Five decades into a career that has seen Ed Snodderly as a songwriter, performer, actor, and owner of the legendary Down Home club in East Tennessee, comes perhaps his most personal release to date. ES Pearl Presents Baggage Flies Free not only continues the family name; his grandma was Pearlie Bell, his mom Willie Pearl, but offers a glimpse into his life in East Tennessee. Surrounded by a stellar cast that includes Tim O’Brien, Amythyst Kiah, Verlon Thompson and Brother Boy Eugene Wolf, the mainly acoustic songs still have a contemporary feel thanks to some pin-sharp production.
The opener, ‘Coming Down This Road’, picks up pace as it travels, leading into the melodic ‘Willow Green’, which sees Snodderly admiring…
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Formed in 2001, Aberdeen’s The XCERTS never reached the heights of their fast/slow DNA brothers Biffy Clyro and Twin Atlantic, but they should have. Their new album, i think i want to go home now., shows exactly why. A punchy, euphoric blend of anger and melodic softness, it sees Murray Macleod attempting to make sense of the world after his father’s cancer diagnosis. Following the opening title track, do it to myself offers an incendiary pop-punk blast full of barbed-wire guitars and brain-rattling bass with the all-important quieter breakdown as Macleod repeatedly questions: ‘Will it always be like this?’, while another highlight comes in the form of the driving Smashing Pumpkins-style love song, sinking feeling.
There’s also the screamo of pretty ugly, but…
The latest entry in Wild Up’s complete account of music by Julius Eastman focuses exclusively on one of his greatest works, 1979’s Gay Guerillia. Although the score is open to any group of instruments of a similar timbre, Wild Up director Christopher Rountree stretched those definitions a bit to forge an orchestral version with four loose instrumental categories.
As Rountree explained, “Our idea for our interpretation is to reach toward one another timbrally so that the instruments begin to blend and transcend their characteristic sounds.” The resulting arrangement recasts the music with fuller voicings and enhanced richness, while still transmitting an essential power and drive. Structured like a chorale fantasia based on…
When Conal was released in 1981 on the Norwegian independent label Uniton Records with an initial run of 4,000 LPs, Conrad Schnitzler had already long been known beyond the borders of the Federal Republic of Germany and was now appreciated worldwide as a media artist and musician. In addition to the many cassette and LP editions he released himself, international labels were now increasingly releasing his music. In the same year as Conal, for example, the album Control was released on the American label DYS, followed in 1986 by Concert in the USA and Consequenz 2 in Spain. Schnitzler worked tirelessly and his total work of art, including his music, was becoming increasingly multifaceted. Conal is a good example of this development.
A sign of the ever-encroaching AI times in which we’re living, the words “Produced Entirely by Humans” appear on the back cover of this superb joint effort from electronic artists David Helpling and Scott Reich — not that such clarification is needed when the music couldn’t more possibly reflect a human touch and the sensibilities of its creators. Both figures are long-standing practitioners of the ambient art, and the two appear to bring out the best in each other when pooling their talents as they do here.
While details about “who plays what” are clarified, the nine compositions are credited to both, making it impossible to determine who might have been more involved in the production of a given piece or whether each was equally…
Brighton on the English South Coast has always been weird. It was built almost from scratch as a hedonistic playground by the foppish Prince Regent, later King George IV, just over 200 years ago — and ever since has attracted waves of freaks, cultists, ravers, lowlifes, and oddballs. Nowadays, it’s beset by gentrification, chain restaurants, media folk and wellness gurus, but just under the surface it still has the air of “a town that is constantly helping the police with their enquiries” as the writer Keith Waterhouse put it in the 1970s. And now, as ever, hidden away from the seafront clubs and big indie gigs, it has a wellspring of genuine eccentricity clinging on to its surreality in basement flats, weird jam sessions above pubs, smelly poetry readings, and weird…
Those who have been following Shane Embury’s career closely since the days of Unseen Terror’s Human Error back in 1987 may be less surprised by the largely accessible, melodic music of Bridge to Resolution than those who are aware of him only as Napalm Death’s bass player and a figurehead of the U.K. extreme music underground scene. There’s never been any shortage of diversity in Embury’s musical career, and it’s his work outside of metal, such as the shoegaze-ish indie noise rock of Little Giant Drug, his electronic dark ambient/drone project Dark Sky Burial and his association with art-rock veterans Cardiacs, that point most clearly in the direction he takes on the first album to be issued under his own name.
