Back in 2005, Seattle quintet Minus the Bear were riding the wave of a swift upward trajectory with their blend of ‘90s mathrock fretboard savvy, early ‘00s electro-indie textural depth, and the wistful melodicism of the more mature strain of Midwest emo. So it was an interesting time for the band to undergo a stylistic sea change. Looking beyond their fellow guitar slingers, Minus the Bear instead found inspiration in the more adventurous pop producers of the era and went full steam ahead with a revamped sound of glitchy guitar loops, modern R&B rhythms, and swirling electronic tapestries on their 2005 sophomore album Menos el Oso. The stylistic shift was a gamble in the waning years of indie rock orthodoxy, but the risk paid off and Minus the Bear’s popularity exploded.
Category: indie
Struggle. Vulnerability. Pain. Resilience. Love. It’s been a hell of a journey that Dinosaur Pile-Up have been on, and they’ve bravely laid it out bare on their new album I’ve Felt Better. Their first record in six years released via Mascot Records.
There were six people in the ward the second time Matt Bigland admitted himself to the hospital. Three of them didn’t make it out alive. Life is short. It’s fragile. It can end in an instant. That’s the harsh truth with which the Dinosaur Pile-Up frontman has wrestled with. Over 12-tracks, ‘I’ve Felt Better’ is 5 years of pent-up emotion – hope, despair, resignation and colossal bravery – Dinosaur Pile-Up at their absolute best.
Long renowned for their high-energy live shows and considered one of the UK’s…
A prolific recording artist since 2002, James Yorkston has once again found a new way of presenting his poetic songs.
This is to add to his already lengthy list of collaborations that have taken in everyone from the Athletes and the Fence Collective to the Big Eyes Family Players, Kathryn Williams, Jon Thorne, and Suhail Yusuf Khan. The self-styled “low-rung sangster from the East Neuk o’ Fife, Scotland” has also, you could say, found a new opportunity to escape the “folk” tag that’s continued to dog him ever since he once (or twice) recorded an album of traditional songs, worked with the Watersons, and – as an acoustic-guitar player of some renown – supported Bert Jansch on tour.
Yorkston is working once more with soft-voiced…
Tangerine Dream’s breakthrough album will celebrated in a box set that features a host of audiovisual material taken from a bigger box set.
Virgin/UMR reissue the German group’s 1974 hit Phaedra as a 5CD/Blu-ray box set featuring all the relevant album-related material featured in 2019’s 16 CD/2BD In Search of Hades (The Virgin Recordings 1973-1979). Beyond the remastered album, extras include two discs of outtakes, the band’s first U.K. concert and some 5.1 surround and stereo remixes of the album material by celebrated engineer Steven Wilson. The set also comes with a new illustrated book featuring liner notes by band expert Wouter Bessels. Though Tangerine Dream had been recording for several years by this point – this was their…
Southern rockers Robert Jon & The Wreck’s new album Heartbreaks & Last Goodbyes is set to release on August 22 via Joe Bonamassa’s Journeyman Records. Produced by nine-time Grammy winner Dave Cobb (Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell, Rival Sons), it’s RJ&TW’s ninth studio album-hard to believe-this band continues to develop and sound fresh.
Recorded in Savannah, GA, the band lived together throughout the writing and recording process. The album is cohesive, reflecting a laser focus on the material and the band’s interconnectedness. It’s raw and edgy but somehow their most compact. Heartbreaks & Last Goodbyes is certainly the best RJ&TW album to date. It reflects their evolution as a band with sharp musicianship…
‘One Small Step’, the opening track on Water from Your Eyes’ latest album It’s a Beautiful Place, is a portal to a strange new world.
The New York-based duo of Nate Amos and Rachel Brown have long been attracted to weird and experimental sounds, but their latest record has themes of science fiction running throughout, coinciding with their most ambitious melding of different styles to date.
