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Music Blog for Indie Rock Fans

The Glorious Years’ ‘The Darkest Universe’: A Psychedelic Prism Illuminating Post-Punk Nihilism

Posted on 25 April 2025

With their debut single, ‘The Darkest Universe‘, The Glorious Years opens a portal to a sonic galaxy where psych, krautrock, new wave, and post-punk coalesce into an aurally rich twilight. Co-produced by the band alongside Euan Hinshelwood (Cate le Bon, Half Japanese), this introduction marks the first glimpse into their upcoming album, ‘Something Beautiful Beyond’.

From the chorally opulent vocals that refract gently through the synth lines, to the subtle yet unwavering melodic pull from the guitars, each note maintains a meticulous tension. The single unravels as an exploration of tonal and textural contrasts—a kaleidoscopic prism of colour chillingly distorted by angular post-punk echoes and distinct influences from 70s and 80s sonic epochs.

There is an irreplicable comfort in the way guitars guide listeners through The Glorious Years’ alchemically orchestrated cosmos while the vocals adjust the listener’s perspective between shadows and illumination. Amidst its layers of nihilism and existential introspection, ‘The Darkest Universe’ acts as an open invitation to briefly abandon reality’s monotony for something more expansive, surreal, and profoundly human.

The Glorious Years set their creative compass towards something uniquely consoling yet philosophically provocative, solidifying their potential as a band adept in traversing the deeper spaces of alternative music.

‘The Darkest Universe’ is now available to stream on all major platforms via this link.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

All Violet’s ‘Animals Domestic’ Fires a Sonorous Bullet Through Indie-Rock’s Corporate Cage

Posted on 20 April 2025

Soft yet sonorous, All Violet’s single ‘Animals Domestic’ pulls you into a vortex of emotion refracted like a prism, a kaleidoscope channelling echoes of Pavement, Badly Drawn Boy, and The Goo Goo Dolls, where the jangly edges of 90s alt-indie collide unapologetically with Americana twang. It’s a sound that settles deep in your chest even as its earworm burrows relentlessly deeper, determined to make its home permanent.

Penned as a war cry against the rising corporate tide, dulling our minds and chaining us to cubicles, Animals Domestic is bathed in venomous vitriol spat at advertising overlords and the sportification of politics, questioning the existential malaise that comes from clock-watching and sleepwalking through life. With a hook that laments, “Is this all it means to be alive? Busy counting sheep until you die,” the song confronts modern existence’s psychological confinement head-on, pleading defiantly for something more tangible than neon-lit consumerist illusions.

Anchored by satisfyingly slick riffs and lyrics sharp enough to pierce the facade of commercial comfort, ‘Animals Domestic’ leaves a lingering mark—a salve for anyone who’s bruised themselves trying to decode life’s absurdities. All Violet, fronted fiercely by the enigmatic BT, ensures their indie-rock revolt resonates loud enough to crack corporate cages wide open.

‘Animals Domestic’ is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Ian McFarland Used Pop Punk to Augment Optimism in His Latest Single, You Are So Loved

Posted on 18 April 2025

If there’s any justice left in indie’s distorted underbelly, Ian McFarland will be recognised as the artist who gave serotonin back to pop-punk. The Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter has already earned a presence across regional charts and NYC live haunts, but You Are So Loved deserves to break much further beyond.

Following a sticky-sweet synth-pop intro, the single throws the genre right back to the golden era of visceral expression with its pop-punk crescendo of unfiltered optimism. But the stylistic transgressions don’t end there. Jangly new wave indie-pop nestles into the volition of the punk-tinged foundations, allowing McFarland to exhibit one of the most distinctive sonic signatures we’ve heard this year.

It’s not just the sound design that makes You Are So Loved cut through the cynicism often used as a crutch in alt scenes. McFarland weaponises sincerity as if it’s a subversive act. There’s bravery in broadcasting this much raw affection, especially within a genre known for self-deprecation and detached irony. But McFarland knew what he was risking—being written off as cloying or sentimental. He bypasses that pitfall entirely with his unshakable authenticity.

Born from a need to pull joy from bleakness, You Are So Loved is an adrenaline shot of altruism for anyone who needs to remember that the world can still look beautiful through a cracked lens.

You Are So Loved is now available to stream on all major platforms, including YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast.

Title: WD-HAN Punch Their Passport to Liberation in the Indie Rock Anthem ‘Chile’

Posted on 17 April 2025

Chile is one of the strongest exhibitions of WD-HAN’s versatility as they veer into sonic South American territory to bring the sardonically sweet context of the track to life. They flipped the script on the “I’ll follow you wherever you go” trope, as the protagonist stamps his passport to get as much geographical distance between an ex whose indiscretions and false promises led beyond spite to the sheer exhilaration of freedom.

With the vibrant Latin flavours popping through the kaleidoscope of the production, your synapses will flood with colour as you soak in the South American percussion and staccato guitar rhythms. This is an indie rock anthem to scream from the top of your lungs, to forget the spite with and lean into the euphoria of cutting ties from people whose sole mission seems to be psychological degradation.

