The Fat Angel Sings

 The Belair Lip Bombs—the Australian quartet of Maisie Everett, Mike Bradvica, Jimmy Droughton, and Daniel “Dev” Devlin—release “Back of My Hand,”  the third single/video from their new album, Again, out October 31st via Third Man Records. In conjunction, they announce a spring US co-headline tour with dust. Following  last month’s  single, “Don’t Let Them Tell You (It’s Fair),”  praised by Paste as “a saga of unpredictable volumes, skating through post-punk and country-rock like it’s no one’s business,” “Back of My Hand” puts on display Maisie’s soaring vocals.

The song undulates with an easygoing rhythm before bursting into Weezer-style guitar riffs on its heart-in-hand chorus. It’s another instance of the band’s total sincerity as Maisie implores a romantic connection to trust in the strength of their connection. “Writing the lyrics was an up-and-down process,” Maisie explains. “I wrote the second verse first, the night I got home from the rehearsal where we wrote the song. I got a bit stoned and laid in bed with a notepad and a pen and the lyrics and the melody kinda just poured out of me, which pretty much never happens, so I guess it was a fluke.”

“Again” marks a new chapter for Australia’s best-kept secret, who have been building a loyal local following since they first formed eight years ago with their earnestness and ultra-sticky power-pop song structures. Endlessly listenable, the album winkingly symbolizes The Belair Lip Bombs’ reintroduction to a global audience. In mapping out “Again”, they merged their individual influences more than ever to craft a no-skips collection of indie-rock anthems. It gives the group’s DIY indie-rock style a fresh coat of polish across 10 rollicking new tracks. Again was produced by the band, Nao Anzai (The Teskey Brothers), and Joe White (Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever), marking the first time the Belair Lip Bombs worked with a producer, 

The Belair Lip Bombs pull you in immediately with their self-coined “yearn-core” combination of quick-footed rhythms, warm and fuzzy guitar melodies, and Maisie’s cathartic vocals. As they move into an exciting new era of their careers, their unshakable friendship, wide-open hearts, and knack for foot-tapping melodies will no doubt endear them to legions of fans in search of musical transcendence. 

On Wednesday, The Belair Lip Bombs will wrap up their first ever North American tour with Spacey Jane. Today’s newly announced co-headline dates with dust  find the band making stops in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and more.  The band will  play headline shows across Europe prior to the US tour. 

“Some things are just destined for perfection; the Belair Lip Bombs’ latest comes with a gold medal pinned to it.”

The Beatles’ landmark 1995 “Anthology” series has been restored and remastered in celebration of its 30th anniversary with 2025 updated releases on screen, as music collections and in print. The original documentary series, which ran across three nights in November ’95 on ABC-TV in the U.S. and on ITV in the U.K., has been expanded with a brand-new episode that includes previously unseen behind-the-scenes footage of Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr coming together between 1994 and 1995 to work on “The Anthology” and reflecting on their shared life with John Lennon as The Beatles.

From the August 21st announcement from Apple and Disney+: Instead of a standard treatment centered on an outside narrator and talking heads, “The Anthology” had the members telling their own story, with all its complexities and contradictions. It introduced The Beatles to new generations of viewers and listeners and marked the start of a creative and commercial afterlife that continues to this day.

The Beatles’ acclaimed “Anthology” documentary series has been restored and remastered. Along with the new episode, the program will stream exclusively on Disney+ beginning on November 26th. The original episodes trace the legendary journey that began in Liverpool and Hamburg and soon captivated the world. They bring to life the timeless stories — of Beatlemania, the band’s ground breaking arrival in the U.S., their role at the forefront of the 1960s counterculture, their spiritual exploration in India, and their eventual breakup. And through it all, the constant thread: the music, always the music.

The restoration has been overseen by Apple Corps’ production team, working with Peter Jackson’s Wingnut Films & Park Road Post teams along with Giles Martin, who has created new audio mixes for the majority of the featured music.

