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Jessica Hernandez & The Deltas have arrived at last with their long awaited European debut, 'Secret Evil'. The album follows their well received 'Caught Up' EP and sees the Detroit-based band serving up a brilliantly polyglot sonic stew - equal parts rockabilly and surf pop, cabaret jazz and funky reggae, Latin psych and Gypsy punk - all cooked up on the hot Motor City pavement and seasoned by that distinctly Detroit combination of blasted R&B, showband theatrics and limitless rock 'n' soul energy.

Formed while founding members Chad Graham and Alan Powell were both living in Los Angeles, California, Christian pop band Anthem Lights began as a solo project for Graham in 2007. After working on songs for Graham's debut, the pair decided to expand the project into a four-piece pop group, recruiting vocalists Kyle Kupecky and Caleb Grimm into the band. Working under the name Yellow Cavalier, the four singers released their self-titled debut EP in 2009 before they changed the group's name to Anthem Lights the following year. The quartet later signed on with Reunion Records, and with the new name in place and the backing of a label, Anthem Lights released a pair of eponymous albums, an EP and their full-length debut, in 2011. One year later, The Acoustic Sessions EP followed.

The Searchers - still with stalwart members John McNally and Frank Allen in their line-up - recently announced they would retire at the end of March 2019, bringing to an end an astonishing unbroken run of around sixty years for one of the most influential and enduring groups in British pop history. One of the more introspective acts to emerge from the Merseybeat group wars of the early Sixties, The Searchers' high vocal harmonies, jingle-jangle guitars and tales of male vulnerability saw them notch a trio of UK No. 1 singles and several popular EPs and albums, with debut LP "Meet The Searchers" spending an incredible ten months in the listings. But although their chart statistics were impressive, The Searchers' place in the rock history books owes at least as much to their seismic level of influence, with the likes of 'Needles And Pins' and the peerless 'When You Walk In The Room' providing The Byrds - and, by extension, the likes of Tom Petty, REM and a whole host of skinny-tied power poppers - with their musical template. Although the group made some fine records throughout their prodigious career, their peak period in terms of sales, influence and musical excellence occurred during a dazzling four-year mid-Sixties spell with the Pye label. The first-ever complete anthology of one of British pop's most pivotal catalogues, the 6-CD set When You Walk In The Room assembles all of the group's Pye recordings, with mono and stereo versions of their albums joined by studio outtakes, foreign language recordings and, on the sixth disc, a treasure trove of non-LP singles and EP tracks. Housed in a clambox design that includes a 36 page booklet with a new 6000 word essay on the band, When You Walk In The Room is a sumptuous tribute to an act who, for a glorious year or two, were arguably the country's only serious rivals to The Beatles. The Searchers are currently on an extensive farewell tour throughout the UK and then they will be retiring! Catch 'em live for the final time if you can and then purchase this amazing career retrospective.

Before the Beatles, Cliff Richard was the biggest star of British pop. Sir Cliff Richard is a British institution, one of the biggest-selling pop stars ever in the UK with a popularity that has endured since the 1950s. John Lennon once said that "before Cliff and the Shadows, there had been nothing worth listening to in British music." His good nature has made him a figure of fun for some, but after more than half-a-century in the public eye, Sir Cliff is an English icon to be proud of. This UK only four CD box set, an all-encompassing study of Cliff's early career and arguably his most important period.

Upon his return to the stage, Patrick Wagner of noise rock band Gewalt talks about the cruelty of hipster coffee and the solidarity that helped overcome his fears. In the 1990s Patrick Wagner had hit the jackpot. His indie label Kitty-Yo, home to Peaches and Chilly Gonzales, was a worldwide success, and his noise rock band Surrogat was on course to stardom as well. But it wasn’t meant to last. In 2003 he split with Surrogat and Kitty-Yo folded three years later. When his attempt at running another label, Louisville Records, failed in 2010, Wagner disappeared from the music scene entirely. He started managing a youth football team and brought the FuckUp Nights to Berlin, encouraging people to talk about their fears and business failures. Luckily for us, Wagner finally returned to the stage together with Helen Henfling and Yelka Wehmeier in the guise of Gewalt. We talked to Wagner before the “violent” noise rock trio’s not-so-regular gig at Kunstverein Neukölln on June 17.

As its title makes clear, Children of Nuggets is the first Nuggets release to stretch beyond the '60s heyday of garage rock and psychedelic music. Instead of once again returning to that seemingly bottomless well – which has not only brought the original 1972 double LP, Nuggets, but such imitators as the Pebbles and Rubble series, plus Rhino's expanded four-disc 1998 box set and its 2001 sequel, which focused on singles from the U.K. and around the world – the four-disc box Children of Nuggets is devoted to bands from the '70s, '80s, and '90s (but primarily the '80s) that were inspired by the original Nuggets LP, along with other trashy, intoxicating rock and guitar pop from the '60s.