indie
Thomas H. Green
20 years on from their first appearance on record, the seventh long-player from Canadian indie-art-rock behemoths Arcade Fire comes off the back of four consecutive UK album chart-toppers.Also lurking in the background are the 2022 sexual misconduct allegations against mainstay Win Butler. He seems to have weathered them better than most, supported by his wife and bandmate Régine Chassagne. This review is not the place for an investigative deep-dive. Make your own mind up. But Pink Elephant, especially its first half, contains some impressive songs.Working with Daniel Lanois, Butler and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Over its crisp 32 minutes and nine songs, Altogether Stranger embraces electropop, lo-fi terrain and gothic solo contemplation. By deconstructing modern R&B, the upbeat “Come on” is as close as it gets to pop’s mainstream. The unifying factors are Lael Neale’s way with a tune – she writes a memorable song – and her penetrating yet translucent voice.The Virginia-born, now Los Angeles-resident Neale’s third album is firmly in the art pop bag. Her main instrument is the electronic Suzuki Omnichord, which can employ pre-set rhythms, be played with buttons and strummed via a touch-sensitive Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There’s this mod milieu, harking back to the Eighties. Weller at the forefront; Dr Robert and his Blow Monkeys; all righteously hate Thatcher; then the electronically groovy 1990s arrive; Acid Jazz Records; boss mod Eddie Piller; his collection of snappily dressed muso's who magazines wrote about and who nearly had hits. These sorts are still about, endlessly churning out music. It’s impressive. Sometimes the music is too. As with this album.Matt Deighton was in Acid Jazz outfit Mother Earth. He’s one of the aforementioned who keep on bangin’ out music. Much of it well-liked. Those mods Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Luster’s fifth track “Halo” has the lyric “mystical creatures… of Éirne,” referencing the Irish river and lough of the same name – both of which are associated with a mother goddess. Earlier, the album’s opener is a short, ambient-styled, scene-setting instrumental titled “Réalt,” where birds, wordless vocals and a harp are heard. Réalt translates from Irish Gaelic as “star.”The second album, then, by the Connemara-born Maria Somerville affirms her Irish origin (the track "Corrib" is named after another lough, one located in Connemara). In contrast, Luster cleaves stylistically to a form of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Record Store Day 2025 is tomorrow (Saturday 12th April 2025)! At theartsdesk on Vinyl we’ve been sent a selection of exclusive RSD goodies. Check the reviews. Then check your local record shop! See you amongst it.THEARTSDESK ON VINYL CHOICE CUT FOR RECORD STORE DAY APRIL 2025Marianne Faithfull Burning Moonlight EP (Decca)A fitting and thoughtfully put together final release from an icon. Marianne Faithfull, who died in January this year, aged 78, was a one-off singer and creative, also a proper 1960s countercultural heavyweight, a woman who lived the best and worst of bright, fast hedonism. Read more ...
mark.kidel
With a sound that's instantly recognisable, Justin Vernon – known as Bon Iver - continues to astonish. Purveyor of wonder, sculptor of enchanting sounds, he treads a miraculous path between melancholy and joy and has established himself as one of the great voice of contemporary indie pop.His new album built on the EP Sable, which he has supplemented with new material, further explorations of love, a search for identity whose mixture of innocence and wisdom steers well clear of self-indulgence. From his first album, For Emma Forever Ago (2007), recorded in solitary retreat, he has made a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHRattle Encircle (Upset! The Rhythm)Rattle are an unusual band. Consisting of Nottingham duo Katharine Eira Brown and Theresa Wrigley, their set-up is two drum kits, with which they build simple hypnotic patterns then add repetitive vocals over the top. They don’t sound like anyone else. Well, perhaps a little like the more outré work of femme-centric post-punk bands such as The Raincoats, The Slits, The Au Pairs, and ESG. It’s not music that most will put on to chill out to or bounce around to – it’s too spooked and odd for either – but it also has a weird power, almost like Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Langenu are a black metal band. On stage at Estonia’s Tallinn Music Week, they are fearsome. Blood-vessel-burstingly intense. Tempering their force with twists into progressive, psychedelic-adjacent territory, they are a band any rock fan would dig.Playing an evening dedicated to the region’s Finno-Ugric culture, Langenu stand apart. Folk or traditional music is typical to this realm. Rock, in any form, is not. This is a first. They are here because their last release, the Setooniq EP, is sung entirely in the Seto language.Seto, like Estonian, Finnish and Sámi, is a Finno-Ugric language. The Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The titular “lighthouse of glass” is a place where the narrator is “crying into the sun,” in which there is a need to “stand by my solitude.” Choosing isolation and self-determination are themes running throughout Lighthouse of Glass the album and how Sweden’s Sofia Härdig has approached recording these 10 songs. As well as the songwriter, she is the arranger, engineer, producer and main instrumentalist.“April,” the chugging, string-infused album opener suggests a PJ Harvey influence, with a smidge of Nick Cave too. This soon dissipates in favour of broader nods to Patti Smith: “Kingdom Come Read more ...
joe.muggs
I can’t stop reading and re-reading the review copy I got of a new book, out next week. Liam Inscoe-Jones’s Songs in the Key of MP3: the New Icons of the Internet Age is one of those books where you’ll find yourself shocked that it didn’t exist before: it’s a mapping out of the modern musical and subcultural landscape on terms defined by the millennial artists who’ve come to define it. That is to say, it elegantly cuts loose from establishment critical discourse that has all too often tried to assess artists and subcultures on the criteria of the late 20th century – Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
It took until the last song before Lauren Mayberry started to well up onstage, which was good going. The singer had mentioned early on the prospect of a hometown Glasgow gig for her solo career had left her emotional all day, both with joy and fear. Hopefully she hadn't popped her head out for a look at the venue around an hour before stage time, though, because there was considerable empty gaps across the dance floor. In addition, the fact one of the venue's bars was sealed off indicated demand for Mayberry on her own didn't match that for her day job with synth popsters Chvrches, who sold Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
For fans of The Horrors, the headline here is that, 20 years into the career, for their sixth album, the band have lost two of their founding members. Original keyboard player Tom Furse has gone, as has drummer “Coffin” Joe Spurgeon, to be replaced, respectively, by Amelia Kidd of Scottish synthy post-punkers The Ninth Wave and Jordan Cook of alt-indie Welsh outfit Telegram. Happily, these changes have not scuppered their overall dynamic. Indeed, the five-piece is now imbued with an encompassing darkness that harks back to their beginnings.This is not to say the The Horrors have reanimated Read more ...