Rare is the artist who boasts a catalogue as broad and impactful as Andy Bell’s. Co-founder and songwriter of shoegaze frontrunners, Ride as well as long-serving bassist of Manchester giants, Oasis, among numerous other projects, Bell’s often understated influence on the alternative rock scene throughout the 90s and 2000s is unassailable. In more recent times, the artist’s catalogue has expanded to more experimental and synthetic sounds, veering progressively further away from the alt-rock rail line be it through his solo work (see GLOK) or extensive collaborative efforts. The latest in the rock druid’s steady output of work since 2019, February 2025’s pinball wanderer, dishes up a smorgasbord of dense synthesisers, locked drum and bass grooves with a distinctly organic touch. 

Inviting listeners with its warm, sizzling synth layers and sparkling guitar riffs, the album’s opener, panic attack, feels like stable ground. Utilising a more pop-centric structure with a blissful, uplifting chorus section, the track would sit neatly amongst an early Ride tracklist, or that of Bell’s preceding solo project, Flicker. With lyrics dealing with a distinctly modern struggle against technology’s magnetic seduction, and the anxieties which arise from this, panic attack heralds themes and sounds which will appear later on in further degrees of variation, while establishing the record’s sonic tone.

In a homage to his post-punk and kraut-rock roots, Bell offers his version of The Passion’s seminal hit, I’m In Love With A German Film Star, renamed here to simply, I’m in love…. With contributions from alternative contemporary, Dot Allison, as well as kraut legend, Michael Rother (of Neu! fame), the track offers a more washed, reverberated and open sounding rendition, where lyrical themes of vicarious obsession and adoration feel all too poignant in the world’s current relationship between celebrity and normality. 

madder lake deep shimmers with washy synth and guitar sounds and reflective lyrics. A memoir on Bell’s feelings on his grandfather’s watercolour paintings, the artist likens them to a sort of dream-like state, reinforced by the track’s floating atmosphere. A fleeting 2 minutes long, the track comes and goes with the poignant transience of a near forgotten memory.

Changing pace dramatically, the album’s centrepiece, apple green ufo, leans full tilt towards Bell’s krautrock influence. A groovy ⅞ drum and bass pattern adorned with muted guitar pluckings catches listeners hook, line and sinker, reeling them through the track’s near 8 and a half minute run time. Precise, ear-grabbing chord changes and fuzzed out psychedelic guitars break up hypnotic jam sections, vindicating the track’s length. With lyrics musing a sci-fi inspired meeting between human and alien, anxious themes of distance and uncertainty here fit neatly with prior tracks, justifying the song’s fairly stark sonic shift away from more shoegazey, washed effects present earlier on the album.

The title track takes yet another sonic leap, introducing folky woodwinds, acoustic guitars and a classic four chord loop, bringing listeners back down to earth from the science fiction world of the previous track. While the pinball wanderer acts as a fresh breath of air amidst the more techno-centric palette selected throughout the record, it does feel somewhat out of place. With no thematically binding lyric to be found, the instrumental comes across as somewhat wedged in and unnecessary. 

Bringing listeners back to robotic synthesiser sounds, music concrete ponders a similarly hypnotic drum and bass groove as apple green ufo, with Bell proclaiming their twinned relationship as the album’s “two central tracks”. Simpler and shorter in runtime than the track’s sister, music concrete opts for subtlety in its layering with the bassline changes being the only major axis of momentum, easing audiences into the groove which is lyrically adorned only by a chanting repetition of the song’s title.

A second twinned track, the notes you never hear is a gasp of life and self-affirmation amidst the tracklist’s anxieties, “nobody can tell me who I am”. Further fleeting even than madder lake deep, which the song partners, the track has been and gone in under 2 minutes, Bell describing it as “a moment to myself” in reference to its incompleteness.

To close the record, the densely layered space station mantra feels like a safety landing, returning to sonic commonalities shared between previous tracks. Uplifting synth tones and harmonized vocal refrains allow listeners to float along through the nearly 6 minute long instrumental epilogue, leaving us with a sense of continuity but also an ambiguous sense of what’s next? Where do we go now? as the recording fades away into the air.

Andy Bell’s work here demonstrates his masterful agency over sound and feeling, drawing wide inspirations to produce a record which is broad in its generic variety while simultaneously concise in its mood. pinball wanderer has ear candy to offer for lovers of both more spacey and more groove-centred music with a healthy dose of hook-based pop-structured songwriting. Despite some moments feeling out of place or wedged in somewhat forcefully, the record overall delivers in spades great variation and atmospheric grooves enough to entice and sustain new and familiar listers alike. 

81/100

Alex Collins