“We’re confident and happy to be where we are as a band — everything that’s happened with us has exceeded expectations, and it’s all been a surprise, it’s all much bigger than what we were prepared for. So when we came to recording this record we had a choice: to shy away from that, or to realise that people dig what we’re doing, and make something robust, with that energy.”

It was December 2010, and Mumford and Sons had been on the road since the previous summer: a glorious, eventful, yet relentless time. Standing somewhere between exhilarated and exhausted, the plan now was for the band’s four members to spend a few weeks apart, write, recuperate, and then reconvene in Nashville in the New Year, with the intention of trying out material for their second album.

The informality of the set-up in Tennessee perhaps helped to dispel any nerves they may have had about following up 2009’s Sigh No More — an album that had gone four times platinum in the UK, and twice platinum in the US. The band assembled in the front room of a house and set about sharing the songs they had been working on alone. “It was a coming together, a sharing of some stuff,” explains Lovett (keys, accordion, drums), “a pool of ideas that would come out of our time apart. So if there was nervousness, it wasn’t nervousness about the record, it was nervousness about how a couple of these new song ideas would go down. But we knew we were going to play music, and it wasn’t time to get into the nuts and bolts of it, it was more like we were starting another year from this point. And that felt very good. Very fresh, and natural.”

Out of that time in Nashville came a couple of songs for the new record — the gorgeous Lovers’ Eyes and Hopeless Wanderer. Then followed more touring, performances at the Grammys and the Brits, before the chance came in the summer to head into a studio in Bermondsey, south London. Here the band recorded the title song for the soundtrack to Wuthering Heights, as well as finding the footings for several of the new album’s songs: Babel, I Will Wait, Not With Haste, Broken Crown, Lover of the Light.

“And then,” recalls Marcus Mumford (lead vocals, guitar, drums), “we went down to a farm in Somerset and played the 10 song game, which is where you have to write 10 songs each in a set period of time without any criteria for quality.” The result of the 10 song game, the band recall with some amusement, was firstly that Ted Dwane (string bass, drums, guitar) has a natural propensity for writing murder ballads, and secondly a new album track named Reminder.

“It’s such a nice exercise because it removes your focus on perfection,” says Dwane. “You drop your guard down and you sort of bash about.” For Mumford, it also helped to re-focus to the material already amassed. “There were various points in the album where we felt maybe we needed to inject more directness, and maybe that’s what Reminder did,” he says. “There’s a bit more obscurity in this album and Reminder is a really emotionally identifiable song. I think I Will Wait Was the Same. And in terms of making the best record we could we felt like we needed those songs.”

"We decided we were more disgusted and bored with the state of heavy popular music than we were with each other. Regardless of where our separate paths have taken us, we recognize there is a powerful and unique energy with this particular group of people we have not found anywhere else. This is why Limp Bizkit is back."

The guys will kick off a world tour in the Spring on the overseas festival circuit with headline shows sprinkled in throughout Eastern Europe and Europe, selected dates include, in late May, Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltic countries where Limp Bizkit has never played before despite huge demand, along with major festivals like Rock Am Ring and Rock Im Park in Germany, more dates to be announced shortly. A new album, which would be the original group’s first full-length effort since 2000, is also planned. Limp Bizkit’s first three albums have sold over 20 million copies in the U.S. alone, and another 13 million in the rest of the world.

The title is taken from a lyric in “Blankets of Sorrow,” the elegiac, wistful ballad that closes the album and perfectly encapsulates the theme that runs through So that you might hear me: the need to be heard, acknowledged, understood. That brief, simple sentiment that underpins all of the songs on the album expresses a universal desire that so often goes unspoken, but runs deep within us all -- the primal, fundamental need for meaningful human connection.

“To me, it’s about trying to communicate with someone and feeling like you can’t reach them anymore” says Andrew. “That deeply resonated with me. Unwittingly, it became a theme of the album.”

So that you might hear me is the follow-up to Bear’s Den’s, UK silver-selling debut, Islands, which earned them an Ivor Novello nomination in the UK and a devoted following worldwide, and 2016’s more expansive Red Earth & Pouring Rain, which went Top 10 across Europe. 2017 saw the band cap four, non-stop years on the road with the largest headline shows to date, from sold-out tours of the States to a 7000-capacity arena in Belgium, and sold-out hometown shows at London’s iconic Brixton Academy and the Hammersmith Apollo.

The speed and scale of their success meant that Bear’s Den hadn’t taken a break since forming in 2012 – Red Earth & Pouring Rain was written in just three weeks squeezed in between tours and main stage festival slots at the likes of Pukkelpop and Lollapalooza Paris. Last year, finally, they took a step back to focus on their future.

For the first time, Andrew and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Jones had their own studio, a cubby called Josiah Booth Studios next to The Church Studios in north London, where they could leave their instruments plugged in and come and go as they pleased. Musically, there were no self-imposed constraints. Nor was there a time frame.

