What sort of music do you fancy next week? American indie-rock? Canadian hardcore? Australian psychedelia? British roots-rock? Swedish prog? Southern metal? Good news: They’re all on the playlist. Along with some indie-folk, alt-pop, singer-songwriters and even some hippie jams. If that doesn’t bring enough spice to your musical life, nothing will. Let’s start the rundown:
The Bobby Lees
Bellevue
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Proudly outspoken and riotously loud, The Bobby Lees are abot to deliver their brand new full-length album Bellevue, 13 tracks of uninhibited rock ’n’ roll. Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry, Henry Rollins … these are just a few of the punk icons who have shown support for the Woodstock, N.Y. band. Sam Quartin (vocals, guitar), Macky Bowman (drums), Nick Casa (guitar) and Kendall Wind (bass) — make music that is punk in spirit and soul; unfettered and resolutely honest. To say their sound is wild and untethered is an understatement. It’s the kind of aural exorcism any listener can tap into, something that struck a chord with Rollins, who brought them to Ipecac Recordings, where Mike Patton and Greg Werckman signed them. As feverish and nihilistic as the music can at times seem, there’s always a glimmer of hope at the core of each song. “I named the album Bellevue because when I listen back, I hear someone going through that stuff, who is now able to laugh about it and have fun re-telling the stories,” says Sam. “It’s a reminder for me that the most painful and intense things I go through end up being the most rewarding creatively.”
Read my 2020 interview with Sam Quartin HERE.
Bonny Light Horseman
Rolling Golden Holy
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Bonny Light Horseman’s self-titled debut was a folk masterclass, reimagining centuries-old standards with effortless grace and wonder. Those Grammy-nominated, list- topping recordings not only suggested renewed possibilities for aging songbooks but also marked the arrival of a trio fully capable of reorienting the wider folk landscape. Still, if it felt at all like the work of some short-lived supergroup or a one-off diversion (it never was), Rolling Golden Holy rebuffs the notion with preternatural beauty and charm, and imagination. These songs, all originals, follow the paths of the traditional tunes the band cherishes to new frontiers, the sounds and situations of history given the gravity and shape of now. This is a band working at the edge of modern folk. After the release of their debut, Anaïs Mitchell, Josh Kaufman and Eric D. Johnson began discussing their next steps, loosely planning on writing and recording stints. Those sessions were delayed for all the unpredictable but now-familiar reasons until the spring of 2021, when the trio reconvened with their families in tow in upstate New York. Their chemistry remained intact.”
Broken Bells
Into The Blue
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Featuring two of the bigger names in indie and alternative music — Shins’ leader James Mercer and producer/multi-instrumentalist Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse — Broken Bells combined the pair’s greatest strengths. Mercer and Burton were inspired to collaborate when they met at 2004’s Roskilde music festival in Denmark, where they discovered they were fans of each other’s work. However, they didn’t start writing and recording together as a band until March 2008, when Mercer holed up in Burton’s home studio in Los Angeles. They took a different approach to working together than with their other projects: Burton avoided the sample-heavy style he used on The Grey Album and Beck‘s Modern Guilt, and played only live instruments; Mercer broadened his vocal style to include falsettos and deeper registers. On 2010’s Grammy-nominated self-titled debut and 2014’s more structured After the Disco, Mercer’s gift for indelible, slightly spooky melodies and Burton’s atmospheric productions complemented each other perfectly. In the late 2010s, the duo reconvened to release a succession of singles ahead of their third album.”
Hugh Cornwell
Moments of Madness
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Widely regarded as the poet laureate of the punk era (from his early career fronting The Stranglers to his transition as a solo artist), Hugh Cornwell has built a substantial and singular body of impressive solo albums. His tenth solo opus, Moments of Madness, continues his illustrious output by experimenting with musical genres as his enviable reputation as a wordsmith resounds across this album’s songs. Self-produced, and with Cornwell playing all of the instruments himself, Moments of Madness’ 10 incredible tracks finds Hugh flexing his musical muscles with a stripped-down, offbeat, reverberating ’60s vibe ringing from the seductive melodies and lyrically distinctive perceptions that are indelibly stamped with Hugh’s trademark imagination. Vocally and lyrically a career-best, Hugh has never sounded so good on his 10th solo album. A high watermark and a modern-day masterpiece, Moments of Madness is being tipped as the most significant album of Hugh’s career.”
