Rock ‘n’ roll is often hard to define, or even to find, in these fractured musical times. But to paraphrase an old saying, you know it when you hear it. And you always hear it with The Wallflowers. For the past 30 years, the Jakob Dylan-led act has stood as one of rock’s most dynamic…
Our picks for 16 and 23 April start with Flat White Moon from Field Music. “We want to make people feel good about things that we feel terrible about,” says David Brewis, who has co-led the band with his brother Peter since 2004. It’s a statement which seems particularly fitting to this latest album. Sporadic…
Sons Of Kemet returns in 2021 with their new album Black To The Future. The follow up to 2018’s Mercury Prize nominated breakout release Your Queen Is A Reptile. This is their fourth record, and their second on Impulse! Compared with Your Queen Is A Reptile, this album has featured vocalists and more of an…
Our picks from releases between 26 March and 9 April start with Dry Cleaning’s debut studio album, New Long Leg (2 April), which follows their thrillingly taut 2019 EPs Boundary Road Snacks And Drinks and Sweet Princess. The album is more ambitious and complex, with Florence Shaw’s spoken vocals tightly intertwined with the band’s restless…
Produced by long-time friend Cate Le Bon, Boy From Michigan is John Grant’s most autobiographical and melodic work to date. Grant stopped being a boy in Michigan aged twelve, when his family moved to Denver, Colorado, shifting rust to bible belt, a further vantage point to watch collective dreams unravel. Across 12 tracks, Grant lays…
Seeking New Gods, the seventh solo album from Gruff Rhys, was recorded following a US tour with his band and mixed in LA with superstar producer Mario C (Beastie Boys). The album concept was originally driven to be the biography of a mountain, Mount Paektu (an East Asian active volcano). However, as Gruff’s writing began…
The inimitable Godspeed You! Black Emperor returns with another soundtrack for our times. As the heretical anarcho-punk spirit of the title implies, G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END! features some particularly raw power, spittle and grit across two riveting 20-minute side-length trajectories of noise-drenched widescreen post-rock: inexorable chug blossoms into blown-out twang, as some of the…
Blue Weekend, the brand new album from Wolf Alice, follows 2018’s Visions Of A Life and 2015’s My Love Is Cool. The British alt-rockers created Blue Weekend in hopes of emboldening their storytelling and refining their musical style. Lead single ‘The Last Man on Earth’ makes good on that promise by pushing singer Ellie Rowsell‘s…
Carnage is a new album by Nick Cave & Warren Ellis, recorded over a period of weeks during lockdown. Although the pair have composed and recorded many soundtracks together, and Ellis is a long-term member of The Bad Seeds, this is the first time they have released an entire album of songs as a duo.…
Our pick of 5 March’s new releases starts with William The Conqueror, a band who have paid their dues. Like the sportsman cutting chipped teeth in the lower leagues before shooting to the very top, this band have lugged all the amps, placated the in-house sound guy for an easier life, their nails dirty, their…