Both had a hankering to incorporate piano and more electronic instruments into their sound. Kev began playing with ideas on piano and drum machines while Andrew alone went to a cottage in a remote part of the English countryside with a guitar and started scribbling lyrics.

“In the past, I’ve always tried to understand what I’m writing about,” says Andrew. “This time, lyrics came from a more subconscious place. Like they were things I needed to say and I worked back from there. I’m inspired by people who wrote as though they were trying to figure out their own feelings as much as explain them to anyone else. The aim was to be more honest and instinctive, like when you blurt something out and can’t take it back, so you have to deal with it.”

Glorious opener “Hiding Bottles” builds in to their rockiest song to date, but is also doused in electronics. The idea for the song began with a synth pad and the lyric “Hiding bottles in the cold blue light.” Like several of the songs, it turned out to be about Andrew’s relationship with a close family member with an alcohol addiction and his attempts to address it.

“It was a situation that I could file away while we were on tour,” says Andrew, “but back home, I had to confront. The lyrics recall real conversations, trying to reach and help someone. It’s also about recognising what you can and can’t change, however hard you try.”

The first single “Fuel On The Fire” blossoms from the throb of drum machine beats in to an orchestral beauty. “Laurel Wreath” is a majestic track built on piano with electric guitars and synths that shimmer like strings. Both the haunting “Fossils” and the deeply moving “Crow” fuse acoustic instruments and electronics so organically it seems daft to distinguish between them.

“I love how the boundaries between genres have gone in the age of streaming,” says Andrew. “No one listens to music in boxes anymore, so why make it like that? Our songs incorporate all sorts of sounds, but not in a pre-ordained way. We could start with a weird pocket synth sound or Kev playing a creaky old upright piano. We just tried to follow our collaborative intuition and go where each song suggested.”

The result is a record that is both bold and exposed, at once intimate and widescreen. While the music leads the listener down different paths, the lyrics unfold as though revealing secrets, each line littered with clues.

Lyrically, “Crow” was inspired by Max Porter’s award-winning, 2016 novel Grief Is The Thing With Feathers while “Not Every River,” the album’s short, self-produced shimmering centrepiece, is about acceptance – or as Andrew puts it, “being okay with what’s not okay”.

Bewitching album closer “Blankets Of Sorrow” turns to nature to explore familial love and ends with Andrew sighing that tweaked album title over acoustic guitar.

“We decided pretty early that the title should be: So that you might hear me” he explains. “We changed the ‘will’ in the title for ‘might’ to acknowledge a sense of hope. The implication being that situations can change, particularly if you talk about them.”

So that you might hear me was demoed at Josiah Booth Studios and recorded at several studios in Seattle over the course of seven weeks with the producer Phil Ek (The Shins, Fleet Foxes, Father John Misty).

“Kev and I are both huge fans of The Shins – their early records helped teach us how to write songs,” says Andrew. “We’d never met Phil, but it was our dream to work with him so we sent him our demos and, luckily, he loved them. Working with him in Seattle was a deeply rewarding and massively educational experience.”

Bear’s Den’s four-man touring band also appear on the album, joining them in Seattle throughout the recording to beef up the songs with brass, drums, electric guitar and more electronics.

“The album has grown and evolved from all of the processes we went through. Every step of the way, it has been instinctive, collaborative and pushed us both lyrically and musically. From writing the songs to Kev and I working on the songs together in the church, working through them as a band together with Phil in Seattle and even ultimately mixing with Craig Silvey (Arcade Fire, The National) in London. Each separate process shaped and informed the album enormously.”

“The album started out as an attempt at trying to communicate with someone honestly. Our thoughts are not all rational, not all considered or tied up with ribbons and bows. This album is an attempt to reveal the honest and difficult challenge of communicating with anyone that you really care about.

“We’re immensely proud of it and hugely excited to share it with people.”

His debut EP, 'Pieces', due for release in early 2015, is a selection of the best of those songs. It's a contemplative affair, with sonic nods to The Bad Seeds, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen. Some parts are loud, others almost imperceptibly delicate but Brill's brandy-warm baritone is always at the centre of proceedings.

In August 2012, less than a month after Yellow & Green came out, Baroness were on tour driving in England when their bus broke through a guardrail on a viaduct near Bath and plummeted nearly 30 feet to the ground below. Through some miracle, none of the nine passengers died, though Baizley broke his left arm and left leg and the group's rhythm section at the time, bassist Matt Maggioni and Allen Blickle, both suffered fractured vertebrae.

"I was lying in my bunk when the brakes went out, and I knew immediately once we picked up speed that we were going to crash, period," recalls Adams, an Army vet who went through the equivalent of a bus crash a day while fighting in Iraq and who earned a Purple Heart in combat. "I didn't tense up. I didn't brace myself. I just rolled over in my bunk and said a few peaceful words to myself and hung in there, because I was like, 'Here we go. If it this is it, then make it quick.' I felt like a shoe in a dryer. Next thing you know, it's over and I'm standing there, and I was not broken. I was burned, I was cut, I was bleeding, I was dazed, but I was OK. And I collected myself and started helping people out. But I absolutely thought the band would be over."

