Alex G has announced a new show at Glasgow&#39;s legendary Barrowland Ballroom later this year. Pennsylvania&#39;s preeminent master of melodic nostalgia and indie rock experimentation Alex Giannascoli and his long-serving band of brothers return to the city on Mon 17 Nov for their biggest Scottish live show to date, swiftly following the announcement of long-awaited new album Headlights, due for release on 18 July. <a href="undefined">In the meantime, Alex has previewed the first track from his new album</a>, entitled Afterlife. Aided by an irresistible mandolin-heavy hook, the song plays to the melodic strengths of previous records God Save The Animals, House of Sugar and in particular, 2017&#39;s Rocket, yet hints at new narrative direction and perhaps the most dextrous and most refined production to date. It&#39;s a bittersweet little banger which more than justifies the excited anticipation of this new record, perfectly-placed to come out right in the heart of summer.Pre-sale for the Barrowlands show starts on Thu 19 June @ 10amSign up <a href="undefined">HERE</a><a href="undefined"></a><a href="undefined">Check out the video for new single &#39;Afterlife&#39; below: </a><div class="video-container">
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ALEX G TO PLAY BARRAS IN NOVEMBER

Big Nights @ La Belle is a new month-long concert series taking place during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer, only at La Belle Angele. This exciting new collaboration between the popular Old Town venue and summer events series Big Nights Out will host a cavalcade of extraordinary performers across the whole month of August, from familiar names and party starters to your new favourite artist. Beloved Libertines co-founder and esteemed solo artist Peter Docherty will perform across two nights in support of his much-anticipated new album Felt Better Alive (12+13 Aug); Kristen Hersh brings her popular 90s alt-rock combo Throwing Muses back to the capital with their first album in five years, Moonlight Concessions (20 Aug); Multi- Grammy-Award-Winning US Blues artist Fantastic Negrito brings his explosive live show to the city on 19 Aug, while revered MC and master of the bass-baritone flow, Chali 2na (Jurassic 5, Ozomatli) brings his solo tour to Edinburgh for a hip-hop masterclass on 11 Aug. Elsewhere throughout the month Big Nights @ La Belle will welcome cinematic US indie rock elders Mercury Rev; charismatic Australian singer-songwriter, X-Factor Australia sensation and recent Coldplay touring buddy Emmanuel Kelly; the bittersweet brilliance of BC Camplight; beguiling North East alt-indie collective Lanterns on the Lake; beloved UK indie-folk project This Is The Kit; electronic jazz heavyweights Svaneborg Kardyb &amp; Vega Trails; UK blues-rock duo When Rivers Meet and rising Scottish neo-trad trio Project Smok. There will also be plenty of chances to party with performances from septuagenarian rap duo Pete &amp; Bas, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater live tribute The 900, LA jazz-funk cosmonauts Thumpasauras, 80s hitmakers Men Without Hats and Croatian Eurovision star Baby Lasagna. All shows on sale now at bignightsout.com

New Summer Concert Series to Join Edinburgh Fringe in August

Rising Chicago indie rock crew Beach Bunny return to Glasgow for their biggest Scottish show to date on Sunday 19 October. Tickets on sale Fri 28 March @ 10am <a href="undefined">HERE </a>The band, expanded from the bedroom project of prolific master of melody Lili Trifilio, will be touring in support of their anticipated new album Tunnel Vision (out 25 April). You can watch the video for the eponymous new single below:<div class="video-container">
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Beach Bunny announce new headline show in Glasgow

Big Nights Out has announced a new wave of summer concerts at Queen’s Park Arena as part of its 2025 programming across two of Glasgow’s iconic outdoor bandstands. Over several nights in May, June and July, Glasgow will play host to a packed line up of world-renowned artists and local legends for a run of very special live outdoor performances at Kelvingrove Bandstand and Queen’s Park Arena this year.Today, new performances have been added to the line up at Queen’s Park Arena, including Leeds post-punk faves Yard Act (18 July), punk-jazz experimenter Geordie Greep (black midi - 19 July) and rambunctious London indie-punk collective Warmduscher (5 July). Pre-sale starts on Wed 26 March @ 10am Tickets <a href="undefined">HERE</a>

