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.
Mandybom – Tango
Infidelity has always made for better pop music than fidelity ever could, and Mandybom knows it. "Tango," her second single, doesn't so much confess to an affair as choreograph one, and the result is the most seductive act of self-sabotage you'll hear this year.
Keesha Blai – The Inheritance
A hymn disguised as a family conversation, "The Inheritance" opens gently, almost shyly, as though Blair is working up the nerve to say something she has carried for years. By the time the refrain lands — the disarmingly plain declaration that we all add to the pot — you realise the song has smuggled a whole philosophy of legacy into four words. It announces its ambition quietly and lets that ambition grow.
OpCritical – Guillotine
There's a particular alchemy that happens when a band understands that rage, to be truly effective, must be dressed in melody. OpCritical have understood this from the start, but with "Guillotine," the closing chapter of their inequality trilogy, they've perfected it. This is protest music that doesn't so much knock on your door as kick it clean off the hinges — and yet you find yourself humming the wreckage on the way to work the next morning.
Evermo – The Path
Some records announce themselves with a shove; this one arrives like a hand on your shoulder in a crowded room, quiet enough that you have to lean in to catch it, and once you have, you can't quite look away. "The Path," the single that opened Emil Andersson's account under the name Evermo, is proof that pop's oldest trick — the ache dressed up as a hook — still has plenty of life in it, provided the person wielding it actually means it.
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.
I Plead Irony – This Monologue Conversation
There is a particular kind of English pleasure in watching a band take a decade to finish an album and somehow arrive at exactly the right moment. *This Monologue Conversation*, the third full-length from I Plead Irony, is not a record that was rushed to market to catch a trend. It is a record that outlasted a pandemic, a change of career, several thousand miles of separation, and — one suspects — more than a little bickering in rehearsal rooms, and emerged sounding entirely unbothered by any of it.
Zmack – Rustbelt Rejects
Akron does not often produce prophets, but Zmack arrives sounding like one who has spent years shouting into the wind of a dying industrial town and finally found a microphone loud enough to carry it. *Rustbelt Rejects* is a record built entirely from scrap metal and stubbornness, and it clangs, hisses and grooves with the confidence of a man who stopped asking permission a long time ago.
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.