“Trying Not to Have a Thought” isn’t just the first Algernon Cadwallader album since 2011’s “Parrot Flies”. It’s also the first with their original line up—vocalist-bassist Peter Helmis, guitarists Joe Reinhart and Colin Mahony, and drummer Nick Tazza—since Algernon’s seminal 2008 debut, “Some Kind of Cadwallader”. Shortly after that album was recorded—and long before it was heralded as a lodestar for the 2010s “emo revival”—Tazza and Mahony departed the band. Despite their looming influence on the aforementioned “revival,” Algernon broke up in 2012 following the release of “Parrot Flies” and remained stubbornly deceased until their fiendishly anticipated resurrection in 2022.
“I almost see it as fate that it boiled us down to this core, our original form,” Helmis says. “There’s a certain magic to that that couldn’t really be replicated.”
There was no expectation that the reunion tour would precipitate new music. However, as the band began rehearsing their classic songs, new ideas started leaking out in the form of off-the-cuff jams, and the seeds of “Trying Not to Have a Thought” began to germinate. Reinhart was pleasantly surprised that, even after 17 years of not playing together under the Algernon umbrella, the foursome’s foundational musical chemistry was still surging.
“I’m kind of hearing in my head what this person’s already doing,” Reinhart says, recalling the intuitive flow of those improvisational jams.
“Trying Not to Have a Thought” is simultaneously the most considered and off-the-cuff Algernon Cadwallader album yet. The 11-song classic was written across two rural retreats on either side of the country, first in Snoqualmie, Washington (mythically known as Twin Peaks), and then in the Poconos in the woods of Pennsylvania. After an initial session at Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, the collection was largely recorded and self-produced at Reinhart’s Headroom Studios in Philadelphia. Whereas some reunion records sound stilted and forced, this record sounds resplendently natural: the production warm and lively, the musicianship congenial yet exacting, and the hooks effortlessly sticky. Fans who’ve been listening to Algernon since their 2005 formation will be fondly reminded of the band’s familiar ring, but the album feels distinctly uncoupled from any of the ephemeral trends that Algernon were previously filed under. Their musical touchpoints remain unchanged—“Joan of Arc and Pavement in a blender is where we end up sitting,” Reinhart says with a smile—but the band sounds more comfortably singular than ever before.
Algernon Cadwallader are certainly cognizant of their cult legacy, a status that’s transformed their fanbase into a unique convergence of graying punk lifers and fresh-faced teens who first discovered “midwest emo” on TikTok. Given the long gap between albums and the critical acclaim they’ve garnered in that time, it would’ve been understandable for the guys to feel pressured to live up to their own standards while making this new record. Thankfully, the opposite was the case.
“If anything, I think [our legacy] made us feel like we had more freedom to be ourselves and let it come out naturally,“ Helmis says. Reinhart doubles down on their creative autonomy: “The only thing we ever try to do is entertain ourselves. Do we like this? Good. No? Let’s try harder.”
“Trying Not to Have a Thought” differs most from previous Algernon records in its lyrical content. On their first two albums, Helmis avoided heart-on-sleeve emo tropes by penning prose that was ambiguous and out there. For this batch of songs, Helmis felt compelled to be a little more thematically explicit, pointedly exploring the tension between the necessity of self-improvement and the urgency of the external. Specifically, the doom-scrollable apocalypse that is modern American life. Album opener “Hawk” is a brisk, poignant meditation on grief that weighs the ache of loss against the bittersweet memories that keep the deceased ever present. “Revelation 420” and “Million Dollars” are scorching political diatribes that excoriate capitalism’s failures and venerate protest. “Attn MOVE” is a historical reminder of the MOVE 9, a group of Black radical activists whose Philadelphia homes were notoriously bombed by police in 1985—a block of houses that’s located right between Reinhart’s current house and Headroom Studios.
“With Trying Not to Have a Thought”, Algernon Cadwallader juggle intrinsic musical connection and shrewd lyrical intention with remarkable poise. The album’s title perfectly captures that dual approach: the effort to resist being mentally bogged down by the bottomless list of daily atrocities, and the band’s decision to let their unspoken connection guide this rejuvenated take on their classic sound. “This is just what comes out of us when these four people get in a room,” Helmis says. And this record is exactly that: an Algernon Cadwallader album that’s leisurely, intensely, tremendously their own.
