Happy Memorial Day Weekend and the unofficial start of summer. Usually holiday weekends are pretty dead, release-wise, but somehow I’m reviewing eight new records today, including DIIV, Paul Weller, La Luz, The Chameleons (first new music in 24 years), Finom (fka Ohmme), newish San Francisco shoegazers Aluminum, Australian band Girl and Girl, and Róisín Murphy (remixed by Moodyman, Eli Escobar, more).

It’s a quieter week in Notable Releases with Andrew reviewing Young Jesus, Vince Staples and more.

In other Basement-friendly news: surviving members of Acetone are playing Brooklyn shows in June; The Juliana Hatfield Three will be playing Become What You Are on tour this fall; and, can you believe it, EMF announced their first US shows in 22 years.

Head below for this week’s reviews…

ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Paul Weller – 66 (Solid Bond / Universal)
The Modfather celebrates his 66th birthday and gifts us with this terrific new album featuring Noel Gallagher, Suggs from Madness & more

Paul Weller rarely does the same thing twice. Twice in a row, at least. For his 17th album, which arrives one day shy of his 66th birthday, he’s created a lush and soulful world draped in swooning orchestration and featuring a wide range of cool friends and collaborators, not to mention a bunch of great new songs. That he manages to always find new places to go that fit within his amazing body of work — that includes The Jam and The Style Council — is arguably Weller’s biggest talent.

Like 2021’s terrific Fat Pop (Vol 1), 66 isn’t entirely beholden to a single style. There are rock songs (“Jumble Queen,” written with Noel Gallagher), disco numbers (“Flying Fish”), and Jaques Brel-style baroque (“My Best Friend’s Coat,” a co-write with Le Superhomard) but the strings and horns and woodwinds — and Weller’s impeccable taste — tie it all together. That said it’s the wistful, soulful numbers that really soar. “Nothing,” one of a few songs written with Madness frontman Suggs McPherson, is an instant classic, sounding a bit like a modern update on what Weller did in The Style Council, with jazzy chords, brass and psychedelic synth solos, set against ruminations of a long-lasting relationship: “Nothing forged our love / Out of nothing / Because it was only by / Having nothing / We were able to realise / We needed nothing else / But each other.”

On a similar note is “I Woke Up,” an absolutely gorgeous ballad about finding solid ground in a turbulent world, that has a knockout chorus and vocal performance (Paul’s pipes haven’t faded one bit). It’s all backed by Hannah Peel’s wonderful string arrangements and pedal steel (the string section of instruments), plus guitar contributions from Richard Hawley and early Jam member Steve Brookes. Like a lot of 66, this one lands somewhere between Marvin Gaye and Burt Bacharach, but in a way that is 100% Paul Weller. See also the rocking “Soul Wandering” (a collab with Primal Scream Bobby Gillespie), dreamy ballad “In Full Flight,” and wall-of-sound creation “A Glimpse of You.” Mellow maybe, but Paul continues to throw heater after heater. May all of your heroes age this gracefully.

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DIIV – Frog in Boiling Water (Fantasy)
Fourth album from DIIV might be their best yet and definitely lands at a fortuitous moment

DIIV’s fourth album hits at a merger of good songs and good timing. Frog in Boiling Water is as strong as as their three previous albums but also is riding the shoegaze revival wave which has seen the most interest in the genre since the early-’90s, if not ever. With a sludgy sound that pulls equally from My Bloody Valentine (who they musically quote from on “Brown Paper Bag”), Slowdive and Swervedriver but also Clinton-era alt-rock radio, DIIV have crafted an album that feels like a favorite sweater. Produced by Chris Coady (Beach House, Blonde Redhead), it’s warm and stretched out in all the right ways…dare I say it’s cozy?  Cole Smith and the rest of the band have slowed down considerably from the early whirling dervish days of Oshun, and this one picks up where 2019’s Deceiver left off, with oceans of viscous guitars that flood out of the speakers like cough syrup that suit the songs’ midtempo pace. The melodies have a similar satisfying ooze to them, with harmonies that spread slowly like a stain. According to the press release, this album “nearly broke the band,” but songs like “Everyone Out,” “Brown Paper Bag,” “Soul-net,” and “Raining on Your Pillow” sound like they were birthed fully formed, no epidural needed. DIIV also say that, thematically, the record addresses the “slow, sick, and overwhelmingly banal collapse of society under end-stage capitalism, the brutal realities we’ve maybe come to accept as normal,” but like most great shoegaze records, lyrics here feel secondary to the vibe; vocals are mixed to be just another element in this gorgeous, satisfying sonic swirl.

