The Fat Angel Sings

Dave Alvin, Victor Krummenacher (Cracker, Camper Van Beethoven), Michael Jerome (Richard Thompson, Better Than Ezra, John Cale) and David Immerglück (Counting Crows, Camper Van Beethoven), and Jesse Sykes (Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter) form the core of this group of seasoned musicians, who have joined forces to take a trip back to the psychedelic folk/rock sound of the 1960s .

While The Third Mind may be a supergroup—the band consists of Grammy-winning singer/songwriter/guitarist Dave Alvin (The Blasters), bassist Victor Krummenacher (Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker), drummer Michael Jerome (Richard Thompson, John Cale), guitarist David Immergluck (Counting Crows, John Hiatt), and singer/songwriter Jesse Sykes—the quintet’s mesmerizing new album, “Right Now!”, is as ego-less a record as you’ll find.

Captured over four days in LA, the collection is a masterclass in being present, in letting go of control and embracing the thrill of collaboration. The recordings represent a singular moment—completely unscripted, completely unrehearsed—and the performances are as unpredictable as they are engrossing, blurring the lines between psychedelic rock, folk, blues, and soul on tunes from artists as diverse as Elizabeth Cotton and Pharoah Sanders.

Jesse Sykes is out front managing most of the vocals on this album. Dave Alvin joins Jesse on “Reno, Nevada,” which will be the single serviced to radio. Sticking with the tradition the band has established, the album includes cover songs including: “Shake Sugaree” (written by Elizabeth Cotten), “Reap What You So” (originally recorded by Otis Rush), “Darkness, Darkness” (originally recorded by The Youngbloods), “The Creator Has A Master Plan,” by Leon Thomas. “Before We Said Goodbye,” is an original written by Dave Alvin and Jesse Sykes. The album cover includes artwork from Lou Beach (who did the cover for Dave Alvin’s first solo album, and the last two Third Mind albums).

Inspired by the improvisational albums of Miles Davis, Alvin and Krummenacher started the band as an experiment, inviting some of their most talented friends for a free-form session that would become The Third Mind’s self-titled 2020 debut. American Songwriter hailed the result as “a captivating, often enthralling journey,” while the New York Times triangulated its sound between “Appalachia, the Byrds, and John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme.” The band returned with “The Third Mind 2” in 2023, and captured dates on their subsequent US tour for 2025’s sprawling Third Mind Live, featuring guitarist Mark Karan (Ratdog, Phil Lesh). 

released September 19th, 2025 

The story of Jimmy Cliff, who has died at age 81, is in part the story of reggae itself.

 “The Harder They Come”.  Director Perry Henzell’s film inspired by the life of Jamaican outlaw Ivanhoe “Rygin” Martin, starring Jimmy Cliff in the title role, failed to make a splash at the box office upon its initial U.S. release in early 1973.  But canny exhibitors realized its similarity to Blaxploitation films such as Shaft and Superfly, and it quickly became a mainstay of midnight movies. 

The New York Times noted that it ran for 26 weeks at a Cambridge cinema in 1973 before returning in 1974 for another seven years.  Its Island Records soundtrack catapulted Jimmy Cliff to international fame and played a major role in popularizing reggae around the world.  Only Cliff’s title track was recorded specifically for the film; the album was rounded out with past Cliff classics as well as songs by The Melodians, Desmond Dekker, The Maytals, and others.  Though the LP only reached the lower half of the chart it became a mainstay of the genre and, in 2021, was recognized by the Library of Congress with inclusion in the National Recording Registry.

Jimmy Cliff remained forever associated with The Harder They Come, and the artist born James Chambers in St. James, Jamaica used it as a springboard to a career that endured until his death earlier today at the age of 81.  The singer was still a teenager when he experienced his first successes in Jamaica; in 1964, he was chosen as one of the country’s representatives at the New York World’s Fair.  In 1969, “Wonderful World, Beautiful People” espoused a philosophy of positivity that served Cliff well: “Take a look at the world/And the state that it’s in today/I am sure you’ll agree/We all could make it a better way/With our love put together/Everybody learn to love each other…”  The anthemic song gave Cliff his first U.K. top ten single; it was followed by further hits including the anti-war lament “Vietnam” (which reportedly earned fans such as Bob Dylan) and a powerful cover of Cat Stevens’ “Wild World.”  Desmond Dekker took Cliff’s “You Can Get It If You Really Want” to the charts in Europe, Australia, South Africa, and the United States.

