Ramshackle Swedish folk, medieval jam sessions, home-spun hymns recorded straight to tape, and albums named after revolutionary communist bands: The world of Gustaf Dicksson’s musical project Blod may seem unbearably esoteric. But a little context helps; Dicksson is a spiritual descendant of Swedish Progg movement of the 1960s and ’70s — not to be confused with prog rock, it was a left-wing, anti-commercial music movement that encompassed a wide range of styles, from psych-rock bands to nationally beloved singer-songwriters. Blod is indebted to the mossier, more experimental ends of the movement, including bands like Träd, Gräs & Stenar. This is the anti-capitalist, DIY heritage which Discreet Music — the record store and label…
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Sunflower is the debut album of German/British artist Paul Holland. It features a number of very enjoyable characteristics, from West Coast soft rock to out-and-out folk, via some quite interesting world music. Above all, it has a very relaxed and personal feel to it, making it the perfect sound for relaxing in the sunshine.
It opens with a rocky number, ‘Clouds of Haze’, which jogs along very nicely indeed, with a live feel about it. The track explores the on/off nature of some relationships and certainly encourages the listener to explore the rest of the album, which tends to mellow out as it goes along.
It’s followed by a slower, jazzier track, ‘Feels Right’, which undoubtedly highlights his ability as an astute, talented songwriter.
If you were going to go looking for rough but melodic bands, you might very well start in Ohio. That’s where the granddaddy of them all — Guided by Voices — got its start, not to mention the Greenhornes, New Bomb Turks, Times New Viking, Cloud Nothings and many, many others. There’s something about flat, fertile, churchy Ohio that encourages rebellion, even oddity — remember Pere Ubu and Devo came from here. But there’s also a midwestern full-hearted-ness in even the most confrontational of bands. There’s ragged soul in ragged riffs here, and if you want evidence, look no further than Smug Brothers.
Smug Brothers, out of Dayton, have been at it for two decades, garnering modest success but an engaging catalogue. The band formed…
In the glory days of Italy’s library music session scene, Giancarlo Barigozzi and his cohorts were like Milan’s answer to L.A.’s legendary Wrecking Crew — if the latter were cutting one-size-fits-all soundtrack music for film and TV licensing. One main difference is that The Wrecking Crew never got to put their names on the records.
Sax/flute wizard Barigozzi and his peers worked on tons of sessions — and not just library music. They would get the call to come play when American jazz heavyweights blew through Italy, be it Joe Venuti or Gerry Mulligan. But in the wide-ranging world of library sessions, Barigozzi could wail in a genre-agnostic way, whether he was diving into electroacoustic experimentalism, chamber-jazz impressionism, early-adopter…
Americana singer-songwriter Caleb Caudle enters a significant new chapter with his seventh studio album, Heavy Thrill. Arriving at a time of profound personal and artistic transition, the record was created as Caudle and his wife prepared to welcome their first child. It also marks his first venture as a self-producer, giving the North Carolina native complete creative control over the project. Recorded at the legendary Cash Cabin Studio in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and later mixed by renowned engineer Jacquire King and mastered by Pete Lyman, the album reflects both growth and self-discovery.
Across its ten songs, Heavy Thrill explores themes of ageing, uncertainty, perseverance, and the feeling of being an outsider…
Dea Matrona have returned to the limelight with their sophomore album Hate That I Care. Written, self-recorded and self-produced entirely on the road, this 12-track body of work vocalises the 10-year history of Mollie McGinn and Orláith Forsythe – from busking on the streets of Belfast to opening for The Beaches, and every story in between. Hate That I Care represents the intrusive thoughts that haunt every listener; the self-reflection, the self-assessment and the choice to stay silent or do something with that self.
Immediately, the feeling of nostalgia is ignited. The beauty in this album is the pure ’80s rock and alternative sound at the core of every song, reminding listeners of The Cranberries or Fleetwood Mac. The title track, ‘Hate That…
Jeff Goldblum is thrilled to present Night Blooms, the companion album to 2025’s Top 10 (and Jazz No.1) record ‘Still Blooming’.
Hot on the heels of Goldblum’s second turn as the Wizard in Wicked: For Good (Universal), one of Hollywood’s most beloved figures brings us a suite of shimmering standards and star-studded new collaborations. Starring in a major screen musical has deepened his lifelong love of playing piano and singing, helping to turn a 30-year passion project into a successful parallel career.
