You know Fine Glindvad Jensen from somewhere. Perhaps you recognize the Danish polymath as the pitched-up voice echoing across Two Shell’s 2022 breakout “home”; maybe the hooks she wrote for that NewJeans EP got stuck in your head. Perhaps you’re familiar with her cohort at Copenhagen’s prestigious (and publicly funded) Rhythmic Music Conservatory, where she shared the halls with Smerz, Erika de Casier, ML Buch, and Astrid Sonne, among others. Her dusky alto may remind you of Hope Sandoval, or Lana, or the beautiful stranger who covered Nancy Sinatra at your local dive’s open mic—or did you imagine that? The great trick of her beguiling second solo album, Jazz dreams, is the veil of velvety uncertainty it casts over sounds I’d thought were carved into stone…
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Back in the year 2000, The Stooges’ proto-punk classic Fun House was given the seven-disc 30th-anniversary box-set treatment. However, 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions wasn’t your typical canonization project. There was no treasure trove of previously unreleased songs, no alternate arrangements to give us insight into the band’s creative process, no unearthed live recordings to transport us back to that particular moment. 1970 effectively locked you in the studio with The Stooges as they burned through, say, 15 consecutive takes of “Down on the Street,” gradually beating the song into fighting shape as if they were enrolled in some merciless rock ‘n’ roll bootcamp. After listening to the song over and over for the better part of an hour…
Djrum’s DJ-Kicks mix is one of the most far-reaching volumes in the series, pulling music from across several eras, spanning a multitude of genres. The artist’s own music has evolved into an ambitious melange of jazz improvisation, modern composition, ambient, and IDM, frequently incorporating live instrumentation, and his mixing style is similarly unconstrained. He often uses three turntables, and on this mix, he cuts and scratches some of the records, sometimes looping parts and manipulating them further in post-production. He erratically switches between tempos, frequently changing things up and at times erupting into moments of pure chaos. He also thinks beyond music and considers sound in general, incorporating several field…
A New Jersey native and former member of bands in New Jersey, Maryland, and N.Y.C. (where he attended grad school), Jeffrey Silverstein put down roots as an educator and writer in Portland, Oregon, before launching his solo career there. He expanded arrangements from the guitar and drum machine of his earliest songs to a dreamier palette that added bass, live drums, and pedal steel by his second album, Western Sky Music.
Picking up where that album left off — but seeming softer and gentler if anything, as if trying not to disturb the surrounding environment — Doggone was recorded with returning bassist and drummer Alex Chapman and Dana Buoy, pedal steel/electric guitarist Rick Pedrosa, and keyboardist Paul Damian Hogan. Its small handful of…
In celebration of his 80th birthday, Sun Records and Jimmy Webb deliver a collection of previously unrecorded songs and demos that were hiding in his piano bench for decades, Yours for the Taking: The Found Songs of Jimmy Webb. Some of these songs were intended for specific artists who passed on them; others remained in the songwriter’s personal archive. Fred Mollin, his longtime producer, safeguarded many of these compositions and worked with Webb to revisit the original material and develop new recordings. There are 11 newly produced performances and a pair of original demos of songs that appear here. The tracks were cut in Nashville, New York, and Los Angeles. Webb’s piano-based compositions provided the foundation for new performances…
“How did all these people get in my room?” Frank Sinatra quipped when he strode onstage at The Sands’ Copa Room in January 1966 for his sold-out concerts, but, in truth, there was no doubt that it was Sinatra’s room. Las Vegas was his kind of town. Supported by Count Basie and His Orchestra under the baton of arranger-conductor Quincy Jones, the Chairman of the Board – who had recently turned 50 years old and entered the September of his years, was in his element. His electrifying shows were preserved on his very first live album, Sinatra at the Sands.
The original double LP set was released on his label, Reprise Records, in July ’66 and rose to No. 9 on the Billboard 200. It also reached the top ten across the pond in Great Britain.
