Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and guitarist Trey Hensley has officially released his solo studio album Can’t Outrun The Blues via Pinecastle Records. The 10-track collection marks a major milestone in Hensley’s solo career and features an impressive lineup of collaborators including Molly Tuttle, Vince Gill, Steve Wariner, and the legendary Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.
Produced by renowned hitmaker Brent Maher, known for his work with artists such as The Judds, Kenny Rogers, and Merle Haggard, Can’t Outrun The Blues showcases Hensley’s signature blend of fiery guitar playing and powerful vocals. The album seamlessly fuses Bluegrass, Americana, and traditional Country influences into a cohesive and energetic project that highlights both his…
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Doo Dah Nean is an entirely characteristic release from La Musica records, the murky Japanese underground cassette label that’s been around since the ‘90s, occasionally putting out sonically debased bootlegs of artists’ work to make them fit with the noise aesthetic of label founder Asahito Nanjo. Nean was a mysterious trio, consisting of Naoko (vocals), Yui (bass/electronics) and Non (drums) and this was their only album, released in 1996. Few people, least of all Nean themselves, can have expected a reissue on limited-edition vinyl in a gatefold sleeve 20 years later, but here it is, and it’s so eccentric, such an acquired taste – though not an inaccessible one, by the standards of Japanese underground music – that it’s guaranteed to sell out quickly.
The Environment series originally began as an archive of previously unreleased recordings but Environment Five features thirteen all new songs recorded in the first half of 2014. It includes appearances from Daniel Pemberton (BAFTA nominated / Ivor Novello winning composer), Raven Bush (Syd Arthur) and Riz Maslen (Neotropic).
Environment Five continues the conceptual journey of the Environment series by The Future Sound of London, but this installment stands apart in several important ways. While earlier releases in the series often drew from the duo’s vast archive of unreleased material, Environment Five presents thirteen entirely new compositions recorded during the first half of 2014. The result feels less like a retrospective and more like a fully formed…
Music in Continuous Motion, Bill Orcutt’s latest entry in his 21st-century repertoire of quartet guitar music, pointedly steps away from the cut-and-paste constructivism of Music for Four Guitars into a sonic stratum that’s yearningly melodic, resolutely human, and built for performance. Conceived for a 2026 NYC concert, Music in Continuous Motion shares the concision of its predecessor – but rather than the discrete, mechanistic precision of Music for Four Guitars, the tracks on Music in Continuous Motion unify – each song weaving four gleaming threads into the warp and weft of an evolving, complex texture that employs simple, repeating motifs to build new melodies from counterpoint itself. It accomplishes this in the most efficient manner possible…
Released on handsome red splatter vinyl for its 45th birthday, the 1981 debut by Edinburgh’s finest has lost none of its ferocity with the passing of time and is as divisive now as it was back then. A vital, hardcore-infused re-statement of the uncompromising principles of 1977 or the retrograde acme of cliched and cartoonish punk? Neither point of view is without its merits.
In 1981, there were plenty of reasons to believe that UK punk was indeed dead. Sid, who was punk, was dead while his former colleague John Lydon was releasing experimental records like The Flowers of Romance. The Clash were making funky pop singles and the Damned goth pop ones; even stalwarts Sham 69 had split after the lamentable The Game. Meanwhile, Wattie Buchan…
On Spun, their first full-length release since 2021’s Hideaway, Wavves returns to their sun-scorched roots — only this time, the distortion is a little cleaner, the tone a little more introspective, and the chaos just slightly more contained.
Clocking in at just under 35 minutes, the album is a beach-punk time capsule that picks up familiar threads from King of the Beach and You’re Welcome, but never quite reaches the spark that made those records feel so vital.
The record opens with the title track, “Spun,” which lands squarely in Wavves’ sweet spot with sun-drenched guitar riffs, bratty hooks, and a chorus that feels tailor-made for a sweaty dive bar sing-along. It’s clear from the jump that this album owes a debt to both the Beach Boys…
For Comet Gain, the 2020s have been a decade of consolidation so far. Their recent output on Tapete is a combination of new material and the wider distribution of their older albums, none of which ever got the fair shake they should have from their contemporary audience. Of those, City Fallen Leaves may be the most crucial in their discography, as it separates and clearly identifies two eras of the band. While prior albums found Comet Gain indulging in equal parts twee melodicism and indie-rock fuzz & scuzz, City Fallen Leaves marks where they began to leave the scuzz behind. Yet, despite cleaning up their act, the band don’t completely abandon the depth that their songwriting always had.
