Gary Louris is on a mission to prove that a person in their 70s can still produce some of their best work. That’s indeed rare. But so is keeping a band together for 40 years, being credited as pioneer of Americana music, touring with Johnny Cash … the list goes on for Louris and his iconic Minnesota band, The Jayhawks.
The Local Show’s September Artist of the Month performed three songs in-studio from their 12th album “Sanctuary Park”. Producer Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper, Peter Gabriel) volunteered to record the LP after Louris called to catch up with the Canadian legend after he renounced his American citizenship, citing his disgruntlement with the country’s extreme political division.
“Sanctuary Park”, named after the location in Dundas, Ontario, comes with Louris’ perspective of being an American now living in Canada. In this interview, we talked with the artist about his unique viewpoint, as well as the love that inspired much of the writing and storytelling in The Jayhawks’ new music.
00:00:00 Keeping Our Heads Above Water 00:04:08 Mr. Lincoln 00:07:20 American Midnight 00:11:59 Gary Louris interview with The Local Show host Diane Musicians
Gary Louris –vocals, guitar Karen Grotberg –piano, vocals Marc Perlman –bass Tim O’Reagan – drums, vocals (including lead vocals on “Mr. Lincoln”)
Whirr and Luster have been orbiting each other for years, bound by a shared language of glide guitar, buried vocals, and volume as emotion. A through line that’s only deepened by Nick Bassett’s hand in producing and mixing the majority of Luster’s previously recorded output. The Whirr and Luster Split pairs one of American shoegaze’s most storied bands with one of its most vital new voices across four new songs.
Splits are sacred territory for Whirr. More than a decade after the band helped define the modern heavy-shoegaze landscape, the Bay Area five-piece returns with its first new material in years. “Spiral Again” opens the record in classic Whirr fashion: an avalanche of guitar wrapped around a lyric about losing yourself in someone else’s gravity — spiraling, intertwining, coming down together. “Wish I Could Give You The World” follows, one of the most openly romantic songs the band has ever recorded, all wildfire imagery and dizzy devotion, desire rendered at full volume. Produced by Whirr and Zac Montez, both tracks find the band in signature form: enormous yet tender.
On the flip side, Los Angeles’ Luster continue their run as the standouts of the new shoegaze generation. Formed with the intent of pushing the genre forward rather than reenacting it, Luster fold electronic pulse and ’90s texture into walls of glider guitar, and the two contributions here find the band in peak form. “Against the World” is a love song as a locked door — it’s you and me, us against the world — claustrophobic and comforting in the same breath. “Forever” closes the record in a haze of doomed-romance repetition, a mantra of do you feel it now dissolving into the knowledge that nothing lasts. Also produced with Zac Montez, the songs make the case plainly: Luster aren’t students of the form. They’re peers.
Taken together, the four songs read like a conversation. About distance, obsession, and the ache of never being able to give someone enough — carried across two coasts and two generations of a genre that refuses to fade. Loud, longing, and gone too soon.
Original members of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers take the stage at the historic Ryman Auditorium for a legendary performance of their classic anthem, “Breakdown,” at the 25th Annual Americana Honors & Awards.
Honored with the Americana Music Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award celebrating 50 years of timeless rock and roll, Heartbreakers icons Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench, Stan Lynch, and RonBlair—alongside Steve Ferrone and Scott Thurston—fill the Mother Church with unforgettable guitar riffs, vintage keys, and pure American music history.
“It’s true, we haven’t played together since 2017, and it’s really emotional and sweet to be here,” the guitarist remarked. “We have two more songs, and we’re so happy to have Chris up here with us.
For their third and final song of the night, later Heartbreakers members Steve Ferrone and Scott Thurston joined the group. Together, the musicians rocked through “You Wreck Me,” a track co-written by Campbell for Petty’s second solo album, 1994’s “Wildflowers”.
Throughout all three songs, the Heartbreakers showed little sign of rust. The musicians still boasted the same unique talents that made them such a perfect match for Petty, while Stapleton – a devout Petty fan – was a natural and exciting addition.