The Cult
Under The Midnight Sun
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “When the sun just wouldn’t leave the sky one evening in Finland, Ian Astbury took notice. Walking the grounds of the Provinssirock festival, Astbury found himself reveling in the surreal, almost occult moment that comes with the “midnight sun,” the summer stretch where the sun doesn’t go down north of the Arctic Circle. “It’s three in the morning, the sun’s up, and there’s all these beautiful people in this halcyon moment,” Astbury remembers. “People are laying on the grass, making out, drinking, smoking. There were rows of flowers at the front of the stage from the performances earlier that evening. It was an incredible moment.” While reviewing archival footage of the performance, Astbury found new mysticism in that moment and imbued it into the forthcoming Under the Midnight Sun. Leading to 2020, The Cult had been on a rolling cycle of releasing albums, touring, and recording. As the world shut down and everyone was forced to reprioritize the way they approached life and work. “When the world stopped, I had this moment to write in real time, to calculate,” says Astbury. When lockdown lifted and the group could meet to record, they teamed up with producer Tom Dalgety. “I was compelled by this vision, this anomaly, this memory, of being under the midnight sun. Tom helped us bring a new musical shape and frequency to our process.”
Dungen
En Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Gustav Ejstes has always been on his way to someplace else. The Swedish musician has been making records as Dungen for two decades now, and while he’s lauded as one of the sharpest and most adventurous musicians in psychedelic music since 2004’s breakthrough Ta Det Lungt, for Ejstes psych has always been only a starting point. Or maybe it’s something more like an ethos — psych with its promise of exploration, the way it prioritizes seeking out new sounds, of leaving the old self behind, of setting into the ether to see what else might be out there. En Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog (One is Too Much and a Thousand is Never Enough) is the first Dungen record since 2016’s Häxan (which they wrote as a score for the 1926 animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed), and the first proper studio album since Allas Sak in 2015. If we’re thinking of psych-rock as a genre, with its readymade tropes — fuzz guitars, shimmering harmonies, pastoral textures — it’s possibly the least psychedelic record Ejstes has ever made. But if psych is really about transcending what’s come before in favor of new ways of seeing and hearing, then the opposite is true.”
Fucked Up
Oberon EP
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Oberon is a pummeling curveball from Fucked Up that channels the world of hardcore that birthed them — despotic and horrendously sludgy riffs exploding in octaves lower than Hades, crashing against hellish bellowing all while the rhythm section heaves at a pace that only Noothgrush, Crossed Out, Kiss it Goodbye and Bloodlet would tread upon. Topped off with an absolutely despicable cover of Saint-Saens’ The Aquarium, this is the mythologically psychedelic sludge record you never thought Fucked Up would make. Four tracks of pure audio excretion.”
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard
Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Things move fast in the Gizzverse. Before Stu Mackenzie and his bandmates had even completed work on their recent mammoth double album Omnium Gatherum, they’d started sketching out this next record. Their single The Dripping Tap had begun life as a handful of ideas and riffs that had arisen at pre-pandemic soundchecks and demos recorded through lockdown. For this new album, however, the group wouldn’t be bringing in any pre-written songs or ideas; instead, they planned to cook up all the music together in the studio, on the spot. “All we had prepared as we walked into the studio were these seven song titles,” says Mackenzie. “I have a list on my phone of hundreds of possible song titles. I’ll never use most of them, but they’re words and phrases I feel could be digested into King Gizzard-world.” Mackenzie selected seven titles from his list that he felt “had a vibe,” and then attached a beats-per-minute value to each one. Each song would also follow one of the seven modes of the major scale: Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Locrian. Over seven days, the group recorded hours and hours of jams, dedicating a day to each mode and BPM. Mackenzie edited those jams after the sessions were done, stitching them together into the songs on the 21st studio album by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava (the initials of the title, IDPLMAL, spell out a mnemonic for the modes).”
Watch my interview with King Gizzard’s Ambrose Kenny-Smith HERE.