Cliff’s 1969 composition “Many Rivers to Cross” became one of his most famous works, recorded over the years by artists including Cher, Annie Lennox, and UB40.  A fusion of reggae and gospel, it anticipated Cliff’s ongoing melding of disparate world music elements.  Bruce Springsteen championed his songs including “Trapped,” The E Street Band’s recording of which ended up on the multi-platinum We Are the World benefit album.  He joined Little Steven for the anti-apartheid record “Sun City,” collaborated with The Rolling Stones, Sting, Joe Strummer, and Elvis Costello, and contributed a spirited version of Elton John and Tim Rice’s carefree “Hakuna Matata” to The Lion King spin-off album Rhythm of the Pride Lands.  Another Disney film, Cool Runnings, inspired Jimmy’s international hit cover of “I Can See Clearly Now,” originally written and recorded by American singer-songwriter Johnny Nash – one of the first non-Jamaican artists to record in Kingston and earn the respect of the genre’s progenitors.

In 2010, Jimmy Cliff was inducted by Haitian singer-rapper Wyclef Jean into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  He was only the second reggae musician to be welcomed to the Hall, following Bob Marley – whom Cliff had, years earlier, encouraged to audition for producer Leslie Kong.  In 2013, Jimmy won his second Grammy Award for the album appropriately entitled “Rebirth” – the first came for 1986’s “Cliff Hanger“, with appearances by Kool and the Gang, La Toya Jackson, and Jaco Pastorius – which was produced by Tim Armstrong of punk band Rancid.  In addition to original songs, “Rebirth” featured renditions of Rancid (“Ruby Soho”) and The Clash (“Guns of Brixton”), further underscoring the breadth of Cliff’s musical immersion.

2022’s “Refugees”, Cliff’s final studio album released in his lifetime, found him continuing his crusade for a better world, with songs including “We Want Justice,” “Racism,” “Bridges,” and the title track.  He sang with a note of hope on “Refugees”: “We gonna’ make it through the odds/Every day that we live is blessing in disguise/Do unto others as you would have done it to you/Listen, that’s just the word from the wise.”  Jimmy Cliff’s legacy of love and light will continue to reverberate from the streets of beautiful Jamaica throughout the world.​

Like so many Jamaican teens of his time, he moved to Kingston in the early 1960s and joined a rising musical movement that would help give voice to the country’s independence from Great Britain. A decade later, he helped reggae ascend to the international stage with his starring role in the cult favourite “The Harder They Come” and his featured place on the film’s classic soundtrack.

Here are a few songs that trace the arc of his career, and of reggae.

1962: “Miss Jamaica”

Singing along to an easy, bluesy groove, Cliff had a way of sounding both relaxed and fully committed, and could make a nursery rhyme sound like an anthem: “Roses are red / violets are blue / Believe me / I love you.” He also joined a long popular tradition, most famously expressed in such 1970s standards as Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are” and Springsteen’s “Thunder Road,” of offering praise to a very personal kind of beauty: “Although you may not have such a fabulous shape / To suit the rest of the world / But you do suit me and that’s all I want to know.”

1968: “Vietnam”

Like Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” and other anti-war songs, Cliff’s “Vietnam” was drawn from the horrors of those who had served overseas. “Vietnam” was a seething, mid-tempo chant — “Vi-et-nam, Vi-et-nam,” the very name an indictment, in this song for the death of a soldier who had written home to say he would soon be returning, only for his mother to receive a telegram the next day announcing his death.

1969: “Wonderful World, Beautiful People”

One of Cliff’s many talents was looking clear-eyed at life as it is, and imagining so well what it could be — a paradise made real by the melody, the feel and lyrics of “Wonderful World, Beautiful People,” a vision so inevitable even the likes of President Richard Nixon and British Prime Minister Harold Wilson can’t get in the way. “This is our world, can’t you see? / Everybody wants to live and be free.”

1969: “Many Rivers to Cross”

Onstage, he sometimes literally jumped for joy, but Cliff also could call out the deepest notes of despair. The sombre, gospel-style “Many Rivers to Cross” was inspired by the racism he encountered in England in the 1960s and tells a story of displacement, longing, fatigue and gathering rage — but never defeat. “I merely survive because of my pride,” he tells us, a variation of the old saying that hopes dies last.

