indie
Barney Harsent
Editors’ last album, the electronic-infused Violence, was hailed as a big departure for the indie rock band on its release a little over a year ago. It wasn’t really, it was simply the latest stage of a transformation that can be traced back to guitarist Chris Urbanowicz’s 2012 departure, and first came to light on 2015’s In Dream. For their 2018 release, the band handed over complete control of the production process to Blanck Mass, otherwise known as Ben Power of electronic drone duo Fuck Buttons. It was a fairly ballsy move by the band to offer their songs as a Blanck canvas – Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Suede finish “Sabotage”. It’s a mid-paced, elegant number set off by swirling, circling central guitar. Frontman Brett Anderson hangs from his microphone stand on the left apron of the stage to deliver it, with the lights down low. Afterwards he paces back to his bandmates, body taut, hair a-flop. He tells the audience he’s been involved in a long ongoing experiment; “standing in front of VOX AC30 amps for 30 years.” The resulting problem, he adds in a rising shout, “is that I can’t hear you.”It’s a showbiz shot, dryly delivered, but it works. He keeps coming back to this, demanding a louder Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It begins with The Stone Roses’ “Don’t Stop”, the fourth track from their 1989 debut long player. A backwards though thoroughly remixed version of “Waterfall”, the album’s preceding track, it enthusiastically pushes the button labelled “psychedelic”.It ends with “T.V. Cabbage” by Gaye Bykers on Acid, originally issued as the B-side of their 1986 debut single. Here, it appears in that version rather than the re-recorded take released on their debut album. Mashing-up late Sixties biker rock, Hendrix, Sonic Youth and first album Stooges, it’s less elegant than “Waterfall” but as an aural bad Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Circa Waves, the guitar-band from Liverpool, go over a storm at festivals and large venues. With simplicity, tightness and concentrated energy, they know how to play with the tension that can build between soft and hard, the yin and the yang of rock forms that continue to sound fresh because they're delivered with a sense of fun and the joy of making party music with catchy lyrics.This is their third album, and they live up to the promise they offered back in 2013, when they first burst on the scene with punchy and uncomplicated power pop, crafted to please, little jewels of songwriting, with Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Drums appeared a decade ago out of New York, riding a media froth about indie music to critical acclaim and, at least for their debut album, some degree of commercial success. They were a four-piece who owed a large debt to New Order but had enough of their own pizzazz to look promising. Ten years and four albums later (meaning this is their fifth), The Drums are a one man band and don’t sound anything like New Order. This isn’t necessarily always an improvement.For a couple of years The Drums have been the solo project of frontman Jonny Pierce. According to the press release, Brutalism Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“We like people here in Estonia. I think we all here very much value being European. To all our British friends, we know that the offer of e-residency has been ticking-up constantly. You can find a sure foothold for your business here in Estonia. There’s enough space, please come.”In her welcome speech at Tallinn Music Week 2019, Estonia’s President Kersti Kaljulaid (pictured below right, photograph by Aron Urb) was unequivocal about how she sees her country. “Estonia is the creative hub of Europe,” she also said. “It’s an innovation-driven society. You are very welcome to set up your Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Encountering a debut album this good is a rare thrill. Nonetheless, the case isn't made instantly – "Simpatico People”, the opening track of W.H. Lung’s Incidental Music, takes 127 seconds to bed in and the vocal arrives after another minute.During that lengthy intro almost everything which needs to be known is disclosed: this is an assured band, one so confident that clear references to the New Order of “Temptation” are overridden and soon left behind. The testifying vocal is akin to that of first-album Stone Roses and there’s also a suggestion of John Squire’s circular guitar six Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Edwyn Collins is in a good mood. Perhaps it’s his 2014 move back to his native Scotland where he now lives and records on the wild north-eastern coast. Perhaps it was finding a sheaf of inspiring old lyrics as he packed up to make the move. Or perhaps it’s just his joy at making music 14 years after two debilitating strokes nearly finished him off. Whatever the reason, his ninth solo album (and fourth since the strokes) is as full of beans as a young collie in springtime.As the frontman of Orange Juice and co-founder of Postcard Records, Collins was a key figure in the genesis of indie music Read more ...
Guy Oddy
While Oasis have so far resisted the temptation of the big pay-off that a Gallagher family reunion would ensure, plenty of other Britpoppers have been considerably less coy about getting back together since the heady days of the 1990s. We’ve already had reunions from Blur (albeit temporarily), Suede, Dodgy and even Shed Seven. Now though, it is the turn of Louise Wener’s four-piece, Sleeper.Slipping easily back into their old sound with New Wave guitars and bitter-sweet, spoken-sung vocals, The Modern Age could easily be a reissue from Sleeper’s first time around. However, while the sound is Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Every so often, an album reminds you that, done properly, the art form is more than just a collection of songs. Barely 35 minutes in length, Lucy Rose’s fourth release No Words Left is a beautifully sequenced work in a time when track listings have come to mean little; its songs, and the spaces between them, something of a late-night reverie. Rose describes the album as emerging from a particularly difficult period in her life, but rarely has a dark night of the soul ultimately sounded so uplifting.This is an album for the loneliest of sleepless nights – ironic, really, for one that opens Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Groove Denied’s keeper is “Ocean of Revenge”, a drifting Syd Barrett-tinged contemplation with a structural circularity and edge setting it apart from the rest of what’s credited as the first solo album from Stephen Malkmus since 2001’s eponymous set. That, though, was an album he wanted co-billed to him and his band The Jicks. His label Matador had other ideas.Plus ça change. The former Pavement man wanted Groove Denied issued in 2017 before the release of last year’s Sparkle Hard, a Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks album as such. The ten tracks out now are solo for real (despite being listed Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Laura Gibson’s songwriting was always that of a storyteller but her newest album, Goners, ups the ante still further. Her first album to be made after completing an MFA in creative writing, the album explores weighty themes like grief and the persistent march of time with a spellbinding elegance.“I wanted to write a fable song,” she says, introducing “Domestication” to the Glasgow crowd as “a song about a wolf that tries to live as a woman”. What is, on the album, something frantic and wild turns haunted in this stripped back, solo setting: “you let me lie in your bed, saw my hunger, called Read more ...