“My heart’s stuck to a rocket/on and on nothing’s gonna stop it” sing Pacific Northwest band Sun Spots on their awesomely catchy new single ‘Rocket’. They fire off an exultant punky power-punk anthem rife with fizzy riffs, besotted melodies, that light the fuse and shoot into the sky. Really catchy and totally ace and bursting with uplifting hooks, it reminds you of the early 90s Seattle sound but with a shiny coating, think Breeders or Belly but with a current sensibility. It’s the lead single from the band’s upcoming second EP, “Dog is Calling“, out now on Seattle indie label Den Tapes.
Featuring members of a handful of Seattle-area hardcore and punk bands, Sun Spots new EP was mastered by Greg Obis (MJ Lenderman, Wishy, Tim Heidecker, Snooper) and features four upbeat, driving tracks with bright, buoyant vocals anchored by thick, crunchy riffs.
It comes as a follow-up to the band’s 2022 “Loosey” EP and a handful of shows up and down the west coast, which saw them sharing stages with acts like Enumclaw, GUV, and TV Star.
Divorce Attorney released a new single ‘Got Lost’ from the upcoming debut EP “Always Something” (April 3rd).
‘Got Lost’ deftly fuses the five-piece’s love of driving grooves laced with elements of shoegaze and alternative rock, crafting an insidious slow-burning alt rock sound. Produced by Spencer Withey (Back/Burden, Man/Woman/Chainsaw; Cowboy, Alien Chicks) and mastered by Felix Davis (Geese, CQ Wrestling, Westside Cowboy), ripe with a twisty turning sound that reminds one of Spiritualized or early Radiohead, with the early ‘just a second there’ nods at Radiohead too?
It spirals into a firework of a track underpinned by propelling twitchy drums, synths swells and decorated in fuzzy riffs, and laced with Nathan Key’s carthasis.
Speaking about the new single, frontman and rhythm guitarist Nathan Key explains:
“‘Got Lost’ was the last song we wrote for the EP, but the first we recorded. I think it’s got that energy that you can only get from a song that you haven’t spent a year deliberating over. It feels urgent. He continues: “The whole ethos of this track was to push ourselves into uncharted territory, we wanted to explore how it would sound if we restricted ourselves to that trendy 2:30 runtime. I think we’re all really proud of it”
Making a name for themselves as a live band touring across the UK, Divorce Attorney have opened for the likes of SANAM (Beirut), Alien Chicks, University, Lunar Vacation, Lifeguard among other bands, played sold out shows at The Windmill, Green Door Store, and have played on Homegrown Festival & Wanderlust Stages.
Tom Waits has announced a covers compilation of his music, which will include the likes of Solomon Burke, Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Marianne Faithfull, Bob Seger, Diana Krall, John Hammond, and many others.
The musician made the announcement via social media, uploading the album art for “Where the Willow and the Dogwood Grow”, with a promise that the project is set for release on May 29th.
“With his long-time creative partner and wife Kathleen Brennan, [Waits] has dismantled and reassembled the idea of song itself, crafting works that exist as both raw expression and high art.”
Few artists have remapped the terrain of popular music, and culture at large, like Tom Waits. Over the course of five decades, he has forged a singular aesthetic that defies genre and turns the marginal into myth. His work is neither fully inside nor outside the mainstream tradition but moves restlessly between them, drawing from vaudeville, blues, jazz, folk, theatre – and just about anything else that catches his ear – to craft something wholly his own. With his long-time creative partner and wife Kathleen Brennan, he has dismantled and reassembled the idea of song itself, crafting works that exist as both raw expression and high art. This collection honours not only the extraordinary versatility of Waits and Brennan’s song writing, but the importance of an artist who continues to haunt and inspire from the edges inward.
Waits and collaborator and wife Kathleen Brennan have ordered the covers chronologically. The album, therefore, opens with Bruce Springsteen’s live recording of ‘Jersey Girl’, Waits’ ode to Brennan from the 1980’s album “Heartattack And Vine”.
