monorail music

02/07/2026

Haiver is the new project from Billy Kennedy (Frightened Rabbit). The Ghost Dance, their debut, tells the story of a journey from tragedy and despair to hope

delighted to have signed prints to go with our white biovinyl copies, pressed here in Scotland: https://monorailmusic.com/products/haiver-the-ghost-dance

16/06/2026

Could it really be?! Some of 4AD’s most requested reissues of the last decade?

Mojave 3 was born from the ashes of Slowdive - a country twinged project spanning across 5 incredible records. Of course, they were dreamlike and ethereal in all the classic Slowdive ways but recontextualised by discernible lyrics and a country-folk aesthetic. All 5 records have been remastered (at Abbey Road) and pressed onto vinyl for the first time in years. Really, truly bliss. Hood down, sand dunes up, driving into the horizon.

Pre-order all titles here: https://monorailmusic.com/search?q=mojave

04/06/2026

Whoa... Pixies reissues, on DINKED with extra un-heard stuff.

Always love this era tbh

BOSSANOVA
https://monorailmusic.com/products/bossanova?_pos=11&_sid=b7aaeb014&_ss=r

TROMPE LE MONDE
https://monorailmusic.com/products/trompe-le-monde?_pos=12&_sid=b7aaeb014&_ss=r

Continuing their 40th anniversary celebrations, Pixies announce previously unreleased songs dating from 1987 to 1991 as part of remasters of their albums Bossanova and Trompe le Monde being released on 11th September. In addition to being available on CD, digital and standard black vinyl formats, tw...

28/05/2026

Monorail album of the month: Gichard's Chins For Lefty (Night School)

https://monorailmusic.com/products/gichard-chins-for-lefty

Limited to 300 with Monorail Exclusive inscribed Postcard, each one with a different piece of prose/poetry from singer/poet Lisa Jones and guitarist Chas Lalli.

Our Album Of The Month is a brand new record by a brand new group, Glasgow’s Gichard. Chins For Lefty makes sense because it makes no sense: effortlessly hummable indie pop detoured by cosmic synth passages, cassette demo punk with a kind of TVPs ramshackleness. The rolling, open-ended lyricism of Dry Cleaning if they were from, I dunno, Dumbarton.

From out of nowhere, if the darkest, weirdest parts of Glasgow count as nowhere, come Gichard. Like all the greatest outsiders, Gichard are awkward, unusual and also have accidentally made a classic outsider Pop record that reeks of Central Scotland and all its vagaries. It’s psychedelic trips to the moon with a droll, drawling poet/singer helmswoman in Lisa Jones, guitarist/producer Chas Lalli’s melodic lines criss-crossing beautifully underneath. It’s surreal kitchen sink dramas, science fiction played out on the mean streets of Pollokshields, eminently hummable, accidental Indie Pop anthems falling over themselves on degrading 4-track cassette spools.

What’s in a name anyway? Gichard take a lot of pleasure in being just a bit “not right.” It’s “Richard” but with a G. A Christian name barked by a dog. For sure if they’d called themselves something cute and played ball a little they’d have holograms of themselves projected against Holyrood in 40 years time lamenting one of the great lost Glasgow groups. But that’s not Gichard. This duo just find stuff funny, look for the joke in the tragedy, like the perennial naked psychedelic romancer in HR, the eponymous hologram of Posthumous Hologram singing “Everything I Do, I Do For You” forever, whether being watched or not.

Gichard walk a thin line between surrealist satire and what could be real human emotions, a tension and awkwardness that actually kind of make the band pretty special. In Your Private Hell, already a global radio smash, our narrator witnesses their beloved commit a murder, maybe, and sticks by them anyway, sharing the carbolic soap they have in bulk, possibly purloined from a Lanarkshire school in the 90s. On Break Up With Johnny Dogbirth, a cul-de-sac of a life is lamented at the funeral of someone you probably shouldn’t have married. Is Dogbirth a real name? Maybe not, but it somehow makes sense.

The lyrics are just sparkling, perfect nuggets of every day life, if your life was that of an extra-terrestrial trying to make sense of Central Scotland. “Your’re nothing like him,” I said, and flicked some liquid soap in his eyes. If I miss the opening lecture on Increased Sow Longevity, I’ll kill myself.” What can it all mean? The meanings are there, tangled in the thickets, but really it’s a sense thing.. It makes sense in the flesh.

