Band: KIDS WITH BUNS Who: Belgian dream pop duo, featuring Marie Van Uytvanck and Amber Piddington.
“We started out with Kids With Buns at age 18 and 20 respectively, and we were
not trained musicians by any means. To be able to put that complete puzzle together.
The arrangement, the songs, the production everything contributes to the whole of
a song.
We have had the privilege of learning it by doing it, from the bedroom to the stage. And we see the potential in each other’s ideas where no one else would.”
Album: BELL JAR
Their 3rd. Recorded in Philadelphia.
The album title is a direct reference to the famous semi-autobiographical
novel by American author Sylvia Plath (1932-1963).
KWB: “The theme of The Bell Jar is how every process in your life is actually circular,
regarding the healing from mental health issues. When things get better, they will also
get worse, and at some point, that becomes a very present theme in our lives. We felt
that we kept falling into certain patterns.”
Pukkelpop Festival, 22 August 26, photo by Turn Up The Volume
TUTV: Once again, we can hear/experience how heartfelt music can generate
a healing force after a break-up and hurting lovesickness. These two wonderful
buns also channel their crestfallen feelings through their singer-songwriters skills
in the hope of a cathartic recovery.
Marie and Amber enchant with guitar-sparkled musings, with warm vocals and
breezy harmonies. Dream-pop tranquillity with a rehabilitating outcome. Enlivening
tunes and ambivalent lullabies alternate throughout this falling down, standing up
record. Bittersweet symphonies for twilight moments.
Grian Chatten (frontman/songwriter) who spent time among the faded grandeur
of Venice, Vienna and Sicily in search of lyrical inspiration: “I think Romance was maybe
60 per cent human and 40 per cent corrupted by automation, and a loss of feeling.
This one feels more like 60 per cent corrupted — the mask is wearing the face a little
more. I felt it would be more powerful to leave the hope out and reflect the ugliness
honestly. This one needed to feel more like a catastrophic warning.”
NME says: “A doom-ridden escape from the band of the decade. The gothy tones of
The Cure linger and ‘Dopamine Chamber’ would sit comfortably alongside the melancholy moodpieces of ‘Disintegration’ and ‘Pornography’, as well as the future-proof genre-clash
and dislocation of Massive Attack’s ‘Mezzanine’.”
TUTV: Their first 2 LPs were afire ones, the ones young gunslingers make, full of vim
and vigour and stuffed with muscular barnstormers. With their third album Skinty Fia
the growing-up Irishmen showed signs of change of course, sonically and lyrically.
The 4th full-lengthRomance confirmed their new direction completely
and now with Dopamine Chamber they created/crafted a masterpiece.
A strings sweeping, orchestral, gloom/doom triumph. More cinematic, designed synth arrangements, less youthful guitar upheaval, more in-depth reflections about what worried Chatten sees and hears around him in this dark era.
His ruminative tonality and affecting storytelling timbre are on his most entrancing button. This sign of the times exploit will spin on my headphones for a long time. One
of the most fulfilling accomplishments of 2026.
Press info: “‘All Inside Aquarium’ sees the band expanding far beyond their minimalist post-punk origins towards soaring anthemic rock, sans the ‘indie’. Sonically, the band aimed for “this late ’80’s/early 90’s Stone Roses-meets-Janes Addiction thing, with more riffing and guitar solos.”
Where the band’s earlier material took a more explicitly sociopolitical bent, Hozie and Belfilgio’s writing on All Inside Aquarium is deliberately more concerned with the personal, poetics, and play.
Album artwork
TUTV: Bodega never made world-shattering records, and All Inside Aquarium isn’t world-shattering. Bodega always made uncomplicated and galvanizing records, and this one is their most uncomplicated and galvanizing one. A let’s have fun album. And fun we have, folks.
They jump from funky crackerjack rockers (the title track / Weather Me / Pick Up The Check / Slow Train) to easygoing, poppy guitar tunes (Literary World / Oxygen / Olivia) without trying to overdo it in any way whatsoever. Straightforward and simple. Paul Weller would say “that’s entertainment“.
About the artwork: “We thought it was perfect to have the child – Harley – be shooting at something. It’s like he’s the kid shooting at the establishment, shooting at the stained-glass that you might find in a church. He’s taking shots at what he perceives to be the authority in his life, and he’s questioning what he’s been told from an early age.”
Album artwork
Mojo Magazine says: “The LP’s 10 squally, dynamics-rich songs skewer
ld Ireland Catholicism, the nanny state, and their hair trigger fragility of
peaceful existence.”
TUTV: Fresh Dublin‘s deep-seated, unambiguously
opinionated and socioemotional kneecap post-punks
make their mark.
Press info: “Freeman writes about the fears of love nursed by catastrophe,
yet protected by the limits of its own memory. He dives well and far here into
what it costs to live through the present moment, and his band’s instrumentation
mirrors that with dense song structures and spacious improvisation.
The weirdest angel I ever saw.
