Indie Basement: Best Songs & Albums of August 2023

Indie Basement is a weekly column on BrooklynVegan focusing on classic indie and alternative artists, “college rock,” and new and current acts who follow a similar path. There are reviews of new albums, reissues, box sets, books and sometimes movies and television shows. I’ve rounded up August’s best music, highlighting my favorite songs and albums, plus links to relevant features and news, a monthly playlist, and more.

August is a typically slow month in the entertainment / media industry when everyone goes on vacation, magazines put out “special double issues,” and album releases slow in anticipation for the big fall onslaught after Labor Day. Pandemic supply issues played with that a little this year but this was still a sleepy August, at least for Indie Basement, but it wasn’t a drought and at least a couple of my favorite records of the year so far came out this month.

There are always lots of great songs coming out and I picked my 10 favorites to spotlight. As for albums, August runner ups include Sonny & The Sunsets’ Self Awareness Through Macrame, Diners’ Domino, Holly Cook’s Happy Hour in Dub, Annie Heart’s The Weight of a Wave, and The Hives’ very enjoyable return, The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons. Check all of my songs/albums picks, plus a three-hour playlist with even more of August’s best stuff, below.

Ty Segall – “Void”

We seem to be entering a new era of Ty Segall with this nearly seven-minute single that puts rhythm and groove to the forefront more than he ever has before. Bass and drums are locked in leading the charge, while guitars play a mostly atmospheric role — at least till things really get cooking and enter more traditional Ty territory. Bitchin Bajas’ analog synth expert Cooper Crain produced this and he and Ty let things get good and proggy. Ty seems to be entering a new personal era as well if the “Void” video, directed by Ty and his wife Denee, is any indication…they seem to be expecting!

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A. Savage – “Elvis in the Army”

Solo albums from members of still-active-but-long-running popular bands, like Parquet Courts, tend to either be stylistic flights of fancy, or testing their wings to maybe leave the nest. I’m not sure what his second solo album, Several Songs About Fire (a very Talking Heads title!), will be but it doesn’t seem like he’s holding back his A-material if “Elvis in the Army” is any indication. And if he IS holding back the good stuff for Parquet Courts, the new record is going to be something else.

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Blur – “Sticks and Stones”

How many songs did Blur record when making this year’s excellent surprise LP The Ballad of Darren?!? Just a week after it dropped, they shared two more (excellent) outtakes and here’s another from the Japanese edition of the album. Graham Coxon fans, “Sticks and Stones” is for you as the guitarist takes lead vocals on this herky-jerky mid-tempo groover that features more than a little of his signature skronky fretwork.

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Connie Lovatt – “Gull”

Connie Lovatt, who was one half of ’90s duo Containe and also played in Smog and The Pacific Ocean, all but retired from music in the mid-’00s so emergence of a new album is a wonderful surprise, as is its reason for existence. She wanted to make a record for her daughter, not a kids album, but one that shared stories from her life that also featured her many friends and collaborators. (Those include Bill Callahan, drummer Jim White, Rebecca Cole and more). “Gull” is a lovely, bittersweet ode to her father and a welcome return.

Coconut Mirror by Connie Lovatt—

Das Koolies – “Out of This World”

Will we ever get another Super Furry Animals album? Gruff Rhys seems content making (very good) solo records, but I miss what the rest of the band brought to the equation. Thankfully, the rest of them are all making music together as Das Koolies and seem to be doing it cause it’s fun, which is the best reason. There’s also some of that gleeful, chaotic SFA mischief baked into “Out of This World,” not to mention the love of techno and acid house that infected records like Rings Around the World and Phantom Power.

