Tyler Ballgame’s stunning debut, 'For the First Time, Again', is a bracing reminder of how great songs delivered by a gifted vocalist can move, captivate, and inspire. Produced by Jonathan Rado (Foxygen, The Lemon Twigs, Weyes Blood) and Ryan Pollie (Los Angeles Police Department) and delivered in Ballgame’s astonishing, versatile tenor, these 12 finely crafted tunes, rooted in classic rock, indie, and Americana, will make anyone with a heart feel seen. Even before the insightful, often provocative lyrics register, Ballgame’s infectious melodies draw you into a story both relatable, and unlike any you’ve heard. After one listen, Ballgame’s message of belief in one’s true self resonates deep and wide.

On 'For the First Time, Again', Tyler Ballgame and his talented circle of fellow music-makers enthusiastically offer listeners songs to fill them with hope, acceptance, delirious happiness, and support for rough roads ahead. For healing to occur, Ballgame offers, “We need to dissolve into experience.” With its gorgeous melodies, wise invocations, irrepressible – and sometimes mischievous – generosity of spirit, and THAT VOICE, 'For the First Time Again' is in itself an amazing experience.

TRACK LISTING

1. For The First Time, Again
2. I Believe In Love
3. You’re Not My Baby Tonight
4. Matter Of Taste
5. Sing How I Feel
6. Goodbye My Love
7. Got A New Car
8. Ooh
9. Down So Bad
10. I Know
11. Deepest Blue
12. Waiting So Long

Rough Trade Records are excited to announce a new stand-alone single by Lankum. Originally created for an Oona Doherty dance show ‘Specky Clark’ at Sadler’s Well earlier this year, the single is a devastatingly powerful and otherworldly interpretation of The Specials’ 1981 number one ‘Ghost Town’.

Lankum explain how the track came about; “Ghost Town came to us through some curious circumstances. Oona Doherty, who we were familiar with through her phenomenal dance work on the video for Gilla Band’s ‘Shoulderblades’, contacted us and told us about a new show she was putting together. It was about her great-great-grandfather being sent to Belfast as a child to live with his aunts and work in an abattoir. She wanted a new piece of music for the show, for a party scene set on Halloween night, and told us she wanted it to start out indistinguishable and woozy, before developing into the very recognisable track by The Specials. At first we were slightly reticent, since a cover of a ska tune wasn’t something we’d usually ever consider, but after a bit of deliberation we decided we’d give it a shot, and the result took us on an incredibly enjoyable journey that had us gleefully playing with synthesisers and drum machines in Hellfire Studios, trying to come up with the scaldiest 90s sounding techno for the outro section of the track.


"We’re very excited with the end product and delighted that Oona approached us and challenged us to step out of our comfort zone. It’s an honour to be releasing a version of this iconic tune, and it feels eerily relevant to be referencing yet again themes of urban decay, economic hardship and working class frustration."

TRACK LISTING

1. Ghost Town

Produced by The Clash’s resident innovator, Mick Jones, and even boasting a vocal cameo from Kate Moss, 'Down In Albion' evokes the sights and smells of its era yet also possesses a forward looking perspective which creates a perpetually relevant body of work that both charts and soothes the human condition.

Accompanying the album’s original 16 tracks, the anniversary edition includes five carefully chosen songs from the band’s archives, with several – despite bootleg fame amongst the band’s fanbase – getting their first official release.

'Gang Of Gin' and '352 Days' were both recorded around the album and were considered as possible b-sides but never officially released, while 'Why Did You Break My Heart/Piracy' did feature on the flip side of the single release of 'Albion'.

'Do You Know Me' and 'My Darling Clementine' are both taken from the fan favourite session for Zane Lowe’s BBC Radio 1 show, which was recorded in October 2004 and helped to lay the creative foundations for 'Down In Albion'.

Initially formed in 2003 when Doherty was temporarily excluded from The Libertines, Babyshambles quickly evolved into an alternative creative outlet for the songwriter, allowing him to explore a different range of themes within a fluid, spontaneous musical landscape.

Forging an expressive, collaborative partnership with bassist Drew McConnell, drummer Adam Ficek and lead guitarist Patrick Walden, as the Babyshambles’ line-up solidified, 'Down In Albion' managed to not only bottle the lightning of a group who always sailed close to the wind – creatively, culturally and personally – but it is also filled with insightful and timeless songwriting that skips between vivid narratives and full throttle emotion.

This edition not only celebrates their visceral mix of personal experience and state of the nation observations, but also pays tribute to Babyshambles’ Walden, who passed away earlier this year. While his characterful playing and melodic innovation is etched deep within 'Down In Albion's music, the guitarist's portrait, photographed by Hedi Slimane, has also been embedded within the sleeve using a special UV gloss.

From the nihilistic-titled yet deceptively hopeful 'Fuck Forever', via the squalor and the joy of 'Pipedown' and '8 Dead Boys', the humour of 'What Katie Did Next', the romanticism of 'In Love With A Feeling' and the melancholic yet heart-swelling 21st century anthem 'Albion', with a smile and roar Babyshambles debut is a truly immersive and invigorating web of feelings, abandon and creative energy.

TRACK LISTING

1. La Belle Et La Bete
2. Fuck Forever
3. A'rebours
4. The 32nd Of December
5. Pipedown
6. Sticks And Stones
7. Killamangiro
8. 8 Dead Boys
9. In Love With A Feeling
10. Pentonville
11. What Katy Did Next
12. Albion
13. Back From The Dead
14. Loyalty Song
15. Up The Morning
16. Merry Go Round
17. Gang Of Gin
18. 352 Days
19. Do You Know Me (BBC Radio 1 Session)
20. My Darling Clementine (BBC Radio 1 Session)
21. Why Did You Break My Heart/Piracy

As intrinsic to the Manhattan soul as the rumble of the subway, the grime of the Lower East Side or the ornate baroque glamour of the midtown blocks housing Ghostbusters’ ghouls, Adam Green’s music is as timeless as New York itself. Echoing through the depths of its dark lore, yet still relevant on sidewalks washed clean by gentrification, the singer-songwriter’s music not only invokes his hometown, but it captures the unique confusion and connection of life within a city: the awkwardness and the adventure, the love affairs and the loneliness, the society and the separation.

His 2005 solo album 'Gemstones', a sort of musical reply to Bright Lights, Big City, is firmly rooted in the Big Apple, its rockabilly rhythms rattle with the L-Train, its melodies hit like a fresh cross street gust, but whether you’ve visited New York or not its brisk, affecting songs will resonate with anyone who knows what it is like to be alone amongst the crowd.

Driven by Green’s beguiling baritone, from the album’s spinning, Wurlitzer-driven opener and title track 'Gemstones', via the chiming organs and voodoo maraca of 'Over The Sunrise', the irresistible rock’n’roll bop of 'Emily' and the bittersweet lament of 'Losing On A Tuesday', the record is as affecting as it is surreal. Fantastical imagery and linguistic twists that evoke an Escher-meets-Sesame Street version of city life, but beneath Green’s visions, guided by his playful melodies, is a warm beating heart of genuinely moving emotions.

