Yeah, I know: 28 albums is a lot of music to get through. But come on, it’s the middle of February. Christmas is long gone. Spring is a long way away. It’s colder than a well digger’s ass. And we both know you don’t have anything better to do. After all, if you did, you wouldn’t be reading this, would you? I rest my case. Now, let’s get to it:
Abdomen
Yes, I Don’t Know
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Yes, I Don’t Know took something like two years to record. Working with Rasmus Bredvig at Tapetown in Aarhus, Denmark, the songs were fine tuned through extensive rehearsal, performance, and sometimes totally transformed in the studio. The lead single, Dazed, for example, began as a demo set at a frantic pace. It was Rasmus who suggested slowing it down — “Something like times times” — morphing, mutating, the track into an epic, melodic, psyche mantra. A heavy, heavy hypnotic groove. With a chanted vocal and wall of phased, psychedelic shredding, there are echoes of outfits such as Loop and Spacemen 3. Their stoned / stoner “aesthetics” all be it turned up to 11. A head-banging, trance-inducing, transcendental raga, with its sights set on spiritual lift-off, the piece aims to create a path away from the negative toward a more positive way of life. In the past Abdomen have been called angry; however, if the album has an overriding message or theme, then it’s about coming to terms with your emotions, cauterising wounds, growing and moving on.”
Martin Luke Brown
Man Oh Man!
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Marking a significant new era in both his personal and musical life, Martin Luke Brown’s new record Man Oh Man! houses a myriad of themes; self-awareness and personal growth, treasured friendships, swept-off-your-feet romance, gut wrenching heartbreak, with an overarching message to find peace in the simple things amongst the complexities of modern life. Described by Martin as a “time capsule”, each track on the album was written and recorded in one day, making for a raw and honest snapshot of his life experiences at the time. Instrumentation is simple and recorded with producer and friend Matt Zara using almost exclusively analog technology — tape machines and vintage mics, a messiness that the duo embraced from the get go.”
Basia Bulat
Basia’s Palace
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Let’s get one thing out of the way: Basia Bulat doesn’t live in a château. The property at the heart of the songwriter’s new studio album is at once her cozy apartment, her ramshackle jam-space, and the inside of her head. It’s a place festooned with love and memory, dream and hope, bad wiring, cat fur, and groovy West German wallpaper. Basia’s Palace is a paradise that comes alive in the wee hours of the night — a time that’s suited to video games and dusty old records, when you sit in all that richness and take in all the mess we inherit. Co-produced by frequent collaborator Mark Lawson and mixed by legendary engineer Tucker Martine (Beth Orton, Neko Case), Basia’s Palace is like a time-travel score, with Bulat akin to Chrono Trigger’s intrepid adventurer, going back into the past to shape the events of the future. After years of releasing records where live performance came first, the singer-songwriter wanted to express herself in a completely different way, composing with MIDI instead of piano or guitar. She found herself moving through a dreamworld of whispers, synths, early Eurovision tunes — and her great uncle’s gauzy Maryla Rodowicz and Marek Grechuta LPs.”
Cash & Skye
Just A Stranger
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Just A Stranger is the debut full-length album from the L.A. duo Cash & Skye. This alluring infusion of Americana and rock ’n’ roll, executed with a punk-rock ethos, documents the seven-year musical journey of songwriters Henri Cash and Sophia Skye de Reeder, and features players from Cash’s prolific and beloved band Starcrawler. Although very different from the raucous chaos of Starcrawler, these songs dive a little deeper into the traditions of country storytelling while still maintaining a raw and honest edge. This long-awaited chronicle of songs were recorded at 64 Sound in Highland Park and Starcrawler’s basement studio in Pasadena, recorded in spare moments over the years between international tours, college classes, and eight-hour shifts. It explores modern recording techniques combined with classic analog tape recording in an attempt to naturally capture the music in a way that stays true to the sounds of the classic records that influenced them.”
