STACK #252 October 2025

MUSIC FEATURE

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WHAT’S OUT OF MONSTERS AND MEN All Is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade INERTIA

Whether it’s a voyage of musical discovery or a sonic reacquaintance with a favourite band or artist, check out these fresh releases heading to JB this month.

Of Monsters and Men deliver their fourth album, their first in six years. The Icelandic band says the record charts the human spectrum of joy and

sorrow, love and pain. Speaking about the lead single Ordinary Creature , the band explained: “It’s about when you start feeling better after a period of not feeling so great. That moment when you start coming back to yourself again and remembering what it’s like to be an ordinary creature.” POP WILL EAT ITSELF Delete Everything ROCKET

EDITOR’S PICK

THE BLUES BROTHERS The Lost Recordings ROCKET When The Blues Brothers

THE LAST DINNER PARTY From the Pyre UNIVERSAL

It’s been quite a trip for England’s Pop Will Eat Itself. Next year will mark 40 years since they formed. They split in 1996

The Last Dinner Party – which features an Aussie, Georgia Davies, on bass – broke big with their debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy . It entered the UK

started on Saturday Night Live , people weren’t sure whether they were a joke or not. But Jake (John Belushi) and Elwood

DAVID MCCORMACK AND THE POLAROIDS A Complete History of Popular Music ROCKET “My work is varied and deep,” David McCormack sings on his fourth release with The Polaroids. Thirty years ago, he had an album with Custard called Wisenheimer . Now he’s releasing a record called A Complete History of Popular Music . Along the way, he’s composed scores for film and TV and provided the voice of Bandit in Bluey . Yep, his work is varied and deep. The pop highlight here is Crystal Ball , where he confides, “ I was laying down some Marc Hunter, baby / She was giving me some Rick Astley ”, before singing a snippet of Dragon’s Still in Love with You . While it might not quite be a complete history, this album is a delight from start to finish. Sit back and marvel at all the musical references.

but returned for good in 2010. Delete Everything is their eighth studio album, their first in a decade. The title of the album’s second single is a neat summation of the band’s indie industrial sound: Disco Misfits . “Because we are jungle punk, we’re speeding up the funk,” Graham Crabb sings.

(Dan Aykroyd) had a genuine love of the blues, and they assembled a killer band. The Lost Recordings sees them ripping through 13 blues classics, including Hey Bartender and Green Onions . Its release coincides with a new graphic novel, The Blues Brothers: The Escape of Joliet Jake , written by Aykroyd’s daughter Stella, and Luke Pisano, the son of Belushi’s widow Judy.

charts at number one, with the biggest first-week sales for a debut album in nine years. The follow-up has been the difficult second album, with producer James Ford having to exit the project after being diagnosed with leukaemia. But the British band regrouped to deliver a record they call “a little darker, more raw and more earthy” than their debut.

DROPKICK MURPHYS For the People INERTIA

THE LEMONHEADS Love Chant ROCKET

RICHARD ASHCROFT Lovin’ You INERTIA

For the People , the 13th album by American Celtic punks Dropkick Murphys, features guest appearances by Billy Bragg

It’s a shame about the delay – this is the first Lemonheads album of original material in 19 years. But Evan Dando has delivered a fan-pleasing feast of melodic indie rock. Most of the album was recorded in Brazil, where Dando now lives. Guests include J Mascis, Juliana Hatfield, and Dando’s longtime Aussie collaborator Tom Morgan. Love Chant coincides with the release of Dando’s memoir, Rumours of My Demise . MADONNA Veronica Electronica INERTIA

Lovin’ You is the seventh solo album for The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft, who has been on the road in the UK, supporting Oasis. The

and Irish bands The Scratch and The Mary Wallopers. And the band’s longtime lead singer Al Barr – who has taken time out to care for his mum – returns to sing The Vultures Circle High . The record includes a roaring tribute to the Pogues’ Shane MacGowan, One Last Goodbye, Tribute to Shane . FLORENCE + THE MACHINE Everybody Scream UNIVERSAL Florence + The Machine have had five Top 5 albums in Australia, including two chart-toppers – 2011’s Ceremonials and 2015’s How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful – so big things are expected for their sixth outing, which the English band says covers themes such as witchcraft, folk horror, mysticism, magic, poetry, and insanity. Florence Welch’s voice remains a thing of beauty.

album’s first single, Lover , samples Joan Armatrading’s Love and Affection , while the title track draws on Mason Williams’ Classical Gas . Ashcroft is in fine form. As he says, music is power.

ROBBIE WILLIAMS Britpop SONY

In 1998, Madonna released her seventh studio album, Ray of Light . A number one hit, it was a pulsating mix of techno, trip hop, and electronica, which lent itself

For his 13th studio album, Robbie Williams returns to the glory days of the ’90s. “I set out to create the album that I wanted to write and release after I left Take That in 1995,” he says. “It was the peak of Britpop and a golden age for British Music. I’ve worked with some of my heroes on this album [the first single, Rocket , features Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi]; it’s raw, there are more guitars and it’s an album that’s even more upbeat and anthemic than usual. There’s some ‘Brit’ in there and there’s certainly some ‘pop’ too.”

to an array of remixes, as well as an alter ego who Madonna dubbed Veronica Electronica. Now, nearly three decades later, comes the Ray of Light remix album, with the artist explaining that the original album was “a seminal moment in my life. I was going through a huge metamorphosis. I had given birth to my daughter Lola. I had found my spiritual path and I was ready to shed a new skin and take a road less travelled.”

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