Everyone heaping praise on this year’s releases from Water From Your Eyes and This Is Lorelei should show some love to fantasy of a broken heart, whose latest EP is even better than their frenetic 2024 debut “Feats of Engineering“. Mixed by Nate Amos (Water From Your Eyes and This is Lorelei), of the aforementioned bands with which the duo have spent months on the road, “Chaos Practicioner” refines the rhythmic and melodic puzzles of their song writing – solving more than it leaves in pieces – without compromising on its oddball humour; the bossa nova-inflected ‘Victory Path’ begins interpolating ‘La Vie En Rose’ to court the opening line “Swish me around like Listerine.” As densely colourful as the collection is, vocalists Al Nardo and Bailey Wollowitz earnestly embrace not just the dynamic interplay of their voices but a pervasive darkness; the final track and standout is called ‘We Confront the Demon in Mysterious Ways’, but their music has never been more transparent in its exorcism of toxic human forces.
“I don’t know what I want from the moment/ I say softly as I trace your eyelids,” Wollowitz sings, in striking vulnerability that contrasts a boisterous moment like the Brutus VIII’s guest spot. But it’s true, what the Slow Hollows member joins in to say: You’ll want just a little more.
Bookended by collapse, “Big Ugly” is a mausoleum for small Southern bygones, wrought in close detail by Aaron Dowdy: torn-down small towns where heaven seemed in-reach, a beer-fisted past self with nothing else to hold, the cans and cigarettes that lined a shabby old convenience store’s shelves. In answering questions of Southern living, it raises an age-old, universal query: What does it mean to love people and places once they’ve become part of history, one that hasn’t quite passed? The album’s title derives from a West Virginian area based around a Guyandotte River tributary named for the crooked, “Big Ugly” creek rushing through it.
A hastily assembled Internet guide to Appalachian West Virginian communities introduces “Big Ugly” as “one of those place names newspaper columnists grab on a slow day,” but Dowdy saw more than a conspicuous headline in the nickname—the evocative, oddly affectionate word pairing captured the essence of the songs he’d been writing: unfiltered snapshots of hardscrabble Southern living zoomed in on the people and places. Fleshed out by a full band and esteemed guest players, Dowdy’s final compositions are, indeed, big.
They aren’t always pretty, per se (although exquisite fiddle pulls and glossy keys attenuate some of the denser offerings, to an unearthly, beautiful effect), but unabated love seeps from every cranny of even the gnarliest, craggiest constructions, deluging every corner of the heart. Each song is a microcosm of its own, and the anecdotes within each, if banal, are so intensely vivid that it’s challenging to imagine them having solely transpired on paper—you can almost trace the steps of every character, deepening their footprints as you meander the dirt roads winding across 11 chapters.
Philadelphia shoegaze band They Are Gutting a Body of Water have announced a lengthy tour and a new album. “Lotto”, their fourth studio LP, arrived October via Julia’s War/Smoking Room/ATORecords. Bolstering the record is new single “Trainers,” which comes with a Ben Turok–directed video.
What began as the solo project of singer Doug Dulgarian has since been expanded into a proper four-piece, with bassist Emily Lofing, guitarist PJ Carroll, and drummer Ben Opatut joining the fold. Their new LP is billed as a step away from the digital collage work of 2022’s “Lucky Styles” and the compilation “Swanlike (Loosies 2020 – 2023)”, with Dulgarian instead putting the emphasis on his guitar again—as evidenced in “Trainers” and the previously released track “American Food.”
The American group are a ferocious proposition – caustic guitar music that unfurls in squalls of noise, they don’t sit easily into any one bracket.
The band will play a full UK tour in February, with new single ‘rl stine’ out now. The title may refer to the famed Goosebumps and Point Horror author, but the lyrics hone in on more personal details, with the volume rising around the words.
