The Dream Machine return with a focused version of their kaleidoscopic, \’60s organ-infused aural ecstasy. Produced by The Coral‘s James Skelly, the album’s heightened musicianship and tighter track lengths are matched by Zak McDonnell‘s matured lyricism, spanning adolescent life in modern Britain, unrequited love, and escaping small-town ennui.
Bold, inventive psychedelic indie that clearly draws influence from the North West’s rich musical heritage, and displays that influence without ever sounding like a pastiche. Crisp, full of warmly familiar melodies and brilliantly conceived harmonies.
“Beachwood Sparks pioneered the indie-country genre, pushing Americana into experimental territories with their fusion of twangy country vibes and psychedelic sounds. Their unique niche in the indie music landscape is marked by ethereal melodies and introspective lyrics, influencing countless artists and shaping the “weirder” side of Americana music.
Their albums “Beachwood Sparks”, “Once We Were Trees” and “The Tarnished Gold“, released under Sub Pop Records, have earned widespread critical acclaim. In 2024, Beachwood Sparks make a triumphant return with “Across The River Of Stars“, produced by Chris Robinson (Black Crowes). After a hiatus, they not only deliver new tunes but also grace the live stage once again.”
Their first official album in twelve years, and fourth overall, “Across The River Of Stars” finds the revived alt-country band Beachwood Sparks in sublime form. Produced by The Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson, it’s a nine-track journey of cosmic reflection and psychedelic pop, driven by soft and intricate performances throughout reminiscent of some of The Byrds’ or Wilco’s finest works.
It’s midway through ‘Land: Horses/Land of A Thousand Dances’ that it becomes crystal clear: Patti Smith is one of the world’s greatest living rock star’s. Furiously flailing across the storied stage in her trademark monochrome Ann Demeulemeester outfit and imploring us to do the watusi, her mighty howl fills the room; hard and heroic, tough and tender and impossible not to be moved by, physically as well as emotionally.
For half a century Patti Smith has been a byword for a deeply American kind of cool. The mere mention of her name conjures up images of grubby Manhattan sidewalks, of beatniks and blues, of poetry and punk. And yet, to see her in such a deeply small sizes venue doesn’t jar at all – in fact she’s an ideal fit for such an illustrious rooms. Opening with the unaccompanied spoken word of ‘Piss Factory’ to pin-drop silence, the audience – many of whom have had tickets for this rescheduled show for the past two years – are in the palm of her hand from the word go.
Joined by her son Jackson on guitar and her daughter Jesse on keyboards, The shows are a family affair and we get a sweet peek at their cosy interaction when Patti announces Jesse’s arrival onstage. “My daughter,” says Patti with a giggle as Jesse whispers something in her ear. “She’s telling me my hair looks nice.” The band then blast into a glorious version of ‘Redondo Beach’, which Patti dedicates to the late Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. “Goodbye Mr Lee,” she calls out over the 1975 track’s punky reggae bounce.
It’s not the only tribute of the night, as guitarist Lenny Kaye leads a pleasantly scrappy version of The Rolling Stones’ ‘I’m Free’ in memory of Charlie Watts. An impeccable interpreter of other people’s work, Patti also coos her way through a stripped-back take on Bob Dylan’s ‘One Too Many Mornings’, introducing the song by telling the rapt crowd about how she fell in love with it 60-odd years ago.
You can see the years whizzing past her eyes as she does so, coming to terms with just how long ago that was in real time. “Nevermind,’ she sighs with a shrug and a smirk. Buddy Holly’s ‘Not Fade Away’ and of course her rule-book ripping version of Van Morrison’s ‘Gloria’ also get a look-in, but it’s the elegiac ‘Pissing In A River’ from her 1976 album ‘Radio Ethiopia’ that is the night’s stand out. Almost heavy metal in its intensity, her hardcore growl nearly takes the roof off the room, passionate, poetic and perfectly Patti Smith.
