July is always the hottest month of the year, and 2023 is no exception with the month going out with a bang here in NYC and temperatures nearing 100. I’m not sure I can cool things off too much with this week’s Indie Basement that’s heavy on dance grooves. Not even The Clientele‘s usual rainy English weather vibe can lower the thermometer. I also check out new releases from Aphex Twin, Bush Tetras, former One Dove singer Dot Allison, and Co-Pilot (members of Jim Noir and The Soundcarriers), and a four-disc box set that chronicles the baggy Madchester scene that gave us The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Primal Scream and more.
Over in Notable Releases, Andrew reviews new albums from Jessy Lanza, Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah, Madeline Kenney, and more.
We lost Sinead O’Connor this week and I looked at 12 of her greatest collaborations, including songs with The The, Terry Hall, Shane MacGowan, and more.
Stay cool and I’ll see you in August. This week’s reviews are below.
ALBUM OF THE WEEK #1: The Clientele – I Am Not There Anymore (Merge)
Wistful indie vets discover computers but mostly stay the same…and there’s nothing wrong with that
The Clientele spent their early years in a haze of London fog and heaps of reverb, as frontman Alasdair MacLean wove delicate, beautiful tapestries of guitar arpeggiations while singing heartsick, romantic tales with a voice that might best be described as Indie Al Stewart. (That is not a dig: I love “Year of the Cat.”) A decade and a half into their career, the cloud cover finally burned off to find The Clientele’s signature sound was just as wonderfully wistful without all that echo. Now, some 32 years since forming, the group have made another sonic evolutionary leap, adding electronic elements, as well as touches of post-pop jazz and modern composition to their arsenal. What sparked this? “We bought a computer,” frontman Alasdair Maclean dryly revealed.
Don’t worry, The Clientele haven’t gone dubstep or trap or EDM — they survived the ’90s without ever dipping a toe in jungle/drum-and-bass, so they’re not going to make a massive left turn now (not that they couldn’t have incorporated an Amen Break to their sound). But there are plenty of moments on I Am Not There Anymore, their seventh album and first in six years (to make up for lost time, it’s a double), that make you prick up your ears. First and foremost is “Blue Over Blue,” the album’s first single that has all the signatures of a great Clientele song — MacLean’s signature guitarwork and melodies, plus lots of atmosphere — but when that distorted riff kicks in unexpectedly, you’re caught off guard. “Garden Eye Mantra” lays in subtle chillout beats beneath gossamer strings to help evoke, in MacLean’s words, “the memory of childhood but at the same time the impossibility of truly remembering childhood… or even knowing who or what you are.” The half-remembered dream vibe has been central to The Clientele’s whole thing since day one, and this is just another way of getting there. Three decades into their career, The Clientele have managed to reinvent themselves just enough to make it all new again.
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ALBUM OF THE WEEK #2: Co-Pilot – Rotate (Dell’Orso)
Jim Noir and The Soundcarriers’ Leonore Wheatley team for an enjoyable, tuneful collaboration steeped in ’60s psych, ’70s earthtones, and ’80s synths
Co-Pilot is the musical collaboration of Alan Roberts, better known as Jim Noir, and Leonore Wheatley of The Soundcarriers and International Teachers of Pop. It’s a very Indie Basement pairing. Wheatley was drafted to play keyboards in the Jim Noir band and they really hit it off musically and ended up doing a lot of tinkering around, musically, in Roberts’ Manchester studio. “Whatever is switched on or nearby gets used,” Roberts says. “There’s no ‘correct’ for us. If it sounds good, record it.” Wheatley adds, “We let the sound dictate the process whilst being drunk enough to follow it.”
The result is Co-Pilot’s wonderful debut album which sports a disparate, eclectic sound but one that will be familiar to fans of their respective projects. Wheatley says there are at least six genres present on Rotate, and while she doesn’t list them, I hear baroque psych, prog, synthpop, krautrock, and just a little Manchester baggy (a genre that will come up again this week below). Roberts and Wheatley are on the same wavelength, and both are clever and creative songwriters and musicians, so it all feels of a whole. Wheatley’s voice and harmonies are at the center, with analogue synths providing the majority of the backing, with some well-placed samples too, like Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Thousand Knives” on the skipping, playful “Motosaka.” This album will most obviously appeal to fans of The Soundcarriers (and Broadcast, Stereolab, The United States of America, Wendy & Bonnie, etc) but you don’t have be a crate-digging record nerd that gets all the references in “Losing My Edge” to appreciate these songs. Rotate is first and foremost a blast to listen to, with great pop songs at the core, colored in with whimsical, inspired production. Sit back, enjoy, and leave the flying to them.