The musical side of “The Anthology Collection“, originally curated by George Martin, now remastered by Giles Martin, in the form of three double albums of rare material, a shadow story to the one told in the documentaries. They are an enthralling insight into the early development of songs that became the recorded masterpieces that resonate just as loudly today as they did when they were first recorded.

“The Anthology Collection” 12LP set includes the three ground breaking Anthology albums from the mid-1990s, remastered in 2025 by Giles Martin, plus a new compilation, “Anthology 4”. Containing 191 tracks, the collection’s studio outtakes, live performances, broadcasts and demos reveal the musical development of The Beatles from 1958 to the final single ‘Now And Then’ released in 2023.

“Anthology 4” features 13 previously unreleased tracks and 17 songs selected from Super Deluxe versions of five classic albums. In addition to fascinating outtakes dating from 1963 to 1969, the album includes new 2025 mixes by Jeff Lynne of ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’.

The original “Free As A Bird” music video has also been beautifully restored.

Furthermore, “Anthology 4″ presents 26 tracks that have never previously been released on vinyl.

Also on “Anthology 4” is “Helter Skelter (Second Version, Take 17),” one of 36 alternate versions featured on that set, including 13 that are previously unreleased. “[It] was a track we did in total madness and hysterics in the studio,” recalled Ringo, with Paul adding, “We just tried to get it louder. Guitars: can we have them sound louder? The drums: louder! We did it like that, because I like noise.”

Paul and George played guitar, with John taking over on bass. Apparently Ringo thrashed the drums so hard during takes that he declared, “I’ve got blisters on my fingers!” [Even though Take 17 ends with Paul calling out “keep that one, mark it fab,” the master take is 21.

Pressed on 180g black vinyl, each 3LP album will be housed within a triple gatefold sleeve, featuring the original art, sleevenotes by Mark Lewisohn, and restored photos for Anthology 1-3; Anthology 4 has brand new sleeve notes written by Kevin Howlett alongside photos. The outer slipcase features the original Klaus Voorman triptych art, and a 3/4 O-Card image of the band with detailed track listing.

The new-and-improved ‘Anthology’ will feature a new disc of 13 previously unreleased demos and session outtakes plus other rare recordings.

The full series will also be available to stream on Disney+, including a brand-new ninth episode featuring behind-the-scenes footage from the making of the original ‘Anthology.’ Rounding out the rerelease is a 368-page ‘Anthology’ book containing more than 1,300 photos, documents, artwork and other archival Beatles memorabilia.

RELEASE DATE: 21st November 2025

Six month ago Peter Buck (R.E.M., the Minus 5) and Barrett Martin (Screaming Trees, Mad Season) unveiled the debut album from the Silverlites, their supergroup with the Black Crowes’ Rich Robinson and singer-songwriter Joseph Arthur. Now Buck and Martin are announcing another supergroup called Drink The Sea with Alain Johannes and Duke Garwood. The new band Drink the Sea. It features well, pretty much everybody – all roads sort of leads to Alain Johannes

Beside others. The instrumentation, moods and overall feel reminds me of Robert Plant’s Dreamland (which is just incredible record) and Mighty ReArranger. Just a perfect soundtrack to autumnal misty mornings. It adds some mystical (or may I call it “misty-cal”? atmosphere.

Opening track ‘Shaking For The Snakes’. It’s a piece of musical voodoo direct from the Deep South that’s ushered forwards by Barrett Martin’s (The Screaming Trees) unique drumming that is at once expressive and understated. With the aid of Lisette Garcia’s percussion, the pair create rich and rarely heard rhythms that open up avenues for the band which will be explored over the following 90-minutes.

