This week’s smashers kick off with the second volume of live recordings from Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit’s annual residency at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. Live from the Ryman Vol. 2 features live versions of 13 songs from Weathervanes and Reunions, plus a stunning rendition of ‘The Last Song I Will Write’…
THE PLAIN TRUTH== we drifted through it, arguing. every day a new war crime, every day a flower bloom. we sat down together and wrote it in one room, and then sat down in a different room, recording. NO TITLE= what gestures make sense while tiny bodies fall? what context? what broken melody? and…
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…
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…
The first of our recommended releases for 22 September is from Reverend And The Makers; if their last album, 2015’s Mirrors, was weird and wonderful, The Death Of A King continues the strange feel that seems to attach itself to much of their music. V is, unsurprisingly, the 5th album from The Horrors, and it’s…
Pre-sale of the week is Luciferian Towers by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, out on 22 September. Luciferian Towers is an album that Godspeed You! Black Emperor made in the midst of communal mess, raising dogs and children. Godspeed themselves say: “Eyes up and filled with dreadful joy we aimed for wrong notes that explode, a…
We’re featuring 8 great new releases for next week. After much thought, the release of the week is Carrie & Lowell by Sufjan Stevens: an elegant, heartfelt depiction of his relationship with his mother and how it changed as she died. There are also new studio albums from The Prodigy, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Ryley…