Yes, 'Gemstones' can be heady and intoxicating, careering with an apparent free abandonment, yet it is also a warm, reassuring and ultimately nourishing record. On its release, the album made Green a superstar in Germany as audiences resonated with this 21st-century ‘The Two Cent Opera’ of intricate tales and bright tunes. Now, as Gemstones marks its 20th anniversary with a new vinyl release, it is time for all of us to step back and truly appreciate this musical diamond.

TRACK LISTING

1. Gemstones
2. Down On The Street
3. He's The Brat
4. Over The Sunrise
5. Crackhouse Blues
6. Before My Bedtime
7. Carolina
8. Emily
9. Who's Your Boyfriend
10. Country Road
11. Choke On A Cock
12. Bible Club
13. Chubby Princess
14. Losing On A Tuesday
15. Teddy Boys

THE PICCADILLY RECORDS ALBUM OF THE YEAR 2013

Little was said about Parquet Courts' debut effort, American Specialties. Released exclusively on cassette tape, the quasi-album was an odd collection of 4 track recordings that left those who were paying attention wanting more. A year of woodshedding live sets passed before the Courts committed another song to tape. The band's first proper LP, Light Up Gold, is a dynamic and diverse foray into the back alleys of the American DIY underground. Bright guitars swirl serpentine over looping, groovy post-punk bass lines and drums that border on robotic precision. While the initial rawness of the band's early output remains, the songwriting has gracefully evolved. Primary wordsmiths A. Savage and Austin Brown combine for a dynamic lyrical experience, one part an erudite overflow of ideas, the other an exercise in laid-back observation. Lyrically dense, the poetry is in how it flows along with the melody, often times as locked-in as the rhythm section.

“This record is for the over-socialized victims of the 1990's 'you can be anything you want', Nickelodeon-induced lethargy that ran away from home not out of any wide-eyed big city daydream, but just out of a subconscious return to America's scandalous origin," writes Savage in the album's scratched-out liner notes. Recorded over a few days in a ice-box practice space, Light Up Gold is equally indebted to Krautrock, The Fall, and a slew of contemporaries like Tyvek and Eddy Current Suppression Ring.

Though made up of Texan transplants, Parquet Courts are a New York band. Throw out the countless shallow Brooklyn bands of the blasé 2000's: Light Up Gold is a conscious effort to draw from the rich culture of the city - the bands like Sonic Youth, Bob Dylan, and the Velvet Underground that are not from New York, but of it. A panoramic landscape of dilapidated corner-stores and crowded apartments is superimposed over bare-bones Americana, leaving little room for romance or sentiment. It's punk, it's American, it's New York... it's the color of something you were looking for.

TRACK LISTING

1. Master Of My Craft
2. Borrowed Time
3. Donuts Only
4. Yr No Stoner
5. Yonder Is Closer To The Heart
6. Careers In Combat
7. Light Up Gold I
8. Light Up Gold II
9. N Dakota
10. Stoned And Starving
11. No Ideas
12. Caster Of Worthless Spells
13. Disney PT
14. Tears Of Plenty
15. Picture Of Health

Tally All The Things That You Broke is far more than a stopgap in between full-lengths; it’s the sound of Parquet Courts stretching out. Opener “You’ve Got Me Wonderin’ Now,” with its melodic drive and persistent Flutophone running alongside the melody, balances the manic tendencies of “Descend (The Way),” which would have fit on Light Up Gold, and extended rager “The More It Works,” which would fit in a live set between Tyvek and Eddy Current Suppression Ring. “Fall On Yr Face” presents a classic desert trawler, lopsided and tuneful, the sound of the end of a long day. But the day is just beginning for the protagonist of “He’s Seein’ Paths,” junkyard drum loops and doorbell samples framing Andrew Savage’s eight-minute stream-of-consciousness rap about the trials and tribulations of a marijuana delivery service representative, zipping around the city on his bike. Simultaneously the link between Parquet Courts and Ween, or Parquet Courts and Beck, it frames the band coming from a new place, and is a post-millenial NYC anthem, quintessential sounds for anyone who’s ever waited in anticipation of dialing that number, or anyone who’s put on their game face and rode from point A to point B in the snarl of vicious traffic.

Parquet Courts remain Austin Brown, A. Savage, Sean Yeaton and M. Savage. They sound like all the bands you think they sound like. They’ve toured everywhere this year and will continue to do so.

TRACK LISTING

1. You've Got Me Wonderin Now
2. Descend (The Way)
3. The More It Works
4. Fall On Yr Face
5. He's Seein Paths

Sleaford Mods have made an explosive return with their brand new single Megaton via Rough Trade Records.

Over an arc of rolling beats and atmospheric electronics, the track is peppered with acerbic bars digging out cultural mediocrity. A union of groove and guile, Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn are ruffling feathers and moving feet with their first new release as Sleaford Mods since 2023 album 'UK GRIM'.

Continuing the duo’s partnership with the charity War Child, all profits from 'Megaton' will be donated to support War Child’s life-changing work with children affected by conflict.

TRACK LISTING

1. Megaton
2. Give ‘Em What They Want

Ireland’s favourite Avant-punk quartet has re-issued 'The Early Years' EP, a collection of out of print 7” singles and covers originally released on Any Other City Records and The Quarter Inch Collective and then on Rough Trade in 2015. 'The Cha Cha Cha' has now been remastered alongside the rest of the tracks and is ready for the dancefloor once again.

Fan fave (and live setlist staple) featured on the collection is an eight-minute cover of post-dubstep mastermind Blawan’s absurdist banger and demented earworm 'Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage' that, simply put, is unlike anything you’ve ever heard before or since

TRACK LISTING

1. Lawman
2. De Bom Bom
3. I Love You
4. Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage
5. The Cha Cha Cha

Having consistently released music by innovative, visionary, and transformative artists, Rough Trade have been defining record collections since their first release in 1977 (RT001 saw the shop help French punks Metal Urbain put out single Paris Maquis), continuing to release cutting edge albums and tracks right up to, and including the present day, with their current roster boasting the likes of Amyl & The Sniffers, Pulp, Jockstrap, Anohni, Dean Blunt, Sleaford Mods and many more.

Now, to mark 45-plus years of the label, its co-MDs Jeannette Lee and Geoff Travis have indulged in a rare retrospective look, personally putting together two boxsets featuring some of their favourite singles released by Rough Trade during its formative years. Accompanied by new sleeve notes featuring the pair's recollections, impressions and opinions, these limited-edition collections are no bog-standard trawl through the back catalogue but a personal look at the hits, gems, bangers, growers, underrated classics and more. Chronicling Rough Trade's emergence from behind the counter of the West London shop of the same name in the late 1970s, the first boxset in the series fizzes with the daring, Do It Yourself attitude that underpinned punk and subsequent musical expressions that surrounded the label's birth.

"Typically for Rough Trade there wasn't a strategy,” says Jeannette of her and Geoff's enduring partnership at the heart of Rough Trade Records. "We just jumped in and hit it off. So, we've stuck together!"