18 songs later, the compilation promises to end gracefully with Joan Baez’s version of ‘Day After Tomorrow’ from 2004’s “Real Gone“. The album will also come with extensive sleeve notes featuring a track-by-track commentary, digging into the particularities of each recording.
The team behind the upcoming release have shared that the “collection honours not only the extraordinary versatility of Waits and Brennan’s songwriting, but the importance of an artist who continues to haunt and inspire from the edges inward.”
Van Morrison, never reluctant to acknowledge his debt, gives us an 80-minute, 20-song set largely made up of material from artists he was listening to and learning from in his Belfast teens.
Future historians will marvel at the earnest diligence with which, in the British Isles, a generation took to singing about mojos and king bees and hoochie coochie men, achieving enough authenticity to convince their young audiences as they assumed the roles of men working in Mississippi cotton fields or visiting whorehouses in New Orleans, a place they had yet to visit anywhere but in their imaginations.
Musicologists will have no difficulty in identifying Morrison among the handful who used their acquired authenticity as a platform from which to reach into new dimensions of self-expression. Them’s version of “Baby Please Don’t Go”, spat out in a London studio by the 19-year-old George IvanMorrison one day in 1964, almost 30 years after Big Joe Williams first recorded it, is arguably the most convincing British blues record of all, supercharged by the sense that already Morrison was using the force of his character to find something beyond mere emulation. He’d heard John Lee Hooker’s 1949 version of the song and sensed extra layers of mystery waiting to be explored.
So Van’s 48th studio album is a voyage of rediscovery through terrain whose appeal remains undimmed by time and familiarity. He treats the blues with the respect it deserves, but he aims to have fun along the way, while proving that, at 80, he still has the voice – albeit an octave or so lower than in his early days – to make the material live again. Without being billed as such, the set is programmed like a show, albeit a very informal one, better suited to a club than a hall.
Working in a studio in Sausalito, the northern California town where he recorded “Into The Music” in 1979, he’s accompanied by a very solid basic rhythm section (including his longtime bassist David Hayes) and a handful of backing singers, to whom illustrious guests are added as the songs roll by. The guitarists Elvin Bishop and Buddy Guy drop in, Taj Mahal contributes harmonica, banjo and vocals. Everybody is swimming in comfortable waters; the turnarounds and endings are part of the common language, endearing in their predictability.
Nor is the sound gussied up by technology. It’s almost as though these tracks are recorded in a rehearsal room rather than a studio, the musicians themselves working out a balance while playing together rather than relying on an engineer at a mixing desk. It would be a surprise if anything took more than a couple of takes.
Van begins with a pair of songs, the mildly saucy “Kidney Stew Blues” and “King For A Day Blues”, from the repertoire of Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, the Texan blues shouter who also played the alto saxophone in a style somewhere between early R&B and Charlie Parker. In tribute, Morrison hooks up his own alto; he’s no Vinson, but the passionate gawkiness of his delivery fits the mood he’s summoning.
There’s a crisp “Snatch It Back And Hold It”, from Junior Wells’ classic “Hoodoo Man2 Blues album, while Bishop makes his first appearance to add stinging licks to Hooker’s “Deep Blue Sea”. Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That A Shame” loses its New Orleans shuffle, replaced by a soulful ballad tempo that allows Morrison to own the song.
And so it continues through the covers, including a pair of murder ballads, the traditional “Betty And Dupree” and Blind Blake’s plaintive “Delia’s Gone”, on which Taj Mahal again steps forward, alternating verses with Morrison on the former, blowing lusty harp on both and then sticking around for Lead Belly’s “On A Monday”, written from inside a prison cell.
Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee’s jaunty “When It’s Love Time” and the gospel singer Marie Adams’ “Play The Honky Tonks” maintain the roadhouse mood, and Bishop is at his best on two slow blues ballads, “Madame Butterfly Blues”, written by Van’s compatriot Dave Lewis (once of psych heroes Andwella’s Dream), and “You’re The One (That I Adore)”, from the repertoire of Bobby Bland.
