Corella
A Beautiful World To Lose
A bit of milestone, this one. It’s the first opportunity to cover one of the bands since ‘indie poo’ entered the public lexicon, and Corella seem like a textbook case of it. They’re Northern; they’re unthreatening; they’re catchy in the precise superficial way that all of these are; and they might as well reveal that their festival slate of the usual culprits in 2027 right now. And yet, unlike some of the others, they don’t totally bereft of meaning. They’re a bit more like The K’s in that regard, in that you can tell that Corella aspire to more than a mid-afternoon slot at Truck Festival. Granted, after listening to A Beautiful World To Lose, maybe said aspiration is a late-afternoon slot.
Yes, it’s another one of these—a perfectly serviceable album that treats being interesting or distinct as a moral failure. It’s demanded by law from bands like Corella, apparently; why else would they all do it? It’d go some way to explain how workmanlike this feels, with none of the added bite or exuberance they appear to gesture at. Then, when the ‘Northern indie boy’ voice is slapped down thick on Simple Life and All I Want, Corella are immediately swallowed into the Reytons / Lathums / Snuts-shaped mass of contemporary indie.
From there, Corella really don’t have a leg to stand on. The album can’t make up its mind whether guitars are growling and fuzzed-up like on Rewire or Bitter End, or barely a factor. Either way, it’s nothing special or noteworthy. Hell, on Jump Scare, when the bridge sounds like it’s winding up for a killer moment, only to immediately fizzle, that’s largely indicative of the whole experience. There’s the faintest wisp of a notion that Corella want to push a little further forward, like with the dance-rock tempo of Simple Life, but indie poo’s notoriously tight bondage proves too much to escape from. Thus, Corella are walled-in beyond belief, where even the most tentative motion towards elation or excess is squashed. Are howls really seen as such an outlandish piece of sound design on a song called Wolf that they have to be sequestered all the way in the back?
At the same time, there’s nothing so unequivocally wrong about A Beautiful World To Lose that it deserves any harsher chastising. Again, it’s one of these, where another interchangeable cast of white boys slavishly colours inside the lines. It’s ignorable in the extreme, though no doubt Corella will bypass all of that for a fruitful, prosperous career over the next 18 months, before a new band muscles them out of the way with the exact same thing. It’s worth noting that there’s a reggae-fusion band from New Zealand called Corrella, and if you stumble upon them by mistake, you’ll likely have a much more fulfilling time.
For fans of: The Reytons, The K’s, Circa Waves
‘A Beautiful World To Lose’ by Corella is released on 18th September on FLG Records.
The Meffs
Business
It’s easy to conceive of The Meffs as an act who recognised Soft Play’s relatively fallow period between 2018 and 2024, and were ready to jump in. They certainly fit the criteria—a no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is punk duo, characterised by their sonic basics ramped up hard, and with an Estuary-accented frontperson as their mouthpiece. Lily Hopkins isn’t even that different from Isaac Holman vocally. And yet, just as Soft Play’s inflexibility has put a firm fence around what they’re successfully capable of, a copy of that won’t magically produce something different.
Business is the sort of album that wants to operate independently from anything and everything else around it. No mind is paid to advancements in style or form; it’s locked in to what it wants to be with unerring frankness. That’s all well and good, but it’s little wonder that The Meffs wind up feeling a little stale for it. Punk this rudimentary needs a real humdinger of an added angle to fly, and it’s just not coming through on Business. So Modern (Keep Up) puts The Meffs’ steadfastness of vision in no uncertain terms, but dispassionate trend-following muddled with what appear as tired jabs against hipsters only proves the point even further. It’s similar on the title track where, regardless of how valiant their crusade against the usual industry malfeasance is, there’s nothing revelatory in this newest version to make your ears prick up.
Musically, things get a bit better, mostly as a result of The Meffs’ proclivity for a hard-as-nails tone above all else. It’s one of the instances where their lack of affectation does pay off, as songs like What A Nightmare and Law grind and grunt with full intent. Naturally, that also brings about the customary flurries of noise in Dreamin’ and Fight, neither being much of…well, anything substantial, but their inclusions are still about right. Ironically, though, it’s where The Meffs do present some additional strings to their bow that Business shines most. There’s a lumbering crunch to Disorder (Wake Up) that’s good, and a toned-up groove and assist from Donots on God Complex is probably the most multifaceted the album gets. Even the cover of The Prodigy’s Breathe is a neat little novelty to end off on.
Perhaps The Meffs aren’t so limited that they barely keep themselves upright, then. Dazzling, genre-bending opuses will never be on the cards, but they can survive just fine without them. That’s another Soft Play-ism they appear to have co-opted, and will likely pull the same results from it. And even if there is a wide world outside of Business that can still be explored without compromising their punk-or-bust values, The Meffs will probably do well regardless. You can’t fault them for that, even if they could go about it more interestingly.
For fans of: Soft Play, Kid Kapichi, Split Dogs
‘Business’ by The Meffs is out now on FLG Records.
Midnight Swim
Midnight Swim
No, this isn’t some unearthed piece of lost media from the mid-2010s Britrock age. It’s actually new, though if the association with Deaf Havana’s James Veck-Gilodi says anything, it’s that Midnight Swim are keen to pick up the parts that continue to work. In Deaf Havana terms, they’re at Rituals with this self-titled album, where the gloss is omnipresent and the hooks pound hard and heavy. Fitting, then, that the song called Sinners is the archetypal Britrock singalong, with the right tempo, timbre and everything elseto have been a Lava TV smash back in the day.
Of course, drawing from that specific era brings other reference points, of which Midnight Swim do a pretty solid job of co-opting. Most notably is the lithe, glittery funk flavouring of Don Broco when they were still good, tightening up Play It Cool (Wanting More) and In The Rain, By The Car, and getting some clear album highlights from them. There’s also a dip into light-dappled alt-pop on Shaking You From My Feelings Would Be Easier If You Were Dead, and fixing that up for full-on The 1975 impression with The Last Song I’ll Write About You. It’s a real parade of tropes and anachronisms, but far from being without charm. The fact that Jack Valentine is that close to oversinging at all times at least suggests some effort and thrust has gone into this; it’s not just all coasting.
Conversely, there’s the stuff that’s been reclaimed from the period that’s not as good, a consequence of Midnight Swim aiming for as wide a breadth as they do. Chiefly, Don’t Wanna Talk About It is the one song with prominent screaming which isn’t achieving a whole lot. More generally, too, the solo on Push Back is a really stilted diversion, and the album could wrap up a good two minutes earlier if Like You Love To’s outro wasn’t so tiresomely padded. That’s vastly overshadowed within an overall strong pop-rock album, though. Midnight Swim take what could’ve been dated patchworking and spruce it up into something inessential, but very listenable. Had this been released a decade ago, it would’ve absolutely cleaned house; as it stands now, it’s still pretty alright.
For fans of: Don Broco, Deaf Havana, You Me At Six
‘Midnight Swim’ by Midnight Swim is out now.
Words by Luke Nuttall
