Weekly digest #73

Featuring Pulp, Phoebe Green, The Decemberists, Otoboke Beaver, The Smiths and more

📷 Pulp on the cover of Live!

I’m hitting ‘send’ on this issue while I wait for a taxi to take me to Heathrow airport. So there’s a good chance you’ll be reading it while I’m in the air and some way into my 5,500-mile flight to San Diego on a work trip to a biotech conference.

I picked a hotel in the Gaslamp Quarter that just happens to be a short walk from a couple of interesting looking record shops and a bookstore, so I’ll definitely be checking out Normal Records, FeeLIT and Hey Books! Hopefully I’ll be able to spend some time in Balboa Park too. Anything else will be the usual work trip randomness of things that just happen (a bit of major league baseball – for this non-sports fan; maybe a ‘tacos and tequila’ thing; definitely some Mexican food).

You’ll get a sense of my priorities when I tell you I decided which book to bring with me (Donna Tartt’s chunky The Little Friend) and what music to download for the trip (Boris’ doom/sludge/stoner metal classic Pink, plus shoegaze and grunge boxsets from Cherry Red Records), way before my case was packed. Important things first, clearly.

And now your weekly digest of punk rock, alt rock and indie music news and writing.

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

Pulp announce live album and film (Stereogum)

Phoebe Bridgers’ record label Saddest Factory Records merging after trademark dispute (Far Out Magazine)

Slumberland announces compilation of early Velocity Girl tracks (Treble)

Ceremony to release John Reis-produced Tell Me You Dream in August (Scene Point Blank)

Mojave 3 to reissue full back catalogue via 4AD (The Quietus)

New releases

Phoebe Green announces new album Premature Nostalgia, shares new single (Our Culture)

New UK melodic hardcore band Bonny Lad drop Hard Fought debut EP (The Punk Site)

Swedish band Clutter announce debut album with boisterous single ‘Grease Baby’ (NME)

Toronto pop-punks Weak Hands released first song ‘Massey Sign’ (Punk News)

Listen to the new album by Madison post-hardcore band …or Does It Explode? and read a track-by-track breakdown! (Punk News)

Listen/watch

The Decemberists prep second live recordings volume for September release (Scene Point Blank)

My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields reunites with Primal Scream on stage in Ireland (NME)

John Vanderslice announces new album Focus: hear ‘From the Life of the Marionettes’ (Stereogum)

Melvins’ Dale Crover covers Neil Young’s ‘Harvest Moon’ - he also starred in the original video (Brooklyn Vegan)

Neko Case, k.d. lang, and Laura Veirs share previously unreleased ‘Accidental Tattoo’ on 10th anniversary of collab album (Stereogum)

Long reads

I know it’s overrated: The Queen Is Dead turns 40 (The Quietus)

“We weren’t allowed to meet Oasis!”: Japanese punk band Otoboke Beaver on fun, feminism and famous fans (The Guardian)

Lambrini Girls to the front (Spin)

The 50 best albums of 2026 - so far (Our Culture)

The reinvention of the guitar in 13 albums by Simon Reynolds (The Quietus)

Elsewhere on Substack

Dead Kennedys, 1981

And finally…

Elliott Smith honored with namesake asteroid (Brooklyn Vegan)

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.)