1970: “You Can Get It If You Really Want”

Cliff’s political songs were so enduring in part because they were so catchy, and because they offered hope without the promise of easy success. Kicked off by a spare horn riff, “You Can Get It If You Really Want” has a lighter mood than “Vietnam,” but just as determined a spirit. “You must try, try and try, try and try,” Cliff warns. “Persecution you must fear / Win or lose you got to get your share.”

1972: “The Harder They Come”

The title track to the movie which would mark the high point of his success, “The Harder They Come” has a spiky, muscular rhythm, the kind you could set to the forward march of a mass protest. It’s a sermon of retribution for oppressors — “the harder they fall, one and all” — and of earthly rewards for those who have been robbed: “So as sure as the sun will shine / I’m gonna get my share now, what’s mine.”

With their foremost line-up’s return, the band promise the wild energy that we know and love. “Natural Magick” incorporates blazing psychedelic sermons, raga rave-ups, stardust-coated pop pearls and mood-enhancing mantras, encapsulated on the album’s title track.

Kula Shaker are an English psychedelic rock band. Led by frontman Crispian Mills, the band came to prominence during the Post-Britpop era of the late 1990s. The band enjoyed commercial success in the UK between 1996 and 1999, notching up a number of Top 10 hits on the UK Singles Chart, including “Tattva”, “Hey Dude”, “Govinda”, “Hush” and “Sound of Drums”

Kula Shaker’s are back with a album “Natural Magick” finds the band harnessing the power to cast their most potent spell yet, incorporating blazing psychedelic sermons, raga rave-ups, stardust-coated pop pearls and mood-enhancing mantras. “This chapter in the band’s life is very much driven by live energy and that spiritual connection with the audiences which comes with it. We all agreed that the songs should be no longer than three minutes. There are no epics.” (says Crispian) Reformed permanently in 2021 due to the return of keyboard wizard Jay Darlington, reuniting all four members of the band’s classic line-up for the first time since 1999. The band became UK chart-toppers with 1996’s debut album “K” and ’99’s follow-up “Peasants Pigs and Astronauts” saw them push the creative envelope prior to their premature dissolution. Having made a welcome return in 2007 with the self-funded “Strangefolk”, Kula Shaker have built towards the sonic summit. 

KULA SHAKER’s irrepressible return continues apace as the original line-up announce the release of a brand new single “Charge of The Light Brigade” on Strangefolk Records.

The band’s sound feels more amplified than ever with the return of Hammond organ wizard Jay Darlington after a decade with Oasis and various Gallaghers, reuniting all four members of the band’s classic line-up (Crispian Mills: guitar/vocals; Jay Darlington: Hammond organ; Alonza Bevan: bass; Paul Winter-Hart: drums) for the first time since 1999’s “Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts”.

Packed with allusions to spiritual vampires and the fairy cavalcade of Celtic folklore, this three-minute musical trip is the first of a number of new tracks the band have recorded for their upcoming eighth studio album (title to be announced) and heralds their March/April shows in the U.K., where they will be riding out with Ocean Colour Scene as very special guests on their 2025 tour.

With their seventh and latest album “Natural Magick” (2024) released across the world and topping the Independent Album Charts in the UK (“The best album of their career” – Shindig!), and having completed successful tours of North America, Asia, the UK and Europe last year, Kula Shaker are well and truly back in the saddle, galloping at speed, in a startling return to form.

Delivering that renewed wild energy we know and love, “Natural Magick” proved to be a mesmeric 13-track incantation incorporating blazing psychedelic sermons, raga rave-ups, stardust-coated pop pearls and mood-enhancing mantras. A technicolour sonic pathway towards a more enlightened state of mind, this was Kula Shaker casting their most powerful spell yet.

Named after a ninth-century mystic, Kula Shaker first carried their freak flag of spiritual sonics to the top during the heady days of Britpop, first with their debut hit “Grateful When You’re Dead” / “Jerry Was There,” followed by top five songs like “Hush” and “Tattva” (a pop song written in Sanskrit) before releasing the legendary “Govinda.”

Having formed their own label Strangefolk in 2007, Kula Shaker have slowly but surely returned to their sonic summit, with a prolific surge of writing, which began in 2023 with “1st Congregational Church Of Eternal Love And Free Hugs“, followed by their acclaimed “Natural Magick” in 2024.

