TORONTO, ON | Durham, North Carolina-based expansive duo Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, better known as Sylvan Esso, brought their stellar vibes to History Toronto on Monday night, leaving attendees thrilled they left their homes on arguably the least popular night of the week.

Nova Scotian indie rocker Rachel Bobbitt put on a beautiful opening set to kick off the evening, and then it was all Sylvan Esso. Typically that consists of Meath and Sanborn, who not only make music together, but also established their own music label, Psychic Hotline, and are fresh off curating their first music fest, Good Moon Festival.

But this tour, along with their excellent 2026 album, Ow ∞, features other musicians as well. The result is the curation of a new way to realize every note and nuance of Sylvan Esso’s highly intentional songs. Live, the band plays and Sanborn runs the sound through his gear, modifying it so that he feels like he’s “finger painting for the whole set,” as explained to The Washington Post earlier this month.

Meanwhile, Meath’s signature voice soars and her dancing accentuates and punctuates every moment. The combined efforts make for some truly kickass songs—like folk hymns hidden inside of dance anthems—and memorable concert moments—like the cover of Donna Lewis’ “I Love You Always Forever.” There’s a reason I’ve never skipped an album or missed a tour.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Texas, one of the UK’s defining bands of the 21st century, celebrate three decades of the record that made them superstars when White On Blonde turns 30 on February 5, 2027. Alongside the anniversary news comes brand new single “Another Way To Cry,” out now via Play It Again Sam.

Released in February 1997 into a musical landscape running on Britpop swagger and laddy energy, Texas’ landmark fourth LP, which is certified 6x platinum in the UK, was the absolute opposite: a record that embraced the band’s love of soul, trip-hop and more, and turned it into a catalogue of emotionally-resonant, radio-ready hit singles.

Following its immediate, huge success (a Number One album chart placing upon its release, plus five Top 10 singles), the band followed it up with curveball moves including a Wu-Tang Clan collaboration on “Say What You Want (All Day, Every Day)” that earned them a further Top 10. Nothing about any of it was expected, but that was precisely what turned it into magic.

“It didn’t feel risky because no-one at our label gave a shit,” Sharleen Spiteri recalls of the attitude towards the band in the UK ahead of White On Blonde. “We were in Glasgow, we made the album in my house and I did all the vocals in the coat cupboard. We had nothing to lose, and anyway, I didn’t want to fit in. If everybody’s doing something, I’m always running in the opposite direction and that’s always been the attitude—whether it’s walking on stage at Glastonbury, or with White On Blonde. It’s always been us saying: We will play our own tune. If you want to jump on, great. If you hate us, fine. But this is what we want to do.”

Read More »

Remembering Bobby Fuller, born on this date in 1942. —Ed.

Inspecting chart history proves otherwise, but due to the ubiquitous nature of that one song everybody remembers, Bobby Fuller is considered by many as a One Hit Wonder. Others view him as the true-blood ‘60s extension in art as well as life of fellow Texan Buddy Holly, which overlaps with the assessment by some that Fuller was maybe the last gasp of rock ‘n’ roll innocence before the ‘60s became The Sixties. But he was also just a passionate young guy with a boatload of talent for whom music was paramount, and nothing communicates that better than a listen to The Bobby Fuller Four’s 1966 LP, I Fought the Law.

The Bobby Fuller Four’s second and best long-player opens with what is probably my pick for the band’s greatest moment and certainly one of their leader’s finest compositions. It’s not the title track, for “I Fought the Law” was penned by Sonny Curtis of The Crickets, a group most famous for backing Buddy Holly (Curtis joined after Holly’s plane crash; the original appears on 1960s In Style with the Crickets).

The tune is “Let Her Dance,” a delicious slice of guitar and vocal harmony-driven pop-rock and easily one of ’65’s best singles. Perfectly calibrated for airplay, its 2:32 flows with expertly layered simplicity. Once established, none of the song’s elements drift far in their roles; not Fuller’s lead singing of his wounded-heart love lyrics or the gorgeous chiming and jangling of his and Jim Reese’s guitars, not the beautiful but non-grandiose backing vocals, not Randy Fuller’s bass, and definitely not DeWayne Quirico’s drumming, which, with subtle alterations, follows the same pattern throughout.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | On the Records: 80 Musicians on Beloved and Overlooked Albums is the new book by music industry veteran Brian Beck with music writer, editor, and educator Piotr Orlov that gathers musical hidden gems, overlooked classics, and personal favorites, selected by 80 celebrated artists.

