April showers are bringing reviews of lots of anticipated new albums this week, including Spiritualized, Fontaines D.C., and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, as well as Jeanines, Jane Inc, and Tess Roby. It’s a good week in the Basement!

If you need more album reviews, Andrew highlights eight, including Pusha T, Undeath, Joshua Hedley, and more in Notable Releases.

If you need more Basement-y stuff to read, we got a bunch of musicians — including Dan Bejar, Nada Surf’s Matthew Caws and Horsegirl — to tell us about the influence of Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted, which turned 30 this week. I also rounded up some notable covers of Pavement songs from the last three decades. Also: there’s a new 30th anniversary edition of Slanted and Enchanted on splatter vinyl that looks pretty sweet (preorder).

More: Graham Coxon and Rose Elinor Dougall formed a new group; Radiohead offshoot The Smile announced their debut album; and Hot Chip just announced a new album.

If you’re flush with tax refund money, might I suggest visiting the Indie Basement corner of the BV shop? You can preorder the Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot box set, and pick up new albums by Fontaines DC (on exclusive wax), Wet Leg, Aldous Harding and King Hannah, plus lots of classics (Pavement, Cocteau Twins, Beastie Boys, more), t-shirts, merch and more.

OK that’s enough intro. Head below for this week’s reviews.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK #1: Spiritualized – Everything Was Beautiful (Fat Possum)
A near-perfect distillation of everything Spiritualized do so well

I reviewed Spiritualized’s fantastic new album elsewhere on BrooklynVegan but, in a nutshell, it’s Jason Pierce’s best record since Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space. Here’s an excerpt of the review:

Everything Was Beautiful is one of the brilliant ones. The album boldly evokes Spiritualized’s 1997 masterwork Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space, from its prescription meds artwork to its recording (using studios all over the world with dozens of musicians), to the way it opens with a female voice whispering the album’s title, sounding like a transmission from the third ring of Saturn. (In this case it’s his daughter, Poppy.) In doing so, you get the sense he knew how good this one was, and it more than holds up to the comparison.

Read the whole review here and listen to the album:

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ALBUM OF THE WEEK #2: Fontaines D.C. – Skinty Fia (Partisan)
Yet another move forward for the Irish band who no longer live in Ireland (it’s a theme of the album)

Fontaines D.C. may be wrestling with their sense of Irish identity on their third album, but their desire not to do the same thing twice is so far serving them well. I reviewed their third album, Skinty Fia, separately but here’s an excerpt:

Even if you aren’t aware of the specific lyrical genesis of Skinty Fia, the sense of unease is palpable. The shouty punk rippers that epitomized their debut, Dogrel, have given way to dark, textured guitars more akin to early-’80s postpunk (The Sound, The Chameleons) filtered through late-’90s UK alt-rock and dance music, with chunky basslines and increasingly adventurous drumming, making for music that is both expansive and claustrophobic.

Read the whole thing here, and you can pick up Skinty Fia on limited edition translucent red vinyl that’s exclusive to our store. Listen to the album here:

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Jeanines – Don’t Wait for a Sign (Slumberland)
More wonderful no muss, no fuss, no solos janglepop from this NYC duo

NYC duo Jeanines (singer/songwriter Alicia Jeanine and multi instrumentalist/producer Jed Smith) released their wonderful self-titled debut in 2019 that’s full of zero-fat punky/twee janglepop, all earworm melodies, soaring choruses and ethereal harmonies, with no room for solos or other flourishes. Their second album, Don’t Wait for a Sign, is somehow even more pared down with none of the 13 songs cracking the two-minute mark. Smith’s low-fi production is just right, the guitars sparkle, the basslines drive things with style, and Alecia’s minor-chord melodies and ethereal harmonies on “Gotta Go,” “Got Nowhere To Go,” may make the hair on your neck stand up. Jeanines songs are almost pure hook delivery devices and the album goes by in a rush that’s easy to replay (you may let it repeat a couple times before noticing).

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King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Omnium Gatherum (KGLW)
No high concepts this time: King Gizzard offer a sonic smorgasbord of every style they’ve dabbled in to date, plus a few new ones. It’s a lot.

