I tend to write on an acoustic guitar or the piano. I have kind of a rule: if I can't sit down and play this and get the song over, I don't take it to the band, because most any good song, you can sit down and deliver it with a piano or a guitar.
Tom Petty
English quartet British Birds have come up with a loveable mix of psychedelic garage rock, XTC-flavoured New Wave and the Kinks in their late '60s early '70s vaudeville leanings. Murmurate, Oscillate is an album that is bursting at the seams with musical ideas, a true cornucopia of twists and turns, plus it will have listener reaching for the dictionary more than once.
They face life's relational stumble blocks with a wry smile and the occasional snide remark (Blame Game), but they don't a turn a blind eye to the world's more pressing problems as well. Some of their friends joined the army and came back with a bad case of PTSD (Polka Dot Eyes). The insightful lyrics deserve undivided attention. The darkness is never far away, but throwing a joyous blanket over it will offer a bit of reprieve.
Jordan Galland created a hand drawn animated video for You Killed My Saturday, a track from his No Rockstars album: "He has taken a scalpel to his current life, cut out all the bullshit, and ended up with a bunch of carefully crafted songs. His sense of humour ensures that he is quite content about where he is right now: trying to be a father of a girl. Raising her means that he had reshuffle his priorities, but once he had the diapers thing under control, music made a comeback with a vengeance."
HCTF review of No Rockstars
Watch the video of the in-studio performance by country musicians Gillian Welch and David Rawlings with Paul Kowert on bass on The Afternoon Show @ KEXP radio in Seattle, recorded on August 18, 2026.
Houston, TX lo-fi rock trio Low Horizon are back with Weak, their new single as a taster for their forthcoming full-length A Hundred Times The Same Way. The foundation of the track is a growling and unrelenting guitar riff propping up singer John Gottlieb celebrating coming out of his shell now that he has found love, but also slightly worried that it might not last.
