Forth Wanderers - Slop

It’s not yet clear whether New Jersey band Forth Wanderers intentionally borrowed their name from a Scottish non-league football club, but either way there’s a distinctly ramshackle around the edges, tinnies-on-the-stands feel to their charmingly named new track, ‘Slop’. Thankfully, it’s less like stodgy gravy, and more like a sloppy tidal wave of tentative but sprawling indie; vaguely in the vein of thoughtful riff-meanderers Built to Spill, Pavement, and a roughed-up, muddier Guided By Voices.

Backward looking Forth Wanderers’ influences may be, but true to their forward-peering name the group draw on previous decades like a pick n’ mix jumble, and surge determinedly forward with their own agenda. “Don’t be ashamed, I’ll breathe through your lungs,” sings Ava Trilling one moment in slightly sinister reassurance, conjuring up headaches, self-doubt, and an inability to think straight the next.

After inking one of those fancy joint-type international record deals with Marathon (home to Courtney Barnett) and Diet Cig’s label Father/Daughter, Forth Wanderers are… er… wandering forth with an EP called ‘SLOP’ next. That’s out on 11th November. Watch this space.