Redun_Radar_01 2022 by aquiaqui33

Photo by elo Koury Ang

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THE WAR ON DRUGS | ELLIOTT SMITH | TEARS FOR FEARS

20th Anniversary Issue

NOV/DEC/JAN 2021 #69 DISPLAY THRU MAR 2022

GRANDADDY q CHVRCHES q KAMASI WASHINGTON BAT FOR LASHES q WEYES BLOOD

underther adarmag.c om

Opposite page: Top photo L to R: Grandaddy, Kamasi Washington, Weyes Blood, Bat For Lashes, and CHVRCHES (photo by Koury Angelo). Bottom photo L to R: The Divine Comedy, Nilüfer Yanya, The Horrors, Miki Berenyi, Elbow, and Rose Elinor Dougall (photo by Derrick Santini). Let’s Eat Grandma (photo by James Loveday). Magdalena Bay (photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern).

ISSUE

DEC. 2021/JAN. AND FEB. 2022

TABLE OF CONTENTS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

10 34 44 DETECTION Cate Le Bon // 10 Snail Mail // 18 Parquet Courts // 18 Courtney Barnett // 159 alt-J // 20 Cat Power // 22 Tears for Fears // 23 The War on Drugs // 24 Let’s Eat Grandma // 26

20TH////////// PLEASED/// TO MEET YOU ANNIVERSARY Magdalena Bay // 34 W.H. Lung // 38 Yard Act // 38 Wet Leg // 39 Geese // 40

MAGDALENA BAY

LET’S EAT GRANDMA

FIRST ISSUE REVISITED/// Mogwai // 76 The Charlatans // 77 Black Box Recorder // 78 Idlewild // 79 Doves // 80 Ladytron // 82

COVER/////// STORIES Grandaddy // 84 The Divine Comedy // 90 Nilüfer Yanya // 96 Miki Berenyi of Piroshka and Lush // 102 Rose Elinor Dougall // 108 The Horrors // 114 Elbow // 120 Weyes Blood // 126 Bat For Lashes // 132 Kamasi Washington // 138 CHVRCHES // 144

Covers of Covers: Inside Under the Radar’s First Album // 44 Covers That Never Were // 47 2001: Albums, Movies, and TV Shows Also Turning 20 // 48 Albums That Defined Under the Radar // 52 The Second Draft of History: Inside Elliott Smith’s Recording of From a Basement on the Hill // 64 Love and Dancing: The Secret Origin of Under the Radar // 70

150 REVIEWS THE END/// Metronomy // 156

BONUS FEATURES/// Aeon Station // 158 Nation of Language // 162 All Our Friends: Under the Radar’s Writers on Our 20th Anniversary and Their Most Memorable Moments // 168

Letter From The Editor W hen thinking about our 20th anniversary all the usual clichés come to mind about how unfathomably fast time has progressed. When you’re a child the weeks and months to Christmas or summer break move as slow as a sloth. Now that I’m in my 40s the months and years speed by almost as fast as The Flash. Momentous life events that seem quite recent, I’m shocked to realize were five or more years ago. For example, it’s now been 10 years since my wife/Co-Publisher Wendy and I moved from Los Angeles to Virginia. It’s been seven years since my father died and five since my sister passed, but both wounds are still fresh. And perhaps the biggest of all, our daughter Rose is about to turn nine. So it doesn’t feel quite right that we’ve been doing Under the Radar for 20 years now; the early days are still vivid in my memories. To celebrate, as we did with both our 10th and 15th anniversaries, it did feel right to put together a special issue. We’ve spent many months producing this double issue, trying to pack it full with as much retrospective content as possible, while also covering a fair share of current 2021 and 2022 albums. Most of what I have to say about the early days of the publication and our last two decades can be found in my Secret Origin of Under the Radar article, which features personal photos of Wendy and I and a behind-the-scenes look at the magazine, including quotes from several of our longtime writers. Throughout the issue we try to use previously unseen photos from some of our classic photo shoots whenever possible, including in the 12-page section where we look back on the albums that have helped define Under the Radar and our First Issue

Revisited section, where we re-interview many of the artists first interviewed in our inaugural issue in 2001. The most challenging aspect of assembling the 20th Anniversary Issue was organizing the two cover photo shoots. Koury Angelo shot one cover in Los Angeles and it features five different musicians together, including Jason Lytle of Grandaddy, as he was on the cover of our first issue. That one came together fairly painlessly. Derrick Santini shot the other cover in London and that one was trickier to pull together, due to managing everyone’s schedules. It was important to have Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy take part, as he was on the cover of our second issue, so we had to plan around when he would be in London, since he lives near Dublin, Ireland. As soon as we worked out a date he could do it, it would turn out that another artist we wanted was out of the country or on tour and so we had to go back to the drawing board. There were some other great artists who wanted to be involved—including Ellie Rowsell of Wolf Alice, Kelly Lee Owens, and Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals—but who couldn’t be in London the dates that worked for Hannon and some of the other artists. We didn’t even know that Faris Badwan of The Horrors was going to be able to definitely show up until the day of the shoot! It was important to shoot each cover with all the artists together in the same room, rather than Photoshopping the musicians together in post, but that also meant we needed to make sure everyone was vaccinated. It was worth all the effort, however, and across the two covers we’ve ended up with 11 amazing artists who represent our last 20 years of coverage

well, ranging from artists we’ve been covering since the beginning to Nilüfer Yanya, who was six years old when our first issue came out and is about to release her second album, Painless. That means we have 11 cover stories, two more if you include my Secret Origin article and Matt Fink’s Elliott Smith article, both of which are cover story length too. If I could go back two decades and change one thing about Under the Radar, it might be our name. Indie snobs who complain about us not covering artists who are fully underground have used our name against countless times over the years. And it doesn’t just happen when we might rarely write about a major pop star, such as Taylor Swift, but also when covering artists on indie labels. Artists who are still quite far outside of the mainstream by most standards, but are known to indie rock fans. We have a long history of interviewing and reviewing artists long before they are well known. The Grammys recently nominated Japanese Breakfast and Glass Animals for Best New Artist, but we’ve been covering the former for five years and the latter for nine years. For some though, it almost seems that an artist isn’t truly “under the radar” unless they just formed last week and haven’t even officially released a single yet! Please don’t take our name so literally. At Under the Radar we are simply about trusting our ears and covering the artists we like. Sometimes that’s a brand new unsigned band; other times it’s a legendary established artist. It’s how we’ve done it for the last 20 years and it’s how we’ll continue to conduct ourselves for however many more years we’re still around.

Mark Redfern

Staff Photos from 2001 and Favorite Albums of 2001

Publisher/ Senior Editor

Mark Redfern (Publisher/Senior Editor)

Wendy Lynch Redfern (Publisher/Creative Director)

1. Super Furry Animals: Rings Around the World 2. Pulp: We Love Life 3. Spiritualized: Let It Come Down 4. Mercury Rev: All Is Dream 5. Elbow: Asleep in the Back 6. Radiohead: Amnesiac 7. Ladytron: 604 8. The Divine Comedy: Regeneration 9. Air: 10,000 Hz Legend 10. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: B.R.M.C.

1. Elbow: Asleep in the Back 2. Death Cab for Cutie: The Photo Album 3. The Shins: Oh, Inverted World 4. Radiohead: Amnesiac 5. Sparklehorse: It’s a Wonderful Life 6. Gorillaz: Gorillaz 7. The Microphones: The Glow Pt. 2 8. Super Furry Animals: Rings Around the World 9. Modest Mouse: Everywhere and His Nasty Parlour Tricks EP 10. Björk: Vespertine

Matt Fink (Senior Writer)

Frank Valish (Book/Metal/Reissues Editor)

1. Danielson Famile: Fetch the Compass Kids 2. The White Stripes: White Blood Cells 3. Stephen Malkmus: Stephen Malkmus 4. The Microphones: The Glow, Pt. 2 5. The Avalanches: Since I Left You

1. Sparklehorse: It’s a Wonderful Life 2. R.E.M.: Reveal 3. Ian Brown: Music of the Spheres 4. Mercury Rev: All Is Dream 5. Super Furry Animals: Rings Around the World

Celine Teo-Blockey (Podcast Editor/Staff Writer)

Austin Trunick (Cinema and DVD Editor/Senior Writer)

1. The Strokes: Is This It 2. Travis: The Invisible Band 3. Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Yeah Yeah Yeahs EP 4. Gorillaz: Gorillaz 5. The Avalanches: Since I Left You

1. The White Stripes: White Blood Cells 2. The Faint: Danse Macabre 3. Clutch: Pure Rock Fury 4. Liars: They Threw Us All in a Trench and Put a Mountain on Top 5. Mercury Rev: All Is Dream

Mark Nockels (Marketing and Advertising Sales)

Lily Moayeri (TV Editor/Staff Writer)

1. Elbow: Asleep in the Back 2. The Knife: The Knife 3. My Morning Jacket: At Dawn 4. The National: The National 5. Pinback: Blue Screen Life

1. Ian Brown: Music of the Spheres 2. The Charlatans: Wonderland 3. Depeche Mode: Exciter 4. Royksopp: Melody A.M. 5. Tricky: Blowback

Hays Davis (Staff Writer)

Ben Jardine (Staff Writer)

1. Manic Street Preachers: Know Your Enemy 2. Super Furry Animals: Rings Around the World 3. Rocket from the Crypt: Group Sounds 4. Rufus Wainwright: Poses 5. Mull Historical Society: Loss

1. The White Stripes: White Blood Cells 2. The Strokes: Is This It 3. Destiny’s Child: Survivor 4. Radiohead: Amnesiac 5. Daft Punk: Discovery

Andy Von Pip (Staff Writer)

Jake Uitti (Staff Writer)

1. Curve: Gift 2. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: B.R.M.C. 3. Ladytron: 604 4. Weezer: Weezer (Green Album) 5. The Strokes: Is This It

1. JAY-Z: The Blueprint 2. Dave Matthews Band: Everyday 3. Jack Johnson: Brushfire Fairytales 4. The White Stripes: White Blood Cells 5. Dave Matthews Band: Live in Chicago 12.19.98 at the United Center

UNDER THE RADAR LLC 409 Honeysuckle Hill Lexington, VA 24450 Tel: (540) 348-8996 www.undertheradarmag.com PUBLISHERS: Mark Redfern and Wendy Lynch Redfern SENIOR EDITOR/MUSIC EDITOR: Mark Redfern mark@undertheradarmag.com CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Wendy Lynch Redfern wendy@undertheradarmag.com MARKETING AND ADVERTISING SALES: Mark Nockels mark.nockels@undertheradarmag.com (323) 229-7512 BLU-RAY AND DVD EDITOR AND GAMES EDITOR: Austin Trunick austin@undertheradarmag.com BOOKS EDITOR, METAL EDITOR, AND REISSUES EDITOR: Frank Valish frank@undertheradarmag.com CINEMA EDITOR: Matt Conner matt.conner@undertheradarmag.com KEEPING SCORE EDITOR AND PLAYLIST EDITOR: Charles Steinberg charles.steinberg@undertheradarmag.com LIVE PHOTO EDITOR AND INSTAGRAM EDITOR: Joshua Mellin joshua@undertheradarmag.com LIVE REVIEWS EDITOR: Dom Gourlay dom@undertheradarmag.com PODCAST EDITOR: Celine Teo-Blockey celine.teoblockey@undertheradarmag.com POLITICS EDITOR: Steve King steve.king@undertheradarmag.com PREMIERES EDITOR: Caleb Campbell caleb.campbell@undertheradarmag.com TELEVISION EDITOR: Lily Moayeri lily@undertheradarmag.com EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS: Joey Arnone, Jimi Arundell, Stephen Axeman, Harrison Suits Baer, Matthew Berlyant, Paul Bullock, Caleb Campbell, Matt Conner, Chris Davidson, Hays Davis, Scott Dransfield, Conrad Duncan, Scott Elingburg, Laura Ferreiro, Matt Fink, Hayden Godfrey, Dom Gourlay, Lily Guthrie, Mike Hilleary, Stephen Humphries, Jennifer Irving, Kaveh Jalinous, Ben Jardine, Kyle Kersey, Ian King, Steve King, Gary Knight, Dustin Krcatovich, Lexi Lane, Stephen Mayne, Candace McDuffie, Lily Moayeri, Mark Moody, Kyle Mullin, Jeremy Nisen, Gareth O’Malley, Blaise Radley, Joseph Ragusa, Matt the Raven, Mark Redfern, Derek Robertson, Austin Saalman, Jim Scott, Samantha Small, Justin Sohl, Haydon Spenceley, Laura Stanley, Charles Steinberg, Laura Studarus, Celine Teo-Blockey, Chris Thiessen, Carlo Thomas, Austin Trunick, Adam Turner-Heffer, Jake Uitti, Frank Valish, Andy Von Pip, Michael Watkins, and Jasper Willems EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Joey Arnone PHOTOGRAPHERS: Koury Angelo, Ray Lego, James Loveday, Wendy Lynch Redfern, and Derrick Santini COVER PHOTOS: Front cover shot exclusively for Under the Radar by Koury Angelo in Los Angeles, CA. Back cover shot exclusively for Under the Radar by Derrick Santini in London, England. MAGAZINE DESIGN: Wendy Lynch Redfern COVER DESIGN: Wendy Lynch Redfern SUBSCRIPTIONS: subscriptions@undertheradarmag.com DISTRIBUTION: Comag Marketing Group (CMG) – i-cmg.com FACEBOOK: Facebook.com/UnderTheRadarMagazine TWITTER: Twitter.com/Under_Radar_Mag INSTAGRAM: Instagram.com/undertheradarmag PATREON: Patreon.com/under_the_radar Under the Radar is published around two to three times per year by Mark Redfern and Wendy Lynch Redfern. The opinions expressed within are those of the individual writers or the interview subjects, and not necessarily those of the publishers or the magazine as a whole. All content copyright Under the Radar, 2021.

SUBSCRIBE All subscriptions include FREE access to our digital version with additional content!

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Over 50 back issues available. $6.50 Each. FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS, BACK ISSUES, INTERNATIONAL RATES, AND MORE:

www.undertheradarmag.com/subscribe 4 ISSUES: $16.99 | 8 ISSUES: $28.99 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Season 2! PODCAST

Features interviews with Courtney Barnett, The Flaming Lips, Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, SPELLLING, James, London Grammar, Sleaford Mods, Xiu Xiu, and more!

www.undertheradarmag.com/artists/under_the_radar_podcast

Support Us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/ under_the_radar

A Digital Sampler!

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To Download, visit: www.undertheradarmag.com/sampler/v69 Enter Code: 3d1m-jan22-pa7z 1. PIROSHKA “Crystal Lake” (Grandaddy Cover) Covers of Covers American Laundromat www.alr-music.com

6. PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING “Blue Heaven” Bright Magic Play It Again Sam www.publicservice broadcasting.net

11. COCO “Come Along” Coco First City Artists www.cocosongs.com

2. LET’S EAT GRANDMA “Hall of Mirrors” Two Ribbons Transgressive www.letseatgrandma.co.uk

7. GONE TO COLOR “The 606” Gone to Color Gone to Color www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ctQPuki86Q4

12. C DUNCAN “Alluvium” Alluvium Bella Union www.bellaunion.com

3. MAGDALENA BAY “Domino” Mercurial World Luminelle Recordings www.mercurialworld.com

8. IMARHAN “Achinkad” Aboogi City Slang www.imarhan.lnk.to/Aboogi

13. DUCKS LTD. “Under the Rolling Moon” Modern Fiction Carpark/Royal Mountain www.ducksltd.co

9. CATE LE BON “Running Away” Pompeii Mexican Summer https://catelebon.ffm.to/ running.opr

14. PIP BLOM “You Don’t Want This” Welcome Break Heavenly www.pipblom.com

10. ABSOLUTELY FREE “Remaining Light” Aftertouch Boiled www.absolutelyfree.ca

15. SILVERBACKS “Archive Material” Archive Material Full Time Hobby www.silverbacksband.com

4. ALL WE ARE “Eden” Eden (single) Domino Recording Co. www.thisisallweare.co.uk

5. W.H. LUNG “Pearl In The Palm” Vanities Melodic www.whlungmusic.com

Under the Radar / www.undertheradarmag.com / Partial Paid Promotion. Copyright 2021. The views and ideas expressed in the songs on this compilation are those of the artists and not of Under the Radar LLC or its publishers.

16. YARD ACT “The Overload” The Overload Island/Zen F.C. www.yardactors.com

24. YUMI ZOUMA “Mona Lisa” Mona Lisa (single) Polyvinyl Record Co. www.yumizouma.com

32. CRAYON “Misplaced” (Feat. Tora & Gracy Hopkins) Misplaced (Feat. Tora & Gracy Hopkins) Erased Tapes www.erasedtapes.com

17. GEESE “Low Era” Projector Partisan/Play It Again Sam www.geeseband.com

25. MAKTHAVERSKAN “This Time” För Allting Run For Cover www.runforcoverrecords.com

33. TIM NAPALM & THE INFLATABLE BAPTISTS “Teaching You The Fear...Again” Teaching You The Fear...Again C.I.A. www.ciarecords2.bandcamp.com

18. INDIGO DE SOUZA “Hold U” Any Shape You Take Saddle Creek www.saddle-creek.com

26. STARFLYER 59 “Sunrise” Vanity Velvet Blue Music www.velvetbluemusic.com

34. SASAMI “Skin a Rat” Squeeze Domino www.sasamiashworth.com

19. SAM EVIAN “Dream Free” (Feat. Hannah Cohen) Time to Melt Fat Possum www.sam-evian.lnk.to/ timetomelt

27. THE DODOS “Annie” Grizzly Peak Polyvinyl Record Co. www.dodosmusic.net

35. A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS “Hold On Tight” See Through You Dedstrange www.linktr.ee/aptbs

20. PENELOPE ISLES “Iced Gems” Which Way to Happy Bella Union www.penelopeisles.com

28. FRUIT BATS

36. JAMESON BURT “One More” One More Bsquared MGMT www.tinyurl.com/2aebbfzh

21. ROEDELIUS & STORY “Spirit Clock” 4 Hands Erased Tapes www.erasedtapes.com

29. MARK AND THE TIGER “The La La Song” The Hero’s Journey Bsquared MGMT www.linktr.ee/ Markandthetiger

37. SINGLE GIRL, MARRIED GIRL “Wreck Cut Loose” Three Generations of Leaving Head Bitch Music https://ffm.to/ singlegirlmarriedgirl_wreckcutloose

22. BOY HARSHER “Tower” The Runner (Original Soundtrack) Nude Club/City Slang www.nudeclubrecords.com

30. LIONLIMB “Loveland Pass” Spiral Groove Bayonet www.bayonet.nyc/loveland

38. TONSTARTSSBANDHT “What Has Happened” Petunia Mexican Summer www.tonstartssbandht. bandcamp.com

23. SALLY SHAPIRO “Forget About You” Sad Cities Italians Do It Better https://youtu.be/ vX5gQomQZ_U

31. AEON STATION “Queens” Observatory Sub Pop www.subpop.com/artists/ aeon_station

39. THE DIVINE COMEDY “Tonight We Fly” Charmed Life - The Best of The Divine Comedy Divine Comedy www.thedivinecomedy.com

“Rips Me Up” Sometimes a Cloud Is Just a Cloud: Slow Growers, Sleeper Hits and Lost Songs (2001–2021) Merge www.mergerecords.com/ product/sometimes_a_cloud_is_ just_a_cloud

DETECTION

Cate le bon Adapting to the Vacuum Words by Ben Jardine | Photos by Koury Angelo

“I

t became a symbol to me of everything that I was marinating in, all this existential fear of this relationship with time that was just changing,” says Cate Le Bon, on her latest studio album, Pompeii. “Someone was just constantly fucking with the focus lens.” The story of how Pompeii came to be seems reflective of the artist’s struggle to create amidst a global pandemic: plans were made, flights were booked, studio space was found—only for plans to change on a dime, and for the creative process to become a lot more digital. For Le Bon, she’d just begun production on Pompeii early last year and was looking at recording in beautiful places like Chile and Norway. “I have always got these ideas of, you know, when I make a record, I want to go somewhere and I want to put myself in a vacuum and I don’t want to be disturbed,” the Welsh musician says. But the pandemic hit, she turned to her local surroundings, and found a terrace house in Cardiff, which she’d lived in 15 years ago. “A vacuum was dictated to us,” she laughs, “but not by our own design.” Le Bon goes on to share that making

Pompeii was a form of therapeutic escapism. With cities going into lockdown and people not even sure if the world would ever be the same, the tracks on Pompeii became the only thing Le Bon could control. So she settled into the house in Cardiff, “in a child’s bedroom with The Animals of Farthing Wood painted on the wall,” with her romantic

and artistic partner Tim Presley (of White Fence, who releases music with Le Bon as DRINKS) in the front room. Producer Samur Khouja and Le Bon would have 16-hour days, putting the pieces together. “It’s pretty intense energy,” Le Bon says, “when you’re working closely with someone who’s going through the

same thing.” The album cover was painted by Presley, and Le Bon describes its influence in the album process as if it was another member of the terrace house: “everything we did had to feel like it belonged to that painting.” Le Bon and Khouja would work underneath the painting (which depicts Le Bon dressed as a nun) and make artistic decisions that they felt would please the figure watching over them. Wanting to start from a different place, Le Bon began writing Pompeii’s nine tracks on bass guitar. “I was always waiting for someone to give me permission to pick [it up] and play,” she says. “And sometimes necessity is the mother of invention.” At the time, Le Bon was listening to Music for Saxofone and Bass Guitar, an album by Sam Gendel and Sam Wilkes, and was inspired by how bass can affect a song’s structure. “I just love the way bass can transform a song,” she explains. “If you’re gonna have a bass that is pretty much playing a solo for the whole song, then the guitar has to pipe down.” 11

DETECTION To this effect, Le Bon did change her guitar playing: allowing the space, the timing, and the pulse of Pompeii’s tracks to exist front-and-center. Opening track “Dirt on the Bed” is a pulsating meditation on silence itself; “Pompeii” is an ooze, reminiscent of its namesake; and over a charismatic bassline, album closer, “Wheel” raises “a glass in the season of ash.” As with any Le Bon release, the lyrics are poetic, mysterious. The album’s underlying message is deep and dark. Le Bon was in school when she first heard about the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, and she was so horrified by the history that she deemed it a Biblical tale. “There can’t possibly be statues of people trapped in their final gesture,” she remembers

“I just love the way bass can transform a song, If you’re gonna have a bass that is pretty much playing a solo for the whole song, then the guitar has to pipe down.”

