“The Baltimore punks found themselves riding the crest of a wave of their own making.
Indebted to a love of Bad Brains, Nirvana and Fugazi, their unique sound was just as informed by passion for shoegaze, pop and R&B, and through this blurring of the lines, they became the gateway drug for a generation of fans now packing out venues everywhere, having captured lightning in a bottle.”
DIY: “‘EURO-COUNTRY’ has been the soundtrack to – and the driving force behind – her arrival proper in the mainstream’s big leagues. An opus in the truest sense of the word, it’s an instant-classic album that, in the future, will be held up as the gold standard for just how much you can say with pop.”
“The band are putting themselves in the same position the Sex Pistols stumbled into when
Bill Grundy said “Say something outrageous.” They are on the same turf as the Dead Kennedys, whose name was a slap in the face of America. “The only good pioneer is a dead pioneer”.
What a way to end an album.”
“Bleeds’ squall isn’t its only show of force: In the album’s quieter moments, just when
you think the dust has settled, Hartzman expertly unveils the detail that knifes you in
the gut.”
Photo by Graham Tolbert
ALBUM
. Best Overall Album: Self-titled LP by LOS THUTHANAKA (Bolivian American)
“It starts with a bang. Then a barrage of DJ tags, sampled vocals, and drum rolls carry
us into a sea of ambience. This is the Los Thuthanaka experience in summary: ceremonial but swaggy, cataclysmic but healing, unrefined but magnificent.”
“Despite its hyper-specific cultural focus, or maybe because of it, Debí Tirar Más Fotos conquered 2025. It could be heard on the streets of New York, San Juan, and beyond,
and helped Bad Bunny make history.”
We’re on our way, slowly but surely, to the end of 2025.
Instead of starting to think about this year’s best LPs,
let’s go back to 2024 and listen to TUTV’s 20 Best Albums
again and look back on what we wrote about each one
of them.
Today: No. 12
Artist: JUJU (Italy)
Brainchild of Sicilian multi-instrumentalist
and producer Gioele Valenti.
TUTV: Valenti is a jam champ and a groove master creating electrifying, trance-like vibrations that transfer you to the dark side of your mind, where you can freely
fantasize and explore your own psyche.
Circling Krautrock-like psychedelia is all over the place. Choir chants and spacey percussion cause a tribal atmosphere à la The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. Mind-bending and dream-triggering. As always.
We’re on our way, slowly but surely, to the end of 2025.
Instead of starting to think about this year’s best LPs,
let’s go back to 2024 and listen to TUTV’s 20 Best Albums
again and look back on what we wrote about each one
of them.
Pitchfork said: “The UK’s once-notorious indie rockers settle into the congenial sound of a pretty good band. This album is no Renaissance masterpiece. Stripped of their fraternal bad blood, the Libertines are just a band, and a decent one at that.”
Promo pic
TUTV: After the turmoil, chaos and drugs addictions (especially Doherty) of the early
years, the side-projects, solo records and getting clean and healthy the Libs are back, again. They’re not the boys in the band of yesteryear, they’re now grown-up men who
enjoy a stable life and still are obsessed by making music.
They became notable, experienced musicians who left their hedonistic lifestyle behind themselves for several years now. Not one dull moment, not one dull song on the eastern esplanade.
We’re on our way, slowly but surely, to the end of 2025.
Instead of starting to think about this year’s best LPs,
let’s go back to 2024 and listen to TUTV’s 20 Best Albums
again, and look back on what I wrote about each one
of them.
MOJO (British music monthly: “Hawley delivers more Steel City romance and Memphis
twang on his new album. He continues to enchant on hymn to his hometown. He has long repurposed the spirit of ’50s and ’60s balladry with style and great affection, his quiff, tailoring and fondness for the lonesome twang of a Gretsch guitar badges of nostalgic allegiance.”
Press photo by 📸: Dean Chalkley
TUTV: Nostalgia is the keyword all over this fully hearty record. As we already know
for a long time Hawley is a romantic at heart who’s in love with his city Sheffield since
he was a child. It’s more than just his hometown.
