indie
Owen Richards
When a band claims a crowd is the loudest of the tour, you can usually guarantee they've said it on every other date too. But for one sweaty night in Cardiff, you had to believe them. Bombay Bicycle Club returned after a six-year absence and were greeted in the Welsh capital like long-awaited saviours. No chorus was left unsung, no build-up left unclapped, and no breakdown unshimmied.The band have perfected their show of power pop performed with pinpoint precision. They create an impressive wall of sound, built on counter rhythms and jangled guitars, supported by a striking lightshow that Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The first album from the Boston-bred songwriter Squirrel Flower opens and closes with autobiographical songs. “I-80” opens with the artist - real name Ella O’Connor Williams - giving up on lyrics, poetry and, later, giving up on love, its rootless melody channelling the road west to Iowa where Williams went to college before building to a relentless crescendo. By the album’s closer, and title track, though, Williams has embraced poetry again: the “swimming” lyric is a reference to her being born still in the remains of the amniotic sac, the shimmering heat of the hottest day of the summer of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Commercially, The Beloved’s peak years kicked off in autumn 1989 when their electro house-pop began its chart run. The band called it a day in 1996 after the X album and its attendant singles. Throughout the period, they dealt in a form of house music – indeed, their final hit single “Ease the Pressure” was built around an acid house pulse and the sort of gospel-inclined chorus that was de rigueur for white, British dance-inclined outfits to show they had soul.There was a back story. Like Primal Scream, The Soup Dragons and all the others, The Beloved were an Eighties indie-circuit staple Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
What a lovely surprise. A debut album with its own sensibility that’s come out of the blue. Aoife Nessa Frances is from Dublin and the terrific Land of No Junction – the title comes from a mistaken hearing of Llandudno Junction – signals the arrival of a major new talent.This Land of No Junction borders on zones traversed by Kevin Ayers, Cate Le Bon, The Eighteenth Day of May, the pre-Sandy Denny Fairport Convention, Bridget St John, Stereolab, Sumie, Trimdon Grange Explosion and Wendy and Bonnie.Highlights are many, but the nine-track album can be characterised. “Libra” is brilliant, a Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
According to Gabrielle Aplin, the delicate piano ballad which closes, and provides the name of, her first album in over four years was written as a letter to herself; and one penned at a particularly turbulent point in her life. “It’s not easy for me, but I know that I’m close,” she sings, as if willing the emotion into being.Dear Happy – which arrives on Aplin’s own Never Fade label following her 2017 split from Parlophone – is full of little moments like this: of resilience, reflection and recovery, providing a consistent through-line on a record which ranges from bubblegum pop and electro- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Only in a Man’s World” is a snappy pop-funk nugget with an Eighties feel. There’s a kinship with Peter Gabriel and “Once in a Lifetime” Talking Heads. Its lyrics though are something else. They begin by asking “Why should a woman feel ashamed?” and go on to address why necessary items associated with periods are deemed a luxury by the tax regimen. “Things would be different if the boys bled too.” Rather than polemic, it comes across as exploring the double standards inherent to the state.That Field Music’s seventh album proper is about more than its musical framework is made obvious by “Only Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
18 years ago, Electric Soft Parade, centred around brothers Alex and Thomas White, were the latest hyped hope of indie kids and NME-type media. However, their might-have-been moment imploded when they moved too fast for their fans, rocketing off in wildly creative flourishes rather than sticking to a predictable formula. They – and associated break-away bands – have since produced a fascinating array of musical activity, often boasting an inventive yet old-fashioned feel for orchestration.Their latest album, their fifth, is a change of direction. Written and sung by Alex, recorded and Read more ...
Katie Colombus
2019 has been quite the year. Amongst other difficulties being a grown-up hurls at you on the reg, I lost my guiding light (may her adventures on the other side of this universe be everything and more). And the testing times that ensued sees me now, not only into the new decade but into a big fat birthday that ends with a "0". So I am looking back while trying to move forwards, doing things like wondering what advice I might have given to my younger self to prepare for the future – which means Sharon Van Etten’s Remind Me Tomorrow is hugely relevant; often giving hope, occasionally terrifying Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Once upon a time – before the nation’s schism – an indie band with dubious reputation espoused the virtues of Albion and invited us on the good ship Arcadia to travel to this Utopia. Things are a bit different now.Unfashionably nostalgic and romantic, preposterously self-indulgent and adolescent, do The Libertines really have any relevance in this brutal post-truth age? Maybe they’re just what we need when the concept of Britishness is being so fiercely fought over? They make their entrance to the ironic strains of Vera Lynn’s “White Cliffs of Dover” just 10 days after the pro-Brexit Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The lyrical and musical languages spoken by Dolphine are not immediate yet since its release earlier this year the album has repeatedly fascinated. Take “I Hear You Listening (to the Bug on My Wall)”, where Erin Birgy sings “Crazy Kermin in the hall, Shadow plant leaf bleats, Piano stumbling, I forgot all your songs.”Although such allusiveness runs throughout the US singer-songwriter’s fourth album as Mega Bog the words of “Untitled (with ‘C’)” imply elements of its core may be an examination of state of her nation: “Another murder should still disturb you, Delivered like clubhouse music to a Read more ...
Owen Richards
Not all One Direction solo albums are created equally, and after Liam Payne's public ostracization for LP1, all eyes are on Harry Styles. His self-titled debut earned some baffling comparisons to David Bowie, so what to expect next?Fine Line is akin to a seasonal selection box, picking the sweetest styles from across the genres. A bit of precision art pop here, a touch of dramatic blues rock there, a sprinkling of calypso on top. It certainly isn't comfortable staying still. Single "Adore You" owes a heavy debt to The 1975 by way of Simply Red, but still works thanks to an irresistible chorus Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Appearing on NPR Music’s legendary Tiny Desk Concert series back in autumn, Taylor Swift talked about how, in interviews over the years, she’d been asked a thousand variations on “what would you write about if you ever get happy?” “Would I not be able to do my favourite thing in the world anymore?” she mused. “I love breakup songs!” Happily for Swift – and for the rest of us who love breakup songs – falling in love didn’t affect her ability to craft heartbreak poetry. “Death by a Thousand Cuts” – which, in “I dress to kill my time”, features perhaps my favourite ever of her lines – is, she Read more ...