Posts Tagged ‘Indie’

15th December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s quite refreshing to find an EP with only three tracks. At the risk of coming on like a nostalgia sap, it takes me back to the late 80s and early 90s, when I first got into music and buying records, when 7” EPs would often contain three tracks. There was something tidy about the format. Then again, a lot of 80s releases would feature two tracks on the 7” and add an additional B-side to the 12”, which was also pretty tidy – before the days of extended remixes and CD EPs which would tediously pack out the space with multiple versions of the single, none of which were often worth the bother, but of course, collectors would feel compelled to buy all of the different formats and the single would achieve a higher chart placing thanks to cynical marketing.

The Supplements, from Fort Lauderdale, describe their sound as ‘moody post-punk meets riff-lead indie rock’, and while post-punk is my thing, it’s the indieness that draws me to this release, and nit only on account of the EP format and the fact the lead track is a mere 2:44, with the longest song being not much over three minutes.

While my loathing of Morrissey and a general sense of ‘outgrowing’ The Smiths in recent years may have eclipsed my one-massive love for the band, there’s no denying that they were the absolute kings of the perfectly succinct single, and there’s clearly an element of that tight songwriting in the zero-fat brevity on the songs The Supplements serve up here.

But another aspect of the band’s sound which is utterly compelling is that darker post-punk element, which is pure Interpol. Now, after hearing all the raving about Interpol being the new Joy Division, I was sorely disappointed the day I picked up their first two albums. But once I had come to terms with the fact that the critics were just wrong in their reviews, I came to love those albums, and the ones which followed (apart from the last one, which is toss). And it’s that dark but jangly thing – think ‘Say Hello to the Angels’, with the kind of descending runs which can be found on ‘Slow Hands’ – which The Supplements do so well.

‘Another Day’, the lead track, boasts a driving bass, and Ted O’Connell’s vocals are pitched around the baritone of Paul Banks’. ‘I Can’t Have Everything’ is defined by a choppy guitar underpinned by a chunky bass groove, and the last few bars seem to lean heavily on the intro to ‘Slow Hands’. ‘Different Light’ – nothing to do with The Bangles – again brings some nagging guitars reminiscent of the intro to ‘Roland’ and the mid-section of ‘The New’ and a strong rhythm section, where a strolling bass holds tight against some urgent drumming. With Moving On, The Supplements deserve to be moving up too, because this is pure quality.

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5th January 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

While I’m still sifting through December’s releases – it seems as if 90% of 2023’s releases landed on 15th December – I’m most conscious that 2024 hasn’t only arrived, but is blasting forwards at a rocket pace. The first week has evaporated already. Where does time go? Where does life go? I find myself contemplating these questions daily, weekly, not as part of some existential fret, but simply as I jostle with the everyday contradiction of the so-called work/life balance. For the majority, the very concept is a myth. They work, they work, they work… and then they die. This is the reality of contemporary capitalism, and apparently, we need to shut up and deal with it.

I shall park the political rage momentarily, while addressing this. Here we have ‘Choppy’, the new single release from Berlin punk rock duo Circolo Vizioso, pitched as ‘a high-octane single spawned of depression and failed love story and… the first taste of their debut album Verrueckt (out March 1st) and as showcasing ‘their unique brand of high-intensity, lyric-driven punk, created with electric violin, guitar and drums. On this album, Circolo Vizioso wrestles with isolation, lack of social and human contact, and a hunger for music and art, which we all felt during recent lockdowns.’ It’s also pitched as being for fans of Sonic Youth, The Black Angels, Fugazi, Nirvana, Buzzcocks, Shellac, Gang of Four, Schleimkeim, Pisse, Abwaert, Old Time Relijun. Of the bands among those with which I’m familiar (It’s a falsehood that even the most knowledgeable music critics have heard every band, however hard they might pretend it’s so) this is all positive, and these are the kind of bands whose sound provide a sonic template for exploring some dark and complex emotions and navigating challenging situations and a messed-up society. Music is more than mere entertainment: it’s an outlet, a way of dealing with difficult things, of exploring and working through them, and on the evidence of this release, Circolo Vizioso unapologetically channel these difficulties into their creative outlet.

