
If you’ve been reading the music press this week, there was some alarm or peevish glee (depending on where you were doing your reading) that vinyl sales had dropped. A Billboard piece stated that vinyl sales dropped by 33%, which is not insignificant. That’s selling 34.9 million units, down to 23.3 million in 2024. Are…

At the country music awards, they didn’t nominate Beyonce for anything despite her all-conquering country LP and while many shrugged, many were irritated by the whole thing. The irritation came from all sides, but more importantly, so did the shrugs – apart from something for the shelf in the spare toilet or a sticker to…

There’s something about golden era rap that just loves a fancy action figure, to place on your shelves next to your collected essays from hip hop journalism, tchotchkes, rap comics and high-end record middles and the like. It’s very wholesome, honestly. Well, Doom’s ‘Mm… Food’ is getting a reissue for its anniversary on November 15th,…

Once upon a time, music retreated away from the bombast of Britpop and US rap-rock, and all over the place, more introspective bedroom producers were making tricky electronic music and singer-songwriters gravitated toward the acid-folk of the ’70s, focusing more on cottage industries and community. Tunng managed to straddle both worlds, with critics dubbing their…

Look, most bands put a song out to let you know new things are coming, but not 2nd Grade. The power poppers from Philadelphia have chucked THREE whole songs at our ears and mercifully, they’re all really fun and filled with skuzzy pop hooks and jangly guitars. The revival of power pop is very welcome…

Today is John Lennon’s birthday – he would have been 84 – and to celebrate this, we’ve been treated to something rather surprising. While a lot of repackaged music from musicians can feel a little exploitative at times, churning out old stuff without much new going on, that’s not the case with this latest Lennon…

The excellent GULP are having a party for the 8th instalment of their broadsheet counter-culture magazine, which features all the wonderful words, tidbits, diatribes and cool design we’ve come to expect from them now. The issue drops on Friday 11th October and you can get down in person at The New Cross in Manchester’s Northern…

A lot of shoegaze can be a little deferential to the late ’80s/early ’90s sound, which is nice and all, but it is better when someone puts something of a new twist on it. And so to Texas, with the group Trauma Ray who have a new song out called ‘Spectre’ which switches from the…

Hey! We’ve done our latest radio show and it features some great new music that you may or may not have heard on these very pages before. Almost certainly you haven’t heard all of it though. We think we’ve found the new Arthur Russell – how about that for a bold claim? Old stuff, new…

Willie Nelson’s career has been a broad and interesting one, so maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that at 91 years young, he’s decided to release a cover version of The Flaming Lips’ ‘Do You Realize?’ from ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’. That’s exactly what’s happened in the lead-up to his release of ‘Last Leaf on…

We’re pretty excited about the new album from Fievel Is Glauque. Their mix of ’60s jazz pop and gonzo psychedelic electronics is a thing that makes our ears fizz with excitement! They’ve got a brand new song out called ‘Love Weapon’ and it is out right now on Fat Possum. Obviously, it’ll feature on the…
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