Front and back cover Art and Photograph by Agata Ferrari Bravo. Art layout by Greg Freeman
Press info: “Over ten mind-bending and melodic tracks, it blends electro-pop anthems, cascading rave bangers, cowboy-tinged pitstops and swirling psychedelia. Into its lyrical orbit, the record pulls mentions of addiction, family ties, love, AI, ancestry, extra-terrestrials, Chris Tarrant, S&M, B&M, H&M and M&Ms.”
Mojo says: “Exhausting. But that’s the point.”
TUTV: Fat Dog are barking at the same tree here. They use their prize-winning
formula of their debut again. Electro-punk fireworks accompanied by boosting
bass riffage and drum beats and Joe Love‘s pushing voice. Their crescendo-going
vitality sounds both very familiar and still very inviting to crash the dancefloor and
chase your tail.
Artist: JOHNNY MARR Who: The former The Smiths‘ guitar hero, who played afterward
several years with Modest Mouse, also with The Pretenders, Brian
Ferry and many more.
Marr: “This is the record that’s been the most cathartic. The title came to me early in the process and became an inescapable idea. It seemed to sum up the way I think a lot of people are feeling. It’s all encompassing, but it’s not necessarily a negative statement. There’s a sense
of overwhelm in the culture brought about by technology, but looking at it with a different light, there could also be a sense of possibility.”
Clash Magazine says: “The Mancunian icon confronts modern
malaise and uncertainty with restless, life-affirming rock’n’roll.”
TUTV: Arguably his best solo effort. A series of top-drawer tunes, action-packed
guitar riffs and sparkling hooks as usual, with vocal striving. This charming man
made a notably arresting record, up there with The Smiths‘ work.
Louder Than War (UK) writes: “Six albums in and Blossoms are now at the level
where they’re filling arenas. Lyrically, songs come from day-to-day observations of
life, in particular, the process of becoming a different person once you get married
and settle down. The songs are laden with their trademark melodies, harmonies
and backing vocals that make them feel timeless.”
TUTV: The album’s title could easily have been one from a sugary love songs
compilation from the 60s. As it happens with many weddings poppy tunes make everybody hit the dancefloor.
Blossoms could be your fav band for your post-wedding ceremony party. Their feel-good, body-activating melodies are sickly sticky and instantly digestible. You don’t need to marry to pirouette around the Blossoms’ matrimony cake.
Band: THE FALL Who: The notorious Manchester post-punk gang
fronted by the late, crackbrained Mark E. Smith.
Album: POST SCRIPT
It features unused vocal recordings of Smith dating from 2001 to 2014.
Press info: It features 9 previously unreleased tracks from the band’s later era, Post Script finds The Fall at their rawest and most restless. These songs carry Smith’s caustic wit, hypnotic repetition and jagged post-punk energy with the same snarling authority that defined the band for decades.
TUTV: As a Fall fan, I’m not really impressed by this posthumous album. Several songs sound like demos, unfinished and chaotic, but not the chaotic The Fall way we know, and that makes your ears go berserk.
Mind you, overall it’s not a total hit-and-miss washout, but there’s so much great, galvanic, and anarchic The Fall music boisterousness out there to listen to again and again, and Post Script falls short of being special in the band’s mind-boggling catalogue.
Smith once said, “If it’s me and your granny on bongos, it’s The Fall”.
It seems like granny left the band a while ago.
TUTV: Back to the future with The Crystal Teardrop. They flew back to the swinging 60s; they bought records by The Mamas and Papas, The Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, Love and other related legends, then returned to the present and wrote/recorded/released their own sonic vision on swirling psych-pop-rock.
Sticky tunes, colourful choruses, layered vocals and jangly guitars mix organically
and turn Love You More in a brisk collection of entrancing thrills. The 60s were, still
are, and will always be an incorruptible inspiration for pop-ular music.
Band: TRIGGERFINGER Who: Belgian rock vets Ruben Block and Mario Goossens who started as a trio back
in 1998.
Album: TARMAC
6th full-length, the tandem’s
first in 9 years.
Ruben Block (vocalist/guitarist) talked to Belgian
magazine Humo about their new record in 9 years.
“People get older; we view life differently now than we did back then. The world has changed too. So the situation is naturally different than it was then. But apart from that, we did indeed try to make a record that sounds a bit different from what we had already made.
It’s fucking hard to write a good song, isn’t it? It takes time, energy, concentration, and frustration. You hope that people will enjoy hearing it and that we’ll be able to tour with
it for a while: that’s it.”
TUTV: For nearly 30 years now, Belgian stone rockers use a simple formula. Let the riffs
do the main talking. Triggerfringer play in the first division of electric-magnetic rawk ‘n’ roll, knocking out bombproof bangers with bona fide dedication and lots of blare, triggering dextrous body activity. No arty farty tricks. Straight on. Bingo.
Lauded New Orleans born folk songstress MARY GAUTHIER (64 now) has a rich past, writing/recording/releasing her deeply felt songs since 1990. Many artists such as Tim McGraw, Blake Shelton, Kathy Mattea, Vince Gill, Bettye Lavette, Candi Staton, and Amy
Helm have covered songs of her.
