US indie
See: Alyssa Gengos shapes up for her 2022 album as a pretty awesome ‘Cheerleader Of The Universe’
LOS ANGELINO bedroom pop genius Alyssa Gengos is basically someone to completely watch in 2022. We’ve already nailed our colours to that mast on the back of her last single, the effortlessly excellent “Gothenburg English” – see our swooning coverage of that, here; and making us feel a whole lot more like we haven’t made …
Album review: Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy & Bill Callahan – ‘Blind Date Party’: a rolling thunder lockdown revue of the Drag City stable, cast in cover versions
NOTHING at all, really. That, for a lifer musician with new songs in the back pocket, older ones to take out and share with fans on the road across the country and the world, no chance to get into a proper studio even, if it is only to kinda dick around and have a laugh …
See: Momma sign for Lucky Number and share the dulcet fuzz-pop of ‘Medicine’
THEY’RE creating more than a bit of a buzz in their adopted New York are Momma, the fuzz-pop collective of singer-guitarists Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten, bassist Kobayashi Ritch, and drummer Zach CapittiFenton, who’ve signed on with one of London’s hottest imprints, the better to air their wares around the globe. The label to land …
See: Alyssa Gengos drops the lighter-than-air, bedroom pop caress of ‘Gothenburg English’ – the world may well already be at her feet
SHE’S already being touted in certain quarters of the music press as the first big thing of 2022. which seems quite an epithet to carry given we’re not even there yet; but on the strength of LA bedroom pop songwriter Alyssa Gengos’ second single “Gothenburg English”, out now, you’d be a foolish man to bet …
See: Empath’s ‘Diamond Eyelids’ is a dose of squally, knockabout, lo-fi fun
FRESH from a whole buncha dates criss-crossing the States in the company of Modest Mouse, Philadelphia’s cutely noisy foursome Empath have got all the feels extended for a new album. That album is entitled simply Visitor, and will be out just short of Valentine’s day next year on Fat Possum. Need more precision with your …
See: Duquette Johnston flicks a dark period the Vs and forges forward with the six-string Southern indie-boogie of ‘Year To Run’
DUQUETTE JOHNSTON is a name that, if you’re a deep connoisseur of the US indie scene you’ll recall in association with one of those band whose star lit, arced, sputtered a little too soon, sadly; almost famous. Gah. That band was Verbena, who came, released three albums of grand, dirtily low-slung, well-honed indie-stoner rock. They …
See: Bill Callahan & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – ‘Kidnapped By Neptune’ (feat. Hamerkop): a double album of collaborative covers follows from the pair
NONE gigs; none proper studio time; none nothing, except, perhaps, as Big Black once memorably put it, to “sit around home, stare at the walls / Stare at the walls and stare at each other.” It’s a tale we’ve heard oft told since the virus got tough, got going. What was a committed, lifer musician …
See: With their album out today, Cali shoegazers The Acharis announce a French and UK tour; see the video for the whispery fuzz gem, ‘False Positive’
HAILING from California’s Bay Area, and more specifically Oakland for the precision buffs amongst you, The Acharis may just have made one of the darker shoegaze gems of the year with their new album, Blue Sky / Grey Heaven, dropping today The way Shaun Wagner and Mila Puccini combine vocally on recent single “False Positive” …
See: Benjamin Lazar Davis drops the future indie-R’n’B gem ‘Snow Angels’
MY THOUGH, he’s quite the singular talent, Benjamin Lazar Davis, isn’t he? The multi-instrumentalist and composer (look, these tunes are so much more than plain written), whose day job sees him locking down the tunes with Okkervil River and Cuddle Magic, besides working with Lip Talk, Joan as Police Woman, &c &c, is to release …
See: The Forms return from a decade away with the excellently spectral, whispering ‘All Souls Day’
QUEENS, New York’s The Forms have been on sabbatical for, well, quite a while now, it’s fair to say. Their last album, Derealization, came out on fellow Five Boroughs label Threespheres a whole decade ago now, and proved the last of a run of three; since when, nada, until recent singles “Head Underwater”, crunchy and …