Feature/Discovery | Rockshot Magazine

Albums Of The Year 2025

Rockshot — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 16:37:10 +0000

Rockshot Magazine Albums Of The Year 2025

As 2025 draws to a close, it’s impossible not to marvel at just how rich, varied and boundary-pushing this year has been for music. From bold reinventions by established heavyweights to fearless debuts and long-awaited returns, artists across genres have stretched themselves creatively — and, in doing so, shifted the landscape around them.

At Rockshot Magazine, we’ve spent the year immersed in the records that moved us most: albums that thrilled, challenged, comforted and surprised; albums that reminded us why we care so deeply about this strange, beautiful art form. What follows isn’t just a list, but a celebration — of craft, courage, vulnerability and vision.

These are the albums that defined 2025 for us. Turn them up, dive in, and discover your new favourites.

Wolf Alice - The Clearing

Wolf Alice’s fourth studio album (and major label debut) marks a confident step into more expansive, polished territory while retaining the emotional immediacy and creative adventurousness that have defined the band since their debut. Produced by Greg Kurstin, the record balances stadium-ready anthems with intimate, introspective moments, demonstrating the band’s evolution both sonically and lyrically.

The album opens with Thorns, a punchy, driving track that sets the tone with gritty guitar riffs and Ellie Rowsell’s emotive, urgent vocals, immediately grounding the listener in Wolf Alice’s signature tension between intensity and melody. Lead single Bloom Baby Bloom follows, a glam-infused rocker with layered instrumentation and soaring choruses that showcases the band at their most confident, embracing the swagger and stylings of 1970s rock ’n’ roll while making it entirely their own.

Just Two Girls slows the pace with a hypnotic, synth-tinged atmosphere, exploring themes of intimacy and vulnerability before Leaning Against The Wall ramps up the tension again, blending jagged guitar lines with Rowsell’s expressive vocals to evoke a sense of emotional reckoning.

Passenger Seat offers a brief, contemplative interlude, its soft acoustic textures and tender lyricism providing a moment of reflection before the punchy, groove-driven Play It Out reintroduces the band’s rock sensibilities, building to a cathartic, anthemic climax.

Safe in the World and Midnight Song lean into introspection, with restrained arrangements and haunting vocal melodies that highlight the band’s skill in crafting emotionally resonant atmospheres. The album closes with White Horses and The Sofa, two tracks that encapsulate Wolf Alice’s ability to blend grandeur and intimacy.

Lyrically, The Clearing navigates themes of personal growth, self-discovery, and the tensions inherent in human relationships. While the album may lack some of the raw edge and unpredictability of earlier releases, its cohesion, sonic ambition, and emotional depth make it a compelling statement from a band unafraid to grow—and one that has fully embraced, yet made their own, the swagger and stylings of 1970s rock ’n’ roll.

– Kalpesh Patel

Bring Your Own Hammer Presents: My Grief on the Sea

My Grief On The Sea is a jaw-dropping exploration of Irish emigration and immigration, curated by Dr. Richard McMahon and Dr. Niall Whelehan, blending historical records, letters, and books into an emotionally resonant contemporary project. Released via Bring Your Own Hammer and Dimple Disc, it is a powerful reflection on 19th-century migration stories.

Michelle O’Rourke opens with the slow, mournful title track, lamenting a lost love sent to America. Adrian Crowley and Brigid Mae Power’s Golden Streets, Bitter Tears carries hushed reverence, portraying the hope and sorrow of leaving home for pastures new. Mike Smalle, Cathal Coughlan, and Jah Wobble’s Old Oak Road brims with haunting imprecations and gorgeous harmonies, emphasizing the irretrievability of home.

The Man With Open Arms, featuring the late Cathal Coughlan and Linda Buckley, delicately narrates a tale of survival and aspiration, while The Female Cabin Boy by Eileen Gogan and Neil Farrell tells of resilience and ingenuity in the face of famine. Smalle and Wally Nkikita’s I Love Over the Ghosts is lush and haunting, transporting listeners to Baltimore with elegiac trumpet and string arrangements. The album closes with Michael J. Sheehy’s The Weight of Water, a reflective, acoustic meditation on hope and the transformative power of the sea.

Richly poetic and exquisitely crafted, My Grief On The Sea stands as one of the most emotionally and intellectually rewarding albums of 2025.

– Simon Phillips

Tedeschi Trucks Band and Leon Russell - Mad Dogs & Englishmen Revisited: Live at Lockn

This album is a loving recreation of Joe Cocker’s original Mad Dogs & Englishmen live album from 1970. Recorded as a tribute to Cocker on September 11th, 2015, for the 45th anniversary of that legendary concert film and live album, it is now issued to mark the 55th anniversary of the gig. The Tedeschi Trucks Band assembled as many of the original surviving members as they could, along with special guests, resulting in 29 performers onstage at the Lockn’ Festival in Arrington, Virginia.

From the opening of The Letter, Susan Tedeschi’s stunning vocals, bold brass, and delicate guitar solo capture the magic of the original while adding their own contemporary polish. Dixie Lullaby, featuring Leon Russell on lead vocals and piano, evokes a sound somewhere between Joe Cocker and Dr. John. Their reworking of Bob Dylan’s Girl From The North Country as a piano ballad, with Leon Russell and Claudia Lennear sharing vocals, adds layers of meaning and a poignant sense of melancholy.

They channel Ashford & Simpson’s brilliant Let’s Go Get Stoned into a raw, gospel-like celebration of indulgence, while She Came In Through The Bathroom Window delivers two Beatles covers with Warren Haynes’ burnished vocals shining through. Rita Coolidge brings Leonard Cohen’s Bird On A Wire into a soulful, almost spiritual space, while The Weight reaches its apex with her trading vocal lines with Pamela Polland and Susan Tedeschi.

With A Little Help From My Friends is treated with reverence, recalling Joe Cocker’s iconic Woodstock rendition. Chris Robinson and Susan Tedeschi wring every ounce of emotion from the track, with Tedeschi at times channeling Janis Joplin. The album closes with The Ballad Of Mad Dogs & Englishmen, stripped back to Leon at the piano, evoking a smoky bar and nostalgic reflections on the 1960s. This live recreation is, without a doubt, one of the most compelling live albums of 2025.

– Simon Phillips

Inhaler - Open Wide

With their third studio album Open Wide, Dublin’s Inhaler prove they’re no longer the bright young things on the rise – they’re a fully realised rock outfit with the ambition and songwriting muscle to match their ever-growing reputation. Produced by Kid Harpoon, the record finds the band stretching beyond their earlier post-punk and indie roots into widescreen, arena-ready territory without losing the urgency that first put them on the map.

Opening salvo Eddie In The Darkness sets the tone in brash, confident style, gritty riffs and a pulsating bassline locking into a hypnotic groove as Elijah Hewson’s soaring vocal delivery lands with both vulnerability and swagger. Title track Open Wide follows, its expansive, cinematic build evoking windswept coastal roads and festival sunsets, marking one of the band’s most ambitious arrangements to date.

Your House surprises with its gospel-style backing vocals and glam-rock grandeur, while X-Ray veers into jangly, Smiths-esque territory – bittersweet lyricism and chiming guitars giving it a timeless, melancholic edge. Midway through, Billy (Yeah Yeah Yeah) erupts with a stomp and chant-along chorus that feels custom-built for heaving festival crowds, fists punching the air in unison.

The pace shifts for Still Young, a reflective, synth-laced haze that lingers like the comedown after a euphoric night out, before Comedown (appropriately enough) offers one of the album’s most tender moments – Hewson’s intimate delivery paired with sparse instrumentation before swelling into a cathartic, spine-tingling release.

Elsewhere, Overdrive injects a shot of sleek, groove-led energy, while closer Falling Through ends the album on an atmospheric note, shimmering guitar lines and layered vocals gradually fading into silence – a subtle reminder of the band’s knack for both grandeur and restraint.

Across Open Wide, Inhaler sound like a group that have outgrown the “promising newcomers” tag and embraced their full potential. The hooks remain razor-sharp, the textures richer, the dynamics bolder, and the confidence unmistakable. This is the sound of a band stepping into their prime – and inviting the rest of us along for the ride.

– Kalpesh Patel

Sam Fender – People Watching

After two platinum records that made the working-class streets of North Shields ring out from stadiums nationwide, Sam Fender returns with his most widescreen and human record yet. This third outing plays like an intimate scrapbook written with a brass section and a telephoto lens.

The title track opens proceedings with swagger and scope, Fender’s knack for painting vivid street scenes sharper than ever.

Nostalgia’s Lie follows with chiming guitars and a restless undercurrent, dismantling the idea of “good old days” with bittersweet precision. There’s warmth in the melody, but the lyric cuts deep, turning rose-tinted memory into sepia-toned truth.

The mid-section finds Fender at his most vulnerable. Chin Up begins hushed, the faintest patter of drums under gentle piano before swelling into an anthem of resilience. Rein Me In strips things back even further — a folk-tinged waltz with a fragile vocal that sounds like it was recorded in the glow of a single lamp.

He isn’t afraid to go big either. TV Dinner crashes in with layered guitars, pounding drums and barely-contained urgency, the chaos almost threatening to drown his words.

The album closes with Remember My Name, a hushed, reverent moment pairing Fender’s weathered delivery with the warm embrace of the Easington Colliery Brass Band. It’s a love letter to his roots, a finale that trades fireworks for flickering porch lights — and it lands all the harder for it.

People Watching is an album of contradictions: brash and tender, local and universal, thunderous and whisper-quiet. It’s Fender doing what he does best — telling other people’s stories until you realise they might just be your own.

– Kalpesh Patel

Wet Leg – Moisturizer

With Moisturizer, Wet Leg return sharper, stranger and more self-assured, doubling down on the deadpan absurdism and sugar-rush hooks that made their debut such a phenomenon. CPR sets the tone immediately — woozy, off-kilter indie pop punctured by Rhian Teasdale’s signature eye-roll delivery — before liquidize slinks in with a rubbery bassline and a chorus that feels both flirty and threatening in the way only Wet Leg can.

catch these fists is all jagged guitars and snark, a chaotic kiss-off built for festival stages, while davina mccall is pure Wet Leg mischief: a frenetic ode to late-night self-help TV that somehow becomes an earworm of the highest order. jennifer’s body leans darker and dreamier, its title a wink to cult cinema wrapped in shoegazy haze, giving way to the buoyant mangetout and the whimsical pond song, which treads the line between nursery rhyme and indie disco banger.

pokemon brings a burst of pure serotonin, its playful nostalgia masking quietly poignant lyricism. pillow talk shifts gears into something more intimate and slow-burning, before don’t speak snaps back with crunchy riffs and a sing-along chorus destined to be screamed in sweaty rooms. 11:21 drifts through late-night melancholia, atmospheric and aching, setting up closer u and me at home — a beautifully dishevelled lullaby that brings the album full circle with tenderness and a sly smile.

