NEWS: Lewsberg unveil new 7″, video, UK tour dates
ROTTERDAM lofi darlings Lewsberg are poised to make a three-pronged assault on your expectant guitarpop consciousnesses. First out, the band have announced the release of a new 7”: a new edit of “Through the Garden”, a pretty, declamatory essay, propelled along on a Sterling Morrison-type riff, and taken from album In This House, which is …
SEE: The Streets’ new single ‘I Wish You Loved You …’
Mike Skinner has released the video for new track “I Wish You Loved You As Much As You Love Him” – the second track to be trailed from his forthcoming mixtape, None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive. The foils for Mike’s trademark declamatory delivery come in the dulcet tones of …
SEE: Fuzzbox re-enter the fray with X-Ray Spex cover
BIRMINGHAM’S bubblegum punk legends We’ve Got a Fuzzbox And We’re Going To Use It are back – with a shiny reimagining of the X-Ray Spex classic “I Can’t Do Anything”. The seed to take on Poly Styrene’s first-wave punk number was sown at last year’s Polyfest: a celebration of the X-Ray Spex singer held each …
SEE: Appendix back in: Alasdair Roberts revisits his roots
ACROSS a trio of albums for Drag City leading into the 21st century – The Rye Bears A Poison, Daylight SavIng and The Night Is Advancing, Callander’s Appendix Out made some of the gentlest, most spellbinding alt.folk you’ll ever have the pleasure of tipping into your ears. After the release of The Night Is Advancing …
SEE: Archers of Loaf shuffle forward a new 7″
THE BEST made plans of mice and men: this year has seen everyone’s diary go into the shredder. US alt.rock mainstays Archers of Loaf are no exception. With Record Store Day at first postponed, and then chopped into three, the planned RSD-only release of “Raleigh Days”/“Street Fighting Man” has been delayed and delayed and finally …
ALBUM REVIEW: Jetstream Pony – ‘Jetstream Pony’
FOR those who study the form, Sussex/Surrey four-piece Jetstream Pony are serious indie thoroughbreds. Four singles under their belts (should that be their harness?) the band’s self-titled debut LP is out now on limited-press coloured vinyl LP, CD and download. A quick earful and you get punky guitars with bittersweet female melodies, ripe to hook …
ALBUM REVIEW: Built to Spill – ‘Play the Songs of Daniel Johnston’
DANIEL JOHNSTON’S story is, of course, one of the saddest, yet heartening, to come out of the US indie underground. Taken from us too soon last year at the age of 58, he’d actually begun his recording career at home in the 1970s; by the 1980s, resident in Austin, Texas, fashioning tapes and handing them …
SEE: Standard Fare’s Emma Kupa returns with folksy gem ‘Nothing At All’
EMMA KUPA has been something of British indiepop’s best-kept secret this past decade. Starting out in North Derbyshire trio Standard Fare, who released two albums of cracking, bouncy guitar pop, coming on like Talulah Gosh’s knowing, insouciant, smokey voiced big sis. A solo mini-album in 2015 was followed by an album with the former front …
SEE: The Blinders up the darkness on ‘Mule Track’
MANCHESTER-based, Doncaster-bred goth-punk outfit The Blinders are back in the fray, with their second album in the can – and their latest single “Mule Track” is a dark thrust into the psyche. The track is named for the painting in the Imperial War Museum, which depicts a mule train making its way through a battlefield. …
SEE: M83’s Jordan Lawlor steps out on his own with J. Laser EP
FORMERLY a member of French shoegazers-turned synth-wielding dreampop angels M83, Jordan Lawlor has stepped outside the fold with a bright new EP, J Laser, due for release on June 26th. The first song from the five-tracker, “Sunshine”, a glimmering slice of halcyon synth shimmer, was well received; and now another track from the EP, the …