Yard Act, Warmduscher and Geordie Greep added to Big Nights Out

Michelle Zauner&#39;s cinematic indie rock project Japanese Breakfast has today released their fourth album, For Melancholy Brunettes (&amp; Sad Women) via Dead Oceans. The album&#39;s release preceds the band&#39;s return to Scotland with a summer headline show at Glasgow&#39;s iconic Barrowland Ballroom set for Mon 30 June. This will be their biggest Scotland show to date, charting an impressive growth in scope and stature over the course of four well-received full length albums since. Tickets for Japanese Breakfast at Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow on 30 June available <a href="undefined">HERE</a>For Melancholy Brunettes... is available now from all good record shops. Watch the video for latest single &#39;Picture Window&#39; below:<div class="video-container">
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New Japanese Breakfast album out now. Barras show set for June.

Counterparts

Glasgow

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Barrowland

Bears in Trees are a band from South London who write songs about setting fire to sofas, breaking down in kitchens, and trying to become more comfortable in your own skin. Patchwork to a fault, they pride themselves on sincerity above all else. they call themselves a dirtbag boyband, but you can call them whatever you want - as long as it's nice.

Bears in Trees

Stereo

TOUCAN is the funk, pop and soul project of Irish songwriter Conor Clancy, emerging as one of the most exciting new voices to break out of Ireland. With brass-driven grooves, velvet-rich vocals and songs that bridge Motown soul and modern pop, he’s the kind of artist built for festival stages and sold-out venues. Since his breakout single&nbsp;We Fell For Miles, TOUCAN has sold out headline shows in Dublin, London, Bristol, Cork and beyond, and clocked over 5 million streams to date. UK crowds have already felt his live spark through high-energy sets at Love Supreme, Meltdown, and Mostly Jazz Funk &amp; Soul. He’s supported icons including Nile Rodgers &amp; CHIC, James Blunt and Durand Jones &amp; The Indications, as well as The Average White Band at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Most recently, he joined Daði Freyr on his European tour.Now, with brand-new music on the horizon, TOUCAN is announcing tour dates across the UK and Ireland. Expect sweaty dancing, singalongs, and a sound as timeless as it is fresh.

Toucan

The Hug and Pint

Lloyd Cole

Edinburgh

Queens Hall Edinburgh

Known for his candid, emotionally resonant songwriting, Woods blends folk, country, and pop. Outside of his own recorded music, he has written songs that have been recorded by Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, Charles Kelley of Lady A, Ben Platt, Hailey Whitters, Ashley Cooke, Barenaked Ladies, Matt Nathanson, Phillip Phillips and more. Albums like Hard Settle, Ain’t Troubled, Both Ways, Without People and his most recent Polaris Prize Long Listed album Things Were Never Good If They’re Not Good Now, are praised for his consistent compelling storytelling of exploring love, vulnerability, and relationships. 2026 he is back with brand new music with the upcoming EP Squander Your Gifts due February 27. The five track EP is a collection of songs dedicated to his friend and writing partner Abe Stoklasa, who passed away in November 2023. A reflection into loss, love and living, the singer once again finds a way to paint a picture and make a deeply personal experience resonate with fans.&nbsp;Donovan Woods continues to solidify his place as one of North America’s most compelling songwriters: unflinchingly honest, an artist who isn’t afraid to bear his soul.

