Promising UK country rockers Brown Horse hit the Monarch Tavern with the well-crafted songs from their Total Dive album out now. Doors at 7 pm!
Here's the scoop...
Brown Horse is a Norwich-based country rock band. Rooted in a collaborative approach to songwriting, the six-piece mix guitar-driven 90s alternative rock with the folk and country sounds of the 70s.
In April 2026 Brown Horse released their third album Total Dive on Loose Records. Their strongest and most grounded work to date, it showcases a new level of skill and assurance in the Norwich band’s thoughtful lyricism and musicality. Leaning away from the playfulness and eclecticism of their previous works, Total Dive sees Brown Horse step forward into the darkness with a cautious optimism. With songs from each of the four members (Patrick Turner, Nyle Holihan, Emma Tovell and Rowan Braham) the writing charts a world of small revelations and painful changes. As they move confidently between searing noise and delicate reflection, Brown Horse take time to note the beauty and agony of the mundane; the death rattle of a vending machine, headlights flashing in the eyes of a road-killed fox, the heather-pink of a winter sky.
The new album is the clearest expression yet of Brown Horse’s unique sound - somewhere between Jay Farrar's darker impulses of Uncle Tupelo's country rock, the raw intimacy of early Cat Power, and the haunted landscapes of Magnolia Electric Co., while embracing the self-possessed noisiness of alt rock trailblazers like Built to Spill and The Breeders. Bolstered by the playing of Norwich drummer, Ben Rodwell, and the vocal harmonies of Leeds-based musician, Neve Cariad, Total Dive is the sound of a band coming fully into their own. These are songs inhabited by wide Norfolk skies, thousands of shared miles on the road, the noise of heartbreak and humour, and the echoing silence of long hours spent in strange in-between places.
Tickets for Brown Horse's much-anticipated Toronto show at the Monarch Tavern (12 Clinton) tonight (Saturday, May 16) are $27.75 and available here. Doors open at 7 pm. Check out a couple of Brown Horse's videos after the impressive title track from their Total Dive album below.
Ace Records has gathered 19 stellar covers of songs by Tom Waits & Kathleen Brennan for Where The Willow and The Dogwood Grow.
Here's the scoop...
With undeniable cultural gravity, the team of Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan join luminaries such as Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, Randy Newman, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Leonard Cohen, Lee Hazlewood, Brian Wilson and Laura Nyro in Ace Records’ long-running series of multi-artist compilations celebrating the great American songwriters of the modern era. Hundreds of artists from all walks of music have recorded songs from Waits and Brennan’s matchless catalogue, 19 of the finest of which comprise the hand-picked selection Where The Willow and The Dogwood Grow (out May 29th), including many chosen by the songwriters themselves.
Few artists have remapped the terrain of popular music, and culture at large, like Tom Waits. Over the course of five decades, he has forged a singular aesthetic that defies genre and turns the marginal into myth. His work is neither fully inside nor outside the mainstream tradition but moves restlessly between them, drawing from vaudeville, blues, jazz, folk, theatre – and just about anything else that catches his ear – to craft something wholly his own. His influence reverberates not just through the underground and avant-garde, but across theatre, film, literature, and visual art. With his long-time creative partner and wife Kathleen Brennan, he has dismantled and reassembled the idea of song itself, crafting works that exist as both raw expression and high art. This collection honours not only the extraordinary versatility of Waits and Brennan’s songwriting, but the importance of an artist who continues to haunt and inspire from the edges inward.
Ace’s selection is sequenced chronologically by song, opening with Bruce Springsteen’s live recording of ‘Jersey Girl’, Waits’ ode to Brennan from 1980’s Heartattack And Vine, and closing with folk matriarch Joan Baez’s version of Waits and Brennan’s anti-war ‘Day After Tomorrow’ from Waits’ more recent Real Gone. “All the great things that came out of New Jersey don’t hold a candle to Kathleen Brennan, at least not in Tom’s eyes,” Bob Dylan said on his Theme Time Radio Hour show. “She rescued me,” reflected Waits in an interview for The Guardian. “Maybe I rescued her too, that’s often how it works. Upshot is that we both got into the same leaky boat. Everybody knows she’s the brains behind Pa, as Dylan might have said. I’m just the figurehead. She’s the one who’s steering the ship.”
