You And Me (we Wanted It All)

In 2020, the authorities in Sweden tried to keep normal life going for as long as possible, but, even there, things were eventually brought to a halt by Corona. And like everywhere else, musicians were among the hardest-hit. "It felt somehow as if one of my limbs had been severed,” recalls Ida Sand.

With music instantly accessed at the touch of a button, it seems that the urge to pigeonhole bands as quickly and neatly as possible has been driven to ever more extremes in recent years. Good Tiger, however, forge their own path. Blending their influences in a manner that defies lazy classification sets them apart from their contemporaries, imbuing everything they do with a distinctive sound and feel, and with We Will All Be Gone, Good Tiger have dramatically built upon their stunning debut, 2015's A Head Full Of Moonlight. "I think that what a musician wants to do musically is always pretty fluid and can change from day to day," states guitarist Derya "Dez" Nagle.

This 1995 compilation from UK rockers Thunder serves as an effective introduction to the band's brand of classy rockers and ballads. Featuring tracks from the first three albums plus two new cover songs (Python Lee Jackson's "In A Broken Dream" and the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter"), as well as a rearranged version of "Higher Ground" and the previously unreleased slowie "Once In A Lifetime", those looking for a taster of what the band is all about need look no further. The songs are all several years old now but stand up (pun intended) very well to repeated listening…

A hypothetical loomed over Devendra Banhart while he was writing Ma, one of those questions that changes your life no matter how you answer it. “I may not have a child,” he tells Apple Music, “and I thought, maybe I should make a record where I can put in everything I would want to say to them. And while doing that, you kind of realize, well, maybe it’s also everything I wish someone had said to me.” Building on 2013’s Mala and 2016’s Ape in Pink Marble, Ma finds Banhart continuing his evolution from freak-folk poster boy to one of the more subtle stylists in his field, touching on atmospheric bossa nova (“October 12”), string-saturated ballads (“Will I See You Tonight?”), and Velvet Underground-style folk-rock (“My Boyfriend’s in the Band”) in a way that feels playful but sophisticated, naive but self-possessed—the nature boy, housebroken but still alight with beautiful ideas. Amongst the songs are a handful of meditations on the plight of Venezuela, a country where Banhart spent most of his early years, and where much of his family still lives.