On the complete opposite end of the sonic spectrum from Jeanines is Omnium Gatherum, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard‘s most maximalist record to date in a discography that has always leaned towards “the more the merrier” (this is Album #20 in a 10-year existence.) The opening song, “The Dripping Tap,” is nearly longer than Jeanines’ entire new album — a manic, motorik blues-jazz-psych odyssey that is almost all noodling and goes through enough wild left turns to induce whiplash. That, or you’ll forget what you’re listening to, check your media player and exclaim “This is still that same song?!?!” “The Dripping Tap” is actually pretty impressive, as 18-minute songs go, and the album branches out from there in all sorts of directions.

Most of King Gizzard’s recent albums, of which there have been many, have been centered around a theme that has them trying out specific styles (thrash metal, glammy boogie, jazz, Tame-impala style dance-psych) or experiments with microtonal instruments, or other high concepts. This one, though, is like a smorgasbord or potluck dinner where there’s a little bit of every style they’ve ever dabbled in. There are also a few styles we haven’t seen them try on yet, like “Presumptuous” which dips a toe in groovy Boz Scaggs/Steely Dan yacht-disco, and “Sadie Sorceress” and “The Grim Reaper” which are Beastie Boys/Beck-style rap tracks. It was only a matter of time!

With a whole band of polymaths, King Gizzard are good at pretty much anything they try, but is this Greatest Hits or Leftovers? This album is a little of both and its title, Omnium Gatherum, certainly suggests the latter. There’s a lot of really good stuff here — the danceable “Magenta Mountain,” the sampledelic “Kepler-22b,” “Presumptuous” — but at 80 minutes, will most people make it all the way through? In today’s playlist age you don’t have to and many fans will whittle this down to a 40-minute album they love, or just cherry-pick favorites for a mix. But as a listening experience, it’s too much of a good thing.

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Jane Inc – Faster Than I Can Take (Telephone Explosion)
The second solo album from Caryn Bezic expands her palette of danceable pop

Caryn Bezic, the Toronto-based musician who has played live in U.S. Girls, Ice Cream and more, released her solo debut a Jane Inc back in 2021; it’s a terrific and underheard album that pulled from ’80s and ’90s dance music while displaying a fondness for proggy analog keyboards. Faster Than I Can Take finds her expanding her range and, if it lacks the tight focus of Number One, nearly every song on this album is good, including forays into Feist-y folk pop (“An Ordinary Thing”), breezy tropicalia (“Picture Of The Future”) or ’70s glam (“Pummelled Into Sand”). The bangers with the killer basslines and thick synths are still high points, though. “Human Being” could’ve been a 1984 Prince production, and “2120” makes great use of vintage drum machines (and the A-gogo). Bezic’s powerful pipes are the real star of the show and tie Faster Than I Can Take‘s many strands together.

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Tess Roby – Ideas of Space (SSURROUNDSS)
More new agey goodness from this Montreal electronic artist

Montreal electronic musician Tess Roby released her 2018 debut, Beacon, on Italians Do It Better. Even on a label known for chilled out disco, Roby’s album was an outlier, floating closer to new age than the Drive soundtrack, while her commanding vocal style that made it obvious that while her music evoked nature, she was no wallflower. Now releasing music on her own SSURROUNDSS label, Roby is back with her second album, Ideas of Space, that’s a further refinement of her inviting, earthy sound. (The title suggests far-off galaxies and quasars, but it also sounds like a rainforest.) With help from Austin Tufts (Braids), saxophonist Joseph Shabason (Destroyer) and Ouri, she’s created a gorgeous world to explore, full of waterfall synths and gentle rhythms that commingle with woodwinds and other organic instrumentation. Ideas of Space makes for a relaxing listen, there are some Pure Moods vibes here (and Cosmos), but it’s never aural wallpaper. Gorgeous stuff.

Looking for more? Browse the Indie Basement archives.

And check out what’s new in our shop.

Indie Basement: 20 Favorite Albums of the Year 2000 (Alphabetical Order)

The Aislers Set – The Last Match (Slumberland)

Maybe the greatest Slumberland Records band ever, and certainly one of the most underrated American bands of the millenium era, San Francisco's The Aislers Set sounded like a head-on collision between an Austin-Healey carrying members of Belle & Sebastian, The Pastels and The Jesus & Mary Chain, and a 1965 Volkswagen Beetle driven by Phil Spector with Roger McGuinn and Brian Wilson in the back seat. Don't worry, no one was hurt, everyone became friends and formed a band. In actuality, The Aislers set were led by Amy Linton, who had been in the noisier Henry's Dress in the mid-'90s and who wrote wonderful shambolic mid-fi pop that mixed reverb-y guitar squalls with spun sugar. The Last Match was their peak, featuring one memorable song after another and timeless, charmingly messy production.

