Indie Basement (11/29): the week in classic indie, alternative & college rock

Hello and a happy start to the holiday season for all of you. Thanksgiving week is historically slow for new releases, but this week does have one of my favorite records of the year: The Innocence Mission‘s wonderful Midwinter Swimmers. I also catch up on a couple things I missed: the new album from The Only Ones‘ Peter Perrett which features Johnny Marr, Bobby Gillespie and more, and the first album in 12 years from Montreal’s Les Breastfeeders. Plus, the Indie Basement Bookmobile has pulled up with Pulp guitarist Mark Webber‘s I’m With Pulp, Are You?

While there’s not many actual new albums out this week, it is Record Store Day Black Friday, and one of the exclusive titles is a double-LP Deluxe Edition of The English Beat’s Special Beat Service which I’ve made my Indie Basement Classic of the week. We’ve got other RSD suggestions too.

Over in Notable Releases, Andrew reviews the latest from Bedsore, Hidden Mothers and more.

Have a swell holiday weekend and we’ll see you in December. This week’s reviews are below.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK: The Innocence Mission – Midwinter Swimmers (Therese / Bella Union)
Another achingly beautiful, wonderfully nuanced album from this long-running Lancaster, PA duo

Karen Peris’ delicate, beautiful songwriting and fragile voice has the uncanny ability to tap into your memory palace, and setting free feelings you didn’t know you had, memories that may not even be yours. That’s the way it is for me, at least. Listening to The Innocence Mission’s wonderful 13th album, these songs evoke feelings that are usually reserved for songs from my childhood, like “When I Grow Up” or “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” (Peris’ 2021 solo album A Song is Way Above the Lawn, was sort of an actual childrens album, though it seemed more about being a kid than, y’know, for kids.) She paints almost exclusively in wistful, happy/sad emotions and you don’t even have to pay attention to her lovely, impressionistic prose to be moved by it. It’s like looking out the window, drinking a hot cup of tea as snow falls the first time in winter. Even if you’ve lived in Fiji your whole life, you know what it feels like. It’s nostalgic and heart-tugging but not in a greeting card way; no cheap sentimentality, whoa-oh choruses, or sappy production. Karen and husband Don are working with a wider palette of watercolors this time, too; The Innocence Mission usually favor piano but Midwinter Swimmers is a very guitar-oriented album, from gently strummed acoustics to delicate arpeggiations that recall another wistful group, The Clientele. Songs like “The Camera Divides the Coast of Maine,” “Your Saturday Picture,” and “Orange of the Westering Sun” are flashes of memory augmented with organ, strings, horns and vintage synths, all used sparingly with just the right touch for perfect airy arrangements. “I often think of the Ivan Lalic poem,” Karen says of these songs, “that says something like: Is this a street or years?” Even if you’re not familiar with Lalic, you know what she means.

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Peter Perrett – The Cleansing (Domino)
The Only Ones’ frontman gets dark — very dark — on this ambitious, ultimately cathartic double album featuring Johnny Marr, Bobby Gillespie, and Fontaines D.C.’s Carlos O’Connell

Peter Perrett is best known for “Another Girl, Another Planet,” the perfect power-pop single by his new wave era group The Only Ones. Forty-six years later, Perrett is in a whole other solar system with his third solo release, a fantastic double album that has him looking square in the face of mortality and depression with all the lights on, and only a mordant sense of humor and a smidge of hope to keep him afloat. “It’s a losing battle, tryin’ to be sane, it leaves me tired and listless,” he sings on “I Wanna Go With Dignity,” the opening song on The Cleansing, “If I’m gonna jump in front of a train, I’ll wait till after Christmas.” That grimly funny lyrical material runs throughout the album’s 67-minute running time, across songs with titles like “Do Not Resuscitate,” “Solitary Confinement,” “Set the House on Fire,” and “Less Than Nothing.” Yet this is not a depressing album (compared to, say, The Cure’s Pornography). He’s fighting the dark thoughts, expunging them through these 20 tracks which are his best, most tuneful batch of songs since The Only Ones. It’s his best-produced album since then as well, still on the raw side but with thought and care and nuance. As on his two previous solo albums, Peter worked with his sons, Jamie and Peter Jr, but this one also features many notable guests, including Johnny Marr, Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie, arrangements by Fontaines D.C.’s Carlos O’Connell, and Dream Wife guitarist Alice Go. At 72, despite years of abuse to his body via addiction (he’s on the other side of that thankfully), at age 72 Perrett’s voice still sounds remarkable similar to his Only Ones days with just the right amount of gravel to give these lyrics the world-weariness they need, and his well of memorable couplets has not run dry. (“Can’t communicate with rage / insults don’t improve with age,” he sings on “Survival Mode.”) The Cleansing is a journey, and by the time we get to the end, “Crystal Clear,” Peter is looking beyond the horizon. “If it ever comes to fruition, you’ve gotta own the choices you make.”