Gichard, let us into your Private Hell?

Our Album Of The Month is a brand new record by a brand new group, Glasgow’s Gichard. Chins For Lefty makes sense because it makes no sense: effortlessly hummable indie pop detoured by cosmic synth passages, cassette demo punk with a kind of TVPs ramshackleness. The rolling, open-ended lyricism of...

27/05/2026

The Cramps
Gravest Gravy (VENGEANCE)
Monorail exclusive (with Rough Trade and Resident) green vinyl LP

https://monorailmusic.com/products/the-cramps-gravest-gravy

Unearthed Cramps is sensational news and we’re delighted to have our friend, Lindsay Hutton, explain the significance of this release. Lindsay is a long-time supporter of Monorail, and in a previous life ran The Cramps legendary fan-club, The Legion Of The Cramped between 1980 and 1983 from his Grangemouth HQ.

The Cramps first show anywhere in Europe was in Glasgow on May 31st 1979 at the Glasgow Apollo, opening for (excuse my language) The Police. A fateful day for all that experienced it on any side of opinion. Roy Trakin’s statement in New York Rocker that they could be “Kiss big or Trashmen obscure” has always stuck with me. They lived up to an element of both. Not in terms of conventional commerce but in the spiritual realm, they took too far the whole distance. I doubt there could be something nowadays like they were when this stuff was recorded. Those who exist to be offended would have a field day.

Ancient knowledge, long considered lost to the world is to be shared in controlled substance style because too much of this might just be overwhelming. Commonly circulated versions of many of these songs were from the later Chris Spedding demos but these are Alex Chilton captures from Ardent Studios in Memphis, October 1977. Alex remains as the one that was able to catch the soul of what they were live. Salvaging the tapes and getting them to this stage provides access to a brief moment in time during gestation that I for one never expected to hear. The chemistry and coming together with him was one of those fateful accidents and for a combo that “never aimed/claimed to make any sense”, their twist on success has been a long, strange, treacle-slow trip. There’s a little extra audio tacked on to the end that was a total surprise. 12 songs, 6 per side that will ideally be featured in a documentary made by those that formed The Cramps Inc. have been given the rope to kick this venture off.

These were the rockabilly voodoo days but the garage disease was already present. The inclusion of Hungry and Can’t Find My Mind are the living (dead) proof. I don’t recall ever hearing a studio version of Paul Revere and the Raiders Hungry with Alex on organ. A veritable nugget if there ever was one.

Arguably the most influential combo there’s ever been, what they mined has been cross-culturally seismic. Many have tried to emulate their oeuvre and failed. They were also the most photogenic band ever and the Gravest Gravy jacket is adorned with finite examples that rubber stamp this claim. The front by the recently departed Stephanie Chernikowski and the (David) Godlis shot on the back. Entertainers of the calibre that we’ll never see the like of again and if you never heard of them far less heard them, I envy that condition that you should rectify forthwith.

Ideally this endeavour will usher in a greater appreciation of the band and most importantly, leave the bootleggers in the dust. The Cramped are still legion and this way, they can be (re)discovered, not passed off as a relic by those that have written them out of some revisionist histories that have appeared of late. The promise of further instalments coming to pass has been made and here’s to a book of Lux’s 3D lenticular photos being part of the plan.

20/05/2026

Exclusive announcement 2 of the day! Our fav Kansas group Sweeping Promises return with a brand new record, You Say I Romanticize.

Loser Edition Magenta with Monorail exclusive signed print: https://monorailmusic.com/products/sweeping-promises-you-say-i-romanticize

20/05/2026

absolutely over the moon to have an exclusive edition of Arab Strap's brand new album, Half-Told Tales.

2LP yellow vinyl with exclusive 7” vinyl (Half-Told Tales at Home, featuring 2 exclusive home recordings of album tracks: https://monorailmusic.com/products/arab-strap-half-told-tales

Thanks Rock Action Records!

18/05/2026

Just announced!