Once through that portal, a collage of synthetic ambience, wailing grunge riffs and even nu-metal-style drumming awaits you. Single ‘Life Signs’ marks the first time a Water from Your Eyes song has been made with the intention of a full band playing, with Al Nardo and Bailey Wollowitz of Fantasy of a Broken Heart having…
Like a late summer harvest, Mac DeMarco yields some of his most mature, sweet and ripe fruit on his most recent album. Written, recorded and mixed entirely by DeMarco, Guitar is a moving personal portrait of an artist navigating the realities of life in his mid-30s: “I think Guitar is as close to a true representation of where I’m at in my life today as I can manage to put to paper,” he remarked in the press notes.
Part of DeMarco’s charm has always been his humble, laissez-faire attitude, which has endeared him to millions of fans worldwide. His past is filled with outlandish, zany experiences — some good, some bad and some ugly — coupled with an impressive discography that has cemented his reputation as one of indie music’s…
Samira Winter has made nothing but first-class shoegaze spiked with dream pop since she started making records. Everything her project Winter has created has been a shining example of how the age-old genre could evolve and grow stronger given the proper care and feeding. Things like hooky songs, very dynamic arrangements, and lyrics that peek through the wall of sound to lasso the listener’s heart. The cool thing about Winter’s 2025 album Adult Romantix is that she does all those things but then adds more. Tighter arrangements that make more room for tonal shifts and space, vocals that ooze melancholy and sadness, melodies that sound timeless and immediate at once, and best of all, it sounds like she and co-producer Joojoo Ashworth…
…Case Oats’ debut record, Last Missouri Exit, does not reinvent the wheel. But it isn’t trying to, nor does it need to. Frontwoman Casey Gomez Walker’s voice undoubtedly calls on the earnest plaintiveness of Mo Tucker, her songwriting brings to mind David Berman’s interpolation of lived-in specifics and heart-rendingly blunt self-analysis, and the instrumentation takes after Wilco (unsurprising, considering Spencer Tweedy is Gomez Walker’s fiancé and the band’s drummer). The record is squarely set in alt-country territory, yet it still feels fresher than a host of recent albums straining to claim some “lush” sound as invention. Case Oats aren’t forcing originality or fleeing lineage — they’re simply writing what they know, and in doing so, carve out something novel.
Anyone wondering if maybe Superchunk was slowing down after over 30 years in the indie rock game — especially after the release of 2022’s autumnal Wild Loneliness — will find those musings dashed against the rocks once the chorus of the first song on Songs in the Key of Yikes hits. “Is It Making You Feel Something” features all the hallmarks of what has made the band so vital over the years. Ringing power chords, gnarly guitar leads, pummeling rhythms, and above all the keening wail and ripped-from-the-heart lyrics of the seemingly ageless Mac McCaughan. It’s a great opener for a record built around a batch of very intense, highly political, and intractable hooky songs. Most every track has…
Fifteen years is a lifetime in electronic music, especially drum & bass, but Pendulum have managed the trick of sounding like they haven’t even been away.
Work on fourth album Inertia began as long ago as 2020, and during its genesis main man Rob Swire experienced two painful break-ups. Though keen not to let them define the record, he channelled his energies into music, taking a leaf from The Prodigy as he looked to keep a signature sound while evolving with the times.
Inertia achieves that with room to spare. With half of its music released in recent EPs, it works thanks to a strong production ethic, a natural instinct for ebb and flow, and the continued excellence of Swire’s vocals. An incredibly flexible…
Calendar Year, the new album from Chicago-based psychedelic folk songwriter and musician Jessica Risker, evokes a timeless, dreamy vibe that sounds like it could have come from this year or maybe even 1972.
The songs are impeccable, but the arrangements have an indefinable quality that is both comforting and mysterious. Coming off a seven-year hiatus from her debut album (I See You Among the Stars, which followed her stint from 2011 to 2018 when she made albums under the moniker Deadbeat), Risker released the new album from songs she wrote in 2020. However, she hesitates to call it a “pandemic record”.
