The Hold Steady have made a welcome return with new record ‘Thrashing Thru the Passion’. The album was recorded in spontaneous fashion and is packed with all the things that we love about The Hold Steady – the hooks, the riffs and Craig Finn’s storytelling lyrics and humour. Recent single ‘Denver Haircut’ opens the record…
Seattle’s premier power-pop trio Dude York have made a welcome return with ‘Falling’ – their second album to be released on the esteemed label, Hardly Art. An album all about how you can fall in and out of all kinds of relationships during your life and how sometimes, it all manages to fall into place.…
Saddle Creek signing Ada Lea’s album ‘What We Say in Private’ continually evolved over the course of its writing and recording process, leaving us with a debut to savour. Montreal native Ada is also a painter and visual artist and these passions have added to the colourful collection of songs that make up this record.…
New York-based singer-songwriter and visual artist Joanna Sternberg has always lived a life surrounded by music – from humming the entire melody of ‘Oh What a Merry Christmas Day’ from Mickey’s Christmas Carol at just 2 years old to piano lessons at the age of 5 and learning guitar and bass at 11. Their education…
Although ‘Don’t You Think You’ve Had Enough?’ is Dead Oceans (Phoebe Bridgers, The Tallest Man on Earth, Mitski) signings Bleached’s third album, it’s the first that the sisters have written from a place of sobriety. When it came to writing the tracks, the duo decided to go back to basics with Jessie Clavin handling the…
We’ve all been eagerly awaiting the debut album from Quiet Lions for quite some time now and recent singles ‘Echo Chamber’ and ‘Wasteland’ have just whet the anticipation even more. Based around social and political issues, they hinted at the overriding theme of isolation and dissociation in today’s digital world that can be found throughout…
The Divine Comedy’s blend of heartfelt romanticism, magnetic melodies and witty, sometimes very cutting, observations has always been a winner and now after 30 years (!), Neil Hannon is set to release his twelfth album in this guise – ‘Office Politics’. Inspired by the soap opera that is the workplace, the record is 16 songs…
Wild Beasts were a very special band and we enjoyed their brand of peculiar – and later downright horny – indie-pop. So many fans were sad when they decided to call it a day last year but the band have left a legacy of five records that still leave you ‘hooting and howling’ whenever you…
Eva Hendricks, the singer of Charly Bliss, once said that ‘the two best emotional releases are crying and dancing, so it makes sense for me to marry the two’ and this rings true throughout all 11 songs on the Brooklyn four-piece’s second album ‘Young Enough’ (out on Barsuk on 10 May). The synthy start to…
Holding Patterns (a band featuring members of previous Big Scary Monsters/Topshelf Records favourites Crash of Rhinos) have shared new single ‘Centered at Zero’ ahead of the release of their new album ‘Endless’ via Vested Interest Records on 17 May (pre-order here). With lyrics referencing extracts of American poet Emily Dickinson’s poem ‘I Saw No Way…
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