More. is the first Pulp album since We Love Life in 2001. Yes: the first Pulp album for almost 24 years. How did that happen? When the band started touring again in 2023, they practised a new song called ‘Hymn of the North’ during soundchecks and eventually played it at the end of the…
Well, here it is at last! Record Store Day 2025 is upon us this Saturday. This will be my first time on this side of the counter, having queued in previous years, so I’m really excited – and a little bit nervous. I hope to make it as smooth an experience as possible for everyone,…
First to blast out the speakers this week is The Mars Volta’s ninth studio album, which represents a significant milestone for a band that has been continually reinventing itself for more than 20 years. With Lucro sucio; Los Ojos del Vacio, they deliver an album that celebrates their roots, allowing them to reconnect with their…
moisturizer is the bold second album from Wet Leg, the Isle of Wight five-piece founded by Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers and joined by Ellis Durand, Henry Holmes, and Joshua Mobaraki. The band has spent the past few years on the road, evolving into a feral, electrifying live force. This new record captures that…
We kick off this week’s bangers with Who Believes in Angels?, the debut collaborative album project from Elton John & Brandi Carlile. The album, which was co-written with Bernie Taupin and produced by Andrew Watt, includes ten new and original songs. This is Elton John’s 33rd and Brandi Carlile’s 8th studio album, respectively. Black Country,…
Sparks – brothers Ron and Russell Mael – are back with their 28th album. MAD! Most acts would, by their seventh decade in the biz, have slowed to a crawl, creakily playing their past hits on the heritage circuit and releasing nothing more than the occasional ‘greatest hits’ collection. This is not the case…
The first of our magical musical moments for this week comes from Alison Krauss & Union Station, who are known for an immaculately crafted but endlessly surprising sound that transcends the boundaries of roots, country, rock & roll and pop. Krauss is a 27-time Grammy winner who was inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of…
Following Mark Pritchard’s remixes for Radiohead, the pair struck upon an otherworldly synergy with the track ‘Beautiful People’, a centrepiece of Mark’s 2016 solo album Under the Sun. Now Tall Tales showcases Pritchard’s mastery of archaic machines that he had previously unearthed in synthesiser archives, guiding the music down unexpected and experimental paths. Thom…
The first of this week’s smashers takes us back to March 2011, when Catherine Anne Davies aka The Anchoress recorded her debut, Communion, at London’s legendary Church Studios with an all-female string section. Recorded live in a single afternoon, Communion is a collection of songs stripped of drums and modern technology. The mini-album was named…
Skeletà is the sixth album from Grammy-winning Swedish theatrical rock icons Ghost, a band on an inevitable path to world domination. This is the band’s most unflinchingly introspective work to date. Where previous albums dealt largely with chronicling and/or observing outward-facing subject matter – such as Impera’s meditations on the rise and fall of…