“There is a guy who I see every day near my house,” bandleader Doug Dulgarian reflects. “I always buy him a pack of Newport hundreds, knowing full well that he will trade it for crack. I wonder sometimes if it’s the addict in me, enabling the addict in him, or if I just fully understand his struggle. Perhaps we’re the same after all.”
released October 17th, 2025
all songs written by they are gutting a body of water except ‘slo crostic’ written by: canty, lally, mackaye, piccciotto. originally recorded by fugazi
Suzzallo (pronounced Sue-Zuh-Low) is a new Seattle-based rock band fronted by Rocky Votolato. After the devastating loss of his child in a tragic car accident, Votolato created an entire new world inside of music that transmutes extreme grief into something healing and beautiful. The result is Suzzallo’s debut album, “The Quiet Year”, an explosive eulogy of fuzzed-out, ‘90s inspired alt-rock songs that are as anthemic as they are cathartic.
Sonically, Suzzallo is somewhat of a return to form for Votolato. He’s primarily known for his solo career, with nine albums that showcase his knack for intimate, acoustic-based indie folk, but Votolato started out playing in louder bands, like Waxwing, who gained an underground cult following in the mid-2000s Pacific Northwest punk and hardcore scene. Suzzallo’s music taps into that same spirit: blistering guitars, soaring choruses, and poignantly impactful lyrics–all with a volume and fervent intensity that far surpasses even the fiercest of Votolato’s previous work. But Suzzallo’s powerhouse sound is more than an artistic choice, it’s a necessity.
“I guess it all started to take shape in the summer of 2022, about six months after Kienan passed,” Votolato explains. “I knew I needed a louder, bigger, more explosive sound to say what I needed to with this project. This kind of personal tragedy rearranges everything about you as a human and artist. I needed a new channel to express what I was going through and the only thing that made any sense to me were the most distorted guitar sounds I could find–I was doing months of primal screaming as a form of grief recovery before I was ever even able to sing at all, so that played into the vocal delivery as well.” The songs that became Suzzallo’s debut confront the shattering weight of grief head on, while also revealing an uplifting strength and determination to carry on beneath it–not so much a reinvention as a reincarnation. “I was completely shattered and knocked down by this loss, but I feel like Suzzallo is a big part of getting back on my feet and finding a reason to keep going,” says Votolato. “I’m so grateful for the way creating art has helped me process my grief and heal, and I hope these songs can bring some catharsis and comfort to others now as well.”
To make “The Quiet Year”, Votolato was joined by a team of friends and collaborators. Suzzallo’s lineup was rounded out by bassist Steve Bonnell (Schoolyard Heroes) and drummer Rudy Gajadhar (Waxwing), and they recruited legendary producer John Goodmanson (Unwound, The Blood Brothers, Sleater-Kinney) to record the album at Robert Lang Studios in Seattle. Votolato’s longtime friend Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie and The Postal Service is even featured on several songs, lending his signature vocals to beautifully placed harmonies, along with performing electric guitar, bass 6, and piano.
On the massive opening one-two punch of “River” and “The Destroyer” Suzzallo introduce their core sound: fuzz-drenched, Pumpkins-esque guitar tones juxtaposed with moving lyric-driven melodies. It’s a highly effective combination that demands the listener’s full attention and doesn’t let go. “I love those ‘90s distorted guitar tones and they were a big comfort to me,” Votolato says. “It’s almost like when Kienan died I immediately was transported back to all of my earliest punk and post-hardcore influences, bands like Jawbreaker, Drive Like Jehu, and Fugazi. Full catharsis was my goal so those were definitely in there, but there was something new as well–something more melody and chorus-driven while keeping that high energy 90’s approach at the same time.”
Lyrically, the songs on “The Quiet Year” are intensely honest portraits of an impossible to describe loss. They’re marked by Votolato’s vulnerability and details that honour his child (such as recurring images of dragons), and throughout the record the singer always manages to deliver heartrending lyrics through bold, well-crafted hooks. It’s a magic trick that somehow makes lines like “no one told us love was this dangerous” (from mid-album standout “Star String Radio”), or “You became the sky, the grey and the white, against the blue, I hope you’re doing alright” (from “Constellations”) all the more effective.
The music that makes up Suzzallo’s debut is more than enough to turn heads based on sound alone. These are truly massive, earth-shaking rock songs, the kind that make your skull rattle while filling it up with instantly memorable hooks. But they’re more than that. They’re also the kind of songs that needed to be made. The kind of songs that fulfill their cathartic purpose before they even go out into the world. But lucky for us they’re also the kind of songs that need to be heard.
