Well into our fourth year living with COVID, the effects remain. People continue to suffer long-term medical consequences, cycle through repeat infections and negotiate the breakdown of civility gnawing at the heart of social and political life. The Separatist Party is the first of a trio of collaborative albums on which Chicago drummer and composer Mike Reed explores seclusion and isolation. Cornetist Ben LaMar Gay, multi-instrumentalists Rob Frye, Cooper Crain and Dan […]

Heartworms oozes dark charm on new single ‘May I Comply’.Out now, ‘May I Comply’ is all cold wave finesse and synth pop menace, a song about trying to move past a prior relationship. Dipping into these feelings seemed to unleash something, a taut, ominous dose of digital paranoia.Heartworms says: “When I wrote this track I just wanted to get over an ex and to tell my little brother he’s good enough… […]

Amy Britton reviews Fortune Teller, the new single from YOBS, to find a high energy burst of garage rock complete with visually arresting video It doesn’t come much more exciting, full-throttle or attention grabbing than Liverpool’s YOBS, and new single release Fortune Teller very much reinforces this. Ahead of a debut full-length album release next year, and off the back of dome acclaimed live shows supporting the likes of fellow […]

Not content with having already put out two albums this year, Hipbone Slim & The Kneejerks return with a dose of wild garage rock on their new EP. Whether it’s under the moniker of Sir Bald Diddley, playing with the Kneetremblers or, like on this year’s double album release, the Kneejerks, Mark Painter is a man on a mission to keep the garage rock train a-rumbling, returning again, this time on […]

Failed States/Creative Resistances is the name of the new triple set of vinyl compilations on Belfast, Banda Aceh and Kosovo punk scene. The project was done by Jim Donaghey and was part of his research in Ulster University. Don’t let the academic part deceive you! It is far from a conventional academic frame that approaches its subject with sterile eyes. Jim led the project in a real punk attitude and […]

Showcasing her fourth album, Black Rainbows, the singer-songwriter moves away from her soulful roots to a more anguished, angry sound that is also joyful and cathartic Corinne Bailey Rae wanders the stage wordlessly, wafting handheld percussion instruments at amplifiers and members of her band as though burning sage to cleanse the space. All around her is the sound of more percussion and the tentative investigations of a saxophone. She picks […]

Edinburgh band Young Fathers have won Scottish album of the year for the third time. They won the award for their fourth album - Heavy, Heavy - in a ceremony held in Stirling's Albert Halls on Thursday night. Collecting the award, Alloysious Massaquoi from Young Fathers said: "Thank you, we love you all and appreciate it." Young Fathers won the award ahead of a shortlist featuring Paolo Nutini, Becky Sikiasa […]

As the genre-hopping London group visit Lagos – the home of Afrobeat – ahead of a Royal Albert Hall gig, bandleader Femi Koleoso explains how music can create positive social change amid poverty and youth violence Lagos is a pulsing mass of infectious energy. Densely packed houses stretch to the horizon below a visible halo of pollution. The streets are busy at all hours, with people eating, drinking, talking, getting […]

More than 50 years after The Beatles broke up, the band have announced the release of their "last song". Called Now And Then, it is based on a 1970s demo recording by John Lennon, and was completed last year by Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Ringo Starr. Sir Paul teased the song in a BBC interview this summer, saying AI technology had been used to "extricate" Lennon's vocals from an old cassette. […]