I hope it’s a long weekend where you live. You’re going to need it to get through all the great music heading your way next week — including new albums from Stereophonics, Emma-Jean Thackray, Amy Venable, Viagra Boys and plenty more. Let’s get it started in here:
Stereophonics
Make ’Em Laugh, Make ’Em Cry, Make ’Em Wait
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “With three decades and a wealth of record-breaking achievements under their belts, including eight No. 1 albums, Stereophonics have earned their status and respect amongst their fans, peers and artists from across the musical generations, ranging from Bob Dylan to David Bowie to Dua Lipa. In 2025, the band mark their anticipated return with Make ’Em Laugh, Make ’Em Cry, Make ’Em Wait, a tight and heavy-hitting eight track record. Written and recorded in London, it is an album devoid of any fat or filler. It is at once clean and precise. Hopeful and joyous. It does what it says on the cover. As with previous album artwork, Kelly has gravitated towards different art forms to influence the project’s aesthetic, whether that be paintings, books or films. For Make ’Em Laugh, Make ’Em Cry, Make ’Em Wait, it was a similar process, Kelly recounts. “I went to New York, I visited some galleries, I saw Art Is A Guaranty Of Sanity, a painting by Louise Bourgeois. She believed art was a form of mental healing and a way to process difficult emotions. The spelling caught me first, then the simplicity of the words etched onto a pink tile. So I tried scratching my title, inspired by my own art school teacher thirty years ago. And I loved it. I loved the simplicity of the pink. The pink album was born.”
Sunflower Bean
Mortal Primetime
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Beloved rock band Sunflower Bean return reinvigorated with the most hard-fought and vulnerable album of their career: Mortal Primetime. In the three years since their last LP Headful of Sugar, the members of Sunflower Bean drifted from one another as they pursued new projects and confronted personal challenges, tragedies and transformations. But Mortal Primetime — the band’s fourth album, but first self-produced effort — finds Sunflower Bean with a renewed sense of purpose after nearly losing everything they built together. “You get to decide what your prime is, and you fight for it,” bassist and vocalist Julia Cumming says. “This is ours, and that can’t be taken away by circumstance. We can’t take it away from each other. This moment, where we are now, is what we’ve always fought for.” With mixing by Caesar Edmunds (The Killers, Wet Leg) and engineering by Sarah Tudzin (Illuminati Hotties, Boygenius), Sunflower Bean were inspired by alternative rock, dreamy psychedelia, and arena-sized ambition to create a sound that’s undeniably theirs on Mortal Primetime; a record that celebrates their history while hurtling toward the future.”
Technicolor Blood
Evolution Now
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Having previously released a pair of 7” singles and a rather poorly timed self-titled 12-inch EP smack in the middle of the pandemic, the space rockers of Technicolor Blood are back with Evolution Now!, a brand-new nine-song LP that clocks in a hair under 38 minutes. Sometimes aggressive, sometimes soaring, Technicolor Blood deliver fuzz-riddled riffs, tremolo-fueled heavy-psych effects and inspired synth work which recalls a strange hybrid of Hawkwind meets Chrome.”
Tennis
Face Down In The Garden
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Produced and recorded by the husband-and-wife duo of Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore in their Denver home studio, the new Tennis album Face Down In The Garden will mark the final recordings from this incarnation of the band. Offsetting intuitive melodies with unusual arrangements, the new album sees the duo returning with music that both feels familiar but also resists convention. “Face Down In The Garden is our seventh studio album,” says Moore. “The inspiration for new work came while we were still on the road touring Pollen. We felt a clear pull to write new music, but ran up against a series of bizarre setbacks. We blew tires and lost an engine. I developed a chronic illness. We took a doomed voyage that culminated in an attempted robbery at sea. Fragments of songs that first arrived like gifts from the universe later refused to be completed. Our days were awash in major and minor crises that dragged the album out endlessly. Patrick and I felt out of sync with the world, as though we had been ejected from the flow of life. My response was to bury myself in my own memories. Those years weren’t easier or better, but I could make sense of them. In Face Down In The Garden, I trace the arc of my life through a series of vignettes: a first moment of connection, a conversation at a wedding, a night offshore, a tour diary.”
Emma-Jean Thackray
Weirdo
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Emma-Jean Thackray, the visionary producer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist, is known for defying musical boundaries — and fittingly, her latest work is a deeply personal and utterly original exploration of selfhood, grief, and gratitude. Drawing on an eclectic mix of influences — grunge, pop, soul, p-funk, and jazz — Weirdo is a triumphant celebration of survival and individuality. Written, performed, recorded, mixed, produced and arranged entirely by Thackray in her South London flat, the album stands as a testament to her extraordinary musicianship and fearless self-expression. Originally conceived as a meditation on neurodivergence and mental health, Weirdo evolved after the unexpected loss of her long-term partner from natural causes in January 2023, resulting in an album that feels deeply personal and universal. With intricate compositions, raw emotion, and an unflinching authenticity, “Weirdo” is more than an album; it’s a masterpiece of resilience, a celebration of individuality, and a bold leap forward for an artist at the forefront of British music. The album features standout collaborations with American artists Reggie Watts and Kassa Overall, but its essence is rooted in Thackray’s unique voice. Blurring the lines between genre and emotion, Weirdo evokes comparisons to Meshell Ndegeocello, Kate Bush and Nirvana — on the dancefloor.”
