Weekly digest #41

Featuring Ash, The Fall, Superchunk, Interpol, Wolf Alice and more

📷 Ash by Andy Willsher

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 and is sometimes on time.

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

Ash announce new Graham Coxon-featuring album Ad Astra with uplifting single ‘Give Me Back My World’ (NME)

Blondie’s new album will be released in “last quarter” of this year, following drummer Clem Burke’s death (NME)

Joyful Noise Recordings puts out 16-cassette box set of Daniel Johnston recordings (Scene Point Blank)

Hayley Williams gets very ’90s on shoegazy alt-rock song 'Mirtazapine' (Brooklyn Vegan)

The Fall’s Seminal Live (uh) to be reissued (The Quietus)

New releases

The Manic Standstill duet with Go Betty Go’s Nicolette Vilar on new single ‘Go Away’ (The Punk Site)

“Leave it to the punks to restore peace to the galaxy” - Red Scare Industries release Red Scare Across Canada EP (The Punk Site)

Dublin punk band Sprints share two new singles ‘Rage’ and ‘Beg’ (NME)

Fiddlehead’s Pat Flynn launches new band How Much Art, whose line-up includes Have Heart drummer Shawn Costa. Their first song ‘PR’ is out now (Stereogum)

Superchunk release ‘Stuck in a Dream’, another song from their upcoming album Songs In The Key of Yikes (Punk News)

Listen/watch

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues – first trailer released (The Guardian)

Watch My Chemical Romance cover Smashing Pumpkins’ 'Bullet With Butterfly Wings' (Stereogum)

Pup record Tiny Desk Concert (Punk News)

The Armed dig in with the pensive post-hardcore workout 'Sharp Teeth' (Consequence of Sound)

Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley appears on Neil Young-themed podcast All One Song to talk about Young's 'Vampire Blues' (Aquarium Drunkard)

Long reads

Rejecting the culture morticians: Elliott Smith’s second album revisited (The Quietus)

Daniel Kessler tells us about the return of side-project Big Noble, and what’s next for Interpol (NME)

Wolf Alice's Ellie Rowsell: "I’m a private person – why am I airing my dirty laundry?" (The Independent)

There’s a Wedding Present musical coming and its writer and director Matt Aston talks about his inspiration (NME)

The devilish history of the 1980s Parental Advisory sticker (Open Culture)

Elsewhere on Substack

A conversation with Melissa Auf der Maur about Ozzy Osbourne from 2002

And finally…

Tim Burton says the word 'goth' has “lost meaning” (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.)