Back catalogue: Indie/Alternative

Review: Mumford & Sons drop a surprise single release alongside Pharrell Williams, 'Good People', delivering on a long-awaited promise to hop in the studio together after years of knowing each other. Finally falling back on their immediate instincts, 'Good People' hears the band and the solo wunderkind sing of tiredness and revelation, making adept use of a dry, driving, sportsmanlike instrumental palette (think hand claps, stomps, gospel harmonies). Though cryptic in theme, the mood on this one-off is one of triumph and impending miracle works to come.

Review: Pearl Jam's latest is an up-tempo rocker with a catchy melody and introspective lyrics about the search for meaning in a dark and uncertain world. Full of imagery of darkness and light, the song builds to a powerful crescendo at the end. The B-side of the single features an instrumental version of the song, is just as powerful as the original, and it gives fans a chance to appreciate the song's intricate musical arrangements. A reminder that Pearl Jam are still one of the most vital and relevant bands in rock music today.

Review: DJ Slow, JA-Jazz, and Jame Spectrum may not be household names across the world, but those who follow Pepe Deluxe seem willing to follow them to the ends of multiple sonic spectrums, and then push through into the Other Side together. The trio, better known as Finnish electronic music obscuros Pepe Deluxe, have been making beats and other pieces since around 1996, first garnering a name for themselves with an infectious combination of hip hop, breakbeat, downtempo and big beat.By 2007, when they released their third album, Spare Time Machine, the remit had changed, slightly, and was less interested in sampling, more concerned with revitalising old school music genres like psyche, baroque pop and surf rock. Freedom Flag brings us up to date, circa 2024, and it seems there's enough room for both approaches, with this two-tracker rooted in everything from trip hop to brass-topped indie.

Review: Emotional Rescue returns to early 1980s Manchester with the previously unreleased music of Michael James Pollard and his beautiful distillation of indie pop in Too Confusing and bedsit cover version of Ashford and Simpson's Surrender.

While studying photography at Manchester Polytechnic, (MJ) Pollard lived and played in a band in a ramshackle house in Walley Range. In the cellar studio he would write and record his own songs using their guitars, fretless bass and keys, as well as his own Casio VL-Tone VL-1 and Simmons Clap Trap to augment his drums onto a 4 track TEAC.

By 1983, and now solo, he was recording out of Dislocation Dance's studio (ERC111), had secured a Peel Session and via Factory Records' Lindsay Reade, was discussing with Fundacao Atlantica about releasing an album.

Working with singer Sioux Goddard as a duo, they put down 8 songs in 2 weeks in summer '84. However, Fundacao Atlantica's financial difficulties and soon closure meant the songs were lost until now.

Recovered off the original tapes and lovingly restored, Too Confusing captures the optimism of the sessions, a summer love melody of forlorn youth. Surrender accompanies, recorded back in that cellar in '81, with friend Stephanie Danziger on vocals, its lo-fi simplicity is a perfect take on an all-time classic, making this a newly prized gem of British indie pop history.

Review: London retro soul specialists PREP almost feel lost in the 2020s. Everything from their sound, which is pretty unique in today's musical landscape, to release and merchandise artwork screams mid-late-20th Century modernism, owing as much to the crimson and purple-hued aesthetics of classic Miami iconography as anything more recent years have offered us. Meanwhile, aurally speaking, their output straddles lines between funk, soul, synth pop and yacht (those who know, will know), all of which have an ability to conjure strong images of easier, simpler times gone by. 'As It Was', a cover of the Harry Styles pop anthem, takes things into particularly seductive, slap bass and sax infused atmospheres, the air thick with intimate suggestion, which may or may not conjure thoughts of George Michael's 'Careless Whisper' letting loose at a boat party.