Badly Drawn Boy – The Hour of the Bewilderbeast (Twisted Nerve / XL)

Are there too many songs on this, Badly Drawn Boy's debut album? Does Damon Gough, who is BDM for all intents and purposes, throw in two too many ideas into some songs? Does it seem like he's sabotaging himself on purpose occasionally? Is The Hour of the Bewilderbeast a wonderful, inventive psych-folk-pop record despite all those things? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Winner of the 2000 Mercury Prize, it remains Badly Drawn Boy's overstuffed crowning achievement.

Bertrand Burgalat – The Sssound Of Mmmusic (Tricatel)

By the end of the '90s, people may have been burnt out on on the whole '60s lounge thing and figured one retro-future French band was enough, but thankfully that never stopped the brilliant Bertrand Burgalat who straddled the line between lush bachelor pad nostalgia and the French Touch disco scene that was pushing things forward at the turn of the century. His debut album, The Sssound Of Mmmusic, is a fully realized sonic world; groovy and glitchy, playful and inviting, endlessly delightful.

Black Box Recorder – The Facts Of Life (Nude/Jetset)

After years playing in indie guitar bands The Servants and The Auteurs, Luke Haines hooked up with former Jesus & Mary Chain bassist John Moore and vocalist Sarah Nixey to make severely subversive synthpop as Black Box Recorder. Their music was so sleek, many listeners didn't really how messed up the lyrics were. Which was the point. On their gleefully twisted second album, The Facts of Life, they actually made it into the UK charts, with the slinky title track reaching #20 on the singles chart. That song had Nixey cooing relationship advice, like suggesting places teenage couples could get time alone such as "a disused coal mine." That's just one of the 11 delicious but deadly poison pop pills in this bottle.

Blonde Redhead – Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons (Touch and Go)

Let's hear it for Blonde Redhead, one of New York's great bands who were around for most of the '90s when there were not very many good bands in NYC. Made up of singer/guitarist Kazu Makino and identical twins Amedeo (guitar) and Simone Pace (drums), the trio's early records were closer to Sonic Youth, but by the late '90s a much wider range of sounds were incorporated into their sonic palette, including electronics, baroque film scores, classical music and shoegazy pop. Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons, certainly one of the greatest album titles of all time, was their second time working with Fugazi's Guy Picciotto as producer and where their sound really blossomed. There were still wild screamers like "Mother," but the stunning "In Particular," "This is Not" and "For the Damaged Coda" point to where they'd go on Misery is a Butterfly and 23.

Broadcast – The Noise Made by People (Warp)

After a number of EPs and an appearance on the Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery soundtrack, Broadcast released their full length debut, 2000's best album bar none as far as this writer is concerned. Utterly bewitching, The Noise Made People still sounds like pop transmitted from another dimension, detached from time and space. Every detail is considered, from the eerie synthesizers (part sci-fi, part Italian horror film), to the snap of the snare, the ambient sounds of electricity that hum lowly in most songs, and the artwork that seems to have been made from old computer punchcards. Trish Keenan's beguiling, mysterious voice seals the deal on perfect songs like "Echo's Answer" and "Come on Let's Go."

Cinerama – Disco Volante (Scopitones)

David Gedge put his cultishly loved indie band The Wedding Present on hold in the late '90s and started Cinerama with his then girlfriend, Sally Murrell. Their first album sounded like TWP gone acoustic with synths, but Gedge figured out Cinerama's raison d'être on 2000's Disco Volante: fierce indie rock by way of swinging '60s spy movies, complete with strings, flutes and marimba. Keeping his lyrical M.O. -- love, lust, jealousy and heartbreak -- Gedge reinvented his style, and made trad indie guitars kinda sexy; Disco Volante ties with The Wedding Present's Seamonsters (both were made with Steve Albini) for best record of his career.

The Clientele – Suburban Light (Pointy / Merge)

UK indie trio The Clientele have always been a rainy day kind of band, romanticizing British inclement weather in many songs and through their general air of wistful melodies, brushed drums and frontman Alasdair Maclean's hushed vocals and delicately plucked guitars. The forecast called for weeks of damp weather on The Clientele's magical debut album, Suburban Light, that includes two songs with "rain" in the title and sounds like it was recorded in a cloud, or at least the London fog, with dense layers of reverb surrounding everything. It just adds to the wonderful, wistful atmosphere and you can't help but be swept up in the mise-en-scene of "Reflections After Jane," "We Could Walk Together," "An Hour Before the Light" and, yes, "Rain." Dress accordingly.

