No Need To Argue confirmed The Cranberries as global stars, most notably via the international hit “Zombie.” The 30th anniversary edition of No Need To Argue includes a previously unreleased demo of Dolores O’Riordan singing what would eventually be an iconic track. The collection also includes two remixes-”Zombie” and “Ode To My Family”- from Iain Cook of CHVRCHES and a handful of live tracks performed at Woodstock ‘94. The third LP in the collection…

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Van Halen’s catalogue is attaining further Balance with an expanded edition of the band’s final album recorded with second lead singer Sammy Hagar.
The band’s 10th studio album, released in 1995, reissued August 15 as a 2CD/2LP/Blu-ray set offering the remaster featured in 2023 box set The Collection II, three studio rarities, eight unreleased live tracks and a half-dozen music videos (including another live performance from the vault). Standalone 2CD and 2LP editions will be available as well; all vinyl features the complete album spread across three sides with an etching on the fourth. (Closing track “Feelin'” was omitted from original vinyl pressings.) The expanded set will follow the model of a similar package for 1991’s For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, released last year.

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Bret McKenzie is a Grammy and Academy Award winning artist most well known for his band Flight of the Conchords and their eponymous television show. McKenzie is internationally renowned for singing and writing funny, strange, and unique songs primarily for film and television. Bret’s songs have been sung by Kermit the Frog, Celine Dion, Lizzo, Benedict Cumberbatch, Brittany Howard, Homer and Lisa Simpson, Fred Armisan, Miss Piggy, Amy Adams, Jason Segal, Ricky Gervais, Benee, Isabela Merced, Spongebob Squarepants, Tony Bennett, Mickey Rooney, and more.
As a young adult Bret was an active part of the Wellington music scene playing in multiple bands across multiple genres. He was a founding member of the popular band The Black Seeds…

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Molly Tuttle, following back-to-back Grammy-winning albums with her band Golden Highway, along with a Best New Artist nomination, releases her new solo album, So Long Little Miss Sunshine, on Nonesuch Records.
Recorded in Nashville with producer Jay Joyce (Orville Peck, Miranda Lambert, Lainey Wilson), the fifth full album from the singer, songwriter, and virtuoso guitarist marks a sonic departure from her recent work and features twelve new songs—eleven originals and one cover, of Icona Pop and Charli xcx’s “I Love It.” The album’s first single, “That’s Gonna Leave a Mark,” which she co-wrote with Kevin Griffin (Better Than Ezra). After a summer of festival sets and headline shows, Tuttle and her new live band lead The Highway Knows tour…

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When it comes to Cass McCombs, there’s a risk of complacency. Not on his side – on Interior Live Oak, the Californian singer-songwriter is as watchful as ever – but from that of the listener, who after 11 albums of cosmically questing music might simply expect nothing less than a line as richly allusive as, “I was working as a soda jerk/Listening to old Panthers’ stories/Over lime rickeys and tuna fish”, or a song that spins around 19th-century Irish-Bavarian proto-burlesque superstar Lola Montez.
Steadily, however, Interior Live Oak becomes the kind of record it’s impossible to be casual about. After releasing 2024’s Seed Cake On New Year, a collection of unreleased music from around 2000, McCombs was inspired to return to his formative San Francisco stamping ground…

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Music for Writers is a wordless collection of pieces meant to accompany thought and inspire another way. It is music made in both stillness and motion, music that listens as much as it speaks. Each track offers a space—open, textured, often slow-moving—where ideas, images, and feelings drift in and out. It’s a record I’ve been thinking about and wanting to make for a long time – my first solo instrumental album.
The album was recorded across places—Brooklyn, Berlin, Latvia—using a minimal setup: guitar, synthesizers, field recordings, and the rooms themselves. The compositions are both structured and improvised, emerging from a process of close attention. Rather than telling a story, they respond to the light in a room…

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“I will fly around the world just to forget you” are the opening words of “It Hits Harder,” the first track on New Radiations. The song is about a farewell. The album ends with “Sad Satellite,” where the titular heavenly object is used as a metaphor for distance, when the gap is increasing between the narrator and the subject: the latter a character who is “sucking me dry” and “took me for ride”.
It’s not hard, then, to construe the tenth album from the Nashville-based Marissa Nadler as one permeated with partings – cleavages which create distance. If analysed, detachment can bring perspective and understanding. But Nadler’s lyrics instead seem to be a form of reportage, oblique vignettes setting-up New Radiations as a commentary on disconnection.

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1. Golomb – Staring
2. Mike Polizze – Is There Anybody Out There?
3. The New Eves – Cow Song
4. His Lordship – Marc-Andre Leclerc
5. Rebecca Schiffman – Before the Future
6. Minor Gold – Love Is A Killer
7. Charif Megarbane – The Invisible Cut
8. Alice Cooper – Black Mamba (Radio Edit)
9. Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band – Monte Carlo / No Limits
10. Mark Stewart – Blank Town
11. Gwenno – Y Gath
12. Murry Hammond – Long American Highway
13. Gina Birch – Doom Monger
14. U.S. Girls – No Fruit
15. Theon Cross – Wings (Live at Blue Note)

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Tellingly, the treatment Eric Clapton’s “Layla” receives from marimbist Mika Stoltzman on her latest release is less in the spirit of Cream’s blistering rock anthem and more the laid-back acoustic overhaul the guitarist gave the song on 1992’s Unplugged. In place of the desperate howl of the original, the words “Layla, you got me on my knees” are delivered against a soulful folk-shuffle on the live set. In like manner, Stoltzman’s sultry take on the song is mellow, and a similar vibe permeates other pieces. Her bandmates, marquee players such as pianist Geoffrey Keezer, bassist Eddie Gomez, and drummer Steve Gadd, are certainly capable of playing with fire and fury; in this context, however, her partners tailor their playing to the restrained mood…

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Rough Trade Exclusive CD comes with two bonus tracks from 2023: “Original Sin” and “Mother.”
Disclosure, self-affirmation and avowal may be the presentation currencies of our time – mystique now seems so very 20th century – but still, it takes courage and conviction for a young band to state their case from the get-go. All the more so if it’s a group of women, who risk accusations of bad faith and superficiality should they choose to develop their artistry or change their image.
If they’ve considered it at all, none of this bothers Brighton four-piece The New Eves, who came together via a regular meet-up of creative women held in the early days after lockdown. Their name is an unambiguous wresting of power from the most enduring of female archetypes,…

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Radiohead have surprise-released an album of live recordings drawn from their 2003 album, Hail to the Thief. Recorded between the year of its release and the end of the In Rainbows tours in 2009, the 12-track album is newly mixed and mastered by Ben Baptie and Matt Colton, respectively.
In a statement explaining how the record came about, Yorke said, “In the process of thinking how to build arrangements for the Shakespeare Hamlet/Hail to the Thief theatre production I asked to hear some archive live recordings of the songs. I was shocked by the kind of energy behind the way we played and it really helped me find a way forward. For us, back in the day, the finishing of this record was particularly messy and fraught, we were very proud of it but there was a taste…

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