Vocalist Daphne Roubini leads the Vancouver-based group Black Gardenia on Whisky Scented Kisses. The style and sound hark back to the 1940s and ’50s. Although not trying to revive that specific era, this homage does justice to the time period’s musical memory. With a solid team made up of Paul Pigat (guitar, arrangements), Brad Turner (trumpet, flugelhorn), Stephen Nikleva (guitar), Jeremy Holmes (bass) and Dave Say (saxophone), Roubini is well supported. The songs feel full yet never overpowering as the tracks flicker by.
Sometimes an artist can waver in their aesthetic attitude. Roubini and Black Gardenia do not. From the start, one understands where they’re coming from: a smoke-filled bar where all walks of life gather. The title track, especially,…
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Brown Box includes all of the duo’s studio output released between 1990 and 2007, including Twin/Tone debut album God Ween Satan: The Oneness, a run of releases on Elektra spanning 1992’s Pure Guava to 2000’s White Pepper; the outtakes collection Shinola, Vol. 1; and the band’s most recent release, 2007’s La Cucaracha. (Chocolate and Cheese uses the same 2024 remaster from the box, but it has not been confirmed if the others have received similar treatment.) All the discs are packaged in CD-size wallets; there does not appear to be a booklet or additional notes in the packshot. The albums White Pepper and 2003’s dark Quebec, long out-of-print on vinyl, will also be made available on colored vinyl: a “green pepper” LP for the former…
Fuzz Club are becoming one of the key hubs for all sounds psychedelic – whether it is the music that is fully in vein with the original psych of the late sixties or any of the updated versions from there on to current times. In that respect, to all who follow all things psych, it will probably be no surprise that one of the modern purveyors of psych that are Minneapolis’ Jason Edmonds and his Magic Castles, have found their way to this label with their new offering Realized.
Edmonds, as the bad’s principal songwriter, has always favoured that trippy, dream-like thread that original psychedelia introduced (not much fuzz or energy rush there), giving it that shoegaze/dream pop veneer, but then updated for the new century. Of course, many critics have…
…includes three reimagined tracks: a revamped version of fan-favorite “Delilah,” a duet with Billy Strings on “Dirt – Macon version” and a cover of The Allman Brothers‘ “Ramblin’ Man”. The remaining nine tracks explore walking the line between letting go of old love and addiction.
Last year, Marcus King deviated from his norm with the Rick Rubin-produced Mood Swings. He scaled back his vaunted guitar and valiantly focused on his vocals, experimenting with soul. Now he follows that up by returning to his roots, reuniting with his longtime live band for their first album since 2018’s Carolina Confessions. The new release, Darling Blue, is a safe, guest-filled, country-tinged offering that still manages to deliver a few changeups to King’s sound.
1. Marisa Anderson – Rop Koh
2. Ed O’Brien – Blue Morpho
3. The Sleeves – Empty Thoughts
4. Tamikrest – Imanin
5. Thomas Dollbaum – Pulverize
6. Blood Sucking Maniacs – Family Tree/Heartbeat (Lucky Marlo Allen)
7. Jeff Parker ETA IVtet – Like Swimwear (part two)
8. The Lemon Twigs – 2 Or 3
9. Kevin Morby – Badlands
10. Brown Spirits – Bakelite Dashboard
11. Aldous Harding – Venus in the Zinnia
12. Angélique Kidjo – Big Heart
13. Hiss Golden Messenger – I’m People
14. Suss – Sunset IV
15. Hurray for the Riff Raff – Pa’Lante (Live)
There is something especially impressive about a band from Sheffield making a record that sounds like it was born somewhere between a honky-tonk bar, a faded interstate map and a dashboard full of memories. But that is the thing with Fargo Railroad Co. They do not just borrow the sounds of classic country rock and southern rock, they inhabit them. On IV, their fourth studio album, they sound warm, wise and utterly convincing.
IV is an album which deals with themes of being stuck, nostalgia, regret and also provides a wry social commentary. Opener, ‘Skin in the Game’, deals with someone who is on the edge and is scared to move on, as he has too much to lose. “Maybe I could change but I don’t know where to start” captures that sense of ambiguity…
Following the release of their debut, The Haunted Youth return with their second studio album, Boys Cry Too via Play It Again Sam. Beginning as the solo project of artist Joachim Liebens, the band today reveal the first single to be lifted from the record, deathwish, featuring fellow collaborator and Orlando-based singer-songwriter, Max Fry.
