Quick Takes – May 2026: Album Reviews

Skirting around the borders of slow-burn dark-rock, full-on intensity, and textural experimentation, the Abrasive Trees debut album combines intricate detail and an overarching weight.

With a core trio of Matthew Rochford (Silver Moth/Rothko), Jay Newton (Rise/Talitha Rise) and Will Tyler (Rise/Talitha Rise) , there’s no surprise that Light Remaining is built on atmospheric dynamics and immersive soundscapes. The loud bits/quiet bits pathway of unexpected twists and turns gets enhanced with a disconnected spoken word vocal.

Opening cut No Solace sets the scene with an ominous intent and immediately contrasts with the crystal tumble of lighter guitar lines on Star Sapphire. The declaration that “I awoke in a dream and heard the voice of God” might provide the key thread to the album as the sequence journeys through subject matters that dip and dive while taking in trauma recovery to newly energised peaks.

It might be easy to apply the ‘cinematic and widescreen’ brush, but the immersive atmospheres that occasionally threaten to veer out of control, combine with a sense of post-punk isolation offers something more sinister. The frankly scary Carved Skull with the “are we divided” mantra is made to be played out on backlit stages filled with dense fog.

Ending with the ten minute I Didn’t Mean To Hurt You, the switchback of passage of beauty and cathartic release might be their ultimate statement proving that bigger and longer is better. Crescendos rule.

After several years spent with their wintertime project Awake Arise, the folk supergroup of Lady Maisery (Hannah James, Rowan Rheingans & Hazel Askew) and Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith, combine their creative forces again, this time to celebrate the summer.

Their highly anticipated second collaboration at 27 tracks, Wakefire returns to the long form, a double length album that creates a musical accompaniment to the longest days of the year and the opportunity to become immersed into an unfolding listening experience.

Exquisite, often fragile, often bold, musical accompaniment comes as standard as does the three voice Maisery signature, enhanced and embellished by a natural empathy and musical synergy.

From the opening piece, Summer’s In, the bait is swallowed as the various combinations that five musicians and their skills offer are explored fully, often with spoken word narratives. Following The Old Oss delivers a bouncy and jolly Maypole vibe as we travel from May, into June, crossing cultures with a vibrant Mikaelidagen and into Free Party with the quintet at full pelt.

All through to midsummer and Harvest and Summer’s End, the most is made of the air of celebration and merry making before the Autumn drifts in. The melancholy banjo air in the finale, Good As Gone, might bring closure yet offers the prospect of what’s still to come. An album that crafts and creates visions of warmth and richness.

With this clangular angular jangular, Glasgow effortlessly confirms its premier position as the worldwide home of jangle. It may not be where the sound first arose, but it is certainly where it thrives best. And it is with the Bluebells that this tradition continues, the band too back as a working unit after a fair few years of diversions elsewhere. Album number 2, and it’s a double, since the current reformation, this teams up the originals of the McCluskey Brothers and Robert “Bobby Bluebell” Hodges with some seasoned pros from the Glasgow chain gang, erstwhile members of, variously, Bourgie Bourgie, Love & Money and Aztec Camera.

What do we get? 16 songs of exquisitely hewn pure pop, chiming guitars and uplifting tunes with comfy, confident vocal resonances. Largely rose-tinted wistful reminisces, it is a largely contention free zone, ideal for summer Sundays at Kelvingrove Bandstand.

Go to tracks include the opener, Sing Like Little Birds Sing, confirming the band remains, delightfully so, still adjacent to Twee Street. Elsewhere all sha la las are present and correct for What I See Up On The Roof, before getting buffed up for the more muscular Days Of The Revolution. Art School offers a dreamy wallow in multiple guitars, with Dream On showing they have additional tricks and ponies, an unexpected diversion into the smoky, skanky fumes of Dream On.

Deffo an album for summer playlists.

Who? Clue, she’s from Fife, fae Fife as they say up there. Fae Fife? Fay Fife! Got it in one, and whilst the ongoing Rezillos remain her main day job, this is her alt.country alter ego, and album number 2.

The titular opener sets all the scene required, a broken phone, a bumped car and no man, elements all familiar to the template of twang. With a line-up that includes Willy Molleson on drums, Al Gare on double bass, Brian McFie on guitar, the Country and West End credibility is upped by Kirsten Adamson’s backing vocals & extra guitar.

Don’t look for sophistication here, it is much too much fun for that. Rockabilly is the main flavour, but the mood can dip also deeper into swampier territory, for Call Me The Witch. By contrast, Who Stole The World is chockful a new wave ballast that wouldn’t disgrace her other band, with Sweet Beneath The Wishing Tree, a torch ballad that sees her going the full Rachel Sweet.

