Back catalogue: All genres

Review: There's almost no point writing about this one - an album that already has legions of disciples waiting to embrace it, with pretty much everyone who knows the names Liam Gallagher and John Squire guaranteed to be interested in what their self-titled LP is about. More so, without even hitting play we all kind of know what it's about, with two of the biggest names to come out of Manchester's 1990s indie rock breeding ground coming together for a record that sounds every bit the sum of its parts. Squire's incredible guitar playing - a centrepiece of The Stone Roses' sound - is incredible as ever, sending riffs soaring over the dilapidated rooftops of North West England and out into the stratosphere. Meanwhile, Gallagher's elongated but gruff vocal style remains steadfast across ten anthems-in-the-making. Powerhouse stuff, but like we said, nobody expected less.

Review: 90s indie bands don't come much more iconic than Garbage. They formed in 1993 and featured Duke Erikson, Steve Marker, Butch Vig and Shirley Manson. They went on to dominate the charts that decade with albums like their self-titled long player as well as Version 2.0. Now some of their best moments are all collected totters on this bumper anthology which comes as a double CD, or double gatefold yellow vinyl versions. It's got the tunes you love to sing back badly at the top of your voice as well as some other lesser-known ones. A great reminder of a great band.

Review: Houndstooth has come a very long way since it launched as the nightclub fabric's sister label aimed at less up front electronic tones. Over the years, it has widened its remit, meaning the roster now includes artists so far removed from where the imprint originally came from you'd struggle to believe the back story, establishing itself among the most varied and exploratory UK labels today.
Enter US experimental artist Katie Gately to prove our point. Fawn is a trip, to say the least. Themed around childhood and what comes next, it audibly reflects the tantrums, the wonder, the rebellion, and the growth that we endure from those earliest years through to teenagehood. And it does this through noisy art rock and avant-garde pop. A real creative triumph everyone should hear.

Review: Dutch gothic doom metal turned shoegazing prog collective The Gathering are one of those artists of two consequential halves. Superheat; their live album released at the dawn of the new millennium and recorded primarily in the classic Amsterdam Paradiso, sonically deposits the group half a year before the release of their seminal sixth full-length If Then Else, by which time they had made the full transition to alternative auteurs. Here the material is a complimentary myriad of cuts from their acclaimed opus How to Measure A Planet?, interspliced with material from their darker, heftier albums such as Mandylion and Nighttime Birds.

Review: Ghost Power is a project from Jeremy Novak of Dymaxion fame and Timothy Gane, also spotted in McCarthy, Stereolab and Cavern Of Anti-Matter. The sound they're whipping up on this debut LP speaks to Library Music freakery with a distinctly 70s twist. It's plenty funky where it counts, cheeky to a fault, and it's embellished with all kinds of wild synth tweaking. Just take a listen to lead track 'Asteroid Witch' and you'll know everything you need to about this brand new, cosmically-charged project with an old soul.

Review: Erlend Viken's first outing as Giant Sky - 2021's self-titled debut - was part epic prog rock overture and part major statement about the state of the music business. Only available in physical album format, for some time just a single track was doing the rounds on streaming services, which wasn't really a track at all, but instead a message about the evils of major streaming platforms and their role in ruining the artistic economy. Second time around, and the music itself is no less powerful. Moving from 'Origin Of The Species' and its floating-through-the-cosmos atmosphere, to the rousing call-to-unity of 'The Pensieve' and the industrial-noise-cum-delicate pop on 'Imposter', the vision and scope are incredible, new ideas seemingly presenting themselves at every twist and turn on this 13-strong track list.

Review: Norwegian indie talent Girl In Red kicked off her musical journey by sharing her home-recorded tunes as a teenager back in 2017. She has since become renowned for her raw lyrics and for delving into the everyday struggles and intricacies of relationships and has won a legion of fans, not least among them Taylor Swift,who invited her out on tour. Her breakout moment came with the viral sensation 'I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend,' followed by the enchanting 'We Fell in Love in October' in 2018. Fast forward to 2021, she unveiled her debut full-length album and soared up the charts. Now she is back with I'm Doing It Again Baby which comes on limited gatefold red vinyl and is full of more of her guitar-driven melodic indie-pop sounds and singalong hooks.