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Aphex Twin – Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / in a room7 F760 (Warp)
Still glitchy and twitchy, but Aphex Twin relaxes just a little for his first record in five years
Richard D. James seems to be mellowing with age. That’s not a bad thing. You can’t constantly be making tracks like “Come to Daddy,” and for the last 10 years he kept thing glitchy, but melodic. Compared to his last major release, 2018’s Collapse, the least friendly thing about his new EP is the title. But even when at his most pop, like on “Blackbox Life Recorder 21f,” it’s still miles away from anything you’d actually call pop. It does however feature many of his glitchy trademarks, but is grounded in melody with an infectious, danceable beat that never flies totally off the rails. “zin2 test5” could even be described as “four on the floor” and it works! Middle age suits him well.
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Various Artists – Come Together: Adventures On The Indie Dancefloor 1989-1992 (Cherry Red)
Put on your bucket hat and twist your melon, man, with this four-disc box set featuring nearly every classic Madchester baggy anthem you could ever want, and then some. Call the cops! Or Bez
I have strong affection for the “baggy” / “Madchester” scene where, following the “Second Summer of Love” in 1988 when seemingly all of the UK fell under the spell of ecstasy, jangly guitar bands all started adding shuffling beats and other dance music elements to their sound. This was led primarily by: The Stone Roses, whose debut album was released in the summer of 1989; The Happy Mondays whose 1990 album Pills N’ Thrills N’ Bellyaches is a pie-eyed classic; and Primal Scream’s 1991 opus, Screamadelica, that was the epitome of the era’s indie-to-dance transformation. Between the three of them, they spawned around 100 other shuffle-beat groups, and also encouraged others to at least offer up remixes by some of the leading DJs of the era (Andrew Weatherall, Paul Oakenfold, Mike Pickering, etc).
By 1991 the scene was losing steam in the UK, replaced by more serious forms of techno and house (and soon trip-hop and Britpop), while in the US what little interest there had been in this was all but obliterated by grunge. Still, the scene, or at least record labels who signed all these groups, clung on. Mark E Smith painted a vivid picture on The Fall’s 1991 song “Idiot Joy Showland”: “Idiot groups with no shape or form / Out of their heads on a quid of blow / The shapeless kecks flapping up a storm / Look at what they are: a pack of worms.”
Many of those groups, though, had at least one good song and the whole flowery scene is chronicled in this new box set from Cherry Red named for one of of Primal Scream’s biggest hits. Cherry Red puts out a LOT of these box sets and they can be hit or miss, depending on what the budgets allow licensing-wise, but Come Together is pretty great, including almost all the heavy-hitters and iconic chunes plus obscurities, lost classics, hard-to-find remixes, bandwagon-jumpers, and also-rans. You get The Stone Roses’ “Fools Gold” in all its 10-minute glory, Happy Monday’s “Wrote For Luck” (Oakenfold remix) AND “Step On,” and yes Primal Scream’s “Come Together” (the essential Terry Farley remix), plus songs by Inspiral Carpets, The Charlatans, Saint Etienne, Electronic (Bernard Sumner & Johnny Marr), James, The Farm, 808 State, The Shamen, The Soup Dragons, Future Sound Of London, The Stereo MCs, Spacemen 3’s “Big City” (as heard in Succession) and more.
It’s also got some of my favorite, more obscure songs: Candyflip’s cover of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” the “Hard Boppin'” remix of That Petrol Emotion’s “Tingle,” Terry Farley’s slinky rework of Cud’s “Magic,” Flowered Up’s “It’s On,” The Mock Turtles’ “Can You Dig It?,” Pop Will Eat Itself’s deeply silly “X, Y and Zee,” “Big” by the dubby, criminally underrated New Fast Automatic Daffodils, World of Twist’s “She’s a Rainbow,”Julian Cope’s “Love L.U.V.” remix of “Beautiful Love,” and The Candyskins cover of Buffalo Springfield’s “What It’s Worth. The only artists or songs that come to mind that aren’t here are The Cure’s “Never Enough” (or “Harold and Joe”), The Top’s “Number One Dominator,” and maybe one of the remixes of Billy Bragg’s of “Sexuality.”