Baizley spent two-and-a-half weeks immobile in a hospital and then months to recover from his injuries, but when he did, he and Adams decided to keep the group going. "I spoke to James Hetfield, who has also dealt with the fallout from a bus-related accident, and he said, “Life is going to be difficult for a while; but you'll be fine. You've got this,'" he says. "And once I had done some physical therapy and played guitar again, I thought, 'Yes, I've got this. It’s not over.'"

Looking back on it now, Hetfield was right, and now Baroness' members feel like they've gotten through the worst of it. "While we realize the accident is obviously of interest, we have gone over that particular story's details at length over the past few years," Baizley says. "We feel that this album not only addresses but puts a punctuation mark on that story. Baroness existed before the accident and will continue to exist, and we'd rather talk about what we've created with Purple than let one side-story overtake or define who we are as a band."

Once Baizley was ready to get moving again, the first matter at hand was to find a rhythm section, since Maggioni and Blickle had both split amicably with the group. To find the right people, Baizley leaned on some famous friends for advice. Eventually, Baizley spoke to Mastodon's Brann Dailor, who pointed him in the right direction to finding the group's new drummer, Trans Am member Sebastian Thomson, to help build up the band again. "We didn't try out anyone else," Baizley says. Another friend suggested that they check out someone whom she described as being the best player she’d ever heard. That turned out to be Nick Jost, who not only played both the upright bass and bass guitar, but was also a skilled piano player with a degree in jazz composition.

With a new lineup in place, the group eventually embarked on lengthy trek that Baizley describes as a "thank you tour," to the fans who stood by the band in its darkest hour, in the spring of 2013. Other than a handful of Australian gigs in 2014, Baroness spent the time since then getting ready for their next chapter, setting up their own indie label, Abraxan Hymns, and writing songs for Purple.

"I wanted to celebrate my misery through my creativity and face it head on," Baizley says of the LP. "The lyrics on Purple are about the different paths that formed in the fallout of the crash, from very direct stories about difficult moments of suffering to the love I feel for people who were there for me."

When the group finally got to work out the tunes in the studio, they did so with a producer whom Baizley has always been eager to work with: Dave Fridmann. "He's been on the top of my list since Day One," the singer says. "I never thought he'd work with us. I absolutely worship his recordings." With 25 years of experience mapping out Wayne Coyne's intricate flights of audial fancy on Flaming Lips records and making the most of bands generally known for understatement like Low and Spoon, the producer helped the group construct a sonic habitat for all of Purple's unique sounds, including acoustic guitar, otherworldly keyboard and echoes galore. He also helped them make the most of themselves.

Baroness' triumphant new album contains some of the biggest, brightest and most glorious riffs and choruses the adventurous rock group has ever recorded. But its title, Purple, also reflects a dark moment in the group's recent history: the terrifying bus crash they survived while on tour in 2012. "The band suffered a gigantic bruise," singer-guitarist John Baizley says of the accident. "It was an injury that prevented us from operating in a normal way for quite some time. Hopefully, this record is the springboard that helps us get away from all that."

But Purple is perhaps most notable for serving as a vehicle for Baizley and Adams to move on, and welcome Jost and Thomson to the fold. "They are both very talented musicians," Adams says. "They're open to new ideas and you can rely on them."

"They said, 'We just want to make sure it kicks ass,'" Baizley recalls. "That's what I needed. I was in a pretty bleak spot when we weren't playing. And when I realized that Pete, Nick and Sebastian were excited – and I hadn't felt that unified amount of excitement before – it pushed us into saying, 'We've got this.'"

"The whole process was very smooth," Thomson says. "The only thing that required a little bit of work was learning how to write together. That took us a month or two to figure out, but once we did we got on a roll."

"We had a situation where a band had to rebuild itself with half-new members and an almost entirely new crew," Thomson says. "On paper that sounds like a possible recipe for disaster, but we all clicked almost immediately. We still have that attitude to this day."

Adams says only recently, since the group has gotten back on the road, he thinks that Baroness has felt like a band again. And now with Purple under their belts, Baroness are ready to take on the world. "There's a lot more playfulness now," Adams says. "Everyone now is positive, there's no heavy bullshit. People are laughing and smiling more now in Baroness than I've ever seen. That's real, and I'm thankful for that." The bruise is beginning to heal.

The album, which is out now and which producer Dave Fridmann (the Flaming Lips, Sleater-Kinney) helmed, covers the gamut of emotions Baroness have experienced in recent years and serves as their victory cry. Purple finds a revamped lineup of the band – Baizley and Pete Adams (guitar, vocals) and new additions Nick Jost (bass, keyboards) and Sebastian Thomson (drums) – playing 10 intricately textured tunes and singing about the worry they felt immediately after the crash ("If I Have to Wake Up (Would You Stop the Rain)"), the struggle to recover as smoothly as possible ("Chlorine & Wine") and their ongoing quest for survival ("The Iron Bell"). From its bulldozing opener "Morningstar" to the avant-garde 17-second closer "Crossroads of Infinity," the record is at once both their most emotionally threadbare and musically complex offering to date, with passages that allude to their classic-rock roots as much as their crushing metal past.

