San Francisco Bay Area, USA – The Asteroid No.4 return in 2026 with “In Praise of Shadows”, their thirteenth full length album and a statement release that reaffirms the band’s enduring place within the modern psychedelic underground.
With our 13th record, “In Praise of Shadows”, we may have made our most ambitious album yet. The title comes from Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s beautifully meditative book In Praise of Shadows, which reflects on the quiet collision between the deep shadows of traditional Japanese interiors and the dazzling light of the modern age. That tension really resonated with us.
This is a darker sounding effort musically and lyrically but it’s also about finding those special, almost hidden moments that exist in the shadows, and recognizing the beauty that can live inside darker times. In a political and social climate like the one we’re living through now, we wanted to search for the good things that still flicker underneath it all and relying on art and music to do so.
Swathed in multi layered guitars, dense reverb, and hypnotic melodic drift, the record reflects decades of refinement while retaining the immediacy and emotional pull that has defined the band since their earliest releases.
Formed in Philadelphia in the late 1990s and now based in the San Francisco Bay Area, The Asteroid No.4 have built a reputation for immersive live performances and a remarkably prolific catalogue. Across thirteen albums, numerous EPs and singles, the band has continually evolved while remaining deeply connected to the lineage of UK shoegaze and classic psychedelic music that first inspired them.
Sonically, the record draws from the classic shoegaze era and the late ’80s/’90s UK indie movement that’s always inspired us, while also leaning further into goth textures and electronic elements. For the first time on an Asteroid No. 4 record, we even experimented with processed drums, pushing our sound into new, shadowy territory while still holding onto the haze that’s always defined us.
From ‘In Praise of Shadows’ out May 9th, 2026 on Little Cloud Records
“Sweep It Into Space“, the fifth new studio album cut by Dinosaur Jr. during the 13th year of their rebirth. Originally scheduled for issue in mid-2020, this record’s temporal trajectory was thwarted by the coming of the Plague. But it would take more than a mere Plague to tamp down the exquisite fury of this trio when they are fully dialled-in.
“Sweep It Into Space” is a masterpiece of zoned dialing. Recorded, as usual, at Amherst’s Biquiteen, the sessions for “Sweep It Into Space” began in the late Autumn of 2019, following a West Coast/ South East tour. The only extra musician used this time was Kurt Vile. Indeed, “Sweep It Into Space” is a very cool album.
As is typical, Lou Barlow writes and sings two of the album’s dozen tunes and Murph’s pure-Flinstonian drumming drives the record like a go-cart from Hell. Lou’s songs here are as elegant as always. But there are very few moments where you wouldn’t know you were hearing Dinosaur Jr. in blindfolded needle drop.
They have a signature sound as sure as the Stooges or Sonic Youth or Discharge ever did. They continue to expand their personal universe with “Sweep It Into Space“, without ever losing their central core.
Cherry Red & Esoteric Recordings announce, “From Genesis To Revelation,” the 1969 debut album by Genesis; available to pre-order now on 4CD/Blu-ray, 2CD and 2 double vinyl editions. A comprehensive new edition of the album that began the Genesis story, recorded in 1968 by the school friends who would become the band’s earliest lineup.
This new deluxe 5-disc edition (4CD + Blu-ray) features new stereo, 5.1 Surround Sound and Dolby Atmos mixes by Stephen W Tayler, alongside remastered original mono and stereo mixes, associated singles, rare demos and previously unreleased material. Also included are video discussions with original band members Tony Banks, Peter Gabriel and Mike Rutherford at AIR Studios, plus a 68-page illustrated book featuring an extensive essay by Jon Dann with contributions from all four original members.
Prepared with the approval of original band members Tony Banks, Peter Gabriel, Anthony Phillips and Mike Rutherford.