Produced by Alex Arias at Fab Factory Studios and released via Red Slushy Records, Chile sees the Floridian alt-rock trio leaving no emotional punches unthrown. Vocalist Spencer Barnes keeps it tongue-in-cheek but razor-sharp as guitarist Cal Henry and drummer Lea Campbell inject every aural atom with augmented rapture. Known for emotionally charged anthems, WD-HAN may have made a departure with this release, but the international lyricality more than suits their status as they amass more acclaim from all corners of the globe. Why are we sleeping on making WD-HAN one of the biggest names in alt-rock is beyond beyond me.

Chile is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast.

Manchester’s Concrete Club turned the noose of neoliberalism with their indie anthem, ‘Paycheck to Paycheck’

Posted on 13 April 2025

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JdX0eWtArndCaiYIe5HH8gwZo24ItAnX

The most promising indie rock outfit Manchester has had swaggering down Oldham Street in quite some time has returned with Paycheck to Paycheck—a synth-soaked, guitar-jangled post-punk-adjacent anthem that picks up where Morrissey left off. Concrete Club turned the noose of neoliberalism into a no-nonsense working-class vignette, unflinching in its portrayal of the modern malaise of trying to keep your head above water while the elite swan-dive into tax avoidance schemes.

Built around a powerful synth lead and a tighter-than-the-welfare-budget rhythm section, Paycheck to Paycheck offers a rallying opportunity to seek refuge in the bleak comfort of shared scarcity complexes. The infectiously adrenalising reprise of “You’re not fun anymore” perfectly encapsulates the satisfaction that’s been stripped and sanitised from society; walk through any town, and you’ll witness psyches cracked by austerity and stitched up with zero-hour contracts.

The irony? Catch Concrete Club live and you’ll find the fun that’s been excised from everyday life forcibly reinstated through their Editors-esque earworms. Their sound may nod to New Order and The Killers, but this isn’t a tribute act banking on nostalgia. With lyricality that hits like a shot to the heart from a candid, politically aware soul and vocals that pull you into the feverish core of their arrangements, Concrete Club aren’t here to be a footnote. They deserve a headline slot in Manchester’s ongoing music legacy.

Paycheck to Paycheck is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast.

Shaw Revolver Wrestle Reverie and Reality in ‘Chasin’ My Shadow’

Posted on 12 April 2025

Shaw Revolver is the artistic definition of keeping it in the family—but there’s nothing saccharine about their dynamic. The trio—fronted by the father-daughter triad of Michael, Dresden, and Brielle—harness their natural synergy without ever falling into sentimentality. What they conjure instead is something far more powerful: emotionally charged rock, stripped of ego, driven by instinct.

The layered harmonies in Chasin’ My Shadow come like storm clouds over sunburnt desert guitars—guitars that shift with a chameleonic coolness, bleeding spectral southern rock into gothic textures, then turning on a dime into lines so virtuosically affecting they sound like the subconscious speaking in reverb. It’s a sonic terrain that mirrors the track’s thematic weight: trying to find stillness while wrestling with the shadows trailing behind you.

Chasin’ My Shadow doesn’t just feel like catharsis—it feels like confrontation. A reckoning between dream states and disillusionment, between inner peace and inherited pain. And while I’ll usually brace myself for the insular feel of family bands, Shaw Revolver blew that expectation wide open. Their sound doesn’t lock you out—it drags you right through the heart of their sound.

Since their 2019 debut, Shaw Revolver has toured coast to coast with their travelling acoustic act, but this single proves they’re just as potent when they plug in and wear their souls on their sleeves. Theirs is a rock ethos built on substance, delivered with gravitas, grace, and an unshakable sense of purpose.

Chasin’ My Shadow is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Nick Cody & The Heartache’s ‘Next Up’ Is A Swaggering Alt-Rock Serenade to Survival

Posted on 11 April 2025

With their latest single, Next Up, from the freshly pressed LP This is Love and the Heartache, Leeds-based Nick Cody & The Heartache have decidedly dialled up the swank and swagger. Frenetically paced grooves pull listeners into a sandstorm of Jim Morrison-esque desert-infused vocals, while backing harmonies create a dynamic, kinetic whirlwind of alt-rock reverence. The ensemble seems charged with an infectious energy that leaps effortlessly from musician to musician, ensuring the track becomes a certified serotonin shot—even against the stark refrain, ‘you don’t know what it’s like to die ‘round here’.

Clearly the band’s boldest sonic exploration to date, the creative gamble has spectacularly paid off. Genre boundaries crumble away as Next Up seamlessly sways from funk to college radio rock, slipping into vintage soul without missing a beat or dropping intensity. Released via Green Eyed Records—an imprint championing creative collaboration, previously hosting acclaimed artists like Jon Gomm and Martin Simpson—the single underscores Cody’s razor-sharp lyrical instincts and penchant for crafting melodies that refuse to fade.

