Wendy Eisenberg has evidently always been a fan of the rhetorical question, but perhaps never more so than on Wendy Eisenberg. “You are the oldest you’ve ever been,” they intone, sweet and clear, on the opening track: “Did you feel yourself change?” Whos, whats, wheres, whys, and hows abound: see “Who was I becoming?” (“Meaning Business”), “What gave me that idea?” and “Where was I when that happened?” (“The Ultraworld”), “Why did I try? Did I try?” (“Will You Dare”), “Is that how I wound up here?” (“Another Lifetime Floats Away”). But, as with all rhetorical questions, there are no answers expected. The asking — or, more specifically, the spacious, open silence that follows in the question’s wake — is the point. After all, absence is itself a kind of presence. Those gaps…
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Emerging out of semi-nowhere — well, Northwich — the Charlatans were saddled with a name that lent itself to jibes about their quality and the early burden of being a one-hit wonder with “The Only One I Know.” That all changed when Some Friendly, the group’s debut, planted itself at the top of the UK charts in 1990. Drawing on Martin Blunt’s background in mod and psych outfits, Rob Collins’ outrageously funky keyboards and Tim Burgess’ unexpected star quality, Some Friendly combines the joyous bounce of baggy with the good natured immediacy of indie pop, then wraps it up in state of the art production. Some of the lyrics betray Burgess’ sharp-tongued punk background — “You’re Not Very Well,” the opener, expresses anything but sunny sentiments…
…Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt met while studying at the University of Hull in 1981. Thorn had already formed the DIY post-punk group Marine Girls and recorded their beloved debut album Beach Party. Meanwhile, experimental singer-songwriter Watt’s debut single – ‘Cant’, produced by Kevin Coyne – was released that year on Cherry Red. The pair started a side project, Everything But the Girl, and released their first EP, Night and Day (led by a cover of the Cole Porter standard) in 1982.
After a couple of years pursuing their respective solo projects, Thorn and Watt came together again in 1984 for their debut full-length, Eden, a timeless set of plaintive bossa nova (No 28 single ‘Each and Every One’), shimmering indie-pop (‘Another Bridge’), wee-small-hours jazz…
Following so closely on the heels of the January 2026 concert piece One Moment in Time: Live in the USA, the re-release of Robin Trower’s 1975 Live! might seem a bit suspect. Instead, it serves as a template for such expansive archival projects (not just for this artist’s discography).
Issued in an elaborate 2CD or 2LP package, what was once a mere concession to the marketplace now becomes an essential entry in the venerable guitar hero’s discography. Fifty-some years ago, the constraints of the vinyl audio configuration prevented the 1975 Stockholm Concert Hall performance from being issued in its entirety.
Now, in observance of the half-century milestone, the entire performance, sequenced in the running order of the actual concert’s…
In the liner-notes to this, the tenth studio album that Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson have released as Sunn O))) the nature writer and poet Robert MacFarlane compares the band’s music to the sound of storms, a fast-flowing river and the shifting of tectonic plates.
They are familiar images to any fan of the drone metal duo who has followed their career over their past 26 years, and read reviews in which critics attempt to ascribe powerful visual images to the dynamics, tone, amplitude and physical effect of such landmark releases as 2005’s Black One, 2009’s Monoliths & Dimensions and the 2019 Steve Albini-produced double of Life Metal and Pyroclasts. As O’Malley himself has said, “It’s putting language on something…
Minneapolis-based novelist, songwriter and vocalist Dan Hornsby is not the first to lead a band, but might be among the first ones to set his lyrical vision through jangly guitar rock with his band True Green.
Hail Disaster, the band’s second 13 songs are set in that catchy musical frame that somewhat abandons the band’s original lo-fi sound for a clearer sound and warmer production values, that shine a brighter light on both the band’s intricate instrumental sound and Hornsby’s literate lyrics.
