Back in stock: Indie/Alternative

Review: There's certainly plenty to talk about here. British chart-topping and stadium-filling enigmas The 1975 return to prove you really can't predict what the troupe will do next, delivering what would be their most divisive and explorative album if it weren't for the fact they command so much loyalty from fans you could be forgiven for thinking dark forces were at play. 'Notes On A Conditional Form' is easily the furthest we've wandered from the formative years of a band that cut teeth doing teen-punk covers, and it's hard not to notice the subtle theme here. From 'Having No Head', which rides on a sharp house groove, through the garage breaks of 'Yeah I Know', low slung dub of 'Shiny Collarbone' and the shoegaze of 'Streaming', it plays out like a celebration of the breadth and diversity of UK pop culture.

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


Alice in Chains' Jar of Flies from 1994 is a masterful album that showcases the band's versatility and songwriting prowess across an acoustic-driven collection of tracks. They deliver plenty of haunting melodies and introspective lyrics that make for a deeply immersive listen. There is a real melancholic beauty to 'Nutshell' while a gritty intensity pervades 'No Excuses.' Each song offers a glimpse into the band's emotional depth and musical complexity, always with raw emotion and captivating performances that make this one a standout release in Alice in Chains' discography.

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


This official reissue of Bela Lugosi's Dead: The Bela Session comes on black and red splattered vinyl this time around and includes previously unreleased tracks that have been mastered from the original demo tapes of their first ever recording session together. The post-punk outfit's debut single was released initially in 1979. Bela Lugosi's Dead is not only their first single, but also often gets mentioned as the first goth record. It has since been covered by Nine Inch Nails, Massive Attack and Nouvelle Vague. The rest of the tunes from the demo session remain hugely innovative, reflecting their post-punk and dark-glam style with dub reggae influences that would further evolve in their output that followed and explain why the band went on to such cult status.

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


2022's stunning album Once Twice Melody was a fine example of Beach House doing what they do best - living bang up to that name, with intimate-but epic instrumentation falling somewhere between surf-y jangle and grand shoegaze. 'Become' is definitely on a similar tip, and as such feels much like an extension of the long form.
Dig a little deeper, though, and scratches begin to show. While the full-length record represented Beach House reaching for the stars, or at least the moon, and stepping into the role of festival headliners, here the sense of pure confidence and occasion is less pronounced. That may not be a bad thing, mind, because while Once came across like a finished article, refined and prepared, things here seem somehow rawer, as though we're sitting in on a session as oppose to getting the signed off product.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Slight surface marks ***


The Charlatans self-titled fourth album gets a lovely yellow make over for this reissue on Beggars Arkive. It's the first time for over 20 years new copies of this landmark album have been pressed, and Frank Arkwright at Abbey Road has taken care of the excellent mastering. The original release date was in 1995, and the album was the most ambitious of the band's career with plenty of number ones included along the way. The most successful of these of course was 'Just When You're Thinkin' Things Over'. It's a real piece of classic 90s indie that will always sound good.

Review: 'Neat Neat Neat' might have only been the second single released by The Damned, but its timeless longevity as an essential punk staple has seen it appear in episodes of The Simpsons and The Boys while Edgar Wright would give the track yet another lease on life by using it to score the intense opening chase sequence in 2017's Baby Driver. That's before even mentioning the vastly differing artists it has influenced with everyone from My Chemical Romance to Elvis Costello taking a stab. Pressed to artwork complimenting purple wax, this 7" offers a slice of cuts captured during a set in Mulhouse, France in 1994, with the classic single on the A-side, while the flip boasts a dynamic yet bizarre bevvy of covers, from the likes of iconic pop duo The Righteous Brothers ('You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin') to 60's mods The Craig ('I Must Be Mad') to Johnny Cash's 'I Walk The Line'.

Review: When Dinosaur Jr. were recorded live in Paris the iconic garage punk outfit were undoubtedly at the very top of their game. Three years after adding Jr. to their name, the creative output at this point was incredible, carving out a position for themselves as purveyors of powerful noises that were as raw and gnarly as they were complex and intelligent. A band that could turn rough and ready chords into walls of sound capable of tearing the roof off and lifting us all into the stratosphere. Never before released, this companion piece to 2022's best-selling live-on-MTV EP, Seventytwohundredseconds, is exemplary of the stuff they built that reputation on. From the gnashing riffs of 'Just Live Heaven', to the wasp-in-jar-energy and cacophonous peaks of 'Drawerings', and 'Keep The Glove' erupting into mind-blowing guitar work, and 'Budge' arguably taking that to greater heights, this is Dinosaur Jr. at maximum roar, and it will never not be impressive.

Review: We've been treated to reissues of everything else from PJ Harvey's spectacular catalogue, so it's only right we get a chance to savour the deeper cuts that shape out the persona of the high priestess of alternative rock. Gathering together an exhaustive 59 B sides, demos and previously unreleased tracks, this six-LP box set takes us into the heart of Polly Jean's writing process, showing the raw power in the songwriting when it's just her voice and an overdriven guitar, and showing us the broader possibilities of songs which didn't make the cut for the studio albums. This is a true treasure of music getting the authoritative release she deserves.

Review: Alternative, goth and pop rock band HIM are one of the most creative and strongest bands to come out of Finland. Tears On Tape was their eighth and final album from the band whose career covered nearly 25 years. Originally released in 2013, this is the first reissue and fans of the band are celebrating that this will also be its' very first time on vinyl. Green vinyl that matches the artwork as well is a nice touch. Experience some of the last key tracks from this ground breaking band like 'All Lips Go Blue', 'Into the Night' and the title song 'Tears On Tape. Come experience a celebration of the band's final full length.

