@ (pronounced “at”) is the art-folk project of Philadelphia-based multi-instrumentalist songwriters Victoria Rose and Stone Filipczak. The band release their new album Autosmile, their second full-length record and first release with 4AD.
Across Autosmile’s 11 songs, @ reimagine the psychedelic folk tradition as an undeniably contemporary art form, carefully balancing beauty and pain and shifting between black hole heaviness and patient understanding.
Autosmile follows @’s 2021 debut album Mind Palace Music — displaying the duo’s penchant for confessional lyrics and affinity for blending digital and analog elements, the album was an organic success story via word…
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What hits first about Manchester Orchestra’s debut, I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child, is how fully formed it already sounds. Recorded independently and driven by instinct, it captures the push and pull between Southern gospel tones, fuzzed-out guitars and the emotional candour that would come to define the band. From the swell of Wolves at Night to the fragile calm of Sleeper 1972, the record moves between hush and full-volume release with real purpose. Andy Hull writes with striking honesty, taking on spirituality, romance, identity and mortality with the urgency of someone living every word. For its 20th anniversary, Manchester Orchestra revisit I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child in a deluxe reissue with all-new packaging, plus a full second disc of reimagined versions.
Doo Wop in the Dark brings together a unique mix of Lou Reed‘s own compositions, spanning his career from the Velvet Underground onwards, along with Chris’s own songs. Together it details the creative and often turbulent path of Reed’s life, from his teenage years through to his death in 2013.
The album echoes his critically acclaimed 2022 release honoring Nico, Eulogy To Christa. In fact, the idea for this album began then, with the track Union Square West.
This is Chris, on why he wanted to make this album: For me, and many others, Lou Reed is one of the holy trinity of Bowie, Iggy, Reed. Mythologised by us, in our minds, each of these tempestuous spirits brought…
It’s hard to believe that, at this late stage, with dozens of Jimi Hendrix live discs available, there is anything decent left to discover. But Magic Boy-The Jimi Hendrix Experience Live at Berkeley (Experience Hendrix label) proves that’s not the case.
It’s odd that this “first set” appears now, especially since the second of two shows recorded at California’s Berkeley Community Center was released in 2003. There is no explanation of the two decade gap, but it’s clear that has nothing to do with the audio or performance quality.
These gigs, from Memorial Day 1970 (just three months before his passing in September) at the relatively intimate venue (only 3300 seats), were unusual because Hendrix generally played far larger stages. Riots broke out before…
Dave Alvin, singer, songwriter, guitarist, producer, author, has touched so many forms of American music that it can be daunting to peg one’s favorite part of his career. Even today, with his psychedelic jam band The Third Mind, he is exploring jazz and early ’60s folk music. Yet the pure Americana audience likely gravitates to his mid-’90s period, when he released two straightforward acoustic folk albums and a third that was close to the same. The first, King of California (1994), a mix of covers and originals, shocked many who had long since labeled Alvin a ferocious rocker.
Four years later came Blackjack David, arguably when Alvin really found his vocal and songwriting chops. In 2000, he won a Grammy for traditional folk songs, Public Domain…
With a gap of 16 years between their first two records, it seems like The Avalanches have almost become prolific these days. Now expanded to a trio (new member Andy Szekeres joined Robbie Chater and Tony Di Blasi earlier this year), the group’s fourth album, No Bad Memories, follows a mere six years after We Will Always Love You was released at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
At first glance, it seems like No Bad Memories could be quite an intimidating prospect. There are no fewer than 31 tracks on the record, framed around a loose concept exploring nostalgia, childhood imagery, and the hypnotic power of modern advertising. However, ultimately it’s what you’d expect from an Avalanches record – meticulously crafted production, full of samples…
It’s hard to believe that Minneapolis-based blues-roots artist Charlie Parr has now released 20 albums. Parr has risen from a regional treasure influenced by Minneapolis blues greats Dave Ray, “Spider” John Koerner, and Willie Murphy to national and international status, buoyed by his signing to Smithsonian Folkways, one of the most selective imprints, six years ago.
First hailed for his blues-roots fingerpicking guitar, Parr has long since become a fully fledged troubadour with a world-weary voice, a champion of the downtrodden, perhaps best realized on this new folk opera, Rooming House. Parr plays his custom nine-string resonator guitar alongside drummer Dave King (from the recently disbanded The Bad Plus).
It doesn’t seem two years since the last Richard Thompson album – but the man who flew furthest from Fairport Convention while Sandy Denny sadly fell to earth, still turns out quality fare. And this is his best for some while.
He’s still working his way through a Covid backlog of songs and, having then invested in a home studio, now supplies detailed demos to his band, the core of which remains bassist Taras Prodaniuk and drummer Michael Jerome. Engineer James Frazee, who’s worked with Thompson’s son Teddy, earns a co-production credit, though whether this heralds a lengthy Mitchell Froom-like partnership remains to be seen.
A brass section is employed at intervals, evoking memories of I Want to See the Bright…
The sound of a band expanding their universe – growing bigger and bolder with each record – never loses its thrill. Upon their arrival in 2017, in an era when guitar music was regularly declared to be in terminal decline, Fontaines D.C. powered on through, painting in primary colours and frontman Grian Chatten’s vivid poetry. If their first three albums, culminating in 2022’s Skínty Fía, seemed intent on rebooting indie rock, it made 2024’s Romance and their abrupt pivot into electronics all the more surprising – not least because the band also underwent a sudden 1990s visual makeover of floppy hairdos and rave colours.
