Originally released in 1978, this version has been remastered and cut by Marco Perry (Bjork, Dennis Bovell, Massive Attack). The 7” will be released on 16th June and is limited to 1,500 copies worldwide.

“This is the re-release of our second ever Rough Trade single release. Richard Scott was working with us, developing a mail order and then a distribution company, and had deep Jamaican connections as he had been part of the management team for Third World.

He made a deal with Joan Higgins, a 15-year-old relative of Augustus Pablo, who worked the Saturday shift in Pablo’s Kingston Record shop. A man called Everton Da Silva was also involved, perhaps as a go between.

I always maintained this is one of the best ever Rough Trade releases, if not actually the best. One of my very bad jokes is that it was all downhill from this point. In any case it’s a monumental record, and very likely justification for the whole enterprise.” - Geoff Travis, 2023

TRACK LISTING

Pablo Meets Mr. Bassie
Mr. Bassie Special!

The Hidden Cameras burst onto the Toronto music scene in the early 2000’s boasting an irresistible combination of pop and queer sensibilities. Playing self-proclaimed ‘Gay Church Folk Music’ a new genre of their own making and songs ranging from haunted, aching ballads to foot-stomping anthems, the band’s outrageous stage shows packed such disparate venues as sweaty dance bars, art museums, working porn cinemas as well as many churches. Fronted by lead singer-songwriter Joel Gibb, the ensemble continues its musical provocations to this day, with Berlin now as its centre of gravity.

The Hidden Cameras had yet to release a note of commercially available music when, in early 2002, they became among the most discussed and celebrated unsigned bands in the history of their native Toronto. By the close of the year, they had been the subject of uncommonly sensational features in The Globe and Mail (Canada’s national newspaper) as well as in every daily and weekly in Toronto. The reasons for the reckless enthusiasm of these usually cautious journals was simple: revelatory live performances that attacked and transcended the staid, dispassionate traditions of rock nightclub culture; and the songs of band front-man and mastermind Joel Gibb, a talent of uncommon melodic and poetic gifts. ‘The Smell of Our Own’, The Hidden Cameras debut album was originally released in April 2003 on Rough Trade to tremendous critical acclaim. This 20th anniversary expanded deluxe reissue features bonus demos and live session recordings. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Golden Streams
2. Ban Marriage
3. A Miracle
4. Animals Of Prey
5. Smells Like Happiness
6. The Day Is Dawning
7. Boys Of Melody
8. Shame
9. Breathe On It
10. The Man That I Am With My Man
11. Fear O Zine Failure - B-Side
12. Boys Of Melody - CBC Session
13. Smells Like Happiness - 4 Track Demo
14. Shame - CBC Session
15. Day Is Dawning - CBC Session
16. The Dying Galatian - B-Side
17. Heavy Flow Of Evil - B-Side
18.Ban Marriage - 4 Track Demo
19. Breathe On It - CBC Session
20. A Miracle - 4 Track Demo

False Lankum follows their 2019 breakthrough album The Livelong Day, which paved the way for critical and commercial success, earning them that year’s RTE Choice Music Prize (the Irish equivalent of the Album of the Year Grammy) and the #8 spot on NPR Music’s Best Albums of the Year list. Drawing on traditional folk songs, Lankum put their own dark, distinctive mark onto each, leaning into heavy drones and sonic distortion that imparts new intensity and beauty into each track. This record sees the band cement their breakout from the folk genre, creating bold, contemporary music that may be fashioned from traditional elements but is firmly new, sitting comfortably alongside Rough Trade labelmates like black midi and Gilla Band. False Lankum also features two original tracks, ‘Netta Perseus’ and ‘The Turn’, both penned by the group’s Daragh Lynch.

‘Go Dig My Grave’ was discovered by Lankum’s Radie Peat who learned the particular version on the album from the singing of Jean Ritchie, who recorded it in 1963 on the album Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson at Folk City. It is a member of a family of songs which seem to be largely made up of what are known as ‘floating verses’, originally composed as stanzas of various different ballads, some of which date back as far as the 17th century.

“'Our interpretation of the traditional song Go Dig My Grave is one that centres around the emotion of grief – all-consuming, unbearable and absolute” explain Lankum, “A visceral physical reaction to something that the body and mind are almost incapable of processing. The second part of the song is inspired by the Irish tradition of keening (from the Irish caoineadh) – a traditional form of lament for the deceased. Regarded by some as opening up ‘perilous channels of communication with the dead’, the practice came under severe censure from the catholic church in Ireland from the 17th century on.”

From the start, Dublin’s Lankum planned for False Lankum, their fourth record and third for Rough Trade, to feel like a complete piece – a progression and a journey for the listener. “We wanted to create more contrast on the record so the light parts would be almost spiritual and the dark parts would be incredibly dark, even horror inducing,” they explain. The album’s 12 tracks, composed of 10 traditional songs and two originals, show the four-piece using a new palate to colour their sound in an increasingly experimental way, alongside longtime producer John ‘Spud’ Murphy.

TRACK LISTING

1. Go Dig My Grave
2. Clear Away In The Morning
3. Fugue I
4. Master Crowley’s
5. Newcastle
6. Fugue II
7. Netta Perseus
8. The New York Trader
9. Lord Abore And Mary Flynn
10. Fugue III
11. On A Monday Morning
12. The Turn

As the Nottingham duo's most dancefloor friendly release to date, UK GRIM is an urgent and sage-like look at life, living and the gritty reality of our era. 

Truly the sound of now, not only in terms of the ideas and issues Jason Williamson's strong words invoke, but also thanks to the innovative and immersive production of Andrew Fearn, which on this release has seen the pair collaborate on songs with Jane's Addiction's creative powerhouse, Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro, and with Florence Shaw, the distinct and vital voice at the heart of British band Dry Cleaning. Speaking of the forces that have triggered the poetic protest at the heart of this record, as with their musical forebears like The Clash or The Jam, Sleaford Mods reveal that the outrage they feel is underscored by love for the people and places around them, making ‘UK GRIM’ as much a celebration of individuals and the idealists as it is an attack on ruling classes who pursue their own self-serving agendas with increasing desperation.

“Maybe we are proud of the country. Maybe we are proud to be English,” explains Williamson. “Maybe I’m proud of the horrible grey streets and the shit weather and the stupid fashions I find myself investing in. It’s just that the English we’re proud of being is absolutely nothing like the English the authorities want to try and promote.” Angry yet artful, innovative yet possessing an instinctual energy that irresistibly moves bodies and minds, ‘UK GRIM’ is an erudite electronic vision that truly engages with times that have been anything but 'precedented'.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: We've already heard Sleaford Mods getting shouty on the new Orbital single in the past couple weeks to whet our appetite, and now we get a new fully-fledged LP of gritty garage beats and punky, aggressive lyricsm. While it's full of the snarling stomp they've become known for, their productions increasingly veer into more subtle melodic sections and impressively diverse stylistic swerves on 'UK Grim', and show the skills of a band at the peak of their game.

TRACK LISTING

UK GRIM
D.I.Why
Force 10 From Navarone – Ft. Florence Shaw
Tilldipper
On The Ground
Right Wing Beast
Smash Each Other Up
Don
So Trendy – Ft. Perry Farrell & Dave Navarro
I Claudius
Pit 2 Pit
Apart From You
Tory Kong
Rhythms Of Class

This 22-track album comprises original songs and instrumental score, all composed by Gruff Rhys. Recorded between 2021-2022 with a host of featured musicians including members of the National of Orchestra Wales, the music features throughout the forthcoming film of the same name, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Rebel Wilson and Celyn Jones.

Set for release in early 2023, the film tells the story of archaeologist (Rebel Wilson) and an architect (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and their fight to re-imagine a future after a traumatic brain injury leaves them adrift from the people they love. The title of the film itself refers to the nicknames given to the parts of our brains that lay down new memories and hold on to the old ones.

Tonally, the soundtrack compliments the movie perfectly: the drama of the subject matter and the human relationships is counterbalanced by the film’s wry humour and lightness of touch, and the varied compositions and styles on Gruff Rhys’ score and compositions reflects that. “The soundtrack for The Almond & The Seahorse was recorded largely in pandemic conditions so it was a matter of recording in bursts of possible activity in various friends’ studios, homes and even scout halls as chance permitted. It’s a varied quilt work as a result. “Gruff notes. “As sonic flagpoles I wanted to signify the film’s location in Liverpool and the Wirral by liberally, but hopefully not too obviously, using the Mellotron synthesizer (as famously used in Strawberry Fields by the Beatles & therefore in my mind it represents that great city sonically) and the Cello as a nod to its use by Gwen’s character in the film.”

“I was encouraged by Mike Jones the editor to take things to a more acoustic, emotional and ragged place. That, I hope, roughly explains the trajectory of the recording and how the varied music contained in this record came about. I hope you enjoy this colorful scrapbook of a soundtrack and get a chance to watch the film”.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Gruff Rhys is equally comfortable crafting grand, uplifting melodies and melodic guitar-based pop as he is brittle, minimalistic soundtracks. The Almond & The Seahorse is a tender work of emotional depth and further proves Rhys' almost unrivalled capacity as a musical chameleon.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Skyward
The Brain And The Body
People Are Pissed
Layer Upon Layer
Orea

Side B
Joe's Theme
Sunshine And Laughter Ever After
Variation With Strings
Amen
Low Cello
Liberate Me From The Love Song
Love Love Love

Side C
I Want My Old Life Back
Forest Waltz
Dance All Your Shadows To Death
Library To Kiss
Staccato With Cello
Small Talk

Side D
Toni’s Theme
Ffenestr
Penbedw
Arogldarth

Rough Trade Records commemorate the 10th anniversary of Alabama Shakes’ internationally acclaimed debut album, Boys & Girls, with a two-disc deluxe edition.

Hailed as one of the best albums of 2012 by Rolling Stone and numerous other publications, Boys & Girls entered Billboard’s Independent Albums chart at No. 1. It went on to attain Platinum certification and earn the band multiple GRAMMY nominations. Lead single “Hold On" was voted the #1 Best Song of 2012 by Rolling Stone..

Repackaged in a foil-board gatefold jacket with new, unreleased photos, Boys & Girls 10 Year Anniversary Deluxe Edition contains the album’s original 11 songs plus an additional 11 tracks from the band’s explosive live performance on KCRW’s “Morning Becomes Eclectic,” which aired in the months leading up to the album’s release.

TRACK LISTING

Hold On
I Found You
Hang Loose
Rise To The Sun
You Ain't Alone
Goin' To The Party
Heartbreaker
Boys & Girls
Be Mine
I Ain't The Same
On Your Way

Hang Loose (Live At KCRW)
I Found You (Live At KCRW)
Be Mine (Live At KCRW)
I Ain’t The Same (Live At KCRW)
Mama (Live At KCRW)
Goin’ To The Party (Live At KCRW)
Hold On (Live At KCRW)
Boys & Girls (Live At KCRW)
Always Alright (Live At KCRW)
Rise To The Sun (Live At KCRW)
Heavy Chevy (Live At KCRW)

Corn, originally released in 2015, features nine tracks Russell recorded in 1982 and 1983. In collaboration with Russell’s partner Tom Lee, Audika’s Steve Knutson compiled Corn from Arthur’s original, completed 1/4” tape masters. Russell himself compiled this material on three separate test pressings—labelled El Dinosaur, Indian Ocean, and Untitled, respectively— in 1985.

Russell fans know something of the Corn sound from Audika’s debut release, ‘Calling Out of Context’ (2004), which included four songs from these sessions: ‘The Deer In The Forest Part 1,’ ‘The Platform on the Ocean,’ ‘Calling Out Of Context,’ and ‘I Like You!’

This new collection includes rhythmic alternate versions of ‘Lucky Cloud,’ ‘Keeping Up,’ ‘See My Brother, He’s Jumping Out (Let’s Go Swimming #2),’ ‘This Is How We Walk on the Moon,’ and ‘Hiding Your Present From You,’ along with ‘Corn,’ ‘Corn (Continued),’ ‘They and Their Friends,’ and the closing instrumental ‘Ocean Movie,’ one of the most beautiful and curious Russell tracks ever to see the light of day.

TRACK LISTING

Lucky Cloud
Corn
Keeping Up
See My Brother, He's Jumping Out (Let's Go Swimming #2)
This Is How We Walk On The Moon
Corn (Continued)
Hiding Your Present From You
They And Their Friends
Ocean Movie

‘Love Is Overtaking Me’, originally released in 2008 comprises 21 demos and home recordings of unreleased pop, folk and country songs from Arthur’s vast catalogue. While much critical and popular affection for Russell’s music has come about well after his untimely death from AIDS in 1992, many fellow artists believed in his genius and were drawn to collaborate with him during his lifetime. The legendary producer John Hammond (Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen) recorded Russell on several occasions; a number of these recordings can be heard on ‘Love Is Overtaking Me’. Alongside songs recorded with various incarnations of The Flying Hearts, a group formed by Russell with Ernie Brooks whose shifting line up included, by turns, Jerry Harrison, Rhys Chatham, Jon Gibson, Peter Gordon and Peter Zummo as well as Larry Saltzman and David Van Tieghem. Several other Russell projects are represented on Love Is Overtaking Me, including The Sailboats, Turbo Sporty and Bright & Early.

Compiled from over eight hours of material, ‘Love Is Overtaking Me’ reaches back further to Russell’s first compositions from the early `70s and spans forward to his very last recordings, made at home in 1991. Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear contributed mixing, restoration and editing to the album, whose tracks were selected by Audika’s Steve Knutson, Ernie Brooks and Russell’s companion, Tom Lee. Several songs feature prominently in Matt Wolf’s film ‘Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell’.

Extensive ‘Love Is Overtaking Me’ liner notes by Tom Lee provide an intimate perspective on Russell’s diverse catalogue, which spanned an extraordinary diversity of styles and won the love of artistic communities that would seem utterly disparate, from Philip Glass, John Cage and Allen Ginsberg to rock bands like The Talking Heads and The Modern Lovers; the pre-Studio 54 disco-party scene of Nicky Siano’s Gallery and David Mancuso’s Loft; and DJ-producers like Francois Kevorkian and Larry Levan, among others.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Close My Eyes
Goodbye Old Paint
Maybe She
Oh Fernanda Why
Time Away
Nobody Wants A Lonely Heart

Side B
I Couldn't Say It To Your Face
This Time Dad You're Wrong
What It's Like
Eli
Hey! How Does Everybody Know

Side C
I Forget And I Can't Tell (Ballad Of The Lights Pt. 1)
Habit Of You
Janine
Big Moon
Your Motion Says
The Letter

Side D
Don't Forget About Me
Love Is Overtaking Me
Planted A Thought
Love Comes Back

After a four year pause, Taken By Trees return to take you on a musical journey – and after a little wait, this one is as magical ever. The first step down an enchanted sonic path with Victoria Bergsman is Say You Don't Mind, a deceptively simple lullaby-like cover of the track first recorded by The Moody Blues' Denny Laine. Simultaneously both haunting and soothing with its gently euphoric atmospherics and Bergsman's own distinctly affecting vocals, which demonstrate why off the back of her own releases the former Concretes singer has been sought out by everyone from John Lewis (who had her cover Guns N Roses) to Peter Bjorn & John, who made her singing the centrepiece of their whistled classic, Young Folks. Say You Don't Mind, of course, was also a solo hit in 1972 for Colin Blunstone, and Bergsman's new version heralds a whole EP's worth of songs written or recorded by The Zombies frontman which she has been inspired to make her own.

TRACK LISTING

Time’s Running Out
Say You Don’t Mind
I Don’t Believe In Miracles
Caroline Good Bye
She Loves The Way They Love Her

On every level, Special Interest is uncompromising: in their adventurous sound, their high-energy live performances, and their convictions. Dance music and punk culture have flirted in the warehouse before, but Special Interest’s desire to dismantle genre is informed by a larger abolitionist worldview that resists constraint, category, and conformity. Their music is a soundtrack to dancing the pain away as much as raging against the machine.

Special Interest describes the experience of recording Endure as “inverted,” since the pandemic obviously stunted the possibilities of live performance, resulting in a new period of experimentation and sonic exploration in which old rules were cast out. Everything the group writes springs from the same source — a hard-hitting drum machine beat — but the possibilities are endless and the outcome always unpredictable. Ruth Mascelli’s work on drum machines and synthesizers provides a foundation, as varying beats lead the group into different directions: rave-ready drum and bass or ballroom-like house on the more dancefloor-friendly cuts, and marching kicks on No Wave-inflected tracks like “Foul”. “Cherry Blue Intention” brings together a sturdy post-punk bassline, shrieking guitar effects, and a jungle breakbeat into a driving anthem of an opening track.

The new songs recall the art rock of Sparks and The B-52s as much as politically-minded punk, and on “Midnight Legend,” the group is more overtly pop than ever before — making something fun during a time of frequent sadness became a central priority. But that doesn’t mean anything is simple or surface-level, with a darkness often treading beneath the smooth production. For as much as the band plays with dissonance, Maria Elena’s expressive guitar work and Nathan Cassiani’s grooving bass lines effortlessly weave together, and shade out the soundscape brought into existence by Alli Logout’s commanding vocal presence. Collaboration is central to the band’s creative process, and it’s difficult to imagine even one element from the whole of Special Interest subtracted from the equation. Their songs are living organisms, open to the possibility of experimentation and interpretation, but also not the property or creation of any one person.

TRACK LISTING

Cherry Blue Intention
(Herman’s) House
Foul
Midnight Legend
Love Scene
Kurdish Radio
My Displeasure
Impulse Control
Concerning Peace
Interlude
LA Blues

Up The Bracket arrived like a raging bull in a tired post-Britpop china shop and introduced the world to The Libertines, a new gang of London bohemians, whose ragged tunes, red military tunics, opiated poetry and ‘live now pay never’ lifestyle came to define the millennial angst of the early noughties. At the heart of the band is the blood bond bromance between the ramshackle Music Hall Jagger/Richards, Peter Doherty and Carl Barat, ably assisted by the rock solid rhythm twins John Hassall and Gary Powell. Any bookie worth his salt would have given you short odds on this quartet surviving more than a month or two, given the teetering on the brink lifestyle they chose to lead, but here we are two decades later and our Byronic heroes, though older and wiser, are still fighting the good fight and making music every bit as vital as their debut. The belief, talent and fervour that Doherty spoke of in their earliest manifesto has stood them in good stead.

