Better late than never

 By Henry Lipput

I had planned to write and post this look at a long lost EP from the late 1980s and a Strummer cover you really should hear at the end of last year. But unexpected hours and responsibilities at my part-time job and two bouts of the flu (one at Christmas and the other right after the New Year which involved three days of fever) pushed it further than I had hoped. Better late than never, right?

Nadine, Jim's Twenty-one (Harriet Records)

Three young men from Ireland, Scotland, and England met in Brussels in 1985 and formed a band. Bringing the DNA of the C86 bands at the time with them, Sean Costello, Andrew Delaney, and Kenny Maxwell recorded and self-released Throwaway Friend, a four-song EP. 

The new collection Nadine is a snapshot of a time and a sound that has reverberated across the years with bands like Close Lobsters and The Jack Rubies back again and making new music. Nadine is important because it contains not only the EP but another eight songs recorded at the same time (but only recently discovered) and five live songs from a Brussel gig in 1987.

"God's Gonna Cut You Down"/"Get Down Moses," BEAUTY IN CHAOS (Bandcamp)

"God's Gonna Cut You Down," a traditional Gospel hymn, is a cover of Johnny Cash track and the BEAUTY IN CHAOS version contains all of the fire and brimstone a vengeful god could unleash. 

"Get Down Moses" is a cover of a Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros track from the band's Streetcore album. The BEAUTY IN CHAOS version ot the song is joyful and shambolic, not far from the original, and a very different feel than "God's Gonna Cut You Down" and so a perfect counterweight. 

The joyful vibe of BEAUTY IN CHAOS's "Get Down Moses" is evident on their recording but it's even more so on the video. 

Over vs. Under

By Henry Lipput

If the classic song “Over The Rainbow” is about the dream of a better future then what does “Under The Rainbow,” the new single from Shapes Like People, mean? The first song is a fantasy that doesn’t exist of a wonderful life with little work needed to achieve one’s goals. “Under The Rainbow" is, on the other hand, the good life that you and your loved ones make for yourselves, using what you have, “knocking up a feast from scraps you’ve grown/using all the things you have around.”

“Under The Rainbow” is the second single (and also the title track) in advance of next year’s Shapes Like People album and a follow-up to this year’s Ticking Haze. Described by the band’s Kat and Carl Mann as a “hopelessly addictive slice of jangly indie pop” there’s also a strong bass line and strummed acoustic guitar building a foundation.

New Singles From The Legal Matters and The Jack Rubies

By Henry Lipput

2026 is already starting to look like a good year for music. Both The Legal Matters and The Jack Rubies have both released singles for albums coming out early next year by Big Stir Records.

“Everybody Knows” – The Legal Matters

Next year it will be six years since Chapter Three, the last album by Michigan’s The Legal Matters, came out in 2021. I became a big fan with their brilliant second album Conrad (2016) and so it came as great news that Lost At Sea will be available early next year.

The new single, “Everybody Knows,” is the kind of wonderful pop for which The Legal Matters is known. The core band is made up of Keith Klingensmith, Andy Reed, and Chris Richards. Richards is lead vocalist on the new single and all three take turns in the spotlight. The trio also provides the soaring harmonies that lift the songs to Fab heights.

"Greedy" -- The Jack Rubies

“Greedy” is the second single and the lead-off track from Visions In The Bowling Alley (out on January 2026), the new album from The Jack Rubies. These post-punk and C86 veterans’ comeback album Clocks Are Out Of Time was a Pure Pop fav last year. 

With “Greedy” The Jack Rubies continue to mine the vein of what our (insert your own adjective) world has become. Following the single “Are We Being Recorded?”, a look at the surveillance state, the new song asks the musical question “When is it ever enough” and responds to the many -illionaires that are made each day: “What you have you do not need.”

All of this might sound more than a bit overbearing and scholarly but you don’t have to worry – because it rocks!

With their third single Tulpa is trying to get in your head

By Henry Lipput

Is someone said to you "You're so sad and I don't know why" a number of times would you start to wonder if you really were sad? Or is someone just trying to mess with your head?

On the dreamy, hypnotic  "PSYOPs," Tulup's third single before the release of their terrific debut album Monster of the Week (Skep Wax Records) on Friday, singer Josie Kirk repeats these words in the song. If it wasn't for her gentle vocal the song would be extremely menacing. (Just imagine these lyrics being sung by Lou Reed -- never mind I've already done it and I might not be able to sleep for the rest of the week.)

There's also another mantra-like phrase "You're in love and I don't know why" repeated but at the end of the song Kirk sings "Feel so sad and I don't know why." Has she been projecting the whole time?

