Review: Folk Star Dar Williams Returns With Her First Album In Six Years

by Joe Sharratt
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New England folk singer and songwriter Dar Williams made her full debut with The Honesty Room way back in 1993, and in the years since has earned comparisons with the likes of Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez (who helped launch her career, but more on that later). Williams has won a loyal following for her insightful, gentle, but powerful songwriting and voice. And somehow, she’s also found the time to write, including two young-adult novels and a green blog for Huffpost, conduct songwriting workshops, and complete her urban-planning study, published in 2017: What I Found in a Thousand Towns: A Traveling Musician’s Guide to Rebuilding America's Communities — One Coffee Shop, Dog Run & Open-Mike Night at a Time.

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Review: Gavin James explores eighties influences with new single Greatest Hits

by Joe Sharratt
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Irish singer songwriter Gavin James has teamed up with Ollie Green (who contributed to Tom Grennan’s number one album Evering Road) and Fiona Bevan (who co-wrote One Direction’s hit Little Things with none other than Ed Sheeran) for his new track Greatest Hits. And sonically, it’s a real sea change for James, who is perhaps most widely known for his gentle acoustic touch, most recently heard on his fantastic EP from last year, Boxes.

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Child of The Parish share the new single ‘Forever’s Not Enough’

by Andrew Braithwaite
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Child of The Parish’s previous single ‘Midas Touch’ was completely atypical while also having an alluring accessibility. It made for a magnetic moment that took their unpredictable songcraft to new listeners, landing airplay from Jack Saunders at Radio 1 and Anne Frankenstein at 6Music, alongside playlists at Spotify (The Other List) and Apple Music (Alt Pop).

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Review: Sam Fender Dives Into His Past With Stunning New Album Seventeen Going Under

by Joe Sharratt
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North-east native Sam Fender is a young man with the world at his feet. From being named one of the BBC’s Sounds of 2018 to winning the Critics Choice Award at the 2019 Brit Awards, he and his debut album Hypersonic Missiles have been hoovering up accolades like they were as scarce as petrol. And with good reason too, Hypersonic Missiles was a gem, a record that, despite its youthful stance, in many ways bellied the tender years of its creator, a smart and accomplished collection that couldn’t obviously be bettered.

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Toby Johnson shares the new single ‘Plot Twist’

by Andrew Braithwaite
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The escapist, feelgood pop style of Toby Johnson’s latest single ‘California’ gave the singer-songwriter a fresh impetus. He earned a new round of radio play courtesy of BBC Introducing, while both Spotify and Apple Music helped him build upon an early career tally of 15 million streams with a range of playlist support. Most recently, the track’s official video was launched alongside a New Noise profile courtesy of Wonderland.

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Review: Invisible Monster Dream Theater

by Nicholas Gaudet
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Coming out strong with a slightly-more-accessible second single, Invisible Monster, from their upcoming fourteenth album A View from Atop of the World, Dream Theater prove that thirty years of legacy have done nothing but refine their chops and their songwriting skills.

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Julius Black shares new single ‘Do You Still Dream?’

by Andrew Braithwaite
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Julius Black’s debut EP ‘Dopamine’ took the young singer-songwriter from his roots as a bedroom producer in Christchurch, New Zealand, to picking up attention right across the globe. His creative slant on alt-pop engaged the interest of numerous influential tastemakers, leading to premieres from Complex and DIY, a cover placing on Spotify playlist The Local List NZ, and his first million streams. Suddenly he was being namechecked alongside leading talents as varied as Frank Ocean, Phoebe Bridgers and Rex Orange County.

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Review: Dublin trio HAVVK grow up but stay loud on new album Levelling

by Joe Sharratt
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Dublin indie grunge trio HAVVK attracted attention with their self titled EP in 2016, and it’s follow up She Knows in 2017, before their debut album Cause & Effect, a stunning record that explored some big themes, brought their music to a wider audience. New album Levelling landed this week and, I’m delighted to report, keeps the fury and frenzy alive, while being just as lyrically intriguing as its predecessor.

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Review: Low keep up digital direction with new album Hey What

by Joe Sharratt
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Comprised of guitarist Alan Sparhawk and drummer Mimi Parker, indie rock minimalists Low have been enchanting fans with their vocal interplay and drop dead gorgeous musical arrangements since the early 1990s. Up until relatively recently though, their formula remained largely unchanged, until their 2015 album Ones And Sixes signalled a significant change in direction as they incorporated new sounds and began working with producer BJ Burton. 

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Review: Running Touch strikes out with superb new single Ceilings

by Joe Sharratt
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Australian singer, songwriter and record producer Matthew Victor Kopp, otherwise known as Running Touch, first rose to prominence as the guitarist for, and founding member of, nu metal band Ocean Grove in his homeland roughly a decade ago. However, Kopp struck out on his own in the mid noughties, releasing a string of singles and an EP, A Body Slow, in the years that followed.

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Review: Andrew W.K. remains committed to his feelgood cause with new album God Is Partying

by Joe Sharratt
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Andrew Fetterly Wilkes-Krier, better known as Andrew W.K., was one of the big breakthroughs of the early noughties alternative revival. His single Party Hard was a mainstay of rock club nights up and down the country, while the album that spawned it earned rave reviews and featured in many critics ‘album of the year’ rundowns, and gained a solid following, partly fuelled by the (at the time) controversy over the cover image of the blood-stained star himself.

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Review: Graham Coxon’s solo adventures take another turn with new Superstate release

by Joe Sharratt
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As one of the defining musicians of the 1990s Britpop era, Graham Coxon had absolutely nothing to prove. However, that hasn’t stopped the singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from producing a huge range of solo material away from the band with whom he made his name. And that material has been as varied as it has been rewarding, from the folky garage rock of The Sky Is Too High and the indie classic Happiness In Magazines, to the predominantly acoustic The Spinning Top and beyond.

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Review: Stratego Iron Maiden

by Nicholas Gaudet
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The British heavy metal titans, godfathers of power metal, and one of the strongest forces in rock are back with their first new single since their latest album, 2015’s Book Of Souls, titled Stratego, from their upcoming album Senjutsu.

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Review: Johnny Flynn collaborates with writer Robert Macfarlane on new album Lost In The Cedar Wood

by Joe Sharratt
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Johnny Flynn is a man of many talents. From carving out a reputation (and rightfully so) as the UK’s premier folk artist, to starring on the stage and silver screen, and racking up a huge amount of awards wins and nominations over the years, there’s seemingly very little the South African born superstar can’t turn his hand to. 

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Review: Imagine Dragons drop varied new album Mercury Act 1

by Joe Sharratt
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Las Vegas four-piece Imagine Dragons are an intriguing outfit. They are, by almost every modern metric that matters, one of the most blisteringly successful bands of the last decade. Billboard ranks their singles Believer, Thunder, and Radioactive as the three biggest rock songs of the 2010s in the US charts, they were Spotify’s most streamed outfit in 2018, and they’ve surpassed 20 million album sales worldwide. And yet, they just don’t seem to have been welcomed into our consciousness in the same way acts like The Killers, in many ways the band that paved the way for their success, have been.

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