Positively obsessed with the silver screen of mid-20th century Britain, London lads The Great Leslie infuse fast-paced and dramatic, energetic indie rock with vintage, old-worlde style, latest single ‘All Good Things’ being their most perfect exemplar yet with the four-piece stitching a quote from Celia Johnson in the 1945 classic Brief Encounter on fighting impermanence together with utterly bang up to date modern sounding Two Door Cinema Club-esque chiming guitar lines.
Vocalist Ollie Trevers compares, with an ardent croon, the end of a party at sunrise to not wanting to let go of a relationship and, not to labour too cheesy a point, after all of the cheery momentum and buoyant rock’n’roll zeal the track delivers we’ll add this song to the list of things we don’t want to let go of just yet.
The Great Leslie have bagged a support slot opening for Franz Ferdinand on their Hits to the Head Tour, along with the equally excellent Los Bitchos at Manchester’s O2 Victoria Warehouse on 19th October 2022, if you fancy checking them out live. You’ve still got time to grab a ticket. A cracking little line up if ever we saw one.
‘All Good Things’ was released on Friday 23rd September. Have a listen on Spotify below:
Classically, the more shoegaze, dreampop or covered in fuzzy distortion a band is, the more they care about effects units and experimentation over conveying a world-improving message in their music. Canadian duo Softcult are here to buck the trend with a sound crammed with lush melodies, coated in grunge tinted euphoria, yet packing sheer punk, riot grrrl intention right out of the original revolutionary early 90s Seattle scene.
‘One of a Million’ sees siblings Mercedes and Phoenix Arn-Horn demand humbleness and find equal parts liberation and wonder in the notion that everything’s already been done before, no-one’s a beautiful and unique snowflake, so we can all find something to relate to in each other. And yes, the record is absolutely filled with gorgeous ethereal harmonics featuring an ecstatically magnificent climax before a prolonged fade out back to the grey, real world.
Alongside their rhapsodic records, Softcult put out their own DIY zine ‘SCripture’ that you can sign up to digitally or physically on their website, in which they don’t hold back in taking on the grittiest social, political and environmental issues.
Softcult are currently supporting Incubus on tour, so if you like what you hear you just might be able to catch them while they’re in the UK:
24th September – Reeperbahn Festival, Hamburg (Germany) 28th September – O2 Academy, Birmingham w/ Incubus (UK) 29th September – Royal Albert Hall, London w/ Incubus (UK) 30th September – Royal Albert Hall, London w/ Incubus (UK) 2nd October – O2 Apollo, Manchester w/ Incubus (UK)
Take a look at the band’s self-produced video for ‘One of a Million’, shot on location in Thailand, below:
With their latest single, Pyncher’s message is a simple, succinct and expertly executed one. When over a low slung, slow drag of a rhythm, vocalist and frontman Sam Blakeley declares presumptuously yet authoritatively that he’s ‘The Saddest Man Around’, which also happens to be the single’s title, we must admit we feel inclined to take his word for it.
Thankfully, as well as allegedly being the most miserable fellow in the vicinity, Blakeley is also at the forefront of one of Manchester’s best up-and-coming post-punk bands, which hopefully helps take the edge off his pain little. In summary, Pyncher’s fourth single is a moody belter of gloomy atmospherics and irate despondency whilst maintaining total and utter vital, exhilarating listen status. We emphatically reckon you should give it a listen.
If you like the sound of all of this and wanna catch Pyncher play live, they’re playing Manchester’s Night and Day Cafe supporting King Violet along with The Strangerz and Yasmin Coe on Monday 26th September for the eye wateringly affordable price of £6 per ticket.
‘The Saddest Man Around’ was released on 17th September 2022 and you can listen to it on all the streaming services now. Here it also is on Spotify at the below link:
Cardiff art rock three-piece,Static Inc,have put out their latest Welsh language EP ‘Brithgofion’, a literal mosaic of mesmeric sound and genres, taking onboard classic and prog-rock, then buffing it up with a contemporary indie sheen to craft a collection of sublime otherworldly and vital melodies.
Recorded entirely in their own home studios, many of the tracks, in fact all of them apart from ‘Ymlacio’, take the listener on adventures of prog-rock levels of sprawl far betraying their humble lo-fi origin. With ‘Reykjavík’ growing from yearning, folky beginnings to flourish into sprawling guitar – we’ve never been, but would hazard a guess the song’s designed as a soundtrack for a train ride through the city, ‘Manwl’ being a procession of powerful build ups, explosions and stilled hushes, ‘Anamorffosis’ at first leading you down a route like Foals at their Two Steps Twice height, switching halfway into an acoustic strum, then launching off for an intergalactically soaring outro. And ‘Sbwng’ is a complete spongy bliss-out. The only track that goes close to bucking the trend is the EP’s single – ‘Ymlacio’, (‘Relax’ translated in English) centring around Californian classic rock styles, the one song takes the record’s potent ideas and whittles them down to one succinct, euphoric song as its centrepiece.
