
Caroline Polacheck’s is an adventurous pop star, and that’s always a good thing. She’s recently hit out at lazy comparisons to Bjork and Kate Bush, preferring to make music under her own steam, which is fair enough. She’s got a big voice and likes to be mildly awkward, which we say as a compliment of…

Hey! Do you like new music and, not just new music, but slightly difficult music that’s fun? Well, you should check outy Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra newbie, ‘Future Shaman’. Apply here if you like wonky jazz and post-rock. It’s discordant, good stuff. Mazurek is a composer/trumpeter and the Exploding Star Orchestra features Damon Locks…

We like a popstar making bold choices, and Sam Smith has been doing exactly that lately. It doesn’t matter whether you like the tunes or not, we should absolutely support a commercial artist when they lean into the experimental and off-kilter. Did you see them on SNL, with Sharon Stone draping themselves all over the…

It feels kinda shitty referring to a new artist as ‘Bjork’s daughter’, but needs must. Isadora Bjarkardottir Barney is her name, and she’s released her debut solo work as part of a comp showcasing Icelandic music. The comp is called ‘DRULLUMALL 4’ and Isadora’s track – ‘bergmál’ – is really good, you’ll be glad to…

The mighty Pet Shop Boys are all set to share some previously unreleased songs in April. It’s all part of a new thing they’re doing and that new thing is a book called ‘Annually’. The 2023 edition of the yearly release (hence the name) will be a 64-page hardback affair, containing journals, photos from their…

You can try and be as clever as you want, deep diving on this, that, and the other… but sometimes it’s just worth reminding yourself how great a band were. From Detroit, America’s greatest music city, Inner City was the brainchild of the great Kevin Saunderson and Paris Grey. Saunderson of course, was one of…

Light In The Attic have been doing a wonderful job giving Lee Hazelwood’s back catalogue a spring clean, and they’re at it again, this time with ‘Nancy & Lee Again’, now available to pre-order on vinyl and, even better, 8-track! It’ll be streaming too, if you’re not in the habit of buying stuff. It’ll be…

Some people are already all over this, some are not – but Eddie Chacon was in Charles & Eddie (‘Would I Lie To You?’ ohyeah!) and he’s been releasing really, really brilliant music lately. Like, utterly fantastic AOR/Future Soul/NuYacht brilliance on Stones Throw Records. No lie. With the 2020 album ‘Pleasure, Joy And Happiness’, he…

Look, you should already be subscribed to BANDSPLAINING on YouTube. If you’re not, this is your heads-up. The latest video explains Library Music, so if you’ve been jonesing for someone to dissect what it is, what’s good about it, and who it influenced, this is a great primer to get you going. If you’re already…

Remember us telling you about the documentary about Scottish girl groups? We did, y’know? It sounded great didn’t it? Well, you may have thought you wouldn’t be able to watch it without getting in some narrow window of when it was aired at some fun, cool indie cinema somewhere. The good news is that you’ll…

Gracie Abrams has opened a can of worms this week, and that’s fine. Pop stars are supposed to run their mouths occasionally, and everyone else in turn, gets to run theirs. That’s the way pop culture works – it’s a contact sport. Speaking about Taylor Swift, she said: “There’s also nothing that comes close to…

We liked the Waxahatchee album – ‘Tigers Blood’ – a lot, but sadly got into it too late to have it on our end of year lists. Still, good music is still great whenever you hear it! With that, we’re right on time to hear a new track from the same sessions, and its called…
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