In addition to “steering the ship”, Brennan became Waits’ songwriting partner. The couple’s first-released joint composition, ‘Hang Down Your Head’ from Rain Dogs, is heard here in a raunchy rendition by country-blues heroine Lucinda Williams. Elsewhere, performers from the worlds of jazz, blues, gospel, soul and rock put their own stamps on great songs with which Waits devotees will be familiar on Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs, Franks Wild Years, Big Time, Bone Machine, Mule Variations, Real Gone and Orphans. Pride of place – because it’s a particular favourite of Waits and proved incredibly challenging to license – goes to the heart-wrenching recording of ‘Down There By The Train’ from Johnny Cash’s late-life masterpiece American Recordings.
Made with the blessing, approval and involvement of Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, Where The Willow And The Dogwood Grow is an essential collection for any fan of this remarkable artist’s unique work.
Where The Willow and The Dogwood Grow:
Words & Music by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan
1. JERSEY GIRL - BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & THE E STREET BAND
2. 16 SHELLS FROM A THIRTY-OUGHT-SIX - BOB SEGER & THE SILVER BULLET BAND
3. GIN-SOAKED BOY - SOUTHSIDE JOHNNY & THE ASBURY JUKES
4. JOCKEY FULL OF BOURBON - LOS LOBOS
5. HANG DOWN YOUR HEAD - LUCINDA WILLIAMS
6. TEMPTATION - DIANA KRALL
7. YESTERDAY IS HERE - BETTYE LAVETTE
8. WAY DOWN IN THE HOLE - THE BLIND BOYS OF ALABAMA
9. STRANGE WEATHER - MARIANNE FAITHFULL
10. I DON'T WANNA GROW UP - RAMONES
11. DOWN THERE BY THE TRAIN - JOHNNY CASH
12. HOUSE WHERE NOBODY LIVES - KING ERNEST
13. PICTURE IN A FRAME - WILLIE NELSON
14. HOLD ON - MADISON CUNNINGHAM
15. THE LONG WAY HOME - NORAH JONES
16. 2:19 - JOHN HAMMOND
17. DIAMOND IN YOUR MIND - SOLOMON BURKE
18. TRAMPLED ROSE - ALISON KRAUSS / ROBERT PLANT
19. DAY AFTER TOMORROW - JOAN BAEZ
Get a copy of Where The Willow and The Dogwood Grow directly from Ace Records right here. Check out a few alternate performances by some of the artists included.
Check out "Orange Slice Blues" and "Knock 'em Out" off Jon Spencer's new album. Catch him live in T.O. this September!
Songs of Personal Loss And Protest
Picking up where 2024’s mini–LP SICK OF BEING SICK left off, Jon tears it up with KENDALL WIND on bass and SPIDER BOWMAN on drums (also famously the rhythm section of Woodstock’s punk powerhouse The Bobby Lees). They deliver garage punk for today — hyper-driven soul and powerhouse groove, beats hard as diamonds and slick as ice, fuzz bass in your face, and an avalanche of uncontrollable urges, pushing Jon’s latest outbursts — hollering, drooling, sexified crooning, and vociferously lamenting these difficult times — to new levels of rock’n’roll expressionism. SONGS OF PERSONAL LOSS AND PROTEST is the New New Super Heavy Rock for Hard Times.
SONGS OF PERSONAL LOSS AND PROTEST is set for release on June 12th on vinyl, CD (with bonus tracks), and all digital platforms via Shove Records, Bronze Rat Records in the EU/UK, and Sony Japan in Japan. Stream/Pre-order here: https://shoverecords.lnk.to/knockemout
Check out "Orange Slice Blues" and "Knock 'Em Out" below.
Don't miss Jon Spencer live in Ontario! Catch him September 8th in Ottawa, September 10th in Toronto, and September 11th in Hamilton. Tickets go on sale May 15th at 10AM right here: https://www.weare-inthefuture.com/jon-spencer-ontario/