Up The Bracket, justly considered one of the greatest albums of the noughties, was originally released on October 21st 2002 by Rough Trade Records. The album, a heady stew of indie rock, skiffle, blues, dub and English bucolic pop, was a huge shot in the arm to a largely redundant music scene and helped to inspire the rebirth of guitar music, going on to influence countless artists who followed in its wake.

Up The Bracket, which was produced by Mick Jones of The Clash, takes you on a wondrously poetic journey into the band’s mythical world and their fevered dreams of Albion, a land of squalid glamour, liberty, equality, fraternity, gin palaces and chip shops. Quite simply Pete, Carl, Gary and John created a hugely compelling timeless British rock'n'roll classic debut as relevant now as it was upon its release.

TRACK LISTING

2LP & 2CD Tracklisting

LP1/CD1 – Up The Bracket (Remastered)
Vertigo
Death On The Stairs
Horror Show
Time For Heroes
Boys In The Band
Radio America
Up The Bracket
Tell The King
The Boy Looked At Johnny
Begging
The Good Old Days
I Get Along

LP2/CD2 - Live At The 100 Club
Horrorshow
Vertigo
The Delaney
What A Waster
Begging
Time For Heroes
Death On The Stairs
Boys In The Band
I Get Along



BOXSET Tracklisting
LP1 – Up The Bracket (Remastered) (black Vinyl)
Side One 
1. Vertigo
2. Death On The Stairs
3. Horror Show
4. Time For Heroes
5. Boys In The Band
6. Radio America
Side Two
1. Up The Bracket
2. Tell The King
3. The Boy Looked At Johnny
4. Begging
5. The Good Old Days
6. I Get Along

LP2- Live At The 100 Club (White Vinyl)
Side One 
1. Horrorshow
2. Vertigo
3. The Delaney
4. What A Waster
5. Begging
Side Two
6. Time For Heroes
7. Death On The Stairs
8. Boys In The Band
9. I Get Along

7” - Up The Bracket – Blue Vinyl
Side A – Up The Bracket – Original Audio Not Remastered
Side AA – Boys In The Band – Original Audio Not Remastered

7” – Time For Heroes – Red Vinyl
Side A – Time For Heroes – Original Audio Not Remastered
Side B – The 7 Deadly Sins (Demo) – Original Audio Not Remastered

CD1 – Album Studio Outtakes
1. Up The Bracket – Take 4
2. Vertigo – Take 2
3. Ha Ha Wall – Take 1
4. Horror Show – Take 3
5. Bangkok – Take 1
6. Time For Heroes – Take 3
7. Begging – Take 1
8. What A Waster – Take 1
9. Breck Road Lover – Take 1
10. Never Never – Take 2
11. Tell The King – Take 1
12. The Domestic – Take 1
13. Don’t Talk To Me -Take 1
14. The Wolfman – Take 2
15. Radio America – Take 2
16. The Good Old Days – Take 1
17. 7 Deadly Sins – Take 3
18. Sweets – Take 4
19. Mocking Bird – Take 6
20. Boys In The Band – Take 1
21. Skag & Bone Man – Take 2

CD2 – Demos/Radio Sessions/B-Sides/Live Etc
1. Vertigo – Demo
2. The Boy Looked At Johnny - Demo
3. Death On The Stairs - Demo
4. Horror Show - Demo
5. All At Sea (Misty) - Demo
6. Wolfman - Demo
7. Plan A – Demo
8. Up The Bracket – Evening Session
9. Boys In The Band – Evening Session
10. Time For Heroes – Evening Session
11. I Get Along/mayday – Evening Session
12. Jo Whiley – Christmas Live Lounge
13. Skag & Bone Man – Up The Bracket B-Side
14. The Delaney - Up The Bracket B-Side
15. Plan A - Up The Bracket B-Side
16. General Smuts (Demo) – Time For Heroes B-Side
17. Bangkok (Demo) – Time For Heroes – B-Side
18. Mr. Finnegan (Demo) – Time For Heroes B-Side
19. Sally Brown (Demo) – Time For Heroes B-Side
20. 7 Deadly Sins (Demo) – Time For Heroes B-Side
21. Up The Bracket – Live At The ICA – 3/6/02
22. Mayday – Live At Nottingham Rock City – 30/10/02
23. Begging - Live At Divan Du Monde, Paris – 7/11/02
24. The Boy Looked At Johnny – Live At Divan Du Monde, Paris – 7/11/02
25. Death On The Stairs – Alt Guitar Version

DVD
HD Videos Of –
Up The Bracket
Time For Heroes
I Get Along
Up The Bracket & Boys In The Band – Jools Holland Dec 2002
Time For Heroes – Top Of The Pops March 2003
Exclusive Extras – Still Tbc

Cassette – Early Demos
1. I Get Along – 12/01 – Nomis Demo
2. Time For Heroes – 12/01 – Nomis Demo
3. Never Never – 12/01 – Nomis Demo
4. Horror Show – 12/01 – Nomis Demo
5. Boys In The Band – 12/01 – Nomis Demo
6. Up The Bracket – 01/02 – Nomis Demo
7. Begging - 01/02 – Nomis Demo
8. What A Waster - 01/02 – Nomis Demo
9. Skint & Minted - 01/02 – Nomis Demo
10. General Smuts - 01/02 – Nomis Demo
11. Bangkok - 01/02 – Nomis Demo
12. Mayday - 01/02 – Nomis Demo
13. Mr Finnegan - 01/02 – Nomis Demo
14. Tell The King – 25/1/02 - Demo
15. Death On The Stairs – 25/1/02 – Demo
16. Time For Heroes – 1/3/02 - Demo
17. I Get Along – 1/3/02 - Demo
18. Horror Show – 1/3/02 – Demo
19. Boys In The Band – 1/3/02 - Demo
20. General Smuts – 1/3/02 – Demo

JARV IS have written & performed the original soundtrack for the critically acclaimed BBC TV series “This is Going to Hurt” based on Adam Kay’s award-winning international multi-million selling memoir of the same name. The soundtrack was recorded at Narcissus Studios, London by Drew Dungate-Smith during various sessions throughout 2021. Most of the performances are live takes featuring the entire band – often recorded whilst they watched the playback of key sequences from the series.

JARV IS… is a band comprising Jarvis Cocker, Serafina Steer, Emma Smith, Andrew McKinney, Adam Betts & Jason Buckle. The soundtrack consists of a mixture of songs & instrumental pieces, with Cocker & Steer being the main composers. Each episode features at least one song with lyrics by Cocker, who had access to the scripts (adapted by Adam Kay from his own book) from an early stage in the production process. Cocker is quoted as saying “It’s our love song to the NHS”.

Lead Director Lucy Forbes says “As one of England’s finest lyricists and songwriters we could not have been more thrilled to have Jarvis Cocker and his band write original songs and score for This Is Going To Hurt. His incisive wit, keen sense of observation and ability to write beautiful heartfelt melodies was the perfect fit. His music immediately intertwined with the fabric and tone of the show and took it to a whole new level, getting right to the heart of the pathos, pain and joy of working at the NHS. It was a huge privilege to work with him on this project, and I can’t imagine TIGTH without him.”

TRACK LISTING

1: This Is Going To Hurt
2: Visiting Hours
3: Adam’s Nightmare
4: Dark Wave
5: Dare To Love
6: Shruti
7: Job Description
8: Difficult C Section
9: Fuck This
10: Just Another One Of Those Days
11: All I Have Is Yours
12: Shruti (The Golden Thread)

For their first album as Gilla Band, (formerly Girl Band) the foursome has redrawn their own paradigm. Most Normal is like little you’ve heard before, a kaleidoscopic spectrum of noise put in service of broken pop songs, FX-strafed Avant-punk rollercoaster rides and passages of futurist dancefloor nihilism.

Covid lockdown robbed Gilla Band of any opportunity to try the new material out live, but the pandemic also incinerated any idea of a deadline for the new album. They were free to tinker at leisure, to rewrite and restructure and reinvent tracks they’d cut – to, as drummer Adam Faulkner puts it, “pull things apart and be like, ‘Let’s try this. We could try out every wild idea.”

The group also fell under the spell of modern hip-hop, “where there’s really heavy-handed production and they’re messing with the track the whole time,” says Fox. “That felt like a fun route to go down, it was a definite influence.”

Most Normal opens with an absolute industrial-noise banger that sounds like a manic house-party throbbing through the walls of the next room as a downed jetliner brings death from above. What follows is unpredictable, leading the listener through a sonic house of mirrors, where the unexpected awaits around every corner.

The common thread holding Most Normal’s ambitious Avant-pop shapes together is frontman Dara Kiely. Throughout, he’s an antic, antagonistic presence, barking wild, hilarious, unsettling spiels, babbling about smearing fish with lubricant or dressing up in bin-liners or having to wear hand-me-down boot-cut jeans (“It was a big, shameful thing, growing up, not being able to afford the look I wanted and having to wear all my brother’s old clothes”, says Kiely).

Most Normal, then, is a triumph, the bold work of a group who’ve taken the time to evolve their ideas, to deconstruct and reconstruct their music and rebuild it into something new, something challenging and infinitely rewarding. It’s a headphone masterpiece. It’s a majestic exploration of the infinite possibilities of noise. It’s a bold riposte to your parochial beliefs on whatever a pop song can or should be. It’s the best work these musicians have put to (mangled) tape.

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: Their first LP under new moniker Gilla Band (formally Girl Band), 'Most Normal' sees the Irish quartet further expanding on their already established brand of pummelling noise rock, whilst also incorporating elements of 00s dance-punk - especially with the James Murphy-esque delivery on album closer 'Post Ryan'. Infectious and full of catchy rhythms, 'Most Normal' is far from normal and is an exciting new future for Gilla Band. Also for fans of old, don't be deterred, this is still the LOUD Gilla Band we all came to initially love.

TRACK LISTING

The Gum
Eight Fivers
Backwash
Gushie
Binliner Fashion
Capgras
The Weirds
I Was Away
Almost Soon
Red Polo Neck
Pratfall
Post Ryan 

London-based duo Jockstrap (Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye) will release their hotly-anticipated debut full-length record I Love You Jennifer B via Rough Trade Records.

Commenting on the album release, Jockstrap’s Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye said: “I Love You Jennifer B is a collection of Jockstrap tracks that have been 3 years in the making. Everything on it is pretty singular sounding so we hope there is a track on there for everyone and something that speaks to you and says ‘I’m a banger.’” Skye added of ‘Glasgow’ (their new single): “‘Glasgow’ is our coming of age, moving forward, long-distance, travelling, beautiful bosk, wonderful thicket song.” And Ellery said of the song’s subject: “Glasgow is a great city, perhaps my favourite in the UK! Only downside is that it’s so damn cold all the time.”

When Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye make music as Jockstrap, the process and result has one definition: pure modern pop alchemy. With their debut album I Love You Jennifer B, Jockstrap will cement themselves as one of the most vital young groups to emerge from London’s melting pot of musical cultures in years.

TRACK LISTING

Neon
Jennifer B
Greatest Hits
What’s It All About?
Concrete Over Water
Angst
Debra
Glasgow
Lancaster Court
50/50 (Extended)

Hellfire builds on the melodic and harmonic elements of Cavalcade, while expanding the brutality and intensity of their debut, Schlagenheim. It is their most thematically cohesive and intentional album yet.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: While Black Midi may be hard to categorise, it hasn't stopped people of all ages flooding towards their diverse mix of jazzy rock and angular post-punk, and 'Hellfire' definitely stands to gain them a significant chunk of new followers. It's another step outside of the comfort zone, with angular guitar phrases and barely cohesive percussion coming together magnificently into yet another chapter of incendiary oddball genius.

TRACK LISTING

Hellfire
Sugar/Tzu
Eat Men Eat
Welcome To Hell
Still
The Race Is About To Begin
Dangerous Liaisons
The Defence
27 Questions

First single “Eight Fivers” announces itself in that typical Gilla Band way where the lyrics often feel abstracted from the music. Dara’s voice is two opposing forces at once: it’s the melodic cry yearning and dancing over the driving beat. In some ways it’s the album’s most memorable track for how instant it sounds and simple it feels, however, its idiosyncratic enough to create its own peculiar feel. On the track Dara says “Eight Fivers is about 40 quid. It's about being out of touch with modern circumstances while feeling socially limited. Never fitting in and kind of proud of it. Stuck with what I have and happy for it. Being grateful and not fashionable, self-conscious and too aware of what is lacking. Accepting that jealousy played a big role in my life but trying not to feed into it.”

TRACK LISTING

A – Eight Fivers
B - Sportsday

To celebrate its 20th birthday, The Libertines’ debut single ‘What A Waster’ is repressed on seven inch single (backed by original B-side ‘I Get Along’).

Part calling card from the stars, part postcard from the gutter, when The Libertines made their first introductions there was no time for a gentle warm-up or an orienteering session to point out all the fire exits. Hell, there was no way out anyway because with their first single Pete and Carl and Gary and John dropped you straight in the middle of the energy and chaos that surged through their lives and fuelled their band. A storm of Bond-theme like riffs and ‘Carry On’ entendres, that charged forward with brakes-off drums, bass and the singers’ intertwined vocals, ‘What A Waster’ wasn’t a song to help you get your bearing with a new band, it was a track that made you realise this group would become your whole world. 

With its Hogarth set to music visions of society’s underbelly, and a Gerald Scarfe-like sharpness to its wit, though The Libertines debut single - backed by equally energetic B-side ‘I Get Along’ - might have come out of the blocks at full speed, but there was a preciseness and a thought behind ‘What A Waster’’s ramshackle charms. Twenty years on from its release, The Libertines' opening salvo retains a freshness that is as much down to its wisdom beyond its years as it is the youthful exuberance it inspired in band and fans alike.

TRACK LISTING

1. What A Waster
2. I Get Along

With their new album, If I Never Know You Like This Again, SOAK has finally shaken the hangover of their starry debut Before We Forgot How To Dream, and the pressures that came with it, hiding in the wings of their ambitious follow up album, Grim Town. Having come up through BBC introducing at the tender age of 15 before signing to Rough Trade Records as well as winning the RTE Choice Music Prize, The Northern Irish Music Prize and the youngest ever Mercury Prize nominee, SOAK has again and again been described as ‘the voice of a generation.’

Showing from a young age an intensely artistic awareness of the poetry of memory, Bridie Monds-Watson, aka SOAK, would incessantly photograph and video everything, documenting and organising the material so it was always there for them to revisit. ”I always want to remember exactly how I felt at a certain moment.” Now, at 25, SOAK’s third album ‘If I Never Know You Like This Again', is naturally made up of what Bridie intimately calls “song-memories”.

Working closely with Tommy McLaughlin (Villagers), with whom Bridie has been collaborating with since the age of 15, and armed with influences from Pavement, to Radiohead to Broken Social Scene, they wrote most of the album together before recording it with the rest of the band in Attica Studios, Donegal. Throughout the album SOAK pushes and pulls at melodies, but never milks their brilliance. Bridie masterfully glides their vocal melody slightly off-kilter above excitable compressed high hats and flourishing guitar lines. With the new direction of a grungier, more lo-fi production the swooning guitars are given a contemporary pop-edge, reflected in the rich and robust musicality of songs like ‘Bleach’, ‘Last July’ and ‘Pretzel’. There’s a constant pulsating beat at the album’s centre, propelling it towards a kind of dewy happiness, like the end credits of a 90s coming-of-age film. Bridie’s lyrics move through the songs almost as effortlessly and they sing them, and the songs when read, read like poetry. With this album Bridie is, as the title suggests, freezing time in the pursuit of truth: capturing their life into existence.

In the world of ‘If I Never Know You Like This Again’, a life is lived only because it's remembered.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Falling somewhere between the youthful vigour of pop-punk and the fuzzy guitars and snappy bass of garage, all softened with the beautiful vocals of Monds-Watson. Another gorgeous, heartfelt outing from one of the most distinctive voices in indie music.

TRACK LISTING

Purgatory
Last July
Bleach
Get Well Soon
Red-eye
Guts
Baby, You’re Full Of Shit
Pretzel
Neptune
Swear Jar

The now classic album that started the renaissance, available via Rough Trade on double vinyl with four page insert.

Calling Out Of Context features 12 previously unreleased tracks of Buddhist Bubblegum Disco Electro Pop including the anthemic "That's Us/Wild Combination", "The Platform On The Ocean", “Make 1, 2” and "Arm Around You", all recorded during Arthur's prime years 1985-90. Collaborators include Mustafa Ahmed, Walter Gibbons, Steven Hall, Jennifer Warnes, and Peter Zummo.

30 years have passed since Arthur Russell left us, in relative obscurity, from AIDS complications in 1992. Yet his work—as composer, songwriter and dance music innovator—is better known now than ever before. Since Audika Records and Arthur’s partner Tom Lee began excavating and curating Arthur’s vast archive beginning in 2003, critics worldwide have hailed Russell as a visionary. Countless younger artists cite him as an influence. There has been an internationally acclaimed documentary film (Matt Wolf’s Wild Combination) and biography (Tim Lawrence’s Hold onto Your Dreams), a critical study (Matt Marble’s Buddhist Bubblegum) along with various tribute albums, concerts and events. In 2016 Arthur Russell’s archive was acquired by The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center as part of their American Music Collection.

If Arthur Russell isn’t quite the pop star he imagined he would be, he is at least widely considered one of the most significant figures in late 20th century American music.