‘Choppy’ is as raw and primitive as it comes. Rough and scratchy, it feels like a demo – but to pretty it up with production would be to strip it of its primal immediacy. Listening to those first few bars, I’m reminded of early Pavement, in every way: it’s rattly, ragged indie, cleanish guitars fuzzing as a condenser mic on a portable cassette recorder overloads. It’s heavy with melancholy, and the tempo switches and drags and races. And the accompanying video – ultra-saturated, blurry – is an eye-bleeder which perfectly mirrors the mood and the no-fi stylings. The violin makes for an unusual slant, bringing further tension and scrapey noise to the dysfunctional party.

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Christopher Nosnibor

To observe that my quota of nights off for beer and live music has been subject to a dramatic cut in 2023 would be an understatement, and any ambition I may have had of becoming York’s answer to JG Ballard as a stay-at-home dad cranking out novels has been rather stifled by the dayjob. But, it pays the bills and I have achieved a writing space that resembles Ballard’s mighty shit-tip of books and all kinds of odds and sods, of which I am rather proud.

Having just the other day stumbled upon Ooberfuse’s latest single, ‘Hard Times’ in one of my virtual submission piles, and having felt compelled to write about it, spotting that they were playing for free at a venue ten minutes’ walk from my house seemed like an opportunity not to be missed, particularly after I’d given Shine Path a bit of a listen on SoundCloud.

Matt B pitches his project as ‘Leeds Based Surf Punk Goth Pop noise’, and it’s a solo thing with ‘Drums and Beats’ provided by sidekick Bruvver Boom. He’s up first and he’s sporting a Sonic Youth T-shirt and some sturdy hiking boots, which he used to stomp on his not insubstantial array of pedals. The pairing of guitar and drum machine is a quintessentially Leeds sound. He appears to use the same rhythm throughout his set, and with no fills or fancy stuff, he seems to be from the Andrew Eldritch post-1997 school of programming. The set consists mostly of tracks from his eponymous EP that’s on SoundCloud, with a few covers thrown in to pack things out. There’s a bit of Bizarro-era Wedding Present jangle in places, too, and when it comes to northern indie, ‘workmanlike’ isn’t a sleight. He delivers a hefty rendition of REM’s ‘The One I Love’, and a sparse echoey swampy, even vaguely gothy drum-free rendition of ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night?’ before wrapping up with a stompin’ take of ‘20th Century Boy.’ I’m assuming he’s friends with a fair few people who are in tonight, but the warm reception is deserved.

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The event listing had led me to expect Ooberfuse to be headlining as part of the promotion for the new single, bit they’re up next, and I’m immediately struck by Cherrie Anderson’s bright yellow puffa jacket and her superbly melodic vocals. The pair bring a tidy set of pop tunes with a fairly minimal setup of synth drums and acoustic guitar, with urban beats and sequenced bass grooves. The songs are quality pop with positive energy and outstanding musicianship. ‘Go’ brings both in spades, with a Latin flavour. Rounding off a short but perfectly-formed set, ‘Hard Times’ marks a bit of a shift stylistically and it’s not only well placed but incredibly effective and moving. Snoop Dogg’s vocal sits as a sample in the mix with the dramatic piano and it’s a strong way to close the set.

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As there’s little mention of faith on Ooberfuse’s social, it’s something which seems to have bypassed Tom Robinson and The Guardian alike in their rave reviews, but there is – reflecting on Shine Path’s logo taped to his amp – very much a Christian thread running through tonight’s acts. But then, in the main, they seem more concerned with esposing Christian values than preaching Christianity. As these are values which are sadly absent from our abhorrent government who seem incapable of even espousing the most basic and fundamental human values, it can’t really be grounds for criticism.