With Moisturizer, the Isle Of Wight-hailing duododge the sophomore slump entirely, delivering a record that’s weirder, warmer and even more addictive than their debut. It’s proof that beneath the memes and mischief lies one of Britain’s most inventive alt-pop bands, still writing hooks that cling like glitter and emotional truths that sneak up on you when you least expect them.

– Kalpesh Patel

Olivia Dean – The Art of Loving

With The Art Of Loving, Olivia Dean delivers a warm, quietly dazzling sophomore album that deepens her reputation as one of the UK’s most emotionally articulate songwriters. Where her debut captured the glow of self-discovery, this record leans into the complexities of connection — tender, tangled, and told with Dean’s unmistakable blend of soulfulness and understated elegance.

The Art of Loving (Intro) sets the tone with soft, cinematic brushstrokes before Nice To Each Other unfurls into a breezy, deceptively simple plea for kindness — Dean’s voice effortlessly carrying both the sweetness and the ache. Lady Lady glides on a velvety groove, a self-assured ode to growth and grace, while Close Up strips things back, spotlighting her ability to make intimacy sound effortless.

So Easy (To Fall in Love) sparkles with classic soul inflections, joyfully capturing the moment affection tips into something deeper. But it’s Let Alone The One You Love that cuts the deepest — a slow-burn lament about the difficulty of protecting your own heart while holding someone else’s.

Man I Need and Something Inbetween showcase Dean’s increasing confidence as a storyteller, both tracks balancing vulnerability with quiet steel. Loud offers one of the album’s most striking moments: a swelling, cathartic anthem about reclaiming space, built around a vocal performance as radiant as it is resolute.

Baby Steps brings the record back down to earth with gentle honesty, a soft-focus meditation on moving forward without rushing the process. Closer A Couple Minutes is a small masterpiece of restraint — a hushed, beautifully weighted goodbye that lingers long after the final note.

Thoughtful, soulful, and stunningly assured, The Art Of Loving is Olivia Dean levelling up with grace and intention. A luminous highlight of 2025.

– Kalpesh Patel

West End Girl - Lily Allen

Unless you’ve been lying low in these final few months of 2025, it’s been impossible to avoid West End Girl. The fifth studio album by English singer-songwriter and actress Lily Allen, and follow-up to Mercury Prize-nominated No Shame (2018), has generated relentless hype since its release on 24 October.

Recorded over an intense 10-day period and co-produced alongside Seb Chew, Kito and Blue May, the album didn’t so much land softly as crack the ground beneath it wide open. People are still dissecting the details; from the Nieves González-painted album cover (Allen in a sky-blue, polka dot Miu-Miu quilted jacket), the mystery of Madeline (“No, but who is Madeline, actually?”) to the notorious Architectural Digest tours of the Brooklyn brownstone.

At its core, West End Girl appears to chronicle the fragmentation of Allen’s marriage to American actor David Harbour. She’s described the album as ‘autofictional’ (telling British Vogue that it references things “I experienced within my marriage, but that’s not to say that it’s all gospel.”) Whatever the boundaries, it’s the music that deserves the attention. Each track charts the alleged infidelity and resulting sense of betrayal and helplessness through raw, unfiltered lyrics.

If you tune out of the commotion that surrounds it, West End Girl is a multi-layered masterpiece. While a pop album in the main, an eclectic blend of genres keeps it fresh and unpredictable, from dancehall to 2-step and beyond. Combined with the kind of whip smart lyrics that have been her signature since Alright, Still (2006), and the London-born artist’s candour and lucidity, the result is a potent mix.

I approach the album as I would a favourite novel; each of the 14 tracks tells a story that unfolds deliciously, so they’re best savoured in order from West End Girl through to Fruityloop, without interruption. For me, standout moments are the gauzy, dream-like Sleepwalking and Dallas Major, which captures the awkwardness and surreal vulnerability of using dating apps while raising children.

West End Girl is an alternative romance album that launches the break-up genre into a new universe. Hearing Allen articulate her rage and hurt without minimising it, apologising or being gracious as we’re so often expected to be, feels validating in a culture that labels outspoken women as “too much”.

Hell hath no fury like Lily Allen, especially when she channels it into an impeccable album and reclaims the narrative with bite. Now this is what you call a comeback.

– Nicola Greenbrook

Lucy Dacus – Forever Is A Feeling

A record steeped in intimacy, longing and a steady warmth, Forever Is A Feeling arrives as Lucy Dacus’s fourth solo outing and her first since the meteoric rise of boygenius catapulted her into the broader musical spotlight. Written in the wake of a deep and transformative love, the album sees Dacus lean into tenderness without sacrificing the sharp lyrical craft that has become her hallmark.

Opening with the hushed, orchestral shimmer of Calliope Prelude, the Richmond-born singer sets a mood more akin to a dimly lit theatre overture than an indie rock record. This brief, cinematic prologue bleeds into Big Deal, a languid meditation on missed chances that pairs muted percussion with Dacus’s warm, unhurried vocal—a song that feels like it could only be sung while staring out of a rain-flecked window.

Third track Ankles takes a turn for the sensual, its delicate strings and brushed drums giving space for her intimate confession: “Pull me by the ankles to the edge of the bed.” This is Dacus at her most quietly daring, embedding desire within restraint. Limerence follows, unfolding like a cabaret ballad—piano chords sway between infatuation and melancholy as the arrangement swells into something almost torch-song grand.

Album centrepiece Modigliani invites boygenius bandmate Phoebe Bridgers into the frame for a gauzy, close-mic duet that could be mistaken for a lullaby were it not for the underlying ache in the lyrics. Elsewhere, Talk dials up the distortion for a shoegaze-leaning burst of frustration before Dacus drops the curtain with the title track—joined again by Bridgers and Julien Baker—braiding their three voices into an aching farewell that lingers well past its fade-out.

But it’s Bullseye that delivers the album’s emotional knockout, pairing Dacus with Hozier in a vocal sparring match that captures the thrill and terror of new love. The track’s chorus—half-plea, half-triumph—lands with the intensity of a spotlight hitting centre stage. Closer Lost Time starts as a gentle acoustic confession before blossoming into a soaring, electric finale that feels both triumphant and resigned.

If there’s a fault here, it’s one shared by some critics: the arrangements occasionally play it safe, letting the lyrics do the heavy lifting when a touch more sonic risk could have elevated certain moments. Yet, in a year of bombast and overstatement, there’s something refreshing about a record that asks you to lean in rather than shout along.

Quietly confident, Forever Is A Feeling is less a grand statement than a love letter whispered across a pillow—personal, precise, and deeply human. Believe in its slow burn; it’s one you’ll keep returning to long after the flame first catches.

– Kalpesh Patel

Po$t American – Dead Pioneers

Po$t American is an essential album from Native American band Dead Pioneers, a fierce and uncompromising salvo against systemic oppression and white supremacy. The album channels anger and urgency through a potent blend of hardcore rock and rap, grabbing listeners by the throat from the very first note.

The record opens by re-tooling A.I.M., invoking the Native cry and drumbeat of the American Indian Movement, before exploding into the title track Po$t American, a searing rap about the genocide at the heart of the American myth. My Spirit Animal Ate Your Spirit Animal confronts the hatred and ignorance directed at Native people, delivering thrillingly angry, confrontational sounds.

The Caucasity is a brilliant set piece of rage and despair, depicting a guest speaker interrupted by a white teenager who believes anger is unwarranted. The track makes clear that the devastation of homelessness, drugs, and systemic oppression is not the fault of Native Americans, but of the white invaders who caused it. Mythical Cowboys skewers the tropes of old Westerns, turning the tables on the idea that Native people were the villains.

White Whine is a poem set to experimental soundscapes, exploring the origins of racism with painful honesty, creating a deeply cathartic experience for anyone willing to listen. Juicy Fruit (Ode to Chief Bromden) is perhaps the best tribute to a film character you’ll hear all year, compelling listeners to revisit One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. STFU delivers its message in a brief, scorching burst, while Bloodletting Carnival offers a dystopian, riff-driven vision of what happens if systemic oppression goes unchecked.

Love Language (ft. Ren Aldridge) channels the fury of corrosion of conformity, railing against endless zealotry and hatred. Working Class Warfare is a blitz of hardcore angst, leaving no emotion unexplored. The album closes with the monumental Untitled Spoken Word No. 2, a searing meditation on the cruelty inflicted by white supremacy, with the message that the only good pioneer is a Dead Pioneer.

Po$t American is strong, unflinching medicine for our times—angry, smart, and necessary listening that challenges the listener at every turn.

– Simon Phillips

Brandi Carlile – Returning To Myself

On Returning To Myself, Brandi Carlile delivers her most intimate, soul-baring work to date — a record that feels less like a reinvention and more like a quiet homecoming. Opening with the reflective title track, Carlile immediately sets the album’s tone: warm, unhurried, deeply human. That sentiment flows into Human, its earthy acoustics and soaring harmonies reminding us why her voice remains one of the most arresting in modern Americana.

A Woman Oversees brings a stirring sense of purpose, Carlile’s vocal grit underscored by stately percussion, while A War With Time stands out as one of the album’s finest moments — a meditation on ageing and legacy delivered with devastating restraint. Anniversary offers a tender reprieve, its soft piano lines cradling Carlile’s delicate falsetto, before Church & State cuts through with a righteous, gospel-tinged fire.

Her tribute Joni is as heartfelt as the name suggests, a gentle, open-hearted nod to one of her guiding lights. The vulnerability deepens on You Without Me, Carlile laying out emotional fractures with poetic clarity. Penultimate track No One Knows Us glows with hushed harmonies and a quiet confidence built on long-won trust, before A Long Goodbye closes the album in classic Carlile fashion — equal parts ache, acceptance and catharsis.

A masterclass in songwriting maturity, Returning To Myself strips away grandeur in favour of truth, showcasing an artist fully at ease with who she’s become. It’s one of Carlile’s most affecting records yet — and one that lingers long after the final note.

– Kalpesh Patel

Luvcat – Vicious Delicious

Luvcat’s debut Vicious Delicious is the kind of fully realised first album that feels less like an introduction and more like the opening night of a long-anticipated show. Across its thirteen tracks, Sophie Morgan Howarth builds a dusky, theatrical world where vintage glamour, wry humour and emotional honesty all share the same stage.

She kicks things off with the seductive strut of Lipstick, a noir-pop opener driven by upright-piano flourishes and a storming bassline. It’s an immediate statement of intent: cinematic, stylish and deliciously dramatic. Alien, an early fan favourite, blooms into a shimmering misfit anthem, its slow-drive chorus carrying all the warmth of a late-night shoulder squeeze.

