STACK #255 January 2026

FEATURE MUSIC

THIS MONTH?

BIL Y’S PICK

MADISON BEER Locket SONY

RICHARD MARX After Hours INERTIA

America’s Madison Beer was just 14 when she released her debut single. Thirteen years later, Locket is her third album. It’s a break-up record.

Richard Marx’s stint as a judge on The Voice in 2025 showed that he’s a perceptive pop

PINK FLOYD Wish You Were Here 50 SONY

performer. For his 14th studio album, After Hours – his first in four years – Marx has turned his talents to jazz pop, swinging through the Great American Songbook and adding some new originals. “I never seriously considered doing a standards or covers album because, at heart, I am a songwriter, first and foremost,” he points out. “But the challenge of writing songs as if I were pitching them to Frank Sinatra in 1948 really appealed to me.” Big Band Boogie is a collaboration with Kenny G, while Rod Stewart pops up on Young at Heart .

“Now that it’s over, you’ll blame it all on me,” Beer sings. “I know I should be bitter, but, baby, right now I’m bittersweet.” Explaining the title, the singer says: “I feel like lockets are very delicate and beautiful and feminine and they hold important things and memories... it just felt like the right title.”

T he daunting task of a follow up to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon produced another masterpiece in their 1975 album Wish You Were Here . The album is an explicit tribute to the band’s founder, their lost friend Syd Barrett. Like its predecessor, the album also explored themes of alienation and hypocrisy and greed within the music industry. This album also employs a conceptual theme written en tirely by Roger Waters. Its four songs are bookended by a moving eulogy to Barrett, the nine-part Shine on You Crazy Diamond . The heartfelt lyrics still resonate today: “Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun” and “come on, you target for faraway laughter, come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr and shine!” Musically, the song is enhanced by inspired perfor mances from David Gilmour (electric guitar, lap steel, backing vocals), Richard Wright (keyboards), Waters (lead vocal, bass guitar), and Nick Mason (drums). Part 5 of Shine On segues seamlessly into Welcome to the Machine , featuring a lead vocal from Gilmour that describes the band’s contempt for the music industry as a money-making machine. Have a Cigar is another barely veiled attack on the music industry. It was originally to be sung by Waters who struggled to nail the lead vocal. Gilmour was asked to sing in his place but wasn’t comfortable; he suggested fellow singer Roy Harper, who was recording his own album in another studio at the same time. Waters’ clever, cynical lyrics hit the bullseye yet again. “Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar, you’re gonna go far. “You gotta get an album out, you owe it to the people. We’re so happy, we can hardly count. “And did we tell you the name of the game, boy? We call it riding the gravy train.”

SLEAFORD MODS The Demise of Planet X ROCKET

MEGADETH Megadeth ROCKET

UK post-punk duo Sleaford Mods – Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn – have had three Top 10 albums in a row at home but are yet to

This is it: the end of the road for Megadeth. Forty-three

years after the band started in LA, this self-titled set is their swansong. And they’re going out on a high, having lost none of their intensity or energy. Fans will lap up the thrash-metal sound, and Dave Mustaine is still in fine voice after battling throat cancer. “We started a musical style,” he says. “We started a revolution, we changed the guitar world and how it’s played, and we changed the world. The bands I played in have influenced the world. I love you all for it. Thank you for everything.”

crack the Australian Top 40 (their highest charting album here was 2021’s Spare Ribs , which hit number 47). Their 13th studio album features their trademark working class pop, filled with witty, potty-mouthed one-liners and some clever collaborations, including Elitest G.O.A.T with New Zealand’s Aldous Harding.

KARNIVOOL In Verses (Feb 6) JOJI P-ss in the Wind (Feb 6) KISSCHASY The Terrors of Comfort (Feb 13) Coming in FEBRUARY

POPPY Empty Hands INERTIA

Moriah Pereira – better known as Poppy – is one of the more intriguing artists in the modern music world. When she was starting out, she said: “I don’t want

people to talk about how old I am; I want them to talk about what I’m making. People, especially nowadays, are so obsessed with knowing everything. They’ll have to invest their time in finding it.” For her seventh album in nine years, the American artist has again collaborated with former Bring Me the Horizon member Jordan Fish. The result is not for the faint-hearted; the pop hooks might be big – check out the beautiful Unravel – but much of the sound is slamming industrial rock. Poppy’s “Constantly Nowhere” tour kicks off in Brisbane on January 20.

Happy 50th birthday to Wish You Were Here .

Radio legend Billy Pinnell presents Billy Pinnell’s Musical Moments on YouTube.

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