The Fat Angel Sings

The Hold Steady is marking the 20th anniversary of their landmark 2005 second studio album, “Separation Sunday”, with a deluxe new edition arriving on their own Positive Jams label via Thirty Tigers on Friday, December 5th.

“Separation Sunday” changed everything for The Hold Steady,” says frontman Craig Finn. “We found a new line-up, a solidified sound, and through incessant touring started building the THS community that exists today. It was a thrilling time to live through, and to revisit with this new look at the album.”

Recently named as one of the “250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far,” “Separation Sunday” proved a sensation upon its May 2005 release, instantly catapulting the Hold Steady to the forefront of American rock ‘n’ roll bands. A dazzling collection that forwarded the band’s signature sound and distinctive vision on virtually every level, the album was greeted by critical applause around the world.

At year’s end, the album was ranked among the top 10 of 2005’s best in SPIN and on The Village Voice’s prestigious Pazz & Jop Critics Poll, with legendary critic Robert Christgau writing, “This literature with power chords addresses not only the crucial matter of vanishing bohemias as cultural myth but also the crucial matter of re-emerging spiritualities as cultural fact.”

The Hold Steady will further mark the milestone anniversary with a full album performance of “Separation Sunday” as part of their upcoming Massive Nights 2025: 10 Years of Killer Parties!, the 10th annual edition of their beloved multi-night concert event at Brooklyn, NY’s Brooklyn Bowl.

This year’s weekend runs from Wednesday, December 3rd, through Saturday, December 6th, kicking off with the first-ever Massive Nights installment of the band’s intimate “Storytellers” show, a special seated performance that will see the Hold Steady stripping down familiar songs along with additional classics not usually heard during regular sets.

Massive Nights 2025 will then see the Hold Steady performing two unique sets each night with no opening acts on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, including a full album performance and a second set stacked with fan favorites and more. Thursday, December 4, will celebrate Separation Sunday, followed by surprise full album performances on Friday, December 5, and Saturday, December 6. A limited number of tickets remain available for Wednesday’s Storytellers set and Thursday and Friday. Saturday is sold out. For complete details, please see theholdsteady.net.

Next year, The Hold Steady will then cross the Atlantic for The Weekender 2026, a four-night concert event taking place at various London venues from Thursday, March 5, to Sunday, March 8, 2026. The Weekender 2026 will include a “Storytellers” performance at The Dome (Thursday, March 5, 2008), followed by two headline shows at Electric Ballroom (Friday, March 6 and Saturday, March 7, 2026), and an intimate headline set at Camden’s iconic Dingwalls (Sunday, March 8, 2026).

Add-ons include a Saturday Soundcheck/Happy Hour at Electric Ballroom, a Sunday Pub Quiz at Dingwalls, The Weekender 2026 Merch Bundle, and a limited edition The Weekender 2026 lanyard. Limited single-night GA tickets for the Electric Ballroom and Dingwalls shows remain available.

The expanded release sees the original 11-track album joined by nine newly remastered bonus tracks on vinyl for the first time, including rare demos, outtakes, and four songs previously released as 2005’s internet-only EP, “The Virgin Digital Sessions.” “Separation Sunday” (20-Year Anniversary Edition) will be available digitally and on 2xLP standard black vinyl and limited edition 2xLP gold-swirl vinyl.

“The Riff That Won’t Quit” is the new single from Rock & Roll Hall of Famers Cheap Trick, a preview of the band’s 21st studio record titled “All Washed Up“, due out November. 14th. The songs were produced by the band and Julian Raymond. The record was produced by Chris Lord Alge and recorded at a handful of studios in Nashville, as well as Los Angeles.

“Just one more great album from the best rock band in the world,” said lead singer/guitarist Robin Zander.

Is Cheap Trick really “All Washed Up?“

That’s the tongue-in-cheek title of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band’s new studio album,

Iconic singer/songwriter Joe Jackson will release a new studio album titled “Hope and Fury” on April 10th, 2026. The 22nd studio album from Jackson in his famed career, the record features lyrics like this, suggesting he’s pretty fired up these days: “Hello cruel world / I’m not going away / So I might as well have my say.”