"We didn't want to make a mellow, sad, dark thing," Adams says. "We needed to be up-tempo. We needed to be melodic, and it also needed to be aggressive. In all of that, I think we were able to get out everything we felt, all of the emotion involved, everything from being angry to wanting to continue to push forward."

Coasts are currently in the studio with producer Eliot James (Two Door Cinema Club, Noah & The Whale) recording their debut album due for release this summer. Before then, the band are set to release a new single from the album at the end of March titled ‘A Rush of Blood’ supported by another UK and European tour for what will inevitably be their last until they tour the album this Autumn.

Beginning their campaign of destruction in 2009 – Feed The Rhino began turning heads with a live show that could be rivalled by few and topped by less. Releasing their debut album, “Mr Red Eye” (2010) cemented them as one of the brightest stars in various magazines “Ones To Watch” features. “Watched” we have done as the band have grown from strength to strength, maturing into one of the countries finest musical products.

Feed The Rhino’s earlier sound mixed hardcore energy, heavy metal foot stomping and a southern infusion to their riff craft. Comparisons to bands such as Every Time I Die were easy to make, but this was a different beast and unmistakably British in tone.

Relentless touring soon became part of the norm for Feed The Rhino, who upon the release of 2012’s “The Burning Sons”, began appearing on tour posters with household names including: While She Sleeps, Bring Me The Horizon, Bury Tomorrow and Gallows among others. Festival performances at Download, Reading & Leeds, Benicassim and Hevy Fest were solidifying the group as a must-see on every bill they appeared.

For some – the live show that Feed The Rhino were able to deliver outshone the music itself. This was to all change in 2014 for the launch of album 3, “The Sorrow And The Sound”. Feed The Rhino had arrived. The formula had been refined and the world was ready. A more melodic approach had been adopted without sacrificing any of the heavy. The song structures were crisper and the hooks were sharper. This was the album to take Feed The Rhino out of the basement and onto a career which as kids they believed were just dreams.

A headline tour supporting the release in October was to go largely sold-out, including a career defining performance to a Sold Out London Underworld. Once every few years, there are shows you’ll witness that will stay with you for the rest of your life. This was one of those and in years to come, attendance at the show will be worn as a badge of honour to all those lucky enough to have got in.



Following swiftly on from the success of this outing, Feed The Rhino found themselves as main support to Enter Shikari on The Mindsweep Tour 2015. The band played to largest crowds of their touring career. Revelling in the opportunity, the band (almost impossibly) had upped their game. A pivotal moment had been made in the band’s journey.

South London singer songwriter, Jake Isaac released his most recent EP ‘Where We Belong’ on Elton John’s Rocket Records last year, going straight into the Top 10 on the iTunes Singer Songwriter chart. That EP places Jake Isaac firmly alongside the likes of George Ezra and James Bay as an innovative and exciting new talent.

In March this year Jake sold out London’s Bush Hall and headlined shows around the UK and Europe. Jake has spent the summer touring throughout the UK and Europe and is now busy in the studio preparing his debut album due out April 2017 on Virgin Records.

Jamie’s fourth album, which takes its one-word title from album opener and single ‘Tinfoil Boy’, is a weird, important record. At beginning and end, it is the darkest, toughest and most pessimistic of his decade in the limelight. But in the middle, it’s a rock ‘n’ roll party album: albeit an edgy, punky reggae party where lost girls clash with 17th century prophets of doom, exiled Brits clash with deserted American cities, trad-rock guitars clash with speed raps and dubby basslines. A lot of Clash, then, in more ways than one.

“Everybody knows I love The Clash,” Jamie smirks, fully embracing his worship of early Mick Jones B-sides, “and I’m too far into this to be overly self-conscious anymore. ‘Robin Hood’ is basically ‘Hateful’ mixed with the idea of the song ‘Bankrobber’ and a little bit of ‘Jail Guitar Doors’. And the first line, “Riding in the back seat…”, is almost ‘Blitzkreig Bop’ by the Ramones, which I didn’t even notice when I wrote it. If I sit down with a guitar in the best mood I can possibly be in, that’s what comes out.”

You may recall that there was a five-year gap between Jamie’s second set Kings And Queens and 2014’s ‘comeback’ set Carry On The Grudge; five years in which Jamie suffered a crisis of faith and confidence, travelled the world to lose himself and find himself, and came back a more questioning adult troubadour with ideas honed and insecurities acknowledged, wondering if fickle pop youth would want him back.

But Trick arrives after a gap of less than two years, shot through with the kind of vigour and vibrancy that can only come from a man who has rediscovered his love of writing, recording and performing. Jamie is on a roll and has no intention of letting the moment pass. “The more making records is a day-to-day thing, the happier I am because I’m less daunted by it all. I’m my own worst enemy and my fears and anxieties can easily take me over. So it was important for me to get this record finished and out there because these days I’m thinking in terms of momentum.”