The majority of the material selected for “Calling Out Of Context” comes from two sources. The first was a completed album which dates from 1985, entitled “Corn” of which three very different test pressings remain (complied and reissued in 2015). The second source was material earmarked for Rough Trade recorded between 1986 -1990.

Both “Make 1,2” and “Hop On Down” (originally titled “Hop On Down To Petland”) are two songs that Arthur wrote specifically with the plan of releasing as singles. Sadly, Arthur was faced with an unsympathetic market which viewed his material as uncommercial or too eccentric. In the case of the abandoned Rough Trade recordings, Arthur had become ill due to complications from HIV. He simply could not let go of his material. Nonetheless, he worked and reworked songs into an infinite labyrinth of possibilities, working incessantly with confidence and optimism until the last years of his life.

As a cellist, songwriter, composer, and disco visionary Arthur Russell consistently blurred the lines of our expectations of what pop music could be. Contrary by nature, Arthur’s spontaneous reaction to and altered perception of his environment produced music that remains challenging and contemporary. Arthur’s open hearted attitude to music was far ahead of its time, and now that time is ours.

TRACK LISTING

The Deer In The Forest Part 1
The Platform On The Ocean
You And Me Both
Calling Out Of Context
Arm Around You
That's Us/Wild Combination
Make 1,2
Hop On Down
Get Around You
 I Like You!
You Can Make Me Feel Bad
Calling All Kids

Remastered double LP with 12 page booklet including liner notes by Tim Lawrence, Ernie Brooks and Arthur Russell.

Before Disco, and before the transcendent echoes, Arthur studied to be a composer.

His journey began in 1972, running away from his home in Oskaloosa, Iowa.

Heading west to Northern California, Arthur studied Indian classical composition at the Ali Akbar Khan College of Music followed by western orchestral music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, before ending two years later in New York at the Manhattan School of Music.

Traversing the popular and the serious, Arthur composed “Instrumentals” in 1974, inspired by the photography of his Buddhist teacher, Yuko Nonomura, as Arthur described, “I was awakened, or re-awakened to the bright-sound and magical qualities of the bubblegum and easy-listening currents in American popular music”.

Initially intended to be performed in one 48 hour cycle, “Instrumentals” was in fact only performed a handful of times as a work in progress.

The legendary performances captured live in New York at The Kitchen (1975 and 1978) and Franklin St. Arts Center (1977) feature the cream of that eras downtown new music scene including Ernie Brooks, Rhys Chatham, Julius Eastman, Jon Gibson, Peter Gordon, Garrett List, Andy Paley, Bill Ruyle, Dave Van Tieghem, and Peter Zummo.

Pitchfork lauded “Instrumentals” Vol. 1 as a masterpiece and one of Arthur’s “greatest achievements”. Americana touching on Copeland, Ives, and maybe even Brian Wilson. “Instrumentals” Vol. 2 is a moving, deeply pastoral work performed by the CETA Orchestra and conducted by Julius Eastman. Also included are two of Arthur’s most elusive compositions, Reach One, and Sketch For “Face Of Helen”. Recorded live in 1975 at Phill Niblock’s Experimental Intermedia Foundation, Reach One is a minimal, hypnotic ambient soundscape written and performed for two Fender Rhodes pianos. Sketch For “Face Of Helen” was inspired by Arthur’s work with friend and composer Arnold Dreyblatt, recorded with an electronic tone generator, keyboard and ambient recordings of a rumbling tugboat from the Hudson River.

TRACK LISTING

"Instrumentals" Volume 1
"Instrumentals" Volume 1
"Instrumentals" Volume 1
"Instrumentals" Volume 1
"Instrumentals" Volume 1
"Instrumentals" Volume 1
"Instrumentals" Volume 1
"Instrumentals" Volume 1
"Instrumentals" Volume 1
"Instrumentals" Volume 1
"Instrumentals" Volume 2
"Instrumentals" Volume 2
"Instrumentals" Volume 2
"Instrumentals" Volume 2
"Instrumentals" Volume 2
Sketch For The Face Of Helen
Reach One

‘Dear Someone, Happy Something’ is the debut album by London based sisters Rowan, Robin and Sylvie. The three sisters from Honor Oak Park in South London, with an average age of only 13 and a ½ years old, write songs that reflect a disarmingly frank child’s-eye view of the world.

Honey Hahs have been championed by, and played shows with, Goat Girl, Fat White Family, Insecure Men, Shame, Micachu and The Moonlandingz amongst others.

‘Dear Someone, Happy Something’ was recorded in London with Steve Mackey. Rowan plays guitar and piano, Robin plays bass and Sylvie plays drums, and they all sing and harmonise.

TRACK LISTING

Forever
River
Rain Falls Down
I Know You Know
OK
Olive Green
Beer Fear
Sometime Ago
Away
Concrete
Stop Him
Swallow
Whoever

Pinegrove’s new album 11:11 is an unqualified triumph, an album that seizes listeners with hook-filled songs imbuing feelings of warmth, urgency, and poetic beauty, even as it asks some of life’s big and difficult questions.

On previous Pinegrove recordings, band member Sam Skinner usually oversees mixing duties, but this time out, noted producer and former Death Cab for Cutie member Chris Walla has assumed the role. Calling previous album Marigold’s production “crisp and contained,” Hall, who co-produced 11:11 with Sam, sought more of a “messier” feel for these new songs. Most of the recording took place at two Hudson Valley facilities (Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock and The Building in Marlboro) with the final touches done side by side with Walla in Seattle. 11:11 features lush soundscapes, organs, Megan Benavente’s melodic and adventurous bass playing, Josh Marre’s signature guitar work & a special guest- Doug Hall, Evan’s father- playing piano on many tracks. The record sounds intimate, yet expansive.

“It spends equal time on optimism, community, reaffirming what we are and how it’s our duty to look out for one another” says singer Evan Stephens Hall. “There’s anger, love, hope and grief. The record has all of that.”

The opening mini epic track, “Habitat,” is a two-part masterpiece of texturalism, brimming with robust, percussive guitars and driven by unsettling shifts. Another key track is “Alaska,” – a happy-go-lucky romp of dense, bracing guitar rock, lurching out of the gate with tectonic force and boasting hooks at every turn. Later, the breezy, pastoral folk-tinged “Iodine” glistens with exquisite vocal harmonies, and “Flora” is a beautifully appointed apology to nature, its luxurious country rock feels connected to past masters like the Flying Burrito Brothers or early Wilco.

TRACK LISTING

Habitat
Alaska
Iodine
Orange
Flora
Respirate
Let
So What
Swimming
Cyclone
11th Hour

Originally released on LP in 1986, “World Of Echo” is a deeply intimate and meditative work of awe-inspiring grace and remains a timeless work of sublime beauty. Arthur’s aim was to achieve what he calls 'the most vivid rhythmic reality', with just cello, voice, and echoes. Arthur achieved all of this and more on one of the most amazing albums you will ever hear.

Often listed in the various 'most important albums you'll ever hear' type of fair; its innovative and maverick approach to the whole production process (even famously recording the album on a full moon) would go on to inspire countless future generations of creatives; especially across lo-fi and DIY scenes. His mix of classical training, frankly punk attitude and love of experimentation forged a sound that was unequivocally his own; a rare and epochal force of nature that will never be copied again.

If you don't own a copy of this album, I urge you to reconsider! It's a must-have for any serious music lover. Copies always fly out too, so take advantage now as when its out of press it always commands big bucks.

TRACK LISTING

Tone Bone Kone 0:57
Soon-To-Be Innocent Fun / Let's See 9:19
Answers Me 2:04
Being It 5:23
Place I Know / Kid Like You 3:20
She's The Star / I Take This Time 4:46
Tree House 2:09
See-Through 2:08
Hiding Your Present From You 4:06
Wax The Van 2:05
All-Boy All-Girl 3:34
Lucky Cloud 2:46
Tower Of Meaning / Rabbit's Ear / Home Away From Home 4:20
Let's Go Swimming

The home of a host of indie disco classics with its noir atmospheres and vivid storytelling – qualities that saw the record inspire recent, generation-capturing movie Giddy Stratospheres which takes its name from The Long Blondes’ iconic single – the Sheffield band’s first album managed that rare trick of capturing the 2000s zeitgeist while leaving a timeless artistic mark for the ages.

Featuring of the aforementioned ‘Giddy Stratospheres’, ahead of the new deluxe edition’s release a remastered version of song, along with the track ‘Never To Be Repeated’,’ are being released today as a new digital single boasting brand new artwork painted by The Long Blondes’ frontwoman Kate Jackson. They are available now via all good streaming services.

Initially inspired by the frisson of the indie disco – now, fittingly, a classic of low lit dancefloors everywhere – ‘Giddy Stratospheres’ is The Long Blonde's sophisticated calling card. A swirl of razor sharp guitars and vivid storytelling, waltzing melodies and burning vocals, the Sheffield band's 2000s single fizzes with dancing, desire and the most stylish sing-a-long you'll ever hear.

The anniversary edition of ‘Someone To Drive You Home’, which was originally released in November 2006 and was produced by Pulp member Steve Mackey, comes as a limited edition, double gatefold LP and features the original record, plus 11 additional tracks that the band used on B-sides.

TRACK LISTING

LP1 Tracklisting
Lust In The Movies – Remastered
Once And Never Again – Remastered
Only Lovers Left Alive – Remastered
Giddy Stratospheres – Remastered
In The Company Of Woman – Remastered
Heaven Help The New Girl – Remastered
Separated By Motorways – Remastered
You Could Have Both – Remastered
Swallow Tattoo – Remastered
Weekend Without Makeup – Remastered
Madame Ray – Remastered
A Knife For The Girls – Remastered

LP2 Tracklisting
Five Ways To End It – Single B-Side
Fulwood Babylon – Single B-Side
The Whippet Fancier – Single B-Side
Who Are You To Her? – Single B-Side
Never To Be Repeated – Single B-Side
All Bar One Girls – Single B-Side
I'm Coping – Single B-Side
Last Night On Northgate St – Single B-Side
Platitudes – Single B-Side
Melville Farr – Single B-Side
The Unbearable Lightness Of Buildings – Single B-Side

JARV IS... truly evolving. From its earliest recordings beginning in an actual cave, via the enticing hypnotics behind the mantralike tracks ‘Sometimes I Am Pharaoh’ and ‘Must I Evolve’, the exquisite yet candid storytelling of ‘Swanky Modes’ and timeless anthem-turned-inadvertent lockdown soundtrack, ‘House Music All Night Long’, the debut album of the Jarvis Cocker-led band JARV IS... proved a standout swirl of creativity, invention and vision on its release last summer.

Yet ‘Beyond The Pale’ has continued to inspire long after the sessions for the record stopped. Despite being divided by the pandemic, audiences came together around the album, Jarvis and co made a live film based on the album with pioneering directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard entirely underground in a cavern, and intriguingly other musicians and producers have continued to be intrigued by the songs Cocker and his band created. The latter now has yielded an entirely new way of hearing ‘Beyond The Pale’ as, for the first time in his career, Jarv is releasing a remix album based on one of his records.

Boasting re-imaginings and re-stylings from the likes of David Holmes, Dennis Bovell and Greg Wilson among others, the record is a collaborative mix that offers new focus and insight on the music of one of this generation's greatest songwriters, while also allowing the remixers’ own unique characters to take flight within JARV IS... creative cave.

TRACK LISTING

Save The Whale (Mister Deltoid Remix)
Must I Evolve? (David Holmes & Keefus Ciancia’s Unloved Rework)
Am I Missing Something? (Pilooski /Jayvich Late Night Mix)
House Music All Night Long (Hot Chip Remix)
House Music All Night Long (Greg Wilson & Ché Wilson Remix)
Do The Pharaoh (Minsky Rock)
Swanky Modes (Dennis Bovell DubMix)
Children Of The Echo (Tam Tam Hidrogenesse Remix)

At once kaleidoscopic and intimate, "Iowa Dream" bears some of Russell’s most personal work, including several recently discovered folk songs he wrote during his time in Northern California in the early 1970s. For Russell, Iowa was never very far away. “I see, I see it all,” sings Russell on the title track: red houses, fields, the town mayor (his father) streaming by as he dream-bicycles through his hometown. Russell’s childhood home and family echo, too, through “Just Regular People,” “I Wish I Had a Brother,” “Wonder Boy,” “The Dogs Outside are Barking,” “Sharper Eyes,” and “I Felt.” Meanwhile, songs like “I Kissed the Girl From Outer Space,” “I Still Love You,” “List of Boys,” and “Barefoot in New York” fizz with pop and dance grooves, gesturing at Russell’s devotion to New York’s avant-garde and disco scenes. Finally, the long-awaited “You Did it Yourself,” until now heard only in a brief heart-stopping black-and-white clip in Matt Wolf’s documentary Wild Combination, awards us a new take with a driving funk rhythm and Russell’s extraordinary voice soaring at the height of its powers. On "Iowa Dream", you can hear a country kid meeting the rest of the world - and with this record, the world continues to meet a totally singular artist.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Wonder Boy
2. I Never Get Lonesome
3. Everybody Everybody
4. You Did It Yourself
5. Come To Life
6. Iowa Dream
7. Words Of Love
8. I Still Love You
9. You Are My Love
10. Barefoot In New York
11. Just Regular People
12. I Wish I Had A Brother
13. I Felt
14. The Dogs Outside Are Barking
15. Sharper Eyes
16. Follow You
17. List Of Boys
18. I Kissed The Girl From Outer Space
19. In Love With You For The Last Time

Originally released in April 2015, Sound & Color debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. The album also went Top 10 in Australia, the Netherlands, Switzerland & the UK where it is certified silver with over 84,000 sales

Alabama Shakes co-produced the album alongside Blake Mills (Bob Dylan, Perfume Genius). Mainly recorded at Nashville’s Sound Emporium Studios, Sound & Color also found the band joining forces with engineer/mixer Shawn Everett (Beck, The War on Drugs, Kacey Musgraves). As they brought the album’s finely detailed tracks to life, Alabama Shakes let their most playful impulses run free.

This deluxe edition features seven bonus tracks pulled from unreleased studio material, b-sides and live recordings plus reimagined artwork by GRAMMY-winning art director Frank Harkins and new photos.

TRACK LISTING

Side A - Original Album:
1. Sound & Color
2. Don’t Wanna Fight
3. Dunes
4. Future People
Side B - Original Album:
5. Gimme All Your Love
6. This Feeling
7. Guess Who
8. The Greatest
9. Shoegaze
Side C - Original Album Plus Two Bonus Songs:
10. Miss You
11. Gemini
12. Over My Head
13. Drive By Baby (bonus Song)
14. Joe (bonus Song)
Side D - All New Bonus Material:
15. Someday (b-side/unreleased)
16. Don’t Wanna Fight (Live From Capitol Studio A)
17. Future People (Live From Capitol Studio A)
18. Dunes (Live From Capitol Studio A)
19. Over My Head (Live From Capitol Studio A)

Parquet Courts’ thought-provoking rock is dancing to a new tune. Sympathy For Life finds the Brooklyn band at both their most instinctive and electronic, spinning their bewitching, psychedelic storytelling into fresh territory, yet maintaining their unique identity.

Built largely from improvised jams, inspired by New York clubs, Primal Scream and Pink Floyd and produced in league with Rodaidh McDonald (The xx, Hot Chip, David Byrne), Sympathy For Life was always destined to be dancey. Unlike its globally adored predecessor, 2018’s Wide Awake! the focus fell on grooves rather than rhythm.

“Wide Awake! was a record you could put on at a party,” says co-frontman Austin Brown. “Sympathy For Life is influenced by the party itself. Historically, some amazing rock records been made from mingling in dance music culture – from Talking Heads to Screamadelica. Our goal was to bring that into our own music.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: While album opener "Walking At A Downtown Pace" is about as Parquet Courts sounding as you can get, Sympathy For Life sees them taking a broader more experimental approach to their sound. It’s still unmistakeably them, the chugging post punk grooves and catchy hooks are still there, but it’s a more expanded, adventurous sound that works brilliantly.

Barry says: It's been a long wait for the new Parquet Courts LP, and this one follows 2018's highly regarded 'Wide Awake', which is never going to be an easy task. Fortunately for all involved, this one takes the incredibly successful formula of that banger and streamlines it into a wonderfully precise and soaring pop-redux of their already sleek sound. A brilliantly catchy, wonderfully written opus.

TRACK LISTING

Walking At A Downtown Pace
Black Widow Spider
Marathon Of Anger
Just Shadows
Plant Life
Application/Apparatus
Homo Sapien
Sympathy For Life
Zoom Out
Trullo
Pulcinella

I was tardy with my introduction to the genius that is Dean Blunt, ignoring the Hype Williams and Babyfather brilliance and only encountering the minimal magic of the first 'Black Metal' during my second year at Piccadilly. Shown the way by Ryan Horsebeach, Mike Riley Jones and Matt Ward, I bought the cryptic release and well and truly lost my shit...over and over again...for years. To say I'm excited by the appearance of a second instalment from the reclusive musician would be a wild understatement. 

The LP opens with strings and solemnity via 'Vigil', a sparse and beautiful reminder of Blunt's trademark sound - intimacy bordering on claustrophobia, nocturnal and emotive. The chiming guitars join the poised drum patterns for 'Mugu' and 'Dash Snow', a pair of bedsit vignettes which Javi just described as a London cabbie's reaction to Drill while Vini Reilly tunes up - this is a good thing by the way. Blunt's is a music of longing, vulnerability and beauty, presented as concise and considered songs which combine to form their own sonic landscape. Referential (the cover blacks out all everything from Dre's 2001 but the 2) but never reverential, Blunt, aided and abetted by Joanne Robertson somehow beats his personal best, and we should all be grateful we get to hear it.

