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MUSIC ALERTS: ZAPPA, THE ANIMALS & MORE – 18 JULY 2026 (UPDATED)
29th July 2026
New music from across the musical spectrum! This week’s Music Alerts features classic rock, blues, experimental music, Americana, psychedelic rock, surf instrumentals, Brazilian jazz, punk-dub fusion and much more
First up is Bronx Blues: The Columbia Recordings (1962–1965) on Floating World, a 20-track compilation by Dion, originally released in 1991 by Columbia/Legacy. It gathers his Columbia recordings from the period, including several previously unreleased tracks. It marked a major reappraisal of this period of his career. It also captures Dion’s transition from teen idol to serious blues- and R&B-influenced artist. Highlights include: Ruby Baby – a Top 10 hit, Donna the Prima Donna – one of his biggest Columbia singles plus powerful blues performances of Spoonful, The Seventh Son and Don’t Start Me Talkin’.
Next is Faith NYC and Love is a Wish Away on Creation Youth. The latest album from the New York band, led by bassist, singer and songwriter Felice Rosser who offers commanding, soulful vocals with a fusion of punk attitude with reggae rhythms. Think Patti Smith, The Clash, Hollie Cook or the dub productions of Adrian Sherwood.
25 (or rather vingt-cinq) Pièces Sans Vide is a 3-CD set by the French free improvisation collective Le Un, released on the independent UNRec label.
Next is The Songs That Shaped The Animals via Jasmine. Rather than being a Best of… compilation, it collects the original recordings that inspired The Animals and many of the songs they later covered or adapted. Bessie Smith’s Me and My Gin reminds listeners that Burdon’s interests stretched back before post-war electric blues. Nappy Brown’s The Right Time shows where Burdon absorbed some of his gospel-inflected vocal attack. The inclusion of both Dylan tracks (House of the Rising Sun and Baby Let Me Follow You Down) illustrates how quickly The Animals picked up contemporary folk material alongside older blues.
For the new Island Records 2CD Deluxe Edition of The Cranberries’ Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?, it’s much more than a straight reissue. It’s one of the most substantial revisits of the album since the 25th Anniversary box set. This is the original 1993 album, but newly remastered by the album’s original producer, Stephen Street, at Abbey Road Studios. Should fans buy it? It depends on which version you have. Original 1993 CD? Yes. You’ll get improved mastering plus the entirely new stereo mix. 2002 Complete Sessions? You’ll already own many of the studio bonus tracks but the new mix and previously unreleased live material make this worthwhile. The 2018 25th Anniversary Edition? There’s some overlap in bonus material but the 2026 Stephen Street remix and fresh mastering are the main attractions.
Hero Street is the 12th album by American Americana/folk singer-songwriter David G. Smith.
What makes the project particularly interesting is that Hero Street is tied to a nine-part documentary film series produced by Emmy Award-winning filmmakers, 4th Wall Films. The series tells the true story of the Hero Street Memorial Monument in Silvis, Illinois, which commemorates the extraordinary number of Mexican-American servicemen from a tiny two-block neighbourhood who served—and many who died—in US military conflicts. Smith wrote the title song to reflect the themes of sacrifice, family and community. Musically, you’re getting contemporary Americana with strong folk and roots influences. Acoustic guitar, resonator guitar and understated arrangements. Lyric-driven songwriting rather than flashy production.
Dream Me a Dream is draped in sadness because it became Tucker Zimmerman’s final studio album. Completed in 2025 but released in June 2026, it arrived only months after Tucker and his wife and creative partner, Marie-Claire, died in a house fire. Several pieces date back to the 1960s, while others were written during 2024–25. Zimmerman also set some of his own poetry to music, including the title track, which draws on poems from his first book When In Flows The Sea. For longtime Tucker Zimmerman fans, Dream Me a Dream feels less like an attempt to sum up his career than a final notebook of reflections—warm, eccentric, quietly experimental and unmistakably his own.
The Garden is the latest album by Margareth Kammerer, an Italian-born vocalist and composer who has lived in Berlin since the mid-1990s. She is best known within the European experimental and improvised music scene. Her music combines song, improvisation, chamber music, folk influences and avant-garde composition.
The Garden was released on the Japanese experimental label Ftarri Uta. Rather than being a conventional studio session, it gathers nine songs recorded between 2007 and 2019, each featuring different collaborators. The result is more like a curated retrospective than a single recording project. Which seems to be the theme of this feature. For those into Carla Bley, Laurie Anderson even Robert Wyatt.
If you’re curious about Frank Zappa but don’t know where to begin, ZAPPAtite – Frank Zappa’s Tastiest Tracks is one of the better single-disc introductions compiled in 2016 by Zappa’s son, Ahmet Zappa and longtime archivist Joe Travers. A sampler as opposed to a hits package. Early Mothers of Invention material is rather underrepresented. There is relatively little of his extended jazz improvisation. Complex live performances, which many fans consider the heart of Zappa’s legacy, are mostly absent. Even so, it’s arguably one of the strongest introductions because it balances accessibility with musical ambition.
Mirage is the latest album by the Portland, Oregon instrumental group Trabants. It completes what the band describes as a psychedelic trilogy that began with Freakout (2015) and continued with Mantra (2024). Unlike many surf bands, their music is more cinematic than beach-party oriented, often recalling film composers such as Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai. Mirage is probably one of the stronger instrumental surf/psych albums of 2026. It leans more toward sophisticated soundtrack music than traditional reverb-drenched surf.
Beleza Pura is the second studio album by Gafieira Rio Miami, an 11-piece Brazilian big band based in South Florida. Led by Latin Grammy-winning bassist and producer Diogo Brown, the group combines classic Rio de Janeiro gafieiradance music with samba, MPB, jazz and Latin influences. It captures the spirit of the dance halls (gafieiras) while giving the music a contemporary, big-band polish.
An Introduction to Sendelica is a new 4CD retrospective from Welsh psychedelic rock veterans Sendelica, released by Fruits de Mer Records. Spanning 33 tracks, it’s not so much a hits package (here we go again) but, like the earlier Zappa CD covered in this feature, a sampler from the band’s career. For anyone curious about modern British psychedelic rock, An Introduction to Sendelica is arguably the most accessible place to begin.
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Reviewed by Paul Rigby — Music journalist and editor for over 38 years. Editor of both Record Mart & Buyer and Record Buyer and contributor to the likes of Computer Music, Blues & Soul and DJ Magazine, he still writes for national music print magazine, Record Collector.
