indie albums
Album Review: Even As We Speak – Adelphi
There is a fragile and elegant beauty in Even As We Speak‘s new album ‘Adelphi’ that leaves the listener swooning with bliss. The entire architecture of the album is built on graceful, sweet melodies expressed with a purity and naivety that is endearing and enthralling, and is yet imbued with such a sense of world …
EP REVIEW: Devendra Banhart – ‘Vast Ovoid’: bursting with ideas
DEVENDRA BANHART was one of the main beneficiaries of the American acid-folk explosion just after the turn of the century. He came in as part of that movement with bands like Vetiver and Espers and became almost the George Best of the movement: piratically handsome with that dusky hair and huge hoop earrings, a brace …
EP: We Were Promised Jetpacks – Out of Interest
Out now is the ‘out of interest’ ep from Indie band We Were Promised Jetpacks. The band hail from Edinburgh, Scotland and their ep is available on various listening platforms, including ITunes, Spotify and Bandcamp.Opener ‘When Getting Lost’ is a spacious and atmospheric start to the ep. The vocals have a desolate beauty to them, …
Album Review: Mr Ben & The Bens – Life Drawing
In a recent interview we did with Ben Hall, aka Mr. Ben and the Bens, he told us about new album Life Drawing, saying “I came up with the idea of calling a record ‘Life Drawing’ and having the lyrical content of the songs be semi-lucid sketches of events happening in an imagined town. Vignettes …
Album Review: Attraktors – Attraktors
Made up of former members of Julian Cope’s band, Six By Seven, Bivouac, The Selecter and The Nectarine No. 9, we’ve already given some love to Nottingham space/krautrock trio Attraktors on more than one occasion on these pages. They take little elements of all of those bands in their new self-titled album, with elements of …
Album Review: Kidsmoke – A Vision in the Dark
There is an ethereal majestic sheen that permeates the new album from Kidsmoke. It may well stem from the wild and beautiful landscapes of northern Wales, where the band comes from, but nonetheless sparkles and glitters like a golden thread throughout ‘A Vision in the Dark’. Every track on this vital album is imbued with …
Album Review: Phosphene – Lotus Eaters
Out now is the new album by Phosphene, a band who combine Shoegaze with a Post-Punk sound and nods to Alternative rock bands of old. ‘Lotus Eaters’ is available on July 7th over on the bands Bandcamp site. This album has an experimental feel which is reminiscent of Alt-Rock bands such as Sonic Youth, the …
ALBUM REVIEW: King of the Slums – Our Favourite Trainers
THEY emerged from Hulme in 1986, breathing sour fire and an eagle eye for unfashionable detail. Second cousins of The Fall in the way they filtered and spat language to reach deeper, following the grimy thread of it back through 21st-century estates and the Industrial Revolution to a lost, almost medieval rural folk tongue, as …
Album Review: Pottery – Welcome to Bobby’s Motel
If you asked a band what was the idea behind their new record and that record was called ‘Welcome to Bobby’s Motel’ and they told you that it was based on an ‘all encompassing alt-reality’ that they had built around themselves where the band is Bobby and the motel is wherever they are….you might think …
Album Review: The Total Rejection – The Time Traveller’s 3rd Will And Testament
Remember when gigs were a thing? Last year I went to a pub in Salford to see Bristol’s The Total Rejection in all their raucous glory. The gig was fantastic, like seeing ‘65 era The Who playing The Seeds or 13th Floor Elevators songs at full pelt and full volume. They may well wear their influences on …