Back catalogue: All genres

Review: Two of the likeliest lads from Manchester team up for the first day release of their new collaborative project. And its something of a full circle moment, with Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher previously citing Stone Roses hero John Squire in a list of formative teenage musical inspirations, who, in turn, first encountered the former when both bands were working the same studio, respectively recording Definitely Maybe and The Second Coming. The pair first shared honours three years after that, co-writing 'Love Me & Leave Me' for Squire's relatively short-lived outfit, The Seahorses, in 1997. Skip forward to 2022 and Squire joined the Gallaghers et al on stage at Knebworth, reprising his appearances for renditions of 'Champagne Supernova' at the band's 1996 shows, spurring the idea to do something together again. Here's the result - and it's precisely what the duo should sound like together.

Review: Big guitars playing huge hooks at a propellant pace. The Goods deliver their debut EP, which looks to decades worth of garage rock and pop punk heritage for influence, while ensuring the finished tracks are every bit theirs. Retro revivalism this isn't, a veteran singer-songwriter known for sharp lines drafting seasoned talent from his local music scene in order to make something new, this most definitely is. Headed up by Rob Good, a well-known figure in the underground Oakland guitar scene, California, for the three tracks here - and this project - he's called upon rhythm section and human drum machine Paul Wiseman and highly respected session bassist Cherron Arena. The result is an EP that's personal and passionate, and incredibly thoughtful, while also compelling and high octane. A refreshing indie whirlwind.

Review: While The Galileo 7's records are all nostalgic by design - they specialise in making psych-pop and psych-rock that sounds so authentically 1960s that it should come with a Beatle wig and a free tab of acid - few are quite as heady, densely layered or hallucinatory as 2017's Tear Your Minds Wide Open. Here that album is given the expanded reissue treatment. Alongside all 12 tracks from the set - including the squally brilliance of 'The Mask', with its gnarled guitar riffs, Hammond stabs and elongated solos, and the Hendrix-esque 'Your Face Tomorrow' - you get eight bonus cuts. Expect a mix of instrumental mixes, alternate versions, band demos and home recordings.

Review: Medway's garage rock king Allan Crockford has credits flittering all the way back to the 80's including the likes of The Prisoners, Billy Childish's Thee Headcoats, The Solarflares, and even the OG line-up of the James Taylor Quartet, to name but a handful. Keeping sharp and busy, however, The Galileo 7 serves as his own passion project; melding 60s mod-beat garage rock with jangling psychedelic pop, leading to a sonic bickering between anthemic hooks and fuzzed out, twinkling guitar lines. Following two exceptional full-lengths released through Damaged Goods; 2017's Tear Your Minds Wide Open! and 2019's There Is Only Now, the collective return after a half-decade of respite to deliver another batch of lysergic, hazy power pop goodness, intended for the wannabe mod/hippie in all of us.

Review: There's almost no point writing about this one - an album that already has legions of disciples waiting to embrace it, with pretty much everyone who knows the names Liam Gallagher and John Squire guaranteed to be interested in what their self-titled LP is about. More so, without even hitting play we all kind of know what it's about, with two of the biggest names to come out of Manchester's 1990s indie rock breeding ground coming together for a record that sounds every bit the sum of its parts. Squire's incredible guitar playing - a centrepiece of The Stone Roses' sound - is incredible as ever, sending riffs soaring over the dilapidated rooftops of North West England and out into the stratosphere. Meanwhile, Gallagher's elongated but gruff vocal style remains steadfast across ten anthems-in-the-making. Powerhouse stuff, but like we said, nobody expected less.

Review: For indie heads of a certain vintage, this album - a first full-length collaboration between Oasis lead singer Liam Gallagher and former Stone Roses guitar-slinger John Squire - is one of the most hotly anticipated of the year. It was recorded in Los Angeles over a three-week period last year, with former Foo Fighters and Gorillaz studio don Greg Kurstin handling production. As you'd expect, the album is undeniably nostalgic, with Squire's variously funky, raw and bluesy guitar licks and Beatles-esque backing tracks providing a fitting vehicle for Gallagher's distinctive lead vocals. For proof, check recent singles 'From Mars To Liverpool' - where Squires' solos towards the end seemingly soar above reverb-laden backing vocals that accurately pay tribute to the Fab Four - and the more psychedelic Roses-meets-Oasis flex of 'Just Another Rainbow'. There are no surprises, but fans will love it.