“I think of it more as a snapshot of a year in a life,” explains Risker, “With themes of human,…
Around the time she was finishing up a degree in jazz guitar from the Berklee College of Music, Mei Semones put together a band made up of class- mates and recorded her first EP, Tsukino (2022). It introduced her sophisticated, strings-enhanced take on affectionate indie pop. By the time she made her Bayonet Records debut with her second EP, Kabutomushi, in 2024, she had a regular, collaborative backing band made up of a violist (constant member and strings arranger Noah Leong), violinist, bassist, and drummer, and had strengthened her beguiling sound — specifically, an indie pop injected with an effortless blend of breezy bossa nova, intricate jazz, and mathy indie rock. Another idiosyncrasy of her music is lyrics that go back and forth between English and…
At first glance, it may have seemed odd when dub-techno legend and Basic Channel co-founder Mark Ernestus first trekked to Senegal to bury himself in the country’s regional sounds. For one thing, the optics were sketchy: Here was a white German musician seeking ways to absorb West African traditions into his own music.
Equally unclear was what an artist steeped in solid-state technology could do with the earthy, unquantized rhythms of mbalax music. The answer was Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force, an extension of the mbalax group Jeri-Jeri, and a project that showcased the skills of the local players more than it highlighted Ernestus’ specialties as a producer. Their 2016 album Yermande was dubbed-out mbalax heaven,…
Paul Pèrrim is a guitarist and music educator from Spain (more specifically, the Canary Islands) whose work combines elements of folk and experimental music, featuring fingerpicking on both acoustic and electric instruments and the use of electronics and found sounds.
…Itara, his first full-length studio release under his own name (he has also recorded as Transistor Eye), is a set of ten original compositions that tend toward minimalism but make use of a fairly wide range of techniques and approaches while maintaining a consistent feel.
The pieces are relatively concise, but, over a total running time of just 35 minutes, Pèrrim covers a lot of ground, and each track has a distinct identity. The opener, “Arkusmaliketus,”…
The frightening ubiquity of artificial intelligence can be enough to concern any artist who possesses even a modicum of creative dignity. However, acclaimed Canadian composer Andrew Staniland offers a refreshing deployment of innovations; one that, in the words of a recent press release, “emphasizes rather than approximates humanity”.
In collaboration with the Memorial ElectroAcoustic Research Lab (MEARL) at Memorial University College in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Staniland has been working for the last several years on the digital instrument JADE, a versatile tool that, according to the press release, “expands upon conventional tactile means of performing music, employing sensors that measure environmental traits such as humidity, temperature…
In Slavic folklore, the archetypal villain Koschei The Deathless is so-called because his “death” is a physical thing which he hides – usually inside an egg. In certain tales, the egg is stitched inside an animal’s stomach, and then the animal is sent far away, or locked up in a chest on the mythical island of Buyan, which can disappear and reappear with the tide.
The enigmatic Staraya Derevnya have their roots in Ukraine (and the wider former Soviet Union), and despite Gosha Shtasel being the one remaining founding member, their sound remains heavily inspired by Slavic culture. Their lyrics, inspired by the poetry of avant garde artist Arthur Molev, are predominantly in Russian – though some words are also part of made-up languages.
Some bands sound like a bunch of college kids who thought it would be cool to speedrun the first three years of Arcade Fire, and Racing Mount Pleasant is one of them. Almost none have that as their actual origin story, but Racing Mount Pleasant is one of them. After an auspicious debut single, “Call it Easy,” the Ann Arbor septet truly introduced itself with its next release: a song named “Racing Mount Pleasant” that announced an album, also called Racing Mount Pleasant.
This isn’t just a band with grand ambitions; it’s one that arrives with a mythology. The first melodic line on opener “Your New Place” recurs on the closer, “Your Old Place,” and the 53 minutes in between feature a litany of lyrical callbacks, a multi-part suite of “You” and “You Pt. 2,” and…