Alternative Album Chart: the best new indie and alternative albums this week
Psychedelic rock has been an ever-present fixture for the past 15 years. With many world-famous bands emerging and putting their spin on their genre, it can be problematic for newer acts to be heard amid such a clangorous mass of spacey indie sonics. Yet, it’s safe to say that California’s Color Green have put a refreshing twist on it with their latest effort, Fool’s Parade.
While the new album certainly contains classic and familiar elements of the genre, with a distinctly rootsy throughline that would have had even the late Robbie Robertson beaming, the quartet blends it with contemporary elements. This blending of the past and present creates a profoundly engaging album that has been one of the year’s great surprises so far. It’s one of those records that is so kaleidoscopic it is hard to fully comprehend with the first listen, but upon second and third, it becomes clear just how impressive of an opus it is.
Elsewhere this week, Hot Chip member and general musical brainbox, Joe Goddard returns with his third album Harmonics, the long-awaited successor to his 2017 effort, Electric Lines. An eclectic and immensely danceable menagerie of grooves, it’s a perfect release for eternal summer nights following a day spent losing yourself at an inner-city festival. Featuring a stellar cast of collaborators, this is one for the movers among us; it taps into something special.
Other stellar releases this week emerge from South London’s Club Kuru, American heroine Clairo and even Scottish mainstays Travis, who show with their new effort, L.A. Times, that they still have a long road ahead of them. On the other side of the coin, former Deerhoof man Chris Cohen provides this week’s biggest disappointment in Paint a Room.
Find this week’s Alternative Album Chart below.
The best new indie and alternative albums this week:
Fool’s Parade – Color Green – 4
Music doesn’t always have to be so cerebral and affected as the contemporary norm. There’s a reason why it is perhaps the most varied artistic landscape out there: music appeals to every aspect of life and every conceivable emotion. On Color Green’s new album Fool’s Parade, the quartet delivers another stellar bag of sincere and captivating psychedeliathat pulls from more areas than the genre’s mention might suggest.
You might think psychedelic rock is a vastly overpopulated domain. It seems tough for newer bands to stake a claim onthis once verdant patch, given how many leviathans have pitched up there and reaped the fat of the land. However, with Fool’s Parade, the California-based outfit not only makes good on their resident state’s inextricable link from the genre’s heady past but blends it with zesty new elements. This includes guest appearances from members of Osees and The Nude Party, to name but a few.
Like the band’s live shows, it’s a record that has you on your toes throughout, with the sincere moments utterly piercing and the dynamic conflagrations immensely entertaining. Co-produced by Color Green alongside the eminent Mike Kriebel – who’s worked with genre forces such as Osees, Wand, Segall, as well as Drab Majesty offshoot VR Sex – and mastered at the genre’s spiritual home of London’s Abbey Road Studios, all the pieces have fallen into place on Fool’s Parade. It’s a deeply profound, narcotic experience.
Harmonics – Joe Goddard – 4
Music has developed a great deal since dance first came about, but still, one of the most common criticisms you hear about the genre is that “all songs sound the same.” It’s a lazy critique, but it prevails as many people who hate moving and fun will roll their eyes at the sniff of an 808 and claim their chosen genre has musical supremacy. Well, if you subscribe to this view, Harmonics is here, and Joe Goddard has put together an album that shows the beautiful diversity available in dance.
As a member of Hot Chip, Joe Goddard is no stranger to getting people up and moving. You could say this kind of music runs in his veins at this point, but if you ever needed more proof that he is an electronic, dance and house maestro, you’ll find it on Harmonics. To have an album consistent throughout yet span so many different styles, sounds, and cultures is a true triumph.
Goddard’s expertise is only further enhanced by the range of exciting features that make up Harmonics. The likes of Ibibo Sound Machine, Fiorious and Oranje make it so the whole album has no corner that can’t go undiscovered. Overall, this album is fun, expansive and an absolute masterclass in electronic music. [Words: Dale Maplethorpe]
Before the World – Club Kuru – 3.5
Before the World is a loosely conceptual record, the birthchild of a thousand rainy nights in South East London. Club Kuru, the British psychedelic rock outfit led by Laurie Erskine, have remained mostly dormant over the five years since their 2019 album Meet Your Maker. During these five years, Club Kuru circumnavigated the Covid-19 pandemic, a cumbrous creative block and personal struggles, and we’re glad to have them back.