Like Carry On The Grudge, Trick is co-produced by Jamie and longtime collaborator James Dring, with Dring taking care of beats business while Jamie plays every other instrument you can hear. The pair also returned to The Premises in Hackney and the now sadly departed Moloko studio in Hoxton Square to record. But this time around, a third surprise recording location has brought something different to Jamie’s sound; a studio called High Bias based in the perfect American city to expand Jamie’s perennial themes of city sickness. “I became interested in Detroit and saw a documentary about it,” explains Jamie. “It has a weirdly post-industrial landscape. These figures might not be bang on, but… Detroit is built for 2.5 million people to live in and something like 250,000 actually live in it. So… it’s empty. You look at the place from the top of a skyscraper and the whole city’s green because all the gardens and plots are overgrown. So surreal!”

If you’re thinking a thought-provoking sojourn in what remains of the former Motor City sees Jamie incorporating shades of Motown and early techno into his spiky brew of multi-cultural English urban pop… think again. “Funnily, when I write abroad it has the effect of making me more Anglophile musically. When you step out of your environment you become more aware of your own identity. Hence songs like ‘Tescoland’. This record, to me, sounds quite English.”

When work on Trick commenced, Jamie did have a theme in mind. But art, digression and a creative desire to “shed some light in the dark” intervened. “The original idea was to write a Summer record, but not what immediately comes to mind when you say Summer. A really hot, oppressive London Summer. Claustrophobic and dark. And Trick certainly ends like that and begins like that, but in the middle it flows around a bit. I felt that a whole record of that vibe would be incredibly heavy.”

‘Heavy’ neatly describes the choice of first single and opening track. ‘Tinfoil Boy’ establishes the theme, names the album (“Summer times you feel like a trick/Like a hangman word that no-one ever gets”), and glowers malevolently as it examines the dark underbelly of loyal friendship. As Jamie explains: “The song is based around the idea of unconditional love, and finding the heart to be there for someone, even if their behaviour is becoming an issue for you.”

A young dog can teach himself new tricks, and ‘Tinfoil Boy’ features the first appearance of a new Jamie sound source, inspired, as is so often the case, by a ‘70s-vintage icon. “When I was very young I started listening to Kate Bush and I loved these kind of cinematic things she would put together. For this album I got a couple of friends who are actors in, sat them in the vocal booth, and told them to say this or that in certain ways, and recorded tons of it. So I made my own samples, basically. The voice on ‘Tinfoil Boy’ is a mix of some of the things I got from my friend Florence in half-a-day in the studio. She says, ‘Wear me down/Use me up/You crack my lips/You burn in my chest/I don’t want you to see me cry/I don’t wanna give you the satisfaction.” Florence is playing the friend who is feeling used in that situation.”

Elsewhere on Trick, Jamie heads back into the dread zone of English history for both the song ‘Solomon Eagle’ and the album’s evocative, Biblically-inclined cover art. Eagle was a real-life Londoner, originally a Quaker musician named Solomon Eccles, who attained mythical status by spreading righteous apocalyptic doom on the streets of London as it perished in the grip of the Bubonic Plague in 1665. “People would take their dead to St Paul’s Cathedral, and Eagle would walk among them wearing a loin-cloth and a burning urn on his head telling them that the reason this was happening to them was because they were living in a den of iniquity, and that they were all going to Hell because of the shit they’d done within the city. I thought he was an interesting character. I almost saw him in the present day as a ragga MC - a prophet of doom berating us for our greed. I was trying to make it sound like a RZA production. Harder than it looks.”

Those who missed Jamie’s rap skills – though the man himself prefers to call it “fast wordplay” – on Carry On The Grudge will be delighted to hear the boy spit rhymes on the likes of the electro-flecked ‘Drone Strike’. “I did write Carry On The Grudge with a feeling of one arm tied behind my back,” admits Jamie. “I loosened my arm this time around and that’s been a liberation. Denying who you are in order to move forward is a good thing. But I was in danger of going too far and forgetting what I enjoy. And I’m suddenly sitting there holding a mandolin going, ‘What am I doing?’ The point of making records is to put new feathers in your cap. You’re not meant to lose things.”

Which is perhaps why a line from ‘Tescoland’ - an ironic dig at the mythical misunderstandings between Limeys and Yanks which Jamie describes as, “a Jam song dressed in Clash clothing” - feels like a neat summing-up of the last seven or so years of Jamie’s life and career: ‘Every plan I make is meant to take me further away/But I always end up back at home’. “What can I say?,” Jamie laughs. “It’s the love-hate relationship I have with London. I think that I would rather be anywhere else, but when I get somewhere else I pine to be back here. And that’s probably the same with my songwriting.”

