Making guitar pop/rock (of any kind) work more often than not depends on the synergy of musicians involved, rather than the guitar expertise, and sometimes even the songwriting quality. That synergy seems to be the driving force for the guitar pop Manchester-to-London duo atmos bloom (Tilda Gratton and Curtis Paterson) create on their second album Everythingness.
The duo, who also became life partners, create the kind of guitar pop where that of every kind from above parentheses comes into play – it can be dream pop, it can be twee pop, it could be jangle pop or whatnot – the thing is Gratton and Paterson practically cover it all here. And they wrap it in some very good to excellent songwriting and equal quality harmonies, with high quality…
Latest Entries »
On Christian Name, an album inspired by the devastating loss of a child, Charles Wesley Godwin narrates his journey through despondency, grief, and redemption to a new understanding of his faith.
Godwin explains, “These songs really meant a lot to me. There’s parts of me and parts of the things that I’ve gone through in the last couple years that are in each and every song on this album.”
The title of the album – Christian Name – and the cover art were inspired by his late grandfather, Charles Godwin, who was a preacher in the Methodist Church. Alongside two standout collaborations, the catchy “Better That Way” with Luke Combs and the moving “Hey There Son” with Wyatt Flores, Christian Name finds …
…2CD edition with a second disc containing 10 of Neil Diamond’s hits.
…Wild at Heart is composed of outtakes recorded with producer Rick Rubin in 2007 for the Home Before Dark album (which was released the next year). Diamond has recently completed the tracks for this release.
Diamond and Rubin – whose production credits at the time already encompassed Johnny Cash, Tom Petty, Donovan, Run-DMC, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and numerous others – first teamed up for 2005’s 12 Songs. Rubin encouraged Diamond to go with a raw, minimalist sound for the album, echoing back to his earliest recordings on Bang in the 1960s. Crucially, he also encouraged Diamond to once again pick up his guitar and…
Perhaps at the end of time we will feel the full weight of history hitting us from behind like a train. Perhaps as the world limps towards its final moments we’ll experience a flickering, cut-up dream movie made up of random constituent parts of human history.
These are the sort of thoughts that must have preoccupied Creekbed Carter Hogan during the making of Peasants Revolt, a record that acknowledges the possibility of an imminent apocalypse but is steeped in a wide range of musical and social histories: medieval uprisings, the Haitian Revolution, twenty-first-century trans activism, Americana, political folk music.
To say Peasants Revolt provides a rich and varied listening experience is…
…Made up of teachers, activists and artists, London’s Shovel Dance Collective recontextualise the folk canon, steepings their songs in field recordings, subterranean drone passages and the theatrical grandeur of second wave post-rock to better fit the realities of modern Britain.
One of the shining lights in Shovel Dance is Nick Granata. A supremely gifted vocalist, Granata’s introduction to traditional music only began around the time of the recent folk resurgence, but they have since become an invigorating and uniquely moving presence among practitioners of the style, as if ANOHNI chose the pedal harmonium over the piano. Their debut solo LP, My Heart is Running Backwards! A Martial Artist! With a Closed Fist! Woof! only cements further…
The title of foodman’s new album, HIKARIGA- SASHIKOMU, translates from Japanese as “light shines in” — meaning, a sign of hope and optimism seen from a dark or difficult place. It’s a clear indicator that Foodman — real name Takahide Higuchi — is writing from a deeply personal space, not just through the emotions he conveys, but in the sense he’s inventing his own musical language as he goes.
Higuchi has been producing since the early 2010s. But it was his 2021 Hyperdub debut Yasuragi Land that really put him on the map: a quixotic spin on footwork that invested the sound’s jittery repetitions with a kawaii sense of play. Since Yasuragi Land, Higuchi has continued to release (slightly) more formally straightforward…
Mohamed Bourouissa has long treated sound as an integral part of his artistic practice, but LILA marks the first time it fully steps into the foreground. Conceived as a “musical object,” the album functions as an inventory of relationships: each track is dedicated to someone who has shaped the artist’s life, transforming memory into vibration rather than portraiture. Just as Bourouissa’s photographs and films explore lives at the crossroads of integration and exclusion, LILA constructs an intimate sonic space where people survive not through representation but through the emotional traces they leave behind.
