It’s been a while… but I thought it about time to throw up / down / about some of those new sounds I’ve been loving lately in between binging on classic Springsteen (I mean The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle has got to have finest Side B out there).

Explosions In The Sky – Ten Billion People

PHEW! After announcing ‘The End Tour’ and pulling all other content from their social feeds back in April, Explosions In The Sky triggered months of speculation as to whether such a name referred to the band calling it a day or a new album. It’s the latter, thankfully, and its announcement came with the release of their first new non-soundtrack music in seven years, ‘Ten Billion People’.

Slowdive – Skin In The Game

You wait years for a favourite band to announce a new album and then two come along at once. Slowdive announced their upcoming new Everything Is Alive back in June with new single ‘Kisses’ and have now dropped ‘Skin In The Game’ too as… well, I guess they’re not really pre-release ‘singles’ anymore just ‘tracks’ which seems somewhat cack but this a gorgeous slab of that warm wash of shoegaze loveliness Slowdive have perfected.

Sigur Ros – Gold

OK: make that three new albums from favourite bands! 2023 is shaping up very nicely – all it needs now is for Springsteen to drop a new non-karaoke album. In one of my Monday post-rock posts I dropped a Sigur Rós track and was about to make a snarky comment about how they’d promised a new album in June and yet… then the cheeky little scamps dropped a new album like *that*. Átta appeared online in mid June (physical copies will follow) and has been in my ears many a time since, it’s another gear change from Kveikur, moving away from that album’s aggressive brooding to a more rich, almost ambient slice of beautiful calm.

Picture Parlour – Norwegian Wood

I heard this on the radio a little while ago. On paper (or screen) I’d describe it as Cyndi Lauper impersonating Poison-era Alice Cooper against a string-rich backdrop akin to ‘Design For Life’ with a pretty solid guitar that eventually bursts out into a solo. Which doesn’t really sound like a good combo but yet it really works for me. I think they’re from Liverpool. This is the only thing they’ve released thus far but I’m ready for more.

The Mysterines – Begin Again

Their album Reeling was only released in 2022 but The Mysterines are already releasing new music – guess you need to keep momentum going in the days of streaming – and ‘Begin Again’ is a a slow builder that does the job nicely. The acoustic strum makes me think of an early Placebo rhythm.

Blondshell – Salad

Blondshell’s self-titled debuts is one of my favourites of the year so far and Salad is a belter.