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La Luz – News of the Universe (Sub Pop)
La Luz just get better and better; their first album for Sub Pop is another winner

La Luz have gone through a lot since their last album, 2021’s eponymous release; the original lineup of the band has entirely turned over apart from singer/songwriter Shana Cleveland who in the last five years became a mom and was diagnosed with breast cancer (which she is currently free of). News of the Universe is the last to feature bassist Lena Simon and keyboardist Alice Sandahl, who both left during the making of the record, and the first to feature Maryam Qudus (Spacemoth), who started as the album’s producer and then ended up joining as a full-time member. La Luz grew out of their “surf rock” pigeonhole long ago and are now just a terrific, lightly psychedelic guitar rock band with baroque and tropical overtones, heavenly harmonies, and just a little of their old beachside twang. Cleveland has also grown to become a wonderful songwriter and News of the Universe is cover-to-cover gems, including “Dandelions,”  “Good Luck With Your Secret,” and the trippy “Moon in Reverse.” Qudus’ production brings some cool modern touches to the album, like on “Strange World” which veers into new wave territory. Cleveland doesn’t need much to make these songs take flight, though; “Blue Jay” closes the album on a perfect beautiful note, short and sweet and just a little sad, just her and her guitar as she sings “Blue Blue Jay, nothin’ is going my way / Look how the water catches the light / And watch as it goes down the drain / I lost control but I never had it / Nothing will be the same.” Now that they’ve fully transitioned into La Luz 2.0, it will be interesting to see where they go next.

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The Chameleons – Where Are You? (Metropolis / Strange Time)
The first taste of the post-punk legends’ first album in 20+ years is harder edged than you might expect

With a sound that was equal parts driving and dreamy, The Chameleons’ three original ’80s albums have influenced everything from the ’00s post-punk revival (Interpol, Editors, The Horrors) to the current shoegaze revival. The band never got their due during their original run, though, and broke up shortly after releasing their major label debut, 1986’s Strange Times, thanks to the record industry grist mill and some particularly bitter infighting. Improbably, all four members reunited in 2001 resulting in a pretty good fourth album, Why Call it Anything?, and some unbelievably good shows before those interpersonal differences reared their ugly head again and caused the band to split once more. Singer/bassist Mark Burgess toured as ChameleonsVOX, often with pick-up players in different cities, but sometimes with powerhouse Chameleons drummer John Lever who sadly died in 2017. Burgess and guitarist Reg Smithies reconnected during the pandemic, recruited a steady new lineup to reform The Chameleons in 2021, and announced a new album was in the works. Details of that are still TBA, but they’ve just released this three-song EP as a taster.

The Chameleons’ first new music in 23 years is pretty darn good. “Where Are You?,” which will be on the album, is as anthemic and hooky as you might expect, though sonically this may be a little more rock than some fans may be expecting; it’s closer to their earliest material like “In Shreds” than the more textural side many of us associate with the band. Still, the song itself is fantastic, there’s real electricity in the recording and Burgess’ bellowing baritone is as strong as ever. As for the rest of the EP, “Endlessly Falling” is a very early, previously unrecorded Chameleons song whose title is a phrase Burgess would reuse on “Death of Imagination” with his post-Chameleons band, The Sun & The Moon. The EP ends with delicate ballad “Forever” that is just Burgess and Smithies and is quite lovely. This makes me very hopeful for the album, though I’m a bit flummoxed by the cover art. Every previous official Chameleons sleeve has featured an illustration by Smithies and his visual style is as much a part of the band as his guitar playing. Not sure why they went with what they did (the less said about it the better), but it’s the only real knock on an otherwise welcome return.

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Finom – Not God (Joyful Noise)
The duo formerly known as Ohmme are still making wonderfully quirky, decidedly arty indiepop, this time with help from Jeff Tweedy

Finom, the Chicago duo of Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart who used to go by the name OHMME, made their latest avant-pop creation with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy at his The Loft Studio. He may have pushed them into slightly poppier directions this time, but these square pegs are still making wonderfully weird music that doesn’t sound quite like anyone else. Take somewhat manic opening song “Haircut.” Who else would have this is a chorus, sung in high falsetto harmony: “Yeah, I’m sorry but I’m not gonna wanna / It’s the time of day I can get my haircut”? There is at least one other band who might, Sparks, and Ron and Russell Mael feel like a clear influence on this very fun, quirky, arty pop album that even Jeff Tweedy couldn’t make boring.