Hibari, however, I might sleight for false advertising. He’s certainly a lot less mean-looking and mean-sounding than the poster had led me to expect. Heavily tattooed and billed as ‘ONE MAN POST BLACK METAL BAND STRAIGHT EDGE/CHIPTUNE/RAP PUNK’, when Hibari bounds on with some buoyant bit-tune rap that’s so, so ultra-poppy it makes so much J-Pop sound like the most brutal doom, it is something of a surprise. The thin sound is sort of part of the chiptune schtick. He’s a showman, and no mistake, windmilling the mic and bounding and leaping with limitless energy. The crowd is comparatively small, but there are a lot of phones out for pics, suggesting that many of the crowd know the man and his work. Given how difficult it is to track him or his music down online, there must be some Christian channels or something. It’s fun enough and all and the numbers dancing down the front increases with every number, but there isn’t the vaguest hint of black metal or punk in evidence here: this is super-clean Japanese electropop at its absolute cleanest and most minimal and most effervescent: it’s almost as dazzling as his very yellow trainers. After a few songs it becomes abundantly clear that anything remotely metal is off the table and the relentlessly upbeat and uptempo energy begins to sap the life from my limbs. It’s always a good idea to monitor and limit your sugar intake, and following the skyward-facing positivity of Ooberfuse, Hibari hits with enough positive froth as to induce a hyperglycaemic coma.

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The stylistic differentials between the three acts isn’t easy to assimilate, but it makes for a dynamic lineup – perhaps a shade too dynamic even for my tastes, but the floor’s getting progressively busier with each song, which says loud and clear that this is Hibari’s crowd.

25th November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Pink Floyd, Joy Division, and Queens of the Stone Age don’t leap to mind as compatible influences for the pollination of a new musical venture, but we learn from the outset that these are the touchstones of Manchester act Dirty Laces, whose debit album, Blink for Nothing has been fully six years in the making. It’s a fully DIY venture, too – self-produced, self-released, and presented in their own artwork. Steve Albini would approve. It may be that Blink for Nothing won’t sell truckloads, but there’s much satisfaction in knowing that any proceeds will go straight to the band, meaning that any profits will, too, instead of lining everyone else’s pockets first before the band receive any leftover change, if they’re lucky. The model is fundamentally flawed, but of course, the industry thinks otherwise: of course it does, because artists who turn a profit turn a profit for labels, management agencies, etc., etc., and those who don’t, find themselves ejected pretty swiftly. It’s unlikely that the industry machine would have afforded these guys six years to evolve and hone their sound, their songs, and tinker with everything, while giving them complete creative control.

‘Midnight Mile’ makes for a strong opener with a bold, melodic lead guitar line carving an entry into a song that packs in so many different elements while keeping it all tightly together with some strong hooks. With some digital bleepery and kicking guitars and an atmospheric breakdown about two-thirds in, it’s got a very 90s/00s alt-rock indie vibe, and somehow manages to land somewhere between Jesus Jones and The Cooper Temple Clause, all delivered with an archetypal Mancunian swagger.

The swagger is something that could be rather divisive, and the baggy beats and bass runs which crop up here and there make nods to the likes of The Stone Roses and The Charlatans which feel a shade derivative and don’t necessarily do them any favours. But despite these features, ‘Old Friend’ is innovative and solid, some nonsensical lyrics aside (‘There’s an old friend I know / Never seen him before)’, and transitions from paired-back and primarily acoustic to big and – yes, I’ll say it – anthemic. ‘All I See’ does the big, expansive funk-tinged blues thing, but unexpectedly, Charlie Jordan’s vocals are soulful and in combination, the end result is rather more like Mansun than anything – and then it really blasts off. these guys really know how to build a song and bring a rushing climax.

The guitar licks on ‘Another Day’ are a bit Dire Straits, but they fire both barrels on ‘Seeker’, which again boasts a chorus that’s absolutely fucking massive, and the fact it reminds me of several other songs, none of which I can put my finger on, doesn’t detract. ‘Tomorrow Comes Again’ arrives as something of a surprise: a slow-burner that again brings hints of Mansun and even a more guitar Duran Duran.

