Guides

The Ashford Saints arrive with Blackwater Mile, a debut album that smells of valve amps, damp rehearsal rooms and long drives through the English countryside.…

A great bushwalk needs a soundtrack with movement. The right rock playlist can make a steep climb feel purposeful, turn a long ridge into a cinematic passage…

Rock has always carried a charge beyond guitars, drums and volume. From protest anthems to records that quietly document working lives, the genre gives public…

Before streaming turned every back catalogue into background noise, a rock musician could disappear in stages. First came the cancelled tours, then the quiet…

Some guitar parts need a full verse to make an impression. Others arrive in a handful of seconds, using a few blunt notes, a dark tone and enough space to make…

The harmonica rarely arrives in rock as a polite decoration. It wheezes, snarls, trembles and occasionally sounds like a train disappearing into the night. In…

The Long Way Home is a concept album about a cross-country road trip on a motorcycle, but its real subject is the emotional distance between leaving and…

Some wedding songs arrive with a built-in emotional charge. The opening piano, the carefully delayed guitar solo and the singer reaching for an impossible high…

Feedback is usually treated as a mistake: a shriek from an overloaded amplifier, a microphone pointed the wrong way, or a rehearsal-room blast that sends…

A rock band, a volcanic crater and a night sky make the sort of image that feels designed for a music documentary. Amplifiers glow against black stone, the…