Although the recording sessions for Before the World lasted just a couple of weeks, Erskine has patched together the material over a longer timeframe. Pivotally, he wrote much of the material in solitude, which gives the material a reflective nuance. In Before the World, Erskine releases his most introspective and sombre material to date. The themes of mortality pertain to a tragic loss in the singer and songwriter’s family, which fortunately preceded a new birth, as reflected in moments of hope.
The main attraction of this album is the psychedelic instrumentation, which flows in faithful matrimony with Erskine’s vocal performance. From soaring guitar solos to rippling piano balladry, the album takes stylistic cues from psychedelic and progressive rock influences of the late 1960s and ’70s. For optimal authenticity, the band recorded directly onto tape. [Words: Jordan Potter]
Charm – Clairo – 3.5
It’s hard to understate the impact of Clairo despite the fact that she always seems like an unassuming force. When she first emerged, gaining millions of views on her self-recorded track ‘Pretty Girl’, she brought with her a huge wave of bedroom pop artists. As a second tsunami of popularity hit her with her debut album Immunity and the massive, viral tracks ‘Bags’ and ‘Sofia’, Clairo was left trying not to sink under her own hype.
There seems to be a pattern of this, with Gen-Z artists especially finding major success and then seeming to get scared and want to run from it. Lizzy McAlpine is another example as her hit ‘Ceilings’ was then followed by a bout of major anxiety and the decision to tour in a more low-key way, as if to try and squash some of that excitement. Clairo seems to have done the same as Immunity was followed up by the notably more demure. Sling, and now Charm, an album that feels devoid of hits as if to try and keep her fans, or the prospect of gaining more, at an arm’s length.
That’s not to say that Clairo is purposefully making bad albums. Charm is beautiful. It’s cohesive and mature, full of complex instrumentals but with a clear sonic identity, as the musician seems to have fallen in love with pianos for this record. When listening from start to finish in an engaged and focused way, it reveals itself to be an impressive undertaking. But, even the most beautiful tracks like ‘Slow Dance’ or ‘Terrapin’ blur into the rest as the album’s cohesion also feels like its downfall as it fades to beige. [Words: Lucy Harbron]
L.A. Times – Travis – 3.5
For most of us, Travis feels like a band born out of the ashes of Britpop into the indie music revival, but their sound and impact have deeper roots than just that. Delivering a personal selection of songs more potent than perhaps 1999’s The Man Who, L.A. Times is a pinball of unexplored territories, but in a way that’s completely organised without seeming too rigid.
This album comes at a somewhat strange cultural time when music has simultaneously become an open mix of just about everything and a playground of various elements siphoned to the sidelines. This makes it difficult for most bands to adopt both nostalgic and contemporary qualities, making L.A. Times seem a little dated. On paper.
In reality, it’s anything but. L.A. Times adopts everything Travis has done well to establish over the years and rarely exits the arena they have crafted for themselves. Theoretically, this should be a recipe for disaster, but instead of appearing empty and energyless, it proves that, when done right, sticking to your roots can be great. [Words: Kelly Scanlon]
Tailem Bend – ORB – 3
Since the early 2010s, Australia has fostered a thriving psychedelic rock scene, with a large majority of the genre’s most successful names hailing from down under. While most music fans will know of acts like Tame Impala and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, that’s only scraping the surface. ORB, who hail from Geelong, have been releasing music since 2015, building from a solid psychedelic foundation with layers of sludgy stoner rock and metal.
Their newest album, Tailem Bend, sees them lean back more into their hallucinatory roots, with some songs largely abstaining from dirge and darkness, swapping these textures out for lighter, even groove-inducing rhythms. On ‘Can’t Do That’, it feels as though ORB are asking us to sing along, infusing the track with sunniness and a lighthearted appeal. At the same time, the song still maintains lots of experimentation and a jam-like sensibility, evidently inspired by krautrock acts like Can.
While ORB’s foray into slightly more accessible territory is still worthwhile, the band are at their best when they moveaway from these attempts to please a larger audience. When they enter a more mysterious, instrumentally complex landscape, where riffs weave in and out without friction and they fall into effortless tune with one another, ORB prove themselves to be extremely talented musicians.
