VIA PRESS RELEASE | This Angry Pen of Mine: Recovering the Journals of Layne Staley—an unprecedented look into the creative archive of Alice in Chains vocalist Layne Staley, created in direct collaboration with his family—has debuted as a New York Times Nonfiction Bestseller in its first week.

This Angry Pen of Mine (Weldon Owen; November 11, 2025) published by Weldon Owen in partnership with Primary Wave Music, offers the first ever look into the untold creative world of Layne Staley, the legendary voice fronting Alice in Chains. This extraordinary collection showcases his handwritten lyrics, deeply personal poetry, stunning original artwork, rare photos, fan tributes, and so much more.

Discover his striking original artwork, where every line tells its own story, and explore rare, candid photos that capture both the highs and lows of his journey. Experience the love and admiration of the fans whose lives he touched, beautifully expressed through evocative fan art that honors his legacy.

“I hope this book gives you a glimpse of the son I knew, the one beyond the headlines, the one with a beautiful, creative, happy soul,” Nancy McCallum, Layne’s mother, writes in the foreword to this book.

“Layne’’ songwriting has left an unmistakable imprint on the music world, and its significance only grows with time. We’re honored to showcase his talents as a writer and to help ensure his legacy continues to shine,” says James Janocha, Primary Wave Music

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Tony Joe White’s The Real Thang Deluxe Edition unearths more gems from a country-leaning, Waylon Jennings-collaborating era of the legendary Louisiana recording artist’s career.

Over the last few years, the late, great Tony Joe White’s output has been as prolific as ever, thanks to his son and de facto archivist, Jody White, who spends his free time digging through The Swamp Fox’s treasure trove of lost, rare, and mostly-unreleased material. Earlier this year, Jody re-released one of his father’s forgotten albums, The Real Thang, which included not only the original album but a heaping helping of never-before-heard recordings from that era. And, with the release of The Real Thang Deluxe Edition, even more has been unearthed. For the digital-only deluxe release, two new songs are included with the original eighteen tracks: “Fine Country Woman” and “Gringo.”

The former is an ode to White’s wife, Leann, with White’s guitar sounding more ’90s country than any of his previous work. The latter, “Gringo,” is a rare instrumental written by White and his friend Waylon Jennings. Replete with the iconic Waylon Jennings phase-shifted telecaster tone and delicate acoustic lead playing from White, “Gringo” is a prime example of the pair’s musical friendship. “Nobody really knows the story behind this song, as these two men took it to their graves,” says Jody. “Apparently, it was recorded one night while they were just hanging out and buried deep in the archives of the Tony Joe White audio tapes.”

Fans can stream or purchase The Real Thang Deluxe Edition here. For more information or to purchase a physical copy of The Real Thang on vinyl or CD, please visit tonyjoewhite.com. To hear more stories about the project and Tony Joe White, be sure to check out Jody White’s recent interviews with Otis Gibbs.

Celebrating Tony Hicks on his 80th birthday. —Ed.

When it comes to scrumptious English pop confections, it’s hard to top the fluff produced by The Hollies on the Epic and Imperial labels during the mid-sixties. While their contemporaries were producing big psychedelic statements, these Mancunian lads were whipping up irresistible little ditties that were pure froth. “Carrie Anne” is one of the most innocent and loving slices of pure popcraft ever recorded.

And 1973’s The Hollies’ Greatest Hits offers a wonderful–if inherently limited–overview of the Hollies’ not-so-grand ambitions. These proud lightweights adhered like superglue to the format of the 3-minute pop song–“He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” is a serious outlier at 4 minutes, 19 seconds–but they knew how to make those 3 minutes count. A whole hell of lot happens in “Dear Eloise,” and the deliriously dizzy-making “On a Carousel” contains gorgeous multitudes. When it comes to great songwriting teams, the names of Allan Clarke, Tony Hicks, and Graham Nash should never be forgotten.

It goes without saying that this compilation will not appeal to existentialists, hard rockers, or people who recoil at the word “cute.” That said, the LP doesn’t play up the cute as much as it might have. I can certainly understand why such post-Nash compositions as 1969’s heavy-on-the-soul “He Ain’t Heavy,” 1972’s lovely but lugubrious “Long Dark Road,” and that same year’s surprisingly hard rocking “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” are included herein, but they don’t feel much at home; a comp that focused solely on the Nash-era Hollies would sound more of a piece, and would provide more pure pop pleasure to people looking for frothy pop thrills.

I also wish this greatest hits didn’t jump back and forth in time in a craven effort to put the more recognizable hits up front; side two starts with a song from 1969 followed by three songs from 1967, then fast forwards to two songs from 1972. But hey, that’s show business, and I can only presume that the folks who put the comp together–and omitted some great U.K.-only hits in the process–knew best.

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An abundance of excellent reissues hit store shelves in 2025. We take a look back at what was looked back upon.