Anyone familiar with later-period Comet Gain…
“Hypnosis Tapes” opens with a vacuum cleaner played in reverse — an inside joke, apparently — before the fuzzy guitars and humming synths layer in, stacking blips and pockets of sound until you realize you’ve stopped paying attention to anything else. Mute Swan named the opening track appropriately. It immediately puts you into a trance.
That pull defines Skin Slip, the Tucson band’s sophomore album and the final recorded work of founding guitarist Thom Sloane, who passed in 2024. Frontman Mike Barnett has said these are their best songs, Sloane’s best playing. He’s not overselling it. The album was recorded before Sloane’s death, and it sounds like a band locked in — joyfully testing how far their sound can stretch and change shape without losing their identity.
Pieces for Broken Piano turns a weather‑wrecked 1916 Gebrüder Stingl grand into an accidental “prepared” instrument, as Miroslav Beinhauer navigates new works by Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Milan Knížák, Gordon Monahan, Elliott Sharp, Milan Gustar and Yoon‑Ji Lee written specifically for its fractured voice.
At the centre of Pieces for Broken Piano lies a single, stubborn object: a 1916 Gebrüder Stingl grand that has been left to the weather until it could no longer be tuned, its action compromised, many of its keys only partially functioning, some not responding at all. By 2021 the instrument had effectively drifted out of standard pianistic usefulness, living outdoors in a garden, exposed to sun and rain. Rather than writing…
Walter Smith III returns to his lean, yet endlessly playful trio concept with 2026’s Twio, Vol. 2. A follow-up to 2018’s Twio that introduced the chordless line-up, Vol. 2 finds the tenor saxophonist leading two different trios.
The first features close associates bassist Joe Sanders and drummer Kendrick Scott. The second finds Sanders graciously stepping aside for legendary bassist Ron Carter, a longtime hero of Smith’s. Also on board for several tunes is another of Smith’s heroes, fellow tenor saxophone titan Branford Marsalis. Part of the fun of the Twio idea is that Smith, tethered only to the four-string harmonies of the bass, can essentially push the group in any direction. It’s a sound that takes direct inspiration from the classic…
Quiet Fire is the first Dave Stapleton solo album since Flight in 2012.
Hardly inactive, he runs Edition Records, the influential 21st century label he founded. He is also a member of Slowly Rolling Camera, the Cardiff-based trio globally recognized for their unique brand of “jazz hop,” which melds modern jazz, trip-hop, and electronic music. His collaborators on Quiet Fire include alto saxophonist Olga Amelchenko, trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer, bassist Jon Goode, Slowly Rolling Camera drummer Elliott Bennett, guitarists Tara Cunningham and Stuart McCallum, and violinist Victoria Stapleton (Astri Strings). The set was mixed by Deri Roberts, who is also a member of Slowly Rolling Camera.
The title-track opener marks the album’s…
Saputjiji, the new album from Tanya Tagaq, opens with a series of blood-curdling screams. “Fuck war,” she bellows, over and over, delivering each word with the seismic force of an Arctic cryoseism. Tagaq’s paroxysm of fury is brutally cathartic — a vicious rebuke to the widespread moral apathy and cowardice of our current moment, from tepid protest songs to mealy-mouthed pleas to keep politics out of art. As missiles rain death from the sky across the Middle East, her words are a galvanizing blast of icy wind, stinging our eyes and forcing them to adjust their focus.
This is, of course, completely on brand for Taqag, a multidisciplinary Inuk artist whose work has always been grounded in radical politics, and whose art has always coursed with…
…featuring four exclusive bonus songs.
Golden Mirrors (The Uncovered Sessions Vol. 1) is the first in a series of projects by Mick Harvey & Amanda Acevedo, exploring songwriters who have profoundly influenced them.
This volume pays tribute to the haunting and overlooked genius of Jackson C. Frank, the enigmatic American folk artist whose lone 1965 album — produced by Paul Simon — became a quiet touchstone for artists such as Nick Drake, Sandy Denny, and Mark Lanegan.
Reimagining 11 of Frank’s songs, Harvey and Acevedo breathe new life into his work, honouring its raw beauty while uncovering fresh depths.
