New Zealand duo Earth Tongue were no strangers to hellish distortion and Satanic psychedelia before teaming with Ty Segall to record their third full length, Dungeon Vision. The pair’s talent for top-volume riffs, sinister vocal harmonies, and overpowering performances that are both tight and chaotic at once defined their sound for much of their discography. With Segall’s help, Earth Tongue don’t necessarily amplify their demonic psych heaviness as much as they bring it to a new level of singed crispiness.
There’s a bit more of a prog sensibility to the blazing guitars and odd time signature grooves of the title track, as with the Black Sabbath-meets-King Crimson sludginess of “Watchtower.” When Earth Tongue’s Gussie Larkin and…
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Cowboy hats and colorful shirts can be a deceiving thing for musicians. For a general set of listeners that rely on musical snippets it would immediately indicate that who they have in front of them is your regular cow poking country singer whose life dream is to end up in some Nashville studio leading her/him to Billboard country charts.
Yet in these modern times, classic country (and western) is just one stream, and country pop, roots, Americana, and Canadiana are not only the terms in vogue, but very real genres or sub-genres, however you want to play it, and cowboy hats and colorful shirts are just a prop and a reference that can mean quite a few things.
That brings us to Boy Golden and his latest album, Best of Our Possible Lives. For many…
There isn’t a shortage of post-punk-leaning indie bands coming out of Ireland – whether it’s Fontaines or The Murder Capital, or, more recently, Basht or Gurriers. Cork-based Cardinals are the latest to stake a claim in the scene. And while they certainly draw on the blunt bleakness of their predecessors, accordion flourishes add folky warmth to their otherwise sombre sound.
Masquerade unfolds in two halves. The first half features forlorn ballads: the propulsive melancholy of the title track, the swinging accordion of ‘I Like You’, and the baroque folk of ‘She Makes Me Real’. Each track holds its own but teeters on the edge of flight, as if waiting for a cue to take off.
However, the second ‘I Like You’ becomes ‘Over at Last’ (or, the midpoint that marks…
Although they dropped the Cascading Moms moniker from the release this time around, Hungry Animal returns the Luke Temple-led trio that he debuted on 2024’s Certain Limitations. Here, the rhythm section of bassist Doug Stuart (Brijean, Toro y Moi) and drummer Kosta Galanopoulos (PWNT) lock in, with basslines seeming to guide the track list. The only other musician involved in sessions was Josh Mease (Fruit Bats, Lucius), who plays guitar on two tracks.
From the get-go, the rhythm section’s nonstop grooves nimbly navigate tracks including the dubby opener, “Clean Leaving,” an examination of the futile quest for purity; the more angular, proto-punk-injected “Shake Me Awake”; and the more-cosmic rock of “Love Means Light…
On their previous album, 2022’s Solidaritine, Gogol Bordello shifted more towards a hardcore punk sound, driven by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 2026 doesn’t offer much in the way of hope on that front, but the band has moved back to their wide-open, global music influences, delivering tunes that mash up multiple genres and layers of musicality on We Mean It, Man!
For Solidaritine, Eugene Hütz worked with NYHC legend Walter Schreifels (Gorilla Biscuits, Quicksand) on production duties to tighten the focus. This go-around, he brought on board both Nick Launay (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Amyl & The Sniffers, IDLES) and Adam “Atom” Greenspan (Amyl & The Sniffers, IDLES) to broaden the sound.
The excellent opening title track begins with…
Tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana is from Santiago, Chile, where she grew up as the daughter of a professional saxophone player.
She started playing at age six, met the Panamanian jazz pianist Danilo Perez when she was 18, and later studied at Berklee College of Music. It almost seems like a jazz fairy tale: she was in New York City studying with the legendary George Coleman in 2009 and was the first woman to win the Thelonious Monk Jazz Competition for saxophone in 2013. She was 26.
The pressure on Aldana must have been serious, but her response has been to work hard, challenge herself by playing with superb musicians, and measure her own playing against the best: heroes such as Sonny Rollins and Wayne Shorter.
Through their first three albums, Demob Happy were many things: indie sleaze princes, post-grunge romanticists, ’80s synthwave cosplayers, the list goes on. Fortunately, they could do it all well, and that afforded them the ability to shift their sound and try their hand at new things.
But coming into their fourth album, they tried something seemingly radical: just being themselves. And the result is some of their most unflinching work yet.
