Pixies – The Night the Zombies Came (Crystal Clear & Smoky Red Vinyl LP)
Tears For Fears – Songs For A Nervous Planet (Limited Cocoa Cream Double Vinyl LP)
Amyl And The Sniffers – Cartoon Darkness (Bittersweet Moondance Edition Vinyl LP)
Laura Marling – Patterns in Repeat (Cream Vinyl LP)
Underworld – Strawberry Hotel
Jerry Cantrell – I Want Blood (Opaque Red Double Vinyl LP)
Pixies – The Night the Zombies Came
‘The Night The Zombies Came is Pixies’ tenth album, if you count their classic 1987 4AD mini LP Come On Pilgrim, and first new music since 2022’s acclaimed Doggerel LP. 13 new songs that find Pixies looking ahead to the most cinematic record of their career.
Songwriter, vocalist and guitarist Black Francis explains:
“Fragments that are related and juxtaposed with other fragments in other songs. And in a collection of songs in a so-called LP, you end up making a kind of movie.”
Druidism, apocalyptic shopping malls, mediaeval themed restaurants, 12th century poetic form, surf rock, gargoyles, bog people, and the distinctive dry drum sound of 1970s era Fleetwood Mac are just some of the disparate wonders that inform the new songs.
For the new album recording sessions the band returned to work with producer Tom Dalgety, who drummer David Lovering refers to as “a fifth Pixie” after producing 2016’s Head Carrier, 2019’s Beneath the Eyrie and 2022’s Doggerel. Early on in the recording process at Guilford Sound studio in Vermont, the band noticed the new songs were dividing into two camps: what they came to call the “Dust Bowl Songs” – country-tinged, ballad-esque numbers such as ‘Primrose’ and ‘Mercy Me’, and on the other side, the album’s furious punk numbers such as ‘You’re So Impatient’ and ‘Oyster Beds’. Only ‘Jane (The Night the Zombies Came)’ keeps its feet in both camps — reminiscent of early 60s Phil Spector, the band hitting the sweet spot between mushy and abrasive, it’s a track that Black Francis allegedly likened to being chased by a swarm of bees.
The Night The Zombies Came sessions also saw Pixies welcoming new bass player Emma Richardson (Band Of Skulls) to the line up; the first British band member to join the group. There’s also an expanded role for guitarist Joey Santiago. After contributing his first-ever Pixies lyrics on Doggerel, for the new record Santiago wrote the words to ‘Hypnotised’ by completing a complex lyrical riddle of sorts, known as a sestina.
Tears For Fears – Tears For Fears – Songs For A Nervous Planet
The new album from Tears For Fears, Songs For A Nervous Planet, features four new studio tracks plus live recordings of Tears For Fears on tour and at their best. The album features live performances of hit songs like “Shout”, “Head Over Heels”, “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”, “Mad World” & more. Spanning all eras of the band from The Hurting to The Tipping Point and beyond, this record takes you on the incomparable sonic journey that is a Tears For Fears live show and their career to date.
Amyl And The Sniffers – Cartoon Darkness
In the eight years since Amyl and The Sniffers came together in Melbourne’s sticky pub-rock scene, Amyl and the Sniffers have become masters of balancing power and playfulness. With two critically acclaimed albums under their belt – 2019’s self-titled debut and 2021’s visceral ‘Comfort To Me’ – vocalist Amy Taylor, guitarist Declan Mehrtens, bassist Gus Romer and drummer Bryce Wilson have achieved something unique and remarkable.
Since the release of Comfort to Me, the band has seen their horizons broaden exponentially in every way. And it’s this attitude – bigger, brighter, smarter, sharper – that’s fuelling their third album, ‘Cartoon Darkness’. Recorded with producer Nick Launay at Foo Fighters’ 606 Studios in Los Angeles, on the same desk that captured Nirvana’s Nevermind and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, the latest Amyl offering is full of surprises. Musically, Mehrtens, Romer and Wilson have written The Sniffers’ most diverse album yet. It stretches from classic punk to the glammy strut of recent single ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’ to the stormy balladry of ‘Big Dreams’ (which is a sonic gear shift worthy of the title).
Cartoon Darkness is about climate crisis, war, AI, tip-toeing on the eggshells of politics, and people feeling like they’re helping by having a voice online when we’re all just feeding the data beast of Big Tech, our modern day god. It’s about the fact that our generation is spoon-fed information. We look like adults, but we’re children forever cocooned in a shell. We’re all passively gulping up distractions that don’t even cause pleasure, sensation or joy, they just cause numbness.
Everything is such hard work, everything is heartbreaking, but everything is beautiful. I want to celebrate. I want to put my phone down and see someone’s facial expression change with what they say. I want to people-watch. I want to see if there are bugs where I walk, but I don’t see them. I also want the fantasy and the escapism. I want to lean into hedonism, I want to feel alive, while acknowledging the dystopia and chaos unfolding around me.
Cartoon Darkness is driving head first into the unknown, into this looming sketch of the future that feels terrible, but doesn’t even exist yet. A childlike darkness. I don’t want to meet the devil half-way and mourn what we have right now. The future is cartoon, the prescription is dark, but it’s novelty. It’s just a joke. It’s fun.
Laura Marling – Patterns in Repeat
Grammy nominated Laura Marling is back with her eighth studio album, Patterns in Repeat. Now eight albums and 15 years into her career as one of the most acclaimed, prolific and respected songwriters of her generation (Grammy and Mercury Nominated and Brit award winning). Patterns in Repeat was written following the birth of her daughter in 2023, and finds Laura reflecting on her motherhood experience as well as more broadly diving deeper into her reckoning with the ideas and behaviours we pass down through family over generations.
Underworld – Strawberry Hotel
Welcome to Strawberry Hotel.
Here, gleaming tensile techno forms clean, straight lines while scratchy acoustic guitars scuff up edges to produce ghostly audio. Poetry is snatched from the overhead, removed from the overheard; words borrowed from the ether are spun into dizzying new shapes, sometimes reappearing in new settings, twisted back to front, side to side.
Each track a very different room – some soundtracked by little more than metronomic kick drum and robotic voice, others deep in layer upon layer of melody and euphoric noise – and each room unmistakably, uniquely Underworld. The only advice from Underworld’s Rick Smith and Karl Hyde upon entering: “Please don’t shuffle.”
Strawberry Hotel features the singles and the colour red and denver luna, as well as new release Black Poppies – a celestial love song, a hymn to the universe and to boundless, positive change. Ambient and beatless, Black Poppies is a celebration of full dancefloors and the beauty of life itself.
Jerry Cantrell – I Want Blood
I Want Blood is the new solo album from Alice In Chains guitarist and vocalist Jerry Cantrell. Co-produced by Joe Barresi (Tool, Queens of the Stone Age), the album has an energy that rivals any of Cantrell’s previous work – powerful, nuanced, and electric. It features Duff McKagan (GUNS N’ ROSES), Robert Trujillo (METALLICA), Gil Sharone (TEAM SLEEP, STOLEN BABIES), Mike Bordin (FAITH NO MORE) and backing vocals
from Lola Colette and Greg Puciato (BETTER LOVERS, ex-THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN). Available on CD, 2LP and Limited Edition red vinyl 2LP. Vinyl editions include 9 bonus spoken word tracks exclusive to vinyl.