Starting out as an antidote to the problem of being unable to adequately express themselves in conversation, the group formed when brothers Robert and Michael chanced upon Matthew in the corner of a crowded room. Quickly eschewing the established methods of relentless gigging and label baiting, Little Comets chose instead to perform in the furtive surroundings of front rooms, trains, trams and university lecture halls – creating small pockets of rapt listeners who would return to see the band in more established concert venues.

“We had an idea of playing only to captive audiences,” says Robert. “People were forced to engage with our music in such a close environment, and it taught us a great deal about the measure of a song - how it could attach itself to a person that stands only an inch away. We’d play on any type of transport, during college classes or even in someone’s kitchen. If nothing else it allowed us to meet many different people in different cities – we’d often find that when we revisited these places we had a little community of recognisable faces that were already familiar with us.”

First single, One Night In October, came out in early 2010, bolstered by support from BBC Radio 1, and self-produced debut album, In Search of Elusive Little Comets, followed in February of 2011 fizzling with an air of ease and nonchalance. Venturing briefly into the States for SXSW, the band spent much of the following year touring before heading back to begin the process of making a second album.

With Michael once again expansively attached to production, Life is Elsewhere draws on a deeper musical alphabet than previous work, melding the quiet influence of “incidents, accidents, hints and allegations” with the more sleeve-worthy motions of Fleetwood Mac, Milan Kundera, Jonathan Safran Foer and Tracy Chapman.

“We wanted to make an album that was far more relevant to ourselves especially in a lyrical sense,” Rob says. “Serving the song with space and confidence was also an important consideration. Listening to classic albums really opened up our ears to the avoidance of diluting emotion with too many sounds – hopefully this album is a step in the right direction.”

Released during 2012 on UK label Dirty Hit, home of such luminaries as Benjamin Francis Leftwich and The 1975, Life is Elsewhere staunchly demonstrates the ability of Little Comets to blend vernacular and content - pairing propulsive beats with layered melodies in the vein of a more sedate Talking Heads or less conspicuous Vampire Weekend . The disc’s buoyant opener, A Little Opus, laments the shackles of old institutions in British society, whilst Violence Out Tonight, a portrait of sexual assault, trundles along deceptively encased in a chilling lyric (“she stalks the stolid streets debased, the ragged gape of alienation wipes the grief across her face… all this protracted by a state in which the poor conviction rate for rape can often leave a woman feeling more at blame than able”). Meanwhile, Jennifer is a whimsical description of an uncommunicative relationship, which steadfastly refuses to swerve from a chorus that encapsulates summer in musical form.

For Little Comets however, the album’s defining track is In Blue Music We Trust a personal addendum that thematically explores impending fatherhood and the simplistic beauty of familial attachment (“I see the kicks beneath her skin, elucidates my own being…”).

“This song used to be full of robust mistrust – an outpouring against everything we saw as vacuous,” Rob says. “We were propelled by disbelief and anger when playing it live. But the more we hear it, the more it becomes a song of positivity for us. We’re all people who are in stable relationships with babies and homes – we are exactly where we want to be. The fact we are fortunate enough to be able to express this in musical form is a beautiful thing.”

After the departure of co-founder and vocalist David Jakes earlier this year due to health reasons, Lonely The Brave stood together, supporting their friend but adamant that as one door was closing, they would very soon be opening a new one. They never stopped writing, never stopped creating, and instead started the search for a vocal talent that they could stand side by side with in their march toward album number three.

A short search led them to the door of Jack Bennett, and an instant connection was made as they traded stories, ideas and inspirations. He is noted for his strong and emotionally wrought vocal performances - qualities that have come to define the band’s live show - so it is with some excitement that their first live outing together is announced to take place at Omeara, London, on October 13th. Tickets will be available here - http://smarturl.it/LTB_Omeara - and go on general sale from 9am this Friday, August 17th. This will be a special headline show with no support act and an early 10pm curfew, so be sure to get down early to avoid disappointment.

The band had this to say about Jack’s arrival;

We don’t know where to start with everything that has happened over the last 12 Months or so, so first of all we all want to say thank you to every single one of you that has messaged us with your support during this period. Nothing worth doing is ever easy and your continued words of encouragement really have helped galvanise our belief that this band has so much more to give. It fills us with pride to say that this new chapter of our history will begin in earnest on the 13th October. The show is our way of thanking every single one of you for standing by us and understanding that this is a continuation; that the songs really are the most important part.

These last couple years have been some of New Found Glory’s best! We released our 9th full length album “Makes Me Sick”, toured the world celebrating the 20 Year Anniversary of our band, headlined the Sick Tour across the US, and just closed out the final Warped Tour shows in our home state of Florida.

We want to thank all you die hard NFG fans and supporters. If you missed out on those final 3 Warped dates, we just put the rest of the limited edition merch we made for those shows on our web store newfoundglorystuff.com.

Unfortunately for some people we have some bad news. This party isn’t stopping. For every year that goes by, the more we value just how lucky we are to do what we do! There’s so much more fun in the works in the world of New Found Glory!

