Summertime Indie!

Well, after a busy couple of weeks and some awful neglect of the blog, it's time to get back to the indie.

I have noticed that (at least with me) each year certain albums tend to dominate my summer playlists. Although it is a little too early to tell what these are going to be yet, it's worth a look back at what was the sound of last summer...



Scream Gun EP - BRMC

I got a copy of this hard to come by EP off a friend and it I instantly became addicted. Consisting of 5 songs that didn't make it on to their debut album, including Fail-Safe (possibly one of their best work to date).

Better Than A Killer - Black Market Radio

Suggested to my by indieawesome friend Kev. Peter Cornell (brother of Chris) along with 3 friends. Possibly one of the best grunge albums I've ever heard. I must have listened to this hundreds of times, and didn't get sick of it. I'm still not sure if BMR are still around (if you know please tell me), but I sure hope so because I'd love to go see them.

Tokyo Police Club - Elephant Shell

Lovely happy indie pop. It's hard not to like music like this, and although every song it only about 2 minutes long (I don't think they'd work if they were longer), and the album is quite short, it does make for good summertime listening.

The lovely summery photograph is by Stathis Stavrianos, who titled the photo "Summer Wasting..." after the Belle & Sebastian song... Looks like someone know's his indie

Grunge ain't dead

After the 90's came and went, we lost a few good musical genres. The one I miss the most is Grunge. Indie with a bit of bite. After people got rid of the outlandish hairstyles and synthesizers, and before tribes of annoyingly generic man-children decided that bands need 4 to 5 dancing singers each, these guys were kicking some serious musical ass.

The punk that had survived the 70's and 80's, became more melancholic and evolved into Grunge. But then the 90's moved on, and Grunge transformed into that Pop-Punk (which is itself an oxymoron) which in turn became Emo over time.



But is grunge dead? Turns out it's not! Former Grunge expert Chris Cornell has a brother it would seem, and Peter (that's Mr. Peter Cornell to us), is still going around with what can only be described as the indiest grunge band in the world. Black Market Radio, possibly the world's sole remaining grunge band (though probably not). Not many pictures of them exist on the interweb, but the do have 1 LP and an EP and are relatively well known, at least in America. Their Myspace page has a few songs up, but no gig listings or much to show if they even still exist. Even their website has no news as to their fate... Let's just hope they're still out there. If Pop Punk is Pop, then Grunge is Indie, and the world needs more of those bands.

I couldn't find a photo of Peter under a CC licence, so here's a nice one of Chris from Nicola T, who her profile states is "Female and Taken".