After two intense albums with freewheeling drummer Malcom Catto on board, Little Barrie turn down the heat on 2026’s Gravity Freeze. The pairing with Catto seemed to bring out something extra in guitarist Barry Cadogan and bassist Lewis Wharton, pushing them to the extremes of their sound. The funk got funkier, the edges got sharper, and the needle was continually buried in the red. Now with Catto pursuing other avenues and his replacement Tony Coote in place, the band pull back from the extremes to settle into a more contemplative, restrained sound. The trio spend most of the album dug deeply into low slung grooves that strut and swagger with well-earned confidence. Coote and Wharton sound so locked together it’s like they…
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Between their 2021 debut full-length In This Town and 2025’s Whispers in the Speed Machine, Ohio band The Laughing Chimes moved from a shiny, jangly type of pop into slightly darker waters by adding a post-punk edge to their sound. Between these two albums, however, the band was working on new material that was a little closer to the sunny pop of their earlier work, demo’ing song ideas on cassette four-track.
Behind Your Blue Fields collects some of these lo-fi sketches from this in-between period, offering documentation of their development from the vantage point of insulated home recordings and exploring what it might have been like if these happier songs had been worked through to completion for their second album.
A band formed in London in the mid-2000s, The Early Years have garnered critical acclaim as well as a devoted fan base despite a release schedule that has brought albums in only 2006, 2016, and now in 2026. This acclaim can be explained not only by an intangible coolness but by their artful, experimental approach to music that has navigated and combined everything from raw proto-punk and Krautrock to space rock and the sophisticated artistry of post-1986 Talk Talk.
For their third album, Modern Moonlight, the four-piece looked to inspirations including John Cage and Steve Reich, Conny Plank and Georgio Moroder, David Byrne, Radiohead, and Brian Eno and David Bowie. The influence of the latter two is immediately apparent on opening track…
Since his last record, Ben Chapman got married and had a kid, so his perspective as a songwriter has naturally pivoted to his new role in the world. And while his music is still rooted in an inspired mix of country guitar picking and honky-tonk funk, lyrically, Feet On Fire travels into new territory for Chapman as he searches for stability after a life lived on the road. That new direction is laid out on the opening track, “Everything’s Different,” with an organ leading the way before Chapman’s deep, distinctive Southern drawl kicks in.
“Out in the Country” is a laid-back, delicately strummed ode to carefree living outside the city that would have fit nicely alongside any of the tracks on his first two records. Lyrically, it’s not treading any new ground,…
Thomas Dollbaum is a songwriter who values atmosphere above all else. His voice is loamy and deep, the dissipating smoke in a room right after you’ve blown out a candle, and it will be familiar to anyone who’s spent time with the road-trip elegies of Damien Jurado or the art-folk incantations of Richard Buckner. On his second album, Birds of Paradise, the Florida-born, Louisiana-based songwriter is accompanied by MJ Lenderman on drums, occasional guitar, and backing vocals, which helps Dollbaum’s rootsy, heartland rock feel part of a larger conversation in modern indie music, and his lyrics about “rambling through the pines” and “driving through the early morning” help it fit squarely into our most immediate associations with Americana as a genre and aesthetic.
Americans are increasingly finding themselves stuck behind slamming doors separating them from other cultures and ideas. Guitarist Marisa Anderson’s efforts to counter our current sociopolitical paradigm are all about underlining the crucial, often ignored difference between un-American and anti-American. The latter defines a hostile outsider or inside agitator, but the former simply identifies whatever lies outside our national experience. And as this project makes clear, that’s something to be sought after.
In 1952, Folkways Records released quirky artistic polymath Harry Smith’s incalculably influential Anthology of American Folk Music. The collection’s rare folk, gospel, blues, and country recordings revealed to America…
Bruce Springsteen brought his “Land of Hope and Dreams” rock and resistance tour to President Donald Trump’s backyard on April 23 with a plea to unite in “choosing hope over fear.”
In a preamble to the three-hour concert, held a day before Trump is to arrive in Palm Beach for his 26th visit this term, Springsteen asked attendees to pray for U.S. military personnel in harm’s way.
“The Boss” then launched into a scathing indictment of the president, who just this month called the Hall of Fame rocker and music legend a “total loser” and “not a talented guy.”