*I kid about Jeff Tweedy but sometimes a zinger is too good to pass up.

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Róisín Murphy – Hit Parade Remixes (Mickey Murphy’s Daughter)
Moodyman, Eli Escobar, System Olympia and more take tracks from Murphy’s masterful 2023 album into even dancier territory

Just ahead of her North American tour, Róisín Murphy has graced us with this collection of remixes of songs from last year’s Hit Parade. That album was wonderfully chill, but these remixes turn the songs (originally made with crate-digger DJ Koze) into Saturday Night Party Anthems. Murphy’s taste in collaborators has always been exquisite and there are some genius bangers here: System Olympia take the skeletal funk of “The House” and turn it into a psychedelic ABBA track, while Hernan Cattaneo & Mercurio turn the already housey “Can’t Replicate” into full-on mid-’90s glory. (Babi Ali, meanwhile, pushes “Can’t Replicate” into electro-glam territory.) Eli Escobar and Payfone deliver radically different but equally danceable remixes of “You Knew,” and Suricata gives the album’s best song, “CooCool,” a cracking four-on-the-floor unst unst unst techno makeover. Best of all, though, is Moodyman who entirely reworks the woozy “What Not to Do” into Sade-esque jazzy R&B. Add some of these to your pregame playlist.

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Aluminum – Fully Beat (felte)
San Francisco band make shoegaze-tinged alt-rock the ’90s way on their hooky debut album

If DIIV didn’t fully satiate your shoegaze needs this week, here’s the debut album from San Francisco’s Aluminum who offer up a gleaming twist on the currently very popular genre. They take a little more of a loud-quiet-loud approach which works so well I’m wondering why more groups don’t pull a similar trick. In that way, Aluminum are closer to Adorable or Catherine Wheel with a sound that’s more melodic and harder hitting than a lot of other current shoegaze with a focus on songs more than smeary sonics. Not that there’s any shortage of hazy chording or ethereal harmonies, and with guitarist Marc Leyda and bassist Ryann Gonsalves both singing lead, it adds another interesting twist that helps this group stand out in an overcrowded pool.

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Girl and Girl – Call a Doctor (Sub Pop)
Australian band deliver their quirky concept album/rock opera of a debut 

Queensland, Australia’s Girl and Girl are blessed with a unique story that makes for an easy hook by music writers (frontman Kai James’ aunt is the band’s drummer) and a live show that backs up the hype. The cover art, featuring Kai James on a stage against a red curtain with the album title above him in an old Hollywood font and a subtitle of “Original Music by Girl and Girl,” puts us instantly in concept album / rock opera territory which is a pretty bold move for a debut. “This record is about an individual who’s too far in their head, trying to get out,” Kai says, noting that person is himself with these songs all pulled from personal history. “I’ve struggled with mental health for a lot of my life and I went through a particularly difficult patch when we were making the album; the band had started to get some attention, and I felt an enormous amount of pressure to live up to it.” With James’ vocals way up front, you can’t really ignore the personal nature of the album, but luckily he’s got a way with words, a sharp sense of humor and has a real ear for melody. Zippy songs like “Hello,” “Oh Boy,” and “Mother” are descended from The Strokes and a variety of jangly ’80s bands from their part of the world, and are so hooky you may have to call a doctor to get them out of your head.

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Indie Basement: 20 Favorite Albums of the Year 2000 (Alphabetical Order)

The Aislers Set – The Last Match (Slumberland)

Maybe the greatest Slumberland Records band ever, and certainly one of the most underrated American bands of the millenium era, San Francisco's The Aislers Set sounded like a head-on collision between an Austin-Healey carrying members of Belle & Sebastian, The Pastels and The Jesus & Mary Chain, and a 1965 Volkswagen Beetle driven by Phil Spector with Roger McGuinn and Brian Wilson in the back seat. Don't worry, no one was hurt, everyone became friends and formed a band. In actuality, The Aislers set were led by Amy Linton, who had been in the noisier Henry's Dress in the mid-'90s and who wrote wonderful shambolic mid-fi pop that mixed reverb-y guitar squalls with spun sugar. The Last Match was their peak, featuring one memorable song after another and timeless, charmingly messy production.

