Curated by Ricardo Villalobos, When There Is No Sun reflects on Afrofuturist icon Sun Ra’s influence on electronic music. The release (issued as a single CD or three 12″s, one of which includes bonus mixes) draws from the Sun Ra Arkestra album Living Sky, as well as My Words Are Music, an album of Sun Ra’s poetry recited by Saul Williams, Last Poet Abiodun Oyewole, TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, and others. Detroit techno collective Underground Resistance appears twice, both times with Williams, adding sparse but insistent beats to lyrics about natural blackness and cosmic waves of sound. Chez Damier and Ben Vedren also contribute two tracks based on Ra’s poetry, with “The Three Dimensions of Air” featuring lush kora playing along with restrained…
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Jess Weiss takes the shadowy intensity of her band Fear of Men deeper into chasms of dark synth pop with Pain Will Polish Me, the debut album under her solo guise, New German Cinema. While Fear of Men have incorporated electronics into their sound at times, the songs of Pain Will Polish Me are built almost exclusively around heavy synth bass, uneasy ambient pads, and programmed drum sounds, creating a foundation of Weiss’ songs that’s sharp and menacing while still making space for hooks. A perfect example of this tenuous balance is “I Become Heavy,” a track made up of tortured verses and exciting dance-pop choruses. Weiss’ ability to take the song from the dungeon-ready atmospheres of early Cure material to club-ready melodies at the flick of a switch is…
Includes 2 brand-new songs: “When You’re with Him” and “Before I Hung Your Picture On the Wall”.
Since the death of Johnny Cash, Rodney Crowell has assumed the crown as the King of Country Music, at least the Americana side of the genre. The 75-year-old former son-in-law of the Man in Black has a complete record of accomplishments and achievements as a singer, songwriter, and producer. Earlier this year, Willie Nelson put out a full-length album, Oh What a Beautiful World, which featured 12 songs written or co-written by Crowell over the past 50 years. What could top that? Well, Crowell’s not about to retire. He’s just released his 20th studio record, Airline Highway.
The new record reveals Crowell is still the master of diamonds and dirt, as he labeled his…
Before his career as a singer, songwriter, and recording artist took off, Luke Winslow-King spent several years supporting himself as a busker, both in the United States and Europe. Part of making a living playing on the streets is playing what people want to hear; maybe singing “Brown Eyed Girl” for the fifth time that day isn’t your favorite thing in the world, but if the guy with ten bucks in his hand wants to hear it, that’s what you play. Winslow-King has gone through plenty of changes since those days, and as he’s evolved from his early days playing traditional blues with a soulful accent, he’s opened himself to other sounds, and 2026’s Coast of Light is the work of a different Luke Winslow-King. While tracks like “Don’t Worry Your Mind,” “Shoot from the Hip” and…
…includes new tracks such as “song for tik tok” and “strange request” alongside “bedroom versions” of previous hits.
Hunny’s SPIRIT! finds them in a transitional place. The record has the same punky indie-rock sound as their earlier material. Lineup-wise, though, singer-guitarist Jason Yarger has essentially dismissed the rest of the band and is continuing as a solo project under the same name. Despite this, Hunny’s now-former drummer Joey Anderson plays drums on SPIRIT!, while the ex-bassist Kevin Grimmett serves as producer and is credited as co-writer on just over half of the tracks. It feels like this change must have been entirely amicable.
Yarger notes in the press materials that he’s happily married with a child, so he’s mostly…
The duo of Verity Susman and Matthew Simms don’t change the basics on the second MEMORIALS album, 2026’s All Clouds Bring Not Rain, but there are some welcome changes afoot. Recorded in a remote cabin in the French countryside, with the occasional excursion elsewhere to find a particular instrument, the record ironically sounds more expansive and less insular than their debut. Like that record, this is built around the sounds of experimental indie rock, space age pop, soundtrack music, left-field jazz, and progressive German rock of the ’70s. Unlike that record, here the duo come across much more focused and intent on delivering not just an array of fascinating sounds, but also some moments of melodic beauty and some real emotional punches.
