“She [Dolly Parton] can see into people. She’s deep. It’s like through her songs, she opens her arms wide and embraces such a broad swath of people that don’t always feel seen. – Jane Fonda Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton worked together, alongside Lily Tomlin in the 1980 comedy, 9 to 5. A tart and

Death Cab for Cutie ended their run on Atlantic Records with 2022’s Asphalt Meadows, a strong return to form after a weaker run of releases through the 2010s that produced only a handful of memorable tracks but kept them on the radio. Now signed to Anti-, I Built You a Tower is their first independent

Is it just me, or does something about modern mainstream pop culture feel off? Not broken, but stuck. A sense of stasis. There’s more content than ever before, but less and less seems worth seeing or hearing. Those nostalgic Facebook posts showing what was playing on multiplexes in 1987 (Robocop, Platoon, Predator, and Three Men

A Strange Light From the East: Eastern Influenced Western Music 1965-72 Various Artists Cherry Red 21 August 2026 In their 2019 article on “raga rock”, Brian Ireland and Sharif Gemie point to several specific social and political phenomena as key to the surge in purported Asian influences on music in the 1960s Anglophone North Atlantic.

Brothers Tom and Ed Russell have been features of the underground electronic scene for years, but it’s as Overmono that the pair have really pushed for the overground. Their stunning 2023 full-length Good Lies gave notice that there was a new electronic act ready to take their place alongside the leading lights of contemporary British

11. Dolly Parton – “Islands in the Stream” (Eyes That See in the Dark, 1983) This list is 11 songs and not a nice round ten because of this one. It would be a sacrilege to leave out her biggest hit. Written by the venerable Bee Gees, co-sung by Kenny Rogers, and destined for karaoke

Some artists polish their sound until it shines, while others leave the stone alone long enough to discover what is buried inside. Pieta Brown belongs to the latter tribe. Her music has never been much interested in standing beneath a spotlight. It prefers the half-light, where things reveal themselves slowly—a melody becoming a memory, a

With their goofy name and playfully garish album artwork, Tönky Hönk may initially come off as a novelty. Still, these two brilliant musicians channel their unique, multifaceted keyboard skills into one of the most unexpectedly moving and instantly enjoyable experimental music releases in recent memory. Madeline Hildebrand and Everett Hopfner are both accomplished pianists, each

The last time Greg Dulli hinted that an upcoming Afghan Whigs release would be less fueled by personal turmoil, we got 1965, a rager of a party record that remains a fan favourite and contains many live staples. In a just world, “66” would have been a massive radio hit. In the press release for

As I set foot on the Sziget Festival grounds and stretch my legs after a post-air-conditioning ride in a vintage overground wagon, a middle-aged Italian man in a bridal gown waving an immense inflatable penis emerges into my field of vision. To my right, a grey-haired DJ blasts LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” next to a

Post-hardcore titans the Blood Brothers terraformed the contemporary punk landscape into new and exciting shapes. Co-vocalist Johnny Whitney’s new project, Evil Island, is in a similar vein, and he hopes that it will draw in their ever-expanding cult that started over two decades ago. The Blood Brothers were planning reunion shows in late 2024 when

As the old philosophical question goes, “If a tree falls in an empty forest, does it make a sound?” That query feels newly relevant in the age of modern music-making. We live in a world where anyone can hear virtually any song ever recorded, anytime, anywhere (provided there’s an internet connection). Today’s artist isn’t just

A new album from the Durutti Column isn’t something most people would expect in 2026. The Manchester-based post-punk band began in the late 1970s and were among the first artists Tony Wilson signed to his highly influential Factory Records label. Through numerous personnel changes—with guitarist Vini Reilly as the band’s only consistent member—they churned out

Bruce Springsteenian Romanticism is exemplified via “Born to Run”. The conflict between yearning and earthly circumstances is palpably evoked. The “town [that] rips the bones from your back” symbolizes family, DNA, conditioning, and emo-cognitive wiring. The impulse to “run” points to the craving to transcend who we are and where we live: the life we

Lana Daher’s Do You Love Me is a formally audacious and eventually punishing attempt to build Lebanon from its audiovisual remains. Made entirely from archival material, the 75-minute documentary gathers fiction films, news footage, television, photographs, radio, music, and home movies into a history without stable dates, protagonists, or causal lines. For a while, its

Anthony Kavanagh is adamant his critically acclaimed book, Pop Scars, does not qualify as a “celebrity” memoir. “I’m not delusional enough to think that a Kavana autobiography is going to be top of the charts,” he says, especially after “being in a blackout for the best part of a decade”. In the age of self-promotion,

Twenty years after her debut solo release, Real Life, Joan Wasser, who records as Joan as Police Woman, has released a reimagining of that recording, this time titled Real Life Evolution. Less revolutionary, it does illuminate Wasser’s consistent artistic ethos. Over her 11 studio recordings, including collaborations and two collections of covers, critics have struggled