Parkville - The Peculiar Aftermath (2020)

Parkville are a folk-pop trio from Victoria’s Dandenong Ranges, with Liam, Michael and Dylan starting out in 2016 busking on the streets of Melbourne, with a driving Mumford & Sons-style backbone embellished with rich three-part vocal harmonies and soaring violin riffs. Their first EP was released in 2108, and received Australia-wide airplay throughout the year, leading to the release of two more singles in 2019, with 'Rooks' and 'Walkabout' catching the attention of critics who praised the bands vibrance and energy, and their eclectic instrumental arrangements. 'The Softest Murder' EP emerged in late 2019, including those two earlier singles, while 'Holly' was released last Christmas, bolstering their catalogue to now have enough songs to make up their debut album. I'm glad that Parkville are still around, as a number of bands from this series have now ceased to exist, so watch out for an actual album from these guys at some point.  

Track listing

01 Brother
02 Into The Sun
03 All My Years
04 Chicago
05 Shoes
06 Clearer
07 Brando
08 Shining
09 Reflections
10 The Peculiar Aftermath
11 Walkabout
12 Rooks
13 Come Around
14 Holly

Berries - Faults (2021)

Berries are a three piece rock band who have honed an engaging, punchy rock sound that’s filled with delicious melodies and naughty fuzzy riffs. The band was first formed through Holly (guitar and vocals) and Lauren (bass), who grew up together in Norfolk, played in different bands on the same bills and jammed through their shared musical influences like Jimi Hendrix, Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Subways. They didn’t get around to starting a band together until they moved to London and met Lucie (drums) who, in their words, “totally got the style straight away.” The band released their 'Lies' EP in 2019, which followed singles 'Discreetly', 'Wild Vow' and 'Faults', all of which were posted on Soundcloud, along with a number of other songs. It all went very quiet after the EP came out, and then they suddenly posted a radio edit of a new song last month, so they're still going strong, and while we wait for an album from them, I've gathered together the tracks they've posted so far to make a great album length release from this superb indie rock band.   

Track listing

01 Siren
02 Waiting
03 Never Smiled Once

04 Lights
05 Those Funny Things
06 Written In Paint
07 Wild Vow
08 Faults
09 Discreetly
10 Lies
11 Wits
12 Dangerous
13 Silent
14 Copy

My Invisible Friend - Sleepless (2016)

My Invisible Friend are an Italian shoegaze/noise rock band with a hint of darkened Krautrock and even a tad of drone music thrown in there for good measure. Their music blasts away with noise-orientated feedback over catchy and diverse shoegaze riffs and a powerful and echoed sound that is contrasted with barely audible vocals, evoking some sort of dream pop element into the mix. They released a few songs on Soundcloud around 2015, and then issued a self-titled EP in 2016, consisting of just three tracks, but which lasted over half an hour. All three tracks are superb pieces of music, with a dream pop tune layered with all matter of reverb, echo and noise drowning out the breathy and alluring vocals, with the closing 'Sleepless' being an eighteen-minute tour-de-force. I haven't seen anything from the band since the EP came out, so I've a feeling that they are no more, but they've left behind an album's work of outstanding psychedelic/noise/drone rock which will be their legacy. 

Track Listing

01 Dear Mary
02 O.N.S.
03 Green Sight
04 Sleepless
05 Eyes
06 Endless

Before Breakfast - Something Good (2020)

Before Breakfast are an indie/folk band from Sheffield, who met up at University around 2016, and originally comprised Gina, Debra, Annie and Lucy, weaving strong melodies, jazz-inflected piano and ethereal cello with sweet harmonies in songs that rise up from the depths of womanhood. The four members all have a wealth of musical experience behind them in the fields of classical music, musical theatre and folk, and have worked with or been part of other bands such as Reverend And The Makers, Jon Boden & The Remnant Kings, Hey Sholay, Screaming Maldini and Renegade Brass Band. Around 2019 they slimmed down to a trio after Annie left, and the core of the band is currently just Gina and Lucy, with other musicians helping out when needed. They've been posting songs on Soundcloud for a while now, and have a number of singles available on Bandcamp, and although an album was planned for 2018, it has yet to appear, so I've taken a few of their singles and some Soundcloud tracks to make up an album which will tide us over until the actual one does finally surface. 

 
Track listing

01 Something Good
02 Sticky Sweet
03 Caravan
04 Lighthouse
05 Fat Child
06 Body
07 Buddleia
08 Words I've Never Heard
09 Christmas Is Here (And You're Not)
10 Stand
11 Wreck  

Imperial Daze - Solid Fair (2020)

