Mystique has become a commodity in contemporary music. These pseudo-intellectuals, hidden behind vague social media posts and complicated album rollouts, seem more concerned with the aesthetic around their music than the songs themselves, resulting in a slew of impressive-looking albums with little substance. Psychedelic West Coast four-piece Allah-Las, made up of former record store employees who combined forces in 2008, toy with mystique without falling into its modern trappings. The quartet of Matt Correia, Spencer Dunham, Miles Michaud, and Pedrum Siadatian doesn’t hide behind masks or try to be mysterious. Still, they do draw inspiration from these concepts on their sixth studio album, Sirenas.
The 10-song instrumental LP occupies a liminal…
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The Will of Tongues, the latest record by performer-composer Sarah Davachi, is a marvel of time. The record draws on Davachi’s many years of engagement with historical instruments and fascination with various tuning systems, textures and harmonic structures, featuring reconstructed period wind instruments, historically tuned organs and an abstracted Renaissance choral form. It also makes excellent use of the centuries of combined musical experience brought to bear by her many collaborators, most of whom are noted performer-composers themselves (Whitney Johnson, Eyvind Kang, and Lucy Railton among them). And then there’s the two-hour-plus runtime.
Taken as a whole, The Will of Tongues feels like the culmination of a gradually developed…
Into the Sky is the realisation of a project six years in the making. With the need to keep active during lockdown, former Late of the Pier singer Sam Eastgate – aka LA Priest – made a dance record entirely from sampled material, devising his own form of house music in the process. Yet the finished product sat in the studio while Eastgate completed his guitar-based third album Fase Luna in 2023.
More recently, however, Eastgate revisited his work in the company of producer friend Alex Ridha, aka Boys Noize. Their challenge was to wring as much emotion as possible from the voice and just two accompanying instruments. These are a drum machine – a Gene built by Eastgate himself around a decade ago – and a synthesizer,…
The discourse surrounding the Linda Lindas is more telling about the state of the music industry than of the band’s actual music.
It’s impossible to ignore the cultural criticism associated with the quartet of Lucia and Mila de la Garza, Eloise Wong and Bela Salazar, who rose to fame on the back of a 2021 viral video of them performing a song entitled “Racist, Sexist Boy” at the Los Angeles Public Library. Take one quick Google search and hordes of comments calling the Linda Lindas “nepo babies” or “industry plants” will immediately become apparent.
While people have been quick to blow the whistle on nepo babies lately, one can’t help but notice such labels are disproportionately wielded against women, especially racialized women.
Ty Segall has a new album because it’s been a whole year since the last one, and Segall doesn’t seem at ease until he can hit a studio and record all of the ideas floating around his mind. The prolific artist has released 18 studio albums, plus three collaborative albums and several projects with other bands over just 18 years.
Despite the constant output and frequent changes in bandmates, Segall has been remarkably consistent in churning out top-notch garage rock. Chrome continues that success with one of his heaviest albums to date.
For this album, Segall reunites with The Freedom Band, made up of guitarist Emmett Kelly, bassist Mikal Cronin, drummer Evan Burrows, and Ben Boye on keyboards and piano.
Jim James’ first solo album in eight years finds him dealing with human disconnection in an age of chronic overstimulation. He uses a term he coined to describe this feeling as the title, Wowed Out.
Modern sensory overload in an age of technological wonder, somehow leaving us more alone, is something James grapples with throughout the record; however, this wasn’t a thematic plan. The album was assembled when James dug into recordings he’d created with his longtime friend, award-winning composer Brian Reitzell (Lost in Translation, The Virgin Suicides). These tracks were meant for different projects, but all share an underlying theme, as James calls it, of being Wowed Out.
