Category Archives: Music Essays

Britain’s new age indie scene – a new sound is on the rise and you don’t want to miss out
1
Apr

A new wave of indie music has been brewing and the potential isn’t barred by any limits. Indie music has been huge in the UK for as long as I remember, but new factors are changing the sound of the new up-and-coming talent into something completely different. By Matthew Rowe.

Indie music has often been praised as the voice of the younger generation, and you will often find that the youth will associate themselves with the sound of the ever-recognisable tunes of the Arctic Monkeys, the Strokes, and Pulp, just to name a few. These are big household names who have helped develop and create their own indie sound, one that will certainly never be forgotten. However, more recently, there has been a huge burst of creativity within the indie scene, with a lot of new talent alongside it. These new artists are helping preserve the meaning of indie while putting their own twist on it.

As a genre, indie music has a massive cultural significance that can’t be ignored. For one, the university experience I’ve enjoyed wouldn’t have been anywhere as good without it. You can’t go to a party without soaking up indie music and its culture. My personal favourite venue, The Leadmill, is host to many indie nights out and so many great gigs; it is truly a hub of musical exploration and a place to have a damn good time (bless the £1.50 doubles).

If I had a pound for every reference to the Tories in indie songs, I’m be deemed a Conservative.

The sound may be developing but some things in indie don’t change. Themes in indie songs still follow consistent themes and messages. If I had a pound for every reference to how bad the Tories are in an indie song, I’d be deemed a Conservative voter. But this is what it’s all about: the voice of the youth expressing their opinions on a vast amount of issues both inside the UK and globally, one example being Declan McKenna‘s British Bombs, a modern-day cult classic that is recognisable instantaneously. The standard themes are being followed but some have rightfully been pushed further than others. Ideas of identity, self-worth and female empowerment have been made so much more vocal, creating an insight into issues recently pushed into the public’s eye, often to the distaste of the older generation. Two songs that I think show this beautifully are Lime Garden’s I Want To Be You and CMAT’s Whatever’s Inconvenient. The sounds of the greats don’t lose their value and are often replicated by bands wanting to reach the great hits their predecessors had. This is shown by Sheffield-based band The Reytons, who have adapted local legends and the Arctic Monkeys sound relatively successfully. If you are ever on a night out, it’s unexplainable, but the atmosphere will become electric whenever an indie banger comes on.

These developments can’t purely be put down to indie music; the music scene as a whole has shifted in recent years. Huge developments in UK jazz, post-punk and rap have all had their impact on the genre, elevating it to a whole new level. This allows a level of creativity and it shows. Post-punk has had such an amazing impact; artists such as BC,NR have had such a huge impact, and other bands in the crank wave subgenre are interchangeable with indie. Hard-hitting indie bands Do Nothing, Dry Cleaning, and Courting are great examples of the development of indie in the post-punk direction. This isn’t the only way the scene has developed; spoken word has snuck its way in almost seamlessly. Leeds band Yard Act are a great example of this, often leaving the preconceptions of how an indie song should be laid out, allowing them to both create standard songs with funky hooks but also much more solemn monologues. This sound is also shown by the much more popular Wet Leg.

The impact of other otherwise irrelevant genres is not to be understated

Outside of the UK, very unexpected artists have been entering the domain. Rapper Lil Yachty gained a reputation for creating rap songs such as iSpy, but last year he took a huge risk by entering alternative indie with the very influential album Let’s Start Here. This was a complete change in vibe for the American artist but it paid off. The song Drive Me Crazy! is a perfect example of this new experimental feel he was going for, creating a perfect example of how the genre of rap has been infused into indie. The concept has been around for a while. Years ago, Arctic Monkeys collaborated with British icon Dizzie Rascal to create Temptation Greets You Like Your Naughty Friend. Bloc Party is known for mixing the two consistently, but it’s incredibly promising to see otherwise unexpected artists entering the subgenre.

Here are some songs by the insane new talent that you need to hear:

I Want To Be You – Lime Garden (Single)

This song is a perfect embodiment of how the standards held by those famous on TV lead to innate jealousy and a desire to change their body and lifestyle, highlighting the huge issues of being surrounded by these fake idols. This is consistent in Lime Garden’s music, a girl band who seamlessly expresses modern issues in their songs

Nearly Daffodils – English Teacher (Nearly Daffodils)

Heavily post-punk inspired band English Teacher often takes a heavier, rock feel to indie, especially in this song sounding akin to a hybrid of Fontaines D.C., Dry Cleaning, and Wet Leg. The singer, ironically named Lily Fontaine, bridges the gap between a harsh, brutal instrumental and a much more melodic and soothing voice, despite still being able to shout out to drive home the whole point: “You can lead water to the daffodils, but you can’t make them drink.” Fontaine’s range is shown in their discography, with much more melancholy compositions like Mastermind Specialism and a poetic start to Yorkshire Tapas.

