Ed O’Brien likes to quote a line from the great Kentucky poet and farmer Wendell Berry: “To know the dark, go dark.” It is the insight, after all, that ultimately led O’Brien from one of the darkest spans of his life to “Blue Morpho“, his absorbing second solo album.
Named for the iconic and magically iridescent butterfly O’Brien first encountered in Brazil, “Blue Morpho” is not some grand destination for O’Brien, not a finishing point. He speaks of the people with whom he made it as a new musical family, a group of compatriots he cannot wait to work with again. He is still learning how to write songs and trust the result, how to help lead a band toward his burgeoning vision. He is candid about the discrepancy between being in one of the world’s biggest bands and being one of rock music’s most lauded guitarists but also being a beginner again, a new songwriter and finally starting to figure out his approach.
O’Brien will talk to you about faith and recovery, psychedelics and meditation, Wim Hof and wilderness, all avenues for continuing to grow. “Blue Morpho” is part of the same endless journey — going in the dark, emerging from it, and recognizing that, if we’re living at all, there will always be more darkness to navigate not too far up ahead.
Almost slept on this album for a month after release but I’m so glad I didn’t. 2:45 on “Teachers” is sublime. “Obrigado” is a near-indescribable bossa-influenced epic: at times uplifting, contemplative, and searching – a fitting conclusion to an album I almost ignored entirely. The extended slow burn outro is an out of this world vibe as well.
“Peacelands” is a word and concept created by visionary Louisville artist Mark Anthony Mulligan,” explains My Morning Jacket singer-guitarist Jim James. It’s “an imaginary land of peace, friendship, and equality he created in his artwork — a place where folks listen to each other and find a way to get along in peace, friendship, and togetherness, despite their differences. “I think about this word “Peacelands” in our world all of the time, especially in troubled times, and we believe that it’s still possible for us to achieve Mark’s vision of “Peacelands” — a world of love and friendship — if only we can learn to listen, love, and forgive in paths of peace, acceptance, and tolerance.
We stand with the people of Minnesota and everywhere else affected by the horrors of ICE brutality and lack of human decency or transparency from this administration,” James continues. “There is room for everyone to be safe and free and at home in this vast world and we need to find a new path together to safe and humane immigration policy and reform rooted in peace and love… safety and equality… and new systems of fairness, freedom, and transparent justice for all.
“Peacelands” is an album of mostly unreleased, acoustic peaceful protest songs – some covers and some of my own – released exclusively on @bandcamp. We are proud to support organizations like @aclu_nationwide fighting for our safety and freedoms here at home, as well as @doctorswithoutborders and @rescueorg – organizations working hard to help heal the horrors of war and terror around the globe… working around the clock to help move us all towards “Peacelands.”
Following the success of his critically acclaimed album “Remembering Now“, which soared into the Top 10 and earned widespread praise, Van Morrison is back with a bold new release.
His album, “Somebody Tried To Sell Me A Bridge”, marks a confident return to the sounds and traditions that shaped much of his musical identity. The album pays homage to the legends who defined the blues genre with fresh interpretations of classics made famous by B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Lead Belly and more.
“Somebody Tried To Sell Me A Bridge” delivers a spirited, unfiltered blues experience from an artist whose connection to the genre runs deep. The album blends Morrison’s trademark grit and lyricism with the emotional weight of classic blues, resulting in a collection that feels timeless and fiercely alive.
A standout feature of the album is its extraordinary roster of collaborators. Morrison is joined by Taj Mahal, Buddy Guy, Elvin Bishop, John Allair, David Hayes, Bobby Ruggerio, Mitch Woods, Anthony Paule and Larry Vann, whose contributions bring depth, character and authenticity, each adding their own distinctive twist to the record.
Good news for people who love music from the Pacific Northwest: Modest Mouse just released their first independent album in nearly 30 years and possibily thier best yet. On “An Eraser and a Maze”, Isaac Brock and his bandmates look around with confusion at how they got this far and question what their band’s identity boils down to. For Brock, that meant leaning into his gut instincts and seeing where they lead him. The murky rhythms return, as do Brock’s caterwauling wail and ragged guitar riffs. Surprises lay in store, too, including Janet Weiss drumming on “Look How Far…” and a burst of aughts indie rock on “Speak ‘N Spell (Or Not)” that you’d be forgiven for mistaking as a “We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank” cut.
A physics theory says past, present, and future coexist, and that’s the best lens for “An Eraser and a Maze”, which feels like every era of Modest Mouse happening at once. Guided by Isaac Brock’s instinct-first process, the album is both familiar and alien, warm and cold. It stretches across the band’s sonic history, from propulsive classics to stripped, raw moments, while carrying an undercurrent of mortality and loss that refuses easy optimism.
