Ahhh remember when rock and roll was still a good time?! We’re so brooding now, so socially serious. Always ironic. How about three or four chords that just make you bump the volume to max and drum the steering wheel? With their April debut On An Unhistoric Night, the band Best Bets deliver a kind of Sloan tribute to the Ramones.
Formerly Transistors, now the band Best Bets
Founders Olly Crawford-Ellis (drums) and James Harding (guitar) spent a decade as New Zealand’s Transistors before re-forming as the band Best Bets. The Christchurch luminaries released 2020’s Life Under the Big Top EP. As the band Best Bets, it’s now a family affair with Harding’s brother, Luke Harding.
Crawford-Ellis and Harding have pedigree, and now a new lineup. So just for a second, imagine when they take the stage for Unhistoric Night. Best Bets break out “Wrong Side of the Sun,” the HOO HOO’S! start to peg the meter — and the kids go absolutely coconuts.
Now, does every minute of Unhistoric Night hit that kind of arena standard? Alack and alas, a couple of the twelve cuts do get a little same-y. But there are so many more hits than misses! Here is Best Bets’ much crunchier, second single for Unhistoric Night, released last December, “Whataworld.”
The band Best Bets concludes album like The Replacements
Best Bets wrap Unhistoric Night with a bit of a Replacements-like closer, “That Movie Never Got Made.” Something of a nod to “Here Comes a Regular.”
Spend $10 or $12 with Unhistoric Night and remind yourself that music can still be fun. Because if you don’t love Best Bets, do you really love rock and roll?
The sheer volume of music right now – full-lengths, EP’s, digital exclusives, singles, B-sides, remixes, extended mixes, reissues – all make it hard to keep up. How do you know if you’ve EVEN HEARD the best albums of 2022 so far with so much noise?
We’re all in this together, so let’s have a look at the best albums of 2022 so far.
Contenders
To start, let’s just note the year 2022 launched with the final installment and formal release of Once Twice Melody by Beach House. It is an epic dreamwork, one worth the time and scope across all 18 tracks. Once Twice Melody will likely be high on many people’s Best Of Decade lists, not just 2022. Even as I write this and listen to the song “ESP,” I question how rational I am not putting this in my top spot.
Young Guv – GUV III. Powerpop at its finest. Ben Cook’s best in years.
Not Feeling It
Next, a few albums that left me underwhelmed.
I buy very little music sight unseen — as in, almost zero. However this year several of my favorite bands released new music and I bought it on spec. Did I not give them enough of a chance? Was I in a bad mood? I don’t know…a friend is persuading me to go back and revisit them. But these albums didn’t change my life.
First among them, as reliable as rain, Spoon.Lucifer on the Sofa is Spoon’s first album since 2017’s Hot Thoughts. I’ve never NOT liked Spoon. Not ever. But this one has not cut through for me. However, I did enjoy single “Wild.” It sounds like a straight up INXS tribute, and I am here for every second of it.
Alright since I’m such a crabby pants about Spoon…a few other big name releases that fell short:
Animal Collective – Time Skiffs
Kendrick Lamar – Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers
Cate LeBon – Pompeii
A Place to Bury Strangers – See Through You
The Smile – A Light for Attracting Attention
It’s probably me.
Best of 2022 So Far
Sharon Van Etten has been on my radar for years but We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong is the first album that really took me aback. It has everything you could want…inflections of Emmylou Harris… dancier tracks… dense numbers layered like bucolic shoegaze. The thing I love most about this album is the way Van Etten starts many of her songs with the simplest musical ideas — and they grow into these epic, crashing things at the end.
Sit with “Born” for the full five minutes to hear this kind of masterful arrangement.
I think Van Etten has released one of the best albums of 2022 so far, so buy it here.
A few more suggestions for top indie songs of 2022, summer edition!
