Jay Buchanan has spent the last seventeen years as the frontman for Rival Sons, where his booming voice, combined with Scott Holiday’s heavy guitar riffs, has created some of this era’s best old-school hard rock. Even as the band’s music over the last three albums has grown more melodic and versatile, it’s remained undeniably heavy. For Buchanan’s debut solo effort, however, he strips the music down to its barest elements. Without heavy riffs and pounding drums, the focus is solely on Buchanan’s voice and storytelling. Luckily, both are strong enough to carry the album.
Weapons of Beauty is an acoustic album that ranges from slow ballads to mid-tempo Americana shuffle, but is always soft. Buchanan’s voice, grainy and soulful, carries world-weary…
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While working on their second album, two members of Mandy, Indiana — the Mancunian quartet fronted by a French valkyrie named Valentine Caulfield — were faced with their own corporeality. Drummer Alex Macdougall underwent surgery for a hernia and, after doctors found a lump, had half of his thyroid removed. Caulfield lost most of her vision in one eye. The 10-hour days that comprised the recording sessions could have broken them. Instead, the band’s distinctive sound — an alloy of industrial, post-punk, and ’80s neo-noir soundtracks — emerged titanium-plated and electrified. URGH is both headier and more visceral than anything Mandy, Indiana have made before. This isn’t body music or brain music; it’s spine music, homed in on the bony…
Five days after the all-star Clifton Chenier tribute album A Tribute to the King of Zydeco won a Grammy Award for best regional roots music album, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and Arhoolie Records are releasing a massive box set of Chenier’s original recordings.
Clifton Chenier: King of Louisiana Blues & Zydeco contains 67 tracks recorded from 1954 to 1983. The box set samples Chenier’s recordings for the Elko, Specialty, Chess and Zynn labels and, most of all, Arhoolie label. Unreleased in-concert performances also appear on the four-CD and six-LP retrospective, a project that marks last year’s 100th anniversary of the zydeco pioneer’s birth near Opelousas, Louisiana. Adam Machado, executive director of the Arhoolie…
…features a newly remastered version of the original double album; rarities; previously unreleased studio and live recordings; and several new mixes by Steven Wilson.
Tales from Topographic Oceans‘ sprawling concept was dug into by frontman Jon Anderson, who was immersed in Paramahansa Yogananda’s bestselling Autobiography of a Yogi. Drawing from a lengthy footnote that described four shastras (Hindu texts outlining basic precepts of social and religious life), Anderson and guitarist Steve Howe primarily conceived four pieces of music that would each take up one side of a vinyl album. Bassist Chris Squire and new drummer Alan White (replacing Bill Bruford after his exit) went with the flow, agreeably retreating to Morgan Studios…
“Running out of Sounds” may be an ill-advised song title for a band celebrating the 20th anniversary of its first album; this is especially true for musicians who have treated their debut as a sacred blueprint for all the records that have followed. So give Silversun Pickups some credit: They spend their seventh album, Tenterhooks — which contains a song with the aforementioned title — circling through the same sounds they’ve mined for two decades, blissfully oblivious to the irony.
Not that Silversun Pickups act as if they’re middle-aged on Tenterhooks. Unlike so many rock bands with members facing their 50s, they don’t embrace new fashions in a frantic attempt to remain relevant. Nor do they spend the record gazing at the past and mulling their own…
Ratboys didn’t explode onto the scene, nor did they propel to stardom on the back of their debut. That’s a good thing, mind you: having never been through the ringer of hype machines and overnight success, the Chicago band have instead allowed their twinkling, countrified take on jangly indie rock to steadily brew for a decade-plus without any major spectacle.
Ratboys’ fifth LP Singin’ to an Empty Chair arrives with little fanfare — just the way they like it. If there’s an album of theirs to get excited about, however, it’s this one.
Back in the saddle with producer Chris Walla, who oversaw the band’s excellent 2023 effort The Window, Ratboys are working towards two key goals simultaneously. The first is…
When Ulrika Spacek released their debut record The Album Paranoia in 2016, there was no reason to believe the band was capable of far more than the psych rock sound that had made them popular in the London scene. What a difference a decade makes: In the years between The Album Paranoia and now, the band moved past psych, developing real experimental muscle via krautrock and post-Radiohead electronic melancholia. They were always decent musicians, but time and age brought with them the confidence to experiment and the discipline to make sure the experimentation always served the song. They’ve never sounded more self-assured than on EXPO, their fourth full-length record and best to date.
