Beach House / Become

Beach House participated in the just-passed Spring 2023 edition of Record Store Day with Become, an EP of new material drawn from the sessions that begat last year’s Once Twice Melody. Of the five songs, the duo said: The Become EP is a collection of 5 songs from the Once Twice Melody sessions. We didn’t think they fit in […]

The Clientele – “Blue Over Blue”

It’s a good day when you’re reminded that The Clientele remain an active concern. Their last musical dispatch came in 2020 with “Orpheus Beach”, a one-off Go-Beetweens cover, so it’s a good start to the week when you receive news that they’re returning with a new album – their first since 2017’s Music For The […]

Manic Sheep – “No More Anger”

Just in case you think my explorations of Asian shoegazers is limited to acts coming out of Japan, I direct you to Manic Sheep, who hail from Taipei, Taiwan. “No More Anger” was a single taken from their second album, 2016’s Brooklyn, and if the Ameri-centric album title wasn’t a tip off, there’s very little […]

New Order – “Elegia”

It’s probably overstating things to call “Elegia” one of New Order’s signature tracks – it’s too much of a stylistic outlier for that – but it is one of their most notable and memorable. Opening up side two of 1985’s Low-Life, it’s an elegiac instrumental that bridges the far poppier halves of the album with […]

Cocteau Twins – “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops”

Here’s another instalment in the series I’ll call “Cocteau for Cocteau’s sake”, where I’ll just throw some Cocteau Twins material out there because doing so makes the world a marginally better place. Wikipedia says that the band had two videos before this one, taken from 1984’s The Spangle Maker EP, but I can’t find it […]