With “Jellywish”, Florist invites listeners to question everything — to imagine a world where magic, surrealism, and the supernatural are our companions in day-to-day life. “Jellywish” dares to present a realm of possibility and imagination in a time that feels evermore prescriptive, limiting, and awful.
With the album, Florist explores life’s big questions without offering silver linings, morals, or definitive answers. Instead, the band asks perhaps the most difficult of questions: Is it possible to break free from our ingrained thought cycles and pedestrian way of life? That, Florist posits, may be the only way to be truly happy, fulfilled, and free. Florist announced a new album and shared the second single,
Singer, guitarist, and principal songwriter Emily Sprague says that the record is purposely complicated. “It’s a gentle delivery of something that is really chaotic, confusing, and multifaceted,” she explains. “It has this technicolor that’s inspired by our world and also fantasy elements that we can use to escape our world.”
Animation by Kohana Wilson (kohanawilson.com) Written by Emily Sprague and performed by Florist (Emily Sprague, Jonnie Baker, Rick Spataro, Felix Walworth) From the album “Jellywish” available everywhere on April 4th via Double Double Whammy
“Normally, Youbet songs start on the nylon string, but this time I was inspired to write on the electric guitar,” Nick Llobet says of the band’s new single “Deny.” “While driving around last spring we listened to a ton of Polvo, Autolux, and Boris, just to name a few. ‘Deny’ was written last April after we got home from supporting Mary Timony on tour. I was inspired to create a song that captured the energy of that time. In this way, touring is such a great learning experience. Getting in front of new audiences last year helped us develop a new sound. We fed off of the energy. I would say this song is an experiment- trying to explore some new stylistic terrain. A lot of the new songs we’re writing live in this world – ‘Deny’ is a bridge.”
youbet is also supporting its 2024 release, “Way To Be”. The album and its singles have seen support from the likes of Stereogum, Consequence of Sound, PASTE’s “Best New Songs,” and Post Trash, with additional playlisting from the likes of Ones to Watch, Pitchfork “Selects,” The Alternative, The Line Of Best Fit, Dork, and more.
youbet also spent much of 2024 on the road promoting “Way To Be”, supporting the likes of Mary Timony, Palehound, Ratboys, Sour Widows, Truth Club, Coco, June McDoom, and more.
Indie rock trio Horsegirl will release their second album, “Phonetics On and On”, which was produced by Cate Le Bon, on Valentine’s Day and here’s another early taste. “Switch Over” is the most immediately appealing song off the album we’ve heard yet and the video is cool too.
There’s a confident simplicity to the song writing here. Horsegirl writes with an unanticipated honesty, leading us through scenes of girlhood and youth, as tenderness reverberates back and forth across the recording. You can see the love that comes with being a band of best friends. It’s a love that is ever-present in “Phonetics On and On”.
Horsegirl — the New York-via-Chicago trio of best friends Nora Cheng, Penelope Lowenstein, and Gigi Reece — unveil the new single/video, “Switch Over,” from their upcoming second album, out February 14th via Matador Records. Following previously released singles, “2468” and “Julie,” “Switch Over” feels almost motorik in its pulse as the track dances back and forth between Cheng and Lowenstein’s swapping vocals.
The “Switch Over” video was directed by Guy Kozak, who came to the band with the idea of switching on / off and doubling concepts. Uncanny in its concept, the video explores the concept of “band-watching-band,” with layered shots of the trio watching themselves perform in the same room.
Our second album is “Phonetics On and On” Produced by Cate Le Bon Out February 14 2025
“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.
The Fat Angel Sings 