Denison Witmer is an indie singer-songwriter hailing from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. With a soulful voice and introspective lyrics, he has captivated audiences worldwide. Drawing inspiration from his surroundings and personal experiences, Denison’s music resonates with listeners on a deep level.
Often compared to artists such as David Bazan, The Welcome Wagon, and Rosie Thomas, Denison’s unique sound blends folk, rock, and pop elements to create a truly captivating musical experience. His heartfelt melodies and poetic storytelling have earned him a dedicated fanbase that continues to grow with each release.
Having collaborated with notable musicians like Damien Jurado and Derek Webb, Denison has proven himself as an influential figure in the indie music scene. His discography includes albums such as “Are You A Dreamer?” and “The Ones Who Wait,” which showcase his talent for crafting beautiful melodies that tug at the heartstrings.
Denison Witmer returns with a new collection of ten vibrant and pensive folk-pop songs recorded and produced by Sufjan Stevens, his long-time friend and collaborator. “Anything At All finds” Denison in a suitably reflective mood, mining sublime revelation from an ordinary, domesticated life. Topics like bird watching, carpentry, houseplants, and hiking offer insights into bigger, existential questions about life, death, meaning, and purpose. What are we doing with the precious time we have left on this earth? Whether it’s spent making clocks, gathering berries, planting trees, or putting the kids to bed at night, these songs suggest that a life lived with thoughtfulness and care can lead to deeper joy and fulfilment.
Recorded sporadically over a period of two years, “Anything At All” was primarily created at Sufjan’s Catskills studio during the pandemic, with additional sessions recorded by Andy Park, in Seattle, WA. Contributors include Stevens and Park as well as Sam Evian, Hannah Cohen, Sean Lane, and KeenanO’Meara, amongst others. The album’s musical aesthetic marries Denison’s folksy, Mennonite vibe with Sufjan’s signature bells and whistles: lush strings and woodwinds, women’s choir, and an occasional jazzy saxophone weave their way around Denison’s matter-of-fact vocals and acoustic guitar. These are simple folk songs with bursts of awe and wonder.
“Anything At All” is Produced and Recorded by, and features Sufjan Stevens.
Often hailed for their pivotal role in laying the groundwork for the Britpop era, Suede were oh-so-much more than a mere warm-up act for Blur, Oasis, Pulp and the new generation of English guitar bands who followed in their slipstream. Suede looked, talked and sounded like an important, game-changing band from the moment their striking debut single, “The Drowners”, which dropped in May 1992. The following year, with a self-titled debut album which frontman Brett Anderson grandly declared to be about “sex and depression in equal measure”, they drew upon classic British glam (specifically David Bowie), indie (chiefly The Smiths), and post-punk to make the most arresting British rock album since The Stone Roses, with Anderson’s whimsical androgyny colliding with Bernard Butler’s fiery guitar heroics.
Swaggering into a moribund British ‘alternative’ scene then cowed firmly in the shadow of US grunge, Suede looked, talked and sounded like an important, game-changing band from the moment their striking debut single, “The Drowners”, dropped in May 1992. The following year, with a self-titled debut album which frontman Brett Anderson grandly declared to be about “sex and depression in equal measure”, they drew upon classic British glam (specifically David Bowie), indie (chiefly The Smiths), and post-punk to make the most arresting British rock album since The Stone Roses, with Anderson’s whimsical androgyny colliding with Bernard Butler’s fiery guitar heroics.
The UK’s ‘indie’ music papers quickly declared Suede ‘The Best New Band In Britain’. Three decades on, many fans view the revitalised group as simply Britain’s Best Band. For while their ’90s peers have come and gone, Suede have survived, and indeed thrived, continuing to make music that matters.
Head Music (1999)
Released three years after the euphoric, triumphant “Coming Up”, an appropriate alternate title for “Head Music” might be ‘The Comedown’. With Brett Anderson’s barely-concealed crack addiction putting the group’s inter-personal relationships under considerable strain – guitarist Richard Oakes admits to showing up for rehearsals half-pissed in order to handle being in the same room as the singer – it’s little wonder that the quintet’s fourth album lacks cohesion and focus.
