Indie Basement is a weekly column on BrooklynVegan focusing on classic indie and alternative artists, “college rock,” and new and current acts who follow a similar path. There are reviews of new albums, reissues, box sets, books and sometimes movies and television shows, not to mention lists like this one.
It’s April which means 2024 is almost a third over and we’re starting to get a picture of the year so far and what lies ahead. BrooklynVegan published its 30 Great Albums from 1st Quarter 2024 list already, and now here is the Indie Basement list of 20 Best Albums of 2024 So Far.
The year started off slow but picked up steam quick, and these 20 albums include at least a couple that have a good shot of being in the Indie Basement Top 10 when December hits. We’ve got albums by a few Basement all-stars and classic indie/alt artists who’ve been making albums for 30 years, and rising artists who have only been around a few years. Interestingly there are no debut albums on this list, but there are a number of sophomore albums. Expect things to change a lot by the time this column’s mid-year list comes out it July — it would actually look very different if the cutoff was just one week later — but all these records are highly recommended.
Like BV’s list, this is unranked and in alphabetical order — it’s too early to start assigning placement yet (though there’s an Album of the Year contender here). This also isn’t meant to represent a definitive Best of 2024. It’s just one guy’s opinion. Head below for the list as well as a Spotify/TIDAL playlist with a song from every album (minus one which is not on streaming).
You can also check out the Indie Basement archives for lots more great stuff from this year.
Astrel K – The Foreign Department (Tough Love)
Rhys Edwards has just delivered three great albums in as many years. 2023 saw the release of Compact Trauma, the first album from his band Ulrika Spacek in five years, and surrounding that are two solo releases as Astrel K. The first of those, 2022’s Flickering i, was made during the pandemic after Edwards had moved to Stockholm to be with his partner. It felt very much like a solo project, almost accidental and decidedly homemade as he explored musical ideas outside Ulrika Spacek’s world of guitars. The Foreign Department, made in the wake of a breakup, seems entirely intentional, with a clear point of view and sounds like, if not a new band, then a solo album made with one.
The Foreign Department is 11 big swings, featuring Edwards’ take on sophistipop with swaying, swaggering songs filled with grand piano, brass and string sections, swoony melodies, soaring falsetto, and more than a few waltzes. The touchstones are still the same: ’60s sunshine pop, Jacques Brel and Scott Walker’s early ’70s records, Stereolab, Saint Etienne and the nostalgic whimsy of the first Avalanches album, but this time applied to ambitious, fully orchestrated studio recordings that sound thoroughly modern. The Foreign Department is a melancholy wonderland that has room for pure beauty (“Daffodil,” “By Depol”), dizzyingly ambitious leaps (“A Rudderless Ship”) and ornate orchestrations (“Brighter Spells”). All of it lands. Add to that a perfectly conceived and executed album sleeve, and The Foreign Department is the total package. As great as Ulrika Spacek are, Astrel K may be Edwards’ true purpose.
The Bevis Frond – Focus On Nature (Fire Records)
Not unlike Robert Pollard with Guided by Voices, Nick Saloman has been leading London’s The Bevis Frond since the mid-’80s, with dozens of albums and lineup changes in his wake. He’s got a signature sound too: a stormy brand of indie rock that’s steeped in folky ’70s British psychedelia, windswept melodies, and ragged guitar solos. Saloman is not quite as prolific as Pollard, but Bevis Frond records feel a little more fussed over. Depending on how you count, Focus on Nature lands somewhere around Album #26, and is a sprawling, 19-song, 75-minute double LP that is awesome in scope. Saloman just turned 71 but you’d never know it with songs like “Jacks Immortal,” a hooky ripper complete with a killer twin-lead riff. Every detail seems considered, even if Nick sometimes sounds like he just woke up. The basslines are fantastic, as are the minor key harmonies, and Saloman possesses a full house of choice guitar tones — see the wonderful, Big Star-ish “Maybe We Got it Wrong” as one of many pieces of evidence. Focus on Nature might benefit from some editing — save a few of these for an EP, perhaps? — but I’d be hard-pressed to tell him what to cut. Saloman has earned the right to indulgence, and his is the sweetest kind.