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Les Breastfeeders – La ville engloutie (Bonsound)
First album in 12 years from these Montreal garage rock greats is a groovy delight

Les Breastfeeders are like the French Canadian answer to The Fleshtones or The Hives, having made amped-up, party-forward rock n’ roll with lots of hooks and a French twist since 1999. The band have been mostly in hibernation since 2011’s Dans la gueule des jours, though, with only a handful of Canadian and French shows in the 13 years since. The band have roared back in 2024, sounding as cool, groovy and tuneful as ever. Co-produced in bright technicolor by the band and Ryan Battistuzzi (Nobro), La ville engloutie (“The Sunken CIty”) is a blast, 12 Franco-Canadian psych earworms loaded with fuzzy/surfy riffs, sparking harmonies, melodic basslines, vintage ’60s organs, enthusiastic “WOW”s, and big choruses. Even though I don’t know what they’re singing — it’s all en français — they do so with conviction. This record is terrific, more swinging Paris than cavestomp grit. Bon retour, Les Breastfeeders!

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Mark Webber – I’m With Pulp, Are You? (Hat & Beard Press)
From Pulp fan to Pulp guitarist, Mark Webber takes us through his life with the Britpop icons via his extensive collection of band epherma in this excellent book that’s a treasure trove for fans

Mark Webber has lived the dream. Growing up in Chesterfield, UK near the industrial city of Sheffield, Mark was an indie-obsessed kid who started a fanzine, Cosmic Pig in the ’80s, and through that ended up befriending then avant-garde group Pulp. He started helping build sets for their stage show, and soon began tour managing the band, running the official Pulp fanclub and being keeper of the archives. He was also a musician himself and as the ’80s turned into the ’90s and Pulp started to pick up steam, he began playing on their records. He contributed guitar to their breakthrough single “Razzmatazz” and then Pulp asked him to join the band in 1995 just as they were making their fifth album, Different Class. He’s been one of Pulp’s guitarists ever since.

Needless to say, Mark has a lot of stories and a lot of memorabilia he’s accumulated over the past 40 years, much of which has made it into I’m With Pulp, Are You? It’s an illustrated band history and a personal memoir that also features contributions from Jarvis Cocker, music writers Simon Reynolds and Luke Turner, and lots more. It’s a great companion to Jarvis’ memoir, Good Pop Bad Pop, but it hold up on its own, covers more ground, and is a treasure trove for fans. With Pulp seemingly back for real (new album?), hopefully he’s already collecting for the next volume.

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INDIE BASEMENT CLASSIC: The English Beat – Special Beat Service Deluxe RSD Edition (Rhino)
The third and final album from 2-Tone vets moves beyond ska and into pop territory. It still holds up as this RSD deluxe edition shows

If you’re looking for Indie Basement core DNA, The (English) Beat are part of my musical awakening. It came via General Public, the Big ’80s pop band Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger formed when The Beat broke up in 1983 after three albums. After wearing out GP’s debut album, All the Rage, I then worked my way back and found a group I loved even more. Getting their start in Birmingham, England, The Beat were part of the 2-Tone ska scene, and scored four UK Top 10 hits in the first year of their existence. Like many of the groups from that scene, The Beat mutated quickly and never made the same album twice. Their 1980 debut, I Just Can’t Stop It, is a ska classic and the US version has all the early singles that made them famous. 1981’s Wha’ppen? was an intentional pivot and saw them exploring dub reggae, carribean music and more socially conscious lyrics, but it suffered from Difficult Second Album Syndrome. I still think it’s great, though.

The Beat went for a more cosmopolitan pop sound on their third album, and it was a real breakthrough for them in the US (where they had to add the “English” to their name thanks to power-pop artist Paul Collins’ band of the same name). Ska seemed only a memory at this point as they incorporated High Life, French pop, jazz and soul to their repertoire, with just a little California New Wave to boot. Dave Wakeling excelled at witty, hooky, three-minute relationship songs and Special Beat Service is packed with them, yeilding two new wave / MTV hits with “I Confess” and, especially, “Save it For Later” which is one of the group’s most enduring songs. Side One is pretty flawless, with “I Confess,” the breezy accordion-fueled “Jeanette,” the horn-blast of “Sorry” and the fantastic Motown homage “Soul Salvation,” which is followed by “Spar Wid Me” (one of two songs where co-lead vocalist and “toaster” Ranking Roger gets to shine), and “Rotating Head,” the closest the album comes to ska. Side Two opens with “Save it For Later,” and if it lags just a little from there we do get the jaunty “She’s Leaving,” a showcase for the whole band (guitarist Andy Cox, bassist David Steele, drummer Everett Morton, and Saxa’s signature reed-work), and bittersweet ballad “The End of the Party.” Having worked with the band since almost the start, producer Bob Sargent makes the whole thing sparkle like the promise of the ’80s. I Just Can’t Stop It is The Beat’s best album, but Special Beat Service is the one I return to the most.

This Record Store Day 2-LP Deluxe Edition has the original album on the first disc, and puts some hard-to-find rarities on the second. Most notable is “March of the Swivelheads,” an instrumental dance remix of the album’s “Rotating Head” which was famously used in the “race home through the backyards” sequence in Ferris Beuller’s Day Off. There’s also: non-LP single “Hit It” (a stab at Chic-style funk) and its dubby b-side “Which Side of the Bed?”; pretty great “Save it for Later” b-side “What’s Your Best Thing?” which was included on American comp What is Beat; a remix of “I Confess” made for US radio, and four live tracks.

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