Good thing it’s a long weekend: You’re going to need that extra time to wade through this roundup of all the essential new releases, reissues, comebacks, lost albums, tribute discs, side projects, solo releases, supergroups, swan songs, box sets and EPs on the way. And before you complain, know this: I didn’t even include all the big-name pop releases (sorry, Shawn, Kylie and Joe). So trust me, it could have been way worse. Here are your plays of the week:
MC5
Heavy Lifting
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Emerging from the gritty streets of Detroit in the ’60s, MC5 revolutionized rock’n’roll with their blistering fusion of garage rock, blues, soul, free jazz, and proto-punk. Infamous for incendiary live performances and a radical left-wing stance, their status as pioneers of punk and protest rock has inspired many musicians like The Ramones, The Clash, Rage Against The Machine, The White Stripes, and countless others — and continues to shape the sound of punk and alternative rock. The first new music from MC5 in 50-plus years (following 1971’s High Time), Heavy Lifting features guitar and vocals by founding MC5 member Wayne Kramer, who also co-wrote 12 of the album’s 13 songs with Oakland singer-songwriter Brad Brooks. Prolific for five decades, Kramer was the last remaining active member of MC5. He passed away suddenly in February, followed by the death of drummer Dennis ‘Machine Gun’ Thompson in May. It is Thompson’s final studio recording. Heavy Lifting was recorded with iconic producer Bob Ezrin (Lou Reed, Alice Cooper, KISS) and features an all-star lineup including Slash, Tom Morello, William DuVall (Alice in Chains), Vernon Reid (Living Colour), Don Was, and Tim McIlrath (Rise Against). Far more than a trip down memory lane, Heavy Listing is a resounding affirmation that the spirit of punk endures.”
Nap Eyes
The Neon Gate
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “After three years of silence, the Canadian band Nap Eyes have returned with their own meditations on the monstrous and familiar (or the monstrously familiar). The Neon Gate, their metamorphic fifth long-player, collects a cache of nine fascinating reveries recorded over the four years since their last album, Snapshot of a Beginner (five of which were released episodically throughout the spring and summer of 2024). I See Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart’s Fullness and of the Coming Emptiness, the album’s colossal penultimate track, is, along with Demons, their languorous adaptation of a phantasmagorical poem by Russian Romantic Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837), one of two ambitious but adept adaptations in which singer and principal songwriter Nigel Chapman unravels knotty, century-old verse into a fluid, memorable melodies across the loom of the band’s pulsing instrumental syncretism.”
Christopher Owens
I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Not long after the release of Girls’ second album Father, Son, Holy Ghost, singer and frontman Christopher Owens announced that he was leaving the formative indie duo in pursuit of a solo career. Following the solo releases of 2011’s Lysandre, 2014’s A New Testament, and 2015’s Chrissybaby Forever, he eventually went on to release more music in 2017 with Curls. Since then, he’s continued to lead a life marked by both extraordinary highs and profound lows. In 2024, he left a bittersweet San Francisco and moved to New York, also reuniting with home label True Panther Records (who released the original Girls records). His latest solo album, I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair, is a record “about a journey back to the center of myself.”
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
Long After Dark Deluxe Edition
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Over four decades after its debut, a deluxe edition of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ groundbreaking but often overlooked 1982 album, Long After Dark, has arrived. “There was some music recorded for Long After Dark that didn’t get on the record, that I thought would’ve made it a better album,” Petty once said. “I left off…four things that I liked quite a bit. And probably a few more written that never even got in the door.” Looking back on their third and final album together, legendary producer Jimmy Iovine reflects, “Long After Dark, we thought we had it. Sounded like Positively Fourth Street, sounded like one of those records, you know. By the way, I think it is!” Long After Dark Deluxe Edition will feature the songs that were lost in the debate over the album’s original direction. Notable highlights include finding Petty’s version of Never Be You — which was a No. 1 country hit for Rosanne Cash — the pop anomaly Don’t Make Me Walk the Line, and an up-tempo version of Ways To Be Wicked, previously covered by Lone Justice, recorded at Applewood Studios in Denver. Many of the additional tracks are taken from the French TV sessions, including the acoustic gems Turning Point and the Everly Brothers-influenced Keeping Me Alive.”
Pinhead Gunpowder
Unt
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Unt marks the return of Bay Area punk group Pinhead Gunpowder, featuring Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day), Aaron Cometbus (Crimpshrine), Jason White (Green Day, Influents, Chino Horde) and Bill Schneider (Monsula). It’s their first new music since 2008. “Pinhead Gunpowder started writing songs in 1990 and made our first 7″ the following spring,” says Cometbus. “Nearly every year since, we’ve met up to play. Some years we recorded — five albums and eleven EPs — and some years we played shows. But since 2010, we’ve been playing just for ourselves, something bands forget to do. Rather than ‘writing for the new album’ or rehearsing to get ready for tour, we went back to the basement every year. We lived in the house we’d built, remembering how we’d made the music for each other in the first place.We played all over the world — well, at least Oakland, Singapore and New York — but only for each other. We worked on the reissues of our back catalog, too and found ourselves fonder of each other and more family-like than ever. A new record and tour was only a matter of time, but between the members’ other bands projects, and families, that was hard to find. When we finally did, we were all surprised. We think it’s our best yet—our catchiest, most collaborative, and most poignant.”