That said, given the climate in which it was cobbled together, “Head Music” has no right to sound as good as it does. Produced by Steve Osborne, best known for his work with New Order, U2 and Happy Mondays, Suede’s trademark sound received a pre-Millennium update with the integration of elements of electronica and dance music, as heard on lead single “Electricty” and the title track. With his head not fully in the game at the time, Brett Anderson would subsequently lament not pushing what became his group’s third number one record into even more experimental territories, but if this is Suede at their worst, “Head Music” is certainly not an embarrassment.
A New Morning (2002)
The final Suede album released ahead of what proved to be a seven-year hiatus, A New Morning was recorded by a unit weakened by the 2001 departure, for health reasons, of longtime keyboardist Neil Codling. Fan expectations were further lowered by two mediocre singles, with Positivity possessing a soft, acoustic vibe, while “Obsessions” found Suede trying but failing to reconnect with the dark glamour of their early work.
Lacking a clear direction, with drug abuse rife and discontent festering, “A New Morning” plays out as listless and uneven, and while its predecessors all debuted within the Top 5 on the UK album chart, their fifth collection failed to breach the Top 20. It’s easy to see why a jaded and weary band splintered in the wake of its failings. When Suede returned, Brett Anderson described the album as “a disaster in every way”, concluding “It was just a very bad record.”
The Blue Hour (2018)
Written and composed over 18 months, recorded in just six weeks, “The Blue Hour“, titled in reference to “the time of day when the light is fading and night is closing in” the band revealed, was steeped in a touch of duality from the start. A dark, bold piece of art, featuring a choir and poetic spoken word dialogue, like most of Suede’s ‘second act’ records, it’s a fine addition to their catalogue, albeit one perhaps missing that special ‘something’ that elevates their very best work.
Where Suede’s early work sought to evoke both the suffocating blandness of suburbia and the edgy, seedy thrills of after-dark London,“The Blue Hour” has a rural setting, and an uneasy gothic tone. Speaking to NME ahead of the album’s release, Brett Anderson described its character as “quite dank and troubling”, explaining, “A lot of this is about the terrors of childhood, so it’s quite unpleasant in lots of ways. I think Suede should be unpleasant, that’s the point of a band like Suede.”
If the defining characteristic, then, of “The Blue Hour” is its lack of elegance when compared to Suede’s early work, this actually works in its favour on an album which deliberate challenges lazy preconceptions about who/what Suede are in the present tense.
Night Thoughts (2016)
In contrast to “The Blue Hour”, “Night Thoughts” has elegance in spades, summoning ghosts of Suede’s past, imbued as it with a similar sense of romanticism and glamour – and the same undercurrent for potential danger – which run through “Suede” and “Dog Man Star”.
It stands up as a tremendous latter-day album from a continuously curious band. Through its layers of guitars, keys, and distinctive vocals, Suede deliver spacious sonic textures for songs about love, anxiety, mortality, and future hopes, fears and expectations. The album was accompanied by an atmospheric film directed by former NME photographer Roger Sargent, but with lyrics and music alone the likes of “When You Are Young, No Tomorrow“, and “Learning to Be” paint their own vivid images.
Bloodsports (2013)
Precious few bands return from hiatus with work of a standard to mirror their early accomplishments. So, in 2013, when Suede cemented their comeback with the promise of a sixth studio album, few would have imagined that they could do just that.
Arguing that “Bloodsports” is as spectacular or inventive as Suede’s early records could be a stretch. But honestly, it’s in the ballpark. Meaning that with their return to the fray, Anderson’s band effectively erased much of the sneering and snark heaped upon the band as it unraveled in the early 2000s.
With Richard Oakes doing his best to evoke Bernard Butler’s operatic six-string flurries and Anderson wailing like it’s 1995, on tracks like “Hit Me” and “It Starts and Endwith You“, Suede managed to recapture touches of the divine melancholy which made them great in the first place.
Autofiction (2022)
During a pre-release press junket for “Autofiction”, Brett Anderson was quoted as saying, “Every record is a reaction to the last record to some extent. You don’t want to just keep going in the same direction.” The proof of his words duly arrived on September last year.