Patti Smith played:
‘Piss Factory’, ‘Free Money’, ‘Grateful’ ‘Redondo Beach’ ‘My Blakean Year’‘Dancing Barefoot’ ‘Blame It on the Sun’ (Stevie Wonder cover) ‘Beneath the Southern Cross’ ‘I’m Free’ (The Rolling Stones cover) ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ (Lou Reed cover) ‘Ain’t it Strange’ ‘One Too Many Mornings’ (Bob Dylan cover) ‘Pissing in a River’ ‘Land’ ‘Gloria’ (Them cover) ‘People Have The Power’ ‘Not Fade Away’ (The Crickets cover)
Over the past 8 years, Little Image (Jackson Simmons, vocals/guitar, Brandon Walters, bass/synth and Troy Bruner, drums) morphed from a group of perpetually online suburban teens who were obsessed with underground indie rock into the tight-knit outfit you see today. While many young artists had their careers derailed in 2020 due to COVID, it actually managed to save little image, who were gearing up to announce themselves to the world without realizing they needed more time for reflection and creativity. That extra time allowed the band to fully expand on the promise of their early singles “Worth It” and “EGgo” exploring different ways to create a pop-rock song beyond the basic guitar/bass/drums template.
This new burst of creativity led to not just a collection of songs but an actual album, deliberately sequenced to tell a story of self-doubt, self-reflection and eventually, self-love that little image hopes will connect with people across the globe. Kicking off their new music is the M83-esque indie-dance number “Lungs Burn,” a diamond in a sea of gems.
Like so many of the most essential rock bands, The Gaslight Anthem have a rare gift for finding glory in the inescapable pain of being alive. On their new album “History Books” – their first new music in over nine years – the New Jersey-bred four-piece bring their soulful breed of punk to ten thrilling songs exploring everything from mortality to mental illness to the more precarious dimensions of human connection.
on ‘History Books’— their first new music in over nine years — the New Jersey-bred four-piece bring their soulful breed of punk to ten thrilling songs, exploring everything from mortality, to mental illness, to the more precarious dimensions of human connection.
In the tradition of their seminal sophomore album the ’59 Sound’, The Gaslight Anthem’s sixth full-length ultimately achieves the tremendous feat of hitting every raw nerve while endlessly inspiring wildly triumphant singing-along. featuring a guest appearance from longtime Gaslight Anthem champion Bruce Springsteen, ‘History Books’ matches its unfussy yet gracefully crafted sound with the force-of-nature energy that’s defined the band since getting their start playing basement shows back in the mid-aughts.
”The first release from their own Rich Mahogany Recordings (a label distributed via Thirty Tigers), “History Books” finds The Gaslight Anthem working with acclaimed producer / engineer PeterKatis (The National, Interpol, Death Cab for Cutie) and recording at his Bridgeport, CT-based Tarquin Studios. Featuring a guest appearance from longtime Gaslight Anthem champion BruceSpringsteen, “History Books” matches its unfussy yet gracefully crafted sound with the force-of-nature energy that’s defined the band since getting their start playing basement shows back in the mid-aughts.
“Making this album clarified that we want to keep doing what we’ve always done – because no one else can do it in quite the same way, and that’s something I’ve started to become very proud of,” says Fallon. “At the end of the day it’s just rock-and-roll music, but I really do believe it can have a positive impact on people’s lives. I think there’s so much beauty and magic in that.”
We decided to remix “History Books” in its entirety, the Expanded Edition is out now
Katherine Parlour and Ella Risi met in Manchester as students and formed Picture Parlour as a duo, before relocating to London in 2021. The band recruited Sian Lynch and Michael Nash through a local Facebook musicians group. as their debut EP arrives, no one can argue that their path to greatness, one marched by bands throughout musical history, is still just as golden.
It’s incredibly refreshing and exciting to see that “Face In The Picture” isn’t just a lazy clump of their previous singles with one extra thrown in. Instead, this is an entirely new collection.
Their syrupy rock’n’roll is sticky and seductive. It sounds raw, yet anthemic; these are songs destined for stadiums. “We’ve always been ambitious in terms of making it sound huge,” says Risi. “It just gives you serotonin, doesn’t it?” Luxurious guitar solos are matched by Parlour’s growling vocals, which elongate painful lyrics with courage and charisma. “Kate reminds me of a circus ringleader on stage,” says Risi. “You’ve got that kind of commanding theatrical energy.”