Donovan Woods

“This is an album about the really fundamental human experiences of suffering, joy, and love. We find a lot of the profound in these basic experiences. To us they are by definition spiritual and worth singing and screaming about. With this record, we wanted to make music that connects the intensity of daily life with the intensity of an encounter with Spirit."&nbsp;- Agriculture The Spiritual Sound&nbsp;is largely a fusing of the visions of its two principal songwriters: Dan Meyer and Leah Levinson.&nbsp;Though distinct, their voices converge in a singular spiritual grammar—one that defines the totality of&nbsp;The Spiritual Sound, not as separate parts, but as one unified expression.Dan writes like someone clawing toward the divine through noise, channeling Zen Buddhism, historical collapse, ecstatic grief. Leah’s songs move differently: grounded in queer history and AIDS-era literature, amid the suffocating fog of the present, they carry the weight of survival as daily ritual.&nbsp; Agriculture’s formation mirrors their duality. What began as a loose collaboration between Kern Haug and Dan Meyer in the Los Angeles noise scene evolved into a shared pursuit of the sublime through heavy music. With the additions of Richard Chowenhill and Leah Levinson, the project solidified into the band’s current form. The ecstatic black metal foundation that was laid on 2022’s&nbsp;The Circle Chant&nbsp;expanded into something more precise and far-reaching on their 2023 self-titled full-length, and deepened further with 2024’s&nbsp;Living Is Easy: a record that embraced devotional intensity and radiant heaviness in equal measure. Agriculture’s writing process is built on dismantling and revision of self. Dan and Leah bring songs to the band and then allow them to be pulled apart and rebuilt communally: reshaped through conflict, repetition, and deep trust. Richard adds guitar melodies and solos, and Kern constructs rhythms which are sometimes familiar but often unconventional. Finally, with Richard producing, the final form of each song is realised through intense collaborative work in the studio. Although a time consuming and ego-frustrating process, this allows the band to find the spirit of the songs not through inspiration, but through persistence. Yet, even in its most ambitious moments,&nbsp;The Spiritual Sound&nbsp;remains rooted in the ordinary and in the day-to-day relationships between the people who made it. Gas station snacks. Inside jokes. Sleeping on floors. Playing shows in rooms that smell like mildew. The spirit here isn’t abstract, it’s live. This is spiritual music that starts with imperfect gear and a long-in-the-tooth tour van. Agriculture doesn’t offer salvation.&nbsp;The Spiritual Sound&nbsp;isn’t a map out of the fire. What it offers instead is presence: a confrontation with the moment, however unbearable, however divine. It insists that meaning is still possible, even in a world hell-bent on reducing everything to content, and where suffering itself can be conducive to recovery. As the Buddhist saying goes: “the only way out is in.”

Core. Presents: Agriculture

Tom McGuire &amp; the Brassholes are a funk soul powerhouse from Glasgow. They effortlessly combine rich arrangements with meticulous songcraft and are wholly untouchable when it comes to their live performance. This band is carving a niche of their own. The band formed busking on the streets of Glasgow and made a living from playing bars before bursting onto the scene with runaway viral debut single “Ric Flair”. Mere months later the band launched their debut album with a sellout show at the 1000+ capacity QMU in Glasgow. Since then they have gone on to secure support slots for Craig Charles and Geroge Clinton, have become a firm favourite on the festival circuit, headlining a number of scottish festivals, and have toured extensively in the U.K and Europe. The band’s music is full of vitality, the sound of a new niche being cut, classic pop sensibility with high musicianship values and rewarding arrangement and rich production. At the root is soulfull song, telling stories and sharing experiences of joy, turmoil, loss, celebration, sadness, happiness, confidence, frailty. All told hyper distilled and delivered in finely honed funk pop parcels of aesthetic joy. Life is confusing and hard, but music is fun and great, so let’s talk about it whilst at one and the same time, getting down.