Springsteen blistered the second Trump administration as “corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless” as the sold-out crowd drowned him out with boisterous cheers.
In 2025’s film Dreaming of You, The Coral looked back a quarter-century at the creation of their Mercury Prize-nominated debut album. “It’s the sound of kids with their imaginations cracked open, allowed to run free,” offered James Skelly. “When you capture that, that can’t really be beaten,” added Nick Power. “You never get that again.” Recognising that the past is indeed a foreign country but impossible to escape has been a theme throughout the band’s lifespan, and the documentary process apparently brought this conundrum to the fore when subsequently making this thirteenth Coral album: consciously or otherwise, 388 summons the sounds that first cracked those impressionable teenage heads.
After three more or less conceptual albums…
A rare and never before released live performance by Chet Baker and his European quartet, including his long -term associate Nicola Stilo on flute and guitar. Recorded in Ferrara, Italy on the 9th of December 1987, just five months before Chet’s passing, this live performance finds the legendary trumpeter at his creative and performance best and captured in sound quality more akin to a studio session. Captured in superb sound quality, this 2CD set in deluxe digipak presentation includes an extensive booklet containing liner notes and rare photographs. As a first-time release recording, it will, undoubtedly, be much sought after by jazz collectors generally and the legions of Chet Baker fans in particular. Recorded live by Gianni Grassilli on the December 1987, Ferrara, Teatro Estense.
The Irish grunge-pop act, fronted by Dolores O’Riordan, broke on to the scene in October 1992 with their debut single ‘Dreams’, which peaked at No 27 in the UK chart and was swiftly followed by ‘Linger’ (No 14). The singles helped their debut album Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? to (ahem) linger around the chart for over a year, eventually selling over half a million in the UK. Meanwhile, they became alt-rock stars in the US, with the album selling over five million. The new “33rd anniversary deluxe edition” comes in a variety of physical formats. Fans who already have the 2018 super deluxe edition of the album might be forgiven for feeling underwhelmed – that version added early demos, 1990’s Uncertain EP, B-sides and a disc full of live tracks and radio sessions.
For his second solo album, Blue Morpho, Ed O’Brien has teamed up with several excellent collaborators, notably Paul Epworth and Dave Okumu, who take the Radiohead guitarist into the new musical vistas that the narrative around the album indicate he was seeking. Finding himself seeking a new purpose and a sense of spiritual connection at a new phase in his life, the opportunity to painstakingly create Blue Morpho during sessions in Wales seems to have come at the perfect time for him. The sense of freedom and creativity on the one hand and sheer songwriting and performance quality on the other shines through throughout the record. This is at least the equal of Radiohead’s recent output and perhaps more pertinently firmly establishes O’Brien as a solo artist in his own right.
Last year, Third Man Records released the reissue of Detroit’s unheralded songwriting genius, Ted Lucas’ 1975 cult classic self-titled album Ted Lucas (OM), as part of an ambitious archival campaign intent on spreading the open secret of Lucas’s genius and putting an end to his unfair anonymity.
Third Man Records released Images of Life, a career-spanning, 3xLP retrospective boxset illuminating the staggering breadth and depth of Lucas’ work, out May 22nd. Disc one, Strange Mysterious Sounds (1965-1970), highlights Lucas’ flirtation with psychedelic major label clout via his bands the Spike Drivers, the Misty Wizards and the Horny Toads. Disc two, Rainy Days (1970-1974) contains the solo acoustic warmth and charm most similar to the music found on his self-titled album.
How do you make a documentary film about a man who was also a myth? About a musician who was more than a musician? About someone who asked us to trust our intuition more than our rational minds? This double LP contains the entire soundtrack to the accompanying PBS documentary! Includes liner notes from executive producer Bradford Smith about the making of Sun Ra: Do The Impossible, interviews from members of the Arkestra and a BluRay DVD of the doc!
