SHANNON & The CLAMMS

(Oakland, USA // Easy Eye Records)

Independent music mainstays Shannon & The Clams are known for their feel-good, vintage-infused, garage-psych sound. Their sonics go from black and white to technicolor on their forthcoming new album, The Moon Is In the Wrong Place, produced by longtime collaborator Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. Faced with the unimaginable sudden loss of singer-bassist Shannon Shaw’s fiancé, Joe Haener, in a car accident weeks leading up to their wedding, the project is a holistic exploration of grief and celebration of life coupled with the most expansive, exciting songs and arrangements of their celebrated catalog.

Shaw’s bandmates, guitarist Cody Blanchard, keyboard player Will Sprott, and drummer Nate Mahan, rallied behind her to create their most ambitious, emotionally searing work to date. The title is drawn from a conversation in which Haener, an astrology novice, attempted to ask if Mercury was in retrograde. This ominous precognitive statement became the basis for the record.

The Moon Is In the Wrong Place marks Shannon & The Clams’ 7th studio album together and showcases their 15+ years of tight-knit collaboration.

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The Datsuns

(Cambridge, NZ // V2 Records)

Time stumbles on. So does the clan DATSUN. Change the inevitable. Despite the ever warping landscape, the DATSUNS find those paths of least resistance up the mountain, and take their lifetime’s accumulated lessons & mastery of rock, up the proverbial giant rock, to dispel their latest riffage & learnings, from the highest point, upon the masses, with joyous savagery. 

The workings towards an eighth volume of Datsun sonics proceed steadily. Though the clan have lost another drummer, Scandinavian thumper Adam Lindmark of Dead Lord fills the seat for upcoming 2025 live action. A host of Swedish drumming familiars also litter recordings thus far, to deliver the Stoogeoid evil, the powerpop crunch or the classic proto rawk assault & battery.

Lead string wrangler Christian, comes to grips with the literal new hand he’s been dealt, after a literal handicapped year, whereupon next level surgical intervention was required to save a paw ravaged.

Entrenched in the semi-rural NZ paradise, Phil has wracked mind & mitts to conjure up new weaving guitarring rhythms to dispense to his comrades across the seas.

In the lands of ice & snow Dolf has soundboarded hooks & crunch w/his like minded Scandinavian pals & also shot back many a reshaped idea & burst of rok energy to his Datsun brothers. 

The end result, a new & eighth album beckons. Touring across lands not visited by the DATSUNS in an age, the first visit to the UK in over 10 years. The promise of more running, riffing, dancing rock, in the Western calendar year of 2025, both studio wrecked & wrangled, and delivered hot wired alive.

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Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds

(Washington DC, USA // In The Red Records)

Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds are on tour to preview their new album “That Delicious Vice” by Kid Congo and The Pink Monkey Birds due out in 2024 on In The Red Records.

“That Delicious Vice” is 5th full length album for In The Red Records and marks the band’s first as a 3 piece with legendary Kid Congo Powers (The Gun Club, The Cramps, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds), Mark Cisneros(Hammered Hulls, Des Demonas, The Makeup) and Ron Miller ( Switchitter , Tire Fire) .  Recorded in the scorching summer of 2023 in Tucson Arizona at Jim Water’s Waterworks studio, the band were thrilled to collaborate with LA Chicana punk icon, singer   of The Bags and author, Alice Bag on songs “Wicked World” and “A Beast, a Priest”.

 Kid has recently released a memoir “Some New Kind of Kick” on Hachette Books (US) and Omnibus Press (UK) .  The Spanish translation “Ese Vicio Delicioso” will be released in October on Liburuak Libros (SP) . The late Mark Lanegan said “They should build Kid Congo Powers his own personal hall of fame. Some New Kind Of Kick is an instant classic of sex, drugs and punk rock by one of underground music’s most legendary kings of cool” . 

As well Kid has released a recent, rocking “Live in Saint Kilda” album recorded in Australia, out now in In The Red Records .  Not to mention the viral sensation of Kid era Cramps tune “Goo Goo Muck” from the Tim Burton Netflix show “Wednesday “ . Yes, the Pink Monkey Birds will be playing the tune!

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Stiff Richards

(Melbourne, Australia // Legless Records)

 Possibly the gnarliest thing to come out of Rye since ergot poisoning: Stiff Richards.

Straight out of the shed into your head, it’s riff-ready, pugilistic punk rock. Scorching licks, no bullshit tricks. Skin-prickling, face-melting, teeth-gritting, savage rock ’n’ roll. Three records deep on Legless, Stiff Richards is a State Of Mind. Five super garage punks, invoking all the slippery pit ghosts that came before them. Blasting the spiders from the rotting rafters, these vibrations will elicit sensations from Australia to Belgium.

C.O.F.F.I.N

(SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA // Legless Records)

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