In many ways, the music on the album draws comparisons to both David Berman’s Silver Jews and solo output, as well as Phil Elverum’s The Microphones phase, to which Hornsby and multi-instrumentalist Tailer Ransom add…
Slayyyter’s music is vile, explicit, and a threat to common decency. Since her early days as a salon receptionist, the artist formerly known as Catherine Garner has channeled her unbridled id with a head-spinning boldness that would be probable cause for exorcism in most God-fearing countries. Over beats as blunt, chromatic, and gleefully stupid as a Jeff Koons sculpture, the singer has vied to make hyperpop more garish and alarming by being hornier, messier, and more extreme than her peers. Together with producer Ayesha Erotica, she dared listeners to join her Bimbo Summit as she barreled through Y2K hedonism without the burdens of taste or conventional morality to slow her down. The mileage one got out of songs like “Daddy AF,” “Throatzillaaa,” or “Purrr”…
The Østfold county is dubbed by some as Norway’s Mississippi, as the country’s longest river, the Glomma, flows through its densely populated lowland area on its way to the Oslo Fjord. A fitting backdrop for americana four-piece Norma, whose debut album Country Catering pays reference to older legends like Poco and the Grateful Dead, as well as combining influences from more recent bands like Wilco. Produced by Simen Følstad Nilsen, who also contributes pedal steel, it’s a melodic meander down a path of floating melodies and chiming guitars.
The opener, Rabbit Feet, is typical of Norma’s approach: an understated driving beat accompanied by dreamy vocals that burst into life in the mid-section. The band was raised on…
If there was any question young blues rocking guitarist Gabe Stillman would progress from his impressive 2018 debut Nighthawks-assisted EP, it was demonstrably answered in the affirmative with his first full length album.
Stillman proved that his vocal, instrumental and most importantly compositional talents were more than ready for prime time on 2019s extraordinary Just Say the Word, one of the finest offerings from a new talent that year, and a Top 10 entry on Billboard’s blues chart.
Five years, one label change and a few hundred live dates later, he returns with the terrific What Happens Next?. It’s worth noting that most of the supporting musicians contributing to Stillman’s first Vizztone release – notably…
The Longest Way Round, New York City-based pianist, accordionist and composer Ben Rosenblum and his cutting-edge Nebula Project take listeners on a wild and exhilarating ride across musical boundaries, through multiple genres and around customary intersections to a destination that is as fresh and pleasing as it is creative and unique.
While contemporary jazz remains the core element, this is music whose broad framework flows beyond the confines of normal depiction to encompass a harmonic and rhythmic panorama that lends new meaning to the phrase ‘creative design.’ Rosenblum’s compositions (he wrote and arranged every number) are shrewd and inventive with nary a trace of dubiety or discord. Even when treading more moderate paths, as he does…
Arriving after Vision Is the Identity (2024) and Asp Nimbus (2021), REX is the third album cellist Christopher Hoffman‘s recorded for the avant-jazz label Out of Your Head Records and formally speaking his debut solo album. However, REX is hardly a jazz album in the traditional sense, as its methodically built-up pieces have as much to do with folk, rock, and ambient as they do jazz. The story behind the album’s fascinating. When the Brooklyn-ensconced Hoffman and his family itched for a change of scenery in 2023, a 116-acre property north of the city presented itself that turned out to be the former home to Rex Brasher (1869–1960), a celebrated self-taught painter who created more than 1200 watercolours of North American birds. How dedicated…
There’s a current tendency among post-modern classical composers to paint their musical pictures, or compositions if you will, in darker overtones, but then, it just might be the mirror of the times we live in. Or, as a composer, you can devote a composition cycle to an inspirational friend and colleague who passed too early, as Canadian post-classical composer Matthew Patton, who operates under the moniker of Those Who Walk Away, does on his latest release, Afterlife Requiem.
Devoted to, as he points out, a friend and collaborator, late Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, Patton uses an interesting concept – he combines drone, electroacoustic, and near-silences extracted from unfinished recordings on Jóhannsson’s hard drives, underpinning…
In Raven Chacon’s music, listening is about paying attention to silence as much as sound. The composer, performer and installation artist presents this dichotomy across experimental noise, chamber and installation works that unfold through layered timbres and ample rest.
His pieces leave space for ideas to emerge in moments that could seem, at first, like quietude. But listen closer and find that so much lives inside: the weight of history, the power of protest, the resonance of performing spaces.
Voiceless Mass, recorded by Milwaukee-based ensemble Present Music, presents three of Chacon’s chamber works that each offer a different lens into his use of sound and silence, showcasing how listening extends beyond pitch.
Xerrox Vol. 1 marked a pivotal juncture of Alva Noto’s process-based, multimedia art, when it transformed from precision-tooled, pulsating minimalism to diffuse states of cinematic atmosphere. By the point of its release, 200, Carsten Nicolai had spent over a decade rising to acclaim for his exquisite, methodical glitch works, including contemporary classics in duo with Ryuichi Sakamoto.