Washington state artist Isaac Brock, better known under his stage name Modest Mouse, is back with his (and the band’s) eighth studio album and the first in five years. Following up “Golden Casket” (2021), things have changed somewhat behind the scenes: it’s the band’s first independent release since 1997’s “The Lonesome Crowded West”.
Initially it was meant to be an EP for his side project Ugly Casanova but he saw potential in expanding it out to a full LP for the day job and let’s be glad Brock did because the results are staggering. The kaleidoscopic sonic maze of wonder that is the ‘Picking Dragons’ Pockets’ has a bombastic, celebratory feel that makes it a balm for the harder edges in our world. If pop music is about escape and joy, Modest Mouse understand this better than most in crafting sounds that truly toy with your sense of place and launch you into another realm.
The passage of time itself is an illusion. And, well, the same could be true of “An Eraser And A Maze” — because you can indeed hear every era of Modest Mouse coexisting at once on it. Past, present and, yes, future. For example: “Absolutely Necessary Never” is a bass and synth-driven journey that takes the DNA of “Tiny Cities Made Of Ashes“, removes a bit of the apocalypse, and snorts it all in a 1980s club bathroom. It also happens to be a new Modest Mouse classic.
Long-running garage / psych rockers The Lords Of Altamont are back with another blast of gasoline-fuelled soaked rock ’n’ roll: Their eighth studio album “Forever Loaded2. With 10 tracks and no brakes, the record captures the raw pulse that has powered the group for nearly three decades. The new album dives straight into the grit. Riffs grind. Organs howl. Rhythm sections hit like engines firing to life.
“Forever Loaded” moves from dive-bar chaos to full-throttle psychedelic drive, keeping the group’s signature swagger intact. The music lands hard and loud, a sharp reminder of why The Lords Of Altamont remain one of garage-rock’s most relentless forces.
The Lords of Altamont’s 8th sacrifice to the rock n roll underworld. 10 tracks to take you on a trip through vice enhanced heights and dive bar depths. Recorded world wide, this album captures the evolution of the Lords sound, while staying true to the grit and power of their 28 year history. Dope Forever, Forever Loaded.
Over 18 years and five studio albums, with each evolutionary jump and a new vein of existing, Iceage have worked inside the idea of collapse. That collapse, or the thrill of being close to it, was a way of playing, singing and writing—a tumbling through life in song, catching it as it falls.
It’s not unusual for Iceage to obscure the narrative details of their songs. But when frontman Elias Rønnenfelt sings about catching “you like an ember falling down” on the opening track of their new album, he might as well be referring to the sparks of a new song that permeate the air when the band is in the studio. The more the Danish punks have pushed their sound forward since their 2011 debut “New Brigade”, the more days it’s taken them to record, with the last couple requiring gasp – up to two weeks.
Perhaps in reaction to the insularity of Rønnenfelt’s recent solo work, though, they returned to a speedier, raucous approach for “For Love of Grace & the Hereafter”, as if the ideas themselves were running for dear life.
“For Love of Grace & the Hereafter” the sixth studio album from beloved Danish quintet Iceage. Across the sprawling, twelve song arc of the album, a universe of love variously expands and contracts in an eternal tango, Elias Rønnenfelt’s lyrics burn with apocalyptic intimacy while the band masterfully maneuvers within their shape-shifting scenery of feral post-punk.
“Secret Love”, is the new record by London avant-indie heroes Dry Cleaning came out on January 9th, and as they have said it is one which takes their unclassifiable spoken-word doom rock oddness to new undeniably genius heights.
The South London four-piece are back with their third record, “Secret Love”,enlisting the help of Cate Le Bon on production for a fresh take on their trademark post-punk sprechgesang and sharp observations.
“Secret Love”moves smoothly between a darker, more intense sound to softer, intimate moments. “Blood” is one of the most striking and perhaps the most transparent in its lyrics. Deconstructing the modern inevitability of witnessing atrocities half a world away on our screens, singer Florence Shaw laments our own sense of complicity as she sings, “Blood on my skin and hands and nails, and in my eyes as well / I try to see”. Evil Evil Idiot continues this darker tone with ominous instrumentation and lyrics about raw meat, carcinogens and chemicals.
Balancing this intensity are cuts like “The Cute Things” and the titular “Secret Love (Concealed in a Drawing of a Boy)”,painting a more personal picture. “Joy” ends the album with a kick, reflecting on the radical act of finding happiness in a dystopian world.
