Back in 2015, Fences made music that sat very comfortably within the indie-rock spectrum. The sound on that year’s ‘Lesser Oceans’ tapped into a sound that often sounded like a more synth based Mercury Rev crossed with the quieter and poppier moments from The New Pornographers. By the time 2019’s acclaimed ‘Failure Sculptures’ rolled around, band leader and frontman Christopher Mansfield seemed to be besotted by various elements of Americana. In adding extra folk and Americana derived elements to the already strong alt-pop sound, Fences created something rather special and a strange bubble where Fleet Foxes and Beck seemed to co-exist helped to create the band’s defining work.
Tag Archives: indie
A Place To Bury Strangers return with new single and video
It’s been three years since A Place To Bury Strangers released new studio material, but everyone’s favourite New York noisemakers return in July with a brand new EP release, ‘Hologram’.
As part of the early promotion for their long overdue return, they’ve shared the lead single ‘End of The Night’, along with an accompanying video.
Watch the new video for Lande Hekt’s ‘December’
Lande Hekt rose to fame as the singer with excellent indie/punk band Muncie Girls, a band whose 90s-centric sounds evoked the past like no other. Lande released an excellent solo EP in 2019 and her debut full length appeared in February 2021.
Stream: The Ghost Of Indie Top 20 (A Real Gone Playlist)
Back in the 90s, a series of compilation albums called ‘Indie Top 20’ provided exciting listening for a generation of NME readers. The series of cassettes (and latterly CDs) brought together 20 indie hits and underground bangers of the day, providing what would become an important time capsule for future generations.
The compilers were unafraid to pitch the era’s heavyweights Pop Will Eat Itself and Carter USM against the then up and coming Sleeper and Salad; it also gave a huge platform to bands that now seem too often forgotten, like Tiny Monroe and 18 Wheeler. Whatever appeared, fans absorbed like sponges. Those compilations were often responsible for creating cast iron favourites.
BLACK PISTOL FIRE – Look Alive
Somewhere near the beginning of their career, blues duo Black Pistol Fire released ‘Big Beat ’59’, a raw as hell album that cast them in a musical mould somewhere between The White Stripes and The Dead Exs. It didn’t always show a lot of invention in terms of garage blues, but it had a lot of balls, resulting in the kind of rough and ready record that should’ve appealed to all lovers of the style. The albums which followed showed a slight musical progression each time, along with a slightly slicker sound and the suggestion of a slightly bigger budget. This culminated in the release of 2017’s ‘Deadbeat Graffiti’ where the expected Black Pistol Fire raucousness was tempered by far more of an indie rock/blues hybrid sound in places. It was a sound that suited the band well, and on tracks like ‘Fever Breaks’ and ‘Bully’ they even appeared to give Arctic Monkeys a run for their money.