Pipe-eye
Pipe-Defy
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “For the first time since 2021, Pipe-eye, the moniker for Australian musician, singer and songwriter Cook Craig (King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Murlocs), is set to release a brand new LP. With nods to the venerable influences of funk and ’70s / ’80s synth dance classics, Pipe-defy is a stylistic departure from his previous albums. For this project, Craig explains wearing his influences on his sleeve; “At around the time that I was starting to write songs for the album, my mum gave me a bunch of old CDs from my early teens that I hadn’t listened to in ages. There was heaps of Grandmaster Flash, Herbie Hancock, Zapp, Stevie Wonder and other stuff like that. When I kept writing songs they kinda just started sounding like that… so I guess it kinda just kick started an old obsession I had for that style of music.” This is particularly evident as each track beckons listeners to lose themselves in a tapestry of mesmeric synth rhythms, sobering orchestra hits and foot tapping, knee slapping, hand clapping groove.”
Porridge Radio
Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “When Porridge Radio formed in 2014, being in a band was the very last thing that London-born Dana Margolin expected to do. Studying anthropology at university, Dana began performing her songs on her own at local open mic nights, before assembling a full band — taking in Georgie Stott on keyboards and backing vocals, Sam Yardley on drums and keyboards, and former bassist Maddie Ryall (who departed in 2023, replaced by Dan Hutchins). Their debut album — Rice, Pasta and Other Fillers (2016) was followed by Every Bad (2020), which was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. Later, Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky (2022) became their first U.K. Top 40 Album Chart success. After 2022 — the band’s busiest year of live shows to date — had finally calmed, the suddenly quiet beginning of 2023 was a decisive moment for Dana. “I got home having been so sad and so tired for so long, and running from that sadness using work and exhaustion to the point of distraction, and then suddenly I wasn’t on tour all the time,” she remembers, “I was just sitting in my room.” This became a period of reflection for the songwriter who had not stopped for the best part of a decade, and had knotty questions about identity, creativity and family to unpack. “I come from a family of workaholics,” smiles Dana, “it’s that, and it’s art, it’s not just work. It’s my whole life.” Dana wanted to work out a way forward — how do you retain creativity, without harming yourself in the process?”
PyPy
Sacred Times
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “It’s been a long decade since Montreal’s PyPy (pronounced with a long ‘i’ rather than ‘e’, thank you very much) landed with their debut Pagan Day, but the lunatics are back with Sacred Times. Co-vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Annie-Claude Deschênes’ (Duchess Says) signature howl and vocal acrobatics are present but so is a tendency towards beautiful melodies. Bassist Philippe Clement’s (Duchess Says) brings a nastier bottom end that locks onto Simon Besré’s drumming with a death grip for the entire affair. And guitarist and co-vocalist Roy Vucino (Red Mass, CPC Gangbangs, Birds of Paradise, Les Sexareenos, a gazillion others) goes bonkers with wildass blown-out guitar that’s like hornets caught in yr hair.”
Rubblebucket
Year Of The Banana
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Rubblebucket’s new album explores one particular year from the band’s past known as the Year Of The Banana. Frontwoman Kalmia Traver has a personal practice of naming each year since 2011, ie: Year Of Brushstrokes (2014), Year Of The Mountain And The Steady Flame (2022), Year Of Stop Crying, Start Flying (2023), etc. However, in 2015 (Year Of The Banana) Kalmia’s romantic relationship with Rubblebucket co-founder Alex Toth fell apart, and that year was spent peeling off psychological layers in search of the sweetness that would allow the friendship, and the band, to continue. “People get obsessed with the albums that were never finished because the band couldn’t stay together,” Kalmia says. “But Year Of The Banana is the album that did get finished.” So Rubblebucket is celebrating 15 years as a band with a record about the year it almost ended. Listening to Year Of The Banana, it’s impossible to overlook how joyful it is, how full of hope. The album speaks to the power of transforming and adapting relationships in a time when the world needs it most. It speaks of yearning & striving for familiar intimacy that has been stripped away from much of our society by the extractive powers of capitalism. It speaks of creative ways of finding togetherness in a time when humans are the most divided from each other and from the myriad life forms of nature. The album has a transforming effect, inspiring us to face ourselves and radically keep loving each other, assuring us that the unpredictable process has potential to feel as free and sweet as peeling a banana on the dance floor.”