Review: Glass Animals are one of the hottest English indie rock bands out there right now. Their second studio album How to Be a Human Being came back in August 2016 was appreciated for its sense of wonder and lasting musical impression. Each of the tracks in the album is represented by one of the people on the original album cover and this reissue comes in the form of a zoetrope picture disc. Inspiration for the people on the cover came from people the band met and stories they were told during their travels on tour promoting their previous album.

Review: Russia's Gnoomes (aka Sasha Painkov and his wife Masha Piankova) have really overcome some hefty odds to get out their new album Ax Ox - the pandemic, illness, depression and of course turmoil back home. But it was worth the graft as they offer up a potent and moving mix of melancholia and strident optimism. The mix up the hope of dream pop with the drive of Krautrock, the vidid melodies of transcendent music with plenty of great narratives about the troubled relationship the band has with their home country. This is an eye-opening and thought-provoking record that is very much reflective of the troubled global times in which we love.

Review: Much loved indie pop pair Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory served up their iconic debut album on Mute in 2000. It has sold over a quarter of a million records since and was nominated in the Mercury Awards that year. It comes alongside the rescheduled Felt Mountain Live Tour and is often said to be the band's most crucial and influential record. As such it comes on a fitting gold vinyl with a gatefold sleeve included new and insightful sleeve notes from Lior Phillips in an 8pp 12" x 12" Booklet.

Review: Who would have thought that'll these years later the cartoon band that is Gorillaz would still be going, still be popular, and still turning out great music? Well, they are. They have kept details of this new album under tight guard for a while but what we do know about Cracker Island is that it features a truly all-star lineup of heavyweight guests such as Thundercat, Stevie Nicks, Tame Impala, Bootie Brown, Adeleye Omotayo, Bad Bunny, and Beck. As always the sound is alternative indie and electronic with a playful sense of character.

Review: We can only guess what Grandaddy would have to say about the state of play right now. Having risen to fame and acclaim in the early-mid-1990s, by the time Sumday came along the Californian band had set out their stall in terms of the technological revolution unfolding around them. 2000's stunning but sceptical (if not scared) The Sophtware Slump is just one clear example of resignation that humans would be unable to ensure tech yields to their commands and only theirs. The robots weren't coming, they had already arrived. Skip forward another three years and Sumday felt more relaxed, and warm. Nevertheless, the same themes are omnipresent, just like those cursed machines. Only this time there's more surrealism and less obstinate pessimism than before. And less experimentation, musically, albeit we're still in the psyche-space-lo-fi rock world, which has 'testbed' written into its manifesto. We loved it then, and love it today, even if it does feel like a warning we never listened to now you're seeing the unchecked birth of deep fakes and AIs.

Review: Liz Harris' image as a gothic, studio-dwelling, ambient mastermind is cemented by her 12th album, 'Shade'. Compiling a loose and formerly unrelated collection of songs made over the last 12 years - from the short, ruined polaroid-style opener 'Followed The Ocean', to the naked strum-singing of 'Unclean Mind' and the droning submergence of 'Basement Mix', this one is arguably one of her most lo-fi projects. It easily captures Grouper's emergence on the international folk-ambient scene through the analog fog of rare CD-Rs and handmade cassettes, making her career trajectory a ghost story if we've ever heard one. Gear up for a print edition, with original sky photographs by Harris' friend David Horvitz, as well as a signed archival letter-press print of Moon Study, her exclusive new book.

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Review: According to Guided By Voices frontman Robert Pollard, Same Place the Fly Got Smashed is at the apex of the band's creative output. In the James Greer Biography, Guided By Voices: A Brief History: Twenty One Years of Hunting Accidents In the Forests of Rock and Roll he says this record has some of his all-time favourite songs on it, and 'Pendulum' is home to his finest lyrics. Originally released in 1990, the fourth studio album from Guided By Voices is certainly potent stuff. The opening sample tells us to "get ready for excitement and adventure", then the raw mood of 'Airshow '88''s riff marks the beginning of an epic journey. From the muscular 'Order For The New Slave Trade', to the tender acoustic heartbreak on 'When She Turns 50', the gritty hypnosis invoked by 'Ambergris', and psychedelic folk-pop on 'How Loft I Am?', resistance remains impossible, 34 years on.