This is The Kit

Brilliant songs from the current crop of extraordinary singer-songwriters: This Is The Kit, Sufjan Stevens, Bright Eyes, Waxahatchee, Angel Olsen and more.

Columbia Records release the fifth studio album by the Swedish folk sibling duo. Released four years after their previous album Ruins, Palomino is an 11 song album and features the singles 'Angel' and 'Out of My Head'. Discussing their new album in a statement, the duo said: “this is the first record we’ve recorded in Sweden since we made our debut album The Big Black and The Blue 12 years ago. We worked with Swedish producer Daniel Bengtson at his lovely studio Studio Rymden in Stockholm. It was such a fun experience. We really let the recording take time, we didn’t want to rush it. It’s probably our most pop sounding record yet.”

On 3rd September 2017, director Mike Mills emailed Matt Berninger to introduce himself and in very short order, the most ambitious project of the National’s nearly 20-year career was born and plans for a hard-earned vacation died. The Los Angeles-based filmmaker was coming off his third feature, 20th Century Women, and was interested in working with the band on… something. A video maybe. Berninger, already a fan of Mills’ films, not only agreed to collaborate, he essentially handed over the keys to the band’s creative process. The result is I Am Easy to Find, a 24-minute film by Mills starring Alicia Vikander, and I Am Easy to Find, a 68-minute album by the National. The former is not the video for the latter; the latter is not the soundtrack to the former. The two projects are, as Mills calls them, “Playfully hostile siblings that love to steal from each other” – they share music and words and DNA and impulses and a vision about what it means to be human in 2019, but don’t necessarily need one another. The movie was composed like a piece of music; the music was assembled like a film, by a film director. The frontman and natural focal point was deliberately and dramatically sidestaged in favour of a variety of female voices, nearly all of whom have long been in the group’s orbit. It is unlike anything either artist has ever attempted and also totally in line with how they’ve created for much of their careers.

Ben Howard returns with his fourth album, Collections From The Whiteout through Island Records. Produced alongside Aaron Dessner (The National, Sharon Van Etten, Taylor Swift), Collections From The Whiteout heralds the first time Ben has opened the door to production outside of he and his bands closer confines.

The Who… smashed guitars… demolished hotel rooms…cars in swimming pools… the legendary band in their most explosive performances. Re-live the glory from their pre-Who days as The High-Numbers to their final appearance with notorious madman and drummer extraordinaire Keith Moon. From raucous rehearsals to major festivals… from rock operas to rock anthems…