Buddy Guy, now in his 90th year, emerges for the double-whammy finale, a slugfest of Muddy Waters’ rousing “I’m Ready” and BB King’s “Rock Me Baby”, on which Van’s vocal elaborations – stutters, growls and shouts – show how he used the enigmatic simplicity of the blues as a teaching aid to finding and shaping his own voice.
What those lessons inspired is made clear on the slow- rolling “Loving Memories”, one of the set’s four Morrison originals. On the title track, another original, he coolly proclaims his unwillingness to fall for other people’s tricks. And over the bustling Latin rhythm of “Social Climbing Scene”, he sings: “He’s a Belfast boy and he knows just where he’s from/Don’t want no fol-de-rol, don’t want no lah-di-dah”. Be assured there’s none of that here.
In this issue. Earth, Wind And Fire’s Ralph Johnson, for instance, explains how their celebratory fusion of jazz, blues, gospel, soul, funk, R&B and disco carried a deeper purpose: “The idea was to lift up your fellow man by way of the music and the messages in the music. There was a higher calling.”
Or Tori Amos, who reveals how her rapturous songs are guided by her ever-present Muses. “It’s a calling,” “I’m a lioness, so I hunt for frequency and how to tell the story.”
Then, of course, there is our cover star, Tom Waits, for whom the transformative nature of music has been a guiding principle for five decades. “When you’re at one of his shows, you can tell there’s more going on than just a concert,” says Beck, a longstanding admirer. “There’s something theatrical, somewhere between Samuel Beckett and burlesque, with a carnivalesque invocation of the strange. He seemed to inhabit the spirit of some of these older forms of performing, but with a modern sense of the absurd.”
Aerosmith’s blistering eponymous debut showcases the legendary band’s high-energy riffs, powerful rhythm section and soaring vocals which would become their trademark sound for over 50 years.
Aerosmith (Legendary Edition) is out now. To present their unfiltered vision now, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry have newly mixed and remastered the original recordings and tapes with Zakk Cervini and Steve Berkowitz. This definitive collector’s edition includes a deluxe 5LP box, a 4LP slipcase, 1LP on black and color vinyl, 3CD, 1CD, as well as exclusive merch.
In retrospect, it’s a bit shocking how fully formed the signature Aerosmith sound was on their self-titled 1973 debut — which may not be the same thing as best-executed, because this album still sounds like a first album, complete with the typical stumbles and haziness that comes with a debut. Despite all this, Aerosmith clearly showcases all the attributes of the band that would become the defining American hard rock band of the ’70s. Here, the Stones influences are readily apparent, from the Jagger-esque phrasing of Steven Tyler to the group’s high-octane boogie, but the group displays little of the Stones’ deep love of blues here. Instead, Aerosmith is bloozy — their riffs don’t swing, they slide.
They borrow liberally from Led Zeppelin’s hybridization of Chess and Sun riffs without ever sounding much like Zep. they lack the delicate folky preciousness, they lack the obsession with blues authenticity, they lack the larger-than-life persona of so many Brit bands.
They are truly an American band, sounding as though they were the best bar band in your local town, cranking out nasty hard-edged rock, best heard on “Mama Kin,” the best rocker here, one that’s so greasy it nearly slips through their fingers. But the early masterpiece is, of course, “Dream On,” the first full-fledged power ballad.
There was nothing quite like it in 1973, and it remains the blueprint for all power ballads since. The rest of the record contains the seeds of Aerosmith’s sleazoid blues-rock, but they wouldn’t quite perfect that sound until the next time around.
Meticulously crafted and overseen by the band, this Legendary Collector’s Edition features timeless classics like “Mama Kin”, “Movin’ Out” and “Make It”, plus the enduring anthem “Dream On” in a stunning boxset that features:
The original album remastered on 180g clear vinyl
Brand new mixes from original masters on 180g translucent red vinyl
Live performance from Paul’s Mall, 1973 plus previously unreleased studio tracks on 180g black vinyl (2 LPs)
Exclusive clear UV cloud effect 12” vinyl featuring ‘Dream On’ 2024 Remaster and ‘Dream On’ 2024 Mix set atop a printed slipmat
Immersive hardback book featuring all new liner notes, previously unseen photos and more
Exclusive fold-out 24” x 36” poster and sticker sheet
all housed in a deluxe box complete with a special Aerosmith 3D popup diorama.