Photographed in the Joshua Tree National Park, CA

thinking. But as she grew older, the stories rang more true. She felt torn between our desire to not repeat history and the resounding idea that life will go on. “Pompeii is such a horrific tragedy but it’s also just a thing that happened. You have to move on as humans, you can’t get caught up in all that stuff.” It’s in this dichotomy that Pompeii exists. It’s at once a powerful rumination on our own mortality, and a nod to what the natural world can do to us if we let ourselves forget its power.

DETECTION

Snail Mail

Parquet Courts Community Music

Balancing Intentionality with Intuition

Words by Ben Jardine

Words by Kyle Mullin

T “N

“It is a pretty loaded statement, but whether I deliberately juxtaposed it or not, I definitely had a feeling that I needed to sing that chorus gently,” Jordan says. She loves veering between vocal extremes, depending on what each song calls for, explaining that “there are some moments that are very from the chest on this new record. But ‘Light Blue’ is very sweet and well intentioned. It’s just a love song.” But Jordan is quick to add that “there was at least some intentionality there in that moment” of giving “Light Blue” its light touch. While the soft chorus was mostly an intuitive decision, Jordan says she is often “an intentional songwriter.” She’s certainly stricter during her editing process, saying: “That’s why there are so many of my songs that don’t make it on the records.” One Valentine song that Jordan particularly put through that wringer is “Forever (Sailing).” The synth splashed, melodramatic-yet-downcast track was the last one she wrote for the album, and it took her weeks in a North Carolina studio “pulling my hair out” to finally finish it. She says the loquacious chorus proved especially challenging, because: “Its lyrics were a different iteration of those syllables 18

so many different times before I finally landed on something that felt completely right. There are just so many words there!” Another of her writing quirks: a need for isolation. Despite touring with some of underground music’s biggest names such as Mac DeMarco and Thundercat after the smash success of her 2018 debut Lush, Jordan eventually grew frustrated. “I almost got nothing done the entire time I was on tour, as much as I tried all the time,” she says. That’s because solitary song-crafting is “part of the freaky magic.” Equally beneficial: a pure final product. “I don’t like eyes or ears on me when I’m fleshing out lyrics. I want to be completely uninfluenced by people around me—I don’t want a reaction that’s good or bad. I just want to be able to ask myself those questions, and resolve them myself, before going on to someone else.” And while she’s aware those steps are essential to her process, following them isn’t a surefire formula for Jordan. “I always feel confident to make decisions to finalize my songwriting, once I get going. But it’s funny how I’ll also feel mystified when I start up again. It can feel like a miracle that comes out of nowhere, like I can’t do it whenever I want. Instead, the inspiration just strikes me naturally.” On the upside, that’s not the only miraculous part of her music. Jordan says she “surprises myself sometimes” onstage. Once she begins touring her songs, she’ll often find herself thinking: “‘Oh now this carries more meaning for me, and I want to deliver it like this onstage from now on.’ That’s my favorite thing about performing songs—how they grow after they are recorded.”

“Sympathy for Life is about caring for your community,” says guitarist and co-vocalist, Austin Brown. “It’s about fostering a loving connection with this community and using that as a way to bring influence and to fight oppressive aspects of our society.” Not only is the album’s message about collaboration, but the album came about collaboratively too. The band came together for a series of improvised jams, 30 to 40 minutes in length, which they then cut down further and further, isolating the parts that resonated with them. “We would do the initial listen and make notes on the stuff we liked,” says fellow guitarist and co-vocalist, Andrew Savage. “And then listen again and make notes on the best of that and just kind of keep going down until we found a nice combination of interesting moments, and moments that make good components to collage into a song.” The band credits producer Rodaidh McDonald (The xx, Hot Chip, David Byrne), with being an instrumental part of the process. He would help them take these sprawling jams and, in-themoment, cut them, trim them, and polish them into gleaming album-length tracks. Was the process difficult? Not entirely, but it was a different approach for the band. “We weren’t precious about the process,” says Brown. “There was lots of stuff that didn’t get used, but I think the most exciting part of it was making those decisions in the moment.” They desired the different approach though, describing their last two albums (2018’s Wide Awake! and 2016’s Human Performance) as “melodic” and “individualistic.” Brown met with McDonald in LA after a DJing gig, well

before the pandemic began, to discuss different starting points for the next Parquet Courts record. The pair went through Brown’s record collection, found elements of tracks by artists (Tony Allen, Larry Heard, and Bobby Konders to name a few), isolated those elements, and created what Brown calls “vibe tracks.” These tracks served as inspiration for the band’s members during these jam sessions, with each member (including bassist Sean Yeaton and drummer Max Savage) listening to the tracks through headphones. The process was not made “with the intention of ending up with that sound,” says Brown, “but just the intention of coming from a different starting place. I think that it’s inevitable that we end up in the Parquet Courts world if it’s us that’s recording it, but bringing a different mindset from the start can influence the results.” The results are different, but just as Parquet Courts as their previous albums. While Wide Awake! was a raucous party, Sympathy for Life is more like the comedown. Party-goers wake up and start to reexamine the components of their lives, and the relationship with the world and those around them. With elements of dub, psychedelia, and ambience, the record shines like the more reserved, older sibling of Wide Awake!—but with just as much to say. Tracks such as “Marathon of Anger,” “Homo Sapien,” and “Application/Apparatus” all feature the trademark Parquet Courts philosophical lens. The lyrics are prophetic and profound, exploring topics such as the Black Lives Matter protests and our collective reliance on technology, and yet the instrumentation and tone of the tracks are wildly diverse. But, as Andrew Savage explains, the philosophical material isn’t really articulated before the creation process. “There’s a kind of psychic thing where you’re putting these ideas into a pot, four people bringing their own ideas, and the philosophy kind of comes out of that.”

Snail Mail photo by Tina Tyrell. Parquet Courts photo by Pooneh Ghana (Bottom to top: Sean Yeaton, A Savage, Max Savage, Austin Brown).

othing’s gonna stop me now,” Snail Mail sings on the chorus of “Light Blue,” one of many standout tracks on her latest album, Valentine. However the 22-year-old indie rocker—born Lindsey Jordan— doesn’t belt out that lyric with the same assuredness she brings to bear on Valentine’s more propulsive tracks.

he underlying thread of Parquet Courts’ latest studio album, Sympathy for Life, is a sense of unfettered community, of collaboration with those around you.

DETECTION

Courtney Barnett Bringing Down the Walls Words by Celine Teo-Blockey

Courtney Barnett photo by Mia Mala McDonald

grave moments and serious emotions, she realizes was another wall, a defense mechanism to detract away from things that matter. Things Take Time, Take Time, her recent third album, attempts to course correct. The songs are more melancholy, there’s less of an attempt to make us laugh. First single “Rae Street” is not crowded with clever double entendres or tonguein-cheek truisms, just the plaintive summation of her day spent looking out her new apartment window. She noticed the foliage changing as lockdown dragged on for Melbourne—which had the most extended COVID-19 lockdowns of any Australian city so far—and found comfort in that change. She wasn’t the hapless observer operating outside her own body as in her 2013 breakthrough single “Avant Gardener” or dispensing belated cutting rebukes to an online hater on “Nameless, Faceless,” instead the most standout line from “Rae Street” is about actively making change even if it’s just changing her sheets. When pressed if she still makes jokes to deflect from being honest, she replies “I probably still do it,” but in recognizing this as a failing of sorts she admits she hopes to “be better, or change it.” “Here’s The Thing” and “Before You Gotta Go” both have the laid-back guitar twang and reverb “I think sometimes with that time and distance drench of her fellow Lotta Sea Lice collaborator you can read something differently,” says the 34-year-old, on a morning Zoom call from Joshua and friend, Kurt Vile. More importantly, both see Tree, in the Californian dessert. “You can interpret her make an attempt at being lyrically straightforward. But it is the raw, bare bones simplicity of it so differently and I can kind of see through it… the pair of songs that bring the album to a close— some struggle and some pain and well-guarded “Splendour” and “Oh the Night”—that reveal the high walls that I had kind of put up around me.” true emotional heart of this record, and are worthy Even her humor, doled out expertly to undercut

iven the benefit of hindsight, Courtney Barnett can now see how guarded she was when she wrote her last solo album, 2018’s Tell Me How You Really Feel. Against a backdrop of cultural strife at home (the vote on same-sex marriage saw a rise in violence and hate speech) and overseas (peak Trump years), plus the ever encroaching tentacles of social media’s uglier side, Barnett seemed to lash out. “Nameless, Faceless” dealt with trolls and online misogyny, and the mere title of “I’m Not Your Mother, I’m Not Your Bitch” created the impression that we really knew what made her bristle. In revealing to us the disconnects she felt within herself, her friendships, her then “marriage” (for a long time, former partner Jen Cloher and Barnett both wore wedding bands but weren’t allowed to officially marry in Australia), and ironically with her fans as well—she was still connecting with us. It felt raw and personal.

testaments to her desire to bring down those walls with uncluttered truth telling. Of “Splendour,” which first came to her late at night in a hotel room, she says “it is this tiny slice of a song…the little underdog of the album,” and she loves it. After a decade of phenomenal success, constant touring, and opportunities to record with her musical heroes, Barnett’s focus had shifted to the small world outside the window of her apartment. Her relationship with Cloher had ended in 2018—though their professional partnership as co-founders of Milk! Records is still intact—and this was the first time that she was living on her own. Sonically, the new album feels more intimate. She wrote the songs with Warpaint drummer Stella Mozgawa, who played on Lotta Sea Lice. At the start of the pandemic, Mozgawa had given her tutorials on how to use a drum machine, and traded music with her. Eventually Barnett asked her to produce the album. The two picked up instruments as the recording process went along without calling on her regular bandmates, Dave Mudie and Andrew “Bones” Sloane. When asked how they felt about being left out, she replies: “They’re two of my best friends…I think they got it.” Having undergone a fair amount of change in her personal life at the time and beset with the uncertainty of a global pandemic or how to even put out and tour a new album, Barnett felt she had to just embrace the unpredictability. “I wanted to do the album in a different way,” she explains. “It was just, I guess, where my head was at…stepping outside that kind of comfort zone and trying to experiment a little bit,” she pauses, then smiles. “And I think it was good.” 19

DETECTION

ALT-J

Dreams and Details Words by Ben Jardine

room/Smiling at your phone.” Then there are the gripping and dark moments, like the “smell of burning cattle” hanging on “a westerly” wind direction from “Happier When You’re Gone”—inspired by a memory from Newman’s youth, when his family drove up the length of the UK during the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak, while farmers burned their bovine livestock. Upon first listen, The Dream feels just that: a dream. Interspersed throughout are audio recordings from friends, family members, wives, and roadies, which act as surreal punctuation for the 12 tracks. You don’t need to know that the voice saying “scum” on “Hard Drive Gold” is Unger-Hamilton’s mother. Instead, you graft your own friends and family, your own story, onto the tracks. Just further detail to push the fantastic nature of the songs forward. “I think our music has always had a dreamlike quality, whether that’s a good dream or a bad dream,” Unger-Hamilton explains. “‘U&ME’ is an example of a good dream, it’s the thing we’ve all been dreaming about for the last two years, which is like, going to a field, listening to music, and getting fucked up with your mates. And ‘Get Better,’ is a bad dream: it’s like the worst thing that can possibly happen in someone’s life. Or ‘Chicago,’ which is just a dream dream: lyrically it’s quite confusing—a sort of thing you’d dream about.” Like dreams, alt-J’s music is open to interpretation. Their lyrics are innocuously delivered, sometimes indecipherable, but the words and stories behind them can be dark and confrontational. It’s in this space, beneath Belushi and Bitcoin, that the band have found their niche. And it’s a niche that doesn’t surprise the band’s members. “There’s always been a sort of darkness to alt-J lyrics,” says Unger-Hamilton.

alt-J photo by Rosie Matheson (L to R: Joe Newman, Gus Unger-Hamilton, Thom Sonny Green).

music together.” Alt-J’s three members—Newman, UngerHamilton, and drummer Thom Sonny Green— rented a house in East London, which they turned into an alt-J shrine. Newman describes it as a “palace of reminders”—kitted out with alt-J tour posters and awards, the little house was the band’s first studio of their own. All throughout The Dream are those little ethereal details: snippets of pop culture references, self-referential nods to the band, sayings, and memories that form a, well, dreamlike composite. Sometimes these moments are funny, sometimes Joined by the band’s keyboardist and vocalist, they’re dark, but always they’re masked by Gus Unger-Hamilton, we talk about alt-J’s fourth Newman’s rhythmic delivery. album, The Dream, and all of the small details “When you’re writing a guitar riff,” he says, “you that make its songs so unique. A vague memory have to fill in the blanks with an assorted selection became a chorus, an image from a film became a throwaway line, and friends and family lent their of words that just fit the movement that you want voices to help round out the album’s tracks. There to hear. And then after a while, when you start are stories behind every lyric, and it becomes clear re-listening to what you’ve sung, you kind of get hooked on certain words.” that for alt-J, it’s cool to care about even the There’s the story in “Hard Drive Gold,” about slightest of details. a teenager who becomes a millionaire by The aforementioned Telecaster features in the “trading that crypto.” There’s the line “packed down song “U&ME,” The Dream’s first single. So too a kilo” on “The Actor” (about John Belushi’s death does the image of a strutting Stellen Skarsgård. by speedball, told from the perspective of an Alt-J have made this level of minute observation a defining characteristic, and it makes their songs aspiring actor), which arose while Newman was playing around with the guitar. “I’ve been raised on both effortlessly cool and deeply poetic. the American Hollywood standard of gunfights, After 2017’s RELAXER and a world tour that wrapped in 2018, the band took 2019 off. Life was violence, opportunity, drugs—30% of Hollywood’s in full swing: band members were getting married, film output,” Newman explains. “I thought that song was going to be about a gunfight at a party, and moving house, adopting cats, and the trio wanted then it just really developed into something else.” time away from the pressures of writing and Elsewhere, there are deeply moving moments, recording. “I think we were quite fatigued when we were making that album,” says Unger-Hamilton, of such as the examination of bereavement on “Get Better,” encapsulated by the gut-wrenching line RELAXER. “We came back into the studio in “I still pretend/You’re only out of sight in another January 2020 with a renewed appetite to make

oe Newman from alt-J grins as he shows me a candy tangerine Fender Telecaster. “It looks left-handed but it’s not,” he says over a Zoom call. “It’s just that the video is reversed.” This is a small detail, but an important one. Newman plays guitar and sings lead vocals for the British three-piece. Over Britain’s lockdown he picked up a few guitars, which are now displayed in his “man cave.”

DETECTION

CAT POWER A Little Bit of Magic Words by Jake Uitti

“Being a little kid with my grandmother,” says Marshall, “she would sing all these old songs. So, it makes sense, because since I was a little girl, I’ve been singing these songs. I’m the granddaughter of a time when that’s all they used to do. Back in the day with Gershwin, they all did that. Everybody did everybody’s songs.” 22

Marshall grew up in the South. She was born in Atlanta and spent her formative years in The Big Peach City. She learned about religion from a young age, both its powers of connecting a community and creating greed. She was raised by her grandmother until she was about five years old. Her grandmother, in fact, passed away in late 2019 just before the COVID-19 pandemic officially hit the United States. Like religion, Marshall knew the healing benefits of music before she learned of the avarice that can also attach to it. There she was, humming with her grandmother, a figure for Marshall much like her best friend. “When I think of music,” Marshall says, “I think of country music or old gospel stuff because [my grandmother] was Southern Baptist. I think of old timey songs and her cooking, just singing with her and learning to whistle with her and learning to snap.” For much of her life, Marshall believed she’d taken on the identity of a musician from her father and stepfather, both of whom were songwriters and guitar players. But eventually Marshall began to realize her musical roots went even deeper. “I realized once she was gone,” Marshall says of her grandmother, “that it was actually her who taught me how to sing, taught me how much love and joy there is in singing.” It’s easy to hear the joy in Marshall’s voice as she sings in her own signature style on her new 12-track Covers album. The record, which features songs by Frank Ocean, The Pogues, Billie Holiday, and others is thick and pointed. It’s the mark of an expert dipping into others’ expertise. On “Pa Pa Power,” a song by rock duo Dead Man’s Bones (co-founded by actor Ryan Gosling), Marshall’s voice punches and breaks like the body of a veteran prize fighter. “It’s just obvious that I would want to do other

songs besides my own,” Marshall says. “Because I love to sing.” During her career, Marshall has both worked with some of the biggest names on the planet and earned countless fans. Somehow, though, she maintains a coveted sense of anonymity that fellow collaborators like Yoko Ono, Eddie Vedder, and Dave Grohl do not similarly enjoy. Her work, too, has been covered by a number of artists, including quite recently by Dave Gahan of the famed band, Depeche Mode. “I could never imagine in a million fucking years that the guy from Depeche Mode would cover my song,” Marshall says, happily. In fact, it’s that type of reworking and reintroducing songs that she loves so dearly and personally. For Marshall, it’s a real joy in a time when she can easily drift mentally off to global disasters like rampant cancer, polluted oceans, police killings, and political troubles in countries like Afghanistan, to name a few. After all, Marshall says that she knows nothing is certain—she tells her son this often, she says—but in each moment, we are faced with the chance to make a choice. With each, we learn another aspect to life’s great lesson. No one knows what they’re doing here, completely. Yet, we keep trying. The key, she says, is to work at not what is easy, but what is best. That’s where the joy of fulfillment comes from, which is perhaps all the compass that Marshall can trust. “It’s almost like songs, to me, are a mirror,” Marshall says. “They illuminate. I like the way they illuminate parts of me that need to be seen. And you can share that!... Music can heal. It might not last for long, or it might last the rest of your life. And every time you put on that fucking song, you will be revealed and revived.”

Cat Power photo by Mario Sorrenti.

ne note twirled out from singer Cat Power’s tongue and it’s clear: the artist is a genre unto herself. When the songwriter, also known as Chan Marshall, offers her voice in melody, it’s like a homemade amalgamation of different woods: birch, cedar, maple, applewood (folk, rock, blues, bluegrass), all fused and nailed together to create some echoing birdhouse tone that’s completely singular. It’s a mysticalgoing-on-mythical combination that many in Marshall’s wake have attempted to mimic or adapt. But that’s the thing with singularity, there’s but one, simply by definition. And so Marshall strides and stumbles through life knowing this, whether or not she admits it to herself out loud, knowing she’s a oneof-one, which must be both paradise and fraught. All the while still, Marshall continues to release glorious new work, both original and cover albums, applying her unique lens overtop each composition. Marshall’s latest offering, Covers, is a new record of just that, with a release date a mere week before her 50th birthday.

DETECTION

TEARS FOR FEARS Mourning Earnestly, Aging Gracefully Words by Kyle Mullin

Tears for Fears photo by Frank Ockenfels (L to R: Curt Smith, Roland Orzabal).

on’t call them a pop band. Yes, Tears for Fears released some of the biggest chart-toppers of the ’80s, from “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” to “Shout.” But main songwriter and vocalist Roland Orzabal and bassist and co-songwriter Curt Smith say they are operating in a far different genre now with their latest album, The Tipping Point, their first in 17 years.

“We are at our best when Curt and I are driving the car together,” says Orzabal of their writing approach. Sonically, meanwhile, they realized their goal of competing with the biggest legacy rock acts, rather than chasing trends. Audience members at a listening event in a London theater put it best, in Smith’s view, when they told him it sounded like a “classic Tears for Fears album.” True to their weighty themed, psychology inspired early hits, The Tipping Point features songs such as the title track. Orzabal began writing it when his late wife and childhood sweetheart Caroline “was becoming more and more ill. To the point of a ghost of “It’s like getting blood out of a stone, making a Tears for Fears record,” Orzabal says via Zoom. But her former self, to quote the cliché that I sang about in the song. It got to a point where you begin questioning when he looks at contemporaries that churn out when you should let this person go.” album after album to indifferent receptions, he asks Married at 21 after meeting at 14, he and himself: “If you were an act that was image-based in Caroline would often meet up with Smith at Snow the ’80s, did videos on yachts, and you make another record when you’re 60—what are you trying Hill Flats in their native Bath, England and drink cider. Their drink of choice became wine as adults, but to say? Because there are kids who do it far, far Caroline’s daily habit led to liver disease, better. Pop belongs to youth.” something Orzabal tries to raise more awareness During an early round of “speed dating” with about now. For Smith, it was “difficult watching various collaborators for The Tipping Point, Orzabal and Smith hit snag after snag. Smith played some of someone you’re close to go through that,” and led to those tracks for his daughter, who is also a musician. a break in recording “because us in the studio He recalls her saying: “‘So many people now do that butting heads wasn’t doing either of us any good.” Working on the song’s lyrics proved to be a better. Why are you doing that?’ And she was right. “combination of detachment and feeling. The dichotomy I didn’t like it, and began to understand why: it’s me in the lyrics and chorus captures the complexity that trying to be something else. Which is never good.” goes on in those moments,” says Orzabal. He also When Orzabal and Smith began communicating poured his grief into “Please Be Happy,” an even more deeply, and leaning on the work of co-producer and longtime touring member Charlton Pettus, the new more bittersweet song because it’s about seeing Caroline “in the depths of depression. And Curt sings songs developed underlying themes and ebbs and flows that suited a Tears for Fears album, rather than the it beautifully.” Another album highlight: “Rivers of Mercy,” which scattered bits and pieces they’d be tinkering with.