Enjoy the video:

Split single, two A sides from Assistant and Goodbye Wudaokou

By Henry Lipput

 Assistant’s Certain Memories and Goodbye Wudaokou’s Anything Of Us have been two of the most well-received albums of 2025. So it’s not surprising these Subjangle label mates and supporters of each other’s music have decided to combine their talents to each release a brand-new song as part of a (very) limited edition vinyl split single (30 copies total!!) on Bandcamp.

Not many do bittersweet better than Assistant and on their newest song “Flowers” the lyrics of a lost relationship are set against a pop tune.  “When we meet should we choose somewhere neutral/It won’t be fruitful if the memories are brutal/And will we hug or just there, awkwardly?” 

Unlike the Assistant song which imagines an eventual meeting of lovers, the Goodbye Wudaokou track “Sky Lantern” has no such thoughts and makes clear the two sides of the same coin these bands share. The Bandcamp page describes the song as “Intimate, mournful” and I  couldn’t say it better myself. “You only exist in the memory of a kiss/You only exist in the sun-whitened photographs/The ones I still cannot bear to see.”

Big Stir Records doubles down on the scary

By Henry Lipput

 “Are we being recorded?”

Last year the UK’s The Jack Rubies released two songs that fit perfectly with the Halloween spirt we’re celebrating right now. But both “Poltergeist” and “Phantom” were also metaphors for a relationship on the skids.

The band’s latest release, the great sounding “Are We Being Recorded?” (Big Stir Records) is even scarier because it deals with a real threat to more than just a couple of kids on the outs. The surveillance state is tracking our every move and there’s a real menace from hackers trying to get into our phones and computers.  Even the algorithms attached to the streaming services we use to watch our favorite programs and listen to our favorite tunes gather information in order to suggest what we should do next.

“You’re in my home sniffing ‘round/What have you found? Mr. Smith and Jones/Not your real names of course” sings the band’s Ian Smith (if that’s his real name). They go on to demand his real location but they already know and will delete his social media accounts.

Sounds like more trick than treat.

Chilling, Thrilling Hooks and Haunted Harmonies 

Did someone mention “Phantom?”

Chilling, Thrilling Hooks and Haunted Harmonies (Big Stir Records), is a frighteningly terrific new collection of Halloween-related tunes (including a spooky remix of "Phantom") interspersed with spoken-word horror stories presented as if Wolfman Jack was really a werewolf. The collection is a perfect accompaniment for your yearly candy and apple haunted house giveaways or your monthly neighborhood séance. (The collection is available on CD, digital, and a deluxe double LP in a gatefold package that unfolds to reveal a playable board game board.)

Speaking of hooks and harmonies, this Big Stir collection contains 21 tracks from the label’s artists. I could list my favorites but I'll just let the members of The Armoires tell you all about it.

You Needmores? We got mores!

By Henry Lipput

This is rocknroll. It’s a four-piece from Michigan playing both kinds of love songs within an inch of their lives.

SideXSide, the new EP by The Needmores (Lenny Grassa on vocals and guitar, Jason Neckrock on guitar, Jason Bowes on bass, and Eric Klisz on drums) is the follow-up to the debut single “Lookin’” that they gifted to us earlier this year.

And like the best rock and roll there’s both joy and heartbreak. The title song hits the ground running and the joy is non-stop: “Side by side/Anytime with you is fine/When you’re zoomin’ round the room/Singin’ that fine tune/Not sure what you sing/But it shoots me to the moon.”

The coin flips for impending heartbreak on “Let It Ride:” ” Three times you left me waitin’/Two times you stood me up/I’m here anticipating time in the sun/Gonna make it happen/It’s gonna take some time/Then I’m gonna let it ride.” (He thinks he's going to be fine when he breaks up with her but it doesn't really work that way.)

Maia Sharp is a tomboy (and many other things)

By Henry Lipput

Maia Sharp is a tomboy.

But Maia Sharp is also a singer; songwriter; guitarist; producer; sax player; percussionist; and player of keyboards, synths, and Mellotron. And she brings all of these talents to bear (along with friends who join her as co-writers, singers, and musicians) on her new album TOMBOY (maiasharp.com/shop).

“Tomboy,” the first track on the album and the leadoff single, is Sharp’s look back on her early years when what she wore to a party was noticed by others: "I'm the only one here not wearing a dress/They're all Audrey and Grace, I'm doing my best." Upon seeing Sharp "mowing the meridian in my t-shirt tan" a neighbor told Sharp's mother "what a nice young man." As she grew up and become more comfortable with herself Sharp has come to terms with all of this: "Tomboy/Not really this or that/Somewhere in the middle of it/Tomboy/Is it still just a phase when she stays a tomboy."