Firelight assembled an incredibly talented team headed by Director/Producer Christine Turner, and six years later in June of 2025, our documentary, Sun Ra: Do The Impossible had its world premiere at the Tribeca International Film Festival. Our goal was to make a film…
Bleachers return with their latest album everyone for ten minutes, continuing the project’s evolution under the direction of acclaimed singer, songwriter, musician, and producer Jack Antonoff, an eleven-time Grammy Award winner. Over the past decade, Bleachers have cultivated a passionate global fanbase, celebrated for high-energy live performances and a strong sense of connection with their audience.
everyone for ten minutes is the inevitable culmination of a lifetime of devotion to bands for the six members of Bleachers and, ultimately, finds each one at their creative peak. Despite the moments where it briefly peers into darkness, it’s essentially an optimistic record that feels lovestruck and hopeful, leaping from…
What would happen if one were to mix LSD with fundamentalist Christianity? Hammock‘s Marc Byrd learned the answer when watching the moonrise and mistaking it for the apocalypse. Looking back, Byrd writes of “letting go of toxic shame and bad religion, while holding onto what is good, beautiful and true.” Rather than lamenting the delayed rapture, he writes, “Seeing and experiencing a moonrise is a miracle in itself.”
The Second Coming Was a Moonrise reimagines Christianity as a religion of seeking and sometimes finding, in which beauty possesses more power than dogma. The fact that Byrd references Philippians 4:8 in his description – and that by adding ten guests, he and Andrew Thompson end up with a group the same size…
…features five bonus tracks.
On their third LP, Down in Heaven, Twin Peaks hang on to their rough-and-raw disposition while drawing sonic inspiration from favorite albums of 1968, including, per press materials, works by the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, and the Beatles.
Bolstered throughout the album by the addition of Wild Onion co-producer Colin Croom to the lineup on keyboards (notably organ), the era, if not a specific year, is resurrected from the moment the needle hits vinyl with the sassy, T. Rex-grooving opener “Walk to the One You Love.” Parts of the record capture the more reflective tone associated with the late ’60s, such as the regretful, even-tempered “Holding Roses” and the brass-embellished “Lolisa,” which could…
Future Islands are an emotionally charged synth pop group, known for their dexterous melodic touch, stately momentum and impassioned delivery. Over the past twenty years they have travelled a rare arc, from promising newcomers to best-kept secret, from cult favourites to heroes of the genre. As they reach this remarkable milestone, they resist the obvious move.
Instead of a ‘best-of’ compilation victory lap, Future Islands present From a Hole in the Floor to a Fountain of Youth – an immediate and accessible collection – half of which has never appeared on streaming services – comprising alternate hits, rarities, and fan favourites that showcase the band’s palette and bring further colour to their uniquely universal appeal.
Formed in Brooklyn at the end of 2006, but now based in North Carolina, Yarn tend to lean towards the southern rock element of americana. The band started with a weekly Monday night residency at Kenny’s Castaways on Bleecker Street in New York’s Greenwich Village, a place that previously hosted up-and-coming local acts such as Patti Smith, the New York Dolls, and Bruce Springsteen.
Although it has changed at times during the band’s 20-year existence, Yarn’s line-up is, band founding member, songwriter, lead vocalist and guitarist Blake Christiana (also co-producer), a rhythm section of bass player Rick Bugel and Robert Bonhomme on drums and, completing the line-up is Andy Thomas on lead guitar and vocals.
Saturday Night Sermon was recorded at…
The MerKaBa Brotherhood are Roman Norfleet (The Cosmic Tones Research Trio, Be Present Art Group) and Andre Raiah (Brown Calvin of Brown Calculus, Be Present Art Group).
If you copped Norfleet’s debut album, 2023’s Mississippi-released Roman Norfleet and Be Present Art Group, you’ll know broadly what to expect here. In fact, Raiah showed up on that album too playing keys, prompting the duo to focus and expand their collaboration. So, drawing from “esoteric texts, sacred imagery, and mystic thought” they strip down the bluster and follow their own rhythm, layering tape-fucked bells and chimes with circuitous Rhodes repetitions, marrying their geometric improvisations with effervescent soundscapes and psychedelic FX.
It’s fitting that this terrific compilation opens with the sound of people happily hanging out (on ‘Boustan El Achaar’) because Yassine Nana grew up in one of Mauritania’s most prestigious music families and was almost always surrounded by his siblings, taking them with him as he travelled to Paris and Rabat, this new formation of the family orchestra heading to studios beyond their home in Nouakchott.
With Yassine on lead vocals, and his brothers Mouftah and Ali and sisters Mouna and Djamila playing alongside, the eight tracks on Modern Pop from Mauritania (1984–1989) unfurl like a flag that stakes a claim for the legacy of this northwest African artist, including his role in shaping what would be the start of desert blues.