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In this week’s podium of greatness, we have three English bands. Triumphing in our latest Tracks Of The Week tournament, Juliet’s Not Dead – originally from the North East – saw off a worthy challenge from Lancaster’s Massive Wagons, while Torquay-born Kris Barras and his Band took out third place, in the process consigning the entire rest of the globe to ignominy. Like a World Cup that England actually wins, if you like. So congratulations to them all.

By the time you read this, our latest competition will already be underway, with challengers from Greece, New Zealand and the Turkish precinct of Los Angeles challenging the usual Brits and Americans. Enjoy!

Villagers Of Ioannina City – Veneremos

These hard rockers from the North West of Greece combine heavy metal and stoner sensibilities with the traditional flavours and instruments of their homeland. It’s a commanding combination, not least on this title track from their upcoming album. Galloping Iron Maiden-meets-Metallica oomph comes with primal, hypnotic heat, courtesy of old-world Hellenic folk streaks – think heady woodwind screams from Greece’s rugged, mountainous Epirus region. The music video involving castles and cloaked figures also helps, natch.

HOLID4Y – Veridream

2026 is turning into the year of the Rivals Sons solo album, as guitar maverick/moustache-twirler-in-chief Scott Holiday releases this expansive, cinematic first taste of his new solo project (following Jay Buchanan’s Americana-fuelled singer/songwriter fest earlier this year). It’s *not* what you’d expect – in a good way. Opening with 70s prog synth textures, Veridream grows into a psychedelic but hooky adventure. A strange, trippy beauty, paving the way for the full album, Topology, coming later this year.

Split Dogs – Suffer

The UK punk’n’rollers veer into beefier heavy metal territory on this game-raising new single. At first it’s pure heavy-booted Sabbathian doom, but then Harry Martinez starts singing and everything kicks into a bouncier gear, creating a rough-throated, theatrical world of cobwebs and black leather that invites much dancing of the not-cool kind (i.e. the most fun kind). “The song deals with the struggle of letting the past dictate your happiness,” Martinez says, of the personal lyrics here, “but ultimately it’s about taking your power back, knowing your worth, and moving forward.”

Queens Of The Stone Age – Easy Street

Back in our lives with a beautifully weird, catchy swirl of lo-fi alternative sweetness, psychedelia and shadows, QOTSA team Josh Homme’s warmly heartbreaking croon with the countrified harmonies of singer/songwriter Nikki Lane. Built upward from gentle acoustic strumming and hand claps, Easy Street comes with a video cast of oddball characters, and it all gets…well, stuff happens. It’s probably best if you watch it. Tender, dark and ultimately kind of lovely.

Ricky Warwick – Seek Zen Destroy (feat. Phil Collen)

Almighty frontman, voice of Black Star Riders and solo artiste, among other things, Ricky Warwick has always had a way with a tune, and this one’s no exception. A bright yet dirty, strutting rock’n’roller with a touch of Prince under its skin, it features Def Leppard’s Phil Collen on guitar and backing vocals.“I wanted to make an album that captures everything I love about rock’n’roll,” Ricky says of parent album Fire & Vengeance, “its power to bring people together, to make us dance and connect with one another, even in a world that often feels consumed by fire and vengeance. At its core, this record is about finding hope and unity in the chaos.” Amen to that.

Eddie 9V – Blowin’ Up

In our experience, the best country-fried rock’n’roll has an edge to it, a little bit of a dark side, even. Such is the case with Dan Auerbach-produced Atlanta dude Eddie 9V. Yes his name sounds like a battery or piece of gear, but Blowin’ Up is swell – a deliciously greasy, easy-on-the-ear Southern groove machine with a laidback funky blues kick, its musings on breaking through as an artist flipped into an actual, explodey-explodey ‘blowing up’ situation in the video. Fine summer holiday fun.

Powder Chutes – Rivers

We somehow managed to miss this when it came out a couple of weeks back, but we’re putting that right now because Rivers is an absolute beast of a song, driven by the angriest riff you’ll hear this week, the kind of savage, lurching stomp that’ll prompt listeners to check that Godzilla isn’t rampaging through their neighbourhoods. It’s the first new song to emerge from the feisty New Zealanders since last year’s (rather excellent) debut album, and it bodes well for whatever big noise they have lined up next.

ÖLÜM – Yılan Kadın (Snake Woman)

ÖLÜM are a Los Angeles-based Turkish psychedelic rock band, so it won’t surprise you to learn that Yılan Kadın (Snake Woman) is both mysterious and exotic, with a video populated almost entirely by extras who appear to have been freighted in from an underground shisha lounge in Istanbul circa 1975. It’s beautifully crafted – melodically as well as aesthetically – with a slinky groove, excellent use of Middle Eastern melodies, and a keyboard player who wears a towering hat.

