Antler Family – Antler Family (Boner Records) – The Widow’s Call is when this album really grabs you properly, this band sound like they’d be absolutely electric live and face to face in some small club, she’d be eyeballing you and you’d not be sure if you should return her look or just pile in to the slow moving swaying pit they’d no doubt be firing up, she is Mia Dean and she sounds like the one in control of the situation whatever she might be singing about capture. it is mesmerising, and those smouldering riffs the band are firing off are dark Infactuation (do they have a touch of Angel Cage about them?), The Widow’s Call is four songs in and it really is where Mia and her band pull you further in and where you find there more than there appeared to be on the surface, there’s some serious guitars being laid down here, nothing flash, no showing off, just proper burning old school guitar lines, thick with colour, alive, electric, Antler Family are electric.   

“Long delayed by worldwide disease (both mental and physical), Antler Family finally releases their debut LP. Described by the band as “an audio visit to a land of dissonant goth noise punk and pagan waltz metal”, the self-titled LP organically unites guitar scraggles and heavy synth drones. Hints of dark murder-folk and slumberous sea shanties. The Oakland-based quartet is fronted by soaring vocalist and opera-school dropout Mia Dean (from Blood Moon Wedding), and also includes drumming monkey business from Stark Raving Brad (The Freak Accident, Hellbillies), keyboard and bass rumblings from Tom Dean (Code of the West), and electronic guitar psychosis from Tom Flynn (Fang, Duh, Star Pimp, Melvins). 

“What thrills me so much about writing songs with Tom Flynn, is that we approach music from very different perspectives.” – explains Mia Dean. “Tom is always pushing the songs beyond their original form, searching for the unexpected note, he’s always looking for extremes”. Described by Dean, herself, Antler Family, is an “incredibly tight band” organically uniting different aspects of chaos and loud-ness. “We’re a really tight and well-rehearsed band” – marks Mia.

“Post-apocalyptic rock from a pre-pandemic world” is what they call it but it really isn’t as easy as that to put into a neat little box. “The full Antler Family album is finally out and about, walking and talking and sticking forks in electrical outlets”. Delayed by years of worldwide disease, both physical and mental, it is now waiting to greet you in the usual spots. Recorded in 2019… 

The self titled album came out digitally last year, it came out on vinyl at the end of January 2024. 

Bandcamp / Facebook

Urvanovic – Let’s Not Be Here (Common Grounds Records) – Urvanovic (uhr-van-no-vitch) are a properly proper chamber pop band, so many claim they are,  Urvanovic really are, luscious pop, glorious strings, a subtle (and sometimes glorious) meeting of the two

“Urvanovic (uhr-van-no-vitch) are a noisy chamber-pop ensemble consisting of Tom Irvine (songwriter/composer/lyricist/vocals), Seonaid Stevenson (vocals), Niall Sinclair (producer/noise-maker) and David Hill (drums/percussion) plus an extended line-up of string players. On the 29th March, the band are set to release their new album ‘Let’s Not Be Here’ via Common Grounds Records.

Let’s Not Be Here is a record about evolving through catastrophe – romanticising ruination as an incitement to action. Across the album, Urvanovic indulge in the escapism of an imagined apocalypse as a catalyst for positive personal change. Forgoing their earlier alt-folk influences, ‘Let’s Not Be Here’ embraces Urvanovic’s latent maximalism and experimentation. Veering between dense, wall-of-noise synthesis and abstract soundscapes – further embellished by colourful string arrangements, theatrical vocals, and orchestral percussion – this is a dynamic, complex, and at times abrasive record”.

Not hearing anything abrasive, the album opening Raze does indeed raise, it opens things perfectly, like the clouds parting or a flower opening, all arms aloft and let it all flow for a inspired three minutes that’s followed by Move to Anatony and a keyboard line tha’ts been bugging me for weeks – Flight Like Apes, it suddenly hit, Fight Like Apes if they were a delicately English rather than madly Irish (whatever happen to FLApes?) Urvanovic are a delight, they could so easily be twee, they never are though, they’re refreshing, uplifting, at time breezy, they are very indie, vitally laced with those chamber strings and and those vocals harmonies  that stop you falling apart at the seems. They gently bounce off each in such a graceful full-bodied way, they just feel good and right now that is no bad thing.

 
“From the start of working towards ‘Let’s Not Be Here’, we knew we wanted to move away from the folk-tinged and somewhat clinical production of our home-produced debut. We wanted to be noisier, more chaotic, and just ‘more’ – leaning towards fuzz-drenched synths, OTT vocals, and more classically-flavoured string arrangements. The writing process was more collaborative and natural than before, which helped us to blend our tastes and become more of a ‘band’ – where before Tom was the mastermind,” says Stevenson.

It is a step away from their debut and yes, ‘more’ is a good way of explaining it, never too much though. Let’s Not Be Here really is an uplifting sunny classically-flavoured indie pop delight and sometimes that all we really need (sw)

Bandcamp / Website

Idles – Tangk (Partisan) –  Does Gift Horse sound like an old Atom Seed song? Obscurest reference point to some I know, not to some around here though, and he is phrasing it in a very Paul Cunningham kind of way, that punchy thing Atom Seed did back there. Idles don’t really need us these days, they haven’t needed us for a good few years now, way on from those days of art exhibitions in old car repair garages in East London or gigs in pubs, they long since stopped needing to follow our social media of communicate with us in any kind of way and isn’t it brilliant to see a band who really do properly matter, a band with something really real to say growing like they are.

Last time we encountered Idles was a couple of summers back and that blistering performance in the early evening sunshine of our local park. Kind of lost touch with their more recent releases, hey there’s only so many hours in the day and there’s only so many ears here in the Organ bunker, we listen to far more music than you do (and like we already said, they don’t need us these days).  Fifth time around, fifth album already and without ever tasting of compromise it sounds softer, Joe Talbot isn’t feeling the need to bark it out quite like before, and those strings and things are well, almost lush. He’s still focussed though, still pushing, punching, pulling nothing, pirouetting in the sweat, shoulders back, chest out, more refined? Less need to hit you over the head and more a need to show another side? Graceful, pure, knocking at your door? No crown, no king, love is the thing, a whole lot of four letter words and no it isn’t as immediate as they have been, Tangt might well outlast them all though. Dare we call it an experimental album? Almost. They’re almost a lot of things, they’re almost elegant, they’re almost shimmering and almost Kid A right now here on Jungle, they’re almost well behaved, almost and we don’t really want them to be anything more than almost, we don’t want to lose what they were, they have the balance right. All is well in the messed up world Idles reflect, well no, and don’t they reflect it, all is well in the world of idles though, they still get our vote and I bet the King loves them…  

Bandcamp 

And while we’re here…