The Fat Angel Sings

On this Ash Wednesday (the day after carnival), the band have released  a brand new standalone 6-track EP, “Days of Ash”. 

In advance of a new album in late 2026, the new EP is a self-contained collection of five new songs and a poem. Their  first collection of new songs since 2017, the quartet have a crispness that has been lacking in their 21st-century material, as they nimbly react to shocking news stories

U2’s “Days of Ash” is a politically charged EP that addresses current events and the courage of those fighting for freedom. The EP includes six tracks: “American Obituary,” “The Tears Of Things,” “Song Of The Future,” “Wildpeace,” “One Life At A Time,” and “Yours Eternally” (ft. Ed Sheeran & Taras Topolia).

The EP is a self-contained collection of five new songs and a poem, inspired by the many extraordinary and courageous people fighting on the frontlines of freedom. The release was a  surprise, with no advance press or warning, and it is available on digital storefront and streaming services. 

On subsequent tracks the music shifts into less aggressive mode – more acoustic guitars, less of The Edge in full flight, a noticeably hazier ambience – and the lyrics take on a more familiar note of consolation and optimism: biblical imagery, distinctly Bono-esque aphorisms (“the future, as everyone knows, is where we’re gonna be spending the rest of our life”). But a genuine urgency remains, no doubt linked to the EP’s relatively quick turnaround. It’s in stark contrast to the mass of second-guessing, re-recording and abandoned projects that have marked U2’s last couple of decades

The EP is available in high resolution audio and includes lyric videos for each song. 

Four of the five tracks are about individuals – a mother, a father, a teenage girl whose lives were brutally cut short – and a soldier who’d rather be singing but is ready to die for the freedom of his country.

Three of the EP’s five songs – there’s also a brief poetry-plus-ambient-instrumental interlude – commemorate recent deaths in conflicts and protests: those of nonviolent Palestinian activist Awad Hathaleen, 16-year-old Iranian protester Sarina Esmailzadeh, and, most recently, the shooting of Renee Nicole Good on 7th January.

The latter informs the EP’s lead track, “American Obituary”, on which U2 sound more righteously angry than they have in years, both in the lyrics, which have a confrontational man-the-barricades tone seldom heard in U2’s work since the era of War – “America will rise against the people of the lie … the power of the people is so much stronger than the people in power” – and musically: a stew of distorted guitar, growling bass and siren-invoking electronics.

“It’s been a thrill having the four of us back together in the studio over the last year,’ explains Bono. “The songs on “Days of Ash” are very different in mood and theme to the ones we’re going to put on our album later in the year.

These EP tracks couldn’t wait; these songs were impatient to be out in the world. They are songs of defiance and dismay…’

Bono lambasts ICE, Putin, Netanyahu and more as U2 release first collection of new songs since 2017.
It’s nearly nine years since U2 released a collection of original material, 2017’s “Songs of Experience”. They’ve hardly been idle since: two tours, two films, a 40-date residency at the Las Vegas Sphere, nearly three hours of stripped-down re-recordings of old material on “Songs of Surrender”, plus Bono’s autobiography, which spawned a solo tour, a stint on Broadway and another film. An impressive workload by any standards.

“Who needs to hear a new record from us?” asks Larry ” It just depends on whether we’re making music we feel deserves to be heard. I believe these new songs stand up to our best work. We talk a lot about when to release new tracks. You don’t always know… the way the world is now feels like the right moment.”

‘Six postcards from the present… wish we weren’t here’

“Days of Ash”, not a taster for their forthcoming album but, like Bruce Springsteen’s recent “Streets of Minnesota”, an attempt to reanimate the protest-song-as-quickfire-response spirit of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 1970 single Ohio. 

Read more from Bono and Larry and also hear from Edge and Adam in a special 40th anniversary edition of the band’s magazine Propaganda – published as a 52 page digital zine to mark the release of the EP.

