VIA PRESS RELEASE | On May 8, rock ‘n’ roll icon Neil Diamond unveils Wild At Heart, a testament to his mastery and a remarkable third—and final—entry in his universally praised collaboration with producer Rick Rubin. Recorded initially at sessions for Diamond’s chart-topping Home Before Dark, this collection of ten songs features his signature passionate vocals and powerfully incisive lyrics surrounded by urgent yet stripped-down arrangements.

Diamond initially teamed up with Rubin for 2005’s 12 Songs, hailed as “one of the most entertaining, satisfying albums Diamond has ever released.” The partnership went so well that Diamond was eager to work with Rubin again. 2008’s Home Before Dark was a tremendous popular success (his first-ever Number One album on the Billboard charts) and garnered widespread critical praise. PopMatters’ James Bassett echoed many of his colleagues’ sentiments when he hailed Home Before Dark as “an album of rare beauty, grace, and eloquence that captures Diamond in all his plain-spoken and big-hearted glory. And it is easily the most intensely personal release of his esteemed career.”

“My work with Rick was a labor of love,” Neil shares, “and I’m so gratified that these songs will finally be set free into the world to complete our trilogy of work.” Recently revisiting this material, Diamond spent time fleshing out nine new songs to be released for the first time and closed the set with an alternate take of “Forgotten,” which initially appeared on Home Before Dark.

The unique set of songs on Wild At Heart (simultaneously archival and brand-new) will be released on CD, vinyl, and digital platforms via Capitol/UMe on May 8, 2026. Limited edition colored vinyl and 2CD versions will also be available. In anticipation of Wild At Heart’s release, digital Deluxe Editions of 12 Songs and Home Before Dark are now available and include the debut of bonus tracks previously available on limited physical releases.

Read More »

Celebrating Nick Lowe on his 77th birthday. —Ed.

Brit Nick Lowe was one of the most beloved, talented, and versatile figures of the punk/new wave explosion of the late-’70s. Oddly, he really wasn’t punk or new wave, but an artist who emerged during that scene in the wake of the pub rock, post-’60s scene in England as a member of Brinsley Schwarz (with Schwarz, Ian Gomm, Billy Rankin, and Bob Andrews).

Lowe was a roots rocker at heart who occasionally dipped his toe into psychedelia, but was most at home with pure pop, even naming the American version of his solo debut album Pure Pop For Now People, released in 1978. Lowe was also and still is an accomplished record producer, most notably for Elvis Costello and The Pretenders. He was part of the group Rockpile (with Dave Edmunds, Billy Bremner, and Terry Williams) while simultaneously producing and releasing solo albums. Later, he would be in another supergroup, Little Village (with John Hiatt, Ry Cooder, and Jim Keltner). He is also a prolific songwriter.

Lowe’s last solo album was The Old Magic, released in 2011. He released a holiday album, Quality Street: A Seasonal Selection for All the Family, in 2013. That resume barely scratches the surface and doesn’t even mention the other singles, EPs, live albums, and contributions he’s made to other people’s work and appearances on a plethora of tribute albums. Indoor Safari is his second with Los Straightjackets, the mysterious, Tennessee-based instrumental band, after their debut together, Walkabout, in 2020. It’s filled with the kind of rootsy simplicity and charm we’ve come to expect from Lowe.

Read More »

Simon Hanes has played varied roles in an assortment of projects over the last 15 years, including the experimental surf band Tsons Of Tsunami, the Italian soundtrack-pop ensemble Tredici Bacci, and even Guerilla Toss in their wild early no wave period, but it’s his skill as a composer, arranger, and conductor that shapes his brilliant new effort Gargantua, which comes out March 27 on compact disc and digital through Pyroclastic Records.

Hanes brings together trios of soprano vocalists, French hornists, trombonists, electric bassists, and drummers to realize a vision that pulls from an array of influences, amongst them 16th-century writer François Rabelais, contemporary heavy metal, 20th-century Classical composer Edgard Varèse, and the Volcanoes of Hawai’i. The complete work is boldly maximal and thrillingly precise with outbursts of the ecstatic that can teeter on the precipice of the delirious.

In addition to the outfits listed above, Simon Hanes is part of the noise/improv quartet GNR8RZ with Anthony Coleman, Grant Calvin Weston, and Aliya Ultan, the experimental electronic noise-rock quartet Shimmer with Anina Ivry-Block, Nina Ryser, and Paco Cathcart, and is a collaborator in various configurations with JG Thirlwell, including Xordox.

Hanes has also worked extensively with John Zorn, including as part of the thrash metal/improv trio Trigger. There’s additionally a trio with Anthony Coleman and Brian Chase to consider, plus his orchestration and conduction for Hal Willner’s album Angelheaded Hipster: A Tribute To Marc Bolan.

Read More »

AUSTIN, TX | One thing I’ve learned since starting my journey as a live music photographer is that you can watch every video, stream every album, and convince yourself you know exactly what you’re walking into—and still be completely wrong. There’s a gulf between watching a performance and standing inside one, surrounded by it, swallowed whole. Nothing More was, without question, one of those shows. Jonny Hawkins and his band don’t just bring energy—they arrive like a controlled detonation, immediate and unrelenting from the first note to the last.