On Boys Cry Too, Joachim Liebens abandons the fragile, bedroom-pop innocence of Dawn Of The Freak – a debut that has since earned cult status back home – in favour of something far more confrontational and emotionally charged. From the towering eight-minute opener in my head to the closing track ghost girl, the album lets go of restraint in favour of something more raw, blending fragile melodies…
Behold, the first new Young Sinclairs LP since 2019’s ‘Out Of The Box’. After a lengthy period of inactivity and time spent focusing on other projects, the band reunited and resumed performing live in October, 2023 featuring a freshly revamped lineup. Momentum gathered, creative wellsprings began flowing again, and new songs slowly emerged. Core members Samuel Jones Lunsford, Daniel Cundiff, and Seanmichael Poff found themselves invigorated by the addition of newcomers Ben Hudson and John Pence – longtime friends and bandmates within kindred musical endeavors. The genesis of Cycles Turning began in 2025 when Samuel recorded a handful of songs in his attic on a newly purchased Tascam 488 8-track cassette Portastudio.
What is so captivating about a pitch-shifted vocal sample? Is it just good old existing IP, scratching the same itch for the trillionth time? Is it the thrill of hearing a sound you thought was fixed respawn somewhere totally new? Loukeman’s eggs are in the latter basket. The Toronto-based producer’s wistful, anemoic dance tracks trawl for vocals across pop, folk, R&B, and hip-hop of the past decade, a net that dredges up Bryson Tiller and Lomelda with equal gusto. But it’s his rendering, like sonic sfumato, that’s the crux of his music. Using an Analog Rytm saturator and a few choice plug-ins, Luke Fenton approaches sung snippets like wet clay, endlessly moldable with a little osmosis. As he put it in an interview last year, he aims to “glue everything together…
Consistency may be disparaged as staid, or celebrated as style. “Art is the place where liking what we like, over and over, is not only allowed but is the essential skill,” writes George Saunders in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, asking, “How emphatically can you like what you like? How long are you willing to work on something, to ensure that every bit of it gets infused with some trace of your radical preference?”
For a house-music producer, it seems around a decade of emphatic consistency really gets the goods. It’s been 13 years since Maya Bouldry-Morrison’s first album as Octo Octa and 10 since she came out as trans — or, as she puts it in the closing poem of her fourth and latest LP, Sigils for Survival, started “finally living life.”
Led by two lifelong friends from Newcastle, bassist Stan Woodward and drummer King David Ike Elechi, Knats are not the easiest band to pin down to a single genre. So they created their own: “Geordie Jazz,” or as they sometimes call it, “Geordie Noir.” Drawing on their Tyneside roots (a “Geordie” being a person from the Tyneside area in the North East of England), the name captures their edgy fusion of soaring melody, driving danceable rhythms, rock energy, and spoken-word poetry.
The result is contemporary and deeply rooted in place — a homage to their hometown. Through evocative instrumental passages and hard-hitting regional accents, Knats channel the mining heritage, sporting culture and present-day realities of the North East, crafting music…
Blood Sucking Maniacs, the Allen family band, helmed by patriarch and matriarch Terry Allen and Jo Harvey Allen, spans five generations and 121 years, including (among others) their sons Bukka and Bale Allen; grandsons Kru, Sled, and Calder Allen; Panhandle Mystery Band mainstays Charlie Sexton, Lloyd Maines, and Richard Bowden, and frequent collaborator Will Sexton.
…Giving themselves the collective name Blood Sucking Maniacs, the songs are free, wild, tender, and gloriously unruly. Put all the contributions together, and we find a mash-up of heart-punch ballads, familial rib-prods, and everything in between, shifting from the sublime to the unabashedly sentimental with maximum integrity.
The name was inspired by their son Bale,…
Chicago’s The Arrivals — well, singer/guitarist Isaac Thotz now lives in L.A., while fellow singer/guitarist Little Dave Merriman, bassist Paddy Costello and drummer Ronnie DiCola have stayed local — uh, have arrived with Payload, their first record in 16 damn years. That gap apparently wasn’t caused by anything other than life getting in the way, but we welcome this return regardless.
Recorded by Meat Wave’s Joe Gac, Payload is essentially hit after hit; it’s punk rock with undeniably ultra-catchy melodies that expertly balances the personal with the political. Thotz’s “Just Like My Brother” begins with quiet guitar strum before kicking in with resounding “whoa-ho-ho-ho” chants; it’s a platonic love song that’s soaring, anthemic and insistent.
Stopped A Freight Train With A Grain Of Sand is the latest instalment from the Let’s Go Dancing series – an epic (and still unfolding) 100-song living tribute to Drivin N Cryin singer/guitarist and celebrated songwriter / solo artist Kevn Kinney.
