Juno Recommends Rock / Indie / Folk / Metal / Punk / 50s / 60s: November 2022

Review: One of Britain's best-loved and most accomplished pop-rock bands are back with another highly anticipated album. The Car is epic on every level with its adventurously designed tunes, lots of grand orchestration and plenty of easy-to-enjoy and enigmatic songs of love but also doubt. The Sheffield outfit's seventh long player was written by frontman Turner at his home in LA and mixes indie and psychedelic rock, baroque, glam and orchestral rock with production largely taken care of by frequent collaborator James Ford of Simian Mobile Disco fame. The title is a nod to the fact that - guess what - there are many references to cars throughout the lyrics.

Review: A bunch of Queen of the Stone Age albums are being reissued at the moment. Their self-titled effort from 1998 is the one that started it all off. It has been long out of print and just as long adored by fans. Here it gets a limited edition colour vinyl pressing with restored artwork. Homme produced the album as well as singing and playing the rest of the instruments but for the drums played by Alfredo Hernandez. The album got critically well received and was earmarked as a classic of the stoner rock genre. It's great to have it back in print.

Review: Shoegaze legends Ride are on a reissuing role, having announced a re-release campaign of almost all their early classic albums on Wichita Recordings. 'Going Blank Again' is the patrician's choice, being one of their most acclaimed and praised. Unlike contempories a-la My Bloody Valentine, Ride's sound at this point was clear and crisp; it was drowned in sonic light, not vacuum fuzz, and carried with it a cheerier edge that predicted the sounds of later bands like Weezer. Don't miss this orange vinyl bundle version.

Review: We're certainly not the first people to note that Being Funny In A Foreign Language is a break from the norm for The 1975. One of Britain's biggest and most opinion-splitting stadium acts aren't exactly known for their brevity or scaling back, having opted for song titles that take up far too much space, and often marrying these with mammoth tunes which are part of the reason people either love or don't really care for them.

Enter 2022's addition to the back catalogue. Overall, we've got just over 40-minutes of music here, which divided into 11 tracks means four minutes per song on average. And there's also a distinct lack of big room, at least up against their previous stuff, although there's still nothing subtle about the emotional indie pop here. Overall, then, this may not be the record die harders wanted, but it could well be the LP the band needed.

Review: Shoegaze legends Ride's reissuing roll reaches their first four EPs; the first here, simply titled 'Ride', was emblematic of the band's sound and, outside of that sphere, paved the way for an entire genre. After that, and before 'Nowhere', came the subsequent EP's 'Play', 'Fall' and 'Today Forever', which make up this sprawling blue vinyl boxset. Once again, you can now bask in the shimmering waves that lap at this jolly band's feet, and ours.

Review: 2012 feels like a very long way back indeed. Nevertheless, we still remember when An Awesome Wave dropped and took the UK, and later a good chunk of Europe, by storm. Alt-J's debut album remains a call to arms for outsiders to take on the mainstream, and a case of setting out your stall to show exactly what you're made of, and how much business you mean.

Straddling folktronica, electronic pop, art rock, and indie, while merging genres and distancing oneself from standard tropes is in itself nothing new, it's the elements that were picked to stay, and those that got removed from each of the styles that made this stand out. The result is a complex, innovative mix that stops short of oppressive intellectualism, and instead just sounds really original.

Review: Ben Howard was already an instant hit when he released The Burgh Island EP in 2012 in the wake of his debut album. The British singer-songwriter signed to Island and landed himself in the hearts and minds of fans the world over. This particular EP was limited to 1000 copies at the time of release, but it's since gone on to attain some sizable cult status thanks to the use of 'Oats In The Water', which appeared in The Walking Dead and The Innocents, and helped launch video game The Witcher 3. That's a whole lot of outreach, and the rest of the EP matches up to that track's spellbinding qualities, not least the epic eight-minute title piece featuring Monica Heldal.

Review: Toronto's Alvvays return for a much anticipated third album five years after their breakthrough record, Antisocialite. As the story goes for so many bands, the last few years have thrown a number of curveballs their way, but they stepped into the studio with Shawn Everett in October 2021 and laid down their new tracks in immediate, urgent fashion. You can hear Everett's touch all over the production, bringing vibrant textures and subtle details into their sound, but at the heart this remains a vehicle for shimmering, electrically-charged songwriting. On Blue Rev Alvvays stake their claim in the premier league of modern day indie rock, and on the strength of these fourteen songs, who are we to argue?