Muse shared video for new single “Be With You” and will release the album “The Wow! Signal” in June The new single opens with a hefty blast of church organ before riding along on an electro pulse, before the band’s expected bombast arrives with flamboyantly rocking guitars, a sound bound to delight the band’s audience.
The accompanying video, directed by Nico Paolillo, who has also worked with Deafheaven and Bad Omens, finds the moon haloed in red as watchers are drawn to what appears to be a cataclysmic event.
That ties in with the album title, which, in keeping with the band’s love of conspiracies, takes its name from a short radio burst that was detected in 1977 and originated from the constellation Sagittarius that suggested a possible extraterrestrial source.
The astronomer who discovered the broadcast famously circled the now-iconic sequence “6EQUJ5” and scribbled “WOW!” on the printout beside it, thus giving the signal its name and cementing its place in scientific and pop-culture lore.
Muse having just shared for their brand new single, as they announce they will release their tenth studio album, “The Wow! Signal“, on June 26th through Warner/Helium 3.
The band first teased new music when they kicked off their 2025 European tour in Helsinki, Finland, in June last year, opening their set with a brand new song, “Unravelling”.
The new album, will be the band’s tenth studio release, is their first since 2022’s acclaimed “Will Of The People”,
The Afghan Whigs return today with their first original song in four years, after sharing a pair of covers a few months back. “House of I,” produced and mixed by Greg Dulli and Christopher Thorn, precedes the indie-rock veterans’ 40th anniversary tour, which will take them from coast to coast starting next month. Check out the song and tour dates, which all feature support from Mercury Rev, below.
Dulli said in a press release, “Laid this one down in New Orleans last summer. Was looking for an up tempo banger and feel like we found one here.”
A new album—the follow-up to “How Do You Burn?“—will follow this year,
Patti Smith is to perform her classic album “Horses” in full on a tour to mark the album’s 50th anniversary Patti Smith band
Born in 1946 in Chicago and raised in Philadelphia and New Jersey, Patti Smith arrived in New York City in 1967 with dreams of becoming a poet and performing artist. Immersing herself in the city’s vibrant countercultural scene, she quickly became a fixture in the world of underground literature, visual art, and music.
Smith headed the Patti Smith Group — featuring guitarist and music archivist Lenny Kaye, as well as MC5’s Fred “Sonic” Smith — where she released a series of albums that bridged the gap between the art-rock experimentation of the 1960s and the incendiary punk movement that followed.
Her 1975 debut, “Horses“, was a declaration of artistic freedom, mixing Beat-influenced lyricism with snarling delivery. At a time when women in rock were often confined to the roles of glamorous front women or folk singers, Smith carved out space for a new kind of female punk icon: brash, commanding, yet introspective and literary.
Kaye and drummer Daugherty aren’t the only band members backing Smith on the road this November.
Guitarist Jackson Smith as well as keyboardist and bass player Tony Shanahan — who has been performing live with Smith’s band since 1996 — will also join her. In the fall of 1975, Patti Smith gathered her band in Electric Lady Studios in New York City to record her debut album, “Horses”. Released on November 10th by Arista Records, it has come to be regarded as a seminal and landmark recording that continues to have resonance and relevance for succeeding generations of musicians and artists.
“Horses” clarion call was: “three chord rock merged with the power of the word.” A poet and visual artist, Patti had begun improvising her unique blend of song and hallucinatory imagery two years before, appearing on cabaret stages and small clubs with the support of guitarist Kaye and pianist Richard Sohl. She honed her songs in this live setting, allowing them to develop at will, garnering an ever-growing audience within the Manhattan underground. By the time she launched a seven-week residency at the relatively obscure Bowery club, CBGB, in winter of 1975, her band had grown, adding guitarist Ivan Kral and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty. It was during this time that she was signed by Arista president Clive Davis. John Cale was chosen by the band to produce the album, and it was released on November 10th, the death date of one of Patti’s most important influences, the poet Arthur Rimbaud.
