LTW newsletter 100

Dear Warriors,

Old masters versus all the new young dudes!

There is something weird going on in rock n roll.

Despite there being an explosion of brilliant new bands twisting and turning music inside out and creating their own agendas and the team at LTW covering them and celebrating their future, the old masters seem to be hitting a ridiculous prime. 

Back in the punk wars, the Rolling Stones were looked on as being impossibly ancient in their late thirties - how could it be possible to get on stage and play something as high octane as rock music at that crazy old age, teenagers would then laugh. Decades later, the Stones are still out there in their eighties, but the real wam bam shows have been in the past couple of weeks. Bruce Springsteen made high impact with his recent Manchester arena show but the talk of the town this week are the remarkable gigs being played by a 78 year old Iggy Pop. 

Battered and bruised and with his body bent out of shape by decades of extreme raw power, Iggy remains defiant - summoning up the demon energy he still tears the stage apart, raging into the light, and his recent show in Manchester is one of the greatest rock n roll shows we have seen. With the added brass the band have never sounded better and Iggy is a whirling dervish phenomenon.

Somewhat fittingly in the Ig context, the Celebration Of Bowie  tour breezed through Manchester with two of the key players in Bowie’s prima period, drummer Woody Woodmansey and producer Tony Visconti rattling off the classics that they had a key part in playing on and producing.

Another great example of old masters is Sparks, whose current album crashed into the charts at number 2 last week - their highest ever chart placing. Somehow, the Mael brothers continue to make brilliant albums, defying the pop logic that you inevitably burn away after your brief flurry of success, and with a tour coming soon, the band have never sounded hotter (hotter…sparks..geddit!!!) I interviewed them about all of this here….

LTW prides itself on writing about many bands first like Fontaines DC or Charlie XCX and another band that made their debut on our pages was The Lovely Eggs. Somehow they still feel like a new band but are actually about to embark on their 20th anniversary tour…newbies on the block or old masters - you decide!

In March 2026, Louder Than War will be having our own festival in Manchester, Louder Than War live Headliners are Sea Power and there are more bands to be announced soon…tickets from…

Close friend of LTW, The late and great punk icon Jordan is to be celebrated in a new book and there are many of iconic images of her and her amazing looks and styles at this upcoming exhibition. Arguably the first punk in the world Jordan’s looks echo through the decades and her cultural impact is still defying gravity and is still an inspirational force.

33 years after releasing their debut EP, the music made by guitarist Dylan Carlson and Earth still defies easy categorisation. The band’s predominantly instrumental output has absorbed and explored elements of drone, rock, country and psychedelia. They often get lumped in with the drone metal sub-genre yet despite their clear influence on that particular sound, the band have consistently ploughed their own furrow. It’s been a whopping 5 and a half years since they last played the iconic Brudenell Social Club, so tonight’s return feels long overdue. Knowing the band’s penchant for volume, my lingering headache feels a tad inconvenient. 

Suddenly out of nowhere, Pulp return older and wiser and still as anthemic, melodic, and smart as ever, as it eloquently deals with ageing and the ever-ending bustle of being alive in a set of songs that will resonate with their generation of fans.

Steven Wilson from Porcupine Tree has been shape shifting his own unique brand of music for years in his group Porcupine Tree. The mixture of prog, post punk and sometimes Abba and electro pop is brilliantly confounding and on his recent solo album he gets immersed in the cosmos with a music to match. He has also played some live shows, which are as astounding as you would expect. 

It’s been a decade since Throwing Muses were last on the road, but the ever-active Kristin Hersh has got the band back together. The result is a beguiling canvas of old and impressive new material, painted with this singular artist’s customary vivid colours. Steve Morgan admires the brush strokes

It’s tempting to see Foxwarren as Shauf’s ‘side-project’, a folk-rock Tin Machine or less-lubricious Grinderman. The reality is more nuanced, however: Shauf has been a member of the band for seventeen years now, predating his solo success. The first Foxwarren album – released in 2018 but a decade into their musical lifespan – was a more direct, Neil Young-channelling contrast to the quirky nuances of Shauf’s contemporaneous albums – ‘The Party’ and ‘The Neon Skyline’. ‘Foxwarren’ was the sound of the famously perfectionist Shauf – he plays every single note on every single instrument on most of his solo albums – letting his hair down. This album is equally playful, but the ‘hair-styling’ comes in a very different flavour: maybe a selection of decidedly brash wigs? Foxwarren’s ‘2’ is as palette-cleansing as its predecessor, but simple and direct it most assuredly isn’t. https://louderthanwar.com/foxwarren-2-album-review/ (Si apre in una nuova finestra)

B Movie were a great band who somehow made sense of the space between post punk and a melancholic synth pop and came up with a bunch of great tunes that have been compiled on this album a sa reminder that some of the best music doesnt always get the success it deserves by the tunes remain like ghosts lingering.

Much more acclaimed were the wonderful Magazine  and a new book details their ground breaking and highly influential career. The biography is a reminder of their fantastic awkwardness and wilful creativity that kept breaking their own mould and left behind a legacy that resonates to this day.  Originally published in 2009, the story of the iconic band formed by Howard Devoto when he left Buzzcocks has been revised and updated, bringing their story bang up to date.