Everyone cheer, the day splits are here! we’ve been very busy, working round the clock behind the scenes, putting the finishing touches on this lovely line-up and perfecting our official programme to get it sent off to print! So, we’re very pleased to finally release these into the wild and I’m sure you are too, thanks for bearing with us!
Extra additions include Gaye Bykers on Acid joining us in the Meadow and even more interesting talks and events programmed into Speakers’ Corner, including a Listening Party Tribute to the late, great, Mike Peters.
You’ll be able to get your hands on our set times during the festival weekend in our official festival programme, chock full of interesting info, maps and ideas of what to get up to over the weekend. Pick one up from our merch stall or satellite stalls around the site. We’ll also have our full range of official merch available in the on-site Rough Trade store, so be sure to stop by… but in the meantime, let’s hear your weekend plans!!
The latest issue of Record Collector, out Thursday, features an interview with the post Bowie archetype and all-round goth O.G., Peter Murphy. He’s not the only Peter this month: Peter Doherty talks at length to Simon Goddard while Rich Davenport profiles Peter Tosh. Elsewhere we meet the busiest man in pop, Steven Wilson, we hear the strange tale of Lotti Golden, and Jarvis Cocker, These New Puritans, Sparks, and Status Quo tell us about their respective new albums. In a flat field near you.
Tiny Engines is thrilled to welcome Washington, DC’s band Pretty Bitter to their growing roster. The label will release the band’s new album, “Pleaser“, in July. The first single/video “Thrill Eater” is out now. “Pleaser” follows the band’s 2022 debut album, “Hinges”.
DC DIY band Pretty Bitter share touring members with recent-vintage Band To Watch Ekko Astral, and they’ll play Ekko Astral’s upcoming Liberation Weekend fest. But Pretty Bitter aren’t an offshoot, and their style is its own thing. Pretty Bitter draw on classic emo melodies, and they’ve got a rich, layered sound that sometimes leads into folk or synthpop or both of those things at the same time. That’s what happens on “Thrill Eater,” the lead single from the band’s upcoming LP “Pleaser”.
Pretty Bitter recorded “Pleaser” with producers Evan Weiss and Simon Small. Lead single “Thrill Eater” is a bright, intense splatter of melody with keyboard and banjo all over it.
Low’s Alan Sparhawk made the collaborative nature of his second solo LP clear by titling it “With Trampled by Turtles”. Sparhawk may be the more recognizable name outside of Duluth’s creative community, but the alt-country group are also long time pillars of the city’s music scene. It’s not hard to imagine the simplicity of ‘Stranger’, the album’s lead single, being refracted and slowed down to fit the distorted atmospherics of Low’s BJ Purton-produced records, but the song’s bluegrass arrangement pushes Sparhawk’s voice toward clear conviction.
The second single, “Not Broken”, from the upcoming collaborative album “With Trampled by Turtles” is out now on the official Alan Sparhawk YouTube channel. Featuring vocals by Hollis Sparhawk and video directed and edited by Alexa Viscius. Watch and subscribe to stay updated and catch new content as soon as it’s released.
“You gotta put up with stranger people than you know now/ You gotta go through some dangerouser things than you thought you’d have to,” he sings, still bending grammatical rules to emphasize his point. More innocent souls might settle with might have to; Sparhawk knows life’s uncertainty is non-negotiable.
From the album ‘With Trampled by Turtles’, out on Sub Pop Records on May 30th, 2025
There’s some albums you just want to keep buying. Dire Straits’ 1985 long-player “Brothers in Arms” is, for me, one of them. There’s just something about this record. It was played a great deal back in 1985,
Over the years I’ve bought various editions, the most exciting of which – until now – was probably the Super Audio CD from 2005, which had the album mixed in 5.1 Surround Sound. But there have also been Mobile Fidelity editions and the 2LP half-speed master from 2021.
Of course, the success of “Brothers In Arms” was helped considerably by the clever computer-animated video for “Money For Nothing,” a sardonic attack on MTV. But what kept the record selling was Mark Knopfler’s increased sense of pop song-craft… “Money for Nothing” had an indelible guitar riff, “Walk Of Life” is a catchy up-tempo boogie variation on “Sultans Of Swing,” and the melodies of the bluesy “So Far Away” and the down-tempo, Everly Brothers-style “Why Worry” were wistful and lovely.
