Rambling Fox

June 2025 Music Roundup

Art by Sancoon/Snouts

A little late but still here, it's time for the monthly music roundup. June didn't see tons of musical activity - compared to the prior month anyway - but there were some new releases and a few new purchases too worth discussing.

New Music Immediate Impressions

Elbow - Audio Vertigo Echo EP
Basically a bunch of b-sides from last year's surprisingly well enduring (and maybe I underrated it during my AOTY listings) Audio Vertigo, but because b-sides are tragically dead they're coming out as an EP a year later. Basically more of what the album represented: twitchy, Talking Heads-esque grooves and some of the most dynamic and surprising Elbow in years. None of these is an essential back catalogue deep cut but the whole short package hangs together tight and well. If you liked Audio Vertigo, no reason not to listen to this one.

Bentley Jones - Absolution: Music From the Sonicverse Vol. 1 (Official store)
Jones is most known for their many musical contributions to the Sonic universe, most famously writing and singing Silver's theme in Sonic '06 "Dreams of an Absolution". They took a break from engaging with the series for a good few years (apart from the occasional cover of one of the vocal tracks) but started to retrace their steps back to it in the past year, and I think their participation in last year's SonicCon UK may have been a bit of a turning point - since then, they've certainly gotten a whole lot more excited about being part of the Sonic community, right down to finally creating their own fan character. Absolution marks this return - its first disc is a compilation of various Sonic songs Jones has covered over the years, remastered or remixed (including three quite distinct versions of "Dreams of an Absolution" itself), while the second disc features brand new material, remixes of disc 1 songs and a few new covers ostensibly under his Ozkar the Hedgehog persona. As someone who really likes Jones' Sonic covers, this was basically tailormade for me - instead of having to hunt down all those covers from all their countless albums, this nicely has most of them in one neat place. The second disc is pretty good as well, with some of the new songs being legitimate bangers in their own right, in particular the title track. It's a fun little fan package that I'm sure I'll be listening all the way to SonicCon 2025 later this year, where Jones is performing once more. And because I preordered this, my copy is signed - nice.

Keep It Together - Signals (Bandcamp)
I mentioned it briefly in my Anthrocon update but the furry music scene is booming right now, and Keep It Together's latest is a great addition to that. Still a young band but it's obvious they've got so much talent: their heart-in-sleeve emotive indie rock packs both muscle and grace, and Signals is full of excellent songs demonstrating both. "Navigator" in particular is constantly in my head, the chorus melody just swiveling around my mind and forcing my body to groove along - what a heck of an anthem. It looks like KIT are already starting to build a bit of a following and I could see them going in places, even beyond the fandom (made easier by how it's only the album cover art that ties them into it - the rest is very much fur-free for those who care). Heartily recommended. Fingers crossed for a CD issue at some point!

Lorde - Virgin
I want to like this more than I currently do. There's something about Lorde that just compels me, her voice and vocal melodies are so positively distinguishable in the modern pop world (ironic given she involuntarily helped build the stereotype of 'aahhvocaedos' affection) and her career so far has seen her go all over the place in an exciting auteur-like fashion. And maybe Virgin will continue to grow, because certainly the sonics are great: some really interesting production choices, mixed with a rather introverted direction where the mood is the overriding factor. Just find that many of the songs feel a little lacking from a writing perspective, and maybe that's a by-product that they're all so short. I'm getting very tired of this trend of 30-minute albums which all feel like partially unfinished experiences, the songs rushing through without being given the chance to grow - some of the outros and mid-song stylistic twists even hint at how much more there is to these songs until they abruptly end. But, as said, there's something here that keeps intriguing me...

Pulp - More
Some of the reviews of this have said it the best: Pulp sound like they had never taken a couple decades off from recording. More is very comfortably Pulp as we know it - no big stylistic twists here - but it's also packed with the familiar strengths of the band as we (I) love them most. It's a cosy collection of suave, slick and sophisticated indie pop suites, with a couple of big hits that slot in perfectly with the best of their back catalogue ("Spike Island", "Got to Have Love"). Both nostalgic but also fresh - a real hard thing for a comeback album to achieve, but they pull it off really well.

Hoard Updates

A good chunk of my June purchases were (some of) the new releases discussed above, but a few other things sneaked by as well.

CD

The sudden Madonna binge was inspired by someone on a music Discord I'm on who was doing a Madge first impressions binge. I started getting more into Madonna's back catalogue during the pandemic and while I've heard the bulk of it, I don't own most of it. But that binge of opinions and the discussion that spawned from it made me go to Music Magpie on a whim and utilise their four-for-£5 deals to fill my shelf with some of the back catalogue. Great albums in this bunch, for most part (Bedroom Stories is a bit hit and miss).

Some might raise their eyebrows at the Bad Guys OST in the CD section because the soundtrack was never officially released on CD. Officially. I found a seller on eBay advertising a bootleg copy and given there's no way of getting the album otherwise physically, this turned into another whim purchase. For what it's worth the print quality of the bootleg is actually pretty good - not flawless but pretty great all things considered - and they've done a decent job fitting all the available artwork for the soundtrack into a neat CD "booklet" and all. I wish the track amounts were a bit more evened out between the two discs but hey, at least I get to listen to this quite excellent soundtrack through my stereos now.

Music reviews in May

June's reviews mainly consisted of continuing with the two ongoing discography runthroughs: a long discography run for Pet Shop Boys (featuring their worst and one of their best), and a short discog dive for Pinegrove.

Most played song of the month according to Last.FM

My most played song of the month was Keep It Together's "Navigator", also linked above - and the bulk of the rest of the top 10 is also occupied by cuts from Signals. But in the middle of all of them is one invader, "Nowhere Special" from the Matt Berninger solo album from the other month - still a really fun, exciting record and this is my favourite song on it. I'm really getting a thing for Berninger mumbling a stream-of-consciousness ramble while a groove locks into place behind him.

#music