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Bill Ryder-Jones – Iechyd Da (Domino)
“I’ve always railed against it when people ask if making a record is cathartic,” Bill Ryder-Jones says of his fifth solo album, “but I’d have to admit that this one really was.” The Coral co-founder, who’s been a solo artist longer now than he was in a member of that band, had a rough pandemic, including a bad breakup and close calls with substance abuse. He’s come through the other side, though, with one of his best-ever records. Iechyd Da, which is Welsh for “Good Health,” is one of those albums that seems to process joy and sadness as the same emotion, not unlike Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs, The Delgado’s The Great Eastern or pretty much everything Spiritualized or Sparklehorse have ever done. Whether he’s singing “It’s noone’s fault, there’s sometimes nothing to be done / I just don’t see myself getting past this one” (“Nothing to be Done”) or “There’s something great about life” on the very next song (“It’s Today Again”), they all hit with a massive wave of beautiful sadness. There are some wonderful pop moments, too, including “If Tomorrow Starts Without Me,” that bring on the warm-n-fuzzies while still keeping a dark cloud in the blue sky. The whole album washes over you with orchestral grandeur, swooning strings and choral backing (more than once via a children’s choir), and in lesser hands these towering creations would topple from schmaltz. But Ryder-Jones has such a sure grasp of tone, in all senses of the word, so that the songs never wobble. He’s got a soft, fragile voice that could carry the emotional weight of these songs all on its own but is also the perfect center for exquisite heartbreak he’s wrapped himself in.
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Chelsea Wolfe – She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She (Loma Vista)
For 15 years Chelsea Wolfe has inhabited the dark corners, crafting gorgeous, gothy music that circled folk, doom, industrial and more. Having recently moved homes form Sargent House to Loma Vista, Wolfe is now diving further than ever into electronic music. Don’t worry: She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She, her seventh album, is not dance music and she’s still working with her usual collaborators — Ben Chisolm, Jess Gowrie and Bryan Tulao — and her songs have always featured lots of different kinds of sounds, but she’s never made a record this synthetic. That is not a criticism; the album sounds absolutely fantastic. Chelsea worked with producer Dave Sitek who helped craft a sound that is sleek and obsidian, a bed of alien beats and textures that is a natural fit with Wolfe’s voice that travels from a whisper to a scream and all points in between. Sultry and sinister, the album more than anything resembles OG ’90s Bristol trip-hop. There may be no John Barry samples but songs like “Salt,” “Everything Turns Blue,” and “The Liminal,” would’ve fit right in alongside Tricky, Portishead and Massive Attack in 1995, or even on one of the Blade soundtracks. (Actually, they’re making a new Blade movie starring Mahershala Ali and Mia Goth and Chelsea should totally get in on that.) Chelsea really sounds at home here as Sitek’s soundscapes swirl intoxicatingly around her voice. It all builds to the album’s finest, and final moment, “Dusk,” where her voice is fragile until the powerhouse climax when guitars, electronics and bit-crushed drums blaze around her as she sings “And I will go through the fire.” It’s a spine-tingling finish to a bold new chapter for her.
Pick up our exclusive translucent berry vinyl variant of She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She, limited to 500 copies, in the BV store.
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Cindy Lee – Diamond Jubilee (Realistik)
Patrick Flegel hasn’t released a Cindy Lee album since 2020 (when they released three albums) but has clearly been busy. Diamond Jubilee is a two-hour and two-minute magnum opus that encompasses a wide variety of styles that showcase Flegel’s many talents as a songwriter, musician and producer. It’s a lot to take in. The album was originally announced as triple album Darling of the Diskoteque to be sold on tour, but then last weekend dropped as a pay-what-you-can download on Cindy Lee’s geocities site (and on YouTube), renamed and resequenced as a theoretical double CD (wav files). I’m really only beginning to digest everything, but am also very wowed by it all. While still very much in the Cindy Lee lo-fi dreamworld of early-’60s pop, country and rock n’ roll, there are less weird-for-weird’s-sake sonic tapestries and instead a parade of memorable song after memorable song.
Lyrically these are mostly straightforward tales of longing, love and heartbreak — “Dreams of You,” “All I Want is You,” and “Always Dreaming” all come within a few tracks of each other on the first disc — which fit perfectly with Flegel’s love of Everly Brothers and Phil Spector productions. Though there are plenty of what I call “Lady in the Radiator” moments, Flegel is not singing all high falsetto this time, and the variety makes Diamond Jubilee a richer, more listenable experience and the daunting runtime sail by. It’s also the most guitar-oriented Cindy Lee album yet, and a real showcase for Flegel’s skills in that department; there are moments with gorgeous filigree throughout that are not that far from what you might hear on a Khruangbin album, just used to very different ends. Diamond Jubilee is a world that is easy to give yourself over to, despite length, and is peppered with amazing moments even very deep into its 32 songs, like the elegiac, stunning “What’s it Going to Take?” I have a feeling more sonic revelations will present themselves as this incredible record stays in my rotation throughout the foreseeable future.
