STACK #256 February 2026

FEATURE MUSIC

THIS MONTH?

AUSSIE RELEASES

PUSCIFER Normal Isn’t UNIVERSAL

Puscifer is the third big band for Maynard James Keenan, the lead singer of Tool and A Perfect Circle. He calls the outlet

S inger, songwriter, guitarist Jeff his iconoclastic father Tim Buckley: both died young – Tim was 28, Jeff was 30. But dad would release nine studio albums, his son only one. Jeff’s first release was a four-track EP recorded live in 1993 at a small New York café, with the singer accompanying himself on electric guitar. Two of his own songs, Grace and Last Goodbye , and his now famous reading of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah , which would appear on his only studio album, 1994’s Grace , are now available on this expanded 2026 reissue that includes Jeff’s treatment of Nina Simone’s Strange Fruit , Ray Charles’ Drown in My Own Tears , Van Morrison’s The Way Young Lovers Do , and Bob Dylan’s Just Like a Woman and I Shall Be Released . Extended monologues between songs reveal much about the fledgling artist’s influences. In the winter of 1995, I experienced what it might have been like that night at Sin-é. I was once asked to define what makes a “great singer”. For me it is someone who inhabits a song like Jeff Buckley did during an outdoor rooftop performance I was privileged to attend with a small gathering of fans. As light rain began to fall, Buckley, backed by his three-piece band who were sheltering from the foreboding elements under a canopy, approached the microphone placed at the front of the stage. Eyes closed, cradling his guitar, he gently strummed the opening chords of Nina Simone’s Lilac Wine . As Buckley began to sing, totally in sync with the story he was relating, he seemed oblivious to the rain lightly hitting his face. At song’s end, he opened his eyes as if awakening from a trance, before acknowledging the audience’s applause. Only then did he move the microphone back a little, in preparation for the next song. JEFF BUCKLEY The Complete Live at Sin-é SONY BIL Y’S PICK Buckley had much in common with

CHET FAKER A Love for Strangers UNIVERSAL A decade ago, Chet Faker reverted to releasing

MELINDA SCHNEIDER Tender ROCKET In 1994, the late-great

Australian record producer Mark Moffatt decided to make a techno yodelling track with Australia’s queen

his “creative subconscious – a playground for the various voices in my head”. Normal Isn’t is Puscifer’s fifth studio album and it sees Keenan return to his early influences. “It’s the place where goth meets punk,” he says. “It’s where I came from.” ROB ZOMBIE The Great Satan INERTIA

music under his real name – Nick Murphy. But he said that Chet Faker would

always be a part of the music. “I don’t know what’ll last,” he reveals in This Time for Real , which introduced this new album, his first in five years. “Now, I’m getting into something new. Sing it.” In the album’s showstopping ballad, Can You Swim? , Murphy sings, “I try to run away from the things I’ve said and done.” But it’s been a remarkable ride so far, including five ARIA Awards, a chart-topping album with Built on Glass , and a number one on triple j’s Hottest 100 with Talk Is Cheap . And A Love For Strangers shows that the Chet Faker story is far from over.

of yodelling Mary Schneider. She turned up to the studio with her daughter, Melinda, and Moffatt realised that she was a gifted singer, so he added her vocals to the track, Tighten Up Your Pants , which became a Top 40 hit. Thirty-two years later, Melinda Schneider’s career remains delightfully diverse. Tender – her first album in a decade – features a couple of big duets, including the title track with Diesel, and Together We Belong , with her husband, Choirboys singer Mark Gable. The album’s closing track shows there’s much more to come: The Story of My Life (The Next Chapter) .

The “hellbilly” king Rob Zombie found fame in the ’90s as the lead singer of White Zombie. Since they

split, he has released seven studio albums, all of which have cracked the US Top 10 and the Australian Top 50. His eighth is called The Great Satan , but he is yet to explain who the title is referring to. SILVERSUN PICKUPS Tenterhooks INERTIA Silversun Pickups’ album produced by Garbage’s Butch Vig, its recording was delayed when singer Brian Aubert was hospitalised after suffering an eardrum injury. The American band has bounced back to deliver another powerful collection of alternative rock. STORY OF THE YEAR A.R.S.O.N. INERTIA Story of the Year were known as 67 North seventh studio album comes 20 years after the band’s debut, Carnavas . Their third

HOWLING BELLS Strange Life ROCKET

TELENOVA The Warning UNIVERSAL

After a stack of solo albums, Juanita Stein has put the

Melbourne indie trio Telenova – Angeline Armstrong, Edward Quinn, and Joshua Moriarty – had a Top 40 hit with their

band back together. Strange Life is the first album in 12 years for Howling Bells, who were known as Waikiki when they started out in Sydney in 1999; they changed their name to Howling Bells when they shifted to the UK in 2004. The new album, their fifth, includes a song called Melbourne , a beautifully nostalgic piece, where Stein sings: “I miss the smell of eucalyptus trees, and everybody’s in a band that sound a bit like the Dirty Three.” It’s a song of yearning and sadness on a record that wears its heart on its sleeve. “If you’re not able to acknowledge the mistakes and the pain and make beautiful music out of it, then they’re left festering inside of you,” Stein says. “And I don’t ever want that to happen.”

debut album, Time Is a Flower , in 2024. The follow-up is their most adventurous outing so far. “We pushed further than we ever have before writing and producing this album,” the band says. “There’s a darker, more anxious edge, an abandon to more complex song structures, textural layers, and vulnerability in the vocals. We found ourselves gravitating towards sonic motifs of urgency and alarm in the music because there was a constant underlying feeling of unease and anxiety in our lives.” As Armstrong sings in Bitcrush , “In the heart of a cyclone.”

Coming in MARCH

when they started out in St. Louis, Missouri in 1995. They then

MATT CORBY Tragic Magic (March 6) PEACH PRC Porcelain (March 20) ROBYN Sexistential (March 27)

became Big Blue Monkey before settling on Story of the Year in 2002. A.R.S.O.N is their seventh studio album, and it showcases the band’s potent mix of emo, metal, and alternative rock.

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

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