Slide guitar wizard Sonny Landreth has released a new single, “Lady On The Rise,” the first preview of his forthcoming studio album, due in 2027 via Provogue / Artone.
Written by Landreth, “Lady On The Rise” features the Louisiana guitarist on vocals and guitar, with Brian Brignac on drums and percussion and Tony Daigle on keyboards. Landreth and Daigle produced the track, which was recorded, mixed and mastered by Daigle at Electric Comoland in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Landreth says the song was inspired by hope and felt like the right choice to introduce his next chapter.
”Oh man, after all this time, it feels great to have a new single coming out. That always gives me a boost and breathes new life into a project, so I’m excited to get it out there. I chose ‘Lady On The Rise’ because of the vibe I felt recording it in the studio this summer and because it’s a song inspired by hope.”
The as-yet-untitled 2027 release will mark Landreth’s 15th album and follows a career that has established him as one of the most distinctive slide guitarists of his generation. His approach combines blues, roots music and the sounds of his native South Louisiana with an adventurous playing style that has earned him two Grammy nominations and appearances at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival.
Landreth began his career playing with zydeco legend Clifton Chenier’s Red Hot Louisiana Band and has since appeared on hundreds of recordings. His collaborations and session work have included artists such as John Mayall and John Hiatt.
Along with the new single, Landreth has several live appearances scheduled. On September 16, he will make his first appearance at Americanafest in more than 20 years, performing on the day stage at Eastside Bowl alongside Grace Potter, Eli Paperboy Reed and others. The performances will be broadcast live on WMOT Roots Radio in partnership with NPR Music, World Café and Nashville PBS.
Landreth will also perform an official Americanafest showcase at the Station Inn on September 17. Later in the month, he heads to Austin for two appearances at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival.
UPCOMING TOUR DATES:
09/17 Nashville, TN – AMERICANAFEST 09/26 Austin, TX – Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival 09/27 Austin, TX – Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival 10/09 New Orleans, LA – FOC Concert Series – New Orleans Jazz Museum 10/11 Lafayette, LA – Festivals Acadiens et Créoles 10/17 Homer, LA – Louisiana Legends Festival
2027:
06/06 Frankford, NJ – Michael Arnone’s 34th Crawfish Fest
By the second half of September, Blone Noble and Hot Hail! will be moving through the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada on the DOMINATOR 2026 tour, carrying enough synthesizers, theatrical posture, political irritation, and suspiciously good tailoring to make a normal Thursday night feel like somebody accidentally booked a cabaret inside a government bunker. For anyone wishing they could have stumbled into a club 45 years ago to catch Fad Gadget and Soft Cell on the same bill, this unholy pairing may be about as close as the 21st century is going to get.
Seattle’s Hot Hail! will support the September run, with NITE SCHOOL co-founder DJ Candy Whiplash curating each night from behind the decks. Her adventurous selections and assured dance-floor instincts will connect the live sets, sustain the audience’s energy, and give every stop the immersive character of a NITE SCHOOL night. More dates in the U.S. South will be announced soon.
Blone Noble belongs to the grand tradition of performers who understand that walking onstage in ordinary clothes and looking pleased to be there is an unforgivable waste of electricity. There is Bowie’s appetite for reinvention, Bryan Ferry’s immaculate poise, Frank Tovey’s art-school mischief, and some of the elegant strangeness associated with Japan and Dalí’s Car. Noble treats clothing, lighting, posture, movement, and staging as part of the music, creating performances that can resemble a nightclub, a fashion shoot, an art installation, or an occult ceremony. Beneath the polish sits a colder electronic foundation built for physical movement. Synthesizers stretch outward, rhythms tighten, and pop hooks creep into spaces where less sociable musicians might have installed a folding chair and lectured you about theory.
DOMINATOR carries a sexually charged absurdity and mechanical tension—certainly the flip side of Fad Gadget’s Coitus Interruptus—while the eerie Subterranean World turns toward a more enclosed and psychological direction. Blone Noble shapeshifts with admirable disregard for anyone attempting to file the project under one convenient heading.
Then there is Hot Hail!, the Seattle duo of songwriter Billy Sigil and DJ Emilio Cerrillo, who bring classic synthpop instincts, darkwave excess, post-punk politics, horror, humanity, and jokes good enough to survive proximity to the apocalypse. Hot Hail! describe themselves as the perfect music for starting, then quickly ruining, any party. This is their first multi-city tour, giving several towns the opportunity to learn exactly how efficiently that process works.
Hot Hail! Photo by Victoria Renaurd
Their newest album, HOPE IN HELL, wrestles with the question of how anyone preserves sanity while fascism crawls back into public life wearing a fresh tie and insisting everybody calm down. The songs pair enormous hooks with political anger, proving that despair can at least have decent bass.