This months Record Collector has Squeeze on the cover of a music monthly, I must say. A reminder of their excellence just as we were in danger of taking them for granted – see also Sparks (who they’re touring with this year), XTC, Madness and Costello. Chris Difford takes RC record shopping, Glenn Tilbrook shows us his collection, we talk about their best album since “East Side Story”…

Also nice to see Hammill exploring his solo back catalogue, the great Tony Cummings tracing dance music’s development from Philly to disco, seeing Swell Maps get their first music press feature since Ian Penman interviewed them for NME in 1980, meeting the last surviving member of The Temptations, reading about Liverpool’s long-forgotten Care and glam-sleaze merchants Dogs D’Amour…

Smashing Pumpkins are set to reissue their classic debut album, ‘Gish’ on vinyl for its 35th anniversary 

The reissue will arrive on May 29th to coincide with the original release date 35 years ago in 1991. There will be multiple new variants of the album, The Smashing Pumpkins recorded ‘Gish’ with producer and Garbage drummer Butch Vig at Smart Studios. Combining rock, metal, psychedelia, pop, and shoegaze, it was released on May 28th 1991 and went on to become one of the most successful independent releases of the decade.

“Gish” set Smashing Pumpkins apart from the grunge crowd. In Billy Corgan they had a frontman with instantly recognisable vocals – nasal and tangy, perfect for the insular, bratty lyrics he spat or cooed – and as capable of writing savage, bludgeoning riffs as he was massive choruses and dreamy, psychedelic diversions.

The 10-track album eventually went Platinum and featured songs including ‘I Am One’, ‘Siva’ and ‘Rhinoceros.’

Producer Butch Vig (months away from recording “Nevermind” with Nirvana) and powerhouse drummer Jimmy Chamberlin gave Corgan’s songs the heft they required (the singer apparently recorded most of the guitar and bass parts himself) and “Gish” became a sleeper hit, teeing the band up perfectly for the giant leap forward of 1993’s “Siamese Dream”.

Frontman Billy Corgan will be selling a colour vinyl housed in the original 1991 packaging via his ‘Madame ZuZu’ emporium. Other independent record stores will stock this too with the special edition also featuring “a limited-edition colour-way evoking the classic cover,” according to a statement. This will be pressed on 180-gram grey vinyl.

Fans will also be able to purchase a standard black 180-gram vinyl in the original 1991 packaging. Unsurprisingly, considering the arena-filling years that followed, Gish has been reissued regularly over the years. The most comprehensive treatment came in 2011, with a 2CD+DVD box set including the original album plus the 18-track “Trippin’ Through The Stars” B-sides, demos and outtakes collection alongside the “Live At The Metro, 1990” DVD. 

It’s a shame then, that the 35th anniversary edition of “Gish” doesn’t include bonus material – perhaps they’re thinking fans are still getting through last year’s 8LP, 80-track “Machina” set. 

The Smashing Pumpkins recently kicked off a seven-night takeover of Lyric Opera House in their Chicago hometown, at which they are reimagining ‘Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness’ alongside a 60-piece house orchestra.

The band also recently released the 30th anniversary deluxe reissue of ‘Mellon Collie’, which included a 6LP package that offered over 80 minutes of unreleased audio from the album’s accompanying 1996 tour.

The reissue will arrive this May, almost 35 years to the day the original was released

The Beach Boys have announced the long-awaited “We Gotta Groove:The Brother Studio Years”, a 73-track, 3LP+3CD box set covering studio sessions from 1974-1977.

The set includes 35 previously unreleased tracks and 22 new mixes.

Disc one features a new remaster of Brian Wilson’s maverick masterpiece, 1977’s “Love You“, along with outtakes from the sessions. The second disc offers tracks originally intended for “Love You’s” abandoned follow-up, the much-bootlegged “Adult/Child“, along with backing tracks and miscellaneous outtakes from the period. And the final disc comprises new mixes of a clutch of tracks from 1976’s “15 Big Ones“, along with outtakes and backing tracks, plus “Love You” alternate mixes and demos. 