Badly Drawn Boy – The Hour of the Bewilderbeast (Twisted Nerve / XL)

Are there too many songs on this, Badly Drawn Boy's debut album? Does Damon Gough, who is BDM for all intents and purposes, throw in two too many ideas into some songs? Does it seem like he's sabotaging himself on purpose occasionally? Is The Hour of the Bewilderbeast a wonderful, inventive psych-folk-pop record despite all those things? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Winner of the 2000 Mercury Prize, it remains Badly Drawn Boy's overstuffed crowning achievement.

Bertrand Burgalat – The Sssound Of Mmmusic (Tricatel)

By the end of the '90s, people may have been burnt out on on the whole '60s lounge thing and figured one retro-future French band was enough, but thankfully that never stopped the brilliant Bertrand Burgalat who straddled the line between lush bachelor pad nostalgia and the French Touch disco scene that was pushing things forward at the turn of the century. His debut album, The Sssound Of Mmmusic, is a fully realized sonic world; groovy and glitchy, playful and inviting, endlessly delightful.

Black Box Recorder – The Facts Of Life (Nude/Jetset)

After years playing in indie guitar bands The Servants and The Auteurs, Luke Haines hooked up with former Jesus & Mary Chain bassist John Moore and vocalist Sarah Nixey to make severely subversive synthpop as Black Box Recorder. Their music was so sleek, many listeners didn't really how messed up the lyrics were. Which was the point. On their gleefully twisted second album, The Facts of Life, they actually made it into the UK charts, with the slinky title track reaching #20 on the singles chart. That song had Nixey cooing relationship advice, like suggesting places teenage couples could get time alone such as "a disused coal mine." That's just one of the 11 delicious but deadly poison pop pills in this bottle.

Blonde Redhead – Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons (Touch and Go)

Let's hear it for Blonde Redhead, one of New York's great bands who were around for most of the '90s when there were not very many good bands in NYC. Made up of singer/guitarist Kazu Makino and identical twins Amedeo (guitar) and Simone Pace (drums), the trio's early records were closer to Sonic Youth, but by the late '90s a much wider range of sounds were incorporated into their sonic palette, including electronics, baroque film scores, classical music and shoegazy pop. Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons, certainly one of the greatest album titles of all time, was their second time working with Fugazi's Guy Picciotto as producer and where their sound really blossomed. There were still wild screamers like "Mother," but the stunning "In Particular," "This is Not" and "For the Damaged Coda" point to where they'd go on Misery is a Butterfly and 23.

Broadcast – The Noise Made by People (Warp)

After a number of EPs and an appearance on the Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery soundtrack, Broadcast released their full length debut, 2000's best album bar none as far as this writer is concerned. Utterly bewitching, The Noise Made People still sounds like pop transmitted from another dimension, detached from time and space. Every detail is considered, from the eerie synthesizers (part sci-fi, part Italian horror film), to the snap of the snare, the ambient sounds of electricity that hum lowly in most songs, and the artwork that seems to have been made from old computer punchcards. Trish Keenan's beguiling, mysterious voice seals the deal on perfect songs like "Echo's Answer" and "Come on Let's Go."

Cinerama – Disco Volante (Scopitones)

David Gedge put his cultishly loved indie band The Wedding Present on hold in the late '90s and started Cinerama with his then girlfriend, Sally Murrell. Their first album sounded like TWP gone acoustic with synths, but Gedge figured out Cinerama's raison d'être on 2000's Disco Volante: fierce indie rock by way of swinging '60s spy movies, complete with strings, flutes and marimba. Keeping his lyrical M.O. -- love, lust, jealousy and heartbreak -- Gedge reinvented his style, and made trad indie guitars kinda sexy; Disco Volante ties with The Wedding Present's Seamonsters (both were made with Steve Albini) for best record of his career.

The Clientele – Suburban Light (Pointy / Merge)

UK indie trio The Clientele have always been a rainy day kind of band, romanticizing British inclement weather in many songs and through their general air of wistful melodies, brushed drums and frontman Alasdair Maclean's hushed vocals and delicately plucked guitars. The forecast called for weeks of damp weather on The Clientele's magical debut album, Suburban Light, that includes two songs with "rain" in the title and sounds like it was recorded in a cloud, or at least the London fog, with dense layers of reverb surrounding everything. It just adds to the wonderful, wistful atmosphere and you can't help but be swept up in the mise-en-scene of "Reflections After Jane," "We Could Walk Together," "An Hour Before the Light" and, yes, "Rain." Dress accordingly.