Review: Erlend Viken's first outing as Giant Sky - 2021's self-titled debut - was part epic prog rock overture and part major statement about the state of the music business. Only available in physical album format, for some time just a single track was doing the rounds on streaming services, which wasn't really a track at all, but instead a message about the evils of major streaming platforms and their role in ruining the artistic economy. Second time around, and the music itself is no less powerful. Moving from 'Origin Of The Species' and its floating-through-the-cosmos atmosphere, to the rousing call-to-unity of 'The Pensieve' and the industrial-noise-cum-delicate pop on 'Imposter', the vision and scope are incredible, new ideas seemingly presenting themselves at every twist and turn on this 13-strong track list.

Review: .Following the success of his Sunday Morning, Coming Down compilation, Ace Records has asked Bobby Gillespie to put together a follow-up. This time round, the Primal Scream frontman has decided to showcase tracks he turns to "for solace, comfort and empathy" during the Scottish band's various tours. Offering a mix of country, blues, Americana, psychedelia and soul, the selected songs - including inspired efforts by Willie Nelson, Lee Hazelwood, Al Green, the Chi-Lites, Ry Cooder and Kate & Anna McGringle (whose 'Heart Like a Wheel' is a genuinely tender and heart-aching affair) - more than deliver on the album's conceptual premise, offering equal amounts of emotion and entertainment.

Review: Norwegian indie talent Girl In Red kicked off her musical journey by sharing her home-recorded tunes as a teenager back in 2017. She has since become renowned for her raw lyrics and for delving into the everyday struggles and intricacies of relationships and has won a legion of fans, not least among them Taylor Swift,who invited her out on tour. Her breakout moment came with the viral sensation 'I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend,' followed by the enchanting 'We Fell in Love in October' in 2018. Fast forward to 2021, she unveiled her debut full-length album and soared up the charts. Now she is back with I'm Doing It Again Baby which comes on limited gatefold red vinyl and is full of more of her guitar-driven melodic indie-pop sounds and singalong hooks.

Review: Glass Animals are one of the hottest English indie rock bands out there right now. Their second studio album How to Be a Human Being came back in August 2016 was appreciated for its sense of wonder and lasting musical impression. Each of the tracks in the album is represented by one of the people on the original album cover and this reissue comes in the form of a zoetrope picture disc. Inspiration for the people on the cover came from people the band met and stories they were told during their travels on tour promoting their previous album.

Review: We can only guess what Grandaddy would have to say about the state of play right now. Having risen to fame and acclaim in the early-mid-1990s, by the time Sumday came along the Californian band had set out their stall in terms of the technological revolution unfolding around them. 2000's stunning but sceptical (if not scared) The Sophtware Slump is just one clear example of resignation that humans would be unable to ensure tech yields to their commands and only theirs. The robots weren't coming, they had already arrived. Skip forward another three years and Sumday felt more relaxed, and warm. Nevertheless, the same themes are omnipresent, just like those cursed machines. Only this time there's more surrealism and less obstinate pessimism than before. And less experimentation, musically, albeit we're still in the psyche-space-lo-fi rock world, which has 'testbed' written into its manifesto. We loved it then, and love it today, even if it does feel like a warning we never listened to now you're seeing the unchecked birth of deep fakes and AIs.

Review: According to Guided By Voices frontman Robert Pollard, Same Place the Fly Got Smashed is at the apex of the band's creative output. In the James Greer Biography, Guided By Voices: A Brief History: Twenty One Years of Hunting Accidents In the Forests of Rock and Roll he says this record has some of his all-time favourite songs on it, and 'Pendulum' is home to his finest lyrics. Originally released in 1990, the fourth studio album from Guided By Voices is certainly potent stuff. The opening sample tells us to "get ready for excitement and adventure", then the raw mood of 'Airshow '88''s riff marks the beginning of an epic journey. From the muscular 'Order For The New Slave Trade', to the tender acoustic heartbreak on 'When She Turns 50', the gritty hypnosis invoked by 'Ambergris', and psychedelic folk-pop on 'How Loft I Am?', resistance remains impossible, 34 years on.

Review: In previous albums, Gwenno has made music in Cornwall and used the Cornish language in the vocals. Y Dydd Olaf however is entirely sung in Welsh, but for one song in Cornish. It is inspired by a 1976 novel of the same name by Owain Owain that is set in a dystopian future. In that future, robots have enslaved the human race using medication. This album extrapolates that and muses on things such as rising technological inference, patriarchal society, media propaganda, isolation and, naturally, the important roles that minority languages still play. It is now repressed after initially being released in July 2015.