After being rescheduled due to the Texas freeze back in January, I finally caught the final night of their Carnal Nature Tour, and there was something electric in the air even before the lights went down—the particular buzz of a crowd that has been waiting a long time and is done being patient.

It was my first time shooting at Stubb’s BBQ, and when I arrived, the venue was wearing its pre-show calm like a costume. People wandered the outdoor grounds, grabbed food, and settled into conversations. The kind of stillness that, in hindsight, is only possible because nobody knows what’s coming yet.

I moved through the space in that restless way photographers do—into the pit, back out, into the pit again, then retreating to grab food under the mistaken impression I had time. By the time I tried to return, the atmosphere had transformed entirely. The crowd had swelled and compressed forward, bodies packed tight, space evaporating by the minute. Getting back into the pit wasn’t a given anymore—it was a negotiation.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | 50 years ago this year, the placid seas of British and American rock were disturbed—if not destroyed—by a tsunami of sound arising from the streets of New York City and London.

It wasn’t called punk rock yet, just a bunch of bands, disparate in nature and unique in sound, but seemingly bound together by a single common cause. Something must change. Everything must change. And we’re the people who are going to change it. What happened next remains among the most dynamic and drama-filled interludes in rock history. Cleopatra Records was not around for punk rock. But, over the last 30 years, the label has done as much as anyone to preserve and advance the first wave of punk rock giants.

From The Damned to Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers, and ex-Runaway Cherie Currie to late Sex Pistol Sid Vicious; from Eater and The Vibrators to The Dickies and The Germs, brilliant new releases and precious archive treasures alike have lit up the shelves, and later this year will see both a major punk rock sale and a very special 50th anniversary edition of the podcast Pirate Radio Cleopatra.

To kick everything off, however, Cleopatra’s long relationship with Cleveland’s legendary Dead Boys hits a savage new peak with the launch of The Dead Boys Bootleg Series, an ongoing collection of live recordings capturing Stiv, Cheetah, Johnny, Jeff, and Jimmy at their absolute peak. The first two albums in the series, Down On The Bowery (recorded in 1977) and From The Sleaziest Catacombs (1978) will be with us on May 22, across two all-encompassing CDs and a raucous double vinyl collection.

Read More »

Celebrating Chaka Khan on her 73rd birthday. —Ed.

When it comes to great pipes, Chaka Khan is hard to beat. Songbirds, and I’m talking your top-notch mellifluous as all hell songbirds, fall suddenly silent when she walks into the room. Because they know they can’t compete. They’re beat. It’s time to go home, sit in front of the television with a fifth of vodka, and sulk.

Khan, as everybody in the universe knows, got her start with Rufus, a multi-racial funk band of extraordinary merit. She shared singing duties with Ron Stockert on the band’s eponymous 1973 debut, but by 1974’s Rags to Rufus she had, with some not so gentle nudging by ABC Records, more or less become the whole show, a move that led Stockert to up and split halfway through the sessions for From Rags to Rufus.

Khan was more or less a force of nature, and her singing and scanty attire won her favorable comparisons to both Tina Turner and Aretha Franklin (she was nicknamed “the wild child” and “Little Aretha”). She also had balls, as Stevie Wonder, who contributed the smash hit “Tell Me Something Good” to the band, found out when Khan, only 20 at the time, turned down another of his compositions for the band, “Come and Get This Stuff.”

Khan may have become the band’s chief draw, but it would be a tragic mistake to ignore the musical talents of Rufus, who produced some of the most vitamin-fortified funk of one very funkified era. It’s apparent from the opening of the first track of Rags to Rufus, “You Got the Love,” which was written by Khan and Ray Parker Jr. and features Al Finer playing some of the coolest chukka-chukka guitar you ever will hear, to the accompaniment of what I assume is one barbarically heavy bass riff.

Read More »

There is a particular kind of violence that Exodus has always dealt in—not the theatrical, fog-machine menace of lesser bands, but something that feels genuinely unsanctioned, like a fight that started in the parking lot and ended up inside.

Since Bonded by Blood tore through the Bay Area in 1985, they’ve been the thrash scene’s permanently aggrieved outliers—Kirk Hammett’s former band, Gary Holt’s moonlighting gig, the almost-Big-Four stalwarts who somehow kept showing up with blood on their knuckles and a grudge to settle. Their story is one of constant turbulence: lineup churns, vocal swaps, and a decade-long loan of their own guitarist to Slayer.

Goliath, their thirteenth studio album, isn’t just a record—it’s a reckoning. Arriving five years after Persona Non Grata and marking the return of Rob Dukes behind the mic for the first time since 2010, it feels less like a comeback than a reclamation.

The production, handled by Mark Lewis in his first time at the board for Exodus—ending a thirty-year run with Andy Sneap—is muscular and clear without being sterile. Jack Gibson’s bass sits right up in the mix where it belongs, warm and rolling under the relentless twin-guitar assault of Holt and Lee Altus. Tom Hunting’s drums hit with the kind of tactile clarity that makes you involuntarily tense your shoulders. And Dukes? He sounds like he spent the last fifteen years storing up everything he needed to say and is now saying all of it at once.