Opening with an anthemic declaration of personal responsibility – “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine” – folded within Van Morrison’s classic “Gloria”, “Horses” was a return to rock’s primal instincts, seeking to awaken the spirit and promise of the music at a time when it seemed as if this sensibility was at risk of being forgotten. The album’s artistic reach took shape in the free-form flights of “Birdland” and “Land,” where the expansive soundscapes of free jazz and propulsive rhythms and incantatory lyrics intermingled to provide an expansive sonic landscape. “Redondo Beach,” “Free Money,” “Kimberly,” and “Break It Up” presented a worldview both idealistic and romantic.
With the album’s final cut, “Elegie,” rock’s past and future were entwined within the “sea of possibilities” that became the present. Infused with poetry, “Horses” is an uncompromising exploration that helped lay the groundwork for what would become known as the upheaval of “punk,” though Smith and her band always attempted to avoid categorization: “beyond race gender baptism mathematics politricks,” as Patti wrote in the liner notes, adding “…as for me I am truly totally ready to go.”
Robert Mapplethorpe’s iconic front cover photograph of Patti with her jacket slung over her shoulder perfectly captured this moment of becoming, and indeed, “Horses” was the beginning of a long musical career that resonates even greater today.
The last time Smith performed “Horses” live in full was at the 2005 Meltdown Festival in London where she celebrated the record’s 30th anniversary.
At all shows, the Punk Poet Laureaute will perform the eight-track “Horses” — which includes “Gloria,”“Redondo Beach,” “Free Money” among other classics — in full for the first time since 2005 along with guitarist Lenny Kaye and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty, both of whom played on the now 50-year-old record that she describes as a “three-chord rock merged with the power of the word.”
“Please join us to help celebrate the final ride of our irreverent thoroughbred,” the New Jersey native and ’70s New York icon shared in a press release.
As for whether Smith still has “it,” critics seem to think so.
“She’s still passionate, still fiery, still a dynamite live performer,” Park Life DC wrote about a September 2023 Washington, D.C. concert of Smith’s. “She’s all heart, and sometimes she stumbled with a lyric before catching herself, but it’s all part of being so deeply emotionally engaged with her material. If you haven’t seen Patti do her thing, you should make a point of it, because you’re guaranteed to get a great show.”
Playing gigs across the US, UK and Europe, Smith’s band will feature guitarist Lenny Kaye and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty, each of whom played on the original recording. The tour includes two UK dates, at London’s Palladium on 12 and 13 October, with Dublin, Madrid, Bergamo, Brussels, Oslo and Paris also featuring on the European run. The US tour will visit Seattle, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Boston, Washington DC and Philadelphia.
“Horses” was Smith’s 1975 debut album, and came to be seen as a foundational text in New York’s punk scene, although Smith rejected the term punk, instead describing “Horses” as “three-chord rock merged with the power of the word”. Featuring a portrait by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe on the cover, “Horses” has long been regarded as one of the decade’s great albums, and is included in the National Recording Registry in the US Library of Congress.
“Horses” will also be commemorated with a tribute concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall on 26 March, featuring stars such Michael Stipe, Kim Gordon, the National’s Matt Berninger, Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O and Sharon Van Etten who will perform album tracks backed by a band including the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea.
Smith has weathered bouts of ill health in recent years, including on tour. In January she collapsed while on stage in Brazil after experiencing a migraine over several days. In December 2023, she was hospitalised while in Italy and cancelled tour dates there after being told by doctors to rest.
But her live performances remain as spirited and distinctive as ever, with the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis describing a June 2024 concert as “moving, powerful and unexpected, a perfect reminder that, 12 years after her last album, Patti Smith is still in constant motion.”
Horses 50th anniversary tour dates
October
6 Dublin – 3Arena, 8 Madrid – Teatro Real, 10 Bergamo – Chorus Life Arena, 12, 13 London – The Palladium, 15, 16 Brussels – Cirque Royale, 18 Oslo – Sentrum Scene, 20, 21 Paris – L’Olympia
The Fat Angel Sings 