Indie-psych-pop quartet Imperial Daze started as a four-piece studio project, made up of singer/guitarist Alex Cameron-Ward, guitarist/bassist Felix Rebaud-Sauer, keyboardist/singer Facundo Rodriguez and drummer Tom Sunney. Following Alex’s previous band being placed in a Sony PS4 advert, Alex, Facundo and Felix decided to build a recording studio together in Battersea, with the intention of making music for advertising under the company name of AudioCommune. Having begun writing music together, late-2016/early-2017 saw Imperial Daze release a short series of hotly received singles, earning critical acclaim and clocking up tens of thousands of plays across streaming platforms. The band’s hazy, rolling indie-pop and self-made success also caught the attention of Rupert Jarvis from The Maccabees and Ian Brundrett from Caroline/Fiction Records, who took the band under their wing for both production and management. Having performed as a studio project up until meeting Jarvis, the decision was made to put a live band together with the idea of recording a first EP and touring, and the 'Solid Fair EP was recorded at The Maccabbes own studio The Drugstore. Another stroke of luck occurred when AudioCommune landed a commission to score an advert for a large ice cream brand, and the the money from that enabled them to build another studio from scratch, inside a giant disused commercial freezer under a railway arch in Central London. Having their own Electric Eel Recording studio has allowed the band to expand their sound and repertoire, scoring, recording and producing the soundtrack to director Nathan Sam Long's short movie 'Give Up The Ghost', while continuing to record music as Imperial Daze. This album collects together those early singles plus the 'Solid Fair' EP, to give an idea of what an album from the band could sound like, and it's pretty good considering it only started as something of a side project to their advertising empire.

Track listing

01 1000 Lives
02 Solid Fair

03 All On Me

04 Work

05 Don't Turn On The Light

06 Man Out Of Myself

07 Minding The Haze

08 Always Settling

09 People Are Animals

10 Centrepole

Little Quirks - Devil's Ivy (2020)

Little Quirks are an Australian indie folk band formed on the Central Coast of New South Wales in 2015 by sisters, Abbey Toole (guitar, lead vocals) and Mia Toole (drums, vocals), and their cousin Jaymi Toole (mandolin, vocals), and in 2019 they were joined by Jaymi's older brother Alex on bass guitar. When they started, Jaymi was 17 and Abbey was 15, while Mia was just 11 year old, and they busked at food markets, playing cover versions of tracks by the Cranberries, Of Monsters and Men, and Vance Joy. In 2016 they issued their first EP 'Where We Hide', which was produced by Abbey and Mia's father Adam Toole, who himself had played in bands Adam's Apple and Sugarmoth, and a second EP 'Suzie Knows' appeared in 2017. I first became aware of them in 2018 when I found some of their tracks on Soundcloud, and was impressed enough to follow them and discover more of their music. In January 2020 they issued their third EP 'Cover My Eyes', and have now have more than enough music for an album, so as they haven't released one then I'll do it for them, with a record that includes the very best of the songs from their three releases to date, plus a recent single and three tracks that are only available on Soundcloud.

Track listing

01 Stay Awake 

02 Run Away  

03 About The World

04 Big Jet Plane

05 Unwinding  

06 Hold On 

07 I Told You So

08 Crumbled

09 Stand Still

10 Devil's Ivy

11 Where We Hide

12 Someone To Hold

13 Bury Our Bones

Jekyll - Midnight Swim (2020)

As I was piecing back together my other blog The Amplified Review, which was also deleted over Christmas, I realised that Blackpool alternative rockers were the only band to feature twice in the New Band Specials, and so I thought it must be about time that an album is due from them. After putting out a couple of tracks on Soundcloud in 2015, they released an eponymous EP on Fierce Panda in 2018, and followed this two years later with their 'Whispering Gallery' EP, but so far that's all we've had from them. In their early days a track like 'Cramp' displayed more than a nod to Muse, but by the time they released their EP's they'd developed a sound of their own, with shredding solos, sharp falsettos and bitter sweet tones between blistering instrumentation. They show their shoegaze swagger through  tracks like ‘Echoes’, with crashing razor sharp guitars which  lacerate through a buoyant backdrop, while ‘Midnight Swim’ is a delicate number which shows they're not all bluster. As I can't wait for the album I've put together my own from all the tracks they've issued so far, and if you end up loving them as much as I do then the album proper can't come soon enough. In the meantime check out a couple of Youtube videos they've uploaded, covering songs by Japan and Echo & The Bunnymen.

Track listing

01 Cramp

02 Unspoken

03 Plan A

04 Othello

05 The Wounds We've Ignored

06 Mania

07 I Do What I Can

08 Midnight Swim

09 So Wrong

10 The Escapist

11 Marionette

12 Echoes

Torus - Torus Of Revolution (2020)

Torus are a young hard rock/grunge trio from Milton Keynes, and comprise Alfie Glass on guitar and vocals, Harry Quinn on bass, and Eleanor Lawrance on drums. They've been together since 2019, when Glass recorded some of his songs as demos, and then started looking for a band to play them. He soon hooked up with old band-mate Quinn, but it took another year before Lawrance joined on drums, and straight away they began rehearsing and recording together. The music is inspired by bands such as Queens Of The Stone Age and Kyuss, and they've been releasing singles since 2019, with a new three-track EP being released in June 2020, all of which are available on Bandcamp. They've been so prolific that if you take all the songs they've recorded so far there are actually enough to put together their debut album after only being together for eighteen months. So check them out, and if you like what you hear then do support them.   