Orzabal says is about “being baptized, surrendering, healing, and letting go,” all juxtaposed with turning on the news to see the racially charged upheaval engulfing America in the summer of 2020. He adds: “It’s about the contrast between your instinctive desire for peace and the rage that’s going on in world.” Orzabal is eager to perform their new songs, many of which are “crazy up-tempo.” Chalk that sound up, in part, to the time Tears for Fears spent at festivals in recent years, sharing bills with rollicking hip-hop and pop acts. Fans will also be sure to enjoy how the band’s sets start these days: with a cover version of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by popstar Lorde playing over the speakers, until Orzabal, Smith, and co. take to the stage and perform the original. They appreciate new takes on their biggest hits, as long as those interpretations aren’t too duly faithful and instead render the song anew, says Smith. The most famous cover of a Tears for Fears’ song is arguably Michael Andrews and Gary Jules’ comparatively downcast take on “Mad World” for the cult classic Donnie Darko. Orzabal recalls signing off on the cover for the movie as a favor to a friend, without thinking much of it. Long after the cover had become a hit, Orzabal’s son sang along to it in their kitchen one morning, and when he reached the lyrics about “children waiting…happy birthday” Orzabal’s “jaw dropped.” That’s because: “I’m a parent, I wrote that as an adolescent and here’s my son, singing it to me.” Orzabel adds that Tears for Fears have not just been lucky to “generate hits, but megahits.” “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” for instance, has reached one billion views on YouTube. “We never could’ve imagined that when we were kids,” Orzabal says, which makes Smith agree and add: “We never anticipated the longevity of the music.” 23

The War on Drugs photo by Shawn Brackbill (L to R: Adam Granduciel, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Anthony LaMarca, Dave Hartley, Jon Natchez).

DETECTION

THE WAR ON DRUGS True Fiction Words by Matt Fink

n the spring of 2018, Adam Granduciel was experiencing one of those rare moments when a person’s professional and personal lives both reach their pinnacle. Having completed a grueling tour with 2017’s A Deeper Understanding, the band’s fourth release that would win a Grammy for Best Rock Album and sell over 200,000 copies, he had somehow cracked the code of making classic rock cool for indie kids. Preparing for the arrival of his first child—a son he’d name after one of his heroes, Bruce Springsteen—he approached his 40th birthday as the first songwriter in a generation to stake out new territory within the Dylan-Springsteen-Petty tradition. But with the tours done and over two years having passed since he last wrote a song, he started to feel his next creative move looming. “I was like, ‘I don’t really think that in the spirit of not doing the same thing, this War on Drugs record should be me alone at a piano,’” Granduciel says with a laugh. “No one wants to hear that. God forbid there was a string section involved. This band, these records, it’s almost like this illusion of this fictional band. The six of us are not in the room making all of these songs together. But it’s this live band—the six of us—that you know.” That tension—a solitary auteur increasingly relying on his thoroughly road-tested fictional band to execute his creative vision—has served Granduciel well. By March of 2018, he was ready to workshop some of the tracks that would become the band’s fifth studio release, I Don’t Live Here Anymore, with multi-instrumentalist Dave Hartley and bassist Anthony LeMarca in Upstate New

York. His goal was straightforward if a bit vague: he wanted to make a better, more concise record. That ethos was quickly put to the test. Early versions of the shimmering “Change” and stormy mid-tempo ballad “I Don’t Wanna Wait” emerged as album building blocks, while a 30-minute jam was soon demoted from a potential album centerpiece to off the album entirely. The changes were incremental but noticeable. What would have been six-minute songs on previous albums were now trimmed to five-minute songs, with nothing much lost in the arrangements. Some changes are more produced than others, however. “Victim” piles up synthesizers and drum machine hooks into an electro-pop anthem that tweaks their formula ever so slightly. The exact opposite approach dominates on the threadbare acoustic balladry of “Rings Around My Father’s Eyes” and the aching Americana of “Living Proof.” Album closer, “Occasional Rain”—a track forgotten for two years before Granduciel discovered it in one of his DropBox accounts—would fit on any War on Drugs records. “I don’t really want to reinvent the wheel too much for this band until it feels natural [to do so],” Granduciel explains. “Hopefully the difference between records four and five and the difference between records four and ten are noticeable. Hopefully there is a common thread between each thing that we do.” Despite the fact that he shares writing credits on four tracks on I Don’t Live Here Anymore, The War on Drugs remains as much an idea as it is a traditional rock band, with Granduciel largely piecing together albums out of recorded instrumental parts and the full band mainly existing in live settings. Though most of the tracks were already written before the pandemic, the enforced isolation actually fit well within their usual creative process, Granduciel says.

Instead of his band members (with multiinstrumentalist Robbie Bennett, drummer Charlie Hall, and saxophonist Jon Natchez filling out the lineup) flying out to Los Angeles to lay down an instrumental part, they now could take their time in their home studios, collecting and refining their ideas without the pressure of deadlines hanging over them. Track-by-track, the hooks are just a little bit sharper, the arrangements just a little bit more precise, the performances a little bit more focused. While Granduciel has no difficulty recounting the minutia of every decision made in his songwriting, he’s far less clear on big picture questions. For one, why is his band successful in an era when conventional guitar rock bands—especially those playing heart-on-sleeve heartland rock—are largely seen as dad-rock relics? “I know it sounds like I should have figured this out,” he says. “I’ve been asked about it enough that it’s like ‘Don’t you have an answer?’ But I feel like if I even tried to think about it, I’d lose…” he says, trailing off as if even completing that sentence is too risky. “I never consider myself anything but lucky in every way,” he concludes, before offering a brief overview of the band’s history. All of their growth has been by necessity, he says, recounting how the band grew from a few friends who expected to go back to their day jobs once touring was over into a six-piece ensemble that was needed to play the more expansive arrangements of 2014’s Lost in the Dream. Then, as if by some law of attraction, the larger band filled larger and larger venues for larger and larger audiences. Granduciel’s fictional band has become very real. “We take it very seriously, and we love playing together and existing together on the stage and on the road,” Granduciel says. “And you can tell that these six guys are really invested in these songs, and we’re very fortunate the people care. It’s the dream.” 25

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LET'S EAT

GRANDMA Love, Loss, and Reconnecting Words by Andy Von Pip | Photos by James Loveday

wo Ribbons, the third album from British duo Let’s Eat Grandma and the follow-up to 2018’s acclaimed I’m All Ears, is a beautifully honest body of work that explores themes of love, loss, and friendship, as well as reconnection and hope. It also reflects on an incredibly emotionally challenging period in the lives of Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton as they attempted to reconnect and figure out how to move forward as artists whilst protecting their friendship. In 2019, Hollingworth’s boyfriend, the talented up and coming musician Billy Clayton, tragically died, aged just 22, after suffering from a rare form of bone cancer. Hollingworth was understandably devastated and after playing Coachella in honor of Clayton, Let’s Eat Grandma was put on the backburner. “I was grieving and my communication with Rosa got lost along the way,” explains Hollingworth. “I was suffering from a kind of wordless grief which I found very isolating. I found it really difficult to express how I felt.” Walton adds her perspective: “At that stage, the band was obviously secondary. Of course, it’s a hugely important factor in our lives, but we’ve known each other since we were four and our friendship runs much deeper.” In time Hollingworth and Walton slowly began working on songs, and it soon became an almost therapeutic way

of communicating with each other. “It was weird,” explains Walton, “for one, we’ve never really written separately before and also these songs are so personal, and yet at the time putting our feelings to music and ultimately out into the world felt less daunting than actually having a conversation with each other. It was a really confusing time because we’d always been able to read each other so well in the past and now we were like, ‘Why can’t we figure this one out?’” A key factor was giving each other time and space. “At times we were probably both pushing so hard to try and make our relationship work that we kind of made it worse by being in each other’s faces,” Hollingworth explains. Once they both accepted that they had changed as people and let go of their old way of working, they were able to move forward. “Our friendship and working on the band has always been based on our respect and love for each other,” Hollingworth continues. “We both are such problem solvers when it comes to relationships, but we also over-think things. We had to accept that as we grew up our relationship had changed, which I think is actually healthy, because above everything else we are just best mates. Which maybe some people forget?” And all these experiences coalesced to make Two Ribbons such a heartfelt album informed by their relationships and an acceptance that not everything has an easy fix. “The grieving process and indeed our relationships with other people can be hugely complicated,” reflects Hollingworth. “Whilst I was grieving I found it very hard to feel part of life when life just carries on as normal around you. I think that’s reflected in 27

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Rosa Walton

one of my lines [on ‘Two Ribbons’]—‘bound to two worlds I can’t feel a part of’—which sums up that sense of trying to communicate with somebody who is no longer here and with the people who are.” Walton agrees and adds, “When Jenny wrote the lyric, ‘Like two ribbons, still woven although we are fraying,’ it really did encapsulate our own relationship as well as Jenny and Billy’s and some of my own romantic relationships.” The album is an incredibly moving affair. “Watching You Go,” for example—which is “definitely about my relationship with Billy,” nods Hollingworth—gives her grief a voice. The lyrics on the sublime “Insect Loop” tackle the dynamic between Hollingworth and Walton as they worked through how to let go of the relationship they once had and embrace the one they now have. Yet even in their darkest moments they still find humor. On “Happy New Year” they ask, “Do you think if we’d have been together we’d be breaking up?/I said ‘I’d want the synth.’” “The synth is our baby, we’ve had it for years,” Walton laughs. “I was imagining a scenario wherein maybe the synth could have a week with Jenny and maybe the weekends with me. I think that was one of the last lines to go on that song, but humor is a coping mechanism.” Hollingworth laughingly agrees. “There is a level of ridiculousness to it! I mean we both do laugh at things that are a bit fucked up.” Let’s Eat Grandma have always worked on the production side of their music, having both studied it at college. “At the start of the process [of this 32

Jenny Hollingworth

“We had to accept that as we grew up our relationship had changed, which I think is actually healthy, because above everything else we are just best mates.” – Jenny Hollingworth

album] I still wasn’t quite in the right headspace to write,” concedes Hollingworth, “so Rosa spent a lot of time honing her production skills. She’s really excellent at focusing on something and committing herself to it. We wanted the production to be almost like a color palette in the sense that certain sounds bring different emotional colours to the record.” Walton concurs. “The production is very much linked to how I write,” she says. “For example, on ‘Hall of Mirrors’ the production is used to accentuate the lyrics, the fluttering arpeggiators are used to represent emotion like that heart-fluttering

feeling or by adding delay to represent the reflections in the mirrors.” Two Ribbons sees the duo experimenting with a diverse range of instrumentation, mixing analogue synths with digital production as they collaborated with David Wrench, the primary producer of I’m All Ears. It’s an album that has a natural ebb and flow and skilfully mixes sparkling electronic dance floor fillers with a gentler acoustic guitar led sound. The more reflective moments were partly inspired by Hollingworth seeking solace in nature. “I could see the cycle of things,” she explains, “things being born and dying and the connection between it all.” It’s a bold album that demonstrates how much they have progressed as artists since their experimental debut album, 2016’s I, Gemini. “I suppose there was an element of us taking the piss a little bit,” Walton says of their debut, “but we were just having fun.” “Our first album was a bit weird and I can almost understand why some people didn’t like it,” laughs Hollingworth. “In retrospect it probably makes more sense if you listen to our other albums first.” Even though their relationship has changed over the years, both musicians feel this has had a positive impact on the musical evolution of Let’s Eat Grandma. “I think it’s helped us develop and think outside the box,” says Hollingworth, “and despite the ups and downs and the challenges life throws at us I do think we’ve produced something creatively satisfying, which in turn has helped us work through our own issues.”

DOMINO RECORDING COMPANY 2021 DOMINOMUSIC.COM

CLINIC Fantasy Island

RICHARD DAWSON & CIRCLE Henki

FRÀNÇOIS & THE ATLAS MOUNTAINS Banane Bleu

HARD FEELINGS Hard Feelings

JON HOPKINS Music For Psychedelic Therapy

SAM MEHRAN Cold Brew

MIDDLE KIDS Today We’re The Greatest

PORCHES All Day Gentle Hold !

HAYDEN THORPE Moondust For My Diamond

TIRZAH Colourgrade

VILLAGERS Fever Dreams

MATTHEW E. WHITE K Bay

JAMES YORKSTON AND THE SECOND HAND ORCHESTRA The Wide, Wide River

PLEASED TO MEET YOU

MAGDALENA BAY

aaaaasaaass From Prog to Pop aaaaasaaass Words by Kyle Mullin | Photos by Wendy Lynch Redfern

o paraphrase a popular meme: find someone who looks at you the way ascending synth pop duo Magdalena Bay gaze, doe-eyed-ly, at each other.

While answering questions about their breakthrough debut album, Mercurial World (released in October by Luminelle), high school sweethearts Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin’s chemistry is as vividly colorful as their synth washed songs and dazzling DIY videos. A meme analogy is fitting given the pair’s TikTok music video savvy. While those visuals for their recent singles such as “Hysterical Us” and “Chaeri” find them travelling in a magical mini-van and floating down a rainbow river, or starring in grainy infomercials (respectively), producer Lewin cites an earlier clip for when things clicked for the Los Angeles-based duo. In 2019 their VHS-shot, heart and butterfly logo laden video for “Only If You Want It” captured the sensibility of a diamond in the rough that was a 1990s video store bargain bin. “After some trial and error, we figured out where aesthetically we wanted to live. And the sense of humor that we were able to put across. So that was a big turning point,” says Lewin. And while singer Tenenbaum patiently nods in agreement, all but batting her eyes at Lewin as he finishes his answer, she quickly retorts: “That’s true. But I like the TikTok where I make a mean rap about you.” “That’s a good one,” Lewin grins. “Because it’s cruel!” “Just because it helped us realize we could be funny,” Tenenbaum says. “We didn’t identify as visual artists nine years ago. But now it’s a big part of what we do.” Their former selves wouldn’t only be surprised by their penchant for flashy video-making. Tenenbaum and Lewin started off as members of a prog-rock five-piece called Tabula Rosa in high school in their native North Miami, Florida. Their shift to pop started, says Lewin, as a lark because it was the “antithesis of what I enjoyed listening to at the time. Only when we started writing it did we realize it’s cool, and that there are subtle intricacies...” “And challenges,” says Tenenbaum, seamlessly finishing his sentence.

“And I didn’t know those complexities existed in pop,” Lewin adds. For Tenenbaum, the conciseness and precision required for pop songs proved deeply engaging. She equally enjoyed seeing Lewin eagerly learn how to produce, mix, and master, while he admired the strides she made as a singer. Their musical palates also evolved, from developing a taste for left of center pop acts like Charlie XCX that overlapped with some of their loftier early sensibilities, to unabashedly fanning over mainstream mainstays like Madonna, Britney Spears, and Gwen Stefani. As Tenenbaum puts it, those megastars’ radio smashes were “masterful, and we just didn’t have the ears for them back when we shunned them.” She adds that, in their current pop-ified writing process, “there’s restraint, and not necessarily wanting to be appealing to a lot of people, but less self-indulgent. Less obscure…” “More direct,” Lewin finishes Tenenbaum’s sentence. He adds: “You can’t overlap too many ideas at once or it’ll get jumbled. So it’s about figuring out the core musical idea you want to get across and working at that.” So yes, they’ve pared down their earlier elaborate instincts on a musical level. But their videos have proven a new haven for (winking) grandiosity. They knew videos would be a necessity for exposure in the current market but, as they began making them, Lewin says “we quickly realized we liked it and it was a good way to put our personalities across.” But despite the fever-dream, anything-goes motif of their clips, Magdalena Bay creates them within confines as inspiring as their restrained pop songs. As Lewin puts it: “We had no experience with film. So shooting on VHS was easy for us to make it look good. Bad-good. Because it’s hard to make a big production video without a budget. Or knowledge!” Despite his modesty, many fans would argue Magdalena Bay’s videos are actually good-good. Prime reasons: their use of retro low-grade graphics and transitions (especially in their 2019 clip

“Money Lover”), disposable costumes and props (best utilized in their more recent “Hysterical Us” video), and by turns earnest yet ironic tones. Straddling such extremes might seem untenable, but they work for Magdalena Bay’s blossoming following and for music critics that increasingly heap on praise. Reaching this forefront as cheeky TikTok auteurs and heart-ontheir-sleeve art-pop songsmiths certainly didn’t seem like a given when they formed the duo, but Tenenbaum and Lewin are happy to have arrived. “We just learned to make pop music as we were doing it,” Lewin says. “It wasn’t like we started and said, ‘Oh my God! We’re so good at this. It’s what we’re meant for.’ It was more like trying things out slowly, until we found what works for us.” Says Tenenbaum: “It was doing a lot of ‘This is bad, this is bad. This is better’ until it worked.”

L to R: Matthew Lewin and Mica Tenenbaum. 35

PLEASED TO MEET YOU

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Guided By Song aaaaa

Character Studies Words by Dom Gourlay

Words by Dom Gourlay

ormed nearly five years ago by vocalist Joe Evans and guitarist Tom Sharkett after playing in various bands together beforehand, Manchester-via-Leeds collective W.H. Lung are the sound of the future dressed as now.

Having released their debut single, “Inspiration!/Nothing Is,” in 2017, their first album, Incidental Music, followed two years later. It was a brooding masterpiece of shape-shifting sonics that owed as much of its inspiration to bands like Spacemen 3 and Stereolab as it did to LCD Soundsystem and Sun Ra. It was one of the finest debuts of 2019, with the next 12 months seemingly poised to be a launch-pad for the band’s incendiary live shows too. However, the pandemic struck, so W.H. Lung spent the ensuing lockdowns writing, writing, and writing even more. “If you’re a band that writes music by being in a room together it must have been a difficult period, especially trying to find an energy and a focus,” says Evans. “But we discovered that solitude helped us. Even having some time away from each other. The communication that songwriting allows, freed up some real creative energy.” With an array of songs at their disposal and a range of new ideas to boot, second long player Vanities gradually emerged while the band—almost by accident— expanded itself to a five-piece courtesy of bass player and multiinstrumentalist Chris Mulligan, alongside keyboardist and vocalist Hannah Peace, and drummer Alex Mercer-Main, both of whom also play in Leeds-based experimental outfit Team Picture. Peace already played keyboards in the live band and was thus a natural to join the band fulltime. “She also has an 38

YARD ACT aaaaa aaaaa

incredible voice,” Evans gushes. “So, if we ever needed any thickening of a chorus, we’d bring Hannah in and she can pick out any harmonies that you’d set your heart on.” At first the band were just messing around and had no intentions of creating a new album. “Tom would just pass me a song and I’d play around with it for a bit,” Evans says. “He was starting to write music more in line with the music he was enjoying. It was a very fertile period of creative activity.” As the first lockdown moved from summer to fall, Vanities began to take shape. But instead of releasing an album right away, they kept pushing and refining to make it the best they could. “We set a higher bar because we knew we’d stumbled upon a sound that was reflective of a real, authentic following of intuition for us as songwriters,” says Evans. Leeds-based producer Matt Peel (known for his work with Eagulls, among others) produced both Incidental Music and Vanities. His advice to W.H. Lung was to write as many songs as possible early in their career, to give them a good foundation. “There’s a risk of getting wrapped up in everything that surrounds making music when you’re a new band,” explains Evans. “But you discover who you are, and what will eventually surround you, by writing loads of songs. You have to trust that your sound—whatever you find it to be— will guide you, by those songs.”

musing characters populate some of the songs of Leeds, England post-punk four-piece Yard Act, including those on their debut album, The Overload. Midway through the album’s title track, frontman and wordsmith James Smith sings from the perspective of Graham, who dispenses unwelcome advice about how they’d be “better off kicking that dickhead singer you’ve got in out the band” and should stick to covers and avoid political lyrics, especially if they want to perform at a pub called The Grand run by a landlord named Fat Andy. Earlier non-album single “Fixer Upper” features Graham again, as he refurbishes a house and apologizes to his new neighbors about all the commotion. “The bloody builders are refusing to finish the job until I pay ‘em,” Smith sings. “But I told ‘em, no one pulls a fast one on Graham.” Smith confirms that many of his characters are based on real people. “There was a Fat Paul and a Small Paul, who were two blokes from the pub in the village I grew up in,” he says. “There’s a lot more to come from Fat Andy.” Smith reveals he’s written a novella called Car Boot Man that Fat Andy features quite heavily in. Graham and Fat Andy are “both amalgamations of different people that are basically all insecure men.” “There are slithers of me in there as well,” Smith continues. “Poor Graham’s just frightened really. I’ve decided that the Graham in ‘Fixer Upper’ is very different to the Graham in ‘The Overload,’ and I kind of like the extremities of Graham’s prejudice or beliefs can fluctuate depending on the scenario. He could be quite a sinister man or a bit of an idiot from the past. If I didn’t know them, I wouldn’t write it. I wouldn’t cast judgment on something unless I felt I knew it inside out.” This has led to some confusion from listeners. “Well, a lot of people do seem to think I’m called Graham, which concerns me!” Smith laughs. Yard Act also features Ryan Needham (vocals, bass), Sam Shipstone (guitars), and Jay Russell (drums). “Me and Ryan started making demos around September 2019 when he moved into my spare room

for a few months, in-between houses. We’d been threatening to do it for years,” Smith says of the band’s origins. Debut single “The Trapper’s Pelts” suggested their irreverent take on postpunk via socially aware, character-based commentaries would dominate the musical landscape over the coming months, and those predictions weren’t wrong. Essentially a Leeds supergroup, Yard Act’s members are present and former players from the likes of Hookworms, Komakino, Cruel World, Post War Glamour Girls, and Menace Beach. Smith acknowledges late 1970s punk legend Ian Dury (of Ian Dury and the Blockheads) as a clear influence. “I’ve always loved his wordplay, because there’s something about the humor in it.” But beyond the irreverence, The Overload also references what’s happening in the UK right now under Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, especially on the song “Payday.” While Smith says he tries to “refrain from being overtly political” with his songwriting, he also admits: “I think it’s inevitable that you can’t not mention the austerity and the lies of what’s happened with Brexit, because it’s formed so much of the state of this country’s mindset. It’s shaped the day to day lives of so many people, so it drops into there. But at its core I’m still trying to document people over politics, if that makes sense. I also don’t think you can escape it in this day and age if you’re going to write a socially documented record in 2021 or 2022. I don’t think you can ignore the political landscape of the country.”

W.H. Lung photo by Adrian Davies (L to R: Hannah Peace, Joe Evans, Alex Mercer-Main, Tom Sharkett, Chris Mulligan). Yard Act photo by James Brown (L to R: Ryan Needham, Jay Russell, James Smith, Sam Shjipstone).

