THIS MONTH’S COVERMOUNT CD is Small Faces 1965-1969 Live. Rare. Unreleased. An official exclusive compilation of Small Faces gems and rarities, including thrilling versions of Afterglow, Tin Soldier, Here Come The Nice and more!

Isotope was formed in 1973 by talented guitarist Gary Boyle and originally featured Jeff Clyne on bass, Brian Miller on keyboards and Nigel Morris on drums. Clyne had previously played with Ian Carr’s Nucleus, while Gary Boyle had played with Stomu Yamashta’s East Wind.

As founding member and principal songwriter of The Pineapple Thief, Bruce Soord has spent the last decade steadily refining a voice that balances emotional directness with musical restraint. Ghosts In The Park, his latest solo album, is his most personal and unguarded work to date: a record shaped by loss, memory, and the quiet spaces that reveal themselves when life continues to move while everything else appears to stop.

Peter Frampton is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, a guitar god, hit song writer and a kind human being. In 2014, Frampton was diagnosed with Inclusion Body Myositis (IBM), a rare, degenerative muscle disease. He was ready to retire after a farewell tour in 2019. Then he realized, he wants to keep going until he can't. At 75, 50 years removed from his #1 album Frampton Comes Alive, he delivers his first new album of original rock songs in 16 years. Carry The Light is co-written with his son Julian. The album is co-produced by Frampton, Julian Frampton and Chuck Ainlay. The 10 song journey captures the wisdom of life entertained with the youthful magic of rock n' roll. Collaborators on the album include: H.E.R. jamming on guitar on "Islamorada", Benmont Tench on keyboards for the lead single "Buried Treasure", Sheryl Crow singing on the duet "Breaking The Mold", Bill Evans playing saxophone on "Tinderbox" and "Can You Take Me There", Tom Morello adds his distinctive sound to "Lions At The Gate" and Graham Nash provides harmonies on "I'm Sorry Elle".

Produced with Mark Ralph, who previously worked with them on their 2013 album Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action, the album showcases Franz at their most immediate, upbeat and life-affirming, unashamedly going for the pop-jugular in classic Franz style. Recorded at AYR studios in Scotland, the 11-songs on The Human Fear all allude to some deep-set human fears and how overcoming and accepting these fears drives and defines our lives.

Squid’s new album Cowards is about evil. Nine stories whose protagonists reckon with cults, charisma and apathy. Real and imagined characters wading into the dark ocean between right and wrong. Cowards is Squid’s most courageous album: simultaneously growing in scope and returning to basics. The band recorded Cowards at Church Studios in Crouch End with Mercury prize winning producers Marta Salogni and Grace Banks. On additional production is longtime shifu and collaborator Dan Carey, who recorded the band’s first two albums. The record was mixed in Seattle by John McEntire, before being compressed by the rich analogue chain of Heba Kadry’s mastering in Brooklyn, New York. Squid have come a long way since forming in 2016 as an instrumental jazz band for a monthly night in Brighton. Their debut album Bright Green Field (2021) arrived as the world was starting to open up after the pandemic and they broke into the top 5 in the UK chart. In 2023 they released their sophomore album, the brooding O Monolith, which took the band all over the world and broke new ground that hardly seemed possible years prior.

With It's My Life, Talk Talk proved that they could pull off an entire album of strong material. With The Colour of Spring, they took it one step further, moving to a near-concept song cycle, following the emotional ups and downs of relationships and pondering life in general. Musically, they built on the experimental direction of the previous album with interesting rhythms, sweeping orchestration, complex arrangements, and even a children's chorus to create an evocative, hypnotic groove. Though the songs were catchier on the earlier efforts and the ambient experimentation was more fully achieved later on, The Colour of Spring succeeded in marrying the two ideas into one unique sound for their most thoroughly satisfying album.

Pretty much every record released during the psychedelic era by EMI’s various satellite labels was honed and buffed to opaque perfection by the studio technocrats who were working for the company.

Pressed for the first time on vinyl and featuring five tracks from one of U2's two legendary open-air performances at the RDS Arena, Dublin in August 1993, the hometown stop on their worldwide industry-defining ZOO TV Tour. While much sought-after bootlegged copies of the RDS show audio have been in circulation for years, this marks the first official release, making it a highly covetable collectible for fans and collectors alike.

The Rolling Stones are teasing their new album, Foreign Tongues, with a new single, “In the Stars.” That song, along with the bluesy “Rough and Twisted,” which they teased with a grassroots campaign billing themselves as the Cockroaches, lead off the 14-track LP. The album, due July 10, follows up 2023’s Hackney Diamonds, which was a Number Three hit in the U.S. and won the band a Grammy.

A slick 3-CD gatefold package that walks you through a legendary back catalogue of folk giants Fairport Convention. Featuring tracks such as Si Tu Dois Partir, Meet On The Ledge, Who Knows Where the Time Goes?, Matty Groves and many more.

Teeming with melodic epiphanies and layered sounds, Squid’s second album O Monolith is a musical evocation of environment, domesticity and self-made folklore. Like its predecessor, 2021’s critically acclaimed, UK number 4 album Bright Green Field, it is dense and tricksy – but also more warm and characterful, with a meandering, questioning nature. Expansive, evocative and hugely varied, O Monolith retains Squid’s restless, enigmatic spirit, but it still holds surprises for those familiar with Bright Green Field. It’s a reflection of the outsized progression of a band always looking to the future. Like its namesake, O Monolith is vast and strange; alive with endless possible interpretations of its inner mysteries.

The Style Council were an English pop band formed in Woking in 1982 by Paul Weller, the former lead vocalist, principal songwriter and guitarist with the rock band the Jam, and keyboardist Mick Talbot. Weller started the project to escape the restrictions of the Jam, and to explore a more arty, European, jazzier direction, which encompassed pop, hip hop, and soul. The permanent line-up grew to include drummer Steve White and Weller's then-girlfriend, vocalist Dee C. Lee. Other artists such as Tracie Young, Tracey Thorn (Everything but the Girl) and drummer/percussionist Steve Sidelnyk also performed and collaborated with the group. As with Weller's previous band, most of the London-based group's hits were in their homeland, where they scored seven top 10 hits. The band also had hit singles and albums in Australia and New Zealand during the 1980s.

WIRED is a hard reset for Basement. It marks the British band’s first album in eight years, a reunion with their original label Run For Cover Records, and a return to making music with the unbridled passion and creative intuition that's always animated their best material. Since forming in 2009, Basement have always been the same five friends – vocalist Andrew Fisher, guitarists Alex Henery and Ronan Crix, bassist Duncan Stewart, and drummer James Fisher – with the same alchemic bond. The only thing that's changed in recent years is their renewed sense of purpose, and their new album makes that loudly apparent. WIRED is the most dynamic, daring, and inspired Basement have ever sounded, while also retaining the timeless fundamentals of the band’s singular sound: growling guitars, rousing choruses, striking emotional verbiage.

His first album of new material in 12 years sees the former Ultravox frontman divide the offering into two parts. The first half, World One: Music, consists of eight instrumental pieces, while the second half, World Two: Songs, features eight ‘proper’ songs (with vocals). This concept is said to be partly inspired by the time Midge spent during lockdown listening to instrumental music, and some of the work he heard whilst presenting THE SPACE on Scala Radio. He began writing what became a selection of instrumental pieces — “music shaped by reflection, uncertainty, and a strange kind of quiet”.