Recorded in Harvey’s music room in North Melbourne and mixed by Alain Johannes…
Hater wrings a lot of intensity and drama out of a standard guitar-bass-drums-vocals lineup. Their 2022 album Sincere was a mini-masterpiece of tightly coiled emotions, menacingly jangled guitars, thundering bass, precisely thumped drums, and sparsely wrought production presided over by the taut to the point of snapping in half vocals of Caroline Landahl. It was a Swedish cousin of the Wedding Present’s Seamonsters and marked the group’s giant leap into the upper echelon of indie rock. Fast forward a couple of years and Mosquito appears. It’s another gut punch of an album, full of bitterness, bleak desperation, and gnarled emotions, this time delivered with a softer, less intense touch.
The band dial back the violence just a bit on…
Laputa, a title taken from the fantastical floating island of Gulliver’s Travels is aptly named as ‘The album that never landed’ for, apart from a limited touchdown in Japan, Laputa was never released.
Laputa‘s obscurity was a prime reason Lo Recordings decided on the Skintone retrospective. Falling as it did between The Boy and the Tree on The Leaf Label and our own debut of Symbol. It was something of an audio crime that the album had never been properly explored and discovered.
…Susumu Yokota makes albums that increasingly worry the boundaries of IDM, ambient and sound collage. Yokota has come at abstract music from the origin of being a house DJ in his native Japan, meaning that his sensibilities are not always aligned with those who balk at the cheesy…
“Power pop” can be a troubling genre label for musicians. Though Elliott Smith, who earned the label in the ‘90s, was celebrated early on in his career, and ‘70s Big Star, in retrospect, have gotten more than their fair share of flowers, there were — and still are — many that, after their brief flicker in the spotlight, have largely been forgotten. Despite this, we now seem to be in another renaissance of the genre, and acts like Bory represent the upper echelon. The project name of Portland’s Brenden Ramirez, with one LP (Who’s a Good Boy) and an EP (Sidelined) to his name, has released his sophomore follow-up, Never Turns to Night. The 10-track album is a significant step up from his previous output.
That, of course, doesn’t mean that 2023’s…
When Stockholm-based musician Kendra Egerbladh started sharing her music under the handle waterbaby in the early to mid-2020s, she was noted for a sophisticated alt-pop that combined light touches of jazz, hip-hop, downtempo, and atmospheric bedroom pop on songs with highly personal lyrics.
Her full-length and Sub Pop label debut, Memory Be a Blade, reveals a surprising evolution in sound that retains the influence of jazz and broader alternative inspirations while relying less on gloss and aura and more heavily on acoustic instruments like strings. The result is something physically closer, more delicate, and more diaristic while at the same time more intricate. The album was produced by Marcus White, her main…
…Tentative Decisions includes the baker’s dozen of 1975-1976 demos (plus one live recording and two tracks from The Artistics, an embryonic version of the band) that was released on one clear vinyl LP and 7″ last November, adding an impressive 32 additional demos (taken from an abortive session to audition for CBS Records) and live cuts from early shows performed as a trio of David Byrne, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth.
While Talking Heads were one of the most striking acts to come out of New York’s late ’70s punk scene, Tentative Decisions shows they didn’t start there, offering early versions of single “Psycho Killer” and deep cut “Warning Sign” credited to The Artistics, a group frontman Byrne and drummer Frantz formed with bassist…
The newest offering from the Fremantle, Australia-based GUM is a swirling collection of psych-pop as Jay Watson (Pond, Tame Impala) lets layers of synths and effect-laden guitars wash over the listener throughout Blue Gum Way.
Watson’s last offering as GUM found him partnering with Amborse-Smith Kenny (King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, The Murlocs) for the more swaggering, glam-laden Ill Times. On Blue Gum Way, Watson has reigned in a bit of those funky dance-laden efforts in favor of more restrained, nuanced tunes. However, the first single, “Celluloid,” is the closest to that Ill Times sound as the pulsing tension builds winningly before cracking open and dripping out a warbling, effect-laden guitar solo that cooks.
This lush but elusive record promises depth for ambient heads, but might feel too little too late for fans of kwes.’ earlier work.
Kwesi Sey came up almost two decades ago among the loose London scene that always seemed to centre on Mica Levi: their collaborative mixtapes as Kwesachu featuring a range of local cult heroes like Ghostpoet and Tirzah. Sey eventually became a prolific producer, working with everyone from Bobby Womack to Solange.
In a career thick with such backseat collaborations, it’s easy to miss the thin stream of solo records Sey has released as kwes. But 2012’s Meantime EP and 2013’s ilp. were both singular — notable not only for Sey’s trippy, warped productions but also his quavering, almost childish vocals.