Edinburgh Fringe: Tom McGuire and The Brassholes

La Belle Angele

As architects of formidably nagging hooks, The Itch could scarcely be more aptly named. Pairing effervescent art-pop with wryly self-aware lyrics, Simon Tyrie and Georgia Hardy make sardonic floorfillers that burrow deep under your skin and linger in your consciousness long after the music stops. Consequently, their debut album, It’s The Hope That Kills You, doesn’t just demand attention, it commands it, with productions that feel both playfully nostalgic and utterly contemporary. At the centre of The Itch’s genius is the dynamic between Simon and Georgia. Having initially met at an open mic night, the Luton-based pair have been friends since high school, playing in various bands together, DJing and running club nights. Most recently, the duo made up two thirds of acclaimed post-punk outfit Regressive Left. Having felt hemmed in by that band’s rigid creative parameters, they started The Itch as a vehicle for unfettered self-expression, looking to dance-punk, electroclash and epic 80s pop productions as a jumping off point for formal experimentation. Initially just a studio project, a key turning point for The Itch came in 2023 when Regressive Left took part in a David Byrne tribute show at Hackney’s MOTH Club, alongside members of Shame, PVA, Goat Girl and Lazarus Kane. Georgia recalls: “We were all just thrown together having never met before, and had to perform after only two rehearsals. It was like being 16 again, playing covers in your mate’s garage: everyone was nervous and it was chaotic and really fun. After that, we just wanted to recapture that feeling.”&nbsp; Reinvigorated, they spent six months playing shows as The Itch with a revolving cast of supporting players, before settling on their current live line-up, comprising former-Lazarus Kane members Ben Hambro (electronics), Louis Haynes (bass) and Charlie Meyrick (guitar). The duo have built their impressive live reputation by retaining that same sense of spontaneity, as Simon explains. “We want it to feel dangerous, like anything could happen, so we try not to rehearse too much.” Georgia concurs, “When I see a band live, I don't want to watch a carbon copy of the recording. We approach gigs almost like we’re our own cover band, playing differently every time.” Their debut single, ‘Ursula’, arrived in April 2024 to widespread acclaim. A statement of intent, its portentous melody takes layers of twitching electronics, fidgety synths and glittering guitar distortion and spins them out into an immersive, seven-minute epic. Thematically, Simon takes inspiration from Ursula K. Le Guin – in particular, her 1974 novel The Dispossessed – using the author’s quest for utopia as a framework through which to examine the thwarted dreams of his own generation. A year later, The Itch made their debut for Fiction Records with ‘The Influencer/Co-conspirator’, a standalone, double A-side single created from identical audio stems. On the former track, they critique being terminally online over punk-funk rhythms and crude, Peaches-esque synth stabs. The latter is as romantic as it is frenetic, its pounding beats and see-sawing, chopped and spliced synths redolent of Kitsuné’s influential, mid-00s Maison comps. Now their first full-length finds them expanding their horizons even further. Two years in the making and largely self-produced in their home studio – bar select sessions at Konk in London and PRAH in Margate – It’s The Hope That Kills You is a riot. Anthemic lead single ‘Space In The Cab’ sets the tone, featuring four-to-the-floor beats, warped synths and droll soundbites like, ‘The political climate is taking its toll on my laugh lines.” Pitched somewhere between Metronomy, The Knife and Does It Offend You, Yeah?, on a surface level it’s a tongue-in-cheek ode to hedonism. But as Georgia explains, it was actually inspired by the creative clarity the duo found post-COVID: “It’s us saying just grab the moment, rather than being paralysed by perfectionism. Write the music. Release the song.” Discussing his arch observational style, Simon describes humour as “a defence mechanism” to deflect from sincerity. You can hear that approach on the deeply mischievous ‘No More Sprechegesang’, which takes aim at the recent glut of earnest post-punk, over a gleefully hyperactive production that’s two parts Devo to one part Bloc Party. Tongue wedged firmly in cheek, Simon’s Phil Oakey-esque vocal intones, “No more Krautrock karaoke at Cafe Oto, which is a shame / No more Speedy Wunderground taking over the local – shout out to those guys.”&nbsp; They’re mocking themselves as much as they are anyone else, a theme that continues on the waspish dance-punk of ‘Aux Romanticiser’. Beginning with a Subway Takes sample decrying laptop DJs, it continues with Simon declaring, “You don't need to know how to crossfade / Just stick it in your phone and play some Beyoncé.” In something of a handbrake turn, the second half of the song transforms into an emotive alt-dance instrumental worthy of New Order. It’s this duality that makes The Itch such an exciting proposition. On ‘Drugdealer’, they weave hazy synth washes over epic, gated drums to create a beautifully warped love song with addiction as its central metaphor. Co-produced by Ghost Culture, reference points included Phil Collins, ‘Vienna’ by Ultravox and Laurie Anderson’s ‘O Superman’, but the results are totally unique.&nbsp; Simon also cites the disjointed, emotion-led approach of director Wong Kar-Wai as particularly influential on the prevailing mood of the album. Because, for all its dry humour and upbeat sonics, there’s no denying that a sense of acute disenchantment clings tightly to the record. You can detect it in the motorik melancholy of the title track, in the punk-funk, cost-of-living critique ‘Can’t Afford This’ and in the serpentine, Talking Heads-esque new wave of ‘Switch It Off’, which examines the dissociative effect of rolling news. As Georgia puts it, with a grin, “Even though we're really influenced by loads of New York dance-punk stuff, we clearly can't shake the British cynicism,” Taking the temperature of the nation while offering limitless dancefloor catharsis, The Itch are an utterly irresistible proposition. Resistance is futile.

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