EXPO succeeds because it is expertly balanced.
In the liner notes of his new album Manifeste, pianist and composer Tigran Hamasyan writes, among other things, that his role as an artist is to facilitate catharsis. This idea goes back to Aristotle and has been explored by countless artists and philosophers across countless media since.
…What Hamasyan offers here is not just release but ecstasy. In its earthiest, growliest moments, it is still transcendent. Not raw, not visceral, it nonetheless hits the listener on pre-verbal levels, primordial if not primal. At the same time, it is as technically proficient and polished as any Hamasyan work (which is to say, extremely so). So Manifeste deserves as much praise for the skill it demonstrates as for the intense emotion it evokes.
Throughout Manifeste are many of the stylistic…
A masterpiece! But also a major turning point in 38 Special’s career. It is with this now ‘classic’ that the band will be recognised. Rockin’ Into The Night, which followed ‘Special Delivery’, benefited from the first seeds sown by the latter, and the first plant to appear in all its splendour was the eponymous title of this new album, released in 1979.
A revolver cartridge transformed into a tube of lipstick sets the tone, far removed from Southern bands. Just like the opening track, co-written by three members of Survivor, including Jim Peterik, which producer Ron Nevison thought was too Southern for his colts. Was it this track that influenced the Jacksonville gang’s songwriting? 38 SPECIAL’s music is becoming smoother and more polished, and even if their Southern roots…
From the moment we are born, we begin the long walk home. Elizabeth and Beverly and Glenn-Copeland started down the path together nearly half a century ago, and have been trailing it since, hand in hand and song by song. Together, they’ve made a life sharing their unselfish hearts-ones too large for earthly configuration-through art and community, encouraging us all to take our own dance down the road with elemental love and grace.
Now, as Glenn lives with a version of Dementia known as LATE, their walk has taken on a different weight. Out of this season comes Laughter In Summer, an album the couple made together-realizing, before long, that it was a love letter to one another: a tender ledger of memories, shared devotion, grief and joy.
“Femcels! Femcels! Femcels!” Rowan Miles and Gabriella Turton cry over speedy video-game bleeps, sounding like they’ve just won the lottery. “You are listening to The Femcels, we don’t have sex ever!” In this deranged parody of the life of two sexless young Brits, having greasy hair and scuzzy teeth sounds like so much fun. I Have to Get Hotter is an audio cartoon — with charmingly disheveled, pixelated production and doofy spoken-word passages about feeling like the “indiest girl at school.” In “You’re Gay and You’re in Love With Me (Please Let Me Touch Your Boobs),” only the second-longest song title, the girls reminisce on an afternoon at a Counter-Strike tournament, with its fetid odor of “incels and hotdogs.” “Rowan, if you want a girl to like you, you just…
This year’s “in” black music style is the slow, sweet groove of soul harmony ballads. Interest has grown over the last decade and now the rarer of these records regularly reach four figure prices. This interest in Soul Harmony has led to Ace forming its own singles label of that name for the purpose of issuing tracks on vinyl for DJs and collectors of this genre.
Though not that expensive, several tracks on here command hefty prices due to demand. The Question Marks on Money, the Puffs on Dore, John Wesley and the 4 Tees’ Melic offering will make a hole in most pockets. We aren’t picking the songs on price though, rather on musical excellence. Hence the recordings by the Mad Lads, Moments, Diplomats and Lee Williams…
Stafell Sbâr Sain (Sain’s Spare Room) is a vibrant showcase of Welsh folk at its most diverse and inventive. Released on limited-run vinyl by Sain, Wales’ oldest independent label, this compilation brings together 12 tracks that weave a strong traditional thread while embracing bold contemporary sounds.
Long-established names like Bob Delyn, Lleuwen Steffan and Gwilym Bowen Rhys share space with fresh voices such as Irfan Rais, a Singaporean who learned Welsh during his studies, a testament to the genre’s growing global reach. The album balances reworkings of classics, like Georgia Ruth’s delicate take on ‘Blodau’r Flwyddyn’, with striking originals such as Lleuwen’s ‘Haleliwia Newydd’. Folk royalty is represented by newcomers…
Nothing about this album suggests that it’s a debut. Shaking Hand’s eponymous introductory shot is so assured it sounds as if an awful lot of groundwork has preceded its appearance. As it happens – beyond live shows – the only thing paving the way was a single issued last June.
