Isn’t the world gorgeous through Sofie Birch-tinted glasses? Listening to “Sefirot Surfa,” a gentle, whimsical romp from Bivabippabualukka, has made the harsh and poorly maintained streets around my East London flat feel magical and new: What portals, it begs a listener to ask, could lie between those cracks in the pavement, or beneath that pile of refuse?
Lush and animated, Bivabippabualukka is an extraordinary break from convention in comparison to Birch’s previous releases, a series of ambient folk records that encouraged scholarly engagement with the minutiae of Birch’s compositional choices. 2025’s soundbath-like Hiraeth, for example, was hardly casual listening, a listening experience that would likely be impeded…
Latest Entries »
The solo project of Kelly Truong, a producer/songwriter from Southern California, kelz joined the roster of Bayonet Records early on in her music career, with the label issuing her self-recorded debut album, 5 AM and I Can’t Sleep, in 2022. It established a gentle and airy yet dance-oriented sound that she created by combining shimmery synths with fingerpicked guitar, high, gossamer vocals, and simple looped beats.
While the follow-up was four years in the making, it can be described the same way with the caveat that it offers a softer and slightly more intricate version of kelz’s distinctive sound, a sound that never quite moves out of the bedroom headphones and into the club. Its cover design features a blurred photo of Truong.
Spyro Gyra’s 2022 concert in Leverkusen takes the viewer along on one of their trademark odysseys that has sustained them as a top attraction in the jazz world for over fifty years. As founder/bandleader Jay Beckenstein explains, “I’ve always spent a lot of effort in contouring the show to maintain audience interest and hopefully takes them on a bit of a rollercoaster ride with ups and downs to a final conclusion.”
This show is notable for another reason. It was shortly after its filming that keyboardist Tom Schuman decided to end his long tenure with the band to move to Spain. So it exists as a final document of an era of the band with its combination of these two musicians. “When I now listen to those recordings…
VA – Where the Willow and the Dogwood Grow: Words and Music By Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan (2026)
With undeniable cultural gravity, the team of Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan join luminaries such as Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, Randy Newman, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Leonard Cohen, Lee Hazlewood, Brian Wilson and Laura Nyro in Ace Records’ long-running series of multi-artist compilations celebrating the great American songwriters of the modern era. Hundreds of artists from all walks of music have recorded songs from Waits and Brennan’s matchless catalogue, 19 of the finest of which comprise this hand-picked selection, including many chosen by the songwriters themselves.
Few artists have remapped the terrain of popular music, and culture at large, like Tom Waits. Over the course of five decades…
…include the remastered album plus two discs of rarities, including previously unreleased tracks, B-sides, demos, acoustic recordings, covers, live performances and BBC sessions.
In the two years that followed the release of their debut album, Keane established themselves as a promising part of the mainstream rock canon. Hit singles like “Somewhere Only We Know,” “Bedshaped,” and “Everybody’s Changing” made Hopes and Fears a transatlantic hit, earning the trio two Brit Awards, a Grammy nomination, and a host of sold-out world tours. Critics deemed them as likeable and as accessible as Coldplay, but Keane’s return isn’t as buoyant as their initial introduction, even if it keeps melody at the forefront. Whereas Hopes and Fears faced…
Sometimes a solo project and sometimes a band, Jilian Medford’s IAN SWEET has switched up its sound from album to album, sometimes favoring bright guitar pop, sometimes shimmery, synth-aided noise pop, and other times applying heavier guitar tones and dissonance to the songwriter’s personal, melodic songs. With IAN SWEET’s fifth album, Shiverstruck, she delivers her most direct-sounding material yet, which is to say that she sticks with mostly full-band arrangements of amplified indie and synthy pop, but makes room for balladry, the occasional appearance of instruments like strings and piano, and a more vulnerable sensibility. The occasion is a breakup album that also carries the weight of a relocation from N.Y.C. to her hometown of L.A. and…
…The expanded tracklist appends rare live versions of tracks like “Fat Lip,” “All She’s Got,” “Crazy Amanda Bunkface,” “Machine Gun,” and “What We’re All About”.
