Alternative Album Chart: the best new indie and alternative albums this week
There’s a lot to be said for musicians who chart their own course and continue on it, resisting outside temptation and the pull of the zeitgeist as they push on to the promised land of total creative enlightenment. With his Wunderhorse project, Jacob Slater has certainly done that, and on their second album, Midas, he has edged ever closer to realising his ultimate vision, providing another example that rock is not dead. It aptly follows other recent successes from the likes of Fontaines D.C., a band Wunderhorse have opened for in the past.
Midas is a strong contender for album of the year. Throughout its run-time, Slater builds on the foundations laid by the band’s debut album, Cub, with his songwriting once again absolutely astounding, but this time slightly more refined, with the time that has passed since allowing him to fine-tune what makes Wunderhorse so excellent. From the lyrics and the vocal delivery to the emotive clang of the guitars, there’s a lot to love about it.
Elsewhere this week, Los Bitchos return with Talkie Talkie, another excellent opus that sees the quartet steer their distinctive formula into the future, and with another kaleidoscopic collection of grooves. A cinematic and deeply imaginative record that pulls from an eclectic potpourri of spaces, from cumbia to Turkish psychedelic rock, it’s an entertaining record from start to finish that will have us dancing even as the summer morphs into the cold months.
Other exciting exhibits this week come from ambient innovator Julie Hill on glow serene, and Tacoma, Washington’s Enumclaw, who deliver a deeply sincere collection of alternative rock on their second album, Home In Another Life. The most prominent act to reappear this week is cultural icon Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds with Wild God, an album that will greatly polarise fans.
Find this week’s Alternative Album Chart below.
The best new indie and alternative albums this week:
Midas – Wunderhorse – [4.5]
People talk a lot about the idea of the ‘tricky second album’. After the debut captures the world’s attention, all eyes turn to the artist. While the first could be made in peace, the sophomore effort is heavy with expectations and pressures, demanding evolution but not too much. For most artists, the debut feels like their purest creation. But for Wunderhorse, their second album, Midas, is a return in the form of a reinvention.
After the burn out and loneliness Slater had experienced in music, Midas feels like a recovery. While the album is full of introspection and expertly crafted lyrics that are heavy with emotion and poetry, the build of the record is one that refusesto hold itself back with thinking. When it came to recording the album’s opening number and title track, their producer Craig Silvey simply hit play on a tape machine, capturing what the band treated as just a practice but ended up being the final and explosive production. That one tale is the perfect explanation for this record: the best things come without trying. Rock requires energy, and allowing a band to simply play as a band, as they would on stage, with no pressure or thought beyond that momentary performance, is always going to capture that energy best.
In that way, Midas was not only an antidote to Slater’s own earlier disillusionment with music, but is a vital antidote for the world’s. Sure, guitars and rock never went anywhere, but as the realm of grassroots music becomes tougher to navigate, an album like this, that’s laced with the balm of live music and serves as a reminder of the power a great band can have, feels very necessary.
In short, Midas is a triumph on all fronts. It is anthemic enough to level the band up to bigger stages, intimate enough to allow fans to develop their own relationship with it, and interesting enough to cement Wunderhorse’s status as an act to keep an eye on and respect. It is a great rock record made with exactly the same energy behind all of history’s great rock records, as Slater, the band, and their listeners return to the root of it all.
Talkie Talkie – Los Bitchos – [4]
Originality is a prized resource in the 21st century. So, when a group like Los Bitchos come around, it is certainly a cause for celebration. Since its inception in 2017, the internationally assembled outfit has been blending disparate styles of cumbia, disco, funk, rock, psychedelia and everything in between, creating a euphoric and infectiously danceable sound in the process.
On their earlier material, such as 2022’s Let The Festivities Begin! Los Bitchos seemed anchored to the funky sounds of cumbia and Latin jazz. While these influences still largely form the backbone of the group, the newly unveiled album Talkie Talkie pushes the band into a variety of previously unexplored avenues. In particular, the album sees the band explore the vibrant world of Turkish psychedelic rock, as well as old-school disco influences. As is often the case with Los Bitchos, you would not necessarily put those genres together, yet the band seem to blend them together with apparent ease and riveting results.
Talkie Talkie is, in essence, an instrumental concept album. As you move through the diverse tracklisting, a certain narrative unfolds itself, as if the record is telling the story of a faraway disco nightclub and the various scenes which occurwithin those walls. Nevertheless, the sound of the record moves seamlessly from the cumbia sound Los Bitchos has become synonymous with to cheesy 1980s disco, Anatolian psychedelia, and even surf and garage rock at certain points. Listening to Los Bitchos is never a boring experience, in each and every track the band offer something new and interesting to sink your teeth into.
glow serene – Julie Hill – [3.5]
Ambient music can be relatively divisive at times. You’ll rarely find anyone who actively dislikes it, but because of its calm nature and the fact the majority of songs build up very slowly, some fans of more fast-paced and energetic music will try to stay clear of it. That’s understandable. It’s all subjective, and atmospheric music can often be something easy to disassociate from; however, that can’t be said with Julie Hill’s newest album, ‘glow serene’.
There is no doubt about it: this is a slow-burning, gorgeous, ambient album that any fans of this genre are going to adore. Hill blends natural and man-made sounds, using recordings of the wind, rain, and running water alongside oscillating synths that allow Mother Nature and musical production to perform in tandem. The result is a luscious off-set of the busy modern world.
Additionally, though, this record has a lot that people who don’t often lean into ambient music might enjoy. For instance, vocals are sporadically placed throughout. There are a lot of effects added to them, but they still sound gorgeous and give more of a standard structure to something that could otherwise be nebulous. She also places a couple of very shortnumbers in the album in the form of ‘an ether and time’ and ‘in and out of your mind’, which provide some levity to the whole LP.
Home In Another Life – Enumclaw – [3.5]
Alternative rock has been a world-famous genre for nearly four decades now. Given the significance of its most essential bands, the giant artistic leaps they enacted, and the tsunami of pretenders they prompted, it can be hard to stand out in such an overpopulated environment. Yet, since breaking out, Tacoma’s Enumclaw have certainly forced their way through the din of the masses. Their second album, Home In Another Life, confirms this, as they refine their tact, and get highly candid at points.
Considering the band has only been around since 2021 and are already on their second studio length – following on from 2022’s debut, Save The Baby – it shows just how much ground they have already covered. Due to such early triumphs, they are now on Run for Cover Records, the home to some of the best guitar music around, the perfect space to keep pushing on. Enumclaw’s second album sees frontman Aramis Johnson produce another collection of compelling lyrics and vocal deliveries, with the band backing him up with crunching guitars, potent melodies and narcotic grooves. They hit differently this time out, though.
Blending alt-rock, shoegaze and indie, there’s a lot to dive into on Home In Another Life, which will undoubtedly be lapped up by those so inclined. While one obvious critique would be that it could be more varied, with some tracks blending into one in musicality and vocal style, the highlights are enough to save it from any significant trashing. The songwriting and sentiment are strong enough on their own, and there are several cogent pointers to where the quartet might head next.
Love Rudiments – Ty Segall – [3.5]
Ty Segall has always been one of those artists it is hard to keep up with unless you’re a diehard fan. He is always working on a new project, whether that be solo, with a band, or as a collaborative project with another musician. Yet, whatever you find yourself delving into is always going to be good, even if it isn’t what you might expect.
With Love Rudiments, fans should leave their expectations of short garage rock cuts or glam rock-inspired tracks – like those Segall has made before – at the door. There are no sludgy riffs, meditations on eggs, rock covers of 1970s-era soul songs, or guitar-laden psychedelia to be found here.
Rather, Segall presents us with four songs, each chronicling various aspects of a relationship, beginning with the first meeting between lovers and moving through excitement and eventual heartbreak. There is no singing here; each track is built around drums, the instrument that helped Segall fall in love with music in the first place.
A wealth of influences are clearly at play here, and Segall presents them in a neatly wrapped bow. It’s a creative project that Segall clearly enjoyed making, and while there is a slight lack of variety, the musician seems to be welcoming us to tune in and get lost in the soundscape he creates.
Ritual – Jon Hopkins – [3.5]
One man’s long droning note, is another’s symphony. To address this record from a non-specialised perspective is to recognise that there will be people who’ll hear Ritual and think Jon Hopkins has fallen soundly asleep on his sequencer. And there will also be people enraptured by the minutia of poetry in each wavering note, who’ll marvel over how the mind can draw so much from such minimalism.
Others will flit between those two polls, trapped, as it were, between embracing the cheese board or staying true to the good old knickerbocker glory. In other words, the rewards of Hopkins‘ seventh solo album, are an acquired taste. But that is not to say they are more muted and neutral. The sophistication of experimenting with what you can extract from a single sustained sound, steadily builds across the eight-part movement to moments of euphoria and moments of dread.
Characterised by hypnotic drum loops, pitch-driven ascension and the occasional choral vocal hum, the record is Hopkins at perhaps his most compositionally footloose. The album is liberated from a sense of purpose beyond creativity itself. Thusly, anything unleashed is largely by subconscious chance. So, it’s rather typical and human, that there is a definite arc to proceedings. Hopkins might not have even known the journey himself, but we’re all passengers on it with our ownvistas.
Wild God – Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds – [3.5]
Up until about a year ago, Nick Cave was approaching a national treasure status, firmly inviolable to censure thanks to the way he was empathetically revolutionising what a rock star could be in the 21st century. Then the door was left ajar for a hint of criticism – rather cynically and unjustly, I might add – when he attended the King’s coronation.
While this might seem amiss to bring up, in the same way that his old friend Mark E. Smith said having security guards wasn’t particularly good for your writing—I’m not sure attending coronations is either. Wild God begins with an Elviseque spoken word moment about a beautiful lake, or some shit, that is every bit as pompous, overblown and self-serious as a coronation itself. And that’s fine. You’d expect that from Wild God. In fact, you’d want that from Cave in his current era.
These opening moments also mark the album’s artistic aim to champion expression über alles, but in doing so, Cave loses sight of the refinement that makes expression eloquent. While it seems harsh to criticise his writing given that he’s arguably one of the finest writers of the last 50 years, there are undoubtedly messy moments, like when he rhymes godwith god four times in a row in the song ‘Wild God’ on the album Wild God.
This same method applies to the music. He has gone for an expression-led orchestral swell that careens and swooshes to the whims of his muse. But the problem is that he isn’t Vivaldi. These grand moments have always been part of his work, but with tracks like ‘Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow’ he also had what Vivaldi didn’t have, which was a thumping chorus and some searing guitar work by Mick Harvey and Blixa Bargeld.
All told, the record is largely a unique and powerful triumph. It boldly reaches for the heavens and often grabs the odd walloping fistful. However, to be entirely truthful, if in two years time the mood for a bit of Nick Cave hits his longstanding fans, the vast majority of people may well bypass Wild God in favour of Push the Sky Away, or have a good cry with Ghosteen instead.
Wish On The Bone – Why Bonnie – [3.5]
Contemporary audiences haven’t been the kindest regarding the evolution of country music. Between the traditional, whiskey-soaked sounds of Willie Nelson and the queer-veiled delivery of Orville Peck, most criticisms tend to centre around the more basic qualities of its sound rather than the different nuances of each artist and the significance of their backgrounds.
However, to shoehorn Why Bonnie into a category as definitive as country almost feels reductive, given their status as one of the most exciting melodic blends of late. Comprising Blair Howerton, Chance Williams, and Josh Malett, Why Bonnie built its foundation in country but also adopted elements of indie, alternative, shoegaze and pop, resulting in a dizzyingly sweet concoction of dark and light; the perfect sound to sink your teeth into if you’ve ever felt simultaneously energised and disillusioned.
Wish On The Bone is a pleasant surprise, not just because of its excellence but also because of the seamless way it melds varying sensibilities. From traditional country to rock and featherlight pop melodies, the album effortlessly blends these elements, creating a timelessly compelling listen anchored by Howerton’s gorgeous vocals.