Clinic – Internal Wrangler (Domino)

Having released numerous singles and EPs through the late-'90s, Liverpool's Clinic had it all figured out by the time of their debut album, from their look (ahead-of-their-time surgical masks and scrubs), to their sinister sound that combined dubby postpunk, sleazy garage rock, analog synthesizers and motorik krautrock rhythms with Ade Blackburn's acid-dipped vocals. Dark as it was, Internal Wrangler was also kind of a party record, with the throbbing "The Second Line," "TK" (which cribs melody from "Ring of Fire"), and the melodica-soaked "The Return of Evil Bill" -- all surefire dancefloor fillers at any party full of nervous, paranoid people who haven't slept in a week.

The Delgados – The Great Eastern (Beggars Banquet)

Led by singer/guitarists Alun Woodward and Emma Pollock, Scottish band The Delgados were one of the best bands of the 1995-2005 era, making magisterial indie rock that felt both immense and entirely homespun. Their third album, The Great Eastern, is wildly ambitious both in song structure and in arrangements -- songs were prone to left turns of tempo and time signature, and grand orchestration. No doubt influenced by Mercury Rev's Deserter's Songs and The Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin (both of which were, like The Great Eastern, produced by Dave Fridmann), songs like "Accused of Stealing," "American Trilogy" and "No Danger" remain perfect indie rock symphonies The Delgados feel a little lost to the era, for whatever reason, but The Great Eastern still wows.

The Fall – The Unutterable (Eagle Records)

Following a weird/bad mid-'90s that saw The Fall reuniting with former guitarist Brix Smith briefly and Mark E Smith blowing up what remained of the classic lineup on-stage in NYC, MES recovered with an almost entirely new lineup of the band and some of their best records in years. The peak of that period is The Unutterable, which has Smith in fine cantankerous form (the most together he'd sounded in years) and the group adding current electronic sounds to their garage/rockabilly/krautrock M.O. There are no shortage of classics here -- "Cyber Insekt," "Two Librans," "Octo Realm / Ketamine Sun" -- but the album's worth the purchase for "Dr. Buck's Letter" alone, where MES reads an apparent actual, unintentionally hilarious, letter from an actual Dr. Buck over a killer, dubby groove.

The Go-Betweens – The Friends of Rachel Worth (Jetset)

Australia's Go-Betweens called it quits in 1989 but bandleaders Robert Forster and Grant McLennan remained close friends, at one point attempting to write screenplays together. That never panned out but Forster and Mclennan reunited in the late '90s for one of the best second acts any indie band has ever had. Made in Portland with Quasi (Janet Weiss & Sam Coomes) in the backing band and the rest of Sleater-Kinney on a track too, The Friends of Rachel Worth almost feels as if both songwriters had been saving up some of their best material in hopes of a reconciliation, here delivering some of their most sublime songs, like McLennan's "Going Blind" and Forster's "Surfing Magazines." The understated production, free of any attempt to get them "in the charts," makes this their best-ever sounding album. I would argue you could take the word "sounding" out of that last sentence, too.

Goldfrapp – Felt Mountain (Mute)

Having sung on records in the '90s by Orbital, Tricky, Plaid and Add N to X, Alison Goldfrapp jumped into the spotlight with Felt Mountain, the debut album from her namesake collaboration with Will Gregory. Drawing from sweeping '60s soundtracks and the downtempo scene she'd been involved with for the previous decade, nothing else sounded quite like it (though Broadcast and Blonde Redhead were clearly from the same galaxy). The album opens with the gorgeously unreal "Lovely Head," Goldfrapp's debut single, that plays like an acid-trip Bond theme featuring whistling, harpsichord, freaky electronics, and spine-tinglingly processed vocals that sound like... an ostrich singing opera? It's an unforgettable start to an record still bewitches and surprises today.

Grandaddy – The Sophtware Slump (V2)

Grandaddy really figured out their sound and worldview with their fantastic second album, featuring frontman Jason Lytle's absurdist tales of mundanity and stress in our increasingly tech-reliant world, set to a blend of '90s indie rock, glammy synthphonic flourishes (Flaming Lips/Mercury Rev's influence loomed large in 2000), and twangy country. The concept album imagines a world full of alcoholic robots, sad computer programmers, lost pilots, stuntman Evil Knevil, and forests made of discarded appliances that Lytle makes relatable with his empathetic style and a hard drive full of earworm spacerock pop...somehow it all sounds even more relevant now than it did in Y2K.