Review: Helping celebrate National Album Day 2022, not to be confused with Record Store Day or Independent Label Day or the other holidays of the musical year, BMG are reissuing Supergrass' breakout debut album I Should Coco. Of course the band evolved in very intriguing ways, mirroring Blur as a group that had enough ideas to transcend the Britpop trappings, but that doesn't stop their mischievous arrival from being a whole heap of fun. From enduring hit 'Alright' to 'Going Out' and 'Caught By The Fuzz', there's still so much to love about this classic album.

Review: It's hard to believe it is now a full decade since Detroit's Dez Andres blew up off the back of his classic house jam 'New For U.' He had of course been toiling away for years before that, recording with Moodyman and DJing for Slum Village amongst other things. Since then the music has kept coming - some of it hip-hop as DJ Dez, some of it house under this alias, and much of it a perfect fusion of the two. And that's what we get here on this new EP for Beretta Music - four lush deep house joints with his smooth signature drum loops and gloriously incidental melodies. The slower, funkier bounce of 'Back To Nature' is the EP highlight for us, but all four of these are a cut above, as per usual with Dez.

Review: They're a Marmite band no doubt, especially among those who followed the altogether more deviant and dengerous Nirvana that brought FF frontman Dave Grohl to the world's attention initially. But there's no denying the fact that the Foo Fighters' anthemic, surging power chord pileup of a sound has turned them into a prospect that - whether live or record - now massively eclipses their predecessor in popularity. This is the definitive double-LP compiliation of all of the Foo Fighters' most essential cuts, including 'Everlong', 'Monkey Wrench' and 'Rope' and many more.

Review: Red Hot Chili Peppers have found some good form of late with a new album Unlimited Love earlier in the year now followed by a surprise second new album. Anthony Kiedis and co's Return of the Dream Canteen is a second Rick Rubin-produced album. The group said of the album "We went in search of ourselves. A beautiful bit of chemistry meddling that had befriended us hundreds of times along the way. Once we found that slipstream of sound and vision, we just kept mining." This one sounds like classic Chilis with plenty of funk and big riffs as well as great songwriting.

Review: One of Britain's best-loved and most accomplished pop-rock bands are back with another highly anticipated album. The Car is epic on every level with its adventurously designed tunes, lots of grand orchestration and plenty of easy-to-enjoy and enigmatic songs of love but also doubt. The Sheffield outfit's seventh long player was written by frontman Turner at his home in LA and mixes indie and psychedelic rock, baroque, glam and orchestral rock with production largely taken care of by frequent collaborator James Ford. The title is a nod to the fact that there are many references to cars throughout the lyrics.

Review: English new wave band Japan put out a small handful of albums in the late 70s and early 80s and managed to make an indelible mark with them. Exorcising Ghosts is a 1984 compilation that now gets reissued as a half-speed record. It was assembled in cahoots with lead singer David Sylvian after the band disbanded and features three recordings from the early-era work on Hansa Records. But mostly it draws on music from their two studio albums on Virgin Records, namely Gentlemen Take Polaroids in 1980 and Tin Drum in 1981. The extended and slightly varied versions make this a real must for fans.

Review: Beyond was a big deal for Dinosaur Jr. fans when it landed in 2007. This was the first album from the Massachusetts rockers in 10 years, but more significantly it was the first album by the band's original line-up since 1988's Bug. The response was rapturous, with critics and fans alike hailing a successful reunion that drew on the best of the band's early years without feeling like a tragic throwback. A big part in that is surely J Mascis' songwriting, which feels pointed and purposeful across this premium slice of alternative rock from true titans of the genre, now repressed as a special 15th anniversary edition on limited purple and green vinyl with a bonus 7" featuring the tracks 'Yer Son' and 'What If I Knew'.

Review: Twenty years ago, The Raveonettes made their debut with Whip It On, the first part of a twin mini-album release. The original CD-version featured an ad for the accompanying second offering called Chain Gang of Love. Now the pairing of songs gets a proper reissue via the duo's longtime label Crunchy Frog; the 'OG' indie songs, as fashioned in this new package, appear in exclusive stereo!

Review: True to their standing as archetypes of goth-tinged punk and pop, Siouxsie & The Banshees present a uniquely angled compilation timed for this very particular part of the year. Themed as an 'Autumnal celebration', All Souls look back through the Banshees catalogue for relevant songs to embrace the chill in the air and the supernatural undertones around Halloween. Of course, that particular festival is well-represented by the classic track of the same name, but there are also rarer B-sides like 'El Dia De Los Muertos' and 'Something Wicked (This Way Comes)', all adding up to a wonderful overview of the spooky atmosphere The Banshees exude so well.