Featuring essays and stories by luminaries across genres and spanning generations, the book offers readers a rare opportunity to explore extraordinary music through the eyes and ears of the musicians who cherish it. On the Records will be available in hardcover on November 17, 2026 via Clarkson Potter, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House (retail: $30).

Discover the music that shaped Dolly Parton’s earliest memories through her mother’s voice, the rare recording that Black Thought of The Roots continues to draw from, the album that changed the way Chris Stapleton heard and approached music, the recordings Sonny Rollins believed deserved a new audience, and the album that clarified for Laufey what she wanted to do as a musician.

The book brings together a remarkable range of musicians, including GRAMMY, Pulitzer Prize, and Academy Award winners and some of the most influential and respected voices in music. Their selections range from overlooked work of widely recognized artists to recordings that were self-released, long out of print, difficult to find, or simply never received the audience they deserved.

Read More »

In 1970 and 1971, Cat Stevens released two albums (Tea for the Tillerman, Teaser and the Firecat) that established him as one of the most important and successful singer-songwriters in music. The genre ruled in that period, with albums from fellow UK artist Elton John and Americans Carole King, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, and Carly Simon.

Catch Bull at Four in 1972 didn’t yield any hits, but it continued a winning formula for Stevens. Foreigner in 1973 was a stylistic departure, and although it was not well received or popular at the time, in retrospect it was an adventurous and experimental album that included a full side of the Foreigner suite, illustrating how Stevens was broadening his sound and growing as an artist.

Buddha and the Chocolate Box from 1974 was a return to more familiar musical territory and included the hit “Oh Very Young.” The album would be one of the last quintessential albums from Stevens and came four short years before he left the music business. It would be almost 20 years before Stevens recorded again. The album has recently been reissued and sounds as fresh and new as when it was originally released. The hit “Oh Very Young” is as poignant as ever, and for those who heard it when it was first released, hearing it now is a whole new experience.

What made the album and those other successful albums of the period so good was the way Stevens mixed folk, rock, and pop with rich musical textures and exotic sounds, highlighted by his guitar work, keyboards, and distinctive vocal style. While his music was often moody and introspective, with baroque classical touches, Stevens was a deft songwriter who could craft catchy choruses and memorable melodies.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Sony Music Entertainment and Hollywood Records are proud to announce that A Day at the Races, the fifth studio album by Queen, is to be celebrated almost 50 years to the day with the release of two special new vinyl editions.

Initially released on December 10th, 1976, the classic album, which features the transatlantic smash “Somebody To Love” and perennial live favorite, “Tie Your Mother Down,” will be issued on blue marbled vinyl and a Queen Store exclusive picture disc almost 50 years to the day on December 11th, 2026.

Queen recorded their fifth studio album between Summer and Autumn 1976, and it was their first self-produced album, engineered by Mike Stone. Like the previous album, A Night At The Opera, it took its title from a film by the Marx Brothers.

Brian May and Roger Taylor have often cited A Day At The Races as a continuation of the previous LP. It remains one of their most acclaimed records, reaching #5 in America (#1 in the UK), where it was issued a week after the UK release and became Queen’s first American album to reach Gold status before moving on to Platinum.

Read More »

Celebrating Ron Elliott on his 83rd birthday. —Ed.

The Beau Brummels are mostly remembered for the exemplary folk-rock of “Laugh Laugh” and “Just a Little,” both Top Twenty hits in 1965. But they also crafted one of the earliest and best examples of country-rock, the masterful 1968 LP Bradley’s Barn.

I find it hard not to be somewhat conflicted about The Beau Brummels. Not in terms of quality, for they were one of the USA’s finest (and earliest) acts to emerge in the wake of the British Invasion, but simply in defining their historical legacy. For starters, they were signed to disc-jockey Tom Donahue’s small Autumn label during their early period of widespread popularity. This circumstance limited the distribution of their two biggest hits (“Laugh Laugh” stalling at #15 and “Just a Little” at #8, respectively).

And yet they were considered legitimate teen idols of the time, appearing not only in two motion pictures but also on TV’s The Flintstones (as the uh, Beau Brummelstones). It’s enough to make a mind contemplate what might have transpired had the band been in the hands of a more capable label, for their first two LPs, Introducing The Beau Brummels and Volume 2, stand amongst the best records issued by American acts in the immediate post-Beatles aftermath.

But when the group switched to Warner Brothers, they were initially mishandled. Beau Brummels ’66 was an ill-advised (if not at all bad) covers-only LP conceived because the label didn’t initially control the band’s publishing. Their first “real” record for Warners, ‘67’s outstanding slice of baroque-psyche Triangle, remains one of the better psychedelic excursions of the period.