Not only did this mark the Heartbreakers’ first performance since Petty’s death, it was the first time the original Heartbreakers lineup had shared the stage in over 20 years.
XTC legend Colin Moulding’s new three-track EP ‘Want It Bad (The Pep Talks and Playing Fields of Old England)’, offering a revealing glimpse into his enduringly inventive songwriting. Available on CD exclusively via Burning Shed, the spirited title track is accompanied by a James Bond-inspired track and a raw demo of ‘Want It Bad’, capturing Moulding’s distinctive English pop sensibility while opening a window onto the ideas, experiments and musical possibilities behind the finished songs.
The EP arrives 47 years to the week after XTC’s seminal single ‘Making Plans for Nigel’, written and sung by Moulding and released in 1979 as the lead single from ‘Drums and Wires’. The song became XTC’s first UK Top 20 hit and remains one of the defining recordings in the band’s catalogue.
The anniversary provides a fitting backdrop for a new release from the songwriter whose melodic voice and idiosyncratic approach helped shape XTC’s music and legacy — and whose work continues to explore the relationship between a fully formed song and the creative process that brings it to life.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released their self-titled debut album in November of 1976. In the next year that followed, the Gainesville-bred rockers found themselves facing an explosive level of fame they weren’t prepared for.
“Origins 1971–1978” captures the sonic formation of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers in the white hot ’70s era. Digging into country, rock, folk, punk and soul, this collection chronicles Tom Petty’s first eight years as a recording artist through 51 tracks, including 27 unreleased, live, extended, and previously unheard tracks.
It has been almost 50 years since Tom Petty and his Heartbreakers released their self-titled debut album. “Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers” will have its half-century birthday this November, and Petty’s estate will celebrate the occasion with the release of “Origins 1971-1978″, a new box set that’ll include previously unreleased tracks from Petty’s earliest days.
The Origins box set will include newly remastered versions of that self-titled debut album and “You’re Gonna Get It!”, the band’s 1978 follow-up, that’ll include extended versions of 11 tracks, including the all-timers “American Girl” and “Refugee.” It’ll also include “Live From The Record Plant 1977”, a recording of the band’s live broadcast from the legendary Sausalito studio, with a guest appearance from Al Kooper. Perhaps the box’s biggest selling point is the rarities collection “No Sleep Til L.A.“, which will also be available as a standalone release. It collects music that Petty made when he was figuring out his sound, from his older band Mudcrutch to the earliest days of the Heartbreakers. Seven of that disc’s 12 tracks are previously unreleased, including the newly shared single “Parade Of Loons.”
“No Sleep Til LA” is described as being “at the heart of the collection”, with the press release explaining of the record, “More than a rarities compilation, it is a 12-track document
Bob Harris, broadcasting legend and former host of The Old Grey Whistle Test, recalled of their iconic set, “One of the greatest performances we had ever seen by a band at the top of their game. They played music from another planet to a room packed with manic fans, in one of the most iconic venues in the world. It was an experience so powerful that five decades later we could still remember every chord, every song, every solo.”
The “parade of loons,” was the way band members came to describe the increasingly chaotic scene on the road.
One other disc included in the Origins box is “The Cut Out Bin“, another rarities collection that features tracks that Petty made with session musicians, including what a press release describes as “a yacht rock track with Leon Russell.” The box also has a live-album version of the Heartbreakers’ 1978 appearance on the British show The Old Grey Whistle Test.
The deluxe of the many versions of the box set also has a Blu-Ray, a DVD, and an 88-page fanzine with liner notes from David Fricke and Bud Scoppa, track-by-track annotations from the band, and other stuff.
Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers are to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Americana Awards, and surviving members Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench, Stan Lynch, and Ron Blair will reunite to perform with country star Chris Stapleton, who has covered Petty a few times. Two other Heartbreakers, Steve Ferrone and Scott Thurston, will join in for the final song.
“Origins 1971-1978″, due out November. 6th, available in three formats: a 5LP box set, a 4CD box set and an uber deluxe edition. Each of these will be accompanied by a Blu-ray and DVD.