After spending a few years exploring his gentler, more singer-songwritery side, Kyle Thomas moved back home to Vermont, dug out his old guitar and tape machine, and welcomed back King Tuff the rocker in all his gritty, grungy glory on 2026’s Moo. The first track — “Twisted on a Train” — is a call to arms of sorts, with live wire guitar riffs coiling around thumping bass and drums, then exploding into shards of shattered noise as Thomas lets loose and dashes away any remnants on the calm found on his previous album. Smalltown Stardust was truly a magical record, full of warmth and sweetness, but it makes sense that someone raised on rock like Thomas would want to break free of the chains of restraint. There are loads of gnarly guitars on the record, drums…
…include two live bonus tracks.
Call it a makeover, or at least a major reinvention of the Tedeschi Trucks Band sound. New management and the outside perspective of new producer Mike Elizondo, perhaps, account for their shift toward more radio-friendly, albeit less exploratory turf on their sixth studio album, Future Soul. That’s not to say they’ve lost their rooted grounding by any means. Arguably, this set of songs comprises their most fully rounded album to date. It comes close to that cliche of ‘all killer, no filler. In fact, there are only two mediocre tracks among the eleven. Many of the tracks have sing-along choruses, which will play well on the band’s upcoming tour. Some fans will miss the lengthy improvisatory solos in this set, but the band will likely bring those to…
They say timing is everything. The time to meet the right person. The right time to start over. Blink, and you might miss them. But is there ever really a perfect time? Or does timing just feel perfect when we’re finally ready to listen? The release of Full Circle at the first hint of spring feels almost too on the nose: an album about retreat and renewal arriving just as the world thaws out. For Tom Misch, timing does a lot for narrative work. After years of constant motion, his long-awaited second studio album captures the lightness of transformation and the undeniable bounce of realising you’re once more in bloom.
Once upon a time, Geography cemented him as a defining voice of the late-2010s bedroom producer wave. Everything felt easy. Since then,…
As the latest emo revival continues apace, and particularly as midwestern heroes of its second wave like American Football enter into whole new chapters, some of its more modern stalwarts continue to go from strength to strength. That would appear to be especially true of Philadelphia mainstays Tigers Jaw, as they enter into their third decade together with this scintillating eighth record. Over the years, they’ve alternated between lush, multi-layered sounds and rawer, noisier work; both sides of that divide are in evidence on this first album in five years, Lost on You.
There are poppier, more melodic moments – the standout ‘BREEZER’ is appropriately titled – as well as more reflective indie rockers that play like paeans to some of their forebears;…
Following the two-person effort Could Have Done Anything (2023), Charlotte Cornfield‘s sixth album, Hurts Like Hell, is a much more collaborative outing as well as her first for Merge and her first since becoming a mother. Not coincidentally (and despite its title), it’s a warm, touching set of songs that is still packed with her often profoundly intimate observations, but this time there’s a subtle shift toward gratitude and perseverance. The collaborators include producer Phil Weinrobe (Adrianne Lenker, Lonnie Holley) and a backing band consisting of Palehound’s El Kempner (guitar, vocals), Lake Street Dive’s Bridget Kearney (bass, vocals), and Wilder Maker’s Adam Brisbin (guitar, pedal steel) and Sean Mullins (drums). The album was recorded at Weinrobe’s…
Throughout his career José González has been a pacifying voice, delivering quiet, organically-made records that emphasize patience and humanity. He’s not particularly prolific, though when they arrive his albums tend to hit their mark — consistency, both in tone and quality, is one of his hallmarks. González rarely employs more than one or two guitars and the occasional second harmony, nor does he need to. His gentle, though commanding tenor and deft fingerpicked arrangements are enough to fill the rooms he creates. Understated as they are, his songs are also not without weight and his fifth album, Against the Dying of the Light, is his heaviest to date. It’s posed as a more outward-focused sequel to 2021’s Local Valley, his meditative fourth…
Since debuting as a bandleader in 2020, Nashville studio ace Spencer Cullum has continued to steer his music further and further from the country world where he makes his living. A seasoned pedal steel player will always have a job in Music City, but the first two albums in his Coin Collection trilogy revealed a more adventurous palette steeped in ’60s psychedelia and folk-rock from both sides of the Atlantic.
In 2025, he teamed up with Nashville outsiders Rich Ruth and Sean Thompsonto form Shrunken Elvis, a sleek amalgam of ambient post-rock and jazz fusion that further emphasized his range as a musician. On his third and final record of the Coin Collection trilogy, Cullum presents a quieter, more pastoral style that heavily favors…
It’s instructive that The Twilight Sad’s first album since reducing to founding duo James Graham and Andy MacFarlane yields the most powerful version of the band’s cathartic soundworld. Perhaps the subject matter helped: It’s The Long Goodbye documents Graham losing his mother to dementia while simultaneously becoming a father, a real-life crossroads detailed with unsettling candour from the first line of the opening song (“And we slowly watch you go”).
