Back in stock: Indie/Alternative

Review: Is there a more hard-working pair of party-starters than the Allergies' Rackabeat and DJ Moneyshot? The Bristol-based duo have been prolific over the last few years, yet the quality of their work seemingly hasn't suffered. Promised Land, their fifth album, is another invigorating, thrill-a-minute ride through hip-hop/funk/soul/rock/breakbeat fusion, where almost every cut is ripe for dancefloor plays. Highlights include the bluesy breakbeat bustle of 'Working On Me', the scratch-happy, Fatboy Slim-esque fun of 'Jumping Off', growling Dynamite MC hook-up 'Lean On You' (which reminded us a little of Plantlife), soul stomper 'Love Somebody' and 'Are You Ready', where Ugly Duckling's Andy Cooper and singer Marietta Smith both make their mark.

Review: Long-time indie darlings and American dream pop duo Beach House barely ever put a foot wrong, and you won't find a misstep on this, their fifth album, either. Depression Cherry was co-produced by the band with Chris Coady and first came back in 2015. It was written over two years before that and saw the band return to a more simplistic sound with fewer instruments, tunes constructed around a main melody and live drums featuring less than in the past. This was in response to having enlarged their sound as the venues they played grew ever bigger, but dialing it back in was a good move if you ask us.

Review:  Duke Erikson, Steve Marker, Butch Vig and Shirley Manson formed Garbage in 1993 and went on to sell more than 17 million records around the world. Their second album came in 1998 and was a marked progression from their debut. It sold more than four million copies and was described at the time as "gloomy and sexual yet lively and introspective." It now gets a proper reissue on 2 x 12" double gatefold and is the first time the newly remastered record has been made available via BMG. Fans of the band who are close to 30 years deep in their career will no doubt be happy to hear this one as they also enjoy their new record on Infectious Records.

Review: Proud Sheffieldian Richard Hawley - so proud he has taken a popular local greeting as the title for his best of album - could well be the artist that Alex Turner of The Arctic Monkeys is morphing himself into. Either way, he has done it all from Mercury Music Prize and BRIT award nomination to four UK Top ten Albums and collabs with the likes of Pulp, Paul Weller and Elbow. He has curated this collection himself with long-term collaborator Colin Elliot and it takes in hits from across his 20+ year career - some are well-known, some are tender gems, some are hidden delights from his early years you may have missed. A much-needed album, frankly.

Review: Jay Wobble is the former bassist with Public Image Ltd of course, but is also a visionary in his own right. This new album finds him revisiting some old ground: it takes him back to influential PiL 1979 album Metal Box, which he wholly reinvents with a load of new and sophisticated dub takes with all new and mind expanding production. Alongside the original tunes are two bonus cuts which are new versions of originals from the first ever PiL album. It adds up to a timelsss fusion of new and old indie and dub from this masterful guitarist.

Review: Electric life-givers, MGMT, return for their fifth album Loss Of Life. Shockingly, it's been six years since 2018's Little Dark Age, in which the duo proved their capacity to evolve beyond the pale of their earliest electro-pop singles. Here, they adapt even further, enlisting the help of a well-selected cast of familiar faces - Christine & The Queens, Danger Mouse, Dave Fridmann, James Richardson, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Patrick Wimberly - all while declaring the project to be the yield of a calculated fusion: "20% adult contemporary" plus an unspecified amount of hero's journey subversion. From the standout single 'Dancing In Babylon' through to more esoteric twin sonic flames like 'Nothing To Declare' and 'Nothing Changes', this feels like an album dedicated to lost causes, overobsession with singular life trajectories, and moving through hard times.

Review: Released in 1994 on the ever-incredible Creation Records, Ride's Carnival of Light was the band's third full length, and didn't so much mark a shift but a progression in the journey of the critically acclaimed outfit, who still retain the shoegaze and noise pop elements we all fell head over heels for, but look to draw on more traditional British sounds, too. The result is something that might be described as a laddish, plugged-in take on folk, at times at least. Sadly, this wasn't quite what critics said about it, and after successive slamming in the press the band began to look unfavourably at the release, too, with frontman and guitarist Andy Bell even going so far as to describe it as "carnival of shite". More recently, he managed to make peace with it, and revisiting the songs now reveals myriad classics waiting to be rediscovered and appreciated out of the context and weight of expectations they were born into at the time.

Review: Gothic songstress Chelsea Wolfe makes her illustrious return on the much anticipated seventh full-length She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She. Following on from 2021's immense collaborative project with artcore auteurs Converge, the album shall serve as Wolfe's first solo endeavour since the minimal, folk-centric Birth Of Violence released in 2019, while serving as her first output since departing long-time label-home Sargent House (following a diatribe of controversies best saved for another time) in favour of Loma Vista; home to outsider artists of numerous sonic shapes. As this new chapter appears to be marrying elements of industrial fury with complex trip-hop motifs akin to Merzbow producing for Portishead, all the while maintaining her sultry, Wiccan hypnotism; 2024 looks set to be the year of the Wolfe.