The deadpan delivery of Shaw’s lyrics makes analysis a tricky thing. In the aforementioned “Cruise Ship Designer“, she concludes the song with the statement “There are hidden messages in my work”. Is it a less-than-subtle hint for the listener to look deeper into the songs? Does it poke fun at those who read too much into the things? These more absurd moments contrast the more straight-to-the-point lyrics; “Blood” reflecting on war and complicity, or “My Soul / Half Pint” touching on domestic burden.
Perhaps the hidden message is that, like the cruise ship designer, we should stop overthinking everything.
So sit back and enjoy the album. Shaw’s straight-faced delivery pairs beautifully with her bandmates’ intricate guitars and grooving basslines throughout. “Secret Love” is a profoundly modern album – puzzling, but endearingly so.
it’s a strong early shout for the Mercury Prize right here.
I can’t make up my mind whether Dry Cleaning‘s new album “Secret Love“, the follow-up to 2022’s “Stumpwork”, is their darkest or most optimistic, precisely because it blurs the line between harmlessness and real horror, self-growth and destruction. In that way it’s certainly their dreamiest, with subtle, reconstructive production from Cate Le Bon, who helps the band break out of their shell by making them sound more like themselves. It’s hard to take thatthe wrong way.
Dry Cleaning unveiled their third studio album “Secret Love”, produced by Cate Le Bon. Written together in Peckham rehearsal rooms, it reflects the close ties between Florence Shaw, Tom Dowse, Nick Buxton and Lewis Maynard, each song built from their instinctive interplay.
The south London quartet draw on early ’80s punk paranoia, Stones-like swagger, stoner heaviness, no wave angles and pastoral touches. Shaw’s measured delivery stands alongside spoken-word figures such as Laurie Anderson and Sue Tompkins, woven seamlessly into the band’s shifting soundscapes.
“Secret Love” took shape across varied sessions: at Jeff Tweedy’s Loft studio in Chicago, Sonic Studios in Dublin with members of Gilla Band, and finally at Black Box in the Loire Valley with Le Bon, chosen for her positivity and openness.
Trust is the record’s central theme, introduced by opener ‘Hit My Head All Day’, a playful yet cutting track tackling misinformation, manipulation and the difficulty of knowing who to believe.
Broken Social Scene is a Canadian indie rock band, a musical collective including as few as six and as many as nineteen members, formed by Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning. Most of its members play in various other groups and solo projects, mainly in the city of Toronto.
Broken Social Scene’s new album, “Remember the Humans“, urges you to think of music in organic terms. The title of the Canadian collective’s first album in nearly a decade came from Charles Spearin, who initially framed it as a joke: it sounds like the AI version of their seminal 2002 LP “You Forgot It inPeople2. The songs get lost in the haze of personal memory, eulogize individual people, and put relationships under the microscope, but the group still has a unique way of reveling in abstraction: finding relief from the burden of identity and emotional truth in every cliche. It’s a joyously universal kind of homecoming.
The bands first new studio album in nearly a decade, “Remember The Humans” reunites beloved Toronto collective Broken Social Scene with producer David Newfeld, who helmed their 2002 breakthrough “You Forgot It In People” (2002) and their self-titled 2005 album.
Across the 12 tracks the arrangements are dense and enveloping — a lattice of horns, guitars, voices, and electronics — yet melody always remains sovereign, refusing to be swallowed by the sheer sound. When the music drifts towards abstraction, a grounding bass line arrives to anchor the listener, reminding us always that there are human hands on the controls and that, however artful, this is still rock ’n’ roll. Remember The Humans was shaped by reunion and loss in equal measure. When Kevin Drew and Newfeld reconnected after nearly 20 years apart, one hangout became what they call “a hurricane of fun.” During the recording, both lost their mothers — a shared grief that drew them closer. As Newfeld recalls, “our moms would have wanted us to do this, and get it right after 20 years of not working together.
released May 8th, 2026
Produced and mixed by David Newfeld Recorded by David Newfeld, Charles Spearin and Nyles Spencer
A moonstone glow infuses Boy Golden’s “Best Of Our Possible Lives”, an LP that reveals its properties — intuition, emotional balance and transformation — through 12 songs of self-discovery. With “Best Of Our Possible Lives”, the singer-songwriter / producer Boy Golden’s artistic approach is as philosophical as it is musical.
This new work finds him mid-journey, on a quest for honesty with a willingness to examine and accept the self as it was, as it is, and as it can be. Buoyant, smooth and disarming, as a whole, “Best Of Our Possible Lives” draws lines from the J.J Cale Tulsa created sound to swampy New Orleans folk. With the lo-fi mystery of mk.gee, the laid-back swagger of MJ Lenderman and the lyrical intimacy of Waxhatachee, Boy Golden’s
The music is fresh, observational and honest. His melodies wax nostalgia for the giants (think J.J. Cale), yet ring true as the work of a young artist, right now.