The fact I’m personally conflicted is no bad thing, and while no doubt some will be absolutely gripped by this from the first listen, it’s healthy to accept that music isn’t always an instant grab, especially when there are moments that feel just a bit standard, a bit Oasis, even. I might not get much of Pink Floyd, Joy Division, or Queens of the Stone Age from this – apart from the mid-section of ‘Wanna Know’, where a bassline worthy of Peter Hook lunges into a dirty riff that does have a strong whiff of QOTSA, that is – but what I do get is a shedload of ideas and some strong attitude, backed up with some solid musicianship.

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Gringo Records – 15th December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

By way of a name, Reciprocate doesn’t give much away. With its connotations of collectivism and collaboration, it could be anything from limp indie to a jazz ensemble, although to my ears, it suggests ska-punk or some other corny right-on festival friendly guff. But no: they’re an avant-rock trio, and something of a supergroup when it comes to representatives of the UK DIY scene, consisting of Stef Kett (Shield Your Eyes), with drummer Henri Grimes (Shield Your Eyes, Big Lad), and Marion Andrau (The Wharves, Underground Railroad) on bass, and the name, it transpires, is a reflection of the synergy between the three, promising ‘intoxicating, super catchy good-time, big heart music – a human album delivering a human message of love and love lost.’

The blurbage goes on to outline how Soul To Burn proceeds at a cadence all of its own, halting and blasting, ducking and weaving, zooming away from its distant cousins: Taste era Rory Gallagher or Mr Zoot Horn Rollo of Beefheart’s Magic Band, leathering it at full throttle, fuelled by virtuosic back beats that remind of somewhere between the rolling rock of Mitch Mitchell and the fractured noisebeat of Lightning Bolt’s Brian Chippendale: immediate, innovative, virtuosic, exhilarating.

The album’s ten songs are concise and precise, with ninety percent keeping below the four minute mark, and it’s perhaps this focus which really makes Soul to Burn pop. ‘Sleevetugger’ is pretty minimal, and has soulful, bluesy vibe with even a dash of county twanged into the mix – but it’s played with a wonkiness worthy of Pavement, and that absolutely changes everything. They amp it up on the groovesome ‘Rhodia’, where a riff that comes on like a Led Zep lift is delivered with a rough and ready noise-rock approach.

For context, my first exposure to live music was electric blues acts playing in pubs in my home town of Lincoln, at the tail end of the 80s and very dawn of the 90s. While I was just starting to discover alternative music – via the top 40 and also Melody Maker – I was still that bit too young to go to ‘proper’ gigs, and besides, there weren’t (m)any in Lincoln back then. But what struck me was the musicianship of so many of the acts, many of which would play a mix of originals and covers, and I also came to appreciate how everything blues-based springs from an extremely limited root stock. ‘Derivative’ isn’t really a criticism that holds any water. But, to make blues rock work, it has to either the executed extremely well, or otherwise fuck with the formula in some way, and bring something different to the party. Either is really, really hard to do in such an immense field. The last decade or so has seen countless acts achieve success with some pretty mediocre blues rock played loud: I began to think I was bored of blues. But then an album like Soul To Burn turns up unexpectedly, doing it with a real punk attitude, and turns everything around.

Whereas many power trios – not to mention duos, who are the power trio of the post-millennium years – go all-out to fill every inch of space with sound, Reciprocate create space and separation. Everything isn’t blasting to the max, and instead, what we get is a rare level of detail. The bending strings, the fret buzz, the rattle of the snare, the ragged imperfections – they’re all there, and are integral to the fabric of the recordings.

They do melody and groove, and it’s enjoyable, but when they wander off track, as they do most spectacularly towards the end of ‘Pissed Hymn’ there’s something truly glorious about it. The title track is ahead-on collision between Shellac-like mathiness and raucous, rabble-rousing folk. Everything gets twisted and knotted up, the template gets tangled and torn, and it’s unpredictable and exciting.

And it’s got a cat on the cover. 10/10

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Criminal Records – 24th November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Regular readers – and fans of Argonaut – will have probably observed that we’ve been pretty consistent in plugging their open-ended album-in-progress Songs from the Black Hat, which has seen the li-fi DIY indie act self-release a song a month via BandCamp. But October’s tune is today getting an official release on a real label – namely Criminal Records, home of The Kut, with whom they’ve released two previous albums.