Read More »

The first time I heard “I Sit on Acid,” I was 20 years old, out on the dance floor at Club Metro in Riverside, and I had no idea what I was listening to, let alone who the Lords of Acid actually were. Nobody did. It was slow, dirty, and hypnotic, with lyrics you weren’t supposed to say out loud, let alone over a club sound system. Nobody around me cared. We just moved.

Not long after, I walked into my first warehouse rave in San Pedro, Krusty’s Funhouse, under a huge circus tent. Around 2 a.m., the DJ dropped Lords of Acid’s latest, “Take Control,” and the whole tent lifted off the ground. I’ve been to a lot of shows in the decades since, and I’ve photographed plenty of them. I can count on one hand the times a single record changed the temperature of a room like that. It was life-changing.

That was the beginning for me. Before the festivals, before EDM became a business, before anyone had a phone to film it, there was a guy in Antwerp named Maurice Engelen putting out records under a pile of different names, and they were landing 6,000 miles away in tents and warehouses full of kids like me. Praga Khan. Channel X. Lords of Acid. “Rave the Rhythm.” “Injected with a Poison.” To us he wasn’t a name on a sleeve. He was the source.

Here’s the part that floored me: he had no idea. No internet, no cell phones, faxes with sales figures coming back from America. He didn’t know we existed until a fan cornered him at a party in Miami and recited his discography back to him.

More than 35 years later, Lords of Acid is still doing what it has always done: pushing buttons, making people dance and laughing the whole way through. Mundo Bizarro, the band’s first album of all-new material since 2018’s Pretty in Kink, is out now on Metropolis Records, with the LP following November 9. It’s the first record with Carla Harvey, who grew up dancing to the songs she now fronts. It moves between English, Spanish, German, and Japanese. And true to form, the cover is already getting flagged by the algorithms: a woman holding a banana to her head like a gun. Praga Khan is still too much for the internet.

I got on the phone with the man who started it all for me, on the eve of the Cheeky Freaky Pt. 2 tour, to talk about the new beat accident that launched a genre, why he still trusts an ARP 2600 over a laptop, and what he’d say to the kid on the dance floor.

Before there was Praga Khan, there was Maurice Engelen growing up in Belgium. What was the first record that made you think, “I need to make sounds like that,” and how far was it from the music you ended up making?

I started out in my early twenties as a booker for international bands, bringing acts like Soft Cell and Cabaret Voltaire over from England to the continent. In 1982 I started my own record label, Antler-Subway, and it became a very influential independent label for electronic body music, with bands like Klinik and A Split-Second. In America, most of the best bands from that scene were on Wax Trax! at the time.

I started making records myself in 1987, when Atari came out with its sequencing software. Before that I’d been working with a Commodore sequencing system. I’ve always been in love with technology and in love with music, so combining the two was the perfect thing for me. The very first record I made was a song called “Blow Job,” and I honestly didn’t know what the word meant. I thought a blow job was a bad job, when somebody does something wrong. Only later did I find out what it really was.

Back then I was influenced mostly by German records like 16 Bit, and by the bands on our own label: A Split-Second, Klinik, Poésie Noire, The Neon Judgement. But that music was a little too dark for me. I wanted to make something less depressive and show the funnier side of it.

Read More »

Live at the KiMo Theater, Albuquerque, 1979, throws a fabulous wrinkle into the discography of Cecil Taylor, uncovering an impeccably recorded quintet performance as remarkable in its ensemble energy as anything in the great pianist’s extensive body of work. Black Editions Archive has released this discovery as a 2LP set in a deluxe heavy tip-on gatefold jacket, with a color-printed 12-page listening guide featuring words by Taylor expert Ben Young.

To borrow from boxing parlance, Cecil Taylor is often characterized as a bruiser, indeed an utter pummeler of the ivories, and while that’s certainly true, he’s also as fleet and fascinatingly unpredictable as a featherweight, unleashing artistry that blossomed into a quickly recognizable sound. Easily the most singular pianist to have arrived on the jazz scene post Thelonious Monk, Taylor’s uniqueness was immediately apparent even as his style developed gradually.

Listening to Taylor’s discography in chronological order is one of the most rewarding adventures in modern music, at least for those who are amenable to his approach. This blend of studio dates and performance recordings begins in 1957 with Jazz Advance, released by the Transition label, capturing Taylor as already something of an iconoclast, if one with a tangible connection to modern jazz. The set fittingly opens with a version of Monk’s “Bemsha Swing,” Taylor situating himself at the vanguard of jazz piano and then spiraling out from there.

