On one of his social media channels, near the beginning of 2025, musician Daniel James mused how he was always busy. So busy, in fact, that he barely had time to sleep. At that time, he was a member of at least four bands – including Indonesian Junk (who’d just embarked on a hiatus) and reformed punkers Chinese Telephones.
When it comes to crossover sounds, things don’t come much bigger than ‘Love Psycho Kill Machine’, the current single from Decrepit Youths.
Welcome back to the Real Gone Singles Bar, the place where we explore some of the individual tracks that have landed in our inbox over the last few weeks. Although this selection digs deeply to showcase recent tunes from up and coming talents, there’s one name here that should be familiar to most. We’ve also got a couple of superb singer songwriters, some classic sounding dream rock, and even a superb sounding single from a cool pop act. As always, we hope you find something new to enjoy!
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On their full length release ‘Mourning Asteri’ from 2022, Negative Thirteen tapped into a brilliantly heavy sound. The bulk of the material fused classic doom metal riffs with a sludgy aesthetic which resulted in a well orchestrated, uncompromising record. Unlike some doom-sludge acts, though, the album flaunted a brilliant production job which placed as much interest on the bass as the sledgehammer guitar parts. It could be argued that the material often valued massive riffs over any kind of immediacy, but there was no doubt that this band meant business.
Their 2025 follow up, ‘Recover What You Can’ is often just as heavy, but with a couple of tracks favouring an epic length allowing the doomy band more room for manouevre, it sometimes feels as if Negative Thirteen haven’t so much “branched out”, but descended even more deeply into their own world of sludge derived sounds.
Throughout their fifth album, power pop band The John Sally Ride explore various different topics that’ll be familiar to the obsessive music fan. You’ll find songs here that recall a big “leap forward” in terms of available formats (‘The First Time On CD’), tread the fine line between apprehension and excitement when a much-loved band returns after time in the wilderness (‘Their New Album’), and celebrate the importance of lyric sheets in a pre-internet age.