Her Liverpool roots slip charmingly into Matador, a swaggering ode to strange nights at The Kazimier Garden, while Dinner @ Brasserie Zédel delivers a swooning, accordion-flecked interlude that feels plucked straight from a candlelit Parisian bar. The noir mood returns for He’s My Man, where crunchy guitars and smoky piano lines wrap themselves around Howarth’s velvet vocals.

Title track Vicious Delicious is all cabaret-rock bravado – a stomping tribute to a chandelier-swinging hell-raiser – before Love & Money sharpens the edges with winking, pop-rock intensity. Spider creeps in on delicate acoustics and a chilling music-box melody, a gothic lullaby about a dishonest lover that showcases her flair for the theatrical.

Things kick back into high gear with the delightfully unhinged Emma Dilemma, while The Kazimier Garden serves as a dreamy instrumental palate cleanser, the album’s surreal core distilled into a single, floating moment. Laurie follows with quiet heartbreak, a tender, forbidden-love ballad that glows with understated intimacy.

The emotional peak arrives with Blushing, rewritten from its teenage Casio-keyboard origins into a widescreen reflection on growing up, moving cities and watching a band – and a life – take shape in real time. Album closer Bad Books ties everything together with vintage show-tune flair, its 1940s-leaning bridge sealing Luvcat’s commitment to full-bodied drama.

Decadent, witty and brimming with personality, Vicious Delicious is one of the year’s most distinctive debuts – a record that doesn’t just introduce Luvcat, but unveils an entire world she seems born to lead.

– Kalpesh Patel

Noah Cyrus – I Want My Loved Ones To Go With Me

Noah Cyrus’ I Want My Loved Ones To Go With Me is a quiet earthquake of a record — a sweeping, dusk-lit Americana odyssey that cements her as one of the most affecting storytellers of her generation. The album opens with I Saw the Mountains, a fragile, wind-brushed hymn that immediately sets the tone: intimate, creaking, full of breath and bruised memory. It’s the sound of Cyrus stepping onto a bigger landscape while keeping her vulnerabilities close.

Don’t Put It All On Me, featuring the golden harmonies of Fleet Foxes, unfurls like a prayer whispered between canyon walls, while What’s It All For? leans into soft country-soul, Cyrus’ voice catching beautifully on every doubt and confession. Way of the World pairs her with Ella Langley for a dust-kicked lament rich with fiddle and gravel, their voices dovetailing with a lived-in ache.

New Country, with Blake Shelton, brings a playful, tongue-in-cheek twang without losing the album’s emotional thread, before Long Ride Home plunges back into somber territory — a road song where regret sits in the passenger seat. Apple Tree and Man In The Field are stripped-back gems, showcasing Cyrus’ gift for quiet, cinematic detail; both feel like modern folk standards already.

With You is a warm glow after the storm, while Love Is A Canyon stands tall as one of the album’s emotional peaks — a sweeping, orchestral country piece that captures the danger and beauty of loving with your whole chest. And then there’s XXX, a haunting collaboration with Bill Callahan that drifts like cigarette smoke through the darkest corners of a dive bar. Their voices — hers trembling, his subterranean — create a spellbinding, eerie intimacy that lingers long after the final note.

I Want My Loved Ones To Go With Me is a triumph of restraint and emotional clarity, a record that trades bombast for raw truth. Noah Cyrus has never sounded more assured, more poetic, or more devastating — an artist fully arriving by whisper rather than roar.

– Kalpesh Patel

The Last Dinner Party – From The Pyre

If Prelude To Ecstasy introduced The Last Dinner Party as baroque-rock firebrands, From The Pyre cements them as one of Britain’s most fearless, theatrically ambitious bands. Their sophomore LP ignites with Agnus Dei, a choral-lit invocation that swells into something darker, grander, and unmistakably theirs. Count The Ways follows with a pulse of restless romance, Abigail Morris’ commanding vocal wrapped in Aurora Nishevci’s shimmering keys, dripping with melodrama.

Second Best leans into wry self-reflection, its melodies twisting and turning beneath orchestral flourishes, while This Is The Killer Speaking delivers one of the record’s standout moments — a macabre, swaggering storytelling piece where tension coils tightly before exploding into guitar-led fury. Rifle strips things back to a brittle emotional core, only for Woman Is A Tree to bloom with mythic sweep, its folk-tinged undercurrents layered with rich harmonies.

On I Hold Your Anger, the group tread new ground, pairing an almost ritualistic rhythm with a snarling vocal performance that feels both cathartic and confrontational. Sail Away offers a moment of dreamlike respite, lilting and wistful, before The Scythe drags us back into the smoke and shadow, strings slicing through the mix with cinematic intensity. Closer Inferno is exactly what its title promises — a blazing, unrestrained finale that loops back to the album’s themes of destruction, rebirth, and desire.

With From The Pyre, The Last Dinner Party transcend the weight of expectation, delivering a record that is bolder, sharper, and even more intoxicating than its predecessor. A theatrical triumph and a sign that this band are only just beginning to show us the full breadth of their fire.

– Kalpesh Patel

Geese – Getting Killed

If 3D Country marked Geese as New York’s most thrilling young eccentrics, Getting Killed elevates them into something downright feral and irresistible. The bastard sons of CBGB-era Tom Verlaine and Patti Smith, they take that jagged Manhattan swagger and push it to fabulous, unhinged extremes — a delirious collision of avant-garde impulses, punk abrasiveness and smoky jazz detours that feels like it couldn’t have come from any city but theirs.

Across the record, riffs snarl, rhythms contort and melodies twist themselves into shapes you don’t see coming, yet the chaos always resolves into something hypnotic. There’s a looseness that borders on danger, a theatricality that never tips into parody, and a sense of curiosity that makes every track feel like it’s discovering itself in real time. It’s the sound of a band not just stretching their limbs, but sprinting headlong into the unknown with grins on their faces.

I’ve been a long-time admirer of Geese — 3D Country was my personal favourite album of 2023 — but Getting Killed is something else entirely. It hasn’t left the top spot on my turntable since it dropped, and with good reason: it’s bold, sharp, swaggering, and utterly addictive. A noisy, intoxicating triumph from a band who refuse to stand still.

– Simon Jay Price

HAIM - I Quit

The Californian sisters’ fourth LP lands not as a perfectly polished pop-rock diamond, but as a defiant, chaotic jewel—its facets catching light from every angle, even the jagged ones. After the Grammy-nominated Women in Music Pt. III cemented their place as genre-blurring chameleons, I Quit finds Este, Danielle, and Alana turning the camera inward, chronicling break-ups, burnouts, and the bittersweet freedom of stepping away.

Opener Gone doesn’t tiptoe in—it struts. A sly sample of George Michael’s Freedom! ’90 sets the swagger, its handclap beat pushing Danielle’s voice into sharp relief. “I’ll be whatever I need,” she declares, with a delivery that sounds both like a sigh and a threat.

Second track Relationships keeps the tempo buoyant but slips barbs between the hooks. Beneath its shimmering guitar jangle lies a lyrical dagger—“You really fucked with my confidence”—proof that Haim can weaponise sunshine just as easily as they can bask in it.

By Down to Be Wrong, the record shifts gear. A woozy blend of Rhodes keys and gently brushed drums backs Danielle’s quiet admission of relief at letting go: “Didn’t think it could be so easy till I left it behind.” It’s a moment of emotional exhale before Everybody’s Trying to Figure Me Out floats in on airy synth pads, co-written with Justin Vernon, and sounding like it could dissolve if you breathe too hard.

Album centrepiece Bullseye pits Danielle’s velvet alto against Hozier’s soulful baritone, the two circling each other in a vocal sparring match as the arrangement builds from delicate plucks to a stormy swell. By contrast, Lucky Stars embraces looseness—a hazy, late-night jam that feels like it tumbled out of the studio unedited, its charm lying in that very imperfection.

While the record is unafraid to get messy, its disarray feels intentional, a mirror to the emotional contradictions of endings. The Farm offers a hushed, almost folky respite, while Love You Right closes proceedings with acoustic intimacy, as if sung from the kitchen table at 2am.

If Women in Music Pt. III was a masterclass in cohesion, I Quit is a scrapbook—polaroids, scribbles, and uncaptioned snapshots scattered across the floor. Not every page lands with equal impact, but the honesty is unflinching. It’s an album that invites you to live in its contradictions: the anger and relief, the grief and giddiness, the urge to slam the door and the pull to look back one more time.

As messy break-up records go, this one’s a keeper.

– Kalpesh Patel

Mumford & Sons – Rushmere

After a five-year wait, the now trio of Mumford & Sons return with Rushmere, an album that feels less like a reinvention and more like a thoughtful continuation of their journey. Having navigated from folk revivalists to arena rock storytellers, the London band now settle into a confident, reflective space where lush instrumentation meets intimate lyricism.

The record opens with the title track, Rushmere, a sprawling, cinematic piece that gently ushers listeners into the album’s themes of home, change, and reconciliation. Marcus Mumford’s earnest vocals cut through layers of warm guitars and subtle strings, setting a tone that’s both vulnerable and hopeful.

Staring Down picks up the pace with its propulsive rhythm and soaring chorus, balancing earnestness with anthemic urgency. Meanwhile, On The Train is a standout moment of simplicity and raw emotion, piano-led and stripped back, allowing the band’s knack for storytelling to truly shine.

Throughout the album, there’s a constant interplay between the intimate and the grand. Tracks like Bloodline and The Rising swell with dynamic energy, while songs such as Tell Me It’s True offer quiet moments of reflection, underscored by delicate mandolin and gentle harmonies.

Rushmere may not reinvent the wheel, but it’s a rich, heartfelt record that confirms Mumford & Sons remain masters of crafting emotionally resonant, melodically rich music. It’s a record for those moments when you want to feel both grounded and uplifted — a fitting soundtrack for life’s complicated journey.

– Kalpesh Patel

Blondshell – If You Asked For A Picture

With If You Asked For A Picture, Blondshell sharpens her already formidable songwriting into something even more daring — funnier, fiercer, more self-lacerating, and utterly magnetic. Sabrina Teitelbaum has always had a gift for turning emotional wreckage into hooks, but here she frames that instinct with a new cinematic clarity: scenes flicker, characters breathe, and every song feels like a snapshot of a moment you’re not entirely sure you should be witnessing.

The album snaps into focus with Thumbtack, a jangling, anxious opener where Teitelbaum turns tiny domestic details into emotional barbs. T&A leans into her sardonic streak — messy, wry, bawdy, and painfully honest. On Arms, the vulnerability shifts, her voice floating over a slow bloom of guitars as she examines comfort, dependency, and the quiet ache of wanting more than someone can give.

What’s Fair might be the album’s most piercing track, its melodies deceptively soft as she dismantles the myth of balanced relationships, while Two Times bristles with jagged indie-rock urgency. Event of a Fire burns brighter still — a desperate, spiralling anthem that captures the sensation of emotional crisis creeping up from beneath the floorboards.