Shaking Hand are a Manchester trio: Ellis Hodgkiss (bass), Freddie Hunter (drums) and George Hunter (guitar, vocals). They deal in a guitar-centred art-rock with touches of Slint and Tortoise, and a muted math-rock feel. There are also hints of Field Music around the time of their 2010 Measure album and a muzzy, out-of focus psychedelic sense of distance – the latter trait emphasised by George Hunter’s distracted, this-close-to-flat singing style and the hard-to-parse…
… The UK-based Phil Tomsett, who otherwise issues material under The Inventors of Aircraft name, is a supreme crafter of atmospheric electronic-ambient music, and the 13 soundscapes he’s spread across the two discs uphold that reputation. Tomsett helpfully provides preambles to bring clarity to the two parts, details that in no way detract from the listening experience. The idea behind Noise Print has to do with shadow selves and the different versions of ourselves that make up who we are. Beyond the self we present to the world, there are shadowy ones we don’t share or only do with select individuals plus parts deeply buried that we struggle to identify and understand. One might think of Noise Print, then, as an aural, print-to-tape document of…
Most of the music recorded by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and its founder, Artistic Director, and conductor Gil Rose appears on their own BMOP/sound label, but issuing an album on New Focus Recordings can’t help but enhance appreciation for the incredible work they’re doing and legacy they’re building. While the contemporary focus of the release certainly dovetails with the BMOP’s own modus operandi, The 21st-Century Orchestra presents the work of four composers, not one, with each on faculty at Brown University. Even a single listen to the release shows the institution is fortunate to have such distinguished figures as Wang Lu, Anthony Cheung, Eric Nathan, and Butch Rovan on staff.
Recordings featuring their work have appeared…
In 1969, as Cold War tensions simmered, Jerry Goldsmith composed the score for The Chairman, a spy thriller starring Gregory Peck. Known for his genre-spanning versatility, Goldsmith had already impressed Hollywood with scores for Planet of the Apes and The Sand Pebbles. This film presented a unique challenge: blending Western orchestration with Eastern musical motifs to reflect the story’s geopolitical intrigue.
…While a soundtrack album was released concurrently with the film on the Tetragrammaton label, the album masters and film recording sessions both vanished over the years. Subsequent CD reissues were limited to rips from vinyl sources, amplifying the limited range and distortion inherit in the format. While a short mono…
Lex Koeten‘s Canopy is a project of different musical styles swirled together in a dizzying stew. It sounds discordant on first listen but ultimately this collection of jumpy prog freakouts, delicate ballads and misty ambience hangs together as parts of the same whole.
Korten creates all this out of a simple lineup of keyboards, voice, alto sax, guitar, and drums. The opening “Oasis Walking” feels like the work of an adventurous singer-songwriter like Sarah Scarbrough Mclaughlin or Beth Orton with a dreamy stream of voice and piano being invaded by shrill sax blasts and a cavernous sound mix. The following “Abyssal Sleep” is all violent, chopping guitar and rolling drums. That gives way to the manic King Crimson-like prog…
Nature is a collaborative album by guitarist/composer Fred Frith and drummer/percussionist Karen Stackpole, focusing on improvised soundscapes featuring gongs and guitar. The 4-track, 45-minute album blends avant-garde, modern classical, and ambient styles.
…Stackpole has spent decades exploring the expressive potential of gongs, scrap metal and resonant percussion, developing a highly personal language of texture, dynamics and extended technique. Her work draws rich harmonics from tamtams and metal surfaces using an array of custom and unconventional implements, producing soundworlds that move fluidly between abstraction, rhythm and atmosphere. Alongside solo performances, Stackpole has…
Charming Disaster sings from a haunted Victorian boudoir, hung all round with silky luxury and velvet comfort and wreathed in scent that might be old fashioned perfume, or, alternatively, poison. The duo of Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris, from Brooklyn, floats through macabre storylines and lavish, steam-punk arrangements, their music sweet and disturbing and faintly archaic. This seventh and latest album, The Double, explores the nasty side of dopplegangers, twins, clones and partners in crime. Here, bad news comes in twos.
Consider “Gang of Two,” a tipsy waltz giddy on its own huffed fumes. Stylish, lushly arranged, utterly unrepentant, the song circles a doomed, damned partnership between two petty crooks, observing, “It’s hard to say goodbye/when…