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Ducks Ltd. – Harm’s Way (Carpark)
No other artist is currently doing more for the cause of janglepop than Toronto duo Ducks Ltd. Evan Lewis and Tom Mcgreevy have majored and minored in the genre, and are well-versed in classics from around the world — from Dunedin to Glasgow, Hoboken and beyond — and have used that knowledge to craft their own undeniable earworms. Harm’s Way doesn’t really mess with the formula of their 2021 album, Modern Fiction, but it’s improved upon in every way.
McGreevy says it was their time on the road with Nation of Language, Archers of Loaf and Illuminati Hotties that made the biggest difference between this and their debut. “When we got signed, we had played maybe five or six shows ever. After last year, it’s in the hundreds. That experience can change your perception of your own music and songwriting. In the past when we got stuck on a song we had a tendency to look at our favorite records to see how they tackled it. But now, instead of asking ‘what would Orange Juice do?’, we’d ask, ‘what would we do?”
On Harm’s Way, the songs are better, the production shimmers more brightly, and the arrangements are more ambitious (piano, strings), with assists from Ratboys‘ Julia Steiner and Marcus Nuccio, Dehd‘s Jason Bala, Finom’s Macie Stewart and more. Most notably, they’ve added real drums to augment their arsenal of drum machines and that adds real punch to these breathless, pop nuggets, and ups their replayability. Effortlessly tuneful songs like “Hollowed Out,” “The Main Thing” and “Deleted Scenes” (there’s not a bum track here) may invite comparisons to The Go-Betweens, The Wedding Present, The Verlaines, and others, but they also hold their own against them.
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Elbow – AUDIO VERTIGO (Polydor/GEFFEN)
After nine albums, you’d think you’d know exactly what to expect from Elbow on their 10th: big, open-armed, open-hearted anthems perfectly suited for festival crowds. But AUDIO VERTIGO doesn’t sound like any Elbow album before it while somehow retaining all the things that make the band’s music so rewarding. The soaring melodies and the warm, inviting voice of frontman Guy Garvey are distinctly Elbow, but the way they get there — the arrangements, the instrumentation — feels new and exciting. It’s not often you get a band three decades into their career making music this bold, creative and fun.
“We referenced The Meters, Beastie Boys, Sly and Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Arctics, Queens of the Stone Age, Bolan, Tom Waits, Public Enemy and Alison Moyet,” says Garvey. “That’s just the opening song.” That would be “Things I’ve Been Telling Myself for Years,” a swaggering litany of uncorrected personality traits where Garvey spouts off lines like “I’m the dashboard hula girl of nodding self-deception / Here’s to never accepting slight adjustment or correction” backed by a choir and booming percussion.
Next up is “Lover’s Leap” which introduces Elbow’s brightest new color: horns, which here are stacked up alongside a very funky rhythm section into a towering Jenga creation that sways but never topples. Brass and woodwinds are all over the album, adding notes of ’80s funk and afrobeat. Even better is “Balu,” which features a massive, spiraling bassline from Pete Turner as afterburner horn charts blast the song into orbit like in the chorus, mirroring the harmony vocals. There’s always been a little Peter Gabriel in what Elbow do; AUDIO VERTIGO at times plays big like So minus the ’80s production bombast.
Garvey and Turner, along with fellow founding members and brothers Craig and Mark Potter, plus drummer Alex Reeves who’s been with them since 2016, all sound like they’re having a blast making these songs, which are almost entirely upbeat, rousing and well traveled. “Knife Fight” lays out a wild night in Istanbul, while “Good Blood Mexico City” might be Elbow’s most rocking song ever and makes you wonder why there aren’t more like it in their discography. Ballads have long been the band’s forte but the closest they come here is the whisper quiet “Embers of the Day” which, at only 38 seconds, is more of an interlude between the moody “Very Heaven” and gorgeous closer “From the River” which is the kind of sweeping, melancholic-yet-uplifting track Elbow do better than almost anybody else. “If and when you cry, feed it to the flowers you’ll find along the way,” Garvey sings, “Funny, wise and kind, use those superpowers, every day.” It’s the most traditionally Elbow-eque song on an album of unexpected pleasures, and plays like a welcome victory lap for a band very much still in their prime.