She delivers a devastating one-two punch with 23’s A Baby — equal parts self-critique and generational observation — and Change, which unfolds with weary wisdom, its chorus hitting like a late-night revelation you can’t shake off. Toy returns to her knack for cutting humour, while He Wants Me surges with a darker, heavier edge that borders on cathartic rage.

The closing pair, Man and Model Rockets, reveal Blondshell at her most incisive. Man is jagged and unsparing, a pointed takedown wrapped in a deceptively catchy shell, while Model Rockets drifts into melancholy beauty, closing the album with a mix of nostalgia and quiet devastation — an epilogue that lingers long after the final note fades.

If You Asked For A Picture cements Blondshell as one of the most compelling voices in modern indie rock: brutally honest, wickedly funny, and unafraid to zoom in on the messy, unflattering corners of growing up and falling apart. It’s her sharpest, boldest work yet — a record full of snapshots you’ll keep returning to, because they’re too true to look away from.

– Kalpesh Patel

Hot Milk – Corporation P.O.P.

Hot Milk’s Corporation P.O.P. is a riotous, white-hot detonation of a record — a snarling, swaggering anti-capitalist pop-punk opera that confirms the Manchester duo as one of the most exciting, politically charged bands in modern rock. If their debut full-length crackled with energy, this follow-up sets the whole system ablaze.

(How Do I) Make The Devil Fall Asleep kicks the door off its hinges, blending slashing guitars with Han Mee’s spitfire vocals and a chorus built for festival chaos. Insubordinate Ingerland sharpens the band’s social commentary into something both furious and darkly witty, while The American Machine expands their critique globally, a stomping, neon-lit anthem dripping with sarcasm and venom.

Hell Is On Its Way and Swallow This tap into the band’s talent for crafting sugar-coated hooks over serrated riffs, each track a bitter pill wrapped in irresistible melody. Machine Elves, the first of the album’s two interludes, adds a psychedelic shimmer before Chase The Dragon plunges into industrial-tinged grit — one of the album’s standout tracks, its urgency pushed to breaking point.

90 Seconds To Midnight feels like the record’s thesis statement: frantic, ominous, and uncomfortably close to reality, while Sunburn From Your Bible skewers hypocrisy with blistering clarity. Warehouse Salvation delivers one of Hot Milk’s most anthemic choruses to date, before Sediments leads into the album’s heaviest stretch.

Asphyxiate and Payment Of Pain form a ferocious one-two punch, both tracks leaning hard into the band’s metal influences without losing their pop sensibilities. Sympathy Symphony closes the album with surprising emotional depth — a grand, crashing finale that threads vulnerability through the rage, leaving the record on a note of bruised resilience rather than despair.

Corporation P.O.P. is Hot Milk at their most explosive, ambitious, and uncompromising — a technicolour scream into the void wrapped in choruses big enough to shake the rafters. A furious, fun, and fiercely relevant highlight of 2025.

– Kalpesh Patel

Halestorm – Everest

With Everest, Halestorm deliver the most towering and emotionally charged album of their career — a relentless, white-knuckle ascent that finds the band harnessing every facet of their identity: the ferocity, the vulnerability, the theatrical swagger, and the sheer, unshakeable heart. Lzzy Hale’s voice remains a force of nature, swinging from volcanic roar to crystalline ache with an authority few in modern rock can match, while the band’s musical chemistry feels sharpened to a lethal point.

The record opens with the cathartic blaze of Fallen Star, a furious reclamation anthem that sets the emotional stakes sky-high. The title track Everest follows with a sense of scale worthy of its name — all granite riffs and sky-scraping vocals — turning the album’s central metaphor into a rallying cry for perseverance. Shiver injects a slinkier, slow-burn tension, its seductive menace coiling around Hale’s icy, controlled delivery.

Like A Woman Can stands out as one of the album’s thematic pillars, a swaggering, blues-tinged assertion of identity that feels both confrontational and celebratory. Rain Your Blood On Me plunges headlong into theatrical heaviness, thunderous and ritualistic, while Darkness Always Wins counters with a bruised, slow-building plea that grows into a full-throated howl — a reminder that Halestorm’s ballads can hit just as hard as their riffs.

Gather The Lambs is among the band’s boldest experiments yet: ominous, gothic, almost hymnal at first, before erupting into a serpentine, doom-kissed finale. By contrast, WATCH OUT! is pure adrenaline — a punk-flecked, shout-along grenade built for the live stage. Broken Doll brings vulnerability back to the fore, its fragile verses cracked at the edges before the chorus detonates in catharsis.

True to its title, K-I-L-L-I-N-G is one of the album’s fiercest moments, a razor-edged blitz where drums and guitars lock into a charging, unstoppable rhythm. I Gave You Everything strips away the armour, exposing Hale at her most raw as she pushes her voice to its emotional breaking point. And closer How Will You Remember Me? lands the final blow — a reflective, bittersweet hymn that feels like the calm at the summit, surveying everything conquered, lost, and learned on the way up.

What makes Everest one of 2025’s defining rock records isn’t just its power, but its clarity of vision. Halestorm sound utterly sure of who they are, pushing their songwriting into darker, braver, more anthemic territory without losing the primal spark that made them. This is a record meant to be felt as much as heard — a mountain built from riffs, rage, tenderness, and triumph.

– Kalpesh Patel

The post Albums Of The Year 2025 first appeared on Rockshot Magazine.

Latitude Festival 2025: A Family Festival Full Of Discovery, Delight And Just A Bit of Madness

Lauren Patel — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 22:14:57 +0000

Now we “do Glastonbury” most years, but having missed out on a ticket this year we decided to try something new, so off to the wonderful Suffolk countryside to Latitude Festival we went. I’d never been to an alternative UK festival, so was super excited to make a comparison, and see what the festival had to offer. Latitude’s reputation as a family festival I was particularly keen to exploit, given we were going as a family with our 8-year-old son. Further, there were multiple families we knew going with kids, so I knew he would have a ball with his buddies. Despite tons on offer for kids, given it falls in term time, there has never been a plethora of friends for him to hang out with at Glastonbury.

Latitude Festival 2025

Latitude Festival 2025 (Kalpesh Patel)

Latitude did not disappoint. It is relatively small and easy to navigate—a capacity of 45,000 vs. some 220,000 at that other festival—, with the ability to bump into and meet friends frequently and easily, and to hop from stage to kids field in a flash, ensuring both adults and children get plenty of time to play. Further, little legs don’t get too tired too quickly! The ‘Arena’, set either side of the beautiful Henham Park Lake, is quirky and interesting, with lots of hidden wonders in the forest areas to explore as well as provide shelter from the frequent switch between burning sun and pelting showers.

Each day started firmly in the kids field after picking up a coffee at the Fire Garden Birdbox in the Trailer Park and a quick hop past the Greenpeace area to see how long the queue was for the climbing nets (too long, again, let’s try again tomorrow!). The kids’ field, a magical place of creativity centered around the obligatory Helter Skelter (watch those elbows!), provided children with endless crafting opportunities including copper keyring making, bracelet making and painting. The building of a new Greenpeace Warrior Ship was a particular favourite, allowing even the youngest of children to, subject to grown-ups signing a disclaimer, pick up a saw, hammer and nails and help build the ship. For those wanting to avoid tools, stick jigsaw-making, stained-glass mosaic, book making and the beaten copper workshop were also on offer!

My son (and his buddies) loves bugs and beasts. What 8-year-old boy doesn’t. So he was keen to join the earthworms and soil beasts walk through the woods with the hugely engaging Dr David Jones from the Natural History Museum. David is an entomologist specialising in rainforest insects and soil ecology and has done fieldwork in many countries as well as published more than 50 research articles in scientific books and journals. What I thought would be a (potentially boring) walk in the woods looking for worms was quite the opposite, and it felt like a genuine privilege to be in such intimate company with the multi-award-winning and funny public speaker. Dr Jones captured the imaginations of both the adults and kids in the same group for an hour, and we found not only worms, but beetles, grasshoppers and even a young toad.

Across the main path opposite the kids field was a new home for the curiously entertaining Cosmic Shambles Forest of Science and Culture where wonder and entertainment intertwined between the trees, from which huge planets dangled. Alongside exhibits from Crab Museum and The Royal Museums Greenwich was the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) stand, visiting the forest from its base in Teddington, South West London. This was a stall we would go back to frequently, and one whereby many young children surrounded in droves to try and balance the 3D printed robots on top of each other. Manage to balance 4 and you get to keep one, balance 7 and you keep the set. This was a challenge that my son, and many others with any minuscule sign of a competitive streak, could not ignore. It took three days, but we got seven! The NPL staff were great for a chat whilst we failed miserably to try and remove our kids from this stall, and I gained a great tip for a band playing at the Trailer Park stage….

The Trailer Park was Latitude’s ‘South West Corner’, brimming with equivalent craziness and mischief set amongst a hamlet in the trees. A hidden après-ski nightclub complete with snow, only to be found if you sneak in the old caravan; the ‘low-cares’ airline, Ryanair had a booking office where they are doing their bit to be planet-friendly by making the flying experience as miserable as possible. Oh, and if you have knees, don’t forget to pay extra for them. The Trailer Park’s centrepiece was however, a stage which featured the most fun and mostly bonkers bands of the weekend as well as secret sets from the likes of Feeder. Whilst the kids built a fire from sticks collected from surrounding trees, we bounced to the catchy tunes of energetic duo The Foreign Locals. Oh, and at night, our favourite coffee spot came alight!

A hop across the bridge, stopping to catch the enigmatic water laser show en route, and we were back at the main Obelisk Stage to catch Basement Jaxx, Sting, Fatboy Slim, Elbow, Alison Moyet, Kaiser Chiefs, Snow Patrol and, at the nearby Second Stage, Feeder to name but a few. A fun and family-friendly line-up brimming with nostalgia. Further, the kids were occupied throughout these sets. Whoever at Latitude thought of the ‘cup collecting’ initiative is a genius. The festival was spotless, largely due to all the children being engaged in cup collecting duties, stacking metres of hauled used paper cups together to exchange back at the bar for 10p each….maximum £25 per day, ching ching!

It was only the start of Elbow’s set that failed to somewhat draw the audience. I think both Guy and the rest of us would have been rather watching the Women’s Euro 2025 final on the Obelisk stage’s big screens, with Euro champions England facing off to World champions Spain. Big screens around the festival had been drafted in for the momentous occasion, and it was pretty special to be sharing such an immense game. Well done Lionesses! Back to the festival, and it was hard to avoid a stop at the bubble tent company, where the majority of bubble wands and swords were testers, available for use as you wish with bubbles blasting out continuously for as long as the festival was open.