To counterpoint the singer’s mournful Scots folk timbre, MacFarlane’s euphoric post-punk schemes roughen the shiny patina of 2019’s It Won’t Be Like This All the Time for a transcendent blend of New Order, My Bloody Valentine and, inevitably, The Cure. He’s previously covered…
…features the original album plus ‘Live at Third Man Records’, a 10-song live album.
On his debut for Columbia Records, Pete Yorn wears his heart on his sleeve like Ryan Adams, sings in a husky croon similar to Jakob Dylan, and earnestly plays into passion and emotion like Jeff Buckley. The year 2001 belonged to Yorn, and his critical praise was not unwarranted, with Musicforthemorningafter marking the stunning beginning of a long, varied career. It’s a raw selection of heartland and American trad rock, yet Yorn’s love for Brit-pop is also quite evident, with several breezy acoustic-based songs (“Sense,” “Simonize”) resembling threads of the Smiths. Yorn’s voice may crack at points, but it contributes to the dusty feeling of the entire…
As Pan•American, ambient musician Mark Nelson has gradually shifted through different phases of style and sound while maintaining the same emotional core of muted longing. Nelson was playing in the equally atmospheric band Labradford when he launched Pan•American in the late ‘90s, first exploring dark and dubby electronic landscapes and slowly expanding into more beat-focused pieces and then an Americana reading of his spacious ambience. Fly the Ocean in a Silver Plane is another shift for the project, moving away from the high and lonesome acoustic touches of his 2010s and early-2020s output into something that’s at once more playful and more serious. The instrumentation takes different forms over the course of the ten-track album.
Forty years on and the seismic shift that was 5150 – Van Halen’s first album with Sammy Hagar replacing David Lee Roth and also my first introduction to the band still detonates with a force that few records in the hard rock canon can match.
The 2026 expanded edition, remastered directly from the original master tapes and overseen by the band’s longtime engineer Donn Landee, doesn’t seek to reinvent one of the most commercially dominant albums of 1986, but seeks to honour it, warts and all, and in doing so reveals just how staggeringly alive this record remains.
What the expanded edition offers beyond an outstanding remaster is a genuinely comprehensive document of the album and its era. CD2 gathers the singles campaign in full – edited versions…
While this is technically a Jon Anderson solo album, it’s actually a collaborative effort, with Anderson working alongside several other musicians who’ve collectively put together the songs on Survival & Other Stories.
The album came about after Anderson placed an ad on his website inviting other musicians to get involved, and ultimately eight different musicians from across the globe contributed, done by file sharing across the net, sending MP3 samples while Anderson performed the songs.
Whether this was because Anderson had been running on empty after coming through a debilitating illness, which saw him come close to checking out, or because he felt the need for fresh inspiration is unknown.
Over a two-decade career, Robyn has made some of pop’s most propulsive, bulletproof bangers – not least ‘Dancing On My Own’, an eternal, iconic anthem about forging your own path out of heartbreak. On her ninth album Sexistential, though, we find her unmoored and questioning, the end of a long-term relationship having catalysed the explosion of everything she thought she knew about love, life, sexuality, motherhood and more besides. Robyn invites us to journey with her through the unravelling. With a deceptively purposeful strut that evokes the bionic pop of ‘Body Talk’, opening track ‘Really Real’ marches us into an ambivalent sex scene – “You’re mid-performance, I’m planning my escape… I want to swallow but it ain’t the same” – that…
Bassist Miroslav Vitous made his bones in the late ’60s and early ’70s as both player and composer for the original lineup of Weather Report, not to mention as a major contributor to pianist Chick Corea’s landmark trio album Now He Sings, Now He Sobs. But he’s been a leader on his own albums for ECM since the late seventies, and he’s never rested on any laurels in doing it. Thus Mountain Call, which combines three different sets of players into a remarkable program that threads the needle between jazz and classical musics.
Vitous opens the album with a four-song mini-set featuring duets with late clarinetist Michel Portal that sound like two old friends having a truly interesting conversation – interesting enough that more of its appear throughout…