W.H. LUNG

PLEASED TO MEET YOU

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WET LEG

Wet Dreams with Dry Humor aaaaaaass Words by Andy Von Pip

Wet Leg photo by Hollie Fernando (L to R: Rhian Teasdale, Hester Chambers).

et Leg, seemingly out of nowhere, gatecrashed 2021 when their hypnotic debut single, “Chaise Longue” (which at the time of writing has over four million streams), became a cult underground smash. The follow-up, the equally enigmatic “Wet Dream,” consolidated Wet Leg’s position as one of the most exciting new bands to emerge from the UK in recent years.

Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers, who both hail from The Isle of Wight, dreamt up the idea for Wet Leg after an idyllic summer spent at music festivals. Teasdale, who previously performed ethereal folk-tinged music, takes up the story. “Those festivals gave us the idea of what we wanted to do musically and also what we didn’t want to do,” she says. “A lot of our friends were in bands and you could see them taking it really seriously because they wanted it so, so much. But that can often take all the fun out of it. I decided to stop doing solo work because I simply wasn’t enjoying it. But when so much of your identity is entangled with this thing you’ve been doing I didn’t quite feel ready to give up music completely. I wanted to start something with Hester that was fun. And so we vowed never to take ourselves as seriously as some people we could mention.” Wet Leg’s tongue in cheek wit was firmly on display on “Chaise Longue.” Fittingly the track was inspired by Chambers’ grandfather’s chaise longue. “Rhian actually wrote all the lyrics to ‘Chaise Longue’ sitting on the chaise longue,” explains Chambers. They have both been completely blown away by how the song has resonated with people. “It’s been a lovely surprise,” enthuses Chambers. “It’s also been bizarre,” laughs Teasdale. “It was probably even weirder as it blew up just as lockdown was lifting. There had been nice things written on the internet but it didn’t become tangible until we played the Latitude festival and the tent was packed!” Chambers agrees: “Initially we wondered if anybody would turn up? Would it just be one man and his Wellies?” It was also the first time Wet Leg had played together with their current live line-up featuring fellow Isle of Wight musicians Ellis Durand, Henry Holmes, and Josh Mobaraki. “It was when people started singing the lyrics back,” Teasdale explains with a degree of incredulity, “that I just looked over at Hester and thought, ‘This is completely mad!’” Since then Wet Leg has bagged high profile support slots playing much bigger venues than they may have anticipated. “I suppose there’s an element of being thrown in at the deep end but it’s a very cushy deep end,” Teasdale admits. “We were so lucky to get them and everybody was lovely, which I can imagine isn’t always the case. We’d only played four gigs before we signed to Domino so the

size of the venue didn’t matter at this stage because any size gig would be scary!” During lockdown Wet Leg had plenty of time to shoot and edit a video to accompany “Chaise Longue,” which introduced a very Wet Leg visual aesthetic and is full of tongue in cheek energy featuring Chambers and Teasdale dressed like escapees from M. Night Shyamalan’s much underrated 2004 movie, The Village. “That’s a great movie and I do like my garments,” says Teasdale laughing and affecting an uncannily accurate Somerset accent. But now the band are so busy they have had to give over some creative control. Teasdale admits that it was difficult to relinquish that oversight on their follow up video for “Wet Dream,” which has them dressed up again whilst wearing fake lobster claws (“There’s no hidden message with the claws,” laughs Teasdale, “we had them lying around and we thought it would be fun to use them”). “I felt terrible when we got the first edit back, because people had obviously worked hard on it, but it just wasn’t right. Letting go of that side of things is hard, however...” Teasdale says, before pausing and laughing, “we didn’t actually let go, they probably wished we had! I still plan to be involved on the video side as much as possible as it can be just as important as the music.” Given the movie references (Buffalo 66 is mentioned on “Wet Dream” and “Chaise Longue” lifts lines from Mean Girls), you might think that Teasdale and Chambers are huge cinephiles. “We’re not really movie buffs,” admits Teasdale, “but we do religiously watch Mean Girls on repeat, Peep Show on repeat, Buffy The Vampire Slayer and X Files on repeat, oh and Lord of the Rings on repeat— because that’s all you need, isn’t it?” Teasdale’s reaction to the acclaim ranges from delight to baffled amusement but she remains endearingly down to earth. “Maybe we could do with lifting our feet off the ground a little bit more!” she laughs. “I can’t believe we are going to America! Who are these people buying our tickets? It’s amazing.” With a self-titled debut album then rumored to be scheduled for spring 2022 (“that is indeed the rumor,” Teasdale laughs, “which I can neither confirm nor deny”), but since confirmed for an April release, Wet Leg’s beguiling blend of post-punk, driving guitars, surreal humor, and acerbic put downs have certainly struck a chord with music fans. It seems their ascent has only just begun. 39

PLEASED TO MEET YOU

GEESE

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Preflight Check

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Words by Mark Moody | Photos by Ray Lego

id-September 2021 finds the Brooklyn-based band, Geese, two days out from a Friday night set at R.J. Daniels, a sports bar on New York’s Long Island. The spot is known more for 50-cent wing nights and NFL game days than hosting the country’s likely-to-be next big post-punk band. The five-piece group of 2020 high school graduates is comprised of Cameron Winter (lead vocals), Gus Green (guitar), Foster Hudson (guitar), Dom DiGesu (bass), and Max Bassin (drums). If the sports bar gig seems incongruous for a band that was also booked for a midday set at Atlanta’s Shaky Knees Festival (where they played a few hours ahead of label mates IDLES) and had just revealed a string of European and U.S. dates that include stops in London, Paris, and Berlin, one must remember that at the moment the general public doesn’t have much of an inkling about the band. With earlier work wiped from the internet, at the time Under the Radar spoke to Geese there were two released singles (“Disco” and “New Era”) and a handful of live performances under their collective belt.

PLEASED TO MEET YOU superiority, and the prospect of free food at Friday’s show seem to hold as much interest for the bunch as discussing their music. When asked about his stage presence and comfort performing live, Winter jokes, “I’m usually suspended from the ceiling like Peter Pan.” The most focused of the group, at least at the moment, Green explains, “We have a lot of fun live and it’s a bit more unhinged. The record sounds pretty tame in comparison.” Pressed further about his vocal range and inspirations, Winter admits to molding his tone to the song at hand. “I was probably being inspired by a lot of the Brits in the punk scene around the era of [Echo and] the Bunnymen and Mark E. Smith of The Fall,” he says. Winter’s voice on record never gets to the manic level of some of the band’s U.K. peers, and the group also smartly avoids the overtly topical in their songs. While the dual guitar attack of Green and Hudson is at times fierce and other times deliciously tangled à la New York punk pioneers Television. And DiGesu and Bassin stand out for adapting their approach to the moment, from the high-hat disco stylings of “New Era” to the more hurried and desperate affair on the ironically named, and not-so-disco, “Disco.” With their debut album freshly out in the world, the group admits to having plenty more post-Projector recorded work under wraps. Understandably so, given the protracted amount of time during lockdown and in pursuit of a label. Pragmatically, when asked about playing new material live, Winter points out that people haven’t even heard their first album yet at the time of the interview. “We’re trying to be tight lipped and not performing too many new songs, just because people haven’t even heard the first record yet,” he says. A point well taken, but one now remedied. With Projector now released and positive reviews of both the album and their live sets streaming in, the band’s next steps will no doubt bring even more interest.

“We have a lot of fun live and it’s a bit more unhinged. The record sounds pretty tame in comparison.” L to R: Foster Hudson, Cameron Winter, Gus Green, Max Bassin, Dominic DiGesu

– Gus Green

Several of the members were friends from early on as Green explains, “I’ve been friends with Max and Cameron since lower school. We were part of band programs back then.” Until recently the group practiced and recorded songs in Bassin’s basement, where their debut album, Projector, was recorded beginning in their senior year of high school. “The basement got a little flooded after we moved out due to the hurricane [Hurricane Ida], but we got most of our stuff out,” Bassin says. When the band signed with local-to-them label Partisan, it afforded the group some additional perks. Their already recorded album was given a professional mix, the beginnings of a tour started to come together, and a professional practice space was obtained. During the interview, Winter was hanging and rearranging foam on the walls of a currently leased out space at downtown Brooklyn’s Pfizer building. The mention of one of the COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers leads the band into a devolved sparring match about who received the best vaccine. “When everyone else is a zombie, we’ll still be going strong,” Winter quips, sharing solidarity with the interviewer for Team J&J. The recent legalization of marijuana in NYC, relative vaccination 41

20TH ANNIVERSARY

Covers of Covers

Inside Under the Radar’s First Album

hen hatching plans to celebrate Under the Radar’s 20th anniversary I knew I wanted to go beyond just producing a special 20th anniversary issue. Despite two decades of writing about albums, one thing we’d never done is actually put one out ourselves. Thus I came upon the idea for Covers of Covers. The concept was so perfect and simple that I’m surprised we hadn’t thought of it before. We approached some of our favorite musicians and asked them to cover any song by any artist who had been on the front or back cover of our print issue over the years, including artists that had appeared in group cover shots. I sent each musician a list of the cover artists to choose from.

To pull all this off we have partnered with Joe Spadaro and his Connecticut-based record label American Laundromat. As well as releasing albums by Juliana Hatfield and Tanya Donelly, American Laundromat have a long history of producing amazing covers albums, including their tributes to Elliott Smith, The Cure, Neil Young, The Smiths, and the music of Wes Anderson films. They even put together a track-bytrack tribute to the soundtrack to Alex Cox’s cult classic 1984 movie Repo Man. Without Joe’s help, Covers of Covers would still just be an idea in my head. He has the know-how to get an album mastered and manufactured, not to mention how to handle all the legal stuff. My Co-Publisher/wife Wendy Lynch Redfern then photographed and designed the album cover, which features a tower of all our print issues. It was fascinating to see which musicians agreed to take part and which artists and songs they wanted to cover. Cassandra Jenkins was the first to say yes. We were also elated that Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle readily agreed to take part, considering Grandaddy were on the cover of our very first issue. We tried to have a wide variety of artists covered, but there was some doubling up, with two covers each of songs by HAIM and Metric. Each artist recorded the songs themselves and there was much excitement when each track was turned in. We asked all the artists involved to provide a quote on why they took part in the project, why they picked each song, and how they approached their covers. Below are all the quotes in the order of the album’s tracklist. Covers of Covers will be available on CD and digitally, with cassette tape and vinyl releases in the works too. Visit www.alr-music.com for more details or to preorder. We are also donating $1.00 from every physical album sold and every full album download purchased to Sweet Relief Musicians Fund (www.sweetrelief.org), which “provides financial assistance to all types of career musicians and music industry workers who are struggling to make ends meet while facing illness, disability, or age-related problems.” 44

1. Grandaddy: “Blindness” (Metric) “Apparently my band Grandaddy was on the cover of issue #1 of Under the Radar and continued a cozy relationship with the mag so it seemed a no brainer to be involved with this Covers of Covers project. I thought it was a good idea in general too. “I’m a big Metric fan. One time I drove from Bozeman, Montana to Salt Lake City, Utah (nine-hour drive) to see them play live. I don’t even like going to shows. That says a lot. I chose to cover the song ‘Blindness’ as it has been one of my favorite songs of theirs since I first heard it in 2009. I recorded and mixed it all in my garage and enjoyed treading that line of trying to emulate some of the original sounds and ‘feels’ but also make it mine for a bit and have a little fun with it.” – Jason Lytle of Grandaddy

Words by Mark Redfern

3. Peter Bjorn and John: “Songs of Love” (The Divine Comedy)

“We made it to the studio (for the first time in one-anda-half years in the same room all together) still not sure what to do exactly from the long list of potential artists to cover. We tried a song by Devendra Banhart (we booked his first ever Swedish show, so there’s a connection), we also dipped our toes into some Super Furry Animals and Feist material. Nothing really seemed to click. Elliott Smith we had covered before at our third show or something but he was already taken… Ah well... Suddenly I realized that Divine Comedy/Neil Hannon wrote the theme tune for the Irish-British sitcom-classic Father Ted, a perennial favorite of mine. This madcap mid-’90s series about three bonkers Catholic priests on a remote fictitious island called Craggy Island, hit me hard when it ran on late night TV in Sweden sometime early noughties. Apparently it’s been banned in the States and voted second best British comedy after Fawlty Towers by 2. Piroshka: “The Crystal some poll in 2019. Either way it might be an acquired Lake” (Grandaddy) taste but it’s my taste. On a tour of (you guessed it) Ireland I got the DVD box-set and pained the rest of Piroshka is fronted by former Lush singer Miki Berenyi the band with it on the bus TV (though the British crew (vocals/guitar) and also includes former Moose guitarist got it). Long story but I thought we might as well have a go at it. Bingo! A few jammed out slightly psychedelic KJ “Moose” McKillop, Modern English bassist Mick PBJ-angled takes with some added vibraphone and Conroy, and former Elastica drummer Justin Welch. tape-echo and there you have it! We then thought... “When Mark sent me a heavily passive well the song DOES have a lyric, looked it up and aggressive email reminding me of the many times sang it. Cause why not? A good set of words too... Under the Radar has plugged Lush and Piroshka, I nothing whatsoever to do with Mrs. Doyle or had to admit he had a point and resigned myself to ecumenical matters. It’s called ‘Songs of Love.’ complying with his demand to provide a track for the Thanks Neil for writing it and thanks Under the magazine’s 20th anniversary. “Scanning the unimaginably long list of possibilities, Radar for the opportunity!” – Peter Morén of Peter I clocked with rising panic the number of bands I have Bjorn and John never heard of, musing how very old and out of touch I have become. 4. Cults: “Bourgeois” (Phoenix) “As luck would have it, I’d seen The Horrors supporting Suede when I took my daughter along to the “We’re very happy to be included in celebrating Under Hammersmith Apollo, but despite finding at least three the Radar magazine as we’ve been big fans for over a tracks that would have made terrific source material for decade now. I’m looking back, UTR might have been a cover, Mick beat me to the vote and his suggestion of our first time our music was ever printed about in a Grandaddy’s ‘Crystal Lake’ won the day. magazine, which was an amazing and bizarre out of “Justin had just moved to a new studio space in body moment. St Leonard’s and did a masterful job of recording the “When we saw the list of bands that had been on drums. Moose noodled his usual 20+ tracks of guitar the covers over the years our first thought was, ‘Wow, effects and I unbelievably managed to record my that’s a lot of great bands.’ Our second thought was, vocals myself with a minimum of howling bum notes. ‘Let’s do that Phoenix song.’ Our favorite studio bod Iggy B was thankfully free and “We’ve had ‘Bourgeois’ on our tour playlist for two available, so we enjoyed a convivial day in the studio album cycles now, meaning we’ve heard it in clubs adding bass and yet more guitar while drinking endless hundreds of times. It always stands out amongst all the cups of tea. other tunes with its extended intro, mellow verses, and “Having mixed the track, we are all in celebratory bright and punchy instrumentation. We also love its mode and, as I write, I am on my second espresso lyrics as a critique of social structures that the French martini—and it’s not even 6 p.m.! So cheers for the do better than anyone. opportunity. It went unexpectedly smoothly and we had “We tried a few different ways of approaching the so much fun we may even include ‘Crystal Lake’ in our cover before we gave up and just dove in, playing the set when we head off on tour next month. song as we would if it was a Cults song. We hope you “Lots of love, Miki” – Miki Berenyi of Piroshka enjoy!” – Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion of Cults

20TH ANNIVERSARY 5. Nation of Language: “Stars and Sons” (Broken Social Scene)

the world of this song, ‘Townie,’ especially. The melody is tremendous, it just cut through my bones at that gym. The gym is not my habitat, I feel alien there, like the teenage-narrator of the song. I have since stopped “It was tough choosing who to cover from the list—so going, now I just run. When I was a teen I really just many of these bands have been really important to us wanted to grow up and be an adult, I didn’t appreciate through the years. Once we settled on Broken Social being a teenager at all. I like it much more now, so I Scene and this song, we realized that, loving ‘Stars and can somehow relate more to the song now, I feel. It Sons’ so much, if we didn’t transform it in a depicts such classic scenes that evoke a nostalgic fundamental way we would end up just copying it darkness. I felt ready to go there, finally. So I spent a straight up. Not wanting to do that, we decided to day with my bass player and the producer of this track, change the rhythm to turn it into a shuffle (think ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ by Tears for Fears, ‘Reelin’ in the Years’ by Steely Dan, ‘Higher Ground’ by Stevie Wonder). Once we made that change it was easier to get loose with the structure and have fun with it. We worked with Nick Millhiser (of Holy Ghost!), who also produced half of our album A Way Forward. We have a song on the record called ‘Former Self’ that’s also a shuffle but in a much more reserved way, so we wanted to go all-out here and turn it into a weirdo dance song.” – Ian Devaney of Nation of Language

in my version, but was keen to see how it would sound with an array of choral parts and harmonies.” – C Duncan

10. Cassandra Jenkins: “It’s You” (Animal Collective) “I was introduced to Vashti Bunyan’s music when some Baltimore friends started playing with her in the early 2000s around the time ‘It’s You’ was released. I love Animal Collective’s music and was reminded of their

6. Kevin Drew: “The Loose Ends Will Make Knots” (Stars) “This is my favorite Stars song from my favorite Stars album.” – Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene

7. Hatchie: “FUBT” (HAIM) “Under the Radar have been such supporters of my music from the get-go so I had zero hesitation when asked to contribute to this project. ‘FUBT’ was a song on the latest HAIM album that immediately stuck out to me as something special. I wanted to try something different for Hatchie, altering the energy by adding more intense instrumentation to match the lyrics and make it my own.” – Harriette Pilbeam of Hatchie Chris Holm, and we just enjoyed the words and music to this song, over and over. It’s so pretty, and I just wanted to really PLAY and SING it without much of an agenda. It’s a great song, let it play!” – Sondre Lerche

beautiful EP with Bunyan when a friend put it on a driving mix for me recently. I listened to it on repeat for miles and when asked to pick a song for this “I always get a kick out of picking apart a song I like, compilation I was hoping AC had been featured on learning it and maybe recording a version. It’s rarely a cover so I’d have an excuse to record this song. a waste of time, from a songwriter-perspective. You 9. C Duncan: “Acrobat” (Angel “Covers are a great way for me to experiment with always learn something new. So I was happy to Olsen) sounds, palettes, and people I want to work with, contribute to this cool Covers of Covers idea, plus I dig without the weight of my songs being at the helm. UTR, and it’s also the 20th anniversary of my career! I “I was delighted to be asked by Under the Radar to Rebecca El-Saleh (harpist) and I did some email first heard ‘Townie’ at a gym in Williamsburg. I love take part in this as they have been a huge supporter recording over quarantine and this was the first time running, but I hate going to the gym. So whenever they’d of my music for a number of years. I was sent a list of we got to play in a room together with my friend Zubin be playing a song I liked, that would go a long way. It artists I could cover and Angel Olsen instantly jumped Hensler (who engineered the session). I had been didn’t happen often, but when I heard this I had to find out to me. Her music fascinates me and I have always listening to a lot of Curtis Mayfield at the time and loved out what it was. It was Mitski, who I hadn’t heard of at been drawn to the enigmatic aura of her song ‘Acrobat.’ some of the harp in his recordings, and I felt like harp the time. This album was pretty new, and I just thought I didn’t want to change the mood of the song too much was one of the few acoustic instruments that could

8. Sondre Lerche: “Townie” (Mitski)

20TH ANNIVERSARY capture something similar to the original recording. Michael Coleman added some piano, and I used field recordings from the house where I’ve been living for a good part of this year, because the bugs made their way into all of my vocal tracks anyway, so I just embraced them. “I’m psyched to benefit a good cause because it’s organizations like Sweet Relief that helped me finish my album, An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, after COVID first hit the U.S. Grant money gave me the extra push I needed to finish my record, and I’m so grateful I was able to put that out this year. Artists need as much support as we can give right now, and we need good art more than ever.” – Cassandra Jenkins

Dissolve, have been really bonding over Metric during this process and so when the opportunity came to cover a song potentially by Metric, the timing felt right. With the original track being keys/synth, I wanted to offer a take on it through the kind of fingerpicking guitar playing that I do and also some of the dynamic cymbal swells and reverb vocals that are very much within my own sound. I also wanted to do a take on the song that would be reflective of how my live band plays with adding drums and bass layers to the mix. The original is my favorite and so I’m honored to be able to share a cover of how I would play it that’s beyond me singing along loudly to my car stereo.” – Katherine Paul of Black Belt Eagle Scout

pick an act I did know, I used this as an opportunity to explore. I selected three names at random, then watched a track of each on YouTube. The first act I chose was amazing, but upon closer inspection of their lyric, it didn’t really work for me when played acoustically. The Phoebe Bridgers song was next to try, and the lyric seemed great, plenty of story to tell. I recorded it by close mic’ing my hand, edging against the soundboard as I lightly strummed the guitar. I played and sang it all together, I feel the rhythm of a song always sounds more natural playing it that way. It’s a very delicate song, and I think I got the ‘less is more’ balance just right. Thanks for asking, it was fun to do.” – James Yorkston

11. NZCA LINES: “Debra” (Beck)

14. Strand of Oaks: “’81” (Joanna Newsom)

18. EMA: “Trailer Trash” (Modest Mouse)

“I believe that Joanna Newsom is one of the most important artists of my generation. Somehow encapsulating the mystical undercurrents of what I like to call the Neverending Story generation. Rooted in both the fantastical and deeply real life, I believe ‘’81’ is one of Joanna Newsom crowning achievements.” - Timothy Showalter of Strand of Oaks

“This song reminds me of a person I used to be in love with. We were teenage robo-buddies. We drove around on gravel roads, pulling over at abandoned barns and country cemeteries. We weren’t physical, except once when I started crying, gave them a kiss and then ran out of the car. Very dramatic. People used to say we were going to end up married and living like the ‘trailer trash’ couple in this song. It didn’t happen…” – Erika M. Anderson of EMA

