Alpaca Sports - Another Day (2025) Hi-Res

On their second album Another Day, Sweden's Alpaca Sports keep the flame of Sarah Records burning brightly with a set of very gentle, very tuneful indie pop. As they proved on their debut, the band can sound tender and sweet without coming across mawkish or sentimental. Instead, they craft their songs with so much deeply felt feeling and unadulterated honesty that they brush right past tweeness and land on something real and true. The songs are sung with unabashed honesty by both Andreas Jonsson and Amanda Åkerman, dealing with nostalgic impulses, determination to hold onto love, and belief in better days ahead. Swinging between glimmering disco pop like "Always on My Mind", quietly sung and played ballads ("Bluebells"), and lightly swinging vintage indie pop ("Break My Heart"), the band continue to recall great bands of the past, while never sounding in thrall to any one of them in particular. Helping to make the record special is the very fine production by Ian Catt that gives the songs an extra shine, and the increased reliance on backing vocals. Adding fellow Elefant artist Cristina Quesada to the vocal mix, the group fills in the spaces behind the lead vocal with soft clouds of harmony that wrap around the melodies like a warm breeze on a spring afternoon. The best songs on the record bundle up all these positive factors and deliver indie pop good enough to compete with the bands that have so inspired them. "Tomorrow I'll Be Fine" is a super jangly, very peppy song that bursts with melancholy and has a truly beautiful chorus, "Slipping Through My Fingers" is a swoony neo-disco track complete with strings and a very tricky bridge, and "Tell Me"'s sophisticated pop that shows how far the band have come in their pursuit of indie pop perfection. They aren’t far off and Another Day is the kind of retro but brand new album that should have fans of classic indie pop both old and new lining up to sing its praises.