When the heavens opened, the perfect place to be was in the Theatre Arena, and that’s where we landed just as the skies roared one morning. However, having already performed on the Saturday, word had spread that YUCK Circus was a must-see, and the queue to get in on the Sunday morning wrapped up and back the main path. As the rain started to pour, we were the last group to get in and grab the last few seats. I wasn’t expecting what I saw, or to spend the next hour simultaneously belly laughing and cringing! An absolutely brilliant all-Australian powerhouse of female circus performers combining award-winning comedy and elite acrobatics whilst bending gender stereotypes and female social norms.

Overall, a wonderful weekend which felt easy to navigate and way less tiring than Glastonbury. It also wasn’t so small that you covered everything there was to do in a weekend. I felt we only scratched the surface, and there is plenty we want to go back for next year. Thank you Latitude!

Feature on Latitude Festival 2025 by Lauren Patel. Photography by Kalpesh Patel.

A Child’s Experience At Glastonbury 2024

The post Latitude Festival 2025: A Family Festival Full Of Discovery, Delight And Just A Bit of Madness first appeared on Rockshot Magazine.

Albums Of The Year 2024

Rockshot — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 15:53:50 +0000

Rockshot Magazine Albums Of The Year 2024

2024 has been yet another year of fabulous new music and reimaginings of music of bygone eras brought afresh for a new audience. Here is a curated list of records the Rockshot Magazine have been playing over and over throughout the year, a feast for the senses even if some have been long-gestating to be unleashed on our ears this year.

The Last Dinner Party - Prelude To Ecstasy

A record that reportedly sat in the can for a year while the label pushed to generate buzz for the London-based, female and non-binary quintet, appetites were well and truly whet when The Last Dinner Party’s debut LP – Prelude To Ecstasy – finally dropped in February. And it was well worth the wait!

A masterpiece in baroque-rock, the BBC Sound Of 2024 group’s record more than lived up to expectations. Its opening title track comes by way of a leftfield orchestral overture, heavy on the woodwind & brass. But it is with Burn Alive that the group’s now signature sound comes to the fore, Abigail Morris’ gorgeous, raw vocals supplemented with Aurora Nishevci’s ‘80s synths. Fifth single Caesar On A TV Screen follows, lush harmonies and changing tempos making you wonder just what you’re listening to as added strings lift. The Feminine Urge seems like it’s lifted wholesale from the 1970s while equally sounding fresh.

Piano lifts On Your Side before the tune’s slow-groove has you swaying along while singing along “when it’s 4am, and your heart is breaking” before Beautiful Boy brings back those record-opening flutes, gentle keyboards and lush vocal harmonies carrying the bulk of the tune before it’s rousing crescendo close.

Stirring mandolin-driven Gjuha is inspired by keyboardist Aurora Nishevci being ashamed about not knowing her mother tongue of Albanian before second single Sinner picks up the tempo once more. Piano introduces Portrait Of A Dead Girl, “I wish you had given me the courtesy of ripping out my throat” Morris croons morbidly.

Lead (and highest-charting) single Nothing Matters supplements rather than carries this record, it’s in-your-face coarse language dropped in matter-of-factly has had crowds screaming along all year before the solemn, slow-drive Mirror closes out what is truly an astonishing debut LP. Believe the hype, I for one, really can’t wait to hear what comes next.

– Kalpesh Patel

Fat Dog - Woof

The challenge for Fat Dog in 2024 was clear: How would they transfer the raucous energy of their already legendary live shows onto wax?

It gives me great pleasure to say that the band from Brixton have nailed it. Early singles and mosh pit favourites like All The Same and Wither blend with newer, less immediate but still effective tunes, bookended by outlandish spoken sections proclaiming that, ‘you cannot kill the dog!’. Indeed.

Special mention has to go to both King Of The Slugs and usual set closer Running, which serve up the greatest examples of the vitality of the live shows, blending klezmer with echoes of The Prodigy and Nine Inch Nails. Yes, it is as bonkers as it sounds, and we love them for it.

– Alex Kavanagh

Jessica Pratt – Here In The Pitch

Oh we could be in Brazil with Gilberto Gil, we could be in peak Beach Boy era 1966, we could be Homeward Bound in a Wigan railway station, we could be in the drop out scene with Mazzy Star. Jessica Pratt’s 4th LP is the perfect late night album, beautifully sparse arrangements, floating and swirling melodies that pull you into the record album. At first I thought Here In The Pitch was the saddest music but it’s amazingly hypnotically hopeful too!

– Simon Jay Price

TISM - Death to Art

Legendary costumed Melbourne pandemonium rockers TISM once described themselves as “the ergonomically designed shovel collecting the dog shit of rock”. It is a poignant image that makes it sound as though they have an endgame, trolling the music industry from within since the 1980s, (making easy work of the poor journalist that they were speaking at), only backed-up by reuniting after a twenty-year hiatus and releasing their longest album, and calling it Death to Art. However, despite a spectacular reunion, this new album, a concept record chronicling an eighty-minute drive in a hearse, provides an ever-entertaining satirical admission of defeat, as if to admit that they aren’t allowed to say what they once could, but hey, let’s pretend we just did – “let’s escape with old-school TISM… Part-catchy pop, part botulism.” During the final track, TISM’s Last Will and Testicle, they boldly repeat that “everything is shit except for TISM”. Anyone who doesn’t believe it yet will at least be intrigued enough to dive further down the fascinating rabbit hole to discover why.

– Nick Pollard

China Crisis - Greatness

Compilation or re-recording of the year for me is China Crisis’ fabulous Greatness LP. An orchestral re-recording many of the bands hits, using the original vocals in the main, the group give widescreen treatments to everything from Black Man Ray through to King In A Catholic Style while making me realise why I loved them first time round and why I was wrong to stop listening after the first album. This is a magnificent treasure of an album, showing how deft lead vocalist/keyboardist Gary Daly and guitarist/vocalist Eddie Lundon were at getting tough messages across in pop songs.

– Simon Phillips

Cartoon Darkness - Amyl And The Sniffers

2024 delivered a bumper selection of music to unwrap. From blues rock to synth-pop to jazz, there was something to grip even the most discerning music lover.

My favourite gift came wrapped in loud, unapologetic Australian pub rock, courtesy of Amyl And The Sniffers and their third studio album, Cartoon Darkness. It was an electrifying soundtrack to a year that was equal parts absurd and terrifying.

Formed in Melbourne in 2016 by housemates Amy Taylor, Bryce Wilson, Declan Mehrtens, and Calum Newton (later replaced by Gus Romer), and with two studio albums and two EPs already under their belt, they’re no strangers to accolades either. Their 2022 release, Comfort To Me, snagged Best Independent Punk Album or EP at The Australian Independent Record Awards and Best Group and Best Rock Album at the ARIA Music Awards.

Cartoon Darkness signifies an evolution in the band’s sound, but their signature raw punk energy is alive, well and more ferocious than ever. It’s an electrifying, multilayered experience that’s anything but subtle. Let’s be clear, this album is not for sensitive ears and, if you’re a parent of a small child like me, certainly not one for the family road trip. It’s gnarly, sneery, sweary rock ferocity. It doesn’t just pack a punch, it knocks you square in the face, leaving you dazed and rubbing your jaw long after the final track fades.

Beneath infectious hooks and high-octane punk lies sharp social commentary, tackling issues like personal liberation, consumerism, online trolls and the state of the world today. Standout tracks are Chewing Gum, a knotty love anthem for the modern ages with a mildly gentler tempo (by Sniffers’ standards) that sweeps you up and spits you out again. The pulsating bass of U Should Not Be Doing That will lodge in your brain, while Tiny Bikini sees dynamite singer Amy swing at body-shamers. The album closes with Me And The Girls, a fierce, anti-misogynist anthem perfectly aimed at boys glued to their Xboxes.

Listening to Cartoon Darkness makes you feel like you can take on the world; like having a bit of a scrap but an exhilarating one – and for all the right reasons.

– Nicola Greenbrook

Chuck Ragan - Love And Lore

No one like to declare an album to be an artist’s best record, and professional punk rock mountain man Chuck Ragan has produced some cracking albums over the course of his solo side project. But on Love And Lore, the occasional Hot Water Music frontman has conjured up his own inner tensions and washed them clean of their sins in a record aching with maturity and longing. If the undying hope of making one’s musical mark conveyed on All In or honky-tonk dueting on One More Shot don’t make you fall in love with Ragan, the proto-punk sketches of Wild In Our Ways surely will. But the desperation for resolution and release on Winter is what’ll make you welcome him into the open arms of your record collection. Considering his normal tours are bare-bones acoustic delights, each song an excuse to unleash That Roar which made his name, we can only speculate how phenomenally emotional his 2025 outing will be.

– Kate Allvey

Fontaines D.C. - Romance

A startling statistic that became apparent this year was there had been just 3 number one singles in the 2020’s that come from bands. One of which was The Beatles! It seems to be that social media has promoted the solo star. Easier to market and more fruitful for young people to aspire to.

Fontaines D.C. are looking to take that spot of the next big chart topping band. Releasing their debut album in April 2019, the Dublin five piece have soared, selling out two nights at Alexandra Palace this autumn and with headline shows at Finsbury Park and Newcastle’s Exhibition Park next year, there seems to be no ceiling to the Irish group.

The immediacy of their sound on their fourth album, is in no part down to their rapid ascent. They don’t like standing still. After touring their third album Skinty Fia and supporting Arctic Monkeys in America untilOctober 2023, just six months later, they released the first single from Romance, the breathless Starbuster is released. It’s an audible panic attack that is guranteed to raise the heart rate. They enlisted producer James Ford, known for his work with arena-scale bands like Arctic Monkeys, Gorillaz, and Foals for to amp up the bands sound at scale. It’s their most polished body of work, they sound self-assured. Rather than looking inwards, focusing on their own communities using working class and classical reference points, they’re looking out to the world utilising pop melodies to fill the available slot of the next big Arena band.

And a fitting frontman and vocalist they have to take them there, with Grian Chatten vocal performance, his most confident on this album, showcasing his range, his falsetto sounding delicate on Favourite.

Here’s The Thing nods to nu metal, a genre that influenced the band whilst Sundowner has a shoegaze tone of guitars. Despite the more amplified cinematic sound, there is still an air of melancholy. Whilst this may be their most accessible record, there are still references to their heritage. Horseness Is the Whatness, named after Ulysses by Irish poet James Joyce, is a beautifully warm song. You feel that they’ll never forget where they came from.

– Chris Lambert

Fabiana Palladino - Fabiana Palladino

Evoking the best of 1980s smooth synth-pop, the 36-year-old British artist’s self-titled debut LP is truly a hidden gem of 2024’s plethora of new music releases. If “long-awaited” is a label banded about too often, it really is true of Fabiana Palladino, this LP dropping some 7 years after she signed with Jai Paul’s Paul Institute label.