“Beck’s Midnite Vultures was one of my favorite albums as a teenager, with ‘Debra’ probably my favorite track from it at the time, so it was really fun to be able to cover it for Under the Radar. It contrasts heavily with the rest of the album, sounding basically like a live band playing as opposed to the detailed production and sequencing of tracks like ‘Sexx Laws’ or ‘Hollywood Freaks.’ Also, for a long time I didn’t think it was Beck singing—the whole song is in this crazy high falsetto a million miles away from anything else I’ve heard him do. I love the imagery in the song lyrics, about a comedically pathetic lothario offering to take a girl for ‘a real good meal,’ or to ‘step inside [his] Hyundai.’ There’s a ton of references I didn’t understand at the time, that I do now since visiting (and now living) in the U.S.: JC Penney, Glendale, Zankou Chicken. Also, fun fact: the whole song kinda rips off the intro to ‘Win’ by David Bowie from the record Young Americans. For my version, I wanted to pare down the band/horn section of the original to an electric piano, drum machine, and a couple of synths. However, because I’ve heard the original a thousand times, I wanted to stick as close as possible to the original arrangement and all its melodic flourishes. Oh, and it’s in a completely different key—I can’t sing anywhere near that high.” – Michael Lovett of NZCA LINES

12. Oceanator: “The Biggest Lie” (Elliott Smith) “I chose to do an Elliott Smith song for this cover because I have a very strong memory of reading that last interview with Elliott and there’s always a lingering Elliott—Under the Radar connection in the back of my mind. So it seemed fitting for this comp that that’s the artist I would choose. And I picked this song ‘The Biggest Lie’ because it’s also particularly relevant to that time in my life. They’re just really linked for me. “In recording the cover I was sort of approaching it like, ‘What would this sound like if it was performed live with a full band,’ kind of the way he did with Christian Brothers and some of the other acoustic songs from time to time. And then we went from there. I recorded it in the basement with my brother Mike Okusami, who played the bass and Rhodes on it. I did the drums and the guitars. We had a lot of fun bringing it to life.” – Elise Okusami of Oceanator

13. Black Belt Eagle Scout: “Calculation Theme” (Metric)

15. Ora the Molecule: “The Fox in the Snow” (Belle and Sebastian) “I love the idea of participating and adding nuances in the life of a song—so I thought Under the Radar’s idea of artists doing cover songs of each other was a good one. To be honest, there’s something a bit terrifying about pursuing that as well. If you already love the song, there’s a big chance that you might just ruin it in trying to make a different version. I started off by picking a song I wanted to learn on piano. I’ve always been a huge Belle and Sebastian fan, and ‘Fox in the Snow’ is my very favorite song of theirs. I started off by just learning the song and playing it for myself. But, as my stomach insinuated, the moment I tried recording it, I was disappointed in it compared to the original. I therefore decided I had to go away from the piano and detach myself from their original instrumentation. I started the new production in the middle of the night in the bathroom, not wanting to wake anyone up, and recorded the new more bass-y version there with a bit of a different melody. It truly can not compare at all to the original, but it was a fun experiment!” – Nora Schjelderup of Ora the Molecule

16. Girl Ray: “Another Try” (HAIM) “When Under the Radar approached us to take part in this compilation, we loved the sound of the project. Looking through the list of artists who had featured on their covers we found it really difficult to choose as it was crammed with so many bands and people who influenced us hugely. HAIM jumped out at us because we’re massive fans of all their records (particularly their last album), and they are an all-female trio like us so it seemed fitting! We decided on ‘Another Try’ because it’s one of our favorite songs from their last album, and thought it would sound cool with programmed drums as opposed to live drums. We recorded the cover in my living room one day, layering it up bit by bit and playing around with loads of different sounds.” – Poppy Hankin of Girl Ray

“Under the Radar has always been supportive of me as an artist and so I was really excited to be able to take part in this compilation they are putting together for their 17. James Yorkston: “Smoke Signals” 20th Anniversary. (Phoebe Bridgers) “Metric is one of my favorite artists and I grew up listening to their music with ‘Calculation Theme’ being one of my favorite songs. I’m working on new music and “When I was sent the list of artists to choose from, there Thurston were so many names I didn’t know, and rather than me and my producer, Takiaya Reed from Divide and 46

19. Alex Lahey: “New York” (St. Vincent) “I got approached about taking part in this compilation just as the sixth Melbourne lockdown set in. I was feeling pretty bummed and lost with an abundance of time at my disposal. Needless to say, I was so grateful to be asked by Under the Radar to ‘pick any song by any one of these artists—all of whom you fucking love— and cover it however you like.’ Fuck yeah, let’s go! “I decided to run with St Vincent’s iconic anthem ‘New York,’ one of my favorite songs from Annie Clark’s illustriously creative and brave catalogue. It’s one of those songs that is so strong in its rawest form that it can be dressed up however you want. As I started recording my take on ‘New York,’ the 20th anniversary of 9/11 was approaching. I wanted to give New York a little light during this somber time of reflection, so I decided to make it sound like summer. “As I was in the depths of lockdown once again, I couldn’t jam this tune out with anyone. That would be literally illegal. So I had to do it alone. I locked myself away in my little room in Brunswick (currently referred to as ‘Lil Bastard Studios’ but that may change...) and plugged away for a few days. Guitars, drum programming, editing, a bit of singing, got my mate Leigh to remotely track some drums, then I mixed the sucker; and you know what? The time evaporated and I forgot I was in lockdown (cue single tear of happiness). “So thanks Under the Radar for not only all the love and support you’ve given me over the years, but also for giving me something to wake up and look forward to during yet another lockdown in Melbourne. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed making it.” – Alex Lahey

20. Water From Your Eyes: “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” (R.E.M.) “Rachel chose this song because they love it and wanted to sing really fast. This is not Nate’s favorite song but he likes it more now (he had fun making the track). They would love if R.E.M. would listen and pass along their thoughts.” – Nate Amos and Rachel Brown of Moore ⋆ Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern Water From Your Eyes

20TH ANNIVERSARY

The

That Never Were

n our 10th Anniversary Issue we featured unused cover designs from our first decade and here are unused designs from the last 10 years. When designing our print covers we consider many different frames from the cover shoot. These are the cover photos that we almost went with. With a few of them, we do still wonder if we picked the right photo. You can be the judge. By Mark Redfern

20TH ANNIVERSARY

2001

Albums, Movies, and TV Shows Also Turning 20 Since we’re celebrating the 20th anniversary of our first print issue, we are highlighting albums, movies, and TV shows that also debuted in 2001.

ALBUMS Air 10 000 Hz Legend

songwriters, but perhaps never again would they dive as deep into their infrared vision. By Ian King

Björk Vespertine (Elektra)

(Astralwerks) Following 1997’s Homogenic, Björk’s fourth While not as immediately album largely eschewed orchestral theatrics lauded by music critics as their 1998 debut, Moon Safari, for muted, often minimalistic mists of glitch pop. Greeted with widespread acclaim upon Air’s 10 000 Hz Legend is, by all means, a its release, Vespertine continued Björk’s reputation solid sophomore effort. But it certainly didn’t feel that way when it was released. The tracks as one of her era’s boldest and most original are longer, moodier, and more suited for a film artists. From opener “Hidden Place” to the score. It didn’t have the groundbreaking gloss controversial “Pagan Poetry” (whose infamous of Moon Safari. It sounds more Flaming Lips- video was initially banned), Björk’s experimental “kitchen sink” approach added layers of inspired, less like a page from Jeff Lynne’s atmosphere to Vespertine’s glacial soundbook. Listening to Legend, it’s clear that the scape. However, her vitreous soprano took French duo (Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît center stage, defying any form Studarus of categorization Moby ⋆ Photo by David Dunckel) sought something different in the or comparison. Vespertine coincided with album’s production, that they wanted to show Björk’s unveiling of her infamous “swan audiences and critics that they were capable dress,” which is featured on the album’s cover, of more than what Safari had delivered. And forever affiliating it with an iconic pop cultural that’s okay. Bands should be allowed to try moment. Not that Vespertine needed an new things. The album still shines (albeit differently) in Air’s discography. By Ben Jardine avatar to capture the collective imagination—it stands firmly on its own, as do the vast majority of Björk’s releases. By Austin Saalman

Arab Strap The Red Thread

(Chemikal Underground) The prolific first half of Arab Strap’s initial 10 years of tears came to a humid peak with The Red Thread. The bawdy boys of Falkirk, Scotland took all of the moves they had learned up to that point and wove a weighty tapestry of love, lust, and every vice that enables and disables them. Drum machine-driven tales of adultery like “Scenery” and “Love Detective” abutted noisy drawn-out stretches of storytelling in “The Devil-Tips” and “The Long Sea.” “Turbulence,” the album’s eight-minute climax, was a deep rumbling counterpoint to the airier “Cherubs” from their previous Elephant Shoe. With The Red Thread coming out in the same year as Mogwai’s Rock Action and Aereogramme’s A Story in White, Scottish post-rock was cutting an undeniable figure. Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton would continue to grow as 48

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club B.R.M.C. (Virgin)

Death Cab for Cutie The Photo Album

with each spin to reveal the succulent fruit within. From the lilting melodies and grand vocal arrangements of “Powder Blue” to the buzzsaw guitars of “Coming Second,” the (Barsuk) album shows off a musical prowess that begs to be heard again and again. Sublime Death Cab for Cutie’s third melodies and ambient textures persist album begins with an ending and ends with throughout, wrapped in stylistic arrangements a beginning. The band get steady on their forming majestic rock tunes that resonate with feet, pay one last tribute to their point of origin a warm glow. Singer Guy Garvey has both (Bellingham, Washington), and hit the road the voice and the eloquence to not only carry until, “Finally/There is clarity.” Ben Gibbard’s a song but afford the listener an emotional songwriting on the whole was more straightconnectivity with the music. Elbow are now forward and concise, the first clear signal of synonymous with engaging and powerful, his intention to reach audiences beyond the atmospheric rock, but it all started here. indie realm, while “We Laugh Indoors” and the By Matt the Raven Stability EP that accompanied the first edition of the CD showed a contrasting fascination Gorillaz with space and pacing. Chris Walla’s production Gorillaz eschewed the textural dynamics of their (Parlophone/Virgin) previous LP, We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes, and rendered tracks like “I Was a Gorillaz create music for the Kaleidoscope” and “Why You’d Want to Live Cartoon Network Here” in clean bright colors. The Photo Album generation: four fictional, multi-racial cartoon remains the most transitional record in Death band members with distinct looks and Cab’s catalog. By Ian King personalities developed by Blur frontman Albarn and English illustrator Jamie The Divine Comedy Damon Hewlett in response to pop music’s obsession Regeneration with image. They enlisted the help of Deltron (Parlophone/Nettwerk) 3030 producer Dan the Automator and MC Del the Funky Homosapien, who laid down The melodic turns and engaging verses for the overwhelmingly goofy string traces wend through “Rock the House” and timeless hit single the song “Mastermind” as it plays like the “Clint Eastwood,” a song so head-bobbingly closing theme to a great, lost ’60s soundtrack, catchy that it’s still a crowd pleaser even after which the title track carries The Divine amongst Gen-Zers. Greater things lie ahead for Comedy’s frontman Neil Hannon aloft on jets Albarn and Hewlett—Demon Days’ danceable of electric guitar. Hannon may have built the nocturnal funk pop holds up as their best trackseventh Divine Comedy album like more of for-track listen while Plastic Beach is their most a band record than with some of his other ambitious—but there’s an element of charm in releases, but their varied musical approaches their debut offering; a zany, sometimes awkward mix only serve to underscore what his fans of trip-hop, ’90s dance and indie rock that captured already know: having Hannon at these the imagination of a generation. By Kyle Kersey albums’ center is what makes them Divine. By Hays Davis

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club began their inventive career alongside that of Under the Radar, their earliest champions. Tracks such as opener “Love Burns” carry with them the musky scent of damp nights and dark streets, while rockers “Spread Your Love” and “Whatever Happened to My Rock and Roll (Punk Song)” showcase B.R.M.C.’s strong garage rock revivalist and neo-psychedelic leanings. There remains Elbow however, a certain raw sensitivity on B.R.M.C, one that seems to draw upon the previous Asleep in the Back decade’s indie movement, as evidenced on (V2) tracks such as “Salvation.” This eclecticism The complexities of the has allowed B.R.M.C. to stand apart for two layers on Elbow’s debut decades, marked by age, but never lack of album, Asleep in the Back, are peeled away edge. By Austin Saalman

Kings of Convenience Quiet Is the New Loud (Astralwerks)

Congenial coos, diatonic plucks, intellectual lovesick poetry. (Check times three.) Quiet Is

20TH ANNIVERSARY the New Loud hums with the quiet crunching of autumn leaves or intimate pillow chat between lovers. The Norwegian folk pop duo’s snuggly, sad-but-sunny vibe and clean arpeggiated guitars inspired everyone from Jim Adkins to Turin Breaks. The album’s title even became a metonym for a particular ilk of gentle indie that both your grandmother and the average beanie-wearing indie snob could agree on. Friends since childhood, Erlend Øye and Eirik Glambek Bøe are the eponymous kings. Of convenience—referring to the lack of equipment needed for shows—but also of lyrics so nostalgic they make Richard Linklater look detached: “Using The Guardian as a shield/To cover my thighs against the rain/I do not mind about my hair.” 20 years later, and this auspicious debut sounds as comforting and wistful as ever. By Hayden Merrick

in the early ’00s—Gilmore Girls episodes, Zach Braff’s male-chauvinistic Garden State, a McDonald’s advert. And although “New Slang” deserved its ubiquity, Inverted World is all-killer/no-filler. “One by One All Day” is an upbeat shuffler, while the sweetly nostalgic finale, “The Past and Pending,” has the album’s most dolorous lines: “As someone sets light to the first fire of autumn/We settle down to cut ourselves apart.” Few debuts get it so right on the first try. By Hayden Merrick

Spiritualized Let It Come Down (Arista)

The White Stripes White Blood Cells

Abrams and his crew pulled off some breathtaking action and globetrotting adventures, all on a TV budget. Quentin Tarantino was such a (Sympathy for the Record fan that he was written into the show as a Industry) one-off villain. Other amazing marquee level guest stars included Ethan Hawke, Faye It’s easy now, 20 years later, Dunaway, Ricky Gervais, Jason Segel, to forget the sorry state that modern rock radio Christian Slater, and James Bond himself, Sir and by extension, mainstream rock in general, Roger Moore. By Mark Redfern was back in 2001. Amidst the avalanche of macho nü-metal and tepid post-grunge Justice League dominating the airwaves then, hearing the (Cartoon Network) Buzzcocks-like rush of “Fell in Love with a Girl” (featuring a memorable LEGO-inspired It could be argued that the most video) on New York’s K-Rock in the months faithful on screen adaptation of just following 9/11 proved galvanizing for a Batman comes not from Tim Burton, generation of up and coming indie and garage Christopher Nolan, or Zack rockers who would remake the musical Snyder, but rather from Bruce Timm, Paul Dini, landscape during the next few years. White and the others behind the iconic 1990s cartoon Blood Cells and its follow-up, 2003’s major Batman: The Animated Series, with Kevin label debut Elephant, catapulted them and Conroy and Mark Hamill now forever the voices leader Jack White to super-stardom which comic book fans hear when they read the continues to this day. However, it was here that printed adventures of Batman and The Joker, they first broke through. By Matthew Berlyant respectively. 2001 saw the ambitious follow-up Justice League series, bringing together the Also released in 2001: A Camp: A Camp, The classic superhero team in an updated way, American Analog Set: Know By Heart, The with far more sophisticated storytelling than Beta Band: Hot Shots II, The Charlatans: Wonderland, Clearlake: Lido, Dntel: Life Is Full of the simplistic old Super Friends cartoons of Possibilities, The Faint: Danse Macabre, Lift to the ’70s and ’80s. Like Batman: The Animated Experience: The Texas – Jerusalem Crossroads, Series, Justice League was safe for kids, but Mercury Rev: All Is Dream, The Microphones: also appreciated by adults. In season three it The Glow Pt. 2, Mogwai: Rock Action, My morphed into Justice League Unlimited, bringing Morning Jacket: At Dawn, Pinback: Blue even more heroes into the fold, and it set a Screen Life, Pulp: We Love Life, Radiohead: Amnesiac, Sing-Sing: The Joy of Sing-Sing, The standard for any future DC animated show or Soundtrack of Our Lives: Behind the Music, movie to live up to. By Mark Redfern

After their 1997 breakthrough album, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, which won them critical acclaim and numerous Ladytron awards and culminated in them opening for 604 Radiohead on their OK Computer tour in 1998, (Emperor Norton) leader Jason Pierce fired his entire band and started fresh here on the follow-up. Recorded By the time 604 was released with a 115-piece orchestra and wallowing in in 2001, many dance clubs the influence of Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound, it were already mesmerized by the dark beats may be the finest album he has ever recorded. of electroclash. Harking back to synth-pop, It includes the soaring “The Straight and the New Romantic, and electronic music of the Narrow” and the absolutely seering, transcendent 1980s, Ladytron helped define a nascent but “Out of Sight.” Fittingly, given the influence short-lived genre and quickly distinguished of gospel music and Spiritualized’s habit of themselves as one of its more talented acts. covering his old Spacemen 3 material both live The centerpiece of their first album, “Playgirl,” and on record, the album closes with a remake functions as a nostalgic anthem that’ll make of “Lord, Can You Hear Me,” originally on you pine for those ’80s New Wave/electronic Spacemen 3’s 1989 album Playing with Fire. Sparklehorse: It’s a Wonderful Life, Spoon: Girls clubs that were all the rage while you were By Matthew Berlyant Can Tell, Sébastien Tellier: L’incroyable Vérité, still in the cradle. And the electric boogie Tindersticks: Can Our Love, and Trembling Blue Stars: Alive to Every Smile. of “Commodore Rock” can still lure any icy The Strokes black-clad wallflower from the shadows and Is This It onto the dancefloor. Ladytron wisely evolved (RCA) their sound with subsequent albums, and it’s undeniable that they had a hand in forging the Very few albums capture sensibilities of today’s mainstream electropop the simultaneous end and acts. By Joseph Ragusa 24 beginning of an era quite like Is This It. Almost (Fox) overnight, The Strokes’ debut LP saw the New Order close of the 20th century in dramatic fashion, 24, for better or for worse, came Get Ready and the skinny jean-clad post-punk of New out at exactly the right time. The (Reprise) York City soon came to the fore. At the time of first season, premiering nearly its release, Is This It was hyped, and perhaps two months after the September New Order’s seventh release for good reason. The band had started a 11 attacks in New York, presciently and eerily Get Ready was a welcome bidding war over their debut EP, The Modern captures the state of post-traumatic shock and return to form, with the influential post-punk Age, so seemingly everyone in indie music uncertainty which was collectively felt by U.S. pioneers once again furthering their legacy. was watching their next move. The songs citizens. On paper, it sounds like your typical Electronica-infused “Crystal” introduces were straightforward, with something to say. James Bond-esque espionage thriller, with keyboardist Gillian Gilbert’s eerie horror film The album is concise, not overbearing. Its 11 incessant plot twists and a protagonist that is score, eventually giving way to a sleek grind tracks are now some of the touchstones of seemingly (almost impossibly) bulletproof; the and stomp. This couples well with the smooth 2000s guitar rock, and The Strokes’ members difference between this particular show and its vocals of frontman Bernard Sumner, resulting were catapulted into the forefront of a sugar-coated counterparts is the unflinching in what has been referred to as one of the movement that represented an entire city cynicism and palpable dread, which no doubt group’s best singles. Celebrity cameos such and an entire generation. By Ben Jardine echoed the sentiments of its viewers, shaken as Billy Corgan’s fitting appearance on the by a national tragedy mere months earlier. 24 somewhat Smashing Pumpkins-esque “Turn Super Furry captures the cynical psyche of a broken My Way” is an exciting feature. Likewise, Animals country, reminding us that the land of the contributions from Primal Scream’s Bobby free is not as safe as we may think, and that Rings Around the Gillespie and Andrew Innes on the fast-paced morality is intrinsically relative. In times of World “Rock the Shack” remind the listener of New crisis, there are no distinct “good guys” or “bad (Epic/XL) Order’s far reach. By Austin Saalman guys”—there are simply people fighting for Rings Around the World was a bit too sprawling, what they believe in, and innocent lives will The Shins inevitably be lost in the process. 24 is a a bit too ambitious, and all the better for it. product of its time and serves as a time Oh, Inverted World Super Furry Animals’ fifth album found them (Sub Pop) settling comfortably into their restlessness and capsule of the state of the nation, as haunting reaching for a new peak. So far into their singular as it is entertaining. By Joey Arnone Oh, Inverted World offered kaleidoscopic vision were the Welsh troupe a more sophisticated that the story goes they roped in Sir James Alias alternative to the pop punk over-saturation of Paul McCartney to make a cameo chewing (ABC) the early ’00s, but with no less young-adult vegetables down a phone line in tribute to an angst. “Shut out, pimpled, and angry/I quietly apocryphal Beach Boys tale. Rings Around the J. J. Abrams’ twisty spy thriller tied all my guts into knots,” frontman and only World boasts some of the band’s funniest and made stars out of Jennifer constant member James Mercer sings on wisest moments, often in the same song or Garner and Bradley Cooper, the “Know Your Onion.” It’s a jejune sentiment, but even the same breath, and they manage to use former playing Sydney Bristow, then again blink-182 were singing about making the word “juxtapose” without coming off as the an agent for SD-6, which she thinks is a secret love to dogs. The Shins were everywhere least bit pretentious. By Ian King division of the CIA, but all is not what it seems.

TELEVISION

The Office (BBC) When Ricky Gervais blagged his way to Head of Speech for the London indie rock radio station XFM, he decided to hire an assistant to do all the work. The application at the top of the pile belonged to Stephen Merchant, a comedy-obsessed university graduate. Thus, one of television’s most fruitful partnerships and revered sitcoms got its embryo. Initially befuddling viewers with its Spinal Tap-inspired mockumentary style and grubby setting, The Office endeared many with its combination of excruciating silences and (tie-)touching love stories (Merchant’s idea after watching Friends). Despite only producing 12 episodes and a Christmas special, the series didn’t end there (“Slough’s a big place!”). It inspired the beloved American remake, numerous other mockumentaries, and led to the Life on the Road film. Today, Gervais and Merchant’s wry, iconoclastic humor is inescapable. And whenever a fellow pub-goer utters “different drinks for different needs,” I make sure to buy them a lager, sometimes cider. By Hayden Merrick

Samurai Jack (Cartoon Network) There was no other show like Samurai Jack on the air in 2001 and there’s been few like it since. It’s a real one of a kind in both concept and execution. The titular hero and his magical katana sword battles the evil supernatural shapeshifting demon Aku in feudal Japan, but before he is defeated Aku sends Jack to the far future, where the demon rules and Jack must fight all sorts of robots and monsters in his quest to return to the past and correct history. Created by Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter’s Laboratory, Star Wars: Clone Wars), the show’s painterly visuals were striking and cinematic. Alas Samurai Jack was cancelled before Jack could complete his quest.

