Category: Indie

Arriving in the wake of the memorable and melodramatic Robert Smith collaboration, How Not To Drown, Chvrches we’re going to need something special as a follow up. Sadly, Good Girls is pop music at its shitest and most compressed.

Chvurches seem to have mastered the art of making music that is simultaneously toe-tappingly catchy and toe-curlingly cringeworthy – quite the achievement! Good Girls conjures up the same feelings of mundanity and indifference as a rainy Monday morning. It’s pop processed austerity personified! The dregs of the pop-synth barrel!

As on-trend, Instagram-friendly music the song just about cuts the mustard. But it will leave the music fan feeling like they have just inhaled a jar of Coleman’s finest. Good Girls is simply bad.

3/10

Chisel-cheeked Geordie, Sam Fender, makes his long-awaited musical return with new single, Seventeen Going Under, taken from the upcoming album of the same name.

Representing the North East of England with his Tyneside twang, Fender has been riding the crest of a wave for two years now. 2019 saw the newcomer pick up a Brit Award, and a number one album for Hypersonic Missiles. 2021 will be expecting a lot from the already acclaimed indie rocker.

Jangly guitar tones treat Seventeen Going Under, and initially the listener might feel they are in for some joyous optimism; however, this does not last long. There is a sense of motion in the song but, sadly, there is a monotony in that motion. The track doesn’t ever truly shift gear, struggling with a sticky clutch throughout.

Despite the largely uninteresting musical worth to Seventeen Going Under, there is a charm to the song that’s achieved through Fender’s canny raconteur skillet. He tells an endearing story of innocence, nostalgia and desperation as good as any of his English singer-songwriting peers. However, lyrics alone cannot carry a song bereft of musical intrigue.

5/10.

Modest Mouse are a band of quirk and quick wit. Fast approaching thirty years of existence, their latest album release, The Golden Casket, is a clever project of optimism and hope. It seems like a lifetime ago since the Oregon octet’s heyday, but the North-Western ensemble are going stronger than ever with their newest effort.

Choosing an album opener can either be a no-brainier or a thankless and long-drawn-out endeavour. The Golden Casket’s opener, Fuck This Acid Trip, might not be the obvious choice, but within a minute or so it all makes sense. The track is as perturbing as it is awesome; perhaps attempting to emulate an acid trip through the medium of music. The outcome is a pretty great song, and the cult-like chanting will get that head bobbing.

Second track, We Are Between, is an indie rock corker. Consisting a comforting and perfectly pleasing riff, the verse is nice if a bit vanilla. However, all crimes are atoned by the time that chorus raises the roof. The song becomes as catching as coronavirus, and more fun than bouncing on a bouncy castle after consuming too much alcohol at your god-daughter’s christening.

Walking And Running is a nifty number that’s guaranteed to get your feet shuffling. There’s an urgency and coolness partying its way through the track, and it feels like the song is begging for an accompanied choreographed routine. A true highlight of the album.

As with almost any album in history, fillers are unfortunately an inevitability. How can artists produce consistently good songs within the confines of one album? Modest Mouse are no exception to this rule. Transmitting Receiving is the album filler – a long one at that – but it stands alone as the one subpar song on The Golden Casket.

The standout tracks are the already-released singles. The Sun Hasn’t Gone and Leave A Light On were rightly selected as the album’s initial singles. Their optimism and essence of hope is beautiful, and their festival-ready feel is up there with the very best of any the fun-time festival jams. When these songs finally reach the festival circuits, you better believe that frenzied euphoria will wave across those muddy, beer-soaked fields.

Ending the album is the oddly named, Back To The Middle. It’s a fitting end to an album of warmth and charm. Permitting some serious overdrive to augment the track only adds to its power as an album closer, and rounds off the end to a successful album.

The Golden Casket is a solid effort. All the songs trickle nicely into the next, and the production quality is high. Modest Mouse are never going to better the success that accompanied their breakthrough album, Good News For People Who Love Bad News, but The Golden Casket is a strong example of a band who continue to entertain, whilst still making music the way they want to make it.

7/10.

London lads, Bastille, make a welcome return to form with new dance floor filler, Distorted Light Beam. Simple and formulaic yet unique, this track will satisfy that Bastille-shaped hole in your life.

Commencing with helter-skelter techno keys, reverberated vocals and computerised beats, it’s still Bastille but with a made-for-Ibiza veneer. The chorus is perhaps less anthemic than the best of the band’s outputs but it possesses a charm in it’s positive – if slightly idealistic – lyrics. Pompeii, this song is not, but it is certainly not a throwaway effort.

BBC Radio 1 will likely gush over the release of any new Bastille material, overplay it and make you hate it. But until it’s tarnished, crank it up to eleven and enjoy the euphoric dance beats for three minutes of bliss.

7/10

Continuing to tease the upcoming release of their new album, The Golden Casket, Modest Mouse find the cheese again with their latest single, The Sun Hasn’t Left.

The track begins with a tinkering xylophone, establishing a sense of cheek, charm and welcome petulance, before settling into the trademark Modest Mouse swing.

As with its predecessor, Leave A Light On, Modest Mouse do not do modest choruses. The Sun Hasn’t Left is a humdinger of a chorus. Coupled with the upbeat sound and lyrics of optimism, the song would melt even the cruelest of hearts.

As certain as death and taxes, the Oregonian Octet never fail to deliver. The world needs more jovial songs to guide us through this time of turbulence.

With two indie feel-good hits for the summer now in the bag, the release of The Golden Casket cannot come soon enough.

8/10

If ever there was a front man with an intriguing voice, Everything Everything’s Jonathan Higgs would top the list for most indie fans. As with all of the band’s biggest hits, Higgs projects his vocal prowess at the drop of a hat; usually with pleasing results.

The sound of latest single, Mercury and Me, is not the band’s usual weapon of choice. If you’re drawn to Everything Everything for their manic nuance and bite, this track will likely disappoint. The band opt for a more sentimental, stripped-back approach in the gentle Mercury and Me. Higgs’s faultless falsetto is still deployed, and perfectly matches the intimacy of what is essentially a piano ballad – accompanied by rivers of reverb – about love and loss. Instead of scaffolding the song’s tempo with his vocals, Higgs ensures his unique register supplements the music.

The outcome is outstanding! There is an irrefutable atmosphere of accepting sadness in Mercury and Me, which is tastefully orchestrated and poignant; however, if you are feeling evenly remotely sad, you should probably give this number a wide berth until your mood lifts.  

8/10