It would be a mistake to view Sum 41 as just another second-rate band cashing in on the early-’00s punk-pop boom, even if it did recruit Jerry Finn to produce All Killer No Filler. Just as Finn had done for both blink-182 and Green Day, he charges Sum 41’s punk-pop with a razor-sharp edge, the sort of dynamic in-your-face sound that helps this music cross over to MTV and radio so well. Besides the notable production, a lot of credit should go to the band as well. Its songwriting is obviously more diverse here than it was a year earlier on its debut album,…
Charles Lloyd pays homage to his dear friend and longtime collaborator Zakir Hussain with Sangam & Friends, an extraordinary document of the deep musical affinity between the legendary saxophonist/flutist and master tablaist along with their Sangam trio mate drummer Eric Harland. The album is built around studio recordings made in Mumbai in 2009 for an album that was begun but never completed featuring an expanded ensemble with Carnatic singer Vijay Prakash, Sabir Khan on sarangi, Rakesh Chaurasia on bansuri, Ranjit Barot on keyboard, and Niladri Kumar on sitar.
…Lloyd had first heard Indian music in 1957 – Ravi Shankar and Hussain’s father the great table master Alla Rakha – and it’s surprising that he didn’t travel to the source until four decades later.
The newest offering from pianist/composer Marco Benevento, Glera, finds the artist expanding his sonic palette, working with different vocalists to score the retro Italian movies playing in his head.
Benevento was heavily inspired by Italian film scores and melody for this album, which uses cinematic lines on every track, providing emotion and depth to the mostly instrumental tunes. Benevento plays more of a role as composer/leader here; a jamband veteran, Marco lets the songwriting be the focus throughout Glera as the tunes run short, set the visual scene, and move on. Opening with the excellent “Frizzante”, the joyful instrumental bounces along with a sunshiny feeling and could have been a theme song to a 70’s television show with its bright,…
For the new remastered edition, 5 bonus tracks have been added: Spampinato’s “Trouble in the Henhouse,” Donn Adams’ “Dry Up and Blow Away,” and Terry’s “Electric Train” are all derived from the ‘Workshop’ sessions. These are augmented by a lively alternate version of “RC Cola and a Moon Pie” plus an updated take of “Get That Gasoline Blues.”
Originally titled Age of Aquariums, Workshop was the last album from one of the pre-classic lineups of NRBQ. This incarnation incorporated the talents of bandleader Terry Adams (keyboard/coronet/trumpet), Joey Spampinato (bass/guitar/sax/vocals), Al Anderson (guitar/vocals), and, in his final studio appearance with the band, Tom Staley (drums). Although they had been performing with an evolving makeshift horn section…
Snow Patrol’s Eyes Open album is receiving a special deluxe reissue for its 20th anniversary.
Eyes Open, originally released in April 2006, marks Snow Patrol’s fourth album. It features six singles, including “Hands Open,” “Set the Fire to the Third Bar,” “Open Your Eyes,” “Shut Your Eyes,” as well as the Top 10 hits “You’re All I Have” and “Chasing Cars.” The LP was the best-selling album in the UK at the time of its release, selling over one million copies. It also hit No. 9 on Billboard’s Top Rock Albums chart and is certified 8x Platinum.
“Chasing Cars,” the alternative rock band’s most iconic and biggest single to date, peaked at No. 6 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. The tune also earned nominations for Best Rock Song at the 2007 Grammy Awards…
All the Beauty is Pete Yorn’s new album, arriving via Shelly Records. The 11-song release marks his third full-length collaboration with Jackson Phillips of Day Wave, continuing a creative partnership that has shaped Yorn’s recent run of records.
Built around Yorn’s signature mix of alternative rock and melodic indie songwriting, the album expands on the breezy, guitar-driven sound the pair established on Caretakers and Hawaii. The title track, released ahead of the album, sets the tone with a focus on staying present and recognizing moments of beauty in everyday life.
The record was produced by Jackson Phillips and Pete Yorn, with Phillips also handling engineering and mixing. Across its 11 tracks, All the Beauty balances understated arrangements…
Produced once again by GRAMMY® Award-winner Rich Costey (Vampire Weekend, Foo Fighters, Death Cab for Cutie) at Vermont’s bucolic Guilford Sound – the same studio where The Revivalists and Costey previously collaborated on 2023’s life-affirming fifth album, Pour It Out Into the Night – Get It Honest sees a veteran band enabled by hard-fought experience and boundless solidarity to strike a new path forward. Having embraced multiple musical personalities on previous records, the 12-track collection evinces a blessed cohesion, as if The Revivalists have finally found how they truly want to sound, at least for right now.
