Indie Basement (6/12): Classic Indie and Alternative Music Highlights

Montreal looms large in this week’s Indie Basement, with two groups hailing from there ( La Sécurité and CFCF ) and half of another ( Paycheque ), plus Horse Lords ‘ first album to feature vocals, and yet another explosive Jon Spencer album.

This week’s Indie Basement Classic looks back at one of the best-ever original era shoegaze albums.

Over in Notable Releases , Andrew reviews Olivia Rodrigo’s Cure-forward new album plus the latest from Piebald, YHWH Nailgun, Wiki and more.

On this week’s BV Interviews , I talk to Indie Basement Hall of Famer Kelley Stoltz and it’s a real treat if I do say so myself (and I do!).

What else happened this week? The Strokes announced a massive NYC show with Beach House, TV on the Radio and Fcukers; Charlotte Adigery and Bolis Pupul announced a Brooklyn one-off which I am personally taking as a sign a new album is on the way; and L’Rain’s new song is the best thing I’ve heard (that I didn’t review today) all week. And for folks who come here for “college rock,” I give you the 2026 Dromfest lineup .

That’s all for this week. Head below for this week’s reviews.

Album of the week #1: La Sécurité – Bingo! (Bella Union / Mothland)

Terrific second album from this Montreal band confidently carries the torch for the city’s still-thriving underground scene, and is also a total party.

La Sécurité’s sophomore album comes at a time when ’00s nostalgia is peaking, and the Montreal group are direct descendants of that city’s fertile indie scene when The Unicorns, Think About Life, and Duchess Says were all the rage. This band are here to party, and Bingo! hits you with one punky New Wave dance banger after the next, loaded with groovy basslines, quirky keyboard hooks, de rigueur angular guitars, and shout-sung vocals dripping with attitude.

“On Bingo! , we move from one style to another, it’s not necessarily textbook post-punk, Riot Grrrl, or another particular style,” the band say. “It’s more like a snowball effect, like a piece of gum at the bottom of your bag, picking up glitters, hair, etcetera.” You can hear The B-52s, Pylon, Gang of Four, Delta 5, Bush Tetras, and more on Bingo! , but La Sécurité have made it all their own.

As for the vocals, La Sécurité are now singing in English at least part of the time, and that Franglais mix is both friendlier and all the cooler for it as they effortlessly flip between the two languages. They are not afraid to touch on serious subjects, but they mix politics and social commentary with songs about Cheetos and potato chips, bringing that unique attitude and tongue-in-cheek sensibility to all of it. Mostly, though, Bingo! is a dance party, and “Deny,” “Nah Nah,” “Detour,” and the other seven songs will have even the most staunch stick-in-the-muds pogoing.

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Horse Lords – Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive! (RVNG Intl)

The Baltimore experimentalists add vocals to the mix for the first time on their hypnotic, enthralling seventh album

The great Baltimore experimental indie rock combo are exploring new territory on their seventh album — for the first time in their 15+ year history, there are vocals. Those come via Nina Guo and Evelyn Saylor, who are the first thing you hear on Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive! , and their ethereal style fits perfectly with the group’s knotty, precision-engineered sound. Their eerie harmonies bring an almost Celtic vibe to the record, which also finds the quartet of guitarist Owen Gardner, bassist Max Eilbacher, drummer Sam Haberman, and alto saxophonist/percussionist Andrew Bernstein augmented by bass clarinetist Madison Greenstone and trombonist Weston Olencki.

It’s almost as if Guo and Saylor are otherworldly spirits who come down to Earth to jam with a group of scientists, and the results are not unlike the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind . It’s skronky, groovy, and at times very beautiful as one track leads into the next, culminating in Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive! ‘s title track, which is both funky and lithe despite sounding like some of the musicians are playing in different time signatures. It is hypnotic and wonderful, and if you’ve played out Angine de Poitrine’s two albums, you might want to give this a spin. If we ever do get contacted by aliens, I hope Horse Lords get the call.

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CFCF – L.U.V. (BMG Solutions)

Mike Silver dives headfirst into electroclash, bloghouse, and French touch on his gleefully nostalgic and guest-filled new album as CFCF

Montreal producer Mike Silver came up through the electroclash and bloghouse ’00s, but by the time he released his first music as CFCF, the lighter sounds he was making were grouped in with chillwavers like Neon Indian and Washed Out. He never quite fit there, though, and quickly mutated, dabbling in musique concrète and modern composition. When the pandemic hit, he retreated to the music of his ’90s youth and released Memoryland , an album influenced by shoegaze and Japanese city pop. Five years later, Silver is back with L.U.V. (that’s Life in Ultra Violet ), which could’ve been called Memoryland II as he presents his take on ’00s hipster club culture, from French touch to electroclash, dance-punk, electro-house, and whatever Uffie was.

“The overall vibe of L.U.V. is meant to be sort of eurodance with a sophisticated edge,” says Silver. “It’s music for an adult lifestyle.” The couple in Beef Season 2 would like L.U.V. , as every song on this features-heavy record seems to find him focusing on a different microgenre or specific group. The album opens with “Kiss Me” ft. nuum & Seren Forever, and between the chopped-up microsamples and vocoders it’s nearly impossible not to think of Discovery-era Daft Punk. “Babes” is pure sleaze, as are “La touche” (ft. Bernardino Femminielli & bbcoooool) and “ultra-obscene! (Piel a Piel),” which plays a bit like Max Tundra’s Amiga-made proto-hyperpop. The irresistible “Bad Song,” featuring vocals from Cecile Believe (ex-Think About Life), owes more than a little to Basement Jaxx, and “Cosmo” could be I Created Disco -era Calvin Harris. There’s also an inspired cover of The Ponys’ 2004 garage rock ripper “Let’s Kill Ourselves” that would’ve sent crowds into hysterics at Motherfucker. The cover art, meanwhile, looks like a still from a Justice video.