The return of the Mystery Jets, with A Hole To See The Sky Through

Including a Dinked edition:

Blue & white "sky burst" vinyl
Hand-signed A6 die-cut postcard
"‘See The Sky" perforated peep hole sleeve with blue sky printed inner
Limited pressing of 1000

Order: https://monorailmusic.com/products/mystery-jets-a-hole-to-see-the-sky-through?variant=53639358775638

03/04/2026

NEW ON SALE: https://monorailmusic.com/product/wired-live-instore-and-signing/

BASEMENT live in Mono

BASEMENT

Wired INSTORE

(Run For Cover)

Monday 11th May 2026

Doors 7:30pm

Mono Cafe Bar

12 King Street,

G1 5RB

FULL LIVE SET + SIGNING

We are so excited to welcome Basement back to Glasgow for this intimate performance.

Tickets are available as bundles and standalone options. Ticket Bundles offer the chance for fans to get the new album at a discounted price, rather than paying full price on the day.

WIRED is a hard reset for Basement. It marks the British band’s first album in eight years, a reunion with their original label Run For Cover Records, and a return to making music with the unbridled passion and creative intuition that’s always animated their best material.

Since forming in 2009, Basement have always been the same five friends — vocalist Andrew Fisher, guitarists Alex Henery and Ronan Crix, bassist Duncan Stewart, and drummer James Fisher — with the same alchemic bond. The only thing that’s changed in recent years is their renewed sense of purpose, and their new album makes that loudly apparent. WIRED is the most dynamic, daring, and inspired Basement have ever sounded, while also retaining the timeless fundamentals of the band’s singular sound: growling guitars, rousing choruses, striking emotional verbiage.

“A lot of WIRED is about me trying to work out and find confidence, and being at peace with being confident publicly,” Fisher reveals. “Because I’ve never done that, and certainly never with the music, which has always been very self-deprecating, insular, and sad.”

That’s not to say WIRED is a happy record. Rather, it grapples with all the personal and band-related tribulations that Basement have endured over the last eight years, and uses those experiences to galvanize a set of songs that are both courageous and tender, vulnerable and vigorous. “We’ve pushed through the craziest lows and the ultimate highs and we’re still going,” Henery enthuses. “To me, WIRED represents a lot.”

02/04/2026

‘haunt’ is an album about grief written and performed by a murphy in his homeland of South Wales.

Signed cassette copies: https://monorailmusic.com/product/haunt/

The record begins with what sounds like the click of a tape recorder. Maybe it’s the creak of a stool on hardwood floor, or a window pane cracking as the wind cools outside. Either way, this is an intimate affair.

Maybe it’s the changing of the seasons in Glasgow, the loss of my Grandfather or the sun still nodding down at me as I leave work in the evenings now, but I’ve found myself longing for the quiet moments in music. Most recently my discoveries have been groups like the Horse, the often quietly beautiful hush of Kiran Leonard, the old favourites of Low and Sparklehorse and Vashti Bunyan and early Bon Iver.

a murphy – whose real name is Andrew James Murphy – has spent the past few years releasing music using the moniker ‘amateur theatre group’, but haunt represents a debut effort under this new name. Recorded and produced at home in South Wales, haunt is a collection of 8 mostly short songs, coming in at just over 20 minutes.

“I was struggling to work out what was next for me when I started writing what became haunt as a bit of an a-side,” Murphy says about creating the album. “In brief, I essentially realised I was coming to the point in my life where I had lived as long without my dad as when he was alive, so this small collection of music became all about grief and its more or less never-ending cycle.”

Fittingly, I’m reading Hood by Emma Donoghue, which follows the story of a woman in Dublin grappling with the loss of her partner of 13 years and the various forms of grief that come with losing someone who is part of your make-up. haunt is about grief too – the loss of Andrew’s father and the ways in which grief quietly spills into everything. For me, when I lost my Grandfather, I found it difficult to comprehend the feeling of losing someone who was physically part of me: my DNA, my genes. The red hair I had when I was a newborn that although eventually turned brown, ‘reminded everyone of my Grandad’, says my Mum.

“Oh, my twisted spine, A plaster cast of yours, Same blood, more alive.”

Sonically, the songs are made up of fragments of mostly vocals and nylon stringed guitar. Occasionally, a horn or something brass breaks through the surface and for a moment there’s light piercing through the mist. Andrew leaves a lot of room but it’s with intent: this is a record which really melts into one long song, a journey through the difficult map of losing someone and how that looks, feels, sounds.

“Lord, leave a light on, Just to help me in the dark"

- Lauren