Sure, her pedigree is excellent – she is, after all, the daughter of bass maestro Pino Palladino (whom she enlists for this LP). But that takes nothing away from her raw talent on display across the 10 gorgeous, self-produced tracks of this LP. Synths and jangly guitars mix with slow beats and delicious harmonies throughout but especially so on I Can’t Dream Anymore. Gorgeous guitars compliment lush vocals on Give Me A Sign while pianos and funk guitars drive Stay With Me Through The Night.

The plethora of synths, synth-beats, crashes and vo-coded vocals throughout Deeper across otherwise sparse instrumentation evokes that mid-1980s feel, perhaps more than any other cut on the record.

– Kalpesh Patel

Wunderhorse - Midas

Wunderhorse was once the name applied to the solo project of Jacob Slater, former frontman of short-lived but incredibly exciting grunge punk crossover band Dead Pretties. Slater’s new band – Harry Fowler (guitar), Peter Woodin (bass) and Jamie Staples (drums) have now subsumed the Wunderhorse name. Slater might be front and centre, but Wunderhorse has become a collective.

Around 18 months ago, the band were still playing regional clubs and pubs. In May next year, they headline London’s 10,000 cap Alexandra Palace. This meteoric rise was formed on the back of excellent debut album Cub. The future rested with the eagerly anticipated follow up, Midas, which dropped in August.

The band need not have been concerned. Midas was met with near universal praise from just about anyone that heard it. Whilst Cub, with its jangling guitars, arpeggios and riffs was bathed in a certain amount of polish; Midas, under the guiding hand of former Rolling Stones producer Craig Silvey, adopted a far more stripped back, lo-fi sound. The aim was to create a record that better reflected the vibe of the live band and to this end all songs bar the album closer Aeroplane end with crashing chords, often accompanied by a wall of feedback. If cheesy fadeouts are your thing, please look elsewhere.

The opening triumvirate of Midas, Rain and Emily are proper rock tunes that pin you to the seat. Silver follows and lightens the load slightly in terms of the music, if not the lyrics:

“I’ve always known an anger, and I’ve always known a shame,
I felt it like a hunger before I knew my name.
I’m just an empty promise, with nothing much to say,
So fill me up with poison, and pour me down the drain.”

These sentiments of self-loathing are a hard listen and Slater delivers them with such apparent ease you just have to hope it’s not autobiographical. Further anguish comes in Arizona, where the lament of the loss of a child is felt:

“And I never meant to hurt you,
Or to tear you from this life.
And I’m sorry if you suffered,
When they turned out all the lights.
But you’re woven in the verses,
Of this broken lullaby.”

The album is at its most raw in July, which is essentially four minutes of guitar hum, two extremely distorted power chords and Slater repeatedly telling the listener that he’s ready to die.

So, Midas is at times a difficult listen, but it’s not all doom laden. In Superman, Slater flies like an eagle; a metaphor for showing his peers that he has capabilities they couldn’t begin to imagine. Girl is a far more upbeat tune and the album closer, Aeroplane; at close to nine minutes by far the longest track on the album, is a work of art. Drenched in laid back acoustic Americana, it could be on a different record from a different band at a different time. Then, in the second half, Fowler brings us back to where we started with an exceptional, haunting guitar solo.

Cub was an inspiring debut album. With this second record, Wunderhorse proved without doubt that they really do have the Midas touch.

– Simon Reed

Cigarettes After Sex - X’s

Texas-hailing dream-pop trio Cigarettes After Sex returned in 2024 with third LP X’s, very much a continuation of form. But, in my opinion, that’s the great thing about this record. Frontman Greg Gonzalaz’s androgynous vocals coupled with the group’s signature sparsely-instrumented slow-groove awash with breezy guitars lends to a uniquely calming sound.

Opener and title track X’s kicks off with deliciously reverberated guitars before handing off to Jacob Tomsky’s drums and Randall Miller’s bass. Tejano Blue carries on the theme, a slow groove atop of dreamy guitar riffs with in-your-face lyrics “we wanted to fuck, like all the time” Gonzalaz whispers alongside his loveletter to Cocteau Twins.

Rousing Silver Sable leads into one of the standout tracks on the LP, Hideaway. Even sparser instrumentation than before (if you can imagine) leads to a crescendoing chorus that’s hard not to croon along to. Baby Blue Movie ups the tempo before it’s wound down once more with Hot.

Moody vocals that seem to sonically soar above deliciously placed guitars, underpinned by the ever-present rhythm section sums this collection of songs up, but the sum is far more than its parts as the shimmering tunes wash over.

– Kalpesh Patel

Tymon Dogg & The Dacoits - The Granada Sessions

This album is a more than welcome comeback by Clash associate Tymon Dogg recorded in Granada with several members of Lagartija Nick. Tymon weaves his magical mix of folk and punk with added strings into a collection of songs with heavy political questions and messages, yet filled with love as well as the monumental instrumental Genghis Khan alongside songs like I Don’t Want to Be Poor and The Turning of the World that really need to be heard widely.

– Simon Phillips

Dorothy Carter - Troubadour

Re-issue of then year for me is Troubadour, Dorothy Carter’s amazing 1976 debut album. I was stunned on first listening and have played this album more than any review album in about 10 years. Reluctantly recorded in Studio B in Cambridge Massachusetts, this is an outsider folk classic, a mix of traditional folk songs and originals. Carter’s use of Hammered Dulcimer and Psalter is revelatory, especially on Visiting Song and King Of Glory.

– Simon Phillips

Jane Weaver – Love In Constant Spectacle

The sound of Jane Weaver’s 12th record is something else. What grabs me is not only her beautiful and precise vocal phrasing but the way the bass guitar interweaves (no pun intended) into carefully crafted use of electronics. The songs are ancient and modern, storytelling with a folk twinge, upbeat and lyrically magnificent modern pop songs…I imagined almost this is what would happen if Taylor Swift and Talking Heads made an album together but in a very English way of course.

– Simon Jay Price

Billie Eilish - Hit Me Hard And Soft

R&B-infused Chihiro showcases her gorgeously high vocal range, underpinned by a driving bassline and 1980s sci-fi soundtrack-evoking synths. Birds Of A Feather feels like summer washing over you and was used as such at her performance at the closing ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics as they handed over to her home city of LA, host of the 2028 games, contrasted by the acoustic guitar-driven alt-rock of Wildflower and The Greatest.

The Diner evokes the macabre, a fairground ride of a tune with Eilish’s vocals hiding behind music and effects while Bittersuite comes out blazing vintage synths before settling into a slow groove haze, haunting vocals cascading before a left-field tonal and tempo shift for the majority if the song’s back half, those opening synths returning to close it out.

Breezy Blue seems like an anticlimactic conclusion to the record, but is, in its own right, a compelling and haunting tune, a theme that seems to carry through the majority of the LP, the tune pivoting midway, simply luscious.

– Kalpesh Patel

Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She

American gothic folk and doom queen Chelsea Wolfe returned with her first studio album in five years, the impractically, cyclically-titled She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She, this time taking a dark and melancholic electronica turn. In collaboration with producer and TV on the Radio guitarist Dave Sitek, Wolfe delivered an experimental fusion of gloomy industrial rock and trip-hop, standing between Nine Inch Nails and Massive Attack. In lead single Dusk, guitars collide violently with a barely tamed ocean of static. The whispery fragility of her voice does not disappear beneath the raucous, instead standing out as somewhat raw, especially when compared to her previous albums that are heavily bathed in reverb. Despite this chaotic texture, everything sounds focused and masterfully deliberate.

– Nick Pollard

The Smile - Wall Of Eyes

Radiohead had a way of re-inventing themselves periodically throughout their 30+ year career. Having not released anything since 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool – largely made up of previous demo’s and songs performed in live sets, 2021 saw Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood teas a new group alongside Tom Skinner of British Jazz collective Sons of Kemet. They performed on the Live at Worthy Farm Concert Livestream in May of that year but it would be a full 12 months until their debut album A Light for Attracting Attention was released.

Wall of Eyes is the first of two records The Smile released in 2024. Building on their 2022 debut, the addition of luscious strings from the London Contemporary Orchestra make songs like I Quit and Friend of a Friend sound ethereal, the latter of which could have been off of Sergeant Peppers if the subject wasn’t about responses to the covid pandemic.

Both Yorke and Greenwood have always had itches to scratch. Solo albums, film soundtracks but this feels different. This is by no means a vanity project. They’ve had pretty heavy touring schedules across the last 3 years and having seen them at the Eventim Apollo back in March, there’s no big fuss over the stage production, no big communication with the crowd. They’re just musicians, exploring a new direction. There’s freedom in anonymity. liberation in stepping out of the limelight and trying new things.

The opening track, Wall of Eyes is sleek. The album as a whole is free of form yet still sounds loose. Each song has a jam-like quality as if the final arrangements may have only been finalised as the engineer pressed record. Tom Skinner on drum’s allows Thom and Jonny conjure a haunting atmosphere through Yorke’s vocals and Greenwood’s twisting and turning precision guitar licks.

Teleharmonic which debuted in Series 6 of Peaky Blinders in 2022 has been reworked and features spiralling synths. The 8 minute epic Bending Hectic detailing a car crash is a fascinating journey. The guitar possibly mimicking that of a car engine. It becomes apparent that this accident is actually a suicide attempt and at the last verse, the protagonist is possibly regretting his decision to end things this way.

The future of Radiohead is fueled by rumours – one week members confirming they had rehearsed together and seemingly weeks later, refuting any sort of reunion. Given the body of work in a relatively short space of time, it feels like this is the main focus for Yorke & Greenwood. It’s certainly something to savour. There is beauty in the unknown, and who knows what they’ll do next.

– Chris Lambert

The Black Crowes – Happiness Bastards

This isn’t just an album; it’s a statement of intent. From the vinyl packaging—basically pasting over their two biggest albums of the past The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion on the front and Shake Your Money Maker on the back, then adding the words “Happiness Bastards” in a large bold black font—the band is signalling their return to greatness. Subtlety isn’t the aim here; this is a full-throated declaration of who they are.

And it exceeds all expectations.

By the time Rich Robinson rips into his second solo on the opening track, Bedside Manners, it’s unmistakable: The Black Crowes are back. It’s been 15 long and tortuous years since any new studio music from the brothers Robinson.

Rats And Clowns sees Chris Robinson bite back, “You want some?” he screams. It’s fiery and unapologetic, a perfect setup for Cross Your Fingers, which starts as a tender acoustic number before erupting into venomous defiance with lines like, “Why’d you hope I die?” Jay Joyce’s production strips the album down to its essence, making every track feel urgent and alive.

The raw power is tempered with moments of gospel-tinged elegance, like the organ-driven Wanting And Waiting, which brims with the unrestrained joy of rock ‘n’ roll—a joy that hasn’t always been synonymous with the Crowes but is undeniable here.

Chris Robinson’s vocals remain as magnetic as ever. Wilted Rose is a standout ballad, featuring a mesmerising duet with country starlet Lainey Wilson that builds slowly into a soaring crescendo.

