Weekly digest #56
Featuring The Cure, Hedge, Tom Morello, Ratboys, Metric 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
‘Lost’ and found: The Cure win first Grammys ever, including Best Alternative Music Performance for ‘Alone’; Turnstile pick up Best Rock Album for Never Enough; and Best Rock song goes to Nine Inch Nails (Spin)
The Ramones settle legal battle on 50th anniversary of ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’: will we get the Pete Davidson biopic now? (Stereogum)
Fred Armisen to host CNN series delving into Nirvana, GN’R, and other Universal Music artists (Consequence of Sound)
Steven Blush: acclaimed author completes book trilogy with When Rock Met Hip-Hop (The Big Takeover)
Weezer announce new early demos and rarities collection 1192 for Record Store Day 2026 (Consequence of Sound)
New releases
Massachusetts pop-punk trio Hedge follow up Better Days (Scene Point Blank)
Massachusetts thrash punks SkyTigers Issue ‘Greenbark’ single from Upcoming …Injustice For All album (The Punk Site)
Hayley Williams unveils new indie-grunge project Power Snatch with four songs (Consequence of Sound)
Mclusky announces mini-album, shares new song (Pitchfork)
Greg Norton’s UltraBomb will ‘Look Forward in Anger’ on upcoming single (The Punk Site)
Listen/watch
Tom Morello rocks Minneapolis ICE protest show with Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave and Woody Guthrie songs (NME)
Watch Pulp cover ABBA’s ‘The Day Before You Came’ with the BBC Concert Orchestra (Brooklyn Vegan)
Broken Social Scene announce new album Remember the Humans, share new single (Our Culture)
The Boo Radleys return with new album In Spite of Everything (Louder Than War)
Suede debut brand new song for their fandom, ‘Tribe’: “This one’s for the insatiable ones” (NME)
Long reads
The story behind every song on Ratboys’ new album Singin’ To An Empty Chair (Stereogum)
Metric are getting back to their essence in the era of “solo artists and billionaires” on Romanticize The Dive (NME)
“I didn’t really go super grunge, I just liked Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains. I went from there right to punk and hardcore” - Guv’s Ben Cook (The Big Takeover)
Converge interview : The storm is always there (Treble)
Doctor’s Orders: Peter Capaldi’s favourite albums (The Quietus)
Elsewhere on Substack
And finally…
Ministry’s Al Jourgensen shows acting chops in trailer for comedic-horror film Jesus Cop (Consequence of Sound)
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.)