For Mind Abandon, Ital Tek incorporated more live instrumentation into the creation process, rather than primarily composing on a computer. The tracks are often based on guitars and even processed vocals, as well as live percussion and other instruments played by hand. The album still unmistakably sounds electronic, but it has a human touch. Ten years on from 2016’s Hollowed, Ital Tek has firmly established a cinematic style that has almost nothing to do with the dubstep, IDM, and juke hybrids he used to produce, even if his newer work is still informed by the more beat-forward direction of his earlier releases.
Opener “The Ice Is Thin” is a sparkling inferno with melancholy bass, and “A Hidden Path” almost sounds like a dark version of new…
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Indie singer/songwriter Spencer Krug released his latest solo album, Same Fangs. Though best known for his string of formative records with Wolf Parade, Krug has also stayed busy with other projects, releasing a prolific run of albums with Sunset Rubdown and Moonface, in addition to his solo albums. Fans last heard from Krug with his latest Sunset Rubdown album, 2024’s Always Happy to Explode, which followed soon after his last solo album, I Just Drew This Knife, in 2023.
Krug returned earlier this year amidst an unexpected cultural resurgence of his Wolf Parade track, “I’ll Believe in Anything,” thanks to a triumphant needle drop moment in Heated Rivalry. However, rather than leaning into chaotic indie rock highs, the songs on Same Fangs…
Primitive Ring is a hard rock power trio, forged in biker rock grime, heavy metal swagger, psychedelic flakes, and bad attitude. Their debut album is reductively self-titled and their sound is similarly free from frills and niceties. Guitarist Charles Moothart made his bones in the Ty Segall universe and much of his musical DNA has made the trip, which makes for an album that would slot in nicely with his work. Bassist Bert Hoover and drummer Jon Modaff are also familiar with the kind of Blue Cheer-meets mustachioed garage rockers vibe and the trio lock together in greasy precision throughout the record. most of the tracks have all the grace of a motorcycle doing donuts on the lawn outside a high school on the first day of summer. Pounding the hooks into…
As founding member and principal songwriter of The Pineapple Thief, Bruce Soord has spent the last decade steadily refining a voice that balances emotional directness with musical restraint. Ghosts In The Park, his latest solo album, is his most personal and unguarded work to date: a record shaped by loss, memory, and the quiet spaces that reveal themselves when life continues to move while everything else appears to stop.
Written over a two-year period while Soord was touring extensively with The Pineapple Thief, the album emerged in hotel rooms, unfamiliar cities, and moments of enforced solitude. Against this backdrop, Soord was navigating the drawn-out decline and eventual death of his father, alongside the continued progression…
49 Winchester the six-piece outfit from southwest Virginia release Change of Plans. The record features 10 tracks, nine of which were written by Gibson, the band’s frontman and lead vocalist. The title is apt for a band that, were it not for the blend of folk, soul, and country that define 49 Winchester, would be unrecognizable from the group that recorded Leavin’ This Holler.
“Each record we’ve made has been a distinct chapter in our life,” Gibson tells Rolling Stone. “I’ve felt it kind of level up, up, and up. I think that this jump is more drastic than it has ever been from album to album. The big, overarching theme of this record is how much our lives have changed since we started this band. We’ve got families. We’re getting married.
Critically acclaimed singer-songwriter and instrumentalist, Patrick Grossi, widely known as Active Child, released his new self-titled album, on Sony Music Masterworks. Co-produced with Alex Goose (Kali Uchis, Childish Gambino, Vince Staples), the album is Active Child’s most personal and introspective work yet, marked by a candid exploration of adulthood and fatherhood. A reflective portrait of his own journey, Grossi navigates the space between creative devotion and familial responsibility, exploring how love and quiet self-protection shape a life no longer driven by youthful idealism.
“Pursuing art feels less romantic and more chaotic as I age,” Active Child notes. “It demands a selfish, often solitary lifestyle…
Cowboy Junkies release Open to Beauty, a transparent yellow 3-LP and 2 CD collection of songs from their 21st century albums to date. This ‘Best Of’ set revisits selected tracks from albums Open, One Soul Now, Early 21st Century Blues, At The End of Paths Taken, Renmin Park, Demons, Sing In My Meadow, The Wilderness, All That Reckoning, Songs of the Recollection, and Such Ferocious Beauty.