Sounding the charge for 2025, this new song continues the ever-evolving Kula Shaker legend, which has both entertained and inspired listeners for decades, and 2025, and sees the band advance once again as “Charge of The Light Brigade” trailers the release of a new studio album.

25 years on from the debut album “K,” Kula Shaker have proved they are still one of the most exciting and ecstatic bands around, an unstoppable tour de force, with kinetic energy cursing through every second of their “electric” live shows.

The band will be releasing new music and embarking on international tours, headlining venues and festivals throughout 2025.

The tour, with extra dates added due to huge demand, kicked off on March 27th in Leeds, UK and runs until May 4th in Newcastle, will see the bands playing 24 dates across the country including two dates at London’s O2 Academy Brixton on April 4th and May 1st and two dates in Glasgow on the 15th and 16th of April. U.S. dates to be announced shortly!

Kula Shaker’s new album “Natural Magick” 

Helicon & Al Lover release ‘Backbreaker’ from incoming collab album, ‘Arise’ Due out February 13th, it finds Helicon’s psych-rock infused with Lover’s genre-bending electronics – resulting in a maximalist, uplifting sound with a baggy, hypnotic pulse.

“Backbreaker came from a desire to fuse sounds we’d never really heard living side by side”, says Helicon frontman John-Paul Hughes: “Middle Eastern guitars paired with a melodic bassline that sits somewhere between Motown and indie rock; eastern strings and percussion rubbing up against sub-basses and breakbeats; chanting harmonies woven through Helicon’s psychedelia, Al’s sampler work, and Tony Doogan’s production. It’s a track you can listen to thirty times and still find something new; some independent melody, texture, or rhythm hiding in the layers. It’s a beautiful melting pot of moving, colliding sounds.”

Lover says: “This one was especially fun for me. I grew up going to drum & bass parties in my late teens and early twenties. It was never a huge part of my identity, but I always loved the music. As I dug deeper into the genre, the importance of the Amen break and how entire branches of electronic music were built around that single drum pattern. It all became endlessly fascinating. Blending that world with rock has been done before, but not quite in the way we approached ‘Backbreaker’. The aggression and intensity of both genres fit naturally together, and the psychedelic edge that emerges when they collide feels like its own new space.”

Emma Swift’s “The Resurrection Game” follows in the tradition of her heroes, singer-songwriters like Sandy Denny and Marianne Faithfull, artists who transformed personal struggle into compelling music. As Swift’s first album of original material, it represents an important and promising step in her artistic development. Emma Swift is an Australian songwriter. She lives in Nashville, TN with the British cult musician Robyn Hitchcock. Swift herself describes this collection as “a bummer of a record,” a characterization that proves accurate, if reductive. Written primarily between 2022 and 2024, these songs emerged from the aftermath of what Swift describes as a seven-week “nervous breakdown” that resulted in her being sectioned in her native Australia. What followed was over a year of recovery—a period Swift characterizes as “very fragile”—during which she processed her experience through therapy, medication, and ultimately, her art.

The album succeeds in its stated goal of transforming personal pain into music.  Swift’s voice remains her strongest asset, providing clarity and emotional weight to lyrics that confront difficult subjects directly. The juxtaposition between her crystalline vocals and the album’s heavy emotional content creates tension that works well on the stronger tracks, though it occasionally feels forced on weaker material.

Producer Jordan Lehning has created arrangements that serve Swift’s material well. The album’s sonic landscape aims for lush orchestration that creates space for Swift’s voice while providing musical support for the lyrics. The production occasionally leans too heavily into the album’s melancholy, making some tracks feel overwrought where a lighter touch might have been more effective.

Swift’s core band   — Spencer Cullum (pedal steel), Jordan Lehning (keys) and Dominic Billet (drums), Juan Solorzano (guitar) — are largely experienced Nashville hands, a group who recently has started to play together as Echolalia.  They’ve all known each other for years, played together at different times but never altogether as a band. Cullum’s pedal steel work provides some of the album’s most memorable moments. Cullum, whose extensive experience includes work with Miranda Lambert, Kesha, and Little Big Town, brings a deft touch to Swift’s material. His playing adds the right Americana flavour while maintaining the album’s emotional consistency, particularly on tracks like “How To Be Small” and “Beautiful Ruins.”