Anyone who knows the work of guitarists Peter Buck (R.E.M.) and Duke Garwood (Mark Lanegan Band) will testify that they largely eschew the “guitar god” template, preferring to add texture and shade, rather than endless noodling, and they weave a rich tapestry throughout. All too often in rock music, the bass is hidden deep in the mix as a supplementary instrument (and The Doors largely dispensed with a bassist) but on these two discs Alain Johannes is given a more prominent role, acting as a compass that signposts future travel (and with a rumble of which Lemmy would be proud on ‘Land Of Spirits’). However, each band member is a multi-instrumentalist and plays a wide variety of strings and skins, and with three members providing vocals, Drink The Sea paint their sound from a palette so wide, most other bands would be green with envy.

That no two songs inhabit the same sonic space is testament to Drink The Sea’s prowess and they draw inspiration from all parts of the globe. Subsequently, Arabic flourishes rub shoulders with motorik beats, and sometimes both at the same time (such as on ‘House Of Flowers’ where east meets west) and the band’s genius lies in bringing these disparate elements together and tying them into a cohesive whole.

You feel that Drink The Sea is a true democracy, egos have been left at the door and the songs have been allowed to grow organically. It’s an approach that gives “I & II” a cinematic quality, albeit the dark filmic aesthetic of Tarantino, and the guitars often have an Ennio Morricone feel (especially on ‘Sweet As A Nut’) and that gives things a dreamy, otherworldly vibe that transports the listener from this world to another plane.

This double set reminds me of the whole vinyl experience. The act of turning over a piece of vinyl is an often overlooked part of playing wax, but it is vitally important; like the intermission at a cinema or the end of an act at the theatre, it’s a moment where you digest what you’ve heard and anticipate what’s to come and that’s just the vibe changing discs creates.

There’s a clear direction of travel over the two albums and when we reach final track ‘Butterfly’ it feels as if we have arrived at our destination, things wind down and become increasingly stark. But as with most endings, ‘Butterfly’ suggests there’s much more to come from Drink The Sea.

Musicians are a funny breed and putting several respected and talented musicians together is no sure sign of success. Band chemistry is a discipline well outside the realms of human science and is part luck, part chance. Those chemicals will either fizz and sparkle and set off a chain reaction, or fall flat like an uncorked wine. However, with Drink The Sea I’m pleased to report that they very much fall in the former category as attested by their recent debut and sophomore albums (imaginatively titled I and II). Those two records now get collected as a double set, twenty two tracks that hang together as a unified whole and suggest that this band is going to stick around for a long while.

Drink The Sea is a new supergroup formed by Peter Buck (R.E.M.) and Barrett Martin, along with Duke Garwood, Alain Johannes, and Lisette Garcia. They are set to release two albums, “Drink The Sea I” and “Drink The Sea II“, with their debut single “Outside Again” already available. 

The group is known for blending rock with global influences, featuring instruments like the Arabic oud and Indonesian gamelan. They will embark on a world tour in 2026, with performances scheduled in January and February.

Peter Buck Duke Garwood Alain Johannes Barrett Martin Lisette Garcia

Don’t wait to give them a listen!

A gritty, slow-burning triumph of heartland Americana and tightly wound post-punk, Racing Mount Pleasant’s self-titled debut paints vivid, late-night vignettes of small-town restlessness. Drawing on Springsteen’s cinematic storytelling and the raw immediacy of early The Walkmen.​ Each track hums with lowlight urgency – barroom epiphanies and the ache of chasing meaning in the mundane. It’s a quietly anthemic debut that already feels like a trusted companion.

Racing Mount Pleasant (formerly Kingfisher) are an indie band from Ann Arbor, Michigan. After forming under the name Kingfisher at the University of Michigan, they released their debut album “Grip Your Fist, I’m Heaven Bound” in November 2022. In 2025, they changed their name to Racing Mount Pleasant and announced a second album. Their musical style has been compared to bands such as Bon Iver, Lord Huron, and Black Country, New Road.