William Tyler
Time Indefinite
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “No other solo American guitarist this century has impacted that fecund scene quite like William Tyler. After crucial stints in Silver Jews and Lambchop, this adopted son of Nashville emerged at the dawn of the last decade with a string of inquisitive albums that paired the measure of his country rearing and classical enthusiasm with his ardor for post-modern experimentation, field recordings and static drifts folded beneath exquisite melodies. Tyler dug Chet Atkins and Gavin Bryars, electroacoustic abstraction and endless boogie. His productive little enclave of instrumental music has increasingly followed such catholic tastes, not only ushering new sounds and textures into the form but also critical new voices and perspectives. And on the brilliant, bracing, and inexorably beautiful Time Indefinite, Tyler’s first solo album in five years, he steps at last into the widening gyre he helped create. The guitar serves as a starting point for an album that will make you reconsider not only Tyler but also the possibilities and reach of an entire field. A vortex of noise and harmony, ghosts and dreams, anguish and hope, Time Indefinite is a stunning record — a masterpiece of our collectively anxious time, really — by a great guitarist.”
Ally Venable
Money & Power
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Expectations are there to be defied. Glass ceilings are there to be shattered. Having spent the past decade carving out her own unique space in the male-dominated world of blues-rock, Ally Venable’s combative sixth album, Money & Power, demands more of both — for herself, for women around the world, and for anyone else who thought they weren’t worthy of a seat at the table. Money and Power is such a strong statement, especially for women,” says the award-winning Texas gunslinger of her Nashville-recorded release, on which Ally’s crack-squad band are joined by A- list guests Shemekia Copeland and Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram. “All the songs on this album showcase the theme of what it truly means to be a force to be reckoned with. I want this record to wake people up.” Money & Power is a modern roots-record that plays by its own rules and marches to the beat of its own drum. The same could be said for Ally herself. “I’m thrilled to release this album,” she says. “For me, it’s a sonic embodiment of a woman’s unstoppable ambition, and really showcases my musicality on all fronts. I’m looking forward to seeing where this one will take me.”
Viagra Boys
Viagr Aboys
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “At the end of the world, Sebastian Murphy knows his place: “I’m just a bag of meat,” the Viagra Boys frontman declares, flashing a brief smile before a raspy cough shakes it away. On viagr aboys, Murphy shifts his focus inward, trading the political satire of 2022’s Cave World for a self-deprecating exploration of his own absurdity. Lead single Man Made of Meat captures the band’s chaotic essence, with Murphy taunting your mom’s OnlyFans, dreaming of free sweaters from LL Bean, and letting out a full-fledged burp, all before summing up his ethos: “I hate almost everything that I see, and I just wanna disappear.” Embracing the nonsense of existence, Murphy finds solace in navigating life’s messy, stupid continuum with humor, self-awareness, and a touch of nihilism.”
Patrick Wolf
Crying The Neck
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “With his seventh album Crying The Neck, 41-year-old multi- instrumentalist and composer Patrick Wolf has created a confident, uplifting and hopeful record inspired by the transfiguring power of grief at the death of his mother, folklore, the Kentish landscape, and the state of England. On this album Patrick brings in long term friends Zola Jesus, Serafina Steer and Seb Rochford to provide guest appearances. The first in a planned four-album series, Crying The Neck was written and recorded in the Kent coastal town Patrick now calls home. As well as the album’s release, 2025 will also see the release of a feature-length documentary film about his life. Across his first six albums Patrick established himself as a much loved and respected artist. He is known for combining electronic sampling with classical instruments.”
World Sanguine Report
Songs From The Harbour
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Songs From The Harbour is World Sanguine Report‘s third studio album of original avant-rock and experimental ballads. Featuring a new iteration of WSR, Songs From The Harbour was created in partnership with long-standing collaborators of Andrew Plummer: Matthew Bourne, Ruth Goller and Will Glaser. The most direct WSR album to date, Songs From The Harbour is aptly named. It has a riverside redolence, both musically and lyrically. From the opening lullaby, which breaks like dawn over a dirty Thames, there’s a sense of sunlight breaking through the clouds and playing on polluted water, of bracing salty air contrasting with the stench of the quayside, a tussle of purity and toxicity, light and shade, romance and desolation. Says Plummer: “This is the album I’ve wanted to make for more than 20 years, though the timing never felt quite right until now.”
The Yagas
Midnight Minuet
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Alt-rock band The Yagas are fronted by Oscar and Emmy-nominated actress Vera Farmiga, who is joined by Renn Hawkey of Deadsy (keys), Jason Bowman (drums), Mark Visconti (guitar) and Mike Davis (bass). Throughout the 10-song collection — mixed by Grammy nominee Brian Virtue (Deftones, 30 Seconds to Mars) and mastered by Grammy winner Emily Lazar (Beck, Coldplay) — The Yagas adorn even the darkest moments with unexpected bursts of ineffable beauty and, in sharing their debut body of work with the world, aim to further their namesake’s legacy in their own ultimately benevolent way. “Producing Midnight Minuet was very cathartic for me,” adds Hawkey. “I felt the need to prove to myself that I could make great music outside of Deadsy, which, for the past 25 years, had been my only writing/recording partnership. This was a very different creative experience for me. I often felt in Deadsy like I was playing in someone else’s playground — I knew the rules, I mastered the slide and the monkey bars, but I felt like a visitor. Midnight Minuet just felt different. The Yagas built a new playground together, made up of our respective life experiences with equal ownership. We are the sum of our parts. When this kind of synergy exists, you grab it, nurture it, and give it a life.”
