Alternative Album Chart: The best new indie and alternative albums this week
Now that the dust has settled on 2023 and 2024 is starting to pick up pace, the latest lap around the sun has offered its first batch of new albums. Whether music will eclipse the previous 12 months in terms of quality remains to be seen, but it has certainly started on a solid footing.
Let’s not forget that 2023 was an impeccable year for popular music and perhaps the best we’ve had in a long time. From the likes of Mitski and H. Hawkline delivering masterpieces to commendable returns from veterans such as The Rolling Stones, a myriad of acts asserted their brilliance. Whether it was the mainstream or the niche corners, the quality and range of the sonics we were treated to were astounding.
Yet, that was all in the past, and we’re waiting to see what treats, and indeed, duds, 2024 has in store. This week, it’s kicking into gear, with a welcome variety of acts and creative triumphs on offer. The album of the week comes from none other than Bill Ryder Jones with lechyd Da, with other commendable bodies of work by Marika Hackman and Emma Gatrill.
Find the first Alternative Album Chart of 2024 below.
The best new indie and alternative albums this week:
lechyd Da – Bill Ryder-Jones – 5
Five albums into his solo discography, lechyd Da feels like a purified encapsulation of Bill Ryder-Jones as an artist, with the musician weaving all his highlights into a sonic patchwork and tapestry of his life. As a result, you can feel it fall into place. As the roaring scope of the album washes over you, you picture him staring out beyond the West Kirby Bay, soaking his Spezials in the slurry surrounding the marine lake as he takes a windswept stroll with lyrics formulating in his mind and melodies being lassoed from the sea breeze.
And this is how you take the record in as a listener, too. It makes you want to jog along a promenade. It makes you want to go back to the childhood cottage in Whitby that you holidayed in in your halcyon days of innocence. It makes you want to call your mother, and it also makes you want to enjoy the most fabled thing of all life’s simple treats: just one pint. In this regard, it is life-affirming; it might be utterly heart-breaking at times, but it happily concludes that life might be sad sometimes, but it is always beautiful. [Words: Tom Taylor]
Big Sigh – Marika Hackman – 4
Considering that Marika Hackman played every instrument on her new album, bar the string and brass sections, you might expect Big Sigh to be a small and soft creature, the kind of thing made in a basement, stripped back to a beautiful yet manageable package that one artist could chip away at alone.
But Big Sigh is not the small, solo basement album you’d expect, and that golden centre she was chipping away in search of for years wasn’t just a glimmer; it was something grand. Balancing boldness with intimacy, drama and tenderness: the record is a tightrope act of artistry that only someone of Hackman’s calibre could pull off. Moving between moments of sparsity to let her emotive lyrics take centre stage, the record swells to something vast in the next moment. Expanding on all previous releases, it has the lyrical depth and left-field indie energy she has always delivered but elevates it to new and stunning levels. [Words: Lucy Harbron]
Come Swim – Emma Gatrill – 3.5
In times more uncertain than ever, a sprinkling of hopefulness and an emphasis on the power of human connection is more than welcome. Luckily, Emma Gatrill’s third album, Come Swim, invites us to appreciate ourselves and our surroundings — even when it feels incredibly hard to do so.
Gatrill has developed an album that relies on instruments that we typically associate with classical pieces – harps, violins, clarinets – immersing them among synths to create a mesmerising blend of sounds that melds the past, present and future. While each song features a mix of classic and modern sounds, Gatrill allows them to work harmoniously – or sometimes purposefully against each other – to create a consistently interesting sonic palette. Moreover, every track has a distinctively feminine essence to it, perhaps due to the harp’s long connotations with femininity and beauty.
This is aided by Gatrill’s captivating voice, which floats with an effortless sensibility. It echoes the type of vocals associated with traditional British folk, back when singing was an oral tradition, often performed while working or gathering with others, specifically women. This ties into Gatrill’s lyrical evocations of reassurance, community and the human experience. There is a simultaneous air of magic and otherworldliness to these songs, with the celestial strings often placing Gatrill’s songs in a cosmic, infinite realm. [Words: Aimee Ferrier]
Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations – The Vaccines – 3
For every artist, there comes a point when a particular sound becomes stale. Even though it might be a winning formula, trying to play the same tracks repeatedly can agitate both the musicians and their fans alike. While The Vaccines may have their traditional indie rock sound intact on their latest album, Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations, they twist it enough to deliver a solid lesson in remaining relevant years after the fact.
The album’s highlights are often performed with the same kind of nervous energy one would expect from the later period of The Jam. Although there are more than a few nods to the band’s indie glory days, they pale compared to the matured lyrics, which touch on the darker subject matter relating to growing old and realising that things can’t be the same as they were way back when.
Even though it’s easy to listen to the songs on a surface level, the juxtaposition of dark lamentations and upbeat melodies is actually one of the album’s greatest strengths. Instead of making a deliberately jaded record, the band sounds like they are trying to wilfully find ways to be happy amid the turmoil, with Justin Young and Timothy Lanham playing different pieces of ear candy against one another, prising sunshine out of honest reconciliation. [Words: Tim Coffman]
Down There! – Folly Group – 2
For a number of years now, the post-punk genre has been steadily becoming increasingly oversaturated. Whereas, in years gone by, young bands often attempted to recreate the indie rock of Arctic Monkeys, the modern musical landscape is awash with bands desperate to capture Dan Carey’s Speedy Wunderground sound. East-London quartet Folly Group tend to fall into that category.
The album offers some interesting ideas, and the odd tracks are fairly impressive, but generally, as a listener, you find yourself yearning for something more. Perhaps some more studio time or the advent of new musical influences would have helped the band to develop their existing sound to create something more mature and exciting. There is an overwhelming sense of wanting to like the record, indicative of a level of charm, but ultimately, the feeling instilled upon listening to Down There! is one of disappointment, like a date with someone you quite fancy, but there are too many red flags to ignore. [Words: Ben Forrest]
Reissue – Lou Reed – Hudson River Wind Meditations – 4
In April 2007, Lou Reed, the founding leader of The Velvet Underground, released his 20th and final studio album, Hudson River Wind Meditations. The release markedly departed from Reed’s more associative conventional rock and experimental works. Unlike the gritty urban narratives of The Velvet Underground & Nico or the avant-garde stylings of Metal Machine Music, this album is a unique venture into ambient territory.
Comprising just three tracks, each exceeding the 15-minute mark, Hudson River Wind Meditations intends to subdue the anxious mind with its meditative soundscapes. The album reflected Reed’s connection to nature and identified his seldom-betrayed contemplative and introspective side.
Reed produced Hudson River Wind Meditations alongside Hal Willner and is credited for taking the photograph featured in the album artwork. In 2007, the record was only released digitally, a disservice to Reed’s photography, which is to be rectified on Friday, January 12th, with the arrival of the album’s first physical issue.
Light in the Attic Records, Laurie Anderson and the Lou Reed Archive have collaborated to review this final offering from one of the 20th century’s most vital musical icons. Remastered by the Grammy-nominated engineer John Baldwin, the new double-LP set includes a gatefold sleeve designed by Masaki Koike featuring liner notes penned by Reed’s eminent yoga instructor and author, Eddie Stern. The physical copies also include a conversation recorded in 2023 between Anderson and journalist Jonathan Cott.
You can pre-order your copy of Hudson River Wind Meditations here.
Far Out Magazine may earn from qualifying purchases. [Words: Jordan Potter]