It’s the place where he experienced all things good and bad, happy and sad. It leads
to yearning reflections, fanciful daydreams and wistful meditations. With his soft and warm voice and nighttime stories, the late great Roy Orbison comes to mind on
several occasions.
We’re on our way, slowly but surely, to the end of 2025.
Instead of starting to think about this year’s best LPs,
let’s go back to 2024 and listen to TUTV’s 20 Best Albums
again, and look back on what I wrote about each one
of them.
Today: No. 18
Artists:DEAD ANYWAY British duo combining the dark lyricism of Kate Arnold
against the music and soundscapes of Marc Symonds.
TUYV: Slow/mid-tempo/fast trip-hop tunes are wrapped in layers of
distortion and feedback, creating an eerie and at times sinister ambiance.
Massive Attack, Tricky, Arab Strap and Mike Skinner’s The Streets
and Laurie Anderson‘s latest opus Amelia come to mind.
DA resonates as EBM for people who come alive when the darkness sets in, far away
from our 24/7 suffocating life and the world’s destructive nature as we experience now, again.
Kate Arnold‘s spoken word stories evolve on waves of chilling synth soundscapes that actually ease one’s confused mind (mine, for sure) and transfer you to your space of imaginativeness. Trance massage it is. You’ll feel alive anyway.
Band: LAMBRINI GIRLS Who: Two razorblade riot girrrrlzz – vox/guitarist Phoebe Lunny
and bassist Lilly Macieira – from Brighton (UK) with an insatiable
appetite for mass moshpits.
Photo by Turn Up The Volume – Lille, France – 24 February 2024
Press info: “The album rips through a laundry list of social ills. Sirens blare over a heavy distorted bass and a live drum breakbeat. The band dance between upbeat poppunk, dirty grunge tones and discordant post-punk. There’s even some noise-popcheer for putting yourself first, whether it’s having an autistic meltdown or doing apoo at your mate’s house.
With instrumentals that inhale you like a Level 5 tornado and sentiments that make you want to kick the nearest door through, it’s a take-no-prisoners debut from one of the UK’s most fun and fearless bands.”
TUTV said:
Faster than a Formula One Ferrari.
Louder than a supersonic jet.
Punkier than any punks around.
Press info: “The album explores themes of unnecessary hatred and
division, Space/Smile and It smells like something died in here, aging, Senor Siniestro
and the separation of the physical from reality, The Body As A Structure. It’s political,
but ultimately personal. More Genet or Kafka than Orwell or Huxley.
Album artwork
TUTV: Without a shadow of a doubt, the perfect soundtrack for Doomsday.
Sledgehammer after sledgehammer, drone after drone, brainfucker after
brainfucker. Always tension in the air.
Any track would work in a zombie horror movie. And we know all
about horror, right? Just take a look outside the window and you
see a lot of it. For free.
Cal Francis‘s spoken word performances are bone-chilling. His primal screams
send shivers down the spine. Lyrically, he operates in a space where reality and
surreality meet. No room for birds and bees.
Cal Francis – Belgium 2024 – Photo by TUTV
Sonically Ditz produce a volcanic and bombastic wall-of-helter-skelter havoc.
Blood-curdling emo-punk exorcism. Chainsaw chaos. Flabbergasting and
jaw-dropping are the keywords.
Never Exhale is an other-worldly Götterdämmerung experience.
It smells like something is alive and kicking here. No regression,
only progression.
Press info: “HEISA embarks on a new chapter with the release of their third
album. This album showcases an evolution in their sound, keeping the bombastic
drums, droning guitars, and dynamic vocals, but pushing further into melody and
experimentation.
On this new record, Heisa brings their emotions to the forefront, revealing a raw, edgy
intensity in tracks like “Lazar” and “Sad Dancer,” where vulnerability and tension intertwine.”
