The Charlatans are one of those bands with little following in the United States but a massive fanbase in the UK. The rare American who happens upon them is likely searching for artists associated with Oasis or Blur before digging into Inspiral Carpets, Manic Street Preachers, or Ocean Colour Scene. That’s how far we are removed from the Cheshire band, now boasting 14 albums, 22 top 40 singles, and three number one albums.
Despite our collective ignorance, the Charlatans have returned after an eight-year hiatus with a certain amount of fanfare. The band, which features Tim Burgess (vocals), Martin Blunt (bass), Mark Collins (guitar), Tony Rogers (keyboards), and Pete Salisbury (drums), entered the studio with the crack production team of Dev Hynes…
Category: indie-pop
…Damien Jurado‘s new album, Private Hospital is the fifth and final instalment of his “Reggae Film Star” pentalogy, a series that began in 2023.
On his Substack, Jurado expressed pride in the series but singled out the upcoming album, calling it a “very different album for me.” While the specifics of the album’s new sound have yet to be revealed, Jurado is making a notable shift in how he releases his music.
Private Hospital will be Jurado’s first album released exclusively in book form. He is moving on from traditional formats like vinyl, CDs, and cassettes, citing there are “a myriad of reasons, but environmental being at the top of my list.” In his announcement, Jurado urged fans to research the environmental impact of polyvinyl…
Entrancing tunes to calm the soul… Alice Phoebe Lou’s sixth album, Oblivion, arrives just two years after Shelter (2023), yet feels like it’s been growing quietly in some sun-dappled corner of the world, waiting for the right moment to unfurl. Recorded in an intimate, improvisational spirit, Lou has spoken of “opening my treasure chest of personal storytelling songs” and leaning into imperfection. The result is an album that shrugs off grandeur in favour of something far rarer: genuine tenderness.
From the opening bars, Oblivion casts a hushed spell. A jazzy Bossa nova breeze runs through several tracks, content to drift rather than demand. On paper, that could spell background music. In practice, Lou’s vocals stop you in your tracks. Sultry and hypnotic, she can sound like…
Jane Inc. began as both a product of lockdowns and a statement of liberation. The pandemic-spawned project has allowed its CEO — Toronto-based artist Carlyn Bezic — to present a more stylistically promiscuous, lyrically provocative identity separate from her collaborative pursuits in the U.S. Girls universe, reinventing this seasoned indie axe-slinger as an all-seeing art-pop auteur equally enamored with electro-disco and bossa nova, like a DIY Madonna who never left the Danceteria. But the euphoric feeling of self-discovery captured on Jane Inc.’s first two albums — 2021’s Number One and 2022’s Faster Than I Can Take — was offset by anxieties over the horrors outside her window and life in their aftermath. “I can’t square the calm/And the eerie…
Suzie True are a fan’s band. Named after a line in a song by 1990s Memphis punks the Oblivians and self-described as “if the Powerpuff Girls formed a Blink-182 cover band,” they’re proud pop culture junkies. References abound — usually as shorthand for insecurities (“Collecting hearts like Pokémon/She’s such a ch-ch-cherry bomb!”) or objects of affection (“Dancing like it’s 1987/And you say I’m just like heaven”), almost always as outlets for escapism. These are songs for slamming your bedroom door because nobody understands, for pretending you’re in a music video even though you’re just driving around your hometown — with the windows down and the radio cranked all the way up, you can hardly tell the difference. The band’s embrace of youthful…
On her debut album Center of Affection, released under the alias Wilby, Maria Crawford manages to guide her musicians like a veteran.
With vibrant sonic ideas and intimate lyricism, the album stands as a striking distillation of beautifully composed rock.
Following a string of independently released EPs throughout the 2020s, Wilby signed with Hit the North Records earlier this year. Center of Affection, financed by a crowdfund, undoubtedly carries a more sweeping and grand scope compared to her past EPs. The production sounds large-scale, the song ideas are more ambitious, and Wilby sounds unapologetic and personal. Her vocals are quiet and intimate most of the time; she either channels the soft and ghostlike vocals of…
…remastered by Kevin Vanbergen.
By developing a flair for tight, melodic hooks on Star, Tanya Donelly unexpectedly achieved the crossover success with Belly that eluded her with the Throwing Muses and the Breeders. Evidently inspired by such success and eager to prove that Belly was a full-fledged band, not just a solo project, Donelly and company made a bid for stardom with their second album, King.