Written on a desert retreat to the legendary Rancho de la Luna in Joshua Tree, The Grown-Ups Are Talking is the sound of a band reckoning with their past and maturing in real time. Whether they’re singing about betrayal on ‘Judas Beast’, ruminating on male suicide on…
With two decades under their collective belts, The Infamous Stringdusters are suddenly finding themselves with plenty of reasons to celebrate. Twenty of them, to be exact.
20/20, the Nashville-based quintet’s tenth full-length LP, and third to be released on their own record label, Americana Vibes, perfectly encapsulates what the Dusters do best.
Clean harmonies, tight instrumentation, and uniquely accessible melodies that define the group’s sound. The twenty-track LP, the group’s first full-length studio effort since 2022’s Toward the Fray, consists of all entirely new and original songs, something of an anomaly for a band known for littering its live setlists with an array of cover material.
It’s safe to say that back in 2009 when punk rockers The Bronx released their self-titled debut by their mariachi alter-egos, no-one would have thought this enterprise would still be going 17 years later. What started as a playful experiment in paying tribute to the thriving mariachi tradition that has suffused their native Los Angeles, has become an identity all its own – vibrant and intoxicating.
And while this fourth Mariachi El Bronx record isn’t a huge leap from its predecessors, musically speaking, that’s not the point of this. Even if you’re unfamiliar with the music being celebrated here, it’s impossible not to be swept up in the sheer exuberance of ‘Forgive Or Forget’ and ‘El Borracho’, songs that take you somewhere else entirely, emotionally and geographically.
Singer-songwriter, drummer and multi-instrumentalist Momoko Gill has long been a key background player in the community of jazz-adjacent artists who have coalesced around north London’s semi-legendary Total Refreshment Centre studio complex, live venue and social hub. After spending much of her childhood and teens in Japan and California, Gill was inspired to forge her musical career in multicultural London, initially through collaborations with more established left-field musicians including Matthew Herbert, Alabaster DePlume, Coby Sey and Tirzah. Many of these bigger names repay the favour with guest appearances on this impressively eclectic solo debut, which straddles the line between spiritual jazz, retro-inflected soul and…
…This expanded reissue adds 8 songs recorded at Inner Ear Studios in Arlington, VA, a few months after the album sessions. These sessions provided playfully experimental B sides to the album’s singles, two cover songs (the New Order cover “Your Silent Face,” and a Beach Boys cover) for a single on Merge Records, and a compilation track.
The problem with Copacetic was the dingy production, so for Simpatico, Velocity Girl hooks up with the Smiths’ first LP producer John Porter. Flaw corrected. Perhaps too much? Some have expressed the opinion that Porter has neutered them somewhat, and indeed, the rawer edges have largely been relinquished, but so what? They sound great now, much tighter, more convincing, more together. Constant touring has…
According to Sam Bielanski, frontwoman of Toronto indie-pop duo PONY, the idea for Clearly Cursed came from her first visit to a psychic. During this encounter, the psychic read Bielanski’s tarot cards and stated that Bielanski’s boyfriend was cheating on her — which turned out to be true — and that, more crucially, Bielanski had a dark spirit attached to her soul.
For the low, low price of $1,500, the psychic promised to exorcise this demon. Bielanski, 21 years old at the time, couldn’t pony up the cash, and she left her psychic visit realizing she’d have to coexist with this curse for the rest of her life.
But if Bielanski is indeed marked by a maleficent spirit, you can’t tell on Clearly Cursed — not with how bubbly and spunky its tracks are.
Have you ever wondered what would have happened if Lou Reed became interested in Americana and recorded with Gram Parsons? Well, if that unlikely combination seems intriguing, then The Nude Party’s Look Who’s Back is for you.
Of course, that oversimplifies the group’s sound, but those two touchpoints are the chocolate-and-peanut combo that makes this record such a tasty listen. The septet is Patton Magee – Vocals, Harmonica, Guitars, Shaun Couture – Vocals, Guitars, Connor Mikita – Drums, Backing Vocals, Alec Castillo – Bass, Backing Vocals, Zachary Merrill – Keyboards, Piano, Backing Vocals, Austin Brose – Percussion, Backing Vocals, Jon “Catfish” Delorme – Pedal steel, Dobro who have been together for over twelve years now.