Review: When Jesus & Mary Chain reunited in 2007 there were tons of questions about what this would mean for their music, music in general, and the planet. Well, OK, maybe more their music. The notorious 1998 on-stage implosion between brothers William and Jim Reid was a culmination of tension between the siblings that afforded the band their inimitable conflict of sound, but also seemed to call definite time. It would be another decade before they attempted to work together again, with a show at Coachella, then another ten years passed while they figured out where from there. In the end, Damage & Joy was the answer, 2017's album, co-produced by Youth in a bid to bring in a potential mediator should things go sour. They didn't, and the record was well received - somewhere between old JAMC and a new era. Now we have Glasgow Eyes, an extension of that. Rather than born of conflict, tracks feel united in a common goal, synths rising to the fore above guitars, combative tones receding in favour of comfortable juxtapositions and contrasts.

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


A highly collectible splatter 12" vinyl of this Martin Hannett-produced session groundbreaking gothic/post-punk band, Joy Division. Includes the band's best known composition 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' and a superb non-album B-side in 'Leaders Of Men', plus an extended mix of the A-side. Most music fans and their mothers will have had the former track firmly implanted into their grey matter by now, but it's the B-side that really gets the true-heads going, channelling a massive, cortex-cracking sound that is closer to punk than post. Boy, did Joy Division have a toothy side.

Review: The original Bridgit Mendler soundtrack to the citrine teen drama movie of the same name sees a full version on vinyl LP this spring. Notable not only for its inclusion in the contemporary musical film, but also for its chart-topping success, the ten songs that make up the many acts of this high-school drama were destined to charm the pubescent masses, coinciding with the film's overarching theme of the school's students transcending use of after-school detention to musical effect, in order to overcome their personal struggles. Imagine Glee meets The Breakfast Club; a cabal of songwriters including Ali Dee, Maria Christensen, Bryan Todd and Jeannie Lurie lay down an array of sure-to-be hits for Mendler to perform on behalf of the cast here.

Review: Johnny Marr's solo debut of 2013, The Messenger showed him channelling his love for classic guitar rock through post-punk dynamics and a sense of urgency apparently abetted by his time spent in Modest Mouse and The Cribs. Keen to establish himself as an artist in his own right rather than a sideman, Payland builds on that album's impact, delivering an impressive salvo of sparky intensity; 'Easy Money' may well be the catchiest and most immediate thing he's committed to wax for decades, whilst elsewhere he brings a chilly frissante to proceedings, seemingly inherited from the like of Wire and Gary Numan. After thirty years of wrenching new inspiration from six strings, it can be a powerful tonic to know that this curiously youthful figurehead is still as restless and driven as ever.

Review: Almost two full decades into their curious career, slacker-psych experimentalists The Pheromoans have never been ones to shy away from the esoteric or mundane. Led by the droll, deadpan delivery and unique world view of primary songwriter Russell Walker, LP number 13 sees the collective lean ever further into topical malaise whilst honing their fuzzed out, post-college-rock jangles into their most digestible and direct form yet. With the title Wyrd Psearch, Walker takes direct aim "at the ubiquity of people claiming things are eerie or weird/wyrd in the present cultural milieu", while the word-search artwork is intended to highlight our cultures' obsessive search for meaning in an increasingly illogical world. Twinkling no wave riffs, glistening synth lines and muted requests to loved ones requesting their presence on a trip to town to reup on prescription meds.

Review: Returning a half decade on from their critically acclaimed sophomore effort A Distant Call, Philadelphia's 70s rock imbued punk outfit Sheer Mag return with their most honed, poignant collection of material to date. Moving on from the "personal coming out party" that was their first few projects, lead vocalist Tina Halladay has made it abundantly clear that this material could not have been penned just a few years prior, while their mission statement going into Playing Favourites was to rectify the fact that no artist seems "to write straight up rock bangers anymore", with an emphasis on having "huge, catchy songwriting front and centre". Signing to Jack White's Third Man Records seems simultaneously like a fitting rite of passage as well as affirmation of the band's monumental success, with their retro-fitted, fuzzed out 70s psych-tinged rhythm & blues grooves swaying and weaving around Halladay's sultry, snarling cadence with a resolute confidence only achieved over time.

Review: Seeing properly, well done reissues of classic material like 'This Is the Sea' has us proud to be in the business of selling vinyl. One of the most critically acclaimed albums of 1985, this became the highest selling and most enjoyed Waterboys albums in their storied career. Thanks in large part to the internationally successful song and heavily MTV rotated songs in 'Whole Of The Moon'. Singer and songwriter Mike Scott, was an all-time creative high when he wrote this album. The song even received an Ivor Novello Award six years after being written in 1991. Each song on this album took on a life of their own and most are featured on many of their best of compilations. Tracks like 'Bang the Drum' and 'This is the Sea' and 'The Pan Within' are dearly beloved by fans of the band. 'Old England' and 'Spirit' are great examples of the folk and pop blend the band perfected. 2025 will be the 40th anniversary of the album. Do not miss out on getting a copy of what Rolling Stone magazine reviewed as "...Spellbinding..."

Review: Gothic songstress Chelsea Wolfe makes her illustrious return on the much anticipated seventh full-length She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She. Following on from 2021's immense collaborative project with artcore auteurs Converge, the album shall serve as Wolfe's first solo endeavour since the minimal, folk-centric Birth Of Violence released in 2019, while serving as her first output since departing long-time label-home Sargent House (following a diatribe of controversies best saved for another time) in favour of Loma Vista; home to outsider artists of numerous sonic shapes. As this new chapter appears to be marrying elements of industrial fury with complex trip-hop motifs akin to Merzbow producing for Portishead, all the while maintaining her sultry, Wiccan hypnotism; 2024 looks set to be the year of the Wolfe.