Vitalizing tunes that work faster than a stream of caffeine
25 September 2025
Band: AUTOMATIC Who: Three splashy Los Angeles rock chicks. Izzy Glaudini, Halle Saxon, and Lola Dompé (daughter of Bauhaus drummer KevinHaskins. They got together
in 2017 and named themselves after a from the Go-Go‘s album Beauty and
the Beat from 1981.
Track: BLACK BOX
Final taster from their upcoming album Is It Now?, out this Friday.
The trio hasn’t wasted time since their formation. This is their 3rd
full-length in 5 years.
New album artwork
Glaudini: “The repetitive synth is supposed to suggest a plane gliding as it crashes, an alarm distress call. I was listening to the Leonard Cohen album The Future a lot around the time the lyrics were written.
It’s a pretty straightforward critique of people that have sold out on a large scale, specifically within creative industries. Thierry Mugler said, “art used to tell money what to do, now money tells art what to do” and the world is a less interesting place because of it.”
TUTV: I never thought a plane’s black box would ever be the topic of a song.
Whatever, the box produces some pretty funky dance-infused beats which are
ideal to get up and make your first moves of another day on this cursed planet.
Shake your pelvis, people. Boogie yourself out of bed. Run, run, run!
Press info: “New album ‘Der Traum Über Alles’, is compared to their debut a more
considered, full-formed beast, its dark underbelly undoubtedly a result of it being
conceived during and after the caged-animal isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic.
TUTV: This record is a funk and punk, buzz and fuzz, move and groove jukebox. Avalanche Party have become masterly songwriters who know exactly how to construct adrenalized knockout killers with the right combination of roasting riffs, jagged hooks, bang-on licks, powerhouse drumming, effervescent synths and sultry horns here and there.
You’ll hear echoes of Scottish celebs Franz Ferdinand, English post-punks Squid and
rowdy rockers Young Knives, but all 3 references’ new album can’t match the fireworks extravaganza of Der Traum Uber Alles.
The Line Of Best Fit (UK) says: “The album captures the band at their most
independent, revelling in high-energy performances while embracing a broad
eclecticism.”
TUTV: The critics are divided for different reasons. My trained ears tell me that TMC
made their best work so far. Extremely passionate, feverishly absorbing and brutally honest.
Singer-songwriter James McGovern still fights his demons, still delivers soul-stirring vocals and the band still back him up with a vehement boldness. Sterling songs, sterling sound, sterling execution.
KEY SINGLE
ALBUM
. Tour Dates 2025 – Instagram
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Album artwork
Band: CUT THE KIDS IN HALF Who: Boston via Rahway, NJ rock siblings Charlie and Jack Silver, named after Radiohead‘s line in Morning Bell. They bring a fresh approach to the age-old genre with songs sure to make their predecessors proud with catchy hooks and an emotional tenderness.
Press info: “Vignettes of struggle, loss and life come to the forefront, soundtracked by soaring guitars and sticky melodies. Heading to college in Boston, the brothers soon added guitarist Kevin Mortenson and bassist, keyboardist and trumpeter Joey Sorkin to their live trio. A group of native New Jerseyans, Cut the Kids in Half follows in the state’s storied musical tradition of raw but fine-tuned lyricism paired with gritty guitars.”
TUTV: Young, but already sounding as seasoned musicians who know exactly
how to fabricate solid pop/rock songs of high-quality. Whether they speed up,
slow down or groove in between, they grab your aural attention and hold it
from start to finish.
Acoustic and electric guitars, drums and bass, all work together as well-trained
teammates. The vocals are pretty impressive, full of vim and vigour. With this
highly promising debut these kids will become talk of the indie town quite soon.
MOJO Magazine: “The combination of Schultz’s desperately appealing voice and
Fraites’s lonesome but poppy piano still hits hard. They’re still doing things right.”
TUTV: These are ecstatic days for folk rock-pop fans with the new album from The Luminineers. The Lathums‘ 3rd one, titled Matter Does Not Define, which lands on 7th March and Mumford & Sons 5th, named Rushmere, which comes out on March 25th.