“We Gotta Groove” focuses on the period that saw band leader Brian Wilson take centre stage for the first time since abandoning the SMiLE project in 1967. The huge success of the band’s 1974 greatest hits compilation “Endless Summer” (over three million copies sold in the US alone), along with their renewed popularity as a live draw, meant that demand for new material was the strongest it had been for years. The band – in particular Carl and Dennis Wilson – spent 1974 and ’75 demoing songs that showcased their growing maturity (some of which appear on “We Gotta Groove’s” second disc), but despite the best efforts of the younger Wilson brothers, their record label pushed for the return of the altogether more bankable elder brother.

Brian returned on production duties for “15 Big Ones“, a collection of new interpretations of rock’n’roll standards with a smattering of originals intended to ease him back into the fold. But if the label were expecting to sit back and watch the dollars roll in, they would be disappointed – Brian’s embrace of Moog and ARP synthesizers and gruff vocals were a world away from the nostalgia-filled hits of his youth. Still, the hype around the album was enough to make “15 Big Ones” their biggest hit in over a decade.

Most importantly, it led to a purple patch of creativity, with Brian throwing himself into sessions for “Love You” and “Adult/Child“. The songs he recorded for “Love You” are unfiltered and raw, all fuzzed-up synths, bizarre and often childlike lyrics, hoarse vocals and killer melodies. It’s difficult to think of a stranger and more uncompromising album released by a major artist.

“We Gotta Groove” includes “Love You” in its entirety, along with a bunch of previously unreleased outtakes and demos, including the set’s title track. Back in the day, Brian wasted little time on moving on to the tracks bootlegged as “Adult/Child” and here presented as “Adult/Child Sessions“. The best songs – the beautiful ‘It’s Over Now’ and ‘Still I Dream Of It’ – will be familiar from previous archive releases, but improved sound quality will be a massive draw for fans.

The three CDs in this six-disc multi-media package effectively repeat the content from the three vinyl records and then go beyond that by offering additional outtakes and alternate mixes that the LPs don’t have space to accommodate. Packaged in a 12-inch slipcase it includes a 40-page booklet with sleeve notes featuring new and archival band interviews and the Brother Studio engineering team, archival photos and a complete sessionography with detailed production credits.

“We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years” is out 13th February via Capitol/UMe, although it should be noted that this box set is not available via traditional retail channels at all. It’s all D2C (direct-to-consumer) so you will need to seek out Beach Boys / Universal Music channels to order it – although at the time of writing it appears to be SOLD OUT (update: it is now newly available from The Beach Boys store in the USA and uDiscoverMusic.com in the US with a 20th March release date, which suggests a repress).

For Kevin Morby, the “little wide open” is the big sky, the small lives, it’s his origins in the Midwest, and every duty and modesty and familiarity and isolation: the land, the people, and the parts of that inside him.

“There’s something unintentionally musical about the Midwest; cicadas chirping in the trees, a train passing, a tornado siren going off,” explains Morby. “If you listen, there are these almost ominous sounds taking place beneath the wide-open sky—its ugliness and its beauty and how the two are often working together simultaneously. And while the Midwest isn’t technically the badlands, it’s my badlands.”

“Little Wide Open” is the title of Kevin Morby’s eighth studio album, produced by Aaron Dessner.
In the summer of 2024, Dessner had asked Morby to support The National at their London show in Crystal Palace Park.
Shortly after, Dessner—who was on a hot streak, having produced albums for Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, and Gracie Abrams—reached out to Morby to say he’d love to produce his next album.
They began recording at Aaron’s Long Pond Studio in Stuyvesant, NY, early in 2025 and finished in September of that year.

The album, which features a host of contributors such as Dessner—who plays multiple instruments across it—Amelia Meath, Andrew Barr, Justin Vernon, Katie Gavin, Lucinda Williams, Meg Duffy, and more, has been described by Morby as the third in a trilogy of releases, following 2020’s “Sundowner” and 2022’s “This Is a Photograph”, which catalogued his time in the Midwest after moving back to Kansas City.

