Lankum singer Radie Peat’s extraordinary debut album begins without frills or ornament: just her voice, stark and low, each breath like air vibrating through the metal reeds of a harmonium. Singing Hares on the Mountain to the tune Shirley Collins arranged for 1964’s Folk Roots, New Routes, Peat accompanies herself subtly on Fender Rhodes piano before adding layers of Mellotron and Wurlitzer. Her simple, quiet approach is consistently startling and profoundly moving.
No Human Tongue Can Tell collects songs of female struggle, suffering, strength and endurance, although Peat only realised this, she writes in her liner notes, after limiting her choices by her “own mind and abilities” and “personal preferences”. Epic statements clearly aren’t her bag…
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When Mississippi native Schaefer Llana took a job as an engineer at Dial Back Sound, the studio owned by Drive-By Truckers bassist Matt Patton, she set in motion the events that would lead to Full Circle, her label debut.
It was at that studio where she met Jimbo Mathus (a founding member of Squirrel Nut Zippers), who, impressed with her vocals, asked Llana to sing on records he was producing and eventually invited her to join his touring band. Years later, after relocating to Austin and touring the country on her own, she returned to the studio, this time to record Full Circle. In keeping with the album’s title, it also features two songs written by Mathus, who appears on the opening track, “In a Scare.”
For many, that track will serve as their first…
Plans for Shane MacGowan’s 60th birthday celebrations in January 2018 were originally modest: a few musicians gathering to play a scattering of the songs he wrote for The Pogues or his later band The Popes. What actually happened, says Victoria Clarke, MacGowan’s wife and partner from the mid-’80s to his death in 2023, gathered momentum to become “something incredibly moving and really magnificent” – a fullscale tribute at Dublin’s National Concert Hall featuring Nick Cave, Bono, Sinead O’Connor and the Irish President Michael D Higgins, who gave MacGowan a Lifetime Achievement Award. For Clarke, the show felt like a metaphor for his reputation: “We just sat back and watched while it grew.”
As Clarke explains to MOJO, MacGowan’s VIP…
…features unique bonus tracks: “Grown Up Xmas List” and “To an Empath at Christmas Time (Intimate Version)”.
Alanis Morissette’s first holiday album, Good Weather for Immaculate Conception, is a mix of recognizable favorites (like “O Holy Night” and “Happy Xmas (War is Over)”) and original material (such as the standout “To an Empath at Christmas Time” and the rollicking “Christmas on the Dancefloor”). Her faithfully tender cover of Joni Mitchell’s “River” is a beautiful moment tucked amongst the celebratory festivities.
Along for the sleigh ride is a packed roster of guests: Brandi Carlile and Steve Martin join Morissette on “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem,” while Amythyst Kiah duets on “Momma Mary” and Joy Oladokun teams up for “Silent Night.”
…features nine bonus track additions — consisting of five previously unreleased studio cuts and four live performances from his tour.
A year on from Puma Blue’s low-key releases ‘antichamber’ and ‘extchamber’, and almost three from previous full-band record Holy Waters, Croak Dream comes with studio-based lore: that he – aka multihyphenate Jacob Allen – and production collaborator Sam Petts-Davies introduced parts of songs to the full band to work with in the room. Not a unique scenario, of course, but it just might be in this switch-up of Jacob’s working methods that the most interesting parts of his latest full-length lie.