‘Brithgofion’ was released on Friday 26th August 2022 and is available on your streaming platforms now. You can have a listen on Spotify below:
The National and Bon Iver teaming up on a record sounds like it should be the kind of release that has fanfares going off, a momentous coming together of the greatest minds of the folk-rock scene getting everyone majorly excited, the wet dream of the late noughties indie fan. But a decade on, the release of ‘Weird Goodbyes’ has passed with little more than a slight nod of acknowledgement.
The National
Maybe it’s for the best because The National’s latest single shows the band on top form, no gimmicks needed. Documenting with trademark wry humour ever relatable themes of letting go of the past, severe second thoughts and regret, all taking part in a clapped-out car on a stormy night as some nostalgic tunes play over the radio, Bon Iver joining the group on the poignant chorus of a song largely built on piano and drum machine, as well as featuring the London Contemporary Orchestra, two major indie players slotting together nicely (alongside an orchestra) without demanding any special attention.
Bon Iver
‘Weird Goodbyes’ was released on 22nd August 2022 and is the first single to materialise from The National’s as-yet-untitled ninth studio album.
You can find the lyric video for ‘Weird Goodbyes’ below:
Arctic Monkeyshave finally released their long awaited comeback single ‘There’d Better Be A Mirrorball’ after four years of fans wondering if they should prepare to mourn their heroes, after 2018’s ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’ was both a runaway success, hitting number 1 in charts around the world, and at the same time left half of the group’s audience confounded and a little offended by the arguably un-rock’n’roll sounds they were being rudely introduced to.
The first single from the Sheffield boys’ forthcoming seventh studio album ‘The Car’ is as divisive as their last LP, choosing to stick with the lounge music blueprint of that record, and yet again the Monkeys’ fanbase are either tearing their hair out in outraged clumps or stroking their chins, nodding “yeah, I get this, I like this…”, but the question we really want to pose is why are people so shocked that Alex Turner and co have ended up doing this?
‘There’d Better Be A Mirrorball’ cover artwork
Since their primacy, Arctic Monkeys have been vocal about the discomfort the success thrust on them has made them feel, lead singer Turner famously describing ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’ as “a bit shit”, the deliciously self-deprecating lead song from their ‘Who The Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys?’ EP waiting uneasily with baited breath for the music press to turn on them, summed up by the venomous call to “Bring on the backlash”, not at all seeing what the rest of the world saw in their rudimentary but heartfelt indie rock songs.
2013’s ‘AM’ is potentially the pinnacle of Arctic Monkeys: the rock’n’roll band, where they got properly deep down and heavy, embraced the blues rock fuzz pedals, distilling love, loss, drugs and Northern England down into one album and brought Josh Homme along for the ride. A perfect crystallisation and highpoint of success, an achievement that could give even the toughest band a crisis of confidence over the best way to construct a follow-up.
The first seeds of their current meanderings were sown when the b-sides of 2006 stand-alone single ‘Leave Before The Lights Come On’ included a cover of 1960’s pop standard ‘Baby I’m Yours’ delivered with a laid-back crooner panache and only two years later Turner teamed up with Miles Kane of The Rascals to put out a couple of albums as The Last Shadow Puppets, collections that ranged from James Bond theme material, Burt Bacharach aping numbers and sounds you would imagine hearing in a smoky Parisian jazz bar. Fast forward right up to 2017, the year before the release of ‘Tranquility Base…’ and who do we see co-writing a space age, lounge pop album with singer-songwriter Alexandra Saviour? Yep, Turner’s back tinkering about with the smouldering jazz sounds again.
Another claim put forward is that these records are out of place and at odds with the rest of the current music scene, but by casting your sights a bit further to Father John Misty, Lana Del Rey and the band’s old pal Miles Kane it’s possible that, if anything, these records are far more at home in 2022 than a lot of alternative artists still trying to write the Oasis song that never was. This isn’t entirely the alien ground it at first seems.
The melancholic song itself, then. The indisputable facts are: The melody is suave and angelic, the strings are richly luscious and sparse piano never fails to lend an air of suit and tie sophistication. You can tell Alex Turner savours the opportunity to truly and full-throatily sing and his lyrics are still shot through with dry wit as he tries to keep a glamorous, light-hearted cool while a relationship ends, requesting at least a mirrorball amidst the desolation. In a scene where much of the indie world prefers to dress down, with spoken word or shouty lyrics, Arctic Monkeys are determined to get smartly coiffured, dress up and buck the trend.
