“Infinity Peaking” perfectly encapsulates the band we were and the band we are now, that careful balance of shoegaze and electronica,” says bdrmm’s Ryan Smith. “It was written when I was in Malaga, and is the first track I wrote that wasn’t in some dingy bedroom. I feel like it captures the location that is reminiscent on The Durutti Column’s Hotel of the Lake, 1990. It’s a track that is full of true joy (despite the lyrics) and it was a pleasure to work on in the studio.
It’s one that we felt we could really get into the experimentation on, especially in the long spanning mid-section. We’re always happiest when we’re sat on the floor of the studio surrounding the latest pedal we bought, each dying to have a pass on it.” bdrmm’s new album “Microtonic” is out March 28th via Rock Action.
Yes’ fifth album, “Close to the Edge”, continued the band’s early winning streak. The 1972 release – their final album of the decade to feature drummer Bill Bruford and first to feature the band’s now-famous “bubble” logo type – featured just three songs (two of which had multiple movements). But they were sufficiently power-packed as to propel the LP to top five berths in both the U.K. and U.S. and eventual Platinum sales status. On March 7th, Rhino will revisit “Close to the Edge” as a 5CD/LP/Blu-ray set anchored by new surround (Dolby Atmos and 5.1) and stereo remixes by Steven Wilson. This Super Deluxe box follows in the footsteps of similarly lavish reissues of “The Yes Album” and “Fragile”.
Lead vocalist Jon Anderson, bassist Chris Squire, drummer Bill Bruford, guitarist Steve Howe, and keyboardist Rick Wakeman teamed with engineer and co-producer Eddie Offord at Advision Studios to record “Close to the Edge”. Offord sought to recreate the band’s powerful live sound in the studio, encapsulating the band’s majestic prog style on just three tracks.
The opening title track, at over 18 minutes in length, was the longest Yes had recorded. Incorporating sound effects, tape loops, and improvisational jams, “Close to the Edge” brimmed with ambition. Though Anderson reportedly gained initial inspiration from composer Sibelius and author J.R.R. Tolkien, he based his lyrics on themes from Hermann Hesse’s Siddartha. Anderson and Steve Howe merged disparate songs into the four-movement suite which occupied all of the original LP’s Side One. The second side opened with a 10+-minute epic, also with four distinct sections. “And You and I” incorporates folk and country influences; the track featured Bruford and Squire’s only songwriting credits on the album. The closing “Siberian Khatru,” composed by Anderson, Howe, and Wakeman, was a thrilling slice of heavy riff-rock borne out of collaboration within the band.
Generally recognized as one of the greatest prog-rock and guitar-rock albums of all time, “Close to theEdge” has been remixed by Steven Wilson (who previously tackled the album in 2013 for the Panegyric label). The original 1972 mix has been remastered by Bernie Grundman on CD 1 while Wilson’s remix and bonus instrumentals comprise CD 2. The third disc of rarities contains the single edits of “America” (a cover of Paul Simon’s moving Simon and Garfunkel ballad), “Total Mass Retain,” and “And You and I,” as well as various alternative versions and three new Wilson edits. The band’s December 16th, 1972 concert at London’s Rainbow Theatre (still standing today and in use as a church) debuts on CDs 4 and 5. The box set is rounded out by a Blu-ray with Wilson’s Dolby Atmos and 5.1 surround remixes plus high-resolution stereo versions of both the 1972 and 2025 mixes; and a remastered LP of the original mix.
The expanded super deluxe edition of “Close to the Edge” on March 7th from Rhino. including a Rhino-exclusive bundle with a print signed by designer Roger Dean.
An album that showcases his song craft at its purest roots, with just his voice and an acoustic guitar.
Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Jason Isbell is one of the most respected and celebrated artists of his generation. The North Alabama native possesses an incredible penchant for identifying and articulating some of the deepest, yet simplest, human emotions, and turning them into beautiful poetry through song. Isbell sings of the everyday human condition with thoughtful, heartfelt, and sometimes brutal honesty.
After releasing multiple albums and touring the world with his band, the 400 Unit, Isbell will begin 2025 with a change of pace. He hits the road on his own, performing solo this winter and early spring at historic music venues across Europe and the US. In conjunction with these much anticipated shows, Isbell releases a new album featuring only his voice and an acoustic guitar, an all-mahogany 1940 Martin 0-17. These recordings further demonstrate his pure talent as a songwriter and musician. Produced by Gena Johnson and Jason Isbell, and recorded at Electric Lady Studios in NYC, “Foxes in the Snow”is an absolute masterpiece.