Veteran producer Glyn Johns gives the band an appealingly punchy sheen, and with the assistance of Tom Gorman and new bassist Gail Greenwood, Donelly cuts away her remaining arty preciousness, concentrating solely on big pop songs. While some fans will miss the occasional detour into spacy dream pop, Belly’s makeover is…
“Ike piano,” an instrumental highlight from Forever, is tasteful, pretty, and elegant. This is not where you expect to find Bassvictim. Henry ‘Ike’ Clateman is most at home behind the decks, detonating 808s and cheap-synthed dubstep in London basement clubs. Here, he’s steeping a piano in delay and letting tiny shoals of melody do their thing. Vocalist Maria Manow should be on stage, striking vape-flavored fervor into the hearts of sweaty moshpits. Now she’s letting amorphous, doe-eyed cello melodies float away like abandoned balloons at a birthday party.
All of this from a group who once wrote a banger about a G-string, the figureheads of London’s buzzy experimental scene who reportedly aren’t allowed back at Berghain ever again.
After years of obscurity, Pulp shot to stardom in Britain with 1994’s His ‘n’ Hers. By the time Different Class was released at the end of October 1995, the band, particularly lead singer Jarvis Cocker, were genuine British superstars, with two number two singles and a triumphant last-minute performance at Glastonbury under their belts, as well as one tabloid scandal.
On the heels of such excitement, anticipation for Different Class ran high, and not only does it deliver, it blows away all their previous albums, including the fine His ‘n’ Hers. Pulp don’t stray from their signature formula at all — it’s still grandly theatrical, synth-spiked pop with new wave and disco flourishes, but they have mastered it here. Not only are the melodies and…
‘Miss America’, the centrepiece of Jennifer Walton’s stylish, painful debut record, sits us down in a hotel room near JFK airport, watching on as Walton learns that her father has been diagnosed with cancer. The Sunderland-born musician had been touring the US for the first time, drumming with indie band Kero Kero Bonito, and now grief greys everything out. Faltering piano and hushed strings accompany gothic dispatches from the tour van: “Cattle farm and broke down shack / Strip-mall, drug deal, panic attacks.”
Walton’s gentle vocals are deadpan, with the record’s tension brought by her penmanship (encompassing fiction, folksy sayings and blunt diary entries) and her sharp, surprising maximalism. Few songs this year have…
Home Counties’ flirtation with provincial-pivoting alt anthems alongside lyrics mapping tongue-in-cheek suburban excursions – by way of socially-charged takes on contemporary life – found feet on last year’s funk-flecked debut LP Exactly As It Seems. Tracking from rural to urban since their formation five years ago, the East London-via-Buckinghamshire six-piece intersect space and time in equal sonic measure. Their first two EPs came leaning on the skewiff yet nimble post-punk footwork of acts such as Yard Act and Squid to evermore synth scored dabbling that has seen the band flaunt twitchy electronic segues adjacent to straight-up indie-pop panache.
Finding voice through dual vocalists Will Harrison and Lois Kelly, Humdrum pins its focus…
Although Unfold in the Sky may be the first album by the solo project of Penelope Isles‘ Jack Wolter, it’s worth noting that Cubzoa (derived from “Cubozoa,” a class of box jellyfish) actually pre-dates the band and served as its launching point in the mid-2010s. He returned to Cubzoa while staying at his family’s home in Cornwall during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, then completed work on the project’s full-length debut after returning to his longtime base of Brighton. That affectionate return to the coast inspired the album’s recurring water theme, one of several components of a highly trippy, immersive set of electro-acoustic art rock that ultimately exceeds the “side project” status. Also inspired by COVID isolation and bands such as…
…The album’s original 12-tracks return in freshly remastered form, while the total number of rarities spread across CD and digital versions totals 23 tracks, including early demos, remixes and B-sides including four previously unreleased.
As Super Furry Animals settle into their second decade of recording and with it their status as veteran rockers, they’re inevitably less surprising than they were at the outset of their career, when their music not only had an exhilarating rush, but there was a sense of impish glee, the sense that they were getting away with something that they shouldn’t. That naturally has declined with the passage of time, yet with their seventh album, 2005’s Love Kraft, SFA show signs of settling comfortably into their status as…
Hannah Jadagu’s debut album seemed to come a bit out of nowhere. After her debut EP What Is Going On (entirely recorded on an iPhone using GarageBand) attracted the attention of the legendary Sub Pop label, which led to Aperture, a remarkably assured debut collection.