But Xerrox Vol. 1 would radically alter his work’s aesthetic away from microscopic, pointillist grammar to explorations of lusher textural and widescreen fascination, systematically sampling and displacing familiar, everyday sounds – advert jingles, phone “hold” tones, film scores – within swelling symphonic structures that exist…
What would be experimental folk exactly? As with any other genre, it would approximately mean that you as an artist are not taking the usual routes associated with such a genre, and it could be anything from bringing in elements from elsewhere, to not so usual performance, lyrics and anything else that might be considered ordinary.
You can get practically all of that on Bird or Snake, the second album by Chicago-based singer songwriter Emma Hospelhorn, who operates under the moniker of Em Spel. It is more or less all there – jazzy song structures, classical flutes, found sounds, subtle electronics, and lyrics that go into deeper subjects.
Hospelhorn wrote the songs and produced them herself, with additional production by…
Buzzy Lee has a couple of tricks up her sleeve. She acts, writes, performs, and on occasion collaborates with musical powerhouses, notably Denzel Curry and JPEGMafia. Now, Buzzy Lee, frequently known to the masses as Sasha Spielberg, joined Harry McNally, her partner, and close friends along the way to build her third solo album, Shoulder to Shoulder. At first, the couple enlisted Nick Millhiser of Holy Ghost! though the team unanimously decided to keep the working process intrinsic — making her album naturally come alive.
Shoulder to Shoulder is unexpectedly soulful with accents of groove. Buzzy Lee delicately caresses her words in every track. Remarkably, she experiments with piano as a foundation while piecing together the right moments to test her…
8-CD Box Set – Newly mastered albums with bonus B-Sides and live shows.
After leaving Deep Purple, Ian Gillan retired from the music business to pursue other business ventures including ownership of the Kingsway studio, where in 1974 he began to work on his first post-Deep Purple solo tracks. This combined with a warm reception to his appearance at Roger Glover’s Butterfly Ball live show prompted him to form a new band.
Initially called Shand Grenade, Ian was persuaded by the management to change the band’s name to the Ian Gillan Band. He recruited guitarist Ray Fenwick, bass player John Gustafson, keyboard player Mike Moran and Mark Nauseef on drums, using Roger Glover as producer…
During the late ’70s, the beginnings of a wave of music heavily inspired by the garage rock and psychedelia of the 1960s began to swell. Chalk it up to many factors — the availability of a number of reissues, especially the Pebbles series, a disillusionment with the restrictive rules of punk rock, the passage of enough time so that the era seemed glamorous, the chance to get cheap vintage gear — but the result was an underground that evolved in many interesting directions and even went quite overground at different times. Cherry Red’s 2026 collection This Can’t Be Today: American Psychedelia & the Paisley Underground 1977-1988 looks to document the scene, gathering together the many strands and sounds of the time to present a comprehensive view.
The storied, three-decade (and counting) career of American visual and performance artist, sculptor, photographer, filmmaker, costume designer, and musician Marnie Weber (b. 1959) began with gigs paid in beer at an LA trucker bar in 1977. Her band, Party Boys, formed in artists’ hangout spots in downtown LA’s semi-abandoned industrial zones. Weber was then 19 and had just left home. After a handful of shows, the bar’s owner asked if she and her female bandmate would perform nude. Taking this as a sign to leave LA, they promptly took off to London. However, their search for more ethical trade there was arrested by a harrowing experience. The band were violently assaulted following a cancelled gig, resulting in the destruction of their instruments, their singer’s…
Blues singer-songwriter and guitarist Selwyn Birchwood has always described his music as ‘electric swamp funkin’ blues.’ Now, on his seventh release and fifth for Alligator, Birchwood sees fit to make that the title. He ‘owns’ this record more than any of his others as it is a self-produced effort, unlike his past two, where he deferred to Tom Hambridge. Here, he sounds positively unleashed, as wild as we’ve ever heard him. Birchwood proudly states in the promotional materials that he carves a unique path: “You would be hard-pressed to find an album or a band that sounds exactly like mine, and that has and will always be the goal.”
Let’s take a closer look. Birchwood, per usual, plays guitar and lap steel. Longtime collaborator Regi Oliver, who has graced all of…