Racing Mount Pleasant’s live shows are often bespoke to each venue, using projectors synced to the music and sometimes telling the audience to sit instead of stand in order to “command attention in a way that [doesn’t] ask for much”. Their performances have been praised for their intimacy, immersion, and detail.

“Grip Your Fist, I’m Heaven Bound” is the debut album from Racing Mount Pleasant, a Michigan-based indie group blending folk, chamber pop, and post-rock influences into sweeping yet intimate songs. Released in 2022, the record layers strings, horns, and textured vocals to create an emotional soundscape that feels both grand and personal. Across its ten tracks including “Annie,” “Holy Hell,” and the title pieces, the band explores themes of longing, faith, love, and personal tension, delivering a debut that’s ambitious in scope and deeply evocative in mood.

Grungy amplifier worshipping space/psychedelic rock with pulsing bass, trance-inducing ritualistic repetitive riffs and rhythms, and heaps of distortion. Key players in Leeds’ hardcore punk and noise rock scene join heads once more for a killer psychedelic rock LP. “Strange Worship” gives plenty of reverence to neo-psychedelic and space rock revivalist groups, particularly Spacemen 3 and Loop, while proto-punk, shoegaze, krautrock, and drone rock sounds are well represented too.

Forged by members of Boom-dwelling groups including Tramadol, The Shits, and Lugubrious Children, Self-Immolation Music play psych rock with punk spirit, offering guitars to the front, fuzz-soaked, and feedback-laden riffs delivered with belligerent repetition, minimalist percussion, and distant vocals.

Within just a few seconds, we find out what S-IM are all about, introducing themselves and their mid-1980s referencing psychedelia with each instrumentalist entering at the same time in the beginning of the first bar of opening track ‘Killing Field’. No steadily building crescendo, abstract ambient instrumental, or a series of soft slippery effects-heavy riffs, just driven, chugging, rock and roll with a brilliant, immediately ear-grabbing grubby guitar tone. It all seems calculated and intentional, their opening manifesto if you will, as they unveil a grungy, monochrome shaded form of psychedelia which sits at the opposite end to flower power psych-pop.

As if primed for the punk and DIY indie sect, Self-Immolation Music’s psych rock is shades on, leather clad, and nods to the nihilistic, conjuring Suicide’s fraught synth-punk plus counter culture totems like ‘Easy Rider’ and the fiery proto-punk of Detroit’s MC5. They manage to balance intense and powerful, near-anthemic qualities, best hear in ‘Retloflex’ which glides with churning, headlong riffs, rhythms, and quicker tempos, while ‘Purifying Light’ strides with a glammy swagger, and ‘Wild Nightmares’ delivers head nod prompting groove after groove.

Self-Immolation Music also do low-slung, lethargic, and drugged out psych rock brilliantly too. Offering a break from the unwavering hypnotic spells, tracks in this vein are either darker, dingier, and drowsier, or brighter as they temporarily burst into kaleidoscopic colour. In the former camp, there’s the quality downer droner ‘New Feeling’, but the title track longform melter is a clear album highlight in this mold. Somewhere between a cosmic stoner rock dirge and The Stooges in slo-mo, its bass bristles with distorted growls, the sporadic drum pelts blare with ritualistic menace, and the whirring wah-wah saturated guitars are total brain melters.

In the latter camp, ‘You Make It Real’ is its radiant inverse, shimmering away with sun-dappled beauty. A clear homage to The Velvet Underground (particularly ‘Heroin’) and Velvets disciples The Jesus and Mary Chain, it’s an unfussy but gorgeous number complete with whisker-thin windchimes, whistling drones, steady percussion, and gleaming guitars played with lightly brushed jangles. ‘Footprints In My Dreams’ keeps the fuzz-steeped psych intact, yet the leading guitar riff is bright, melodic, and almost triumphant.