“Holiday Romance” – The Photocopies (Holiday Romance EP)
I don’t know how there could be more perfect jangle pop for the summer. Fuzzy guitars, a bubblegum hook and shimmering harmonies. The Photocopies’ “Holiday Romance” is Teenage Fanclub playing from your neighbor’s garage in a fever dream. Download “A Holiday Romance“ from exiled London artist Sean Turner and play at top volume.
“One Easy Thing” – TV Priest (My Other People)
Next, TV Priest has moved into more melodic territory with their second release, My Other People. Charlie Drinkwater’s bellicose Johnny Cash baritone grows into the opener “One Easy Thing” as he bellows the terrific refrain, “I am waaaaiting.”
“Blood in the Wine” – Aurora (The Gods We Can Touch)
At a certain age, you start to care a lot (okay, a little?) less about what people think about you. I am clearly not the target for Aurora; I honestly don’t care if she appears on the Frozen 2 soundtrack. Any woman in 2022 who is the President and CEO of her music and personal brand deserves the world’s respect.
Aurora’s hooks are undeniable. Kate Bush would be proud.
“Blood in the Wine” by Aurora (from The Gods We Can Touch)
Counting both Vol 1 and Vol 2 of my top indie songs of 2022, we’re at least ten songs in without a real shoegaze tune. Obviously that has to be remedied: I downloaded PEEL by happy accident last year, so I direct you to their criminally ignored EP from 2021.
The PEEL EP is a filthy marriage of Ride and The Stone Roses. Maybe you chanced upon “Memory Loop” in the last year or two? It is all top shelf. You can’t listen to “Silver Spring” or “DYNA” too often or too loudly.
I don’t know a ton about Alex Cameron, something of an iconoclast and provocateur. But “Best Life” is about as summery as summer gets, from Cameron’s fourth album Oxy Music, which you can find here. His ironically titled, Oxy Music marries a bit of the 80’s with some of the social conflict of the 2020’s.
Hey it’s getting too serious in here. How about some post-punk with brainy lyrics from Oakland’s Neutrals. The very best part of “Gary Borthwick Says” is the picture it draws of someone we’ve all known from our past, and a part of ourselves we may not want to admit to. Garage band entry for one of the top indie songs of 2022.
Let’s take a trip back in the hot tub time machine to the fall of 1991, shall we, when little-known grunge rocker Kurt Cobain said he wanted to write a Pixies knockoff. I can still remember taking the yellow vinyl promotional 12″ of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and cranking it in our college radio station’s production room.
THAT is what I hear in multiple spaces when I listen to Crows engrossing Beware Believers. Something very atmospheric and Interpol-y is happening, along with the knockdown of early 1990’s grunge. “Wild Eyed and Loathsome” also ends with a tasty little walkaway during the last ten seconds.
“Goodbye Mr. Blue” – Father John Misty (Chloe and the Next 20th Century)
Finally, let’s wrap with a delightful song for a summer evening. I have no real prior history with FJM, though he keeps good company with Fleet Foxes and Damien Jurado. Chloe and the Next 20th Century is charming from start to finish but “Mr. Blue” has particularly delicate vocal touches to highlight the sweetest lyrics.
For nine of The Valery Trails‘ twelve years, brothers Andrew and Sean Bower collaborated on releases from, respectively, Houston and Brisbane. The Valery Trails Australian rock, which includes fellow Aussie Dan McNaulty, has released three albums starting with 2012’s Ghosts and Gravity…all the while separated by 8,344 miles of Pacific Ocean.
Since the corona, Andrew has returned to his native Australia and we’re seeing the results of that propinquity in 2022. February saw TVT release two EP’s, Introvert Blues and Disappear, which feel like tasty mashups of Bob Mould and Drive-by Truckers.
“Jaisalmer” is new single from The Valery Trails Australian rock
This week comes the first single from The Valery Trails‘ fourth album, The Sky is Blue. “Jaisalmer” sounds like FUEL-era Sugar splurging on a brass section for an appearance with David Letterman.
