Back catalogue: Indie/Alternative

Review: ***B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition***


It might cost a bit more to manufacture but 180g vinyl is much more satisfying to hold. There's something in your brain that tells you weight correlates to quality and it's best to trust it. This decadent cut of silver vinyl is for the reissue of synth-pop legend Thomas Dolby's joyous masterpiece of a debut album (originally released in 1982). From the moment the first notes strike on the technopop opener 'Flying North', it's assured and makes you want to strap in for the long haul and when you do you're rewarded with eclectic leftfield hits, such as 'She Blinded Me With Science', which is so groovy and trippy it make you feel like you're strutting your stuff in the crowd on Top of the Pops in the 80s. It's an album that's up there with anything from the likes of Soft Cell, OMD or Gary Numan.

Review: New wave/synth pop artist Thomas Dolby is on extrovert mode here on his joyous, funky third studio album. Originally released in 1988, the album didn't fare particularly well commercially, at least compared to his 1982 hit 'She Blinded Me With Science', but the sheer inventiveness on display here makes it an underrated gem. The slap bass-laden single 'Hot Sauce' isn't shy in its use of light double entendre and when you think you have it pinned down musically, a Spaghetti Western interlude appears and there's a salsa outro. Elsewhere, on 'My Brain Is Like A Sieve' reggae and sophisti-pop collide to stunning effect and the tongue-in-cheek hit 'Airhead' shows off his David Bowie-esque pop baritone, whilst showering us in a stylistic stew.

Review: Stella Donnelly made a huge impression with her first long-form outing, Beware of the Dogs. One of those records that manages to combine some truly on-point and difficult themes - toxic masculinity, racism, body rights and climate change - with naive hope. Something we could all do with a little of right now. Flood is like that child praying for future happiness skipped the teenage anger and went straight to adult despair.

Hence the reason this album seems to resonate so much more than the highly accomplished (and essential) first. Here the Australian singer-songwriter conjures sexy jazz, distorted brass balladry, and uptempo lite rock to tell us all that she sees things for what they really are - knackered. Opener 'Lungs' is a case in point: marrying breezy guitar and piano work with a story of a landlord ignoring asbestos warnings to leave her and poverty-line parents living in a death trap, with no redemption.

Review: Flared, blazered indie rockers Dope Lemon don leopard-print scarves and pink supercars as they glide, sunshades on, down the street to the tune of their new album 'Rose Pink Cadillac'. After the release of their recent single of the same name, the album is decidedly electro-funky and sultry in feel, with the band reconcile every mood between the styles of Tame Impala and Anderson Paak, and teasing a stinking funk to the smooth production that belies each vocal performance by Angus Stone. Coming to CD and LP, one lucky fan who preorders the album will receive - yes - a real 1960s rose pink cadillac with their preorder.

Review: Dr. Robert of British 80s pop hitmakers The Blow Monkeys and British folk icon Matt Deighton (Mother Earth, Bill Fay, Paul Weller) have formed a new duo and release their album on the not-for-profit Last Night From Glasgow label. Their respective histories - writing really accomplished pop songs and performing in bands with some of the best artists in the history of rock n' roll - raise expectations, but they absolutely smash them. The title-track is a beautiful marriage of pastoral psych folk and glam rock, where there's melodies to spare and affecting, deeply soulful timbres at every turn.

Review: This demo sessions album is a real rarity - so if you were one of few to bag a copy first time round, you likely earned some jealous looks from fans. But since it's earned cult status as a jewel in their oeuvre through word of mouth, America's answer to Slowdive caved to popular opinion and made it more accessible with this first ever remaster job. This album takes it back to where it all began. Before signing to Caroline Records, Boston-based shoegazers took a leaf out of the punk DIY handbook and handed out this collection on cassette at gigs around London and posted it to labels. 4AD picked up on it and handed the cassette to the Melody Maker, where critics swooned and sparked a feeding frenzy for their signature. And for good reason: despite being less produced than their albums proper, the muddier mixes have a murky, hypnotic edge. Of the songs here 'Song For J.J.' is exhilarating with its unsettling, apocalyptic atmosphere. And 'Daymom' is the audio equivalent to being stood on a windswept Arctic tundra - dark, desolate beauty to its core. Many bands will come and do their best Drop Nineteens impression with the nu-gaze movement in full swing, but the 'Teens had something really special that can't be repeated.