Some of the thoughts in "Tomboy" have filtered down into the love songs that follow especially the idea "not really this or that/somewhere in the middle of it." These songs provide shifting perspectives on love. For instance in the sad but lovely “A Fool In Love Again,” Sharp sings “I’d drop everything if I knew where and when/I could be a fool in love again/I’d be swept away in my reverie/Every word poetry, every note a symphony.”  

And although the equally lovely “Is That What Loves Does” is slotted earlier in the album’s track listing for me it’s very much the next chapter in the album’s story as it relays the dawning of how a new love makes one feel: “Same house, same street, same skin, same town/Same troubled world spinning around/But nothing’s like it was/Is that what loves does?” Sharp’s vocal is hesitant as if she’s afraid to even acknowledge what’s going on.

But in "Any Other Way" it seems Sharp is still not taking a side one way or another: "And if I find all the answers/It won't matter who's to blame/I'll just roll into forever/Knowing I'll never be the same." 

Which leads directly to the last track on the album, a beautiful, heart-felt cover of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."

Pop bliss

By Henry Lipput

Consequences + Detours (Big Stir Records) is the poptastic second album from the Michigan-based Crossword Smiles. And you would expect nothing less from Chip Saam (late of the much-loved and missed band The Hangabouts) and Tom Curliss (of Tom Curliss and The 46% -- of which Saam is a member).

The album kicks off with “Counting By Fives” and “Fall All Over Myself” a pair of pop rock gems. You can just imagine how cool it would be to hear these songs done live (as far as I know Crossword Smiles has only performed twice at the release concerts for their debut album and the new one).

Consequences + Detours is full of the kind of pop bliss and clever lyrics that aren’t often found together but this album has them in spades. For example, “Millicent” (one of my favorite songs on the album) is chock full of clever lyrics that are used to fully tell a story: “You bought a ticket on a plane/I’ll see you when you’re back from Spain/We can start a brand new deal/I don’t know where you went/but the money’s all spent/To what extent is it real?” The song also has a terrific arrangement with both mandolin and accordion up front in the mix.

For me, “Millicent” is in many ways a sequel to “Taking You To Leave Me” from The Hangabouts’ Kits & Cats and Saxon Wives album, a song about airports and leaving on a jet plane. 

“Navigator Heart” was co-written with Greg Addington (also of The Hangabouts and now recording as Suburban Hi Fi) and the vocals have an early Posies feel (before they went all grunge). “Looking for you/With my navigator heart/Still got a map/But I don’t know where to start.” Another favorite is “Girls Club” one of the many story songs on Consequences + Detours that recall the lyrical work of Ray Davies and Paul McCartney.

“Kismet” is a gorgeous straight-on love song about infatuation at first kiss and is the kind of pop classic written in the ‘60s. The essence of the song compares the feeling of a new love to the feeling that it was meant to be. “I know you go by something different/but for now I call you Kismet.”

“stay close by,” the first single from Tamar Berk’s new album ocd, is reviewed and there’s a video too

By Henry Lipput

ocd is Tamar Berk’s fifth album in five years and like her other four albums this one is self-released. It's out on September 5^th and available to preorder here.

According to Berk, the new album feels like her most personal and intense yet. “It’s raw, loud, messy, sometimes funny, sometimes devastating – just like my mind," she has said. “I called it ocd because I live in loops and overthink everything, but writing these songs helped me make a little sense out of that.”

The first single, and the first track on the album, “stay close by,” explores the idea of all the things we say we’ll do, things we think about but never quite get around to. And for me the fuzz that permeates its sound reflects the inability to move on, to even, as she sings in the song, do the most basic things like “get high” or “go for a ride.”  Lyrically and sonically the song gives on the feeling of being overcome by one’s world. "Stay close," she's singing, as she implores a friend to help her through difficult times.

The video gives an answer of sorts as it's the being out in the world and listening and playing music that gives her the ability to go on. And isn't it music that helps us to get through the fuzz and the brain clouds and helps us to go on? 

New Single and Video From Scotland's The Cords

 By Henry Lipput

Unless my ears have betrayed me "The Fabulist," the new single by the excellent indie pop band The Cords, is just as good as the hype.

The Cords are from Scotland and comprised of sisters Eva (guitars) and Grace (drums) Tedeschi. After releasing a cassette and a flexi-disc their self-titled debut album will be out on September 26th as a co-release from Skep Wax in the UK and Europe and Slumberland Records in America.