With seven of its eight members now fathers, Get It Honest is unquestionably a grown-folks record, built on songs about cutting yourself…
When Emerson, Lake & Palmer conceived the idea of releasing a live album at the end of the ‘70’s it was intended to be, in true prog rock style, a grandiose double LP type affair. However, the band’s dissolution in 1979 meant that Atlantic Records slimmed down the band’s original vision into a single set under the moniker In Concert. When reissued in 1993, that album was restored in all its double disc glory with much of the omitted music included. Titled Works Live, it was more in tune with what the band envisioned, and that vision has finally been realised with this updated version from BMG. Refreshed with upscaled packaging and liner notes, along with a crisper sound, this issue elevates Works Live to its rightful place as a key release in the ELP canon.
On 23rd December 1977 a unique concert took place at Queens Hall, Barnstaple that has justifiably earned a special place in the history of Hawkwind.
Billed on posters as being an appearance by Dave Brock’s Sonic Assassins, the band featured Hawkwind members Dave Brock and Robert Calvert, along with future members Harvey Bainbridge (bass), Martin Griffin (drums) and keyboard player Paul Hayles.
Intended as a Brock and Calvert side project, the concert was recorded and featured early renditions of tracks such as ‘Freefall’ and ‘Death Trap’, along with a classic improvised piece later titled ‘Over The Top’ which showed Robert Calvert at his improvisational lyrical best. The performance would later be seen as sowing…
The 21-track expanded edition includes the remastered original album and 10 “Live and Intimate” recordings from a special session captured at Capitol Studios.
Actually, the title of the Goo Goo Dolls’ 8th album can be taken somewhat literally: Let Love In is a welcoming collection of songs that eschews some of the darker currents roiling under the surface of their previous effort, 2002’s Gutterflower. Not that Gutterflower sounded bleak — it was clean and glossy, so much so that it would be easy to listen to it once and assume that there wasn’t much there. Such assumptions also come to mind after the first listen for 2006’s Let Love In, but unlike its predecessor, there isn’t much to dig into here; what you hear upon that first listen is…
Sydney’s Body Type — Sophie McComish, Annabel Blackman, Georgia Wilkinson-Derums, and Cecil Coleman — are a band who clearly don’t believe in hanging about. Two early EPs preceded their sparkling debut album, Everything Is Dangerous But Nothing’s Surprising, in May 2022, then, before anyone had quite caught their breath, Expired Candy turned up just over a year later in June 2023. Since then, though, the quartet have taken some time out, focusing on life and various side projects, which meant the wait for album number three, Tally, has stretched to a whole three years. By Body Type’s own hyperactive standards, that’s practically a My Bloody Valentine-sized gap.
But it’s been worth the wait. Tally is an album that fizzes with ideas, bristling with sly wit…
The Strokes’ stock is pretty high in 2026, definitely higher than it was in 2016, and maybe even 2006. This year marks the 25th anniversary of their classic debut, Is This It? Their recent tour, the band’s first in 20 years, saw them light up a multigenerational audience of young olds and old youngs. Their standing isn’t only based on nostalgia either: Though the last Strokes album, 2020’s The New Abnormal, got a little lost in the Covid malaise, its standout hit, “The Adults Are Talking,” has as many Spotify streams as “Last Nite.” Meanwhile, the biggest indie band around, Geese, is undeniably post-post-Strokes, even if the band members were still in their strollers back when Julian, Albert, Fab, Nick, and Nikolai owned the night. Not a bad legacy to keep rolling into…
What an extraordinary band are the Punch Brothers, a bunch of conspicuously talented musicians whose six albums never fail to delight and stimulate as they push the boundaries of acoustic music to what you think would be beyond breaking point. It’s been said that they’ve taken “bluegrass to its next evolutionary stage, drawing equal inspiration from the brain and the heart”.
Virtuosos all, The Unsung Adventures of Punch Brothers marks the debut of fiddler Brittany Haas with the band which, in addition to Chris Thiele, includes Chris Eldridge on guitar, Paul Kowert on bass, and Noam Pikelny on banjo. A sought-after session and touring musician whose credits include US TV host Steve Martin’s bluegrass band, Haas managed to pursue her youthful…
Robyn Hitchcock has spent nearly six decades as a singer-songwriter and raconteur, thrilling fans with his wry, whimsical and often surreal view of the world. Now in his seventies, he returns with his 25th solo album, The Confuser, and it does not disappoint. Recorded in his adopted hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, the album features an excellent supporting cast, including Jeremy Fetzer on guitars, Todd Bolden on bass, and Eric Slick on drums and percussion. It was recorded by Brad Jones and includes guest appearances from Gillian Welch and Hitchcock’s former Soft Boys bandmate Kimberly Rew.
“When I decompose I will be part of everything,” announces Robyn Hitchcock on ‘I Am This Thing’, marvelling at the fragile wonder…