‘Night Blooms’ explores the musical affinities Goldblum developed on set with Wicked co-stars, including Cynthia Erivo, while deepening new relationships with singing sensation Charlie Puth, the British artist dodie…
Conceived as a series of portraits inspired by his personal encounters, Alter Ego, released by Decca, marks a new direction in the discography of Thibault Cauvin. Extending the ideas of his eponymous book and framed as a kind of sonic travel diary, the album features eleven original pieces, each tied to a figure who left a lasting impression during his journeys. Far removed from the more flamboyant character of his previous works, Cauvin here turns toward a stripped down form of introspection, inviting the listener into a more private, inward world over the course of a 39-minute program.
The album opens with Sabbir and Constanza, two pieces that immediately establish an accessible musical language built on short motifs…
Off Course, the new Osees record, is only five tracks, but some of them are long, and Dwyer is calling it an album. It certainly takes you on a journey the way good albums do. The songs are playful, funky, and hallucinatory in a way that reminds me how much King Gizzard owes to this crew.
Dwyer says it emerged from endless jam sessions, a method the Osees hadn’t employed for a while: We went back to an older method of writing for this one. We jammed and jammed and jammed. I took the tapes home and ironed out some mutant tunes. We went back into the studio and burned them to tape live and then I took it home to Stu-Stu-Studio and did the vocals and brought in Tom Dolas & Brigid Dawson to put the finish on…
There is something deceptive about The Chauffeur. On first listen, REXEN — Michael Rexen — sounds like a textbook introspective acoustic singer-songwriter. That melancholy, low-key reflectiveness is real enough, but it’s only a small part of what’s going on. This is the work of a restless maverick, made with a strong supporting cast (John Parish handles the mix), the variety in his vocal delivery alone is surprisingly unexpected. REXEN swings from a deep, intoxicated baritone croon to a disorienting high register so innocent it sounds like he’s impersonating a child. On ‘You’ve Got It All Wrong’ his singing tips into a wild, suffering howl, the kind John Lennon let loose on his first solo album; while on ‘M. Romance’ he’s a smooth lounge crooner in repose.
By 1977, Tony Rice had already established a distinct voice within bluegrass. His guitar playing-precise, fluid, and rhythmically grounded-drew from the tradition while introducing a broader musical vocabulary. His self-titled third album arrived at a moment when that approach was beginning to take clearer shape.
Originally released in 1977, Tony Rice brought together a group of musicians working at a similar edge of the genre. Featuring collaborators including David Grisman, J.D. Crowe, and Jerry Douglas, the album moves between traditional material and contemporary compositions, balancing established forms with a more open, ensemble-driven sound. The album returns June 5, 2026, newly remastered from the original tapes.
…featuring a previously unreleased demo, alternate versions of much-loved album favorites and a cover from the sessions for their seminal debut album.
Light Upon the Lake is the moseying debut album of Whitney, a septet built around the core songwriting team of Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek, both formerly of Smith Westerns. Often surprisingly intimate for a seven-piece, the group makes subtle use of instrumentation like brass and strings to flesh out without symphonizing their country-tinged indie pop.
The melancholy opener, “No Woman,” begins with cushiony keyboards and a short brass fanfare before Ehrlich — who doubles as the band’s lead singer and drummer — introduces his misty, double-tracked falsetto. He appears…
…four new tracks: new single ‘Should’ve Known Better’ joins unreleased songs ‘Perfect 10’ and ‘Hypothetical’, plus an acoustic ‘Lesbian of the Year’.
The Beaches have been slingshotted to a level of fame seen by few bands this side of the border, with their 2023 smash “Blame Brett” now sitting pretty at well over a hundred million streams on Spotify alone. They’ve been on the cover of Exclaim! and featured on the Freakier Friday soundtrack, as well as playing prestigious festivals and exponentially larger shows — stateside and beyond. The Toronto-based four-piece undeniably have more eyes on them than ever for the release of their third studio album, No Hard Feelings.