Twelve years have passed since we heard from Howling Bells – a lifetime in pop music, let alone in the world. The band, having toured themselves into the ground, took a self-enforced break after the release of Heartstrings in 2014, and this marks their first music together since that decision. Singer Juanita Stein has been busy in the interim, releasing four well-received solo albums, and the reunion with brother Joel (guitar) and fellow founding member Glenn Moule (drums) appears to have been an easy one.
Life has intervened, of course, and the recent death of Juanita’s father has been a key event, along with her return to Melbourne. These things come together on the emotive heart of Strange Life, Melbourne being an honest and…
The only thing that can outlast time is the stories forged in the midst of its unforgiving crawl into an unknown future. These tales act as snapshots of moments we weren’t present for, battling clouded memories and the present to ensure that people and moments never fall victim to humanity’s forgetfulness. For The Olympians, the Toby Pazner-led instrumental soul group based in New York City, their attempt to cement themselves amongst the burgeoning soul revival scene came ten years ago. In 2016, Pazner and his posse introduced their cinematic, orchestral take on contemporary soul with the release of their self-titled debut, placing them among the shining stars of this new wave of soul music. Even after a decade, The Olympians remain a cornerstone of this…
For a few minutes in 1976 – America’s bicentennial year and the 15th anniversary of California-sun ambassadors The Beach Boys – the hype was right: Brian Wilson was back. On November 27th, the group’s resident, troubled genius was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. And he was solo, his first TV appearance without brothers Dennis and Carl, Mike Love and Al Jardine since a legendary recital of Surf’s Up in the 1967 documentary Inside Pop. Brian’s three SNL songs included an eerie ‘Good Vibrations’ – alone and skittish at a piano in a faux-sandbox set – and ‘Back Home’, a jaunty original from the Beach Boys’ latest LP, 15 Big Ones, with the SNL band even though the former were in town selling out Madison Square Garden.
Brian also performed ‘Love Is a Woman’, a new…
The cover of Toni Geitani’s Wahj is, at first glance, an intimidating presence: all blacks and browns, the painting looks like a cave or a crater, the scene of some great but unknowable violence. But the closer you look, the more light you see, until the whole scene is luminous with bright whites and verdant greens. Wahj, which is Arabic for “radiance,” creates a similar effect, with glimmers of hope shining out in its dense, apocalyptic soundworld.
As an artist, Geitani is drawn to the aftermath of disaster, to what lies beyond the event itself. He was originally trained as a filmmaker, and his first mid-length film, The Disappearance of Goya (2018), is a reckoning with the Lebanese Civil War. He was born after the war ended, but lived with its effects; his hometown of Beirut still…
Do you need a sensitivity to divine forces to be drawn into Nilza Costa’s new album? Not necessarily. But it does require a willingness to listen to music that resists explanation. Nilza Costa is a Brazilian singer and songwriter from Salvador de Bahia, now based in Italy. Her new album revolves around cantigas – sacred songs from the African diaspora – sung in Yoruba, Kimbundu and Brazilian Portuguese. These songs function as direct invocations of the orishas: spiritual entities that, in traditions such as Candomblé and Santería, connect human life with nature, history, and the divine. Rather than presenting this tradition from the outside, the album positions itself within it, as a continuation in sound.
Costa’s voice anchors the album. It carries…
If you knew beforehand that Nick Schofield’s primary instrument used to be the drums, you probably wouldn’t expect to hear the sounds that are coming your way from his latest album, Blue Hour. Yet, with inventive, inspired and well-versed artists, as Schofield presents himself here, you should expect the unexpected, particularly if it turns out that the sounds are something you want to hear. After all, the primary instrument shouldn’t mean much anyway. Take Barry Adamson as an example; he dabbles with drums on occasion.
But let’s stick with Schofield, who actually deals mostly with electronics these days, and his take on them is more leaning towards the jazzy side of ambient rather than what you would expect from ‘pure’ ambient or electro-pop these days.
For the front cover of his fifth solo album for Home Normal, Wil Bolton‘s opted for something a little more unsettling than the usual kind of bucolic imagery favoured by ambient practitioners. Shot by Bolton, the grainy photo shows a building structure on the left and on the right the upper part of a dome, its distinctive shape initially suggesting it could be an observatory. However, upon learning that the recording merges synthesizers (Buchla, Nord Wave) with “environmental sounds, radio waves, and found objects” collected by him along the Suffolk coast, the interpretation shifts as the locale is home to a nuclear power station, specifically the Sizewell B nuclear reactor. That one of the seven track titles is “Reactor Dome Haze” would seem to lend further…