Drawing on a decade of collaborations and experiments with sound, Bourouissa assembles a vocabulary that slips effortlessly between…
…Deluxe Edition expands Daniel Herskedal’s fifth trio album with 3 previously unreleased bonus tracks recorded during the original sessions.
Quick — when you think of instruments that sound airy, what comes to mind?
Piccolo, mandolin, some kind of synthesizer or possibly the theremin? Most of us would take quite some time before guessing the tuba.
It takes some imagination to look past its conventional low lines and thumps, but Daniel Herskedal is just that kind of thinker. Even if the tuba’s role in jazz commonly involves features or solos, it is rare to hear any player handle it with such gentleness and finesse.
Amidst travel-themed works like the sweeping Voyage (2019) Herskedal’s catalogue has…
Where will new musicians gain their experience? Alden Hellmuth, a saxophonist and composer based in New York City, offers one compelling answer: by forging her own path. A graduate of the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz, she was awarded the 2025 German Jazz Prize for Debut Album of the Year and has appeared internationally at major venues and festivals, including the NYC Winter Jazz Festival, the Hollywood Bowl, the Blue Note Jazz Festival, and International Jazz Day events in Morocco and Abu Dhabi.
Hellmuth’s discography charts a clear artistic trajectory — from acoustic, texturally nuanced jazz toward increasingly exploratory and experimental terrain. Tiny Windows (2022), released with the Focusyear Band on the German…
Few archival releases feel as genuinely worthwhile as this newly expanded edition of The Autumn Stone. Originally assembled and released by Immediate Records in 1969 without the band’s involvement, the compilation has long occupied an unusual place in the Small Faces catalogue. While it introduced listeners to some of the group’s finest work, it never truly reflected how the band wanted its music to be presented. More than five decades later, that finally changes.
Curated by drummer Kenney Jones to mark the 60th anniversary of Immediate Records, the 2025 deluxe edition transforms The Autumn Stone from a posthumous compilation into a thoughtfully restored retrospective. Rather than simply remastering the original album…
Amigos has been beloved for decades by both long-time and recent Santana admirers, with multiple generations of fans drawn in by the record’s contagious blend of R&B, Latin, rock, and funk elements. As well as its immense accessibility. Coming off a series of albums that heavily leaned into jazz fusion, the band returns to the more dynamic and concise approaches of its earlier works without losing the sense of adventurousness, craftsmanship, and virtuosity that turned it into a juggernaut embraced by both the mainstream and experimentally minded communities.
The enhanced aural perspectives extend not only to Carlos Santana’s intoxicating fills and solos, but to the rich tapestry of the rhythmic, melodic, and vocal elements that help Amigos…
Nick Hakim is one of those artists you’ve come across whether you realize it or not. From his extensive collaborative history with the likes of Show Me the Body and Pink Siifu to his own solo output that seemingly set out to expand the mind, the multi-instrumentalist / producer / singer / songwriter has built one impressive, undeniable career. The self-reliant renaissance man is capable of conceiving and executing every portion of the creative process at its highest level, allowing Hakim to build these psychedelic sonic universes that are welcoming to the exploratory mind. His solo material and collaborations have never dabbled in the conventional, yet sought to change that norm, with Hakim’s innate experimental tendencies colliding with a natural knack…
Following a hiatus of nearly three years, Tramp Records return to their acclaimed Can You Feel It series with a fifth edition, resuming their treasure hunt through the oft-overlooked depths of the late 1970s disco and modern soul landscape.
As ever, the focus falls on long-lost private-press obscurities, unreleased recordings and neglected dancefloor cuts, with Bill Deal & The Rhondels sharing space with Ryjel’s ‘Heart’s On Fire’, Avatar’s ‘Been Thinkin’ About You’ and King Perkoff’s ‘When You Live In Marin’. Including bonus 7″ of a very rare disco single!
From extremely rare tracks to easily accessible ones and even unreleased material-this release has everything to make a collector’s heart race. Once again, these songs will get you…
The story of EJ & the Echoes represents a remarkable chapter in Michigan’s music history and the early American soul scene. Its origins date back to the late 1950s, when Everett J. “EJ” Gronda was already active as a young musician. While studying at Central Michigan University in the early 1960s, he met the talented vocalist Manuel “Manny” Holcolm. Together with other musicians, they formed vocal groups that soon performed throughout the state and even recorded near Detroit’s legendary Motown studios.