The Freebies join a select but perfectly formed group of acts—including Mod Lang and The Kitchenettes—who creatively blend 60s girl group pop with various shades of indie retro. On tracks like “Hard On U, Josephine”, “I Love You”, “Kiss Me, and “Luv Is Strange”, this Los Angeles-based foursome combine the sweet charm of classic girl-pop with the edgier, more turbulent side of The Kitchenettes’ recent faux indie-punk aesthetic.
A band from Los Angeles California. Inspired by jangle pop, 60’s girl groups and early punk. The members of the band are Breanna Limón (guitarist/vocalist), Delaney Millican (bassist), Adam Stafford (drums) and Harper O’Loughlin (backing vocals).
In contrast, songs like “Friends” and “What’s On Ur Mind” deliver a raw, three-chord energy reminiscent of the Ramones, battering their pop instincts into a percussive, punk-infused pulp.
However, as the album closes with the triple salvo of “Lucky For Me,” “Valentine (demo),” and “Whatever She Says (demo)”, the band’s punk sensibilities give way to a sparser, more introspective style. These tracks wrap Adam Green-style twee-pop in the atmospheric, understated production reminiscent of The Velvet Underground, resulting in the album’s most compelling and intriguing moments.
The Freebies’ inventive fusion of retro pop, indie, and punk influences creates an album that is both nostalgic and refreshingly original, with its closing tracks standing out as particular highlights and perhaps an exciting route for definite exploration in subsequent releases.
You can’t fault Neil Young for his industry. “Second Song” is his second new album of 2026: the first, a double live set called “As Time Explodes2, was released just over three months ago. Indeed, at 80 years of age, his work schedule seems mind-boggling. Since 2020, he’s released nine new albums, a 30-minute EP, five self-directed films and three more films directed by others, 10 archival live albums, six archival studio albums and two immense box sets. He has embarked on tours with his longstanding backing band Crazy Horse, his recently convened backing band the Chrome Hearts, and solo.
He has gone to public war with Spotify, Amazon, Ticketmaster and – briefly – the BBC’s coverage of Glastonbury, and penned umpteen op-ed pieces about politics, the environment and corporate media for his online newspaper the Times-Contrarian. When he recently cancelled a European tour citing exhaustion, it was hard not to think: well, I’m not surprised.
You do find yourself wondering if his workload is such a good thing: not just for an elderly gentleman’s health but also for the quality of his output. Young has always prized spontaneity over finesse, but some of his more recent releases have suggested that at least a soupçon of finesse might not go amiss. Last year’s “Talkin to the Trees“, however, seemed to cross the line that separates the instinctive from the dashed off. Young frequently sounded as if he was making the material up as he went along, with nugatory results: “When today has come and gone, I might be singing my new song,” he offered on Family Life. “Might be short, it might be long, but I’ll be singing my new song.” If some of the melodies sounded familiar, that’s because they were. Not one but two tracks echoed the tune of Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land; “First Fire of Winter” was essentially Young’s 1970 masterpiece “Helpless” with different lyrics; Thankful rewrote 1992’s “Harvest Moon”.
Its follow-up leans more into Young’s gentle acoustic side than the gargantuan Crazy Horse-like the Chrome Hearts are more than capable of creating. The music seems a little more honed than that on its predecessor. There are audible overdubs, including a backwards guitar solo on opener “The FoggyEdge of Time”. Like 1973’s “Don’t Be Denied” or 1979’s “Thrasher”, it’s one of those Neil Young songs in which he defends his right to follow his muse, regardless of the personal cost. But if you’re worried about declining inspiration, the omens augur ill. Two of “Second Song’s” seven tracks are re-recordings of tracks Young first performed with his early 60s band the Squires, which hardly suggests a surfeit of great new material.
“Casting Me Away From You” and “I’ll Love You Forever” turn out to be pleasant enough, but slight. The former has already been plundered for its melody on “The Emperor of Wyoming“, from Young’s eponymous 1968 solo debut; “I’ll Love You Forever”, reworked as a paean to Young’s partner Daryl Hannah, is at least more charming than the tribute he offered up on “Talkin to the Trees“, which described Hannah as “my best wife ever” and “the best cook in the world”. Elsewhere, there’s another song cut from the same rambling cloth as the stuff on Second Song’s predecessor – “Day After Day’s” seven minutes feel like seven months – and an unexpected, but sweet diversion into pre-rock’n’roll pop on “Earth Girl”.
