Weekly digest #34
Featuring Foo Fighters, Wolf Alice, Steve Albini, New Order, Jehnny Beth and more
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
Foo Fighters (pictured above) part ways with Josh Freese (Punk News)
Steve Albini’s stuff (LPs, books, posters, more) being sold online to benefit his estate (Brooklyn Vegan)
Sonic Youth to reopen Reverb shop to sell studio-used guitars, pedals, and more (Pitchfork)
Thom Yorke goes Willy Wonka, hides 400 coins around the world for fans to find (Brooklyn Vegan)
The Cure are sending audio fragments from Mixes Of A Lost World on vinyl acetate to record stores around the world (NME)
New releases
The Lemonheads share new songs with Juliana Hatfield and J Mascis, Townes Van Zandt cover (Stereogum)
Heavy shoegazers Slow Crush to release new album, share 'Thirst' video (Punk News)
Jehnny Beth announces new album, shares video for new song ‘Broken Rib’ (Pitchfork)
Shoegazy punk supergroup Hard Chiller announce debut LP (Brooklyn Vegan)
Wolf Alice announce new album The Clearing, share video for new song 'Bloom Baby Bloom' (Pitchfork)
Listen/watch
Turnstile debut new Never Enough songs live as they discuss “mad flavours” of new album (NME)
Vampire Weekend cover their generation’s indie hits - songs by Tame Impala, TV On The Radio, Grizzly Bear and others - at Just Like Heaven 2025 (Stereogum)
Pelican discuss 10 albums that influenced their new LP Flickering Resonance (Brooklyn Vegan)
Hear Interpol frontman Paul Banks’ new Iggy Pop and Stooges covers from new movie Sister Midnight (Stereogum)
Amyl And The Sniffers do ‘Tiny Bikini’ on Fallon (Stereogum)
Fugazi’s live shows come out of the waiting room
The last, to-date, Fugazi show was on 4 November 2002 at London's Forum in Kentish Town. I did not attend it. Awaiting the impending birth of my first son was very much the priority then, rather than gig going.
Long reads
Stereolab interview: “We have to organise how society is run in radically different ways.” (Mojo)
The ultimate fuck you: McAlmont & Butler’s ‘Yes’ revisited (The Quietus)
Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus: “I thought, I’ve been lucky for so long and now I’m supposed to die” (The Independent)
Supergrass on I Should Coco at 30: “The further we got into the studio stash of weed, the more psychedelic we went” (The Independent)
New Order’s Low-Life at 40: their other genre-fusing masterpiece remains peerless (Brooklyn Vegan)
Elsewhere on Substack
And finally…
The Simpsons did a ska episode (Stereogum)
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.)
Time to burn
In lieu of well thought out words, this issue offers some video from UltraBomb’s excellent first UK gig at the Camden Underworld.