Odd name. Pip Paine (Pay The £5000 You Owe) sounds much more fitting for an individual song than a full album- maybe it’s the brackets that are throwing me off. Anyway, the first Metronomy album is pretty notable in their discography for its near-total lack of vocals. In fact there’s only one song on the album with them- that being ‘Trick Or Treatz’ which features Virginia Lipinski. The instrumental tracks are quirky and charming, some tracks (especially ... read more

A campy but futuristic electroclash predecessor that makes some very good use of some very icy synths. Solid on the whole, but I think the social critiques it makes on songs like ‘Seventeen’ are more surface level than I think it thinks they are, and the vocals aren’t anything to write home about either (plus they can be quite poorly mixed sometimes). Still, you can do a lot worse than Light & Magic for early 00s electronic music.

I’ve grown a love for this period of purposefully dumb, glitzy, recession-era electropop anthems recently… but Hands just isn’t really doing it for me. For one, the songs are overly wordy- for an electropop album it’s surprisingly lyric-heavy and despite the lyrics themselves still being kitschy and relationship-focused as is to be expected I also think the wordiness of the tracks as well as the way Little Boots is delivering them just kinda clashes with the overall ... read more

TANGK sees a softer IDLES, but one that hasn’t entirely lost their edge either. Sure, it’s much more composed than their previous work, with an abundance of slower, more reflective tracks like ‘Grace’ or the closer ‘Monolith’- but there’s still an inimitable ferocity to the band that makes them such a special act in the realm of post-punk and that is still on full display during this album.

An interesting experiment on first listen; then an incredibly boring one to return to. It's dance-punk without the grooves of dance and without the message of punk. What's the point??

A really fun listen all the way through. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy an album in this style that much but Galore is a great snapshot of this era of pop but is also just a great record in its own right. Realistically it should sound incredibly dated- it’s sleazy electropop with a rocky edge from 2006 and just look at the album cover- but it’s actually very clean, accessible and quirky. If anything I kinda wish this style of sugary, vibrant dance had stayed in the mainstream for ... read more

I’m a lot less fond of Surfing The Void than I was Myths Of the Near Future. It goes a lot heavier on the guitars, and heads to a more noise-rock influenced direction. But this to the point where there’s so much going on, especially during the choruses, that it stops being fun to listen to and is more confusing than anything. It doesn’t help that on many tracks (but most of all ‘Cypherspeed’) the guitars are pretty poorly mixed. Not to mention the vocals, which ... read more

Cold Reactor is the best I’ve seen so far of Everything Everything’s approach to a poppier sound. It’s bright and fairly simplistic but the lyrics are as anxious as ever and it’s still distinctly an EE song.

Myths Of The Near Future is urgent, frenzied dance-punk that’s generally a cut above much of the other indie music that was also big at the time. It’s a lot richer instrumentally and just more rewarding to listen to generally as opposed to many of the 00s landfill acts. Apparently the lead singer of Klaxons was the first person to coin the genre ‘new rave’, which is interesting though he later claimed it was just a joke that got out of hand which makes sense to me ... read more

Reptillians has a very limited soundscape- think of something similar to early MGMT- but I’m a (star)sucker for that stuff and they make the most of it despite painting themselves into a corner a bit. The first track in particular is brilliant and does a great job of bringing you into their world with its immediate synths and bright, catchy hook. There are moments where their all-encompassing, space-ish sound gets repetitive but it never fully loses its luster and it picks up again in the ... read more

It doesn’t get much janglier; or much poppier than this. Harm’s Way is a short but sweet listen- 9 brisk, by-the-numbers indie tracks that don’t really reach their full potential, but don’t put a foot wrong either.

Angles may not be taking itself entirely seriously, sure, but that doesn’t really justify Dan Le Sac’s repetitive, metallic production and Scroobius Pip’s smug theatre-kid style of rapping. Worth an affectionate eye roll at best, enough to make you throw your phone in the sea at worst.

Declan McKenna’s third album What Happened To The Beach is a collection of warmly nostalgic, socially conscious- if occasionally understated- indie bops. It’s not a massive game changer or anything but the sound McKenna goes for on this album is very colourful and pleasant to the ear. A solid release, albeit nothing spectacular.

This one’s a vibe! Free The Bees is by the Isle-Of-Wight based band The Bees, who in the US have the much better name A Band Of Bees. It draws very heavily on its influences, specifically a whole lot of 60s psychedelic rock- but there’s some reggae flavours thrown in too. For the most part, these sounds are done with their own fun spin on them, but occasionally it winds up sounding overly commercial (I have little time for the pithy, ad-friendly single ‘Chicken Payback’) ... read more

Girls And Weather is a whimsical little indie album with a John Finnemore-esque tongue in cheek sensibility (esp. on songs such as ‘Motorcycle’) and a horn section. If those two things aren’t to your liking then you’ll probably lose patience with this album, but if you can live with those you’ll probably get *something* out of it.

The first half of Torches is a sight to behold- a barrage of incredible indie pop songs full of life and bursting at the seams. The second half is… I mean, it’s fine, but the highest of the album’s highs are within those first few songs.

Streets In The Sky is a pretty good benchmark for the death of landfill indie, as Coventry rockers The Enemy deliver track after track of sluggish nonstarters desperately trying to cling on to any form of meaning or relevancy they can.

For the most part, Drop 7’s foray into darker, Afrobeats-inspired territory reaps good rewards.

When The Laughter Stops is a little less vibrant than the first singles but it’s still a fun time.

As much as frontman Harrison Patrick Smith often straddles the line between fun and creepy, The Sex EP generally succeeds at replicating the groovy 2000s dance-rock sound it was aiming for.