TRACK LISTING

Augustus Pablo – Pablo Meets Mr Bassie
B-side Mr Bassie Special!
RT002
1978

Stiff Little Fingers – Alternative Ulster
B-side 78 Revolutions A Minute (78RPM)
RT004
1978

Subway Sect – Ambition
B-side Different Story
RT007
1978

Swell Maps – Read About Seymour
B-sides Ripped & Torn And Black Velvet
RT010
1978

The Raincoats – Fairytale In The Supermarket
B-sides In Love & Adventures Close To Home
RT013
1979

Cabaret Voltaire Nag Nag Nag
B-side Is That Me (Finding Someone At The Door Again?)
RT018
1979

The Pop Group – We Are All Prostitutes
B-side Amnesty International Report On British Army Torture Of Irish Prisoners
RT023
1979

Young Marble Giants – Final Day
Second Track On A Side Radio Silents B-side Cakewalking
RT043
1980

“The Sophs arrived out of the great blue yonder,” says Rough Trade co-founders Geoff Travis and Jeannette Lee of the label’s newest signing, LA six-piece The Sophs. The band’s brutal honesty, flamingly intrusive thoughts, and broad genre-spreading caught their attention immediately. Rough Trade heard the sort of creativity and variety — and “don’t expect me to act pretty” sentiment — that could get The Sophs — including frontman Ethan Ramon, Sam Yuh (keyboards), Austin Parker Jones (electric guitar), Seth Smades (acoustic guitar), Devin Russ (drums), and Cole Bobbitt (bass) — a slot on nearly any stage. “It’s rare that a demo that arrives in the post sets your heart racing and sends you off on a quest to track down its sender. But that’s what happened when we listened to the music sent to us by Ethan Ramon,” Travis and Lee explain.

“As a band newly entering the public sphere, signing with Rough Trade felt like an act of symbiotic faith. They took as much of an interpersonal interest in us as we did in them. From late nights at the pub to earnest conversations about the real-life events that inspired our songs, Rough Trade has always been and continues to be a team of true music lovers - people we’re nothing short of honored to call our partners,” says Ramon of their signing to the esteemed indie label.

Ramon elaborates on ‘SWEAT’, “To me, the song feels like an attempt to overcompensate in the face of grief, one that fails misterably and ends with you being swallowed whole. I tried to capture the moment when the tension breaks and you realize you’re no longer in control of your emotions; your emotions are in control of you. That realization is humbling.”

TRACK LISTING

1. SWEAT
2. At Your Worst (You Tried Your Best)

WORDS FROM JARVIS ON “MORE”

“This is the first Pulp album since “We Love Life” in 2001. Yes: the first Pulp album for almost 24 years.

How did that happen?

Well: when we started touring again in 2023, we practiced a new song called 'Hymn of the North' during soundchecks & eventually played it at the end of our second night at Sheffield Arena. This seemed to open the floodgates: we came up with the rest of the songs on this album during the first half of 2024. A couple are revivals of ideas from last century. The music for one song was written by Richard Hawley. The music for another was written by Jason Buckle. The Eno family sing backing vocals on a song. There are string arrangements written by Richard Jones & played by the Elysian Collective.

The album was recorded over 3 weeks by James Ford in Walthamstow, London, starting on November 18th, 2024. This is the shortest amount of time a Pulp album has ever taken to record. It was obviously ready to happen.

These are the facts.

We hope you enjoy the music. It was written & performed by four human beings from the North of England, aided & abetted by five other human beings from various locations in the British Isles. No A.I. was involved during the process.

This album is dedicated to Steve Mackey.

This is the best that we can do.

Thanks for listening.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's been over two decades since the last full Pulp outing, not counting Cocker's solo work as Jarv Is, so you'd be right to expect some of the magic from the band we once loved has dissipated. If that's you, then fear not! All of the deadpan Northern lyricism and operatic vocal turns you'd expect are well in place, and tempered by a good few years lying fallow. It's a beautiful exercise, a tentative teasing of their more unique aspects and a strong indication of what sort of persepctive a few years can give. Wonderfully well humoured, brilliantly memorable. Classic Pulp.

TRACK LISTING

1. Spike Island
2. Tina
3. Grown Ups
4. Slow Jam
5. Farmers Market
6. My Sex
7. Got To Have Love
8. Background Noise
9. Partial Eclipse
10. The Hymn Of The North
11. A Sunset

Having announced their return with 'Spike Island', and inspired by the overwhelming reaction to the track, Pulp will release the song on 7” – making it their first vinyl single since the acclaimed, James Murphy-produced After You in 2013.

What's more, it will be backed on its B-side by a brand new track that won't feature on the band's forthcoming album. A gently building, melodic meditation, 'Open Strings' will initially only be available on the reverse of the single.

TRACK LISTING

1. Spike Island
2. Open Strings

In 2012 Gruff Rhys embarked on a solo 'investigative concert tour' through the heart of America following the route taken by his distant relative John Evans. Every night he presented songs augmented by a power point presentation that detailed his relative's unbelievable history, along with any new piece of information that had come his way during the day. He was ultimately looking for Evans's lost unmarked grave. Along with many major cities, the tour took him to play shows at the Mandan and Omaha tribe reservations, a Missouri vineyard, villages that no longer exist and lay at the bottom the Mississippi river and a New Orleans bordello.

What transpired from that ‘investigative concert tour’ was a 2014 album, 'American Interior', plus a book, film and exhaustive tour of the same name. With the aid of the dusted-off power point presentation, Gruff Rhys and a full band revisits the project in 2025 to perform the songs that formed both the album, and the soundtrack to the film.

TRACK LISTING

1. American Exterior
2. American Interior
3-The Whether (Or Not)
4-The Last Conquistador
5-Lost Tribes
6-Liberty (Is Where We'll Be)
7. Allweddellau Allweddol
8. Walk Into The Wilderness
9. Sugar Insides
10. 100 Unread Messages
11. That's Why
12. The Swamp
13. Media Quake
14. Cylchdro Amser
15. Iolo
16. Y Gwenan Gorn
17. Year Of The Dog
18. Tiger's Tale
19. I Grombil Cyfandir Pell (3LP Deluxe Only)
20. Ar Goll (3LP Deluxe Only)
21. Y Madogwys Neu Angau (3LP Deluxe Only)
22. Power Point Presentation (3LP Deluxe Only)
23.  American Exterior (Extended Version For Two Synthesizers) (3LP Deluxe Only)

'Open Vocal Phrases, Where Songs Come In and Out' offers an intimate unedited solo live performance recorded at Phill Niblock's Experimental Intermedia Foundation in Downtown NYC on 12/20/85.

Phill curated and produced with Arthur two concerts at EI that would become an integral part of the foundation for the final World of Echo album. Arthur titled this performance 'Open Vocal Phrases, Where Songs Come In and Out'. This extraordinary performance was recorded by Steve Cellum and overseen by Phill and Arthur. Arthur would later edit sections from this performance merging it with studio material recorded at Battery Sound to finalize the 'World of Echo' album released in 1986.