Deerhoof ⋆ Photo by Ray Lego

20TH ANNIVERSARY Thankfully Adult Swim brought it back for a fifth and final season in 2017, which had a slightly more adult tone and wrapped up the story once and for all, helping to add to the show’s collection of eight Emmy Awards. By Mark Redfern

CINEMA

Ghost World

Moulin Rouge!

(United Artists)

(20th Century Fox)

Who knows where the lonely go? Based on Daniel Clowes’ Amélie serial comic of the same name, (Miramax) Ghost World takes us into the lives of recent high school graduates, Enid (Thora Birch) and If the spontaneity and raw Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson). Having Scrubs coolness of Breathless (1960) summarily rejected the notion of college, Enid (NBC/ABC) made the Boomer generation and Rebecca start their shiftless summer by dream of becoming expats to live la belle vie pulling a prank blind date on Seymour (Steve Bill Lawrence’s Scrubs was a in Paris, then the lushly vibrant and polished Buscemi). Seymour is relatively undisturbed high watermark for NBC comedy, Amélie arguably did the same for Gen Xers by being stood up, but guilt gets the better but perhaps wasn’t fully and Millennials upon its release in 2001. The of Enid and she slowly infiltrates Seymour’s appreciated at the time. Even after film achieved a perfect alchemy of luminous obsessive record collecting life. She slowly winning Emmys, Golden Globe nominavisuals and engaging storyline, with a career- falls under the spell of Skip James’ “Devil Got tions, a Humanitas Prize, and a Peabody, defining performance by Audrey Tautou My Woman” and Seymour’s self-described Scrubs was the misfit in the NBC comedy guiding us through a whirlwind Francophone dorkiness. At turns hilarious and heartbreaking, family and later moved over to ABC. The wonderland. Somehow, against all odds, her the consummate cynic, Enid, finds herself first season deals with issues like death (the character manages to toe the line of eccentric ultimately on the outside looking in. Directed at whole show was about death to one degree and outré without crossing over into becoming a steady pace by Terry Zwigoff, from his and or another),addiction, and ambition within the medical community, seen from the perspective too precious. No subs over dubs debate here; Clowes’ screenplay, Ghost World launched Johansson’s career, which ironically has evolved to of interns JD, Elliot, and Turk, and nurse Carla this is the rare movie that can engage you throughout without having to understand a portraying more traditional comic superhero roles as they navigate the egos and agendas of word being said. Brimming with plot quirks of late. Buscemi does an outstanding job of living their mentors, Dr. Cox and Dr. Kelso. The first and cheeky asides, the film’s central love story comfortably in his character’s skin, while Birch season set a bold standard for the rest of the nevertheless still rings true after 20 years. To ultimately steals the show, pretending not to care series, at least until that weird final season. find love and ultimately triumph over loneliness while also letting us see Enid’s hollow core. The give and take between actors who are like Amélie does, all the while spreading kindness Ghost World is offbeat and endearing, but also clearly enjoying themselves comes through to those around her, must truly make for subtly conveys a message on the impact of the screen and stayed there for nearly a sublime living—especially when done among feeling alone in the world. decade. By Steve King the streets of Montmartre. By Joseph Ragusa By Mark Moody

Smallville

Bully

(WB/CW)

(Lionsgate)

Over a decade before the Arrowverse kicked off on the CW with Arrow and The Flash, the only DC superhero TV show around was the Superman prequel Smallville, featuring a teenaged Clark Kent (Tom Welling). Its no tights, no flights rule seems quaint now, with the abundance of fully costumed heroes we’re treated to on screens these days, but the producers stuck to their guns, for better or worse, with Clark not donning the iconic red and blue costume until the last scene of the very last episode 10 seasons later. But by then it had long become a Superman show anyway, with Lois and Clark working at the Daily Planet and Clark battling such comic book villains as Doomsday. Smallville may not have fully taken flight in the way today’s superhero shows do, but it laid much of the groundwork for what came later. By Mark Redfern

Larry Clark’s controversial and provocative Bully did nothing to change the minds of critics of his 1995 debut Kids, a film which depicts the hedonistic lifestyle of a group of skateboarding teenagers in a completely unfiltered way. Based on the real life 1993 murder of teenager Bobby Kent by seven of his peers (one of them being his best friend), Bully is a disturbing yet darkly comic exposé on affluenza and the aimless ennui of today’s youth. Clark, as always, revels in the lasciviousness and decadence of the film’s main characters, but clearly depicts the darkness and emptiness that lies underneath it all. Described by film critic Roger Ebert upon its release as “a frightening indictment of a society that offers absolutely nothing to some of its children,” Bully reveals to the viewer, in as crystal clear and harrowing a way as possible, what kids can be driven to do by sheer boredom. By Joey Arnone

Star Trek: Enterprise (UPN)

Donnie Darko (Pandora/Newmarket)

Enterprise, initially, didn’t want to be a normal Star Trek show. The creators didn’t even want the words “Star Trek” in the credits. They added it in later seasons. Speaking of Enterprise’s credits sequence…it is... there is no way around this: a complete abomination. There are a lot of complaints that can be leveled at Enterprise, but it covered a lot of ground not previously seen in Trek, and did it as best it could. The show is very workman-like, but that’s the way it was in the 2150s. The franchise had just kind of run out of steam by the time Enterprise came along. It was meant to be an optimistic show but it premiered mere weeks after September 11th and had to do what Trek does best and adapt its tone accordingly. No first season of any Trek is perfect, but Enterprise made a valiant effort. By Steve King

If Pulp Fiction taught mainstream audiences how to tag along with a playfully non-linear timeline without losing the narrative thread, then Donnie Darko took that storytelling device and pushed it into the deliciously eerie. Not only did the film cause us to think twice about the nature of reality, cause and effect, and the superiority of the original version of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World,” it positively catapulted Jake Gyllenhaal into dreamboy stardom and brought the acting chops of Patrick Swayze—he of Dirty Dancing and Ghost fame—into a grim place that nobody could have ever expected. Twenty years later, the film still makes us alternately shiver, smirk, and wonder in much the same way as original audiences experienced it. Thanks for all the nightmares, Frank. By Joseph Ragusa

In a movie genre where the majority of its entries could be politely described as criminally insane, Moulin Rouge! may be the wildest jukebox musical of them all. Baz Luhrmann did the seemingly impossible and doubled down on the over-the-top stylization we saw in 1996’s Romeo + Juliet, setting his next tragic love story in an 1890s Paris reimagined in an acid dream, and soundtracking it with unorthodox covers of classic pop canon. The cast—including Ewan MacGregor, Nicole Kidman, Jim Broadbent, John Leguizamo, and Kylie Minogue—get to chew on wild renditions of everything from “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to “Material Girl” to “Your Song,” “Roxanne,” and selections from The Sound of Music! Many characters conduct themselves like they’ve consumed nothing but cocaine, sugar, and energy drinks for days, but if the movie weren’t this fast and over-the-top it wouldn’t be half as fun. By Austin Trunick

Ocean’s Eleven (Warner Bros.)

What was supposed to have been just a light diversion in the filmography of one of the ’90s most respected indie directors— a way to pick up some nice box-office participation points in between more highbrow Lord of the Rings: The fare like Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and Solaris— Fellowship of the Ring has stood the test of time as arguably Steven Soderbergh’s crowning achievement, and (New Line) easily the most giddily enjoyable heist movie of the past 20 years. Ocean’s Eleven’s brilliance For a generation of movie-goers, is the way it pares down the film narrative to its Star Wars reigned supreme as barest essentials—cutting into scenes at the the definitive film trilogy until 2001, when Peter tail-ends of conversations, leaving the primary Jackson released the first of his Lord of the action out of frame to follow subtle visual cues, Rings trilogy. From the mindblowing pre-credits condensing what would heretofore have been sequence to the introduction of The Shire, several-minute-long exchanges of dialogue Bilbo and Gandalf smoking on the hillside, the into simple, meaningful glances. What’s more, badass old man wizard fight, the Ring Wraiths this love letter to mid-century Rat Pack Vegas assault, Gandalf’s battle with the Balrog, and swankitude is now a time-capsule in its own the fight with the Uruk Hai, Fellowship came right: of a bygone era in Hollywood when to play. As the trilogy was filmed concurrently, A-listers still roamed the Earth. By Justin Sohl its consistency and vision eventually won Best Picture for the final installment, The Return of The Piano Teacher the King. But Fellowship had already changed (Kino International) the culture. Every young guy in America had (and some still do) the shaggy Frodo hair. Winner of the 2001 Cannes Film By Steve King Festival’s Grand Prix, along with its Best Actor and Actress prizes (for Benoît Magimel and Isabelle Monsters, Inc. Huppert, respectively), Michael Haneke’s The (Pixar) Piano Teacher is a masterclass character study of a deeply troubled woman on the In worldbuilding theory, the rule verge of destruction. Huppert gives one of of “if, then” is used to dictate how the greatest performances ever committed to an imagined world works. If a film, showing great restraint and nuance in world is populated by monsters, the role of Erika, the titular piano teacher who then how scary those monsters are to children becomes romantically involved with one of is a measure of social success. Monsters, Inc. her students. Considered part of the takes this principle and runs with it, building then-blossoming New French Extremity a world so genuine that we feel like we are a movement (a French film movement part of it. Pixar took painstaking efforts to lay categorized by socially nihilistic films with the groundwork of believability. Even for 2001, bluntly portrayed sex and violence), the film the animation was cutting edge. The humor does not shy away from presenting human is sharp, brought to life by a magnificent Billy sexuality and repression in an honest, Crystal performance. The plot is a premonition unflinching way. Haneke, as was seen in of climate change and the need for renewable perhaps his most well-known film Funny energy. “If this is true, then what else is true,” Games, has no problem keeping the camera you can constantly hear the film’s story staff rolling long past the point where most (Pete Docter, Jill Culton, Jeff Pidgeon, and directors would have cut. In the process, he Ralph Eggleston) say to themselves. And has crafted an uncomfortable portrait of that sentiment is reflected in one of the most repressed trauma and hidden desires, delightful and engaging animated films of the exploring who we as humans truly are when last two decades. By Ben Jardine we think no one is looking. By Joey Arnone

20TH ANNIVERSARY The Royal Tenenbaums (Buena Vista) The Royal Tenenbaums still sparkles as a landmark film from a director known for landmark films. In Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson employs all of the trademarks that he would later be known for: deadpan dialogue, framing shots, music, exquisite colors, flat lays, and beautiful composition. But at the time of its release, Tenenbaums was revelatory. And it remains so to this day. What makes Tenenbaums so unique isn’t the vibrancy, the costumes, or the music that Anderson snuck in. What makes Tenenbaums so moving is how its characters navigate the loss (or threat of loss) of those closest to them. There is a real sense of pain that seeps through the whimsy. We want to see how impossible characters like the Tenenbaum children deal with the very real sensation of unfettered pain. That pain is what keeps audiences coming back, 20 years later. By Ben Jardine

NEW RELEASES FROM

MERGE RECORDS

Spirited Away (Studio Ghibli) Spirited Away won Studio Ghibli the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature—it’s also arguably the most creative and beautifully animated movie in the filmography of Hayao Miyazaki, the most singular force in animation since Walt Disney. After her parents are mysteriously transformed into pigs, the movie’s 10-year-old heroine enters the spirit world in search for a cure. She’s employed in the local spa, where she encounters its many amazing (and terrifying) denizens, befriends a dragon-boy, and does the bidding of an ugly witch. It’s genuinely frightening at points, so parental guidance is suggested—but if there truly are movies made to speak to all ages and levels of life experience, this bizarre, beautiful fable is one of them. By Austin Trunick

Training Day (Warner Bros.)

SHE & HIM A Very She & Him Christmas 10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition Featuring three newly recorded seasonal hits from Zooey Deschanel (She) & M. Ward (Him)

LAMBCHOP I Hope You’re Sitting Down / Jack’s Tulips First time on vinyl in the U.S.

OUT NOW

THE MAGNETIC FIELDS

FRUIT BATS

The House of Tomorrow

Sometimes a Cloud Is Just a Cloud: Slow Growers, Sleeper Hits and Lost Songs (2001–2021)

Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Macy Gray, Scott Glenn, Cliff Curtis, Eva Mendes, Raymond Cruz—all involved in a west coast LA crime story at the turn of the century. Directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by David Ayer. What more do you need? How about Denzel winning an Oscar for how badass and evil he was in the film? Training Day was probably the best of the toxic masculinity films of the early 2000s not because it was gangster as fuck, but because the community that Washington’s Alonzo has been preying on turns against him and his end is as brutal as his previous actions. There are so many shady characters and criminal schemes in Training Day that it’s way up there in the pantheon of the greatest gangster movies. By Steve King

Vanilla Sky (Paramount) Beneath its stylish surface, Cameron Crowe’s 2001 psychosexual science fiction-mystery Vanilla Sky is ultimately a morality tale of living, loving, and dying in the new millennium—a sweeping fantasy concerning the complex mystery of human desire and its resultant consequences. Crowe’s second collaboration with leading man Tom Cruise found the duo surpassing the likes of Jerry Maguire, delivering a masterpiece that is intriguing, intelligent, and often touching. Although Penelope Cruz’s star shines the brightest here, the entire cast—including Kurt Russell, Jason Lee, and Tilda Swinton—offer solid performances. Its soundtrack (featuring Sigur Rós, Jeff Buckley, and Radiohead) is also notable, as Crowe, if anything, is more adept at compiling tunes for his films than most directors. While certainly undeserving of much of the criticism it receives, Vanilla Sky is, for a large budget mainstream film, “weird” in so many respects—but therein rests its beauty. The power of memory and fragility of time as we experience it is no light topic to cover, but certainly Vanilla Sky comes close. By Austin Saalman Also released in 2001: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Warner Bros.), Bridget Jones’s Diary (Miramax), Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Warner Bros.), Mulholland Dr. (Universal), The Others (Miramax), Wet Hot American Summer (USA Films), and Zoolander (Paramount).

First time on 12” vinyl 30th Anniversary Reissue Green vinyl with etching

OUT IN JANUARY

A 20-year chronicle of Fruit Bats, hand-selected by Eric D. Johnson à la Neil Young’s Decade

OUT IN JANUARY

20TH ANNIVERSARY

The Albums That Defined UNDER THE RADAR T

o celebrate our 20th anniversary, we have highlighted the albums that have helped define Under the Radar over those years, starting with albums released in 2000 as the initial seeds for the magazine were being planted and stretching all the way to 2021.

This is not a definitive list of the best albums of the last two decades, nor is it a complete list of our favorites. Instead it’s a collection of albums that meant something to us for one reason or another. For example, Broadcast was the first ever band I interviewed and The Delgados were the first band I ever interviewed in person,

2000 Broadcast The Noise Made by People (Warp, 2000) I once read that Broadcast wrote every album as if it were the score to an unrealized film script. For their debut, the English band sound like they’re soundtracking the departure of survivors from a bombed out airport hangar in a post-apocalyptic world where a mad scramble to reach life on a new planet has taken hold. The organic nature of the compositions gives the hissing electronic backgrounds something pulsing and striving towards an escape from the mundaneness that marks the everyday. Recorded over a period of two years and produced by the band themselves, the finished product sounds startlingly alive and contemporary, even with all of the Twilight Zone lounge romp and cabaret melodies. Dishing out doleful reassurances on the nature of identity and of the difficulties in communing with others, Trish Keenan’s angelic and haunting voice sounds as timeless as ever. The album stands as testament to the future as best imagined in the past. By Stephen Axeman 52

The Delgados The Great Eastern (Chemikal Underground, 2000) Whether one hears The Great Eastern today for the first time or the fifteenth, the Scottish quartet’s timeless melodic strengths continue to hold. Released on their own Chemikal Underground label, this 2000 Mercury Prize nominee marked a creative roll that continued with The Delgados’ gorgeous 2002 follow-up, Hate. By Hays Davis

Doves Lost Souls (Heavenly/Astralwerks, 2000) After surviving a studio fire that claimed all of their equipment and the recordings they’d been working on, Jimi Goodwin and twin brothers Jez and Andy Williams had a rebirth from mediocre house music outfit Sub Sub to a band that helped define the sound of British indie rock in the ’00s. Doves’ debut album, Lost Souls, kicks off with a groovy instrumental track, aptly named “Firesuite.” Recorded in a claustrophobic Manchester studio attached to a graveyard, the album showcases their melancholy tendencies tinged with euphoria that became the band’s trademark sound. Contemporaries of Elbow and Coldplay, Doves didn’t typically chart as high in the U.S. as their counterparts, but that didn’t stop them from

both for another publication just prior to starting Under the Radar, and both artist’s albums at the time are included. For starters I put together an extensive list of albums we could write about and then our writers handpicked which ones they were most passionate about revisiting. We weren’t able to write about every album I would’ve liked to, but for each year I’ve included short lists of other important releases. Albums from 2001 are featured in a whole separate section related to that year. Any longtime reader won’t be surprised by many of the albums chosen. Nor should they be shocked by the lack of much genre representation outside of our main area of coverage, indie rock and its various sub-genres. This is an honest reflection of the artists and albums we have championed for 20 years. By Mark Redfern

selling out American shows. Their unique brand of downbeat, guitar-laden rock, which is also somehow danceable and uplifting, found an audience on both sides of the pond, and Lost Souls set the groundwork for many brilliant Doves albums to come. By Laura Ferreiro

Grandaddy The Sophtware Slump (V2, 2000) These haunting, melodic songs that find heart in modern technology hit the Top 40 of the UK albums and singles charts, moved David Bowie to seek them out backstage, and led Grandaddy to the cover of Under the Radar’s first issue. You’ll believe a robot can cry, along with a few humans. By Hays Davis

Sigur Rós Ágætis byrjun (FatCat, 2000) That one group could entirely reinvent themselves after a largely conventional debut is a feat in and of itself, but very seldom does an album genuinely defy any and all genre categorization. Resembling instead a relic from some peculiar afterworld of sights and sounds still alien to those of us on earth, Sigur Rós’s magnum opus Ágætis byrjun saw the Icelandic post-rockers tap into some lovely ethereal inspiration in delivering one of the

most wholly unique releases in popular music. Jónsi’s inimitably extraterrestrial vocals pair superbly well with the orchestral flourishes of the group’s ambient soundscapes, with “Starálfur,” “Olsen Olsen,” and “Ágætis byrjun” providing fresh fantasies for those looking to escape reality for a time. Words cannot describe the utter beauty of Ágætis byrjun, its strange sensation just as pure and affecting two decades on. (First released in Iceland in 1999, we’re honoring its international release in the UK in 2000 and America in 2001). By Austin Saalman Also released in 2000: The Avalanches: Since I left You, Badly Drawn Boy: The Hour of the Bewilderbeast, Black Box Recorder: Facts of Life, Clinic: Internal Wrangler, Goldfrapp: Felt Mountain, and Radiohead: Kid A.

2002 Bright Eyes Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (Saddle Creek, 2002) With Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground, the Omaha-based band Bright Eyes showcased their ability to adapt to other genres—including the infusion of folk and orchestra instrumentals that would only

20TH ANNIVERSARY grow stronger over time. However, aspects of angst and twenty-something emo-ness remained, especially on the standout and live show staple, “Lover I Don’t Have to Love.” This record opened both Conor Oberst and Bright Eyes up to new audiences and marked the first time Under the Radar interviewed the expanding group (the one and only interview done by our Co-Publisher Wendy Lynch Redfern). By Lexi Lane

Beck: Sea Change, Clinic: Walking With Thee, Coldplay: A Rush of Blood to the Head, Doves: The Last Broadcast, Idlewild: The Remote Part, Ladytron: Light & Magic, The Polyphonic Spree: The Beginning Stages of…, Sigur Rós:

’90s shoegaze all in equal parts meant that they had finally released a record that approached their live power. They would go on to make many more records of varying quality, but this is their magnum opus. By Matthew Berlyant

Broken Social Scene You Forgot It In People (Arts & Crafts, 2002) Broken Social Scene redefined what a band could be. The sprawling collective of 10+ musicians was founded by core players Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, but an open-door policy extended to members of Toronto’s alterative/indie scene. With You Forgot It In People, the group mutated and reassembled pop songs into a dense, exciting, and influential melange of non-existent subgenres. There’s the banjo-led Appalachian emo of “Anthems For a Seventeen Year-Old Girl,” Sebadoh’s answer to Neu! on “Cause = Time,” and some kind of jazzy trip-hop elevator music with “Pacific Theme.” The end result is disparate yet cohesive, and indie rock’s answer to Snarky Puppy. By Hayden Merrick

The Flaming Lips Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (Warner Bros., 2002) Perhaps the ultimate Flaming Lips record, 2002’s Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots fuses the band’s alt-rock sensibilities from the first two decades of their career with the spacey electronics that would become a prominent feature in the next two. Initially telling the story of a girl named Yoshimi who works for the city and battles, well, pink robots, the album abandons the narrative it sets up after four songs and instead becomes a lysergically-drenched rumination on love, death, and existence in our current, technologically-driven world—exactly the brand of off-kilter one would expect from the band. Deliriously wonky and punctuated with moments of Shakespearean tragedy, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is a psychedelic head trip of enormous emotional depth that truly has to be heard to be believed. By Joey Arnone

The Dears in Long Beach, CA, 2004. (Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern)

Interpol Turn on the Bright Lights (Matador, 2002) After all the fuzziness of grunge had faded away and set against the practiced sloppiness of The Strokes (who came out of the same scene in New York), Interpol appeared like a sharpened blade with their sleek suits, angular guitars, and glowering temperament. All of which added up to a million easy Joy Division comparisons, but a) who wouldn’t want more Joy Division b) songs like “NYC,” “Obstacle 1,” and “Leif Erikson” still elicit goosebumps almost two decades later, and c) there’s absolutely zero chance Ian Curtis would have tried to get away with Paul Banks’ “We have two hundred couches where you can sleep tight, grim rite” chorus. Turn on the Bright Lights led many young listeners to other bands, but it is, in its own right, a masterpiece. By Jim Scott

Rilo Kiley

(), Sparks: Lil’ Beethoven, Spoon: Kill the Moonlight, The Streets: Original Pirate Material, Supegrass: Life on Other Planets, The Walkmen: Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone, and Wilco: Yankee Foxtrot Hotel.