Four Tet – Three (Text Records)
Kieran Hebden has been doing it so long and so well as Four Tet, having carved out a distinctive sound from the jump, that it’s easy to take him for granted. But what makes Four Tet records so consistently great is that whatever he does, whether it’s albums on his own or collaborations with Thom Yorke or Skrillex, everything seems to stem from personal curiosity. He makes music for himself and remains at the top of his game on Three, his 12th Four Tet album and first in four years. Hebden is still working with the same threads he always has — downtempo beats, jazz, folk, shoegaze, techno, house, dub — but the tapestries he weaves are always unique, beautiful and distinctly his own creations.
Three is a smorgasbord of what Four Tet does best, from downtempo mood pieces (“Loved,” “Storm Crystals”), to ethereal dance tracks (the techno-tinged, harp-laden “Daydream Repeat” and skipping “31 Bloom”), dalliances with dreampop (“Skater” owes a little to Cocteau Twins and The Durutti Column), and pure shimmering atmosphere (“Gliding Through Everything”). The album closes with “Three Drums,” Four Tet’s masterful single from last year that here ties the whole record together. Powered by a loping, 96 bpm beat, it’s an end-of-the-night send-off, eight minutes of bliss where majestic, airy synths crest, washing away the drums entirely, leaving a slow fade of warm ambience as the day breaks and you head home.
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Gruff Rhys – Sadness Sets Me Free (Rough Trade)
Sadness Sets Me Free is the 25th album that Gruff Rhys made, when counting solo works, records with Super Furry Animals, Neon Neon, soundtracks and more. For this one, Gruff and his band — Osian Gwynedd (piano), Huw V Williams (double bass) and Kliph Scurlock (drums) — recorded the majority of it in a three-day session in Paris in March 2022, with strings and backing vocals by This is the Kit‘s Kate Stables added later. “At this point I quite like working with serendipity,” Rhys says of the album. “Not in a cosmic way, [but] I try and leave things open to chance encounters and chance geography…I’m always looking for ways to make a different-sounding record.” Sadness Sets Me Free is one of Rhys’ prettiest, most melancholic records, heavy on acoustic guitar, piano and strings, with a strong element of both ’70s country and tropicalia. Gruff is one of those rare artists who consistently manages to do something new every time while only ever sounding like himself. The way he writes songs, the chords and melodies he favors, haven’t really changed over the years — this album’s “Celestial Candyfloss” could’ve fit, with a different arrangement, on SFA’s 1996 debut, and “Silver Linings (Lead Balloon)” could be a cousin to “Northern Lights” from 1999’s Guerilla. Yet both feel like they could really only be here, and his inquisitive, thoughtful, and empathetic lyrical style is as warm as the music, while embracing those darker thoughts. When Gruff sings “I left my dreams in a rental car” on “Silver Lining,” you know how he feels.
Halo Maud – Celebrate (Heavenly)
“My desire is pure!,” Maud Nadal sings on the single of the same name, off of Halo Maud second’s album, and you can feel the joy radiate from the speakers as her voice takes fanciful flight atop a lightly funky beat and a guitar riff that sounds born of a different world. Celebrate follows an amazing 2023 for the French artist who welcomed her first child into the world and was a bit of a muse for Chemical Brothers, providing the “beautiful” on four great songs on their album For That Beautiful Feeling. Last year’s good vibrations can be felt here, too. Originally known for her guitar skills in Melody’s Echo Chamber and Moodoïd, Maud is a musical polymath whose greatest instrument might be her vocal chords which emote in French and English and at times, it has to be said, are very reminiscent of Bjork. While Maud has no trouble creating magic on her own, for Celebrate she traveled from Paris to Los Angeles to work with Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier, and the two really hit it off creatively and brought out the best in each other. This one is not miles different from 2020’s Je Suis Une Île — melodic sunshine psych rock with a fondness for Can, yé-yé, Tony Allen’s drumming, and Lonerism-era Tame Impala — but everything’s just a little brighter and sharper. Also, nobody does it quite like Halo Maud, from great originals (“Catch the Wave,” “My Desire is Pure,” “Terres Infinies”), to an inspired, flute-filled cover of Fred Frith & René Lussier’s “Iceberg,” and the lythe, transportive Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares tribute “Pesnopoïka.” If you’re not smiling like Maud on the cover of Celebrate by the end, you’re listening to the wrong album.