Taylor’s quartet for Jazz Advance featured Steve Lacy on soprano sax, Buell Neidlinger on bass, and Denis Charles on drums, an aggregation that also comprised one side of At Newport, released in 1958 by Verve Records (the Gigi Gryce-Donald Byrd Jazz Laboratory gets the other side). For the 1959 Contemporary Records’ set Looking Ahead!, vibraphonist Earl Griffiths replaces Lacy.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | The Fratellis critically acclaimed fourth studio album, Eyes Wide, Tongue Tied, is now available for the first time on limited sunburst vinyl.

After the release of 2013’s We Need Medicine, the band spent a year touring the world. At the tail end of 2014, they decamped to LA to work on album number four with Tony Hoffer (M83, Depeche Mode, and Belle & Sebastian), who also produced their first album smash Costello Music.

That unique, bright clarity of California sunshine seems to permeate the record and the band channelled it to create an album that represents what they do best. At the heart of Eyes Wide, Tongue Tied there’s a fun, energetic soul reminiscent of their 2006 debut. With recognisable nods to ’70s Cali-rock, rockabilly, and glorious hints of Americana and country layered high, it’s a glorious homecoming with roots in both Scotland and LA.

Littered with standout tracks: the foot-stomping “Baby Don’t You Lie To Me!,” the spiraling riffs of “Getting Surreal,” and “Thief”—all big choruses and live crowd pleasers. “Dogtown” parades along with its strident brass section and funk-driven bass line; and an early-seventies Stevie Wonder cover of The Beatles’ “Come Together.” While the delicate, drifting layers of “Moonshine” bring us to a reflective, poised ending.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Set against the backdrop of a global rock phenomenon, The Vampire Lestat follows Lestat de Lioncourt as played by Sam Reid on an electric multi-city tour while he’s haunted by “muses” from his wild and rebellious past. Preorder the soundtrack here.

As his band’s popularity and star power rises, so does Lestat’s influence over vampires and human’s alike, leaving others to contend with Lestat’s power in the face of The Great Conversion, an unnatural surge in the vampire population. In addition to Reid, The Vampire Lestat star Jacob Anderson, Assad Zaman, Eric Bogosian, Delainey Hayles, and Jennifer Ehle, and is executive produced by Mark Johnson, creator, writer, and showrunner Rolin Jones, Hannah Moscovitch, Christopher Rice, and the late Anne Rice.

Daniel Hart is a composer and performer based in Los Angeles. He made his feature film debut with the critically acclaimed Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, beginning an ongoing collaboration with filmmaker David Lowery, and has since composed the music for all of Lowery’s films, including Pete’s Dragon, A Ghost Story, The Old Man & the Gun, and The Green Knight.

His recent projects include A24’s Mother Mary, AMC’s hit series The Vampire Lestat, and The Dutchman starring Kate Mara and André Holland. Recent work also includes An Almost Christmas Story, Sunny, and Peter Pan & Wendy, reflecting Hart’s approach to scoring that blends orchestral writing, experimental textures, and an intimate emotional perspective.

Read More »

Celebrating Wanda Jackson on her 89th birthday. —Ed.

When it comes to vocalists—male, female, whale, Sasquatch, you name it—it’s hard to top Wanda “The Queen of Rockabilly” Jackson. For a couple of years at the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, Jackson recorded a bunch of truly hair-raising vocal performances that generated every bit as much feral excitement and raw sexual energy as the ones being recorded by Elvis Presley (whom she dated for a brief spell), Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent, and Little Richard. The very much alive Jackson possesses vocal cords made of barbed wire, and has never met a tempo—most of them played back in the day with lethal intensity by a relatively unsung young guitar slinger named Roy Clark—so raucous she couldn’t rein it in. And she can yodel up a storm, too.

There were other women singing rockabilly during its golden age; Janis Martin, for example, who was unfortunate enough to have the moniker “the Female Elvis” hung around her neck like an albatross. But Martin had a more staid vocal style that came up short in the barbaric yawp department.

For the most part, the same goes for Lorrie Collins of novelty act the Collins Kids, who had her moments of inspiration (check out her wonderfully frenzied take on “Mercy”) but who rarely roamed into the realm of the possessed. Jackson was a full-grown woman, and her voice was a force of nature in 1961, and still is; listen to the 73-year-old Jackson kick up a rockin’ ruckus out on such raunch’n’roll numbers as “Shakin’ All Over” and “Rip It Up” on 2011’s Jack White-produced The Party Ain’t Over if you have any doubts about the matter.

Read More »