Cigarettes For Breakfast
Slow Motion
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Cigarettes for Breakfast are a Philadelphia band known for their lush soundscapes and raw, emotive, fuzzed-out shows, capturing the essence of shoegaze and dream-pop greats like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive. The bedroom project of Matt Whiteford — along with an ever-changing cast of members and collaborators — has taken the hearts of listeners, making waves out of the DIY music scene and onto the stage with renowned acts like Slow Crush, The Asteroid No. 4 and Mahogany, among others. After collaborating with former band members and mix engineer Jeff Ziegler on their debut album Join the Circus, Whiteford took things in the opposite direction and wrote, recorded, and mixed Slow Motion on his own. The album takes a more personal, vulnerable, and inward approach to the songwriting while further expanding upon his modern take of the “classic” shoegaze and dream pop sounds. In the era of the “the single” with shorter and shorter attention spans, Slow Motion is an immersive experience intended to be listened to all the way through.”
Cut Glass Kings
From A Distant Place
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Birmingham / Black Country alt / indie / psych duo Cut Glass Kings were formed in 2014 by childhood friends Paul Cross and Greg McMurray. The band started as a recording project with their early homemade works catching the attention of James Skelly, who signed them to his Skeleton Key Records label. Their debut EP was released in 2017 with their sound being described as ‘fuzzed-out’ and ‘thunderous.’ 2019’s Shadow of Your Love, lifted from their debut LP, now has over 4.7 million streams. Following a long break, Cut Glass King are ready for the next chapter. The new material owes a lot to 1980’s technology and carpentry skills, with their new album forged in a wooden basement studio on a second hand reel to reel recorder. pandemic-enforced isolation proved helpful to hone their new direction; drummer Greg says: “For this album we started broadening what we were listening to. I remember early on we were listening to a lot of T. Rex’s Electric Warrior, earlier Ty Segall stuff, James put us on to the Eels album Hombre Lobo, which definitely had an influence on us. We were also listening to John Grant’s Outer Space a lot.”
The Deadnotes
Rock ‘n’ Roll Saviour
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “In recent years the term “rock ’n’ roll” has become a kind of punchline; a musical synonym for outdated gender roles, for being out of touch, for having a macho mindset. So obviously, as with so many things in the modern age, it’s high time for a complete overhaul — as The Deadnotes have fittingly titled their third album, giving the well-known catchphrase of “Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll” a contemporary and long overdue update. The destructive power of rock is well-documented and The Deadnotes know it all too well, but bandmembers Darius Lohmüller and Jakob Walheim prefer to emphasize the unfathomable, yet always tangible, power of music. Despite all the clichés, there is also a fundamental truth about rock music: the songs that blare too loudly, the nights that become way too long, the lyrics that hit too true at just the right moment… all of it can save you, no matter what. Those who have felt it know it to be true. The Deadnotes have written songs that want to do just that — be your saviour.”
Sam Fender
People Watching
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “If Sam Fender’s debut album, 2019’s Hypersonic Missiles, introduced a smart, streetwise young British songwriter with a penchant for euphoric, hard-hitting guitar anthems, it was 2021’s peerless Seventeen Going Under that sent the Newcastle artist stratospheric. An acute observer who turns the mirror not only on the streets that he grew up walking, but to himself too, the record was a tough-talking but tender account of Fender’s childhood and finding his feet in the North-East of England. It’s also a classic coming-of-age story, marrying relatable family themes and broken friendships with colossal choruses. Now Fender releases his third album, People Watching. Firmly solidified as one of Britain’s most accomplished songwriters of his generation and the next, if Seventeen Going Under was Sam’s “coming-of-age” record, People Watching is his next step forward — colourful stories and observations of everyday characters living their everyday, but often extraordinary, lives.”
