Our look at the key collections released this month also features Most Things, Adam Hopper & The Wimps, Mabel Clarke, Esther Rose and The Black Lagoons.
Above: Search Results | Words: Lloyd Bolton
caroline – 'caroline 2'
caroline return with what will surely be one of the albums of the year, a beautifully executed collection of uniquely crafted compositions. With as much emphasis on process as melody and arrangement, the band drift and cut between ideas, its eight tracks unfurling like some raffish tapestry. Caroline Polacheck features on 'Tell Me I Never Knew That', as if to underscore the saturation of hooky, pop melodies across the record. The magic of this record lies somewhere between these accessible tunes and the ambitious conceptual loading of each piece.
Search Results – 'Go Mutant'
Listening to 'Go Mutant', one of the most striking elements is the sheer efficiency with which the band express an idea. Their power trio setup shuns ostentation, and Fall-like melodies on songs like 'Wrinkle' are set forth with a similar mechanical humility to the beat of the drums. Under this cloak, whip-smart and surreal lyrics slip in and grab you, the music underscoring this response to the detritus of the everyday. Elsewhere, this simplistic setup permits moments of almost abstract expressionistic texture, as with the noisy sections of 'Noon'd' and 'Amaray'. An impressive second album from the Irish group.
Alien Chicks – 'Forbidden Fruit'
Alien Chicks' second EP captures the band pushing their compositional ceiling, at least in terms of recorded output. Their take on punk chops up its base elements and whizzes them together in an assault suited to the thin modern attention span. 'Say Fish' is particularly telling in this respect, a clattering pile of clashing musical ideas, somehow woven into a tight three minutes. 'Mr. Muscle' is another highlight, screaming about cleaning products to express a kind of terror of the domestic that feels particular to a generation coming of age today.
Most Things – 'Bigtime'
The debut album from Most Things is a charming introduction to a band whose uniqueness comes from an immediacy of approach and economy of arrangement. Debut single 'Shops!' is a perfect starting point, a stream-of-consciousness ramble that unravels from a trip to the shops into a surprising spool of imagery. Across the album, this immediacy makes room for genuinely surprising moments that feel borne of an inspiringly permissive approach to creativity.
Adam Hopper & the Wimps – 'Remember to Have Fun'
'Remember to Have Fun' is the sugar-sweet debut EP from Adam Hopper & The Wimps. Formed out of the ashes of the beloved Manchester group Blanketman, they make catchy indie rock invested with the joy of being in a band with your best mates. 'My Friend Al' is a rocking tribute with a fabulous middle eight proving the song's claim that Hopper can "still remember my best friend's telephone number". The title track takes things in a folksier direction with that invigorating mix of grandeur and tasteful DIY shabbiness that is at the heart of the wonder of a band like Bright Eyes. The song's message is in its title, a reminder to appreciate the good things in this life, a feeling that emanates across this EP and Hopper's output more generally.
Mabel Clarke – 'Winged'
The latest in the diverse and delightfully DIY output of Mabel Clarke, 'Winged', combines noise elements with beautiful details drawing on influences from folk to classical, set behind raw and evocative songwriting. 'A&E' makes a rousing singalong moment out of being picked up from the emergency ward, while 'All That Dooms Me' loops a guitar riff that could easily feel parochial but which gradually takes on a kind of defiant urgency as a noise backing rises up behind it. Then in moments of 'Death Song (Waltz for Ronnie' and 'Pigs 1', there are instrumental turns that recall the bittersweet lilt of Georges Delerue's French New Wave soundtracks. A sprawling and immersive collection.
Esther Rose – 'Want'
The latest album from Santa Fe-based alt country artist Esther Rose centres, as the title implies, on her desires, each track seeming to cut some binding tie. While her roots are firmly in country music, Rose's output has increasingly absorbed the best elements of the burgeoning American alternative singer-songwriter canon – particularly the catchy melodies, rich, contemporary production and the lucid, personal songwriting.
The Black Lagoons – 'These Hills We Ride'
This debut album from the Leeds/London four-piece lays out their wonderful synthesis of scratchy country rock with an exciting mixture of other interests. 'Hare Rama' has the ghostly layers of psych rock, but stomps along with a country swagger, while 'Bells Ringing' speaks more of the legacy of Country Teasers and subsequent adherents, like House Arrest and HONK. The adjacent influence of Westerns and Americana more broadly bleeds across the album's varying timbres, closing out on the lonesome whistle of 'Jesus & Jack'.
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