Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys build a captivating sonic world tinged with intimacy on Pale Bloom. The Berlin-based band’s seventh studio album maintains a hauntingly atmospheric quality, ultimately honing the gothic art-pop sound the group have become known for.
Opening track ‘Bloom’ establishes the album’s persistent eeriness, initially playing with the melodies and lyrics of nursery rhymes. This almost ghostly nostalgia for childhood is evoked throughout Pale Bloom, supported by a mesmerising viola part courtesy of Jean-Louise Parker. The song’s instrumentals build, combining strings with electric guitar effectively. Like its title would suggest, ‘Bloom’ unfurls organically – a manifestation of slowly…
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In every form of music there are the giants, the ones whose talent and ambition strut across the world stage, dazzling critical and commercial considerations alike.
Then there are the quiet geniuses, the folks who display equal creativity and range to their more famous compadres, but with little interest in the spotlight – simply going about their business making music that doesn’t sound like anyone else. These folks’ music may likely be less-heralded, but will have an equally broad and meaningful impact in the years to come.
Cellist and composer Tomeka Reid is definitely one of those quiet ones. She’s unusual just by virtue of her chosen instrument – the cello is not the first axe one thinks of when we think…
Kurt Elling joins forces with Germany’s WDR Big Band for the lush and swinging In the Brass Palace. Conducted by tenor saxophonist Bob Mintzer since 2016, WDR Big Band has a long history of showcasing guest performers. What’s particularly generous about the WDR approach is how much they cater to their guest artists; curating arrangements and song choices that both illuminate and expand upon a performer’s career.
Here, they collaborate with Elling, digging into a nice cross-section of beloved standards and unexpected covers that touch upon all of the acclaimed vocalese singer’s stylistic touchstones from driving post-bop jazz and burnished ballads to funk-infused numbers. Elling and Mintzer are longtime associates and fittingly,…
Life feels a bit of a grind at the moment. Every news headline seems to suggest the world’s going to hell in a handcart, and rain has become an almost constant fixture during the early weeks of 2026.
So, as an antidote to indie navel gazing, here comes Brighton quartet Congratulations with a debut album that feels like a big day-glo shot of adrenaline. The four-piece have spent the last couple of years building a name for themselves as a band with a live show defined by chaotic energy – it’s not unusual to leave a Congratulations live show after witnessing frenetic ‘running on the spot’ dancing performed by a group in matching jumpsuits.
So can the frazzled, sweaty atmospherics of a Congratulations gig be accurately recreated…
Erik Vincent Huey is an Austin-based American singer-songwriter issuing his second full-length album, Fort Defiance. He collaborates with one of the best, Eric “Roscoe” Ambel, who plays his trademark electric guitar, produces the record, and recruits high-profile guests. Huey is hailed for his 2023 debut, Appalachian Gothic, a concept album, a kind of autobiography. Fort Defiance, however, is simply a collection of songs without a unifying theme. “This record is about achieving escape velocity out of Appalachia and into the larger world. Kinda like my own journey,” says Huey. Reference points run from Dave Alvin to Willie Nile to Steve Earle to Springsteen and Dylan, all of whom possess streetwise credos and punk tinges.
Huey, the son of four generations of coal…
The Clay Street Unit may have formed in Colorado, but you can hear the influence of Appalachia throughout their debut, Sin & Squalor. Blending bluegrass with folk, country, and Americana, echoes of everyone from Doc Watson and Earl Scruggs to more modern musicians like Chris Stapleton and Sierra Ferrell can be heard throughout the 11-track collection.
Building on the foundation that was laid with their EP — 2022’s A Mighty Fine Evening — this full-length finds the band expanding both their sound and their themes, delving into some weightier topics here and there. The album starts off modestly with two of their mellower offerings. “Nothing Else Matters,” the song that introduces the record, is a relatable and sweet…
Numero present ’90s shoegaze band Should’s ’98 debut ‘Feed Like Fishes’ + 10 period bonus tracks.
The folks in Phoenix’s Half String talked up this trio when they were Austin, TX’s shiFt (before they moved north to various universities and gave up their name because of another band called Shift). And it’s easy to see why: Should would have fit perfectly into Arizona’s former “beautiful noise,” post-dream pop scene.
