Roky Erickson’s The Evil One, the horror-rock masterpiece from our Austin hometown legend, restored to its original 1981 glory.
Roky Erickson’s definitive version of ‘The Evil One’ will be released by Fire, as a 15-track deluxe edition, restoring the original front cover from San Francisco’s 415 Records release for the first time since 1981.
The legend of 13th Floor Elevators leader Roky Erickson is one of the most compelling in rock and the brilliant “The Evil One” is perhaps his most influential album. Not widely heard at the time of release, this brilliant album grew to be an eccentric cult classic (aka the mother lode) in the following decades.
The recording sessions took place in 1978 and 1979 (with producer Stu Cook of Creedence Clearwater Revival fame) and 15 songs were completed. A UK version was released by CBS in 1980, followed by a US version in 1981 via 415 Records but each release had a different 10-song track listing. Luckily this new reissue of the album has all the 15 tracks including “Two-Headed Dog (Red Temple Prayer)”, “I Think of Demons”, “I Walked With a Zombie”, “Cold Night for Alligators” and “Night of the Vampire”.
Erickson’s place in the pantheon of outsider rock isn’t in question: he snarls about demons, zombies, vampires, ghosts, and more demons with all the passion and intensity of his music, good pitch and soul: he’s got it all but is his voice that shows the traits of the greatest rock singers.
Presented across two LPs cut at 45 rpm for maximum sonic depth and clarity, the release brings together the complete recordings from the legendary 1978 and 1979 sessions. The package includes a collector’s booklet with liner notes by acclaimed Austin music journalist Joe Nick Patoski, who attended a recording session for The Evil One in 1979. Alongside rare photographs and archival images from the collection of Roky’s then manager, Craig Luckin.
Austin music journalist Joe Nick Patoski, who attended one of the album’s 1979 sessions, contributes a new essay to the LP and CD packaging, exploring Erickson’s extraordinary career, enduring influence and place in Texas rock history.
More than a standalone reissue, this deluxe edition of “The Evil One” opens an exciting new series honouring Roky Erickson’s extraordinary body of work, with “Gremlins Have Pictures” and “Don’t Slander Me” to follow in 2027.
Deluxe gatefold. The complete ’78 and ’79 sessions across two 45 RPM LPs for maximum depth and clarity. Pressed on orange and blue “Atom Brain Splatter” vinyl with a 24-page booklet of rare photos and liner notes. Ultra Limited
Limited Edition ‘Evil’ Black & White Splatter 2XLP
“I’ve always wanted to use that title,” Sam Beam says of “Hen’s Teeth“, his eighth full-length album and his sixth for Sub Pop Records. “I just love it. To me it suggests the impossible. Hen’s teeth do not exist. And that’s what this record felt like: a gift that shouldn’t be there but it is. An impossible thing but it’s real.”
“Hen’s Teeth” and his previous album, “Light Verse“, are siblings of a sort. They were recorded during the same sessions after a year-long dry spell, with the same band, at Waystation studio in Laurel Canyon. “When I’ve been on a writing kick, and the band can meet me where I’m at, they push me into something I hadn’t imagined. I’m at a point in my life where spontaneity is a lot more important to me. I don’t have as much to prove as I used to. I’m a lot freer and I love making music more than ever. There are no right or wrong answers. You just pray for your luck and try your best.”
In this case prayers were answered and luck struck hard. The musicians cohered so quickly and inspired each other so much that they were often getting songs recorded in just a few takes, sometimes at the rate of two or three per day. The two albums might therefore be thought of as fraternal twins: they share DNA and complement each other but have distinct identities and are defined as much by their differences as their similarities.
Light Verse (2024) took its name from a form of poetry that makes heavy use of wordplay, humour, and nonsense. Its cover depicts figures in silhouette, floating or falling through a cyanotype sky. It’s a sweet and airy album, impressionistic, at times even flirting with abstraction, a hearty shaking off of the doom and gloom of the Covid era. Many of the songs are named for ideas or feelings that gesture toward hope amidst uncertainty: “You Never Know,” “All in Good Time” (a gorgeous duet with FionaApple), “Cutting It Close,” “Taken by Surprise.”