The layers of instrumentation and vocals can…
Forty years on, The Jayhawks remain true to their trusted sound. Their lush and patented three-part harmonies and thoughtful, imagery-filled lyrics never go out of style. Their 12th studio album, Sanctuary Park, is a balm for these times. They capture the innocence of teenage years, reflecting from the perspective of adulthood. The opening track, “Keeping Our Heads Above Water,” begins with the line, “under the football lights,” immediately putting the listener in a nostalgic frame of mind. Yet, the upbeat music obscures the theme of resignation heard at the end, “taking all that you have to believe again.” The album’s most riveting track, “Hands on the Wheel,” begins this way in a cappella harmonies, ‘We’ll steal your daddy’s car/Roll down the window…
When Alabama Shakes sauntered in with the Southern groove of ‘Hold On’ in early 2012, the members were barely older than the boys and girls for which they named their debut. Sure, guitarist Heath Fogg was nearing 30, but Brittany Howard sang about the surprise of surviving to 22 from the wizened perspective of just 23. They advanced quickly, shifting in only three years from their elemental and agile soul-rock beginnings to the psychedelic and skywriting Sound & Color. An album borne of audacious vision and confident execution, it recalled the joyful hybrids that have long come from their geographical zone, particularly just north in Muscle Shoals and Memphis. Howard continued that quest with two highly collaborative solo albums,…
In the summer of 1976, Bob Marley & The Wailers hit the UK shortly before the heatwave, in mid-June. They’d been touring Rastaman Vibration since April – breakthrough shows in the US and Europe – and in Britain, just a few months after the success of Live! and No Woman, No Cry, filled four nights and two matinees at
the Hammersmith Odeon, announcing that reggae was no niche novelty but a potent force. In the audience was future DJ Don Letts who in the linernotes here makes an impassioned case for that residency’s significance. “It made British kids who’d never stepped in a Caribbean household feel the hum of something deeper than rock or pop. Marley showed the world the spirituality, rebellion and beauty inside our culture.” Letts also asserts that reviewers of…
A chandelier of CCTV cameras hangs down from the cover of Interpol’s eighth album, a portrait of both the band’s DNA and of this record. Their sound has always been one of elegance, but coloured by the gloom of a very urban modernity. On ‘This Mirror Weighs a Ton’, the New York indie heroes are feeling watched by the modern world, while also reflecting on their own worth.
There are generally more eyes on Interpol in 2026. Their new record label Partisan (also home to IDLES, Geese and PJ Harvey) reports that more than half of the band’s 2.5million monthly Spotify listeners are under the age of 35. It’s a rare feat for a band of their vintage to have a following beyond 6 Music dads, but there’s a new generation taking up front rows of gigs, devouring their…
When J Mascis set up his home studio in preparation for Dinosaur Jr’s sixth album since their 2005 reunion, he decided to use a ’70s Mesa Boogie MK 1 amp for the first time since their 1985 debut Dinosaur. Independently but simultaneously, Lou Barlow was making his own nod to the past, incorporating on one song the distorted sound of a shortwave radio that he’d taped during the band’s first European tour and originally used on 1987’s You’re Living All Over Me. These two decisions say a lot about Dinosaur Jr in 2026, as Barlow and Mascis concurrently but separately reference their past, in a way so subtle and classy that nobody except them would even know they’re doing it. It’s a way of creating a bond to your history without disorientating the listener with…
During the first wave of post-punk, the bulk of its practitioners lived in nations with undeniably agit-worthy issues. But they weren’t faced with anything like the existential chaos that’s been a day-to-day reality for generations in Lebanon. In other words, Beirut bands like Scrambled Eggs have a right to roar, and then some.
Scrambled Eggs’ first recordings appeared in the early ‘00s, but the quartet wound up drinking deeply from the late 1970s/early ‘80s post-punk well of bands like Gang of Four, The Pop Group, et al. The explosive energy and sociopolitical unrest at the core of those 20th-century sounds is surely something four young men raised in Lebanon could take to heart in a whole different way from their fellow post-punk revivalists further…
Pioneering Arabic/Western fusion singer Natacha Atlas returns alongside creative and life partner Samy Bishai – a violinist and composer who has served as Atlas’ musical director since 2010 – with an album dedicated to the people of Palestine.
The lead single, ‘Unchanging Game’, sets a suitably sombre tone. Processed beats and hand percussion mix with subtle electronics and keyboards. Atlas’ voice remains as smooth and compelling as ever. ‘Zar’’s experimental edge trickles and bubbles with cut-and-splice vocals.