Next Up is now available to stream on all major platforms, including SoundCloud.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Precious McKenzie – ‘Soft Skin, Screaming’: Alt-Indie Proof Romance Isn’t Dead, It’s Just Nihilistic

Posted on 9 April 2025

Manchester’s Precious McKenzie scratched their 7-year hiatus itch with the release of their single, ‘Soft Skin, Screaming’ on April 7; a precursor to their upcoming EP, which brings with it a promise of more cerebrally Machiavellian lyricality and stylistic ricochets across the alt-indie spectrum.

As an exposition of emotional addiction, hedonic excess and how the intersections between them can lead to the avenue of alienation and desperation to evade apathy, the single opts for realism over resolve, affirming how in the end, we return to dust, and yet, there’s catharsis in the emotive cataclysm which proves that romance isn’t dead, it’s just nihilistic and as dysfunctional as its perpetrators as they chase the impermanence of satisfaction in an era of dystopia.

With a chorus that delivers the visceralism we crave to abstract us from the monotony of unaltered mental states following palpitatingly taut verses of angular guitars fuelling the tension and visualising the anxiety that instils itself in the preludes of indulgence, ‘Soft Skin, Screaming’ is the sharpest blade on the alt-indie execution block in 2025.

Through chameleonic vocals that deliver poetic tender sentimentality, augment into anthemic 00s indie adrenaline, find room to inject sardonic spite and let restraint slip into ether while keeping flawless pitch like an indie crooner on the brink, Soft Skin, Screaming, is a buzzsaw through the mind, body, soul and rhythmic pulses.

Soft Skin, Screaming is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify and YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Paradise Drive’s ‘The Phenomenon’: Alt-Rock’s Interstellar Ride into Sonic Rapture

Posted on 5 April 2025

Paradise Drive is an alt-rock powerhouse delivering orbital euphoria through razor-sharp songwriting chops, interstellar production stylings, and a seamless transcendence beyond simply presenting as a talented act. Throughout their latest album, The Phenomenon, you won’t merely marvel at the evident virtuosity; instead, you’ll become locked into every emotional nuance as it ebbs and flows through kaleidoscopically alchemic progressions.

The opening track pulls you into a riff-raw reverie reminiscent of 00s indie rock—yet propelled further by spacey pedal-to-the-metal momentum, allowing oscillations to move effortlessly via sonic osmosis from airwaves into emotion. Bridging anthemic resonance with introspective quiescence, Paradise Drive taps uncharted intersections within alt-rock, confidently steering innovation towards one of the most dynamic albums of 2025.

From 80s new-wave synth-pop ballads like the standout single, ‘Girl on the Plane’, which fans of The Midnight will undoubtedly devour, to the cathartic rancour of ‘Let’s Be Clear’, The Phenomenon exceeds the promise implied by its title, leaving nothing to be viscerally or evocatively desired.

Led by guitarist and vocalist Hugo De Bernardo, Paradise Drive creates meteoric, immersive experiences, fusing the soulful ambition of Coldplay, U2’s ethereal expansiveness, and the contemporary zest of The Band Camino. Their songs, anchored by themes of love, heartbreak, and personal evolution, resonate affectingly through soaring melodies and lush, electronic-tinged rock landscapes, proving their powerhouse reputation is well-deserved.

The Phenomenon is now available to stream on all major platforms. Discover your preferred way to listen via the artist’s website.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

John Drake’s ‘Ocean’ Washes Poetic Desolation in Waves of Soul-Stained Rock

Posted on 4 April 2025

With his debut solo single Ocean, the truly prodigal rock n roll conduit John Drake has torn away from The Dust Coda to expose a more vulnerable but no less arresting facet of his talent. The first single from his solo debut Separation Songs is a slow-burning catharsis, steeped in self-doubt and the inertia of ambition, as he captures the conflict between longing and paralysis with a voice that gnaws away at the walls of the soul.

While Drake was never short of emotional artillery during his thirteen-year stint with The Dust Coda, Ocean is where he gives full licence to his inner poet. Resulting in a production steeped in haunting nostalgia, built on Bowie-style acoustic murmurs and thick, lumbering beats that drag you into a Radiohead-reminiscent realm where nothing is safe from introspection. There’s a quiet sense of disquiet that swells under the surface—never theatrically melancholic, always grounded in raw human ache.

Drake’s vocal delivery alone makes the release a force to reckon with—teetering between the cavernous grit of Eddie Vedder and the fragile celestial range of Buckley. It’s not a sound engineered to pander, but one engineered to bruise with truth.

Written in the aftermath of an identity-shedding leap of faith, recorded between Brisbane and London with ARIA-winner Cody McWaters and long-time collaborator Chass Guthrie, Ocean transcends the trappings of its influences. Nick Cave’s brooding presence lingers, Springsteen’s resilience flickers at the edges, but what Drake builds is unmistakably his: a cinematic alt-rock elegy for anyone who’s ever feared they might be swallowed whole by the scale of their own dreams.

Ocean is now available to stream on all major platforms via this link.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

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