That leaves two songs, although in fairness, they take up nearly half “Second Song’s” running time. From its title downwards, “Soon I Might Be Going” is thick with intimations of imminent mortality – “I miss you like tomorrow”, Young sings at one point – and feels like a weary, far older cousin of 1974’s “Ambulance Blues“: a long, ruminative sigh of a song whose subject matter ranges wildly about, from Donald Trump’s White House renovations to Young’s estrangement from his daughter Amber Jean. He also addressed the latter on “Talkin to the Trees”, but while the tone there was huffy and injured, here Young sounds plaintive and bereft: “Come back to me, my lovely girl, your memory is mine.”
It is genuinely gripping, but “Second Song’s” title track is something else entirely: a latter-day Neil Young song that you might compare to his best work without recourse to special pleading. Its melody is impossibly beautiful and – crucially – not markedly similar to any of the impossibly beautiful melodies Young has previously written: 11 minutes of it slip by without the listener checking their watch. Its lyrics capture a dying-of-the-light quality – “the leaves are falling, gathered in piles to burn outside / Somehow the smoke is calling, somehow the embers will decide” – but unlike “Soon I Might Be Going“, it reaches a comforting resolution: everything may be turning to shit, its final verses suggest, but you can always find solace in music.
It would be nice if everything here was as good as those two songs, if you could justifiably claim “Second Song” as an autumn-years masterpiece along the lines of Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways. Instead, the sublime shares space with the not bad and the insubstantial: a superior example of a late-period Neil Young album, but a late-period Neil Young album nonetheless.
“Second Song” is released via Reprise on 18th September
Thirty-five years and eight albums later, in 2014 KateBush announced her return to the stage with 22 dates at the same theater where her last tour ended, London’s Hammersmith Apollo. A multimedia performance in three acts, “Before The Dawn” recasts songs from her post-’85 catalog.
“Before the Dawn” is the second live album by the English singer-songwriter Kate Bush. It was released on 25 November 2016 by Bush’s label Fish People, and is distributed in the United States by Concord Records. It was recorded in 2014 during Kate Bush’s sell-out 22-date residency, “Before the Dawn“, at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, which saw her return to the stage following a 35-year absence.
As with the residency, the album is split into three parts, comprising seven miscellaneous songs, the complete Ninth Wave suite from Hounds of Love, and A Sky of Honey from Bush’s 2005 release “Aerial”. Presented in the same order as the original show, the album’s performances are culled from various shows throughout the residency.
Act I begins with a spoken prayer and, in a sense, exists as a prayer itself, wherein songs like “Lily” and “Top Of The City” invoke the care of angels and the fortitude of saints (“Joanni”) as the journey begins. The act sounds like a straightforward rock concert, with the audience agog and Bush thanking them between songs. Vocally, Bush is confident and composed, hitting what iconic runs she can with precision and expertly reworking elsewhere to accommodate her matured voice. The seven-piece band and five-person chorus somehow manage to make songs like “Hounds Of Love” feel even more massive than their original recordings.
The energy of the theater establishes a powerful emotional atmosphere, but it’s not until the very end of Act I that any narrative emerges on the record. The act primarily works as an easing-into, where the audience can celebrate beloved songs that have never seen the stage and Bush can slowly transmute from Kate Bush, long-missed art-rock icon, to the nameless protagonist of “Before The Dawn“. Likewise, songs can take on new meanings: The familiar refrain “The wind, it blows” that ends “King Of The Mountain” here whips up the massive storm at the center of the story.