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English Teacher – “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab”

The combination of this London band’s name and the title of this single almost sounds like a parody of the mid-’00s post-punk revival dreamed up by Chris Morris or Charlie Brooker for a highly sarcastic TV show — or a band that could band on tour with Yard Act or IDLES right now. While “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab” is on the angular side, it is not shouty; singer Lily Fontaine’s voice is smooth and luxurious, contrasting nicely from the band’s guitar racket. But don’t let her sonorous pipes fool you, she means business: “I am the world’s biggest paving slab / So watch your fucking feet.”

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Helena Deland – “Bright Green Vibrant Gray”

For her second album, Montreal singer-songwriter Helena Deland teamed up with Sam Evian who has helped her head into less synthy and more organic directions. “Bright Green Vibrant Gray” is an apt title for this song that sounds like a rainy day in April; delicately plucked acoustic guitar hits like raindrops in a puddle, while the flutes and harmonies blossom, at the first signs of spring growth.

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The Intelligence – “Now, Squirm!”

It’s only been a year since the last album by The Intelligence but somehow it feels like forever, so I was glad to see this squirm into field of vision. Like his friend and onetime bandmate / producer Ty Segall, this is new, mostly guitarless territory for Lars Finberg; with electric piano and keyboards in their place, he’s remodeled the garage into a cocktail lounge, but that familiar Intelligence discomfort is still there: “Just shy of psychosis synchronicity stacks / ‘Round the politics of space I vote we float off the map.” No one does it like Lars.

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Joseph Shabason – “Jamie Thomas”

This is perverse: saxophonist, composer and occasional Destroyer hornblower Joseph Shabason has rescored the classic 1996 Toy Machine skate VHS Welcome To Hell, replacing the songs by Lard, Sabbath, Sonic Youth, Maiden and, uh, The Sundays, with groovy, smooth jazz. But you know what, it works.

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Mantra of the Cosmos – “X (Wot You Sayin?)”

“It’s never too late to come back from the dead,” sings Shaun Ryder on this second single from Mantra of the Cosmos, his far-out new group with Ride’s Andy Bell, drummer Zak Starkey and his Happy Mondays/Black Grape conspirator, Bez. And if anyone should know, it’s Ryder who must’ve been a cat in his last life. His way with words is still in fine twisted (melon) form on “X (What You Sayin?)” which is all about never learning from your mistakes.

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Wet Man – “Swimming with Sharks”

I know almost nothing about Wet Man who recently released this, his first single. It was produced by Dean Horner and Adrian Flanagan of Moonlandingz and International Teachers of Pop and they give this a scuzzy electro vibe, like a Giorgio Moroder hangover in the gutter. But Wet Man (real name Jack Clayton) has a loquacious swagger that puts this in Jarvis Cocker territory — they’re both from Sheffield — and if you liked (or remember) Relaxed Muscle, you’re gonna dig this.

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ALBUM OF THE MONTH: Girl Ray – Prestige (Moshi Moshi)

It’s been a treat to follow the trajectory of London trio Girl Ray over the last seven years. Started as teenagers, Poppy Hankin, Iris McConnell and Sophie Moss originally made folky, earthy, jangly indiepop, but with their 2019 sophomore album Girl pivoted to synthy nu-style R&B pop which was a surprise but also turned out to be a good fit with Hankin’s songwriting and voice. Their Hot Chip-produced 2021 single “Give Me Your Love” pointed the way to their next pivot, which is somewhere in between the sounds of their first two albums, staying on the dance floor but steering more towards classic UK indie. Prestige is an album of nearly all hits, owing to both the current disco revival as well as early-’80s new wavers who co-opted disco for their own means. It’s more Haircut 100 than current Billboard Hot 100, an album packed with breezy, fun, danceable earworms that plays like a Greatest Hits album, or at least one of those records where most of songs ended up being released as singles. Girl Ray have arrived. [Read the full review]

Prestige by Girl Ray

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Activity – Spirit in the Room (Western Vinyl)