Helado Negro – PHASOR (4AD)
Roberto Carlos Lang’s latest as Helado Negro was partially inspired by getting to visit Salvatore Matirano’s SAL-MAR synthesizer at the University of Illinois. “I was enthralled by it,” Lange says. “It’s like sailing; you set a destination but how you get there always changes.” This one of a kind “organic sound creation device,” as one of the synth’s caretakers puts it, is perfect for Helado Negro’s earthy, vibrant and highly empathetic universe. Underlining this, he also made it in his new home of Asheville, NC, a place known for rolling hills, abundant wildlife, and Moog synthesizers. PHASOR bubbles with life, nine gorgeous creations swimming in electronic primordial ooze but in a very organic way, floating alongside acoustic instruments and Lange’s warm, inviting, distinctive voice. It’s like a spaceship glimpsed from the forest floor, making diodes, patch-cords, and oscillators seem like wonders of nature.
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High Llamas – Hey Panda (Drag City)
Sean O’Hagan has carved out such an instantly identifiable High Llamas sound over the last 30 years — a mix of Brian Wilson, Steely Dan, Ennio Morricone, Caetano Veloso — that it’s been hard for him to escape his own gorgeously constructed cage. There aren’t any bad High Llamas records, but even big fans like this writer would admit that since 1998’s Cold and Bouncy, you pretty much know what you’re going to get: two or three very catchy songs and lots of meticulously crafted aural wallpaper in their signature style. Not so with Hey Panda, the group’s 11th album that majorly shakes up the formula while still being very much a High Llamas record. Thank the pandemic and O’Hagan’s kids, who were constantly playing Tyler the Creator and Tierra Whack in the house during lockdown; O’Hagan became obsessed with the sound of their music. The seeds were first planted with Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Bill Callahan’s 2021 cover of Billie Eilish’s “Wish You Were Gay,” which O’Hagan produced and which allowed him to experiment with the modern hip hop and R&B production (minimal, herky jerky beats, twinkly keyboards, sub bass, autotune) that he has now used all over this new album. Will Oldham also provides lyrics and lead vocals for two songs, “How the Best Was Won” and “The Hungriest Man,” and he brings a welcome new warmth to the proceedings. He’s not the only guest either: Rae Morris sings lead on the album’s best song, “Sisters Friends,” and provides vocals on two others, while O’Hagan’s daughter, Livvy, sings on six others. O’Hagan is still all over this, though often he’s just on backing vocals, and mainly through his unmistakable chord phrasing and way with nylon-string guitars, string arrangements and harmonies. In someone else’s hands, this could be awkward and ham-fisted but he’s such a master of sound, it all flows out naturally. The High Llamas’ music has always been verdant and bucolic, but Hey Panda positively glows.
IDLES – TANGK (Partisan)
TANGK‘s mix of melody, menace and heart is the key to the album, which may win over people who didn’t take to IDLES’ output through 2020’s Ultra Mono. Call it “Resistance as an Act of Joy,” this is their most accessible collection of songs to date, still with lots of bruising energy but also overflowing with heartfelt lyrics. The combo really works, and it’s probably no accident the album came out the same week as Valentine’s Day. IDLES hinted at this direction on 2021’s CRAWLER, a real chrysalis of album, but they emerge as a fully formed butterfly on TANGK. A Muhammed Ali type butterfly, mind you, that can still sting like a bee.
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J Mascis – What Do We Do Now? (Sub Pop)
J Mascis is synonymous with loud guitars; playing with his band Dinosaur Jr., on stage he’s cocooned in Marshall stacks which is as iconic an image as any in indie rock. The band are still making great records and are reliably solid live but, dare I say it, his solo records are more satisfying these days. His weary vocal style and melodic tendencies are not really different from what he did on You’re Living All Over Me back in 1986, but it all feels a little more at home against dusty acoustic guitars and piano. J had planned for his first solo album in five years to be totally acoustic but then he got the itch to play drums and add a few electric solos. Before long he was tapping his friends Ken Mauri to play piano and Matthew “Doc” Dunn for pedal steel. “I dunno why I did that exactly,” J admits, “but it’s just what happened. What Do We Do Now? sounds as much like a “band” record as any by Dinosaur Jr. but this is one J, Lou and Murph would never make. Whether they are or not, the arrangements make songs like “Can’t Believe We’re Here,” “Old Friends,” and “Set Me Down” seem more introspective and personal. More pop, too, in a rambling country rock way which, again, fits in so well with J’s sleepy delivery and sounds so good when he lets those signature ragged solos rip. I hope Dinosaur Jr. never break up again, but I’m glad Mascis gives us a record like this every few years.