Six Shooter Records released “Best of Our Possible Lives” on February 13th, 2026
For The Bobby Lees, their fourth album and Epitaph debut “New Self” marks a thrilling new chapter for the band while doubling down on what’s always made them so magnetic. The Bobby Lees don’t need much in the way of introduction. Within a few seconds of exposure to their furnace-blast live shows or their bottled-lightning studio records, it’s easy to hear why they’ve earned fans in legendary musicians like Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry, and Henry Rollins. They’re as uncompromising in their sound and generous with their energy as any of their punk ancestors who first rewrote the rules of engagement back in the 1970s. Led by singer and guitarist Sam Quartin, drummer Macky Bowman, and bassist Kendall Wind, The Bobby Lees bring wildness and danger back into punk rock.
Woodstock, NY’s The Bobby Lee’s signed to Epitaph and will release their first album for the label, “New Self”, on June 12th. “
This song feels like a diary entry that I’m letting strangers read, it’s kinda weird to share – but fuck it,” says the band’s Sam Quartin. “We were listening to late 90’s Hip Hop and Nu Metal when we wrote it. We told Dave Sardy, who produced the track, that sound was our goal, that kinda feel.”
The members of the Bobby Lees first met in Woodstock, NY, in 2017, and officially released their debut album the following year. Since then, they’ve toured extensively on both sides of the Atlantic, building a dedicated following year by year. Their ferocious presence has always been undeniable, but “New Self” elevates their sound to even brasher heights. Produced by Dave Sardy and Alex Pasco in Los Angeles, the album sets The Bobby Lees’ signature bravado loose across a wide and reverberating soundscape. They’ve never sounded quite this expansive or emboldened before.
At the heart of “New Self” glows the wonder of growing into somebody that you could barely imagine when you were younger. “I’m older now / I’ve gotten help / I wish you could meet my new self,” Quartin sings on the album’s raucous and bittersweet title track. It’s a sentiment that took some time to find. The record arrives after a period of deep uncertainty for the band. Toward the end of 2023, the Bobby Lees went on an indefinite hiatus: The deepening economic pressures of the music industry weighed heavily on them, and the labour of touring edged the group close to burnout. “We hit a ceiling with the cycle of funding our own records and then barely breaking even on tour,” says Quartin. The band took a break from performing and started trying to find a sustainable balance instead of working at their limits with no end in sight.
After they announced their hiatus, the Bobby Lees received an outpouring of support from their fans — including actor Jason Momoa, who contacted the group and offered to fund their next record. “That was such a gift for us,” says Quartin. “It made the whole experience of making the record a lot lighter.”
Returning to writing songs proved to be a welcome relief for Quartin. “I start to feel ill, physically and spiritually, if I don’t have a place to put my creative energy,” she says. While writing the songs on “New Self”, Quartin, Bowman, and Wind experimented together with new entry points, rather than beginning with guitar chords and lyrics as they’d done before. The barrelling, high-contrast “All I Got” was born from a guitar riff that Bowman wrote and shared with the group. Quartin asked her bandmates to send her recordings of bass and drum loops while they were on tour with another band, then used those loops as the starting ground for new songs. “I’d never written without a guitar before, but I had so much fun walking around listening to those beats and writing down lyrics,” she says.
Throughout the process of writing and recording the album, Quartin embraced a more deeply collaborative creative philosophy. “I used to think that if you work as hard as you can and put all of your energy into everything, you’ll get back what you give. But it didn’t pan out that way,” she says. “If I’m giving 90 percent, there’s only 10 percent left for whoever I’m working with to give back. So I tried doing less and seeing what happened. It ended up being a really nice change for me.”
Part of that change Quartin attributes to reading Ralph Waldo Emerson. “I bought the portable Emerson, and the chapter that I just read over and over again was called ‘Spiritual Laws,'” she says. “That shifted how I approach the exchange between people – what’s a healthy balance between giving and receiving. I think some seed of that went into these songs.”
Sometimes when you give up control, you end up claiming more power than you ever knew you had. You can hear the Bobby Lees easing into a new confidence — one that’s both looser and more towering — all throughout “New Self”, from the seething, fiery “Napoleon” to the rambunctious, offbeat take on PJ Harvey’s “50ft Queenie.” This is the sound of a band who’s scrambled over shaky ground only to come back stronger than ever: more confident, more connected, louder and fiercer and secure in their own skin.
The Fat Angel Sings 