Don’t miss the closer, the never more, if not Johnny Cash, certainly daughter Carlene, arrangement of Worn Out And Unloved, a Hank Williams-esque song that’s shows Fife is anything but. And don’t blame me if the ending has you checking your fuse board.

He might be 84 years old, but legendary musical force Taj Mahal still sounds as fresh as ever. Indeed, Time, the new album from the man once known as Henry St.Claire Fredericks Jr stands, as the album’s press release rightly point out: “as both a reflection on a six-decade career and a powerful statement of continued creativity, offering a masterclass in soul, roots, folk, reggae and blues from one of American music’s most enduring and influential voices.”

Whatever your musical preference, you’ll find a pristine example of it on Time. Whether that preference is the smooth, rich soul of the Bill Withers-composed title track, the brasher Otis-influenced intensity of Sweet Lorene, the reggae-laced blues of Talkin’ Blues or the smoky 1940s jazz of Crazy About a Jukebox – it’s here.

In the lyrics to Life of Love, the album’s opening track, Taj sings of “A soulful stew, with all the spices for you.” He could be describing the entire album!

The third album from Bristol math-rock innovators Maebe seeks to build upon the success of its 2023 predecessor, the acclaimed Rebirth. Relive. Repeat.

Maebe frontman, Mike Astley-Brown, has a self-confessed obsession with instrumental guitar music and, over the 11 tracks of Brain Paint, Maebe delve into things they describe as: “Springy math-rock bops, post-hardcore riff marathons, sad bangers in wonky time signatures and cinematic kraut grooves.”

Maebe are a five-piece outfit these days, with Will Thomas and Duncan Stagg (rhythm guitars), Patrick da Costa (bass) and Nic Appelgren sitting alongside lead guitarist Mike to flesh out the sound. They create their music live, without the aid of backing tracks and there’s a rumour going around that Brain Paint is Maebe’s finest album yet…

The follow up to Book Of Secrits from 2024 delivers more of the genre fluid possibilities explored by The Flavor That Kills. A mix of rock, soul, melody, punk, and a dash of classic psychedelic sensibilities, where the majority of band members listed as synth contributors, come in, give-or-take three minute bursts.

Imagine if you will, Prince at the helm of the stark funk of Evaporate or the busy disco groove of Swimming In A Paradox populating a Seventies US cop show and bust open the doors to a wild and wacky world that Zappa once made his own.

The creation of strange sounds and sense of experiment abound and find a home in the Blue Oyster Cult-esque domains of desert-y Sci Fi in Boots and a concession to a mid album dose of relaxed indulgence before FooLOL picks up the baton with a bass riff that could easily be lifted from Deep Purple doing Hush.

Be it in the sharp riffing, the vocal incantations or the ‘what does this button do’ (and wherewill it take us?) philosophy, Thunderbird Lodge deservedly sits admirably on the right side of weird.

A second shout out for hard-working Barnsleyites, Common Culture, their single of the same name being released on the same day as, this, its parent album.

A quartet, encompassing guitar, bass and drums, driven by vibrant rootsy fiddle, they all sing. Sing loudly, passionately and tunefully, with emphasis on the tune, as the hooks are plenty, catchy anthems all, documenting, largely, their life and experiences, good and bad, on their way to become festival for sures at most festies about the land. Two fellas and two wimmins, they are less ABBA than Mac, but not really either either, other than in the ear worminess of their product.

Here they are joined by varied guests and friend, notably “Mr Rusby”, Damien O’Kane, whose missus is a staunch advocate for the band. O’Kane’s banjo chum, Ron Block, also appears, as does Gaz Brookfield, but none of these take the spot away from the moresome foursome.

Highlights include the opener, Hiding The Truth, which allies a mood of Merseybeat to a slightly smoother Levellers-y scaffold, and the pure pop of the single, which soon becomes unshakeable. Other sides of the coin get displayed with the vulnerable pathos of Start Again and the swaying nostalgic wistfulness of Living On The Road.

A fine album, this displays exactly the sentiments of the aforementioned Mrs O’Kane: “Ones to watch“. I’d add “and listen to“.

If being described as “a disturbed lovechild of OM, Sumac, Swans, Miles Davis, and Pandit Pran Nath” and named after the iconic Van Der Graaf Generator track isn’t enough to pique the interest…

…Then maybe the promise of three tracks that include I Fuck people, might. Chaotic noise and throat shredding, dare we say, vocals provide the challenge as the Plague vent their spleen against the ongoing Palestinian genocide, and show their support for marginalized queer communities worldwide, in a free-jazz avant-metal concoction where you know for sure that instruments are being destroyed or seriously mistreated.

Almost perversely, the EP closes with the title track where violence and angst are parked for a spiritual wall of sound that spends its ten minute lifespan in search of something more hopeful and forgiving in a world of pain.

A tower of silence this ain’t. Not something you hear every day, but perhaps should.