This fall we will be completing the Trilogy! We’ll be heading into the studio to record From the Screen To Your Stereo Part 3 where we cover theme songs from movies, some classic and some annoying, and make them our style! If you saw us on the Sick Tour in the spring then you already heard our cover of "Eye Of The Tiger” from Rocky 3. We aren’t going to spoil the rest just yet! But before we go off and start working on that we want to present a video for one of our most loved songs from Makes Me Sick, "Barbed Wire”! We hope you enjoy!

New Found Glory recently released a deluxe version of their recent album called Makes Me Sick Again. Featuring 3 new tracks, the album is available in exclusive vinyl variants today at http://smarturl.it/NFGmerch. Please be sure to stay tuned to www.newfoundglory.com as well as the band’s socials for more information about this next chapter of New Found Glory.

Over their span of 20 non-stop years in the music industry, New Found Glory have released 9 studio albums, 1 live album, 2 EPs and 3 cover albums. New Found Glory is Jordan Pundik (lead vocals), Chad Gilbert (guitar), Ian Grushka (bass guitar) and Cyrus Bolooki (drums).

Until her recent signing to Columbia Records, Lucy Rose had none of this, but her heart-stoppingly poignant songs and cracked porcelain voice saw her enter 2012 with YouTube hits, radio plays and crowds like nobody else out there. Such is her fan-base, she now sells out 500-capacity venues with ease, and at the tender age of 23, Lucy is being tipped by the great and the good as the one New British Artist who may stick around longer than any of the other fly-by-night contenders.

“Gentle, folky, confidential tone, undershot by a coolness of intelligence and self possession” 4/5 The Daily Telegraph

(Pop CD of the Week)

“A bewitching one-off talent” Daily Star

“Dark-hearted pop songs that strive for the epic” Q Magazine

“A resounding affirmation of a consummate talent” 4/5 Daily Mirror

“A beautiful voice” The Sun

“Miss Rose’s unassuming charm ticks off everything on the How To Make Your Fans Adore You checklist” 7/10 NME

“Each song is a confessional of her most tightly clasped secrets” The Fly

“One of the country’s most promising new voices” “Utterly beautiful” Sunday Times (Culture)

“It was only a matter of time before the second wave of British nu-folk pioneers made it to the U.S, and Lucy Rose is sure to be among its first breakout stars” Vogue.com

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The band's debut album We Will Reign, produced by Brendan O'Brien, was released in 2014 on Epic Records. The band immediately hit the road and began building a steadily growing fanbase worldwide.

TLI has toured with acts such as Robert Plant, Neil Young, The Who, Kings of Leon, Slash, Scott Weiland, Weezer, OneRepublic, Tom Morello, Lenny Kravitz, Incubus, Royal Blood, and many more. They also played the festival circuits in Europe, North America, and South America as well as apparel on night shows like David Letterman.

In 2015, TLI released a live cover of Mahalia Jackson's "I'm Gonna Live the Life I Sing About in My Song" on Tom Morello's record label, Firebrand Records. The song immediately went to #1 on the iTunes blues charts in the UK.

The Last Internationale recently finished writing and recording their anticipated second album, titled “Soul on Fire”. On this record the band boldly embraces and evolves the musical style and rebellious poetry that has come to characterize and set them apart from contemporary rock bands. Although TLI has forged a sound that is their own and modern, their music and anti-establishment attitude are more in the tradition of Patti Smith and Gil Scott Heron than anything you hear on the radio today. The new album is scheduled for release in early 2018.

"The Last Internationale are one of my favorites in the next wave of rebel rockers. They're raw and real and mix East Village rock sensibilities with Battleship Potemkin firepower." - Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine, Prophets of Rage)

New song Together finds Tourist at his most dance orientated, an approach he hinted at on his work earlier in the year. Opting to work with sampled vocals, the balance struck between the soulful vocal contributions of his collaborators exemplify his work as a forward thinking producer alongside many of his contemporaries.

Bristling with energy and oozing optimism, Great Divide is a rock record with widescreen ambition, inspired by the band watching their own fans and from sharing stages with the likes of Springsteen and Foo Fighters.

“Our aim was always to make songs this size,” says Twin Atlantic singer Sam McTrusty. “Coming from a punk rock background, it took a while - we like to say we went the scenic route. But it was the right route for us, full of interesting stops on which we learnt a lot – about ourselves, about each other, about how to make music that connects with fans which is always honest, never forced.”

Almost three years and over 300 gigs since the release of their silver-selling, debut album, Free, catapulted them from clubs to sold-out shows at Shepherds Bush Empire to the main stage at Reading and Leeds and this summer, Glastonbury, Twin Atlantic have made a mainstream record that marries their incredible energy live with a more mature approach to songwriting that acknowledges their long-held love of pop. Great Divide may be driven by guitars and drums, but it is also steeped in piano and strings, built on soaring melodies and littered with lyrics, sung in McTrusty’s strong Scottish accent, that express grown-up emotions as chantalong slogans.