The New Pornographers – Mass Romantic (Mint)

They may be the Carl Newman Show these days, but The New Pornographers started off as a true collaborative supergroup, with Newman (previously of Zumpano), Destroyer's Dan Bejar and Neko Case all writing songs, often together, played with a band that also included members of Limblifter and Nardwuar's band, The Evaporators. "How could we lose," Newman told Pitchfork on their formation. "You could just take some interesting elements and put them together. Even taking myself out of the picture, when I looked at the band I just thought, 'This band's got to be great.'" He was definitely right, and their debut album, recorded over a three-year period, is a modern guitar pop classic where every song is a potential single.

Oranger – The Quiet Vibrationland (Amazing Grease / Poptones)

San Francisco's Oranger were popsmiths of the highest order, borrowing the best bits of '60s and '70s psychedelia to create their own brand of sunshine pop. Nicking the title from The Who's Tommy (and drummer Jim Lindsay swiping wild fills from Keith Moon), The Quiet Vibrationland also borrows from The Byrds, Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Turtles and the Kinks, but they do it with panache, punny pop-culture-laced humor and their own fantastic melodic sense. Oranger never really got their due -- they're not too far in sound or style from Fountains of Wayne -- but "Suddenly Upsidedown," "A View of the City from an Airplane," "Texas Snow" and "Stoney Curtis in Reverse" all sound like lost classics.

Primal Scream – XTRMNTR (Creation/Astralwerks)

Like The Fall, Primal Scream svengali Bobby Gillespie has always been able to absorb myriad influences and current trends into his band's own brand of rock n' roll and have it sound like they invented it. They were never more ambitious than on XTRMNTR -- a call-to-arms with revolution (political, musical, everything) in its sights that counted The Chemical Brothers, My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields, New Order's Bernard Sumner, and The Stone Roses' Gary Mounfield as part of their band of rebels. The 'Scream had never sounded so urgent, gritty and alive, and crazed, techno-infected songs like "Swastika Eyes," "Kill All Hippies" and "Shoot Speed/Kill Light" were miles away from the ecstasy-fueled good vibes they began the '90s with on Screamadelica. Gillespie may have lost the war, ultimately, but XTRMNTR remains a helluva battle.

Radiohead – Kid A (Capitol)

What is there to say about Kid A at this point that hasn't been said in a million other places? The band could do no wrong at this point, and going from The Bends to OK Computer, to this -- one of the most thrilling hot-streaks of the era -- it became apparent that the only thing you could expect from Radiohead was to be surprised and usually wowed. To wit: the minimal electronic bent of much of the record (like "Idioteque"); when the horns come in on "The National Anthem"; and the ambient beauty of "Treefingers." When they weren't dismantling the the sound formed on their first three albums, Radiohead showed they could still make powerful rock tracks like "Optimistic" and "Morning Bell." Even with all that's come since, Kid A still feels like an amazing curveball.

Super Furry Animals – MWNG (Placid Casual / Flydaddy)

Radiohead (see above) get the credit for being the biggest rock innovators of the late-'90s and early-'00s, but I'd at least give the silver medal to Welsh band Super Furry Animals who consistently pushed the envelope -- musically, visually, everything -- and were never scared to take wild swings while still working within in the boundaries of pop and rock. Take MWNG, which debuted at #11 in the UK albums chart and is sung entirely in Welsh. Even if you don't understand what they're saying on this one (and I don't), there's no denying the melodies, performances and clever production which are super and furry in any language.

Teenage Fanclub – Howdy! (Sony)

Glaswegian greats Teenage Fanclub have never been ones for breaking new ground, but they have one of the most consistent track records of any group that have been together 30 years. Howdy! is the Fannies' seventh album and one of their most underrated. It barely got released in America -- I bet many fans don't know this one even exists -- but Norman Blake, Gerry Love and Raymond McGinley are still cranking out the jangly hits. Everything you love about Teenage Fanclub is here: stick-in-your-head melodies, great harmonies, and really nice arrangements. They were a much mellower band by this point, but that fits them like a favorite sweater.