The year is 2008. Steve Gunn was experiencing the itch to start working on material under his own name after having spent the last several years playing in and around Philadelphia and Brooklyn in collaborative projects such as GHQ. He had recorded some experimental CDRs on his own under the moniker Moongang before branching out in 2007 to placing the name “Steve Gunn” on titles for the first time. The first couple of releases displayed an immediate leap in his songwriting and confidence. His growth as a solo artist seemed to meet the use of his name head on with a burst of creativity. Nowhere was this growth more visible than with the 2008 title “Sundowner”. The album’s first iteration was released on CD by Digitalis Recordings. Not only was it the first Gunn title to have a release on a non-recordable media, but it was his widest release to date. Gone were the days of micro-editions. Now folks from far and wide could get deeply into what Steve was working on and the spells he was weaving.
Jump forward a couple of years to 2010. Gunn had released his widely acclaimed “Boerum Palace” the year prior, a title which amplified the spotlight on both his craft and his place within the broader new weird America scene. Venerable Asheville institution Harvest Records couldn’t shake the ghostly majesty of “Sundowner” and reached out to him to see if they could do a vinyl edition on their then-new label imprint. Steve obliged the request but felt that he could lay down “better” versions of half of the album’s tracks. He re-recorded these tracks, paired them with a few of the originals and that became the album’s vinyl edition. Without formal distribution but sold through Harvest’s webstore and by Steve at shows, this one was for the true heads in the know.
Jump once more to 2026. This missive is being written in connection with a current vinyl and CD reissue of “Sundowner” by Three Lobed Recordings, the title’s first widely distributed version. Eighteen years removed from its original release, what is it that keeps bringing folks back to this title time and time again? The answer is simple – the songs and the performances. You have Gunn-specific guitar workouts like “No Atlas” and “Concrete Beach”. You have haunting vocal turns like “For the Horse, Etc.”, “Money Train Blues” and a gorgeous take on John Martyn’s “Over The Hill”. This is the album where Jack Rose told Steve he needed to keep putting out material in this vein. Ask anyone who knows it and they will all tell you that this album is both timeless and has earned the legend. Three Lobed is excited to bring this one back into the wider conversation, back into store shelves and onto the turntables of listeners everywhere.
releases October 30th, 2026
All songs by Steve Gunn except “Over The Hill” by John Martyn.
Gurriers have shared “Pins,” the fourth single to be released ahead of the Dublin band’s new LP, “Nobody’s Coming to Save You”. The swaggering cut is built around a circular, meditative guitar melody and drums that recall the UK alt-rock scene of the mid-’90s and early 2000s. Dan Hoff yearns for his partner, singing: “I want it / I need it / Your love is / Everything.”
Gurriers are currently in the midst of a US tour leading up to the release of “Nobody’s Coming to Save You” on September 25th. They’ll perform at Levitation in Austin before shows in Dallas, Atlanta, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh. They’ll also make a stop at Riot Fest in Chicago next weekend.
Check out “Pins” , and pre-order “Nobody’s Coming to Save You” via Play It Again Sam
Lambrini Girls Let Their Return Policy Be Known with Newly Announced Second LP “No Refunds“
Lead single “Bang Bang Bang” arrives today ahead of the record’s January 15th release via City Slang.
Lambrini Girls turn their attention to a grim roll call of modern horrors on No Refunds, tackling genocide, fascism, AI, reproductive rights and the murky depths of the manosphere. The duo push their punk sound further, bringing industrial abrasion, angular basslines and flashes of pop immediacy into the mix. Beneath the confrontation, there’s room for vulnerability too, while the biting humour and wit that made their debut hit so hard remain firmly intact.
Lambrini Girls, the Brighton duo of vocalist/guitarist Phoebe Lunny and bassist Selin Macieira, have announced that their second LP, “No Refunds“, will arrive on January 15 via City Slang. The news arrives alongside lead single “Bang Bang Bang,” which I would describe as “pummeling,” “electrifying,” “delightfully snarling,” “itching to soundtrack a rowdy ass moshpit.” According to Lunny, the song is about, “a man who has been revered as a Christ-like figure but also as the devil.” Sounds familiar!