The addition of a string section—featuring Annaliese Kowert and Laura Epling on violin, Betsy Lamb on viola, and Emily Rodgers on cello—brings classical sensibilities to the album’s texture. Rather than simply adding orchestral grandeur, these players approach the material with precision and emotional intelligence, creating arrangements that enhance the songs’ emotional impact without overwhelming them.

Swift’s approach to addressing mental health and personal crisis through her songwriting is both brave and necessary. As she notes, “I believe that there is a space for songs about real pain. In this moment in time, we live in a world where we’re encouraged to anesthetize what ails us by any means possible. But this record is more about spending time with your sadness, of leaning into that sorrow and facing it head on.”

This philosophy permeates every track on “The Resurrection Game”. Swift doesn’t offer easy answers or false comfort; instead, she presents a clear-eyed examination of suffering that acknowledges its reality while searching for meaning within it. On “No Happy Endings,” she confronts mortality and impermanence with unflinching honesty: “The world’s a spinning time bomb / That there’s no denying / There are no happy endings / But baby I’m trying.” Yet even in this stark assessment, there’s defiance—an insistence on connection despite inevitable loss.

Her lyrics cut straight to the heart of complex emotions without resorting to cliché or sentimentality. In “How to Be Small,” she captures the vulnerability of depression with devastating simplicity: “I am so terribly lonely / How are things with you?” The contrast between profound isolation and casual social convention captures the disconnect between internal experience and external performance that defines much of modern suffering.

The album’s title track and songs like “Nothing and Forever” and “Catholic Girls Are Easy” showcase Swift’s ability to find universal truths within personal experience. In “Beautiful Ruins,” she transforms the aftermath of trauma into something almost mythic: “I come from the place, the place of many crows / And I’ve told them all my stories / And I’ve let them pick my bones.” The imagery is both visceral and poetic, suggesting both destruction and renewal.

Swift gives us songs that go beyond her personal mental health crisis; they are explorations of humanity that will resonate with anyone who has faced loss, grief, or the kind of existential questioning that comes with life’s darker moments. The album’s closing track, “Signing Off With Love,” perhaps best encapsulates this duality: “Is this how the end of the world is supposed to feel?” Swift asks repeatedly, but the act of asking—and the love in the song’s title—suggests that even in endings, connection remains possible.

Swift’s belief in “the redemptive power of art” (as she puts it) is evident throughout “The Resurrection Game“. She describes her process as attempting “to alchemize the experience. To make the brutal become beautiful.” This transformation is perhaps the album’s greatest achievement—it takes pain that could have been purely destructive and channels it into something that offers both artist and listener a path toward healing. In “The Resurrection Game,” she literally excavates the past: “In Calistoga, where the redwoods grow / I have come to, to excavate your bones,” transforming the archaeological metaphor into something deeply personal yet universally resonant.

“The Resurrection Game” is quite different from Swift’s previous album, 2020’s “Blonde on the Tracks“, which featured her interpretations of Bob Dylan songs. Where that earlier effort demonstrated Swift’s ability to reinterpret existing material through her own perspective, this new collection presents her original songwriting. The contrast is notable: “Blonde on the Tracks benefited, of course, from classic source material and allowed Swift to focus on vocal interpretation, while “The Resurrection Game” requires her to carry the full weight of both song writing and performance.

“The Resurrection Game” succeeds as both personal statement and artistic milestone. Swift’s willingness to address difficult subject matter directly demonstrates real courage, and her voice remains compelling throughout. While the album has its uneven moments, it achieves something meaningful: transforming private pain into music that speaks to universal experiences of loss and recovery. The stronger tracks—particularly “The Resurrection Game,” “Beautiful Ruins,” and “How to Be Small”—reveal Swift as a songwriter of genuine talent, capable of finding poetry in darkness without resorting to easy sentiment. For listeners drawn to honest, emotionally direct music, 

Emma’s album, “The Resurrection Game” came out September 12th, 2025 on Tiny Ghost Records.

This year marks 45 years since the release of The Durutti Column’s landmark album “The Return Of The Durutti Column”. To celebrate, London Records will release a very special reissue of the seminal Manchester band’s 1980 debut, out now. One of the first groups to be signed to the legendary Manchester label Factory Records in 1978, The Durutti Column took their name from Spanish Civil War anarchist Buenaventura Durruti and a 1960s Situationist comic strip. Having appeared on Factory’s inaugural release “A Factory Sample” (a double 7” compilation also featuring Joy Division, John Dowie, and Cabaret Voltaire), the band’s relationship with the label would endure for two decades and ten studio albums. 

