New music
Jonathan Geddes
You wait years for a guitar group with brothers to reunite and then two come along at once. The Maccabees return might have attracted far less attention compared to the Gallaghers hitting the road again as Oasis, but as they strolled onstage on a humid Glasgow night the ecstatic reaction from fans suggested it was a sight many had not expected to see again.There are many obvious differences too, given that the London fivesome never dented the public consciousness in the way of Manchester’s finest. And while the Oasis reunion has served up a glorifying of the Britpop era they provoked, Read more ...
joe.muggs
The more time goes by, the more it seems like Dev Hynes might be the antidote to what Guy Debord called “the society of the spectacle”. As is documented in the fantastic recent book Songs in the Key of MP3, Hynes is representative of a type of modern musician whose relationships to mainstream and underground, art and pop, just don’t make sense in the traditional “star” framework of the post rock’n’roll era. He’s defined not by having the biggest shows or iconic moments, but by his connections, his ability to cover ground, his success best defined not as a “rise” to fame but an expansion Read more ...
joe.muggs
The long, hot summer of 2025 has been something else, right? Hate rallies, creeping authoritarianism, a weird reluctance to discuss the extremity of the weather even as everyone scrambles to buy air conditioners...But also a slightly delirious sense of fun as people get out and about in the sun – exemplified by the eruptions of joy of DJ AG’s spontaneous pavement sets featuring unknowns and megastars, broadcast online as a super-democratic antidote to all those videos of DJs alone or surrounded by too-cool-for-school party people. Anyway, it’s all quite exhausting. I was feeling burned Read more ...
joe.muggs
Wolf Alice are a band who consistently over-deliver. Their presentation is so staid, their cited influences so safe (The Beatles! Blur!), their politics so “bad things are bad, m’kay?”, that they give every impression they’re going to be bland and generic.Yet over the past decade and a bit, they’ve consistently built a sound that is super distinctive: a kind of supersized shoegaze that allows their relatively straightforward songwriting to grow into something oceanic and dreamlike. It’s no wonder they fill stadiums, and it’s great that it’s not spectacle, personal soap operas Read more ...
Ibi Keita
Deftones’ Private Music arrives as the band’s long-awaited tenth studio album, carrying with it the weight of expectation built from nearly three decades of powerful records. Known for mixing aggression, atmosphere and vulnerability in equal measure, Deftones have rarely missed the mark. Sadly, this latest release does not live up to their impressive past.The album opens with “my mind is a mountain,” a track that shows flashes of the band’s trademark energy, and later presents “milk of the madonna,” another single carrying even more aggression and melody, making you wonder what happened to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A sticker on the cover of American Dust is says it’s “an ode to the beauty of the American Southwest,” specifically the High Desert area within the wider setting of California's Mojave Desert. North-East of Los Angeles, this region contrasts with the city’s urban and suburban sprawl by incorporating scattered settlements.Eve Adams lived in Los Angeles. Now resident in the High Desert, this landscape is primary to her fourth album. In contrast with its title and inspiration, American Dust is not a desiccated rumination on the impact of remoteness with sparse arrangements and instrumentation. Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Gibby Haynes is the wild-eyed crazy man who used to front the Butthole Surfers back in the 1980s and 1990s. At the time, there was none weirder or more out there than the Texan psychedelic punks – and even Ice-T was then prepared to step back and acknowledge their place in the pantheon of musical barbarians.Despite a recent avalanche of album re-issues, a new live disc and a forthcoming documentary film, the Butthole Surfers effectively came to an end 25 years ago. However, not being one to settle down and integrate into mainstream society, Haynes is presently back on the road with a group of Read more ...
Guy Oddy
UK dub maestro and producer, Adrian Sherwood is hardly what anyone might call a slacker, but it’s 13 years since the release of his last solo album, Survival and Resistance. Those who have been eagerly anticipating more of his particular take on one of Jamaica’s greatest musical exports, however, need wait no longer.While The Collapse of Everything doesn’t offer too many surprises to those familiar with the On-U Sound, it does bring in plenty of other textures along the way. Smouldering, moody and intoxicating, it is an album that may not hit the extremes of some of Sherwood’s previous Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
George & James was originally released in March 1984. Stars & Hank Forever! emerged in October 1986. The two LPs were parts of – and, as it turned out, the only entrants in – a series of albums their creators, San Francisco’s Residents, designated the American Composer’s Series.Side One of the first was dedicated to interpretations of the compositions of George Gershwin. The flip was a heavily distorted reconfiguration of James Brown’s 1963 Live At The Apollo album. Stars & Hank Forever! tackled, respectively, John Philip Sousa and Hank Williams. In keeping with previous Residents Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The history of popular music is littered with bands who fulfilled everything needed to make it. Then fate kicked them in the teeth. Goofin’ good time Brit heavy rockers Dinosaur Pile-Up have had some rubbish luck.In 2019, after slogging the circuit for a decade, their fourth album was signed to Parlophone, they supported The Offspring and Sum 41 on US tours, and their new song “Back Foot” was an ebullient pop-metal classic. They were on the brink of breaking big.We all know what happened next. That virus closed the world. But, worse for the band, frontman Matt Bigland became seriously ill, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Who’d have guessed that a dude who first came to attention a decade ago guesting on a cheesy Chase & Status drum & bass track would likely now be heading for his third chart-topping album? Tom Grennan’s done well.His first two albums lent into singer-songwriter territory. His last one became playful. On his fourth, the convolutedly titled Everywhere I Went Led Me To Where I Didn't Want To Be, he’s aiming for the Olly Murs mountaintops.By Tom Grennan we mean Grennan, regular collaborators Dan Grech-Marguerat and Mike Needle, plus new associate, US mega-songsmith Justin Tranter. Between Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Emma Smith, one time Puppini Sister, has established herself over the past decade or so as one of the UK’s most compelling jazz singers, now signed to hip Brooklyn label La Reserve, with Bitter Orange, a new album of classics from the Great American Songbook. The 2024 Parliamentary Jazz Vocalist of the Year launched the album from the stage of Ronnie Scott’s over four sets across two hot, high-summer Soho nights.She’s got artistry and showbiz all sewn up in one body-sculpting outfit, and between songs delivered very funny, sassy and illuminating asides – best of which was a story about her Read more ...