As someone who lived through this era — and at the time never tried anything harder than jello shots — Come Together evokes warm nostalgic vibes from a time when I didn’t own a t-shirt that wasn’t two sizes too big and I read NME religiously. It might be a “I guess you had to be there” type thing for others but these four discs do a great job of painting a musicial picture of a brightly colored scene.
Come Together: Adventures On The Indie Dancefloor 1989-1992 is import only but, at only £27.99, even with exchange rates and shipping it’s still pretty affordable. Or you can listen to this Spotify playlist featuring nearly every song from the set:
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Dot Allison – Consciousology (Sonic Cathedral)
The former One Dove singer delivers a gorgeous grower full of gorgeous string arrangements and ethereal harmonies
Dot Allison lived through the Madchester scene as singer of One Dove whose sole album, 1993’s Morning Dove White, bridged the gap between baggy and trip hop. She returned after a 12 year absence in 2021 with the sophisticated Heart-Shaped Scars and thankfully isn’t making us wait as long for a follow-up. Consciousology is Allison’s first album for Sonic Cathedral and is a much more sublime album than Scars, or as she puts it, “a more wayward, rule-breaking partner.” This is a sunrise album if I ever heard one, all delicate acoustic guitars, standup bass, conga-forward percussion and genuinely awe-inspiring strings courtesy the London Contemporary Orchestra. None of the backing, though, can eclipse Allison’s voice, which is as ethereal and dexterous as ever, lifted by electronic touches that build a through-line to her past. This record caught me off guard, much like the first time I heard Minnie Riperton’s “Les Fleurs,” and Dot has planted her own unique flower garden whose delights are still being discovered. A grower if there ever was one, and I have a feeling I’ll like this one even more as summer turns to Autumn.
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Bush Tetras – They Live in My Head (Wharf Cat)
Produced by Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley (who is now their drummer), Bush Tetras’ first album in 11 years is a terrific, modern update on the band’s classic no wave / post-punk sound
They Live in My Head is NYC no wave/post-punk greats Bush Tetras’ third proper studio album, first album in 11 years, and first since the death of original drummer Dee Pop. While no one can replace him, Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley is hard to argue with as an addition, and he also produced the album. “We thought a lot about memories from 1979 in New York City,” says singer Cynthia Sley of the album. “It’s a reflection of growing up together, what we were eating, what we were doing, weird little things people probably won’t get. But that’s cool.”
While memories of NYC 40 years ago may have provided some inspiration, They Live in My Head feels like a very now record. You can definitely dance to it, but they’re not just rewriting “Too Many Creeps” ad infinitum. “Bird on a Wire” (not a Leonard Cohen cover) gets dubby and rides heavy on high-hats, but the guitars are vast. Likewise with “Things I Put Together,” which has familiar Bush Tetras elements, but approaches them in ways they never would’ve in 1979. Part of this also comes from Cynthia Sley whose voice has never sounded more pure and full. There are times, like on “Another Room,” that they are closer to Siouxsie & The Banshees than their old selves, but it’s still obviously Bush Tetras. The album’s fieriest moment is “2020 Vision,” that lets loose on the last three years of insanity across three wailing minutes of pure pissed off release that acknowledges that the creeps still need to be put in their place. Bush Tetras remain a force.
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DJ Koze – Wespennest/Candidasa (Pampa)
Ahead of his album with Róisín Murphy, DJ Koze’s drops this killer double A-side 12″
German producer and expert crate-digger DJ Koze hasn’t made a record since 2018’s great Knock Knock, but he’s finally back at our door and making up for lost time. He produced and co-wrote Róisín Murphy’s upcoming album Hit Parade, but before that drops he’s got this double A-side 12″ featuring two excellent, lengthy bangers. According to the press release, both tracks were inspired by a stay at a secluded Benedictine monastery on the “enchanting” island of Sulawesi which is near Borneo. “Candidasa,” which was apparently composed while Koze was lying on his stomach, is trancelike with layers of muted guitars alongside tribal vocal samples that builds and builds to a wonderful hypnotic state, while “Wespennest” is moodier thanks in part to Sophia Kennedy’s icy vocals and sinister insect noises (the title means “Wasp Nest”) that buzz in and out. Both use their extended length to the fullest and get better as they go, especially on headphones. Glad to have you back, DJ Koze.
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