“The Return Of The Durutti Column” remains one of Factory’s most enduring and important works: fragile, otherworldly, and quietly radical. Produced by Martin Hannett, it showcased Vini Reilly’s distinctive, delicate guitar work against Hannett’s ambient textures, post-punk reverb, and glacial electronics. The 45th Anniversary Edition will be available in several formats:

The Deluxe Sandpaper LP, replicating the rare first pressing and limited to 500 numbered copies worldwide. Each sleeve has been spray-painted by hand with the original catalogue number, FACT 14. This edition includes a unique printed inner sleeve featuring an essay by Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie, housed inside a protective outer cover. Available exclusively at store.the-durutti-column.com.

The Standard Edition LP, replicating the second pressing, commonly known as the “Dufy” sleeve (after a featured triptych of images by French painter Jean Dufy), with the outer sleeve printed on the same textured card as the 1980 version. The inner sleeve features an essay by Durutti Column/Factory Records expert James Nice. Rough Trade will stock a unique pressing of this edition as part of their Essentials range, pressed on black-and-white marbled vinyl and limited to 500 copies (with bonus sandpaper postcard).

All vinyl editions have been remastered from the original source tapes, recently rediscovered in a Stockport warehouse, and cut at half-speed for maximum audio fidelity. The tracklisting includes the original album plus “Untitled” (featured on later iterations), alongside two further tracks: “Lips That Would Kiss” and “Madeleine,” both originally issued on Factory Records’ Belgian sister label Factory Benelux in autumn 1980.

The Expanded Hardback Book Edition is a 2CD, 38-track collection housed in a tall storybook format with a 48-page booklet. Alongside essays from James Nice and Bobby Gillespie, this edition also includes a new piece by Mojo journalist Ian Harrison. The expanded audio features the vinyl track-listing plus material from the 1980 bonus flexidisc “Testcard,” first recordings, studio and home demos, live performances, and several previously unreleased tracks. The artwork reflects the special 1985 boxed cassette edition (part of Factory’s series alongside releases from Joy Division, New Order, and A Certain Ratio) and is printed on authentically sourced paper stock.

The first 500 orders from the official store will receive an exclusive bonus CD, “Lost Songs and Sketches”, featuring early live recordings and a rare 1981 audio interview with Vini Reilly.

The Durutti Column’s sparse yet emotionally charged soundscapes have influenced generations of musicians. Most recently, Blood Orange sampled the band’s “Sing For Me” on “The Field,” the lead single from his album “Essex Honey”, while their catalogue now enjoys millions of streams worldwide.

The band is experiencing a renewed cultural resonance, with songs featured in acclaimed series The Bear, in Jonathan Anderson’s debut collection for Dior Spring-Summer 2026, and across the entire soundtrack of Dries Van Noten’s Autumn-Winter 2025 runway show.

“The Return Of The Durutti Column” endures as a defining statement of minimalism and atmosphere: an album that still sounds as visionary today as it did 45 years ago.

It’s always fun to see big bands play NPR Music’s Tiny Desk concert series, as groups attempt to squeeze all their members into the small office. This week it’s the one and only David Byrne, whose current band numbers 13, including him. Interestingly, though, David’s tour for his new album ‘Who Is The Sky?’ is designed to have all its musicians performing close to one another, so apparently it wasn’t as hard as it may seem.

David Byrne has a long history of staging elaborate live shows, often with a sprawling cast of musicians, highly choreographed dancing and unusual instrumentation. So when we learned he wanted to have more than a dozen performers at the Tiny Desk, playing everything from cello, saxophone and marimba to a Brazilian timbau and zabumba (not to mention various guitars and keys), we weren’t sure we’d be able to fit it all in. It turns out his latest tour, for the album Who Is The Sky?, is well designed for our roughly 10 by 11-foot space. Though Byrne and his band do normally spread out across large stages, the set design for each show is almost completely bare, without any cables or amps, and the artists wear or carry compact, custom-made instruments to make it easier to move, almost like a marching band.

David & his band played “Everybody Laughs” and “Don’t Be Like That” from the new album, & then treated Tiny Desk to a couple of Talking Heads songs “Nothing But Flowers” and “Life During Wartime.”

