News
Darren Hayman reissues “The Violence,” the double album he calls the most ambitious work of his thirty-year career. First released in 2012 and recorded with his sixteen-piece ensemble The Long Parliament, it closes his Essex Trilogy with songs about the 17th-century East Anglian witch trials and the English Civil Wars, now expanded with previously unreleased tracks and demos.
Horse Feathers reissue their long out-of-print debut, “Words Are Dead”, on August 28th via Kill Rock Stars. Recorded in Portland in 2006 by the duo of Justin Ringle and Peter Broderick, the album returns fully remastered, on exclusive vinyl, with a replica of the original six-song demo CD. Hear “Finch on Saturday”, the first thing the band ever committed to tape.
Prison pull up with their third album, “Big Rigs on the BQE”, out July 31st, a long way from last year’s “Downstate”. They’ve shared lead cut “Sunrise Highway” with a scorching single edit video from Johnny Celentano and Cliff Elor — a fast, garage-bred psych charge built live from guitars, bass, drums, fuzz organ and vocals. Two side-long trips, tracked overlooking the highway.
A major archival release celebrates Martin Carthy MBE. “Along The Road Forever: Live At The BBC (1965-2022)” collects 328 recordings — 22½ hours across 20 CDs, spanning his solo work, his duo with Dave Swarbrick, with his daughter, Eliza Carthy, as well as Steeleye Span, Brass Monkey, The Watersons and Waterson:Carthy. It includes an 80-page book with a new Clinton Heylin essay.
Mama’s Broke announce their new album “Reunion,” out August 28th via Free Dirt Records and Forward Music Group, and share the 16mm video for the single “The Nameless.” Following the JUNO-nominated Narrow Line, the Nova Scotian duo hold a mirror to a fracturing world of broken communities and systems that no longer deliver. We trace the announcement through our archive.
LA quintet SML announce “Spontaneous Music Live,” out June 26th on International Anthem. After two studio albums collaged from live fragments, the band strip the editing away: two side-length pieces of unedited improvisation, recorded to analog tape during their December residency at Zebulon. Lead piece “Roundabouts,” the 24-minute B-side, is streaming now — SML in the room, fully in the moment.
Oisin Mod returns with “Mirror Mirror,” his first new music since 2022’s Honeycomb and again produced by Bill Ryder-Jones. The Galway songwriter pairs retro swirl with warm analogue keys and gentle vocals on his most introspective writing yet, calling the track a study in pretending and observing others do the same. The video is directed by Mod and Rory Ryan.
Rowena Wise announces her second album, Bad Things Feel Good*, and shares new single and video, Diamond In The Rough. The song, “about the pressures of being told that you’re special from a young age, creating an unattainable standard you must maintain,” is accompanied by a Didirri-directed video, the concept for which was inspired by Jamie Lee Curtis’ ‘The Last Showgirl’.
Family Stereo, the project of singer-songwriter Blake Watt, shares “Waiting On Nina,” the second single from debut album The Thread, out 31st July via Bella Union. The country-tinged folk-rock track turns on birth and innocence, lit by Dov Sikowitz’s lapsteel. Recorded over nine months in north London with producer Sam Hodder-Williams, the album is followed by four UK headline shows in September.