The biggest mystery that’s left outstanding surrounding ‘There’d Better Be A Mirrorball’, we’d dare to suggest, is how on earth does one of our generation’s greatest drummers, Matt Helders, feel about being relegated to sweeping drums with jazz brushes rather than bashing those skins up like a virtuoso on ‘Brianstorm’ et al? We’ll give our final hope to Helders getting his moment to shine elsewhere on ‘The Car’.
‘The Car’ cover artwork
If you’ve been living under a rock then you might not know that ‘There’d Better Be A Mirrorball’ was released on 30th August 2022. ‘The Car’ is due to be released on 21st October 2022 and available to pre-order on limited grey vinyl right now.
‘There’d Better Be A Mirrorball’ has its own music video and we thought you might like to watch it below:
If you haven’t freaked out yet today then we recommend you stick on Pixy Jones’ new single ‘Hold Your Tongue’ and save your daily dose of freaking out until then. Err… no, not because of the screwy walrus mask the songsmith and sometime member of South Wales music scene stalwarts El Goodo has donned for his solo project, we mean purely in the 60’s freak scene sense, as the Resolven musician has managed to craft a solid slice of psychedelia that we could easily believe had been committed to wax just over half a century ago.
Boasting hammond organ straight off of a Zombies track, gravelly vocals singing words that don’t make much sense but sound fucking mint, an extraordinary harmony, a magnificently psychedelic blues guitar break and an outro packing reversed drumbeats, ‘Hold Your Tongue’ couldn’t be any more authentically 60’s rock’n’roll if it was actually authentic 60’s rock’n’roll.
Escapist abandonment doesn’t come any more insistently joyful than Cardiff four-piece Angel Hotel’slatest single ‘Automobile’. On this, their fifth single, the group fully embrace the quintessence of their retro dream-pop pizazz by summing up the elation of hopping in an unassuming motor vehicle, driving to the middle of nowhere and idyllically getting away from it all, jazzing up the stress-eschewing narrative with loads of snazzy keytar synthesiser and truly fuzzed up guitar. It’s what amounts to a sheerly gladsome hit of happiness.
If we may hold ‘Automobile’ up as evidence, Angel Hotel seem to be able to pull off feel-good, 1980’s inspired, jangly-indie power rock at it’s inspirative, jubilant greatest without breaking out a sweat (unless singer Siôn Russell Jones’s bandana isn’t for purely aesthetical purposes).
‘Automobile’ was released on 5th August 2022 on Recordiau Côsh Records and is available to stream on all of the streaming sites as we live and breathe. The band have also put out an incredible video to go with the song which sees the foursome playing with various cardboard cut-out video games and toys on a nostalgia strewn kid’s TV set. You can see the video below:
Nostalgia and rueful, youthful memories run amok on the latest single from one of South Wales’ finest, Broken Fires. ‘Underside’ is a confessional letter to either a long lost compadres or love, we’re not sure which but evidently the affection is strong. Full of Frightened Rabbit and Biffy Clyro energy, singer Tom Stephens’ achingly honest lyrics and Ben Gibbard-esque vocals are an emotive compliment to the group’s searingly impassioned guitar lines and high intensity drumming.
Basically, it’s a song that’s gonna either make you leap about doing air guitar in your living room, or bring a little warm-hearted tear to your eye, depending on your frame of mind when listening, so be forewarned.
Along with ‘Underside’ comes the announcement of Broken Fires second album ‘Hymns’ due to be released on 28th October 2022. Featuring previous singles ‘Dreamer’, ‘New Friends’, ‘Midnight’ and ‘Sharks’ the record sounds as if it’ll be full of emotional rock energy. ‘Hymns’ is available to pre-order on Limited Edition Orange Vinyl now.
Broken Fires have also put together ‘Underside’s official DIY video using footage of their recent Canadian and UK tours. Take a watch on the “underside” of this article, lol (sorry):
Indie surf funk wonders Harri Larkin are back with their first single since last year’s ‘Beach City’ album and they’re totally on form. Having opened the main stage of Tramlines Festival this year, the Sheffield trio grasp the limelight shining on them right now with ‘Bonfire Toffee’ and it just so happens to be the best song they’ve put out there yet.
If Snail Mail hailed from the various areas of the UK that Harri Larkin come from (namely Cornwall and South Yorkshire) she might come up with something a little like this, a chilled out alt-pop hymn to wide-eyed love, heartache and whirlwind, beach-side romance. And another thing, if you’re asking, the most gorgeous part of the record is where it pares right down at the two minute thirty mark but, instead of fading off like it could, the track utterly explodes again and there’s a whole minute more of dopamine secreting, sun-bleached excellence.
‘Bonfire Toffee’ is out today – Friday 26th August 2022 and you can head over to Spotify to listen the hell out of it any time you like. We’ve sorted you out with a link below:
