The Alternative Album Chart: The best new indie albums this week
Every year in the music calendar, June marks the moment that everything starts to arrive. From the 1st onwards, you can literally witness the hairlines of music editors recede in real time, like a landslide of post-punk fringes played in reverse. It is a blessing and it is a curse, but securing your slot on festival stages, ensuring your place on the playlist of a thousand BBQs, and cashing in on the positive vibes of the sun is a windfall that keeps the industry afloat. Hell, even Bob Dylan is back at it with a live record.
This week we saw the returns of rocking stalwarts Noel Gallagher and the Foo Fighters. Baxter Dury also comically mused on being a musician with a famous dad in the age of nepotism. And plenty of acts joined the jam-packed week. Thankfully, just about all these records happened to be worth your time too; whether you were fans before or not, June got off to a cracking start.
With Glastonbury on the horizon, the stress of a frantic schedule subsides and the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald come to mind: “And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.” And I feel myself concurring with Henry James who opined: “Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
So, without further ado, let’s look at the perfect accompaniment of those summer afternoons in question: indie music. Aside from the names above we’ve got handpicked new ones from Demob Happy, Lanterns on the Lake and Beach Fossils for you as we look at the finest releases this week.
The best new indie and alternative albums this week:
Council Skies – Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – 4/5
This week, Noel Gallagher releases his new album, Council Skies. As its cover artwork – a roundabout in the modest Moss Side neighbourhood that marks the site of Manchester City FC’s former Maine Road ground – depicts, Gallagher has embarked on a regression session of sorts in Council Skies. “I was just reflecting on how I’d got to where I’d got to, and I had a lot of time to sit and think about it,” he said in a May interview with The Mancunion. “It’s a reflective album, more than anything”.
Gallagher’s latest and most reflective journey was not made in vain. Council Skies is a considered and consummate follow-up to the more psychedelic and adventurous Who Built The Moon? This new record is by no means a work of innovative genius, nor was it intended to be. Gallagher has brought his fans back to the start with a well-structured, well-produced and well-sung discographic entry. Now he’s gone full circle, does an Oasis reunion await on the horizon? (Words: Jordan Potter)
But Here We Are – Foo Fighter – 4/5
Over ten tracks, this album feels more like a cathartic listen between the band and audience as they come together to grieve the loss of a dear friend. Starting with ‘Rescued’, Grohl doesn’t even begin to try and hide what it’s about, with the opening line about everything coming in a flash and then being over encapsulating their situation perfectly.
While it’s hard to call But Here We Are a classic Foo Fighters record, it’s definitely a record that should garner respect later as the band comb through their back pages to celebrate their own story of survival. It might hurt to be dealt this kind of blow, but it takes the strong to get back up, and Foo Fighters have come out on the other side stronger for it. (Words: Tim Coffman)
Versions of Us – Lanterns on the Lake – 4/5
Lanterns on the Lake have that stark capacity that could haunt and empty house, but this time out they subsume that side of their character in a welter of powerful sounds that tap along to the metronome click of Karen O’s swaggering stiletto heels. With assuredness they wade into a smorgasbord of indie influences to create an album that swings like many of your favourites but always proves implacably original.
The tyneside band are now ten years on from their debut and that time has clearly layered their sound with a deeper assortment of influences and the confidence to follow them. However, as ever with the band, the strength is in that uncanny knack they have of the music magically coalescing with your mood. This is a summer gem that yearns for you to join it with a glass of wine.
I Thought I Was Better Than You – Baxter Dury – 3.5/5
“Why am I condemned because I’m the son of a musician?” Baxter Dury snarls in typical fashion on his latest album I Thought I Was Better Than You. It’s a stand-out moment—one of those lyrical slaps that he specialises in, subverting the standards of what we have come to expect from songwriters with a thrilling knack of ditching all tropes and dolling out barely rhyming amusement in the form of quirky yet honest quips.
Once again, I Thought I Was Better Than You is resplendent with these original remarks, and that’s usually enough to push Dury towards five stars on its own. However, 20 years on from Len Parrot’s Memorial Lift, he seemingly finds his songwriting in a slightly uncertain patch. This results in a great record well worth your time owing to his ability to always be interesting coupled with the melodious listenability of the album, but in years to come, if you’re reaching for Dury in your record collection, this won’t be the first you pluck out.
Such Ferocious Beauty – Cowboy Junkies – 3.5/5
Now 18 studio albums in the Cowboy Junkies prove that a lack of ideas is something that only affects those who never had enough of them in the first place. Such Ferocious Beauty is a record that has an air of their debut, The Trinity Sessions, and that is a massive compliment to say the least. It begins with the feeling of a saloon door swinging in cool western and never lets the drama slide from there.
This hotspur attitude is not without its sense of quirkiness though either. That much is affirmed on the track ‘Mike Tyson (Here It Comes)’, a song that broods like The Bad Seeds but carries a wry smile of modern cultural commentary. Yep, the Cowboy Junkies have never lost it, and exactly what ‘it’ is still remains beautifully enigmatic.
Divine Machines – Demob Happy – 3/5
In a rather comic fashion, Demob Happy’s own Matthew Marcantonio reflected on the commercial-bent of their new record in the press release: “We’ve never chased the dragon of success, even though we’ve been encouraged to, but we’re not interested in doing it like that. We’ve always done what we wanted, but now it seems like it might align with what other people want as well.”
It is notably a more polished album than we’re used to from the fuzzy trio. However, the experimentation of the genre-hopping ways from their earlier efforts remain. They are a band whose sound is almost akin to sampling. This time the assortment is an adrenalised mix that somehow pairs elements of disco with flashes of desert rock. It’ll certainly put some pep in your Chelsea booted step this summer.
Bunny – Beach Fossils – 3/5
Beach Fossils’ fourth album, Bunny, sees the band explore themes such as fatherhood, depression, grief, friendship and love, making it feel infinitely relatable to listeners. The record is beautifully atmospheric, evoking nostalgia and hazy summer days with reverberating guitars and peppy drum beats that pay homage to shoegaze, dream pop and indie rock artists from the 1990s.
The album has its highlights, ‘Feel So High’ mirroring the spacey psychedelic nature of the title, and ‘Numb’ taking a heavier, shoegaze-influenced approach that stands out as one of the album’s strongest moments. Overall, Bunny is an impressive effort, yet one that lacks enough power to sustain repeated listens and interest. Beach Fossils demonstrate their skills at making intricately complex soundscapes that resonate with a retro sensibility, but it leaves us wishing for more meat to chew on.
Live album: Shadow Kingdom – Bob Dylan – 4.5/5
At 82-years-old, Bob Dylan is still the original vagabond out on the road and seeing him live remains biblical. Unlike a lot of older icons, Dylan has not become a tribute act to his former glory. In many ways, this itself is a tribute to his artistry in the first place—none of his work was ever upholding to any gimmick or pretence, it was all about the power of the songs themselves and they have remained as timeless as ever. And so, he has aged like a great artist should, weathering towards a mystic depth and imbued with a gravelled power that defies his frail stature like a feather that floats towards a window and shatters the pane on impact.
On Shadow Kingdom, he is as vital as ever. The title seems to decreed the coded myth that makes the album soar. As he once wrote: “Songs, to me, were more important than just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality. Some different republic, some liberated republic.” In a live setting, Dylan is still able to manipulate reality towards this sovereignty of song, towards his mythic shadow kingdom.
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