Liam Gallagher has shot down hopes of a new album from Oasis, suggesting that the expectations for the record would be so great that nothing the band might release could live up to what fans are hoping for.
Gallagher made his comments on X, in response to a fan who suggested that a new album from the Manchester band “will actually change lives”.

“NO,” Gallagher replied bluntly. “I’m just not prepared for the criticism if it doesn’t sell 100 million copies in the first hour, cure bad breath and constipation for the nation, if it doesn’t turn back time for Cher and some other shit. Let’s just do some gigs and be happy, thank you.”

As you may have detected, Gallagher’s response was not entirely serious.

Oasis’ last studio album, Dig Out Your Soul, was released in October 2008, just 10 months before the infamous backstage argument in Paris between Liam and Noel Gallagher that led to the band’s break-up.

In 2024, after the band’s Live 25 reunion tour was announced, Liam Gallagher told fans on X that a new record from the band was “in the bag”, adding that he was “blown away” by the new songs his brother has written for said record.

This turned out to be the singer’s idea of a joke.

“I was fucking joking,” he later admitted, “and the reason being because everyone is a little uptight these days. I’m sorry if I have upset anyone but fuck me it was a laugh.”

Rumours persist that Oasis will play more live shows in 2027, following the extraordinary success of their 2025 world tour.

They were the New Romantic group who spurned their pop audience to create bleak, beautiful music that inspired Marillion, Porcupine Tree, White Willow and many others. In 2012 we asked the question: how prog were Talk Talk?

“There were three bands in the 80s who, for me, just defined how music could be arranged: The Blue Nile, Japan and Talk Talk,” says Marillion vocalist Steve Hogarth. “I’d first heard Talk Talk on the radio with [1984’s] It’s My Life and the other hits, and I thought they were a cut above the usual chart stuff. But it was with [1986’s] The Colour Of Spring that they came well and truly onto my radar.”

Teetering in from the fringes of the new wave and New Romantic movements, London band Talk Talk supported Duran Duran in 1981, and released their debut album The Party’s Over a year later. The band – late vocalist Mark Hollis, drummer Lee Harris, bassist Paul Webb and keyboard player Simon Brenner – played sleek synth-pop. The single Talk Talk was a belated Top 30 hit, earning the group an appearance on Top Of The Pops.

However, admitting to any influences from the progressive rock era in the 1980s was terminally un-hip. So the fact that Hollis used to carry around a set of King Crimson’s 70s LPs for inspiration, or that Can’s Tago Mago was a source for rhythmic sustenance, went unreported. After Simon Brenner’s departure, the band made their second album, 1984’s It’s My Life, as a trio with producer Tim Friese-Greene becoming George Martin to their Beatles.

While It’s My Life retained many familiar 80s signifiers, such as glistening synths and sliding bass, the seeds of change were sown. Guest musicians such as trumpeter Henry Lowther and pianist Phil Ramocon help evoke a glacial cool that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the German jazz label ECM.

But the changing sound that so appealed to Steve Hogarth was more evident on 1986’s The Colour Of Spring. Talk Talk’s growing experimentation was assisted by former Pentangle bassist Danny Thompson’s vamping on Happiness Is Easy, ex-Traffic man Steve Winwood’s vibrant Hammond organ and the searing guitar work of ex-Random Hold member and Peter Gabriel associate David Rhodes on the single Life’s What You Make It.

“I went in for one evening, taking my pedals and guitar,” recalls Rhodes. Having played the backing track, Mark Hollis asked him to make the guitar sound “poxy.” “I pressed some pedals and asked if that’s that they meant, and he said ‘yes’. The other thing Mark asked me – which was very funny – was if I knew of Acker Bilk, the clarinetist who’d had a hit with Stranger On The Shore; and if so, could I play the riff like that?!”

Life’s What You Make It went to Number 16, with The Colour Of Spring reaching Number 8. Just when Talk Talk might be expected to make another record bristling with hits, they confounded all expectations. In February 1987, along with Tim Friese-Greene and engineer Phill Brown, the band went into Wessex Studios, the converted church in Islington where King Crimson recorded their first three albums, to begin work on Spirit Of Eden. There they would stay for more than a year, in a secluded, womb-like environment, bedecked with 60s-style psychedelic oil lamps, strobe lights and incense, embarking on a remarkable journey that would lead far away from their pop origins.

“I loved The Colour Of Spring but in retrospect it seems like the link between the pop/commercial era and the darker, more intense and beautiful two albums that followed,” says Porcupine Tree’s Richard Barbieri. “1988’s Spirit Of Eden and its 1991 follow-up, Laughing Stock, are quite simply works of art. Such fragile beauty and use of space in music is rarely found; and however long and hard the journey was in creating these, the overall feeling I get is one of spirituality and intuition. My desert island discs, for sure.”

