Indie Basement (5/29): the week in classic indie, alternative & college rock

This week we say goodbye to May and say hello to a bunch of great albums. I highly recommend all six that I review this week — Boards of Canada, Iceage, Guided by Voices, The Bug Club, Eddy Current Suppression Ring and Doublespeak (members of Erasure and Blancmange) — and anoint two of them with AOTW status. The rest are also really, really good.

This week’s Indie Basement Classic is one of my favorites of 1986, a year that was full of near-perfect albums. Over in Notable Releases you can read reviews of Kurt Vile, Greg Mendez, Feeble Little Horse, Turnover, and more. On this week’s episode of BV Interviews I talk to Glenn Donaldson of The Reds, Pinks & Purples.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts. In other news: The Durutti Column announced his first album in 16 years; and Panda Bear & Sonic Boom announced their second album (which will not be on streaming services). Head below for this week’s reviews.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK #1: Boards of Canada – Inferno (Warp Records) The enigmatic Scottish duo trade nostalgia for dread on their sprawling first album in 13 years It’s probably a good thing that Boards of Canada don’t make albums more often. The warbly sound brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin forged in the mid-’90s — built from ’70s television samples and analog synths, then manipulated with layers of eerie effects and detuned instruments — is so distinctive that you might burn out on it if there were 15 albums of this stuff. Or maybe they’d burn out first.

You can watch YouTube videos breaking down how they crafted Music Has a Right to Children using samples from Sesame Street and other kids’ TV programs, Speak & Spells, and movie soundtracks, twisting nostalgia into something beautiful and strange. The process seems exhausting, but what a hypnotic result. Inferno is Boards of Canada’s first album in 13 years — and only their second in 21 — and the nostalgia seems to have been replaced by repressed bad memories.

This is their heaviest, bleakest album to date, turning the dial from Eerie fully into Creepy. Still compelling, though. They dive deep into dark waters in a way that feels in tune with our bad-vibes, apocalyptic times while maintaining Boards of Canada’s hazy, sample-heavy, downtempo style.

This is also BoC’s longest album since Music Has a Right to Children, clocking in at 70 minutes, and you may need to get yourself in the right headspace — and into a pair of comfortable headphones — to take it all in at once. That’s the best way, too. I got to attend one of the NYC listening parties at Judson Memorial Church where it was blasted out at concert-level volume as the crowd fervently nodded along, the band’s spinning hexagon logo projected above the pulpit and below a gorgeous stained-glass window.

There are plenty of highlights: first single “Prophecy at 1420 MHz” drops a little rock grandeur into their sound; “Naraka” is one of many tracks to dabble in spiritual music from around the world; “Father and Son” turns the sliced-and-diced dialogue samples they’re known for into something decidedly sinister; and penultimate track “You Retreat in Time and Space” opens the shades, lets the sunshine in, and beckons you through the window into another time and place. Thirteen years is a long time to wait, and your mileage may vary on Inferno, but I think of Boards of Canada like a comet — they’re not here very often, but I’m always glad when they make an appearance in a galaxy near me. <a href="https://boardsofcanada.

bandcamp.com/album/inferno">Inferno by Boards of Canada</a> — ALBUM OF THE WEEK #2: Iceage – For Love of Grace & the Hereafter (Mexican Summer) The Danish post-punks emerge from the shadows with their sixth and easily best album yet Once known for glowering, druggy post-punk, Danish band Iceage lightened up considerably on 2021’s Seek Shelter, and that evolution continues here, even if it might not seem that way at first. “At a moment’s notice, you wrecked the ship,” Elias Rønnenfelt sings.

“One error, then you’re fucking dead, boy.” That’s the opening couplet of “Ember,” the first song on Iceage’s sixth album, which turns out to be a love song. “I love you in an ominous way,” he sings in the chorus.

It’s gushy, but in an Iceage way, cut through with doubt. Still, they’ve found the light at the end of the tunnel. “Ember” is one of many love songs on For Love of Grace & the Hereafter.

“Star” is their best single in ages, with Rønnenfelt belting, “You’ve got me dying like a star / Centuries apart / Sunlike in the battered sky.” A little sunlight does this band good, even if it’s the December-in-Copenhagen kind that only shows up for a couple hours a day. For Love of Grace & the Hereafter is also a lot of fun, with a swaggering, danceable energy that recalls The Pogues, The Replacements, and The Libertines.

“Lifetime” bounces like The Smiths’ “Handsome Devil,” “No Fear” is a jangly earworm, and there’s even an infectious “la la la” chorus on “1835.” Yet it all remains distinctly Iceage. There’s real life here, not a mediocre song in sight, and they too are sunlike in the battered sky.