Except for anthemic, upbeat openers So Long and Asshole they entice with a series
of sepia-colored torch songs, passional musings and picturesque balladry. C’mon,
all you romantic hearts, lit some candles and enjoy the longing melodrama at play
here.
Artist: GHOST ON TV Who:Boston-based alternative singer-songwriter who found himself in Japan several years ago, wandering back alleys, absorbing a more spiritual sense of culture, and embracing a kind of creative balance that had previously eluded him. There, he understood the art of being quietly loud and, as he puts it bluntly, to “be impactful with less.”
With this record, disparate elements of styles and sounds are wrapped tightly around a rock music core. And like a back alley of Tokyo, what lurks on the other side, beyond what our mind perceives, may not be what we first anticipated. When DePasquale looked beyond what was right in front of him, Ghost on TV truly found its rhythm.
DePasquale: “Some of these songs are about being tired of all the noise, and some are about getting old, losing memories, getting older and becoming wiser, standing up for yourself, being bold, and also just knowing your humbled place in the world.”
The album’s artwork is a photograph of DePasquale and a friend, backs turned, walking through Tokyo’s back alleys in search of a hidden cocktail bar, with elements of bright new technology jostling with old-school decay, reflects a scene like something out of a dystopian film, drawing us deeper into this world.
TUTV: Beneath all the distortion, sonically and vocally, there’s always a galvanizing
groove generated mostly by a busy bass, that carries the songs and infuse them with
a magnetizing hauntingness which turns the record into an eerie trip you need to repeat
a couple of spins to let it sink in. Don’t get lost in translation, people.
Artist: TDID Who: A musical project originating from the Strasbourg area in France. Its name
is inspired by Trouble Dissociatif de l’Identité (TDI in French) and Dissociative Identity
Disorder (DID in English), a condition where multiple personalities coexist within the same individual. A perfect metaphor for TDID’s musical vision: an ever-evolving artistic identity, embracing different sonic facets while remaining anchored in a dark and immersive aesthetic.
Press info: TDID takes us on a journey through ethereal soundscapes and haunting rhythms. Each track delves into themes of isolation, confronting darkness, and the search for truth. The album oscillates between melancholy and raw power, driven by cold synths, deep basslines, and a spectral voice that echoes like a call in the night.
TUTV: A fitting soundtrack for every Goth addict who wants to go out, hit a sinister nightclub and lose him/herself in the hypnotizing vortex of mysterious darkwave dynamics.
Echoes of early Siouxsie bone-chilling wailing and Lene Lovich‘s enigmatic melodiousness inject Xx Phlegmatic with ominous sonic shadows you love to be surrounded by. TDID creates a ghostly world where surreality and reality meet. Fascinating.
James Dean Bradfield (frontman): “As you get older and as all the concepts, ideologies
and understandings that you’ve grown up with start to dissemble and crumble around you – whether it be left, right or left of centre – once you realise that they become a separate tense and economies work in different ways – the game is up. You can’t think the way you used to think. You’ve got to have a looser way of thinking and see what comes out of it. That’s what
we did with this record.”
Photo credit: Alex Lake
NME says: “With warm but spiky ’80s art-indie, the Welsh rock veterans’
15th album finds no absolute design for life – but still plenty of fight.”
TUTV: The Manics are one of my all-time favorite bands, on record and on stage,
but for the last 3 albums (this one included) they sound at times too mellow, too sugary, too poppy. I understand why. In your 50s, you can’t have the same flame burning as it happened in your 20s and let it hear you the way they did with cutting punk flair and roasting rippers.
Mind you, they still know what an anthem should/could sound like and they come up with a handful (Critical Thinking / Decline & Fall / Brushstrokes of Reunion / Hiding in Plain Sight / One Man Militia) but the new ones do not strike and adrenalize the way their many classics did/do. No, this isn’t a bad record at all but also not one to archive as a great one.
MOJO Magazine: “The combination of Schultz’s desperately appealing voice and
Fraites’s lonesome but poppy piano still hits hard. They’re still doing things right.”
TUTV: These are ecstatsic days for folk rock-pop fans. The Luminineers ‘ new one is out ow. The Lathums‘ 3rd one, titeld Matter Does Not Define lands on 7th March and Mumford & Sons 5th, named Rushmere comes out on March 25th. The Luminineers take it easy.