Review: "I told her my plight, then I played her a song, and she told me I wasn't singing high enough for my speaking voice. When I returned to LA, I started coming up with new progressions, which I'd modulate up three half steps. It forced me to find a new way to sing."

So says Drugdealer founder, singer and primary songwriter Michael Collins of his chance meeting with composer-artist Annette Peacock at Mexican Summer's annual Marfa Myths festival, their conversation concerning his lack of faith in his own singing voice which, by this point, had become crippling to the point of giving up. Taking that sage advice and applying it, Hiding In Plain Sight is the result - an incredible exercise in modern soul-rock and an instant classic.

Review: If there's a list of bands to get - or be - excited about to hand, then add Dummy to it. The Los Angeles crew formed in late-2018, and had a solid run of things through to the great pandemic pause, and between then and now have evolved pretty quickly to get to where they are. All the trappings of a group deserving of cut status, although sadly perhaps not huge commercial success (then again, who is these days?), attempting to define their sound isn't easy.

As this vinyl-only outing proves. Comprising two EPs - logically entitled 'EP1' and 'EP2', both released in 2020 - this is very dense stuff indeed. Veering from the blissful, earthy ambience of 'Second Contact', to sci-fi synth refrains on 'Touch the Chimes', and Pixies-style garage rock chaos with 'Slacker Mask', we implore you not to pass these over.

Review: The Durutti Column prove just how fertile the North West England music scene was during the mid-late-1970s and through the 1980s. Taking their name from an anarchist military movement active during the Spanish Civil War, the band was formed by Vini Reilly, who brought together a bunch of players from the nascent punk and post punk scene, and managed to turn heads in the process. One of which was Tony Wilson. One of the first acts to sign to his now-legendary Factory Records, they would remain on the imprint until its demise, by which time the project had become a solo thing for Reilly, whose name was already shorthand for risk taking with bold ideas. Take this record, for example, veering from Southern Mediterranean folk to experimental indie, sample-based rock-opera and more, it still defies expectations.

Review: Durutti Column fans will often say that this album, Paean to Wilson, is the band's best work since Factory Records began its sad demise in the early 1990's. It was in 2009 that the record was commissioned by Manchester International Festival of Music, at which point Vini Reilly had already composed pieces for Manchester icon Tony Wilson to listen to from his hospital bed. The album developed from there and gave rise to a 70-minute international festival tribute to Tony Wilson. It features plenty of virtuoso guitar performances from Reilly, who refused to sing during that live show as another tribute to Wilson who had always said he should leave the vocals out.

Review: Baxter Dury has been making superbly loose and laidback sounds for more than 20 years now. Here, Mr Maserati collects some of his famously idiosyncratic sounds from across that long career with plenty of comedown disco sounds and deep, rumbling basslines. There is plenty of wry humour and musical sweetness within the material which is taken from Baxter's six long players. Says the artist, "It's a kind of provincial nod to the music I got into during lockdown because my son was playing it - Frank Ocean, Tyler the Creator and Kendrick Lamar."

Review: The Crown Prince of Essex is here in all his sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll glory, and while most of the tracks on this career-spanning collection will be familiar, diving back into the back catalogue is a welcome reminder of the power of modern poetry. Ever the astute lyricist, deftly combining slang with more sophisticated forms of English wordplay, it's enough to make you fall head over heels for the eccentric lad-cum-laird all over again.

With early anthems such as 'Kilburn & The High Roads' sitting next to outtakes from his final, posthumous 2002 album and classics like 'Reasons To Be Cheerful Pt.3', and 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick', Hit Me! is as comprehensive an introduction or as deep an exploration of a musical master's work as you are likely to find on two discs. Let's leave it at that.

Review: American rock band Duster returned back in September with a fourth new full-length album. Just a mere matter of months later, their regal Numero Uno label is also reissuing their Stratsophere album. It dates back to 1998 and found the band of multi-instrumentalists Clay Parton, Canaan Dove Amber and Jason Albertini reinventing a slow-core sound at the end of the first wave. It's a dreamscape soundtrack with hazy, arpeggiated guitars layered up over fine drumming and barely-there vocals. Still special even now.