As the awkward phrasing above suggests,…
On Wednesday night at a sold-out Nationals Park, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band had just reached the end of “Streets of Minneapolis,” the song the Boss wrote about the ICE murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and the resistance put forth by the citizens of Minneapolis and St. Paul in reaction to “Operation Metro Surge” (it was no accident that this tour opened in the Twin Cities). As recorded, it’s a fine folk ballad. But when performed live by the E Street Band, the song flips from black and white to technicolor, with Springsteen opening the song solo acoustic and the band swinging in on the chorus.
There’s a line in the last verse which is set up as potential crowd participation: “In our chants of ‘ICE out now!’ our city’s heart and soul…
Freddie & the Dreamers were the clowns of the British Invasion, playing their pop music for laughs while the other groups of the time were dead serious. Lead singer Freddie Garrity began playing in skiffle groups in the late ’50s, switching to rock & roll in the early ’60s.
After the Beatles broke the American market wide open, Freddie & the Dreamers followed in the flood of acts that tried to duplicate the overwhelming success of the Fab Four. The group’s hits were more numerous in the U.K. than in America, where they had only one Top Ten hit, the number one “I’m Telling You Now.” As 1965 turned into 1966, the group stopped charting in the U.S. and the hits began to dwindle in the U.K.; by 1968 the original group disbanded.
Organetto (small diatonic button accordion) luminary Riccardo Tesi teams up with his Tuscan hometown pal, classical flautist Paolo Zampini (who worked with Ennio Morricone), to channel organic acoustics and a shared passion for prog rock. Camerock, a portmanteau of ‘chamber’ and ‘rock’, offers much more than the title suggests. Joined by a great cast including pianist Daniele Biagini, who co-wrote three pieces, the duo merges global influences with baroque, classical and rock elements. The album features newly penned compositions alongside a chamber rendition of Morricone’s ‘Nuovo Cinema Paradiso’ and an impressive take on Jethro Tull’s ‘Living in the Past’ (an adolescent idol of the pair), woven into Tesi’s ‘Presente Remoto’, where his…
Since 2024, Kou Records, a label co-run by vocalist Charmaine Lee and sought-after producer and composer Randall Dunn, has been “dedicated to artists who have built their own musical language”. A listen to their small but potent roster bears this out. From Lee’s processed, often violent vocal contortions to Aliya Ultan‘s foreboding song cycle for cello, these are serious artists with daunting resumes. These musicians have often grounded themselves in classical forms, so they know exactly what rules they are breaking.
Taiga Ultan, a classically trained flautist who now creates her own tight constrictions only to break free of them constantly, creates music perfect for the Kou label. With her debut, Shade Zero, she makes a strong argument for…
The New York quartet ContraPunctus eases into the third track on its 2026 self-titled debut with about 15 seconds of musical suggestion. Bassist Gui Duvignau and drummer Hamir Atwal respond to pianist Carmen Staaf’s gentle Fender Rhodes melody with a tempo that starts at a comfortable clip. Staaf eloquently establishes the melody in the next few seconds — Juan Tizol and Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” — that clarinetist Mike McGinnis picks up and continues. McGinnis and Staaf trade the tune’s theme as the quartet establishes an elastic, rollicking synergy.
This “Caravan” came about during a moment of collective improvisation the group made time for in the recording studio, summoning this restless and introspective version of a jazz standard…
Show Me the Body have always approached hardcore less like a defensive crouch and more like a charge — they treat it as an offensive form. Their songs don’t wait to be cornered; they move first into the fray, with jaw set and teeth bared as the hand that feeds draws near. They force confrontation, and on Alone Together, this is the most direct and recognizably punk they’ve sounded — not because they’ve abandoned what has made them one of the strangest, most experimental hardcore acts around, but because they’ve sharpened it all into a weapon of absolute precision, brandished with love.
Yes, their classic banjo-punk sound still scrapes like grazing the surface of some exposed rusting metal, while Julian Cashwan Pratt…
Melodi Ghazal’s debut full-length finds the Copenhagen-based artist tracing a path through cultural inheritance and sonic exploration. Raised by Iranian parents and shaped by everything from pre-revolutionary Persian pop to VH1 balladry, her sound was honed at the illustrious Rhythmic Music Conservatory – the same stable as left-field contemporaries like ML Buch and Astrid Sonne.