Activity released their debut album two weeks into covid lockdown in March 2020, a record with a weirdly prescient title, Unmask Whoever. The music also fit the time: mysterious, alien, sinewy, cautious paranoia. Aka a good time! Despite the less than ideal time that the first album dropped in, Activity survived, mutated (new bassist Bri DiGioa), and actually got better. Spirit in the Room, made during peak pandemic isolation — “to keep from losing our minds,” frontman Travis Johnson says — takes all the best parts of their debut and condenses it like a white dwarf star, and then expands upon it. The result is somewhere between peak 4AD and the early days of Bristol trip hop — Tricky produced by This Mortal Coil? — but minus any of the obvious signifiers that might take this into Remember The ’90s territory. Spirit in the Room is not nightmare fuel nor a bummer, but a perfectly realized mood piece, creepy in a good way, thick with atmosphere and melody. [Read the full review]

Spirit in the Room by Activity

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Panda Bear, Sonic Boom & Adrian Sherwood – Reset in Dub (Domino)

Panda Bear & Sonic Boom’s great 2022 collaborative album, Reset, was already pretty trippy, but now it’s even more so as Reset In Dub. For it, they enlisted legendary producer Adrian Sherwood, who has worked with everyone from The Slits and The Pop Group to Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Mikey Dread and recently worked on the dub version of Spoon’s Lucifer on the Sofa. Sherwood kept the vocals and harmonies — the melodic core of the album — but then built the songs from the ground up, enlisting his stable of regular ON-U Sound collaborators. The Reset originals were all built around samples of intros to ’50s and ’60s rock n’ roll singles, and now Sherwood removes almost all of that, making for another string theory parallel universe record, stemming from similar blocks before taking things in wildly different directions. [Read the full review]

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Film School – Field (Felte)

Greg Bertens has led L.A./S.F. indie rock stalwarts Film School since 2001, never wavering on fully realized dreampop sound — somewhere between doomy ’80s Brit alt-rock and ’90s shoegaze — that has fallen in and out of fashion over the last two decades. Field is Film School’s seventh album and is another terrific entry in their remarkably consistent catalog. Like on 2021’s We Weren’t Here, what distinguishes this one is Noël Brydebell of Wild Signals whose featherlight vocals are a perfect match for Bertens’ moodier singing style. (Fans of Pale Saints’ In Ribbons, or Slowdive, it’s a similar vibe.) Though they clearly know all the sonic moves, and own all the right pedals, it’s always at the service of great songs. [Read the full review]

Field by Film School

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OSEES – Intercepted Message (In the Red)

After 26 years, 26 albums, and numerous name variations, John Dwyer has “at long last” delivered an OSEES album with verse-chorus-verse song construction — “a pop record for tired times.” Like so many have over the last 50 years, Dwyer has done it via synthesizers. Electronics have always been a part of his band’s arsenal — from actual keyboards to the many effects pedals used to warp other instruments and voices — but never have they been such a prominent part of the equation as they are on Intercepted Message, the OSEES’ 27th album that is also one of the most immediate, enjoyable and satisfying in their long and snaking discography. [Read the full review]

INTERCEPTED MESSAGE by OSEES

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Here’s the Indie Basement: Best of August playlist in both Spotify and TIDAL form:

Looking for more? Browse the Indie Basement archives.

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While John Dwyer used variations of the OCS/Oh Sees name for a decade, it was in 2008 where a lineup -- bassist Petey Dammit, drummer Mike Shoun and keyboardist/vocalist Brigid Dawson -- really took hold, and the livewire, blown-out garage-psych sound took shape. While The Master's Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In was a lot of people’s introduction to Thee Oh Sees’ world, its follow-up was the group's first great record. A descending guitar line drops like a timer into the explosion of "Enemy Destruct," Help's opening track, and you're hooked immediately. The momentum keeps going with the record's hit, "Ruby Go Home." It's not all revved-up bangers, though, as the band make room for Brit invasion-style pop like "Flag in the Court" and sweet closer "Peanut Butter Oven." It's interesting to listen now, just a decade later, to a record that seemed pretty wild at the time but now seems somewhat quaint compared to the sounds Dwyer is currently making.

