4 weeks ago
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The coldest and worst month of 2026 so far is behind us and let’s hope things get better from here. They already have as far as Indie Basement goes, as I’ve given three new records Album of the Week status as part of six I review this week.
This week’s Indie Basement Classic is an ugly beautiful thing that turns 30 this year.
For more of this week’s new albums, Andrew reviews Joyce Manor, By Storm, Red Sun and more in Notable Releases.
I interviewed The Cribs on this week’s episode of the BV Interviews pod.
It was another busy week for announcements and here are some relevant to this column: new albums are on the way from Kneecap, ADULT. and Fear of Men’s Jessica Weiss; Spoon & The Beths are touring together this summer; and industrial icons Cabaret Voltaire announced their final tour (including North American dates).
Pour one out for Sly Dunbar, one of the greatest drummers ever.
In a week of many Minneapolis tribute songs, Billy Bragg made the best.
ALBUM OF THE WEEK #1: Lande Hekt – Lucky Now (Tapete)
Third solo album from the former Muncie Girls singer/guitarist is full of shimmering, winsome janglepop that gives Twee a good name
Former Muncie Girls singer/guitarist Lande Hekt just keeps getting better with each solo album. Her third long-player is loaded with shimmering janglepop indebted to Flying Nun kiwi pop, Heavenly, The Pastels, Dolly Mixture, and other music you could call “twee,” which also matches Lande’s cardigan-clad style on the album’s artwork. That word is generally used as a pejorative, but Lucky Now is the best kind of twee — full of fantastic songs and confident performances that are winsome and thensome.
Lande made the album with producer Matthew Simms of MEMORIALS (also Wire and It Hugs Back), who really nails the sound here — keeping her voice, harmonies, and melodies at the center, while the instrumentation remains appropriately sweet but not without muscle and moments of swirling atmosphere. It would be hard to make a bad record with songs like “Favourite Pair of Shoes,” “A Million Broken Hearts,” “My Imaginary Friend,” and the soaring title track. With Lucky Now, Lande is on par with The Beths and Alvvays.
That confidence also comes through in the lyrics. “I wanted to try and push for something slightly more positive, which I’m trying to do more of generally — just to not fall apart,” Hekt says. “An appointment at an embassy, a promise of sobriety, a single night when you didn’t go to sleep,” she sings on “Lucky Now,” taking stock of where her life is at. “I was a tiny fish, I don’t know how I crossed that sea.” Lande can clearly swim oceans now.
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ALBUM OF THE WEEK #2: Plantoid – FLARE (Bella Union)
Proggy UK trio find focus on their seriously impressive second album
Brighton trio Plantoid made a strong impression with their 2024 debut album Terrapath, which mixed genres with wild abandon and refused to be constrained by labels. Well, maybe one genre united them all: “prog.” It was the kind of record where fans of Primus, Yes, Porcupine Tree, and Faith No More could find common ground. They’re now back with their second album which, at first glance, looks like more of the same — complete with a Stonehenge-esque rock formation and ancient runes on the cover. But the proggiest thing about this one is the album art.
FLARE finds Plantoid focusing their sound into something less gangly. “While making FLARE, we did knowingly acknowledge that our sound had been very erratic,” says drummer Louis Bradshaw. “We never stayed on anything for too long. Before going into writing this album we wanted to slightly redefine what we were doing — it’s less directly proggy. It strays from that sound a bit, while retaining that character.”
Make no mistake, Plantoid’s dazzling musicianship and love of unusual time signatures are still very much on display, but these nine songs feel like tentacles working in tandem, mixing skronky math rock with passages of jazzy, ethereal beauty. FLARE is somehow both further out and more grounded than their debut. Where you once had to give them credit for their chops — even if it was giving you whiplash — this album is a genuinely impressive, enjoyable listen.
