Sending Signals

100 episodes baby! This episode, I’m joined by Nick Heyward and Blair Cunningham of Haircut 100, very appropriately for my 100th episode. The band are back, with their first studio album since 1982’s masterpiece, “Pelican West”, that’s not counting a 1984 album they made without Nick. The new album is called “Boxing The Compass” and it is sensational. I caught them play a tour warm-up recently and...

Geoff Downes has quite the musical CV. Shooting to fame with The Buggles, then joining Yes alongside Trevor Horn for their 1980 “Drama” album, he then had massive success alongside Yes member Steve Howe with the supergroup Asia. He rejoined Yes in 2011 where he remains to this day. Geoff joined me from his home in Wales for a career-spanning conversation discussing songs by The Buggles, Asia, and...

The Four Tops formed in Detroit in 1953, originally named The Four Aims. They’re a cornerstone of American pop music and helped propel the Motown label to international recognition. Although ostensibly a soul vocal group, I find the band interesting in how broad they were stylistically and in the variety of material they adopted. The current incarnation of The Four Tops are touring this year with...

Charlie McCoy has an incredible musical CV to look back on. His relationship with Bob Dylan began when he was asked, at rather short notice, to join the session for “Desolation Row”. He went on to assemble the core band when Dylan decamped to Nashville to record his masterpiece “Blonde On Blonde”. He went on to play on “John Wesley Harding” and “Nashville Skyline” too.   Add to that, the many sess...

The Twilight Sad are a Scottish indie rock band, currently consisting of Andy MacFarlane and frontman James Graham who joins me this episode to discuss their new album “It’s The Long Goodbye”. It’s an appropriate title, as the album documents the loss of James’ mother to a 9 year battle with dementia. On top of this James has been battling serious mental health challenges. It’s a heartbreaking rec...

This episode I am joined by two-time Academy Award nominee, film editor Pamela Martin. She edited the recent Springsteen biopic “Deliver Me From Nowhere”. The film was directed Scott Cooper, adapted from Warren Zanes’ book documenting the making of Springsteen’s stark classic “Nebraska”. Pam has worked on movies including King Richard, Little Miss Sunshine, Battle Of The Sexes, Free State Of Jones...

In February 2025 at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia, something incredible happened. Jason Narducy, alongside actor Michael Shannon, were out touring their R.E.M. tribute project, where they perform early albums in full, alongside deep cuts from the back catalogue, when all 4 original members of R.E.M joined them to perform a version of “Pretty Persuasion”. Over the past couple of years various...

Always a pleasure to have Steve Howe on the podcast. The Yes guitarist joins me this time to discuss a couple of reissues from his solo back catalogue; “Natural Timbre” and “Portraits of Bob Dylan”. The former being an all acoustic record, and the latter being, as you may have inferred, a Dylan covers album. It was a nice excuse to talk about Dylan, and solo albums in general.   I, of course, also...

The past 3 decades have brought their share of ups and downs for Feeder. They’ve enjoyed 11 top ten albums, and various hit singles, but had to weather the tragic loss of drummer Jon Lee in January 2002. It was against this backdrop that frontman Grant Nicholas returned to studio alongside bassist Taka Hirose to produce Feeder’s most poignant and life-affirming album “Comfort In Sound”. The album...

Steve Rothery is a founding member of one of my all time favourite bands, Marillion.   Despite various personnel changes in the early years of the band, Marillion have maintained a stable line-up for the past 36 years.   One of the keys to their ongoing unity is surely their tolerance for band members to indulge in side-projects, and Rothery is about to release an album under the name Bioscope, in...

This summer sees the release of an expanded edition of Richard Hawley’s breakthrough masterpiece “Coles Corner” with an accompanying tour. Richard joins me for an epic chat about the making the record, his family history, his prodigious session work, the closing of the beloved Sheffield Leadmill, and working (remotely) with Hank Marvin.   Enjoy. Find me on Instagram @sendingsignalspodcast Visit ri...

On February 27th 2023 Ben Kweller received the worst phone call imaginable. His 16 year old son Dorian had died in a car accident. An oncoming truck had veered into Dorian’s lane and a downed tree had gone through his windscreen as he swerved over.   Dorian himself was a budding musician, releasing music under the name Zev, and had been due to tour with his father later that year.   Ben has been i...

