After three excellent but generally underappreciated albums in what is more or less the Americana/singer/songwriter genre, Sam Morrow was ready for a change.
On his simply titled fourth release, and first in two years, he leaves most of the country influences that informed those discs, cranks up the guitars and charges into a stronger, sonic punch implied by the collection’s name.
While there are plenty of Southern red clay guts here, he sells himself short on the “boogie” part. Like Blackberry Smoke, which this resembles in the best ways, Morrow is too sharp of a songwriter to delve into the clichéd beer, booze and broads mode most associate with the title. Even when name-checking the “party all night/…
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The polarizing songs of contemporary troubadour Jesse Welles have always been stubbornly present and blunt. His prolific nature has seen the release of many loose singles and celebrated LPs, landing Welles Grammy nods and placing him amongst some of the more talked-about figures in modern folk. At a time when folk music, in a popular sense, was beginning to sound formulaic, Welles’s scorching political takes and dedication to the mysterious songwriters that came before him quickly separated him from a burgeoning scene. Not that Welles’s music is some innovative leap, but it has become the center point of controversy within folk music for some years now, and the artist seems hellbent on getting his point across, uploading acoustic vignettes to…
The four words no one thought they would ever see appeared last year. They were “GRAMMY nominee Jon Spencer.”
But that’s what happened when Samantha Fish and Jesse Dayton’s 2023 album Death Wish Blues was up for one of those iconic awards. And by extension, so was producer Jon Spencer.
It’s worth noting that his career spans over four decades crafting some of the edgiest, most frictional and at times discordant roots music ever appearing on major or indie labels. A variety of sonically boundary-pushing outfits such as Pussy Galore, Boss Hog, Heavy Trash, Jon Spencer & the HIT Makers and, probably the most popular one, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion were all helmed by Spencer.
Meltt is a psych-ish rock band from Canada that is set to drop its third album, Pathways, on June 12. The 13-song album is preceded by the release of no fewer than eight singles, the earliest of which, “Hesitate,” dropped almost a year ago, in July 2025. All eight were collected in the order of appearance on the “In Good Time” single, the last one released on May 28 of this year.
There’s a method here of giving each single the chance to capture the attention of the non-album-oriented public before releasing the complete album, a strategy the band began experimenting with for the rollout of Eternal Embers in 2023. If album-oriented folks tilt their heads in anti-climactic wonder, well, that’s too bad. They’re not a big part of the music-streaming…
Arguably the worst fallout of the American Democratic Party’s decade of humiliation and ineptitude was the 2016 release of Le Tigre’s “I’m With Her”. To fashion the aesthetic and soul of art-punk into an establishment worshipping, pro-Hillary Clinton ‘anthem’ has banished the genre into the deepest reaches of musical hell since; every set and record must now begin with an apology and a land acknowledgment. Like a trip to KFC after eating rotten chicken, even the sound of a punk timbre over a synth has given me nausea to this day. 2026 may be a year of rekindling, as La Sécurité joins Mandy, Indiana in going ornate and reckless with the genre.
Whereas the latter’s Urgh is a masterpiece of industrial sound design and ultra-propulsive…
Trumpeter/composer Ambrose Akinmusire and guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson’s album Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings features four new compositions by each musician as well as one collaboration. The duo, long admirers of each other’s musicianship, met at Halvorson’s Brooklyn apartment and began playing together periodically, going back as far as 2009. They rehearsed the music on Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings in January 2025, just before performing it at the New York City club The Stone; they recorded this album the next day at Sear Sound.
The duo made two previous attempts at recording an album but felt that they got it right with this third session. Halvorson says of their rapport, which developed over those years of…
“Been all around the world, at least once or twice” barks Mike Campbell on the roaring “My Mama Told Me” from Mission of Mercy. It’s the fourth album with his post-Petty outfit, the Dirty Knobs. A continuation of the remarkably eventful career from a well-traveled guy who proudly stood by Tom Petty’s side for the better part of 50 years, Campbell was a trusted wingman who could have retired living off royalties from the many hits co-written with his world famous pal.
Campbell not only toured extensively last year, but penned ‘Heartbreaker,’ an expansive 450 page autobiography. He also recorded these dozen tracks with a recently minted backing band, now officially including another Petty alumnus, drummer Steve Ferrone.