Between 2023’s Accompany and this, his next studio album and label release, maker of soft-spoken, dreamy indie songs, Michael Nau released a slew of self-recorded albums and EPs, some of them instrumentals, some experimenting with new instruments, and most all recorded on portable tape machines.
He eventually returned to the studio, in this case Little Jamaica studio in Burlington, Vermont, with the songs that would become Popfly, which was also partly recorded at home. With Nau playing most of the instruments, it was a relatively intimate endeavor co-produced with prior collaborator Benny Yurco. The rest of its contributors were family (Nau’s kids and wife, Whitney McGraw) and a few other friends on select…
The Cat’s Miaow started in 1992 as a home-recording duo, Bart Cummings and Andrew Withycombe knocking out songs on Withycombe’s four-track. Soon joined by Kerrie Bolton and Cam Smith, the quartet spent the next five years quietly, slowly working away in the suburbs of Melbourne. They’ve long been spoken-of in hushed tones in pop circles for their perfectly unadorned nuggets of gentle indiepop mastery, put to 4-track tape and drip-fed to the world a few decades back via 7” singles, cassettes and compilation appearances.
Following a pair of recent and *very* well-received compilations on the excellent World of Echo label, The Cat’s Miaow were inspired to regroup to play some shows and begin working on new material. The result is When You Smiled and Turned Away…
While Claud‘s third album continues in a similar vein to their previous releases — hooky, vibrant, disarmingly confessional — they did remark that they were trying for a lighter tone, adopting the attitude that one can struggle with heavy experiences but still have some fun.
The resulting Me and the Music was co-produced by Grammy winner John Congleton (St. Vincent, Alvvays, Wallows) and, for the first time, Claud themself. It begins with one of the album’s handful of potential outsider anthems, “Gay Witchcraft.” It’s also one of the record’s more melancholy entries, but one with a bright chorus that encourages a partner with: “Don’t you know/That I’m so completely/In it deeply/Don’t go easy on me.” The next song, the bouncier…
Olivia Tremor Control’s 2026 album The Same Place is a melancholy triumph for the always brilliant, now defunct psychedelic collective. After the band reformed in the early 2000’s, they began working on music in fits and starts while never getting to the point of completion and weathering some tragedy along the way. Both guiding lights behind their ambitious, murky, and delightfully hooky sound passed away; Bill Doss in 2012, Will Cullen Hart in 2024, just before this album was finished. Producer Jason NeSmith plus a bunch of band members and others worked together to put the album together the way Hart wanted according to the notes he left behind. Thanks to everyone’s efforts the record works both as a stunning return to form and a tribute to Doss and Hart.
The Australian quintet Surprise Chef have made a batch of records that combine slinky nocturnal jazz, rubbery funk, head-nodding hip hop, echoing dub, and library music charm; on 2026’s Frogs in a Pond, they do all those things while also paying tribute to the suspenseful music of 1970’s giallo cinema from Italy. The group stitch the songs into a kind of suite that flows smoothly from beginning to end, fitting together like hands in gloves while also being separate enough to stand on their own when extracted. They exhibit all the features needed for instrumental music to survive and thrive. They melodies need to be catchy and memorable, the arrangements must be interesting enough to stand up to repeated listens, and the playing should be top notch.
Orchestra Baobab was founded in 1970 to serve as house band at Dakar’s Baobab Club. Between 1971 and 1987 they cut numerous albums fusing Afro-Cuban rhythms, Wolof griot traditions, mbalax, Congolese rhumba, and jazz. 1982’s internationally celebrated cassette Pirates Choice offered the depth and breadth of their musical range. It has been reissued internationally several times. After splitting in the ’90s, they reunited for 2002’s Specialist in All Styles. 2017’s Tribute to Ndiouga Dieng offered homage to OB’s late original vocalist. No less than six of the band’s former members have died, leaving alto saxophonist and musical director Seydou Norou “Thierno” Koité the only survivor from the original group. On Made in Senegal, he used veteran…
More than three decades into an extraordinary career, Swedish progressive rock pioneers The Flower Kings return with HOPE, their 18th studio album and one of the most ambitious statements of their storied journey. Balancing refined musicianship with fearless creativity, the album is both a celebration of the band’s legacy and a bold leap forward, embracing the grand, cinematic scope and adventurous spirit that have made them one of progressive rock’s most beloved acts.
