2023 was a great year in music! Solid release after solid release made this year’s list one of the hardest to put together in TFN’s 17-year history. The simple fact is that TFN receives hundreds of albums every year for review so it is never an easy task. In regards to our annual best-of list … Read more
At The Fire Note, our writers are the heart and soul of what we do. We want to give a big shout-out to these amazing folks (past and present) who pour their knowledge and love for music into every piece they write. The time and effort they put in consistently doesn’t go unnoticed by us … Read more
The music world has been slowly uncoiling from the pandemic which gave us another onslaught of great 2022 releases this year. This created another tough think tank around what albums would make The Blazing Top 50. There are plenty that we missed and one rule at TFN is that a review had to be posted … Read more
The Fire Note would not be possible without the talented writers that share their educated thoughts and true enjoyment of music with our readers. The time and commitment that goes into writing consistently is appreciated by TFN and taken for granted by everyone else! Our official year end Top 50 is coming at the end … Read more
2022 was a banner year for us here at The Fire Note as we rolled out a new section on the website – The Prog Corner! In addition to that we started a YouTube channel (The Prog Corner) of the same name in December of last year. In that time, the channel has exploded and … Read more
2021 was great year in music! Solid release after solid release made this year’s list one of the hardest to put together in TFN’s 15 year history. 2021 brought us plenty of surprise entries, more psych rock, an excellent new London scene, modern soul, good old indie rock and simply something new and interesting for … Read more
The Fire Note would not be possible without the talented writers that share their educated thoughts and true enjoyment of music with our readers. The time and commitment that goes into writing consistently is appreciated by TFN and taken for granted by everyone else! Our official year end Top 50 is coming at the end … Read more
It is with great sadness that we present this year’s Prog Year In Review. The world of progressive rock lost one of its leading lights when David Longdon of Big Big Train left us on November 20th at the ridiculously young age of 56. His voice and songwriting are a huge part of why we … Read more
Well, 2020 has certainly sucked for so many reasons but TFN has found some silver lining in the fantastic music that was released this year. From the surprise album releases to the surge of psych rock entries plus the debut album discoveries, TFN feels our Blazing Top 50 Albums of 2020 will have something new … Read more
TFN Artists Of The Week is one of our favorite features and probably is the one which gets the most attention. In 2020, we featured 125 artists that deserved your ear. We now have reviewed our selection and picked out our Top 25 of those artists just to make sure you didn’t miss them! Honestly, … Read more
The Fire Note would not be possible without the talented writers that share their educated thoughts and true enjoyment of music with our readers. The time and commitment that goes into writing consistently is appreciated by TFN and taken for granted by everyone else! Our official year end Top 50 is coming at the end … Read more
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Dickens himself couldn’t have explained this year any better. With a global pandemic virtually shutting the music industry down artists had to rely solely on non-touring revenue; and the bulk of that for Prog bands these days is physical record and CD sales … Read more
The recent death of Little Richard Penniman was a stark reminder that the founders of rock and pop music are not getting any younger. It’s been nearly 70 years since the birth of rock and roll, so this seems like a good time to take stock in our musical forebears and review who we still … Read more
#50 Steve Gunn The Unseen In Between Matador Records [2019] Steve Gunn is a well-known industry talent that really took a step forward in 2016 with his Matador Records debut Eyes On The Lines. Now on his sophomore album for Matador, Gunn evolves his sound even farther as the production was seamless and he delivered … Read more
Music has been good this year! Each week, I tried to sample at least a song from each new single, EP, or album. As I did so, I created a playlist, and that playlist exceeded 250 tracks by the end of the year. I took the top 10% and made a list. I didn’t discriminate … Read more
We brought back one of our favorite features this year with several small tweaks and over the last third of 2019 we highlighted 33 artists that deserved your indie ear. Now with the end of 2019, it only seemed appropriate to create a Top 10 of those artists just to make sure you didn’t miss … Read more
The Fire Note would not be possible without the talented writers that share their educated thoughts and true enjoyment of music with our readers. The time and commitment that goes into writing consistently is appreciated by TFN and taken for granted by everyone else! Our official year end Top 50 is coming soon but clearly … Read more
The apocryphal, and often repeated, origin story of Prog has it that in 1969 King Crimson released In The Court Of The Crimson King and a new genre had been born. This of course ignores the fact that Yes’ debut came out two months earlier or the contribution and influence of acts such as Pink … Read more
As another calendar year comes to an end it seems like 2018 was full of yardmarkers – elections, mass shootings, North Korea, etc. But it will be remembered in the Prog community as the 50th Anniversary of some of the genre’s most beloved acts: Yes, King Crimson and Jethro Tull all turned fifty this year … Read more
#50 Ty Segall & White Fence Joy Drag City Records [2018] It wouldn’t be a good year if there were not plenty of Ty Segall records to spin. Joy brought back Segall’s buddy Tim Presley of White Fence for a sophomore collaboration. It has been six years since their 2012 debut and it feels like … Read more
The Fire Note would not be possible without the talented writers that share their educated thoughts and true enjoyment of music with our readers. The time and commitment that goes into writing consistently is appreciated by TFN and taken for granted by everyone else! Our official year end Top 50 is coming soon but clearly … Read more
The simple fact is that TFN receives hundreds of albums every year for review. In regards to our annual best of list -The Blazing Top 50, TFN follows the rule that for an album to make the Top 50 we had to review it. With a very small writing group there is never any way … Read more
#50 Old 97’s Graveyard Whistling ATO Records [2017] Drinkin’, whiskey, cars, trouble, women, God and Texas – Dallas, Texas that is. That has been the story of the Old 97’s since their first record, Hitchhike To Rome which was released back in 1994. This veteran group returned this year with an album that embraced the … Read more
The Fire Note wouldn’t be possible without the talented writers that share their educated thoughts and true enjoyment of music with our readers. The time and commitment that goes into writing consistently is appreciated by TFN and taken for granted by everyone else! Our official year end Top 50 is coming soon but clearly everyone … Read more
Progressive Rock is not dead. It’s been relegated to the back of the line but it refuses to go away. And this is the time of year I get to reflect on all of the previous twelve month’s worth of proggy goodness that my ears have received. Yeah, it’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta … Read more