The opener ‘Heart on the Loose’ drifts in on cyclical grooves and devotional lyricism, Ghazal’s voice hovering over soft-focus electronics and darkening daf rhythms, while ‘Miracle’ is a swirl of delayed synths and sultry bass.
‘Fariba Forever’ sets spoken word against manipulated melodies, ‘Numb’ pairs shimmering guitar with a muted sense of release,…
Slow Magic is the second album by Sailing Stones, alter ego of the Irish-born and Bristol-based singer-songwriter Jenny Lindfors, arriving six years after the debut Polymnia — released in 2020, the very year her daughter was born.
The record explores the rising tide of physical, psychological, and emotional changes that come with motherhood, blending together moments of beauty, rage, heartache, and exhaustion into a woozy psych folk swirl.
…It is both musically and lyrically built around the subject of matrescence, the transitions and major life changes a woman goes through at the time of bringing new life into the world. Which is not to say that only half the population will relate to this collection; it is a universal moment…
She’s green have been justifiably building buzz as purveyors of a mighty fine brand of shoegaze and ethereal indie rock since their 2023 EP Wisteria took the scene by storm. Now swallowtail arrives ready to cement their status as one of the best and most exciting bands of their time. Coming in at seven tracks and 29 minutes this record still counts as a long EP rather than a short album. The power and beauty of the band is only growing, which is shown in multiple spots on the record, whether on the more understated “dear ivy” (“and I need you know” ringing out in its latter stages atop some beautiful lead guitar lines) or in the more restrained “empty house” where vocalist Zofia Smith truly comes to the fore.
Elsewhere, tracks build to perhaps more…
Ordinarily, a Bruce Springsteen show is a ferocious, three-hour rock’n’roll display. But his performance Sunday at TD Garden was no ordinary Springsteen show. It was a ferocious, three-hour, rock’n’roll display of righteous anger, a conscious political act. Dubbed the “Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour,” Springsteen made plain what it was about in the tour’s announcement: “we will be rocking your town in celebration and in defense of America — American democracy, American freedom, our American Constitution and our sacred American dream — all of which are under attack.” It is no accident that the tour kicked off in Minneapolis, the city where, a few months ago, Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed by ICE agents, an event that precipitated the latest…
The colorful combination of names on this collaboration is indicative of the vibrant music they create together. Americana singer/songwriter Grey DeLisle, who has been releasing rootsy country/folk/rocking albums for over 20 years, heard young soul singer Greene and was so impressed, she suggested they combine their talents. The effervescent, soulful and instantly loveable Grey & Greene, is the result.
The two initially dueted on 2025’s frisky Christmas single “I Don’t Want Nothing,” then decided to expand that to a (short) album-length project touching on retro-tinged upbeat soul, classic pop, rockabilly and even some gospel. Their secret weapon is producer/multi-instrumentalist James Intveld; a veteran of roots-oriented…
This is George Mann and Si Kahn’s second album working together following the release of Labor Day: A Tribute to Hardworking People Everywhere in 2024. That album, released to celebrate Kahn’s 80th birthday, was rightly celebrated within the Civil Rights and the music fraternities.
…This latest album, Mayday!, is subtitled Songs to Keep Our Hearts Steady and Strong for the Fight and reflects on life in a darker, less democratic country. The album features 9 Kahn originals, two of which were recorded last century, 3 new songs jointly written by Mann and Kahn, and a track where Kahn shares a writing credit with Beethoven. Mann has clearly been a key facilitator in making this album to celebrate Kahn and takes the lion’s share of the vocals, with Kahn taking…
Inspired by a bird landing on a city windowsill, Air Signs by anthéne looks to the skies for meaning or assurance. We don’t find a feathery, avian energy here. Instead, this is an airborne album of open expanse and surging textures, matching the bird’s natural element. Ephemeral guitar sounds overlap in loops, rising and falling like breath. Diffuse gusts of melody blow past. Bright glimmers of sound give a sense of sunlight and shadow.
Air is immediate evoked on Air Signs. So what about signs? With guitar, pedal, and filter, artist Brad Deschamps weaves signification out of thin air, or transcribes the air’s own signifying. The finished work may be organic and effortless, but the activity of meaning-making is hinted at. Rustles, clicks, pops, and crackling…