Picture Parlour performing “Face In the Picture” 2024 Island Records,
Acclaimed Manchester-based pop-rock outfit Pale Waves burst onto the scene back in 2018 with the runaway success of their debut album “My Mind Makes Noises”. Two top five albums later and an outpouring of support from the likes of BBC Radio 1, Apple Music, Spotify, NME, and more, the band are back with a newfound maturity to accompany their fourth studio album “Smitten”.
While Pale Waves’ first three albums focussed on the band’s immediate present, “Smitten” is a lot more preoccupied with past lives – some more recent than others. Written two years after “Unwanted”, and after the tour that followed, Heather found herself in a headspace where she could finally breathe, and reflect, like peeling through the pages of a long-forgotten teenage diary and being surprised by what she found. “I found myself writing about not just a certain time period, but my whole life, from years ago,” she says. “When I fall in love, I fall deep, and it’s interesting to me that you can feel so fascinated and smitten with someone and then they can become a total stranger. So I feel like “Smitten” really summarised perfectly what I felt for others at a certain point.”
Glasgow septet The Joy Hotel release their debut album “Ceremony”. Lead single is the surging and rapturous ‘Jeremiah’. It’s a song that grapples with the idea of approaching unknowns, and how conflicting attitudes illicit different responses to the same situation. More directly, it’s about staring death in the face and choosing how to come to terms with it.
Newly signed to SO Recordings and with a debut album proper in hand, The Joy Hotel have become a word-of-mouth success story in the Scottish DIY scene.
The band spent eleven days at Rockfield, the legendary studio in Monmouth, Wales, recording live-to-tape. When they left, they had a sound. It is often contradictory, in that it combines the song writing sensibilities of pop and country with arrangements reminiscent of the psychedelic scene of the 60s, six-part vocal harmonies with elements of noise rock, beautiful balladry with a sense of humour, and a cinematic quality. The result of those eleven days is debut album “Ceremony”, a record that searches for the profound in the seemingly routine, and reaches out with arms wide open to wring celebration out of each moment.
“Ceremony”, the debut album from this Glaswegian ensemble The Joy Hotel, is a grand musical vision that embodies their growth into a septet, their admiration for vocal groups, and their diverse styles. Across 13 tracks, each with a seamless segue, the band use uplifting vocal harmonies, noise rock and ’60s leaning psych, and whimsical ballads to bring the extraordinary out of the mundane.
A song is a song until it isn’t, until it’s pushed to its limits and beyond to become harder, faster and more dissonant. The music on Oneida’s 17th full-length album, “Expensive Air”, all started as tightly structured, melodic rock songs—very much in line with the non-stop bangers of “Success” from 2022—but along the way, they changed.
Bobby Matador sketched the structures of these songs from his home base in Boston, then sent the demos to Oneida’s New York contingent: Kid Millions, Hanoi Jane, Shahin Motia and Barry London. “We were working out the songs in New York without Bobby. We would start out riding the riffs, and then Shahin and Jane would add wild, out-of-tune licks,” said Kid Millions. “It seemed so perfect.”
Oneida has long straddled gray-area boundaries between the NYC punk/psych/rock world and the art/experimental world, playing at gritty rock clubs and elevated cultural institutions, including the Guggenheim, MoMA PS1, ICA London, MassMOCA and the Knoxville Museum of Art. The band has been known for extended live improvisational performances, collaborating onstage with Mike Watt, members of Flaming Lips, Portishead, Boredoms, Yo La Tengo, Dead C, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and many others.
Oneida’s members juggle a wide variety of other music projects. Drummer Kid Millions has played with Spiritualized, Royal Trux and Boredoms and releases solo compositions under his own name and as Man Forever. Shahin Motia founded noise-punk’s Ex Models and currently plays in Knyfe Hits. Kid and Fat Bobby perform and release music as People of the North, and Bobby’s outside projects New Pope and Nurse & Soldier each released new albums in 2023.
