There are few duos in modern Country music as consistently adventurous as Brothers Osborne. Bound by blood, a lifetime of playing music together and a shared working-class upbringing in Deale, Maryland, John and TJ Osborne have spent more than a decade establishing themselves as one of Nashville’s most distinctive acts.
Their music has always occupied an exciting space between Country, southern rock, blues and soul, with John’s formidable guitar playing providing the perfect counterpoint to TJ’s unmistakable, expressive vocals. On Watertown, they bring those ingredients back to the place where their story began, delivering a record that feels both like a homecoming and another step forward.
Named in reference to their…
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“We’re recording this, so we need you as loud as fucking possible please”, says Nicky Wire before “feel-good singalong anthem of the winter” ‘Mausoleum’. “Take it a-fucking-way”. An audience of Manics devotees at London’s Roundhouse responds magnificently. The chorus to ‘Mausoleum’, after all, is a humdinger. “No Birds!” they scream as one. “No Birds!” It’s probably the biggest, most naggingly infectious, poppiest chorus on the entire album. A knock-em-dead singalong. A moment of pure release delivered over a swaggering Chuck Berry groove. “No Birds!” they yell, like an Oasis crowd doing the “sooooooo Sally can wait” bit in ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’. It’s not that, though. “No Birds!” they sing, “No Birds! … Holy Mass … Of Dead Insects!”
“Who Do You Want Me to Be” asked singer/songwriter Joanne Shaw Taylor on her 2009 debut, White Sugar. 11 studio albums and 17 years later she takes a more direct stance with “This Is Who I Am.” That tune is the lone cover from The Trouble with Love. The ten-song set further defines who she has become as a veteran roots artist who has gradually coalesced her approach and strengths. Taylor’s blues roots have always been on display, specifically through guitar solos like she and guest Joe Bonamassa ignite on the opening title track. For the following Bad Company-styled “Hell or High Water” she sings about her career with “I’m just a soul/trying to exist/All on my own/And I’ve given it my best.”
…features four never-before-heard demos alongside rare B-sides, alternate studio takes, and a previously unreleased live set recorded on the Back to Black tour in Amsterdam in 2007.
In November 2024, Michael Kiwanuka released his fourth album, 
The iconic Tony Iommi has released a new solo record, From the Dark, squarely in his wheelhouse of titanic riffs, thundering low end, and flights-of-fancy vocals. It is good to see the metal god still churning out headbanging tunes in a style his fans will instantly recognize.
Since Britpop began, there have been endless arguments about the best Britpop band, the best Britpop album, the defining Britpop image. Choices vary, but it feels inarguable that Elastica – and Elastica – remain the coolest in all the above categories. The four-piece were cemented as elegant, eternal stars on their self-titled 1995 debut album: a collection of short, sharp songs, with equally short, sharp haircuts on the cover. Like the supernatural pop ideal immortalised in 1998’s Velvet Goldmine – a film they cameoed in – Elastica came from London but also seemingly arrived fully formed from another, sexier, less effortful dimension. Untouchable louche perfection. Exacting boy-girl androgynous tension. Post punk guitars arrived encased in…
Sharing secrets with strangers is more common than many realize. Sometimes it’s just a way to test a reaction, so you’re better prepared to share the secret when it counts. This is one of singer-songwriter Mary Bragg’s subjects on her album of the same name, Secrets to Strangers. She also wrestles with uncertainty throughout the album, bringing problems into the open, often without resolving them. In that sense, we are all the receptive stranger to her conversations. Said another way, it’s her way of being relatable. We all have baggage that we need to shed.
When two paths to ecstasy unexpectedly converged in the middle of the Mediterranean, 
Another week, another tech bro triumphantly declaring music solved, with hyper-individualisation via AI just around the corner. This obnoxious class of talentless grifters is obsessed with optimising everything, art included, and misses the point entirely. We want – no, need! – art to be messy, incomplete, and flawed.
A classical dimension has always been part of 
Doug Dulgarian founded Julia’s War Recordings in 2021 to help his friends release cassettes of the cool music they were making. The Philadelphia musician and 
…early bird vinyl pressing (limited to 400) comes with a bonus CD, the “dronus disc,” a standalone drone piece the band want played simultaneously with the album itself.
While 
French soprano saxophonist