It’s worth remembering that, for the members of Fontaines D.C., that decade is as distant as the 1960s were to Oasis and Blur. And so, in…
Matador Records continue its reissue series documenting key catalog titles by the iconic Texas band, The Butthole Surfers. This latest tranche brings remastered audio for piouhgd and Humpty Dumpty LSD to streaming services with vinyl to follow December 11.
piouhgd (say it “P.O.’ed.”) is the Surfers’ fifth album and was originally released in 1991. It catches the band in a moment of transition – moving from underground freakshow to unlikely “120 Minutes” mainstays. Face-melting guitars abound, as do references to comedian Gary Shandling. A cover of Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man” is demented but tuneful.
Originally released in 2002, Humpty Dumpty LSD compiles odds and ends from…
The second chapter in Gong’s legendary Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy, Angel’s Egg takes the story deeper into the surreal, otherworldly universe first introduced on Flying Teapot. Originally released in 1973, the album follows the continuing adventures of Zero the Hero and the Pot Head Pixies, expanding Daevid Allen’s visionary mythology into an even more ambitious world of flying teapots, cosmic transmissions, spiritual awakening, and playful rebellion.
Musically, Angel’s Egg pushes Gong’s unique fusion of psychedelic rock, progressive experimentation, jazz improvisation, and anarchic humour into new territory. With its hypnotic grooves, swirling synthesizers, gliding guitars, saxophone excursions, and eccentric vocal…
Remastered from the original BYG Records tapes and cut for the first time ever at half-speed at the UK’s world-famous Stardelta Studios by Grammy Award–winning mastering engineer Lewis Hopkin, this exclusive RSD 2026 edition features a deluxe gatefold sleeve, archival artwork, and a 16-page booklet exploring the storytelling and mythology of the beloved Radio Gnome Invisible saga. Released under BYG Records – the original label that recorded the album before licensing it to Virgin – this definitive deluxe reissue delivers the best sound quality Flying Teapot has ever had: a true cosmic upgrade for Gong’s mind-bending masterpiece.
Originally unleashed in 1973, Flying Teapot kicked off the eccentric Radio Gnome…
Philosophising about life comes naturally to Eels’ Mark Oliver Everett. On his 16th studio album, Cookie Happened, the starting point comes from an unlikely source: Cookie Monster and the words, “Me no cry because cookie is finished. Me smile because cookie happened.”
That mixture of sadness, acceptance and humour runs through much of the record.
Opener “Clobbered” sounds surprisingly bright and rejuvenated, all jangling guitars and catchy 60s-style pop, despite being about someone who has reached rock bottom. Rather than wallow in it, Everett finds liberation in surrender: there is nothing left to lose, so the only way is forward.
That idea returns on “Congratulations To Me”. Opening with a solemn feel…
It’s hard not to feel disillusioned by the state of the world right now. It’s getting harder to scrape by; our algorithms are a constant whiplash between images of genocide and manmade destruction and TikTok Shop hauls that will end up in rotting landfills; and it feels like few in power are interested in helping anyone besides the rich. Why not just give up, stop caring and bury your head in the sand?
Chloe Slater knows exactly how you feel. She’s made putting a voice to those frustrations her M.O. since her 2024 single ‘24 Hours’, whose viral success opened her up to a whole new audience of like-minded fans. On her debut album, Riot Youth, the former NME Cover star builds out a communal, cathartic space to air her…
There are albums that demand your attention and others that seem to invite you to fall into them. Kingfisher, the new album from Northumbrian folk duo The Brothers Gillespie, belongs firmly in the latter category.
Brothers James and Sam Gillespie have created a collection of songs built around acoustic instruments, close harmonies and recurring images of rivers, woods, birds and changing seasons. The result is music that often feels almost meditative: less a collection of individual songs than a place to spend some time.
That atmosphere is established immediately on ‘The Worlds Unfold’. Rolling, plucked guitar sits beneath slightly ethereal harmonies before fiddle and the soft crash of a cymbal gradually…
Scary movies usually end. Whatever has appeared at the window or risen from the grave is gone by the credits. The viewer always has the option to leave. Life offers no such sympathetic division. In her memoir Blue Light of the Screen, Claire Cronin wrote about the frightening images that follow us out of the cinema, finding their way into ordinary life. On The Bruise, the gap between the screen and real life is closing in. Sparse electric guitar, low strings and voices gathered around Cronin’s lead make these songs feel less like stories told after the fact than thoughts still spiraling and coalescing in the dark.
It is another tentative step forward from 2021’s Bloodless, whose private fears acquired an awful public backdrop when wildfires…
Jonathan Personne is the solo alias of Jonathan Robert, a Montreal-based singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and frontman for Sub Pop band Corridor. His fifth album under the alias is a lovely sweet of dreamy psych-pop with Jonathan largely singing in French atop his warm, lush, welcoming arrangements.
Corridor bandleader Jonathan Personne’s solo record Nouveau Monde was one of the must-hear Canadian albums from 2025, and now he’s back with even more new material — Répertoire arrives via Bonsound. Marking his fifth album in seven years, Personne blends dreamy pop with yacht rock textures as he reflects on the highs and lows of being a professional musician and his ever-evolving relationship with music.
Several months after more eaze released the intimate art-pop album sentence structure in the country, the artist issued a related but much different effort, valley and structure. The album is based on live performances, and it focuses on repetition and harmonization, with the artist remarking that she’s been fascinated with ostinato since childhood. It might be easy to label this her post-minimalist album, but some of her pop influences are still present.
While the album as a whole isn’t more eaze’s most lyrical work, “i’m in the structure” is essentially an alternate version of the previous record’s “the producer,” replacing the original’s intimacy and ticking drum machine with shadowy reverb burying the vocals, distorted drum…