Oneida’s previous album, “Success”, came after a four-year hiatus, unleashing the band’s pent up creative energy in a set of catchy, accessible, nearly poppy songs. Song structure remained important in the run up towards “Expensive Air“, but so was the instinctual, improvisatory interplay that has always been a part of Oneida’s process. The band had been playing live together for two years, sharpening its attack and pushing its songs to go harder, faster and wilder.
Oneida recorded “Expensive Air” in three sessions scattered across 2023, convening at ColinMarston’s Menegroth The Thousand Caves studio in Woodhaven, Queens, whenever they had a few songs ready. Marston and the band mixed the album in February 2024 at Menegroth.
The new album expands on what Oneida achieved with “Success“, but also pushes past it, laying down irresistible song structures then blowing them to psychedelic bits. “I found myself thinking about this record as a darker, looser, louder, counterpart to “Success,”Bobby explains. “Both records charge forward from the jump and mix the elliptical with the blunt, and longing with self-mockery. But “Success” is like laughing in a car gunning carelessly through an ice storm, and “Expensive Air” is how you laugh at yourself as the car spins into the ditch, or a tree. Same trip, but a little closer to the bone.”
Oneida off the album ‘Expensive Air’ out on Joyful Noise Recordings.
In this entertaining and observant memoir, Johns takes us on a tour of his world during the heady years of the sixties, with beguiling stories that will delight music fans the world over, such as when he had to bail the Steve Miller Band out of jail on their second day in London, his impressions of John and Yoko during the Abbey Road sessions, or running into Bob Dylan at JFK and being asked by Dylan to work on a collaborative album with him, the Stones, and the Beatles, which never came to pass.
Johns was there during some of the most iconic moments in rock and roll history.
“Glyn Johns was there. He was there at some of the most important recording sessions in Rock and Roll. Reading his book, you are standing beside him as he sets up the studio in readiness for the arrival of groups like Led Zeppelin, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. For me it is a fantastic romp through the pages of Rock and Roll history.” –Sir Paul McCartney
“Glyn Johns has been a very important person in my recording life (and also his brother Andy). Glyn was the first recording engineer who helped me to understand recording and through that he was very supportive in introducing me to a lot of sessions with important people such as Ben Sidren, Leon Russell, Ronnie Lane, Pete Townshend and Howling Wolf. This together, of course, with many of the great recordings he did with us. He is one of the best.” –Charlie Watts
“Sound Man will make readers aware of the many sides of Glyn Johns, a giant of a man and one of my best friends from the moment we met in 1963 to present day. Apart from his genius behind the faders and success as the producer of myriad hits, his humour comes through here, together with his unfailing desire to do the very best work he could in the face of some frighteningly egotistical artists.”–Bill Wyman
“If you remember the sixties then you probably weren’t there, unless of course your name is Glyn Johns. Sound Man is an intimate, humorous journey through the corridors of the music industry, as told by one of the greatest record producers of all time. I’m proud to be mentioned here and there, and to have worked with Johns on so many memorable occasions. A great read!” –Eric Clapton
“Glyn Johns was the most sought after sound engineer at the time when the recording industry was just exploding in the early 60s in London. He soon became the first choice of the artists who wrote their own songs and wanted a producer who could create for them a great sound for their recordings. He was always a strong and direct influence on the talent he worked with, and his records sounded brilliant! He soon became one of the very few truly great record producers and remained so over the last fifty years. Reading Sound Man reminded me of just how many incredible people he worked with and how many great iconic records he made. It’s fantastic reading.” –Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records
“Sound Man opens with a declaration: A record producer has to have an opinion and the ego to express it more convincingly than anyone else. So Glyn Johns has stood his ground with a few big-headed rock stars? I must be the exception. I’ve only had transcendental moments in the studio with Johns. Returning to the control room after a studio take I often felt like running: the joy of hearing what Johns had created out of the glue-and-string that was The Who was like a drug. He is an artist himself of supreme talent and experience.” –Pete Townshend
The Fat Angel Sings 