Back catalogue: Indie/Alternative

Review: "I'd prefer it to be called just a country album," said TORRES of her collaboration with Baker, nearly a decade in the making, "but I'm proud to have made a 'queer country' album." TORRES had the initial idea to turn to the genre, inviting Baker to collaborate not only because of her shared southern roots but also because she'd also had a similarly religious upbringing that ultimately saw sexual orientation judged and condemned. The result is some deeply autobiographic songwriting on tracks like 'Tuesday', about a traditional family's rage at discovering their daughter was gay, the lilting 'Sylvia' and 'Sugar In The Tank', with pedal steel meeting acoustic guitar strum and very intimate sounding vocals. Bound to cause controversy in certain areas of the US, but it's got the quality and distinctive flavour to stand its ground.

Review: Rolling Stone declared Bettie Serveert's debut album Palomine as "untamed and free as pop gets" back when it was originally released in 1993. It sure did become a classic and so now gets a 30th anniversary reissue, the first it's ever had. The Dutch band's Carol van Dyk and Peter Visser admit that they were "green as it comes" when they record it but that didn't stop them cooking up plenty of infectious hooks and jangling grooves run through with elements of prog, pop and folk. It's a nostalgic trip to tune into this one three decades on, but one that is well worth making.

Review: In recent years we've had some exceptional examples of what you might call "narco rock 'n' roll". The sort of records that sound excellent when you're high, but seem to lose some of their potency - or relevance - when you're listing through headphones at your desk in the middle of a working day. Darkside's latest is, unsurprisingly, very much of the 'baked goods' ilk, but there's a delightfully pop-friendly element at play here that means you can get a lot out of the experience without having to have your own induced experience.

Musically it's actually relatively conservative stuff, considering the artists involved. Nicolas Jaar is a bonafide electronic visionary who has been pushing boundaries for well over a decade, while Dave Harrington is one of the most forward thinking multi-instrumentalists you'll ever hear. Together, though, they create a space that's strange but also familiar, like rediscovering forgotten albums from the early-1970s psyche heyday.

Review: Back in 2011, Nicolas Jaar joined forces with fellow Clown & Sunset contributor Dave Harrington for the Darkside EP, an impressive trio of untitled tracks that pitted the formers scratchy, near-paranoid production style against the latter's penchant for lo-fi indie-rock inspired fuzziness. Here, the duo dusts down the Darkside alias once more for a first collaborative album. Predictably, it's an impressive set, offering a collection of downtempo tracks that shuffle between crackly, out-there atmospherics ("Sitra", reminiscent of much of Jaar's Space is Only Noise album), echo-laden alt-rock experimentalism ("Heart") and heart-aching fragility (the James Blake-ish "Greek Light").

Review: Horsegirl is a threesome from Chicago who, after much fanfare early in their career, finally get round to serve us up a long player on Matador Records. This band of best friends is made up of Penelope Lowenstein on guitar and vocals, Nora Cheng also on guitar and vocals, and Gigi Reece on the sticks. They do everything together from swapping vocal duties to writing the songs, mixing up the instruments they play and designing the visual art. The lyrics are open ended and impressionistic and the sounds range from joyous to enthusiastic.

Review: Interpol's seventh album sees the long-standing NYC indie rock giants teaming up with the legendary production team of Flood and Alan Moulder for a trip into sadness, darkness and introspection. For devoted fans of the band, those themes should ring true and spell out another record to be cherished for those downcast days. Daniel Kessler's serpentine guitar work cuts an imposing, but ultimately graceful figure on 'Into The Night', while Samuel Fograino's propulsive drumming continues to explore meters beyond linear motorik drive and Paul Bank once more speaks from the deepest reaches of his soul.

Review: It's been a rough old ride leading up to In Times New Roman for Queens of the Stone Age frontman Joshua Homme. Private life very much splashed across the front pages (of the music press, at least) amid custodial battles with ex-wives, cancer diagnoses and surgery, the loss of several close friends, including former Queens and latterly solo legend Mark Lanegan. As such we can understand why this latest album is an unforgiving and at times surprisingly edgy place to be.
It's been a while since the Seattle, Washington hard rockers allowed themselves to go this hard, and reveal so much about themselves. For the most part, In Times is their heaviest sounding outing in more than 15 years, essentially since Era Vulgaris dropped. Even in the sonically softer moments, for example 'Straight Jacket Fitting', there's a brooding moodiness recalling the heyday of unplugged grunge. Simply put, they clearly had a lot that needed to be let out, and that's exactly what they've done.

Review: If anybody thought QOTSA's previous offering '...Like Clockwork' indicated a band trying out new ideas, they're making far greater leaps this time around. Die-hard fans might be a little confused by the enlistment of Mark Ronson as the album's producer, perhaps even more so by the strong influence on Josh Homme of Ronson's ubiquitous 2014 hit 'Uptown Funk'. The outcome of this surprising collaboration proves to be a heady blend of the band's usual desert-rock sleaze and a crisp, infectious and floor-filling sound. This is an album to move to, and this new direction of dancefloor focus makes the blistering fuzzbox riffs and contortion-inducing solos sound even more cool and confident than ever.

Review: If anybody thought QOTSA's previous offering '...Like Clockwork' indicated a band trying out new ideas, they're making far greater leaps this time around. Die-hard fans might be a little confused by the enlistment of Mark Ronson as the album's producer, perhaps even more so by the strong influence on Josh Homme of Ronson's ubiquitous 2014 hit 'Uptown Funk'. The outcome of this surprising collaboration proves to be a heady blend of the band's usual desert-rock sleaze and a crisp, infectious and floor-filling sound. This is an album to move to, and this new direction of dancefloor focus makes the blistering fuzzbox riffs and contortion-inducing solos sound even more cool and confident than ever.

Review: Adorning his long hair on the cover, Kurt Vile returns with his seventh solo album Bottle It In which has the charm of a rare, golden find inside of a dusty Seattle record store. At 13 tracks long, interestingly enough three clock in at an epic 10 minutes long. It's an album that graces various themes of dark psyche within dreamy soundscapes of crackles and feedback underneath an ensemble of roomy drums, finger-picking guitars and other folky sentimentalities. There's mellifluous flow to the record, with the hip lyrical content of "Cold Was The Wind" a highlight and stand out alongside the washed out beach blues of "Skinny Mini" and unique album closer "(Bottle Back)".