Nathan explains the band’s methodology for the album’s continual evolution this: “At band practices we each write song titles on slips of paper & put them in the hat. One is then picked at random. We jam around that title & see what alchemy occurs. Most times the magic flows & the combined band chemistry creates something we are really pleased with.”

With two previous albums on Criminal Records, Argonaut’s newest release is produced by Jack Ashley of Popes Of Chillitown, and mastered by The Kut who was drummer/producer on Argonaut’s self-titled debut.

I still can’t hear the world ‘vulnerable’ without thinking of Nathan Barley and an image of David Bowie pissing into a Dualit toaster, but perhaps, particularly since the pandemic and our government’s shameful treatment of the poor and the disabled, I’ve become significantly more sensitive to the way in which vulnerability can be life-shaping, and rarely in a positive way.

Whereas perhaps even in the not so distant past, vulnerability was perceived as being synonymous with weakness, a great many of us understand that it is a fundamental facet of the human condition, and recognise that almost everyone is vulnerable in some way at some time or another. This may not be true of the right-wing tossers who scoff at showing vulnerability – or sensitivity to it – as being ‘soft’ and ‘woke’, but anyone who is a reasonable human being can empathise with how circumstance and life events can place strain on an individual, and just as we’re getting to a place where we can talk about mental health without being stigmatised, so we appreciate that to show vulnerability in fact requires strength in a way we didn’t not so long ago.

The fact that ‘we’ are the vulnerables – all of us – is the crux of the song’s lyrics, along with the painful truth that others will exploit vulnerability for their own ends:.

We are the vulnerables

And we are being used

We are the vulnerables

Me and you and you and me and you

Because it’s Argonaut, it’s a natty tune in the classic indie / alternative style: Lorna’s vocals are sweet and ultra-poppy and there’s both jangle and bounce to the instrumentation – but Nathan can’t resist bringing blasts of fizzy, fuzzy distorted guitar. It all stacks up to a superbly catchy indie pop tune from a band who have quite a catalogue to catchy indie pop tunes to their credit, and no doubt plenty more to come.

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Irish indie favorites Soda Blonde are delighted to reveal the music video for their latest single ‘Bad Machine’, the first from the band’s upcoming Dream Big album, due for release on September 8th.

‘Bad Machine’ fuses warm vocals with fuzzy synths, bringing a sense of sonic pleasure with its self-acceptance message. Indie pop and vibrant electronica combine to create a song with vigour and excitement.

When discussing the single’s new music video, guitarist Adam O’Regan writes: “For this video we wanted to explore the idea of ‘malfunction’. In an age of increasing automation, artificial intelligence etc, it’s easy to imagine the many ways things could go awry. But also, we just wanted to break stuff! Our talented & hardworking production designers built the set in 2 days, and we destroyed it in 10 mins of 16mm film.”

Soda Blonde has grown tremendously in the years since their debut, and it shows. Whereas 2021’s Small Talk was an anxiety-fuelled coming-of-age record about navigating our twenties, Dream Big is a mature awakening to the world at large; one that dives deeper and hits harder than its predecessor.

Dream Big is as much a product of self-reflective reckoning as it is one of submission, and both of these experiences are borne out in its songs. Soda Blonde begins Dream Big by asking what they’re willing to sacrifice in order to achieve their dreams, and as the album continues, they wrestle with the sheer weight of that question.

Watch the video for ‘Bad Machine’ here:

Tour dates below:

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Argonaut are keeping them coming at a rate of a song a month for their open-ended album, Songs from the Black Hat.

We’re fans of this, not least of all because you never know quite what they’re going to bring next.

Keeping it DIY and no-budget, Nathan and Lorna’s sixteen-year old has, for the second month, made the video to accompany the track. Simple, but effective, it’s very much in keeping with the Argonaut ethos.