Spirit Of Eden and Laughing Stock were seen as a significant departure. Brilliantly unpredictable, the handful of pieces on each album transcend the usual notions of song structure, becoming one amorphous, dream-like suite. The ingredients include echo-drenched bluesy licks bleeding into Messiaen-like chamber music interludes of viola, clarinet and bassoon; squalls of distorted harmonica merging with ghostly choirs; jagged guitar chords and teeth-rattling percussion; sonorous organ and icy piano.

But having abandoned the trademark synthesizers used on their previous records, there was nothing that could be described as a radio-friendly hook. In making this decisive break with their past, it’s no coincidence that almost three minutes and 30 seconds – the optimum running time of a single – elapse before Mark Hollis starts singing on Spirit Of Eden’s opening track The Rainbow.

Jacob Holm-Lupo, guitarist with the Norwegian art-rock band White Willow, believes the two albums – and Spirit in particular – represented a liberating force that went against the prevailing mood of the times. “The 80s were a time of rigidity in music,” he says. “Rhythms were being sequenced and time-locked, the harmonic vocabulary was solidifying into a set of effective but predictable clichés. Talk Talk loosened everything up. Time stretched and slowed, harmony was disassembled and reassembled. I was 15 when Spirit Of Eden came out. I had already discovered 70s prog, but this was the first time I found that similar sense of freedom, and that rainbow of possibilities, in contemporary pop.”

In a 1988 interview Hollis shone some light on the record’s progressive sound: “Well, it’s certainly a reaction to the music that’s around at the moment, ’cos most of that is shit. It’s only radical in the modern context. It’s not radical compared to 20 years ago. If we’d have delivered this album to the record company 20 years ago they wouldn’t have batted an eyelid.”

Theo Travis, sax player with Soft Machine Legacy and Steven Wilson’s current live band, is an admirer. “There are very few who’ve managed that trajectory from pop into… I don’t know what. Spirit Of Eden isn’t pop people playing at something jazzy or experimental. It’s a very mature album in itself and, musically, beautifully successful.

“On Laughing Stock there’s an absolutely classic drum sound which was recorded by a single microphone 30 feet away from the whole kit. That technique which Phill [Brown] brought to Talk Talk and on Mark Hollis’s self-titled solo album was extremely important and really quite unique.”

“Minute by minute, Spirit Of Eden and Laughing Stock are beautiful, sumptuous records,” says Radio Massacre International’s Steve Dinsdale, “a colourful tapestry of timbres blended to perfection, surrounded by hallowed silences and spaces. I didn’t know what to make of it as there weren’t many precedents.”

Spurred on by the momentum of expectant fans hoping for ‘The Colour Of Spring Part Two,’ Spirit Of Eden was by no means a commercial disaster, reaching Number 19. However, with no obvious hit single, and without a tour to promote the album, Talk Talk were no longer a viable chart act. Moving labels to Polydor, final album Laughing Stock was even more uncompromisingly stark and obscure. “They were just growing up and challenging themselves and taking things into a more esoteric area,” suggests David Rhodes.

But could they be considered a prog band? Theo Travis thinks so. “You could call them progressive in a non-generic way. Where ‘progressive music’ means a music that’s very ambitious to move forward, then Talk Talk absolutely fit the bill.”

In 1992 No-Man vocalist Tim Bowness was under the wing of Talk Talk manager Keith Aspden. “Steven [Wilson] and I definitely heard a kinship with progressive artists in the band’s eclectic influences,” says Bowness. “With each successive release, Talk Talk sounded purer and more focused than on their previous one. I could hear late-1960s Miles Davis in Laughing Stock and Spirit Of Eden, especially in the production and the restless and insistent drum patterns.

“I think the band’s fusion of sophisticated classical and jazz-derived chords with Mark Hollis’ soulful voice had something in common with similar approaches in the music of Traffic, Procol Harum and early Genesis.”

“I think ‘prog’ is such a strange word,” says Steve Hogarth. “It’s generally used to define a kind of music that was progressive in 1977. Bearing in mind we’re 30 years-plus on from there, it must mean it’s regressive by definition. If you stretch the word ‘prog’ back out to progressive again then any band that tries to reach out into the darkness and push their boundaries are by definition progressive – and that certainly applies to Talk Talk.”

By no means the first artists to make the journey from brightly-lit pop to rarified, sepulchral introspection, Talk Talk followed their muse no matter where it led. After 1998’s sparse, Zen-like acoustic solo album, Mark Hollis left the music industry. Since then, there’s been no hint of a Talk Talk comeback or reunion; only a profound silence.

Harold Pinter, whose plays are as famous for their dramatic pauses as the actual content, said: “When true silence falls, we are still left with echo but are nearer nakedness.” Pinter understood that when the words stop, truth can resonate more clearly. The same could be argued of Talk Talk and Mark Hollis, whose mysterious allure remains untarnished.