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1 month ago | 
undertheradarmag.com | Michael James Hall
Web Exclusive “Have you heard The Tubs yet? They’re from Cardiff. They’re your new favorite band.” So went the message I woke up to from a trusted friend one hazy morning last August. Welsh and intrigued, I listened to their 2023 single “Wretched Lie.” I moved on to their 2020 single “I Don’t Know How It Works” and then I ordered their debut album Dead Meat and The Names EP on vinyl and started looking for Tubs t-shirts.
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Feb 21, 2025 | 
undertheradarmag.com | Michael James Hall
Web Exclusive Porridge Radio’s latest offering is also their last. A set of four tracks drawn from the sessions for last year’s wonderful Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There For Me album, the Brighton 4-piece use this release to both clear the table and offer a final morsel to their fans. Lead track “Machine Starts to Sing” offers a glimpse of the band under the looming shadow of Radiohead.
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Jan 14, 2025 | 
undertheradarmag.com | Michael James Hall
Web Exclusive Karate have been away for quite some time. Seventeen years is one hell of a hiatus. For fans of their unmatched combo of jazz and post-rock, the announcement of a wave of reissues in 2021 followed by their return to the live stage in 2023 has been an unexpected thrill.
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Oct 17, 2024 | 
undertheradarmag.com | Michael James Hall
Web Exclusive Canadian two-piece Japandroids have been going hard at their own party for the past 18 years. Their euphoric, cathartic live shows have brought frantic crowds to the brink of joyous oblivion night after night, year after year.
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Sep 25, 2024 | 
undertheradarmag.com | Michael James Hall
Issue #73 - Maya Hawke and Nilüfer Yanya Parallel to Low’s evolving, often inspired musical career, frontman Alan Sparhawk invested in musical ventures as diverse as a funk quartet and a New Wave synth band. Following the death of his wife, and Low bandmate, Mimi Parker, White Roses, My God sees Sparhawk alone at the controls for the first time since Solo Guitar, his beautiful, experimental ambient album of 2006.
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Jun 13, 2024 | 
undertheradarmag.com | Michael James Hall
Web Exclusive Cola recently played at the Ramsgate Music Hall here on the Kentish Coast of England. The seaside side-street building mirrors the band’s minimalist, motorik rock well: it’s a small space with a big sound, unassuming and alluring, friendly and understated—the kind of place you want to return to again and again in search of further musical treasures.
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May 28, 2024 | 
undertheradarmag.com | Michael James Hall
Web Exclusive Scott Lavene scored a screamer with breakthrough single “Waitrose Has Run Out of Lobsters” in the spring of 2023. A serrated, laconic laceration of British middle class mores, it drew wider attention to a singular artist who had quietly been making beautiful, funny, uniquely English music as far back as 2016.
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May 8, 2024 | 
undertheradarmag.com | Michael James Hall
Issue #72 - The ‘90s Issue with The Cardigans and Thurston Moore The ancient bleep and buzz of dial-up opens and closes Arab Strap’s eighth and probably best album. These bookends serve to humorously demarcate the online realm that much of this record inhabits, while also nodding at the advancing age of its creators. It is a brutal, painful record in which all is lost, ugly, and hopeless. It is also beautiful and funny.
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Apr 8, 2024 | 
undertheradarmag.com | Michael James Hall
Web Exclusive After five years away, Walla Walla, Washington’s low key dream rock legends Chastity Belt have new stock on the shelf with their fifth album, Live Laugh Love. The promise held in the so slyly egregious title is great.
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Apr 7, 2024 | 
undertheradarmag.com | Michael James Hall
Web Exclusive On Matthew Houck’s first album of originals in six years, he steps away from the glistening, quicksilver chimes of 2018’s C’est La Vie. Stripping back both musically and melodically, Houck proffers a record both wracked with anxiety and comforting in its shared sorrow. The opening, title track reassures us that Houck hasn’t entirely abandoned melody in favor of misery.