"Some of it sounds so pure and clear and I am picturing him huddled around all that gear, simply magical. In my memory he didn't play "for" the audience but was rather trying to perfect these various permutations of sound within himself...and a few of us just happened to be present" - Tom Lee

TRACK LISTING

LP Tracklist:
1. That’s The Very Reason
2. Tower Of Meaning/Rabbit’s Ear/Home Away From Home
3. Happy Ending
4. All-Boy All-Girl/Tiger Stripes/You Can’t Hold Me Down
5. Introductions
6. Hiding Your Present From You/School Bell
7. Too Early To Tell
8. Changing Forest
9. Sunlit Water

CD Tracklist:
CD1 - Sketches For World Of Echo:
1. Changing Forest
2. Let’s Go Swimming
3. They And Their Friends
4. Keeping Up
5. Make 1,2
6. I Take This Time
7. Losing My Taste For The Nightlife
8. I Can’t Hide You
9. The Boy With A Smile On His Face
10. Sunlit Water

CD2 - Open Vocal Phrases Where Songs Come In And Out:
1. That’s The Very Reason
2. Tower Of Meaning/Rabbit’s Ear/Home Away From Home
3. Happy Ending
4. All-Boy All-Girl/Tiger Stripes/You Can’t Hold Me Down
5. Introductions
6. Hiding Your Present From You/School Bell
7. Too Early To Tell

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2025 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

Sue Tompkins from the band has designed new artwork for the packaging & it will be available on limited edition red coloured vinyl.

Though Life Without Buildings recorded just one and acclaimed studio album, Any Other City released on the Rough Trade Tugboat imprint, the Glasgow band also played a series of unique, now near-mythical live shows before splitting. Capturing their group's fleeting creative spark, Live At The Annandale Hotel is a triumphant document of the Life Without Buildings shining at their very brightest on stage.

Revealing the organic roots of Sue Tompkins' experimental vocals along with propulsive energy behind the band's core, this live recording reveals the crisp, clipped and controlled, yet always passionate, performance of Life Without Buildings as they hit their all too brief peak.

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2025 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 12TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8PM ON MONDAY APRIL 14th.

In the eight years since Amyl and The Sniffers came together in Melbourne’s sticky pub-rock scene, Amyl and the Sniffers have become masters of balancing power and playfulness. With two critically acclaimed albums under their belt - 2019’s self-titled debut and 2021’s visceral ‘Comfort To Me’ - vocalist Amy Taylor, guitarist Declan Mehrtens, bassist Gus Romer and drummer Bryce Wilson have achieved something unique and remarkable.

Since the release of Comfort to Me, the band has seen their horizons broaden exponentially in every way. And it’s this attitude - bigger, brighter, smarter, sharper - that’s fuelling their third album, ‘Cartoon Darkness’. Recorded with producer Nick Launay at Foo Fighters’ 606 Studios in Los Angeles, on the same desk that captured Nirvana’s Nevermind and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, the latest Amyl offering is full of surprises. Musically, Mehrtens, Romer and Wilson have written The Sniffers’ most diverse album yet. It stretches from classic punk to the glammy strut of recent single ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’ to the stormy balladry of ‘Big Dreams’ (which is a sonic gear shift worthy of the title).

Cartoon Darkness is about climate crisis, war, AI, tip-toeing on the eggshells of politics, and people feeling like they're helping by having a voice online when we’re all just feeding the data beast of Big Tech, our modern day god. It’s about the fact that our generation is spoon-fed information. We look like adults, but we’re children forever cocooned in a shell. We’re all passively gulping up distractions that don’t even cause pleasure, sensation or joy, they just cause numbness.

Everything is such hard work, everything is heartbreaking, but everything is beautiful. I want to celebrate. I want to put my phone down and see someone's facial expression change with what they say. I want to people-watch. I want to see if there are bugs where I walk, but I don't see them. I also want the fantasy and the escapism. I want to lean into hedonism, I want to feel alive, while acknowledging the dystopia and chaos unfolding around me.

Cartoon Darkness is driving head first into the unknown, into this looming sketch of the future that feels terrible, but doesn’t even exist yet. A childlike darkness. I don’t want to meet the devil half-way and mourn what we have right now. The future is cartoon, the prescription is dark, but it's novelty. It's just a joke. It's fun.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Another blazing transmission from Melbourne pub-rock sensation, Amyl And The Sniffers. Bold, jagged sweeps of distorted guitars and pummelling percussion underpin Taylor's acerbic vocals. This time, we get a slightly more nuanced selection, with the familiar fiery phrases balanced with some more thoughtful and tentative melodic elements, but nothing that changes everything we love about this singularly energetic force.

TRACK LISTING

Jerkin’
Chewing Gum
Tiny Bikini
Big Dreams
It’s Mine
Motorbike Song
Doing In Me Head
Pigs
Bailing On Me
U Should Not Be Doing That
Do It Do It
Going Somewhere
Me And The Girls

Goat Girl - Lottie Pendlebury (she/her), Rosy Jones (they/them) and Holly Mullineaux (she/her) are excited to announce their third album “Below The Waste” which is being released on Rough Trade Records. The album was co–produced by the band & John Spud Murphy (Lankum & black midi).

Pieced together like a collage over an extended period of time, the instrumentation was tracked mostly over a ten-day stint in Ireland at Hellfire Studios, in the shadow of the infamous Hellfire Club itself. They also used Damon Albans, Studio 13. Additional strings (Reuben Kyriakides and Nic Pendlebury), woodwind instruments (Alex McKenzie) and vocals (including a choir made up of family and friends) were added to this framework at a number of locations, from a barn in Essex to Goat Girl’s own studio in South London.

Singer Lottie on lead track: “I was listening to lots of music at the time by Phillip Glass and Deerhoof that plays with the relationship between tension and resolution which definitely influenced this song. I was yearning for honesty and authenticity in relationships I held with people, probably partly because at the time, like everyone, we were so isolated from one another. But it also felt deeper than that, like the conversations I dreamt of stripped away all of the etiquettes we desperately clung onto and went below the surface to where the most interesting parts of ourselves tend to be suppressed.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Otherworldly melodies and cracked, ethereal vocals come together into a drifting wave of dreamy post-punk and gloomy synth-pop. It's a departure from their earlier work, showing more sonic variation and stylistic fluidity while retaining the near-perfect hooky songwriting that made their self album and 'On All Fours' such hits.

TRACK LISTING

1. Reprise
2. Ride Around
3. Words Fell Out
4. Play It Down
5. Tcnc
6. Where’s Ur <3
7. Prelude
8. Tonight
9. Motorway
10. S.m.o.g
11. Take It Away
12. Pretty Faces
13. Perhaps
14. Jump Sludge
15. Sleep Talk
16. Wasting

Dinked Edition Tracklisting:
Side A:
Reprise
Ride Around
Words Fell Out
Play It Down
Side B:
Tcnc
Where's Ur <3
Prelude
Tonight
Side C:
Motorway
S.m.o.g
Take It Away
Pretty Faces
Perhaps
Side D:
Jump Sludge
Sleep Talk
Wasting

Dinked Bonus 7":
Side A:
Where's Ur <3 (demo)
Sleep Talk (fka Mellotron Improv)
Ride Around (fka Wavey Bye)
Side B:
Play It Down (sad Demo)
Wasting (demo)

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 20TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8PM ON MONDAY APRIL 22ND.

Incredibly, “Sadness Sets Me Free” is the 25th album Gruff Rhys has released in his 35 year career individually, collaboratively and as a member of various bands. “Sadness Sets Me Free” is also the follow up to 2021’s “Seeking new Gods”, his first solo top ten record.

Lead-off single “Celestial Candyfloss” is a telling four minute glimpse of the forthcoming album, revealing the heady wonders and classic pop sounds within. Soaring strings carry the sweet melodies along, anchored by just enough necessary melancholy to add emotional ballast. The eye-popping video was created by long-time collaborator Mark James and compliments the scope and style of the song on a galactic scale.

