Time for a party - and at any time that you want. After a summer of endless studio album releases, the feel-good festival season kind of made it appropriate to turn attention to an album release that captures the irreplaceable magic of a live show, and that spontaneous connection between band and audience.

When ‘Mad’ landed it was the first time for years I felt suitably acquainted with Sparks music to welcome the new songs with a sense of familiarity and excitement - having grown particularly fond of  ‘Hello Young Lovers’ and their nineteenth studio album ‘Lil' Beethoven’ over the previous year...

Click the heels and make a wish - “You can go wherever you wish to go.” Badflower opens their fine new album with a line from the ‘Wizard of Oz’. Dorothy yearns to go home.

For the last decade, there has been much talk about the latent promise of bands from the rising rock scene - and Those Damn Crows could well be the band from a new generation that go all the way and bag a Number 1 album.

By a distance, it’s the best album Cry For Mercy have done - and in terms of charm, conviction and chemistry, it’s one of the best UK blues-rock albums of 2025 so far.

Cutting through the relentless stampede of new music promotion and the white noise on social media, Ellis Mano Band drop a truly classy album to take 2025 up a level.

Trucker Diablo have unleashed their career-best album to date: a collection of songs that showcase their fine ear for melody, their skill at song arrangement and the natural talent for recording songs that will effortlessly translate into crowd pleasers during a live set.

This album feels like it’s been a long time coming – but, rest assured, what’s about to land is well worth the wait.

There’s something so innately positive about this Quireboys album project. On stage, you can tell the boys are having so much fun. From the pre-show gatherings and interviews, there’s lots of laughs and good spirits.

Authentic. If I had to describe Melissa Etheridge in one word.

Full circle. As Fish prepares to retire from rock music, he leaves us with a fresh and reinvigorated take on his first solo album.

For fans of classic rock, ‘Where The Colours Meet’ is set to become one of the most emphatic and cohesive album releases of 2024.

Sometimes though you need to go off-piste, embrace the unknown, be excited by what’s different and remember what it really feels like to be alive. ‘The Man’ from Calum Ingram will do this to your music collection.

With ‘Design,’ Amongst Liars just go up another level, as the anger of the ‘Black Days’ era is now superseded by channelled rage for album two...

Ellis Mano Band have been firm listener favourites with Great Music Stories for some years now. They’ve had two previous albums of the month, and then ‘Single of the Year’ for a song that was never actually a single, but magically – and totally organically - generated a massive groundswell of requests that kept it on the rockshow playlist for a year...

As 2023 drew to a close, the rock community was greatly saddened by the news Tony Clarkin shared on his rare spinal condition and the band’s decision to cancel their 2024 tour dates. Over the Christmas period, I spent time returning to some of Magnum’s live albums - ‘The Spirit’, ‘Stronghold’ and the famous Symphony Hall release, three live releases that define the essence of Magnum as one of the great and enduring live bands.

As 2023 drew to a close, the rock community was greatly saddened by the news Tony Clarkin shared on his rare spinal condition and the band’s decision to cancel their 2024 tour dates. Over the Christmas period, I spent time returning to some of Magnum’s live albums - ‘The Spirit’, ‘Stronghold’ and the famous Symphony Hall release, three live releases that define the essence of Magnum as one of the great and enduring live bands.

Following a mini review earlier this year, 2023 finished with us calling this modern-day opus as Album of the Year. ‘Relentless’ is the remarkable second studio album from one of British’s most accomplished rising rock bands – Empyre.