Speaking about the new collection, Cowboy Junkies’ Michael Timmins said: “We are now 25 years into this century, the beginning of which saw us leave the world of major labels and return to making music as an independent band. We figured this was as good a time as any to look back, reassess, and reflect on the music…
An indie rock group with a lo-fi, slowcore sensibility, Hiding Places formed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with several members of the original lineup serving as DJs at UNC’s student radio station. They then scattered across various states, occasionally meeting up in places like Athens, Georgia, and releasing a handful of EPs while shifting members of their rhythm section. Produced by new bassist Michael Matsakis, The Secret to Good Living marks the band’s full-length debut, Keeled Scales label debut, and their first release to be recorded together after they all relocated to New York.
A certain Southern aesthetic inhabits the album, however, at least after it opens with the dark, metal-tinged rocker “Dead Dove…
A simplified take on Austin band Touch Girl Apple Blossom and their debut album Graceful is that they’re twee pop revivalists, unambiguously re-creating the softhearted melodies and yearning tones of the ‘90s rosters of K or Sarah Records as closely as possible in the late 2020s. There’s some credence to this assessment (the anything-but-high-definition analog tape production, the hand-stamped fanzine aesthetic of the album art, the band’s name being borrowed from a Beat Happening lyric), but it’s not the entire story. Opening track “The Springtime Reminds Me Of…” is a flurry of jangly guitars of all sorts, kicked off by the kind of sweetly sad and unfussy riff that might have shown up in a Tiger Trap song. Listening closer, there are more layers of…
Green World Image is the second album and Sub Pop debut of spirited post-punk revivalists Telehealth, a group that build on both the sound and subversion of acts like Devo and the B-52s while updating subject matter for the 2020s. Launched from the Seattle music scene by married couple Alexander Attitude and Kendra Cox, Telehealth are fleshed out by members of Slowdive, Tomten, and other indie projects. Attitude and Cox particularly evoke the B-52s at times thanks to the couple’s dual and rotating lead vocals and accented enunciation. The album begins, however, with the soothing voiceover track “[user onboarding sequence],” which asks, “What if there was a model for living that connects people, finances, nature, and technology into one seamless…
For two decades, Tamikrest’s music has illuminated the sound, culture and conscience of the Kel Tamasheq (Touareg) people of the Sahara. Tamikrest means ‘connection’ or ‘union’ in Tamasheq, and the band have become one of the Kel Tamasheq’s most vital voices, raising awareness of their plight while channelling experiences of exile, loss and resistance. Their sixth studio album, Assikel, which means ‘voyage’ or ‘journey’, shows just how far the band have come.
…Tamikrest have always struck a balance between the calm and contemplative on one hand and the heavier, proggier sound on the other. Here, it’s all brought together under a particular atmosphere: analogue tape hiss, wide-open reverb and the inclusion of Paul Salvagnac’s…
Taking the title to musical heart (the album cover pointedly having him sporting different looks), after two albums mining country, reunited with producer David Mansfield who contributes, among other things, guitars, pedal steel, lap steel, celesta and Ondes martenot, alongside drummer Charley Drayton, bassist Tony Scherr and keyboard player Andy Burton, Teddy Thompson’s latest album, Never Be the Same, digs back into rockier seams for his first album of original material since 2020 and, with influences ranging from Crowded House and The Beatles to his father Richard Thompson, songs exploring love, change and the passage of time.
With John Grant on synthesizers, there are, though, still country ballad traces to album opener ‘Come Back’ with its major chords and…
Originally brought together in September 2015 to perform the Zorn Bagatelles, Julian Lage and Gyan Riley have become two of Zorn’s most trusted and soulful musical collaborators, having recorded over a dozen CDs of his compositions for acoustic guitars both in duo and in trio with Bill Frisell.
Seven Sonnets is their sixth CD together as a duo and the music is a lovely series of compositions referencing early music, minimalism, contemporary classical, soundtracks, folk, jazz, and more. Two of the world’s most accomplished and acclaimed guitar virtuosos perform a beautiful book of original music inspired by the Sonnets of William Shakespeare. Volume One of Zorn’s musical Sonnets contains some of his loveliest and most intimate creations.