“Celestial Candyfloss” is, Gruff says, “an attempted pocket symphony about the cosmic lengths that people will travel in the pursuit of love and acceptance. Mark James has brought the Sadness Sets Me Free album cover to life & managed to place me watching TV interference in a shipping container that’s lost in space. For what is apparently the 25th album I’ve had a hand in writing I’ve reverted to a rich seam of inspiration relating to shedding some light on sadness and the general terror of cosmic loneliness.”

And so it was that Gruff and his band – Osian Gwynedd (piano), Huw V Williams (double bass) and former Flaming Lips drummer turned Super Furry Animals archivist Kliph Scurlock (drums) piled into a van driven by the late, legendary tour manager “Dr” Kiko Loiacono and raced from Dunkirk, where they had just played the final show of a tour of Spain and France, to the outskirts of Paris in the early hours of a March morning in 2022. There, in La Frette Studios, a recording facility installed in a 19th-century house, Gruff and his road-hardened group tracked “Sadness Sets Me Free” in just three days. Backing vocals were added along the way by Kate Stables from This Is The Kit along with additional strings and orchestration and it was mixed between Marseille and Cardiff. What finally emerged from these intense bouts of cross-continental activity was Gruff’s most accomplished and beautiful record to date.

In a career that has taken him from the slate-mining towns of north-west Wales, down to the expat communities of Patagonia, up to the Mandan tribe of the Great Plains of North America and across to the Tuareg rock groups of the Saharan Desert, Gruff Rhys, one of Britain’s most beloved and successful singer-songwriters, has always been willing to follow an opportunity, wherever it may lead him. “At this point I quite like working with serendipity,” he says. “Not in a cosmic way, [but] I try and leave things open to chance encounters and chance geography. As I'm around 25 albums in I’m always looking for ways to make a different-sounding record”.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Gruff is one of the masters of musical disguiuse, effortlessly turning his hand to any number of genre leanings, but it's in effortlessly melodic albums like 'Sadness Sets Me Free' that we get to hear the true genius and uplifting glee that only he can bring. There are moments of orchestral majesty and brittle, tentative sadness but every moment is a delight. A reminder of why Gruff is one of the greatest songwriters of our times.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sadness Sets Me Free
2. Bad Friend
3. Celestial Candyfloss
4. Silver Lining (Lead Balloons)
5. On The Far Side Of The Dollar
6. They Sold My Home To Build A Skyscraper
7. Peace Signs
8. Cover Up The Cover Up
9. I Tendered My Resignation
10. I’ll Keep Singing

Dinked Edition Bonus 7”:
A. Amser
B. (etching, No Audio)

London-based duo Jockstrap have today announced I<3UQTINVU, a fully remixed version of their Mercury Prize shortlisted 2022 album I Love You Jennifer B by the band’s Taylor Skye. I<3UQTINVU - I Love You Cutie, I Envy You - is set for release on 3 November via Rough Trade Records.

The remix record is the brainchild of Skye, who was making multiple versions of the album’s original tracklisting to stay inspired during the writing of I Love You Jennifer B. The guest features on the remix record range from Ersatz, who inspired Skye to make music many years ago to IAN STARR who he only connected with online a few months ago.

Skye explains more about I<3UQTINVU, saying, “Some of the remixes are almost three years old and some are under six months old. We played a run of shows with Babymorroco when our album came out to test them all. The main thing I was interested in whilst making this music was the sonic palette and the texture of the music. The musical material didn't matter too much, it was just about the sound. That's often what moves me, not necessarily the notes but the sound. However, I'm not even sure what that means and if music can really be separated like that. Maybe it's too paradoxical. Well… it's an experiment! I'm still learning.”

Commenting on ‘Red Eye’, collaborator IAN STARR adds: "I love making songs that push the limits of my vocality and energy, and I went all-out in efforts to craft the craziest performance possible on ‘Red Eye’. Whenever I write a song, I always have the live audience in mind; performing this at my first festival with Jockstrap made me feel really great about the result! The crowd’s energy felt amazing & I’m so excited to perform it for everyone who comes to the U.S. tour!"

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: Fully remixed version of one of our albums of 2022, this is a must have companion piece for 'I Love You Jennifer B'. Goes to some pretty wild places but definitely worth sinking your teeth into!

TRACK LISTING

1. Sexy (feat. Babymorocco)
2. All Roads Lead To London (feat. Coby Sey & Ersatz)
3. Good Girl
4. I Touch
5. I Feel
6. Pain Is Real
7. Red Eye (feat. IAN STARR)
8. I Noticed You (feat. Kirin J Callinan)
9. Sexy 2

Fresh from supporting Blur at Wembley, Sleaford Mods return with a EP of six new tracks. Emerging from the same environment that created the duo's Top 3 album UK GRIM, the songs of More UK GRIM share the incisive lyrical vision and forward-thinking electronics that won acclaim for the LP. Tracks including Under The Rules, Old Nottz and Big Pharma not only continue Mods' era of dancefloor dominance, but with insight and wit, outrage and compassion, they critique yet celebrate our turbulent times.

TRACK LISTING

1. Under The Rules
2. Old Nottz
3. Big Pharma
4. PO Crazy
5. My 18hr Girdle
6. Old Nottz (Alt Mix) 

My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, ANOHNI’s sixth studio album, expresses a world view by shape-shifting through a broad range of subject matter. Through a personal lens, ANOHNI addresses loss of loved ones, inequality, alienation, acceptance, cruelty, ecocide, devastation wrought by Abrahamic theologies, Future Feminism, and the possibility that we might yet transform our ways of thinking, our spiritual ideas, our societal structures, and our relationships with the rest of nature.

On her first full album since 2016’s HOPELESSNESS, she explains the creative process was painstaking, yet also inspired, joyful, and intimate, a renewal and a renaming of her response to the world as she sees it. “Some of these songs respond to global and environmental concerns first voiced in popular music over 50 years ago.”

ANOHNI’s approach since her last record has shifted from someone tasked with challenging global denial, to an artist seeking to support others on the front lines. “I learned with HOPELESSNESS that I can provide a soundtrack that might fortify people in their work, in their activism, in their dreaming and decision-making. I can sing of an awareness that makes others feel less alone, people for whom the frank articulation of these frightening times is not a source of discomfort but a cause for identification and relief.

On “It Must Change,”ANOHNI soulfully describes systems in collapse with a note of compassion for humanity: “The truth is I always thought you were beautiful in your own way // That’s why this is so sad.” ANOHNI’s voice is sensual and smoothed, selectively reaching to the edges of what it can contain. “We’re not getting out of here // No one’s getting out of here // This is our world,” she murmurs.

A portrait of legendary human rights activist Marsha P. Johnson taken by Alvin Baltrop features on the cover, reflecting a 25-year relationship with the memory of Johnson that ANOHNI has held space for in the presentation of her own work.
Elsewhere, the album artwork states ”IT’S TIME TO FEEL WHAT’S REALLY HAPPENING”. In some ways it feels as if she is reaching across her life’s expression, and has found a moment of unique composure, wearing her long exploration of disarming intensity, with the maturity of a painter carefully choosing her colors. “I want the work to be useful, to help others move through these conversations we are now facing, to move with dignity and resilience through this bitter dawning.” 