OH SEE ALSO: The Master's Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In is pretty terrific too, and the band's early, sweaty showspace reputation was captured on live album The Hounds of Foggy Notion, which was recorded around the same time as 2007's Sucks Blood. Immediately after Help came Warm Slime whose title track is a purposefully lengthy jam in the spirit of Can's "Yoo Doo Right" and Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”

The first of two Thee Oh Sees albums released in 2011 marks a turning point for John Dwyer and the San Francisco DIY community he flourished in, as it was "the last record worked on at 608 c haight street in san francisco (very near and dear to my heart and heavy in my memories) before control was assumed by rich assholes." Primarily made by Dwyer on his own, with contributions from Dawson (the only other Oh Sees member to play on it), Ty Segall, and The Fresh & Onlys' Heidi Gardner, Castlemania dives into chamber psych and folk pop, making it one of the most tuneful albums in the Oh Sees catalog. If there was any doubt about the direction of the album, he ends it with covers of songs by The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, The Creation and Norma Tenaga. The playful arrangements put Dwyer's multi-instrumentalist talents (flute, clarinet, trumpet, plus lots of mellotron keyboard) to full use, bringing "I Need Seed," "Corrupted Coffin," and "Blood On The Deck" to technicolor life, while his affected, somewhat sinister vocal delivery keeps things druggily demented.

OH SEE ALSO: 2009's Dog Poison is Thee Oh Sees gone acoustic but no less wild.

2011 also saw Thee Oh Sees expand their lineup to include The Intelligence's Lars Finberg, who was brought in primarily as a second drummer but also as a guitarist. You can feel the extra wallop Finberg brings to the band on Carrion Crawler/The Dream, a record that also benefits from the well-oiled, constantly gigging band recording live to tape ("1, 2, 3, press record, go," according to Petey Dammit). This is Thee Oh Sees' first album to both capture the intensity of one of their live shows on record, and record it with a fidelity most of the previous records lack. Centerpiece to the album is "The Dream," a seven minute motorik groover that absolutely smokes and remains their most-played song live. The krautrock influence, which would become more predominate on albums later in the decade, also rears itself earlier in the album on a track that fuses stabbing original "Contraption" with a cover of Can's debut single, "Soul Desert." As for "Carrion Crawler," the other half of the album's title, it's a psych-garage burner that takes its name from a centipede-like Dungeons & Dragons monster. This will not be the last time D&D pops up in Os Sees' catalog.

OH SEE ALSO: The Finberg-enhanced Oh Sees toured with Australia's Total Control in 2011 and released a terrific split 12" with each group contributing four songs.

Following the recorded-live Carrion Crawler/The Dream, John Dwyer explored the studio as an instrument, making an almost entirely one-man-band Thee Oh Sees album with regular engineer Chris Woodhouse as chief collaborator/contributor, plus a little vocal help from Dawson and Heidi Alexander, and saxophone from Mikal Cronin. It's the same approach as Castlemania, but sounding more in big, band style, using thick, bassy guitars that recall Brian Eno's Here Come the Warm Jets, with other mid-'70s glam elements popping up throughout the record. The shuffle-beat "Hang a Picture" is one of Oh Sees' meatiest, catchiest singles ever, though "Floods New Light," with handclaps on the "bah bah bah" chorus and killer sax from Cronin, is up there too. Dwyer calls Putrifiers II an EP, but at 10 songs and 37 minutes it's as much an album as anything in their discography. What's not in question is that it's one of Dwyer's best records, arguably the best. Putrifiers II also marked the last Oh Sees album to be released by L.A. label In the Red. In Dwyer would take things in-house via his own Castle Face label from here on out.