TUTV: Trois is without a shadow of a doubt the most balanced, the most arousing and
the most vitalizing noise rock record I heard in a very long time. No, never a dull moment. Heisa grab you by the throat for 40 wicked minutes, and you won’t protest for one second. The cliché all killers, no fillers is so accurate here. In a normal world this should be a hit record.
Les trois singles (Nandor / Flowers / The Harmonist) were the harbinger for something really special. Which we experience now. Every song stands as tall as the Eiffel Tower. There’s always an enigmatic anxiousness in the air that tests your nerves and boggles your mind.
On several occasions (Flowers / After Hours / Shifting / Sad Dancer) Heisa tease you with voltaic foreplay riffs before heading towards an orgastic burst of demonic hullabaloo. Primal screams out of the darkness, schizophrenic guitars and raw and rough post-punk dynamics work together to create a hell-raising turbulence. Think Fugazi and The Jesus Lizard .
No arty farty tricks, no unnecessary overdubs, no useless volume exaggerations.
The production is flawless, and is an instrumental factor for the overall organic
resonance of this expressive exploit. I’m quite sure that the late great Steve Albini
would have loved it.
Heisa is going places. Don’t miss them.
Embrace them. Join them. Love them.
Band: MCLUSKY Who: Welsh notorious noiseniks featuring Andrew Falkous, made
a loud and clear mark on the indie list of decibels-producing acts between
1993 and 2004 with three ear-piercing and politically loaded albums.
In 2015 Mclusky suddenly returned for a benefit gig in London and played
some more here and there. In 2023, they released a new 4-track EP, called Unpopular Parts Of A Pig / The Digger You Deep to fund a delayed US tour.
Press info: “Having formed in the late nineteen-nineties and releasing music, if that
is what it was, from 2000-2004, Mclusky disbanded soon afterwards in a slow motion
farce of not enough drama to get much press off the back of it.
Falkous with Mclusky – Brussels, 9 May 2025 – photo by Turn Up The Volume
TUTV: The world is still spinning and Mclusky decided to come back after 21 years
to see what’s going on and let us know what they experienced/experience in their
own tumultuous way. To be honest, it’s Mclusky by numbers, but their furious
numbers still slice and slash as a set of first class Swiss knifes.
Loudmouths Falkous and Damien Sayell‘s immense, clamorous, badass voices rip
politicians to shreds while wielings their razor-sharp axes. Chainsaw guitars everywhere,
backed by a hellacious drum/bass duo. They’re masters when it comes to search and destroy punk havoc.
Press info: Inspired entirely by the life and mythos of actor Dennis Hopper, Mike Scott
and The Waterboys created this expansive album as tribute to one of American popular culture’s most compelling public figures.
Deeply conceptual, this album of all original songs brings together high-profile
featured artists like Bruce Springsteen, Fiona Apple, and Steve Earle to musically
weave through Hopper’s life, including a song for each of Hopper’s wives.
Ghent, Belgium – 5 July 2025 – photo by Turn Up The Volume
TUTV: This an amazing piece of work. Could be the soundtrack for a yet to be made Dennis Hopper documentary. Hats off to Mike Scott for his boldness, imaginativeness, and ingenuity to score this musical movie, constructed marvellously with its sonically cinematic versatility.
Pop, rock, blues, country, bar-room jazz, and musing balladry take turns and puzzle
a most coherent and highly entertaining whole together, spiced with magnificent vocal contributions by Fiona Apple, Steve Earle and others. Never a dull moment with its varied stream of top-tier songs and Scott‘s awe-inspiring vocality throughout.
Movie shots from Hopper‘s parts in doom and gloom films such as Blue Velvet, Apocalypse Now, True Romance, Speed and, of course, counterculture classic Easy Rider pop up on the screen in your head. He was at his best when he played psychotic characters. And Scott is here at its best too. Supreme accomplishment.
Band: THE MOONLANDINGZ Who: English electro-pop combo started by the Eccentronic Research Council
duo, featuring Adrian Flanegan and Dean Honor back in 2015. Lias Saoudi (Fat
White Family, Decius, author, modern day, philosopher) joined them, as well as
different guests.
