Indie Basement (5/8): This Week's Classic Indie, Alternative & College Rock Highlights

This week I’ve got six new records for you, including the latest from sublime weirdo Aldous Harding , plus a surprising new EP from Little Simz , The Lemon Twigs , Gun Outfit , new London band 1000 Rabbits , and Montreal trio Cola .

Over in Notable Releases , they’re overflowing with new ones from Basement, Fire-Toolz, Social Distortion (I like it too), Lykke Li, Broken Social Scene, and more.

This week on BV Interviews , I talk to former METZ frontman Alex Edkins about his second Weird Nightmare album. I’m also on this week’s BV Weekly, discussing Radiohead’s very cool immersive art installation/film, guitar solos, and more.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Aldous Harding – Train on the Island (4AD)

Aldous Harding’s most understated album reveals its charms slowly and strangely

“I was nine when I left my body.” Aldous Harding is one of those songwriters whose lyrics I love to pore over even when, most of the time, I have no idea what she’s actually on about. Train of the Island , the New Zealand singer’s fifth album, is full of evocative imagery while also being her most understated record yet. Like her previous three releases, Train of the Island was made with producer John Parish at Rockfield Studios in Wales, alongside regular collaborators including H. Hawkline. It doesn’t quite have the cohesion of 2019’s wonderful Designer , but its many quirky charms shine through on repeat listens and closer inspection.

Over spare piano, guitar, and restrained drumming, Harding uses a number of different vocal styles this time: full-throated and forceful on “One Stop,” which name-drops John Cale (“I packed the stage while he ate rice,” one of many food references on the album); whimsical and coquettish on the elegant “If Lady Does It” (“He’s got a new bag, he’s not a new boy”); casual on the sublime, key-changing “Coats” (“Can’t buy the remedy but I’ll eat if you’re next to me”); and low and Nico-esque on “Worms” (“I’m saving myself by eating rocks and plants / I pray for the incel”).

Harding also duets with H. Hawkline on the flowery “Venus in Zinnia,” sweetly trading lines like: “Venus down in the zinnia / I was thinking about ya / Red rose trying to leave me / Redrum rocking the ages.” What exactly are they saying? I’m not sure, but you can feel the affection, which gradually becomes clearer: “The best of me, you can have it if you want / You’re right on time.” Stick with Train of the Island — it blossoms.

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Little Simz – Sugar Girl (AWAL)

A short, sharp left turn that finds Simz testing new textures and tempers

The title of Little Simz’s new EP may promise sweets — while the cover art suggests other kinds of treats — but these four songs offer a dense, dark thicket of sounds that the British rapper hasn’t really explored before. Trap beats, harsh distorted digital chords, autotune, and seething anger are about as far from Simz’s records with Inflo, or even last year’s Lotus , as you can get.

Most of the tracks are collaborations too, featuring 070 Shake, JT, and, on the EP’s most familiar territory, “Open Arms,” Deela. Sugar Girl is probably not what fans are expecting — or wanting — but it’s good to hear Simz stretching her wings, and when she lets loose her flow on “That’s a No No,” it’s pretty thrilling.

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Gun Outfit – Process and Reality (Upset the Rhythm)

A smoky, slow-burning double album made for anxious times

Spiritual, dusty West Coast band Gun Outfit tend to use natural landscapes for their album covers: a raging sea, Devils Tower, and, on Process and Reality , the ruins of an ancient civilization. That could very well be a metaphor. It’s a double album they’ve been holding onto for a while, recorded over a single month back in 2020 during California wildfire season. You can almost smell the smoke in the air across these 19 mellow tracks.

“I hope it provides listeners at least somewhat relaxing and hopeful,” says the band’s Dylan Sharp. “We are in the midst of an insane strategy-of-tension situation in the US and this is just an invitation to fade in and out and remember your friends and not get too stressed out all the time, even if it appears we are hurtling over the edge into absolute cynicism and depravity.”

Process and Reality is a record that urges you to slow down and take it all in, and by the time you get to the dreamy, languid “Southward Equinox” near the album’s midpoint, you can feel your muscles start to relax and the tension fade — if just for a little while, long enough to appreciate the sunset.

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The Lemon Twigs – Look for Your Mind! (Captured Tracks)

More perfectly crafted retro-pop from the D’Addario brothers

Michael and Brian D’Addario are multi-instrumentalists who can do it all in the studio, playing everything themselves on their first five albums. But on Look for Your Mind! they brought in members of their live band — Reza Matin (drums) and Danny Ayala (bass), plus Eva Chambers of Tchotchke — for the first time.

It hasn’t really changed the music they make, though: here are 14 more sparkling power-pop gems leaning toward lushly orchestrated ’70s bubblegum, a style that especially suits Brian’s sonic sweet tooth. A few more rough edges, like on 2024’s A Dream Is All We Know , would’ve been a welcome bitter counterbalance, but there’s no denying the perfectly formed melodies of “I Just Can’t Get Over Losing You,” the Brian Wilson-y “Mean to Me,” and the title track.

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Cola – Cost of Living Adjustment (Fire Talk)

Tim Darcy and crew channel modern dread into lean, twitchy post-punk on Cola’s third album

For fans of wiry, minimal post-punk, Montreal artist Tim Darcy has been flying that flag for 15 years, first with Ought and, since 2020, with offshoot Cola. The band’s third album is both kind of self-titled ( C.O.L.A. ) and a perfect acronym for one of their most overtly political statements yet: Cost of Living Adjustment .

The album is full of songs about hedge fund brokers, wellness influencers, and the gap between action and words, all set to jerky rhythms, discordant guitars, and dense basslines. Cola have distilled social and political unease into 45 tightly wound minutes.

