White Denim Performance City Slang Whenever I hear a new song, my brain tries to place the common sounds, tries to pull together references to say, “hey, keep listening, you’ll like this.” White Denim’s Performance is everyone’s brain pulling [...]
Mitski Be The Cowboy Dead Oceans Mitski may be one of the most intriguing young artists making music at the moment and Be The Cowboy, the follow-up to her acclaimed 2016 album Puberty 2, is again full to overflowing with enigmatic, intriguing, [...]
Mystic Braves The Great Unknown Lolipop Records There’s a beach somewhere in Southern California where it’s been the Summer of Love for the last 50 years. The air is consistently thick with the same dizzying heat, and there is always a light [...]
STRFKR Being No One, Going Nowhere (Remixes) Polyvinyl The new take on Stkrfkr’s fifth studio album is an odd one; one that is very difficult in seeing the point of. Whatever structure they created two years ago when the unremixed album came out [...]
Death Cab for Cutie Thank You For Today Warner Music Into their second decade of making music, Death Cab for Cutie’s Thank You for Today is a testament to a band whose career boasts a vast catalogue of poetic lyrics mixed with sun spotted and [...]
Walter Lure & The Waldos Wacka Lacka Loom Bop A Loom Bam Boo Cleopatra Records It has been almost 25 years since Walter Lure has released a studio album. Many know the name from his time with Johnny Thunder and The Heartbreakers and his work [...]
Bear Grass Left Five Kill Records At its very centre, Bear Grass’s new album Left is some fairly standard singer/songwriter kind of stuff. That is not an insult, far from it. The album boasts some amazing melodies and hooks throughout the [...]
Water Slice Water Slice EP Independent Psychedelic-tinged, power pop songwriter Patrick Philips, also known as Water Slice, has arrived with his debut EP and it couldn’t have come at a better time of the year. From the first track, Phillips [...]
The Proclaimers Angry Cyclist Sony Music Angry Cyclist is the first collection of new music from The Proclaimers since 2015, and it is a sonic treat. Leave it to twins Charlie and Craig Reid to give us the old sneak attack – as if we didn’t see [...]
Primal Fear Apocalypse Frontiers Music Primal Fear formed in Germany in 1997. It was and is a supergroup of European heavy metal music. Ralf Scheepers of Gamma Ray (vocals) joined up with Mat Sinner of Sinner (bass and vocals), and the result [...]
Elvis Presley Where No One Stands Alone RCA/Sony Music Elvis always seemed at home singing gospel, and there are many interviews with Elvis where he references growing up singing hymns and religious music. He released some brilliant gospel [...]
Halcyon Way Bloody But Unbowed Agonia Records Atlanta natives Halcyon Way are back with their latest release, Bloody But Unbowed, delivering their unique blend of progressive and thrash metal. With driving and relentless guitars, demonic vocals, [...]
Laffey Ten Laffey Records Andrew Laffey (who goes by the name Laffey) is a producer who has branched out to being a musician in his own right. Ten is is second album (Laffey being his debut album released earlier in 2018). Ten is a short album [...]
Merry Clayton Merry Clayton Real Gone Music Strange is the fate of backup singers. Many have extraordinary talents, but rarely get anything beyond a mention in the liner notes, and rarely even get a chance to have a solo recording. The case of [...]
NOFX Ribbed – Live In A Dive Fat Wreck Cords Seeing NOFX live is always surprising – breaking from the typical concert formula of playing hits interspersed with new singles, they take pleasure in shocking the audience with obscure or [...]
Monk Higgins Extra Soul Perception Real Gone Music Studio musicians and writers are often the unsung heroes of other artists’ music, rarely seeing the limelight themselves. Sometimes there’s good reason for that: it takes a lot more to create [...]
Phantastic Ferniture Phantastic Ferniture Universal Music Phantastic Ferniture, the darkly breezy garage-pop debut album of friends Julia Jacklin, Elizabeth Hughes, and Ryan K Brennan, is a passion project in the best sense. Jacklin’s acclaimed [...]
John Schumann & The Vagabond Crew Ghosts & Memories Universal Music Australia John Schumann was the front man of the group Redgum, a group he left to form The Vagabond Crew in 2005, their name coming from a Henry Lawson poem. He also [...]
Clearance At Your Leisure Topshelf Records There are some bands that simply refuse to fit into the pre-existing genres or eras of music. Clearance is one of these bands, with a new album that could have very well topped the pop charts in the [...]
Tony Molina Kill The Lights Slumberland Tony Molina is back with a new EP. Molina is coming off a pretty solid run with his last release, but this new album is definitely a step in the right direction. Kill the Lights is a bit different than [...]
Bass Drum Of Death Just Business Red Music In 2011, a one-man-band from Oxford, Mississippi dropped its debut LP on Fat Possum Records. Over the next few years, Bass Drum of Death led by John Barrett released a slew of lo-fi goodness that looked [...]
Gareth Inkster Last Year Independent Musician Gareth Inkster has released his coproduced debut EP titled Last Year. Although this is the twenty-six-year-old folk-rock musician from Hamilton’s first album, he has proven musical maturity. Inkster [...]
Rab Noakes Welcome to Anniversaryville Neon Records Rab Noakes may not be a household name in North America, but in his native Scotland, the man is a revered artist. Here he is primarily known for working with Gerry Rafferty and for being a [...]
MÒZÂMBÎQÚE For Never And Ever Text Me Records To be honest, I was not sure what was going to come at me when I slipped For Never And Ever on, but I can tell you, I was not expecting what I heard. For Never And Ever is MÒZÂMBÎQÚE’s debut album. A [...]