Check it here:

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28th July 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Funny how time goes. Precisely two weeks short of a year ago today, I reviewed Bedroom Tax’s debut single ‘Kin’, against a backdrop of a heatwave and wild fires in the UK, and increasing level of panic over fuel costs ahead of the winter in prospect. And we thought things looked bleak then. No heatwave in the UK this year: instead, we’ve spent the last three months swinging between regular summer weather and days that more closely resemble October while the rest of the world burns, and we long for the days when it was only the cost of energy and Lurpak that were heading into the stratosphere.

Bedroom Tax are one of many bands with sociopolitical leanings who have adopted names which set their stance out in the simplest of terms. I’m thinking BDRMM, Bedsit, Benefits, bands born in many ways out of frustration and necessity, and their very existence is a statement about the crushing economic climate we live in – at least if you’re a regular person and not in the executive echelon, or otherwise comfortably off thanks to inherited wealth, a backhander from a mate in government, or an MP.

The so-called ‘bedroom tax’, introduced in 2012 is one of many examples of the tory government shafting the poor and the disabled, and as Michael Rosen pointed out in an article for The Guardian in 2014, the bereaved, was found in 2019 to be discriminatory by the European Court of Human Rights. No wonder the government are keen to ditch the ECHR: they keep ruling that their inhumane policies are illegal.

Since releasing ‘Kin’, Bedroom Tax have spent their time reflecting and refining their sound. It’s been time well spent.

‘Bad Behaviour’ is a magnificent melding of post-punk and post-rock with ‘urban’ elements, and possesses both beauty and bleakness simultaneously. Chiming guitars and programmed beats provide the backdrop to the incisive yet flowing rap of the lyrics, poetically dissecting social division and the hand we’re dealt due to privilege or lack of. It’s got bounce and groove, and even a certain noodly indie jangle that’s seen the sound of The Smiths cast through a more current prism that’s still more 2006 than 2023, but there’s a joy in witnessing the bounds of genre time being dismantled, and knowing that Morrissey would fucking hate it.

It’s a progression from the kitchen-sink reflections of ‘Kin’, but at the same time, there’s still that gritty realism, with echoes of The Streets, and the reason Bedroom Tax are so appealing is because there’s no pretence, no artifice: they’re telling it like it is.

And just as punk and post-punk emerged from the desolation of Thatcher’s Britain, so the current wave of acts who hark back to that but with the addition of more contemporary twists are coming from parallel circumstances. Austerity may not be the buzzword of the present, but we never left it: cuts upon cuts by cunts upon cunts are why we are where we are. And acts like Bedroom Tax articulate the everyday realities of life right now. We need these guys.

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Scottish six-piece – Parliamo – are back with the new single ‘Matters Like’, out today.

Arriving as the band’s grittiest, stickiest offering to-date, it sees Parliamo’s usual bright rhythms and funky basslines, traded-in for howling Suede-esque electric guitars, low-slung hooks and unconventional choruses.

Like a migraine growing under the noon-day sun, ‘Matters Like’ has a burbling, off-kilter intensity quite at odds with the brilliant sunshine that baked the Summer of 2022 in which it was written. Finding nuanced inspiration during those mind-melting times in the Fontaines D.C. track ‘Roman Holiday’ and the spring reverb bass of The Last Shadow Puppets’ second record, the band’s Jack Dailly and Finn Freeburn Morrison began assimilating both into a new track that would mark a moody left-turn for the band.

A song about finding confidence in a new relationship and the overcast feelings that can come hand-in-hand with it, vocalist Jack Dailly explains: “’Matters Like’ has a moodier sound than most of our previous output, with its screaming guitars and echoing hi-hats. This mood fits well with the lyrics, as the song touches on feelings of uncertainty and internal conflict. It’s a song about insecurity in a fledgling relationship and the plethora of emotions which come with getting to know more about someone than you might have bargained for.”

Weaving their straight-up songwriting and babbling instrumentals niftily through a heatwave-warped collision of influences, ‘Matters Like’ finds a band pushing the Parliamo sound and enjoying getting a little experimental.

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Photo credit: Lauren Kellie