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Indie Rock

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

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

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

Byron Ciotter used lo-fi melodic rock as a confession booth through his latest single, Impossibilities

Posted on 3 April 2025

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=xIoxuYgJ1Ws&si=Hk5o4XXhIdFne8oz

There’s something arrestingly primal in the way Byron Ciotter strips his soul bare in Impossibilities. While most artists polish pain until it sparkles, Ciotter lets it crack and creak through every chord in this lo-fi melodic rock elegy that aches with the weight of unprocessed loss, love, and the universal pull of unanswered questions.

Drawing from two decades of eclecticism that started in Southern Maryland’s metal scene in 2005, Ciotter’s path to Impossibilities was paved through the wreckage of trauma, the solace of connection, and the quiet contemplation of death, divorce, and fleeting affection. It’s a long way from distorted riffs and high-octane catharsis—now the weight is carried by pared-back progressions that resound like intimate confessions. There’s no filter between the listener and the flood of reflection. Every note feels lived in, every lyric sounds like it was torn from the back page of a notebook too private to publish.

While Ciotter may never claim a crown for innovation, he’s reached the epitome of emotive expression. His unembellished approach to songwriting serves as a raw conduit of connection, one forged in the fires of personal experience and cooled in the lo-fi tones of acoustic melancholy.

Impossibilities is now available to stream on all major platforms, including YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Noah Nordman Constructed an Indie Pop Rock ‘Paradise’ with His Latest Raw Revelation of a Release

Posted on 1 April 2025

Noah Nordman perceptibly shares melodic DNA with Sam Fender, but within his sound lies far more than sonic assimilation; he delivers stridence twined seamlessly with indie sensibility. His latest single, ‘Paradise’, is cultivatedly twee, presenting Nordman as an artist who wears both his heart and his digressions openly on his guitar strings and soaring vocal lines.

As the rhythm section steadily feeds the track’s pulse, all peaks and valleys emerge courtesy of Nordman’s elastic vocal range, contracting and extending to flood the track with endless nuance. This melodic confession bursts with blistering emotion, subverting the stereotypical tranquillity of summery indie-pop-rock into an intimate canvas that vibrantly colours Nordman’s vulnerability and candour.

Based in Indianapolis, Nordman made his initial impact through the 2022 release of his debut, two-part album, SHIPWRECKED!. Following live performances across breweries and distilleries, he transformed his ambition into reality by diving headfirst into home production. With ‘Paradise’—the first of multiple planned 2025 releases—his powerful, clean vocals align effortlessly with impactful lyricism that blends indie-pop immediacy with singer-songwriter introspection.

Nordman’s music invites listeners into a world where emotional sincerity bursts free from indie-pop convention. ‘Paradise’ confidently positions him as an artist unafraid to colour outside the lines, providing listeners with a melodic outpouring as authentic as it is unforgettable.

‘Paradise’ is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Soundcloud.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Caught in the Current: The Manor Born Push Against the Tide in ‘Catch Up’

Posted on 24 March 2025

With their debut single, ‘Catch Up’, Tucson’s The Manor Born cement their stake in the indie rock soil with a release that thrums with urgency, yet never forgets to carry the melody. The verses pulse with pent-up tension, simmering beneath euphonic layers of saturation until the chorus tears through with cathartic clarity—each note a release valve for the emotional pressure that precedes it.

There’s a lo-fi warmth in the production that refuses to disguise itself as something it isn’t. It holds back from slickness and opts instead for truth—proving pretence, polish, and posturing have no place when the aim is to reach people, not impress them. Every line lands with weight, held together by panoramic progressions that refuse to sit still, and guitar tones as iridescent as the potential behind this project.

For anyone whose playlists are lined with Sam Fender or bands that know how to channel introspection without losing drive, ‘Catch Up’ won’t just resonate—it’ll leave a dent. The Manor Born understand how to translate emotional turbulence into something solid, tangible, and wildly listenable. The lyrics don’t beg for understanding—they offer it, through the universal disorientation that settles in when we try to find sense and self in a world always in flux.

There’s no promise of ease in their sound, but there is affirmation. And with this calibre of expression, The Manor Born have set a tone worth following.

Stream Catch Up on Spotify now.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Luxthereal Cast a Gothic Spell with Moments of Silence

Posted on 17 March 2025

Luxthereal has built a legacy channelling the spectral energy of new wave romanticism, and Moments of Silence is their most affecting séance to date. If Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cure, and Siouxsie and the Banshees still haunt your playlists, the sweeping, gothic glamour-tinged chords in this track will pull you under without resistance.

Angular guitar lines carve through the mist of atmospheric synths, giving the track an otherworldly edge that never leans into excess. The vocals command with a force that demands attention, leading you through the song’s moody corridors with a presence that defies material reality. There’s an ethereal pull to Moments of Silence, but it never floats too far into abstraction—this is alternative rock at its most tactile, driven by melody, tension, and an unshakable sense of purpose.

Hailing from Phoenix, Luxthereal have mastered the alchemy of melody and atmosphere, layering their sound with the echoes of decades past while refusing to be shackled by nostalgia.

Stream Moments of Silence on Spotify now: fans of atmospheric, hypnotic alt-rock—this one’s got your name on it.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

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