20. The Paragons, On the Beach (Charly) The UK-based reissue imprint Charly has had a presence in the record store bins for decades. It’s great to see that the label is still going strong by putting out records that will either be difficult (if not impossible) to find or insanely pricey to procure in good quality, in an original pressing. For example, there’s this swell slice of rocksteady from The Paragons, which came out way back in 1967 on Duke Reid’s Treasure Isle label. Including the original version of “The Tide is High” and featuring backing from Tommy McCook and The Supersonics, this set is a total delight.

19. Bratmobile, The Real Janelle and Peel Session (Kill Rock Stars) Bratmobile’s beautifully back-to-basics attack could really get under the skin of some listeners back in the day, and that’s likely still the case. Favoring a buzzy and at times kinda surfy feel that was nearer to Beat Happening and Girl Trouble than the blistering fury of others in their Riot Grrl cohort, Bratmobile could still let loose with the rage when it hit them. This combines their ’94 EP and subsequent Peel Session, and the whole still barely breaks 20 minutes.

18. Salem 66, Salt (Don Giovanni) Like a slew of 1980s underground bands, the Boston-based Salem 66 was underrated while active and posthumously neglected but not forgotten. This collection, issued on vinyl and CD, coincides with the digital reissue of what appears to be the band’s entire catalog (this is a model more contemporary reissue programs should employ). Salem 66 caught some occasional guff while extant for being a little too college rock in orientation, but the reality is that their approach was appealingly moody post-punk.

17. Ken McIntyre + Eric Dolphy, Looking Ahead (Craft Recordings) Obviously, the commercial hook here is Eric Dolphy, but please notice that Ken McIntyre’s name is favored size-wise in the cover design. McIntyre, who was later known as Makanda Ken McIntyre, was, like Dolphy, a multi-instrumentalist attracted to the edgier regions of the ’60s-’70s jazz scene. He recorded into the early ’90s as a leader and sideman with Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Bill Dixon, and others, passing in 2001. Taking this album’s title into consideration, Looking Ahead is still a very approachable set, and it’s very deserving of reissue.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Back in 1980, Twisted Sister were still a few years from superstardom. They’d already been around since 1972, growing out of a band called Silver Star, who styled themselves as New Jersey’s New York Dolls. A year later, though, they changed their name and shifted their direction as well.

Constantly gigging, forever sharpening their sound, and undergoing a veritable plethora of line-up changes, Twisted Sister as we know them best would not emerge until 1982. But already they’d made appearances on major label comps, and they’d recorded, too, the first couple of live shows featured on 2016’s so-aptly titled box set Rock ‘N’ Roll Saviors – The Early Years. Now the most ferocious of those performances, from West Islip NY in1980, makes its stand-alone debut as Hammerheads—and what a show it is.

Opening with a positively roof-raising rampage through “What You Don’t Know (Sure Can Hurt You),” the 12 song concert sees these legends of crazed, cross-dressing hard rock mayhem absolutely slaying on stage, with—among so many more—future smash “Rock’n’Roll Saviors,” a fiery “Johnny B Goode,” and one of the all-time greats, “Born To Be Wild.”

It’s a devastating concert—the sound of a band that, still awaiting their first major break, has already put all the pieces in place. Now all they need do is wait for the world to catch up with them.

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There are voices in rock history that don’t just age; they gather texture, like a well-worn leather jacket that only gets cooler with time. Graham Bonnet possesses one of those voices.

When you think of the sheer power required to front bands like Rainbow, MSG, and Alcatrazz, you realize it takes a special kind of fortitude to keep that engine running decades later. With the release of Lost In Hollywood Again, recorded live at the legendary Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip, the Graham Bonnet Band doesn’t just revisit history—they grab it by the collar and shake the dust off. And this isn’t a nostalgia trip; it’s a testament to the enduring vitality of hard rock when it’s delivered with Bonnet’s level of conviction.

From the moment the band launched into their set, I could feel the raw energy of the Whisky beginning to hum. The album opens with “Eyes of the World,” a 1979 Rainbow classic that immediately sets the stakes high. It’s a bold choice, demanding vocal dexterity right out of the gate, and Bonnet delivers. But the true centerpiece of the evening—and perhaps the emotional anchor of the entire record—is “Since You’ve Been Gone.”

Bonnet himself notes that this track “put Rainbow on the map,” and hearing it live in 2025 feels like a victory lap. The audience connection is electric; you can almost hear the crowd sweating along with the band as they belt out that iconic chorus. It captures the essence of a great live performance: the shared passion between artist and fan.

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Celebrating Dave Clark on his 86th birthday. —Ed.

The Dave Clark Five were one of the most successful and acclaimed bands of the British Invasion of the 1960s. Unlike The Beatles and many others of that time and place, however, they were not from Liverpool. The group was from Tottenham, in north London. Their big, booming, stomping, brassy and infectious sound propelled them to seven top-ten UK singles and eight top-ten US singles.