TRACK LISTING

1. Vigil
2. Mugu
3. Dash Snow
4. Sketamine
5. Semtex
6. La Raza
7. Nil By Mouth
8. Zaza
9. Woosah
10. The Rot

Already renowned for a ball-tearing live show, The Sniffers made their international debut as one of the hottest tipped acts at The Great Escape in 2018. Soon afterwards, they signed deals with both Rough Trade Records and ATO Records, made a massively hyped appearance at SXSW, and finally released their self-titled debut album in 2019, landing them an ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) Award for Best Rock Album, capping off a wild year for the lunatic, likeable punks.

Late in 2020, Amyl and The Sniffers went into the studio with producer Dan Luscombe to record their sophomore album, Comfort To Me. Written over a long year of lockdown, the album was influenced by and expanded on a heavier pool of references - old-school rock’n’roll (AC/DC, Rose Tattoo, Motörhead and Wendy O Williams), modern hardcore (Warthog and Power Trip) and the steady homeland heroes (Coloured Balls and Cosmic Psychos). Lyrically, the album was influenced by Taylor’s rap idols and countless garage bands and in her words ‘I had all this energy inside of me and nowhere to put it, because I couldn’t perform, and it had a hectic effect on my brain. My brain evolved and warped and my way of thinking about the world completely changed.’

Seventeen songs were recorded in the Comfort to Me sessions and the top 13 made the cut. They were mixed long-distance by Nick Launay (Nick Cave, IDLES, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and mastered by Bernie Grundman (Michael Jackson, Prince, Dr Dre).

Comfort To Me demonstrates the same irrepressible smarts, integrity and fearless candour as their debut but as you’d expect of any young band five years on, their sound has evolved, in Amy’s words it’s ‘raw self expression, defiant energy and unapologetic vulnerability.’

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: An expectedly hefty new one from Amyl And The Sniffers sees the Melbourne four-piece continue their brutal domination of the modern punk scene with this wonderfully acerbic, incendiary slice of slashing modern punk rock. There's a reason the band have garnered such a following, and this LP shows everyone why.

TRACK LISTING

Guided By Angels
Freaks To The Front
Choices
Security
Hertz
No More Tears
Maggot
Capital
Don't Fence Me In
Knifey
Don't Need A Cunt (Like You To Love Me)
Laughing
Snakes

11 years after the release of previous album Provision, Scritti Politti erupted back into life with 1999’s Anomie & Bonhomie. Recalibrated, re-evaluated, re-imagined and, eventually, rewarded. Anomie & Bonhomie is the heady results of this artistic rebirth. Illuminated by the band’s stylish pure pop spotlight, collaborations with Mos Def, Lee Majors and Wendy Melvoin give the record a neon-lit, nocturnal shimmer. Hip hop flourishes sit side-by-side with heart-hitting balladry, as truly touching melodies match moments of uncompromising musical grit with their emotional impact.

TRACK LISTING

Umm
Tinseltown
First Goodbye
Die Alone
Mystic Handyman
Smith ’N’ Slappy
Born To Be
The World You Understand (Is Over & Over & Over)
Here Comes July
Prince Among Men
Brushed With Oil, Dusted With Powder

From a bedsit in London to New York recording studios… Alternative acclaim to mainstream adulation… Indie label hopefuls to major signings… Despite the series of radical shifts that underpinned its creation, Scritti Politti's second album Cupid & Psyche 85 achieved the virtually impossible. While everything was scaled up – the ambition, the sound, the audience – the singular artistic vision that drove the group not only remained intact and undiluted in these bigger surroundings, but became more inventive, more adventurous and, ultimately, more beloved. Introduced to pianist and programmer David Gamson while making of the band's debut album Songs To Remember, Green Gartside realised he had found a creative foil to help him achieve the ambitions he had for Scritti Politti.

Partially recorded in New York, with several tracks produced by Arif Mardin (who had worked on Aretha Franklin's I Say A Little Prayer, a track Green beautifully commemorates on this record) and partially in the UK, with Green and Gamson directly overseeing the process, Cupid & Psyche 85 is infused shimmering synths and the heat of classic funk. Yet weaved together by Green's intoxicating melodies, it is also embroidered with ideas from philosophical writings, while taking cues from myths and fables.

TRACK LISTING

The Word Girl
Small Talk
Absolute
A Little Knowledge
Don't Work That Hard
Perfect Way
Lover To Fall
Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)
Hypnotize

Gruff Rhys is releasing his new album “Seeking New Gods” through Rough Trade Records on 21st May. This will be Gruff’s seventh solo album. “Seeking New Gods” was recorded following a US tour with his band and mixed in LA with superstar producer Mario C (Beastie Boys).

The album concept was originally driven to be the biography of a mountain, Mount Paektu (an East Asian active volcano). However, as Gruff’s writing began to reflect on the inhuman timescale of a peak’s existence and the intimate features that bring it to mythological life, both the songs and the mountain became more and more personal.

“The album is about people and the civilisations, and the spaces people inhabit over periods of time. How people come and go but the geology sticks around and changes more slowly. I think it’s about memory and time,” he suggests of Seeking New Gods’ meaning. “It’s still a biography of a mountain, but now it’s a Mount Paektu of the mind. You won’t learn much about the real mountain from listening to this record but you will feel something, hopefully.” - Gruff Rhys.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Gruff returns for yet another faultless slab of widescreen cinematic pop, full of his warmingly familiar but endlessly inventive chord progressions and swoon-inducing vocal drawl. Optimistic but filled with more introspective moments among the otherwise bombastic stomp. It's as dizzying and perfect as anything he's ever done. Peak Gruff.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Mausoleum Of My Former Self
2. Can’t Carry On
3. Loan Your Loneliness
4. Seeking New Gods
5. Hiking In Lightning
Side B
1. Holiest Of The Holy Of The Holy Men
2. The Keep
3. Everlasting Joy
4. Distant Snowy Peaks

Dinked Edition Flexi Disc
Tropical Messiah

Goat Girl's latest offering lets off the distortion pedal just enough to make room for a more electronic pool of inspiration. It's delightfully wonky at times and tracks like “Jazz (In The Supermarket)” explore tempo changes and chord progressions that 2018 Goat Girl wouldn't dare consider. This doesn't mean they've held out on pure melody though, “P.T.S Tea” is satisfyingly poppy and “Sad Cowboy” breaks off into a New Order-esque sci-fi trip only after first smashing out four and a half minutes of delicious guitar twanging.
There is (to my delight) an overarching melancholy present throughout, keeping the pop at bay. Sadly, this might be because the album was put together during uncertain times for guitarist Ellie Rose Davies who was diagnosed with blood cancer. Now in remission, one can’t help but think that facing mortality changes everything and perhaps the band, as a whole, have been left feeling these shockwaves.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Goat Girls' swooning jangle takes a step into the future with their newest outing, adding moody synths and angular changes to their already impressive foundations. It's a brilliantly refined forward step, and shows that great things will come from Goat Girl in the future.

TRACK LISTING

Pest
Badibaba
Jazz (In The Supermarket)
Once Again
P.T.S.Tea
Sad Cowboy
The Crack
Closing In
Anxiety Feels
They Bite On You
Bang
Where Do We Go From Here?
A-Men

It is frustrating that in a country beset by unfolding social and economic trauma, caused in large measure and plain view by an entitled elite in service of their own ambitions and with a population gaslighted by their friends in the media, that there has been little or no kickback from what has, in the past, been a reliable source, contemporary music. That it's taken a couple of fortysomethings to pick up punk's combative baton and run with it is telling, but at least someone is doing it. It's a testament to their energy and commitment, and the biting wit with which it is delivered, that Spare Ribs, their 11th album, still sounds this sharp. With its broader palette adding funk and hip hop influences to the paired back bleep punk, and the scathing social commentary accompanied by childhood hurt and recovery, it is also, maybe, their finest hour. So far. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Sleaford Mods have one of the most rabid fanbases of all and 'Spare Ribs' is further proof as to why. Wry takes on modern issues and the politics, pitch-perfect commentary and delivered in their usual no-holds-barred way. Every bit the continuation of their rightfully enduring legacy.

TRACK LISTING

The New Brick
Shortcummings
Nudge It (feat. Amy Taylor)
Elocution
Out There
Glimpses
Top Room
Mork N Mindy (feat. Billy Nomates)
Spare Ribs
All Day Ticket
Thick Ear
I Don't Rate You
Fishcakes

Jarvis Cocker’s 2006 self-titled debut ‘Jarvis’ and his second album ‘Further Complications’ are being reissued. Both albums have been out of print for several years. ‘Jarvis’ comes with a 7” featuring his rabblerousing classic single ‘Running The World’, which was the subject of a UK fan campaign to get it into the Christmas charts in the aftermath of the general election.

TRACK LISTING

The Loss Adjuster
Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time
Black Magic
Heavy Weather
I Will Kill Again
Baby’s Coming To Get Me
Fat Children
From Auschwitz To Ipswich
Disney Time
Tonite
The Loss Adjuster
Big Julie
Quantum Theory
Running The World (one-sided 7”)

Jarvis Cocker’s 2006 self-titled debut ‘Jarvis’ and his second album ‘Further Complications’ are being reissued. Both albums have been out of print for several years. 2009’s ‘Further Complications’ is joined by a 12” featuring ‘You’re In My Eyes (Discosong)’

TRACK LISTING

Angela
Pilchard
Leftovers
I Never Said I Was Deep
Homewrecker!
Hold Still
Fuckingsong
Caucasian Blues
Slush
You’re In My Eyes (Discosong) (one-sided 12”)

The expanded reissue includes additional live sessions, B-sides and rarities from the period and extensive new sleeve notes.

The majority of the original album was recorded by Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized, Primal Scream, Girls Aloud) and mixed by Bill Price (Sex Pistols, The Clash, Sparks). Two tracks were recorded and mixed by Graham Sutton (The Delays, Bark Psychosis) and Phill Brown (Sly Stone, Led Zeppelin, Talk Talk).

TRACK LISTING

LP1/CD1
It Ended On An Oily Stage
Be Gone
How Will I Ever Find My Way Home?
Like A Honeycomb
Please Stand Up
North Hanging Rock
To Get To Sleep
Victorian Ice
Oh Larsen B
The Land Beyond
True Adventures

LP2/CD2
It Ended On An Oily Stage (recorded For The Mark Radcliffe Show On BBC Radio 2 – First Broadcast On 31st March 2005)

How Will I Ever Find My Way Home? (recorded For The Mark Radcliffe Show On BBC Radio 2 – First Broadcast On 31st March 2005)

Don’t You Want To Be A Bird? (recorded For The Gideon Coe On BBC Radio 6 – First Broadcast On 28th March 2005)

When I Go Out (recorded For The Gideon Coe On BBC Radio 6 – First Broadcast On 28th March 2005)

Crystal Horse (originally Appeared On ‘It Ended On An Oily Stage’ CD Single 2)

Over In The Corner (originally Appeared On ‘Please Stand Up’ CD Single 1)

How Will I Find My Way Home? (Organ Version) (originally Appeared As A Hidden Track On Open Season CD)

How Animals Work (Mike Hedges Version – Previously Unreleased)

Runaway (originally Appeared As ‘Gale Warnings In Viking North’ On ‘Please Stand Up’ 7”)

Green Grass Of Tunnel (originally Appeared On ‘It Ended On An Oily Stage’ CD Single 1)

Grey Goose (originally Appeared On ‘Please Stand Up’ CD Single 2)

Chicken Pig (True Adventures Instrumental Demo) (originally Appeared On ‘Please Stand Up’ CD Single 2)

I Am A Cider Drinker (originally Appeared On The Split 7” Single By British Sea Power And The Wurzels)

Rough Trade Records are excited to release the debut album by Californian group Hello Forever. Based in Topanga, California, the band live together in a pastoral setting high above the Pacific Ocean – not far from where Neil Young recorded After the Gold Rush or Captain Beefheart laid down the tracks for Trout Mask Replica, the group forever expanding and contracting, with members coming and going as they please.

They fuse elements of the 60s West Coast sound with a DIY approach to music and creativity which has spawned their remarkable debut album, the aptly titled Whatever It Is. Samuel Joseph and company have created a contemporary throwback to a vibrant era with a set of songs that establish the collective’s exquisite harmonies and colourful instrumentation.

TRACK LISTING

1. Some Faith
2. Anywhere Is Everywhere
3. Farm On The Mountaintop
4. Colors In The Sky
5. Created For Your Love
6. Rise
7. Natural
8. Get It Right
9. Yeah Like Whatever
10. I Want To Marry You
11. Her Everything
12. Happening

Additional New Singles On CD / LP
Everything Is So Hard (included On 7” With LP, Download With CD)
I’m Feeling It (included On 7” With LP, Download With CD)

JARV IS… are pleased to announce their debut album “Beyond the Pale”. This is the first original music from Jarvis Cocker since the “Further Complications” album in 2009.

JARV IS… a band featuring Jarvis Cocker (vocals, guitar, percussion), Serafina Steer (harp, keyboards, vocals), Emma Smith (violin, guitar vocals), Andrew McKinney (bass, vocals), Jason Buckle (synthesiser & electronic treatments) & Adam Betts (drums, percussion, vocals).

JARV IS… formed to play a show at the Sigur Ros “Norður og Niður” festival in Iceland at the very end of 2017.

JARV IS… was conceived as a way of writing songs in collaboration with an audience. As the material they were playing was in a state of flux the band decided to record their live shows so that they could monitor how the songs were developing. After an appearance at the Desert Daze festival in California, Geoff Barrow (Portishead, Beak>) suggested that these recordings could be used as the basis for an album. Overdubs & vocals were added at Narcissus Studios in Neasden, London. Post-production work took place at Jason Buckle’s Place du Big Boss studio in Raynes Park, London. The album was mixed by Craig Silvey at Toast Studios in West London.

The first single from the album “Must I Evolve?” was released in May 2019 & appeared in many “Top 10 Tracks of the Year” lists.

JARV IS… an ongoing live experience because life is an ongoing live experience.

Or, to put it another way:

THIS IS NOT A LIVE ALBUM – it’s an ALIVE ALBUM.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Jarv Is the ever-talented ex-pulp frontman with a string of unmissable releases since then, spreading over a wide range of styles. Jarv Is returning with a brand new album and Jarv Is absolutely smashing it. It would maybe be easier to go through the things that Jarv Isn't, and he definitely isn't coming off our stereo anytime soon.

TRACK LISTING

Save The Whale
MUST I EVOLVE?
Am I Missing Something
House Music All Night Long
Sometimes I Am Pharoah
Swanky Modes
Children Of The Echo

‘In All Weather’ is a new collection of songs in which Josienne Clarke goes it alone; musically, as this is her first solo record and in her own life, laid bare and played out in the leave-it-all-behind-andstart- anew nature of the lyrics. The songs were written in on the Isle of Bute in 2018, where Josienne relocated for a year, overlooked by a snowy Ben Nevis.

Josienne accompanies herself on pared-back acoustic and electric guitar throughout. She’s joined on the record by experimental piano prodigy Elliott Galvin, innovative jazz drummer Dave Hamblett, celebrated Scottish harpist Mary Ann Kennedy and guitarist/bassist Sonny Johns, who co-produced the record with Josienne.

TRACK LISTING

(Learning To Sail) In All Weather
Seconds
The Drawing Of The Line
Leaving London
My Love Gave Me An Apple
If I Didn't Mind
Host
Slender, Sad & Sentimental
Season & Time
Walls And Hallways
Fair Weather Friends
Dark Cloud
Onliness

Dublin fourpiece Lankum release their new album ‘The Livelong Day’. Made up of brothers Ian and Daragh Lynch, Cormac MacDiarmada and Radie Peat, Lankum have gained worldwide acclaim for their first two albums and captivating, often euphoric live performances. ‘The Livelong Day’ successfully blends alternative folk and psychedelia. Lankum honour the sacredness of traditional Irish tunes but allow them to metamorphose, to grow and breathe like the heavy, ancient breath of the Uilleann pipes which seethe beneath the tracks of their third studio album (and second with Rough Trade). “Drone is a big part of traditional music because the Uilleann pipes are indigenous to Ireland, so we’re ramping up that history and taking it as far as we can.”

This is the idea found at the core of the universe created in ‘The Livelong Day’; expanding and emboldening that which is already playing out in history. Alongside the traditional songs on the record, there are two originals, the haunting ‘Young People’ and the tragic beauty of ‘Hunting The Wren’. With ‘The Livelong Day’, Lankum are about to fully cement their reputation as one of the most unique and talked about groups to emerge from Ireland in decades.

TRACK LISTING

The Wild Rover
The Young People
Ode To Lullaby
Bear Creek
Katie Cruel
The Dark Eyed Gypsy
The Pride Of Petravore
Hunting The Wren

Starcrawler’s remarkable sophomore album Devour You is a record that dynamically captures the essence and aggression of their gloriously unhinged live shows. Produced by Nick Launay (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, L7) at Sunset Studios, Devour You takes the feral intensity of their 2018 self-titled debut and twists it into something grander and more gracefully composed.

With its more elaborate and nuanced yet harder-hitting sonic palette, the result is a selection of songs radiating both raw sensitivity and untamable power, and a record that the band’s Arrow de Wilde says, “encapsulates all the blood, sweat, bruised knees, and broken fingers of a Starcrawler show.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Scathing, fiery rock riffs, a wonderfully odd exotica-meets-punk visual aesthetic and an incendiary live show have gotten Starcrawler to where they are today, and 'Devour You' is certainly set to continue that legacy in fine fashion.

TRACK LISTING

1. Lizzy
2. Bet My Brains
3. Home Alone
4. No More Pennies
5. You Dig Yours
6. Toy Teenager
7. Hollywood Ending
8. She Gets Around
9. I Don't Need You
10. Rich Taste
11. Born Asleep
12. Tank Top
13. Call Me A Baby

Recorded in November 2018 at Ballintubbert House, Ireland, “a few pay grades above what we're used to!”, the alien construction of Ballintubbert and its corridors help to navigate Girl Band’s cataclysmic sound within a world of its own.