The world of Hen’s Teeth is earthier, darker, more robust and more tactile than that of Light Verse. The songs have titles like “Roses,” “Robin’s Egg,” “Dates and Dead People,” “Singing Saw.” “Run into the one you love forever / Laugh into each other’s empty mouth,” Beam sings on “Roses,” the album’s first track. It’s one of several songs in which lovers are depicted as so deeply entwined they physically merge. “Paper and Stone” recalls that “But for the time we fell in two / You’d be me and I’d be you / One crust of bread could fit in our mouths / You’d breathe in and I’d let it out.” And on “In Your Ocean,” we find Beam “Praying for dry ground / Though I only want to drown / When I find myself swimming in your ocean.”
The cover is a portrait of Beam surrounded on all sides by flourishing ferns and other tropical plant life. He is wearing a pin-stripe jacket and holding a massive cluster of grapes, prodigious beard spilling down his chest. He could be a local harvest god or a gentleman outlaw holed up in a jungle cave. There are white feathers covering his eyes but these somehow do not suggest blindness. Rather they seem to literalize the poetic notion of an artist’s vision taking flight. The whole surreal scene is washed in humid, spooky red. It’s somewhere between Leonora Carrington and Frida Kahlo, and the contrast with the cool blue-white palette of “Light Verse” could not be starker.
“The experiments in this one were more with genre than with form. For the last couple years one of my go-to’s has been Van Morrisson’s Astral Weeks, that style where jazz musicians play folk music and it blossoms in different ways than folk musicians are normally interested in doing. ‘Singing Saw’ feels like a song that Dock Boggs and Simon & Garfunkel might have done together. ‘Roses’ and ‘In Your Ocean’ are straight forward folk rock, but they build to these apocalyptic endings. ‘Dates and DeadPeople’ and ‘Defiance, Ohio’ take a lot from Tropicalia, which is some of my favorite music too. I don’t see it as that much different from jazz. All these forms have been in rock music forever.”
About the players: David Garza on guitar, Sebastian Steinberg on bass, and Tyler Chester on keyboards. Griffin Goldsmith, Beth Goodfellow, and Kyle Crane all play drums. Paul Cartwright plays violin and mandolin among other stringed instruments; he also handled string arrangements for both records. The indie-country trio I’m With Her appears on the ebullient lead single, “Robin’s Egg,” and again on the tender, mournful “Wait Up.”
“I’m obsessed with duets,” Beam says. “Ever since I did “Love Letter to Fire” with Jesca Hoop. I just love the form. It’s inherently dramatic. And it’s so fun. I had these songs and I finished them with I’m With Her in mind.” Arden Beam—Beam’s daughter—contributes harmonies and backing vocals onthe tracks, “Roses,” “Singing Saw,” “Defiance, Ohio” and “Grace Notes.” Her contributions lend a personal poignancy, as well as a wonderful sonic texture, to “Hen’s Teeth“. Born two months before the release of his debut album, “The Creek Drank the Cradle” (2002), she is now 23 years old and a musician herself—the first of his children to appear on one of his records.
“It’s exciting, making it more of a family affair. I like making Iron and Wine records, but I like the collaboration even more. Interacting with a bunch of friends and being blown away by what they can bring, musically and emotionally, to a set of three chords. I get to play all day with these people I love and they respond by giving me their most vulnerable, expressive self. It’s the weirdest, best job ever.”
Julia Holter always knew that there was more to the song “Materia” than what she included on her wondrous 2024 album, Something in the Room She Moves. She had written the tune not long after the tours for 2018’s Aviary concluded, and it worked well for solo shows—her voice and piano, lyrics still morphing as she played with the meaning.
But on the new Materia, a kind of companion LP to Something, Holter has realized not one but two distinct versions of the song. “Materia 2” is a hallucinatory dream of drum machines, fretless bass, and clarinet, Holter’s voice spiralling through ether alongside that of Jessika Kenney. And on “Materia 3,” intended as a hidden bonus track in an homage to the CD era of her youth, Holter literally slows down the take from Something. The change not only emphasizes the unpredictable glory of the harmonies within but also reiterates the song’s emotional sophistication, the sense that it’s about learning how to live.
