The Loft: Badges – Album Review

Album Review

The Loft

Badges

Tapete Records

CD/LP/DD 

Released 8th May 2026 

The LTW review of Everything Changes Everything Stays the Same  called it: Absolutely perfect in every way –  Can the follow up possibly be as good? An album of existential contentment in the form of guitar/pop music made by veterans competing against no-one but themselves, writing about camper vans, ex-lovers and long lost brothers and Sad Comedians? Yeah, it’s even better, says Ged Babey.

Only ten songs, seven of them under 3 minutes, so a running time of exactly 30 minutes. Yet you will NOT feel ripped-off as every second counts. Every note, beat and syllable is vital. I know it sounds like exaggeration but this really is another perfect album from a great band making up for lost-time.

Maybe it IS just me. Maybe it’s because the band are roughly the same age as me: born-in-the-Sixties, white, punk-inspired as teens, bookish, left-leaning, soft-arses… under-achievers but who have kept their sanity and ‘out of prison… the madhouse and the grave’. Or maybe they are just a great pop group whose existentialism is more acceptance and contentment than angst

It’s not that I even totally ‘get’ what half of the songs are about.  Some of the lyrics tend to be cryptic and describe personal memories of a time and a place and a situation that were unique to the narrator:  but they are still relatable, and framed by some masterful guitar-playing and the most natural, walking-pace tunes.

Astor and Strickland both play guitar, but I suspect it’s Andy providing most of the hooks and plaintive solos, borrowing sounds and ideas from Television, the Velvets, T-Rex and Buddy Holly – nothing post-1980.

Track by track:

Happenstance –  just a great word for starters: coincidence, chance, fate, luck, a happy accident of timing…..fastest song on the album, the country rockabilly vibe of a steam train speeding down the tracks.

Sad Comedian – a classic – The T-Rex/’Panic’ steal raises a smile.

Campervan –  Why deal in metaphor and allusion when the literal rather than symbolic is enough.  The campervan is a means of escape from routine, the humdrum and 9-5, but in a way still symbolises the mid-life crisis / need to get-away.

1955 –  I’m sure the Auteurs had a song called 1959 on a similar topic. (About parents meeting)

Beautiful Problem   The perfect description of having a lover who is basically a nightmare. A distant echo of the Pistols ‘Problems’ maybe too and another title, like the next two which could also be a Suede song.

 Ex-Lovers And Long Lost Brothers,  Goodbye Saturday Night and Junk Shop are the centre-pieces and masterpieces on Badges. Musically, lyrically, vocally, emotionally…. once you’ve heard them you’ll understand my lack of objectivity. The guitar solo towards the end of Junk Shop is spine-tingling.

 C’mon Let’s Hear It For The Now is possibly my least favourite as it’s a bit self–help book ‘Mindfulness’ style on the face of it. Great homages to the Lloyd/Verlaine guitar interplay though.

Rob Rides The Sunset saves the best for last. A cowboy lullaby to getting stoned in a park at night. I can remember a night like this, watching the sun-rise rather than the sunset, with a mate, sat on a park bench overlooking the city – it wasn’t Hampstead Heath and a sunset but must have been during the same time=frame I imagine and the song captures a similar memory to perfection.

Oddly, the first time I heard it without the tracklisting to hand I misheard the chorus as ‘Rubberize the sunset’.

The original four members, Pete Astor, Dave Morgan, Bill Prince and Andy Strickland have produced an album that continues, and moves forward, the story of The Loft, the band that helped define the sound of the Creation label and the emerging Indie genre. ‘Badges’ has a sound that comes from a band who’ve been together, touring and playing consistently over the past two years – relaxed, vibey, assured.

‘It feels good to be in a real band again, and for the first time I’m co-writing songs with Andy, learning to manage and negotiate all the things that split the band apart all those years ago,’ says singer and songwriter Pete Astor.

‘We just naturally started writing the new album as soon as we finished touring last year,’ says guitarist Andy Strickland, ‘it feels more organic – it’s a real privilege to still be able to get together and do this.’

(Eagle-eyed readers will spot that the rest of this review is exactly what I said about the previous album – but it all applies to this one too…)

It is very rare that you get an album which is this good: Absolutely perfect in every way. (The Modern Lovers, Berlin, Even Serpents Shine, After Murder Park are the first few others that spring to my mind…)

Every song, utterly fantastic in its own right, yet in sequence a complete, uplifting joy to listen to from start to finish. Ten songs. No extravagance. No gimmicks. A warm ‘analogue’ sound with no sign of digital modernity. Relaxed but skilful playing. Music in competition with no-one else.  Songs that are immediate but with a lasting beauty that reveals itself with each subsequent listen.

A timelessness, equilibrium and a charm all of its own. A maturity and a knowing, poetic look back at life, relationships, mistakes

A Great, True Indie album…. when independent meant something that had soul…

Buy from Bandcamp

All other links – tickets, Spotify etc

The Loft on tour May 2026

Thu 7th May Oxford – Common Ground  TONIGHT!
Fri 8th May Bristol – The Croft
Thu 21st May Leicester – The Big Difference
Fri 22nd May Gateshead – Central Bar
Sat 23rd May Edinburgh – Voodoo Rooms
Thu 28th May Sheffield – The Greystones
Fri 29th May Cambridge – The Portland
Sat 30th May Hastings – The Piper

Words  Ged Babey