“In many ways the idea behind the album was to make an audio representation of the house.“ And this enigmatic manor becomes Girl Band’s sonic playground: to place yourself within a space, and to work with that space harmoniously. Dan continues, “We recorded all the drums twice: once on the landing and once in the cellar” -The Well of Souls- “and during production we could actually cut in between both these sounds”. The Talkies vacillates between being big, ambient, and atmospheric to suddenly terribly intimate and up close.

The Talkies is living, breathing, in a continual state of metamorphosis. It encompasses everything there is to love about Girl Band while simultaneously causing an exciting level of discomfort. The moaning and sawing guitars, atonal blankets of sound, abstractive lyrical repetition, chugging snare and ascending/descending snakes and ladders noise-rock guitar deliver something that is so distinctively Girl Band.

…Eregenis. Album closes to steady breathing. It drips with catharsis, slow and mindful and purging over the familiar key and darkly syncopated grooves which closes the door to Girl Band’s sonic universe and brings ‘The Talkies’ to its first and final silence.

TRACK LISTING

Prolix
Going Norway
Shoulderblades
Couch Combover
Aibophobia
Salmon Of Knowledge
Akineton
Amygdala
Caveat
Laggard
Prefab Castle
Ereignis

The 10 year anniversary remaster of ‘Up From Below’, the rousing, anthemic and wildly adventurous debut album from California’s Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros featuring the hit single ‘Home’.

Drenched in choral psychedelic folk rock, it was recorded onto used 2 track tape using a 24 track tape machine made in 1979.

Available on 180g black double vinyl with embossed gatefold sleeve and 16-page deluxe booklet including never before seen photos and stories.

TRACK LISTING

40 Day Dream
Janglin’
Up From Below
Carries On
Jade
Home
Desert Song
Black Water
Come In Please
Simplest Love
Kisses Over Babylon
Brother
Om Nashi Me

PicaPica’s debut album ‘Together & Apart’ was recorded at the end of 2018 and is produced by Mobo / Mercury-nominated producer Sonny Johns, who also plays bass on the record. Together & Apart’ is about health and heartache, spring and shade, love and loss and life. PicaPica are able to balance life’s joys and sorrows beautifully, effortlessly and in continuous harmony, viewing life’s coloured photographs as imagined through their silvery negatives.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Beautiful rhythmic new folk sounds mix with quirky off-piste melodic tilts and smooth electronic accents. Like a more melody focused Tunng, PicaPica clearly take influence from all ends of the musical spectrum and pull them together into a cohesive and musically rich whole.

TRACK LISTING

Together & Apart
On The Wing
Cast In Stone
Family, Friends & Lovers
Sucker Punch
Teeth & Chin
Opposite Song
SeeSaw
Village Kids
To K(no)w One
Day To Day Parade
The Weather
Stones

The debut album from Amyl and the Sniffers is the sound of 21st century Australia recorded in Sheffield with producer Ross Orton. It's primal and explosive with a love of glam, the 70's Sharpie movement and good time rock n roll backed with lyrics that somehow are simultaneously bleak and nihilistic, yet humorous and celebratory. The album is full of beefy riffs and stomping drums that rages and rolls and lives up to all the hype. It has attitude, sass and Amy's sore throat howl.

Coming off the back of a hair raising gig at London's Moth Club (the band 'almost literally tore the roof off'), Amyl And The Sniffers are certainly one to watch if you like feisty, independent punk-n-roll.

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: Gnarly, energetic garage Aussie punk that demands to be played loud. Like a cross between GØGGS and Be Your Own Pet, this is their debut long player on Rough Trade! Thrashing guitars and an irreverent band name - what more could you ask for?

TRACK LISTING

Starfire 500
Gacked On Anger
Cup Of Destiny
GFY
Angel
Monsoon Rock
Control
Got You
Punisha
Shake Ya
Some Mutts (Can't Be Muzzled)

SOAK returns after 4 years with a new album, bringing with her 4 years worth of growth, introspection and understanding. The result is Grim Town, the follow-up to her Mercury Music Prize-nominated debut Before We Forgot How To Dream, which saw her win the prestigious Choice Music Prize for Album of the Year, the Northern Irish Music Prize, and the European Border Breaker Award, in addition to being shortlisted for a Q Award.

Her astonishingly assured, emotionally mature songwriting was often hailed as wise beyond its years; but, as her new album often asks, when do we ever truly shake off those childlike fears, the imposter-syndrome, the outsider-status? The term ‘to come of age’ lands with so much expectation, but with Grim Town, Bridie dissolves all such assuredness with imaginative, ambitious, and cathartic results. It is almost as though the greater soundscape - heavier in places, more pop-focused in others - has given SOAK the confidence to put her long overdue introspections in the firing line. It’s beauty and brutality is there from the album open opener, ‘Get Set Go Kid’ which traces the train-tracks out of depression (“I’ve got to get out, I can’t live here anymore!”) and was as inspired by the audio-visual environmentalism of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ as Bridie’s train-obsessed grandad on voiceover duties.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Grim Town is the newest album from Soak in 4 years, and displays a much more mature and thematically consistent side to Monds-Watson's sound. Still encompassing the punky chord sequences but with a much more nuanced and musically diverse backdrop, shimmering and soaring before bringing things back to earth with minimal guitar pieces, accentuated only by those unmistakable vox.

TRACK LISTING

1. "all Aboard"
2. Get Set Go Kid
3. Everybody Loves You
4. Knock Me Off My Feet
5. Maybe
6. Fall Asleep / Backseat
7. Crying Your Eyes Out
8. I Was Blue, Technicolour Too
9. Déjà Vu
10. Scrapyard
11. Valentine Shmalentine
12. YBFTBYT
13. Life Trainee
14. Missed Calls
15. Nothing Looks The Same

Bonus 7”:
1. IOU
2. Talk Of The Town

A. Swayze & The Ghosts are an exhilarating new garage punk band from Hobart, the capital of Tasmania. They are comprised of lead singer Andrew Swayze, alongside high school friends Hendrik Wipprecht (guitar), Zackary Blain (drums) and Ben Simms (bass). ‘Suddenly’ is backed with the epic, 10 minute jamfest known as ‘Reciprocation’.

Tasmania is known around the world as The Island of Inspiration and it’s no secret that the albums that have inspired A.Swayze & The Ghosts came from classic artists such as Iggy & The Stooges, Television, Fugazi, The Ramones and Australia’s kings of punk The Saints. Elements of these masterful artists from an early era can be found in the band’s DNA and have allowed them to grow into their own world, to create their own scene, on an island that also has much deep and meaningful history with potential to have some new rock & roll history too.

TRACK LISTING

Suddenly
Reciprocation

Across 19 tracks in just 40 minutes, Goat Girl’s self-titled debut creates a half-fantasy world out of a very dirty, ugly city reality.

Goat Girl belong to a burgeoning, close-knit south London scene, born in venues like The Windmill in Brixton and including bands like Shame, Bat-Bike, Madonnatron, Horsey, Sorry, and many more. “We help each other - I put you on, you put me on - because we genuinely like each other’s music. We’d played gigs all over before but never really settled in a comfortable environment, which is what The Windmill is. It’s an important place for us, it was the first space that our music made sense to exist within. It’s a safe space where music is genuinely listened to and appreciated, and where laws and licensing haven't reached over to ruin the venue.”

This live freedom enabled the band to think without constraints when it came to recording. Goat Girl enlisted producer Dan Carey (The Kills, Bat For Lashes, Franz Ferdinand) to help them capture their vision, set a goal to write and record a piece of music in a day in effort to capture that raw first-creation moment, and chose to record to tape.

It’s a very English album -- sharp-eyed observations like The Kinks, louche rage like The Slits -- but it’s also full of swampy, swaggering guitars and singer Lottie’s filthy drawl. Each member brings a diverse range of influences and contributions, ranging from krautrock to bossa nova, jazz to blues. They resist being boxed in to an indie, guitar-based genre, and focused intensely on the layers and textures of each song as well as the different contexts they could sit within.

The result, Goat Girl, succeeds in conjuring a complete world all unto itself, and is arranged in segments -- divided by improvised interludes -- that offer glimpses of an even stranger parallel universe. With each song acting as its own story of sorts that features different settings and characters, listeners are transported therewithin. It’s dark yet cheeky, varied yet cohesive, and striking in its vision; this world is populated by creeps and liars, lovers, dreamers, and wonderful lunatics. Lead single “Cracker Drool” is at once jaunty and sinister, a foreboding tale full of swirling guitar, echoing vocals and synthetic drum hits that stumbles and gurgles straight into “Slowly Reclines,” an equally menacing and considerably heavier track. “Creep” is, predictably and grimly enough, inspired by actual events: Creep on the train / I really want to smash your head in.

On “Country Sleaze,” she sings about sex in a way that embraces visceral reality and defeats shame. “If you say you’re sexually free, as a woman, society still deems that a bad thing. But really it’s a beautiful thing to be confident in yourself - to know that you can have sex and it doesn’t have to mean anything and that doesn’t make you a bad person.” Ellie smiles: “That song is quite disgusting, in a good way. It’s not trying to be nice, it’s not a love song.” Goat Girl is altogether an album crafted with intention, and invites imaginations to run wild; it draws listeners in to its half-fantasy world from the slow fade, eerie instrumental intro “Salty Sounds,” to the gorgeous, unsettling closer “Tomorrow” -- a rendition of the song featured in Bugsy Malone -- which ends with dawn-chorus birds and the feeling of new possibilities after a long and messy night.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: A superbly textured and stylistically varied outing from Goat Girl, holding within it's 19 tracks a fiery resolve and melodic leaning of the highest order. Brilliantly written and performed with heart!

TRACK LISTING

Salty Sounds
Burn The Stake
Creep
Viper Fish
A Swamp Dog's Tale
Cracker Drool
Slowly Reclines
The Man With No Heart Or Brain
Moonlit Monkey
The Man
Lay Down
I Don't Care Part 1
Hank's Theme
I Don't Care Part 2
Throw Me A Bone
Dance Of Dirty Leftovers
Little Liar
Country Sleaze
Tomorrow

The EP “Traveling On” is the next iteration of The Decemberists B-sides series, a tradition that began in 2005 and serves as a follow up to “Florasongs” and “Long Live the King”. It’s comprised of five B-sides related to their last album ‘I’ll Be Your Girl’ (4 tracks that were exclusive to the Exploded Edition box set + a full band version of “Traveling On”).

TRACK LISTING

1. Down On The Knuckle
2. I Will Not Say Your Name
3. Tripping Along (Full Band Version)
4. Midlist Author
5. Traveling On

The Moldy Peaches were established in the mid-90s by Adam Green and Kimya Dawson, after meeting in upstate New York. The duo helped spawn the “anti-folk” music genre movement, bringing a more quirky, lo-fi punk element into the indie music scene. After releasing their own music for a few years, they collected their best material for a proper album, and in 2001 shared “The Moldy Peaches” via Rough Trade Records.

Known for their sense of humor, whimsy and self-deprecation, the album featured gems like “Downloading Porn With Dave” and Who’s Got The Crack”. In 2007, “Anyone Else But You” (another song from the aforementioned album), was used in the Academy Award winning movie Juno, and reignited the album’s cult popularity. Since then, the two founders have had continued success in their respective solo careers.

Kimya Dawson has also made children’s albums, and collaborated with many artists including Aesop Rock, They Might Be Giants, and The Mountain Goats. Adam Green has several albums on Rough Trade, as well as showing exhibitions of his visual art and making films.

We asked Adam Green what he thought about reissuing the album at this time....he said "It's been 17 years since this was last released and we are putting it out again just in time to capitalize on the popularity of Juno. JK LOL  we are slow at re-releasing stuff. We decided to ignore Barbara Walter's advice when she told us to strike when the iron was hot, and decided to wait until the iron had become safely tepid. Once a Moldy Peach, always a Moldy Peach. Bon appétit!"

“punk poets disguised as Nancy Sinatra and Dean Martin against a background of guitars and hiss...sweetly crazy and completely memorable.” -GUARDIAN

TRACK LISTING

Lucky Number Nine
Jorge Regula
What Went Wrong
Nothing Came Out
Downloading Porn With Davo
These Burgers
Steak For Chicken
On Top
Greyhound Bus
Anyone Else But You
Little Bunny Foo Foo
The Ballad Of Helen Keller & Rip Van Winkle
Who's Got The Crack
Lucky Charms
D.2. Boyfriend
I Forgot
Lazy Confessions
NYC's Like A Graveyard (Edit)
Goodbye Song

Babelsberg is the fifth album by Gruff Rhys, his first record for Rough Trade since 2007’s classic Candylion. The album features orchestral scores by Swansea based composer Stephen McNeff and the incredible work of the 72 piece BBC National Orchestra of Wales. The result is Gruff’s best record to date - a ten song gazetteer of modern times, each track set to timeless, indelible melody. Amazingly, for a collection of songs written over two years ago, each one seems to pull very sharp focus on the times we’re living in.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The legendary Gruff Rhys kills it once again for his newest outing, Babelsberg. Orchestral, nuanced and oozing with Gruff's singular vocal drawl, encompassing all aspects of his previous works and pulling together into a cohesive and essential whole.

TRACK LISTING

Frontier Man
The Club
Oh Dear!
Limited Edition Heart
Take That Call
Drones In The City
Negative Vibes
Same Old Song
Architecture Of Amnesia
Selfies In The Sunset

Parquets Courts' fifth album 'Wide Awake!' - produced by Danger Mouse - is a groundbreaking work, an album about independence and individuality but also about collectivity and communitarianism. The songs, written by Andrew Savage and Austin Brown but elevated to even greater heights by the dynamic rhythmic propulsion of Max Savage (drums) and Sean Yeaton (bass), are filled with their traditional punk rock passion, as well as a lyrical tenderness. The record reflects a burgeoning confidence in the band's exploration of new ideas in a hi-fi context.

TRACK LISTING

Total Football
Violence
Before The Water Gets Too High
Mardi Gras Beads
Almost Had To Start A Fight/In And Out Of Patience
Freebird II
Normalization
Back To Earth
Wide Awake
NYC Observation
Extinction
Death Will Bring Change
Tenderness

On May 11, 2018, Mark Kozelek will release his self titled album, Mark Kozelek, on Caldo Verde/Rough Trade. The 88- minute, double CD was recorded in San Francisco hotels and studios between May 2017 and January 2018. Mark has also completed work on a new Sun Kil Moon album to be released this November. All of the songs were written during Sun Kil Moon's European tour of Europe this past November, 2017. Some of the songs were recorded in Europe during that time, and some were recorded in December of 2017 in San Francisco.

Mark recently contributed music to the James Franco directed movie The Pretenders, to be released this summer, and also acted in the independent film Passing Through, written and directed by Jason Massot. Passing Through was shot in Butte, Montana, February of 2016.

Mark will be touring throughout 2018, both solo and with Sun Kil Moon, in South America, Europe, USA and Canada.

TRACK LISTING

1. This Is My Town
2. Live In Chicago
3. The Mark Kozelek Museum
4. My Love For You Is Undying
5. Weed Whacker
6. Sublime
7. Good Nostalgia
8. 666 Post
9. The Banjo Song
10. Young Riddick Bowe
11. I Cried During Wall Street

Josienne Clarke and Samantha Whates met on the London acoustic music scene several years ago and immediately shared a love of singing and writing songs. They have been unofficially collaborating for years, more often than not singing backing vocals for each other’s projects or just singing harmonies together for the pure enjoyment of it.

PicaPica represents a long held ambition to write, record and perform new material and to join together with like-minded musicians and explore what it’s like to be in a band. Along with multiinstrumentalist, singer and songwriter Adam Beattie and multiple Grammy, Mercury and MOBO nominated producer, guitarist and bass player Sonny Johns, PicaPica make a sound that provides the perfect platform for two of the UK’s brightest vocal and songwriting talents. It’s instantly recognisable and completely unique.

TRACK LISTING

Spring & Shade/Light Of The Day
Dawing/Morning
Last Leaves/Way Back Up
Small Time/Secret
Little April Shower/April
Come She Will

An album as good as Ghosts of the Great Highway should never go out of print. Ghosts continues-- even fine-tunes-- the work Kozelek did with his former band, Red House Painters. These songs are virtuously stoic Americana-- all shimmery guitars, measured tempos, malevolent moods, and wandering melodies. His voice sounds like Neil Young’s, especially in the effortlessness with which he hits the high notes then returns to a lower, earthier texture. Ghosts is a travelogue of sorts, speeding through the Midwest and the West; in this sense, it’s the male equivalent to Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, especially in the imperfect mirroring of physical terrain and emotional geography. The band Kozelek assembled for Ghosts-- Anthony Koutsos (Red House Painters), Tim Mooney (American Music Club), and Geoff Stanfield (Black Lab), along with a few guests-- ably but subtly bolster his lyrics and vocals, generating a steady clip that never flags. The result is an album as hypnotic as highway divider lines whizzing past. Includes original bonus track “Gentle Moon (Acoustic).” 

Rough Trade Records are delighted to announce the reissue of Elastica’s debut album ‘Elastica’ which came out in 1994 and went straight to number 1.

Justin Welch “The band is shocked and totally overwhelmed at the outpouring of love that obviously still exists for Elastica after all these years. Unfortunately, there are no immediate plans for a reunion but we are really excited to announce that we are working with Rough Trade Records and the re release of the first album on vinyl to coincide with Record Store Day 2017.”

TRACK LISTING

Line Up
Annie
Connection
Car Song
Smile
Hold Me Now
S.O.F.T
Indian Song
Blue
All-Nighter
Waking Up
2:1
Vaseline
Never Here
Stutter

“Lankum are the darlings of Dublin’s 300 year-old folk scene.” Colin Irwin – The Guardian

Lankum are one of the most talked about bands to come out of Ireland in decades. They are a Dublin four-piece who combine distinctive four-part vocal harmonies with arrangements of uilleann pipes, concertina, accordion, fiddle and guitar. Their repertoire spans humorous Dublin music-hall ditties and street-songs, classic ballads from the Traveller tradition, traditional Irish and American dance tunes, and their own original material. The band comprises of brothers Ian and Daragh Lynch along with Cormac MacDiarmada and Radie Peat. When not on tour Ian lectures in Irish Folklore and musical traditions in University College Dublin, while Cormac and Radie grew up as champion traditional players, on the fiddle and concertina, respectively. Yet Lankum are not purely trad themselves, in the same way The Pogues were more urban music. Rough-hewn and raw, they’re the edgiest thing in Dublin right now.

