Squeeze have done well. They’ve worked their arses off for years and now have significant profile again, playing some of Europe’s bigger venues (such as the O2). Their latest release, then, is anticipated. It’s a fanciful rejig of a concept album the band’s central duo, Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook, created, pre-success, when they were teenagers in 1974. For both better and worse, it sounds that way.Trixies offers 13 snapshots of an imaginary nightclub, much flavoured by Difford’s youthful reading of Damon Runyon’s New York nightworld tales, mingled with the lowlife of their native south Read more ...

VINYL OF THE MONTHWest Virginia Snake Handler Revival They Shall Take Up the Serpents (Sublime Frequencies) Image Californian producer Ian Brennan walks, loosely speaking, in the footsteps of groundbreaking (and controversial) father and son song collectors, John and Alan Lomax, who, between them, gathered an essential storehouse of American folk music in the early-to-mid-20th Century. Like them, he’s interested in the cultural context of roots music and he’s ranged across the world, from Rwanda to Azerbaijan. His recent 2023 Parchman Prison Read more ...

“Never mind the Sex Pistols, here's the rotting corpse of Johnny Rotten, stinking to high heaven like some maggot brain from the Bryan Ferry School of Design. Rotten has dubbed his new band Public Image Ltd. PiL's first single ‘Public Image’ sounds like a powerful Pistols' reject. And for making a nyah-nyah statement, the single is sufficient...but an entire album of catcalls is pure self-indulgence. Hearing Rotten make music now is like listening in a cathedral to a eunuch chanting in a language which he does not even need to understand.”The US music magazine Creem’s April 1979 review Read more ...

In November 1975, UK music weekly New Musical Express included an article by Charles Shaar Murray titled “Are You Alive To The Jive Of The Sound Of '75.” Recently in New York, he was revealing what he had discovered.The bands looked at – and he saw most saw live – in his prescient round-up were Blondie, The Heartbreakers – “the first N.Y. punk supergroup” – a “new-look” New York Dolls, The Ramones, The Shirts, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Television and Tuff Darts. Image Central to what he covered in this remarkable role call was a venue: the Read more ...

Mandy, Indiana are a Mancunian four-piece with a French singer who's based in Berlin. They make a lot of noise. Their second album is a take-no-prisoners amalgamation of electronic squall, thrashy rap (a distant cousin of Dälek), and tints of deranged hyperpop. In an age when ever-increasing quantities of people seek soothing music, they are outliers. URGH is too cacophonic to be the making of them but those after a solid, catalytic bash around the brain may want to tune in.The album was flavoured by multiple operations undergone by frontwoman Valentine Caulfield and drummer Alex Macdougall Read more ...

“One pure sonofabitch 45. The record to put them high in the national charts. Top five at least.” In October 1976, the weekly music paper Sounds was unequivocal about Eddie and the Hot Rods’ “Teenage Depression” single.Over at Melody Maker, the tone was similarly frothing: “Everything about the single [released 29 October] works – the explosive power, the convincing presence and the intense sound. They are the first of the new-wave punk bands to trail blaze into the national chart.” Image Depending on how their music was defined, this was so Read more ...

After over 600 gigs, London based brother-and-sister duo The Molotovs have finally released their debut album. It’s fair to say that for a band so aligned with punk, Wasted On Youth is much more of a hark back to Britpop and 2010s indie rock, but despite a slight lack of self-awareness, it is studded with promise.Indie cursive singing is a bold move, and one that has attracted a lot of attention on social media in recent years by millennials cringing at their youth. There’s an extremely thin line between The Kooks asking the ironically iconic "do you want to go to the seaside?" and Arctic Read more ...

The term “post-punk” is much overused to describe music, not least by we music writers. It usually covers anything with punk’s outsider attitude but boasting an arty, tricky musical ambition beyond 1977’s spit’n’roar. Not all music described thus sounds as if it might have bothered the indie charts between 1978 and 1984, but Dry Cleaning do. Their third album’s bubbling combination of musical scratchiness and impassively delivered spoken word is pure post-punk. It’s also an intriguing and likeable listen.The rhythm throughout is a groovy plod, guitars wilfully relishing atonal skronk, coming Read more ...

In recent years, Sleaford Mods have moved on somewhat from sounding like an insistent and angry drunk yelling over a cheap Casio keyboard. Fortunately, not too much, though.Andrew Fearn and Jason Williamson’s potty-mouthed, minimalist punk-funk is still one of the sharper musical commentaries of the UK’s seeming demise and their style fits the subject matter like a glove. Angry, harsh and taking absolutely no prisoners. Sleaford Mods are the perfect soundtrack to a country that over-estimates its worth, while blithely strutting towards the edge of a steep cliff. As John Peel used to say about Read more ...

The stylish gentlemen pictured above are Crimson Earth, a band active from 1970 to 1976. Regardless of their longevity, the Dorset-based outfit failed to attract national attention and didn’t release any records. There was an audition for EMI, local media support and a deal with a Bristol booking agency but cigars were not forthcoming.Even so, a 1972 tape of the band has been disinterred and one track from it – the explosive, irresistible “Heathen Woman” – was included earlier this year on the agenda-setting Yeah Man, It's Bloody Heavy!!, an extraordinary, wild-ride compilation of never- Read more ...

VINYL OF THE MONTHManduria Bite Me (Wild Honey) Image The debut from Milan punkers Manduria is a six-tracker haemorrhaging rock’n’roll cheek and sass. They riff and fuzz and bang about without a care in the world, shouting and revelling in reverb mess, howling like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins while cranking up the amps like The Cramps, the rhythm section indulging in a mono-stomp that penetrates the inner brain like Joe Pesci’s vice. There’s a track called “I Hate to Think” and you don’t need to. On “Buongiorno” they slow things down for a dip Read more ...

Yes, I know. Maybe everything bitched about them is true; an eye-watering marketing push, cynically calculated, monied, etc. Maybe it is not. I’ve no real idea.But, but, but, the second album by this London five-piece is my most listened-to of 2025 – and it only came out in October. In the end, all that will be left is the music, the rest history. Just think of The Monkees. The cool kids loathed this manufactured TV group in the 1960s, but who listens to “Daydream Believer” today and froths with the same indignation?From the Pyre is a gem, start-to-finish, a perfect balance of Sparks-like pop Read more ...