Hall of Ukrainian Rock’n’Roll
In our traditional support of the Ukrainian rock scene, we would like to offer you a story about a remarkable event that took place in western Ukraine in the small town of Manevychi. Every year, at the end of May, all the world's museums hold a night at the museum, and such a night took place in Manevychi, where at the same time the soft opening of the first hall of the future Rock Capital museum took place. The hall is called The History of Ukrainian Rock and Roll and is the first of seven planned halls of the Rock Capital Museum. Perhaps it would not have been so attractive if the Rock Capital Museum had not truly been the first rock museum in Ukraine.
Do you know at least one Ukrainian punk rock band?
Do you know at least one Ukrainian punk rock band? Of course, no one asked me such a question, but I sometimes ask it to my friends. Talking about the glorious traditions of Ukrainian rock n roll, I don't want to miss punk itself. The first thing that comes to my mind is the band Borshch. Some people will say it's not punk rock, and maybe they're right. But musically and lyrically, Borshch has a spark that only lives in this style.
David Bowie’s first address
It remains interesting that even such alien rock stars as David Bowie had his parental home on our unfortunate planet. The future star lived the first 6 years of his life in 40 Stansfield Road, Brixton, London.
Formation of the Ukrainian rock n roll scene
2022 has become too difficult for one of the largest countries in Europe. It is about Ukraine and its heroic people. The passing year has brought devastation and tears, pain and suffering to the country. In its fight against the invaders, Ukraine is choosing its freedom and the right to a democratic future. Today we wanted to remember the glorious past of this musical nation and especially, we are interested in the development of the rock scene in Ukraine, in a country with its ancient roots and culture. How it was and how it was born.
Simmy – RAISE
There's a moment in every artist's evolution when ambition either curdles into cliché or hardens into something worth hearing. On "Raise," the lead single from the forthcoming EP of the same name, Simmy lands firmly on the right side of that line, and does so with the kind of unshowy conviction that British drill has been crying out for.
The Ruffles – Baby Blue Bronco
Three sisters from Delray Beach have walked into Abbey Road's Studio Three and come out the other side with a record that sounds less like a debut single and more like a statement of intent. "Baby Blue Bronco" arrives loud, unpretentious, and gloriously unbothered by cool — a pop-rock confection built on the unglamorous, universal memory of a first car.
LaCosta Tucker – It Matters to Me
A recording surfacing decades after it was cut can go one of two ways. It can sound like exactly what it is — dusty, apologetic, a museum piece wheeled out for the curious. Or it can land as if no time passed at all. LaCosta Tucker's rendition of "It Matters to Me" belongs firmly in the second camp, and that alone makes this quiet act of archival excavation worth your attention.
LJ and the Ray Band – Heels
There's a particular kind of British pop joy that arrives fully formed, glitter first, and asks no permission — and "Heels" by LJ & The Ray Band struts through the door like it already owns the place. This is a record that understands something too many of its po-faced contemporaries have forgotten: that pop music's first duty is to make you feel ten feet tall in shoes you can barely walk in.
Talking Horses – I Will Work Harder
Three years of van fumes, sticky floors and half-empty rehearsal rooms have distilled into something genuinely worth your attention. *I Will Work Harder* arrives not as a tentative debut but as a document of a band who have already lived the life the songs describe — and it shows in every bruised, brassy bar of it.
Last Night Watchman – Old Blighty
Songwriters who dare to rhyme "colonial" with anything at all deserve applause before the needle even drops, and Last Night Watchman — the recording alias of a Herefordshire-based veteran of Birmingham's indie underground — clears that bar and keeps climbing. *Old Blighty*, the title track and centrepiece of this new EP, takes its cue from the toppling of Edward Colston's statue in Bristol, and turns a moment of street theatre into something far more durable: a genuinely unsettled meditation on inheritance, guilt and the stories a nation tells itself to sleep at night.
Benjamin Djurhuus – öð[øh]
The Faroe Islands have a reputation for weather that punishes and light that vanishes early, and a lazier writer would reach straight for the fog-and-fjord metaphors before the needle even drops. Djurhuus, a producer who has spent years shaping other people's records from the shadows, refuses to give us that. His debut steps out from behind the mixing desk with something far stranger and more valuable than atmosphere for its own sake: patience.
Banquet Darling – NOW
Banquet Darling has never been an act content to sit quietly at the back of the room, and NOW confirms as much within its opening bars. Todd Kilby's music arrives dressed in sequins and doubt in equal measure, and the record wastes no time announcing itself as a genuine leap from Dreamlove Obscura's cult beginnings into something altogether more confident, more sprawling, and considerably stranger.
Spoony-B – 99 Apples
Confidence is the rarest ingredient in modern rap, and "99 Apples" has it in spades. Spoony-B has built a track around the kind of central metaphor that shouldn't work on paper — abundance, temptation, the orchard as a stand-in for a heart that keeps saying yes to everyone — and somehow makes it feel inevitable rather than gimmicky by the second hook.
Bollard – No Desire
Melbourne's Bollard have never been a band content to sit still, and their new single "No Desire" confirms it once again, arriving less as a single than as a small, controlled detonation. Ahead of the melodic guitar work and songwriting polish promised for the forthcoming "Heat," this track drags the listener back toward the murkier, more disquieting terrain the six-piece first staked out on *Trawlers* — only now with a discipline that their earlier, wilder material never quite possessed.
The Sonic Travelers – Let’s All Go To The Rodeo
There is a particular strain of Americana that British critics have always been suckers for — not the mythologised, dust-blown loneliness of the desert highway, but the noisier, warmer, more crowded version: the county fair, the church supper, the rodeo. It's the America of bleacher seats and funnel cake, and it is exactly the terrain that George Aiello and John Ingram, working under the name The Sonic Travelers, have chosen to stake out with their new single, "Let's All Go To The Rodeo."
The House Flies – Derelict Crawl
The House Flies have never been a band content to sit still in the genre box built for them, and "Derelict Crawl" — the first taste of their forthcoming second album *Lions and Ore* — confirms it with a swagger that feels earned rather than borrowed. This is a Moline, Illinois four-piece taking the bones of English post-punk and dressing them in denim and rust.