Bristling with the anger and angst of a class of ’82 punk album, “Autofiction” is Suede’s most significant achievement of the last 25 years. There’s just enough nostalgia here to satiate the old faithfuls, but with heaps of forward-thinking musicality, we’d wager that its converted more new believers than any other post-reunion release. It’s so good, in fact, that the likes of “She Still Leads Me On”, “Personality Disorder”, and “Shadow Self” make one forget there ever was a pre-Richard Oakes era.
Dog Man Star (1994)
Having made such a seismic impact with their acclaimed debut album, Suede were never going to dial back their ambitions or compromise their vision when tasked with delivering its follow-up. Rolling Stone duly labelled “Dog Man Star” one of the most pretentious albums ever released by a major label”, a diss one imagines a doubtless delighted Brett Anderson would have worn as a badge of honour. Your loss America.
That he and Bernard Butler, who wanted to produce the record himself and furiously resented being denied that opportunity, held absolutely nothing back when reunited in the studio with Suede producer Ed Bueller in early 1994 was surely informed by a growing awareness on the part both men that their friendship and creative partnership might not survive beyond the recording sessions. For these increasingly hollow men, come what may in the studio, the world would end with a bang, and not a whimper.
And so “Dog Man Star” was mapped out for a widescreen format, Suede granted the broadest of canvases across which to unfurl an epic story of the pursuit of dreams and ambition while managing broken hearts and broken homes, tragedy and trauma, desperation and death, all the big stuff
So, sure, at times it can be a bit hard to decipher, a bit overwhelming, a bit extra. But if you step back and soak in tracks like “We Are the Pigs” and “The Wild Ones” for what they are – pieces of distinctive art – the grandeur of the record comes into complete focus. For its chief architects, “Dog Man Star” was conceived as an anti-Britpop statement, a rejection of the simplistic sentients of Live Forever,and both Anderson and Butler would have been aware that this was an not album destined to dovetail neatly with the culture and climate of the time. And in following their muse, and (temporarily) setting aside their personal differences, they crafted what may be Suede’s most idiosyncratic artistic statement.
By the time the album’s provocative lead-off single, “We Are The Pigs“, was released is September ’94, Butler had already walked away from Suede, never to return. Which meant that the band’s appearance on Top Of The Pops to promote the single would become notable for being the world’s introduction to 17-year-old Richard Oakes, Suede’s new guitarist, who had played not one note on their forthcoming dark masterpiece.
Coming Up (1996)
The loss of gifted guitarist and musical lynchpin Bernard Butler could have easily derailed Suede: beyond the obvious loss of momentum his departure would inevitably trigger, the timing of his exit coincided with the UK music weeklies, BBC Radio 1 and influential international media organisations beginning to realise that Oasis’ Noel Gallagher and Liam Gallagher, Blur’s Damon Albarn and Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker were every bit as quotable as Brett Anderson and arguably more relatable than Suede’s frontman. A worst case scenario could have seen Suede shunted out of the spotlight at the exact point that Britpop began penetrating mainstream consciousness.
Instead, Suede dusted themselves down, located another prodigiously-talented guitarist in teenager Richard Oakes, and commenced more collaborative, less charged writing sessions for a third album in which each band member, including new addition Neil Codling on keyboards, could feel invested. The result was “Coming Up“, easily the most accessible, and arguably the best-known, album of their career. At the outset of the writing process, Anderson pitched the notion of Suede album three being a ‘pop’ album, featuring 10 potential hit singles. In the end, in a span of 12.5 months, it delivered no fewer than five Top 10 hits in the UK, and was classified as a ‘platinum-selling’ (300,000 UK sales) album within three months of its release.
But even as “Coming Up” penetrated the mainstream, Suede cleverly maintained an image as scene outliers, champions of the marginalised and misunderstood, so that Anderson’s empathetic, underdog anthems – encapsulated in the the album’s cornerstone lyric ‘We’re trash, you and me / We’re the litter on the breeze’ – rang out as sincere, honest and believable. And in that visual lyric, Anderson was able to astutely assure Suede’s original fan-base that they’d still be fighting to amplify their voices, concerns, and fears long after Britpop fizzled out and faded from centre stage.
