indie
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 ...
Kieron Tyler
The body language fascinates. Mercury Rev’s frontman Jonathan Donahue could be playing a theramin. The arm movements fit the bill, yet the putative instrument is absent. At other points, his arms are outstretched, palms down. He might be projecting invisible rays in the manner of a silent-screen magician or, when he's in front of the band’s guitarist Grasshopper, absorbing invisible energies.During “Dream of a Young Girl as a Flower,” his arms – seemingly of their own volition – jolt up and down, tight to his body, a constricted analogue to the movements of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis. Judging Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Sitting on a sofa, cigarettes and beer, ten years disappear…agreeing to agree, just to get along.” By going into the difficulties of resuscitating the past, the lyrics of “Ten Years,” the fourth song on The Loft’s first album, neatly sum-up the band’s current situation. The final line gives the 10-track set its title: “Everything changes, everything stays the same.”Everything Changes, Everything Stays The Same is, indeed, the first album by The Loft, a band integral to the early days of Creation Records which fell apart on stage in June 1985. Forty years ago. A long time. Before that rupture Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Cultural references run up the flagpole on Ghost Palace include Deep Purple’s “Space Truckin’” buskers covering Lynryd Skynyrd and Ed Sheeran, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and The Ramones’ Leave Home album.Album opener “Celebrities in Cemeteries” encounters Jim Morrison in Père-Lachaise, the do-it-yourself funeral ceremony for Gram Parsons at Joshua Tree and a cemetery in Oklahoma reserved exclusively for circus performers. Contemplating this travelogue, The Burning Hell’s hopeful Mathias Kom sings “They’ll all come see me where I’m buried, Once anonymous and nameless, I’ll be posthumously Read more ...
joe.muggs
Doves really are quite prog rock aren’t they? It’s never really leapt out at me before, probably because I’d always thought of them as brooding indie first and foremost.There are elements of things like spaghetti western soundtracks, Scott Walker vadevillianism, krautrock rhythms and electronica woven in, sure, but those things were all in service of songs that definitely seemed to come from an unpretentious “alternative” tradition, dosed with northern kitchen sink grit, light years away from the flash of big Seventies acts. Perhaps it’s because their initial flush of success in Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Microtonic comes into focus on its third track, “Infinity Peaking.” Album opener “Goit,” featuring a guest vocal by Working Men’s Club’s Syd Minsky-Sargeant, is doomy post-Balearic impressionism with spoken lyrics seemingly about the loss of self. Next, the distant-sounding rave-shoegazing hybrid “John on the Ceiling.” “Infinity Peaking” is the point of coalescence; where beats-bedded, drifting electronica is suited to the comedown experience.After this, bdrmm’s third album – their second for Mogwai’s Rock Action label – settles into developing the marriage of Seefeel-esque post-rock Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
An album is one thing, a live show is another. A truism of course, but one which is inescapable during this London date by the Rotterdam-based Rats on Rafts at a shabby chic pub in Dalston, East London.Rats on Rafts’ measured new album, Deep Below – released a couple of weeks ago – inhabits the shadows cast by the early Eighties Cure, with a nod to the Cocteau Twins of slightly later. The hyperactive sonic assault colouring their predecessor albums is set aside in favour of a hazy shade of grey.It’s not-quite goth and not-quite a fun factory, but this is irresistibly kinetic stuffThis Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Hinds don't believe in God. They declared this as they surveyed the converted church that is St Luke's, and given the past few years you can't blame them for lacking faith.The Spanish duo later admitted they weren't sure they'd ever be playing material from last year's Viva Hinds live, and it was not an exaggeration, given the past few years saw half the group leave, a departure from both their management and label, and a drastic drop in money after the outbreak of Covid-19 cancelled touring plans.Yet here they were, bounding about in Glasgow with zeal and charm, beginning with the riff- Read more ...
Tom Carr
While discourse on many topics grows toxic and polarised, it’s the voices who speak plainly about the reality of everyday lives that provide some sanity and make us feel heard. Enter Sam Fender, whose straight talking and pride of his working-class roots has seen him emerge as a figurehead for the younger generation, who at times feel unheard and underappreciated.Fender rocketed to stardom with his 2019 debut Hypersonic Missiles, which paired cutting takes at the political elite with a huge, spacious indie rock sound that harkened back to Eighties era Springsteen. With his follow up, Read more ...