There are some genuinely great moments here, but they’re sandwiched between some less memorable cuts, like the theatrical ‘Skyclock’, which feels completely different to anything they’ve ever done before. Tailem Bend displays impressive musicianship, but sadly, not all of ORB’s experimentalism pays off. [Words: Aimee Ferrier]
My Light, My Destroyer – Cassandra Jenkins – 3
With the rise of so-called “sad girl” music, indie folk has become a crowded marketplace. There are countless guitar-wielding women telling tales of love and longing over gentle strums and Americana twangs, hoping to add something new to the genre, desperately trying to stand out on Spotify’s ‘my life is a movie’ playlist. The latest attempt to do so comes from Cassandra Jenkins in the form of My Light, My Destroyer.
There are certain songs that feel restricted to the tropes that sad girl indie has set out for itself: declarations of desperation and strums that indulge them. But Jenkins also pulls heavily from jazz on My Light, My Destroyer, adorning her sonic storytelling with saxophones that sound as if they’ve bled into the recording studio from a nearby jazz club. She fills the record with voice recordings, too, so that it often feels like you’re listening in on a conversation you shouldn’t be.
My Light, My Destroyer isn’t necessarily a groundbreaking entry into the realm of indie-folk poeticism, but it’s a gorgeous record nonetheless. There are tracks that pass by without a second thought that would get lost amidst names like Julia Jacklin and Mitski, but there are moments that do manage to cut through the endless stream of sad girls and offer something new. [Words: Elle Palmer]
Strange Burden – Font – 2.5
A debut album is a pretty daunting thing for artists to come to terms with. Often, groups will spend years honing their craft, playing live shows and touring before even thinking about heading into a studio. As a result, debut albums often feature artists at their most honest and expressive, before they have been jaded by the harsh realities of the music industry.On the other hand, debut records can also be a confused amalgamation of every idea a band or artist has ever had. Unfortunately, Strange Burden, the debut release from Austin’s Font falls into the latter category.
After hitting the Austin scene back in 2022, Font quickly grew a reputation for their eclectic and chaotic sound. Thanks in part to bandmembers Jack Owens, Thom Waddill and their time playing in a college cover band, Font amassed an incredibly broad body of influences, many of which can be heard plainly throughout Strange Burden. Over the course ofthe record, Font move sporadically from old-school post-punk, to driving dance music and brooding self-reflection.Oftentimes, Font embody the sound of bands passed, with tracks like ‘Hey Kekulé’ particularly reminiscent of earlier groups like A Certain Ratio.
The production of Strange Burden, largely undertaken by Waddill along with multi-instrumentalist Anthony Laurence, also lets the record down at points. For instance, there are tracks like ‘Natalie’s Song’, which you can envisage being a definite highlight of Font’s live performance but, on the record, the sound of the song falls flat, causing it to sound underwhelming and unremarkable. Nevertheless, there are some truly interesting concepts explored across the album, and Font certainly show promise for the future, despite the confused sonic mess that permeates through much of their debut. [Words: Ben Forrest]
Paint a Room – Chris Cohen – 2
Sometimes an album implores you to slowly pore over its finer details, to call a psychologist about its crooned lyrics, to probe at its musical constitution on pro-tools, to dismantle what exactly it is that you’re getting from it and what the artist intended to give you. With Paint a Room, Chris Cohen and his many indie collaborators have created the exact inverse of that.
Immediately, the pungent perfume lifting off the vinyl is so intense that you’re instantly transported to some early 1980s lounge bar where everything seems to be made of Burt Reynolds’ chest hair, or at least capture its essence. Everything else fades into the background of this bewildering, gaudy facade. Jeff Parker’s horn arrangements almost feel like a parody of the sticky tones you’d expect to hear piped out in a restaurant frequented by Patrick Bateman.
So, all that remains is whether that’s a bad thing or not. During his years in Deerhoof, Chris Cohen was not the most expressive of artists, but here he’s effectively compèring a jazz and poetry night at the yacht club. In short, it is certainly not the record you’d expect. But once again, the task for fans is to decipher whether that’s a bad thing or not. The problem is, you’re not left with much brain space to ever engage in too much discerning. The lava lamp tonality keeps you too preoccupied for that, creating a record akin to Mulholland Drive in many ways. [Words: Tom Taylor]