Having spent the last number of years performing as ‘Lynched’ a play on Ian and Daragh’s family name Lynch, the band decided that they would no longer continue with the name due to the unavoidable implications that it has in regards to acts of racist violence. Their new name comes from the ballad ‘False Lankum’, as sung by the Irish Traveller John Reilly Jr.

The band was originally formed by brothers Ian and Daragh Lynch in the early 2000’s, and has since progressed through a number of incarnations, culminating in the four-piece group playing today. The release of their album 'Cold Old Fire' and a subsequent appearance on the BBC television programme, 'Later... with Jools Holland' cemented their reputation as a band that successfully crosses genres. Lankum are busy breathing new life into old music.

Although an acoustic group whose repertoire is fundamentally based on traditional song, influenced by legends such as Frank Harte, Planxty, The Dubliners and the Watersons, subtle traces of the group’s collective influences can be detected, ranging from American old-timey music to krautrock and drone.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Unbelievable hypnotic multi-part harmonies, flickering fiddles and trad. melodies all over the gaff. It's a hark back to traditional folk in all it's forms. Sea shanties, drinking chants, all the good stuff.

The Honey Hahs are three sisters from South London somewhere between Nunhead and Peckham. Their average age is 11 and a ½ years old. Rowan plays guitar and piano, Robin plays bass and Sylvie plays drum. They all sing and harmonise.

This Is The Kit - the musical project which holds exceptional Paris-via-Bristol songwriter Kate Stables close to its heart - have earned the adoration of peers including Guy Garvey, The National and Sharon van Etten. Their new album and Rough Trade debut, 'Moonshine Freeze', is undoubtedly their most compelling and accomplished to date. Produced by John Parish (PJ Harvey, M Ward, Perfume Genius), it began in the immediate wake of its predecessor, 'Bashed Out', when days after coming off tour last November, Stables and her band (Rozi Plain, Jamie Whitby-Coles, Neil Smith and Jesse D Vernon) headed into the studio in Bristol. Aaron Dessner of The National also features on six of the album tracks.

Though the album’s songs were already written before heading into the studio, Stables says she had no fierce vision for how they should sound, preferring to let them take shape with the input of her band and Parish. “I’m not yet someone who says ‘I want this album to sound like an 80’s French nightclub’,” she says. “All I can do is write the songs and then step back from them and see what themes or patterns there are, then bring those patterns out so it’s a coherent piece of work, sonically and in terms of feeling.” Sonically, Moonshine Freeze is a beguiling mixture of great musical sophistication and something more guileless — children’s games, songs, incantations and snatches of nursery rhymes. Stables’ voice too is a remarkable thing: in its angles there lies an exquisite strangeness reminiscent of Will Oldham, Magnolia Electric Co, Robert Wyatt, Karen Dalton. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Propulsive dual vocal melodies and tenderly treated fuzz guitars punctuate subtle acoustic strums and clashing lo-fi percussion, gradually acquiescing into folky flickering strings and softly accentuated angelic vox. The 11 songs on ‘Moonshine Freeze’ perfectly progress from twee minimalism into hefty, but not overwrought instrumentals. It's a delicate balance to maintain, but it is done flawlessly here.

TRACK LISTING

Bullet Proof
Hotter Colder
Moonshine Freeze
Easy On The Thieves
All Written Out In Numbers
Empty No Teeth
Riddled With Ticks
Two Pence Piece
Show Me So
By My Demon Eye
Solid Grease

On ‘Witness,’ Booker has created his most ambitious work yet by digging deep into his passion for eccentric soul, R&B, and blues, while never straying too far from the garage-punk intensity that made his self-titled 2014 debut such a creative breakthrough. The album’s ten new, original tracks were all written by Booker, produced by Sam Cohen (Kevin Morby), mixed by Shawn Everett (Alabama Shakes), and recorded at The Isokon studio in Woodstock, NY and New York City’s Red Delicious studio.

WITNESS
By Benjamin Booker

“Once you find yourself in another civilization you are forced to examine your own.” -James Baldwin

By February of 2016, I realized I was a songwriter with no songs, unable to piece together any words that wouldn’t soon be plastered on the side of a paper airplane.
I woke up one morning and called my manager, Aram Goldberg.
“Aram, I got a ticket south,” I said. “I’m going to Mexico for a month.”
“Do you speak Spanish,” he asked.
“No,” I answered. “That’s why I’m going.”
The next day I packed up my clothes, books and a cheap classical guitar I picked up in Charleston. I headed to to Louis Armstrong Airport and took a plane from New Orleans to Houston to Mexico City.
As I flew above the coast of Mexico, I looked out the plane window and saw a clear sky with the uninhabited coast of a foreign land below me.
I couldn’t help but smile.
My heart was racing.
I was running.
I rented an apartment on the border of Juarez and Doctores, two neighborhoods in the center of the city, near the Baleras metro station and prepared to be mostly alone.
I spent days wandering the streets, reading in parks, going to museums and looking for food that wouldn’t make me violently ill again. A few times a week I’d meet up with friends in La Condesa to sip Mezcal at La Clandestina, catch a band playing at El Imperial or see a DJ at Pata Negra, a local hub.
I spent days in silence and eventually began to write again.
I was almost entirely cut off from my home. Free from the news. Free from politics. Free from friends.
What I felt was the temporary peace that can come from looking away. It was a weightlessness, like being alone in a dark room. Occasionally, the lights would be turned on and I’d once again be aware of my own mass.
I’d get headlines sent to me from friends at home.
“More arrests at US Capitol as Democracy Spring meets Black Lives Matter”
“Bill Clinton Gets Into Heated Exchange with Black Lives Matter Protester”
That month, Americans reflected on the murder of Freddie Gray by Baltimore police a year earlier.
I’d turn my phone off and focus on something else. I wasn’t in America.
One night, I went to Pata Negra for drinks with my friend Mauricio. Mau was born and raised in Mexico City and became my guide. He took me under his wing and his connections in the city made my passage through the night a lot easier.
We stood outside of Pata Negra for a cigarette and somehow ended up in an argument with a few young, local men. It seemed to come out of nowhere and before I knew it I was getting shoved to the ground by one of the men.
Mau helped me get up and calmly talked the men down. I brushed the dirt off of my pants and we walked around the block.
“What happened?” I asked him.
“It’s fine,” he said. “Some people don’t like people who aren’t from here.”
He wouldn’t say it, but I knew what he meant.

It was at that moment that I realized what I was really running from.
Growing up in the south, I experience my fair share of racism but I managed to move past these things without letting them affect me too much. I knew I was a smart kid and that would get me out of a lot of problems.
In college, if I got pulled over for no reason driving I’d casually mention that I was a writer at the newspaper and be let go soon after by officers who probably didn’t want to see their name in print.
“Excuse me, just writing your name down for my records.”
I felt safe, like I could outsmart racism and come out on top.
It wasn’t until Trayvon Martin, a murder that took place about a hundred miles from where I went to college, and the subsequent increase in attention to black hate crimes over the next few years that I began to feel something else.
Fear. Real fear.
It was like every time I turned on the TV, there I was. DEAD ON THE NEWS.
I wouldn’t really acknowledge it, but it was breaking me and my lack of effort to do anything about it was eating me up inside.
I fled to Mexico, and for a time it worked.
But, outside of Pata Negra, I began to feel heavy again and realized that I might never again be able to feel that weightlessness. I knew then that there was no escape and I would have to confront the problem

The song, “Witness,” came out of this experience and the desire to do more than just watch.
If you grew up in the church you may have heard people talk about “bearing witness to the truth.”
In John 18:37, Pilate asked Jesus if he is a king. Jesus replies, “You say that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, that I may bear witness to the truth. Everyone being of the truth hears My voice."
In 1984, The New York Times printed an article titled “Reflections of a Maverick” about a hero of mine, James Baldwin.
Baldwin has the following conversation with the writer, Julius Lester.

Witness is a word I've heard you use often to describe yourself. It is not a word I would apply to myself as a writer, and I don't know if any black writers with whom I am contemporary would, or even could, use the word. What are you a witness to?

Witness to whence I came, where I am. Witness to what I've seen and the possibilities that I think I see. . . .

What's the difference between a spokesman and a witness?

A spokesman assumes that he is speaking for others. I never assumed that - I never assumed that I could. Fannie Lou Hamer (the Mississippi civil rights organizer), for example, could speak very eloquently for herself. What I tried to do, or to interpret and make clear was that what the Republic was doing to that woman, it was also doing to itself. No society can smash the social contract and be exempt from the consequences, and the consequences are chaos for everybody in the society.

“Witness” asks two questions I think every person in America needs to ask.
“Am I going to be a Witness?” and in today’s world, “Is that enough?”

TRACK LISTING

1. Right On You
2. Motivation
3. Witness (feat. Mavis Staples)
4. The Slow Drag Under
5. Truth Is Heavy
6. Believe
7. Overtime
8. Off The Ground
9. Carry
10. All Was Well

The album was recorded at Steve Mackey’s (Pulp) West Heath Garage studios in London. Jason Williamson discusses ‘English Tapas’: "Andrew walked into some random pub and saw "English Tapas" scrawled on the menu board. Underneath this beautiful coupling of words were it's components, half a scotch egg, cup of chips, pickle and a mini pork pie" It says everything about this fucking place. It's comedy, it’s make do, it's ignorant and above all, it's shit"

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Sleaford Mods hit us hard with another voracious and aggressive commentary on modern life with their trademark combination of wit and vitriol, backed by a thumping but decidedly downplayed backline. Snarling, punky spoken word passages and gritty dusty drum machines. If you like the Mods, this one won't change your mind. If you don't, it just might.

TRACK LISTING

1. ARMY NIGHTS
2. JUST LIKE WE DO
3. MOPTOP
4. MESSY ANYWHERE
5. TIME SANDS
6. SNOUT
7. DRAYTON MANORED
8. CARLTON TOUTS
9. CUDDLY
10. DULL
11. BHS
12. I FEEL DO WRONG

In collaboration with Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke, on “PARADISE,” ANOHNI seeks to support activist conversations and disrupt assumptions about popular music through the collision of electronic sound and highly politicized lyrics.

“PARADISE” includes new songs as well as material recently debuted live. On the title track, “Paradise,” Anohni voices ecstatic alienation, describing a dystopian life filled with horror, awe, comfort and threat. She expresses a sense of disembodiment: "Myself, I'm here... not here, as a point of consciousness." The music is wild and invigorating with a heavy beat conceived by Hudson Mohawke and twisting vocal treatments by Daniel Lopatin.

Nine portraits of women on the EP artwork reflect the feminine oracle that ANOHNI evoked in her live concert tour.

TRACK LISTING

1. In My Dreams
2. Paradise
3. Jesus Will Kill You
4. Enemy
5. Ricochet
6. She Doesn’t Mourn Her Loss

“‘Common As Light And Love Are Red Valleys Of Blood’, for the most part, captures events from January to August of this year and how I processed it all while traveling.

“[…] I’m blessed to have met the very talented Justin Broadrick and to have made these beautiful albums with him.

“These two new albums capture more than my reactions to mass murders or the passing of beloved heroes like David Bowie or Muhammad Ali. The Sun Kil Moon and Jesu/Sun Kil Moon albums are also full of love, humor, and my gratitude

Rough Trade release a collaborative album by Emiliana Torrini & The Colorist Orchestra. This is a live album containing nine Emiliana Torrini songs from her catalogue along with two brand new songs. Seeing Emilíana and The Colorist Orchestra in concert is a truly special experience. They have a musical chemistry that is undeniable and documenting the experience on an album was something that just had to be done.

The Colorist Orchestra are a Belgian ensemble founded by Aarich Jespers and Kobe Proesmans in 2013. They re-envision the repertoires of established musicians from across genres using traditional classical instruments and arrangements, along with a variety of their own musical inventions to contribute innovative, never-before-heard sounds and grooves to their compositions and re-compositions.

When Jespers and Proesmans, fans of Torrini’s rich catalogue, invited her to collaborate on a series of live concerts she was intrigued and asked them to recompose one of her songs to see what their concept was all about. The result, a wholly novel rendition of ‘Animal Games’, from her most recent album ‘Tookah’, convinced Torrini that working with the group was a creative opportunity that she shouldn’t dare miss.

The group created a new world out of the music and while Torrini admitted that she could barely recognize many of her own songs in the rearrangements, the collaboration - from emails and Skype calls to rehearsals, soundchecks and finally the live concerts - came together organically and beautifully, with Torrini’s talent elevating the Colorist ensemble’s creativity and the group helping her rediscover the joy and the power within her own songs in this new light. The shows’ reception from audiences and press was exceptional and the Colorist members and Torrini realized a live album would enable them to share this magical experience more broadly.

Two brand new Emiliana Torrini songs debut on this album: ‘Nightfall’, written by Kid Koala and Torrini; and ‘When We Dance’, written by Jespers, Proesmans and Torrini. The latter reflects the musical chemistry the three musicians developed during the process of rehearsal and performance for the Colorist concerts.

Emiliana Torrini’s voice has been embedded in your brain over the last 20 years whether you knew it or not. She was a member of GusGus and she’s written / produced / performed numerous songs and hits with the likes of Kylie Minogue, Thievery Corporation, Bill Callahan and more. She herself had a #1 hit in a few countries with the song ‘Jungle Drum’ and in Germany it stayed in the #1 position for nine weeks. She contributed a song to the multi-platinum ‘Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers’ Soundtrack and her songs have been featured in many television shows. Her debut album was released in 1999 and was followed by three more critically acclaimed titles.

“Ms. Torrini’s voice is warm and whispery and appealingly unpredictable: she knows when to flatten the melody with a half spoke phrase and when to carry it up and away.” - The New York Times

Jason Williamson discusses TCR: “The idea behind the TCR video was to show and use the actual 1980’s toy racing kit in its original environment which would of most probably been the living room floor for most kids at that time It's a pretty crap device and I thought it married perfectly to the idea of life's (at times) rotating dross. The narration/vocal over the song is just that, an account of a bloke reacting to what he feels is a routine laden existence by 'escaping' for the night to the pub only to realize this is also a limited experience and in turn all options kind of merge into a circular experience of never ending repetition that he tries to navigate.”

TRACK LISTING

TCR
I Can Tell
Britain Thirst
Dad's Corner
You're A Nottshead

Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker release their debut album for Rough Trade. The album which is self-produced, follows their Rough Trade debut, the ‘Through The Clouds' EP, which was released earlier this year.

‘Overnight’ is their most ambitious record to date, focusing on Clarke’s extraordinary voice and lyrics, and Walker’s prodigious guitar-playing and arranging; the album features panoramic orchestration by an eclectic core of acclaimed musicians, including strings, horns, piano, double bass, and drums. The twelve songs – ten originals and two covers - recorded almost entirely live at Rockfield Studios in Wales - serve as a snapshot of the endless cycle of night into day and back again, morning light, into dusk, into black midnight, into greying dawn, and on, and on.

The album’s lilting first single, “The Waning Crescent,” is almost an answer in ballad form to the portrayal of the moon in traditional and popular music as a soothing, confessional, companion (i.e. “Blue Moon”). Coming at the darkest and stillest point in the album, the song – like the moon – brings a reassuring lightness.

Clarke explains, "I started to think about if I was the moon, what I might think and feel, and what the moon might sing back,” adding, “I’ve given it a slightly whiny, self-pitying quality because it’s whimsical and a bit funny.”


One of the poppier songs on the album, the sound of “The Waning Crescent” is meant to fit the song’s subject matter. “We’ve done vignettes before where we've taken on a musical genre because that’s what fits the concept of the song. On this one, we’ve used the ‘50s and ‘60s space-race era pop sound to deliberately compound the moon theme,” says Josienne.

Other ‘Overnight’ highlights include the stunning country/soul ballad “Something Familiar” and their marvelous take on Gillian Welch’s “Dark Turn Of Mind,” the eerie folk of “Dawn Of The Dark” and “The Light Of His Lamp,” and the traditional-leaning “Sweet The Sorrow” and “Weep You No More Sad Fountains,” the latter a traditional English ballad set to song.

Though Clarke & Walker’s previous work is very much steeped in the the folk tradition – the two in fact won the BBC Folk Award for Best Duo in 2015 – ‘Overnight’ draws just as much inspiration from more-straightforward 1970s AM radio rock like Fleetwood Mac or Neil Young as they do from folk-rockers like Fairport Convention or Joni Mitchell.

‘Heads Up’ was recorded after the band spent 2015 apart working on solo projects. Reuniting in January this year, the band started to work with producer Jacob Bercovici, whom they had worked on their debut EP ‘Exquisite Corpse’ – into the studio to begin work on the new LP.

The album was recorded in House on The Hill studio in downtown LA, their home studios and Papap’s Palace and for the first time ever, recorded in pairs and alone rather than as a full band.

‘The doors were a little more open in terms of what was accepted and what wasn’t, because we were sharing ideas so rapidly between us” says the band drummer Stella Mozgawa of the recording process. “

“Everybody was allowed to have their space, time and creative freedom with songs and figure out, ‘I wonder what the best notes would be? I wonder what the best would be to play?” says bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg “Everybody got to sit and go, “What do I want to do to this? What’s my part? What’s My Role? How can I make it the best?”

“I Feel really proud of what we made – almost surprised,” says Linberg “When we were making it, I was like “I wonder what this is going to sound like? How’s this going to come together so nicely? I feel so proud of it, and like its an evolution of our band, It sounds like a mature version of Warpaint”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Warpaint have obviously matured a bit. Their last album was a rawkous and forceful cacophony of sound, visceral and triumphant. This is somewhat more nuanced, confident and collected. Electronic drums are heard in certain sections, rippling and swaying instrumental breakdowns and smooth vocal melodies. This has much more of a swagger about it, like they have made their point and now they're just out to prove their worth. It's definitely working. Fantastic.