Press info: “No Rocket Required delivers brassy squawks, motorik convulsions and
sinister soothing vocals from a righteous line-up of guest singers and ranters: Nadine
Shah, Iggy Pop, Jessica Winter and Ewen Bremner. Plus, of course, there’s The Moonlandingz’ own front man, Johnny Rocket aka Lias Saoudi.
What to do, as we potter and fret, as we watch bodies, homes and lives destroyed every day while our elected leaders, so forensic and so sensible, use their weasel words, shrug their coward shoulders and saunter off to raise our bus fares. Dancing of course and togetherness, looking out for each other, and that’s not enough. What kind of fight are we bringing? We will always need to organise, to fight, to collaborate, to connect and to dance dance dance. And that is what The Moonlandingz do.”
TUTV: Where the first album was a 24-hour party affair, this 2nd one is musically a
sonic melting pot of 70s disco (like Sign Of A Man that clearly is inspired by 1978 classic Born To Be Alive by Patrick Hernandez) and 80s house uppers (like Yama Yama) and midnight hour downers (like Roustabout, and the romantic ballad It’s Where I’m From with perfectly matching vocals by the one and only Iggy Pop) that messes with your mind, body and soul.
To make sure that you hit the (dance)floor in the end, Flanegan and Honor knock you
out with the 9-minute hyperkinetic brainbreaker The Knack Drought Suite (Pts 1-3) that hammers your head in relentlessly and gives the last word to film-noir crooner Lias
Saoudi. Lyrically, NRR echoes Twin Peaks‘ unhinged stories from the dark side of the
human psyche. Everybody happy now? I definitely am.
This project blends his iconic Madchester groove with fresh, infectious energy,
delivering music that’s both raw and transcendent, and also features the irrepressible vocals of Rowetta making the sounds of 1990 come alive again in glorious fashion.
Gaz: “Yogi-G and The Family Tree are not hippies, we give a fuller human experience that
is more devolved from the punk experience, where you never quite know if you’re going to
get a hug or a headbutt. Life is filled with peace and love but equally excitement and pain.
I got fed up waiting around to try to agree to write a new Mondays album. When it
became apparent, we couldn’t agree, I decided to do my own. I think it’s bloody great
and the support has been outstanding and for all the good ones we’ve lost along the way
like Gil Scott Heron, Tony Wilson and more recently my bandmate Paul Ryder, this is for
them and for all those who just love to get off on good music.”
TUTV: Madchester 2025? Absolutely. And why not? ‘Show Me The Truth‘ is the Happy Mondays album, that should have been the perfect follow-up to their 1990 masterpiece Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches rather than the mediocre Yes Please!. It’s an album that activates your hips, and makes you ignore our daily rat race, for at least 40 minutes
This dance-and-turn-around-inviting record with several vocal guests, doubles your adrenalin production. From happy-7-days-a-week gospel stimulants The Blind Man And
The Monkey, Shine On Brother and Show Me The Truth to groovy-orchestral musings Black Symphony, and The Return Of Apollo Creed (be ready Rocky) from the special(s) ska vibes
of The Ballad Of David Bowie to the closing sing-hum-whistle chant We The Peaceful.
Yep, there’s way more sonic versatility than on any Happy Mondays longplayer. There’s
no way to delete today’s grim reality, but look around and you’ll find a lot of love, peace, happiness, family and friends too. That’s the hopeful spirit that Yogi-G And The Family Tree celebrate. Join them. Embrace their soul-uplifting gusto. Shake your booty.
Press info: “Talkin To The Treesis a personal and powerful album featuring
ten new compositions by Young. “Big Change”, the first song from the album,
comes with a message that left no doubt where Neil Young stands in these
challenging times.
The Chrome Hearts are Spooner Oldham (Organ); Micah Nelson (Guitar and Vocal); Corey McCormick (Bass and Vocal); Anthony LoGerfo (Drums); with Neil Young (Guitar, Harp, Piano, Vibes). The album is co-produced by Lou Adler and Young, and recorded at Shangri La Studios in Malibu.”