2003 The Dears No Cities Left (MapleMusic/SpinART/Bella Union, 2003)

When The Dears’ sophomore full-length studio album No Cities Left was initially released in 2003 in Canada, it went virtually unnoticed outside of their home country. However, when it was Rilo Kiley’s album circuit for their 2002 licensed to Bella Union and SpinART for release in the U.K. Saddle Creek sophomore release, The and U.S., respectively, in 2004, it garnered some long overExecution of All Things, was the first time that Under the Radar had interviewed the Los Angeles indie due recognition for the band (who had been at it since the band. Although lead singers Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett mid ’90s in various incarnations, all led by singer/guitarist/ songwriter Murray Lightburn and his wife, keyboardist/ share vocal duties on the record, the greatest strength of these songs rests in their clever lyricism. “Let’s get together vocalist Natalia Yanchak, their only constant members). That was also in large part due to the band’s legendarily and talk about the modern age,” Lewis sings on the album’s incendiary live shows, and once more folks saw them, they opener “The Good That Won’t Come Out,” setting a sly gained even more attention. Combining Lightburn’s soaring standard as the world moved further into the internet realm vocals (think a Canadian Morrissey or Damon Albarn of at the turn of the century. By Lexi Lane Blur) and appropriately soaring, gorgeous, melodic sadness inspired by ’90s Britpop, ’80s U.K. post-punk, and early Also released in 2002: Badly Drawn Boy: About a Boy, The Execution of All Things (Saddle Creek, 2002)

Death Cab for Cutie Transatlanticism (Barsuk, 2003) Less than two years prior to their appearance on the cover of Under the Radar’s 10th issue, Death Cab for Cutie delivered what is arguably their finest album and easily one of the decade’s most enduring. Arriving in October 2003, the appropriately autumnal Transatlanticism marked a major turning point in the Bellingham, WA indie rockers’ evolution. The sunny “Sound of Settling” and O.C. hit “Title and Registration” found the group embracing a more mainstream appeal that ultimately catalyzed their breakthrough success. The piercing “Tiny Vessels” and “We Looked Like Giants” stand among their greatest achievements. Also notable are the reflective “Passenger Seat” and plaintive closing ballad “A Lack of Color.” Broader, louder, and far more consistent than its predecessor The Photo Album (for which the group was interviewed in Issue 2), Transatlanticism chronicles a great band in transition from underground favorite to household name. By Austin Saalman

Mew Frengers (Sony, 2003) Hard rock—but make it magical. Mew’s third album (and first released internationally) was the ultimate exercise in prog-busting expectations. Guitars? Yeah, they’ve got 53

20TH ANNIVERSARY them, but tracks like “Symmetry” and “Her Voice is Beyond Her Years” also provided an emotionally charged oasis from their angular attacks. The album fittingly concludes with 8-minute, quiet-to-loud opus “Comforting Sounds,” neatly tying together their myriad of ideas and proving that we might not quite be friends and not quite strangers, but we were certainly fans. By Laura Studarus Also released in 2003: British Sea Power: The Decline of British Sea Power, Broadcast: HaHa Sound, The Cardigans: Long Gone Before Daylight, Clearlake: Cedars, The Concretes: The Concretes, Elbow: Cast of Thousands, Grandaddy: Sumday, Spiritualized: Amazing Grace, and M. Ward: Transfiguration of Vincent.

2004

set to music. What it is, at least musically, is his darkest, most chaotic release, a small detour by an artist who seemed eager to prove he could make an album sound as foreboding as the subject matter in his lyrics. “Don’t Go Down” churns with a sort of menace that Smith had never reached previously, its dark undertow of guitars swirling around his defiant vocal. “Strung Out Again” is as straightforward a song as Smith ever wrote about addiction, with howling guitar leads echoing the desperation of the lyrics. That’s not to say that there aren’t delicate moments on From a Basement on the Hill. The haunted “Let’s Get Lost,” “The Last Hour,” and “Little One”—all nimbly fingerpicked acoustic ballads that rank among the best in his catalog— sound that much more fragile due to the raw nerves that surround them. All of the fundamentals of his craft—the sophisticated melodic sense, the fragile vocals, the constantly shifting arrangements—are present, but here Smith pushes everything into the red. Though he’d be gone by the time the album came out, he never sounded more alive than he does on these tracks. By Matt Fink

Arcade Fire

Stereolab

Funeral (Merge, 2004)

Margerine Eclipse (Elektra/Duophonic, 2004)

With some time to look back, the explosion of amazing music, including fully-

“All the aches, pains and the joys/Of growing up beside you/Dancing a

Modest Mouse: Good News for People Who Love Bad News, Rilo Kiley: More Adventurous, and TV on the Radio: Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes.

2005 Bloc Party Silent Alarm (Wichita, 2005) Everything seems to be some shade of art rock or politically charged post-punk these days, but rewind to a time that was still reeling from the overbearing excesses of Britpop and the impotent toxic masculinity rage of nu metal, and the arrival of Bloc Party and their fresh new sound as heard on Silent Alarm cannot be understated. Fusing rapid fire riffs with breakbeat rhythms and boasting such huge anthems as “Helicopter,” “Banquet,” and “Like Eating Glass,” Kele Okereke (singer/guitar), Russell Lissack (fringe/guitar), Gordon Moakes (bass), and Matt Tong (drums) shot to Number 3 in the UK album charts, and their debut LP became a gold selling record in less than 24 hours, with the singles staying as a mainstay at any decent indie disco ever since. By Jimi Arundell

Richard Hawley Coles Corner (Mute, 2005) A throwback to a kinder, gentler musical era, Cole’s Corner is replete with tales of unfulfilled love and protagonists who face the ghosts of their past. Richard Hawley’s classic, sultry baritone is the star of the singer’s fourth studio album, which takes its name from a meeting spot in his hometown of Sheffield, England, where people have rendezvoused for more than a century. An accomplished guitarist who played with several bands including Pulp and Beth Orton, Hawley didn’t make his singing debut until he was in his late 30s, and the world is much richer for it, as proven by this magical and achingly beautiful album, which he performed many songs from at Under the Radar’s first ever SXSW party in 2006. By Laura Ferreiro

Sufjan Stevens Illinois (Asthmatic Kitty, 2005)

Arcade Fire in Los Angeles, 2005. (Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern)

formed debuts, in the early aughts was less about a cohesive sound than a cohesive scene. Arcade Fire emerged from Montreal with the barely tamed wildness of Talking Heads and the weirdness of the freak folk movement, and on Funeral, they explored a world in which much of what we know has rotted away. Not really apocalyptic, but whatever culture emerged afterwards seemed strikingly like a fort made by children. The breaking of Win Butler’s voice on “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” betrayed how much they truly cared about this world, and that care has permeated their music since, as they’ve risen to become one of the biggest bands in the world, and will likely continue to be when we’re living in blanket forts in the abandoned homes built by our parents. By Jim Scott

Elliott Smith From a Basement on the Hill (ANTI-, 2004) Contrary to what you’ve been told, Elliott Smith’s final album is not his suicide note 54

spontaneous dance with you/Your spirit lives,” Lætitia Sadier intones on “Feel and Triple.” It’s her elegy to Mary Hansen, who played on Stereolab’s near-perfect run of albums in the ’90s before being tragically killed in a bicycling accident. The group’s first release without her since 1992 debut Peng! honors her legacy with a collection of focused and tender compositions—the portentous bleep-bloops of “Cosmic Country Noir” that climax into a blissful, shimmering guitar plateau, the rich Moog pads and hypnotic bass on “Vonal Declosion,” and the bittersweet bossa nova of “Dear Marge.” Margerine Eclipse is unjustly eclipsed by preceding albums, but it’s unclear why. Here is a gentle yet direct collection of motorik lounge pop, a polished mission statement, and a poignant goodbye to a close friend with a “love of life.” By Hayden Merrick Also released in 2004: Air: Talkie Walkie, Ambulance Ltd: Ambulance Ltd., The Divine Comedy: Absent Friends, Electrelane: The Power Out, The Fiery Furnaces: Blueberry Boat, Franz Ferdinand: Franz Ferdinand, The Go! Team: Thunder, Lightning, Strike, Interpol: Antics,

The Midwest has long possessed a certain melancholy urban mythology. In 2005, Michigan-bred singer/songwriter Sufjan Stevens managed to depict this unique region in the production of Illinois—a vast, symphonic exploration of the sprawling Prairie State through the eyes of its inhabitants. Spanning generations and genres, Illinois ranges from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition to the riverfront community of Decatur and so forth, encountering along the way Carl Sandburg’s ghost, Mary Todd Lincoln, and John Wayne Gacy, Jr. The album’s epic scope is mirrored by its eclectic influences, exploring everything from indie rock to folk, jazz, and ’70s pop, running raw with emotion still so deeply affecting, as on the devastating “Casimir Pulaski Day.” 16 years later, Stevens’ groundbreaking masterpiece is yet to be replicated. Part lesson in American history, part experimental indie epic, Illinois continues to make waves, standing as a monumental release of its genre. By Austin Saalman

Also released in 2005: Death Cab for Cutie: Plans, Elbow: Leaders of the Free World, Gorillaz: Demon Days, Ladytron: The Witching Hour, Jamie Lidell: Multiply, Metric: Live It Out, Mew: And the Glass Handed Kites, My Morning Jacket: Z, The New Pornographers: Twin Cinema, Rogue Wave: Descended Like Vultures, Spoon: Gimme Fiction, and Supergrass: Road to Rouen.

20TH ANNIVERSARY

2006 Bat For Lashes Fur and Gold (Echo, 2006)

Ser Sexy. Taking both their moniker and LP title from Paris Hilton complaining she was tired of being sexy, it is a record absolutely dripping in irony and bursting full of party beats, which perfectly chimed with a world in the mood to dance. Yet despite being the right sound and the right time, it flopped when released in their home country on Trama, and it wasn’t until they were picked up by Sub Pop that they suddenly became the international superstars they deserved to be—if only for what seemed a few short months. “Alala” is an absolute

turned the bass and keyboards up a notch, and allowed them to take more of a lead. The Decemberists have always had a flair for the dramatic, but The Crane Wife enhanced their ever-evolving sound. Now with eight distinctive albums, songs ranging from the quirky to the sublime, and a reputation for dynamic and entertaining live shows, The Decemberists have built a well-deserved and large devoted fan base. By Matt the Raven

Bat For Lashes’ stunning debut album, Fur and Gold, demonstrated the scope of Natasha Khan’s cinematic musical ambitions. It’s an album infused with adventurous instrumentation and often unconventional song structures as she guides the listener on a mesmerizing trip through a world of baroque gothic elegance. There’s a purity and a refreshing lack of cynicism that runs throughout Fur and Gold, whilst Khan’s dazzling voice is indisputably an instrument of opulent beauty. Although comparisons to the glacial imperiousness of Siouxsie Sioux or the theatrical flamboyance of Kate Bush aren’t without merit, Khan takes her influences and creates something truly unique. It’s a world of mystery and magic, of twisted fairy tales, and as with the best fairy tales, there’s an undercurrent of creeping menace. The ghostly spectre of Spector (Phil) on the hypnotic “What’s a Girl To Do?,” the swooning majesty of “The Wizard,” or the whispering foreboding atmosphere of “Trophy” (with Josh T. Pearson on backing vocals) all demonstrate Khan’s singular talent and ability to transport and immerse the listener into her world of beauty and wonder. By Andy Von Pip

Belle and Sebastian The Life Pursuit (Matador, 2006) Having turned the page on a remarkable (and prolific) early career that saw the band eschew its typical monochrome set for Technicolor grandeur, Belle and Sebastian carried serious momentum into The Life Pursuit, astutely partnering with Tony Hoffer (Beck, Air) to channel obvious songwriting confidence into a sound teeming with energy and panache, suggestive of one of Stuart Murdoch’s smart outsiders wandering into a costume closet and finding caffeine pills in one of the jacket pockets. There’s an immediacy and unrelenting quality to the music (the triumphant lift of “Act of the Apostle,” the revved-up folk rock of “Another Sunny Day,” the funky keyboard riff and heavy swagger of “White Collar Boy,” the sustained desperation of “Funny Little Frog,” etc.) informing a gaggle of highpoints that ultimately form the peak of the Scottish band’s substantive and adventurous second act. A chance encounter between Under the Radar staff and guitarist Stevie Jackson at a revived legendary soda fountain in Hollywood in late summer 2005 led to an interview, photo shoot, and album preview at Sunset Sound with Jackson and frontman, Stuart Murdoch, with the band eventually gracing Under the Radar’s cover upon the album’s release in early 2006. By Gary Knight

Camera Obscura in Austin, TX, 2006. (Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern via a photobooth)

banger, which still ignites dancefloors to this day, “CSS Suxxx” is a perfect marriage of punk attitude and electroclash style, whilst “Off the Hook” is still cool as fuck. By Jimi Arundell

Camera Obscura Let’s Get Out of This Country (Merge, 2006) From the opening church organ of “Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken,” Let’s Get Out of This Country transports to a time in our past that never exactly occurred, but is rooted in our nostalgia. This is a record that conjures hazy memories of listening to 45s on your cousin’s portable turntable, sitting cross-legged on a bedroom rug. When Belle and Sebastian took a turn for bombastic pomp with their 2006 release, Camera Obscura put out an album that was as warm and comforting as anything their fellow Scots ever recorded. Heartache has never been this cozy. By Austin Trunick

CSS Cansei de Ser Sexy (Sub Pop, 2006) Somewhere amid the madness and absurdity of nu-rave came some genuine gems, and none better than Brazilian band CSS’ debut album, Cansei de

The Decemberists The Crane Wife (Capitol, 2006) The Decemberists’ allure has always been their ability to weave intriguing stories into the fabric of their artistic folk-pop while mixing in touches of worldly musical forms like sea chanties, Irish jigs, and The Smiths. For 2006’s The Crane Wife, the band expanded their quaint and captivating indie rock with a more focused and fuller production and seemingly pulled off the impossible. Not only did they land on the cover of Under the Radar, but they embellished their sound by integrating the intricate and complex cadences of old-school ’70s prog rock with vestiges of ’80s synth-rock polyrhythms, all without losing their distinctive charm. With a handful of songs loosely based on a Japanese folk tale, and plenty of masterful murder ballads and tragic love songs, The Decemberists did not abandon the genuine sounds that graced their three previous albums but included salient electric guitars,

Midlake The Trials of Van Occupanther (Bella Union, 2006) From the eerie woodland image on its cover through the opening harmonies of “Roscoe” to the pastoral sounds of “Young Bride” and the record’s lyrical content, The Trials of Van Occupanther feels like a melancholy folk fable come to life. The departure of songwriter Tim Smith led to the band releasing only one album in the last 11 years, making the new Midlake record one of our most anticipated of 2022. By Austin Trunick

Also released in 2006: Jarvis Cocker: Jarvis, The Dears: Gang of Losers, The Divine Comedy: Victory For the Comic Muse, Charlotte Gainsbourg: 555, Grizzly Bear: Yellow House, Headlights: Kill Them with Kindness, Lansing-Dreiden: The Dividing Island, Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins: Rabbit Fur Coat, Love Is All: Nine Times That Same Song, Peter Bjorn & John: Writer’s Block, and The Pipettes: We Are the Pipettes. 55

20TH ANNIVERSARY

2007 Bloc Party A Weekend in the City (Wichita, 2007) Returning with a more mature feel on an even more ambitious scale, Bloc Party’s second record, A Weekend in the City, is

let us know that “Ninety-Nine and a Half Won’t Do.” Tharpe may have been singing of spiritual things, but Sharon Jones, born seven years on, always gave it 100%. The former Rikers Island prison guard released a handful of R&B singles in the ’90s, but made a bigger splash fronting Brooklyn’s The Dap-Kings, who would support her the rest of her career. Already in her 50s, Jones reached peak popularity with 100 Days, 100 Nights and the succeeding I Learned the Hard Way. 100 Days starts with its title track, where a woozy horn line leads right into Jones telling us just how it is, and things rarely let up from there. Whether it’s the slow burn of “Humble

MGMT Oracular Spectacular (RED Ink/Columbia, 2007) The album that millions of teens paired with their first joints. Beneath the Day-Glo synthesizers and Bee Gees-inflected grooves is a collection of sophisticatedly off-kilter tracks from two wry, self-aware pranksters that still to this day convince me of the sincerity in not being serious. Opening with the inimitably diaphanous key line of “Time to Pretend” that evokes nostalgia the way a Rorschach evokes answers, this paean to the fantasy lives they would end up nearly leading is full of genuine wonder, heartache, and a tongue-in-cheek nod to the pitfalls they would knowingly avoid. It might be the track that best encapsulates MGMT’s strange journey from soundtracking frat parties to deep-in-the-weeds explorations of texture and tonality. The album is full of contradictions, from the utopian galvanization of “The Youth” to the cynically sarcastic “The Handshake,” a song about their feelings of selling out to a major label. One thing that remains constant is the attention to craft and the unmistakable hooks that would define their era. By Stephen Axeman

Radiohead In Rainbows (Self-Released/TBD Records/XL, 2007) At the time, a lot of the discourse around In Rainbows surrounded the seemingly novel idea of a pay-what-you-want album. Now, in the age of streaming, the record is even more fondly remembered as one of the high points in Radiohead’s already legendary discography. The cool electronic experimentalism of Kid A and Amnesiac and burning political polemics of Hail to the Thief were replaced with lush instrumental warmth, expansive production, and even tender love songs. Not only did it serve as an accessible entry point for new fans, In Rainbows proved that Radiohead was still capable of delivering all-time classics almost two decades into their career. By Caleb Campbell Also released in 2007: Beirut: The Flying Club Cup, The Besnard Lakes: The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse, Deerhunter: Cryptograms, Feist: The Reminder, Klaxons: Myths of the Near Future, LCD Soundsystem: The Sound of Silver, Modest Mouse: We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank, of Montreal: Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, Spoon: Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, St. Vincent: Marry Me, and Tegan and Sara: The Con.

Sharon Jones in Austin, TX, 2007. (Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern)

a somewhat underrated album, rarely recognized for both the creative and commercial successes it achieved. Referencing author Brett Easton Ellis and tackling themes of middle-class ennui, drug use, alienation, and racism in the media and wider society, they present a challenging context that remains relevant today without ever being too on the nose with the polemics or politics. “Uniform” is guitarist Russell Lissack at his best, with truly razor-sharp riffs; both “Flux” and “The Prayer” are superb early forays into the electronic sound that Bloc Party would pursue further in following album Intimacy. And special mention must go to oft-overlooked single “I Still Remember,” whose playful melodies and Kele Okereke’s sweetly sincere lyrics perfectly capture the heart-breaking memories and yearning nostalgia of young love. By Jimi Arundell

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings 100 Days, 100 Nights (Daptone, 2007) Way back in 1949, Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Me” or the harder edged funk of “Nobody’s Baby,” Jones covers the waterfront oozing the essence of juke joint soulfulness. We lost Jones to pancreatic cancer in 2016 and label mate Charles Bradley the following year. Both were too soon gone, but Jones left an indelible mark by reminding us that soul music done right never goes out of style. By Mark Moody

Jens Lekman Night Falls Over Kortedala (Secretly Canadian, 2007) On his second album, Jens Lekman fully embraces the power of his cracked romantic storytelling, often making himself the butt of the joke as he plays beard for his best friend, fails to have a meaningful chat with his sister, and discovers the depths of love during an avocado-related medical incident. Rendered in a beguiling blend of Northern soul, beach-disco, and good old-fashioned crooning, they’re wry life lessons that linger. By Laura Studarus

2008 Deerhunter Microcastle (Kranky, 2008) It’s been well over a decade since Deerhunter’s breakthrough full-length redefined psychedelic indie pop, and it remains an unparalleled statement of swirling beauty and sumptuous terror. Microcastle built on many of the excellent ideas in 2007’s Cryptograms by taking a less-is-more approach, smartly distilling their sprawling influences (Jean Genet, shoegaze, doo-wop, and Krautrock to name a few) into shorter, more potent songs. The album was also the victim of a high-profile internet leak (remember those?) and, ultimately, was released in tandem with its wildly underrated sister record Weird Era Cont., which was originally intended as a surprise gift for loyal fans. Together they make for the best Southern rock double-LP since The Allman Brothers Band’s Eat a Peach. By Paul Bullock

20TH ANNIVERSARY Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop, 2008) A definitive year in ’00s indie, 2008 saw the emergence of Seattle’s Fleet Foxes and their eponymous debut album. An atmospheric study in pristine folk pop wrapped within the salty scent of driftwood and freshly fallen rain, the music evokes the emerald foliage and misty air of their hometown. The group’s meticulous harmonies on richer, fuller numbers such as “White Winter Hymnal” pair well with frontman Robin Pecknold’s earthy vocals. The ghostly, unvarnished balladry of “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” reveals an ethereal and moody essence, placing Fleet Foxes within a realm all its own. Among the first nationally distributed print magazines to interview the group prior to the album’s announcement, Under the Radar has developed a fondness for Fleet Foxes as they continue to produce the thoughtful, top-rate indie sound that defined their masterwork over 13 years ago. By Austin Saalman

ing radically from the gothic garage rock of their debut to a sleeker, shoegaze-focused strain of neo-psychedelia— and it worked like a charm. At once intuitive and well-researched, Primary Colours is really a wonderful effort. “Mirror’s Image” and “Scarlet Fields” expertly channel the doom and gloom of early ’80s Cure and Echo & The Bunnymen, while the grinding “Who Can Say” places the group at the forefront of their generation’s alt rock scene. Dreamier numbers such as “I Only Think of You” also work well, with frontman Faris Badwan’s low, foreboding vocals adding a distinctive funerary nuance, and closing epic “Sea Within a Sea” stands as The Horrors’ single highest point

Want” and “Laughing with a Mouth of Blood.” Here, we find ’00s St. Vincent at her finest, her melodies intricate and lyrics insightful, rapidly distinguishing herself as one of her generation’s premier artists. By Austin Saalman Also released in 2009: Atlas Sound: Logos, Bat For Lashes: Two Suns, Camera Obscura: My Maudlin Career, Jarvis Cocker: Further Complications, Dirty Projectors: Bitte Orca, The Flaming Lips: Embryonic, Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest, The Invisible: The Invisible, The Phantom Band: Checkmate Savage, Phoenix: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, The Soundcarriers: Harmonium, and Telekinesis: Telekinesis!