With a remarkable career spanning over four decades, a discography that includes 20 studio albums and five Grammy nominations, Joe Jackson has left an indelible mark on the music world. His loyal fanbase prizes Jackson’s unapologetic curiosity, impressive musical diversity, and unique artistic perception – ready to follow and embrace their idol in any new musical adventure he wants to explore. In 2025, Joe Jackson announces his first studio album in seven years! “Hello cruel world / I’m not going away / So I might as well have my say,” sings Joe Jackson on his new album, and there’s no doubt that at a point when many of his contemporaries have lost their passion, their talent, their voices or even their lives, Jackson goes from strength to strength. ‘Hope and Fury’ might, in fact, just be his best album yet

Featuring nine new songs, this album showcases Jackson’s ability to stay true to his vision — and challenge himself in the studio, even this far into his career. A news release quotes Jackson’s recent statement given in rare interview U.K.’s Chap magazine: “I always knew I was in this music thing for life. So every now and again I’m going to do something different, to keep it interesting.”

 “Hope and Fury” will be out April 10th, 2026 on Ear Music, followed by a North American tour from May to July 2026 and a European run from September to December

The doyen of the Scottish underground, Emma Pollock returns with her first new album for nine years

Emma Pollock’s “Begging The Night To Take Hold” reviewed: Glasgow indie-rock mainstay unearths interior and exterior truths. How to explain the nine years that have passed since “In Search Of Harperfield”, Emma Pollock’s self-acknowledged “best received” album in her 30 years as the vanguard of the Scottish underground? In her own words: “start at the beginning until you sing sunlight” – an oblique, poetic fragment that at its core captures the essence of a tumultuous journey of self-discovery, captured in all its light and shade on the songwriter’s fourth solo album.

Recorded in the safe spaces around and after pandemic lockdowns, “Begging The Night To Take Hold” was shelved while The Delgados – the band formed by Pollock and three friends in ’90s Glasgow which, through its Chemikal Underground label and studio, continues to underpin much of the city’s music scene – embarked on a triumphant reunion tour, including sets at Primavera in Barcelona and their hometown’s open-air Kelvingrove Bandstand. As she prepared to return to the record and the intense grief of her father’s sudden death that informed much of its writing, Pollock obtained a post-menopause autism diagnosis, and found some answers to the questions she had begun to ask herself about her place in the world

The second single to come from Emma Pollock’s fourth studio album “Begging The Night To Take Hold”, “Future Tree” explores Pollock’s personal world as one constantly frustrated by distracted thoughts. “Rogues and thieves you know, they masquerade as new ideas.” “Too many numbers and not enough poetry” laments the writer, trapped in her own perception of the world whilst struggling to make progress.

The final message; “Can only move by standing still” could be the remedy – to sometimes, simply, stop. This video was made by Emma Pollock using footage taken whilst driving to Sweden and Norway from Scotland on holiday in the summer of 2025. There were many mountains, tunnels, fjords and sometimes goats.

Although working with only a tight-knit group of collaborators – Graeme Smilie, returning from …“Harperfield”, on piano and bass, cellist Pete Harvey of Modern Studies and producer, Delgados bandmate and husband Paul Savage adding drums – this set of songs are Pollock’s richest and most melodic. Her dusky alto voice, once compared to Dusty Springfield, is weighty with newfound wisdom, ushering the listener to come closer where the subject matter shifts from the confessional to more straightforward narrative storytelling.

Described as “a raw and fearless commentary on modern America”, the album was co-produced by Tom Overby and longtime collaborator Ray Kennedy, who recorded and mixed the album at his Room & Board Studio in Nashville. Guest stars include Norah Jones, Mavis Staples and Brittney Spencer.

“Truth is my saviour,” Williams sings on opener “Fruits Of My Labour”, a sentiment that could also double as her manifesto. Always a personal writer, her honesty is at its most immediate on her seventh album, which picks over the bones of her relationship with Ryan Adams’ former bassist Billy Mercer. The live-in-the-studio rawness of the music is more than matched by the words. Tender portraits of a damaged lover (“Sweet Side”, “Righteously”) are weighed against the damage he has caused. If “Over Time”, “Minneapolis” and “Ventura” linger agonisingly over the cooling ashes, on “Those Three Days” the pain and fury is still evident.

Lucinda Williams has today announced that her new album, “World’s Gone Wrong”, will be released by Highway 20 Records on January 23rd.

Bill Callahan continues to open uncanny depths of expression, blazing one of the most original singer-songwriter trails out there. Applying the living, breathing energies of his concerts to this album production, he sharpens his slice-of-life portraiture to cut deeper, releasing a stream of singalong consciousness – poetic, cinematic, novelistic, comedic – and above all, musical.