TRACK LISTING

01 Whiteout
02 By Your Side
03 New Song
04 The Stall
05 So Good
06 Don't Wanna
07 Don't Let Go
08 Dre
09 Heads Up
10 Above Control
11 Today Dear

“Hendrik Weber is one of the leading figures in modern techno.” - Pitchfork • “A gift for generating heavily melodic mazes of sound.” - BBC

German techno auteur Pantha Du Prince (aka Hendrik Weber) releases ‘The Triad’, his first proper studio album since his 2010 breakthrough ‘Black Noise’ and 2013’s collaboration with The Bell Laboratory, ‘Elements Of Light’.

Of the new album’s conceptual framework Weber says, “‘Black Noise’ was very much about me being alone in a small room in Berlin and composing. ‘The Triad’ opens the structure to more human ways of interacting, not digitized ways of interacting. It’s not about Facebook; it's about meeting up and jamming. I wanted to cut through the digital dust that surrounds us.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The tone for this whole album is set by the organically blooming electronic melodies and serene ambient sweeps of anthemic opener 'The Winter Hymn'. Nuanced and breathtaking.

“Anohni has arrived at the high table of electronic nowness. She has moved from the lush pastoral piano modern compositional landscape framing her voice into a more immediate world of dance-mutated electronica... Was pop ever so revelatory or so profound?” - Geoff Travis, London 2016

Anohni, the singer of Antony And The Johnsons, releases her new album, ‘Hopelessness’, on Rough Trade. A collaboration with Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke, ‘Hopelessness’ is a dance record with soulful vocals and lyrics addressing subjects including surveillance, drone warfare and ecocide. The album seeks to disrupt assumptions about popular music through the collision of electronic sound and highly politicized lyrics.

To coincide with the Climate Conference in Paris last December, Anohni released her debut single, ‘4 Degrees’ and The Guardian called it “Hugely affecting… instantly earns its place in the pantheon of great musical protests.”

‘Drone Bomb Me’ is the beautiful yet brutal second single from ‘Hopelessness’. As described by Anohni, “‘Drone Bomb Me’ is a love song written from the perspective of a young girl in Afghanistan whose family has been executed by unmanned US drones. She dreams of being annihilated.” The powerful video for ‘Drone Bomb Me’ was directed by Nabil and features an astonishing performance by Naomi Campbell.

“‘Hopelessness is the genius of Anohni and her masterful songwriting. The long low sexy beats, the skittering colorful and playful rhythms surround her voice, which is the silky center… ‘Hopelessness’ is an entirely new mix of love and power, sex and despair delivered with her heavenly voice and incantatory melodies.” - Laurie Anderson, NYC 2016

“Once, some time ago, Anohni, who sings so exquisitely on this new record which is really about defiance and naming names-the name you want to be called, your birthright-was known as Antony but it didn’t measure up to what was felt inside, and it is my belief that Anohni’s voice would have closed up if Anohni had stayed Antony and the words would have stopped, too, because the naming was not as accurate as Anohni’s soul required to sing what needed to be sung... The record is fierce-fierce in its desire to breathe and be heard.” - Hilton Als, NYC 2016

Recorded over the course of a year against a backdrop of personal instability, Human Performance massively expands the idea of what a Parquet Courts record can be. They've been one of the most critically acclaimed bands of the last 5 years; this is the record that backs all those words up.

“Every day it starts, anxiety,” began the first song on 2014’s Content Nausea. Those were essentially the song’s only lyrics, but Human Performance picks up where that thought left off, picking apart the anxieties of modern life: “The unavoidable noise of NYC that can be maddening, the kind of the impossible struggle against clutter, whether it's physical or mental or social,” says singer, guitarist and Human Performance producer/mixer Austin Brown.

There has always been the emotional side of Parquet Courts, which has always had an important balance with the more discussed cerebral side, but Andrew Savage sees Human Performance as a redistribution of weight in that balance. "I began to question my humanity, and if it was always as sincere as I thought, or if it was a performance,” says Savage. “I felt like a sort of malfunctioning apparatus,” he says. “Like a machine programmed to be human showing signs of defect.”

The sonic diversity, time, and existential effort that went into its creation makes Human Performance Parquet Courts' most ambitious record to date. It's a work of incredible creative vision born of seemingly insurmountable adversity. It is also their most accessible record yet. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: After bursting on the scene with the explosive and thrilling splendour of “Light Up Gold” (a Piccadilly Records Album Of The Year back in 2013) Parquet Courts seemed to be on a mission to alienate with a succession of somewhat “difficult” releases, the ‘Monastic Living’ EP in particular was a real head scratcher! But thankfully with ‘Human Performance’ the Brooklyn based four piece have rediscovered their smart pop edge.
Kicking off with the upbeat and catchy “Dust”, the band immediately plug in to their trademark “Americana punk” showcasing an uber cool sound that brings to mind the perfect New York lineage of Sonic Youth, Television and The Velvet Underground.
Almost every track on ‘Human Performance’ screams “Single” potential; we have the goofball pop of “I Was Just Here”, “Berlin Got Blurry” and afore mentioned “Dust”; the slacker-rock (dare we say Pavement influences?) of “Paraphased”, “Outside” and “Keep It Even”; the jaunty rumbles of “Pathos Prairie” and “Captive Of The Sun”; the mellow hazy-psych of “Steady On Mind” and the uptempo but chilling “Two Dead Cops”. The title track chronicling a relationship breakdown is a serious song of the year contender with its introspective verses and explosive shouted choruses; and then we have album’s centrepiece, “One Man No City”, a six minute plus drawn-out long-jam epic combining bongos and the jagged guitars of “The Gift” period VU. Lastly, "It's Gonna Happen" is a perfect finale, a brooding refrain that leads out with the reflective “…it’s gonna happen every time so rehearse with me in mind…”
‘Human Performance’ is Parquet Courts reaching a songwriting peak, refined and intelligent off-kilter Brooklyn art-rock.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dust
2. Human Performance
3. Outside
4. I Was Just Here
5. Paraphrased
6. Captive Of The Sun
7. Steady On My Mind
8. On Man, No City
9. Berlin Got Blurry
10. Keep It Even
11. Two Dead Cops
12. Pathos Prairie
13. It's Gonna Happen

Pantha du Prince's new EP 'The Winter Hymn' features the titular album cut along with the exclusive track “Post Human Palisades (feat. Bendik & Kassian)” and an extended mix of the album track “Dream Yourself Awake".

NYC’s The Prettiots (Kay Kasparhauser and Lulu Prat) release their debut album ‘Funs Cool’ via Rough Trade.

Packed with catchy melodies, memorable hooks and heart on the sleeve lyrics, ‘Funs Cool’ acts as a thoughtful, funny, and catchy-as-hell state of the union address from young women living in a big city and watching life unfurl in fits and starts before them.

‘Funs Cool’ comes hot on the heels of the band’s recent rapturously received first UK shows in November.

The Prettiots have a playful aesthetic and a sweet pop sound but their observations are scalpel-sharp and the emotional gut-punch their music packs is real. For Kay (vocals and uke) and Lulu (bass), simple instrumentation and no-frills vocals aren’t employed because they’re easy or cute - they’re useful because they’re the fastest way to the truth.

As Kasparhauser explained recently in a Rookie Magazine interview earlier this year, “My lyrics are completely honest… they’re 100% true to my thoughts at any given moment. I like to talk about Werner Herzog and sex.”

A collaborative studio album by American indie folk act Sun Kil Moon and British experimental act Jesu. The album also features guests Will Oldham aka Bonnie "Prince" Billy, members of Low, Rachel Goswell of Slowdiveand Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse.

Jesu and Sun Kil Moon including drummer Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth will play five shows in February and March 2016 to support the album. 

"Candylion" was the second solo album from Gruff Rhys. Now released on vinyl for the first time in the UK, it's a mesmerising musical journey. It seems fitting therefore that insight into the workings behind the album come straight from the man himself:

'"Candylion" took form in the spring of 2006 over a fragmented two week period at Gorwel Owen's Ofn studio in Llanfaelog, Wales. My ears were happily ringing from a few months touring with the Super Furry Animals and I had a batch of mellower acoustic songs I wanted to record quickly and get out of the way before the next speaker-blowing SFA record. Once in the studio however I got carried away and found myself in a nostalgic mood, pining for some of the music I grew up listening to.'

TRACK LISTING

A.1 - This Is Just The Beginning
A.2 - Candylion
A.3 - The Court Of King Arthur
A.4 - Lonsome Words
A.5 - Cycle Of Violence
A.6 - Painting People Blue
B.1. - Beacon Of Darkness
B.2 - Con Carino
B.3 - Gyrru Gyrru Gyrru
B.4 - Now That The Feeling Has Gone
B.5 - Ffwydriad Yn Y Ffurfafen
C.1 Skylon!
D - Etched..

Jenny Lee Lindberg of Warpaint announces her solo debut album as jennylee, after hinting to fans with studio photos via social media. ‘right on!’ is released by Rough Trade Records.

Co-produced by jennylee and Norm Block, the 10 songs on ‘right on!’ were all written by jennylee and recorded earlier this spring at Happy Ending Studios in Silverlake, CA.

Joining Jenny on the album are Norm Block (Plexi, Mark Lanegan), Dan Elkan (Them Hills, Broken Bells) and Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa. Additional players include Tony Bevilacqua, Kris Byerly, Katie Burden, Kirk Hellie, Jonathan Hishcke and Cedric LeMoyne.

While ‘right on!’ retains some of Jenny’s signature Warpaint groove, she incorporates New Wave and Goth elements into her solo work. Her breathy voice and her meticulous bass playing create a new aura that is hazy and dreamy, and essentially all jennylee.

TRACK LISTING

Blind
Boom Boom
Never
Long Lonely Winter
Bully
Riot
He Fresh
Offerings
White Devil
Real Life

That Micachu & The Shapes’ return, three years after the release of their last record ‘Never’, is almost an accident: the trio of friends decided to rehearse in an East London studio, and found themselves immersed into an hours-long jam. Drummer Marc Pell had an Edirol field recorder in hand, and unbeknownst to his bandmates, recorded the whole session; Pell, Mica Levi, and Raisa Khan were so enamored of those off-the-cuff audio experiments that they became the underpinnings of a new record.

"For me it's the most free we have been,” Levi explains. Rather than showing up to the studio with songs written out, the trio started with a collaborative improvisation, from which Levi chose sections to develop into songs, writing lyrics to the entire record “non-stop, in one avalanche."

With one listen, it’s easy to hear why they loved the tracks. ‘Good Sad Happy Bad’ maintains the experimental-pop sensibility the band has brought to previous efforts, combining the lightness and bounce of their best singles with the sonic textures of field recordings, industrial effects alongside straightforward instrumentation. Levi’s affected vocals eschew easily readable emotional tone, instead relying on quixotic lyricism, repetition, and immersion into the song’s landscape, to evoke warmly - rather than show - the sentiments underpinning the songs.

The record’s irrepressible energy, across both the upbeat and a handful of sadder songs, seems to be a direct result of the live recording process. “Jams are really quite a healthy release, it’s a way of getting stuff out without consciously thinking about it or making decisions,” says Khan.

Conversely, because the band worked out the final mixes together over a number of months - rather than in a traditional, multi-track studio over a shorter period - Pell found a new degree of creativity. “I think the best drum part I have ever written is the stick-clicking at the beginning of ‘Peach’ - a moment, he explains, that he wouldn’t have been able to notice without the luxury of seeing the recorded tracks as more than simply songs, but as collections of sonic ideas.

“Different things are happening in my life now, so there is no doubt that it will be a very different album.” - Mark Kozelek

‘Universal Themes’ includes ‘The Possum’, a nineminute track featuring Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley about dead possums and hanging out with Godflesh.

Guitars and vocals by Mark Kozelek. Percussion by Steve Shelley.

Recorded in San Francisco, 2014 / 2015. Additional recording in Hoboken, 2015.

TRACK LISTING

The Possum
Birds Of Flims
With A Sort Of Grace I Walked To The Bathroom To Cry
Garden Of Lavender
Cry Me A River 
Williamsburg Sleeve
Tattoo Blues
Ali/Spinks 2
Little Rascals
This Is My First Day And I’m Indian And I Work At A Gas Station

Before We Forgot How to Dream’ is a stunning snapshot of SOAK’s formative years growing up in Northern Ireland, touching variously on the themes of isolation, family and what to do with your future. Already compared with the likes of Laura Marling and Beach House, Bridie has been a rising star in her hometown of Derry since the age of 14, when a chance uploading of the ‘Sea Creatures’ demo to the BBC Introducing playlist saw A&R board the next flight over and park up outside the Monds-Watson’s household. Yet SOAK rushed into nothing, instead splitting her time between studies, the local skate-park and daunting early shows (such as opening Derry’s tenure as City of Culture hours before a GCSE exam). Things moved forward last year, when Bridie teamed up with CHVRCHES for their launch of a singles label, toured with George Ezra and Tegan & Sara, before signing a deal with Rough Trade the same summer most of her friends got their A-Level results. Produced alongside Tommy from Villagers, her debut album traces SOAK’s extraordinary journey to this point, and marks Bridie’s graduation from raw talent to a significant songwriter for the years ahead. It seems also to speak of those more universal joys and fears of adolescence, before we, too, forgot how to dream.

TRACK LISTING

My Brain
B A NoBody
Blud
Wait
Sea Creatures
A Dream To Fly
24 Windowed House
Garden
Shuvels
Hailstones Don’t Hurt
Reckless Behaviour
If Everyone Is Someone - No One Is Everyone
Oh Brother
Blind

Two year’s on from the release of their debut, top 10 UK charting album ‘180’, which NME declared to be ‘the new soundtrack to your life,’ Q Magazine ‘one of the best debut albums of the decade’ and The Quietus ‘fucking brrrilliant,’ Palma Violets have announced the full details of their highly anticipated follow-up ‘Danger In The Club’. The album was produced by John Leckie (Stone Roses, Radiohead, The Fall), recorded at Rockfield Studio in Wales and is set for release on 4th May 2015 on Rough Trade Records. 

Anyone lucky enough to catch Palma Violets road testing the new album at intimate UK venues recently (including Scunthorpe where the local rugby team had to be called in when the venue’s bouncers couldn’t handle the over-excited crowd) can testify that the new material is a giant step up from the band’s debut. ‘Girl, You Couldn’t Do Much Better On The Beach’ and ‘Hollywood (I Got It)’ build on ‘180’s exhilarating, primal rock and roll, whilst the hook-heavy choruses and imaginative lyrics of ‘English Tongue’ and ‘Coming Over To My Place’ demonstrate how much Palma Violets – still all in their early twenties – have developed into first class songwriters and honed their own unique sound.

Speaking about the new album, bassist and singer Chilli Jesson explains: 
“We wanted to make a young-sounding record. We listened to a lot of pre-punk while we were making the album. We like its rawness and simplicity. A lot of bands want to over-complicate their second album, we know that we didn’t.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Sweet Violets
2. Hollywood (I Got It)
3. Girl, You Couldn’t Do Much Better On The Beach
4. Danger In The Club
5. Coming Over To My Place
6. Secrets Of America 
7. The Jacket Song 
8. Matador
9. Gout! Gang! Go!
10. Walking Home
11. Peter And The Gun
12. No Money Honey
13. English Tongue

Bonus Tracks:
1. Five Gold Rings
2. The Man Is Asleep
3. In The Rain
4. Scandal

Two year’s on from the release of their debut, top 10 UK charting album ‘180’, which NME declared to be ‘the new soundtrack to your life,’ Q Magazine ‘one of the best debut albums of the decade’ and The Quietus ‘fucking brrrilliant,’ Palma Violets have announced the full details of their highly anticipated follow-up ‘Danger In The Club’. The album was produced by John Leckie (Stone Roses, Radiohead, The Fall), recorded at Rockfield Studio in Wales and is released on Rough Trade Records.

Anyone lucky enough to catch Palma Violets road testing the new album at intimate UK venues recently (including Scunthorpe where the local rugby team had to be called in when the venue’s bouncers couldn’t handle the over-excited crowd) can testify that the new material is a giant step up from the band’s debut. ‘Girl, You Couldn’t Do Much Better On The Beach’ and ‘Hollywood (I Got It)’ build on ‘180’s exhilarating, primal rock and roll, whilst the hook-heavy choruses and imaginative lyrics of ‘English Tongue’ and ‘Coming Over To My Place’ demonstrate how much Palma Violets - still all in their early twenties - have developed into first class songwriters and honed their own unique sound.

Speaking about the new album, bassist and singer Chilli Jesson explains:
“We wanted to make a young-sounding record. We listened to a lot of pre-punk while we were making the album. We like its rawness and simplicity. A lot of bands want to over-complicate their second album, we know that we didn’t.”

Since the release of the Athens, Alabama group’s critically acclaimed 2012 album ‘Boys & Girls’ which has sold over a million copies worldwide, the band have been nominated for a Brit and Q Award, contributed music to the Oscar-winning films ‘Twelve Years A Slave’, ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ and ‘Silver Linings Playbook’, performed at The White House alongside Mavis Staples and Justin Timberlake for Barack and Michelle Obama, and become one of the most celebrated live acts in the world having delivered unforgettable performances everywhere from Jools Holland to the main stages of festivals including Glastonbury. They have also just been announced as the Friday night headliners of this year’s Great Escape Festival.

‘Sound & Color’ demonstrates the tremendous strides made by a group of twenty-something musicians who had only been playing together for a few months when they recorded their first album. From the gently swaying, chiming title song to the garage-rock freak-out on “The Greatest” to the psychedelic space jam “Gemini,” ‘Sound & Color’ builds on Alabama Shakes’ soulful blues-rock base and maps a surprising, innovative new direction. 