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ALBUM OF THE WEEK #3: Whitelands – Sunlight Echoes (Sonic Cathedral)
London shoegazers shift to dreampop — with an emphasis on “pop” — to great effect on their excellent second album
“A few people on Reddit have been complaining about the state of shoegaze singers,” says Etienne Quartey-Papafio of London band Whitelands, “but I think that’s where Whitelands shines.” It’s hard to argue with that. Etienne says listening to Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter changed the way he sang after releasing the band’s 2024 debut, and he’s definitely not your average shoegaze frontperson. Born in Ghana before moving to the UK and discovering Slowdive, Etienne notes that people often assume he’s in a reggae band — but his powerful vocals are one of the most striking things about Whitelands and their excellent second album.
While initially lumped in with the new shoegaze scene — and still signed to Sonic Cathedral, a label that focuses heavily on the genre — Sunlight Echoes finds them taking flight into pillowy dreampop territory. Some use “shoegaze” and “dreampop” interchangeably, but no one would confuse the gossamer beauty of “Songbird (Forever),” resplendent in swirling strings, with My Bloody Valentine or even Slowdive. Whitelands still pull off a loud-quiet-loud trick, though, via Etienne’s vocals: beautifully breathy in the verses, then going full-throated technicolor in a knockout chorus that practically demands you close your eyes and sway as it envelops you.
“Songbird (Forever)” is for sure the standout on Sunlight Echoes, but the rest of the album soars nearly as high: “Glance,” the album’s other pure pop stunner; “Sparklebaby,” a gentle and folky number featuring backing vocals from Lush’s Emma Anderson; the groovy “Golden Daze”; and “Blankspace,” the record’s lone unadulterated shoegaze rocker, not too far off from Swervedriver.
Alongside Deary, Whitelands are the most exciting thing to happen to shoegaze in a while — even if they’ve already escaped its confines.
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Cast – Yeah Yeah Yeah (Scruff of the Neck Records)
These Britpop greats, who spent much of 2025 opening Oasis’ reunion tour, are back with their eighth album of catchy, anthemic guitar pop
Britpop vets Cast — led by former The La’s bassist John Power and together for more than 30 years — are having their highest-profile year since releasing their wonderful debut All Change in 1995. A big part of that resurgence is due to Oasis having them open all UK dates of their 2025 reunion tour (they also played the NYC and LA shows), as well as a fall tour celebrating All Change. But Cast have felt ready for the spotlight even before all that. Their 2024 album Love is the Call had the same sparkle as All Change, and now the band — which includes original members Liam “Skin” Tyson and Keith O’Neill — have followed it up with another terrific record.
Much of Cast’s staying power and charm come from John Power’s indefatigable spirit, knack for a catchy tune, and still-powerful voice. Like Love is the Call, Yeah Yeah Yeah was produced by Killing Joke bassist Youth, who has a way with veteran bands — helping them make records that sound like what fans know and love. No one here is trying to innovate; they’re just delivering the kind of anthemic Britpop that made people fall for them in the first place.
Yeah Yeah Yeah isn’t just more of the same, though — orchestration and soul backing vocals give everything a little more heft, especially on “Poison Vine,” “Say Something New,” and the stratospheric “Free Love” and “Calling Out Your Name,” which both sound stadium-ready. Sometimes giving people what they want is the same thing as giving them what they need.
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GUV – Warmer Than Gold (Run for Cover)
Former Fucked Up guitarist Ben Cook shortens his solo moniker and finds inspiration in early ’90s baggy Manchester psychedelia
After four albums of chiming power pop (and one of Prince-esque synth-funk) as Young Guv, former Fucked Up guitarist Ben Cook has rebranded his solo project to just GUV. “I’m not so young anymore, three-letter band names are cool, and I’m tired of being mistaken for a rapper,” he says. The makeover isn’t just in name — he’s now channeling early ’90s UK indie, specifically the Manchester-centric rave/baggy scene that gave us The Stone Roses, The Charlatans, Screamadelica, and more, with a healthy dose of shoegaze and Britpop in the mix. Helping him out are Hatchie, Meg Mills of Turnstile, James Matthew Seven, Darcy Baylis, and more.
