#shoegaze-collaboration

#shoegaze-collaboration

"At 2 a.m., sitting up and contemplating our loss during my child's wake, I found myself reflecting on all the major news events that had left their mark on me through the years and the helplessness I sometimes felt to change anything. Writing the last verse was the most difficult and personal thing I've done."

We were pretty stoked to make another album after the success of our previous album and its single 'Pepper.' Capitol Records was stoked to get that next record until our relationship soured.

Things begin promisingly enough with the darkly powerful Going Up and All That Jazz from 1980's Crocodiles, the first of the terrific four-album run which blended psychedelia, post-punk and classic songwriting to turn the Liverpudlians into one of most hallowed bands of the decade.

Swell Maps were a punk band, but only because that word meant something different when they started making records in 1977. It didn't mean bands called Knuckleheadz or Gimp Fist; it meant unfettered freedom, curiosity rather than rage. Theirs was a music that wandered off in unexpected directions, where songs barely hung together before falling apart, punctuated by peculiar sounds made by whatever happened to be around.

I've done more books now, I think, than Shakespeare, sort of. I had a right laugh writing my first book, and people liked it, so when the chance to write another came up, I thought why not? I've got even more mad tales to tell.

Pop punk lifers New Found Glory are back with their 12th album, Listen Up!, their first album since guitarist Chad Gilbert began cancer treatment and an album that the band says was shaped by that ongoing experience. "We wanted to make something that really focused on how lucky we are," Chad says. "We've all gone through serious stuff in our lives, and I think the lyrics on this record are more meaningful and purposeful than ever. It's a positive outlet that hopefully keeps people going."

Inner Magic is the duo of former Chromatics guitarist Adam Miller and former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Jeff Schroeder. They met in 2024 and bonded over their love of '80s UK indie legends Felt, krautrock and the Vinnie Vincent Invasion, and then decided they should make music together.

"It always happens at some point," Rob Pursey says in reference to "twee," a descriptor that has dogged he and partner Amelia Fletcher's bands for 40 years. It was a word often used as derogatory by music journalists, but like a lot of genres - shoegaze, trip-hop - it's become accepted and embraced by many who have listened to their band Heavenly in the nearly two decades between breaking up and reforming in 2023.