Drawing from the synth traditions of early Depeche Mode and Soft Cell, Hot Hail!’s WYRD takes the form of an address to an absent companion: the feminine self pushed down early, disciplined into silence, but never erased. The lyrics speak directly to this buried part of the self, allowing affection, recognition, and regret to occupy the same space. The arrangement leaves enough space for each admission to register, giving WYRD the feeling of a conversation postponed for years.
Candy Whiplash brings the full history and curatorial authority of NITE SCHOOL to the September bill. As the acclaimed series’ co-founder, curator, resident DJ, and creative director, she has spent nearly sixteen years helping shape one of Austin’s most respected underground music institutions. Candy and her late partner, Seattle-born DJ Scorpio RX, launched NITE SCHOOL at Beauty Bar before establishing its longtime home at Cheer Up Charlie’s, one of the city’s most influential queer live-music and DJ venues. Through acclaimed performances by artists from around the world, adventurous DJ programming, and a fiercely loyal community, the night became a cornerstone of Austin’s underground electronic music scene.
Candy’s work has always reached far beyond the DJ booth. She developed NITE SCHOOL’s distinctive minimalist visual identity and has overseen its branding, marketing, photography, graphic design, artist relations, and promotion. That combination of creative direction, musical judgment, and sustained care gave NITE SCHOOL a complete identity of its own while providing a platform for darkwave, post-punk, EBM, industrial, techno, noise, synthpop, and genre-defying electronic artists from around the world.
Behind the decks, Candy is known for emotionally charged, dance-floor-driven sets spanning French electronic music, goth, coldwave, darkwave, EBM, industrial, post-punk, no wave, mutant disco, Italo disco, synthpop, techno, and Spanish-language darkwave. Her selections connect foundational records with contemporary underground sounds, turning every changeover into an essential part of the evening and carrying the audience’s momentum from one live performance to the next.
Candy Whiplash. Photo by Victora-Renard
Following Scorpio RX’s passing in January 2024, Candy revived NITE SCHOOL by popular demand, honoring the vision they established together while leading it into a new chapter. DOMINATOR 2026 marks NITE SCHOOL’s Seattle debut and carries its legacy of immersive programming, adventurous booking, visual imagination, and community-building into the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada.
For several nights in September, restraint is officially somebody else’s problem. Have a blast!
Evanescence singer Amy Lee and pop-metal solo artist Poppy have played End Of You, their collaborative track with Spiritbox frontwoman Courtney LaPlante, live for the first time ever.
The pair performed the 2025 standalone single at the first date of Evanescence’s European tour on Tuesday, September 8, at First Direct Arena in Leeds. Poppy is a support act on the tour, along with US singer K.Flay. Even though LaPlante wasn’t present, it was the first time End Of You has been played onstage since its release last September.
The End Of You debut was part of a 22-song setlist that featured material from Evanescence’s new album, Sanctuary, plus such hits as Bring Me To Life and My Immortal. K.Flay appeared onstage for their collaborative single Fight Like A Girl, which was part of the soundtrack to 2025 action film Ballerina before making it onto the Sanctuary tracklisting. See the setlist and watch the End Of You debut below.
End Of You was produced by ex-Bring Me The Horizon member Jordan Fish and released on September 4, 2025, via Sumerian Records. The idea for the song came during the making of Poppy’s 2024 album Negative Spaces, from a conversation between her and producer Fish.
“I knew he was friends with Amy, and I thought she would really be a great person to meet and get to talk to,” Poppy told NME. “It was mine and Jordan’s idea to start with, and then we thought, ‘What if we made our version of a dark Moulin Rouge [referring to Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 jukebox musical], like Lady Marmalade?”
Lee said that the lyrics were about “about taking on the patriarchy”: “In order to make way for the new, we have to let some old ways die, and I don’t feel that should be as hard as it is. I love change, and things can stand to definitely get a lot better than they are right now. It’s about challenging the norms and showing how strong we are when unified as women.”
Although more music from the three singers wasn’t in the pipeline when End Of You came out, Lee said she was open to future collaborations with Poppy and LaPlante, including appearing on a game show with them. “We’ll see what fun shenanigans could come out of this collab!” she said.
Sanctuary came out in June and received positive reviews, including four stars from Metal Hammer. Evanescence’s tour continues tonight, September 10, at Co-op Live in Manchester. See the remaining dates and get tickets via their website.
Meanwhile, Spiritbox released a new single, Mourning, this week and are about to embark on a European tour of their own with Jinjer and Dying Wish. The first show takes place at Sec Hall 3 in Glasgow on Saturday, September 12.
Evanescence setlist: First Direct Arena, Leeds, UK – September 8, 2026