“Materia” is only seven tracks long, but Holter works in nearly that many modes here. There are two astounding improvisations, one where she builds a one-person ensemble of drum machines and synth lines and another where she manipulates her voice until each word seems to contain another symphony. And yet another is built from a riff that came from a demo for “Something”, a demo that itself is one of “Materia’s” most spellbinding and emotional pieces, “My Twin.” These seven songs show that Holter is among her generation’s most fluid writers of art-pop, moving among ideas and idioms with true exploratory aplomb. “Materia” is a kind of playground for Holter, where each distinct scene steadily coheres into a moving whole.
I made it inspired by the musicians that made up “Something In the Room She Moves” and its tour. I wanted to continue building songs in this realm & it became a sister album that wandered off to its own world. The fretless bass writing & performance of Devra Hoff are central to this record; I have been turning her bass up high in the mix since “Loud City Song”. Beth Goodfellow‘s percussion is mesmerizing & her creative spirit contagious; studio recordings of her, Devra and me playing at once, vibing off each other, were the foundation for a lot of these songs. Chris Speed’s kaleidoscopic winds form another main vocal in a way & he has generously contributed wild and visionary melodies to my songs since 2013. Maia’s transcendent flute is also like a voice—she sometimes is in fact singing into the flute, forming a pivotal moment in the record during “My Lost One”.
One of my favorite voices ever is that of Jessika Kenney, so I was delighted for her to bring her magic to “Materia 2”. It was a joy to record again 64 Sound w the assistance of Tyler Karmen and also record overdubs Stones Throw Studios. Importantly, enormous thanks to talented Kenny Gilmore, who co-produced, engineered & mixed the record; I am fortunate to work w a longtime friend w a great ear who always gets it. And the great Heba Kadry did a beautiful job mastering.
Thank you so much to Chantal Anderson for bringing her vision over to my house to shoot this special & unearthly photo that has become the cover. And as always, very appreciative of the great Matthew Cooper for his gorgeous art design.
Loving appreciation overall for my dear partner Tashi Wada’s wide array of offerings throughout the making of “Materia” from his dreamy analogue synth work to tape engineering to art direction to photos to his overall kindness & support.
Thankful for Domino Recording Co making this record happen so thoughtfully.
Boston has announced that they will release a 50th anniversary edition of their iconic debut album in 2027 featuring “lost demos” recorded during the sessions for the original LP.
In late summer of 1976, a self-titled album from Tom Scholz’s basement studio, was quietly released on CBS’s Epic Records label, under the name BOSTON. Listeners across the country quickly embraced the bright, punchy BOSTON sound, with its relatable lyrics, meticulously double-tracked guitar tracks, and singer Brad Delp’s powerful, crystalline lead vocals. The sheer assertiveness of the writing, performances, and sonics—coupled with the album’s joyfulness—helped thrust the band and their debut into the stratosphere. Within three months of its release, BOSTON was awarded both gold and platinum status by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), while nearly every song from the album was in constant rotation on pop and rock radio.
The band revealed the news on the 50th anniversary of the release date for the “Boston” album, which originally arrived August 25th, 1976. The new expansion is being “released in close collaboration with Tom Scholz,” by Impex Records and is currently scheduled to come out in the second quarter of next year.
Recognizing that the album has been reissued a number of times over the years, Scholz personally supervised the production of the upcoming expansion, with a goal of delivering “the most authentic version of this oft-reissued classic,” the group detailed in a press release.
“Wishing to offer something truly unique to the millions of Boston fans who’ve supported the band through the years, Tom has—for the very first time—dug deep into his massive archive of recordings to find the long-lost, previously-unreleased demos he famously shopped to the labels before being signed by Epic Records,” they shared. “He painstakingly restored and remastered these elusive treasures with the help of producer, digital expert and Boston guitarist Gary Pihl, exclusively for this 50th anniversary release.”