For while his often melancholy, occasionally pretty, singing voice excels in projecting…
Masayoshi Fujita’s album Forest of Tranquility originated from a commission to compose the soundtrack to a living nature installation as part of Expo 2025. The release consists of inviting, slowly unfolding pieces incorporating marimba, vibraphone, and hand percussion, along with softly rippling synths, gentle woodwinds, and natural sounds such as birds and frogs. The result is an immersive and transportive sound bath that floats, meanders, and soothes, lending a slightly ethereal aura to natural environments. “Portal to the Universe” patiently sets in, with distant flutes calling along with a backdrop of chirping crickets, and the sound of children playing so far in the background that it’s nearly subliminal. “Departure” contains sparse, considered…
Louis Armstrong is at his most barnstorming best on the archival 2026 album One Night in Highland Park: Live! Recorded in March 1957, it features the trumpeter/vocalist’s then-lineup of trombonist Trummy Young, clarinetist Edmond Hall, pianist Billy Kyle, bassist Squire Gersh, and drummer Barrett Deems. The band had traveled to Highland Park High School in Illinois for a special fundraiser concert where a savvy student stage manager, Joel Goldstein, had the presence of mind to record the proceedings. Minus bassist Arvell Shaw, this is almost the same lineup that appeared alongside Armstrong in the film High Society. He even makes mention of the movie, revisiting the soundtrack favorite “High Society Calypso.” In keeping with what was his tradition at the time…
Jan St. Werner’s album Squares Will Fall contains three collaborative pieces exploring spatial dynamics, improvisation, and generative composition.
The 22-minute title track was created during the sessions for Mouse on Mars’ Dimensional People, and heavily features a guest on that album, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. The piece was presented as part of a choreography installation during the Ural Industrial Biennial, with isolated parts played through multidirectional loudspeakers, moved by the performers, and with audience members free to walk throughout the venue, making each individual experience unique. The version appearing on the album is a stereo mix assisted by Andi Toma, the other half of Mouse on Mars.
µ-Ziq’s Tango N’Vectif was released in 1993, a classic year for auteurist electronic music that didn’t always fit on the dancefloor. Written by Mike Paradinas in his late teens with some help from Frank Naughton, it still stands up really well today and its influence on electronic music in the decades since is obvious.
Across an expanse of ideas, taking influences from early Aphex, Detroit Techno and UK Hardcore, Mike created this spirited, funky, jerry-rigged, lo-fi version of rave; with crunchy drums and a knack for melody that fell somewhere between John Barry and classic TV themes.
Without owning a computer, Mike had been writing techno, house and industrial tracks on and off since 1990, playing live keys alongside…
Swansea Sound’s first two albums tracked their progress from an indie pop dream come true to a real live band capable of wrapping pointed social commentary in candy-sweet melodies. Their third album, 2026’s Pre-Post-Truth – takes another leap forward. This time the band sounds tougher, hookier, and more assured. The jokes are funnier, too, and the commentary is more pointed. The first two records sounded a little ramshackle in places, like they were getting their act together and figuring out just what kind of band they were going to be. This time it feels like the tumblers have clicked and they’ve unlocked the secret, sort of like they aren’t working at it anymore and being a good, bordering on great, indie pop band comes naturally.
…The deluxe edition extends the original record with three brand-new remixes and an array of live tracks recorded using high-end vintage gear at Crystal Ship in Sheffield.
As AI becomes an increasing threat to humans trying to make a living from creative activities, Nubiyan Twist’s latest album is a defiant riposte. It is a celebration of the joyful energy and chaos that comes from musicians getting together in a room to play. While that could imply a scrappy sound, it would be a wildly inaccurate description of the ensemble. Chasing Shadows represents a skilful interception of jazz, afrobeat, R&B and electronics, fused with a mastery that reflects the nine-piece band’s background having formed in 2011 while studying at the Leeds College of Music.
There aren’t many three-time platinum selling albums that credit Captain Beefheart as a co-songwriter. But that’s not the only unusual aspect about Joan Osborne’s major label debut Relish.