TRACK LISTING

1. It Must Change
2. Go Ahead
3. Sliver Of Ice
4. Can’t
5. Scapegoat
6. It’s My Fault
7. Rest
8. There Wasn’t Enough
9. Why Am I Alive Now
10. You Be Free

Rough Trade Records in partnership with Audika Records are excited to announce ‘Picture of Bunny Rabbit’ a new album of previously unreleased World Of Echo era material by Arthur Russell recorded in 1985/86.

‘Picture of Bunny Rabbit’ features nine previously unreleased performances from this era compiled from completed masters culled from two unique test pressings, including one, dated 9/15/85 by Arthur, provided by his mother and sister. A further four tracks were discovered in his tape archive. The track listing includes an exceptional and dramatic solo recording of “In The Light of a Miracle” and the enigmatic title instrumental “Picture of Bunny Rabbit”, written especially for a friends pet rabbit. The bulk of the material was recorded with engineer Eric Liljestrand at Battery Sound Studios, New York, which was located directly opposite the World Trade Center and at Arthur’s apartment studio in the East Village.

In 1986 Arthur Russell was diagnosed with HIV, that same year he released his career-defining masterpiece ‘World of Echo’, the first and only solo album issued during his lifetime. Arthur had found his voice and a fresh direction with a set of new, transformative material, unlike anything he or anyone else had previously released. His illness ensured that the artistic growth and sense of exploration encapsulated in ‘World of Echo’ would be tragically curtailed. Within six short years Arthur was gone.

Arthur’s final years were filled with a renewed commitment to creativity and unceasing live and recording work. He regularly performed the ‘World of Echo’ material and incorporated several of its compositions in collaborations with choreographers active in New York’s innovative dance community. Arthur worked closely with Diane Madden, Allison Salzinger, Stephanie Woodard and John Bernd, usually playing his cello and effects boxes off stage as the choreographers’ pieces were performed. In 1993 Arthur posthumously received a prestigious Bessie Composer Award for his work in the dance world.

This release is the latest in a series in partnership with Audika Records, the exclusive label and home for the Arthur Russell archive and estate, who since 2004 have compiled and published the exceptionally varied, long sought-after music of Arthur Russell, and who in the process have helped the beloved, late artist find the broader audience he always believed he would reach. A new generation of listeners and critics has come to appreciate Russell as a visionary and an influence upon a broad range of today’s most compelling musical artists.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Some premium unearthed material here from the late, great Arthur Russell. Having come from the World Of Echo sessions, you know that there's some superb material here, including nine previously unreleased performances including some salvaged from tape provided by his mother and sister.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
Fuzzbuster 10
Not Checking Up
Telling No One
Fuzzbuster 06
The Boy With A Smile
Side B:
Fuzzbuster 09
Very Reason
Picture Of Bunny Rabbit
In The Light Of A Miracle

This Is The Kit, the group led by Paris-based bandleader Kate Stables, today announced the band’s new album Careful of Your Keepers–produced by Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals)–will be released on June 9th, 2023, via Rough Trade Records. The album’s propulsive yet introspective lead single “Inside Outside” finds Stables as magnetic as ever, joined once again by her stalwart band of Rozi Plain(bass/vocals), Neil Smith (guitar), and Jamie Whitby-Coles (drums), and accented by a cascading horn quartet arrangement by Jesse Vernon.

Careful Of Your Keepers is daring and soft, cutting and warm–a wild feat of complexity and combined dispositions. There’s a shared language of the band’s family experience that is as audible as ever in these recordings, which boast beautiful instrumental performances that still leave the nuanced space required for Stables’ vocals to live at the forefront. “The album was nearly called Goodbye Bite. And in a way it still is,” says Stables. “I went for Careful of Your Keepers in the end. It’s one of my favourite songs on the album, a song that for me holds the general feeling of the album as a whole. The fragility of things. Of situations. Of relationships. Of humans. What we do to look after each other and ourselves. The passing of time and what that does to us, and how we live our lives going forward.”

Guiding the ship through changing seas is producer Rhys. Stables described his role as being a “tonesetter,” watchful and attentive to the band dynamics while making sure to always follow a hunch for where a new sound could find its place in the recording. “I’ve always loved the idea of working with him somehow, and when this album started getting planned, I realized that maybe this was my chance to reach out and see if he was up for working together,” Stables explains. “And he was! As if that wasn’t enough, he was also up for doing a bit of singing on the record, which totally blew my mind and made my year. His way with harmony and melody and the tone and quality of his voice is a totally killer combo.”

“They are so ridiculously talented–and every member is a great producer in their own right–so it was just a matter of trying to capture the magic they make when playing live together,” Rhys says of the recording process. “Their playing is by default so thoughtful and complimentary in terms of respect to each other’s parts and to the integrity of the songs themselves that it creates a beautiful foundation of often cosmic interplay that’s always in aid of Kate’s voice and vision as a songwriter.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: 'Careful Of Your Keepers' sees Stables in fine form, confidently traversing the waters we're so familiar with from 2020's brilliant 'Off Off On' but mixed up with a hint of Gruff Rhys' wonderfully psychedelic production and a hint of jagged, art-rock groove. It's a perfect development for Stables' song writing, keeping the elements which we've become so fond of but boldly branching into new areas.

TRACK LISTING

1. Goodbye Bite
2. Inside Outside
3. Take You To Sleep
4. More Change
5. This Is When The Sky Gets Big
6. Scabby Head And Legs
7. Careful Of Your Keepers
8. Doomed Or More Doomed
9. Stuck In A Room
10. Dibs 

A space of wonderment and exhilaration, the home of true heart and a timeless soul, Delays' Faded Seaside Glamour was an atmospheric and evocative debut album. Released in 2004, the fragile strength of frontman Greg Gilbert's vocals intoxicatedly intertwined with the forward looking synths of his brother Aaron, Colin Fox's bass and Rowly's drumming, to create a series of affecting songs that delivered an immediate pop hit that also left a deep and wistful impact worthy of the album's enticing title.

Its iconic singles Nearer Than Heaven and Long Time Coming, became immediate yet lasting focal points for Southampton's Delays, while tracks including the melancholic No Ending, the smooth beats of Stay Where You Are and chiming opener Wanderlust demonstrated the remarkable depth of this unique debut.

Nearly 20 years have passed since the release of Faded Seaside Glamour and much has changed – most notably the loss of Greg Gilbert who passed away in 2021 after a period of treatment for cancer – but like the idiosyncratic places the album's name celebrated, Delays' music has not only endured but their art has been loved and cherished as it has continually connected with audiences.

To celebrate this soaring and smouldering body of work, Rough Trade Records is pleased to announce that it will be releasing Delays' Faded Seaside Glamour on vinyl for the first time ever. 

TRACK LISTING

A

Wanderlust
Nearer Than Heaven
Long Time Coming
Bedroom Scene
No Ending
You Wear The Sun

B

Hey Girl
Stay Where You Are
There's Water Here
Satellites Lost
One Night Away
On

UK eight-piece caroline’s eponymous debut album often cascades with force like an avalanche, squalling and rumbling on the edge of all-out collapse. At other points they slip back into impossibly fragile moments of quiet – a simple bassline or a rattle of snare the only sound amid a dark sea of silence. caroline know exactly the right balance between restraint and release. These songs are expansive and emotive pieces, their rich palette drawing on a mixture of choral singing, Midwestern emo and O’Malley and Llewellyn’s roots in Appalachian folk.

