Listening to Shotgun Driver’s new EP, “Jester Privileges”, is like finding a glitter bomb in a padded cell. The four songs present a disorienting, strangely compelling contradiction. On the surface, the alt-pop framework pulses with an upbeat, almost defiant energy; this is the slick, rock-tinged anxiety of a Machine Gun Kelly track built for open-road brooding. But beneath it, the narrative, carried by those...

It takes a certain kind of ideological whiplash to shift from navigating corporate property deals to aggressively narrating the downfall of humanity, but at 74, Stephen Wicks introduces his single "The Doomsday Clock" with the blazing clarity of someone watching civilization slip off the edge. https://open.spotify.com/track/70JffY8Y63JRdjn98A1fMB?si=xK17Z-ERQO-o2he9oKPX-g The Hertford-based entrepreneur-turned-songwriter channels his late-in-life reinvention to confront a cocktail of existential horrors: geopolitical collapse, climate crisis, unchecked AI,...