Nearly 20 years into their career, they have made their best album by a mile. <a href="https://iceage.bandcamp.

com/album/for-love-of-grace-the-hereafter">For Love of Grace &amp; the Hereafter by Iceage</a> — Guided by Voices – Crawlspace of the Pantheon (GBV Inc) Robert Pollard still has plenty in the tank as GBV’s 44th album proves Rumors of their demise continue to be exaggerated, and even though Guided by Voices haven’t played a show in over two years, they are still cranking out records at a typically prolific pace. Crawlspace of the Pantheon is GBV’s 44th album, and it’s remarkable how good Robert Pollard’s songwriting remains, and how much joie de rock the current lineup brings to his creations. Crawlspace of the Pantheon offers up a dozen off-kilter arena rock anthems, played with gusto and making the most of a modest budget.

The arrangements are heavier and louder than on recent records — “Dragon’s Plunger” is nearly metal — but also more grandiose, with touches of synthesizer, mellotron, chimes, and other orchestration. Pollard has been getting less esoteric lyrically, too, dropping prose that, if not direct, is relatable while still full of his unique, evocative imagery. We meet thrift-store mods, Cheap Trick cover bands who want to record in Mitch Easter’s garage, confused jokers, and clowns.

The best place to start is “We Outlast Them All,” an instant classic that feels like it could be Guided by Voices’ current theme song: “and we outlast them all / to the riot’s final call / with the house band’s playlist / crushed in a tight fist and thrown at the wall.” Pollard swears it’s not about the band, but it’s hard not to read it that way. From there, head to “Arthur Square,” an epic of Who’s Next proportions where Pollard and company bring maximum attitude to lines like “there are now no squares in Circleville.

” Pollard turns 69 this year, and the desire to retire from the road, if that’s what he’s doing, is understandable. But Guided by Voices are still delivering too many burners not to be letting us hear them in concert. As long as they’re making records as good as Crawlspace of the Pantheon, though, he can play reclusive genius for as long as he wants.

<a href="https://guidedbyvoices.bandcamp.com/album/crawlspace-of-the-pantheon">Crawlspace of the Pantheon by Guided By Voices</a> — The Bug Club – Every Single Muscle (Sub Pop) This Welsh duo turn anxiety, awkwardness, and self-loathing into charming, empathetic, shout-along indie-pop Sam Willmett and Tilly Harris have a mordant sense of humor, not to mention a way with words and a knack for a well-placed pop culture reference, that makes nearly any depressing or potentially humiliating subject fun.

Or at least catchy. Here they are on “A Good Day for Dying,” a jangly number and one of many great songs on their fifth album as The Bug Club: The big boys found another planet The little girls never even landed Computers and hard back books And all the other things I never liked the look of Seem strangely beautiful Complete and undisputable Atrocities recoupable The hollow smiles of children know They’re going nowhere After a chorus where the title is shouted four times, Sam asks, “Please can I play my solo now?” The solo lasts all of a second and a half.

The Bug Club take the best bits of guitar-forward indie from the last 40 years — The Wedding Present, The Mekons, Pavement, Half Man Half Biscuit, The Pastels, Television Personalities, and more — and put what they’ve learned toward their own brand of melodic, hooky, pitch-black, hilarious, and heartfelt songs. Songs about awkward sex (“Make It Count”), murder pacts (“Cut to Black”), loneliness (“How Can We Be Friends,” “Watching the Omnibus”), being in a band (“Our Manager David”), and self-loathing (“When You Look Like Me,” and, really, most of the album). You probably need a bit of a dark sense of humor yourself, but The Bug Club handle all this in such a charming, tuneful way on Every Single Muscle that it becomes all the more empathetic and endearing.

You may even find yourself singing along to “I’ve never seen your penis, so how can we be friends?” <a href="https://thebugclub.bandcamp.

com/album/every-single-muscle">Every Single Muscle by The Bug Club</a> — Doublespeak – Doublespeak (London Records) Erasure and Blancmange alumni find common ground in classic songs and vintage synths Vince Clarke and Neil Arthur have known each other for more than 40 years, dating back to when their respective synthpop bands, Depeche Mode and Blancmange, toured together in the early ’80s. They remained friends as Vince went on to form Yazoo and Erasure, while Neil dissolved and later reformed Blancmange. There was always talk of collaborating on something, but it never really came to be until the late 2010s when Neil suggested they try recording a cover song.