“We took our time to write this record, and I’m really glad we did,” says lead singer/guitarist Brittany Howard. “We were able to sit down and think about what’s exciting to us. This record is full of genre-bending songs.”

‘Sound & Color’ was recorded at Nashville’s Sound Emporium studio. The band co-produced the album with Blake Mills—a young guitar wizard who has played alongside Lana Del Ray.

“In some ways, this album was four years in the making,” says Colin Meloy, frontman and primary songwriter of the Decemberists. “We were on hiatus, so we had all the time we could want, no schedule or tour, no expectations.”

With the ability to work at their own pace, the resulting record, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, is the band’s most varied and dynamic work, both musically and emotionally. Since their earliest recordings more than a decade ago, the Decemberists have always been known for their sense of scope and daring—from “The Tain,” an eighteen-and-a-half minute 2004 single based on an Irish myth to their last two ambitious, thematic albums, The Hazards of Love and The King is Dead. This time, though, Meloy explains that they took a different approach: “Let’s make sure the songs are good, and eventually the record will present itself.”

Without a deadline, the Decemberists were also able to explore every song to completion. “Usually you have to let some songs slide because of time constraints,” Meloy says, “but nothing was relegated to the b-side pile, everything was given a fair shake. Which is a blessing and a curse—we ended up with 18 songs, and each had champions and detractors. There were a multitude of albums you could potentially make—somber, over-the-top pop, folk—and I think every band member would have created a different record.”

Ultimately, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World found its final form, a distillation of the best things about this remarkable band. A new way of working led to a renewed excitement about the next chapter for the Decemberists. “I’ve never lived with a record for so long,” says Colin Meloy, “documenting my shifts and changes as a songwriter, with a real sense of time passing. And there’s something very freeing about working on music with absolutely no agenda, and just letting the songs become themselves.”

Hype Williams man Dean Blunt preceeds his soon-come 'Black Metal' LP with this super-limited 12". Showcasing more of Blunt's eclecticism, '50 Cent' combines spacious, shimmering, reverb-laden lo-fi shoegaze guitar work and simple kick-snare machine drumming used as a hip hop break. Over this Williams adds a melancholic rap, duetting with a choral female vocal in a call and response style. 'Trident' offers a more straight forward rap, but again over an inventive dark and grimey backing track. It's indie hip hop, but not as you know it.

Fifth album from Scots indie-pop heroes and their first for Rough Trade. Featuring their usual blend of twee chamber-pop and dry wit, the album was produced by Trevor Horn, the man behind the desk for such pop luminaries as Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Grace Jones and The Pet Shop Boys.

Benjamin Booker, Rough Trade Records’ exciting new signing, releases his debut, self-titled album.

The album is produced by Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Hurray For The Riff Raff). Described as “a well-mixed musical cocktail of punk, folk, and New Orleans blues,” Benjamin Booker cites his influences as The Gun Club, Blind Willie Johnson and T. Rex.

The young singer-songwriter plays as a two-piece with drummer Max Norton, both of whom are based in New Orleans.

Having already gained fans including Tame Impala, toured with Hurray For The Riff Raff and played a string of sold out shows in London, Booker and his drummer Max Norton have been hand-picked to open for Jack White on his US July tour, which will be followed by a series of summer US dates with Courtney Barnett.

“Benjamin Booker blasted a raw brand of blues / boogie / soul,” observed the Chicago Tribune’s Greg Kot in his SXSW wrap-up. “He likes to leave the rough edges intact, bringing to mind the houserockin’ records that Hound Dog Taylor once did for Alligator Records in the 70s.”

American Songwriter said “The 22-year-old New Orleans guitarist / songwriter - joined live by drummer / mandolin player Max Norton - took the stage as an unknown and… stepped off the stage a conqueror.”

“It might look like just two people onstage but Benjamin Booker’s voice surely counts as a band member in its own right. Soulful and sandpaper-rough…” noted The Guardian, while NME said “he takes the ripped, raw racket of The Dirtbombs and smothers it in fuzzy, inherently moody-sounding riffs that recall The Gun Club and T Rex in equal measure.”

The year and change since the release of Parquet Courts monumental 'Light Up Gold' is reflected in ways expected and not with 'Sunbathing Animal', its sharper, harder follow up. Following their quietly released 2011 debut 'American Specialties', 'Light Up Gold' caught the ears of everyone paying even a little bit of attention, garnering glowing reviews across the board for its weird colors and raw energy, saturated punk songs that offered crystal clear lyrical snapshots of city life. It was immediately memorable, a vivid portrait of ragged days, listlessness, aimlessness and urgency, broadcast with the intimacy of hearing a stranger’s thoughts as you passed them on the street.

As it goes with these things, the band went on tour for a short eternity, spending most of 2013 on the road, their sound growing more direct in the process and their observations expanding beyond life at home. Constant touring was broken up by three recording sessions that would make up the new album, and the time spent in transit comes through in repeated lyrical themes of displacement, doubt and situational captivity. To be sure, Sunbathing Animal isn’t a record about hopelessness, as any sort of incarceration implies an understanding of freedom and peace of mind. Fleeting moments of bliss are also captured in its grooves, and extended at length as if to preserve them. Pointed articulations of these ideas are heard as schizoid blues rants, shrill guitar leads, purposefully lengthy repetition and controlled explosions, reaching their peak on the blistering title track. A propulsive projection of how people might play the blues 300 years from now, “Sunbathing Animal” is a roller coaster you can’t get off, moving far too fast and looping into eternity.

Much as Light Up Gold and the subsequent EP Tally All The Things That You Broke offered a uniquely tattered perspective on everyday city life, Sunbathing Animal applies the same layered thoughts and sprawling noise to more cerebral, inward-looking themes. While heightened in its heaviness and mania, the album also represents a huge leap forward in terms of songwriting and vision. Still rooted firmly in the unshackled exploration and bombastic playing of their earlier work, everything here is amplified in its lucidity and intent. The songs wander through threads of blurry brilliance, exhaustion and fury at the hilt of every note. Parquet Courts remain, Austin Brown, A. Savage, Sean Yeaton, and M. Savage.

TRACK LISTING

1. Bodies
2. Black And White
3. Dear Ramona
4. What Color Is Blood
5. Vienna II
6. Always Back In Town
7. She’s Rollin
8. Sunbathing Animal
9. Up All Night
10. Instant Disassembly
11. Duckin And Dodgin
12. Raw Milk
13. Into The Garden

‘Warpaint’ was co-produced by Warpaint and Flood (PJ Harvey, Sigur Ros, New Order, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and Foals), and mixed by Flood and Nigel Godrich (Radiohead). The album was conceived after some writing and recording sessions that took place in The Joshua Tree late last year. Here the band was joined by visionary director Chris Cunningham who has partnered with them for many of the album visuals including the cover. He has spent the past two years filming and photographing the band as they made ‘Warpaint’.

STAFF COMMENTS

David says: The Californian sunshine bores the daylights out of Warpaint. Surf dudes to the left, Hollywood desperados to the right: their second album proper finds the band diving down deeper and darker than ever before in a valiant, but ultimately doomed attempt to escape LA's shiny, happy people. Hypnotic and bleakly claustrophobic; 'Warpaint' is an album that won't return your calls and will pretend it hasn't seen you on a night out but, like a doomed love affair, will keep you coming back for more, hoping for reciprocity, ignoring the truth, that this a record that will never love you back. Don't let that stop you falling in love though, having your heart broken is one of life's cruel constants. So, if it's inevitable, you could do worse than to have it broken by 'Warpaint'.

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro
2. Keep It Healthy
3. Love Is To Die
4. Hi
5. Biggy
6. Teese
7. Disco//Very
8. Go In
9. Feeling Alright
10. CC
11. Drive
12. Son

British Sea Power’s widely-praised soundtrack for the film ‘From The Sea To The Land Beyond’ is to be released on CD and double vinyl (plus digital download coupon) accompanied by a DVD copy of the film through Rough Trade Records.

The album features a bonus track not available on the original soundtrack. · The soundtrack consists of re-workings of previous British Sea Power songs and was recorded in Brighton and mixed by Ken Thomas (Sigur Ros, Daughter, M83, Cocteau Twins, Moby).

In January 2013 when the film, directed by Penny Woolcock, was first shown on BBC4 as part of the ‘Storyville’ series the viewing figure nudged 500,000 - over twice the usual audience size.

The film features a fantastic array of footage of the British coastline from the BFI’s National Archive. Travelling from 1901, through both World Wars, into peacetime and the modern age, ‘From The Sea To The Land Beyond’ shows our coast as a place of leisure, industry and wild nature: A woman scaling a sheer cliff face to collect eggs, dancers on the Sussex shoreline, émigrés from the Caribbean and India, a big British Rail hovercraft... For all this, the British Sea Power soundtrack is a fitting, moving audio counterpart.

‘Tookah’ is Emiliana Torrini’s fourth album and follows 2008’s fantastically received ‘Me And Armini’.

The album sees Emiliana back in the studio with her longterm producer / collaborator Dan Carey. As well as Emiliana’s three previous albums the pair co-wrote and produced Kylie Minogue’s Grammy award-nominated track ‘Slow’ which went straight to Number 1 upon release. ‘Jungle Drum’ from Emiliana’s last album ‘Me And Armini’ also charted at number 1 in several countries including Germany where it stayed for 9 weeks.

Of the album Emiliana says: “For me the first album was learning to write songs, the second was working on my own melodies and lyrics and the last album ‘Me and Armini’ was about learning to let go. With this record, it’s much more about the exploration of sonics and visual landscaping in order to find my own sound. I am a craftswoman and for me this record has been about Dan (Carey) and I evolving and going on a sound journey.

“‘Tookah’ is a made up name or word, which I connected with in a very deep and blissful way. It is the core of you, the you when you were born before life decorated you like a Christmas tree with all your baggage. It is what connects us with everyone and everything. It is what the Sufis spin for. It is the sudden thankfulness you feel when doing nothing in particular, where everything is gently perfect for a moment. Some call it god. I call mine ‘Tookah’.”

British Sea Power’s new, fifth album ‘Machineries Of Joy’ will be released on Rough Trade Records. The album release will be accompanied by a full UK tour.

‘Machineries Of Joy’ was written in the Berwyn mountains in north Wales and recorded in Brighton with Dan Smith and mixer Ken Thomas (David Bowie, Sigur Ros).

“We’d like to think the album is warm and restorative,” says singer Yan. “Various things are touched on in the words - Franciscan monks, ketamine, French female bodybuilders turned erotic movie stars. The world often seems a mad, hysterical place at the moment. You can’t really be oblivious to that, but we’d like the record to be an antidote - a nice game of cards in pleasant company.”

One of the most highly anticipated debut albums of the year, comes in the shape of the Palma Violets '180' via Rough Trade Records. They kicked things off with last years 7" debut 'Best Friend' - a burst of raw hook-filled energy which sets a general template for the entire album. The tempo fluctuates throughout, but there's always that energy bubbling away. I've read a couple of reviews that have said it sounds a little rough around the edges, but I don't think it's any worse for it. It has an urgency and exhuberance that goes some way to matching that of their live performances.

‘180’ is also the number of the Lambeth house that the four-piece have become known for regularly throwing parties and impromptu gigs for friends and fans in. The album artwork features the band stood outside the building.

'180' was recorded in London at RAK Studios (produced by Steve Mackey), and also at The Lightship (produced by Rory Attwell).

TRACK LISTING

1. Best Of Friends
2. Step Up For The Cool Cats
3. All The Garden Birds
4. Rattlesnake Highway
5. Chicken Dippers
6. Last Of The Summer Wine
7. Tom The Drum
8. Johnny Bagga' Donuts
9. I Found Love
10. Three Stars
11. 14

‘POP ETC’ was recorded by the band over the course of 2011 at both Headphone Cave and Pull Studios in New York City, as well as in Los Angeles at SoundEQ Studios.

Though largely produced by the band, the album also features contributions from Danger Mouse and Andrew Dawson (Kanye West, Lil' Wayne).

Bright synths, high-octane pop melodies, and watery R&B reconfigurations.

Until very recently the band were known as The Morning Benders.

TRACK LISTING

1. New Life
2. Back To Your Heart
3. Halfway To Heaven
4. Keep It For Your Own
5. Live It Up
6. Everything Is Gone
7. R.Y.B.
8. Whyd You Do It Honey
9. I Wanna Be Your Man
10.C-O-M-M-U-N-I-C-A-T-E
11. YoYo

The album ‘Here’, the follow-up to the band’s 2009 debut ‘Up From Below’, was self-produced and recorded in Bogalusa, LA and in their studio in Ojai, CA.

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros made an appearance with Mumford & Sons at the 2012 South By Southwest Film Conference & Festival for the world premiere of ‘Big Easy Express’, the Emmett Malloy directed film that covered the band’s journey as they travelled in vintage railcars across the American Southwest over the course of a week, playing concerts at six unique outdoor locations along the route.

The album was recorded in Austin, Texas and Streatham, London and was co-produced by Mystery Jets and Dan Carey (Hot Chip, Franz Ferdinand, Emiliana Torrini).

Mystery Jets are Blaine Harrison, Will Rees, Kai Fish and Kapil Trivedi. On the making of the album ‘Radlands’, Blaine explains: “We’ve always wanted to make a record in America and after touring ‘Serotonin’ the time felt perfect to go and do it. Our first three albums were entirely conceived and recorded in London so going out to Austin felt like the furthest place from everything we knew. We arrived with a handful of songs, but one in particular felt like it captured the spirit of why we had come there. It was called ‘Radlands’ (a fusion of the 1970s Terrence Malick film ‘Badlands’ and Redlands, Keith Richard’s Sussex estate), which is also what we named our studio; a big old wooden house on the banks of the Colorado River. All we brought on the plane were the guitars on our backs, so we ended up borrowing all this amazing valve gear from an old guy called jack who ran a little studio up in the hills, which is why the songs sound the way they do. In the daytime we wrote lyrics on the porch and in the evenings a family of deer would gather in the back yard to hear us play. Some nights we drove into town to drink and bring people back to play on the songs. When we arrived home, it was hard to believe any of it even happened. It somehow all felt like a strange dream. But when Dan Carey heard it and invited us down to his studio we listened back to everything and it was all there, it was real. All we were missing were some gospel singers, which he found in the Streatham Community Ladies Choir... Twelve months on, and we are gearing up to take ‘Radlands’ on the road.”

Alabama Shakes – comprising vocalist/guitarist Brittany Howard, guitarist Heath Fogg, drummer Steve Johnson and bassist Zac Cockrell – began playing together when they were in high school. Ben Tanner assists on keyboards. 'Boys & Girls' was recorded at The Bomb Shelter in Nashville, TN. Produced and mixed by the band members, the album is a vibrant fusion of swampy dirty South rock, blues and soul delivered with punk rock fervour.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: The debut album and a real biggie!! Don't be put off the massive hype surrounding this band, this is top notch soul rock bringing to mind the likes of Afghan Whigs, early Kings of Leon and Muscle Shoals period Rolling Stones.

Unlike its predecessors, "Write About Love" is an album which has come together in a relatively short period of time. After reconvening in February 2010, a period of writing and pre-production in Glasgow was followed by a trip to Los Angeles for recording with Tony Hoffer (who also produced ‘The Life Pursuit’) at the renowned Sound Factory Studio B.

Adopting a more fluid approach than on the previous record, fourteen songs were recorded and mixed by the start of June, of which eleven feature on the CD and vinyl releases. Two further tracks from these sessions appear on a bonus 7” with the vinyl edition of the album.

As ever, the record draws the band’s internal songwriting strengths, but this time includes some guest performances. Stuart Murdoch wrote the majority of the songs on the album, while Sarah Martin takes lead vocals on her two contributions, "I Didn’t See It Coming" and "I Can See Your Future" and Stevie Jackson on his ("I’m Not Living In The Real World"). In addition, Norah Jones contributes lead vocals to "Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John" (which also appears on her forthcoming album of duets and collaborations called "Featuring") and actress Carey Mulligan sings on "Write About Love". Strings were added by LA residents The Section Quartet.

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: I’m spoilt for choice with Belle and Sebastian albums; they’re a favourite band of mine, their juxtaposition of melancholic lyrics with upbeat and cheery melodies are just brilliant. It’s bold and rosy; their story-like style is prominent in their ever on-going array of music.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Didn't See It Coming
2. Come On Sister
3. Calculating Bimbo
4. I Want The World To Stop
5. Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John (Feat. Norah Jones)
6. Write About Love (Feat. Carey Mulligan)
7. I'm Not Living In The Real World
8. Ghost Of Rockschool
9. Read The Blessed Pages
10. I Can See Your Future
11. Sunday's Pretty Icons

Adam Green's sixth's studio album, recorded with long time producer / friend Noah Georgeson. Co-founder of influential anti-folk group The Moldy Peaches, Adam Green's unique vocal style has never been especially commercial. However, while "Minor Love" isn't exactly a 'Top40' style record, it is more accessible than his previous work. Green recorded almost all of the instruments himself, and the songs have simple arrangements, which highlight Green's vocals. "Minor Love" showcases a side of Green that is not often obvious in his public profile.  

This is their debut mini-album originally released on Manimal Records, now reissued in the UK on Rough Trade.

Los Angeles' mystical Warpaint weave majestic, haiku-like guitars, hypnotic vocals, and driving post-punk rhythms into gorgeous, sprawling songs that skirt the line between the soundscapes of psychedelia / shoegaze, the haunting intimacy of folk, and rock's primal heaviness. At the core of the band are childhood friends Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman who both met bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg at a commercial casting audition in LA. The trio quickly traded in their headshots for guitars and the fertile, diverse LA music scene has been much better for it since. Expertly mixed by John Frusciante, the album successfully captures the band's sonic textures and playful dynamism Warpaint is notorious for creating live. Onstage, Warpaint's disarmingly authentic package can shake a room into a dance frenzy—while simultaneously holding it in a trance-like dreamworld.