The Harmony Codex – the seventh solo album by Steven Wilson – takes you on a trip. A genre-spanning collection that opens up like a musical puzzle box, it presents a series of endlessly beautiful vistas that roll out and shift in front of you. Arguably the best album Wilson has made during a career…
The Asylum Years (1972–1975) is the latest entry in Rhino’s ongoing, Grammy-winning series exploring the vast untapped archives of rare recordings by Joni Mitchell – a project guided intimately by Mitchell’s own vision and personal touch. The collection begins with an early cut of ‘Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire’, one of two songs (along…
The Handsome Family’s new record, Hollow, began with a scream in the night. “It was a bleak winter during the middle of the pandemic,” says Brett Sparks. “One night around 4 a.m. Rennie started screaming in her sleep. She screamed, ‘Come into the circle, Joseph! There’s no moon tonight.’ Scary as it was, I thought,…
Wilco’s thirteenth studio album, Cousin, was recorded in the band’s legendary Chicago studio The Loft over a period of two years. The ten new tracks were written by band leader Jeff Tweedy and feature musical performances by the long-time line-up of Nels Cline, Mikael Jorgensen, Glenn Kotche, John Stirratt, Pat Sansone and, of course, Tweedy…
Black Grape could only have been made in Manchester. The swagger, fun and cryptic humour seem hewn from a city historian AJP Taylor once described as offering an archetypally different way of English urban life to London. Both Shaun Ryder and Paul Leveridge, known as Kermit, came from edgy-but-cool parts of the city: in Shaun’s…
Emma Anderson, co-founder of Lush, is one of the most underrated British songwriters to emerge from the era that encompassed shoegaze and Britpop. She has now teamed up with producer James Chapman (aka Maps) for her debut solo album, Pearlies, an album that combines effervescent electronic pop with psych and folk textures with lyrics covering…
The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Light is a classic Streets album – filled with Mike Skinner’s trademark lyrical wizardry and beats honed over a decade of building his other career as a legitimate bass/rap DJ in clubs. All the songs on the album were written by Skinner but feature vocal contributions from longtime…
This New Noise is a newly remixed and remastered live recording of Public Service Broadcasting’s acclaimed 2022 BBC Proms show at the Royal Albert Hall. A celebration of the power of radio written in recognition of the centenary of the BBC, This New Noise saw the band joining forces with the 88-piece BBC Symphony Orchestra,…
Israel Nash first rose to fame in Europe, where he built a loyal following with a series of critically acclaimed albums that landed him a deal with the renowned Loose Music label. As American audiences began to catch on, the Missouri native relocated to Dripping Springs, Texas, where he built his own recording studio on…
Sigur Rós’s first new studio album in ten years, ÁTTA, is their most intimate and emotionally direct record to date. Few bands cut through the noise and distractions of the world to bring you a pure elemental truth or feeling like Sigur Rós. As you hear on ÁTTA, there’s a new compulsion and drive to…
