indie
Kieron Tyler
While recognisably a John Grant album, Boy From Michigan brings on board something new and unprecedented – an outside producer. Welcome, Cate Le Bon. Among her previous production credits are Deerhoof and Tim Presley, whom she’s collaborated with on an album. As these and her own releases attest, she’s not going to steer anyone towards the mainstream.For Grant’s fifth solo set, the follow-up to 2018’s Love Is Magic, Le Bon appears to have helped give Grant his most integrated sound in years, bringing a balance which last surfaced on much of 2013’s second solo album Pale Green Ghosts. Although Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Dungen’s October 2005 appearance on Late Night With Conan O'Brien was incongruous. Here was a Swedish band on an independent label, singing in their native language, playing live on coast-to-coast mainstream US TV. The show’s host making a great play in his intro of trying to pronounce their name compounded the sense that this was a band of outsiders which had been mistakenly invited to the banquet. The frazzled song they played was “Panda”, from their recent third album Ta det lugnt.This wasn’t their first brush with the mainstream. Three years earlier, their also-independently issued second Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Broken Hearts and Beauty Sleep has been five years coming. It’s only a mini-album but is spiced with a range of guests, and offers an array of musical styles, the whole sound ably built with alt-tronic producer FaltyDL. The press release tells us Blanco has recently come out of a calming three year relationship, but the album is neither morose nor studiedly reflective. It feels more like a sequel to the playful 2016 debut Mykki. Blanco may be a key transgender presence in hip hop, but rather than preaching, they prefer to entertain, and are not afraid of choruses.The one song that does seem Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
After listening to Miracle on repeat, the impression which lingers is that its creator has assimilated a lot of music. First and third album Big Star, Magnetic Fields, The Left Banke, the non-rock side of Abbey Road, Nilsson, Lloyd Cole, Plush, Emitt Rhodes, the poppy side of Field Music, a smidge of Elliott Smith, the swoon of Brian Wilson. Yet the result is a coherent song cycle with its own flavour. Classic, yet fresh. Familiar, but different.The creator of this musically erudite album is Tom McClung, a former member of the high-concept Manchester band Wu Lyf. They hid their identities and Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
At no point in their near-30-year career have “shy” or “retiring” been adjectives you could apply to Garbage - and yet, on this their seventh record, the Scottish-American rockers go to places that they never have before. With songs taking on capitalism, climate change, misogyny, racism and police brutality, No Gods No Masters is a no holds barred, politically charged firecracker of a record - one which is as brutal, messy and vulnerable as the human condition.Despite its songs pre-dating the pandemic - the band’s last day of recording together was in March 2020, before the world went into Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The latest album from Marina Diamandis, her fifth, is a startling explosion of vim and attitude. It mingles speeding, wordy, indie-tinted dance-pop bangers, tilting at all manner of contemporary ills, with sudden moments of broken-hearted piano-led contemplation. When she last appeared two years ago, it was with the lengthy Love + Fear album, Paloma Faith-ish songs whose tastefulness masked real character. Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land, on the other hand, is packed with plenty of juice and surprises.It opens with the title track, an electro-glam-pop stomper midway between Britney Spears’ “ Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
When Wolf Alice appeared a decade ago, you’d have to have been a soothsayer of Merlin-like proportions to predict the career trajectory they’ve had since. Certainly, prior to their debut album, this writer took them for just another female-fronted London indie guitar band, following the same old formula. Instead, they blossomed into imaginative alt-rock/pop ones-to-watch who can sell out Alexandra Palace, a Mercury Music Prize under their belt, now on the verge of big-festival-headlining proper fame.They deserve it. It’s an overused word (by music journalists, at least) but eclecticism is Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“All the best bits of Dylan and the Velvets with a post-punk Eighties edge to it.” That’s how Alan McGee described The Loft to NME in November 1984. Their first single, “Why Does the Rain”, had come out on his Creation label that September. Their next, “Up the Hill and Down the Slope”, arrived in April 1985.It was some claim. The interview coincided with the release of the debut single by another rising Creation band, the Jesus and Mary Chain. McGee went on: “Jesus and Mary Chain are the shock troops in this war on pop, they'll smash down doors which more subtle bands like The Loft will Read more ...
caspar.gomez
INTERLUDE 1: INVALID CODE-AGEDDON6.45 PM on Saturday 22nd May and all is well. Like tens of thousands of others across the UK (or maybe even more?) my wall flatscreen is tuned to Glastonbury’s livestream. Prior to the event itself promos for Water Aid and the like roll by, the kind usually on the huge screens beside the Pyramid Stage at the festival.One of my usual Glastonbury compadres, Finetime, is round, the fridge is loaded with beers, posh bottles of Bordeaux breathe by the radiator. Finetime has made his patent fiery quesadillas, timed for the 7.00 PM start. We’re going to make a right Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Things got out of hand at theartsdesk on Vinyl this month and these reviews run to 10,000 words. That's around a fifth of The Great Gatsby. It's because there's so much good music that deserves the words, from jazz to metal to pure electronic strangeness. That said, this is the last time theartsdesk on Vinyl will reach this kind of ludicrous length. So enjoy it. Dig deep. There's something for everyone. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHThe Fratellis Half Drunk Under a Full Moon (Cooking Vinyl)Look, I’m the first one to gleefully, mercilessly dance on the grave of so-called landfill indie (the wave Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“A complete fully translated and transcribed Obsidian Rock Audio Anthology chronicling the ancient spiritual technologies and exploits of prehistoric, post-revolutionary afro bionics and sacred texts from The Great Book On Arcanum by Supernal 5th Dimension Bound 3rd Dynasty young Kushites from Azania.”So runs the text on the back of the sleeve of the second album from Johannesburg’s Blk Jks, the belated follow-up to their 2009 debut After Humans. Helping them build from this inscrutable manifesto are guests including guitarists Vieux Farka Touré and Madala Kunene, vocalist Ali Magassa Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A few hurdles need jumping before grappling with the essence of Teenage Fanclub’s 11th album. Endless Arcade is their first without bassist and founder member Gerard Love. He, alongside Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley, was one of the band’s songwriters. And this is their first with former Gorky's Zygotic Mynci mainstay and solo artist Euros Childs in the line-up on keyboards. Blake and Childs made the Jonny album together in 2011. Childs has recorded a fair amount of other collaborations but joining Teenage Fanclub in 2019 was a different type of commitment. Following this arrival, TFC Read more ...