indie
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 ...
Guy Oddy
No-one needs to be told that 2019 was a year which saw the UK, USA and many other countries looking somewhat at unease with themselves. Inevitably, this filtered down into much of the music that was produced under these conditions. Even Peter Perrett – a man not known for his political pronouncements – sang of how “The so-called Free World stands for evil incarnate” on the storming “War Plan Red” from his superb second solo album, Humanworld.The album that really held up a mirror to 2019, however, came from Imperial Wax, the band predominantly consisting of the remaining members of the Fall’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s not about spontaneity. Bar switching the order of a couple of songs at the beginning and during the encore, the set was the same as a couple of days earlier in Paris. And, just-before that, in Turnout, Belgium. The first UK date on Mark Lanegan and his band’s European tour didn’t deviate much – odd other songs have cropped up during this excursion – from what they’ve been doing since hitting the trail in the last week of October.Instead, it’s about reiterating what Mark Lanegan is about. The gruffness. The lack of chit-chat – beyond a couple of acknowledgments, he limited himself to one Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Despite their name, U-Bahn are from Melbourne. Instead of looking to Germany for their musical inspiration, their minds are on a vintage band from Ohio. “Beta Boyz”, the first track on their eponymous debut album, reassembles the key elements of Devo’s version of “(I Can’t Get no) Satisfaction”. The chicka-chicka tick-tock guitar is present. So too are the throat-swallowing Mark Mothersbaugh vocals, the rotating tin-can drums and primitive synth.Next up, “Turbulent Love” does a similar job by hybridising Devo’s “Mongoloid” and “Whip it”. “War of Currents” borrows from the de-evolutionist's “ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In the liner notes to the new reissue of 2001’s All is Dream, Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue says it is “a weird astral album musically, and yes the symbolism lyrically runs many layers down and deep – different coloured layers of rock, soil and ash on an archaeology dig.”More straightforwardly, Mercury Rev’s other mainstay Grasshopper explains “All is Dream was a continuation of ideas we hatched during recording [previous album] Deserter’s Songs – and [its predecessor] See You on the Other Side – but we were bolstered by the excitement that Deserter’s Songs generated.”All is Dream was Read more ...