Paul McCartney: Man on the Run, a documentary about Paul McCartney’s departure from The Beatles, his beginnings as a solo artist, and his founding of Wings, and ending in the early ’80s with his McCartney II album, is currently playing on Amazon. Directed by Gordon Neville, it’s an entertaining and surprisingly candid portrayal of McCartney’s early solo career, ’70s success, family life, and much more.

A companion soundtrack album has been released. The album is yet another recently released project that looks at the period. The Wings Anthology audio releases and Paul McCartney and Wings: The Story of A Band on the Run book are also part of chronicling this era. In many ways, the soundtrack album, best enjoyed on the 180-gram vinyl edition, is a pared-down version of the Wings Anthology. This album, though, includes some rarities.

There’s a demo of “Silly Love Songs,” a rough mix of “Arrow Through Me,” a track from the James Paul McCartney television special from 1973, and the Rockshow version of “Live and Let Die” from 1980. Although not in chronological order, the album actually has a nice flow. As a single album, it might be a good introduction for younger fans just discovering McCartney’s early solo music and Wings. Collectors will appreciate the rarities and the enclosed two-sided color poster. The sound quality is also quite good, particularly McCartney’s bass, considering how many different sources were accessed for this project.

While this soundtrack and even the Wings Anthology are welcome releases, an audio companion that matched the robustness of the book and film might have been more fitting. Gathering together several discs of rarities would have been thrilling. Also, many live concert discs could have been released, chronicling the different bands McCartney assembled during the Wings period. And of course, fans are still waiting for the obvious reissues of London Town and Back to the Egg from this period, as part of the McCartney Archive.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol. 1 gets in the ballpark of being consistently excellent…Xiu Xiu’s unified sound draws these complementary selections into an interconnected whole…To borrow contemporary phraseology, the album goes hard. Just as importantly, from top to bottom, the LP was obviously a labor of love.” —The Vinyl District

Xiu Xiu shares a Deluxe Edition of the delightfully wide-ranging collection of a series of covers that had previously only been available through subscription, titled Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol. 1 now with 4 new bonus tracks—featuring new covers of songs by Roxy Music (“In Every Dream Home a Heartache”), Boy Harsher (“Pain”), Rowland S. Howard (“Breakdown and Then”), and Dolly Parton (“Jolene”).

The original edition of Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol. 1 was named one of Pitchfork’s most anticipated releases of 2026, with pre-release singles including a raw, devastating cover of “Dancing on My Own,” the beloved track originally by Robyn, along with “Cherry Bomb” originally by The Runaways with the b-side “Some Things Last a Long Time” originally by Daniel Johnston, released in December, drawing acclaim from Stereogum who said: “Xiu Xiu are people of taste. This is obvious based on their decades of brilliant, provocative musical output, but also based on their selection of covers.”

According to Jamie Stewart: “We have a long history of doing covers and have done 3 albums of covers. The enduring and basic throughline with all of them is an attempt to say thank you to those songs. They are all in one way or another pieces of music that have moved us and exploring them in a deep way is a small honorific offering to the muse that created them. We never approach them thinking ‘How can we improve these’ but really “What can we learn from these?’”

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Far too frequently, when pop acts and rock bands attempt comebacks, the results register as disappointing. By extension, sometimes even good examples benefit from diminished expectations. This is not the case with The Searchers’ unexpected return to studio activity, the fruits of which are collected on Another Night: The Sire Recordings 1979-1981. Utterly avoiding nostalgia without straining for the new, they simply tapped into the period’s melodic-rock upsurge, and the albums’ meager commercial fortunes remain something of a stumper. 

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating; Rhino’s DIY compilation series, which emerged in one nine-volume splat back in 1993, delivered a consistently killer ride, and the four pop entries (two each for the US and UK) additionally served as an education for ears that’d missed out on much of the melodic action situated between ’75 and ’83. For one example, Starry Eyes – UK Pop II (1978-79) included the Yachts, Joe Jackson, Bram Tchaikovsky, Mo-Dettes, and naturally, The Records (as their classic titled the set) along with an intriguing track by The Searchers.

While familiar with and quite fond of the band’s ’60s material for the Pye label (released by Kapp in the US), I initially thought this was some other Searchers, as there isn’t another ’60s-era outfit on any of the DIY discs. Discarding the shrink wrap clarified matters, and listening to “Hearts in Her Eyes,” which opened the band’s ’79 LP The Searchers (just Searchers in the UK) drove home the wisdom of their inclusion, as they mingled with a younger generation without a snag (the song was written by The Records’ Will Birch and John Wicks) and sounded not at all like a dusted-off, reanimated relic.

Fact is, The Searchers never quit. Instead, after numerous attempts to put platters into the racks faltered post-’60s heyday, they just set their sights on the cabaret circuit, which, if far from glamourous, was preferable to desperately jumping onto a series of stylistic bandwagons in hopes of regaining lost success. That they didn’t soil their public image by going psych or hard rock or glam surely helped stoke Seymour Stein’s interest in getting them back into the studio.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds redefined what an album could be upon its release on May 16, 1966, forever altering the course of popular music. Sixty years on, it remains as vital and influential as ever.

Providing deeper insight into the making of the album, The Pet Sounds Sessions Highlights compiles standout material from the 1997 Grammy-nominated 4CD box set, The Pet Sounds Sessions, which documented the legendary 1965–66 recording sessions. The collection features 25 alternate takes, a cappellas, and tracking sessions, all making their vinyl debut.

Available as a 2CD set and across multiple 2LP configurations—including standard black vinyl and limited-edition splatter/color variants—each format includes new liner notes by longtime Beach Boys historian Howie Edelson, along with a detailed sessionography. Currently unavailable for download and streaming, the full 90-track box set, The Pet Sounds Sessions, will be delivered to DSPs upon release.

Ahead of the release, The Beach Boys have released a three-track digital EP exploring their classic hit, “Sloop John B,” through a stunning a cappella version that isolates the vocal harmonies of Brian Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Carl Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, and Bruce Johnston, along with a fascinating alternative take featuring Carl in place of Brian on lead. The EP is capped off with the stereo mix.

Leading up to the anniversary, The Beach Boys are keeping the celebration going across socials and YouTube. Follow along as the band shares the stories behind Pet Sounds, explores its global legacy, and reveals new ways to experience the music. Starting anniversary week, tune into The Beach Boys’ YouTube channel for a special listening experience in collaboration with the San Diego Zoo, where the iconic Pet Sounds cover was famously photographed in 1966.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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