Isotope was formed in 1973 by talented guitarist Gary Boyle and originally featured Jeff Clyne on bass, Brian Miller on keyboards and Nigel Morris on drums. Clyne had previously played with Ian Carr’s Nucleus, while Gary Boyle had played with Stomu Yamashta’s East Wind.
Isotope’s self-titled debut album was released in 1974 and continued the tradition of Jazz Rock fusion that had been pioneered by acts such as Tony Williams’ Lifetime and The Mahavishnu Orchestra. Although their debut album was critically acclaimed, Brian Miller and Jeff Clyne departed Isotope shortly after its release and were replaced by former Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper and keyboard player Laurence Scott. This line-up recorded the excellent…
As humans, we have an inherent desire to connect with those around us. These relationships shape our social interactions and influence us in ways we may not realize, each moment subconsciously ingrained in our decision-making. The people we decide to keep in our lives come with the weight of influence, but unfortunately, these wildly important relationships never hold the staying power they promise. We are all made up of the mistakes, triumphs, and losses that come with building a connection with someone, and how these lessons linger in future relationships. When someone decides to exit your life entirely, their presence takes on a ghostly aesthetic, leaving a void they once filled, and a rush to fill it ensues.
That moment of panic after your support…
Sixty years after Pet Sounds changed the language of pop music forever, The Pet Sounds Sessions (Deluxe Edition) arrives less as a simple reissue and more as a museum-quality excavation of Brian Wilson’s masterpiece. Originally released as a landmark archival box set in 1997, the newly 2026 edition finally makes this enormous body of session material widely accessible again through streaming platforms and updated physical editions. The result is both overwhelming and fascinating: a deep dive into one of the most carefully constructed albums in popular music history.
For longtime Beach Boys fans, this release is almost mythical. The original Pet Sounds Sessions box had become increasingly difficult to find, often circulating through collectors, bootlegs…
“I know that the world will come apart / I hope that the pain is gonna stop,” sings Rostam on the penultimate track from American Stories, his third solo album and first record in five years. It’s an appropriate sentiment given the current global political climate, but the wording is also vague and conflicting. Is it pessimistic? Is it hopeful? Perhaps it’s pretty much all of our duelling emotions while we’re trapped doomscrolling.
In fact, the very concept behind American Stories could hardly be more timely. The former Vampire Weekend member (full name Rostam Batmanglij) was born in Washington DC with family roots in Tehran, and after mining classical influences for previous albums, has now set his sights on the most American of genres:…
Peter Frampton has released his first new album in 16 years. Carry the Light was co-written with his son, Julian, and features an intriguing cast of guest musicians, including H.E.R., Tom Morello, and Sheryl Crow.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer is continuing in spite of his inclusion body myositis (IBM) diagnosis in 2015. That’s seen him adapt his playing style to counter the generative disease’s effects, while (semi) recent live showings shredding the Beatles with Grace Bowers and Trey Anastasio, and soloing with Pearl Jam in Nashville, prove that the Les Paul-toting legend still has plenty of licks in him yet. Consequently, Carry the Light extends that sentiment, and Frampton hopes it can usher in a new era for him.
It’s no knock on SUSS’s excellent music to admire the strategy behind their success. Their first savvy move was to embrace the kind of pat labeling that many artists try to avoid. Self-branding as “ambient country,” they made the tradition of diffusing American roots music through a new-age filter sound sexy and modern and algorithmic. They played to the playlists and got results, and were branded as pioneers in the process.
SUSS expanded their brand under the rubric Across the Horizon, which consists of a podcast; a compilation series featuring fellow travelers like Mark Nelson of Pan American, William Tyler, Marisa Anderson, and Chuck Johnson; and now a revolving all-star jam at the Big Ears Festival, a booking that’d be a feather in any upscale…
The All-American Rejects are back with their first album in 14 years, and their first ever independent release. At the height of their success in the early 2000s, the band had an established place in the pop rock landscape, one foot in emo culture and the other heading into the mainstream, but halted before they inevitably became too radio ready. Their return follows a string of free backyard pop-up concerts, a symbol of their intention to get back to their roots, American kids making fun, high octane rock, and Sandbox is a clear continuation of this energy.
With a catalogue of timeless hits behind them and a ready-made audience, the band really could have continued in any direction they wanted, but obviously planned their resurgence…