Maida Vale Sessions is a collection of four live sets recorded at the Maida Vale studios at BBC, truly capturing the magic that was the Birmingham band. A mesmerizing compilation of live songs for veterans and new fans alike, this live record showcases songs all pre-Tender Buttons, showing their progress as a band between 1996 – 2003.
Battle Ave are still the mature band they have always been, still making the soothing yet exciting music they are known for. There’s a lot subtlety, but if you listen closely you’ll be amazed by what can be found on I Saw The Egg. They create a welcoming atmosphere of delicacy with the perfect album to relax, brood, or think introspectively to.
How Is It That I Should Look at The Stars thrives on its construction: played in three days in an uninterrupted jam, it gives back the naturalness of a live show, accompanied by lyrics edited in detail. We are accustomed through contemporary culture to seriality, and The Weather Station succeeds to be a point of coherence of her works.
Though Famously Alive’s first three songs—also its pre-release singles—hint at a straightforward listen that filters the psych elements of previous album Twisted Crystal through a poppier approach, the rest of the album is anything but, revealing a band whose restlessness provokes ceaseless transformation the moment a new opportunity arises.
Springtime is considered a supergroup – and rightfully so. Each of these players is a pillar of their craft, a master at their instrument. Their Night Raver EP may only be three songs, but there’s a lot going on: two very disparate longform opuses and one seven-minute improvisation-adjacent rock song.
Talk Soon, Hemlock’s latest self-released album, was recorded in Astoria, Oregon, where Chauffe was living during one year of the pandemic. This work differs from her other projects in its production, collaboration, and fullness. Throughout the seventeen tracks, Chauffe braids in windy field recordings and features a selection of voicemails.
Knowing no melodic bounds, the Peacers’ exceptionally expansive musical palette is apparent, painting in a spectrum of refined subtlety, hypnotic grace, and plangent adventurism. This panoply of hues presents itself in a microtonal, blue note fashion, with chromaticism and a generalized uniqueness of twists-and-turns.
On Picnic in the Dark, Zeiguer does not hesitate to whisk her listener away to a lush, reverberant world of her own design. By blending contemporary indie pop’s structures with vintage drum machines, old Hollywood strings, and dalliances into bossa nova territory, Zeiguer’s become the architect of her own memories.
Mother is The Milky Way is not quite a collection of songs and not quite a soundtrack. Rather, it is a twenty-minute meditative experience in an unambiguously Broadcastian space, with equal parts journey through pastoral psychedelic meadows and whiplash-inducing descent into some of the darkest spaces the band has dared to curate.
Palm Friends’ music has an easy sound to the ear, with each song stepping into another direction, while keeping it recognizable. It’s a hard thing to do across two or three separate releases, let alone within a single EP. Yet, that is exactly what the Minneapolis quartet have done on The Delivery, their latest record.
The tape features reworkings of hit bedbug tracks spanning six years that make the most of classic four-piece rock band instrumentation. While the halcyon bedroom pop days of multi-tracked guitars and fuzzy synths may be behind the project, there is no need to mourn; bedbug’s singular approach to diaristic songwriting suits indie rock well.
Process, the latest from Pinch Points, shows the band have a caustic take on the modern world and its many ongoing societal issues. The band’s sound has become a little more developed and although there is a strain of anxiety and anger that runs through everything here, there is also an excitement that is equally pervasive.
PLOSIVS is a modern day So-Cal alt-rock supergroup, helmed by the twin guitars of John Reis (Drive Like Jehu, Rocket From the Crypt, Hot Snakes) and Rob Crow (Thingy, Pinback, and many, many others). This pairing of prolific San Diego powerhouses sets expectations high, and their self-titled debut does not disappoint.