OH SEE ALSO: If you're wondering, there is no Putrifiers I but it one of Dwyer's old groups, Yikes, had a song with that title on their 2006 album Secrets to Superflipping. The Australian edition of Putrifiers II came with a bonus disc featuring 10 demos.

Where most Oh Sees albums up to this point featured John Dwyer coming in with songs already written, 2013's Floating Coffin was created as a band, taking a few extra days in the studio to write on the fly. Though he hadn't been able to tour with them since 2011, Lars Finberg once again joined them as second drummer and, driven by that three-part rhythm section, this is one of the jammier Oh Sees records to date, heavy on the heavy zone-outs and punctuated by some especially ripping solos alongside Dwyer's signature shrieks and whoops. (See: "Toe Cutter/Thumb Buster," "Maze Fancier" and "Sweet Helicopter.) Floating Coffin not only marks the first album with Castle Face as their permanent home, it's also the swan-song for the Pete Dammit/Mike Shoun lineup of the group. At an end-of-year show at S.F.'s Great American Music Hall, Dwyer announced it would be "the last Oh Sees show for a long while," and that the band were going on "indefinite hiatus." Dwyer moved to L.A. and Dawson moved to San Marin, with Dammit and Shoun staying in the Bay Area. "A long while" was a relative term, though, with a new album coming just a few months later, and a new lineup of the band playing shows not long after that.

OH SEE ALSO: 2014's Moon Sick EP features four songs from the Floating Coffin sessions that didn't make the album.

The in-betweener album. With the previous lineup gone, Dwyer and Chris Woodhouse played everything on Drop, save some saxophone (Mikal Cronin again), recording at Sacramento, CA's The Dock which was -- fun fact -- previously a banana-ripening warehouse. It sounds like a record between worlds, the garage-rock one that had been San Francisco and the proggier direction Dwyer would take Thee Oh Sees after moving to L.A. Things open with "Penetrating Eye," one of their heaviest riffs to date, and it's followed by two of their best: the slinky, one-chord jam "Encrypted Bounce" and "Savage Victory" which falls somewhere between Can and paisley acid rock. They keep the krautrock grooves going on "Put Some Reverb On My Brother" (shades of "I'm So Green"), while the title track shows that few make catchy garage rock rippers like Dwyer. Drop concludes with three songs that take Oh Sees into baroque/prog territory -- "Transparent World" and Beatlesque album-closer "The Lens" are especially great -- that they've never really dabbled in before or since. At least yet.

OH SEE ALSO: 2013's Singles Collection 3 compiles loose odds-and-ends; 2014 also saw the release of Dwyer's first solo album as Damaged Bug.

Though he was fully settled in Lala Land, Dwyer hadn't quite figured out the new lineup of the Oh Sees yet, but he was getting there, adding bassist Tim Hellman, who is still in the group today, and White Fence drummer Nick Murray. This trio, who toured for Drop, ushered in an unabashedly highly technical Oh Sees, heading deeper into krautrock and prog galaxies. Not unlike Floating Coffin, Mutilator Defeated at Last is very jammy but is heavier and more out-there than anything Dwyer had made so far. The album is so rhythm-forward it sounds like Dwyer knew he wanted a two drummer lineup again, and when Murray bowed out after making the record, Ryan Moutinho and Dan Rincon (who's still in the band) took his place. You can hear it right out of the gate with perhaps the best one-two punches in the Oh Sees discography: the clattering "Web" and absolute scorcher "Withered Hand." Hellman makes a huge difference too; Pete Dammit played guitar put through pedals to simulate a bass, but Hellman gives them a big, fat bottom end. It's hard to imagine a track like closer "Palace Doctor" before this. Oh Sees sound massive here, but they would continue to expand their universe.

OH SEE ALSO: Moutinho and Rincon made their debut on A Weird Exits and companion album An Odd Entrances which came out within a few months of each other in the latter half of 2016. Both are good, but the group seemed like they were still feeling each other out. 2016 was an especially prolific year for the band, with excellent stand-alone single "Fortress" and the "Live in San Francisco" LP also out.

