Indie Recap - January 2020

Artists covered: Algiers * Blossoms * Bombay Bicycle Club * Field Music * The Big Moon

Here we go again, the second in my new format of recaps where I'll take a reasonably focused look at five key releases within a genre, this time with the meaningless label of "indie". These releases have to have come out in December or January and they're five albums I think are worth mentioning, due to reasons good or bad. I admit, I wouldn't call this winter a great time for indie music, maybe you disagree but this is all just my opinion and without further ado let's jump into the review...

"There Is No Year"
Algiers

17th January 2020

Matador

After seeing that Randall Dunn was listed as this album's primary producer, I was excited to see where his very dark style would take this boundary-pushing band. His work with Cloud Nothings on their last album resulted in a comeback that I revel in to this day, and I sincerely hoped he would do the same for Algiers, whilst also improving upon his mixing of the bass which was undoubtedly the only underwhelming moment on that album. So, what came out out of There Is No Year?

Firstly, you have to understand that the lyrics and themes of this album are derived directly from the poem Misophonia, and it's clear from their sonic and thematic shift on this album that they're aiming for something grander and more expansive than their previous work. To achieve this, their instrumentals have moved on from their early psychedelic soul and from the experimental industrial sounds of their last album, opting for a grittier interpretation of post-punk and gospel-inflected noise rock to provide a solid foundation from which to recount the poem. Instead of the crisp, distinct sounds of previous albums, they've transitioned into a new kind of dark mush that shouldn't work as well as it does. This is far from a perfect album, but it's strong instrumental core and intricate rhythms paired with what I can only describe as ambience achieved through a gothic kind of soul.

Occasionally, it definitely feels as though this band lose track of their point when the instrumentals get too murky or the lyrics get too abstract, and this definitely leads to lack of connection between me and the music that prevents it from hitting as hard as it should, but I'm never too far removed when due to how captivating the experimentation and depth of sound is. The best songs are able to transcend the atmosphere this album is steeped in, and for as strong as the record begins I find that the more interesting and eye-opening moments come several tracks in, the haunting and resonant "Unoccupied" and the metallic guitar driven "Chaka" standing out perhaps the most, the latter winning me over for its unstoppable defiance of expectations that keeps me coming back for more.

By contrast, the worst tracks on this album are those that fail to distinguish themselves from the persistent slog of dreary, unmelodic ambience. Moments like "Wait For The Sound" make me wonder if the band were content to just create an atmosphere and once they'd achieved that were all too pleased with themselves that they forgot to make an actual song. There is some progression, but waiting for the sound (ha) to arrive is a tedious affair, for as aptly titled as it makes the song. Waiting for the sound in fact turns out to be waiting for the next song, the fresh and enthusiastic "Repeating Night" which boasts an almost mechanical drumbeat that perfectly contrasts Franklin James Fisher's most human performance. Despite these two fantastic features, I find that the tropical flavoured guitars and gushing piano outro end up as the most engaging parts of this relatively short song.

Conclusively, this is an album that wants you to understand the context surrounding it far more than it needs you to, a fact that I find increasingly odd given how little the lyrics actually say when you look into it. Caught between a vibe and a hard place, this album is at its best when it chooses to work above the troublingly low instrumentals and allow for distinguished melodies to flourish; as feared Randall Dunn's production does leave the bass parts frustratingly undistinguished and this does take a toll on my enjoyment of the project, but there are enough great songs for me to latch onto to consider this worth my time.

7.5/10

Best Tracks: Unoccupied; Chaka; Repeating Night; Nothing Bloomed; Void

Worst Tracks: Wait For The Sound

"Foolish Loving Spaces"

Blossoms

31st January 2020

Virgin EMI

Finally. I have an album in the spotlight that successfully harkens back to the sound of 70s without compromising the band's identity through their writing and arrangements. More than that, it's the perfect alternative to Harry Styles's new album which is not as good as everyone says it is (plus more than half the audience of that thing would support Harry regardless of whether he was making death metal or nocturnal trap). If you're going to rejuvenate the sounds of the most blissful pop the 70s, then this amalgamation of protopunk, new wave and disco is the way to go. 