Tom Sheehan was born in Camberwell, South London. He was an in-house photographer for CBS Records in the 70s, and went on to be the chief photographer for Melody Maker. He enjoyed long-term working relationships with the likes of REM, The Cure, Manic Street Preachers, and Oasis, the subject of a new book of Tom’s work entitled “Roll With It: Oasis in Photographs 1994-2002”.   I had a great time ch...

Nels Cline was born in California in January 1956. He started played guitar at the age of 12 and his early career is fairly jazz-based, before stretching into other directions.   He has played guitar for Wilco, one of my favourite bands in the world, since 2004.   He has a new solo album out on Blue Note Records entitled “Consentrik Quartet”, featuring Ingrid Laubrock on saxophone, Tom Rainey on d...

Wolfgang Flür was born in Frankfurt in 1947 but moved to Düsseldorf in the early ‘50s, which has been home ever since. As a young man he played in the band The Sprits Of Sound, and studied to be an architect, hoping to get into interior design. Wolfgang joined Kraftwerk in 1973 and plays on one of the most remarkable album runs in pop music history; “Autobahn”, “Radioactivity”, “Trans Europe Expre...

Wendy James is tied up with some of my earlier memories of music. She fronted the band Transvision Vamp, who were hard to ignore in the late 80s. Songs like “I Want Your Love” and “Baby I Don’t Care” were pretty big hits over here.   Transvision Vamp split in the early 90s and since then Wendy has persuaded various solo projects. Interestingly her first solo album “Now Ain’t The Time For Your Tear...

Pat Arnold has had quite a life. Born in 1946 she grew up in LA, and was in an abusive marriage with two kids while still a teenager. In 1965 she got a chance to audition for Ike and Tina Turner’s band as an “Ikette”. She got the gig and left her children in the care of her parents. This eventually took her to London where she fell into the orbit of The Rolling Stones, and she decided to stay behi...

Nadia Reid is a singer-songwriter born and raised in New Zealand, before recently relocating to Manchester. She’s just released her fourth album “Enter Now Brightness”. We take a deep dive into the album, and our conversation ends up encompassing motherhood, relocation, generational trauma, faith; it goes to some deep places. I really hope you enjoy it.   Instagram: @sendingsignalspodcast

You know how every now and then, an album comes along that just gets into your bones, and it’s hard to describe just how grateful you are it exists? (If you don’t know that feeling, I’m sorry, but keep searching for it). Tamara Lindeman working as The Weather Station has make two such records I feel that way about; 2019’s “Ignorance” and 2025’s “Humanhood”, released on January 17th.   “Humanhood”...

I first heard The National 17 years ago this month I think, and I fell in love instantly. They’ve continued to be one of my favourite bands, and it’s been great to see them ascend to new heights of popularity and pursue interesting creative directions in the band and outside.   Guitarist Aaron Dessner is now a key producer and co-writer for the likes of Taylor Swift and Gracie Abrams. His twin bro...

It’s a busy one. My guests this episode are Sunderland’s David and Peter Brewis, known collectively as Field Music, and Walter Schreifels of New York post-hardcore rockers Rival Schools.   You may remember David Brewis from Field Music has been on the podcast before. I’ve been a fan of the band since 2007’s magnificent “Tones Of Town” album. Depending on how you count it, “Limits Of Language” is t...

So, actually quite a personal episode for me this week. When I was 16 years old I started a media GNVQ at a local college, and during the first year there was a week allocated for work experience, so around June 2000 I spent a week working at Uncut magazine. My babysitter for that week was Michael Bonner, who in 2018 officially became the magazine’s editor, after founder Allen Jones stepped down....

Phil Manzanera has had a remarkable life. Best known as the lead guitarist in Roxy Music, he’s also worked as a writer, producer and/or performer with the likes of David Gilmour, Steve Winwood, Nico, Brian Eno and many more. He’s just released a mammoth box set of his solo work which dates back to 1975’s “Diamond Head” album.   The box, entitled “50 Years Of Music”, comes at a time of reflection f...

Released on the 9th June 1978, “Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds” went on to sell an estimated 15 million copies. As you likely know, the album features an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic sci-fi story, narrated by actor Richard Burton set to music, with vocal performances from the likes of David Essex, Justin Hayward, Phil Lynott, Chris Thompson, and Julie Covington.   A sin...

The last time Genesis keyboard player extraordinaire Tony Banks came on the show was a few years ago, and we discussed a box set of his solo albums. Since then there has been a final Genesis tour, “The Last Domino?”, which I got to see the opening and closing nights of, and Tony now has a new boxset compiling his three classical albums “7”, “6”, and “5”.   The first half of the interview we take a...