Read More »

West Yorkshire–home of Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, BBC personality and infamous sexual predator Jimmy Savile, professional wrestler Rampage Brown and the Rhubarb Triangle (don’t ask)—is as good a place as any to spawn one of the rarest of all things, an English noise rock band.

They’re called The Shits, and I don’t get the idea they want to be your friend, which makes the title of their new single, “Thank You for Being a Friend,” such a hoot.

Noise rock—or the best noise rock anyway—is largely an American, and more particularly an American Midwest phenomenon. Cows, Killdozer, the Jesus Lizard, Big Black, and experimental noise rockers U.S. Maple all hailed from Fly-Over Country. But England? I can’t think of a single noise rock band, although Gnod can pass if you’re the “Big Tent” type.

Or so it went until the Shits came along, producing an ugly din on two LPs (2020’s Punishment and 2023’s You’re a Mess) and some singles. And they’ve released two 2026 singles in advance of forthcoming album Diet of Worms, which, if the singles are any indication, promises to be their most uncompromising and remorseless full-length yet.

And that’s saying something. The title track of “You’re a Mess” is a piledriver mounted on a rocket sled, and vocalist Callum Howe sounds about as nice as the football hooligan in Bill Buford’s Among the Thugs who literally sucked an eyeball out of some unfortunate fellow football hooligan. And he looks the part.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | From their record-breaking 50 States in 50 Dates Tour in ’81 to their current tour, The Baddest Show on Earth, George Thorogood and the Destroyers have always given 100 percent on stage.

Now, as the legendary blues rockers celebrate more than five decades together, Craft Recordings shines a spotlight on their high-octane concerts with The Baddest Show on Earth: Greatest Hits Live. Spanning 1978–2024, the brand-new collection showcases some of the band’s most electrifying live performances—many making their debut on record—including such enduring crowd pleasers as “Who Do You Love,” “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,” “Bad to the Bone,” and “Move It on Over.”

Arriving June 12, The Baddest Show on Earth will be available on LP (featuring four previously unreleased tracks), while the expanded CD and standard/hi-res digital editions include eight previously unreleased performances. Both physical formats feature new liner notes from GRAMMY® Award-winning producer and blues musician Scott Billington. In addition to black vinyl, fans can pick up a Translucent Yellow vinyl pressing exclusively at Barnes & Noble and Blazing Red Smoke vinyl exclusively through GeorgeThorogood.com and on tour.

For more than 50 years, George Thorogood and The Destroyers have remained one of the most consistent—and consistently passionate—progenitors of blues-based rock. And no one knows that better than the millions of fans who’ve seen them live. Formed in 1973 by guitarist, singer, and songwriter George Thorogood and drummer Jeff Simon, the Delaware-based band honed their sound on stages across the Northeast, building a devoted word-of-mouth following through their high-energy performances and blistering grooves.

Read More »

Remembering Jerry Reed, born on this day in 1937. —Ed.

A guitar picker extraordinaire and redneck comedian whose songs could almost be called funky, the late Jerry “Alabama Wild Man” Reed is one of my favorite country artists. Me, I’d love him if he’d never cut anything but “East Bound and Down” (the theme song of Smokey and the Bandit!), “Amos Moses,” and “The Preacher and the Bear,” a hilarious tale of an unfortunate meeting in the woods between a preacher hunting on the Sabbath and a grizzly bear that ends with the preacher up a tree and praying to his Lord, “I mean/Look at how he’s lookin’ at me/Does the word ‘fast food’ mean anything to you, Lord?/Oh, he’s hairy/And he’s still thinkin’/And he’s lookin’ at me like I… smell good!”

The man’s usual mode was high-spirited, and he had a knack for what you could call novelty tunes, but he was also capable of singing about the more lugubrious aspects of life; you know, broken hearts and all that. But I much preferred him at his wildest and woolliest, as did Robert Christgau, who called him “a great crazy,” and said apropos his more saccharine tunes, “He couldn’t sell soap to a hippie’s mother” and “RCA should ban the ballad.” Me, I hadn’t listened to him for years when my girlfriend gave me a truly terrible ‘70s compilation CD redeemed only by R. Dean Taylor’s great “Indiana Wants Me” and Reed’s fantastic swamp tall tale, “Amos Moses,” which is one of the songs on the 2000 best-of compilation, Jerry Reed Visits Hit Row.

Fiddle-driven opener “East Bound and Down” is a bootlegger’s anthem and smooth as Jim Beam Single Barrel bourbon, and includes a great solo by Reed. It speeds along like an 18-wheeler on the run from Smokey, and if you think it’s a bit slick, well, all I can say is all those thirsty boys in Atlanta don’t agree. “Amos Moses” is a funky tune about a Cajun alligator poacher, mean as a snake on account of his old man, who used the young Moses as alligator bait. He’s got one arm on account of a hungry gator, most likely killed a sheriff trying to track him down in the bayou, and the only thing cooler than his biography are Reed’s righteous guitar picking and distinctive voice, which are as good old boy as you can get.

Read More »