Clinic – Internal Wrangler (Domino)

Having released numerous singles and EPs through the late-'90s, Liverpool's Clinic had it all figured out by the time of their debut album, from their look (ahead-of-their-time surgical masks and scrubs), to their sinister sound that combined dubby postpunk, sleazy garage rock, analog synthesizers and motorik krautrock rhythms with Ade Blackburn's acid-dipped vocals. Dark as it was, Internal Wrangler was also kind of a party record, with the throbbing "The Second Line," "TK" (which cribs melody from "Ring of Fire"), and the melodica-soaked "The Return of Evil Bill" -- all surefire dancefloor fillers at any party full of nervous, paranoid people who haven't slept in a week.

The Delgados – The Great Eastern (Beggars Banquet)

Led by singer/guitarists Alun Woodward and Emma Pollock, Scottish band The Delgados were one of the best bands of the 1995-2005 era, making magisterial indie rock that felt both immense and entirely homespun. Their third album, The Great Eastern, is wildly ambitious both in song structure and in arrangements -- songs were prone to left turns of tempo and time signature, and grand orchestration. No doubt influenced by Mercury Rev's Deserter's Songs and The Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin (both of which were, like The Great Eastern, produced by Dave Fridmann), songs like "Accused of Stealing," "American Trilogy" and "No Danger" remain perfect indie rock symphonies The Delgados feel a little lost to the era, for whatever reason, but The Great Eastern still wows.

The Fall – The Unutterable (Eagle Records)

Following a weird/bad mid-'90s that saw The Fall reuniting with former guitarist Brix Smith briefly and Mark E Smith blowing up what remained of the classic lineup on-stage in NYC, MES recovered with an almost entirely new lineup of the band and some of their best records in years. The peak of that period is The Unutterable, which has Smith in fine cantankerous form (the most together he'd sounded in years) and the group adding current electronic sounds to their garage/rockabilly/krautrock M.O. There are no shortage of classics here -- "Cyber Insekt," "Two Librans," "Octo Realm / Ketamine Sun" -- but the album's worth the purchase for "Dr. Buck's Letter" alone, where MES reads an apparent actual, unintentionally hilarious, letter from an actual Dr. Buck over a killer, dubby groove.

The Go-Betweens – The Friends of Rachel Worth (Jetset)

Australia's Go-Betweens called it quits in 1989 but bandleaders Robert Forster and Grant McLennan remained close friends, at one point attempting to write screenplays together. That never panned out but Forster and Mclennan reunited in the late '90s for one of the best second acts any indie band has ever had. Made in Portland with Quasi (Janet Weiss & Sam Coomes) in the backing band and the rest of Sleater-Kinney on a track too, The Friends of Rachel Worth almost feels as if both songwriters had been saving up some of their best material in hopes of a reconciliation, here delivering some of their most sublime songs, like McLennan's "Going Blind" and Forster's "Surfing Magazines." The understated production, free of any attempt to get them "in the charts," makes this their best-ever sounding album. I would argue you could take the word "sounding" out of that last sentence, too.

Goldfrapp – Felt Mountain (Mute)

Having sung on records in the '90s by Orbital, Tricky, Plaid and Add N to X, Alison Goldfrapp jumped into the spotlight with Felt Mountain, the debut album from her namesake collaboration with Will Gregory. Drawing from sweeping '60s soundtracks and the downtempo scene she'd been involved with for the previous decade, nothing else sounded quite like it (though Broadcast and Blonde Redhead were clearly from the same galaxy). The album opens with the gorgeously unreal "Lovely Head," Goldfrapp's debut single, that plays like an acid-trip Bond theme featuring whistling, harpsichord, freaky electronics, and spine-tinglingly processed vocals that sound like... an ostrich singing opera? It's an unforgettable start to an record still bewitches and surprises today.

