Andy Bell – pinball wanderer (2025) [FLAC 24bit/48kHz]

Andy Bell – pinball wanderer (2025)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 37:03 minutes | 447 MB | Genre: Alternative Rock, Indie Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sonic Cathedral

Perhaps every rock star who makes it big reaches a point in their career when they feel emboldened to do what the hell they like. This would certainly help explain the run of solo and collaborative projects from Ride and Oasis veteran Andy Bell over recent years, all of which have yielded music that is eclectic, playful and, more often than not, adventurous.

Third solo outing pinball wanderer follows this pattern, with tracks that demonstrate Bell’s versatility by encompassing spirit-of-Madchester-infused workouts, lush electronica and krautrock. Impressively, the album does this while maintaining coherence, never seeming less than the sum of its parts.

Matters begin with ‘panic attack’, a track that dissects the very 21st-century problem of doom-scrolling and obsessing over things we likely can’t change. For all Bell’s guitar chimes in a Byrds-like fashion, the overall effect is closer to Stereolab, a recurring reference point here, in the track’s sheer insistence.Andy Bell—the Ride guitarist who also played bass in the final days of Oasis—has crafted an album equally great for running or resting, thinking intensely or totally zoning out. All that utility is courtesy of hypnotic grooves, no two remotely the same, you can’t help but lock into. “apple green ufo” is eight-plus minutes of a transcendental, Stone Roses-esque rumbling bass line, but also a sneaky, snaky guitar melody and bright, traffic jam horn noises. Or, as Bell explains the magic: “I had this riff on an acoustic and it was kind of like one of those Led Zeppelin folk bangers, but I brought it into the Serge Gainsbourg world and gave it a glass of absinthe.” Sure, why not? “i’m in love…”—a feathery cover of the The Passions’s icy “I’m in Love With a German Film Star”—rides an equally mesmeric groove and warms things up with gauzy, echo-heavy vocal perfection from Dot Allison. Michael Rother of Neu! joins in on guitar, and a heavy buzz drone intermittently saws through the ethereal lightness. Bell has said he thinks of the post-punk original, which he used to play at Ride soundchecks, as “proto shoegaze,” which really means something coming from one of the genre’s ’90s pioneers. But don’t expect much of that on pinball wanderer, which is produced with his former Oasis bandmate Gem Archer. Instead, Bell calls on his love of Syd Barrett trippiness: The instrumental title track taps into it with breathy flute, twangy guitar and a slip-slide bottom end, while “madder lake deep” mixes up psychedelia and Cocteau Twins dreaminess. Catchy “panic attack” throbs and ping-pongs, and “music concrete” is like living in a retro video game dusted with Can-style synth blerps and a disco funk beat. And “space station mantra” is tactile topography—rising and falling with scratchy drums and buttery, entranced vocals, as spiky, slow-moving guitar offers a beacon on the horizon. And that groove? Here, it traverses the fine line between being hypnotic and delirious. – Shelly Ridenour

Tracklist:

1-1. Andy Bell – panic attack (04:08)
1-2. Andy Bell – I’m in love… (04:50)
1-3. Andy Bell – madder lake deep (02:09)
1-4. Andy Bell – apple green ufo (08:21)
1-5. Andy Bell – pinball wanderer (04:33)
1-6. Andy Bell – music concrete (05:16)
1-7. Andy Bell – the notes you never hear (01:58)
1-8. Andy Bell – space station mantra (05:44)

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