album review

The Lovely Basement

Lowlands  

Precious Recordings of London / No Aloha

CD/DL/LP

Released Fri 14 November 2025

Fourth album from Bristol-based Alt-Country band – Post-cool or too old to care? The Lovely Basement are one of the best-kept secrets of the indie world and the newest additions to the Precious Recordings of London roster. Ged Babey has been following them for six years now.

This is The Lovely Basements best album yet.

I loved their debut album and the second.  A colleague reviewed the difficult third so it was my turn again…

But I broke the Golden Rule of Album Reviewing – failing to concentrate on the album in hand alone. I was listening to a half a dozen others at the same time (the young and amazing Tulpa, the new/old/forthcoming release by Wreckless Eric, ongoing obsessions with Your Heterosexual Violence and The Long Decline... and the genius of Lisa O’Neill) so it took me a while to fully reacquaint myself with the pace and subtlety of the Lovely Basements work.

I described them before as a Sunday Afternoon Listen… you have to let the relaxed gentleness of The Lovely Basement groove literally slow you down, lower your blood-pressure as you recline on the couch. They don’t demand your attention in a brash way, more whisper in your ear. But they are not just ‘easy-listening’ – there is a lot of content and wisdom in these songs.

Lowlands eloquently covers a range of subjects. From musings on sentience, inequality, globalisation, even theology – to the deep need to hunker down with good friends when the world outside gets too much – all find an often wry voice in this shimmering collection of lovingly crafted songs.

A couple of songs do have f-bombs which detonate quietly so not to spoil the vibe. The settings for the songs seem to be mainly churches and mountainsides, ‘familiar places’.

It’s great that Precious has taken on the band as they are in a way, a sister-band to The Loft.  A similar indie and country smartness and deftness.

There are several really fantastic songs hidden within the depths of this album… but this one, Mostly Wrong, is different, out of character, out of kilter. It is standard Velvets chug but narrated, initially by Kevin Bache, with Katie singing only the chorus. Then there’s a dramatized soliloquy at the end (from Paul.)

Have a listen…

Yep, a bit Blue Aeroplanes and not dissimilar to Brian Bilston and Catenary Wires.

The stream of bravado that closes – over very Lady Godiva sounding guitar peals – is pure Gallagher brothers type invent-a-quote.

The lyric overall takes a bit of working out – I did guess that the Carol mentioned was Carol Kaye but thought the Godmother was Patti Smith….  Katie filled me in with the background.

The lyric tries to weave together three ideas:

1. That as you get older, you learn more. When this comes to ‘rock n roll’ this includes learning about all the incredible women who have been airbrushed out of it its history, despite their huge contributions. So we see Sister Rosetta Thorpe, its Godmother, on the station platform in Manchester, and Carol Kaye just getting on with it, ignoring detractors.

2. That young folk, generally, come to this heritage full of ‘piss and vinegar’, unaware and uncaring of the shoulders on which they stand. As, er, older music fans, sometimes watching their confidence and obliviousness can be grating. And as, to this day, the genre is still male dominated, the irritation can be considerable at times.  (We covered this a little in our earlier song, Bands With Girls). So that’s where Oasis-tude comes in. But with the recognition that all bands absorb and regurgitate (consciously or unconsciously), and age gives you the freedom to not worry about being unique but rather to enjoy messing with music, which is the point of it all. So, leading on from that…

3. … the chorus kind of zooms out to acknowledge that, irrespective of where we are, when it comes to writing music, we can’t stop. An artist friend described the need to make art as a ‘calling’, and it hit home, hence ‘something like a calling’. We even pondered this phrase for the album title. We can’t stop, even though our age and homespun approach make this endless desire feel rather daft at times. Hope this doesn’t sound pretentious!

(Oh, it does a bit – but not in a really bad way. At least you are not dressed up in Victorian lace.)

Paul’s text at the end is essentially a a series of quotes from male bands so high on their own youthful self importance that they can’t see their own plagiarism.

The press release points out that as well as the Velvets, they have been compared to Fairport Convention and on the B-side of the Cornstalk Girl single is a fabulous cover of Beat Happening’s Angel Gone, which is not on the album. But the Lovely Basement have developed their own sound using familiar influences but their own skill and sensitive songcraft.

Black Jumper On – seems to be about attending a family funeral and is a musing on family.  Rest Now Lucy –  alludes to a person with dementia or nearing the end of their life. Dust Patterns – is about ‘greed not the politics of envy’ as it states in the lyric.

The more you listen to these songs, like Fifth Column with its fabulous use of the word ‘gelatinous’  in the lyrics, the more you need to work out what they are saying…

The cost of liberty is eternal dirt / They want us to stay clean

Has a real echo of Lou Reed and ‘Barrabas’, is very Dylan.

Meets Judas for a drink but he’s late again / Drops into his seat with “Hello my friend.

In fact, Barrabas is the Radio 2/Suzanne Vega type ‘hit-single’ the band need. See what you think… before you buy Lowlands.

Definitely a grower of an album, it took me a while to fully appreciate it,  But one day as I listened I happened to look in the mirror, and to my surprise I saw Whisperin’ Bob Harris smiling back at me , nodding his approval.

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The Lovely Basement LIVE
THIS THURS !   13 Nov  2025 – The Cavendish Arms,  London
11 Dec 2025 – Rock & Roll Brewhouse Bar,  Birmingham

All words by Ged Babey with quotes and PR in italics.