Jake Shimabukuro & Mick Fleetwood
Blues Experience
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Since gaining prominence in the early 2000’s, ukulele marvel Jake Shimabukuro has mesmerized audiences with his innovative and dynamic style, taking the instrument to dizzying new heights. Over a dozen solo albums, Shimabukuro has shown a knack for moving effortlessly between genres, sometimes in the same song. For his brand-new project, Shimabukuro joins forces with his friend, drumming legend and founding member of Fleetwood Mac, Mick Fleetwood, to create a fresh new take on the blues. “I’ve always wanted to do a blues album and when Mick and I started talking about working together, I thought who better to work with than Mick Fleetwood?” The result is something exhilarating and unique, as these two titans of their instruments reinterpret some of the greatest songs written by some of their favorite songwriters in a blues setting.”
Silverbacks
Easy Being A Winner
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “As a band, Ireland six-piece Silverbacks are restless, eager to move onto the next thing: Three albums in four years is evidence of this. That their fizzing, rock-addled songs rarely pass the four-minute mark is further proof. But in their personal lives, they’re not restless. In fact, they’re settling down. Lead singer and guitarist Daniel O’Kelly now lives on the outskirts of Paris with his wife — it’s where he sees his immediate future too. His brother, guitarist Kilian, has moved to Drogheda, an hour north of Dublin, with wife and bandmember Emma Hanlon, where they’ve discovered a newfound interest in plants (red hot pokers are their favourite). They’re content. Their relationships — their friendships — take the pressure off the music and ultimately allows for something that is more enjoyable to make, and perhaps, as a result, sounds more authentically like Silverbacks too. As they sing on the closing track of third album Easy Being A Winner: “You start to figure it out.”
Various Artists
American Football (Covers)
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Alongside and in celebration of American Football 25th Anniversary Edition arrives American Football (Covers), an ingeniously programmed set that highlights not only the way American Football fueled an eventual “emo revival,” but also and perhaps more important how their songs and sounds infiltrated and inspired so many corners of music. From string-swept and imaginative folk to idiosyncratic international pop, from intricate instrumental splendor to open-road shoegaze wonder, (Covers) traces — or at least teases — the endless ways the source material has cut across borders of generation, genre, and geography. It affirms just how important the nine songs three college kids cut in four days remain. The lyrics on American Football were specific in detail but vague in situation. What we knew was that a relationship was collapsing with less animosity than regret, a sense of future nostalgia shaping words that asked how an ex-couple might feel as the summer passed and they maybe saw each other again. This framework, then, is a perfect invitation for different singers to climb inside and find their own interpretation.”
Various Artists
Tonight I’ll Go Down Swingin’: A Tribute to Don Heffington
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Don Heffington, a beloved L.A. musician who died of leukemia in 2021, is the subject of this Sweet Relief charity tribute album featuring Jackson Browne, Fiona Apple, Buddy Miller, John C. Reilly, Dave Alvin and Watkins Family Hour. Heffington was one of the most beloved of all musicians on the L.A. scene over the last several decades, especially among figures associated with either the Largo or roots-rock scenes, with a renown that well outlasted and transcended his already-important tenure as the drummer for Lone Justice in the mid-1980s. His influence as both a sideman and a singer-songwriter in his own right is apparent from the illustrious guest list signed up by producers Sheldon Gomberg (Ben Harper, Rickie Lee Jones) and Sebastian Steinberg (Fiona Apple, Iron & Wine) for this project, which was already in the works when Heffington died three years ago.”
W.H. Lung
Every Inch Of Earth Pulsates
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “A huge thing for this record was to make it feel as close to our live show as possible,” says Tom Sharkett of W.H. Lung’s latest album. “We didn’t want it to sound live but we wanted to capture the excitement of the live performances.” This is something that has become paramount to the group in recent years as they have undeniably blossomed into one of the most joyous and arresting live bands in the country. “The reason I’m in a band is to play live music,” says singer Joe Evans. “For me, music is live music. That’s what it’s for, to be played with people.” The five-piece band, also featuring Chris Mulligan, Hannah Peace and Alex Mercer-Main, decided to try something new on their third album after two incredibly successful collaborations with previous producer Matt Peel. In order to capture the energy, spirit and dynamism of their live shows, they relocated to Sheffield to work with Ross Orton (M.I.A., Arctic Monkeys, Working Men’s Club), who was able to harness this side of the band to remarkable effect. “Ross is the Sheffield Steve Albini,” says Evans. “He’s the king of not overthinking it and trusting the process of the art of recording songs. He was always there to stop us fucking around with cerebral stuff and get it down.” Sharkett echoes this too: “He was the exact producer we needed without us even realising. His productions and mixes are bombastic, lively and in your face and that’s exactly what we wanted.”