Except for anthemic, upbeat openers So Long and Asshole they entice with a series of sepia-colored torch songs, passional musings and picturesque balladry. Gather around romantic hearts, lit some candles and enjoy the longing melodrama at play here.
Press info: “This set grooves with social anxiety, internal strife, compulsive behaviours
and the dilemmas and tribulations of Los Angeles life, where vocalist/guitarist/songwroter Matthew “Murph” Murphy and his family live. From behind the band’s deceptively cuddly façade, Murph has always written openly about his anxiety, depression and addictions
(he’s now “sober as hell”).
But with this collection there’s a sense of progress towards confronting, accepting and coping with his issues. Alongside familiar sounds they explore new genres from glistening tech rock to sci-fi pop, futuristic fuzz rock to bluesy rock’n’roll, with touches of disco and hip-hop-inflections.”
UNCUT says: ““What may be The Wombats’ most plain fun album to date.”
TUTV: Lots of primo tunes to play out loud while driving in your car with the windows down, your hair in the wind and the sun up high. Wait, it’s still winter. So windows up, heating on and hair down, but don’t change the volume and your thrilling state of pop paradise mind.
Artist: IMUSTBE LEONARDO Who: Berlin-based Italian singer-songwriter who, since 2016,
has composed, recorded, and played songs around Europe and America. He has, so far, 2 albums and 2 EPs on his résumé.
ML: “The story of “Berlin, Ohio”, begins one morning in February 2022. Ten years had passed since I moved to Berlin, and that day I looked out the living room window and thought about some of the people I had met here, and who had left the city and the rooms they used to call home. Berlin appeared to me as a sort of unstoppable vortex made up of figures who arrived with their aspirations or who left because their future was now somewhere else. Those who remained had only two states of mind available: that of those who are making their dreams come true and that of those who are giving up. I thought I should tell the stories of those empty rooms, and of the ones who had left them.
“Berlin, Ohio” is a 36-minute album. It contains imperfections, smudges, wrinkles, flaws, and it is a work made with all the honesty, dedication and seriousness that Howard, Peter and I have been capable of. I am proud of this record, I am happy that it exists thanks to me, and I am bold enough to say that this work belongs to the present, to the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century – because many of the stories and thoughts it is made of could not have existed before now.
TUTV: IMustBe Leonardo is at his best when he translates his mixed emotions, his busy mind and his stream of consciousness in stripped-to-the-bone ponderings wrapped in intimate, introspective songs. Except for a couple of one-man-garage-rock band explosions (my favorite knife / the place) he and his expressive guitar do the talking.
Give the record a couple of spins, let the music
grow on you and you’ll find sonic tranquillity.
30 years ago, on 9 October 1989, Scottish fuzzy feedback legends THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN released their third longplayer ‘AUTOMATIC‘. The band was reduced to brothers William and Jim Reid assisted by a drum machine and a synthesizer replacing the bass guitar. The only other credited musician was Richard Thomas who joined the band as a drummer on tour. Although the critics had mixed feelings about the record’s production, in the long term ‘Automatic‘ became a fan’s favourite. With single ‘Head On‘ (later covered by Pixies) the duo even scored their most successful single in America so far back then. Overall it was one of their rockiest album ever.
Los Angeles Times wrote: “They might have hit it with their third album. The Jesus and Mary Chain still works the same few rock archetypes–blues, Velvet Underground two-chord rise and fall, Stooges grunge riffs, Ramones bubble-gum punk–and this time, the Reids really make it sing and surge and soar.“Automatic’s” power is its faith in simplicity and its inspiration is in the way it sabotages the structures it celebrates. William Reid approaches the guitar as a flamethrower, and by the end of the album he’s trashed the terrain in just about every track,” like the climactic shoot-out in an over-the-top apocalyptic battle movie. Full review here. Score: 4/5
Eleven Knockout Tracks on repeat this past month!
A tasty cocktail of roaring rippers and sassy strokes.
Here’s Turn Up The Volume‘s Knockout July Team!