R Entertainment – Sports Team (Gulp!)

It wouldn’t be a list of indie recommendations if I didn’t mention Cambridge-formed band Sports Team, who gained notoriety in 2020 with their debut album Deep Down Happy and many of my favourite indie rock songs, such as Stations of the Cross. They haven’t slowed down since, going on several tours or releasing a second album, Gulp!. This album hasn’t gained as much traction as their debut, but in my opinion it has songs of the same or even better quality. R Entertainment is my pick from this album, a commentary on how desensitised the general public has become to otherwise shocking content and how war, homicide, and car crashes have become almost trivial to us. “They’re mowing us down, for R entertainment.” The slang just emphasises how much of an issue it is in the UK.

I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby! – CMAT (If My Wife New I’d Be Dead)

CMAT has one of the most impressive voices I have ever heard. Hailing from Ireland, she doesn’t hold back with her loud, passion-filled choruses. I had the pleasure of seeing her live recently, and I was amazed her voice hadn’t died by the end of a nearly three hour action packed and downright fun set. Her song I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby! covers so many issues while being an incredibly catchy banger. Several people in the crowd donned cowboy hats for the gig. Issues of self-identity and empowerment are covered here with lines such as “But I break down every time I’m on the scales” and “My style icon is the wolverine / Between each finger lies the key / To getting home without a buckaroo.” These lines emphasise issues of body standards as well as how society and men will often go out with the pure intention of going home with someone and view women as objects, the keys referencing needing self-defense on a day-to-day basis. Her discography covers so many deep issues while maintaining high quality and listenability.

The British music scene and indie as a whole are in great hands; these new talents have already achieved brilliant things, from widely acclaimed albums to supporting huge global talents to having their own national and international tours. I can’t wait to see what they are capable of and how other genres will continue to influence both new and established artists. The Arctic Monkeys delving into more lounge and art rock is a great example of this. To conclude, please give the new indie scene a listen, specifically the songs mentioned above.

Songs for solitude: alone on a mountain with Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher
28
May

There’s loneliness and there’s simply being alone, and as I plodded up the final steep slope to the minor peak of Froswick in the Lake District one evening last September, I only felt the latter. I hadn’t seen a soul since leaving the valley earlier that morning, locating with difficulty a faint path that guided me through dense bracken and up a ridge that rose gracefully above the glassy expanse of Haweswater behind me. Even on reaching the summit of High Street, the most significant fell in the area, I could eat a celebratory Wispa with only the company of a handful of disinterested sheep. Having spotted a sharper fin of lower peaks a little distance away from the barren plateau I had arrived at, I had diverted in their direction, enjoying the gloriously gentle wide ridge (High Street was once indeed a passageway for horses and carts, and a spectacular one at that). I found a picturesque tent pitch on Froswick for the night and wondered whether the tiny, potential outlines of people I’d seen earlier on the hill’s larger neighbour Ill Bell had been imaginary.

There were two reasons why listening to the second studio album from Californian singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers felt like the natural thing to do after I’d settled down that evening. The first was fear. I hadn’t seen anyone all day, but something about the prospect of a stranger approaching – particularly without me spotting them in advance – in such an exposed, vulnerable location scared me more than it perhaps should have. After all, I’d met a friendly enough fellow solo camper on a similar overnight trip up Helvellyn last year, and that night spent the first hour of darkness watching specks of headtorch light weave their way up the ridge I was sat on, willing them to turn away from me at the crest perhaps for the sake of a little more solitude. There were no such encounters on Froswick, although I heard the chug of helicopter blades from my tent later that night, which is surely one of the most inexplicably terrifying sounds you can hear when alone in a tent in the middle of nowhere, made worse when accompanied by a search light (camping is, after all, technically illegal in England, but not that illegal). For me, thankfully, there was no such light, and I breathed a sigh of relief as the sounds of the rotor promptly faded into nothing.

The view of Froswick and Ill Bell from the summit plateau of High Street was enticing.