‘Foxes in the Snow’, the new solo acoustic album from Jason Isbell, will be released on March 7th, 2025 via Southeastern Records. It was recorded and co-produced with Gena Johnson last fall at Electric Lady Studios.
Jason Isbell – Vocals and Guitar, All songs written by Jason Isbell,
Recorded at Electric Lady Studios releases March 7th, 2025
It’s difficult to know whether the devil-may-care attitude of Tyler Bryant and his band The Shakedown will ever see them join the big league, but on this sixth album they remain one of the best little bands in the world. The Shakedown wear their influences well, with shades of Aerosmith and The Black Crowes rubbing shoulders comfortably with Zep-isms and country stylings to sound great whichever gear they’re in.
For those watching meters, there’s always a dip in voltage around 6 o’clock. When workaday folks get home and start turning on their televisions and firing up their microwaves, the hum of electricity goes crackling down the power lines, lighting up the windows of house after house, street after street, mile after mile. But when the moon has been high for hours and, slowly but surely, the nearby world starts to fall asleep — that’s when workanight folks, like Tyler Bryant & The Shakedown, come alive.
As the voltage begins to spike, current flows like a high tide flooding through the transformers and wires that stack well into the thousands at TBSD’s musical headquarters, “The Lily Pad” in Nashville, Tennessee. In a fast-moving, increasingly digital world, vintage tube gear is considered obsolete by the majority, but for those still living on the fringes of time, there’s a quality of magic when pieces of gear from a different age power up — the dim glow of vacuum tubes purposefully burning and generating heat in the close quarters of a control room.
Experience suggests that the best microphone to use is the one closest to an idea; and the best ideas flow from Tyler Bryant & The Shakedown when expectations are eliminated, complexity is simplified, and raw energy is refined into sound that goes barreling against an otherwise silent Nashville night. Like a freight train rolling down a hill, momentum builds: A thought sparks a feeling, a feeling sparks a few words that are strung together to form a musical conversation that asks, and then answers, its own question.
have you heard the news? The Men are back, and though they’ve been out and about for two years, they’ve made up for the absence by buying us…a beautiful pony. TL;DR, the Brooklyn post-punk group are gearing up to release “Buyer Beware” in February, their first effort since 2023’s “New York City” (great place). First single “Pony” is a pummelling thriller full of wall-of-noise guitars and growling vocals, sloshing hi hats, and a chest-beating bass line. It is the platonic ideal of The Men, and I am here for it. Now excuse me while I go paste over the recently formed hole in my drywall.
The band’s Mark Perro said about the track: “This one picked up the name ‘Pony’ ’cause it felt a little sugary and sweet. It was one of those things that just came out when we talked about the song and it stuck. I’m really happy with the fuzz tones we got on here, and the harmony vocals from Nick [Chiericozzi] and Jess [Poplawski] take this to another level. Lyrically, it’s about that transitional moment—when the jig is up.”
The new LP will arrive on February 28th via Fuzz Club Records.
Pretty Lightning are today releasing ‘In Place Of Bees, Glow Worms’. The second single to be lifted from their recently announced upcoming album ‘Night Wobble’ due out February 21st. On the new single, the band say: “In Place Of Bees, Glow Worms” was the first song we made for “Night Wobble“. It spawned the conceptual idea that guided the writing of the songs to follow and outlines the scene we´re in: it´s dusk at forest´s edge and the opening guitar warbles along to a setting sun until the first beat cracks through the creaking branches. The ramblers enter the woods while a lap steel´s mangled, distant howling hints that an extensive woodland awaits them. They sneak on carefully to gentle ringing chords, gain pace only slowly by the tapping of the bongos and eventually find themselves in a pleasant trot that makes them flow even further into the night. Well, this could be a story, or one could just skip the talk and only listen to the music.”
The newly-announced ‘Night Wobble’ LP is a set of downtempo, repetitive grooves that course through dusty spaghetti-western psychedelia, Tuareg-derived desert-blues, library music and ’70s progressive. It’s always cinematic but shot through with trippy, off-kilter moments that bring a sense of alien to the widescreen panoramas here – this is an “oozy, woozy cowboy groove”, as they put it. If it was David Lynch who directed ‘Paris, Texas’ then Ry Cooder’s soundtrack might have sounded something like this.
