The last time we heard from The Format, the pop duo of Nate Ruess and Sam Means, the world was a much different place. The band’s previous LP arrived 20 years ago in the summer of 2006, and if anyone ever asks what that summer sounded like, The Format’s Dog Problems is a good place to start. Their youthful energy, fueled by curiosity and anxiety, was drenched in danceable melodies and sun-blenched instrumentation, creating an infectious LP of pop anthems. The bright aesthetic of the LP defines a sound that has been lost in time, carefree pop that wanders listlessly through life waiting for the next opportunity to drop its shoulders. That relaxing time, though, is far in the rearview, and pop music has changed drastically.
Much like the world around them, Ruess and…
Category: indie-pop
Like a sausage supper or a good slug of whisky, The Just Joans will keep you warm during these dark winter months. One of Scotland’s greatest indie bands, they’ve been around for two decades, and their latest LP mixes their trademark sardonic humour with a new year music cocktail of Blur, The Kinks, Elastica and The Lightning Seeds.
Led by siblings David and Katie Pope, The Just Joans’ latest album, Romantic Visions of Scotland, is about “mundane failings, bitter regrets and missed opportunities”, perfect for those January blues. There are great titles like ‘Strictly Presbyterian’, ‘Here Come the Rugby Boys’ and ‘Drinking On a Weeknight’ and whipsmart lyrics like ‘Back On the Meds’ ‘I started crying in the chip shop / Do you want salt and vinegar?’
In their infancy, Vancouver trio cub embraced the term cuddlecore — coined by friend and Destroyer guitarist Nicolas Bragg — as a cheeky tagline for their ramshackle fusion of ‘60s bubblegum pop and three-chord punk rock. It was an apt descriptor; their 1993 debut record Betti-Cola had garnered a cult following on North American college campuses in part because of its Archie Comics-inspired cover art, riddled with sentient teddy bears, rainbow Popsicles, and lucky pennies.
Where cub’s visuals exuded cuteness, their songwriting possessed a campy bite. Like their twee-punk contemporaries in Heavenly and Tiger Trap, cub’s best songs capture the emotional confusion and lost innocence of adolescence, stories of teenage runaways and…
We live in an age of multitudes. Our emotions today tilt from joy to horror to humour with the flick of a doom-scrolling finger. Likewise, the art of this era has started to reflect this boundaryless mania. See the multiverse trope in cinema and pop music’s embrace of darker themes and avant-garde producers. Recent cultural history could even be viewed as an arms race of increased emotional complexity; from modernist sincerity to postmodern scepticism to contemporary multiplicities.
These sorts of oscillating moods are something Clothesline from Hell (the solo project of Toronto multi-instrumentalist Adam LaFramboise) utilises with intuitive aplomb. The accessible but gently complex music he comes up with…
Some albums take years to make. The Stone Roses famously took their sweet time over The Second Coming, while Guns N’ Roses made fans wait for over a decade before finally delivering Chinese Democracy. Tugboat Captain? They made Dog Tale in a week, mate – done and dusted in seven days, it’s a refreshing testament to creative brevity.
Recorded at South London studio Ctrl P – run by Sox and Josh from the band – there’s a pervading comfort to the material on Dog Tale. As time has gone on, Tugboat Captain have added baroque flourishes to their songwriting, and while the arrangements here testify to that, they equally refuse to be smothered by ad hoc additions.
As a result, it’s a beaming grin of a record, a witty series of quips, diversions, and…
…The Australian singer-songwriter Georgia Knight‘s debut record, Beanpole, is a dark, introspective meditation on desire — the Lacanian kind: desire rooted in the Other. Always is, isn’t? In some sense, we’re actors waiting to be seen and chosen, as if by a film director (where are you, Antonioni? Dead. Oh.). You won’t be hearing Knight drawing these conclusions — as the narrator, in the throes of an all-consuming desire, can barely think, let alone think critically.
Desire is about escaping yourself; this is why, on Beanpole, you will hear of a character wanting to be a “rockerbilly”, and, although it might seem silly, transcendence is at the heart of desire and, thus, the record.
Recorded between Knight and Andrew “Idge”…
Dreams can be either of two things: alluring or fleeting. It can either pull you into its fascinating details, stirring enough to stick with you for quite some time. Or it just washes over you, where hazy moments can be observed, but feel like there’s not much to glean at the end of it all. Sassy 009’s newest project, Dreamer+, falls under both edges. Carrying an intriguingly amorphous character to its soundscapes, yet simultaneously never fully embracing its capabilities.
Take the meditative, atmospheric rock of “Tell Me”. Its moody presentation and Sunniva Lindgård’s airy singing eventually bring Blood Orange into the fray. His voice nestles well within the song’s atmosphere, yet the track just ends there, like a faint breeze that glides across. Its impact…
Despite only being in his twenties, Cavetown, aka Robbie Skinner, boasts a large discography – five studio albums, a live album, several EP’s, and more – each track detailing a phase of his life with disarming honesty. From the palpable teen angst in his first two albums, to the soothing sense of self-acceptance in his 2022 album, worm food, Skinner never shies away from exposing every part of himself. His sixth studio album, ‘Running With Scissors’, is no different.
Cavetown’s discography tells a tale of growth, with Running with Scissors at the forefront, exhibiting a new chapter in his life – one of self-assurance and self-expansion.
