indie
Thomas H. Green
Manchester trio The Longcut’s latest album, their third, comes nearly a decade after their last one, but is rife with ideas and energy as if it's still riding the crest of their initial success. Their M.O. is twofold, either shoegaze-ish, jangle-tinted numbers with wispy indie vocals in a singing style not a million miles from Ian Brown of The Stone Roses, or mantric post-Krautrock jams that pulse with building energy. The cuts in the former style are not dramatically special but the ones in the latter tend to be vividly realised and truly dynamic.The best of Arrows boasts imaginative Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Three years ago The Vaccines’ last album, English Graffiti, received a mixed response. It appeared to be a stab at moving sideways from the previous two, at proving they were more than just a guitar band in the classic indie mould, that they could also be studio-produced into the realms of polished pop. It was an experiment they’re now, perhaps, less sure about. In any case, The Vaccines 2018 is a different band. Drummer Pete Robinson has left, to be replaced by Yoann Intonti of fellow London major-indie outfit Spector, and keyboard-player Tim Lanham has also joined. On Combat Sports this Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
This column last encountered Cocteau Twins in 2015 when the compilation The Pink Opaque and the Tiny Dynamine/Echoes in a Shallow Bay album, which collected two EPs, were reissued on vinyl only. Now, it’s the turn of two albums-as-such: 1983's Head Over Heels and 1984's Treasure.The overriding question from then still applies: neither record is rare in its original form and neither fetches a high price. The reissues sell for around £17. Decent-shape first pressings fetch £3 or £4 less than that. Why would anyone buy a vinyl reissue of either?And, upending a review’s normal structure, the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Considering the coal-dark nature of her music, it was unsurprising Sweden's Anna von Hausswolff was dressed entirely in black while meeting up at London’s Rough Trade East shop to talk about her new album Dead Magic. Less foreseeable was her sunny disposition and willingness to veer off topic. She happily explored what has brought her to this point and spoke enthusiastically about her inspirations. Whatever was discussed, the overriding impression was of a cheerful but nonetheless serious-minded person who puts a lot of thought into their music.Dead Magic (pictured below) is the Gothenburg- Read more ...
joe.muggs
For some a lack of development is failure; not for Kim Deal. Her songwriting and voice have influenced hordes of indie bands from the Eighties until now – indeed the “angular” clang and arch drawl of bands indebted to Pixies, and The Breeders, her band with sister Kelly, is as great a cliché as blues licks were in the Sixties and Seventies. Yet still, on this reunion album for The Breeders' 1993 lineup, the voice, sound and structures remain utterly distinctive and gloriously alien, a world away from the imitators, just as they shone out as different from all around them during The Breeders' Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Without further ado, let’s cut straight to it. Below theartsdesk on Vinyl offers over 30 records reviewed, running the gamut from Adult Orientated Rock to steel-hard techno via the sweetest, liveliest pop. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTH 1Zoë Mc Pherson String Figures (SVS)Where to begin with this one? Zoe Mc Pherson [sic] is a Brussels-based producer of French-Northern Irish extraction who collects field recordings around the world, from Indonesia to Greenland, then works with the accomplished percussionist Falk Schrauwen, and a load of electronic equipment, to turn them into something thrilling Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A trio from Halifax with a collective age of 56, Orielles aren’t shy about revealing their musical enthusiasms. References to A Certain Ratio. ESG, Happy Mondays, the Housemartins, Orange Juice, the Pastels and the Soup Dragons pepper their interviews. The band’s first rehearsal was dedicated to mastering The Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks”. Much of the music they cite was made before they were born.The connections with the past go further than preferred musical flavours. The father of bassist/vocalist Esmé Hand-Halford and her drummer sister Sidonie was in the indie band the Train Set, who were Read more ...
Katie Colombus
There are two types of people - those who are fans of Belle & Sebastian and those who are too ashamed to admit such plebbishness regarding musical tastes, that they won’t admit to not being fans of the Glaswegian band.Unfortunately I fall into the latter camp. I wish I got this band, I really do. I wish I was one of those cool-kid superfans. So I’m trying my darndest with this triplicate mini-album release – a hark back to their 1997 album of the same order.“Sweet Dew Lee” hearteningly opens with a duet that promises the filmic soundscapes of earlier albums, but ends up being try-hard Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
What does a band do when it loses a key member? Pack it in? Carry on as if nothing has happened? Execute a radical change of direction? Nick McCarthy, Franz Ferdinand’s rhythm guitarist and keyboard player, left the band last July and their new album Always Ascending answers the questions.Obviously, Franz Ferdinand have not packed it in after the loss and two new members replace McCarthy, a keyboard player and a rhythm guitarist. Before his departure, McCarthy had co-written all the band’s songs. The last record Franz Ferdinand contributed to was their hugely successful 2015 collaboration Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Transangelic Exodus is a roller-coaster ride. Songs twist, turn, have sudden shifts in tempo, are punctuated by unexpected instrumental interjections, and come to a dead stop after which they resume their unpredictable course. Although Ezra Furman's musical touchstones of late Fifties pop and The Modern Lovers are still apparent, the follow-up to 2015’s Perpetual Motion People comes across as nothing less than a vigorously shaken-and-stirred take on pre-Born in the USA Bruce Springsteen.Furman says the narrative thread running through the frenzied Transangelic Exodus is his being “in Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
On paper Django Django seem a perfect band. The four-piece, half Scottish, quarter English, quarter Northern Irish, boast an indie songwriting sensibility, but filtered through a natural pop suss, an engaging sense of psychedelia, a desire to rave it up, and a ripe capacity for harmonisation. Their third album is fat with melody and interest, right from its ballistic opening title track, yet in the end, why is it eminently likeable rather than loveable?See, I keep trying to have a love affair with Django Django’s music. Their last album, Born Under Saturn (2015), sounds luscious but in the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
How much of someone else’s despair is it possible to take? What are the limits on putting a sense of desolation or isolation into a song? Can such naked expression be mediated by a glossy production or crowded instrumental arrangements which distract from the core essence of the song?All three questions are raised by the new Television Personalities archive release Beautiful Despair. Rather than being an unreleased album, it is a collection of 15 previously unheard home recordings taped in 1989 and 1990 between the albums Privilege (1989) and Closer to God (1992). This was a period of Read more ...