The core musicians featured on My Days Of 58 are the group that toured for 2022’s YTI⅃AƎЯ: guitarist Matt Kinsey, saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi and drummer Jim White. The album also features contributions from Richard Bowden (fiddle), Pat Thrasher (piano), Chris Vreeland (bass), Mike St Clair (trombone), Bill McCullough (pedal steel), Eve Searls (backing vocals), and Jerry DeCicca (tambourine).

“Improv/unpredictability/the unknown is the thing that keeps me motivated to keep making music,” says Callahan. “It’s all about listening to yourself and others. A lot of the best parts of a recording are the mistakes – making them into strengths, using them as springboards into something human.”

Bill Callahan will release “My Days Of 58”, his eighth album under his own name name, via Drag City on February 27th.

These tracks are mostly early iterations of the songs released on “Caroline 2″. Minimal acoustic versions of  ‘Coldplay cover’ and ‘U R UR ONLY ACHING’; an impromptu version of ‘When I get home’ recorded in Peckham Rye park in 2022 ); We have also included a recording of the club track from the first half of ‘When I get home’. This was recorded from the front bathroom of Avalon Cafe and is a track produced by our friends Daniel S Evans and Jennifer Walton.

We have always loved the quality of phone and portable mic recordings: both how casual and informal they feel, but also because they tend to capture freer and more explorative playing in that precious writing stage, before a song congeals into something solid. It feels like there is almost something mysterious at work in these recordings that can never be replicated or mimicked.  ‘greek2go’ – is also a phone recording. It was recorded in what was then the empty shell of a former Greek dark kitchen, but has since become our studio – and is an improvisation with three guitars and singing in an empty, reverberant room. It never made it onto the album but it is a piece of music we are really proud of.”

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released November 11th, 2025, , Rough Trade Records Ltd

The Power Station’s self-titled debut album is being reissued for its 40th anniversary in 4CD and 2LP variants.

The band ( a supergroup of sorts) came about during Duran Duran’s hiatus (which also saw Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes and Roger Taylor form Arcadia) and featured Robert Palmer, Tony Thompson (from Chic) and Duran members John Taylor and Andy Taylor. Bernard Edwards produced the album (with “informal assistance” from Nile Rodgers) which features the hit singles ‘Some Like It Hot’ and ‘Get It On’.

The new 4CD reissue comes in a clamshell box and features a remastered version of the album, remixes, ‘raw instrumentals’ (taken from the original studio sessions) and unreleased live tracks (from The Spectrum in Philadelphia on 21st August 1985, newly remixed by Richard Whittaker) and Live Aid performances.

It should be pointed out that Robert Palmer would only perform with the band live once (‘Saturday Night Live’ in February 1985) and left the band shortly after album came out. They toured with Michael Des Barres who also performed with them for Live Aid – these are the recordings on the reissue.

The box includes a 12 page booklet with a new interview with John Taylor and Andy Taylor (by John Earls).

A 2LP black vinyl edition features the remastered album, single remixes and Live Aid recordings. Both formats will be released on 23rd January 2026.

Drop Nineteens are working on their follow-up to great comeback album “Hard Light”, but meanwhile singer/guitarist Paula Kelley has announced her first solo album in 20 years. It’s titled “Blinking as the Starlight Burns Out” and will be out March 27th 2026 via Wharf Cat.

The first single from the album is the dreamy track “Party Line,” and Paula says it “made me think of Spiritualized with Telescopes doing the vocals. It’s the requisite post-Cold War influenced track.” She adds, “When the song came to me it presented nearly fully formed- a pedaling bass line, a four part vocal harmony, an expansive soundscape. Sometimes songs sound great in your head but then don’t translate well into reality. I was lucky with this one. As I was recording part upon part, it felt as though the song was writing itself. It’s a dreamy song about dreams—not the kind that come during sleep, but rather wishes, anxieties, projections—as a way to work through and reconcile an unhappy past.”

Drop Nineteens have a few live dates in November,

Aussie alt-rock greats The Church were supposed to be on The Singles Tour this summer, but the tour got postponed to 2026, Meanwhile, The Church have shared a new single. “Bleak and yet beautiful, ‘Sacred Echoes (Part Two)’ is unlike any previous Church song ever with its almost orchestral climaxes and its sombre mood,” says frontman Steve Kilbey. “The lyrics and voice are the weariness at the point where hope and hopelessness merge. The music is by turns delicate and sparse turning into a churning monstrous racket. Intense, forlorn and exultant!”

“Bleak and yet beautiful, ‘Sacred Echoes (Part Two)’ is unlike any previous Church song ever