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Mary Timony – Untame the Tiger (Merge)
While Mary Timony has stayed musically busy since the late-’00s with Wild Flag and Ex Hex (and as a guitar teacher for the likes of Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan and other DC-area residents), new album Untame the Tiger is her first record under her own name in nearly two decades. This is a pandemic work and Mary had an especially rough last four years, losing both parents (and being their sole caregiver), and going through a bad romantic breakup. The latter seems to have informed this album the most as Mary questions her decisions and her inability to get out of her own way. But it’s dealing with the former that seems to have inspired a new worldview where things are taken in stride. “The dead leaves are blowing around in my mind,” she sings on “No Thirds,” which opens the album. “We only know this one life at a time.” There’s a lot of well-traveled insight here, leavened just enough by well-placed dashes of cutting humor. Great music too. Mary is a skilled musician with a love of British folk and prog that can really be felt this time; Fairport Convention/Steeleye Span drummer Dave Mattacks plays on half the songs, and there’s a lot of chewy, interlocking guitar leads and modal drones that give things a very earthy feel. At the same time, these songs are still obviously coming from the same person who gave us ’90s classic, Dirt of Luck. Not unlike Steve Gunn, Mary flashes her guitar prowess in controlled doses, keeping things focused on the songs which are across-the-board great, topping it all with just a little tasteful jam. Ex Hex are a lot of fun, and I look forward to their next record, but Untame the Tiger sticks to the ribs.
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Marika Hackman – Big Sigh (Chrysalis)
“Big Sigh” is not only the name of Marika Hackman’s wonderful fourth album, it’s also a pretty perfect two-word descriptor for it. There’s a haze of melancholy that infiltrates everything on the album, from the lyrics, to the melodies, arrangements and Marika’s breathy vocals which are probably the biggest sigh of them all. It also plays like a comedown from 2019’s Any Human Friend, an album that was fun, extremely sex-positive, and found Hackman very comfortable in her own skin. Big Sigh feels like a hangover, or at least waking up with a shock wondering “what have I done?” Strings swirl around her like 1000 doubts on tracks like “No Caffeine” where she tries to distract her way out of tailspin: “Take a day off work / Call your mum / Have a glass of wine / Stay away from fun / Pretend like you don’t care.” At first glance Big Sigh is most like her first, 2015’s We Slept at Last, windswept and atmospheric, but with the skill, confidence and nuance that comes with nine more years of life. Marika played every instrument on the album — apart from brass and strings — and clearly learned a lot making her previous records (including 2020’s Covers). You can hear echoes of her second and third albums’ sound here even if it’s employed in very different ways, including subtle electronics that bubble under many of the songs. For those missing the zesty, carnal delights of Any Human Friend, there is “Slime” — “Stranger I wanna rearrange you / Climb your spine and shake your mind / Slide back and feel your bones crack / So sublime, turn to slime” — but these two albums make for a satisfying meal, expertly pairing the bitter with the sweet.
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Ride – Interplay (Wichita)
Along with their Oxford friends Slowdive, Ride are having one of the best second acts in recent memory. Their third album since reforming a decade ago, Interplay, is the sound of an older, wiser and more comfortable in their skin group who are no longer worrying about being part of a current scene and just making music for themselves. Really, really good music. Andy Bell, who leads the band alongside fellow singer/guitarist Mark Gardner, has intimated that this was not the easiest album to make, but Interplay sounds effortless, with some of their Ride-iest songs since the early ’90s and their best swerves away from their signature sound to date. As to the former, “Portland Rocks” is blissed-out shoegaze perfection and pure Ride, from the “ahhhhs” and harmonies to the roaring, soaring guitars and Loz Colbert’s ever-powerful drumming. Similarly, “Midnight Rider” is armed with a shuffling beat that dares you not to bob your head, and a rumbling low end via bassist Steve Queralt, as well as the band’s signature guitar swirl; “I Came to See the Wreck” lays out a slowly building, beautiful maelstrom. They’ve also got pop songs for days, from the joyous “Peace Sign” to “New Frontier” that owes more than a little to New Order (and The Lightning Seeds), and swaying ballad “Last Night I Went Somewhere to Dream” which is definitely new territory for Ride. Unlike the “Hey we’re Britpop now” move of 1994’s Carnival of Light or whatever was going on on 1996’s Tarantula, all of this sounds natural for Bell, Gardner, Queralt and Colbert, with styles that support a uniformly excellent batch of songs. I already proclaimed 2019’s This is Not a Safe Place their best album since Going Blank Again, which was true, but this one is even better. Interplay is the third great album of Ride’s career.
