indie
Thomas H. Green
The joy of The Hives on record is encapsulated by their 2012 micro-song “Come On”. Despite being one-minute long and consisting solely of the title phrase, it fizzes with righteous, effervescent buzzsaw euphoria. They open their encore with it, showcasing with ease that, whatever the pleasures of their studio output, live in concert is where The Hives truly explode.Clad in regulation black’n’white suits covered in zigzags, they first appear to Chopin’s funeral march and dive straight into “Bogus Operandi” from their most recent album, last year’s The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons, from which Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Carl Barat and Peter Doherty are "the Glimmer Twins" of their own wayward trajectory through the worlds of rock and roll, stardom, drugs, distraction and destruction.The noughties indie stars, releasing their first album in a decade, are perhaps as near as their generation will get to the steady state of the Mick-n-Keef equation. But it pulls you up to realise that, more than 20 years after they went in to a studio together, this is only their fourth album as a band.Recorded, in part, at their Albion Rooms hotel on Margate’s Eastern Esplanade, its 11 new tunes display Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Motif,” Love In Constant Spectacle’s fourth track, is the closest Jane Weaver has come in over a decade to the folk influences embraced on her 2007 and 2010 albums Cherlokalate and The Fallen By Watch Bird. Not that her new album is rooted in past ventures, more that it appears she has taken a step back to consider what she has done, and has found this reflection comfortable.And there is a lot to ponder. Weaver, who thrives on embracing new musical and wider cultural discoveries, has her own résumé to contemplate. Her first solo album was issued in 2002. Just before this, there was her Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Hey Panda is unlike any previous High Llamas album. While the characteristic traces of late Sixties and early Seventies Beach Boys, Van Dyke Parks and Steely Dan are here, they have become melded with a sensibility lead-Llama Sean O’Hagan has absorbed from multifaceted US hip hop producer J Dilla – whose approach to rhythm and song structure rewrote standard linear templates.In the promotional material for the first High Llamas album – the title comes from a panda seen on TikTok during the coronavirus pandemic – in eight years, O’Hagan is quoted saying “when I heard J Dilla in the early 2000s Read more ...
joe.muggs
Jim and William Reid’s musical trajectory has been extraordinary. They started out by out-punking punk with terrifying noise barrages and wilfully clumsy three-chord thrashing, but quickly revealed a deep love of classic pop song structures which became ever clearer as they sonically mellowed in the early stages of their career.From there, in the early 90s, they managed to catch a wave as elder statesmen of alternative rock – but suffered from creative and personal diminishing returns, eventually acrimoniously breaking up at the end of the decade. They reconciled in 2005 and very Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
On this, their 10th album, the melodious Mancunians started at the drum kit and built from there. This is no bad thing. The overall effect is wide-ranging, surprising and altogether more uplifting than either the delicious despairing Giants of All Sizes (2019) or gentle, soulful Flying Dream 1 (2021).We kick off with “Things I’ve Been Telling Myself For Years”, (for instance, “Of course I’ll live to 96 and fix the welfare state”) a self-deprecating piece of analysis that packs in the influences without ever being derivative. As Garvey puts it, “We referenced The Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Some icons sit back and bask. Kim Gordon does not. She has occasionally intimated that her New York cool and relentless work rate may be down to a smidgeon of imposter syndrome, even after all her years on the frontline. Whatever the truth of it, her output since Sonic Youth (and her marriage) dissolved in 2011 has been prodigious. It’s ranged from new band projects Body/Head and Glitterbust, to film roles, to art exhibitions, and more. But perhaps most dynamic are her solo albums with producer Justin Raisen, of which this is the second. The Collective successfully continues their journey Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHMito y Comadre Guajirando (ZZK)Mito y Comadre are Guillermo Lares and Shana Comadre, a Bogota-based pair of Venezuelans whose debut album is produced by Christian Castagno (a man who’s more likely to be found helming outings by Iggy Pop, Arcade Fire and others). The duo are deep-dipped in their heritage, embracing an array of traditional instruments that I can’t even locate by name via Google (the quichimba, the macizón, etc). Such ignorance is no hindrance to adoring this music, heavily lathered and danceable funk and lively upbeat spirit, with electronic twiddlings and Read more ...
mark.kidel
The best popular music tunes into the zeitgeist. It can reflect cultural currents, encourage them, or enable the public to turn away and just party. At a time when the future of humanity feels more uncertain than at any time since the height of the Cold War, Yard Act, one of the most interesting British bands to emerge in recent years, play on the sense of doom around the corner, while laughing in its face.The acclaimed band from Leeds, fronted by James Smith, who speaks the lyrics as much as he sings, come in a tradition of English bands – often from the North – who place cultural and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Musically, the assured Focus on Nature knows exactly what it is. Fuzzy, psychedelic-leaning, folk-aware pop-rock with an emphasis on guitars about captures it. And what tunes – this 75-minute double album’s 19 songs are immediate, instantly memorable and stick, limpet-like, in the head. Even during “A Mirror’s” backwards guitar coda the song’s melody is still to the fore.Lyrically, The Bevis Frond’s new album draws from main-man Nick Saloman’s concerns about where the world is – and shouldn’t be – heading, “I’m so tired of scary ecological forecasts” are the blunt opening words. The song, “ Read more ...
joe.muggs
It must be kind of unreal living in the Stereolab universe.A band of geeky introverts, beloved of the type of hairclip-and-satchel indie ultras a friend of mine used to call “the Scooby Gang” for their tendency to resemble Shaggy and Velma, over the past three decades they also became cool enough in fashion and celebrity circles to get multiple mentions in Bret Easton Ellis’s Glamorama, and etched into the very fabric of hip hop via fans like The Neptunes, J Dilla, Timbaland and Tyler, The Creator. Laetitia Sadier, one of the two sole continuous members of Stereolab along with Tim Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The dolefulness of the title Loss of Life is reflected by what’s in the grooves. The lyrics of the Todd Rundgren/Queen-esque fifth track “Bubblegum Dog” include the line “None of this seems like fun but maybe that’s the point, man.” Further in, “Nothing Changes” seems to be about wanting to be rescued from an enervating stasis.Such melancholy is accompanied by an archness. With its key line “nothing prepares you for loss of life,” it is not possible to take woozy album closer “Loss of Life “ as a po-faced rumination on ceasing to exist. A Day-Glo sense of absurdity is in-keeping with the Read more ...