This is the sort of album that requires very little in terms of thought, but it's clearly had a whole lot more thought put in that you'd expect. Reading interviews with the band I discovered that for such and tried and true sound the band really made it their own in the way they developed and recreated it, employing student-ish tactics like kitchen instruments and an assortment of new instruments that achieves a sound more expansive than it has any right to be. This is cheesy pop that people are taking seriously, that I'm taking seriously right now as I review it. And I love it!

Blossoms have always had a certain charm that's kept their music in pretty consistent rotation with me, from the glorious psychedelic-tinged debut to the explosive synthpop of Cool Like You, a title more amusing than ever given how distinctly uncool this new sound of theirs is. Whether they're pulling you in with their hooks and guitar solos or getting you to awkwardly dance in the corner of your room, the common thread between each album has and continues to be fun, a word top of my list to describe this album. From the joyous relatability of "Oh No (I Think I'm In Love)" to the whirly instrumental outro on "Like Gravity", fun is in excess.

If moving back through the decades is their schtick then can we expect a Beatles/Beach Boys pivot in direction next time or perhaps a dip into the Supremes' territory? Honestly, who knows, I'm just looking forward to it. This might not be their sleekest or most interesting album but it has hooks for days and a knack for ingraining itself within you, passively of course.

7.5/10

Best Tracks: My Swimming Brain; Sunday Was A Friend Of Mine; Oh No; My Vacant Days; Like Gravity

Worst Tracks: The Keeper; Romance, Eh?

"Everything Else Has Gone Wrong"
Bombay Bicycle Club

17th January 2020

Mmm...Records

Do I have to talk about this one? Seriously? Fine...

Bombay Bicycle Club are back after six whole years. My primary thought listening to this album is why did they come back at all? Over the course of their last four albums (of which I've listened to only one in its entirety) they proved time and time again that they were capable of finding new and exciting ways to make you wish you were listening to someone else. That said, on their final album before their hiatus they came scarily close to getting so good at finding interesting ways of not being interesting that they came close to being interesting. And with that out of the way I went into this with no expectations or preconceptions and I'm ashamed to say that at first I fell for their lies...

At surface level, this is an album that sounds very good. Expanding the simplistic, folk-influenced indie rock of their third album A Different Kind of Fix with elements of indietronica and I will say that the synths in particular compliment their expert bustling soundscapes, somehow sounding both larger and more intimate all at once as the range is diversified and the specific tones come across as very personal. I just wish they hadn't been so influenced by every other indie pop and rock artist of the 2010s when making this because hearing the influences of better but still mediocre bands gets frustrating, particularly on the actually well formed and successfully impactful "I Can Hardly Speak" which without the stolen chorus from The Naked & Famous's hit "Young Blood" would be a great song.

What I meant when I said "I fell for their lies" is really that I fell for the simple honesty of this album, as it feels for the first time that the band are being open and true to themselves, or at least that's what the presentation and delivery would have you believe. The overabundance of imitations and incredibly lazy, underwritten lyrics leave a gaping hole where the substance of this album should be and they do every they can to make you not notice it, the distractingly good instrumentals a shallow facade that supports absolutely nothing. What really gets me is that frontman Jack Steadman consistently coasts off of repetition and on the moments where we're privy to actually hear what he has to say all he seems to do is put words in your mouth and whine about how unstable everything is, a frustrating trope that as a rich white man with a stable income and successful music career is a path that lacks the integrity this album is framed as having. If he was bringing something interesting or new to the table it would be fine, but the lack of originality and personality makes the whole thing ring hollow.

I didn't intend to talk for such a great length about my issues with the album, this segment intended to be brief and digestible of course, and as such I may be persuaded to do a full review exploring and analysing this thing should this post surpass my expected views or if I find myself with the time and will to listen to this abominable record again. With a different person at the helm (say, Liz Lawrence who has an excellent feature on the track "People People") I would like this album a whole lot more.

3.5/10

Best Tracks: I Can Hardly Speak; People People; Racing Stripes
Worst Tracks: Get Up; Everything Else Has Gone Wrong; Good Day; I Worry Bout You

"Making A New World"
Field Music

10th January 2020

Memphis Industries

Is the title supposed to be ironic given how obsessed with the interwar period this album is? Or, given all the attempts at progressiveness and inclusivity do they genuinely believe this is the way forward? Listening to this I am confused and bemused at what exactly they were thinking during the creation process, this album sitting somewhere between Dire Straits and cancel culture, it succeeds in making me groove and cringe simultaneously (and that's just the Dire Straits influence). This is definitely an oddball, but more because of the themes than anything else.

