
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…

Everyone was scrabbling around looking for a password so they could hear Hayley Williams’ new music, we found it, nearly published it before it transpired that she’d removed all the music from her website. What a palaver. Well, good news is that she’s officially released the 17 songs for everyone to hear so we don’t…

Honestly, if a group is dubbed ‘post punk’, there’s a good chance we’ll swerve it as we’re over it already. However, there’s no denying there’s some cool bands that have been called such things, and we’ve got a new track from Ganser which is very good indeed. From Chicago, they’ve got a new song called…

The comeback of country music has been fun and all, but we’ve found ourselves wishing someone would remember the weirder, louder, garage punk elements of it – think of all those old, fantastic, sleazy records that lie between rockabilly, early rock ‘n’ roll, and booty shakers. Well, Manchester group HONK remember, and they have an…

South Korean group, Silica Gel (great band name, that) have teamed up with Michelle Zauner aka Japanese Breakfast for a new track called ‘南宮FEFERE’. Zauner says: “This was the first time I’ve ever written lyrics in Korean. Anyone who’s familiar with my work knows how much my Korean heritage has come to mean to me,…
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