With the above in mind, 40 years after the album first came out, it’s somewhat surreal to be involved in the 40th anniversary. Universal Music Recordings and Dire Straits have collaborated with SDE to bring you an exclusive blu-ray audio edition which features a Dolby Atmos Mix of “Brothers in Arms” by Guy Fletcher, who was of course ‘in’ Dire Straits and still works closely with Mark Knopfler to this day. The blu-ray also includes the old 5.1 mix, both stereo mixes (CD and vinyl versions) and most interestingly, for the first time, an instrumental version of the album, which is also in Atmos.
The deluxe LP and CD issues feature a full live show that the band performed in San Antonio as part of the band’s Live In 85′ Tour.
The blu-ray is released next week, alongside 3CD and new vinyl editions On May 16th, “Brothers In Arms” will be reissued on single LP vinyl, 5LP Deluxe, and 3CD Deluxe editions, plus a super deluxe Blu-Ray edition.
Los Angeles Anglo-American trio Sunday (1994) will release their second EP, “Devotion”, this Friday (9th May) via Arista/RCA Records. The indie-dream pop group comprises Paige Turner on vocals, Lee Newell on guitar and Puma on drums. They quietly previewed the title track this week following previous singles “Doomsday” and “Rain.”
Written by Turner and Newell, who also produced the track, “Devotion” continues the band’s talent for threading intimacy and abrasion into something warmly off-kilter. “‘Devotion’, the title track to our second EP, is out now,” the band wrote in a typically arch missive. “A love letter scrawled on the back of a beer mat, about a night in an English pub where the ceilings sag, the ale is flat, and the heart, against all good sense, rises.”
The six-track EP, produced entirely by Newell, promises to be a loose sequel to their debut. “We are thrilled to unveil “Devotion“, our second EP,” they added. “A fevered companion to our first. Each song converses, conspires, or continues the story of one that came before. We won’t tell you which; discovery is far more divine. Call it a psalm for the disenchanted. Or… an EP.
Sophie Allison has always written candidly about her life, making Soccer Mommy one of indie rock’s most interesting and beloved artists of the last decade. On “Evergreen”, Allison is again writing about her life but life’s different these days. Since 2022’s “Sometimes, Forever”, Allison experienced a profound and personal loss. New songs emerged, unflinching reflections on what she was feeling.
She wanted them to sound that way too, as true to the demos as possible. Nothing overindulgent, everything real.
New album “Evergreen”, out now
Washington DC band Pretty Bitter announce their signing to Tiny Engines. Their album “Pleaser” comes out in July and the lead single is “Thrill Eater.” Mainstays of the D.C. DIY scene, Pretty Bitter live up to their name. Masters of all kinds of dissonance, they juxtapose stories of haunting and heartbreak with dazzling pop-rock arrangements. Pretty Bitter make music that gets the emo kids dancing. They’re unafraid to infuse their blistering breakdowns with hits of disco and synthpop—and that’s exactly what they’ve done on “Pleaser”, their sophomore album, co-produced by Evan Weiss (Into It. Over It., Pet Symmetry) and Simon Small (Strawberry Boy) and out July 25th, 2025 via cult favourite indie label Tiny Engines.
Following a string of ethereal singles, their 2022 debut “Hinges” formally introduced Pretty Bitter and their dreampunk to a rapidly growing audience. Fearlessly led by Mel Bleker and sharing studio and touring members with D.C. punk all-stars Ekko Astral, Pretty Bitter has been embraced by DIY fans far and wide. In the summer of 2025, they’ll be making their triumphant return to the Midwest’s premiere DIY music festival Fauxchella, and they’ll be one of many hometown heroes taking the stage for the inaugural Liberation Weekend, Ekko Astral’s hand-curated trans rights benefit music festival.
On “Pleaser”, Pretty Bitter have amped up the drama of their lush arrangements—a match made in heaven for the emotional ferocity of Bleker’s lyricism. “If everything is out there, nothing’s embarrassing,” they sigh on “I Hope You Do,” expertly toeing the line between the personal and the universal over bright, bubbling synths. On the arresting closer “Outer Heaven,” Bleker sings “Time isn’t a lover in the way it likes to play / I’m getting older, every due I pay / Time isn’t a bandage in the way you always say / I won’t be abandoned by myself again this way.” Their observational, heart-on-sleeve songwriting is as effortless as their flittering between the jangly, dreamy inclinations of rock, pop, and folk. “Pleaser” is a triumph, and instantly loveable record that reveals just how bright Pretty Bitter’s future is.
Pretty Bitter – “Pleaser” out July 2025 on Tiny Engines
