LTW newsletter 86

Welcome Warriors,

It's full on crimble cromble fucking chrizzy whissy pissy bah humbug Cratchit xmas here and the city centre is packed with drunken hordes and the xmas markets smell of burnt sausages and strange felt hats. It’s a curious if traditional time of year when Jesus was born in a manger surrounded by Santa Fookin’ Claus and his braying reindeer and people got very drunk and fell over in the surrounding hay and Christmas cards, meanwhile the gods looked down and bedecked the planet with tinsel and everyone cheered when the blizzard arrived and the sledge got stuck.

At LTW Towers, we are emerging from the elf rubble to try and bring you the last remnants of musical stuff in the dying embers of 2024 a year when the world went a little bit crazier and our lives got a little bit messier but somehow we were still engrossed in the noisy stuff that makes sense of the senseless world around us! 

Speaking of crimble, cromble, cramble, bramble we have a Louder Than War calendar featuring 12 great shots from our team of brilliant photographers. Surely the perfect last minute xmas gift…

Featuring 13 stunning images, the calendar is A3 size – each print is A4 with the month below. Make notes, book tour dates, never forget a gig – old school analogue style!  Each print has photograph has been taken by one of our world class, professional photographers, with the cover designed by our very own Jack Flynn! All in stunning full colour, this is a real collectors item of original bands and artists doing what they do best! 

It’s that time of year again when we chase the 40 plus writers on the site favourite albums into our top 100! More of a snapshot of how diverse the music scene really is these days that n a scientific list there are some hidden gems and discoveries to be made on the list…

The Damned are currently on tour and with Rat Scabies brilliantly back on drums the band has never sounded more magnificent. In the punk era the bands made a virtue out of their chaos but the Damned these days are a musically brilliant unit casually switching from one style to another in their never ending quest to be themselves, dressed up in their pantomime regalia, they are the perfect xmas tour band!

It’s great to see IDLES so established as one of the big bands of our time - constantly evolving and deconstructing their thrilling feral sound they can now headline places like Manchester Apollo without any hint of compromise, adding a certain sensitivity to their unzipped angular sound creating a very mid roaring 20’s rock for the now…

The Sad loss of Mark Lanegan a couple of years ago left a very big dark hole in the music scene. Lanegan not only had one of the great voices, he also commanded the stage with his very being and wa sa wonderful human being to tour with. Dave Gahan, Chrissie Hynde, Josh Homme, Bobby Gillespie, and Alison Mosshart celebrated what would have been Mark Lanegan’s 60th birthday with stellar renditions of the baritone colossus's greatest songs. At times delicate, at others thunderous, always emotional.very special gig at London Roundhouse

We didn't realise that Travis were still going but they are currently on tour and the live review of their gig was one of the most read things on the site this week.

The iconic rock band formed in Glasgow in 1990, shot to fame with their breakthrough second album, The Man Who, which topped the charts in 1999. This show marked the second stop on their 2024 UK Raze The Bar Tour, a 13-date journey set to culminate in a triumphant hometown finale on December 21st. The tour highlights fresh tracks from their latest album, L.A. Times, released in June 2024. Guest contributor Paul Addy was there.

Looking back at the early days of the site and it’s always great to be ahead of the curve when it comes to new music. This was a curious gig in front of about 20 people upstairs in a pub in Camden town where Charli XVX played one of her first gigs supporting the Young Fathers - both have become big names with ground breaking musics in different kitchens and we loved them both then back in 2011.

Robert Smith has been doing the very occasional interview and it was great to see him hint at two more Cure albums for next year. This years mighty opus is one of the front runners in most album of the year lists and wa a remarkable comeback from the much loved band who seem to exist in a time zone of their own.