Using his introspective lyrical talent to shine light on happier experiences, Skinner…
Ya Tseen is a continually evolving musical collaboration guided by Nicholas Galanin/Yeil Ya Tseen. Born into the Sitka Tribe of Alaska (Tlingit) Galanin is L’uknax.ádi (Raven Coho clan). He began learning music from his father, Dei Kee Tla Tin (Dave Galanin, 1955-2021), an accomplished Blues guitarist who performed under the name Strummin’ Dog. In 2013, Galanin was in a serious boat accident while returning home from a hunting trip that broke his back and ribs. He recalls the stars overhead as he was airlifted from the boat, connecting him to his earliest memory of looking up at the night sky, and his connection to Land. Galanin has returned to this experience of intense connection to Land throughout his career; in many ways, it guides his creative practice.
Amanda Bergman has long been one of Sweden’s most quietly powerful singer-songwriters. Her best work to date, Your Hand Forever Checking On My Fever, was only just released in 2024, making it a fantastic surprise to receive embraced for a second as we die so soon afterwards.
Where Bergman previously folded her vulnerabilities into folksy arrangements, here she leans into a soft-rock warmth.
Songs like ‘grasp’ feature unashamedly ’80s arrangements, big open road melodies and hooks that feel almost Californian, somewhere between the glow of Dylan’s Infidels and the clean, sun-soaked sound of HAIM.
These songs exist in the space between despair and consolation. The grief-stricken never…
After nine albums with indie rock trio Peter Bjorn and John, Peter Morén began to confront the issue of who he really was as a songwriter. Given plenty of time to think during the pandemic, he emerged as SunYears with a debut album, Come Fetch My Soul in 2023. It had elements of guitar pop, indie rock, and folk, a mixture he’s evolved on his second album, The Song Forlorn. Morén credits The Beatles’ Revolver and The White Album as influences that leaned on a variety of styles. There certainly is something for everyone here.
Things kick off with ‘Where Are We’, a grumbling garage rock instrumental leading into the folk rock of ‘Dark Eyes’, inspired by a friend in the throes of depression. A theme continued by the piano ballad ‘Your Dad Was Sad’, written…
Forty years ago, The Twinsets were the ultimate “you had to be there” band, a vibrant, ethereal presence in the history of Scottish independent music. They commanded massive fees for an unsigned act on the university circuit and delivered high-octane sets at the Edinburgh Nite Club, yet they vanished into the mid-80s ether without ever releasing a formal record. Only with the archival devotion of Precious Recordings of London, that silence has finally been broken. This release of the 1982–1983 sessions is more than just a compilation; it is a vital act of musical restitution and a long-overdue correction to the indie-pop canon. The mastering preserves the tension between the girl group sweetness of yesteryear with the grit of punk, ensuring the tracks…
Yeah, mostly is a new collection of 11 songs resembling a collection of short stories traversing a person’s relationship with their dishwasher, a grandparent’s funeral, an ungodly cold night in Los Angeles and other scenes that float in and around the rhythms of daily life.
It is the most personal and self-assured album yet from Will Epstein – also known for his work under the moniker High Water, in addition to collaborations with Nicolás Jaar and Dave Harrington (Darkside) – as well as the most seemingly effortless application of his songwriting talents. His work composing for movies, like his recent IDA Documentary Award-nominated score for Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV, bleeds into his recent, more accessible work.
Typically, when an artist stays out of our view, every public gesture he or she does make is loaded with extra significance. Think of the ways each demo, cover, or bit of extramusical trivia is instantly subsumed into the canons of D’Angelo, Fiona Apple, or Frank Ocean.
But given how Corbin, who drifted from SoundCloud stardom to deeper recesses of the internet, has released music — first under a different, instantly infamous stage name, and then in intermittent bursts that suggest a true disregard for self-promotion and self-mythologizing — the temptation is to receive his songs as a series of experiments, tips of an iceberg that will languish in a Google Drive folder until it melts.
The grey cover of his new album, Crisis Kid,…
At only 26, Jenny Hollingworth has already (incredibly) been making music for half her life. Having formed freak-pop project Let’s Eat Grandma with Rosa Walton as a young teen, the duo released their striking debut effort, ‘I Gemini’, aged just 16. Now, with three Let’s Eat Grandma albums under their joint belt (the most recent being 2022’s confronting ‘Two Ribbons’), the pair have taken that record’s crux – namely, the metamorphosis of their relationship from inseparable teenagers to independent adult entities – to its natural conclusion, each embarking on solo endeavours under new monikers.
Jenny On Holiday, then, sees her step sideways with a staunchly pop palette, leaving behind the quirkier corners of LEG’s fantastical…
Lightning in a Twilight Hour are another band built around the heartbreak of Bobby Wratten, and like the Field Mice, Northern Picture Library, and Trembling Blue Stars, their albums are made up of songs that trickle like warm tears down the cheeks of a heartbroken soul. Colours Yet to Be Named has all the hallmarks of his work: precisely jangling guitars, dub-inspired basslines, soothingly dark synth pads, and vocals that alternately glide on top of, or sink into, the gloom. Wratten is joined as he was on the group’s previous masterpiece of overwhelming melancholy Overwintering by longtime collaborators Anne Marie Davies and Beth Arzy on vocals along with producer Ian Catt and bassist Michael Hiscock. They work together seamlessly to create a soft…