Patterson Hood
Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “I’m releasing my fourth solo album, the first in over 12 1/2 years, called Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams,” says Drive-By Truckers singer-guitarist Patterson Hood. “It was recorded last year during an ice storm, no less, which is befitting for an album that starts out with a similar meteorological condition. My buddy Chris Funk (Decemberists) produced and played a bunch of cool vintage analogue synthesizers (among other things) on it. The songs take a backwards journey through time — from the ice storm that wrecked my hometown just before my 30th birthday and move to Athens, GA, all the way back to my early childhood in North Alabama in the ’70s. It’s a very different album than anything I’ve ever done, yet somehow feels steeped in the universe our other albums seem to inhabit.”
Q Lazzarus
Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “For almost everyone, the entry point for discovering the music of Q Lazzarus came via Goodbye Horses. The song appeared in 1988, via Jonathan Demme’s Married To The Mob, but it would not become fully lodged into popular consciousness until it infamously materialized again in Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs in 1991. Goodbye Horses felt like a self-contained universe — dreamlike and wholly unusual, an instant classic that left listeners captivated and curious about the mysterious voice behind it. That voice belonged to Diane Luckey, a uniquely talented artist whose music was ahead of its time and who would ultimately remain largely unrecognized in her lifetime. In conjunction with the release of Aridjis Fuentes’ documentary Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus, Sacred Bones is releasing a collection of songs that span the entirety of Q’s career, showcasing the different eras of her work and the full breadth of her personality. Released in collaboration with the family of Q, this holds the distinction of being her first and only full-length release.”
The Limiñanas
Faded
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Following Shadow People (2018) and De Pelicula (2021), done with Laurent Garnier, The Limiñanas are making their big comeback with their new album Faded, whose first single is Prisoner of Beauty featuring Bobby Gillespie (Primal Scream), a supporter of the band for years. The French psychedelic / garage duo have also gathered for duets with artists such as Jon Spencer, Bertrand Belin, Rover, Penny, Anna Jean and Pascal Comelade.”
Motorpsycho
Motorpsycho
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “After two pandemically conditioned ‘reaction’ albums — Yay! (2023) and Neigh!! (2024) — a few non-album singles and a compilation album, a downsized and sleek Motorpsycho are back where we all know and love them, with an epic, sprawling double album, filled to the brim with inventive, organic and ecstatic rock-based music. This eponymously titled 11-song work has exactly as much variety and diversity, accord and discord, as one expects from a band that has released a few albums before, and that these days must be regarded as an institution in European rock. From concise three-minute pop-rockers, to 20-minute-pluse progressive epics, via acoustic intimacies and psychedelic wigouts, this is concentrated Motorpsychosis: Countdown initiated. Ever closer. Ever sharper…”
The Murder Capital
Blindness
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Following the universal acclaim for their two first records, The Murder Capital are back with Blindness, the vividly realised, clear-sightedly ambitious new album. A record that’s momentous and charged with momentum, it’s full of geography — of the mind, and of a Dublin-formed band whose members are now scattered around Ireland, London and Europe — yet bristles with an intense energy. There’s a wider, richer perspective animating The Murder Capital’s new set of songs, brought on from the diverse insights the five members were bringing to the creative process, differing worldviews arising from their literal new positions in the world. Drummer Diarmuid Brennan was living in Berlin, bass player Gabriel “G” Paschal Blake was in Letterkenny, guitarist Cathal “Pump” Roper was in Donegal, and guitarist Damien “Irv” Tuit and McGovern were in London. The album prioritizes urgency, energy, freshness — all baked into the songs from their earliest incarnations, recorded in L.A. with the help of Grammy-winning producer John Congleton.”
Pretty Lightning
Night Wobble
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Night Wobble is the sixth long-player from Saarbrücken, Germany duo Pretty Lightning and their second instrumental record following 2022’s Dust Moves. It’s a set of downtempo, repetitive grooves that course through dusty spaghetti-western psychedelia, Tuareg-derived desert-blues, library music and ’70s progressive. It’s always cinematic but shot through with trippy, off-kilter moments that bring a sense of alien to the widescreen panoramas here — this is an “oozy, woozy cowboy groove”, as they put it. If David Lynch had directed Paris, Texas, then Ry Cooder’s soundtrack might have sounded something like this.”