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INDIE BASEMENT CLASSIC: The House of Love – The House of Love  (1988)

Led by Guy Chadwick, whose deep voice matched his high cheekbones, House of Love benefitted from being signed to legendary UK indie label Creation in the wake of The Jesus and Mary Chain’s landmark debut single. They had some of JAMC’s squall but fed it through Chadwick’s graceful songwriting and guitarist Terry Bickers’ inventive playing. Opening salvo “Christine” is such a stunner, from the roaring guitars to the “Bah bah be dah dah” hook, if the rest of the album had been a dud it would be remembered today. But House of Love  is all hits, from the dark, sexy cool of “Road” and “Hope” to the riff-heavy “Sulfur” and “Salome” to the ethereal grandeur of “Man to Child,” and the album’s second best song, “Love in a Car.” The album was also as big an influence on the burgeoning shoegaze scene as My Bloody Valentine’s  Isn’t Anything , and it’s hard to imagine groups like Ride and Catherine Wheel existing without House of Love.

Looking for more? Browse the  Indie Basement archives .

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THE MOON & THE MELODIES: 12 SONGS FEATURING ELIZABETH FRASER

This Mortal Coil – “A Song to the Siren”

Most people want Elizabeth Fraser for her voice's more angelic qualities, but she's got quite the range, and her lower register can be just as transportive, as this spine-tingling cover of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren" proves. This Mortal Coil was the recording project of 4AD Records founder Ivo Watts-Russell and producer John Fryer, and "Song to the Siren" -- Ivo's favorite song of all time -- was TMC's debut single in 1983. With guitar from Robin Guthrie, it remains one of the most unforgettable showcases for Fraser's emotive pipes. This Mortal Coil's version has touched a lot of people over the years, perhaps none more so than filmmaker David Lynch, who has called it his favorite piece of music ever. He was obsessed with "Song to the Siren" during the making of Blue Velvet , and wanted Fraser and Guthrie to perform it in the film, but usage rights were out of the film's budget. Lynch eventually got to use it 10 years later in Lost Highway . "That song does something to me, for sure," Lynch told The Guardian .

Jeff Buckley & Elizabeth Fraser – “All Flowers in Time (Bend Toward the Sun)” (demo)

Jeff Buckley loved This Mortal Coil's cover of his father's "Song to the Siren," and the musical admiration was mutual, as Fraser was enamored with Jeff Buckley's album Grace . Their mutual admiration grew into a short but passionate love affair somewhere around 1994, which was not long after her relationship with Robin Guthrie ended. (Cocteau Twins continued till 1997.) "I just couldn't help falling in love with him," she said in BBC documentary Jeff Buckley - Everybody Here Wants You . "I read his diaries, he read mine. We'd just swap...I've never done that with anybody else." While it didn't last, at least one song was written during their relationship. "All the Flowers in Time (Bend Toward the Sun)" is a gorgeous duet between Buckley and Fraser, with Jeff singing the chorus of "Oh, all flowers in time bend towards the sun / I know you say that there's no-one for you / But here is one." It's a rough demo that has never been commercially released, but you don't really need much more than their voices to have you wondering what could have been. Elizabeth Fraser w/ Massive Attack at Radio City Music Hall, 2019 (photo by P Squared)

Massive Attack – “Teardrop”

Elizabeth Fraser's most popular song, Cocteau Twins or otherwise, is probably "Teardrop," one of three songs she sings on Massive Attack's 1998 album Mezzanine . It is the trip hop group's biggest UK hit, reaching #10, and it went to #1 in Iceland, and in the '00s became known as the theme song to TV show House . Liz says she learned of Jeff Buckley's death while recording it which influenced her lyrics. "I'd got letters out and I was thinking about him," Fraser told The Guardian . "That song's kind of about him – that's how it feels to me anyway." Interestingly, the track was almost given to Madonna. Massive Attack's Mushroom sent Madonna the instrumental and she really wanted to make it a single of her own. No disrespect to Madge but we're glad 3D and Daddy G won out. She can still belt it out , too.

Felt – “Primitive Painters”

One of the great UK indie singles -- and duets -- of the mid-'80s came about through happenstance. Felt, the cult band led by the iconoclastic Lawrence, hired Robin Guthrie to produce their 1985 album Ignite the Seven Cannons , the centerpiece of which was "Primitive Painters," with its hypnotic, cyclical riff. (You're right, it does sound a little like Guns N' Roses' "Paradise City.") Liz Fraser came to visit Guthrie in the studio while Felt were working on the song, and he had the idea to have her sing on it. Lawrence told Uncut : "He just played her the end section. I wrote the lyrics out for her on a piece of paper, she went in, listened to it once on headphones, and then just improvised around it. It was as real as that. It was a remarkable moment. When you listen back to something like that, we knew we’d got it." A classic was born. photo by Barnaby Roper

Jónsi – “Cannibal”

One wonders if The Cocteau Twins didn't inspire all of what we think of as "Icelandic music" -- the kind that sounds like glaciers and waterfalls -- even if just through osmosis. Sigur Ros certainly got compared to the Cocteaus a lot when they first started, though the band always claimed they'd never listened to them. (Never?) "I really didn’t like that," says Sigur Ros' Jónsi of the comparisons. "I hated being compared to anybody. Then I got really into Cocteau Twins like two or three years ago. They’re so good. I understood the comparison then." Thankfully he came

_Originally reported by [Brooklyn Vegan](https://www.brooklynvegan.com/album-reviews-aldous-little-simz-1000-rabbits-gun-outfit-lemon-twigs-more/)._