Even without the interestingly sedate but grasping cover of the Wedding Present’s “Spangle” (and, on another record, 18th Dye’s “Merger”), their sound makes it apparent that they can match the English in pairing inventive, modern guitars to lulling tunes for nighttime singing. You could see “Sarah Missing” appearing on a Slowdive…
Like so many 20 year olds before him, Zion Battle found something transcendent in Joshua Tree National Park. Since age 16, Battle had been working towards becoming a musician, studying for a time at CalArts and New York’s The New School. Then, in 2024, he left behind his academic training to begin making music as Katzin, exploring a more intimate sound shaped by a healthy love for the bedroom dream pop of early Orchid Tapes releases and the fuzz of 1990s indie rock. He linked with friend and producer Max Morgen, and the duo temporarily decamped to California and set up a makeshift DIY studio near Joshua Tree to fine-tune Katzin’s debut.
The bright and sweet Buckaroo radiates sincerity. Battle’s biggest strength is his…
Vast, the fourth studio album from Vermont’s Wet Tuna to make its way to vinyl and first since 2022, presents a wide-screen slab of irreverent, playful psychedelia that could have only come from the hands / brain / interstellar groove telescope of Matt “MV” Valentine.
Over the course of ten tracks you are hit with slice after slice of pleasantly disorienting, secretly whip-tight rural funk that is truly out of time. One tune in you start to feel gravity lighten your grip to the earth. By track three that lightness gives way to a distinct “when was this recorded?” vibe. 1960? 2170? 2280? By jam ten you’ve been so soaked in the aura that you no longer care as you know that you are here now. Where else have you ever been? Or wanted to be?
Live at Nelsonica & Clothworkers Hall – this is the first ever released recording of this unique trio comprising of: Bill Nelson (Be Bop Deluxe/Red Noise), Theo Travis (Soft Machine/Robert Fripp/Steven Wilson), Dave Sturt (Gong/Jade Warrior).
The trio performed various concerts between 2009 and 2019 often as part of Bill Nelson’s ‘Nelsonica’ conventions. Following years of planning and preparation, this album consists of live recordings made by the trio in 2011, 2012 and 2018 from 3 concerts in Leeds and York.
The music, a broad sound palette from ambient soundscapes, to rocky workouts and ethereal mood painting was improvised over loosely prepared structures. with occasional use of backing…
In a musical landscape where the ‘indie pop’ label frequently masks a lack of melodic ambition and a reliance on tired tropes and recycled aesthetics, The Would-be-goods remind us that the genre can and should be a vehicle for high art. Their latest offering, Tears Before Bedtime, arriving this February via Skep Wax Records, is more than just a collection of songs; it is a curated gallery of human experience, painted with the finest brushes of wit, melancholy, and cinematic flair.
Jessica Griffin, the visionary behind this long-running project, remains one of pop’s most literate and idiosyncratic voices. Nearly four decades after the cult success of ‘The Camera Loves Me’ (Él, 1988), she continues to operate in a league of her own, blending the refined elegance…
Glasgow’s Helicon and Los Angeles-based producer and DJ Al Lover have joined forces on a bold new collaborative album, Arise, due for release February 13th 2026 on Fuzz Club. “Arise confronts a culture of individualism at the mercy of opportunistic grifters,” says frontman John-Paul Hughes, “offering a reminder that empathy, compassion, and authenticity are still choices.” Reflecting that tension, Helicon and Al Lover deliver a maximalist, uplifting sound with a baggy, hypnotic pulse — fusing Helicon’s trademark psychedelia with Al Lover’s genre-bending electronics.
Produced by Tony Doogan (Mogwai, The Jesus & Mary Chain) at Castle Of Doom Studios in Glasgow, the result is a dense, hypnotic and fiercely rhythmic record that layers trip-hop breaks…
Swedish high energy rockers The Hellacopters have been celebrating their 30th anniversary recently and after releasing something new – the much-lauded “Overdriver” album on January 31, 2025, which reached No. 1 in the Swedish charts for the second time in the group’s career – it is time to offer their dedicated fanbase something truly nostalgic.
Cream of the Crap! Collected Non-Album Works • Volume 3 is the long-overdue follow-up in a series of rarities collections started in 2002 combining material from a myriad of singles, EPs, and compilations. The 24 tracks featured in this set have originally been released between 1995 and 2004, and include originals like ‘Disappointment Blues’, ‘Freeway To Hell’, ‘Doggone Your Bad-Luck Soul’ and ‘Long Gone Losers’ as well as many…
On their 2013 debut and 2015’s Then Came the Morning, The Lone Bellow sounded like the new darlings of the Americana movement, blending blues, country, bluegrass, and roots rock with energy, smarts, and unpretentious sophistication. With 2020’s Half Moon Light and 2022’s Love Songs for Losers, they shifted gears, adopting more ambitious production and aiming for a sound that was more strongly informed by indie rock and adult alternative acts.