Track listing

01 Next Time
02 Hold On
03 The Feeling
04 Valley Of The Weasel
05 Follow
06 Blurry
07 Oceans
08 Make You Mine
09 Off The Ground
10 Under
11 Numb

Sun Arcana - Oblique (2020)

Essex four-piece Sun Arcana have been posting songs on Soundcloud since 2017, which is where I first heard 'Wonderful', and realised that this was a band to watch out for. There's more than just a touch of Muse about their sound, and they are actually signed to the Easy Life Records label, and have released two EPs, but the album is a long time coming, so here's what they could easily have released a year ago. 

Track listing

01 Fracture
02 Oxygen
03 Everybody
04 When I Turn Cold
05 Wonderful
06 Oblique
07 Let Me Down (Ventilate)
08 Alone
09 What If You Can't Accept Me?
10 Hard To Be Around
11 Sleep-Talking
12 Through The Night
13 Find Our Way 

La Bete Blooms - Lost And Found (2018)

La Bete Blooms were a post-punk four piece from Hull who formed in 2015, and started to post songs on Soundcloud, as well as releasing a limited edition cassette containing two of their songs, 'Summer' and 'Nothing Left But The Taste'. They merged a wall of noise with a keen ear for melody, and had developed from their shoegaze beginnings to become a post-punk powerhouse. 'Breaking In', the lead track from their 2017 CD EP 'I Know It's Nothing', attracted attention from BBC 6Music's Steve Lamacq, but before they could build on that the band ground to a halt, and in 2018 they metamorphised into Low Hummer and deleted their Soundcloud account. This album is therefore not only their debut, but it's also their epitath, and if you like it then do track down the EP.  

Track listing

01 TV Speak
02 Everyday's The Same
03 Stay Away
04 All For You
05 Wishing I Could Kill
06 Summer
07 Nothing Left But The Taste
08 Sigh Away
09 Home
10 Lost And Found
11 Saw You On The TV
12 Take Arms

Planet - Northern Skyline (2020)

Planet are an alt/indie four-piece from Sydney, Australia, who posted the excellent 'Northern Skyline' on Soundcloud back in February 2016, and right from that first song I knew they were a band to watch. Now signed to Dew Process, they've released a number of singles since, some of which have been compiled on the extremely hard-to-find 'Singles' mini-album, but by adding in the rest of their songs I now have enough for a full-length album. I've named it after that first single, and the artwork is based on 'Darwin Skyline' by Michael Tompsett.

Track listing

01 Northern Skyline
02 Disaster Caster
03 Frosty
04 Undermine
05 Can't Connect
06 Aimless
07 For You
08 Aching Dream
09 Save.Sold
10 Waking Eight
11 You, Just A Little More
12 Reason Why
13 Never Knew
14 Imaginary
15 Outright

Paris Youth Foundation - Missing The Mark (2020)

On my other blog amplifiedreview.blogspot.com I review a few indie albums every few months, and also pick out six bands that I've found online that I think are worth keeping an eye out for. The Little Indie blog is an invaluable reference point for these, which can then take you to Soundcloud, Youtube or Spotify to hear the music, and often the same bands keep turning up with a new song, but never get signed up to make an album. Before long there are enough songs scattered around online to make the album that they were striving for, and so when a group has released around a dozen songs and still don't look like ever getting an record deal, I'm going to do it for them and make the album, so that you can hear some of these criminally under-rated bands. The Paris Youth Foundation are a Liverpool five-piece who have been uploading songs to Soundcloud since around 2016, and they are all of a consistently high quality, so here is the album that they should have made.  

Track listing

01 If You Wanna
02 Losing Your Love
03 Lost Cause
04 Missing The Mark
05 London
06 The Off Button
07 Jessica
08 Look What You Started
09 Home Is Where The Heart Is
10 You Haven't Loved Until You've Lost
11 I Can't Keep Up With Your Love
12 Hold On To Your Heart

HAIM - When We Were Young (2016)

Haim comprise three sisters - Este, Danielle, and Alana Haim - who first came to my attention in 2012, when they posted a couple of songs on Youtube. These were indie/pop of the highest order, and so over the next few months I kept an eye out for more, and an album finally surfaced in 2013.
A new album is scheduled for a summer release, but as a stop-gap I realised that I still had 12 unreleased tracks stashed away on the hard-drive. These songs were recorded 'when they were young', so that seems an apt title, and as well as unreleased originals, there are some tasty covers ('Oh Well' is stunning live, as they rock much harder in a live setting), and an extended acoustic version of one of the album tracks.

Track Listing

01 Spirit Wind
02 Figure It Out
03 Hold Me (Fleetwood Mac - pop)
04 Throwing It All Away
05 Oh Well (Fleetwood Mac - blues)
06 Honey & I
07 When We Were Young
08 Send Me Down
09 Hazy Shade Of Winter (Bangles/Simon & Garfunkel)
10 Stop
11 Edge
12 Strong Enough (Sheryl Crow)

As these are all ripped from Youtube then they are only in 192, but I hope the quality of the songs shines through, and if you are as smitten by them as I was, then check out the album, as it was one of the best of that year.