Weekly digest #31

Featuring Manic Street Preachers, Pere Ubu, Elliott Smith, Broken Social Scene, Nick Drake and more

Apr 27, 2025

📷 Still from Manic Street Preachers’ ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’ video

Welcome to Fire Red Sky’s latest weekly digest of punk rock, alt rock and indie music news and writing.

It’s a light read, a quick catch up on the week that lands with you every Sunday morning.

The links are mainly taken from my social media feeds, so if you want more of this sort of thing than you can follow me on Facebook, Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon (I’m also on Instagram).

Headlines

Manic Street Preachers and Keith Cameron announce new book 168 Songs Of Hatred And Failure (NME)

Mixes of a Lost World - Four Tet, Orbital, Chino Moreno remix The Cure (Spin)

Pere Ubu’s David Thomas dies, aged 71 (NME)

Greg Ginn launches new Black Flag lineup for shows and new music (Brooklyn Vegan)

Green Day to receive star on Hollywood Walk of Fame (Punk News)

New releases

Holy Fuck members launch new band Cut Cult with first release ‘Lame Horse’ (Stereogum)

New York's Model/Actriz release 'Diva', the third single from their new album Pirouette (Pitchfork)

Hildur Guðnadóttir's experimental noise rock supergroup Osmium release first song 'OSMIUM 1' (Stereogum)

Broken Social Scene announce You Forgot It in People covers album featuring Toro y Moi, Maggie Rogers, and more (Pitchfork)

Fiona Apple shares cover of Neil Young’s 'Heart Of Gold' (Stereogum)

Listen/watch

Watch Gang Of Four bring out Belly’s Tanya Donelly and Mission Of Burma’s Roger Miller on their farewell tour (Stereogum)

The Divine Comedy premiere video for 'Achilles' from forthcoming album Rainy Sunday (Louder Than War)

John Mulaney gets METZ to reunite for his Netflix show: “One of my favourite bands ever” (Consequence of Sound)

Wolf Alice share playlist of influences on new material as they tease new single ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’ (NME)

Watch Deafheaven play Lonely People With Power songs live for the first time at LA tour opener (Stereogum)

Long reads

Tunde Adebimpe on the future of TV On The Radio: “I would love for us to record more, I’m sure that we will” (NME)

Every Elliott Smith album ranked (Spin)

Like starting over: an interview with Shack (The Quietus)

Nick Drake: Unheard songs and recordings reveal the story behind Five Leaves Left (Mojo)

5 albums I can’t live without: Monique Powell of Save Ferris (Spin)

Elsewhere on Substack

Ready for Nothing

The Unheard Music

As an artist advocate, I’ve been thinking of things I can do - or encourage - to address some of what I consider anti-artist behavior from the old industry. The “old industry,” meaning pre-streaming, gatekeeper era, the recent past. It’s an era when record companies had immense power over artists. The vast majority of artist signings failed to revenue, …

2 months ago · 45 likes · 11 comments · John Strohm

And finally…

Red Hot Chili Peppers to be part of voice cast for Love, Death + Robots season four (NME)

Do you have a Substack article, news tip or other piece of writing you’d like to be considered for the digest? Send it to tangleofwires@gmail.com (same goes for press releases etc.)