She just released her new full-length, named RECKONING, her first in 8 years.
TUTV: Gauthier‘s riveting Americana voice gets all your aural attention throughout this
new, stirring acoustic folk album. Gauthier sings about people’s loneliness caused by addiction to alcohol and drugs. About the struggle for love and justice in a world where religious people often pervert Jesus’ message of love for others. About the Kennedys,
MLK, Obama, and today’s dark political turmoil.
About individuals eager to follow orders, whether it’s crucifying Jesus or shooting Rene Good in cold blood on a Minneapolis street. About anything/anybody that puzzles Gauthier and impacts her views on humanity. No, these aren’t happy songs whatsoever,
but they stick, like real life sticks. In the end, Gauthier hopes for salvation, something,
I guess we all do.
Fitting candlelight music for soulful and moony Sunday evenings
Press info: “With Nobody’s Coming To Save You, Gurriers have sent their ambitions sky-high and come out swinging. If the band’s MO was to find a way to make the record “slap you in the face”, then consider yourself smacked.”
Album artwork
TUTV: Without a shadow of a doubt, one of the hottest records of the year. They rock,
they punk, and they punch with blood-and-guts fervour. They’re on a quest to find the
light at the end of the tunnel to replace today’s dark times. Watch your back, Fontaines, your fellow committed countrymen are coming fast.
Press info: “Gilla Band never know where they’re going next. For over ten years now,
the Dublin quartet have been redefining what you could loosely call “rock music” in the 21st century, influencing a wide swath of similarly forward-thinking guitar acts along the way.”
TUTV: I follow/love these Irishmen since I saw them live in Belgium in 2014
as nervous snotnoses hadn’t a record out yet, as support act for Fat White
Family. Their chainsaw hullabaloo went through bone and marrow.
And it still does. Mind you, their songs had and still have bloodcurdling body and returning, capriocious structure that’s bone-chilling and mind-blowing at times, while frontman Dara Kiely fights upfront to vomit his eccentric lyrics. If your eardrums survive
this electric-chair experience, you’re ready for some more sonic Gilla Band blitzkrieg.
Press info: “The album fuses Adult DVD’s love of hook laden indie, with
pulsing groove, 90’s acid house influence and an undeniable humour in
their songwriting.”
Album artwork
TUTV: Think/feel this. Electro-punk mixed with industrial thumps mixed with drum/bass bashing sledgehammers mixed with sonic booms. Sounds like thunder and lightning fireworks for (il)legal raves produced by techno experts Underworld. Bonkers, right?
You wham bam betcha.
Press info: “Stray Dogs reconnects the Southend five-piece with their DIY roots.
The album was written in unison over a dedicated 5-month period, resulting in
the band creating their most liberating and cohesive work to date.”
Album artwork
TUTV: On 6 tracks NBT mess with your rotating head with untrammelled force,
storm-wracked noiz drills, hysterical guitars, drum/bass horsepower, and full-hearted vocals. On the other 6 tracks they go for more traditional rock sucker punches. It results
in a roller coaster record with a straightaway impact. Nothing but thrills.
The recordings were finished before co-founder Dave Ball passed away last year in October.
Press info:“The final album is both a love letter to early 80s New York and
a tribute to the late, great Dave Ball. The album is a big, classy and playful
farewell after.”
TUTV: It’s a Soft Cell worthy goodbye, showing their heart and soul for dancefloor
entertainment once again, but, unfortunately, for the last time. Their magnificent 1981
gem “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye” is playing in my head while writing this. Thank you for
the music, electronic dance pop champs.
Irish giant stars U2 have just announced details of their upcoming album.
It’s their first in 9 years, following Songs Of Surrender, which was actually
one with reworked versions of old songs.
The new LP is titled Carnaval De Luz and is set for
release on November 13th. Pre-order info HERE.
The 12-song record is produced by Jacklee Knife and tackles themes of spirituality, friendship, freedom, and endurance. The news comes a couple of months after the
band’s two surprising 6-track EPs, Days Of Ash (February) and Easter Lily (April),
and the new CD/LP’s teaser single Street Of Dreams (July).
Bono:“Roll up, roll up, roll up! Bring your purple socks, your broken hearts, your
rose-tinted naivety… oh be amazed in the hall of mirrors. There will be loud guitars,
deep bass, some ecstatic rhythms and, yes, some silver tears will make an appearance.
Because in the near distance just outside our carnival of light there are all kinds of creatures. The same imagination that brings us our creativity can also bring us monsters. So we make
the drums louder. We build a bigger fire. We make our stories wilder and funnier. We make the melodies sweeter and the songs, they better shine, because if the world is in darkness we better not be.”
The Edge: “It’s a messy, provocative, sacred collection of songs, and features
the first-ever use of flat-wound strings on a U2 recording. Just saying.”
Along with the news, we get the 2nd appetizer, named SILENCIO. It’s a solid gold footstomper with a red-hot chorus. I guess I didn’t hear them ignited like this since Vertigo (2004, gosh, that’s 22 years ago).