TUTVTalkin To The Trees brings Young‘s 1975 masterwork Tonight’s The Night instantly
to mind, sonically that is. Raw and rough, as if the LP was recorded live in one take, in
a garage with lots of echo and plenty of ramshackle guitars, buzzing electricity and Young‘s characteristic, ardent vocals. Very familiar, very entertaining.
From riff-robust rockers (Family Life, Dark Mirage, Let’s Roll, Big Chance) to country-bluesy musings (Silver Eagle, Moving Ahead), to melancholic balladry (Talkin To The Trees, Battle Of Love, Thankful).
It’s pure Young, musically and thematically, wondering about the world’s future, warning for environmental pollution dramas, difficult times to come for our children, and the need of a big positive change. At 79, he’s still socially and climate concerned as he was in his prime and he still delivers soul-and-ear pleasing records.
Laurenne: “The songs were written in the style of vintage jazz standards, but are then drenched with Rhodes piano and sparkling horn parts, with upright bass and triphop beats holding down a groovy, downtempo feel underneath. The vocals are the polar opposite of my garage rock sound in The Darts – in Black Viiolet, I am quietly telling you secrets in the dark.
After You was recorded by nine producers on two continents with fourteen French and American jazz musicians – including Digable Planets drummer Conrad Real – and contains thirteen original tracks that I wrote all the parts for and arranged, plus one special cover song, “My Baby Just Cares For Me.” My influences include spy movie themes, Nina Simone, Portishead, Budos Band, Lovage, Nouvelle Vague, Digable Planets, Propellerheads, Sneaker Pimps, Forniquette, Nick Waterhouse, Hooverphonic, and even cartoon character Jessica Rabbit!”
TUTV: Imagine Nicole Laurenne‘s sultry alter ego coming from behind a curtain
on a stage in a smoky nightclub, leg by leg, with a bright spotlight on her and
making all spectators go ‘sigh‘.
From there on she becomes Black Viiolet. A femme fatale that entertains us with
bouncy trip-hop vibes à la Portishead (AboutA Woman / Never Know / New Day / Drop),
jazzy candlelight musings (Don’t Leave Me On The Dancefloor / Not It / Stayin / You Can’t Afford Me) and a seductive version of 1930 jazz standard My Baby Just Cares for Me
made immortal by the late great soul diva Nina Simone.
The record is subtly, yet richly orchestrated. The instrumentation at work here – contrabass, trumpet, trombone, saxophone, piano – serves the overall mood perfectly.
On top of it comes Viiolet‘s near-whispering, hoarse and sensual voice to complete the arousing sonic picture with a saucy sensuality. The ambiance is spellbinding and ravishing.
After You is delectable music for the midnight hours that massages your ears for
40 minutes. The most sexy record I heard in a long time. It transfers you to a place
where you can dream away, far from today’s depressing outside world.
Dim the lights, relax, sit down, have a bottle of your favorite wine at hand, close
your eyes and let Black Viiolet enter your spicy fantasy of choice. Trust me, you’ll
love the tantalizing trip.
Since Doherty got clean (already several years) and living in France with his wife and big dog, far away from the temptations of party cities he became quite productive releasing albums with one-time outfit Puta Madres, with French musician Frédéric Lo and with his first-and-forever band The Libertines he scored one of the best albums of 2024 with All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade.
Press info:“Felt Better Alive is Peter Doherty’s most confident solo collection yet,
sprinkled with radiant playfulness, almost innocence at times, shot through with
Peter Doherty’s signature melodic nous, quirky poetic realism, and visual storytelling
gifts.”
Brugge, Belgium – 14 June 2025 – Photo by Turn Up The Volume
TUTV: Writing songs is Doherty‘s oxygen. He has music running through his veins.
Enter this new solo album. A collection of daily life tunes that puts a smile on your
face. The man entertains, charms and shows his alluring skills once again. It’s clear
that the French air stimulates his productivity. Poetry in motion.