It was a bucket-list performance for the Tiny Desk. Afterward, as the rest of the band and crew dispersed, Byrne hopped on a rented bike for a solo ride through the District on a beautiful, fall afternoon.

SET LIST “Everybody Laughs” “Don’t Be Like That” “(Nothing But) Flowers” “Life During Wartime” MUSICIANS David Byrne: vocals, guitar Mauro Refosco: percussion, music director Ray Suen: guitar, bass, violin, music director Kely Pinheiro: bass, cello Daniel Mintseris: keys Stephane San Juan: drums Tim Keiper: percussion Yuri Yamashita: percussion, marimba Tendayi Kuumba: background vocals Sasha Rivero: background vocals Hannah Straney: background vocals Sean Donovan: background vocals Jordan Dobson: saxophone, background vocals

Meanwhile, David has just shared a new playlist perfect for the season, which you can also view at the link below: ‘Christmas Music for People Who Hate Christmas Music’. It includes songs from Run-DMC, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, Yellowman, Prince, Sufjan Stevens, The Staple Singers, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, Neko Case, Tierra Whack, Phoebe Bridgers, The Decemberists, Sabrina Carpenter, Captain Beefheart & more, & he ends things with his own “Fat Man’s Comin’”.

Danny Lee Blackwell’s Night Beats released their self-titled debut album back in 2011 and 2024 sees a long-overdue vinyl reissue hit the racks courtesy of UK label Fuzz Club. An acid-drenched modern garage-rock classic in the Texan thirteenth-floor tradition, the band’s R&B-inspired Western Psychedelic sound on this 12-track set is a reckoning, a shoot-out at dawn, the ear-splitting peel-out that leaves nothing but a cloud of red dust in its wake.

Following early releases in the shape of the ‘H-Bomb’ 45 and a split 10″ with UFO Club (a collaborative project between Blackwell and The Black Angels’ Christian Bland), the ‘Night Beats’ LP was the first full-length introduction to the band and propelled them to the forefront of burgeoning contemporary psych scene in a blaze of scuzzy rock’n’roll release. Heavy touring immediately ensued and hasn’t let up in the years that followed, and the definitive Night Beats hit ‘Puppet On A String’ has since clocked up millions of streams and become the soundtrack to an underground, fuzz-worshipping generation.

Looking back on the record and upcoming reissue, Danny Lee Blackwell says: “Turning stones, looking for a sound. In bloom, or right before. Looking back on this first album I see a band with ideas that committed early on. I see where things will be built from, ideas that set up the groundwork for sounds to expand far beyond while honing a classic sound. I ventured with my voice and guitar and glad I did because there’s self acceptance and experimentation on this album. I’m proud of it and very glad it’s getting a long overdue repress.”

Vinyl reissue of Night Beats’ S/T debut album – a long out-of-print modern garage-rock classic. The splatter vinyl edition – exclusive to the Fuzz Club store and Night Beats live shows – includes fold-out poster designed by Night Beats’ Danny Lee Blackwell and limited to 500 copies.

“Forever, I’ve Been Being Born” is Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter’s first new album since 2011’s “Marble Son“, and the band’s fifth album since 2002. It is a suite of masterful, emotive songs from an open heart, dwelling in a brightness yet deep in the ethereal and melancholic, steeped in themes of magical thinking, emotional dislocation, death and transformation.

In the making for 10 years, the album centres around the power of Jesse’s transcendent voice, which has never been more beautiful, evocative, and hauntingly intimate. Guitarist Phil Wandscher’s playing masterfully frames these songs with classic and fractured tones, a duet of vulnerability and strength frequently on the edge. The album also features exquisite contributions from Marissa Nadler.

“This album is our attempt to create elegant folk and sometimes ragged, cosmic, heart rendered songs full of eulogies and laments,” says Sykes. “Our sound is still familiar enough, but unrecognisable at times — we’ve gotten older and wearier, the music more fragile…

“When we started recording this album,  I remember saying, ‘Play the songs as if the edge of a butterfly wing was brushing against your cheek in the dark while you’re holding a small child.’ I wanted to connote tenderness and a state of grace in the wake of resolution — paying homage to the creeping knowledge of an emerging, menacing undertone forming in our collective psyche. In hindsight, the delay in releasing this record has been a bit of a blessing, as the lyrics seem more poignant now, transcending our own internal voices and psyches. As the world shares its collective crisis, so we too, share our songs.”