They manage to balance their usual off-kilter sound and experimentation(..?) with the funky rock of the 70s surprisingly well in a somewhat compelling but meaningless style that has essentially no link to the themes and explorations of the societal changes during the period of time that they're trying to cross examine through their lyrics. Honestly, it works best when the lyrics are at their most vague and imperceivable, such as on "Coffee or Wine" where the bemusing uncoordinated nature of their music flukes itself an impactful moment that is completely undone by the next track, the unbelievably awkward "Best Kept Garden" that showcases just how dire the vocal performance and grooves can be. The forty second interlude "Silence" was better than this for goodness sake, I just don't know why anyone would be drawn to this above the leagues of better actual piano-driven funky indie folk artists with their infinitely better songwriting.

Despite the brief song lengths, or perhaps due to how underdeveloped each track is, every listen to this album is a tedious and uncomfortable one, without much to latch onto good or bad. For something so odd, I kind of expect it to stand out a bit but instead we get a slew of mediocrity that seems to barely exist let alone function as it was intended to. No, there aren't any saving graces but look deep enough and there's more than a few things to condemn in regards to this album, from the poor writing to the bland pianos that seem to tie the whole thing together. The piano is such a versatile instrument that its poor usage and lack of the usual emotion impact ubiquitous with piano driven music is replaced by melodies that seem to be coasting on the sound alone to get by, something I find insufficient in captivating any sort of emotional response from me.

All in all, for an album supposedly so invested in the narrative of the interwar period and its attitudes, it could be quite easily mistaken for an impressive array of passable 70s piano-rock pastiches performed by a band of dads ten years later in a rejection of the synthpop of the 80s. The lyrics are meaningless, the themes are weightless (at least in their delivery) and I am left feeling cold to all but a couple of tracks. It's not not good, it's just not worth it unless you care about fragments of mediocre songs that vaguely resembles a Dire Straits demo and an Arcade Fire rip off simultaneously.

4/10

Best Tracks: Coffee or Wine; A Common Language Pt 1; Money Is a Memory
Worst Tracks: Best Kept Garden; Between Nations; Nikon Pt 1; Nikon Pt 2

"Walking Like We Do"

The Big Moon

10th January 2020

Fiction

The final album on the chopping block, I'm glad I don't need to destroy this one. The Big Moon are an up and coming band hitting pretty hard on this, their second full length album. Continually proving their knack for writing smart, sensitive and conscious indie pop, this is an album which shares a lot with its predecessor but offers a lot as a more introspective and sonically adventurous progression from their debut.

As cool as the first track is, the album really starts with the second track "Your Light", a properly developed and rather polished tune that fits the tone of the album far better without compromising the sentiment and self awareness of "It's Easy Then", instead building upon that formula in a way that offers some insightful comments on the self and people growing up today - "every generation probably thought they were the last" is a line that pretty aptly describes the feeling that surely everyone feels, and this song in general seems to serve as the example of what this album is like. Why it was constricted to being the third single, I do not know.

The album continues, delivering more and more lyrics in the vein of that one and building up to a collection of songs that I can pretty confidently call a well written and well framed body of work, every song feeling as personal as the last but also just as anthemic and relevant, each track serving a purpose as the band literally just describes what's going on in their world in a reasonably reassuring and relatable way. If there's one thing I have a problem with, it's actually not the safe lyrics because it justifies itself by being clever each time. No, my only real problem is the jarring, stop-start nature of songs as they transition from one to another, leading to a lack of instrumental flow between songs that means it comes across as slightly disjointed. 

All in all though, this is a great listen. There are definitely some songs that halt proceedings a little but overall it's conscious and well written indie music that packs more of an emotional punch than an instrumental one, and that's okay. I recommend this to anyone that's interested, or anyone who wants to add something new to their rotation, go check it out.

7/10

Best Tracks: Your Light; Why; Don't Think; Holy Roller; A Hundred Ways To Land
Worst Tracks: ADHD

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Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed the second installment of my genre based recap series, the next one will likely be oriented towards pop music and I've even got a special version of this in the works for March...

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