Pastiche? Yes, but done at an extremely high level, and it’s hard to deny the bangerability of these 13 tracks. Too long? Also yes. At just over an hour, you may lose focus, but it’s okay in this case, as what L.U.V. really resembles is a Kitsuné Maison compilation from a parallel universe: all hits you’ve never heard before that somehow feel vaguely familiar. You have to wonder if Silver has had a lot of these ideas sitting on a hard drive, never wanting to flesh them out until now. If this had been released in 2023, it would’ve felt 15 years too late, but between Fcukers, Slayyyter, and The Dare, it arrives right on time.

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Jon Spencer – Songs of Personal Loss and Protest (Shove! Records)

Powered by The Bobby Lees’ rhythm section, Jon Spencer channels grief, frustration, and righteous anger into another blast of cathartic rock’n’roll

The latest album from New York rock legend Jon Spencer starts rather quietly, as if he’s setting up a fairy-tale bedtime story. “Nighttime falls on the small city. Another day has passed, and what have you done? How do you measure success? Or achievement? Pour another drink to celebrate? Go ahead, you’ve earned it.” But it’s not long before things get loud and boisterous, and Spencer sets about doing what he does best: exploding shit.

As you might expect from an album titled Songs of Personal Loss and Protest , Spencer has more of an agenda here. “I’m in a time of spiritual reckoning,” he says. “These past few years there has been a lot of emotional conflict and personal loss — the passing of time takes its toll. Losing friends, losing family, and all of this set against a world gone topsy-turvy where it feels like we are losing basic freedoms.” He comes to a familiar and logical conclusion: “The answer is always rock’n’roll.”

Spencer calls rock’n’roll “America’s true gift to the world… It is the hip-shaking sound of rebellion. The blues is my bible, rock’n’roll is our battle cry!” Backed by The Bobby Lees’ rhythm section, bassist Kendall Wind and drummer Macky Bowman, Jon rattles the cages of The Powers That Be on patented Spencer creations like “Vermin Attack!,” “Knock ‘Em Out,” “Give It Up 4 the Devil,” and “Step on the Gas,” while on “Slip Away” and “No More” he looks death in the face.

He’s got so much personality in his voice that Spencer could probably start a riot with a spoken-word album, but he’s especially amped up here, and Wind and Bowman breathe fresh life into a sound he’s been igniting for decades.

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Paycheque – Paycheque (Mansions and Millions)

This LA duo’s debut album traffics in the softer side of the ’80s, by way of 2010s-era Captured Tracks

Allison Goldfarb and Jackson MacIntosh are  transplants to LA — she’s a filmmaker and musician while he’s a Montreal indie fixture having spent time in Sheer Agony and TOPS — who met at a mutual friend’s show and bonded over their love of the softer side of ’80s pop. Paycheque were born. After a handful of singles, the duo have released their debut album which hearkens back to the early ’10s when Wild Nothing and Craft Spells were making waves on Captured Tracks, and people still liked Ariel Pink. If you have a soft spot for some of those groups — add to that TOPS, Mood Rings, Chromatics, The Radio Dept — you will find lots to love in luxuriously low-fi tracks like “Next in Line,” “Temporary Love,” and “Heatwave.” The reverb-heavy production tries to downplay the exceptional musicianship here, but I’d personally like to hear what they could do with widescreen budget.

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INDIE BASEMENT CLASSIC: Slowdive – Souvlaki (1993, Creation)

One of the pillars of the original shoegaze cannon sounds just as good today, maybe better

Watching a bit of Slowdive’s performance at Primavera Sound last weekend — what I could find online, that is — had me pull out what I think is their best album of their original era.

Influenced by the Cocteau Twins ‘ ethereal style, not to mention The Jesus and Mary Chain and probably a fair amount of goth, Pink Floyd, and prog, Slowdive didn’t really sound like any other group from the original shoegaze era, riding a massive wave of shimmering guitars that were at times so transformed by effects pedals they resembled synthesizers. Like their early EPs, the band’s debut album, Just for a Day , was hypnotic and sensuous, wrapping listeners in layer upon layer of gorgeous haze, but it was maybe a little lacking in focus and A-level material. Not a problem with their sophomore album, which nestles memorable songs and a stronger rhythmic backbone into their signature aural cloudwork.

Their best album to date, Souvlaki , features some of their catchiest songs (“Alison,” “When the Sun Hits,” “40 Days”), along with more muscular material like “Machine Gun,” the vivid trip-out “Yellow Melon,” and two songs (“Sing,” “Here She Comes”) featuring keyboards and treatments by Brian Eno. Best of all, though, is “Souvlaki Space Station,” which takes their spiraling sound deep into dub territory. Never as popular at the time as their shoegaze contemporaries Ride or Lush, Slowdive’s records have aged better than most things from the ’90s, while the group have delivered one of the most satisfying second acts in recent memory.

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_Originally reported by [Brooklyn Vegan](https://www.brooklynvegan.com/album-reviews-la-securite-slowdive-horse-lords-cfcf-jon-spencer-more/)._