25 years ago The Breeders released their classic album, Last Splash featuring the iconic single “Cannonball” and “Divine Hammer”. That line-up included Kim and Kelley Deal on guitar along with Josephine Wiggs on bass and Jim Macpherson on drums. The band broke up soon after but came together for the 20-year anniversary tour. Sparked by that tour, the reformed band released All Nerve in earlier this year.
The album starts out with a fine burst of early 90s alt rock in “Nervous Mary” and first single “Wait in the Car”. The title track is a touching yet messy love song. The album unfortunately peaks here. “Spacewoman” and “Walking With a Killer” are both fine coming off the bench tracks but here they are thrust in the starting line-up and can’t keep up. The rest of the album doesn’t offer up any surprises or standouts. It’s nice to have the band back together but All Nerve is not the record you want to hang out with on a regular basis.
6/10
Following up on two well received EPs, Melbourne rockers Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have now released their debut LP, Hope Downs. Preceded by dynamite single, “Talking Straight”, the album contains a spry 10 tracks that trend similar indie rock ground to one another. A great bassline propels “An Air Conditioned Man” whereas “Bellarine” ruminates that it “feels like rum is taking all my time…I never did my best”. “How Long” simply repeats the line “what are you running from” while your foot bounces up and down to the beat.
Courtney Barnett’s 2015 debut, Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit was a big hit with both critics and fans. Tracks like “Elevator Operator” and “Pedestrian at Best” treated audiences to Barnett’s witty banter mixed with early 90s guitar sound. Many tours later, plus a well-received effort with Kurt Vile, Barnett releases sophomore effort Tell Me How You Really Feel. After listening to the attention weary album, the title comes off more of an inward question than an outward one for the Melbourne artist.
Way back in the 90s Belle & Sebastian became a much loved band in the world of indie rock. Besides excellent albums such as If You Are Feeling Sinister and The Boy With The Arab Strap, the band released several coveted EPs. In late 2017 and 2018 B&S released three EPs one month apart which were then collected on one disc entitled How To Solve Our Human Problems. This idea recalls the 1997 boxset of three early EPs albeit in different packaging.
On various message boards, one constant thread is the struggle to follow new music while keeping up with ever growing physical and digital collections. It’s easier to keep up with a sliver of a niche than try to be everywhere but what fun is that? Meghan Remy’s cleverly named U.S Girls project is one of those that passed us by when she signed to 4AD in 2015 after 4 studio albums. The Illinois born, Toronto based artist’s second release on that prestige label caught our ear after hearing the excellent Citizen Kane inspired single “Rosebud” and In A Poem Unlimited started getting rave reviews.
