Bay Area-based singer-songwriter Andy Pastalaniec’s Chime School project follows up his 2021 self-titled debut with ‘The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel’, an album that examines the sadness of gentrification and the much-missed bars and theatres that were lost in its wake… There are elements of The Pastels and Orange Juice in the opening sadpop…
Charly Bliss, now based across New York City and Australia, present their most confident album yet with the aptly-titled ‘Forever’. The record opens with ‘Tragic’, a bass-heavy slice of power pop about the power of lust which finds Eva Hendricks declaring ‘I know I gotta have you’. It finishes with a flourish before ‘Calling You…
Oso Oso follow up 2019’s smash ‘Basking in the Glow’ and 2022’s ‘Sore Thumb’ with ‘Life Till Bones’ – a collection of 10 songs that find Jade Lilitri looking back over past loves and experiences with fondness and frustration. ‘Many Ways’ opens the album with what might rank as the most famous and special three…
Following a number of personal and professional hurdles – not to mention a global pandemic – Indoor Pets almost called it quits in 2020 but now they’re back at their spiritual home of Alcopop! Records with a brand new album called ‘Pathetic Apathetic’ – and it’s one that finds the four-piece embracing their love of…
The Lemon Twigs’ fifth album – ‘A Dream is All We Know’ – finds the brothers D’Addario celebrating the joy and beauty of dreams – while throwing all kinds of new instruments into their finely honed pop sound, including cellos, mandolin, trumpets, horns and harpsichord. Recent single ‘My Golden Years’ opens the album and feels…
Adult Jazz’s ‘So Sorry So Slow’ is the London four-piece’s first album in a decade and over its hour-long running time, the band get to explore the power and pain of passion, panic, devotion and remorse… ‘Bleat Melisma’ opens the record with loose, tribal drumming and beautiful vocals that talk about ‘how heartless you are’…
Probably the band with the greatest name in the world right now, Philadelphia’s The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick release the equally enthrallingly titled new album ‘The Iliad and the Odyssey and the Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick’ via Count Your Lucky Stars Records on 25 April. A six – sometimes seven –…
Pillow Queens new album ‘Name Your Sorrow’ is more exposed than ever before. Taking influence from the Irish poet Eavan Boland – alongside the likes of Tool, Barbara Streisand and Frank Ocean – it’s a raw account of life, love and self-worth as the band consider a question posed in Boland’s poem ‘Love’: ‘Will we…
Cloud Nothings’ latest album, ‘Final Summer’ (out on 19 April via Pure Noise Records) finds Dylan Baldi and co in fine form, powering through 10 songs in just 29 minutes that celebrate the sheer joy of playing music loud and proud. The title track opens proceedings with a futuristic, space-age sound that gently builds –…
Brilliantly named Van Houten have released ‘The Tallest Room’, a record seven years in the making. The Leeds band enlisted the ears and ideas of producer Alex Greaves (bdrmm, Bloc Party) to help and the result is an emotional snapshot of the band’s formulative years that also manages to look ahead to an optimistic future.…
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