Two years later we have the follow-up, Describe, and it sounds like a natural evolution of Jadagu’s sound, while adding some extra flourishes. The overall sound remains the same – dreamy, languid indie-pop, with Jadagu’s voice not too over-treated by vocoder. This time around though, there’s a move towards a more rounded sound, rather than the guitar-based songs of Aperture, with new producer Sora Lopez coming on board to join Jadagu’s regular collaborator…
A band that has drawn on a variety of ’90s alternative inspirations (grungy alt-rock, winding math rock, tuneful pop-punk, shoegaze, and more), Cusp find their way to something still varied but more streamlined on their second album, What I Want Doesn’t Want Me Back.
Some of its relative consistency may well be due to how it was recorded: it was tracked almost entirely live at Electrical Audio in Chicago by a newly expanded five-piece edition of the group (with returning engineer Scoops Dardaris). This is not to say that the album suffers from sameyness; on the contrary, it was written during a period of transition as the project moved from Rochester, New York, to the Windy City, and is rooted in anxiety and the examination of forces like…
Amateur is prolific musician Molly Nilsson‘s 12th album, and while it stays true to the specific style of D.I.Y. synth pop she’s always created, it also embraces eclectic influences the way her previous album did. The title also refers to the joy and enthusiasm that drives creation, even though the word amateur also gets taken to mean someone who lacks professional qualities or ethics. To that end, her music seems to follow in the tradition of independently released synth pop efforts from the early ’80s rather than big-budget chart-toppers, with songs that might sound rough and unpolished, but are undoubtedly sincere and passion-driven. The lyrics also offer commentary on life in a capitalist system, delivered from the perspective of someone who’s worked hard…
Jeff Tobias wrestles a frantic saxophone in psych-jazz Sunwatchers and a subtle bass counterpoint in serene and minimalist Modern Nature. Here in a solo project, he splits the difference, amping up indie melodies with proggy, jittery, staccato arrangements, and reinforcing dystopian scenarios with enticing, nearly pop tunefulness.
One Hundredfold Now in this Age takes a strong political stance, but sweetens the polemic with indie drift and dream. “End It,” allow only a brief interval of synth-and-strings shimmer before unspooling its insurgent chorus. “Burn the American flag, one hundred times a day,” Tobias croons, his tone unbothered, his message aflame, as a glittering fusion jazz fanfare goes off in his wake. The song was inspired by American…
Good Flying Birds‘ debut album Talulah’s Tape is the work of youngsters deeply in love with the sounds of indie pop. Their devoted infatuation dates back to C-86 and gathers up every twist and turn in the story as they bop along to the present day. They add elements of jangle pop, shoegaze, lo-fi, dream pop, indie rock, and noise pop, gleefully taking bits and bobs from each and welding them into a glorious creation of their very own. It helps that they only borrow and steal from the best aspects of each style, injecting plenty of joyous energy into the arrangements and performances while making every melody as sweet as ice cold lemonade on a sweltering summer day. The production is perfect as well, coming across happily mid-fi and home cooked.
Six years after 2019’s Fever Dream, Of Monsters and Men returned with their fourth full-length, All Is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade. Hitting on the highs and lows of life, the Icelandic quintet stick close to their established sound: touching and tender indie folk anthems that play on earnestness and innocence. The vocal interplay between Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir and Ragnar “Raggi” Þórhallsson remains the primary draw, with the band — Brynjar Leifsson, Kristján Páll Kristjánsson, and Arnar Rósenkranz Hilmarsson — wrapping listeners in the warm sonic hug that the group is known for. These are intimate peeks into life, both the good and bad, or the love and the pain from the album’s title. The simplicity helps focus the effort, which dials back the bombast of…
British rocker Miles Kane joins forces with the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach for his bluesy and bombastic sixth album, 2025’s Sunlight in the Shadows. A gleefully obvious case of what you see is what you get, the album (which follows 2023’s One Man Band) finds Kane and producer / instrumentalist Auerbach essentially playing out their idol worship of Marc Bolan’s T. Rex, crafting psych-soaked glitter stomp anthems drenched in fuzztone guitars. It’s a throwback, vinyl-era aesthetic both artists have explored on previous albums and one which has been a creative touchstone for Kane going as far back as his Last Shadow Puppets albums.
Here, they recorded live in studio, backed by a potent cadre of instrumentalists, including…