Cook’s parents are English, and he actually grew up between Toronto and the UK, so it’s not as wild a pivot as it might seem. “My grandmother helped invent the miniskirt in London in the ’60s, my parents met in a squat in Brixton. My dad was the drug dealer, my mom the hippie runaway,” he says. “Growing up, I had a little bit of a Bristol life — it was more like trip-hop and reggae vibes over there when I was young.”
As an exercise in style, Warmer Than Gold gets the sunshine-and-love vibes right, with a mix of anthemic chord progressions, trippy psychedelia, and bongo-fueled beats. He might even be sampling The Stone Roses’ “Fools Gold” (or Bobby Byrd’s “Hot Pants,” which they sampled) on opener “Let Your Hands Go,” though sonically it’s closer to Chapterhouse. Cook knows his way around a hooky melody, and these songs get the big choruses they need. As someone who was very into this scene in real time, I probably would’ve played the heck out of this in 1991 — though today I’d rank it more alongside groups like The Dylans, The Mock Turtles, and The Candyskins than The Roses, The Charlatans, or The Mondays. Not bad company, though.
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Sébastien Tellier – Kiss The Beast (Because Music)
First album in six years from this French Touch great revels in ’80s sounds. A bit too much.
French Touch vet and unrepentant hipster Sébastien Tellier will always get a pass from me thanks to “La Ritournelle,” his elegant, seven-minute 2004 masterpiece powered by a hypnotic piano pattern and the drumming of Afrobeat icon Tony Allen. I haven’t loved everything else he’s done in the 20+ years since, and I’m a bit on the fence about Kiss The Beast, his first album in six years.
He piles on so many ’80s sonic touchstones — Vangelis synths, pan flutes, fretless bass, Fairlight-style samples, vocoder, shameless sax — that it falls into full fromage. It all seems by design, though, and moments like the Morricone-esque disco instrumental “Romantic” and the banger “Copycat” (which is worthy of early-’00s Tellier) manage to turn it all into delicious fondue. Guests including Nile Rodgers and Kid Cudi don’t add much to the dish. How much you enjoy this one may depend on your level of lactose intolerance.
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INDIE BASEMENT CLASSIC: Babybird – Ugly Beautiful (Echo, 1996)
DIY musician Stephen Jones recorded hundreds and hundreds of songs on his four-track Portastudio in the early-to-mid-’90s. Between July 1995 and May 1996, he released five compilations of those songs — many decidedly weird but compelling and often loaded with pop hooks — as Baby Bird (two words), which became instant cult hits. (I’m particularly fond of Fatherhood and The Happiest Man Alive. They’re all on streaming services.) Jones also asked people who bought the albums to let him know their favorite songs, and those became the basis for Ugly Beautiful, the debut album by the full-band Babybird (one word).
Babybird got lumped in with Britpop, but Jones had more in common with fellow weirdo Julian Cope, who was also signed in the mid-’90s to UK label Echo Records (home to Moloko, Subcircus, Denim, and more). He scored a Top 10 UK hit with “You’re Gorgeous,” an effortlessly catchy song about a creepy photographer mistreating his model — which most people misinterpreted entirely as a love song. Jones still considers it an albatross around his neck.
Ugly Beautiful is a breezy, if decidedly quirky, listen, including equally excellent singles “Cornershop,” “Goodnight,” and “Candy Girl,” plus great deep cuts like “45 & Fat,” “Jesus is My Girlfriend,” “I Didn’t Want to Wake You Up,” and the decidedly demented 10-minute “King Bing,” which finds Jones in admitted Jim Morrison territory and was removed from the belated U.S. release of the album. Jones mostly turned his back on those poppy sounds on later albums — though his excellent 2000 single “The F Word” did end up as the theme song to the early-’00s Gordon Ramsay food series of the same name — but he has remained Robert Pollard–prolific, as his Bandcamp page, which feels like it gets updated hourly, can attest. But Ugly Beautiful remains Babybird’s finest moment.
Over the last 10 years, Jones has become even more of an eccentric but he just announced his biggest Babybird show in ages, a special Ugly Beautiful 30th anniversary celebration at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire on March 7.
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