At 11 tracks, No Hard Feelings is full of…
Fitz and the Tantrums return with Man on The Moon (The Galaxy Edition), the deluxe version of their sixth studio album. The release includes three new tracks, highlighted by the recently released single “Good Morning California.” Last year’s standard version of Man on The Moon was met with enthusiastic praise from Rolling Stone, Billboard, and more, and supported by a massive 31-city headline tour across North America. Bringing their infectious live show to the small screen, Fitz and the Tantrums performed the album’s lead single and title track on national television with high-profile appearances on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Man on The Moon Tour continues this summer alongside various festival stops and a pair of arena dates opening for Zac Brown Band.
Brent Cobb is pulling the curtain back on the songwriting that has defined his career on his new acoustic album Live a Song, Write a Memory, Vol. 1.
Recorded at Capricorn Studios, the self-produced album captures every performance live and in a single take, and spans songs from across his catalog, including selections from the Grammy-nominated Shine on Rainy Day, fan favorites from Providence Canyon and No Place Left to Leave, and cuts made famous by other artists. Songs like “Come Home Soon” and “Country Bound” revisit defining moments in Cobb’s journey, while outside cuts like “Tailgate Blues” recorded by Luke Bryan and “Bar, Guitar and a Honky Tonk Crowd” by Whiskey Myers are brought back to the writer’s chair where they began.
Kosmiche krautrock mainstay Harald Grosskopf operates at full wingspan on a new raft of astral-planing arps and motorik pulses laced with wistful extended melodies and atmospheric sleaze, together with a titular nod to Miles Davis’hinting at the album’s underlying theme: the productive friction between man and machine.
“For the uninitiated, Grosskopf’s career spans six decades of German music history. From early beat groups in Hildesheim, through Krautrock propulsion with Wallenstein, cosmic explorations alongside Ashra, and defining work with Klaus Schulze, he has consistently pushed rhythm into evolving technological contexts. His 1980 solo debut Synthesist, previously reissued on Bureau B, helped establish a sequencer-driven…
Expanded reissue of the cult 1991 Skooshny compilation, now collecting all twenty-one of the LA power-pop trio’s recordings from 1971 to 1981 including four tracks new to this edition.
Skooshny is an L.A.-based psych-folk-pop trio who originally came together in 1971, a time that singer/guitarist Mark Breyer later said was “too late for the Byrds, too early for R.E.M.” Breyer and drummer David Winogrond had been in a Chicago-area trio, Brevity, before moving to L.A. in the early ’70s to try their luck on the West Coast. They met guitarist/keyboardist Bruce Wagner after placing an ad in a music publication and he continued to be an on-again/off-again member. Rehearsals proved to be tough to organize, however, as none of the three had a car and relied on public…
It seems obvious and trite to say that Liz Lawrence‘s fifth album was one that she should never have had to write. The story behind Vespers is a heartbreaking one – in the summer of 2024, Lawrence’s sister Jessie suddenly died following an accident while on holiday in Ireland. For the next few months, Lawrence was understandably plunged into a kind of creative inertia, until six months later, the songs for Vespers were written over a period of three weeks.
The result is an album that couldn’t be more different to Lawrence’s last record – the funk-pop behemoth that was Peanuts – but one that’s likely to stand as one of the most beautiful, affecting and life-affirming records you’ll hear all year. As grief is, sadly, the most universal of…
Lithic‘s cover photo portrays Laura Misch from behind standing in the mouth of a cave, facing the light, she holds stones in her hands. It’s thematically perfect for the music offered here. This release follows a loose line by the London-based saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, producer, singer/songwriter that began with 2023’s album Sample the Sky with music that seemingly streamed from the clouds, while its acoustic follow-up, 2024’s Sample of Earth, focused on myriad ways in which geology and earth science influence her work. Lithic is deeper still. It’s informed by the elements, rock formations, and deep time: the concept of geological and evolutionary spans that reach back billions of years to Earth’s formation, offering a temporal framework…
From the start of her career, Jackie De Shannon was a great singer, with a strong instrument and a fine sense of how to invest her performances with emotion and nuance. However, DeShannon has said more than once that Liberty, the label that she was signed to through the 1960s, was more interested in her as a songwriter than a performer (she’d already penned a hit for Brenda Lee, “Alone With You”). So it was a real paradox that when she recorded her first LP in 1963, Liberty insisted that she record a set of covers rather than her own material. (The album included three tracks by Bob Dylan, only months after the release of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, though the label turned down her suggestion to cut a full album of his work.) DeShannon’s debut was…