This time out, Dessner’s production elevates Morby’s recordings while never losing focus of the songs themselves.
There’s a newfound confidence and clarity in both Morby’s writing and Dessner’s production that recalls Tom Petty’s 1994 classic Wildflowers.

Now primarily living in LA, the atmosphere that runs through “Little Wide Open” has changed somewhat from its predecessors.
As Rachel Kushner writes of Morby in the album’s accompanying essay: “It’s about time, about feeling like he has shifted from nostalgia and the losing game, losing but beautiful, of holding onto the past. He has accepted that time is ceaselessly flowing, and you can’t stop it. Instead, he feels like he’s riding it. He’s riding passenger with time.”

Hailing from Cork, indie hot tip Cardinals are set to finally unveil their debut album ‘Masquerade’! 

Back in 2024, Cardinals’ Euan Manning told NME he wanted the band’s debut album to be a “classic”. The Cork five-piece will unveil their attempt at that lofty title imminently, with Manning describing the record as “peeling back the ‘masquerade’ or the facade we all put up” via 10 vulnerable and visceral pieces of storytelling.

Irish band Cardinals have announced a few US tour dates, Dates kick off May 7 in Somerville, MA and stops include Brooklyn (Main Drag Music on May 8), Los Angeles, and Seattle.

Cardinals have also shared a new song from from their upcoming debut album, “Masquerade”. “‘I Like You’ is the first song we wrote with the album in mind,” says frontman Euan Manning. “After a very long period of not working on anything, we started and finished this some bright morning last February in our practice studio.

It felt cathartic, a completely grounding moment after feeling slightly lost for months. The first lyric is stripped/paraphrased from the tune ‘My Funny Valentine.’ I don’t think it was written by Chet Baker but that’s the version we know.” You can watch a live version of “I Like You” and listen to the studio version below.

Debut album ‘Masquerade’ out February 13th 2026

My new album, “Cruel World”, is going to be out on 10th April, I am genuinely obsessed with it

Holly Humberstone returns with her highly anticipated second album, “Cruel World”, set for release on 10th April 2026. One of the defining voices of her generation, Holly delivers a record that lives in the tension between pain and pleasure, where chaos and acceptance sit side by side.

I wrote ‘To Love Somebody’ after watching someone close to me go through a brutal heartbreak. I think loving hard is a painful thing, but it’s part of the human experience x

Renowned for her forensic songwriting – earning an Ivor Novello nomination for her debut EP and winning the BRIT Rising Star in 2022 – Holly has evolved into a global force whose lucid, emotionally piercing storytelling resonates far beyond her own walls.

On “Cruel World”, she escapes into a dark fairytale of her own making, where childhood relics, monsters and memory collide, resulting in her most immersive, introspective and compelling body of work to date.

Freddie King – “Feeling Alright: The Complete Jazz Pulsation Concert 1975“. Presented as a box set, this release captures King late in his career but still playing with raw authority, blending Texas blues power with a tight live band at full force.

Never-Before-Released Freddie King 1975 Live ‘Album Feeling Alright: The Complete 1975 Nancy Jazz Pulsation Concerts’

Deluxe package includes appreciations from his daughter, Wanda King, as well as ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, plus liner notes by author Cary Baker

Slotted for release by Elemental Music exclusively for Record Store Day on April 18, 2026, ‘Feeling Alright: The Complete 1975 Nancy Jazz Pulsation Concerts’ is a limited-edition 3-LP set capturing blues guitar giant Freddie King live before more than 50,000 fans at France’s Nancy Jazz Pulsations Festival in October 1975 — the final full year of his life.

Previously unreleased and sourced from original ORTF (Office de radiodiffusion-télévision française) recordings, the newly restored 180-gram vinyl set documents an essential blues artist whose ferocious guitar tone, commanding singing, and genre-bridging vision helped reshape modern blues and rock.