Before his death, this June, at the age of 61, Martin Phillipps, the founder of New Zealand jangle-pop greats the Chills, was at work on an album of songs he wrote in his youth but never formally recorded. That work of re-imagination, “Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs”, is now ready for release. “Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs” will arrive on Friday, February 28th, 2025, via Fire Records.
A press release quotes Phillipps recollecting the experience of making the record. “All of the songs needed varying degrees of rewriting,” he said. “A 60-year old man couldn’t just stick to the lyrics of those formative years. And some of the songs were just vague recollections, incomplete, only blossoming during recording.” Contributors to the LP include Crowded House’s Neil Finn and members of Fur Patrol, Split Enz, Purple Pilgrims, and other New Zealand institutions.
‘Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs’ is a Martin Phillipps passion project. A dedicated reimagining of his earlier unreleased songs that became his artistic farewell, a lasting legacy, and a reminder of his huge, underappreciated talent. The album has been finalised for release with the love and support of his band, family and friends.
Another song from the upcoming posthumous Chills album, featuring songs the late Martin Phillipps wrote in the early days of the band but didn’t actually record till the last years of his life. “All of the songs needed varying degrees of rewriting,” he said. “A 60-year old man couldn’t just stick to the lyrics of those formative years. And some of the songs were just vague recollections, incomplete, only blossoming during recording.”
As the subject of an undulating life and times movie – The Chills: The Triumph And Tragedy Of MartinPhillipps – Chills’ singer, songwriter and main motivator, Martin Phillipps spent the last decade releasing studio and live albums while careering into his sixtieth year with typical gusto.
Amid such momentum, Martin was stilling digging through old tapes, searching for the foundations that resulted in global rapture in 1987, an overnight success that took a mere seven years to ignite. These early songs and musings were revisited, revised and finally put to record. As such, ‘Spring Board’ is the final chapter of The Chills, immeasurably significant output.
‘Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs’ is alarming, personal, brittle and at times hopelessly upbeat. This is a man casting his mind back on an esoteric career that led to nothing short of cult status; someone rediscovering his roots, his innermost thoughts, hopes and fears.
The Chills are Martin Phillipps, Oli Wilson, Erica Scally and Callum Hampton, Todd Knudson. ‘Spring Board’ features contributions from Fur Patrol’s Julia Deans, Elroy Finn and Split Enz, Crowded House alumni Neil Finn, Tiny Ruins’ Hollie Fullbrook, Manics producer Greg Haver, Troy Kingi, Shona Laing,Tami Neilson, Dianne Swann (Everything That Flies) and Purple Pilgrims’ Clementine Valentine.
Horse Jumper of Love thrive on patient and uncompromising songs. Thanks to frontman Dimitri Giannopoulos’ evocative lyrics and arrangements that suddenly turn from delicate to blistering, their music is full of intensity. While the Boston trio, which also includes bassist John Margaris and drummer James Doran, has stretched the fringes of indie, their latest is their most immediate yet. Released August via Run For Cover Records, “Disaster Trick” tackles self-destructiveness with healing and heart.
Where Horse Jumper of Love’s last release 2023’s “Heartbreak Rules” excelled with quiet, bare-bones songwriting, “Disaster Trick” cranks up the volume while keeping the no-frills intimacy of the band’s catalogue. Recorded at Asheville, North Carolina’s Drop of Sun Studios with producer Alex Farrar (Wednesday, Indigo De Souza), the recordings soar with searing guitars and an unshakeable rhythm section. “I tried the quiet thing on the last album and I realized there’s definitely two parts of me: I like really heavy music, and I like really gentle music,” says Giannopoulos. “The two albums I listened to the most while we were in the studio were Leonard Cohen’s Songs From a Room and Hum’s Downward is Heavenward.” This contrast between quiet and loud exists throughout “Disaster Trick” but it’s animated by stark emotion and straightforward, timeless song writing.
“Disaster Trick” feels like a creative reset. It’s also Horse Jumper of Love distilled to their purest essence, which is partly due to Giannopoulos’ recent sobriety. “This was the first album I’ve ever done where I went into it with a very clear mind,” he says. “In the past, we would just show up at a studio, drink, and record. Here, everything felt purposeful.” With newfound energy, the band revisited old, unfinished material like “Gates of Heaven,” which dates back nearly a decade. Originally written during a period Giannopoulos describes as full of immaturity, he sings, “I am late to work again / I’m always missing something / when I walk out the door.” By focusing on a mundane moment, he highlights how self-defeating behaviors can linger.