The singer/songwriter’s 1995 multi- GRAMMY nominated disc also included Bob Dylan and Sonny Boy Williamson covers and, in “One of Us,” a left field, still controversial hit single she did not write (Relish producer/arranger and Hooters frontman Eric Bazilian did). That’s a lot of uniqueness for any artist, let alone one on her first studio recording. Relish put Joan Osborne on the pop music map, a place she has visited intermittently for the following thirty years. There have been plenty more titles since; she has delivered a clutch of covers albums (Dylan and soul classics), done…
With his second solo album Snakewards, Chicago musician Joe Glass builds a private world of top-shelf power pop. In addition to the composition, arrangement, and singing, Glass plays almost all of the instruments on the album and recorded these songs himself over a three-year period. While there’s a lo-fi kinship with Sharp Pins (the band Glass plays bass in), these tracks are more versatile, going in multiple directions from one moment to the next like a compact and home-brewed version of The White Album.
Moments like the bounding opener “Dust on Your Halo” and “Man Who Lost His Diamond” have the revved-up jangle and melodic brightness of the post-Big Star power pop cannon, while “Buck Wild” shifts gears wildly into…
Twenty years on from his debut The Last Resort, Anders Trentemøller has firmly nailed his colours to the mast, proclaiming his musical identity with a self-titled album. In it he shows all the qualities from the past two decades but with an added assurance to his writing. Helping mark the occasion are fellow Danes Jonas Bjerre (Mew), Sune Rose Wagner (The Raveonettes) and vocal guests Sakura, Anika, Midwife, Tan Cologne and Emma Acs. Each bring a unique quality to help add the icing on the cake, but in spite of the multiple personalities it is Trentemoller’s ear for production that shines through time and again.
His penchant for widescreen epics is akin to that of a Nordic M83. Few ears could be fully prepared for the sheer explosion of sound…
One of the most interesting aspects about Cherry Soda is what it’s not. The album that would eventually become Nathan Williams’ tenth as Wavves was first announced this past summer, in the form of a collaborative project with Max Bemis of 2000s pop-punk relics Say Anything. On paper, the pairing made sense. Both artists’ respective sounds are inextricably tied to past eras of rock music, with Williams’ aesthetic most commonly associated with the weeded-out indie gold rush of the early 2010s. The project imploded after allegations emerged that Bemis had engaged in inappropriate communication with underage fans. In a series of statements, Williams claimed that Bemis was barely involved in Cherry Soda’s writing process and promised that it…
It’s been four years since the Live Archive series revisited the 1992-93 tour in support of Human Touch and Lucky Town. Historically, this era has been marked with an asterisk, often viewed as a deviation from the norm given the new, not E Street band. Yet as time passes, 1992-93 simply feels like one interesting chapter in a long, musical journey. One major component of that band, gospel-influenced background singers, has become a fixture on recent tours. Tom Morello isn’t Nils Lofgren or Stevie Van Zandt, just as Shane Fontanye wasn’t. Someone other than Clarence Clemons playing saxophone on “Born to Run”? We’re used to that too.
However, the 1992 musical formula was intended to be roots-rock meets gospel, not unlike…
Twenty years after forming Howlin Rain, frontman and founder Ethan Miller has once again reshaped the lineup and added guest appearances to deliver Watermelon, a new album that celebrates the music that has shaped the band’s journey.
Miller comments on the record: “Rather than curate a record like this with universally favorite hit songs, we wanted to try and still please the ears in that way but draw on more esoteric songs and sometimes obscure artists that were meaningful to us, both of which would tempt further investigation into their strange stories and secret worlds.” Howlin Rain & Friends delivers on that approach more than. By taking on lesser-known songs or bands, the album is as much a continuing journey into Howlin Rain’s sound as it is a look at…
At this point in their career, Land of Talk are a CanCon institution. They’ve released six albums, toured the country tirelessly and worked with pretty much every Canadian act you like. It’s been a slow growth, but one that has resulted in a great body of work and a solid coast-to-coast fanbase.
Or, as frontperson Elizabeth Powell told Exclaim! in their 2010 cover story, “Some bands have a bit more of a meteoric rise, and some are slow burners. I like to think we’re a slow burner. It’s totally true to who I am and how I approach my own life. Very slow and very unsure, but curious. And it all works out.”
With their latest album, LASTS, they’re now fully ablaze.
Across its eight songs, it showcases all…