WOLF ALICE THE CLEARING RCA RECORDS It’s been four years since we’ve heard something of substance from Wolf Alice, and they’ve had their fanbase on tenterhooks, particularly since the much-trailed single “Bloom Baby Bloom” showed off the band’s [...]
NO OVERPRODUCTION, NO OVERTHINKING A CONVERSATION WITH DUNCAN LLOYD The first thing you learn about Duncan Lloyd is that he’s a man that isn’t in a rush, and that’s something of a relief given our meeting is delayed by at least 10 minutes by [...]
THE FARM LET THE MUSIC (TAKE CONTROL) MODERN SKY/ROUGH TRADE Just what is happening in British indie at the moment? After recent releases by The Cure and Pulp, the latest band to emerge from a long on-record hibernation is The Farm, who have [...]
SAVE THE RETRO A CONVERSATION WITH MANCHESTER’S RETRO BAR OWNER MARK ARMOR This July, roughly a quarter of a million Oasis fans, over four days, will make a pilgrimage to Manchester to see the resurrection of a band thought long dead. [...]
MATT BERNINGER GET SKUNK CONCORD RECORDS With The National’s recent resurgence, there’s an increasing demand to hear songs from Matt Berninger’s pen, and that’s prompted a second solo album, following 2020’s Serpentine Prison. What follows is a [...]
BUTTHOLE SURFER LIVE AT THE LEATHER FLY SUNSET BLVD RECORDS There can’t be many weirder bands to try and capture the essence of than the crazy-named Butthole Surfers. That said, this album succeeds where many live albums fall down, by mixing [...]
REAL ESTATE THE WEE SMALL HOURS: B-SIDES AND OTHER DETRITUS 2011-2025 DOMINO RECORDS Following on from 2024’s reinventive effort “Daniel”, Real Estate attempts to bless our ears with this collection of oddities and deep cuts, and it’s a [...]
MANCHESTER PUNK FESTIVAL 2025 @ MANCHESTER (UK) APRIL 18-20, 2025 Manchester Punk Festival continues to thrive. Now in its 10th year, the Easter weekend institution remains atop most UK punks’ calendars, and with good reason. Recently voted the [...]
40 WATTS FROM NOWHERE SUSAN CARPENTER/SLAMDANCE FESTIVAL FEBRUARY 23, 2025 What do you do with a bunch of burning ambition, a love for music, and a boredom with early 90’s commercial radio? For most people, the obvious answer wouldn’t be ‘start [...]
SAM FENDER PEOPLE WATCHING POLYDOR With People Watching, his first album since his 2022 breakthrough Seventeen Going Under, Sam Fender landed a big coup in hiring Adam Granduciel of The War On Drugs as his producer and collaborator. That [...]
GLEN MATLOCK – I WAS A TEENAGE SEX PISTOL VMI WORLDWIDE FEBRUARY 10, 2025 (US) I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol advertises itself as Glen Matlock’s tale of the rise of the Sex Pistols, and it delivers on that front from the off. Every step of [...]
CIRCA WAVES DEATH & LOVE PT. 1 LOWER THIRD There’s immediate joy in Circa Waves’ new album; “American Dream” opens in a blaze of sound and classic indie pop, an explosion of euphoria after trauma, which is probably not that far [...]
FRANZ FERDINAND THE HUMAN FEAR DOMINO RECORDS Franz Ferdinand’s first studio album in seven years (Always Ascending being 2018’s major effort) is instantly identifiable from its opening track “Audacious”. Alex Kapranos’s voice has lost none of [...]
THE NATIONAL ROME 4AD The National have had a busy few years, encompassing two albums, a well-received Glastonbury headline slot, and a much-needed return to the top table of indie rock. This, then, doubles as a celebration of that re-ascension [...]
KIM DEAL NOBODY LOVES YOU MORE 4AD When you hear the words “Kim Deal’s first solo album”, you’d be forgiven for expecting to hear more of the same clattering rhythms and incongruous lyricism that made her a behemoth of the alternative rock scene [...]
LESS THAN JAKE UNCHARTED PURE NOISE For an album named after discovering the unknown, it’s amusing that it’s incredibly obvious that this is a Less Than Jake album from the second you hit the play button. All the hallmarks of the best of the [...]
THE CURE SONGS OF A LOST WORLD POLYDOR/UNIVERSAL MUSIC Barring a reformation, it’s hard to imagine it ever being acceptable for most bands to take 16 years to release new music. However, this is The Cure. There’s therefore an obvious sense of [...]
REAL BANDS…WELL, THEY PLAY MUSIC AND THEY RECORD ALBUMS A CONVERSATION WITH JOEY SANTIAGO & DAVID LOVERING OF THE PIXIES It feels strangely surreal to still be interviewing the Pixies about new music in 2024 – it’s a credit to them that, [...]
PIXIES THE NIGHT THE ZOMBIES CAME BMG Even over 20 years into their second act, on The Night The Zombies Came, the Pixies show no signs of being ready for a musical rapture. The album corkscrews around as expected. There’s awesome predictability [...]
DERYCK WHIBLEY – WALKING DISASTER: MY LIFE THROUGH HEAVEN AND HELL GALLERY BOOKS BOOK REVIEW BY JOHN PORTER It was something of a surprise when now-former Sum 41 band leader Deryck Whibley announced he was picking up the pen to write his [...]
MAXÏMO PARK STREAM OF LIFE LOWER THIRD/[PIAS] Perhaps the late 2000s greatest indie survivors, Maxïmo Park return with their eighth album, and if there are any lingering doubts about their remaining power, they dispel it pretty quickly with [...]
THE WAR ON DRUGS LIVE DRUGS AGAIN SUPER HIGH QUALITY RECORDS Some bands often bemoan a record producer’s lack of ability to record ‘their live sound’, but perhaps no band benefits more from being captured live than The War On Drugs. There’s a [...]
STEVIE VAN ZANDT: DISCIPLE HBO JUNE 22, 2024 When you’re best known for being part of a cultural phenomenon like the E Street Band, it can be hard to get your individual story told. Disciple sets out to redress that balance by focussing on [...]
JOE GITTLEMAN HOLD UP BAD TIME RECORDS After many years being the backbone of many bands on the ska scene, not least the ‘Bass Fiddleman’ of the sadly-missed Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Joe Gittleman takes a step forward into the limelight himself. [...]