Beginning with a call to the coast guard to report a ship at peril in the storm, Act II is a slight reframing of “The Ninth Wave.” It tells the story of a woman lost at sea who fights to make it through the night with help from visions of her life—past, present, and future. On “Hounds Of Love“, this was a powerful suite of some of Bush’s best songs ever, and here it remains mostly intact, with bits of monologue and dialogue expanding the narrative. Wisely, the audience is edited down to be minimally invasive for the last two acts.
The scene “Watching Them Without Her” introduces our protagonist’s husband and son (played by Bush’s actual son) at home, expecting to hear from her any moment, and effectively heightens the uncertainty of those dark hours spent adrift. The scene also introduces the show’s life force: family. It was Bush’s teenage son, Albert McIntosh, who nudged her to put “Before The Dawn” together, after all. Following what sounds like her helicopter rescue, the lyrics to “The Morning Fog” prove especially moving. “I tell my son / I tell my sisters / I tell my brothers / How much I love them,” she sings to intermittent applause, seemingly in response to some of her loved ones emerging on stage. With so much time away, with so much love to be shared, the line “D’you know what? I love you better now” resonates beyond its original delivery to include the audience, the evening, the artist’s legacy, and her family there. And it makes for a brilliant segue into the blissful celebration of family and life that is “A Sky Of Honey,” or Act III.
Act III sees the biggest changes to its source material. Not only is nearly every song a little longer and a little different from its studio version, but every melody hits differently following the near-death experience of “The Ninth Wave.” Every small pleasure is just a little sweeter. The suite follows the narrator and her son over the course of a summer day as they revel in birdsong and the light’s constant movement. Bush’s son takes on a larger role, fortunately replacing Rolf Harris’ voice-overs and leading the newly written “Tawny Moon” with a strong if very theatrical vocal performance.
Ultimately, it’s impossible for “Before The Dawn” to stand alone. Throughout the recording, there are surges of applause for no apparent reason that, while often rousing, serve as reminders of what the listener is missing. But because the main suites were written with a blind listen in mind and because it is so well-executed, the audio makes for an epic, vivid two-and-a-half-hour event that will enchant anyone new to Bush’s music and—with its many calls forward and backward, its cross-catalog layers—delight diehards. (Lines from “Waking The Witch” showing up in “Nocturn”! Those “Sensual World” bells in “Aerial”!)
It’s refreshing to hear Bush sing these songs in her weathered voice, to be reminded they are alive and breathing, not entombed in their studio productions. For most of us, the full thrill of a live Kate Bush show will always be the stuff of legend, but “Before The Dawn” provides a poignant approximation.
“Before the Dawn” contains the song “Tawny Moon” performed by Bush’s son, Albert McIntosh. “Never Be Mine” did not feature on the “Before the Dawn” residency; however, it was recorded when the show was performed without an audience for the purposes of filming the production.
Following two years of speculation, the album, released as three-CD and four-record pressings, was officially announced on 29th September 2016; the track “Prologue” was also shared. A booklet included with physical copies offers some insight into the experience: elaborate staging including puppetry, mask work, and 3-D animation. And the sole video release, for “And Dream Of Sheep,” is the same one that played during the show.
Bush commented:
It was an extraordinary experience putting the show together. It was a huge amount of work, a lot of fun and an enormous privilege to work with such an incredibly talented team. This is the audio document. I hope that this can stand alone as a piece of music in its own right and that it can be enjoyed by people who knew nothing about the shows as well as those who were there. I never expected the overwhelming response of the audiences, every night filling the show with life and excitement. They are there in every beat of the recorded music. Even when you can’t hear them, you can feel them.
The track “Prologue (Live)” was made available for streaming in September, before “King of the Mountain (Live)” was released as a promotional single October, and “And Dream of Sheep (Live)”, along with an accompanying piece of film used during the concerts, was made available as the album’s official single on 18 November 2016.
In November 2018, Bush released box sets of remasters of her studio albums. “Before the Dawn” was included in the second box set, but was not remastered.