"The Fabulist" is the album's lead-off track and its first single. The band's take-no prisoners sound and the lyric's take-no-crap from boyfriends recalls the '90s work of Juliana Hatfield with Blake Babies and her solo work (especially Sunburn and Hey Babe). 

And there's a video!!

Two from Tapete Records

By Henry Lipput

The latest solo album by Robert Forster and the debut album by  Britain's returning, reunited The Loft are recent releases from Germany’s Tapete Records that have caught my ears.

Robert Forster, Strawberries

As a member of the great band The Go-Betweens as well as his solo work Robert Forster has been known for his story songs. His “Born To A Family” on 2004’s Oceans Apart, the final Go-Betweens album, is a perfect example.  His albums since then have also included “Life Has Turned A Page” from 2019’s Inferno and “When I Was A Young Man” on 2023’s The Candle And The Flame.

On his new album Strawberries, “Tell It Back To Me” is a tale about two very different people getting together and over the years finding it difficult to continue to be a couple. “Breakfast On The Train” is unique in that it begins with an ending and then circles back with a story about a chance meeting at a rugby game when he remembers her from school and a night of love making that causes a family in the hotel room next door to complain about the noise. It’s a lovely, melancholy song and one of Forster’s best.  

The title song, “Strawberries," is a delightful duet between Forster and his wife and musical partner Karin Baumler especially because before the recording of the album The Candle And The Flame she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Although he was able to quickly record that album the result was a collection of songs that were literate and heartfelt with an underlying feeling of sadness throughout. So it’s wonderful to hear them have fun singing about a suddenly empty bowl of fruit while recognizing “it took time to recover/from the edge of the night.”

“Diamonds” is a departure in the sort of arrangement Forster has set for his songs with a free jazz interlude and shouted lyrics. Beginning with a riff that recalls “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield, he sings “She put diamonds in my eyes/Changed the way I saw life.” What follows could be seen and heard as a strong declaration of his love or a cry of despair for the loss of that love. The sax follows a similar route with a lovely melody that turns into an angry, confused blast.

The Loft, Everything Changes Everything Stays The Same

For a band on the fabled Creation Records label in the 1980s that broke up in the middle of a song during a concert, The Loft has been very busy recently. After performing at the Glas-Goes Pop Festival last year they were invited to record a BBC session for the Riley & Coe show (released on vinyl by Precious Recordings of London who also put out a single with “Dr. Clarke” and “Got A Job,” a non-album B-side).

Now the original band members Peter Astor (guitar and vocals). Andy Strickland (guitar), Bill Prince (bass), and Dave Morgan (drums) have reunited and recorded their debut album Everything Changes Everything Stays The Same. “The Loft has always been just the four of us,” said Strickland, “and it’s a real thrill to be writing and recording and playing across the UK with the band again.”

You can hear this renewed focus on playing together on each of the songs on the new album.  The band has a clean, crisp sound that recalls four-piece bands in the mid-Sixties as well as the Britpop sounds of the 90s.

Despite being upbeat, the protagonist of the opening track “Feel Good Now” can’t wait for that feeling so just wants to start drinking now. A similar disconnect between the lyrics and the playing is on “Killer” with its dark message but a lovely guitar solo.

The mid-Sixties sound is most evident on “Dr. Clarke” with a lyric and guitar that recalls another song about another physician on a certain Revolver album.

The beautiful “Greensward Days” has the looking-back feel of a Ray Davies song from The Village Green Preservation Society or the opening songs of Preservation Act 1.

Poetry and Pop

By Henry Lipput

Being a writer can be a lonely business. Whether you sit at a desk in a fancy side room in a house or with a pad on your lap in a garret, you’re by yourself as you work to find the right words.

Brian Bilston may have started out in one of those situations but he’s now one of the most popular poets in England with half a million followers on social media, a bunch of best-selling books, and sold-out live shows.

But for all his success he’s never fronted a pop band. Until now. Word reached Rob Pursey and Amelia Fletcher of The Catenary Wires band (who also run the Skep Wax label) that Bilston had been seen wearing a Heavenly (also a Skep Wax band) T- shirt and they got in touch.

The result is Sounds Made By Humans (Skep Wax), a unique collaboration between the poet’s own voice and the pop sounds of a band to produce an album of “song-poems.” Pursey selected thirteen of Bilston’s poems and created melodies and arrangements.

Some of the songs are performed by The Catenary Wires, sung by Pursey or Fletcher and joined by Ian Button and Fay Hallam of the band.

Some of the tracks are spoken by Bilston.

And sometimes both things happen together and become songs by humans in perfect alignment, poetry and pop in a perfect collaboration.