This new set sharpens its focus on the harder, faster and louder edges of Kinney’s songbook. If earlier chapters leaned into folk-born introspection, Stopped A Freight Train With A Grain Of Sand roars, spotlighting the grit and voltage coursing beneath Kinney’s writing, whether delivered solo or at the helm of Drivin N Cryin.
Deer Tick set the tone straight away with a rugged, heartfelt Let’s Go Dancing, leaning into the song’s weather-beaten melody with the kind of loose charm that keeps Kinney’s music evergreen.
Keith Forsey is often remembered for writing Don’t You (Forget About Me) for Simple Minds, and – ironically – for little else. That hit song from a memorable 1985 movie (The Breakfast Club) is by no means something you’d want others to forget, and yet there are many other blockbuster moments of note in a blistering career.
Survey the producer, songwriter and drummer’s many credits – running into several thousand contributions over half a century – and you will discover a Zelig-like figure who was present and often instrumental in the creation of assorted epoch-defining music. If his name is rarely mentioned, then you suspect he likes it that way.
You’ll not find interviews with him should you go searching on the internet.
Paul Weller may be something of a cult artist in the United States, but in his native UK and across Europe, he’s a well-deserved living legend. As a founding member of the Jam in the 1970s and the Style Council in the 1980s, he has taken listeners on a journey through punk, soul, jazz, folk, and whatever other styles he likes to try. Live settings are a great way to experience Weller’s music, usually because they put his electrifying on-stage presence on full display, allow him to cherry-pick some of the best songs from his long and varied career, and give him a chance to test out unique and surprising covers. Weller at the BBC, Vol. 2 accomplishes all of this in spades.
While Weller at the BBC was released in 2008 and covered the years 1990 to 2008…
Releasing as a 2CD set, this edition includes the original album, newly remastered from the original master tapes, alongside a bonus disc of rare, previously unreleased alternate versions and outtakes from their early recording sessions.
It sold poorly (around 11,000 copies) and the band never cut anything like it again, but Little Feat‘s eponymous debut isn’t just one of their finest records, it’s one of the great lost rock & roll albums. Even dedicated fans tend to overlook the album, largely because it’s the polar opposite of the subtly intricate, funky rhythm & roll that made their reputation during the mid-’70s. Little Feat is a raw, hard-driving, funny and affectionate celebration of American weirdness, equal parts garage rock, roadhouse blues…
Of all the artists that emerged from the freak folk/New Weird America boom of the early noughties, Colorado-born Josephine Foster is one of the most enduring, and certainly one of the most interesting. Besides the obvious – her startling voice, opera trained but as wild as the hills – constant reinvention and inspired collaboration have been the hallmarks of her continued success.
She has tackled folk, country, desert psych, the poetry of Emily Dickinson and 19th-century German Lieder, and has teamed up with David Pajo and Andy Bar (as The Children’s Hour) and Jason Ajemian (as Born Heller). In recent years, her most fruitful collaboration has been with guitarist Victor Herrero, with whom she formed the band Mendrugo.
…includes live recordings from the Orchestral FM4 Radio Session, Radio Eins Session and three new remixes; ‘Patterns’ (BOKKA Remix), ‘City Walls’ (Last Chance Remix) and ‘Wake Up Strange’ (Four Horsemen Remix).
For more than 30 years, cult British collective Archive have been ploughing their own furrow – joining the dots between ’90s trip-hop, various shades of alt rock and electronica. With Glass Minds, their 13th studio effort, the band continues to break new ground.
…A stark contrast exists between Glass Minds and its brooding and intense predecessor Call to Arms & Angels. For guitarist and co-vocalist Dave Pen, this originates from the differing circumstances in which the two projects were conceived.
…include a bonus disc with songs from the December 12, 1973 concert at Omni Coliseum in Atlanta.
From Dick’s Picks Volume 1 to Dave’s Picks Volume 58, Curtis Hixon Hall is front and center once again as we shed a little lovelight on the complete, unreleased show from December 18, 1973. On this one, you’ll find the band coastin’ off that Europe ’72 sound (“Tennessee Jed,” “Brown-Eyed Women,” a not-to-be-missed mix of “China>Rider”), testing the tempo of the newly debuted (12/12/73) pretty little “Peggy-O,” and morphing Wake of the Flood tracks (“Weather Report Suite,” “Row Jimmy,” and “Eyes of the World”) into live form. “Dark Star,”…