Although the songwriting on Boston’s self-titled is fairly by the numbers by certain rock standards, the real power behind it is just how much Scholz put into the background. Having invented his own guitar pedal to work on most of the songs, his guitars have a cutting midrange that sounds like a metal guitarist just randomly decided to show up on a rock and roll tune.
Outside of playing most of the instruments himself, hearing Brad Delp pull off superhuman vocal exercises is the musical equivalent of looking into the sun half the time. ‘More Than A Feeling’ and ‘Smokin’ might get celebrated as singles, but taken as a whole, this album should be studied by any high-profile producer to know what to look for in a great mix.
The band’s signature hit “More Than A Feeling” entered The Billboard’s Hot 100 on September 18th, 1976 and peaked at Number 5 on Christmas Day, spending 19 weeks on the chart. The single also reached Number 4 on Cash Box’s singles chart. The album’s second single “Peace of Mind” was released on January 7th, 1977 and peaked at Number 22 on The Billboard’s Hot 100.
The specific demos that are being released have not been unveiled yet, but the press release says it will give music historians and fans a chance to “peek inside Tom’s basement studio — and the ability to trace how the creative process progressed as Scholz, vocalist Brad Delp and the other musicians were working on the Boston album. Additional details for the upgraded album note that Scholz and Pihl “restored” the demos, but they were “left in their original sonic state.”
Jack White honored Dolly Parton by covering her classic song “Jolene” during his performance in London on Tuesday night (August. 23rd).
Earlier in the day, Dolly Parton died at the age of 80. The country singer’s passing spawned an outpouring of tributes from fellow musicians and fans alike, as people from all walks of life celebrated Parton’s career and philanthropic achievements. White, a longtime admirer of Parton’s, posted a simple tribute on Instagram which read “Instant sainthood,” alongside a classic image of the country star. Then, during his concert at the Eventim Apollo in London, he opted to celebrate Parton with one of her best-known tunes.
After opening his set with the recent single “That’s How I’m Feeling,” followed by the WhiteStripes classic “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground,” White surprised the crowd by launching into “Jolene” for the first time in 19 years.
White was drawn to “Jolene” even before he became a musician. “I thought that was an interesting name when I started hearing that song as a teenager,” he recalled to NPR in 2008. “And I guess later on, as a songwriter, I started to think about names starting with ‘J,’ like that could be used almost accusatory, like Jezebel… Jolene.“
In a clip shared on social media (which you can watch below), White can be seen rocking through the emotionally-charged song. At one point he looked away and pointed to the sky, before then clasping his hands as if he was saying a prayer of thanks for Parton.
According to setlist.fm, the last time White performed “Jolene” in concert was 2007 during the White Stripes’ July 24 concert at Madison Square Garden. He had not performed it live during his solo career until today.
Dolly Parton originally released the song in 1974. It reached No. 1 on the country chart and earned the singer a pair of Grammy nominations. Decades later, the White Stripes put their own unique spin on the tune – first releasing it as the B-side to the single “Hello Operator,” before later making it a staple of their live sets (Parton referred to their interpretation of the tune as “wonderful”).
Foreigner are too release an expanded version of their album “Head Games” due out on October. 30th.
The box set version of the 1979 album, which features concert staples such as the title track and “Dirty White Boy,” will include a disc of outtakes and alternative versions, as well as a newly unearthed complete concert from the Head Games tour.
The previously unreleased song “Trouble” has been remixed and released as the first taste of the “Head Games” set, with a newly added guitar solo from none other than Peter Frampton.
You can hear “Trouble” below, Originally recorded in May 1979 during the original ‘Head Games’ album sessions at Atlantic Studios in New York City, “Trouble” was recently discovered during research for the ‘Head Games Deluxe’ edition album -. This previously unreleased track has been freshly remixed & remastered, and features a newly added guest guitar appearance by longtime friend of the band, Peter Frampton.
Foreigner are currently wrapping up the last few dates of their summer co-headlining tour with Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Twenty years. Ten releases. One word: Hope. “Asha” is Elephant Stone‘s most intimate record yet — a collection born from loss and shaped by light. Named for frontman Rishi Dhir‘s late mother, the album carries its meaning in Sanskrit: hope. In a world growing darker, it arrives as a shelter. Produced, engineered, and mixed by Dhir at Sacred Sounds in Montreal, “Asha” finds the band — Dhir,Miles Dupire, Robbie MacArthur and Jason Kent — at their most emotionally direct and sonically expansive, with a guest appearance by Amy Millan on the closing track.