The album’s second half roars in with Dirty Cold Sun, a swaggering masterpiece that channels Mick Jagger’s strut and then some. Bleed It Dry drenches itself in harmonica and grit, while Flesh Wound evokes E Street Band energy with its propulsive rhythm. The slide guitar on Follow The Moon is pure, unfiltered Rich Robinson, adding a filthy charm that only the Crowes can deliver.

The closer, Kindred Friend, is a reflective, soul-soothing ballad. With lyrics like “Tomorrow owes nothing to the past,” it encapsulates the album’s ethos: embracing the future while honouring the past.

When word broke of their first album in 15 years, fans were understandably anxious. Could they meet their legacy? With Happiness Bastards, they haven’t just met it—they’ve surpassed it.

This is more than a return to form. It’s the sound of a band rediscovering and owning what made them great in the first place.

– John Hayhurst

Alkaline Trio - Blood Hair & Eyeballs

“I’m waiting to break like teenage heart in America,” wails Matt Skiba on Teenage Heart, just one of a ton of superb tracks on Alkaline Trio’s first album in six years. It’s a thoughtful record, the view of outsiders watching the world become even more unpleasant than their early lurid fantasies could have predicted, taking it all in with maturity and a raised eyebrow. Early single Bad Time bursts with bewilderment and the desire to feel a human connection in the midst of insanity, as well as one of the most pleasingly nuts Alkaline Trio lines we’ve heard in a while (“I’m being stalked by Latin Royalty and Me and Marty just ate Shrooms”), but then there’s the echoing post-punk shadows of Versions Of You to haunt your aching heart. Sure, there’s very little of the cinematic slasher gore that we’ve come to associate with the lads over the years, but they wear their maturity and nuance with such style that you won’t feel let down by the lack of shocker lyrics. All in, this is the record that proves why Alkaline Trio have achieved such enduring success over the last two plus decades.

– Kate Allvey

The post Albums Of The Year 2024 first appeared on Rockshot Magazine.

The Hillbilly Moon Explosion Have Our Love For Evermore in London

Kate Allvey — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 17:37:39 +0000

The Hillbilly Moon Explosion are one of those genre-crossing bands that magnetically attract attention wherever they go, the kind of cult band beloved by those in the know who notch up millions of streams while retaining an underground reputation. With one foot in the rockabilly scene thanks to a whole lot of bass-slapping and the other rooted in an old school punk ethos, The Hillbilly Moon Explosion’s sound is curated by Oliver Baroni and Emanuela Hutter, who share lead vocal and songwriting duties on top of playing upright bass and rhythm guitar respectively. Catching them in the middle of festival season for long enough to have a chat is a very lucky coincidence, considering how incredibly in demand they are. “I arrived [back from California] the day before yesterday. I basically had one night to do my laundry and hopped in the car and drove to London. We’re all a bit jet lagged, so you’re in for a really tedious, slaggy gig tonight…we’ll see what happens,” quips Baroni ahead of their only London show this year at New Cross Inn. They’re playing a very quick run of shows across the UK, culminating at Rebellion Festival in Blackpool, which Baroni is looking forward to. “I think it’s our third time [at Rebellion] – it’s always a lot of fun. And I’m rather thrilled to find out that the band on right before us on the Main Stage is Bad Manners! Excellent! It’s going to be great. But they’re also kind of playing at the same time. But Ruts DC, which also kind of my favourite live act, I think they’re playing at the same time as Bad Manners.” “I remember one time we played, the Peacocks were also there,” Hutter gestures to her Peacocks t-shirt. “It’s so special, but also a bit stressful sometimes. I can’t remember if the Peacocks were before us or after us, but we had to change clothes behind the curtain.” “You have to very much treat it like a commando raid. You have your stuff, you do your thing, and you have to get out again!” Baroni laughs.

Hillbilly Moon Explosion @ New Cross Inn, London 2024.08.01

While The Hillbilly Moon Explosion have a lot of fans in the rockabilly and psychobilly scenes, their success isn’t based on appealing to any narrow labels .“Our crowd has always been very mixed,” explains Baroni. “We’ve never played to a specific crowd, not ‘the psychobilly crowd’ or ‘the rockabilly crowd’ or whatever, we’ve always had a mixed crowd. When we play festivals it’s always interesting. We’ve played psychobilly festivals, we’ve played fifties rock n roll festivals, we’ve played Viva Las Vegas, we’ve done Rebellion…and we’ve played heavy metal festivals – I kid you not – in France, where we were probably the ‘joker band’. It always went down really well.” That said, their set at the annual Psychobilly Meeting in Santa Susanna, Spain was a highlight of the entire weeklong festival and Baroni’s summer. “That was absolutely fabulous. I must say I enjoyed the gig, the audience were really lovely and the whole thing has just become such a cosy, family-style event. Already at the airport I met Wes from the Quakes and Andy from Mad Sin…it’s like a class reunion, it’s really nice and comfortable so you have a beer together, and the driver doesn’t show up, so you say ‘screw it’ and take a taxi, and it’s just fun. We were taken care of very well backstage, with the best stage manager ever.” “I liked it because the Peacocks also played,” adds Hutter, “and we went up early to hang out and see the Delta Bombers. It’s kind of like a family meeting, you know?”

Hillbilly Moon Explosion @ New Cross Inn, London 2024.08.01

This year saw the release of their eleventh album, Back In Time, a release with a different flavour to the rest of their back catalogue. “I’d say there was more influence from my songwriting and by my childhood music, which was more seventies, more punk and so on, than this rockabilly thing,” Hutter shares. “With us, it’s never an artistic decision to have an album more in one direction than another,” explains her fellow songwriter. “With this album it’s the same thing. We’ve gone the route of ‘do whatever the song demands’, and if the song ends up sounding like a sixties song because that’s the way it’s written, then that’s how it goes. It’s not ‘ooh, I want to do a sixties album’. That’s why you end up with Emanuela, this Swiss-Italian lady, somehow writing a Bakersfield country song. So we totally went down that route, and kind of intentionally unintentionally made it a sixties sound.” That said, Hutter felt inspiration call from some of her heroes. “1979 is like a tribute to Debbie Harry. When I wrote that song, I wrote it on piano. I had this line in my head from a Blondie song, but with this band I couldn’t do it on piano.” “A lot of people have said, with your songs like 1979, it’s like the Go-Gos,” smiles Baroni. “There’s certainly more of that late seventies-1980-1981 punk in there.”

Hillbilly Moon Explosion @ New Cross Inn, London 2024.08.01

The first taste of Back In Time came last year in the form of lead single Knocked Down, written by Baroni. “It’s my usual happy joy-joy of disappointment and disillusionment,” he jokes. “Emanuela got the ball rolling by saying ‘we’ve got some songs, lets get rehearsing’, and this was way back in lockdown. I wasn’t really writing, but then we found a studio that we wanted to try out, so we decided to rent it for a day, just do two songs and see how it worked out. Because she had two songs ready, I thought ‘I’d better have one too’, so I kind of threw Knocked Down together. It’d been buzzing in my head for a while. We write differently: she writes all the time, I write under pressure.” Coupled with video that’s equal parts moody and hilarious, it was more than enough to get the hype building for their next album. “That’s by Chris McGee of Bopflix: he did the Jackson one, he did Depression,” he says, referring to the videos for their Johnny Cash cover and fan favourite single. “It was his idea of trying of different hats, dressing up, whatever. What you can’t see in that shot is that I’d had a bit of a disagreement, a bit of an altercation with one of these electric rental scooters…well, I fell off. I remember going home after falling off that bloody thing, and thinking I’d walk. Then the police stopped me, and started dabbing my face, and they showed me what I looked like… Ah,” Baroni pauses, remembering how he must have looked. “But we managed with sunglasses [to cover it], but half of that video I was injured.” Second single Sometimes Late At Night followed in February of this year. “It’s actually an old song. I wrote it twenty years ago. I actually wanted to record it for my solo album, but somehow it landed with the Hillbillies. That song is about children hearing their parents fighting, and at the time when we recorded it we needed more songs, so why not this one?” recalls Hutter. ”Yeah, but you were already rehearsing that one”, Baroni says, expanding her point. “We kind of had that one, so recording was pretty quick.” “But we played it very differently, with the riff.”

Hillbilly Moon Explosion @ New Cross Inn, London 2024.08.01

Back In Time takes pride of place in their set at New Cross Inn. The crowd is indeed very mixed, with a few sporting Psychobilly Meeting shirts, but united by a desire to be as close to the front of the sweaty South London venue as possible. Those at the bar crane their necks to catch sight of Hutter taking lead vocal on Sometimes Late At Night, her voice tough, lending a more garage edge to the song when we hear it live. 1979 is lighter and cheerier in performance, an ending credit soundtrack waiting for a film, peppered with a delicious guitar solo from Duncan James and bursting with an an innocence distilled by age and time. “The Californians were really good at this,” jokes Baroni as he begins a clap along, “it’s from the new album you can’t buy at the merch table!” The lack of merchandise doesn’t diminish quite how stunning The Hillbilly Moon Explosion are live, even if we can’t get a signed vinyl today. Knocked Down is even faster and more atmospheric, tempered by subtle harmonies that stir the dark waters, and finishes on a bouncing rhythm and classic rock guitar. Two girls swing each other in circles, giggling to each other at the bar.

Hillbilly Moon Explosion @ New Cross Inn, London 2024.08.01

If you’ve only heard one song by The Hillbilly Moon Explosion before, it’s probably My Love for Evermore, the duet between Hutter and legendary psychobilly frontman Mark ‘Sparky’ Phillips of Demented Are Go. Twenty five million views on YouTube plus thirteen million listens on Spotify have earned it the title of ‘that song’ when Baroni introduces it onstage. It’s ’as much your song as it is ours’, he declares. With guitarist James taking on Phillips’ part, the song feels precarious, more lonely and dangerous than the studio version we’ve heard so many times before. The collaboration between The Hillbilly Moon Explosion and Sparky culminated in 2019’s The Sparky Sessions, a full album combining Hutter’s ethereal vocal style and Phillips’ trademark growl. “I would love to do more recordings with Sparky. I would love to do four more songs,” enthuses Hutter, and at New Cross that night her brilliantly distorted vocals emerge from heartbroken mist of Queen of Hearts, elegant and shattered before being revived by James’ solo. They switch gear effortlessly live, a chant of ‘hey ho, lets go’ the only lead in to Let’s Go, lending the song an almost mystical quality , rough and repeated like an urban legend. Death By My Side projects a wildness, an untamed treasure barely held together by Hutter’s light vocal, then we’re swept into Reno’s sweetness, full of country vintage softness on the solos like well washed cotton, a heat haze mirage of memory. Depression is dark, serious but so danceable, and Baroni throws in so much so much gorgeous, galloping bass click as the melody playfully twists between highs and lows on Broken Heart. “I’m getting too old for this song,” he jokes, swapping instruments with Hutter on the bluesy, provocative Love You Better.

