Album Review – Coffee & Regrets by Next Time Passions (2024) (Shelflife Records / Fastcut Records and Make Me Happy Records)
Formed in the early 1990’s, Elefsina (Greece)-formed Next Time Passions have a tendency to re-emerge every seven to ten years just to remind us that one of the finest indie-pop bands of the modern era is nowhere near finished yet.
Consisting of a mixture of new tracks, the entirety of their 2017 Another Wish EP and an unreleased track from the 1990’s, Coffee and Regrets reminds us of just why the 90s version of jangly indie-pop was every bit as important as that of the 1980s, even if it was not quite as ‘twinkly’.
As such, the post-punk meets (the Robert Forster tracks) sound of the earliest of The Go-Betweens courses with dulcet understated beauty through the title track, Come to Conversations, Another Wish, and Beast Inside, whereas the sophisti-pop meets jangly indie-pop sounds of Make Me Happy Records labelmates such as Ta Toy Boy and The Jaywalkers courses through Win The Universe and Not Here Anymore and present an absolute antithesis to the cinematic massive of Crystal Drum and Sandy Says.
Doubtless, the band will now disappear for the best part of a decade, and we will all dutifully wait for their further brilliance. They are just so very worth it.
janglepophub.home.blog 