“Sometimes things sound much better when there’s empty space,” says Llewellyn. “Sometimes you might populate [a song] with too many things and forget that an element on its own is enough.” Elsewhere on the record the band have employed a collage-like technique, combining snippets of lo-fi recordings from a myriad of different locations – a barn in France, the members’ bedrooms and living rooms, the atmospheric swimming pool in which they also filmed sublime live sessions for ‘Dark blue’ and ‘Skydiving onto the library roof’ – with more traditional group sessions at the Total Refreshment Centre and their studio in Peckham.

The growth that began as a scrappy guitar band above a pub many years ago is still continuing. caroline’s astounding debut album is merely the first step. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: What a fascinating sound caroline have managed to coax out here. It's a heady mix of post-rock, folk and avant rock pulled together with a keen ear for melodies and tempered with airy group vocals, a-la ASMZ. A dynamic and ever-shifting landscape of melody and texture.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Dark Blue
Good Morning (red)
Desperately
IWR
Messen #7
Side B
Engine (eavesdropping)
Hurtle
Skydiving Onto The Library Roof
Zilch
Natural Death

Dinked Edition 7” Tracklisting:
Side A - Good Morning (red) Demo
Side B - Dirty Triple (3) #2

black midi’s new album Cavalcade is to be released on 28th May. Cavalcade is a dynamic, hellacious, and inventive follow-up to 2019’s widely-praised Schlagenheim, “a labyrinth with hairpin-turn episodes and lyrics full of dourly corrosive observations” (New York Times, Best Albums of 2019).

It scales beautiful new heights, pulling widely from a plethora of genres and influences, reaching ever upwards from an already lofty base of early achievements. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Black Midi have always revelled in forging the most cacophonous and confounding noise, drawing skilfully from a diverse range of influences. 'Cavalcade' takes this one step further with such a varied and hugely skilled narrative, it's hard not to get drawn into their world after just a couple tracks. Jazzy, noisy, heavy and in parts eerie, this is peak Black Midi.

TRACK LISTING

1. John L
2. Marlene Dietrich
3. Chondromalacia Patella
4. Slow
5. Diamond Stuff
6. Dethroned
7. Hogwash And Balderdash
8. Ascending Forth

Goat Girl will be releasing a 12” featuring Remixes of ‘Sad Cowboy’ one of the standout tracks from their new album ‘On All Fours’ as a limited edition on May 8th. The ‘Sad Cowboy’ Remix 12” will feature remixes by Tony Njoku, PVA, DJ Dairy (black midi) and Nídia.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Sad Cowboy Original
A2 Nídia Remix

B1 PVA Remix
B2 DJ Dairy Remix
B3 Tony Njoku Remix

Since 2008’s debut album Krülle Bol, This Is The Kit (lead by Kate Stables) have unpicked emotional knots and woven remarkable stories, but even by their high standards, Off Off On is a beautifully clear distillation of Stables’ song-writing gifts.

By the end of 2018, the band had finished touring their last album, the talismanic Moonshine Freeze – leading to Kate’s Ivor Novello nomination, but when it came to Stables’ natural impulse to start the next record, her efforts were diverted by an invitation to join The National on the road for multiple tours and TV appearances – a continuation of the role she took on their album I Am Easy To Find. “It was so brilliant when I was writing to be away from my songs and the responsibility of being in charge of a band or a project – I think it really helped my writing and my getting through whatever I needed to get through.”

Richly illuminating and acutely sensitive to the pulses and currents of life, Off Off On shows This Is The Kit overflowing with ideas. In difficult times, it’s a record that feels like a lifeline, moving against the tide, standing against the storm. Keep going.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's no surprise that 'Off Off On' has already garnered hefty praise from the mainstream music media, with it being a perfectly illustrated collection of skilful songwriting and beautiful performance skills. While Moonshine Freeze and Bashed Out were both stunning, this shows a real maturity and unbelievable advancement of the skills that thrust Staples into the limelight in the first place. An essential addition to any collection.

TRACK LISTING

Found Out
Started Again
This Is What You Did
No Such Thing
Slider
Coming To Get You Nowhere
Carry Us Please
Off Off On
Shinbone Soap
Was Magician
Keep Going

Having been out of print for years, ‘Little Joy’ is back on vinyl available on Rough Trade Records. Little Joy are Binki Shapiro, Rodrigo Amarante and Fabrizio Moretti, three friends who dropped their routine at their respective hometowns to make a record in Los Angeles, California. 

Through a chance encounter at a Portuguese festival in Lisbon, where both Amarante (singer / guitarist of Los Hermanos) and Moretti (drummer of The Strokes) had performed, the two chatted well through the night and into the morning by the side of the river, humouring the idea of working together on music that had no affiliation to their particular bands.  

A year later, Amarante travelled to the United States to record with Devendra Banhart on his ‘Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon’ album. On the off hours of an arduous recording process, Amarante would meet with Moretti to discuss anything but music.

Binki Shapiro, musician and native of Los Angeles, was introduced to the pair through mutual acquaintances and became a fast friend, encouraging the two to focus on the music they had spoken of long before. Through the process of late night ‘show-and-tell’ the three developed and arranged songs Moretti had begun and soon after started writing original music for the group as a band.

A couple of months later they all moved into a house in Echo Park to demo songs and soon after, with the help of producer Noah Georgeson, who had recorded Banhart’s album, they finished their self-titled debut, ‘Little Joy’, named after the cocktail lounge just down the street from their home.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Next Time Around
2. Brand New Start
3. Play The Part
4. No One’s Better Sake
5. Unattainable
6. Shoulder To Shoulder
7. With Strangers
8. Keep Me In Mind
9. How To Hang A Warhol
10. Don’t Watch Me Dancing
11. Evaporar

Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn stepped out of 2019 with a Top Ten album under their belt, Eton Alive, their biggest sold out tour to date and the swagger of a band that have never been more relevant, topically challenging and downright entertaining.

Sleaford Mods are set to continue their onslaught into 2020 with the release of All That Glue, a collection of songs spanning the last seven years of the bands career; an array of crowd pleasers, B sides, unheard tracks and rarities for fans and the curious, released via Rough Trade. Over the past few years Sleaford Mods have become one of the most intractable British pop stories. One of its best. Their music is drawn at a flawless fault-line of anger, tenderness and humour, a triumvirate of raw energy which frequently jostles in the space of a cadence for supremacy. On record you can hear their sinews, live you can touch their veins.

Ahead of All That Glue's release the band will be making available fan favourite Jobseeker for the first time. In addition, footage from the duo's acclaimed sell out show last year at the Eventim Apollo, will be released for the first time and kicks off with an incendiary performance of Tweet Tweet Tweet.

Limited edition independent store-only double white vinyl includes a 16-page A5 booklet - a précis in the inimitable style of Jason Williamson - documenting Sleaford Mods inexorable rise since their inception in 2011 to the present day, together with praise from the incomparable Iggy Pop.