HOPE features a rich collection of expansive compositions, including the epic 30-minute centerpiece “The Gods of Rome.” Drawing on themes of power, conflict, human ambition, and the state of the modern world, the album reflects on an era marked by division…
Michigan space rock duo Windy & Carl initially self-released their debut album on cassette in 1994 before Ba Da Bing picked it up for a CD release in 1995, adding three lengthy, exploratory tracks. (Kranky eventually reissued Portal in 2026, including its first vinyl pressing.) The duo pretty much established their blissful, expansive sound right from the beginning, though the album noticeably sounds a bit rougher, and at times stranger, than their later recordings. “Preparation” augments its magical thrumming with trippy, vibrating keyboards, and “Sound Ignition” is unexpectedly noisy, though it feels like fog is trying to wash out the scorching distortion. “Ode to Spacemen” is an appropriately cosmic drift featuring Windy’s hushed, poetic…
William Basinski‘s 2026 work Passing the Cup of Sorrows was inspired by a spiritual hypnotherapy exercise involving an exchange of energy between two souls in the spirit world, in which one spirit comes to understand and forgive someone who hurt them in a past life. Moved by online testimonials of this practice, Basinski attempted to interpret this transformation process through music. The 38-minute piece consists of intimately recorded solo piano, with background noises audible at certain points, along with sparse electronic effects. Basinski typically plays a short melodic pattern and lets the notes decay, patiently waiting before playing again. Notes that have already been played sporadically flash back during the in-between spaces and still…
Those thus far unaware of Shovel Dance Collective’s bracing approach to folk should probably note that their third album is not much interested in breaking newcomers in gently. Everything in Readiness kicks off with a three-song suite that lasts more than 10 minutes and takes you, via a series of dramatic sonic jump-cuts, from a grinding one-note drone to a reel that seems to split the difference between trad folk fiddle-playing and the punishing squall of the Velvet Underground’s ‘Black Angel’s Death Song’. It then leaps to ‘Tally Ho! Hark Away!’, which sets a hunting song first collected in the late 1940s over a blast of what might best be described as ecstatic noise. It’s genuinely hard to work out what instruments are involved in the clattering arrhythmic chaos…
For the last decade, Caroline Rose has garnered a reputation as one of indie-rock’s most unpredictable songwriters. They’re impossible to categorise, with albums like Loner and Superstar hopping from genre to genre – as Rose has said “I’m just trying to make music diverse enough that AI can’t reproduce it”.
On the evidence of the excellently titled Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall, Rose has certainly achieved that. This is probably their best album since 2018’s Loner, and has the same air of unrestrained chaos running through it. Rose has always been at their best when they’ve completely slipped off the leash, and there’s a giddy sense of excitement which runs through the record from the very first track.
The word “dangerous” isn’t one most bands would embrace. That especially concerns any with a handful of popular radio singles. But The Doors not only fit, but celebrated that description.
Look no further than 1967s debut album which included not only the huge hit, and controversial radio track, “Light My Fire” (in edited form) but some truly out-there covers that ranged from Kurt Weill’s 1930s era, quirky, carnival-esque “Alabama Song” to Howlin’ Wolf’s searing and lascivious approach to Willie Dixon’s “Back Door Man.” Add the experimental and unsettling, 12-minute disc-closing epic “The End” whose sheer length, dark, even threatening Oedipal theme remains a challenge to delicate sensibilities, and you’ve got an act that defined and even relished…