Issued in cooperation with the Freddie King Estate, the set is produced by award-winning reissue producer Zev Feldman, widely known as the “Jazz Detective” for his celebrated archival discoveries. Mixing and sound restoration for the recordings was done by Marc Doutrepont (EQuuS), with mastering by Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab. CD and digital editions will follow on April 24.

Freddie King — the Texas Cannonball — carved out his place in blues history by fusing raw tradition with explosive modern energy. With his stinging thumb-and-fingerpick attack, he delivered instrumentals like “Hide Away” and “Sen-Sa-Shun” that became essential study pieces for generations of guitarists, while his impassioned singing — notably on “Have You Ever Loved a Woman,” included here — matched the fire of his guitar. Onstage, his commanding presence and sheer force of delivery gave the blues a rock ’n’ roll intensity that directly influenced players from Eric Clapton to Stevie Ray Vaughan.

The expansive set moves easily from King’s classic instrumentals — including “Sen-Sa-Shun,” paired in a medley with Magic Sam’s “Lookin’ Good” — to signature vocal performances such as “Have You Ever Loved a Woman,” seguéd into B.B. King’s “Whole Lot of Lovin’.” King also delivers powerful readings of blues standards including “Sweet Little Angel,” “Got My Mojo Working,” “The Things I Used to Do,” “Sweet Home Chicago,” “Messin’ with the Kid,” “Danger Zone,” and “Stormy Monday.”

Drawing from the rock musicians he helped inspire, King also includes two rock staples that had become part of his live repertoire: Dave Mason’s “Feelin’ Alright” (popularized by Traffic and Joe Cocker) and Don Nix’s “Goin’ Down.” In all, the collection features sixteen performances across six sides of vinyl.

The performance represents a convergence of Freddie King’s single years and album years — Texas swing, Chicago club-honed blues, and later rock-infused work shaped alongside Leon Russell and Don Nix — delivered with authority before an international audience at one of Europe’s premier festivals.

The album features King on guitar and vocals, joined by Alvin Hemphill on organ; Ed Lively, guitar; Lewis Stephens, piano; Benny Turner on bass; and Calep Emphrey, drums.

King was appearing at the Nancy Jazz Pulsations Festival as part of what Stephens — who played keyboards in his band during those overseas dates — recalls as a “blistering” five- or six-week run through France. “Freddie had truly hit his stride as a blues-rock star in Europe and the U.S.,” he reflects.

The set includes liner notes by music journalist and historian Cary Baker, author of Down on the Corner: Adventures in Busking and Street Music, along with comments from reissue producer Zev Feldman and appreciations from King’s daughter and estate administrator Wanda King, as well as ZZ Top guitarist Billy F. Gibbons. As Gibbons writes, “At this show in Nancy — just a year before his untimely departure — the Texas Cannonball poured it on in a big way.”

As Feldman notes in his reissue producer’s statement: “Freddie King is and remains a king indeed — a defining figure in blues and rock guitar. These recordings capture a moment when he was transcending audiences and influencing players around the world. It’s also been deeply meaningful to work with his daughter, Wanda King, as we set out not only to release this music, but to celebrate Freddie’s legacy and the impact he made. These performances present him at his very best — and they’re thrilling to hear.”

50 years of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The only sad thing about celebrating that milestone? TP himself isn’t here to enjoy it.

Our deluxe, updated and expanded Ultimate Music Guide gives him the send-off he deserves: 148 pages covering every album (including new box sets and deluxe editions), plus classic interviews from the archives. Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench share fond memories of the Tom Petty legacy, and we go inside the making of the classic “Wildflowers” album.

Celebrating 50 years of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers we present the deluxe, 148-page edition of our Ultimate Music Guide to Tom Petty. In one of the new additions to the magazine, Mike Campbell (for 30 years Petty’s lieutenant, both with the Heartbreakers and in his solo work) looks back on the Petty he knew, one year on from his passing.

He recalls for us Petty at his final show: “His face was beaming. I remember thinking, ‘This guy loves what he’s doing, and he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else than where he is right now,

Ultimate Music Guide