Five acts, five bangers, five flavours of guitar-driven indie: Paris soul-funk energy, West London DIY grit, Ottawa dream-pop drift, Ayr anthemic Britpop, and Chicago lo-fi electronica. Not a combination you hear all the time, right? But all worth your time.
The Hypnotiks (featuring Wolfgang Valbrun) – Stone Cold Sober
The Hypnotiks deliver a soul-funk masterclass on Stone Cold Sober: tight, alive, and impossible to sit still to
“Stone Cold Sober” is what happens when a nine-piece band that plays Paris venues every week takes that live energy into a recording. There’s nothing tentative about it: the brass section locks in, the rhythm section drives hard, and Wolfgang Valbrun has exactly the kind of voice that can hold its own above all of it. Which is no mean feat. It sounds like a room full of people who have played together long enough to stop thinking about it.
The Hypnotiks are one of Paris’s leading soul and funk outfits, built around a core band of eight musicians and a rotating roster of guest vocalists. The model, inviting the city’s best singers to perform rare gems and forgotten classics at top venues, has made them something unusual: a collective that gets tighter the more variables you introduce. James Startt leads on guitar, with Anthony Honnet on keys, Gérard Berruet on bass, and a full brass section rounding out the sound. This is genuinely great, and deserves to do very well.
Sparky’s Magic Piano – Orange Juice
Orange Juice is Sparky’s Magic Piano at their most quietly brilliant: a song that starts one place and ends somewhere far better
“Orange Juice” starts exactly where you’d expect: open-string riff, a lovely indie energy, heading somewhere loud, and then quietly goes somewhere else entirely. The Hanwell five-piece recorded it partly live in their homes, building it up over weeks of visits, each member adding and subtracting until the song found its own shape. What it lands on is lonelier and stranger than the opening suggests, and all the better for it.
Sparky’s Magic Piano are Pob Bartlett, Marion Bartlett, Alex Carter, Jill Majumdar, and Terence Martin. The Beach Boys and Smashing Pumpkins don’t sound like an obvious pairing until you hear a band using both as permission: permission to layer, permission to be abrasive, permission to let a song become something its opening riff never promised. “Orange Juice” is released as a double A-side with “Chaos,” the band’s first output in over a year. London locals can catch them at Hanwell Hootie on 9th May. And if I hadn’t left London a few years back, I’d be there like a shot. A great single.
Wotts – ALOHA!
ALOHA! is a genuinely gorgeous piece of dream-pop that earns its place as the closing track on Wotts’ debut EP
“ALOHA!” closes out the COPE EP in no particular hurry, which turns out to be exactly right way to do it. The Ottawa artist sits comfortably in Tame Impala and Pond territory: hazy, melodic and tapey-vibes, more interested in mood and texture than serving up the momentum. But Wotts feels very much in their own lane too, the track does a great job of using spaciousness to let the melody do the work. The production is a dream, and basically I’m just ready for the next EP right away.
Wotts has played RBC Bluesfest, Canadian Music Week, and Junofest, and picked up coverage from CBC Radio, The Luna Collective, and EARMILK: serious platform for an artist still on debut EP material. COPE was recorded as a duo project; “ALOHA!” is the first track released as a solo act. The step down in headcount hasn’t cost anything. If anything the focus is sharper. A real stunner.
Sbob – Lonely People
Sbob’s Lonely People is a quietly devastating indie anthem that builds from a whisper into something you’ll be humming for days
“Lonely People” opens quietly: acoustic, melodic, the kind of song that doesn’t announce itself too strongly. But it builds into a lovely and jangly indie classic. The refrain “why don’t you come back round” is blunt without being simple, a genuine plea for real connection over the hollow substitute that social media offers. Stuart Stevenson isn’t being clever about the diagnosis. He just thinks it’s true and has made a real banger out of it.
Sbob is Stevenson’s solo project, and “Lonely People” is his fourth single, the fourth track on his album Revelation. He plays every instrument and co-produces alongside Ayr-based collaborator Sam Rae. Before this he fronted Glasgow band Bob Cuba and recorded as one half of Stelar77, so the craft is well established. The solo format strips away the collaborative filter and lets the songs make their case directly. It’s a real indie bop, and I’ll be digging into the rest of the album.
Justin Sconza – What a Beautiful Day
What a Beautiful Day is Justin Sconza at his warmest and most assured: intimate, spacey, and well worth your full attention.”
“What a Beautiful Day” is exactly what the title says, and the production earns that sincerity rather than undermining it. Sconza recorded it mostly in a sunny Chicago attic, playing the synth arpeggios by hand rather than programming them: fast, outlining the chord changes alongside the melody, and the result has a warmth and slight imprecision that really works. The song just reminds me of nature, helped by the lovely artwork. And musically, it sits somewhere between indie rock and maybe something more ambient.. But it’s the melody and wonderfully building rhythmic arrangements that are the standout, it’s fab.
Justin Sconza is a Chicago multi-instrumentalist on his sixth self-recorded album, Fantasy. He wrote every song, played every part, and captured it all on a Tascam analog cassette four-track and a Tascam digital multitrack, deliberately avoiding a DAW beyond basic track storage. His influences span Scott Joplin to Kurt Cobain, which sounds unwieldy until you hear how naturally the record moves between warmth and noise. Six albums in, entirely alone, entirely on his own terms. Essential stuff this week.