The familiar sound of Punisher was, therefore, a vital extra comfort blanket over my icy sleeping bag and copious layered fleeces. The album exhibits a calmness so intense it can be easy to dismiss the whole thing as insubstantial or boring on first listen. The exceptional quietness of most of the songs invites deeper listening, and meticulous production provides plenty of hidden gems to uncover: alien electric guitar mumblings, minimalist and thoroughly intentional muffled drum grooves, the occasional frissen of electronic vocal manipulation. Bridgers’ vocal performance in particular encourages this tranquil, deep listening. Lyrics are recited patiently and deliberately, and Bridgers’ outstanding poeticism shines as a result. Seemingly one-dimensional lines like “if I could give you the moon, I would give you the moon” are rendered gut-punchingly poignant by Bridgers’ poised delivery, pausing several times for effect before ushering in a final rush of backing vocals. There’s no rush in Punisher, and neither was there in my wonderfully spare few hours atop Froswick.

Cars like fireflies occasionally made their way up the valley beside me, their full beam headlights clearly visible in the gloom.

The other reason was that Punisher seemed to fit the occasion in a way no other album could. Far from a distraction from the beautiful view in front of me – standing on Froswick’s modest summit, Windermere stretched out into the distance towards the barely-visible wind turbines of Morecambe Bay – Punisher is an album pristine enough to enhance that feeling of wonder. Kyoto, for example, includes a rousing trumpet melody that, completely independent of the lyrics, inspires pride and awe that I can quietly indulge in having made it up to the heaven of a Lake District fell entirely on my own steam. Other times, Punisher has an ability to transport me even further away from the problems of the real world than my rural location. Garden Song is one such escape, with Bridgers describing a surreal dream beside a single reverb-soaked guitar, her plaintive melody doubled by an eerie deeper vocal. “What if I told you I feel like I know you / But we never met?” she asks uneasily a few songs later. Nothing quite makes sense, but nor should it. Punisher feels like its own fantasy world with its own rules, and perhaps that’s why its meditative qualities resonated with me so strongly as day became night on Froswick. My perch on the summit gave a god-like perspective of the flat plain below. Cars like fireflies occasionally made their way up the valley beside me, their full beam headlights clearly visible in the gloom. Gradually, the residents of Windermere turned on their lights, which flickered gently as they proceeded with their Wednesday evenings. Being so high and so alone with my magnificent view of the land already felt blissfully unreal and gave a chance to momentarily untangle myself from the constant preoccupations of day-to-day life; Bridgers’ vivid world of strange, purring guitars and ghostly strings felt like just one step further into unreality.

Standing from the summit of Froswick, Ill Bell loomed over my tent, which looked out towards Windermere and the distant lights of Morecambe.

A sheep brought me back down to earth during Chinese Satellite, giving me a start when it appeared a few feet behind me, calmly munching some grass. It was a good prompt to stand up and turn towards the mountain range behind me for a few songs. Together we watched the colossal, boulder strewn slope of Mardale Ill Bell during Moon Song, the mountain’s valley base more and more thrillingly abyss-like as the darkness thickened. I was reminded why the song was one of my favourites of the album, largely thanks to Bridgers’ deeply evocative lyrics that offer a searing edge of resentment and melancholy to the lilting melody. “You pushed me in and now my feet can’t touch the bottom of you,” she tells us, apparently pointing out how comparatively tiny I am both amongst the mountains and the towns of people below, as god-like as I may like to feel. Being a mere drop in the ocean can be just as liberating as omnipotence, I was reminded.

A sheep brought me back down to earth during Chinese Satellite, giving me a start when it appeared a few feet behind me.

It was so dark by the time I reached louder, anthemic standout ICU the outlines of the great Cumbrian peaks to the west that I’d enjoyed during the day were beginning to become difficult to pick out. Truthfully, I grew so tired that the great musical explosives of closing track I Know The End washed over me. Beginning to shiver, I shuffled through the two fabric doorways of my tent and wrestled with my sleeping bag as Bridgers finished her finely crafted masterwork not with more acoustic musings but with a shocking, chest-rattling scream over a soul-stirring horn melody.

I would have preferred for Bridgers to somehow have continued through the night; even after many uneventful nights camping, the wind’s uncanny ability to shake the tent fabric in a way that sounds exactly like a sheep gnawing at guy ropes or, worse, footsteps of a wayward stranger, has always unsettled me. Of course, the logical part of me knew there was no one else nearby, and likely no one else on the entire mountain range. I couldn’t have been further from the buzzing confines of Leeds’ Brudenell Social Club, where Scottish new wave/post-punk band Altered Images were wrapping up their headline set to a no doubt rapt, sweat-drenched audience. Places of community like Brudenell give music their own ritualistic edge, whether one is hamonising as a collective in an improvised choir or colliding with bodies in a cathartic mosh pit. But on Froswick I learned that experiencing music in total solitude can feel every bit as life-affirming and vulnerable. It was quieter and more personal, but hearing Punisher that night provided all the feelings that come with a brilliant live gig: euphoria, awe and an unstoppable sense of freedom.