Hyde & Beast’s next single You Will Be Lonely is released on November 14th and you can watch the video now. The video follows a giant teddy bear around a desolate landscape on what they’re calling, “a journey of self discovery, on a quest to find himself, with a purgatory metaphor, on the shore of a new beginning and ultimately taking the chance and swimming towards something … Continue reading MM Shorts 25: Hyde & Beast Video
Arrogance is a wholly unpleasant characteristic. Confidence, yes; arrogance, get ye out of my bloody space. Despite the urge to strike back, I pay homage to the way of the Mackerel: bide your time, wait awhile, then just wait for the penny to drop. As MM always says, much better to know, step back, remove from the payroll, metaphorical or otherwise. What goes around often … Continue reading Mrs Mackerel’s TFI Friday (28th October)
Mat Gibson is a London based, Canadian born acoustic musician and troubadour. Produced in collaboration with various members of Oxfordshire based fast rising stars The Epstein, Mat’s new mini-album Forest Fire, recently released on Clubhouse Records, is a joy to behold. For comparisons sake, think Nebraska era Springsteen or Wilco’s Being There. Switching from a sparse, finger picked strum to reverb heavy vocal phrasing the … Continue reading Introducing…Mat Gibson
All Hands Electric is releasing this excellent 7″ single (on vinyl and digital formats) by The Gang Violets – it is out today. Their blend of psychedelic Americana effortlessly shifts from sunshine-pop to space-rock, while making more than a few country, folk, and blues detours along the way. Black Clouds rises up like a campfire despite moody lyrics, and is impossible to forget with its hook laden cadences, … Continue reading Introducing…The Gang Violets
Mirror Test is the debut EP from The Thinking Men, self-released on November 7th. The 5-track EP was recorded in Norwich during the snowstorms of early 2011 and showcases the band’s folk-inspired blues rock with huge sophistication. Their influences include Tom Waits, The Doors and Nick Cave, and they’ve already started to create quite a buzz for themselves. The band will be celebrating their new … Continue reading Introducing…The Thinking Men
Tyler Ramsey (guitarist with Band of Horses) has released a solo album titled The Valley Wind. The title track is a lovely, evocative slice of countrified rock that recalls vintage Neil Young with its rustic imagery and sense of solitude and mystery. Download Tyler Ramsey – The Valley Wind mp3 (from The Valley Wind) Continue reading MM Shorts 19: Tyler Ramsey
Communicating Vessels is releasing part two of their lavishly packaged 7″ vinyl recordings of secret songwriters from the southeast of the USA. Born equally of bright lights and seedy charm, The Grenadines might be Birmingham, Alabama’s sexiest band. Fronted by husband and wife team Michael and Lauren Shackelford and thrust into widescreen by guitarist David Swatzell and bassist Jesse Phillips, The Grenadines have been making a name for themselves in … Continue reading Communicating Vessels 7″ Series
The Sunparlour Players are one of our favourite bands of the past five years. Both 2007’s Hymns For The Happy and 2009’s Wave North were superb albums chock full of wonderful folk tales, stomping bluegrass, anthemic country rock and impassioned lyrics. Euphoria would give way to melancholy and back again in two sets of perfectly judged and executed records that reminded us of a Canadian … Continue reading Return Of The Sunparlour Players
Perhaps best known as the singer-songwriter of the phenomenally successful and much-loved Hefner, Darren Hayman is now six albums into an increasingly idiosyncratic career path; writing the theme tune and staring in a Spanish Sitcom, playing a 30 people capacity show in a 100 year old paper mache observatory and playing possibly Britiain’s most remote festival on the Isle of Eigg. It could also be … Continue reading Mad Mackerel Recommends…Darren Hayman
It was Mrs Mackerel who first discovered the exquisite, starkly beautiful folk of the Söderberg sisters, aka Swedish duo First Aid Kit. Their debut album The Big Black And The Blue more than confirmed all of the early promise that they had shown, but this new single The Lion’s Roar is a further step up the ladder of intelligent, innovative songwriting. Like the equally young Laura Marling, … Continue reading First Aid Kit: New Single
The Mad Mackerel 