Often, a single sentence can say more than a manifesto spanning several pages. Especially when it is repeated, rewritten, and allowed to take on a life of its own. A phrase written two centuries ago can suddenly sound like a commentary on the present. A handful of words can become a refrain, an axis around which entirely new meanings begin to accumulate.
Horse Lords’ new album begins with such a phrase. Drawn from the nineteenth-century hymn, published in The Sacred Harp – one of the most enduring traditions of American sacred music – the line “We seek a city yet to come” becomes the album’s conceptual and sonic centre of gravity. Sung by Nina Guo and Evelyn Saylor, it is looped, stretched, fragmented, and subjected…
Legendary space rock band Hawkwind return with a brand new collection that blurs the lines between studio album, archive excavation and future transmission. Drawing together unheard recordings, newly reworked classics and fresh material from the current line-up, this latest release stands as a vital and evolving chapter in the band’s ever-expanding sonic universe.
Rather than a retrospective, this forward-facing release presents a snapshot of Hawkwind in motion. Featuring brand new studio recordings alongside previously unheard material from ongoing and unreleased projects, the album captures multiple facets of the band’s creative output, from cosmic psychedelia to driving space rock and experimental electronica.
It was unreasonable to expect Duane Betts’ second full-length long-player, Isle of Hope, to match the passionate match of musicianship and material of its predecessor, Wild and Precious Life. And, in fact, this Sun Records release only comes close and ultimately falls short because the bright moments, most of them instrumental, merely interrupt the mainly sluggish performances of somewhat formulaic arrangements overseen by studio supervisor Dave Cobb. The man who’s produced Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Sturgill Simpson and Jason Isbell certainly has a recognizable style that includes pristine audio quality. But this Betts record, recorded in just five days at Cobb’s studio in Savannah, GA, suffers from too many ponderous instances like “Best Wishes.”
Performing under the moniker Fruit Bats, Chicago’s Eric D. Johnson has managed to seamlessly slip in and out of genres throughout his 25-year career, from indie rock and pop to experimental folk. Following up last year’s Baby Man, a surprisingly intimate record with Johnson handling the entire album on his own, he is back with a full band on The Landfill, and the difference is obvious from the opening track.
“The Saddest Part of the Song” sounds like a classic Otis Redding tune before Johnson’s distinctive reedy tenor kicks in, occasionally reaching a falsetto. It’s a curious pick for an opening track, but a great song regardless, with layer upon layer of instruments. “All Wounds” is closer to the indie folk sound Fruit Bats is known for, but…
Slippers‘ cozy brand of indie pop is baked to perfection on their second album Slippers 08. Madeline BB is the writer and singer, and drummer too, and she’s got the whole thing figured out. It’s never a bad idea to mix together intimate C-86 noise pop, woolly Elephant 6-sounding indie, and hooky, pocket-sized power pop, especially when the songs are short and focused, the guitars are crisp and jangly, the rhythm section plays with economical punch, and the vocals have best friend warmth. BB’s lyrics feel like that same friend telling you about her hopes, dreams, problems, and feelings; it’s so small scale and intimate that it’s impossible not to be drawn in right away. She never overstays her welcome musically, keeping the songs very short and never…
Listening to Magazine feels like speedrunning a tour of the circles of hell. The band doesn’t even try to make these songs sum up to anything coherent: each song hits, fades, and the next introduces itself, just to fade again in record time. On each, synthesist Jack Tobias puts down ominous chords and motifs at the worst moments; guitarist-that-sounds-like-a-synthesist Saguiv Rosenstock plays what could very well be the transposed sheet music of a dying dog’s final whimpers; vocalist Zack Borzone moans against the beat in broken Revelations-inspired word association poetry; and drummer Sam Pickard works like the devil to hold the whole operation together. Right when you get accustomed to one song’s palate, it pauses, waits a few seconds,…
Taking a critically acclaimed, historic composition and reconfiguring it for a seemingly anachronistic style can be tough to pull off, even, to some ears, heretical. However, for composer and pianist Aaron Wyanski, retooling the works of the prolific, groundbreaking 20th-century composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) has become something of an ongoing project, with results nothing short of stunning and deeply imaginative. Taking these unorthodox, atonal works and dropping them into the mid-century world of lounge jazz works a lot better than you would think, and the most ambitious example of this ongoing fascination may be his best work yet.