“We’ve been through our punk rock rebellion phase and come out the other side,” laughs McTrusty. “We’ve all grown up being in this band. Dare I say it, we’re finally fully-formed adults. Since Free, some of us have got married and bought our own places and I’ve spent time in Canada because my girlfriend lives there. When the four of us got back together to work on this album, there was no bullshit. With our own lives sorted, it was easier to see the point of the songs and how we wanted them to sound. And, definitely, part of that was embracing pop.”

Pop hooks and harmonies abound on songs such as Hold On, an ode to self-belief driven by drums it’s difficult not to dance to. ‘It’s a risk worth taking/To

have a life worth living’ sings McTrusty on a huge, hooky chorus that’s a surefire summer singalong. The stunning Brothers And Sisters, set to shimmering guitars, bulked up by multi layered vocals and boasting a soft-loud dynamic is a collective call-to-arms dedicated to those who refuse to give up on their dreams.

Flamboyant first single Heart and Soul is a dirty rock stomper that sums up the shared feelings of a bouncing festival crowd, nods to both classic Bon Jovi and Queen and has already moved George Ergatoudis, Radio 1’s head of music, to tweet ‘Hyperbole alert. No joke - STUNNING does not do them justice.’ The single went in at number 17, a phenomenal achievement for a rock band in this day and age.

Twin Atlantic formed in 2007 when McTrusty and bassist Ross McNae, a friend from school, joined forces with drummer Craig Kneale and lead guitarist and occasional cello player Barry McKenna. All four had been in previous bands on the Glasgow scene. They bonded over a shared love of alternative rock, punk-pop and the city’s skate and street art scene, as well as a determination to make music their day jobs. Their ferocious shows soon saw them booked to support Smashing Pumpkins, Biffy Clyro and their teen idols Blink 182. Within two years, they had played most major UK festivals and been signed, following a tip-off from Alan McGee, to American label Red Bull Records.

“Our A&R person saw us at this strange snowboarding Channel 4 gig at Battersea Power Station,” recalls Kneale. “We pure went for it at that show, not because we knew anyone was watching, but because we were fucking freezing. We were surrounded by fake snow, our hands so cold we couldn’t hold our guitars. Either we went for it or we froze. Our A&R said it was the craziest gig he’d ever witnessed.”

A mini album, Vivarium, released in 2009, found Twin Atlantic fans in Kerrang!, saw them tour Europe and the States, play festivals including Download and Sonisphere and support My Chemical Romance. Free, their debut proper, followed two years later, boasting three singles playlisted by Radio 1, including the title track, which soundtracked Felix Baumgartner’s historic space jump in 2012.

“We were told Felix himself chose it,” says Kneale, “because he liked the lyric ‘Set my body on fire so I can be free’.” I guess he knew something could go horribly wrong. Thank God it didn’t! It wouldn’t have been a good epitaph for us.”

Most of Great Divide was written last year, while Twin Atlantic were still touring Free. “90% of it was written in the back of the tour bus, or a sweltering van in America,” says McTrusty. “Our adrenaline was through the roof because, for the first time, thousands of people had come to see us. I’d be in the lounge, unable to sleep, recording ideas on my phone, trying to make sense of the reaction we’d had to our songs. You can’t hear 10,000 people singing a chorus back at you and not be changed by it.

“I’d sit there thinking ‘I wish I’d had this type of song’ or been able to make people feel a certain way. I tried to write for people who don’t dance, and

didn’t intend to, but couldn’t help it cos the energy of the song meant they couldn’t stand still.

“I was definitely inspired by playing with Bruce Springsteen, who we supported at Hard Rock Calling last year. Every song of his is an anthem, even if it’s weird and complicated. You can’t see Springsteen and not remember it the next time you write.”

The bulk of Great Divide was recorded in Rockfield in Wales with producer Gil Norton (Foo Fighters, Pixies), who also helmed Free. Additional songs were recorded in the States with Jacknife Lee (Snow Patrol, U2, R.E.M.). The Rockfield sessions lasted much longer than had been planned and almost broke the band.

“We were there, between festivals, for most of last summer,” recalls McTrusty. “Remember how good the weather was? We were ridiculously decadent, lying in the sun, bringing back loads of alcohol. We bought a big projector screen, played FIFA and watched nearly every James Bond film.

“At the start it was amazing. We were inspired by stories of the bands who had been there before us. We used the piano that’s on Bohemian Rhapsody. But by the end, when the album still wasn’t finished, the place started to feel too isolated. Silence to me is terrifying – I’m from inner city Glasgow, I’ve always lived on a main road.”

One of the results of the extended Rockfield sessions was the song Oceans, Twin Atlantic’s favourite on the album. “Oceans could only have been written somewhere like that,” says McTrusty. “It sounds like a cry from an unhinged, isolated person, which is what I became there.”

Hold On also took on new meaning, becoming a metaphor for a band at breaking point. “There were a lot of frayed ends and decisions to make,” says McTrusty. “Hold On was us telling ourselves to not give up, that we’d get there in the end. Did we ever think the end was nigh? I’m not sure, but we did hold on and we made it and that’s what matters.”