Lamb Of God
Omens
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Across their career, Lamb Of God grew from basement shows and grimy DIY venues to headline arenas. The New Wave of American Heavy Metal architects earned a reverence akin to musical forefathers (and road companions) Metallica, Slayer and Megadeth. Now, the Grammy-nominated goliath follow 2020’s self-titled slab with a vicious new testament. Riding high on an insatiable drive, a focused collective camaraderie, and a creative renaissance, Lamb Of God returned to longtime producer Josh Wilbur (Megadeth, Korn, Avenged Sevenfold) and carved the gloriously unhinged Omens into sonic stone. Even as D. Randall Blythe (vocals), Mark Morton (lead guitar), Willie Adler (guitar), John Campbell (bass) and Art Cruz (drums) enjoy one another’s company and chemistry like never before, Omens is possibly the angriest Lamb Of God album yet. “It’s a pissed-off record,” Blythe says, with a hint of mischief. “It’s a very pissed-off record.” He pauses for emphasis. “It is extremely pissed-off.” Densely muscular, soaked in unnerving spite, with a pessimistic eye toward inner struggles and global affairs alike, Omens is a furious entry in the Lamb Of God catalog. “The world is crazy and keeps changing. Omens is a reaction to the state of the world around me,” Blythe reasons. “The last record was thematically driven; really, this one is just a response to the screwed-up world we live in.”
Will Sheff
Nothing Special
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “After nine critically acclaimed albums, after 20 bandmates, after countless bars and clubs and theaters and festivals, after two full decades, Will Sheff is letting Okkervil River drift out to sea with Nothing Special, a rich and cinematic collection that marks the acclaimed indie songwriter’s first release under his own name. Written through a period of painful loss and deep transformation and recorded with a mix of old friends and new collaborators (including singer-songwriter Christian Lee Hutson, Dawes drummer Griffin Goldsmith, and Death Cab For Cutie pianist Zac Rae), the record represents more than just a change in name; it’s an act of liberation and self-determination, an emotionally raw reckoning with grief, identity, and hope that blurs the lines between fiction and autobiography, surrealism and humor, stoicism and a deepening spirituality. Formed in Austin, Okkervil River embraced both frenetic rock and cerebral complexity as bandmates came and went over its 20-year run, but the group’s north star always remained firmly fixed in Sheff’s emotional vocals and striking lyrics, which could turn even the most seemingly mundane observations into profound philosophical revelations. With Nothing Special, Sheff begins his next and most compelling chapter yet.”
Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros
Live in Colorado Vol. 2
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros —consisting of Weir, Don Was, Jay Lane and Jeff Chimenti — are set to release their second batch of live recorded material this year. Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros: Live In Colorado Vol. 2 is a followup to the first volume of the critically acclaimed live performance collection. It features more songs recorded at the band’s live performances at the historic Red Rocks Park & Amphitheatre in Colorado and the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater in Vail in June 2020. The set list includes the classic Grateful Dead hits Ripple and Brokedown Palace, along with covers of Merle Haggard and Marvin Gaye. These shows were the group’s first live audience concerts in over a year and featured Greg Leisz on pedal steel, along with The Wolfpack: Alex Kelly, Brian Switzer, Adam Theis, Mads Tolling and Sheldon Brown. “Been too long,” Weir said of the performances, “but I can’t think of a better place to pick it back up.”
Ginger Wildheart & The Sinners
Ginger Wildheart & The Sinners
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Their self-titled album is an energetic album that celebrates rock ’n’ roll — and as Ginger Wildheart explains it, is in “the spirit of the music that we all collectively love, from childhood to the present day. Little Feat, The Allman Brothers, Wilco, The Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Jayhawks, Lone Justice, Jason & The Scorchers, Georgia Satellites, Status Quo, The Rolling Stones — from roots country to rock ’n’ roll and Americana.” Ginger Wildheart & The Sinners were formed in 2019 when Ginger joined forces with Neil Ivison and Nick Lyndon from the band Stone Mountain Sinners. The lineup was completed with drummer Shane Dixon (Tri-City Fanfare). As Ginger explains: “Me and The Sinners met for the very first time in the studio, in preparation for recording an album together. We figured out that if we can’t get along with each other then the music would be ultimately worthless. So we went to the pub and got drunk together. The next morning the music started flowing with ease. This is the sound of friendship.”