Pierrot Lunaire is Schoenberg’s 1912 interpretation of 21 poems by Albert Giraud,…
Adam Schatz is nothing if not eclectic and musically profound.
The saxophonist, composer, and keyboard player, known for his curious indie pop songwriting project Landlady, as well as playing alongside the likes of Wye Oak, Japanese Breakfast, Sylvan Esso, and This Is the Kit, is also a longtime curator of jazz and experimental music. That is why his latest album, Civil Engineering, Vol. 1, seems like a delightful inevitability. It’s the result of one day in a Manhattan recording studio, creating improvised magic with bassist Carmen Quill (Scree, Tilt) and drummer Qasim Naqvi (Dawn of Midi).
Labelling Civil Engineering, Vol. 1 as jazz is fairly accurate, although the overall sound eschews labels. As with all improvised music,…
The imagery New Mexico banjoist Johnny Bell throws up on his first fully composed solo banjo album, Mountain States, is often along the lines of slow-moving, sun-scorched skylines, or a scorpion in a desert with its tail quivering. There is an element of unease and an underlying gravity running through this music that is a far cry from a more ambient style of country banjo music, like that of Andrew Tuttle’s Fleeting Adventure, for example; something also reflected in the album artwork in which Daniel McCoy Jr. (Muscogee Creek/Potawatomi) renders New Mexico’s Diablo Canyon in surreal, psychedelic colour, a landscape at once familiar and alien.
A chunk of this is down to co-producer Andrew Weathers’ direction and decision to mic…
It’s been more than 8 years since Maryam Saleh’s last album. A stalwart of the Egyptian alternative scene, many believed the Cairo native had quit the industry entirely after the 2017 release of Lekhfa with Maurice Louca and Tamer Abu Ghazaleh, until a sudden collaboration with Syrian producer Hello Psychaleppo dropped in 2023.
The synth-led single ‘Baghanny’ deviated from the artist’s more traditional-leaning electro-shaabi but signalled the return of one of Egypt’s most compelling voices. Syrr, written and recorded under the mentorship of Palestinian musician Kamilya Jubran, finds Saleh back in more familiar territory. With Louca returning on production, the album draws on traditional modes while carrying a heavier emotional weight.
You know you’re listening to a hardcore album when the lyrics that most warm your heart are, “Sit the fuck down, get your guard down.” This intense desire for connection fuels Hammok’s latest album, When Does This Place Become Our Scene. Following their 2024 debut’s within-the-scene success, the Norwegian power trio now finds themselves on the verge of breaking internationally and expanding beyond the expected bounds of hardcore/punk/noise rock, leading to questions like, where are they and who’s with them? It’s good inspiration, as this album shows that the band thrives amidst raw, furious uncertainty.
Repeatedly asking “Is this us or am I alone?” over rampaging drums and guitars that will make you slam yourself into the nearest bystander,…
Much of the publicity surrounding Deadlights refers to it as Lauren Lakis’ debut, but surely her releases have been appearing fairly regularly since Ferocious in 2018, making this her fourth album? Whatever; the cover photo of Deadlights appears to be a messy, witty and possibly dark homage to the cover of the Cars’ 1978 debut.
There is sometimes a pop sensibility lurking at the heart of Lakis’ songs, but although powerful, it’s definitely not “power pop,” as its melodies are generally submerged in surging and ebbing distorted guitars. Deadlights is essentially a shoegaze record with some strong ‘90s alt-rock inflections, and much of it trudges along disconsolately with Lakis’ dreamy, reverb-masked voice riding the waves of guitar and…
As the years went by, Káryyn’s chilling masterclass of a debut album started to feel like a singularity. 2019’s The Quanta Series seemed like it might not only stand the test of time but be capable of bending it, blurring the past into futuristic art-pop. It took half a decade for the Armenian American singer and composer to follow it up with another record, the James Ford-produced EP Calm Kaoss!, which was preceded by a standalone single co-produced with Hudson Mohawke.
Along with Björk collaborator Marta Salogni on mixing duties, those names turn up throughout the credits of Káryyn’s long-awaited new album, like the UK alternative’s equivalent to the Weeknd enlisting Max Martin and Oneohtrix Point Never on Dawn FM.