The Push of the Past and the Pull of the New
The Cast (Albums) : Big Long Sun, Found Object, Joseph Shabashon + Nicholas Krgovich + Tennis Coats, Juan Wauters, Juliana Hatfield
The Cast (EPs, Singles and Songs) : Autoleisureland, The Bluebells, Shapes Like People
Lightning Might Strike : Juliana Hatfield
Best for : Fans of US radio friendly indie rock
Some listeners are never satisfied. Back in the mid 70s when music could only be bought in physical formats and funds were limited, the fear wasn't so much that I wouldn't like a record, but that I wouldn't like it enough. Not liking a record was a statement of taste. Feeling that something was OK, but not really worth talking about with friends was an error of judgement. I didn't expect to be overwhelmed by everything and I hoped not to be underwhelmed. I just wanted to feel satisfied and, well, whelmed.
Juliana Hatfield took me back to that time. She's released tribute albums to her favourite artists of the 70s - ELO, Olivia Newton John and the Police - so she has a strong pop sensibility and she's not ashamed to acknowledge it. And there are moments early in this record where it shines through, on 'Fall Apart' and 'Long Slow Nervous Breakdown'. The backing vocal refrain to the latter is one of the elements that makes it a pop gem. 'Popsicle' has a proper new wave chorus, one to have the students bouncing off the sprung gym floor.
This has the American radio feel. No problems with that. The problem is that it never really catches fire. It's at the border of indie rock and soft rock, cleverly done but not about to set the world alight. Everything is played at a comfortable mid pace which, after a while, starts to feel churned out, more akin to Sheryl Crow and Alanis Morrisette. They become the kind of songs that you might expect from the transformed Sandy in 'Grease', rockier but still not particularly rebellious.
And that's where I may be unfair. There's a concern beneath the songs with mental health, and barren grieving. If you see these songs as the equivalent of the suffering behind a smiling face, they acquire more depth. It's an ambitious balance to reach for, and, if it's the case, it doesn't quite work for me. That said, 'Ashes' possesses the raw feeling that's missing from the rest of the album.
Lightning might strike, but it doesn't light up everything here.
Taster Track : Long Slow Nervous Breakdown
Tokyo Mystery Circus : Found Object
Best for : Anyone who likes their electropop bright and shiny
An i-phone 13 is millions of times more powerful than the computers that landed men on the moon. So, it shouldn't be surprising to learn that you can record a whole album on one using the Beatwave app. Well, it's a better use of its potential than doom scrolling!
What is surprising is how good it sounds. It's crisp and clean. This is music that is full of bright primary colours, propelled by the rhythms you might beat out on the kitchen tables as you wait for the kettle to boil. It's the soundtrack to a cartoon world, with all the magic of music made on the first, affordable synthesisers by kids on the street. Above all it's fun and celebratory.
Found Object has made a record out of the ear worms that come from nowhere and lodge in your head for weeks. It can be a little noodly. 'New Humanity' sounds as if he's been possessed by a hook and has fallen into a trance while seeing where the hook takes him. On 'Paraglide' and at moments elsewhere it feels like high quality library music, but if you heard it on hold, you'd be happy to hang around for as long as it takes. At its best though, as on 'Queen of the Night', it's hopelessly addictive and quirky. 'Shining' is as catchy as hell.
You don't need to look far for influences. Space, The Yellow Magic Orchestra. Giorgio Moroder are all partly accountable for synthesiser pop ending up as a found object. There's even a touch of Blancmange in its off the central highway feel.
Tokyo Mystery Circus came out in 2024. In 2025 Found Object released four new EPs, so there's plenty to discover if you want to delve deeper. This is music that will perk up your day, the ideal start to a Blue Monday morning.
Taster Track : Shining
MVD LUV : Juan Wauters
Best for : Travelogue indie folk
I don't know what the aural equivalent is for 'blink and you'll miss it', but it applies to this record. Fourteen tracks in just 26 minutes, this feels like music made on the move. Put three of these tracks together and you'll have the length of a single from other artists!
It's over far too soon. It's a whistle stop tour of his strengths, and there are several places you'd like to linger longer. There's an attractive home made feel where its sincerity and simplicity shine through. He sounds like a former busker who has taken all his knowledge of pleasing crowds and who has deservedly made the big time.
It sounds homemade in another sense too. In his introduction 'Amor Montevideo' he explains that this is the first time he has been able to record in his home town. MVD LUV is not an ambient record at all, but it is highly successful in communicating the ambience of a specific place. 'La Lucia' - comfortably the longest song here at four minutes - sounds like a psychedelic carnival and captures the bustle of Montevideo in its percussive section.
There's a wealth of charm in this album, wrapped up in tiny packages. It comes, in part, from the Spanish lyrics. It also sounds warm, good humoured and humane. Inevitably some songs sound like snippets, 'Acting Like I Don't Know' for one. Think of them as memories contained in postcards rather than letters home. Witness 'Cancion Mama' and its lullaby feel and tune or the genuinely acoustic indie style of 'Aeropuerto'.
You'll find melodies tripping all over this album. It's as if the Las joined the Gipsy Kings to get stuck into Simon and Garfunkel's 'El Condor Pasa'. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to note the similarities between Juan Wauters' name and John Walters, the radio partner for John Peel. I sense that there is much here that John Peel would have liked in his later years.
