New music
Music Reissues Weekly: Norma Tanega - I Don't Think It Will Hurt If You SmileSunday, 16 March 2025
After scoring a hit in 1966 with the distinctive folk-pop of her jazz-inclined debut single "Walkin' my Cat Named Dog," US singer-songwriter Norma Tanega (1939–2019) seemed to melt away. Three follow-up 45s weren’t hits. Her album wasn’t a strong... Read more... |
Album: The Loft - Everything Changes, Everything Stays The SameSaturday, 15 March 2025
“Sitting on a sofa, cigarettes and beer, ten years disappear…agreeing to agree, just to get along.” By going into the difficulties of resuscitating the past, the lyrics of “Ten Years,” the fourth song on The Loft’s first album, neatly sum-up the... Read more... |
Album: Jason Isbell - Foxes in the SnowFriday, 14 March 2025
America – the pro-wrestling-ass nation, the ultimate society of the spectacle – famously likes things big, and modern country and western music has gone along with that. Big hats, big trucks, big sentiment, big pop production, very big sales indeed... Read more... |
First Person: singer-songwriter David Gray on how the songs on his new album came to himThursday, 13 March 2025
Occasionally, when I pass my own reflection, out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of the likeness of my father, shining out through the bones in my face. In this way his ghost walks with me. Sometimes the making process can feel like... Read more... |
Album: Steven Wilson - The OverviewThursday, 13 March 2025
Steven Wilson’s cinematic concept album The Overview is named for the cognitive shift required of astronauts and others who’ve observed Earth from space and been humbled by both its beauty and its – and their – inconsequentiality. Wilson’s grappling... Read more... |
Album: Coheed and Cambria - The Father of Make BelieveWednesday, 12 March 2025
The Father of Make Believe is the latest instalment in the cinematic fantasy world that Coheed and Cambria have meticulously crafted over the last 30 years. It’s openly more personal in nature than previous albums but The Amory Wars storyline and... Read more... |
Album: Reg Meuross, Fire & Dust: A Woody Guthrie StoryMonday, 10 March 2025
I come to this album from a week or so spent among the denizens of the New York and Boston folk revivals, including a key figure from Tulsa and the Guthrie Center, and a concert (Judy Collins, marking 85 years of music and activism).They were a... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Liverpool Sunset - The City After MerseybeatSunday, 09 March 2025
What happens after the spotlight is directed towards another target? In the case of Liverpool and the Merseybeat boom – which, in terms of chart success, peaked in 1963 – the question is addressed by Liverpool Sunset: The City After Merseybeat 1964–... Read more... |
Album: Lady Gaga - MayhemSaturday, 08 March 2025
Just the other day I overheard one of my kids watching a YouTuber called Nathan Zed and was instantly gripped. It was called “How Trying Became Cool Again,” and focused on pop cultural moments like Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl show, Doechii... Read more... |
Album: Spiritbox - Tsunami SeaThursday, 06 March 2025
Within the loud realm of metal, it often exists happily unbothered by the mainstream. And although a metal band going mainstream isn't always well received in the subculture, it is still exciting when a band feels on the cusp of shattering through... Read more... |
Album: The Burning Hell - Ghost PalaceWednesday, 05 March 2025
Cultural references run up the flagpole on Ghost Palace include Deep Purple’s “Space Truckin’” buskers covering Lynryd Skynyrd and Ed Sheeran, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and The Ramones’ Leave Home album.Album opener “Celebrities in Cemeteries”... Read more... |
Chuck Prophet, Mid Sussex Music Hall, Hassocks review - the good AmericanTuesday, 04 March 2025
Forty years ago, Chuck Prophet was the Keith Richards-like guitar hotshot in Green On Red, peers of R.E.M. and among the raw country-punk architects of what became Americana. Now he’s 61 and playing in a sold-out pub back-room in Hassocks, a... Read more... |
