Band: ENTER SHIKARI Who: British electro-punk-hardcore squad
from St Albans, Hertfordshire. They cause furor
since 1999
Track: LIGHTYEARS
2nd new piece in 3 weeks, following Higher Ground.
No sign, so far, of a new album (would be their 9th).
Frontman Rou Reynolds, who has struggled with physical and mental health
recently reflects in this new song on the people who are no longer there, the
places that have since disappeared, and the younger version of himself, to
whom he later wished he had still wanted to tell so much.
TUTV: How to describe a juggenraut that jumps from hard-hitting disco turmoil
to titanic rock and back? No idea, the thing is that Enter Shikari gets under your skin
with a head-twisting roller coaster, spiked with Reynolds‘s white-hot vocal chords.
Be ready to be pushed forth and back in the moshpit. The heat is on, people.
In between, frontwoman Lauren Mayberry took the time and space for
her solo debut CD/LP, called Vicious Creature, which came out in 2024.
Mayberry: “This is the longest break we had ever taken between albums and when
we got together to write new music, we wanted to really push ourselves and not be
most coherent vision we’ve had as a band. We’re excited to be back.”
The 2 singles (so far) display a new direction indeed.
Band: WILCO Who: Singer-songwriter Jeff Tweedy‘s combo.
Active: Since 1994 / 11 LPs so far
Album:BEING THERE, 2nd LP, a double one. Released: 29 October 1996 – 30 years ago today.
Despite its release as a double album, Being There was sold at a single album price as a result of a deal between lead singer Jeff Tweedy and the band’s label Reprise Records.
Tweedy: “I was a later bloomer. I was in my thirties before I even came to terms with
the idea that I was making a living as a recording artist. I was in a punk band for a long
time and thought it was my life.
I was a bass player in a band making fifty dollars a night, paying eighty dollars a month
in rent, making indie records and not getting paid for them, and having this naive sense
f well-being that I would always do this and never have much more responsibility than
that.
I went from that to being a dad and a major-label recording artist who had
the pressure of supporting a family and also making something I felt good
about artistically.”
Pitchfork said: “‘Being There’ flirts with cynicism, but really the mood
is sober, world-weary, adult. Wilco massively improved as both a band
and as songwriters, but the two-disc set is really nothing more than
a marketing scheme.”
Last August, the unwearying prog-rock maniacs KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD from down under released their 28th album in 14 years. Hallelujah. Champagne.
A truly unexpected one, as they, obviously, had thrown their guitars through the window
and dropped the full-electronic record ALIEN METAL. Stream all the synth havoc below.
They just announced Tour Dates for 2027, starting with the
UK and Europe. I suppose they will bring their guitars along.
Band: GLASVEGAS Who: Scottish emo-pop vets who
hit the music scene in 2003.
Track: DEGÜELLO
First shared piece from their forthcoming album, their
first in 6 years, baptized Airy Fairy. Out April 2nd, 2027.
TUTV: These melancholic Scottish woolgatherers still wear their hearts on their
sleeves, and still come up with perfervid pop pearls romanticized by frontman James Allan‘s soul-striking voice and Interpol-refined guitar lines.
Artist:HEARTWORMS Who: The psych-pop project British songstress Jojo Orme who has
released her applauded debut LPGlutton For Punishment last year,
in February.
The song is about how our brain matter starts to mislead us when we are left
in the dark and how that feeling of uncertainty overwhelms us. Orme gives that
feeling a different twist precisely by embracing these fears and dancing with
them.
TUTV: Guess, this funky jam will enkindle your pelvis, your feet, your
head, and c’mon, your whole body to move in the shadows on the wall.
Gabriel: “The song was conceived as something that might encourage activism. It might be naive, but I still believe that people have real power for change if they can get together in large enough numbers. Politicians will respond – democracy or not. “My hope is that we start thinking of ourselves as global citizens and that we work together to bring about change on a global scale.”
TUTV: Gabriel grooves once more again, half as fast as his Sledgehammer blockbuster,
but catchy enough to get your hips going. Adding a gospel choir here and there raises
the soulful vibrancy.
Vocalist/keyboardist Steve Winwood, who joined the band at the age of 16 and who
had a successful solo career later on, lifted this firecracker to impressive heights with
his room-filling soul voice.
It went to #2 in the UK, #7 in the US and #1 in Canada.
Spencer Davis: “Once in the studio we started to mess about with riffs, and it must
have been eleven o’clock in the morning. We hadn’t been there half an hour, and this
idea just came. We thought, bloody hell, this sounds really good.
We fitted it all together and by about twelve o’clock, we had the whole song.
Steve had been singing ‘Gimme, gimme some loving’ – you know, just yelling
anything, so we decided to call it that.”
Band: STARCRAWLER Who: Glam and glitter rockers from Los Angeles,
fronted by the utterly charismatic and idiosyncratic Aaron Dewilde.
Album: KICK ME
Their 4th. Out 5 March 2027.
Pre-save info here.
The L.A. misfits return to their DIY roots with this new, independently recorded full-length.
Henri Cash (guitarist-co/songwriter) about the album: “We played the same festival as Patti Smith a couple years back, and right when she was about leave the catering tent, she came to our table and told us: ‘You know what Jimi Hendrix always told me? Let your freak flag fly.’ That moment always stuck with us, and I feel like that’s exactly what we’re doing with this album.”
Cash about the lead single, the title track: “The idea for the song came one night thinking back to when I was a little kid, hating school and being super obsessed with Elvis Presley and playing the tuba. I was always getting into fights at school because I was the one weird freak that couldn’t relate to the rest of the other kids. We are all still weird freaks in our own ways, and that’s probably why we all get along so well.”
