Birch Street Radio

Sunday, August 31, 2025

New music from The Beths, Flyte, Lauren Mann, Next Week's Washing, Don't Believe in Ghosts

The Beths: Straight Line Was A Lie

Here's the title track from the New Zealand band's just-released fourth album. Nothing has been proven more effective against Music Boredom than Birch Street Radio. It's unsurpassed! Use only as directed. Possible side effects include altering your mood, distracting you from what you should be doing, and causing flashbacks to the first time you heard that song. Our musical variety program is produced Birch Street Studios in Beautiful Downtown Suburbia and streamed 24/7 from Canada by TorontoCast and in the USA by Live365.

Flyte: Alabaster (feat. Aimee Mann)

We weren't familiar with Flyte, the UK indie-folk duo of Nick Hill and Will Taylor, but we're long-time fans of Aimee Mann, so this collaboration caught our attention. It's from Between You And Me, the upcoming fourth Flyte LP. Under The Radar mag writes: "The band’s typically feather-light acoustics are anchored by simmering fuzz guitar and prominent basslines ... [T]he lyrics explore a love affair that is doomed to implode."

Lauren Mann: Different Light

We're very happy to get new music from this self-described songwriter-musician-island adventurer from Pender Island, B.C. She's releasing an EP called Heaven in late September. Mann describes it as "an intimate collection of songs brought together through expansive journeys of finding home, blossoming into motherhood and navigating personal growth through it all." (It's strictly coincidental that this week's New Music picks include two women with the last name Mann.)

Next Week's Washing: Empty Pages

Here's the latest of a series of singles from this emerging Toronto trio, formed last year by Rhys Newman and brothers Miles and Julian Duffy. Canadian Beats writes: "Drawing on elements of shoegaze, Britpop, and alternative rock, the track combines a nostalgic emotionality with forward-looking sonic ambition – pairing shimmering walls of guitar with front-and-centre, harmony-laced vocals."

Don't Believe in Ghosts: Driver

This New York City band will release But On The Bright Side in November. Steven Nathan (vocals), Dan DelVecchio (guitar) and Ken Yang (drums) worked on it over two years across multiple studios in Nashville, Cleveland and New York. Vocalist Steven Nathan says this first single "is about living in the moment ... a colorful track filled with a lot of energy."

Saturday, August 30, 2025

Florence + The Machine, Goose, Night Talks and much more added to our New Music bin

Florence + The Machine: Everybody Scream

Has there ever been a song so clearly designed to whip a concert crowd into a frenzy? This is the title track from the band's upcoming sixth studio album. Florence Welch is known for her near-manic live performances, dancing wildly around the stage, and in this song she acknowledges both the rush she gets from her audiences and the toll it takes on her: "Look at me run myself ragged, blood on the stage / But how can I leave you when you’re screaming my name?" Compare: "It's Only Rock & Roll (But I Like It)"

Goose: Royal

Surprise! Just four months after April's Everything Must Go, the jammers from Connecticut released another album, Chain Your Dragon, in August. The band has played most of its 12 songs live over the years, but this is a new number, which the band says is about "a transient musician whose burning ambition threatens to get the best of him.”

Night Talks: Targets

It's good to see this LA indie band getting more recognition - including East Coast tour dates in September. This new single features additional guitar work by Cory Wong. The group's firecracker lead vocalist, Soraya Sebghati, sings of trying to shake feelings of paranoia: "I've got a target on my back ... It's not real you said / It's in my head."

And Many More!

We took a bit of a summer break from adding new releases and posting about them. But now we've refreshed the New Music bin with the three tracks described above - and a dozen more!

Wolf Alice: White Horses
Sheryl Crow: The New Normal
Almost Monday: Enjoy the Ride
Alkaline Trio: Oblivion
Cult of Venus: Sinner
Kathleen Edwards: When The Truth Comes Out
Rohin: Sundown
The Black Keys: No Rain, No Flowers
Planet Smashers: Wasted Tomorrows
Bob Moses: Last Forever
Krooked Tongue: Dog Days
Pony Gold: Big in the City

Remember: Nothing has been proven more effective against Music Boredom than Birch Street Radio. It's unsurpassed! Use only as directed. Possible side effects include altering your mood, distracting you from what you should be doing, and causing flashbacks to the first time you heard that song.

Sunday, August 3, 2025

Latest from Sheryl Crow, Stereolab, Nilufer Yanya, The Technicolors, Sunrise in Jupiter

Sheryl Crow: See You On The Other Side

This is one of two new singles from Crow and her longtime touring band, The Real Lowdown. Here she seems to be channeling a god who can't understand why his people find it so hard "to let love win."

Stereolab: Aerial Troubles

Instant Holograms On Metal Film is the first album in 15 years from this UK band that went dormant around 2010. Founders and former couple Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier brought their "groop" back together for a 2019 tour and that led to this recording. Under The Radar says "Stereolab’s sound remains unmistakable, yet newly expansive. ... [T]he music fuses elements of Krautrock, lounge jazz, psychedelic pop, and minimalism."