With a discography spanning 10 acclaimed releases, Elephant Stone remain at the forefront of the modern movement, constantly deconstructing the past to find something visceral, haunting, and undeniably human in the present.
Elephant Stone celebrates 20 years and a milestone 10th studio release with “ASHA”, their most visceral and personal project to date.
From the upcoming album “ASHA” out August 28th, 2026 Label: Elephants On Parade/Little Cloud Records
Purple mountains, empty highways, jet trails as the sun fades; Dogwood Tales paint in valley colours on their album “Every Star In Rockingham County“. Hailing from Harrisonburg, VA in the heart of Shenandoah, the band features founders and childhood friends Kyle Grim (guitar/vocals) and Ben Ryan (guitar/vocals), alongside college contemporaries Jake Golibart (drums) and Danny Gibney (bass).
With its location in its title, their new album is as much a love letter to the local DIY scene, vast farmlands, and surrounding mystical mountains as it is a portrait of present-day small-town American life. The humming electric guitars over beds of pedal steel and earnest lyricism find the album in dialogue with indie rock’s current lo-fi country romanticism — and lyrically pays homage to revered American songwriters in the footsteps of Townes Van Zandt — but ultimately takes listeners on a ride through uncharted territory.
It’s a ride through Rockingham County, through the moody valley, the tight bond of four friends coming of age in a rural Virginia town, and a digital age where loneliness is far too prevalent. Thankfully, we’ve got the stars to keep us company.
The late, great Steve Cropper had another ace up his sleeve before his tragic passing in December 2025. To anyone who knows the roots and branches of American music, the loss of The Colonel was seismic. As guitarist, songwriter, producer and engineer — not just for the iconic Stax record label but on a forest of sessions and solo releases — the Tennessee soul man was the DNA that coursed through the post-war era, his fabled right hand setting the pace of rock ’n’ roll for 60-plus years.
The legendary musician was working on this new record, and with “Watching The Tide”, he has left a beautiful gift to the world, featuring an all-star cast including Eric Clapton, Brian May, Billy Gibbons and Ronnie Wood.
The wider world assumed 2024’s star-dusted, Grammy-nominated “Friendlytown” was the full stop on this most seminal of careers. Little did we know this towering figure had one last play. “Making music was Steve’s greatest joy,” explains Jon Tiven, the acclaimed songwriter/producer who first met Cropper in the early ’70s, became a close friend and helped ignite his post-millennial solo career. “Steve was so encouraged by “Friendlytown”. He was adamant he wanted to do another record.
On their sixth record, Allah-Las embrace a fully instrumental template that oscillates with hypnotic, rhythmic textures and soft ambient currents. Wrapped in the ambiance of aquatic soundscapes, the grooves channel atmospheres where sundowns meet blurred, gauzy perceptions. With references to the likes of English electronic duo Ultramarine and The Durutti Column’s Vini Reilly, the free-wheeling pathways of “Sirenas” offers a fascinating pivot that leaves the door open for boundless transmissions . . .
“Allah-Las make music that resists easy placement. Since forming in Los Angeles in 2008, the band have steadily sidestepped trends, creating a sound rooted not in nostalgia, but in feel — instinctual, atmospheric, and often instrumental in its storytelling, even when words are present.
Their records suggest a band uninterested in spectacle, and focused instead on tone, pacing, and space. The easy friendship that blossomed when three of the four members were working at Amoeba Music has evolved into a lauded body of work grounded in storytelling and discovery. 2016’s“Calico Review” was a cinematic exploration of their hometown of Los Angeles, while 2019’s “LAHS” saw them looking farther abroad, turning their gaze outward and transmitting sound from a place not found on any map.
It’s a similar fascination with vast listening, inner and outer traveling, and collective imagining that steers their new album “Sirenas”, the band’s first fully instrumental expression
The Fat Angel Sings 