“Strange Worship” is a clear case of a band wearing their influences firmly on their sleeves, but executing it so well that it’s near impossible not to fall for. Laden with addictive guitar licks, sumptuous tones, and hands-off yet flawless production which suits their sound to a tee, Self-Immolation Music are a must-listen for all the psych rock devotees out there.

I don’t think anyone expected to get a new album from Pulp in 2025, let alone a Tiny Desk Set. But the much-beloved group, fronted by the singular voice of Jarvis Cocker, returned this spring with “More”, its first full-length in nearly a quarter century. A couple of months later, the group celebrated with a visit to our D.C. offices for a career-spanning set. Just before making the short walk from our makeshift green room (a converted office) to the Tiny Desk down the hall, the band members held hands and sang, “This will be the very best Tiny Desk.”

It’s the kind of deadpan humour long found in the band’s music, but also in their performance, as Cocker crooned, cooed and danced his way through four tracks. The oldest they played, “Acrylic Afternoons,” dates back to the 1994 album “His ‘n’ Hers”. But they also performed the jangly “Something Changed,” from 1995’s “Different Class“, along with one of Pulp’s career-defining and fan-favourite songs, “This Is Hardcore,” originally released in 1998. They rounded out the set with the bittersweet “A Sunset” from “More”.

SET LIST: “This Is Hardcore” “Something Changed” “A Sunset” “Acrylic Afternoons”

MUSICIANS Jarvis Cocker: vocals, guitar Candida Doyle: keys Mark Webber: guitar, piano Nick Banks: cajón Emma Smith: violin, background vocals Richard Jones: viola, background vocals Andrew McKinney: bass Adam Betts: percussion, background vocals Jason Buckle: guitar

For the fourth installment in Father/Daughter Records’ 15th anniversary covers series, Portland’s Pure Bathing Culture reimagines The Softies’ “I Said What I Said” into a breezy, samba-tinged sway 

Last year, the Softies released their long-awaited reunion album. The duo of Tiger Trap’s Rose Melberg and Pretty Face’s Jen Sbragia started making hushed, intimate music together in 1994, and they released a handful of LPs before breaking up in 2000. Last year, the duo returned with “The Bed I Made”, their first album in 24 years. The record fits right in with the rest of their catalogue, and you can tell because another band is already covering that LP’s lead single “I Said What I Said.”

The song gains new warmth and movement with Pure Bathing Culture’s shimmery guitars and airy vocals cloaking the lyrics in a heartfelt haze, transforming it into something distinctly their own

Since we finished the reunion tour in 2022, all 3 members of us knew we wanted to get back to making music together after a very long time apart: after 2 years in & out of the studio, touring and playing festivals – we have finished our 5th album and we could not be more proud of it.

The album will be available in all the usual places so get yours ordered now… there’s also some very special editions up for grabs – including signed test pressings, plus our 20 Track signed deluxe double LP which we are properly excited about.

When we were making this record we made over 90 demos.

Making the final choice of songs to put on the album was so difficult, so we decided to make a proper double LP – we can’t wait for you to hear all of it, so be quick grabbing a copy of that.

Absolutely buzzing.It’s great to be back. Tom, Liam & Andy. X

These boys should of taken over the world with the tunes they have! The Enemy – “Not Going Your Way” brand new album ‘Social Disguises’ is out Friday 20th February 2026.

“Trixies” could have been Squeeze’s first album. Written by Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook when they were just 19 and 16 respectively, “Trixies” is a concept album born of imagination and nostalgia. Inspired by a fictional members’ club dreamt up in the early 1970s and imagined as existing in the future (the 1980s), the album channels a world reminiscent of a 1920s or 30s speakeasy – glamorous, smoky, and populated by colourful characters.

When Glen Tilbrook and Chris Difford first started the great UK band Squeeze, it was the mid-’70s, and the two of them were kids. Squeeze recorded their self-titled debut album with producer John Cale in 1978, but they were writing and recording songs long before then.

