A lot of bands get softer as their careers progress. Whether that’s due to the righteous anger of youth fading, record companies and producers “sanding off the rough edges” for commercial radio, or just the members getting old, it’s an annoyingly common career trajectory. The Replacements, Cheap Trick, pretty much every punk band that went “New Wave”…heck, even the mighty Led Zeppelin’s last album is pretty flaccid, if you’re willing to admit it. So it’s a pleasure to report that the San Francisco band The Spiral Electric have bucked this trend, and grown steadily heavier, in live and on record, since their earliest incarnation. While they were never exactly “soft” in their…
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Thomas Greenwood and the Talismans | Ates
Hailing from Bergamo, Italy, Thomas Greenwood and the Talismans is a project born from an idea by Thomas Mascheroni (also guitar/voice of stoner trio Humulus), after a long series of jams inside a former barn above the hills of Lake Iseo. Thomas Greenwood and the Talismans play a psychedelic rock heavily contaminated by 70s influences, condensed into a cauldron of neo-psychedelia and West-Coast-style surfing sounds, transmitting an overwhelming energy live. After releasing two singles (‘Valley of the Sun’ and ‘Violet Hills’), the Talismans released their first album – the entirely self-produced entitled Rituals (2023). In March of this year, the band released Ates, their second full-length record. Ates is a…