Hillbilly Moon Explosion @ New Cross Inn, London 2024.08.01

In the middle of their stellar originals on their records are more than a few covers, the kind of re-imaginings that make you appreciate hidden qualities in the songs we know already. There’s no big pop covers on Back In Time though. “You’ve got one or two songs that’d you’d love to cover,” Baroni says to Hutter, “there’s a Donna Summer song that’d be great. While I agree with you that they would be fabulous, I don’t want to be ‘the band that does covers’. There wasn’t a debate, there wasn’t a song that we decided against.” Their take on Blondie’s Call Me at New Cross, prompting full, confident dance moves, and it’s so much fun, a timeless and irresistible reinterpretation and reinforcement of the original. “Emanuela will sing a song by her greatest influence: that is, the late great Ronnie Spector,” grins Baroni to introduce their encore, Baby I Love You. It’s just, lovely stripped of its gloss to make something real, owing as much of a debt the Ramones as to Spector.

Hillbilly Moon Explosion @ New Cross Inn, London 2024.08.01

After Rebellion Festival is out the way, the songwriters know what’s next on their agenda. “First a vacation!” Hutter laughs. “There’a bunch of videos that are already in the can. We’re going back to the US in October…” says Baroni, before Hutter finishes his sentence. “…then we’re going to England again in February, and Spain in March.” Indeed, Baroni announces onstage that, “We will be back! I think we’re playing the 100 Club and we will have merch,” before leaving us with Maniac Lover, a perfect finish with James’ guitar building the foundation for Hutter’s otherworldly high notes. Regardless of your favourite genre, or the musical tribe you belong to, there’s room in your record collection for back in time, and room for you at The Hillbilly Moon Explosion’s next show.

Interview with The Hillbilly Moon Explosion and review of their show at New Cross Inn on 1st August 2024 by Kate Allvey, photography by Pauline Di Silvestro.

The post The Hillbilly Moon Explosion Have Our Love For Evermore in London first appeared on Rockshot Magazine.

A Child’s Experience At Glastonbury 2024

Lauren Patel — Sat, 13 Jul 2024 20:15:17 +0000

Only 7 years old, but already our son considers himself a Glastonbury Festival veteran! It’s his 5th visit to the wonderful festival, 5 and a half if you count when I was 6 months pregnant. He’s missed only the fallow and covid years in his lifetime and is in ours and his view, one of the luckiest little boys alive. Now I know not all will agree with this, I am aware that bringing kids to Glastonbury divides opinion, but most that critique ‘dragging your kids to a festival’ have not been or are not aware of what a magical world the Glastonbury Festival is for them.

Glastonbury Festival 2024

Glastonbury Festival 2024 (Kalpesh Patel)

We arrive on Wednesday, and after setting up our tent we head in the heat and glorious sunshine into the main site. The first day before the festival starts proper on Friday is what we have come to call ‘crafts day’. It’s a chance to try our hand at new skills in the Kidz Field; Green Kids or in Green Crafts areas. Over the years we’ve made stick men wind chimes; mosaics; glass ornaments; hats; and more. This year, we had a go at pottery, making small pots that would then dry out in the sun and which we could then swing by and collect later in the festival. No festival with kids is complete without parents wondering how they are going to get the driftwood ornament decorated with seaweed and shells safely home.

There is also the wondrous Carhenge to check out over at the Williams Green area, a Stonehenge inspired construction made of old cars that sit alongside a bar and DJ desk in place of the old Williams Green tent stage where many a secret set used to take place on a Thursday following a traditional power ballad DJ set.

I have little guilt about taking our son out of school for a few days, what he gets from the festival far outweighs what he would miss out on during a couple of days at school at this stage of his education. The festival is not just a feast for the senses of little people, it’s educational and creative at every turn. And that is very much the thought as we forgo our usual Wednesday night bonfire and fireworks experience up at The Park and instead go to check out the newly announced drone show taking place above the Pyramid Field.

When the Kidz Field opened on Thursday we were there, our son eagerly awaiting as the gates opened at 12pm (9am on subsequent days). The Kidz Field is like being in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, there is colour and craziness everywhere. Each year as our son gets a year older, there are different attractions he gravitates to. This year at 7, it was the bikes that control the bubble machine that he arrived at first, and which he would return over and over. The faster he pedalled; the more bubbles came….

But it was the Experimakers tent that he firmly and quite literally glued himself to all weekend. Here it was all about science. He made water rockets, which were then fired into the air with a bicycle pump, gaining extra cackles if it hits a grown up on the way back down! Next came out the bicarbonate of soda, which when mixed with vinegar has some exploding effects. The favourite however was the classic Coke and Mentos experiment, which, using the Experimakers special funnel, caused coke to explode in dramatic fashion at whoever happened to be standing in its way. More cackles from the excited children would ensue. But don’t worry about being followed by the wasps if you get covered in coke, it’s diet apparently!

Talking of wasps, the children across the Kidz Field are meanwhile captivated by a lovely woman and her assistant dressed head to toe as those pesky little insects. They are singing a song about the benefits of wasps, and why they shouldn’t be feared.

Elsewhere, children are running excitedly around the bright pink castle, the kidz field anchor and a maze of tunnels, slides and giant monkey puppet which the children can operate to make it dance. It’s easy to lose your child in there, at one point losing mine for half an hour just as I was hoping to hop to watch Michael Kiwanuka over on the Pyramid Stage. He promises he wasn’t hiding but I’m not so sure!

Michael Kiwanuka @ Glastonbury Festival 2024

Michael Kiwanuka @ Glastonbury Festival 2024 (Kalpesh Patel)

When half of the festival goers are just making it to bed, the other half are up and ready to go, and the Pilton Palais cinema helpfully lays on kids movies in the mornings to suit. This year, firmly on our line-up was the premier of Despicable Me 4, an opportunity for a sneak preview ahead of its general release later in July. And it didn’t disappoint!

When it comes to food, you don’t go to Glastonbury expecting to achieve your five a day. But there are increasingly plenty of healthy and child friendly options available, even for the fussiest of children (like ours!). The Kidz Field itself has a cafe which specifically caters for young tastes and portions, the chilli and curries are particularly popular and a tad cheaper than food options found elsewhere in the festival site. There are also smoothie and fruit stalls dotted around which allow at least a small intake of vitamins during the extended weekend. It was, however, Fish Finger Heaven that was our son’s firm favourite this year. The ‘Tiddler’ comprised a yummy fish finger sandwich and a generous tub of baked beans, perfect for the 7-year-old that only does beige. For grown-ups, the Fat Belly Cafe at Croissant Neuf, serving high quality home cooked food and salads is a firm favourite if you’ve had enough of burgers and pizzas.

Glastonbury Festival 2024

Glastonbury Festival 2024 (Kalpesh Patel)

While some of the smaller stages do start the music on Thursday, it is on Friday that the music kicks off proper, and there’s nothing we’re desperate to see, so we drive our trusty wooden wagon north. There used to be a more limited draw for children in this part of the site, but in recent years with the introduction of the Glastonbury On Sea pier a few years back, this has changed. Further, as well as the new dragonfly (or is a grasshopper!) at Arcadia this year, next to this is the new Alchemists Playground. This wonderful new space you might expect in a more relaxed Scandinavia than in the UK with our more stringent health & safety laws. Help yourselves to some wood, nails and a hammer and feel free to use these to help build the playground. Only if you are 4 or older though and do watch out for splinters! This approach delighted both my son and I and we equally enjoyed helping build. We also made a stool, but unfortunately despite an attempt to add this to all the wondrous objects being pulled along in our wagon, it was just too big and we had to say goodbye. There were tears….

With stunning views across the temporary city that is Glastonbury, the Pier stands atop the site and allows you to escape briefly from farm to seaside. Here traditional British seaside attractions are plenty, with Hook A Duck being our son’s obsession last year. As we arrive, we are instantly recognised by the guys that run it…”it’s YOU again” and they giggle. This year, much to my surprise after 3 failed attempts to hook the right number duck, my son allows us to move on. Instead, this year he is more captivated by the German artist Kugler’s awesome robot punk band.

There is art and play a plenty for children, but we must not forget the music. The main stage in the Kidz Field welcomed CBBC’s Andy And The Odd Socks again this year amongst others, and the field also had a music tent filled with drum sets; keyboards; and guitars for kids to try their hand themselves. Thankfully there was headphones! Whilst being on the main stages in crowds with kids can be a challenge, the illuminating Xylobands, lasers and fireworks alongside Coldplay’s vibrant set had our son captivated.

The Kidz Field is also a place for both kids and adults to try their hand at a variety of circus skills. Our son can now hula hoop for hours and can walk on stilts. Mastering juggling is for next year!

Close by, the Theatre & Circus field with it’s legendary big blue top tent hosts incredible circus acts from across the country. Each doing a short show that helpfully keeps small people’s attention, there are a variety of jaw dropping and hair-raising artists that defy gravity and dice with things thought humanly impossible. Circus Funtasia is a regular at Glastonbury and one that our son eagerly awaited this year. He yelped as they bought out the finale, a giant hamster like ball within which five stunt bikers would race around with roaring noise and speed and somehow manage to avoid each other. Bonkers.

At a mile and a half across, the walk across Glastonbury with children can take time, and be tiring especially if you are pulling a cart. However, centrally located and a place to take that much needed rest is the Green Kids area, located next to the Greenpeace Stage. This is a relatively small area set around Cadmus, a 40-ft pirate ship for kids to climb up and slide down for hours on end. It’s a place where the grown ups can sit down and take a rest, but still keep their children in sight the whole time. For this reason, Green Kids has over the years been a real saviour and a favourite place for us. They even have kid-sized toilets if your child has a fear of the long drops! A great alternative to the Kidz Field, and for families only, it is also lined with craft tents and even includes a library.

Glastonbury Festival 2023

Glastonbury Festival 2023 (Kalpesh Patel)

The most anticipated set of our weekend was the breakfast slot on the Acoustic Stage on Sunday morning. Our son met the up-and-coming blues guitarist Toby Lee when Rockshot Magazine interviewed him at the Gibson Garage a few months prior, and Toby became his role model that day advising Kamran that he had started playing guitar at our son’s present age. When Toby was announced to play Glastonbury, our son firmly etched this set in his line-up! He made sure we were there on time before 11am, and quickly found his way to the barrier. It was lovely to see him enjoying his new idol and Toby, who is currently touring with Jools Holland, has a big career ahead.

Overall, another wonderful family experience and a double thumbs up from our son at the end to try for tickets next year.

Feature on bringing children to Glastonbury Festival 2024 by Lauren Patel. Photography by Kalpesh Patel.

Taking Children To Glastonbury Festival – Looking Back At 2023

The post A Child’s Experience At Glastonbury 2024 first appeared on Rockshot Magazine.