The DC5’s unique sound centered around Clark’s pounding drums, Mike Smith’s full-throated voice and wide-ranging keyboard styles, and Denis Payton’s honking sax. The group was rounded out by guitarist Lenny Davidson and bassist Rick Huxley. Huxley also played harmonica and all four members, other than Smith, supplied bracing backing vocals. Unlike most of the groups of the British Invasion, their sound did not center around guitars. They were the first British group after The Beatles to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show and they were inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2008.

The group disbanded in 1970, but Dave Clark, who was the group’s manager and producer, has always curated the group’s legacy with aplomb. Among his many other activities through the years are acquiring the rights to the seminal British music television show Ready Steady Go! and, in the 1980s, he wrote and produced the 1986 theatrical musical Time.

There have been excellent collections of the group’s music on CD and vinyl, but the latest reissue is the best yet. The group’s debut U.S. album Glad All Over, originally released in 1964 and one of four albums released by the group in the U.S. that year, has been reissued on white vinyl in glorious mono, from the original master tapes from BMG.

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To kick off the week, here are ten of the finest box sets or expanded releases of 2025.

10. Clikatat Ikatowi, The Trials and Tribulations of… (Numero Group) Post-hardcore emerged in the 1980s (DC, Louisville, Chicago, Boston) as young musicians gained adeptness on their instruments and became frustrated with the stylistic restrictions on the right side of the hyphen. However, this new genre really flourished in the decade following as a younger generation absorbed the foundational post-hardcore records and caught the bands (that didn’t quickly break up) on tour.

San Diego was a bit of a hot spot of ’90s post-hardcore, and across this superb 3LP set, the city’s Clikatat Ikatowi brandish a highly consistent style with roots in records issued by the Touch and Go (Slint) and Homestead (Honor Role, Squirrel Bait) labels. An even bigger influence is the Dischord scene, which continued to hone post-hardcore deep into the ’90s alongside these more youthful upstarts. Any of the cuts on this superb collection would’ve fit nicely onto a ’90s-era compilation on Kill Rock Stars or an ’00s release on Troubleman Unlimited.

9. Kenny Burrell with Art Blakey, On View at the Five Spot Cafe: The Complete Masters (Blue Note) This is the second, and one would assume, given the titular addendum (although one can never be sure), final expansion of performances originally recorded in 1959 and released the same year. Capturing guitarist Burrell in the midst of a fertile creative stretch, these 14 selections across three LPs alternate a quintet with tenor saxophonist Tina Brooks, pianist Bobby Timmons, bassist Ben Tucker, and drummer Blakey with a quartet where Brooks lays out, and Roland Hanna takes Timmons’ spot.

The music these groups delivered to the Five Spot’s audience wasn’t perfect, in large part because the club’s piano was out of tune; so it was in ’59, and so it remained two years later when Eric Dolphy’s At the Five Spot was recorded, a profound gesture of disrespect during jazz’s supposed heyday. But Timmons and Hanna largely overcome this obstacle (as does Mal Waldron on the two Dolphy volumes), with Hanna particularly impressive in the quartet configuration. Blakey is his usual solid self, as is Tucker. Getting to hear more from the under-recorded Brooks is a treat. But it’s really Burrell’s show. He never lays a note wrong.

8. Xmal Deutschland, Gift: The 4AD Years (4AD) Formed in 1980 in Hamburg, Germany, with an all-female lineup, Xmal Deutschland emerged as part of the Neue Deutsche Welle scene, releasing their first single on the NDW-affiliated ZickZack label. That means Xmal is aptly categorized as post-punk, but it was a Goth orientation that surely attracted the band to 4AD’s owner-operator Ivo Watts-Russell and, by extension, landed them in late ’80s US import bins.

The most sensible comparison is Siouxsie and the Banshees, but Xmal had a harder edge that underscored a disinterest in imitation. Still, far too many prospective listeners, at least in the US, were dismissive of Xmal as the Goth genre became near-synonymous with poser-dom. That’s silly, and this set, which rounds up everything the band recorded for 4AD (that’s two LPs and two EPs inside ’83-’84), makes a strong case for Xmal as residing near the head of the original gloom-merchant class.

7. Ida, Will You Find Me (Numero Group) Marking the quarter century anniversary of what was to be Ida’s major label debut (for Capitol), the fourth album by this enduring New York City band (properly released by Tiger Style in 2000) gets a massive expansion, available either as a four LP or five CD set, with the latter holding a whopping 103 tracks (the vinyl comes with a download of the entire kaboodle).