Tilbrook and Difford wrote the songs for “Trixies” before Squeeze even had a stable lineup. (Drummer Gilson Lavis passed away last week at the age of 74; he joined up in 1975.) In a press release, Difford says, “We fully committed ourselves to songwriting but this was three or four years before we even got to make our first record. Long story short, these were songs that we just didn’t have enough musical experience to record properly.”

Drive-By Truckers have announced details of “The Definitive Decoration Day“, album set which is due on November 14th from New West Records. The 4-LP box set features the 15-track album remixed by its original producer David Barbe and remastered by Greg Calbi. The new collection includes the previously unreleased double album “Heathens Live at Flicker Bar, Athens, GA – June 20, 2002“, as well as a 40-page, full-colour book featuring never-before-seen photos and artwork.

It also features well a new essay written by Uncut contributor Stephen Deusner, author of Where the Devil Don’t Stay: Traveling the South with the Drive-By Truckers.

You can hear the newly remixed and remastered album version of “Sink Hole” A stripped-down, acoustic performance from the band’s hometown, recorded a year before “Decoration Day’s” release, The “Heathens Live…” album features the band performing several of these songs for the first time ever.

Says Patterson Hood, “We decided that it would be fun to go play an acoustic late-night show at the tiny Flicker Bar, less than a block away from our beloved 40 Watt Club. We ended up playing a set that included all but one song off of our new, but still unfinished album. I didn’t even know until recently that there was an existing tape of the show. This is a beautiful document of our band at a very crucial and joyous moment in time. I’m so happy that it exists.”

Originally released in 2003, “Decoration Day” was also the band’s first album with Jason Isbell.

The version of Drive-By Truckers that existed in 2003, when the band released the classic 2003 album “Decoration Day”. Back then, a very young Jason Isbell was in the band. He was one of their three songwriters. Isbell didn’t write anywhere near as many Decoration Day songs as Patterson Hood or Mike Cooley, but he did write the title track and “Outfit,” so that’s pretty good. Isbell was a Drive-By Trucker from 2001 to 2007. Then he split, went solo, and eventually became a huge deal on his own.

“The legacy of the band has definitely grown,” says Isbell, “and there’s a new appreciation for the Drive By Truckers and especially for that era of “Decoration Day”. Without them you wouldn’t have the kind of work being done by MJ Lenderman and Wednesday and Waxahatchee and a bunch of other acts. I can hear the Truckers in all that music.”

Of the album’s influence, Wednesday’s Karly Hartzmann says, “Decoration Day” reminds me that a song can be a piece of advice, a grudge, a suicide note, a bargaining for mercy, or a veneer over the rot. It’s music that delivers the bad news but kisses the bruises it leaves.” 

Adds The Hold Steady‘s Craig Finn, “Decoration Day” was the Drive-By Truckers’ three songwriters firing on all cylinders — alternately thoughtful, pissed off, charming, surly and often hilarious. I marvel at this record. It’s a true American classic.”

“The Definitive Decoration Day” follows the band’s deluxe edition of their album “Southern Rock Opera“, originally released in 2001, as well as “The Complete Dirty South“, originally released in 2004.

It will be available across digital platforms, standard black vinyl and as a 3-CD set. A limited olive colour vinyl edition will be available at independent retailers, and a limited-to-150 blue-and-burgundy-swirl colour vinyl edition will be available at Seasick Records in Birmingham, Alabama.

In addition, a special, limited-to-300 HeAthens red-and-black vinyl edition will be available at local participating retailers in Athens, Georgia and for pickup at the New West Records’ Athens office. A limited-to-1,000 burgundy colour vinyl edition via New West Records.

“The Definitive Decoration Day”, a four-LP box set. It includes extras like the previously unreleased double live album “Heathens Live At Flicker Bar, Athens, GA – June 20, 2002” and a liner-notes essay from Stephen Deusner, who wrote the DB-T bio Where the Devil Don’t Stay in 2021