For the band, the album marked an opportunity to strip down their song-writing to the essentials: urgent, accessible arrangements full of catharsis. “This album helped me realize that a lot of the time, simplicity is the answer,” says Giannopolous. Lead single “Wink,” captures this perfectly. When Giannopoulos sings over hushed guitars, “And your arms have never looked / More empty than they do from here,” his delivery exudes a remarkable earnestness. As the track hits a boiling point in its thunderous chorus, it’s disarmingly raw.
Other songs like “Today’s Iconoclasts” are imbued with wry humour, referencing both “the Amazon Basics Bible” and playing “fuck, marry, kill” in consecutive verses. Whatever the mood, Giannopoulos’ lyrical directness anchors “Disaster Trick”.
While in Asheville, the band enlisted collaborations from Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman and MJ Lenderman as well as Squirrel Flower’s Ella Williams. Opening track “Snow Angel” kicks off with a growling, shoegaze-tinged guitar riff. It’s a heavy song that’s grounded by wistfulness. “Would you pull me a feather / From your pillow – I want to dream like you,” sings Giannopoulos. Throughout, “Disaster Trick” navigates uncomfortable, dark thoughts with a subtle grace. On the downtempo and compelling “Word,” Giannopoulos finds lightness in relationship malaise: “Last night we had a fight / You blamed it on the moon / But that’s not very fair to the moon.”
“Disaster Trick” is a dark record but there’s a glimmer of hope throughout. As he sings on “Death Spiral,” “I know it sounds dramatic / But I must describe / The way that it felt.” This gets to the core of the album: looking back on mistakes with the grace and clarity that comes from growing up. “A lot of the songs came out of this point where things in my life were going well but I couldn’t accept it,” says Giannopoulos. “I was being a brat. “Disaster Trick” is me cleaning up my act and reflecting on it.”
released August 16th, 2024
Dimitri Giannopoulos – Vocals/ Guitars James Aloyseus-Charles Doran – Drums/ Percussion John Theodore Margaris – Bass/ Backing Vocals/ Piano
Karly Hartzman – Vocals on “Wink”, “Today’s Iconoclast”, “Wait by the Stairs” & “Heavy Metal” Ella Williams – Vocals on “Snow Angel” & “Lip Reader” Jake Lenderman – Guitar on “Snow Angel” & “Curtain” Maria Gelsomini – Synth on “Heavy Metal”
There are one million ways to approach love, one million ways to experience love, one million ways in which love shapes both the course of our lives and how we choose to navigate that course. On her second album, Bnny’s Jessica Viscius looks love square in its many eyes and describes, with self-awareness and humour, not only what she sees, but what it makes her feel. Deep romantic love, breathy lust, generous self-love—and their opposites, self-loathing, resentment, disappointment—all make appearances on “One Million Love Songs”, Bnny’s revelatory second album.
Bnny’s debut, “Everything“, was written in the face of tragedy, following the death of Viscius’ partner, fellow Chicago musician Trey Gruber. It was a raw, honest album whose songs seemed to emanate from Viscius like a personal climate. Pitchfork called “Everything” a beautiful record from wall to wall, comfort food for heartbroken insomniacs.” And while those songs have not lost an ounce of their power, performing them every night live across the US and Europe made for a new and different kind of exhaustion. It’s hard to access your grief all the time; it’s even harder to share it. “I wanted to make songs that are exciting to play—songs that make me feel happy,” Viscius says. “This album is about love after loss, getting older, and just trying to have fun with a broken heart.”
True to form, “One Million Love Songs” is a brighter, fuller record that shows Viscius’ immense growth as an arranger and artist. “Good Stuff” begins as soft slowcore, with a touch of Echo and the Bunnymen, but as it wakes up, Viscius channels the sunny chords and at-ease ’90s charm.
“I’m hanging on to the sunshine,” she sings, her voice full and rich and carrying both the giddiness that line implies and an awareness of how silly that giddiness can feel. “Something Blue” rises, sighs, and rests in its own tension, Viscius’ voice calm with a self-assured form of acceptance. In “Changes,” she hangs a simple lyric on a straightforward melody like a sheet being draped over a clothesline, channelling Mazzy Star and mimicking the soft, gauzy, fresh feeling of realizing you’re able to begin it all again with a new person. “So happy I could scream,” she sings, and then she does.