It’s too often the case that a musical act’s major label debut connects as a disappointment, but in this almost instance, Ida was clearly bringing their best record to the (turn)table. That the deal fell through is almost certainly for the best, because Will You Find Me could’ve easily gotten lost in the shuffle, and then possibly stuck in legal purgatory. It didn’t; instead, it landed as a creative breakthrough. It’s a record wholly deserving of this bold enlargement, which is the dictionary definition of deep dive.

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Here I spent decades, hell, most of my life, thinking Eddy Grant’s synth-fueled, hard-rocking, reggae-flavored, let’s dance dawn-of-the-eighties MTV anthem “Electric Avenue” was about having a good time. I guess it would have helped to listen to the lyrics.

Because, and you probably know this, my lyrics-conscious brothers and sisters, it’s actually about a riot, the Brixton Riot of 1981 to be specific, and Eddy isn’t heading on down to Electric Avenue to have a good time, as I spent decades believing. He’s going to light shit up, and I’m not talking electricity. And it wasn’t the first protest song by the Guyanese-British musician–he’d been on the front lines since the mid-sixties as guitarist of the Equals, the UK’s first major interracial rock group, for whom he wrote the incendiary tracks “Police on My Back” (which the Clash culturally appropriated!) and “Black Skinned Blue Eyed Boys.”

The Equals were a top-notch rock/soul/reggae/pop act, and their most popular songs were apolitical, from their first (and biggest) hit “Baby Come Back” (1967) to “Viva Bobby Joe” (sample lines: “Bobby Joe and his funk machine, yeah, yeah/Everybody’s gonna see a sensation, a sensation”).

They had some bubblegum in them too; “Michael and the Slipper Tree” must have resonated with the kiddie crowd, ditto “Rub a Dub Dub” (the Equals Jamaican-born lead vocalist Dervan “Derv” Gordon wants to smell like a rose for his baby). And “Laurel and Hardy” is kiddie novelty rock at its most blatant. “Honey Gum” isn’t as chewy chewy as you’d expect, but it still has bubble-blowing appeal. Why, they even recorded a cover of The Music Machine’s bubblegum standard “Little Bit of Soul.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Rhino High Fidelity (Rhino Hi-Fi) expands its acclaimed series of limited-edition, audiophile vinyl reissues today with two pivotal albums: T. Rex’s Electric Warrior and Devo’s Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!.

Each album was cut from the original analog master tapes by Kevin Gray and pressed on 180-gram black vinyl at Optimal in Germany. Both releases are limited to 5,000 individually numbered copies and available exclusively at Rhino.com and select Warner Music Group stores internationally. As a bonus, Electric Warrior has two 7-inch singles, “Hot Love” and “Bang A Gong (Get It On),” available to bundle. Order HERE.

Recently released as part of Rhino’s High Fidelity Reel-to-Reel line, Electric Warrior crystallized Marc Bolan’s transformation from cult folk hero to the godfather of glam with its release in 1971. The album topped the charts in the UK and was certified gold in the US, powered by hits like “Bang A Gong (Get It On)” and “Jeepster.” Working with producer Tony Visconti, the band built a sleek, groove-driven sound—equal parts grit and glitter—that came to define glam’s golden age.

In the new liner notes, Visconti recalls how sessions for the album gained momentum when the band moved from London to Los Angeles, and finally New York, where they cut three songs in a day, including “Lean Woman Blues” and “Jeepster.” “I could tell this was one of the best times of Marc’s life from how great these tracks turned out—they fully complemented the tracks we had just recorded in LA. He was so happy,” he writes. “We knew we had a hit album.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Think of Melanie and, once past “Brand New Key” and “Lay Down,” the most immediate image is probably a shy, nervous 22 year old stepping out alone onto the Woodstock stage, knowing that hardly anyone in that vast sea of humanity had even heard of her before.

A few had. The previous year, her debut album Born To Be caught some radio play around New York (and spawned a couple of hits in Europe); earlier in ’69, her sophomore set, Melanie, was built around songs she recorded on a much-acclaimed visit to the UK. Still America regarded her as a total newcomer and, while she was happy to discuss her folk club past, she was equally willing to let people hold onto that preconception. How wrong, however, it was. And if history had taken a slightly different turn around 1964, the whole world would already have known exactly who Melanie was.

Dropping on January 2, There Should Have Been A Rainbow is, effectively, Melanie’s true debut album and, as such, it readily stands alongside Bob Dylan’s recently released Bootleg Series examination of this same period, an unerring portrait of a young artist heading for fame. Indeed, while the CD includes 19 songs from throughout this period, the 11 song vinyl is a direct approximation of how that first LP might have lined up.

Recorded in a New York apartment across four sessions between 1963–1965, There Should Have Been A Rainbow captures the teenager already in full control of the voice and guitar style that would so single her out for attention (and adoration) at the end of the decade—only the songwriting has still to fully develop, but even the handful of her own songs that are included here pack plenty of pointers for the future.

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