Suede (1993)
Was there ever really any doubt as to which Suede album would occupy the top spot? Suede’s self-titled debut was a game changer.
Preceded by three incredible single’s – “The Drowners”, “Metal Mickey” and the remarkably graphic “Animal Nitrate”(‘Well he said he’d show you his bed / And the delights of the chemical smile So in your broken home he broke all your bones / Now you’re taking it time after time’) – it lives up to every word of the hype thrown its way ahead of it’s March 1993 release and properly introduced Anderson and Butler as a Morrissey/Marr-esque songwriting partnership for a new generation.
“Rarely has a record from the indie sector come with such a burning sense of its own significance,” noted Q magazine, approvingly in its review of the record. Suede duly charted at number 1 in the UK, selling north of 100,000 copies in its first week on sale, and would go on to win the Mercury Music Prize. It remains a benchmark for great British rock in the modern era.
“It was a wonderful time for us when we were all still young men; wild – eyed and passionate and heedless, when we were still united and mutually purposeful and when it felt like the world could be ours,” Anderson reflected as the album received a 25th anniversary reissue. “The album is charged with a naivety but it manages to have a feel which I still love; it rages and it screams, it yelps and it whispers and captures some truth of who we were at that moment in our lives: youthful, impertinent, ambitious and flawed.”
Nailed it.
For while so many of their ’90s peers have faded, disappeared or lapsed into pure nostalgia, Suede have survived, and indeed thrived, continuing to make music that matters, as emphatically proved by their most recent album, “Antidepressants“.
Antidepressants (2025)
Introducing Suede’s tenth album ahead of its September 2025 release, Brett Anderson said “If “Autofiction” was our punk record, “Antidepressants” is our post-punk record. It’s about the tensions of modern life, the paranoia, the anxiety, the neurosis. We are all striving for connection in a disconnected world… This is broken music for broken people.”
But what a life-affirming record. “Antidepressants” sounds like it was recorded in a day by a bunch of pissed-off art students sharing a hatred of authority and a mutual love of Joy Division, Killing Joke, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Echo & The Bunnymen and Gang of Four. A band this deep into their career have no right to sound this good, this urgent, or as fierce as Suede do here on the likes of “Disintegrate” and the title track. If “Antidepressants” was a debut album, it’d be garnering Suede ‘Britain’s Best New Band’ plaudits anew.
“Ace” is the third studio album by American musician Madison Cunningham. It was released on October 10th, 2025, through Verve Forecast Records. The album was produced by Cunningham alongside RobbieLackritz. “My Full Name” was released as the album’s lead single on August 15th, 2025, followed by “Wake” (featuring Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes) . A pivotal and personal record that spans 14 tracks and is out on Verve Forecast. Depending on the game, an Ace can be the highest or lowest card, zero or infinity. A breakup feels similar—one path crumbles, while all others remain infinitely possible. How do you write about heartbreak when you’re going through it?
An official album “bio” for “Ace” states that the majority of the songs on the album were written in August 2024 following a period of writer’s block, and deal with themes of heartbreak, betrayal, and falling in and out of love. Additionally, Cunningham described the album as “the first record that’s ever felt like mine from start to finish. It was as light to make as its subject matter was heavy.” Cunningham performed much of the new material live throughout early 2025, before the album had been announced.
Alongside the album announcement, Madison swaps her trusty guitar for lush piano on the first single, “My Full Name,” a vulnerable introduction that is both a love letter and a goodbye. Cunningham sings, “Love’s a kind of sorrow worth saving,” as she processes heartbreak and explores new beginnings.
Cunningham wrote “Wake” while in Nashville during a blizzard in January; the song stemmed from experimentation with a new alternate tuning on guitar. The final recording is a duet with Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes and also features prominent upright bass played by Daniel Rhine. Cunningham described the track as a “song about reflection, about looking in the rearview mirror and seeing someone wasn’t right for you all along.
Upon release, “Ace” received positive reviews from critics.
My name is Clark Hamilton and I have made music under the moniker klark sound and Stranger Sounding. I generally play all the instruments you hear in these recordings as well as record them myself. On the heels of his last record “What Is Music”, Clark Hamilton(klark sound) released a solo acoustic album entitled “This Is Music“. A stark and distilled collection of songs recorded in just 3 evening sessions immediately after the mixing of “What Is Music” was finished in 2024.