Oh, but sadness can have its pleasures, too. “Heartbreak can be fun when you put things into perspective and think about how absurd and fleeting life is,” Viscius says. “One Million Love Songs” was written in the wake of a breakup that prompted a period of deep introspection and a grappling with her own self-destructive tendencies. Many of the songs here take it as a given that love will end. In “Crazy, Baby,”Viscius lays out her approach to love songs: “write one quick ’cause nothing lasts,” she sings, suggesting that any attempt to capture the green shoots of love’s first moments also carries within it the dying and decaying of the tree. “Sweet” is humid with self-loathing, a nearly bluesy lament in the vein of the Velvet Underground’s third record. “I’m so sweet,” she sings, her voice venomous with sarcasm, “don’t you want to get to know me?”
“One Million Love Songs” was recorded in Asheville at Drop of Sun and produced by Viscius alongside Alex Farrar (Wednesday, Indigo De Souza, Snail Mail), As with “Everything”, Bnny is primarily Viscius’ solo project, with assistance from her twin sister Alexa Viscius and a rotating cast of friends. The cover is a photo Alexa took of Jess while they were backpacking in Alaska. It’s an ambiguous image—you can read Viscius as relaxed and at ease, or you can read her as completely wiped out and drained. It’s an image that exists out of time, like the love song itself—songs that will always be relevant because people will always find themselves drawn to and apart from one another, with the millions and millions of complications those movements bring. The idea is to embrace all of it while remembering that everything passes. It seems instructive that the last thing Viscius sings on this album is “No one loves me anymore.” It seems equally instructive that she sounds completely free.
released April 5th, 2024
Bnny is Jessica Viscius, Alexa Viscius, Tim Makowski, Adam Schubert, and Matt Pelkey. Recorded by Alex Farrar at Drop of Sun studios in Asheville, NC.
Loose Cattle are inheritors of the progressive politics and compassionate humanity of folk and country truth-tellers past and present, some of whom have become friends: both Lucinda Williams and Patterson Hood guest on their debut for the mighty Southern indie Single LockRecords. The album ably takes on these weird American times with tenderness, rigor, empathy, and guitars.
The American band Loose Cattle didn’t attract a lot of attention last year with their album “Someone’s Monster”, but it’s an album that should be counted among the best alt-country albums of the year I came across “Someone’s Monster” by Loose Cattle by chance, but the album made an indelible impression almost immediately. Loose Cattle is a band from New Orleans that consists of experienced musicians which can handle both alternative country and more traditional-sounding country music. The vocals on “Someone’s Monster” the band has the necessary vocal talent. The album by Loose Cattle is also full of excellent songs and is very expertly produced by John Agnello.
In the annual list of readers of the American online music magazine No Depression I came across the album “Someone’s Monster” by Loose Cattle. I follow the magazine that focuses entirely on American roots music closely throughout the year. It may have been the only tip that the annual lists of No Depression gave me, because I have become quite addicted to the album of the band from New Orleans, Louisiana.
“Someone’s Monster” is the third album by Loose Cattle and it is an album that fits into both the boxes of country and alt-country. but the band can also go in other directions and on “Someone’s Monster” also regularly shifts towards more traditional-sounding American roots music.
The band has a great singer in Kimberly Kaye, who takes the lead in a number of songs on the album. The other singer of the band, Michael Cerveris, also has an appealing voice and switching between male and female voices is one of the strengths of Loose Cattle as far as I’m concerned.
The band made musical friends with its previous albums, which has ensured that Lucinda Williams and Patterson Hood (Drive-by Truckers) contributed to the album. Musically, “Someone’s Monster” is a rich album. The sound of Loose Cattle is generally guitar oriented, but contributions from the violin, the lap steel, the pedal steel and the mellotron (!) ensure that the music of Loose Cattle sounds richer and also different from most music in the genres in which the band from New Orleans moves.
It provides a pretty full sound, but that comes out of the speakers really beautifully. It is the merit of the chastened producer John Agnello, who has been known as a top producer since the early 90s and now has a CV that makes you quiet for a while. A number of music websites focused on American roots music have already written nice words about Loose Cattle’s album in the past year,