All told, this is a pretty good album for the armchair traveller, and for anyone who loves music made from the heart.
Taster Track : Cancion Mama
Whatever (Whatever) : Big Long Sun
Best for : Surprising us with its alternative artiness and creativity.
Here's something that's engagingly different. You can sense that when they identify elements of their target audience in their Spotify bio. Who else have you listened to who wants their music to connect with angry children, car parks, Pritt stick nibblers and question marks? Big long sun are a new band with WTF appeal.
From the start in the minimalist 'to fold' and the joyous electronic glam of 'like a dove' you're caught up in a rich but richly entertaining musical mix. Like a master chef mixing together ingredients that shouldn't work but do, this is constantly surprising and interesting. This is the product of an inventor's imagination if he'd had a studio set up in a shed and an ability to make 2+2 = 4.1. It should amount to a new way of making music. Try everything. Anything goes. Avoid dull and boring at all costs.
You're in the presence of an album that draws you in with multiple rhythms and vocal styles. Sometimes, as on 'fast like I like my money', it's messy and chaotic but who made anything worth keeping from keeping it neat and tidy? Perhaps they could rein it in at times and not give us too much too soon, but that would be letting a six year old into a toy warehouse and telling them which boxes they can and cannot look in.
Try 'thus spoke zara' to appreciate the rhythms that keep you close. Listen to any track to appreciate the vocal styles that make you want to stay. Feel how the separate parts of 'the lion and the butterfly' magically combine to create an undertow to the song that bends, stretches, twists its wonky sounds into memorable ear worms.
Big long sun operate in a niche part of pop, but they'll find themselves in good company with the likes of Scritti Politti and The High Llamas. Although they have moved in a different direction, they come from the same creative spark as Black Country New Road.
We need these mavericks in our lives.
Taster Track : to fold
Wao : Joseph Shabashon, Nicholas Krgovich, Tenniscoats
Best for : Long term fans of Shabashon and Krgovich who want to be stretched on the next instalment of their journey together.
This is the fifth album Shabashon and Krgovich have made together. Their musical companions for this chapter are Tenniscoats, a Japanese indie pop duo. The collaboration is an avant garde and experimental success, adding an Oriental flavour to their intimate and quiet, jazz influenced style.
Many of their trademark elements remain, stretched perhaps as far as they can be made to go. As always this is a hushed work and a little eerie too. On ' Look, Look, Look' the breathy vocals sound barely there. The album carries the Shabashon / Krgovich distinctive sound - strange, but promising beauty. 'Shioya Collection' brings the feeling of warm, soft winds across formal gardens while water features soothe nearby. The experience of listening to a Shabashon / Krgovich record is often captivating, as if witnessing innermost thoughts and confidential conversations from the unseen margins.
Something is missing though, something that on earlier albums became a point around which the rest of the album circled. I'm thinking of, say, 'Philadelphia' on 2020's album of the same name, and I think it's the absence of melodies to cling to while you listen. Elvis Costello had a phrase for what you're left with when that is missing - 'All This Useless Beauty'. What's left seems to be veering towards lethargic ennui, rather than restorative calm
It's the same with the lyrics and vocals. From 'At Guggenheim House " I long to be a fish flapping in the street." is part of a stream of consciousness that feels more like something improvised than meaningful. It's curiously sung too, so quiet that it sounds like stretching for a low note that falls outside your register.
This is still a good album, stretching their distinctive and ambitious sound to new limits. Tenniscoats can be proud of their contribution as collaborators. I think though that this is an album that stands on the shoulders of what came before and cashes in some of the credit they've built with their earlier albums.
Shabashon and Krgovich have made a fair stab at that difficult fifth album, but it may now be time to retrace their steps.
Taster Tracks : Lose My Breath
EPs, Singles, Songs
Autoleisureland (aka the Sons of Sunderland), The Bluebells (aka Sons of Scotland), Shapes Like People (aka.... sound of unnecessary tagline crumbling to dust.)
Three songs this week that seem to be drawn from the same well of inspiration. It's as if the classic indie pop spark has reignited in Scotland and spread through Sunderland to Wiltshire. All three share a gift for sweet pop with memorable tunes dipped into melancholic waters.
No one captures a sense of childlike confusion and wonder better than The Bluebells have on 'A Monochrome Set'. The image of a black and white TV may not be immediate for everybody, but anyone over the age of 45 will instantly be transported back to their youth. This is the kind of indie folk song that you hear once and feel you have known all your life.
Shapes Like People simply get better and better with every new song. 'Find Me There' finds melancholy through its jangling shoegaze feel. The way that it builds feels like rushing through the stars to a new place containing the possibility of hope. I loved it from the opening notes. It's quite possibly an early contender for 2026's best songs chart, and it's only January!
Autoleisureland are made up of two members of The Kane Gang. They've smoothed out the soulful funk of their 80s heyday to make a contemporary synth and guitar mix that will be completely at home at this Summer's festivals. It's from the same part of the heart as the Bluebells, but with a more urgent pulse to the verse. It bodes well for the release of their second album in May.