These acoustic songs are just Clark and his guitar; his words and melodic sentiments outlining powerful emotional experiences and reflections. With this record Clark answers his own question, and delivers succinct yet unfolding compositions that find new meaning with each listen. He aIso plays in another band called Improvement Movement.
Klark charms us with his soothing vocal harmonies and then blasts us with kick-ass guitar solos on his latest record “What Is Music.” The album is an invitation into Klark’s deepest vulnerabilities as an artist, where finding his identity and voice is contrasted with a near death experience that left his guts literally spilled onto the ground over a decade ago. Struggling with how he is perceived by the world despite his other-worldly musical talent, Klark puts all of his moods and colors on display with heart wrenching songs about love, imposter syndrome, and the meaning of music itself. This record is unlike any other you will listen to this year. There are no production gimmicks, song features, or session players. This is Klark playing every instrument, each performance largely unprocessed and captured for the raw energy and spirit in which it was created.
Recorded in three days in March 2024. These are some solo songs of mine old and new.
Daniel Kleederman Steps Into the Spotlight with his Debut Solo LP “Another Life”, ahead of a New Single “Compromised Positions”. Best known as the musical director and touring guitarist for indie powerhouse Bartees Strange, Daniel Kleederman is finally stepping into his own spotlight with his debut solo album, on Grand Kid Records. Leading the charge is “Compromised Positions,” a shape-shifting, cosmic psychological thriller of a track that arrives today alongside a mesmerizing video.
“Compromised Positions” explores the weight of honesty and love amid cycles of seduction and codependency, warping time and space as the gravitational pull of a breakup intensifies. “It’s the only song on the record that went through a serious editing process,” Kleederman reveals. “The original version was eight minutes long—I may release it one day.”
The album’s opening track, “A Knock At The Door,” signals a closing chapter, setting the tone for a record that feels both deeply personal and grand in scope. Co-produced with longtime collaborator Chris Connors (Bartees Strange, Holy Hive), “Another Life” is an odyssey through love, loss, and the dizzying highs and lows of self-discovery.
Sonically adventurous yet deeply human, the record blends progressive rock, folk, and post-Americana, crafted through years of meticulous collaboration with Connors. Standout track “Compromised Positions” is a visceral, psychedelic ride through a mind at war with itself, propelled by frenetic guitar work and elastic rhythms. Meanwhile, “They’ll Be” injects unexpected humor, complete with over-the-top baritone guitar duets and bold key changes—an embodiment of Kleederman’s belief that true sincerity embraces both pain and joy.
The album’s journey culminates in “Answers,” a mantra-laced, ocean-sized closer that seems to exist in the past, present, and future simultaneously—much like Another Life itself. A fearless, cathartic debut, the record cements Kleederman as not just a sideman, but a singular voice in his own right.
A lifelong guitarist, Kleederman’s relationship with his instrument is central to his artistry. Raised in the hills of Western Massachusetts, he spent childhood afternoons cranking up his amp and escaping into sonic worlds alongside The Beatles and B.B. King. His path sharpened at Vassar College, where he met Connors and drummer Alex Goldberg (L’Rain, Cassandra Jenkins, Jessica Pratt), both of whom would become essential creative partners. After nearly a decade in NYC’s underground scene, fate led him to Bartees Strange in early 2020—just before the world shut down. Retreating to his hometown, Kleederman reconnected with his roots, trained as a life coach, and rekindled his love for songwriting, eventually leading to the birth of “Another Life”.
Songs written by Daniel Kleederman
Musicians: Daniel Kleederman – lead and backing vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, slide guitars, bass (tracks 2, 9), percussion, effects Chris Connors – bass, additional guitars (tracks 1, 9, 11), keyboards, programming, percussion, effects, backing vocals (tracks 1, 3, 10, 11) Alex Goldberg – drums, percussion Kate Victor – backing vocals (tracks 1, 6-9) Kyle Morgan – backing vocals (tracks 1, 6-9)
Another Life arrives April 4th via Grand Kid Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 