In 1963, Gronda founded EJ & the Echoes, a band that quickly gained popularity at dances, clubs, and weddings across Michigan. With Manny Holcolm as lead singer, the group developed a distinctive harmony-driven sound…
Foreigner released its new live album, In the Eye of the Storm, via Green Hill/Sun Records/Virgin Records. The album serves as the official soundtrack to the band’s concert film, recorded September 6 and 7, 2025 at Ellis Island and the Dumbo House in Brooklyn, and features original members Lou Gramm and Al Greenwood alongside former vocalist Kelly Hansen and current lead singer Luis Maldonado.
A video for ‘I Want to Know What Love Is,’ featuring performances from Gramm, Greenwood, and Hansen, was also released alongside the album.
The project marks part of Foreigner’s 50th anniversary, with a feature film produced by Vertigo Live Productions set to arrive in theaters worldwide in fall 2026.
Josh da Costa imagined his solo debut album New Wave Graveyard as a “greatest hits from a parallel universe, classic songs from an alternate reality.” He says, “Instead of trying to home in on one specific vibe or sound and capturing it over the course of, say, a month of my life, I chose to sort of chameleon my way through my own taste and record collection and try out different approaches to songwriting – as if I were more than just one artist.”
Anyone who’s witnessed Josh DJ around LA or checked out his Confusing Mix radio show on NTS will be familiar with his curious blends of music – Brussels micro-labels, Flying Nun favorites, and leftfield post-punk – and how they all somehow make sense together.
REZN create psychedelic music both retro and modern, occasionally experimental but largely streamlined. It’s space rock and stoner rock with hints of Americana and prog; Sky Valley-via-Sacramento with a not-so-final destination of Live at Pompeii, though the band is from Chicago. If 2024’s breakout album Burden sounded like an ominous transmission from the cosmic depths, then Cycles in the Infinite Dream trades outer space for inner space, recalibrating those hostile frequencies in favor of a heaviness that registers as more organic, more human.
REZN guitarist/vocalist Rob McWilliams leads the way with smooth vocals somewhere in the rarefied air between Chino Moreno and Failure’s Ken Andrews. His high-flying melodies on…
A gritty, veteran soul singer backed by a 12-piece band replete with blaring horns and background singers is your perfect summer soundtrack. You’ll be moving and grooving to What Can We Do?, the debut of The Anthony Paule Soul Orchestra (APSO) on Nola Blue. This is a follow-up to the band’s 2024 multi-BMA-nominated What Are You Waiting For? The APSO has a tradition of being fronted by great vocalists. After all, the band was initially formed to back the late Frank Bey. Willie Walker and Terrie Odabi have served as vocalists. The band is now featuring Willy Jordan, who built his reputation working with Elvin Bishop’s Big Fun Trio and John Lee Hooker.
You may have gathered that the APSO is a Bay Area entity due to Jordan’s background.
Arvo Pärt’s four symphonies occupy a distinctive place within his output. Written over a span of 45 years, they chart not so much a linear evolution as a series of aesthetic ruptures, from the serial experimentation of the 1960s to the austere spirituality of the Fourth Symphony. By bringing together the complete cycle on a single recording, Eva Ollikainen and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra offer a compelling survey that emphasizes the striking contrasts between the works rather than imposing an artificial sense of continuity. The album joins a still relatively modest discography, long dominated by the various recordings from the Järvi family and Tõnu Kaljuste’s complete cycle. From the opening bars of the First Symphony, Ollikainen adopts an approach…
Can you say where you are from after many years living in a country not your own? Can you belong to more than one place at the same time? These are the questions Curió Curió, a Brazilian-German duo, attempts to answer on their debut album.
Actress and singer Luiza Monteiro moved out from her hometown of Rio de Janeiro nine years ago to pursue a career in Europe. There she met Dustin Braun, a German producer, best known for his work with Berlin-based Turkish alternative musician Peki Momés, forming Curió Curió. After almost a decade abroad, Monteiro felt she was “not the same person she’d been in Rio,” but not fully from her new home, either. To address this ambiguity, Braun wrote music that is definitely Brazilian — elegant, groovy, sensual,…