Segmenting its sequencing between six quite lengthy instrumentals and three song-based collaborations, Swallow unapologetically and assuredly bridges the gap between Ride’s formative basilica-ceiling scraping epics and the post-rock world the group part-inspired through the interregnum years.
Adrian
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Having delivered two top-drawer albums already this year from this side of the Atlantic – in the form of recorded outings provided by The Gentle Spring and Brian Bilston and The Catenary Wires (see Freq reviews passim) – the indie-pop renaissance operations of Skep Wax now enter a creditable new co-release arrangement with the US-based Slumberland Records for two like-minded East Coast ensembles.
Having hooked-up as a low-key instrumental explorer super-duo of sorts in recent years -- under the moniker of Whin – the Glasgow-based Martin John Henry (De Rosa, Jewel Scheme, Henry and Fleetwood) and Robert Dallas Gray (Life Without Buildings, Even Sisters) unpack themselves again for near-simultaneously dispensed solo albums. Whilst both releases feature varying degrees of supportive intermingling from the pair, they plough determinedly divergent furrows.
Precious Recordings pushes things even further with a back-to-back payload of early-summer releases. Featuring newbies and returnees delivering wares with a variety of provenances, here follows a breakdown of what the label now has vying for our shelf space.
For those who have been following her lateral art-pop manoeuvrings as far back as 2009’s tentative Mind Raft EP, the freshly-dispensed Ready For Heaven should feel like a logical and satisfying refinement of the pathways that started taking proper shape on 2015’s The Expanding Flower Planet solo debut album and which have evolved over subsequent releases, whilst still being packed with invigoratingly fresh ingenuity.
...a return-within-a-return from visual artist and onetime pastoral-psych legend Mark Fry. Having previously brought 2011’s baroque-tinged I Lived In The Trees (with backing assistance from The A. Lords) and 2014’s soothingly lush South Wind, Clear Sky to the 2L catalogue, after a decade or so’s gap arrives the meta-anointed Not On The Radar.
Although conceptually bonded around memories of the brutalist architecture and municipal communitarianism of the Sunderland Civic Centre, demolished in 2022, Chambers stands up as a low-tech yet otherworldly edifice built from its own sonic materials. Framed primarily through the stretched parameters of a basic analogue synth set-up, with some apparent deployment of his dusted-off drum kit, this ten-track tape / download delivery has some genuinely alluring and arresting moments spread across it.
Whilst on paper a collaboration between a successful modern poet (Brian Bilston) and an ensemble co-led by indie-pop veterans (Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey’s The Catenary Wires) might suggest a slightly unwieldy and ephemeral vanity side-project, in aural reality Sounds Made By Humans proves to be a deeply entertaining and durable product from the creative conjoining of like-minded souls.
Thanks to the more benevolent side of technological advances, recordings of a roaming and domestic provenance are no longer restricted to four-track strummers or those with the resources of rock royalty. Which, means there not many real limits upon those with advanced levels of imagination and ingenuity. As evidenced by the below divergent sonic dispersals.
Recorded in Spain, away from their now globally-scattered homes, the group’s extended latter-day line-up, built around -- but not subservient to -- the long-running core membership of Jon Langford, Sally Timms and Tom Greenhalgh, have delivered an eclectic exemplar of well-matured musical mind-melding.
Nick Godfrey’s Precious Recordings label continues to be one of the most reliable historical route-finders for visits inside the BBC vaults, in parallel to promising recent forays into releasing new recordings. From such navigation, fresh archival spotlights are put upon the familiar and near-famous, as well as those previously misplaced in the mists of musical time. Enter then, three 10-inch EP platters -- bolstered by bonus digital content -- from the latter camp.
Dipping just a toe into the DIY electronica streams these days still requires some weighty waders to avoid being soaked by the volume of material. Hence, another amalgamated approach is needed to fish for some of the most notable new wares.
Whilst such output has fleetingly tipped the hat to his formative enterprise along the way and Galaxie 500 songs have regularly reappeared in recent solo ensemble live shows, it’s taken until now for a fuller recorded reconnection with the most atmospheric elements of the hallowed group’s aural palette.
the fact that Hersh’s recent recordings have confirmed a renewed creativity means fresh rewards for those of us who have kept the faith over the years. Arguably providing the biggest late-reblooming flourish – following on from 2022’s rowdy yet textured Black Pearl with 50 Foot Wave and 2023’s sonically diverse Clear Pond Road solo outing – is this new nine-track set from Hersh’s mothership enterprise, Throwing Muses.
With his 2023 debut, Evensongs, having rightly been hailed for its modern but ageless psych-folk magnetism -- by Mark Radcliffe, Shindig! and the Guardian alike -- expectations are set quite high for this sequel set. Whilst the nine-song Collodion possibly doesn’t quite possess the same out-of-the-blue awe of its old-as-new prequel, this is still a sublime twenty-minute offering in its own right.
Whilst sadness surrounds the unveiling of this posthumous affair from The Chills – following the premature passing of the New Zealand group’s only constant member Martin Phillipps last year – we can take comfort in the fact that the late-reblooming legacy continues to be given considerate curation on Fire Records. A fully fledged and seemingly intentional swansong project, conceived by Phillips himself, Spring Board brings the band’s somewhat unwieldy story full circle to a well-groomed, if pathos-tinged, celebratory conclusion.
The documentary evidence of an accepted invitation to Maida Vale from the Yeovil-birthed quartet, this is an unpretentiously charming C86-era memento. Fleeting in duration yet brim-full of melodic energy and youthful camaraderie, these four recordings may possess plenty of period trappings, but they contain an elevating freshness.
For his latest long-player on Sonic Cathedral -- the punningly anointed Pinball Wanderer - Bell seems increasingly comfortable in his own sonic skin, to the point of allowing the boundaries between his two sole trader ventures to be openly blurred.