Grandaddy – The Sophtware Slump (V2)

Grandaddy really figured out their sound and worldview with their fantastic second album, featuring frontman Jason Lytle's absurdist tales of mundanity and stress in our increasingly tech-reliant world, set to a blend of '90s indie rock, glammy synthphonic flourishes (Flaming Lips/Mercury Rev's influence loomed large in 2000), and twangy country. The concept album imagines a world full of alcoholic robots, sad computer programmers, lost pilots, stuntman Evil Knevil, and forests made of discarded appliances that Lytle makes relatable with his empathetic style and a hard drive full of earworm spacerock pop...somehow it all sounds even more relevant now than it did in Y2K.

The New Pornographers – Mass Romantic (Mint)

They may be the Carl Newman Show these days, but The New Pornographers started off as a true collaborative supergroup, with Newman (previously of Zumpano), Destroyer's Dan Bejar and Neko Case all writing songs, often together, played with a band that also included members of Limblifter and Nardwuar's band, The Evaporators. "How could we lose," Newman told Pitchfork on their formation. "You could just take some interesting elements and put them together. Even taking myself out of the picture, when I looked at the band I just thought, 'This band's got to be great.'" He was definitely right, and their debut album, recorded over a three-year period, is a modern guitar pop classic where every song is a potential single.

Oranger – The Quiet Vibrationland (Amazing Grease / Poptones)

San Francisco's Oranger were popsmiths of the highest order, borrowing the best bits of '60s and '70s psychedelia to create their own brand of sunshine pop. Nicking the title from The Who's Tommy (and drummer Jim Lindsay swiping wild fills from Keith Moon), The Quiet Vibrationland also borrows from The Byrds, Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Turtles and the Kinks, but they do it with panache, punny pop-culture-laced humor and their own fantastic melodic sense. Oranger never really got their due -- they're not too far in sound or style from Fountains of Wayne -- but "Suddenly Upsidedown," "A View of the City from an Airplane," "Texas Snow" and "Stoney Curtis in Reverse" all sound like lost classics.

Primal Scream – XTRMNTR (Creation/Astralwerks)

Like The Fall, Primal Scream svengali Bobby Gillespie has always been able to absorb myriad influences and current trends into his band's own brand of rock n' roll and have it sound like they invented it. They were never more ambitious than on XTRMNTR -- a call-to-arms with revolution (political, musical, everything) in its sights that counted The Chemical Brothers, My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields, New Order's Bernard Sumner, and The Stone Roses' Gary Mounfield as part of their band of rebels. The 'Scream had never sounded so urgent, gritty and alive, and crazed, techno-infected songs like "Swastika Eyes," "Kill All Hippies" and "Shoot Speed/Kill Light" were miles away from the ecstasy-fueled good vibes they began the '90s with on Screamadelica. Gillespie may have lost the war, ultimately, but XTRMNTR remains a helluva battle.

Radiohead – Kid A (Capitol)

What is there to say about Kid A at this point that hasn't been said in a million other places? The band could do no wrong at this point, and going from The Bends to OK Computer, to this -- one of the most thrilling hot-streaks of the era -- it became apparent that the only thing you could expect from Radiohead was to be surprised and usually wowed. To wit: the minimal electronic bent of much of the record (like "Idioteque"); when the horns come in on "The National Anthem"; and the ambient beauty of "Treefingers." When they weren't dismantling the the sound formed on their first three albums, Radiohead showed they could still make powerful rock tracks like "Optimistic" and "Morning Bell." Even with all that's come since, Kid A still feels like an amazing curveball.

Super Furry Animals – MWNG (Placid Casual / Flydaddy)

Radiohead (see above) get the credit for being the biggest rock innovators of the late-'90s and early-'00s, but I'd at least give the silver medal to Welsh band Super Furry Animals who consistently pushed the envelope -- musically, visually, everything -- and were never scared to take wild swings while still working within in the boundaries of pop and rock. Take MWNG, which debuted at #11 in the UK albums chart and is sung entirely in Welsh. Even if you don't understand what they're saying on this one (and I don't), there's no denying the melodies, performances and clever production which are super and furry in any language.

Teenage Fanclub – Howdy! (Sony)

Glaswegian greats Teenage Fanclub have never been ones for breaking new ground, but they have one of the most consistent track records of any group that have been together 30 years. Howdy! is the Fannies' seventh album and one of their most underrated. It barely got released in America -- I bet many fans don't know this one even exists -- but Norman Blake, Gerry Love and Raymond McGinley are still cranking out the jangly hits. Everything you love about Teenage Fanclub is here: stick-in-your-head melodies, great harmonies, and really nice arrangements. They were a much mellower band by this point, but that fits them like a favorite sweater.