Pressed on 180g heavyweight black vinyl, ‘Rose Dogs & Blackwood Pew’ brings together MuireannBradley’s acclaimed 2025 EP ‘Rose Dogs’ with her new collection ‘Blackwood Pew’, featuring three new original songs including ‘Not Going Back’ alongside reimagined classics. Named after the custom Australian Blackwood guitar at the heart of every recording, this double EP captures the timeless folk and country-blues sound of an artist coming into her own.
A blues guitar wunderkind, the 19-year-old draws from a tradition of intricate fingerstyle playing and reshapes it with a rare sense of clarity and ease. What might be technically complex becomes, in her hands, something deeply human; meticulously detailed, elegant, lump-in-your-throat gorgeous compositions that wear their virtuosity lightly. Her astonishing ability to inhabit songs written decades before she was born quickly drew her international attention, leading to acclaimed appearances on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny and The Late Late Show, while her debut album ‘I Kept These Old Blues’ became an instant collector’s item, selling out its first pressing.
Dublin four-piece Gilla Band are releasing a new album, “Pugnello,” on September 25th via RoughTrade. Now they have shared another single from it, “Alogia,”
The Gilla Band were formerly known as Girl Band, but changed their name in 2021. The band features vocalist Dara Kiely, guitarist Alan Duggan Borges, bassist Daniel Fox, and drummer Adam Faulkner.
“Alogia” means poverty of speech linked to mental health conditions,” explains Kiely in a press release. “I was diagnosed with Schizophrenia while writing the lyrics. I thought I could just walk off the old mental illness but alas!”
The album’s first single, “Giraffe,” the band followed that up with “Placeholder” was its second single.
Working Men’s Club have returned with the Atticus Ross-produced new single ‘Devout’, which they say introduces a new chapter. The standalone single follows on from critically-acclaimed albums ‘Working Men’s Club’ (2020) and ‘Fear Fear’ (2022), and is the first release they’ve shared since signing to Domino.
Said in a press release to herald the beginning of a new era for Working Men’s Club – aka songwriter-singer-producer Sydney Minsky Sargeant – the track sees Working Men’s Club join forces with Grammy-winning composer and Nine Inch Nails’ Atticus Ross.
The song takes on an intense, looming electronica sound as it fades in, with the rapidly increasing instrumentation being topped off with Sargeant’s distinctive, synth-inspired vocals.
While the sound has the same urgency and driving melodies that Working Men’s Club showcased in their previous material, ‘Devout’ introduces new, more-vulnerable lyrics and more abstract elements into the mix.
“Devout” always felt like the right song to return with,” said Sargeant.
Available to order now, the latest issue of MOJO Magazine features an ultra-rare, exclusive interview with Neil Young – Reprise Records as he releases his new album, “Second Song”. we get the full lowdown on “Second Song”; the inner workings of Young’s killer current band, The Chrome Hearts; a look back at his 1968 solo debut; plus – Radiohead’s Thom Yorke expresses his ongoing awe.
Also in the issue: the incomparable Dolly Parton; the intergalactic John Coltrane; the enigmatic JJ Cale; UB40 Featuring Ali Campbell comes out swinging; the Tao of ‘Sad Beck ’; the miracle of Echo andthe Bunnymen. And: The Kinks; Elastica; Martha Reeves; Madness ; Gil Scott-Heron; RichardThompson; Cabaret Voltaire; Elvis Costello; Popol Vuh; John Prine; Susannah Hoffs; Marillion; Masayoshi Takanaka; Rhiannon Giddens; and more!
This month’s covermount CD is The Goldrush: Neil Young Covered. Fifteen amazing versions of key Neil Young songs, featuring Low, Ty Segall, Drive-By Truckers, The Meters, Bill Frisell, The Feelies, Emmylou Harris, Tindersticks and more!
The new issue of MOJO is in UK shops from Tuesday 15th September, and available to order for delivery wherever you are now.
The Fat Angel Sings 