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The Smile – Wall of Eyes (XL)
The Smile, aka Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner, did a magical thing in 2022: they reignited my interest in Radiohead. Perhaps they also reignited Yorke and Greenwood, too, as The Smile’s debut album was to these ears the most engaged they’d sounded since maybe In Rainbows, and seeing them live in 2023 made it clear they were having fun. At that show they played a handful of songs that are now on The Smile’s second album, Wall of Eyes, which is a much subtler but no less sophisticated record than the first. This is also the first album from Yorke and Greenwood to not feature Nigel Godrich in some capacity since Radiohead’s debut, but hard to tell if that has anything to do with that. Nothing here calls attention to itself the way “Thing Thing,” “You Will Never Work in Television Again” or “The Smoke” did, but these eight songs hang together better as a whole and grow on you. The most immediate number is probably “Bending Hectic,” which has a misnomer of a title though the strings get very intense (shades of Jonny’s film composition works) before the afterburners kick in for a Big Rock Finish. It’s the only song that might have you looking up from the book you’re reading — the slow-rising “Friend of a Friend” is great too, actually — but the rest of the album is engaging “back to mine” music, and Skinner’s syncopated drumming style pulls everything together in new directions. Wall of Eyes is also a “late night” album that deserves to be played loud. Go ahead, wake the neighbors.
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The Umbrellas – Fairweather Friend (Slumberland)
San Francisco’s The Umbrellas embrace 40 years of shambolic indiepop, the kind made by fanzine-reading, striped-shirt-and-cardigan-wearing folks who mix big hooks and catchy choruses with warbly guitars and dream of visiting the Glasgow library for a Stephen Pastel sighting. They are clearly students of the genre, and tip their hat to some of the janglemasters of the form, including The Pastels, The Wedding Present, Comet Gain, Beat Happening, Orange Juice and others. Fairweather Friend is the band’s second album and a big sonic leap from their debut, with the production giving the kind of oomph you could tell the band have live, not to mention more nuanced arrangements (strings, keyboards, harmonies). The songs were great on that first album but everything felt a little flat. The Umbrellas also play to their strengths here as well, namely the vocal interplay between Matt Ferrera and Morgan Stanley. More than anything, Fairweather Friend sounds like a band that know they’ve got the songs, know they can really play, and are having a great time doing so without overthinking it. To paraphrase the album’s first song (and Orange Juice), three cheers to The Umbrellas!
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Yard Act – Where’s My Utopia? (Island/Republic)
Where’s My Utopia? Is brimming with confidence, ambition, wit, fun, and big hooks. As to the latter, they are not ashamed to write catchy songs which is the subject of “We Make Hits,” a meta bit of bragging, statement of intent and Yard Act origin story all in one dance floor filler. “We make hits…but not hits like Nile Rodgers,” Smith sings, knowing they probably won’t be displacing Taylor Swift on the charts, then rhyming it with “just that we ain’t hook dodgers.” Yard Act’s choruses are massive and instantaneous, and working with Gorillaz drummer and producer Remi Kabaka Jr. they’ve expanded their palette well beyond the post-punk signifiers of their debut. They’ve embraced disco (the ABBA kind), lush ’80s new wave sophisti-pop (the Wham! kind), and hip hop rhythms (the ’90s kind), while still keeping those groovy basslines and angular guitars (the Gang of Four kind). Where’s My Utopia? is a rare beast, an album packed with bangers that has the flow and scope of “an album”; a party record that knows not to overstay its welcome. It may even give them the chart success they’re openly dreaming of, but they’re prepared in any case. “If it’s not a hit, we were being ironic.”
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Here’s a playlist with a song from every album on this list except Cindy Lee (you’re gonna have to listen on YouTube or download it):
Check out BrooklynVegan’s 30 Great Albums from 1st Quarter 2024 list.
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