After 10 years using the same variant on their name, 2017 saw John Dwyer drop the "Thee," shortening it to just Oh Sees (which is what a lot of people called them already). While the spelling of their name contracted, Oh Sees got bigger, sonically. Paul Quattrone took over the second drummer seat vacated by Ryan Moutinho and alongside Paul Rincon, and he was the missing piece. The second great lineup of the band was born. Co-produced by Ty Segall, Orc is the first album of Oh Sees' two drummer era where you can really feel both at work, with Quattrone in the left channel and Rincon on the right, complimenting each other, propelling the band like never before. Like the monster it's titled after, (more D&D/LOTR fantasy) Orc is a beast of an album, dabbling in metal and jazz in addition to the heavy prog direction they'd been heading in since leaving the garage. (Some definite Pink Floyd vibes this time around.) Blasting out of the gate with "The Static God," Orc goes on an incredible five song run that makes up the first disc of this two-LP set, including the prog-wave jam "Nite Expo" and the incendiary "Jettison." The remaining five songs are no slouches either ("Drowned Beast" is a knockout), all taking Oh Sees in new, wigged-out directions.

OH SEE ALSO: Following Orc, Oh Sees would expand to a quintet with keyboardist Tomas joining full time. That lineup made 2018's doomy Smote Reverser (which has arguably their best cover art) and the jazz-infected Face Stabber, both of which went much further out than Orc and could use a little trimming, especially Face Stabber (80 minutes!).

Just a few months after the release of Orc, Dwyer reverted back to the original OCS incarnation of his band's name for their 20th studio album. In keeping with those early-'00s records, Memory of a Cut Off Head is decidedly quiet, and reunites him with his OCS collaborator Patrick Mullins on singing saw and electronics. But where the other records under the OCS banner were very, very low-fi, Memory of a Cut Off Head is gorgeously produced and arranged orch-pop that could only have been created after Dwyer made records like Drop and Mutilator Defeated At Last. The album, which was Castle Face's 100th release, was also an opportunity to work with Brigid Dawson again. She'd sung backup on many Oh Sees albums since she quit being a full-time member of the band, but this is a full-blown collaboration between them, from co-writing all the songs together to sharing lead vocals. With lush string and horn arrangements -- very Summer of Love -- it's a unique, gorgeous album in Dwyer's catalogue.

OH SEE ALSO: The three early-'00s OCS albums are borderline ambient but are worth checking out. Dwyer and Dawson played special OCS shows in San Francisco, L.A. and Brooklyn with string sections, and the S.F. shows became a 2018 live album.

Now onto a sixth variation on their name, Protean Threat is their first album as Osees, but the slight rebranding does not so much herald a change in musical direction as much as it offers a refinement and combination of the doom leanings on 2017's Smote Reverser and jazz/prog workouts of 2019's Face Stabber. Clocking in at a lean 39 minutes, Dwyer and co still make you feel like you've run a marathon, perhaps while on hallucinogens. Domas' keyboards bring a spazzy, proto-new-wave element to the band ("Dreary Nonsense"), while Hellman,Quattrone and Rincon amp up that Can/Neu! groove. Everything just feels tighter and dialed in; there's still plenty of weirdo jamming, out-of-nowhere sonic left turns and psychedelic freakouts, but it's all more purposeful. In some cases, like on "Said the Shovel" and "If I Had My Way," it's even funky. Protean Threat is almost like the band's last five years in one record, and thrown into a Cuisinart.

OH SEE ALSO: 2020 saw three Osess albums. Believe it or not, there were Face Stabber session tracks that didn't make the album -- including a couple epic-length ones -- and those their way onto Metamorphosed. Meanwhile, Protean Threat's songs were remixed, reworked and blended with field recordings by the band, turning it essentially into a totally new album, Panther Rotate.