‘Wana Leih’ displays an ultra-modern R&B gleam yet sacrifices little to commercialism. ‘Dawsha’ ticks, clicks and sways across an ambient, trip-hop landscape. ‘Bahlam Biyoum’ rains stirring melodies over a romantic, digital…
Adam Bałdych is a name that’s become synonymous with the German label ACT and is the epitome of one of the label’s central musical crossroads between folk-roots and Euro classical-leaning chamber jazz sophistication. The 40-year-old Warsaw-based violinist-composer has recently collaborated with pianist and fellow countryman Leszek Możdżer and trumpeter Paulo Fresu as well as Helge Lien Trio and Marius Neset among others. Endless features Bałdych’s new pan-European quartet performing his compositions’ haunted song-like minimalism with a lush classical-music sonic and traditional Polish and tango roots music, the latter aided by a contribution from the esteemed Italian bandoneon instrumentalist Daniele di Bonaventura.
In his excellent Rough Guide to Country Music, Kurt Wolff devotes a chapter to the Nashville Sound. In his introduction, he charts its emergence back in the late 1950s as: “Goodbye fiddle leads, hayseed routines and nasal voices; hello string sections, background choruses and smooth sophisticated singing. This country-pop blend – or countrypolitan, as it came to be known – worked like a charm, as far as record sales and radio listenership were concerned”.
And he goes on to point out that, despite the scorn from some purists, this gave rise to many beautiful recordings from the likes of Don Gibson and Patsy Cline, and later, Charlie Rich, and even George Jones and Merle Haggard.
It is not an insult, therefore, to see the latest…
…The deluxe edition introduces 2 previously unreleased studio tracks rescued from the original sessions, newly mixed by Stephen Mougin.
On their second effort for Ricky Skaggs’ Ceili label, Del McCoury and his band, the reigning kings of bluegrass (even if Ralph Stanley is the Pope) turn in a another solid, haunting, and even completely astonishing set that features everything from tunes about haunted train rides, biker outlaws who remain focused on their quest unto death, a Richard Thompson tune (“1952 Vincent Black Lightning”), and a blues tune supposedly gleaned from listening to Frank Sinatra, as well as more traditional bluegrass stompers about being high and lonesome, grief, lost love, and hanging out at the barnyard. Right, that sentence was…
…Four albums from the McAuley Schenker Group from the late ’80s and early ’90s. All with bonus material.
After making his debut at a mere 17 years on Scorpions’ first LP ‘Lonesome Crow’ in 1972, guitar maestro and mad axe-man Michael Schenker spent five years as lead guitarist with the inimitable UFO, before forming The Michael Schenker Group (MSG for short) with singer Gary Barden in 1979. With four studio albums and two live records under his belt between 1980 and 1984, Michael returned in 1987 with the ‘Perfect Timing’ album, fronted by former Grand Prix and Far Corporation singer Robin McAuley, and a change of name to the McAuley Schenker Group – but still conveniently shortened to MSG. The new look MSG…
…5CD box set anthology of B-Sides, rarities and archive material from Toyah’s recording history for the Safari label (1979-1983).
…Revelations provides an alternate history of the Toyah Wilcox-fronted new wavers by way of B-sides, outtakes, instrumentals, alternate versions, home demos and live tracks.
Record label Cherry Red say that “it has been designed to perfectly complement the album catalogue reissue programme”.
Remarkably, given how comprehensive the individual album reissues were, 50 of the 102 tracks on Revelations are previously unreleased. The box has been compiled by by Toyah archivist Craig Astley alongside Joel Bogen, co-founder, composer and guitarist with the band.
…includes 9 bonus tracks of ‘Midnight Versions’ and rarities.
Marius Lauber’s debut album is in itself a feat of many surprises. The Cologne, Germany-based artist, who records and produces under the moniker Roosevelt, takes measures to make sure that this initial self-titled offering feels far from conventional, yet remains accessible to those who crave new sounds.
Upon first listen of the self-titled debut, Roosevelt’s origin should not surprise many diehards of electronic music, as the genre is very much rooted in the land of the Rhine, with forerunners of synthpop such as Kraftwerk and Neu! both hailing from the country. Roosevelt takes what made those early electro artists special and…
When an artist breaks away from the path they know best, there are two expected directions they can take: either they’ll continue to make the same kinds of music they’ve always made, or they’ll sprint in the opposite direction. When the robots known as Daft Punk decided to call it quits, the humans behind the masks became free to make that choice. For Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, at least so far, the choice has been to step away from most acts of musical creation beyond acting as a producer for the likes of Sébastien Tellier, Travis Scott, the Weeknd and Rosalia. It’s hard to blame him for not working harder; after all, when you and your creative partner become one of the most iconic electronic music duos in the history of the genre, you don’t really need…