Pinegrove’s new album begins with a breath and ends with a shimmering exhalation. In between is Marigold, an urgent, multivalent meditation—and an expanded take on the blend of alt-country, indie rock and cerebral humanism that’s inspired the band’s ardent fan community. Marigold marks their Rough Trade Records debut, offering what songwriter Evan Stephens Hall calls a “heart-first” perspective.

Those familiar with Pinegrove will recognize signature elements of the band’s sound: literary yet conversational lyrics, geometrically interlocking guitars, the dynamic shifting shadows of rhythm and structure. But this effort marks the most spacious, bold, and well defined iteration of the project yet.

Formed in 2010 by childhood friends Evan and drummer Zack Levine, Pinegrove have released three previous albums — Everything So Far (2015), Cardinal (2016), and Skylight (2018) — to massive critical acclaim, garnering them a widespread and devoted listenership. They’ve described their sound as variously as introspective party music, or energetic music in the folk tradition; in any case they have combined catharsis and inventive structures with irrepressible melodies, resonant lyrics and emotive twang. Marigold finds the band expanding into the latter, spreading out over varying tempos and swelling pedal steel. But in surprising moments, the album can suddenly unfold into the band’s heaviest, most unbound offerings yet—a cavalier disregard of genre in favour of something honest and unique.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Swooning, Americana tinged rock choruses and beautifully mixed instrumentals from New Jersey's Pinegrove. Grand and momentous while still retaining the charm of more relaxed acoustic folk numbers. Lovely stuff.

TRACK LISTING

Dotted Line
Spiral
The Alarmist
No Drugs
Moment
Hairpin
Phase
Endless
Alcove
Neighbor
Marigold

The new album from Gruff Rhys, ‘Pang!’ is a Welsh Language pop album with a couple of verses of Zulu and an English title. ‘Pang!’ developed unexpectedly over about 18 months. A solo album of songs by Gruff Rhys, produced & mixed by the South African electronic artist Mmusi, and will be released by Rough Trade Records.

Recorded in Cardiff, Wales. It was mixed by the producer Muzi in Johannesburg, South Africa. Drums by Welsh-American psychedelic warlord Kliph Scurlock, brass by Gavin Fitzjohn and flute and percussion by the engineer Kris Jenkins. Beats, bass & ah’s by Muzi with Gruff on vocals and guitar.

Gruff explains “Pang! Is a Welsh language song with an English title. It started life as a folk reel and soon expanded into a ‘list’ song, listing various reasons for pangs; hunger, regret, twitter, pain, bad design etc. Using the English word pang in a Welsh language track may appear weird but I suppose it’s like using the French word ‘Magazine’ in an English song. In that it’s slightly pretentious but completely acceptable.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There is no more distinctive a voice in modern indie than Gruff, with his impeccable grasp of melody and seamless integration of welsh vocals, dynamic percussion and classic songwriting. Another absolute classic, and an absolutely lovely chap to boot. Perfect.

TRACK LISTING

1. Pang!
2. Bae Bae Bae
3. Digidigol
4. Ara Deg
5. Eli Haul
6. Niwl O Anwiredd
7. Taranau Mai
8. Oi Bys Nodau Clust
9. Annedd Im Danedd

black midi -- Georgie Greep (vocals/guitar), Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin (vocals/guitar), Cameron Picton (vocals/bass), and Morgan Simpson (drums) -- have a dynamic energy, playing as a musical unit that’s constantly in a state of flux and development.

Schlagenheim was recorded with Speedy Wunderground producer Dan Carey, who the band praises for his quick, unfussy approach. black midi laid down eight of the record’s nine tracks in just five days. The process was one of refining and rebuilding tracks around the initial structures. Five hour jams would sometimes yield a riff that then became a few bars of a song. As anyone who’s been lucky enough to catch black midi live over recent months will testify, black midi’s songs are slippery creatures.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Much like the fervour that accompanied Battles' 2007 outing 'Mirrored', Black Midi have managed to make an indefinable and thrilling collection of angular post-punk, avant math-rock and percussive glitch without so much as a glance into their stylistic forebears. Singular in artistic scope and as forward thinking as they come, they are sure to have a loyal and enthusiastic following through their use of unexpected rhythms and off-piste stylistic flair.

TRACK LISTING

953
Speedway
Reggae
Near Dt, Mi
Western
Of Schlagenheim
Bmbmbm
Years Ago
Ducter

This is the band’s first new music since last year’s top 15 album “English Tapas” The EP was recorded in Spring 2018 in Nottingham, and features five new tracks including lead track “Stick in a Five & Go”. The band are confirmed to play two nights at London’s Roundhouse on September 21st & 22nd 2018 and also their biggest hometown show at Nottingham’s Concert Hall on September 30th. They also play their biggest Paris show too at Le Triannon on 26th Sept, some Scottish dates in November with shows in Copenhagen and Amsterdam planned for November too.

The band are currently in the studio in Nottingham working on tracks for a new album planned for March 2019.

Jason Williamson says about the new songs “the lead tracks are mostly full of violent tendencies that only transpire through imagination. People are powerless under the political monster and the intense anger and frustration morphs into illusions of attacking each other through the bravado of social media, depression and paranoia.”

TRACK LISTING

Stick In A Five And Go
Bang Someone Out
Gallows Hill
Dregs
Joke Shop

’Seedlings All' is Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker’s first album to be made up of all original songs, and is songwriter Clarke's most autobiographical work to date. As she explains: “For the first time I’m out there alone with a bunch of songs that expose my insecurities, fears of failure and inflated pride. They deal with my own specific thoughts and feelings about the reality of pursuing this kind of career, the cost to personal relationships, circumstance and lifestyle, and asking the question - "Is this still worth it?” They’re about trying to find an inner balance in an environment that doesn’t provide any balance or certainty. Where one day everything is brilliant and the next day it could all be over. Where one night ends in a standing ovation and the next starts by playing to an empty room."

TRACK LISTING

Chicago
Bells Ring
Seedlings All
Maybe I Won't
Tender Heart
All Is Myth
Ghost Light
Sad Day
Things Of No Use
Bathed In Light
Only Me Only

(Bonus CD)
When To Then
Milk And Honey
For All We Know

The Decemberists explore a new sound with a new producer on their inspired eighth studio album I’ll Be Your Girl, which will be released March 17 on Rough Trade Records. The acclaimed Portland, Oregon-based band worked with producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Lana del Ray) and embraced influences such as Roxy Music and New Order to spark a new creative path, as can be heard on the synth-driven lead single “Severed”

I’ll Be Your Girl is the sound of a veteran band finding new inspiration, a unit unafraid of challenging itself to re-connect with its creativity. “Making music is an infinite choose-your-own-adventure,” says Colin Meloy, “and when you go down one path, the other paths get sealed off. So every time we could, we said, ‘If this is what our impulses would tell us to do, let’s try to imagine it in a different way.’”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A more direct affair than their previous outing, 'I'll Be Your Girl' flits between the full-sounding AOR melodicism of War On Drugs and the pseudo-country psychedelia of their previous iterations, 'I'll Be Your Girl' takes all the elements we love about The Decemberists and distills them into a cohesive and hugely satisfying whole.

TRACK LISTING

Once In My Life
Cutting Stone
Severed
Starwatcher
Tripping Along
Your Ghost
Everything Is Awful
Sucker’s Prayer
We All Die Young
Rusalka, Rusalka / The Wild Rushes
I’ll Be Your Girl