Nilufer Yanya: Cold Heart

The London artist follows up last year's My Method Actor LP with a new EP, Dancing Shoes. It consists of four songs that were held back from that album and then reworked.

The Technicolors feat. Madison Cunningham: First Class to Nowhere

We haven't been familiar with the band from Phoenix, but reviews of this track from their upcoming album Heavy Pulp say it marks a shift to a softer, more introspective sound than their previous releases. (Chalk up one more collab outing for the ubiquitous Madison Cunningham.)

Sunrise in Jupiter: Take Me Home

This London rock group's upcoming first album will be a double-LP entitled Mission to Mars. It's billed as cinematic rock exploring "profound themes of exploration, separation, and destiny." An ambitious debut, no?

Saturday, July 19, 2025

Jeff Tweedy, Joe Bonamassa, The Strumbellas, Goose, Suzanne Vega in our New Music bin

Jeff Tweedy: Enough

The Wilco frontman newest project is a 30-track (!) album, Twilight Override, arriving in late-September. With the announcement of the longggg-player came four tracks, of which this is the most upbeat, despite melancholy lyrics: "Has it ever been enough? / Has it ever been OK?"

Joe Bonamassa: Drive By The Exit Sign

The veteran blues-rocker just released Breakthrough, his first album since 2021's prog-influenced Time Clocks. He returns to his shorter, tighter, songwriting on this outing, writes Rock and Blues Muse, which calls this track "a spark-plug igniting inclusion enhanced by soulful backing female vocals."

The Strumbellas: Hard Lines

There's no word on whether the release of this new single means that an album is on its way. It would be the Ontario group's sixth, following last year's Part Time Believer. But we won't be the ones to ask. After all, the band says this is a "a song about keeping up with pressure and expectations."

Goose: Dustin Hoffman

We pull another plum from Everything Must Go, the Connecticut jam band's latest studio release. It's one of just a handful of songs to appear on the album before being heard in concert. Glide Magazine calls it one of the record's standout moments. "Starting as a funky ’70s strut, the track seamlessly shifts to an adult-contemporary-infused chorus teeming with ’90s-inspired horn arrangements courtesy of an impressive brass trio led by a longtime collaborator, saxophonist Stuart Bogie." (The song's title supposedly was inspired by the actor of the same name, but the lyrics have nothing to do with him.)

Suzanne Vega: Alley

We return to another of this spring's releases to pick another track for our New Music Bin. The singer says this is a song "about transcending life's difficulties and seeking sanctuary somewhere."

Saturday, July 12, 2025

Tedeschi Trucks & Mad Dogs, Drop Kick Murphys, All Time Low, James and the Cold Gun, Big Thief

Tedeschi Trucks Band: The Letter (Live at Lockn' 2015)

Ten years ago at a festival in Virginia, TTB and Leon Russell celebrated the 45th anniversary of the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour with a tribute concert. The 12-member band and the iconic blues-rock pianist (who passed away the following year) were joined by some original members of the Mad Dogs ensemble, such as Rita Coolidge, Claudia Lennear, and Chris Stainton, plus guests including Chris Robinson of The Black Crowes, Warren Haynes, Anders Osborne, and Dave Mason. This track is the first taste of an album compiled from that show, to be released in September. What took so long?

Drop Kick Murphys: Who'll Stand With Us?

This single from the Boston band's new album, For The People, is a protest anthem that ties the current socio-political situation in the U.S. to historic inequality and exploitation. "The working people fuel the engine / While you yank the chain." The song's video depicts immigrant workers being abducted, and then uses the same imagery for people being cut off from health and other benefits. Lead singer Ken Casey says, “We’ve always had the same message and haven’t been afraid to speak out about what’s important to us.." (Photo credit: @Chezphoto / Riley Vecchione)

All Time Low: The Weather

It's been 20 years since this band, formed by high school classmates in Towson, Maryland, released its first album - and now it's rolling out its tenth studio LP, Everyone's Talking!, due in October. This track is billed as "Ramones-toasting pop-rock." Lead singer Alex Gaskarth calls it a "a cynical but playful" song about running into an ex and, rather than delving into the past, talking about trivial matters. "I won't ask you how you've been / 'Cause we might just fall back in / So we talk about the weather."

James and the Cold Gun: Above The Lake

This group from Cardiff calls itself "the loudest in South Wales" (which seems to have confused some people into thinking they're from Australia's New South Wales instead of the U.K.). This track is from the band's second LP, Face In The Mirror. Frontman James Joseph says: "We’re massive rock fans. If you look at 90 per cent of the bands on rock playlists right now, though, they don’t always sound like rock. You can barely hear a guitar, and everything is super polished. We found ourselves wanting to hear new music that had the guts to keep things messy and as real as possible, so we made it ourselves.” (Photo credit: Luke Shadrick)

Big Thief: All Night All Day

Here's the second single to emerge from Double Infinity, the sixth album by the Brooklyn band featuring the tremulous voice of Adrianne Lenker and bandmates Buck Meek and James Krivchenia. "Swallow poison, swallow sugar / Sometimes they taste thе same / But I know your love is neithеr / And love is just a name."