With “Forever, I’ve Been Being Born”, Sykes and co. have crafted a work which feels “very much like a eulogy” — a collection of tracks which see her exploring the idea of mortality with a calm acceptance. While Sykes’ voice has already acted as a guiding light through dark times for others, for Jesse herself, that presence is felt in the form of a chaperone on this record. More specifically, Jesse’s childhood babysitter inspired a motif on the record, “She truly was the person who taught me love,” muses Jesse, “When I think of the moment of death, I often think that it would just be going to her.”

Recording a new album was delayed for years, in the wake of two band members unexpectedly leaving after “Marble Son”. “Losing our rhythm section was heartbreaking,” she reflects. “ It sounds cliche, but we had to grieve that loss, and in doing so, we had to separate ourselves from making music for a while, because dare I say, music was painful at the time. It reminded us of what we’d lost. Bands are like family and I’d lost my family. So yes, I had to give up music in order to fall in love with music again.”

The album title, “Forever I’ve Been Being Born“, hints towards this sense of cyclical surrender — “I’ve felt I’m constantly being born and constantly having to die. Or constantly dying in order to be reborn.” We live in a time of collective mourning, and to Jesse, “the lyrics make more sense now than when I was writing them. I think there was some kind of premonition going on… juxtaposed to what’s happening in the country, the emotional climate — this music speaks to the times we are living through.”

The emotional feeling of the record can be summed up in a single line from the title track — “Eternities, they will crumble.” A quiet sense of acceptance runs through the record like a stream meandering towards the sea. Listen in the dark.”

“The Waterboys Present: Rips From The Cutting Room Floor (Extras from Life, Death And Dennis Hopper) is the genre-defying companion to The Waterboys’ Sun Records debut album “Life, Death, and Dennis Hopper”, a song cycle telling the life story of the great American trailblazer and actor. Written and self-produced by Mike Scott and the storied international rock band, the eclectic album is comprised of 16 all new tracks including “The Next Time I Saw Elvis, Still Raging On” and an alternate version of “Golf, They Say.”

First single from the Waterboys’ forthcoming album of bonus tracks – “Rips From The Cutting Room Floor” extras from Life, Death And Dennis Hopper, out December 5th. Performance featuring Mike Scott on guitar and vocals and Dylan Bishop on lead guitar.

STILL RAGING ON, the second track to be released from our Hopper extras album Rips From the Cutting Room Floor, is out now.

“Still Raging On” is the prototype of what became “Ten Years Gone” on the album. It features the same lyric but with a completely different and very beautiful tune sung by Mike with acoustic guitar.

The Waterboys will perform a special series of dates in August and September 2026 under the banner THE FISHERMAN’S BLUES REVUE. The shows will celebrate and explore the music of the Waterboys’ classic “Fisherman’s Blues” album era of the mid-late 1980s.

Legendary Waterboys fiddler Steve Wickham will rejoin the band for the shows, and in an exciting development the ensemble will be graced by great American singer/songwriter Steve Earle, who will perform as a member of the Revue, singing his own songs while adding vocals, guitar and mandolin to Waterboys numbers.

The shows will follow hot on the heels of the release of “ATLANTIC RAIN“, a 3-disc set of previously undiscovered music from the Fisherman’s Blues sessions, to be issued July 17th 2026 on Chrysalis Records.

Waterboys leader Mike Scott: says “The Fisherman’s era was a transcendent time for The Waterboys and it’s always exciting to delve into its spirit and see what happens. We’ll be performing with an eight-piece band including the mighty Steve Earle who I’ve wanted to do a project with for many years. He’ll bring Americana roots and killer songs to the party, and these promise to be among the best Waterboys shows ever.”

Other band members include Brother Paul (organ), Famous James (piano), Aongus Ralston (bass), Eamon Ferris (drums) and Norwegian Pedal Steel ace Roar Øien.

“ATLANTIC RAIN” will comprise 3 discs of previously unheard songs and alternate versions recorded during “Fisherman’s Blues” but forgotten due to the sheer volume of music recorded. Says Scott: “We made so much music during those days – hundreds and hundreds of individual recordings – that I’m still discovering magical stuff in the vaults. This set contains the best I’ve found so far – the music is every bit as good as the original album.”.