Clearly this is a group with no fear of changing lanes, and for 2026’s What a Time to Be Alive, the Lone Bellow take another detour, only this time they’ve split the difference between their rootsy and indie inclinations. The recording of the album was unexpectedly eventful — the band’s…
Billed as the legendary, now-octogenarian singer and songwriter’s 30th album, Inspirations of Life and Love proves to be a surprisingly melancholy Valentine’s Week release, if a quite moving one. It was recorded mostly at Paul Anka’s home studio in California, although he’s backed by a symphony orchestra that was recorded in Budapest. With 11 tracks in all, the album combines a little bit of everything as far as sourcing goes, with a mix of covers, re-recorded Anka hits from decades past, brand-new original songs, and in one case, a first-time Anka recording of a song he co-wrote with Michael Jackson for Jackson. That song, “Love Never Felt So Good,” appeared on the posthumous Jackson album Xscape in 2014. Anka puts a warmer, springlike spin on that upbeat,…
John Beltran is Detroit techno’s foremost daydreamer. His first albums under his own name, 1995’s Earth & Nightfall and 1996’s cult classic Ten Days of Blue, were blissful-sounding ambient techno records that took the melodic sensibilities of the local scene to their cosmic extremes. Every beep and blip was in harmony with a lush string line, the rhythms less like breakbeats or programmed drums than trance-inducing hammered dulcimers. By 1997’s The Cry, the first album released under his Placid Angles moniker, Beltran had drifted even further into new-age sounds, the beats dislodging themselves and seemingly hanging in mid-air.
As the next generation of electronic musicians, including Four Tet and Skee Mask, absorbed…
Dominik Felsmann and Patrick Tiley have made hard trance records together under a handful of different names since 2003. For their eponymous project, they’ve shifted to a drum-free, cinematic form of music with more of a neo-classical and progressive electronic inspiration, as well as a retro-futuristic synthwave sheen. After issuing their debut album as Felsmann + Tiley in 2018, the duo went viral with their haunting reinterpretation of M83’s “Solitude.” They went on to rework songs by Moby, Muse, and the Irrepressibles, in addition to releasing two EPs and a few singles. The pair spent several years envisioning ambitious, immersive live performances in seated venues, filled with lights and animated visuals. Protomensch, the act’s first album since signing with Mute,…
“Many found the music offensive, the dancing objectionable, and the popularity of both with young people verging on a mental health crisis.” So writes music historian Susan C. Cook about ragtime, the heavily syncopated ancestor of jazz that arose in the late 1800s. Like all things, ragtime’s subversiveness faded over time, and, a century later, the works of Scott Joplin and other practitioners had been relegated to carnivals and fairs, their jaunty piano melodies now evoking quaint notions of old-timey fun. On their debut album Euphonic Sounds, Los Angeles duo Ragger — Marc Riordan and Jon Leland — aim to recapture some of ragtime’s original spark while giving it a relatively modern edge.
Ragger’s basic idea — ragtime compositions…
In the world of electronic pop, Danny L Harle is something of a Max Martin figure. Over the past several years, the English producer and songwriter has become a go-to collaborator for both emerging and established stars, generating an impressive list of hits while pushing the genre into colourful new directions.
As a solo artist, Harle’s music is decidedly weirder. As a member of PC Music, the revolutionary collective out of London, Harle helped define the exaggerated, bubblegum-and-supersaw sound that defined early hyperpop. On 2021’s Harlecore — a marvellously absurd, high-concept album that imagined a virtual club soundtracked by Harle’s four rave-focused alter-egos — he dove headlong into happy hardcore, gabber…
Back with more of their compelling juxtaposition of riff-fueled rock and writer/musician Elizabeth Nelson’s hyper-aware, articulate, sometimes esoteric conversational patter, The Paranoid Style present their timely titled fifth LP, Known Associates. With the exception of new bassist Michael Venutolo-Mantovani, it reunites the noteworthy lineup from 2024’s The Interrogator: Nelson, her husband Timothy Bracy (the Mendoza Line), lead guitarist Peter Holsapple (the dB’s), keyboardist William Matheny, and drummer Jon Langmead, most of whom are also fellow freelance writers. As usual, the group welcomed a few guests into the studio as well, namely the Mountain Goats’ Matt Douglas, and Eugene Edwards (Brian Wilson, Stevie Wonder, Beck,…