Twenty years after they formed in Gothenburg, Sweden, neo-psychedelic hard rockers Graveyard have finally achieved what all neo-psychedelic hard-rocking bands set out to achieve: victory in our Tracks Of The Week contest. So congratulations to them, and may their journey continue unthwarted.
Joanne Shaw Taylor locked in second place, while our old friends Girish & The Chronicles came in third, but we've already moved on from that, and the new combatants are listed below. Vote for your favourite at the foot of the page.
Grace Potter - Main Street U.S.A.
Oh hell yeah, this totally rocks and then some. A sumptuous, boot-scootin’ groovefest with gritty heartland and Americana in its blood, Main Street U.S.A serves as a reminder of Grace Potter as one of rootsy music’s quietly superior voices. Expect vivid storytelling, dirty guitar swagger and a big juicy chorus draped in sparkles. Hot off her new album, Trespasser, which is out now.
The Scratch - Roses And Poses
These guys’ gig at London’s Electric Ballroom is still one of the best shows we’ve been to this year, so we were delighted to see this clever setlist highlight (from their latest album Pull Like A Dog) getting the single treatment, complete with a video montage of recent live triumphs. It’s heavy and introspective, straight-shooting yet subtle. A powerful, unexpected but searingly effective cocktail: pummelling beats fresh off the Dublin streets they used to busk on, riffs straight out of the Metallica-come-Pantera guidebook and the tenderest of traditional folk storytelling.
Brothers Osborne - Bottle It Up
John and TJ reconnect with the bluegrass heritage of their hometown – Deale, Maryland, in the shadow of the Appalachian mountains – on this sweetly lilting, swamp-slidin’ new taste of their next record, Watertown. If Little Feat grew up playing bar gigs in a working-class fishing town (as the Osbornes did) they might have played this. “We’re not just getting back to where we were born and raised, but to the roots of where we started musically,” TJ Osborne says. “A time when music wasn’t dictated by anything other than what our hearts and souls wanted to say.”
The Temperance Movement - Always Been Love
Kicking off with a riff that made us think a little of Free’s Fire And Water, Always Been Love puts you right in the room with the reunited Temperance Movement – no excess polish, just a lot of simmering, bouncing energy that peaks in an arresting bridge section. Frontman Phil Campbell recently told us it’s his favourite track on the album, New Promise Land Incorporated, which comes out this month.
Queens Of The Stone Age - Insignificant Other
Artfully, gently conjuring the sort of pensive melancholia and emotional baggage that comes with much of midlife, the latest QOTSA single sets lo-fi soulfulness to a toe-tapping mid-tempo beat. "It's a song about distance,” Homme says. “About how someone can be your entire world only to simply vanish. And about the strange vertigo of being on the receiving end of that.”
Kit Trigg - Down To Earth
Skate-rocker, surfer dude and friend to the seals (he’s partnering with the Cornish Seal Sanctuary, among others), Kit Trigg combines environmentalist wordplay and scrappy 90s energy in one sharp yet loose-limbed rock banger, all sunshine, lurking rain clouds and the British seaside. “The riff came quickly as soon as I got home [driving to his new Breacon homestead from Farnham, where he grew up] and the chorus was inspired by early 90s hiphop,” Trigg says. “We have such a sweet deal on this planet, let’s look after what we have!”
Clutch - The Drifter Returns
Maryland's favourite sons Clutch are back with their first new music since 2022's Sunrise on Slaughter Beach, and long-term fans will be relieved to discover that they still sound exactly like Clutch, pumping and grooving along in the most righteous rock'n'roll manner imaginable: If songs came with an aroma, The Drifter Returns would smell of creosote. There's no news of a long-player yet, but we suspect it won't be too long before album number 14 is hoving into view.
Danielle Nicole - Gaslight
Danielle Nicole made her name as one third of blues-rockers Trampled Under Foot with brothers Kriss and Nick, but has been flying solo for more than a decade now. New album Fireflies was written in the wake of Kriss's early death from cancer, and grief kept Danielle from completing some of the songs, but you'd never know it from Gaslight, which is uplifting and funky, packed with sass and swagger. Danielle is currently on the road in the US, and plays five UK shows in February.