Vampire Weekend Vampire Weekend (XL, 2008) Like a great wrestling heel, Vampire Weekend leaned into their Ivy League pedigrees by dressing the part (those polos) and not only singing about punctuation, but naming a song “Oxford Comma.” This allowed them to kick in the door in terms of wielding their intelligence however they wanted, and any accusations of, say, cultural tourism were deweaponized by their own awareness (see: naming a song “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”). Vampire Weekend is a smart album, sure, but it’s also supremely catchy, with dynamic songs that rise and fall made by a collection of kids barely in their 20s who looked ahead to the cultural conversation, headed it off at the pass, and went from there. (Under the Radar was, we think, the first nationally distributed print magazine to interview Vampire Weekend, based on a burned CD-R of an earlier version of this album that they sent to us.) By Jim Scott Also released in 2008: The Dears: Missiles, The Dodos: Visiter, The Duke Spirit: Neptune, Elbow: The Seldom Seen Kid, Flight of the Conchords: Flight of the Conchords, Friendly Fires: Friendly Fires, Hot Chip: Made in the Dark, Jenny Lewis: Acid Tongue, Lykke Li: Youth Novels, M83: Saturdays=Youth, Plants and Animals: Parc Avenue, Portishead: Third, She & Him: Volume One, and TV on the Radio: Dear Science.

2009 Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino, 2009) Through most of the ’00s, Animal Collective’s live shows were strewn with unfamiliar songs that wouldn’t appear on record until a couple of years later. After Merriweather Post Pavilion came out at the end of the decade, the group—then operating as the trio of Avey Tare, Panda Bear, and Geologist—settled their setlists around what remains their biggest critical and commercial achievement. Having long made a virtue of restlessly rushing forward, they were justified in celebrating this new point where the mainstream opened up and let their weird waters flow in. By Ian King

The Horrors Primary Colours (XL, 2009) Upon its release, The Horrors’ sophomore album found the group shift-

Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend, and Meric Long of The Dodos in San Francisco, CA, 2008. (Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern)

as a group. Primary Colours .remains a spacey and highly original modern classic, its sense of deeply inspired timelessness keeping it fresh and intriguing for listeners old and new. By Austin Saalman

St. Vincent Actor (4AD, 2009) On her sophomore release, avant-pop maestro Annie Clark—better known as St. Vincent—furthered her penchant for baroque experimentalism, surpassing her marvelous debut in terms of creative eccentricity, a vision Clark realized with the expertise and sincerity of a devoted composer. An exercise in her observational wit and sometimes self-deprecating humor, Actor is an intimate experience, especially on key tracks such as “Save Me from What I

2010 Arcade Fire The Suburbs (Merge, 2010) To say that The Suburbs, Arcade Fire’s third album overall and their second-to-last on Merge, was highly anticipated by fans before its summer 2010 release is an understatement of epic proportions. They had just established themselves as perhaps the premiere indie rock band of the 2000s since the 57

20TH ANNIVERSARY release of their smash 2004 debut album Funeral and were heading into their second decade on top of the world, selling hundreds of thousands of records in an era where sales shrank considerably due to downloading, being feted by legends like David Byrne and David Bowie, and graduating from theater headliners on the tour for 2007’s second LP Neon Bible to full-on arena and amphitheatre seat fillers on the tour for this album. And unlike on their subsequent album, 2013’s Reflektor, they didn’t really change their sound up too much here. Songs such as the bitter “Rococo” deal with the pressures of fame and acclaim while both parts of the two-part “Sprawl” (particularly “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”) deal with the album’s titular theme and the alienation it produces. Crucially, this song, sung by Régine Chassagne and not usual lead vocalist Win Butler, provides a preview of where they’d go on the synth-heavy

plays before things elegantly fall into place. Indeed, bodies of work that often necessitate a degree of engagement are often the most rewarding, and Without Why certainly delivers. There are spine-tingling moments of near perfection such as previous singles “Start/Stop/Synchro,” “Another Version of Pop Song,” and the sublime “Find Me Out,” whilst “Fallen Over” has an air of Britpop before the genre descended into generic lad rock. Elsewhere, “Carry On” and “To the Sea,” sound like lost cult indie classics and could have easily have slotted onto The Sundays’ revered debut album Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. Dougall’s rich euphonic voice is in and of itself a thing of dark beauty. Listening to her employ it so effectively on this elegantly crafted collection of shimmering pop songs is never anything less than a blissful and richly rewarding experience.

“Domestic Scene,” “Heaven’s On Fire,” and “The Video Dept.” represent some of the best material the band has to offer, while “You Stopped Making Sense” packs its emotional punch with a swift iron fist. A key release of the ’10s, Clinging to a Scheme offers new thrills with each listen, cementing The Radio Dept. as one of the most inventive groups of the past 20 years. By Austin Saalman Also released in 2010: Beach House: Teen Dream, Club 8: The People’s Record, Deerhunter: Halcyon Digest, Gayngs: Relayted, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings: I Learned the Hard Way, Local Natives: Gorilla Manor, Janelle Monáe: The ArchAndroid, The National: High Violet, Joanna Newsom: Have One on Me, Plants and Animals: La La Land, Mark Ronson & The Business Intl.: Record Collection, Sufjan Stevens: The Age of Adz, Tame Impala: Innerspeaker, Twin Shadow: Forget, Vampire Weekend: Contra, and Yeasayer: Odd Blood.

2011 The Horrors Skying (XL, 2011) From the gothic grit of their 2007 debut Strange House to the shoegazing post-punk of 2009’s Primary Colours, The Horrors have always been prone to taking great stylistic leaps between albums, and 2011’s Skying is no exception. Here, the British rock quintet further refined their sleek post-punk and shoegaze leanings while diverging into a dizzying dream pop soundscape. Tracks such as “Changing the Rain,” “You Said,” and “Still Life” play upon the decade’s emergent ’80s nostalgia trend, while “Endless Blue” reserves plenty of room to rock. The use of brass and heavy synths provide a necessary warmth to frontman Faris Badwan’s cool, often despondent vocals. In its well-executed variety, Skying marked a fresh phase of experimentation for the group, charting a new course for their second decade. Ten years on, Skying holds up, reminding us that The Horrors are one of their generation’s most unique acts. By Austin Saalman

St Vincent Strange Mercy (4AD, 2011) Annie Clark had already floated through two albums of baroque pop before unleashing Strange Mercy, her first unabashedly rock album. A storyteller’s album, she lays out detailed narratives in her fairy-tale soprano, exploring twisty cruelty, complicated salvations, and mistaken apocalypse—the screech of her guitar reminding listeners this isn’t a bedtime story, but a cheeky preview of what’s to come. By Laura Studarus

St. Vincent in New York City, 2011. (Photo by Tommy Kearns)

Reflektor and subsequently on 2017’s Everything Now as well. It’s also the best thing here, with Chassagne channeling her inner Kate Bush on an ultra-catchy track. Oh, and The Suburbs surprised everyone by winning the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, a rare feat for an indie rock album. By Matthew Berlyant

Rose Elinor Dougall Without Why (Scarlett Music, 2010)

Without Why is a gorgeous and compelling debut full of depth and beauty that revolves around themes of love, regret, longing, and new beginnings, and is also an album that will ultimately reward the listener if they are prepared to put the effort in. By Andy Von Pip

The Radio Dept. Clinging to a Scheme (Labrador, 2010)

Also released in 2011: Anna Calvi: Anna Calvi, Cut Copy: Zonoscope, Dum Dum Girls: Only In Dreams, EMA: Past Life Martyred Saints, Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues, Florence and the Machine: Ceremonials, Hooray for Earth: True Loves, I Break Horses: Hearts, M83: Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, Metronomy: The English Riviera, Slow Club: Paradise, SBTRKT: SBTRKT, Toro y Moi: Underneath the Pine, The War on Drugs: Slave Ambient, Washed Out: Within and Without, and Yuck: Yuck.

2012

There is a uniquely exquisite beauty to be Rose Elinor Dougall’s debut album finds gleaned from The Radio Dept.’s overall Bat for Lashes her emancipated from the stylistic discography, though Clinging to a Scheme The Haunted Man polka-dotted restraints of her former band has always felt like their most realized accomplishment. A (Parlophone, 2012) The Pipettes and exploring an entirely different sonic palette. classic of its genre, the Swedish dream pop outfit’s third Moreover, it displays an introspective yet sophisticated style studio album harnesses the velveteen buzz and blurred of songwriting that demands (and is totally deserving of) delirium of previous efforts, but sharpens its rebellious After undergoing a crippling bout of writer’s the listener’s full attention. Dougall’s song structures aren’t edges and compresses its content into a concise 10-track block following the release of Two Suns, always the most straightforward, and it can take repeated collection on which every song is strong. Standout tracks singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Natasha Khan 58

20TH ANNIVERSARY delivered The Haunted Man, a grand celebration of creative expression and her finest achievement as an artist. A vast electro-symphony, Khan’s third album delivers a sound clearer and fuller than its predecessors, feeling at once her most personal and ambitious. The opening “Lilies,” a key track, showcases her powerful vocal abilities, while “Laura” and “A Wall” remind the listener of her extraordinary lyrical prowess, her poetic nature seemingly drawn from the earth itself. In retrospect, The Haunted Man feels somewhat like Khan’s personal Medúlla—a grandly experimental effort by a famously unique artist that is both mature and indicative of a fresh creative chapter in a book of plenty. By Austin Saalman

Beach House

ability to not second guess himself into an early grave. The album features nine songs—roughly split into three sets of three, flavor-wise—that, amazingly, go deeper than Loveless. The pop is poppier, such as on the sparkling “new you,” the whooshy weird moments go whooshier and weirder (“wonder 2”), and the dynamics are vaster: The tender synth purrs of “is this and yes” juxtapose the dark, immersive guitar smog on “she found now.” It may have taken a generation, but if the next album is anything like m b v, I’m happy to get it when I’m in my 40s. By Hayden Merrick

Vampire Weekend Modern Vampires of the City (XL, 2013)

Bloom (Sub Pop, 2012)

Vampire Weekend is one of a few bands that owned the indie world of the 2010s, and Modern Vampires of the City shows Teen Dream was the breakthrough, but why. Even upon release, it proved a huge step forward Bloom was where Beach House went for the band. Ezra Koenig’s hyper-referential writing dived widescreen. Surely in part a result of being deeper into the unknown, deconstructing faith, aging, written in the midst of constant touring, these songs reached romance, and death. Meanwhile, the band’s peppy Afro-pop for the back of the room in ways that Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally had hardly hinted at in their hazy early recordings. “Wild” and “Lazuli” were uncontained, bold, and immediate. Down the line, “Troublemaker” tipped into “New Year” and poured into “Wishes,” and it became startlingly clear that Bloom wasn’t going to do anything by halves. By Ian King

National: Trouble Will Find Me, Primal Scream: More Light, Still Corners: Strange Pleasures, Suede: Bloodsports, Kurt Vile: Wakin on a Pretty Daze, Chelsea Wolfe: Pain is Beauty, and Younghusband: Dromes.

2014 Alvvays Alvvays (Polyvinyl, 2014) When Alvvays put out their self-titled debut LP in 2014, few were paying attention and even fewer suspected that this Canadian foursome would become one of the most popular and best indie-pop groups of the past decade. Becoming a sleeper hit over the course of a year following the popular single “Archie, Marry Me,” this album is chock full of other wonderful songs, such as

Wild Nothing Nocturne (Captured Tracks, 2012) The sonic leap from Wild Nothing’s wonderful Gemini (2010) to its follow-up, Nocturne, is large enough to make many first-time listeners do a double-take. While the first album had a DIY charm, Jack Tatum’s second record was an unexpected marvel of production. The hooks are still here, but this time around they came wrapped in an almost otherworldly studio polish which gave modern indie dreampop, finally, a truly dreamlike quality. The results were transcendent. By Austin Trunick Also released in 2012: alt-J: An Awesome Wave, Bear in Heaven: I Love You, It’s Cool, Chairlift: Something, Choir of Young Believers: Rhine Gold, Chromatics: Kill for Love, Django Django: Django Django, Father John Misty: Fear Fun, Grimes: Visions, The Invisible: Rispah, Moonface: With Siinai: Heartbreaking Bravery, Frankie Rose: Interstellar, Tame Impala: Lonerism, and Jessie Ware: Devotion.

2013 Foals

Future Islands in Los Angeles, CA, 2010. (Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern)

Holy Fire (Warner Bros., 2013) It was Holy Fire that proved Foals was headed for (and capable of) true rock and roll greatness. Filled with both intimacy and intensity, Holy Fire expanded Foals’ instrumentation and presentation, anchored by the arena-ready pomposity of “Inhaler.” This Mercury Prize-nominated third LP introduced Foals to true international success, and future acclaimed albums would tip their hat back to the permission to explore granted by Holy Fire. By Matt Conner

My Bloody Valentine mbv (Self-Released, 2013) Twenty-two years after Loveless, a record that, for simplicity’s sake, changed the world, the startling arrival of a new My Bloody Valentine album almost as good as its predecessor is a testament to Kevin Shields’ songwriting prowess and

transformed into sparkling studio gems, with co-producers Rostam Batmanglij and Ariel Rechtshaid crafting some of the decade’s most lavish chamber and baroque pop. Though the band likely still have more to come, Modern Vampires of the City now sports a strange nostalgia as both their creative apex and as their last album with Rostam in the band. While Vampire Weekend may never sound quite like this again, it’s easy to see why the record has proved so enduring; it is the strongest statement from one of indie’s seminal acts and an undeniable modern classic. By Caleb Campbell Also released in 2013: Willis Earl Beal: Nobody Knows, Camera Obscura: Desire Lines, CHVRCHES: The Bones of What You Believe, Daft Punk: Random Access Memories, Foxygen: We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic, Girls Names: The New Life, John Grant: Pale Green Ghosts, HAIM: Days Are Gone, The

the slowed-down fan favorite “Party Police” (complete with a riff taken from Joan Osborne’s 1995 smash “One of Us”). Alvvays sees singer Molly Rankin (of Canada’s famous Rankin Family) and guitarist Alec O’Hanley (from Canadian indie band Two Hours Traffic and others) joining forces to create a modern pop classic in the vein of late ’80s U.K. groups like The Primitives (whom they covered), The Shop Assistants, and others. 2017’s sophomore LP Antisocialites is even better and saw them solidify their fanbase and get even more popular, but this is where it all started. By Matthew Berlyant

Future Islands Singles (4AD, 2014) After four albums and eight years, Future Islands hit Late Show with David Letterman

20TH ANNIVERSARY with attention-grabbing synth single “Seasons (Waiting on You).” As novel as Samuel T. Herring’s Vincent Price-bellow and fancy theatrical moves felt, the performance and album had all the hallmarks of what we’ve come to love from the band—namely, a chance to dance it out while celebrating all-consuming heartache and earthshaking love. By Laura Studarus

could be forgiven for not seeing that indie rock’s savior of the literate pop song would be arriving from Melbourne’s shores. Barnett’s first full-length album would prove that earlier singles “Avant Gardener” and “History Eraser” were no flukes. The drolly titled Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit took us places we had never heard of and didn’t know we needed to go. From Melbourne’s 96 tram line (“Elevator Operator”) to Phillip Island’s Sunset Strip (“Kim’s Caravan”) to suburban Preston (“Depreston”), The War on Drugs Barnett’s hyper descriptive lyrics allow you to skip the actual Lost in the Dream trip. And with tracks like the slow rolling boil of “Small (Secretly Canadian,2014) Poppies” and Barnett’s still best rave-up, “Pedestrian at Lost in the Dream is a work of perseverance. Best,” Sometimes both announced her full on arrival and With his Springsteen-inspired, midwestern stood the test of time. By Mark Moody breeze, The War on Drugs’ Adam Granduciel so tangibly Beach House offered us passionate reflections on love, dreams, and the Thank Your Lucky Stars pressures that would try to disrupt them. The album—our (Sub Pop,2015) favorite release of 2014—propels us forward with a steady beat through the lonely threat of night until dawn crests the Somewhat unexpected and released just horizon again. Here, meticulous care is given to the ambient two months after their fifth album

especially in the case of Mayberry, a literal target of online misogyny and threats. Somehow, against such overwhelming attention and pressure, CHVRCHES’ sophomore effort Every Open Eye exudes a defining confidence that the band has maintained ever since. Doherty and Cook’s hooks are crystalline in their sharpness, and Mayberry’s vocals are reaching and aspirational in a way that firmly established her as a template which many future artists will undoubtedly emulate and follow for years to come. Every Open Eye is where CHVRCHES found their clarity with singular vision. By Mike Hilleary

Father John Misty I Love You, Honeybear (Sub Pop,2015) Josh Tillman’s Father John Misty persona is self-evidently a pretentious misanthropic character. What a surprise, then, that he delivered one of the previous decade’s best love stories with I Love You, Honeybear. In an internet-addicted, ironypoisoned media landscape, one of the most notorious emblems of 2015-era hipsterdom created an album full of surprising warmth and joy. The story Tillman crafts is just as expansive, freewheeling, sardonic, and frequently brilliant as the man himself. It’s an album about being hopelessly, deliriously in love, delivered through the eyes of a bitter cynic. By Caleb Campbell

Tame Impala Currents (Interscope,2015) One of the ultimate break-up albums and the soundtrack to many a college kid’s life, 2015’s Currents by Tame Impala (aka Kevin Parker) is all about change, and how Parker translates the dizzyingly inevitable vortex of it is truly unparalleled in its emotional resonance. Parker’s lyricism strikes directly at the heart of what it means to grow as a human being, at once broadly prophetic and intimately relatable. The album, which according to Parker was a nightmare to create and “unlistenable” upon its completion, has struck a chord with many since its release exactly because it speaks volumes about a natural process with which we all have to face: getting older, and the pain and liberation with which it can bring. Bound to be a future classic, Currents will undoubtedly be a cornerstone coming-of-age record for generations to come. By Joey Arnone

Wolf Alice My Love Is Cool (Dirty Hit/RCA,2015)

Ellie Rowsell of Wolf Alice and Josh Tillman of Father John Misty in London, 2015. (Photo by Pal Hansen) After a succession of dazzling singles, Wolf Alice released a stunning debut album that proved that the excitement surrounding the band was more than justified. My Love Is silences (“The Haunting Idle”) occupying the space between Depression Cherry in 2015, Thank Your Lucky Stars was a Cool was an album that pretty much delivers on every level. explosive waves of guitar-jam euphoria (“Red Eyes”). most pleasant surprise. With a focus on surrounding the lush The sheer quality of Wolf Alice’s songwriting can be judged Because only when you’ve truly understood the darkness and gossamer melodies with catchy beats and softly not just by the collection of fantastic songs that do appear can you understand the spark that overcomes it. soaring guitar riffs, it’s the quintessential Beach House on the album, but also by those that do not. When you can By Chris Thiessen album, featuring their signature dream-pop formula of airy afford to leave off songs such as “Blush,” “She,” and guitars, hushed indie-rock beats, and ethereal vocals. “Leaving Home” and still release a debut album as Also released in 2014: alt-J: This Is All Yours, Caribou: Our The duo of vocalist/keyboardist Victoria Legrand and exceptional as My Love Is Cool, it goes to show just what Love, East India Youth: Total Strife Forever, EMA: The guitarist Alex Scally are often compared to Cocteau Twins, a talent Wolf Alice are. Future’s Void, First Aid Kit: Stay Gold, Jenny Lewis: The but Beach House’s vibe is distinctly 21st century ethereal The haunting Mazzy Star-esque opener of “Turn to Voyager, Angel Olsen: Burn Your Fire For No Witness, pop perfection. With Legrand’s velvety voice and Scally’s Dust” gives way to the exuberant, chiming majesty of Real Estate: Atlas, St. Vincent: St. Vincent, and Wye atmospheric guitar swirls adorning the hypnotic melodies, “Bros,” in which Ellie Rowsell’s beautifully expressive vocal Oak: Shriek. Thank Your Lucky Stars is a gorgeous triumph. perfectly captures the joys of childhood friendship. “Your By Matt the Raven Loves Whore” is another example of Wolf Alice’s consummate ability to combine melody with noisy, crunching guitars. Live favorites “Giant Peach” and “Fluffy” demonstrate CHVRCHES how Rowsell can quickly transform her vocal delivery from Every Open Eye a soft whisper into a belligerently combative riot grrrl roar as (Glassnote/Virgin EMI,2015) the band demonstrate an unerring ability to fuse melody with fierce but controlled power. By Andy Von Pip With the breakthrough success of their Courtney Barnett debut album The Bones of What You Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Also released in 2015: Amason: Sky City, Beach Believe, Scottish trio Lauren Mayberry, Sometimes I Just Sit House: Depression Cherry, C Duncan: Architect, Martin Doherty, and Iain Cook conquered a zeitgeist of (Mom + Pop/Marathon/Milk!,2015) Everything Everything: Get to Heaven, FFS: FFS, synth-pop in 2013. Being placed at the forefront of a whole Gwenno: Y Dydd Olaf, Julia Holter: Have You in My genre naturally made them targets for scrutinizing fans and Given that 99.7% of the world’s Wilderness, My Morning Jacket: The Waterfall, Neon critics waiting for what they would pull for their follow-up, population doesn’t live in Australia, one

2015

20TH ANNIVERSARY Indian: VEGA INTL. Night School, Natalie Prass: Natalie Prass, Shamir: Ratchet, Sufjan Stevens: Carrie & Lowell, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra: Multi-Love.

2016 David Bowie Blackstar (Columbia, 2016) There’s an element of bravery in David Bowie’s Blackstar. While the late Leonard Cohen (who died the same year as Bowie) grappled with the god of the Old Testament on his swansong You Want It Darker, Blackstar peels back the myth of Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke to reveal a frail, mortal man facing the abyss. His voice cracks when he sings “This way or no way/You know I’ll be free/Just like that bluebird/Now, ain’t that just like me?” Bowie didn’t owe us this, his legacy cemented in stone the moment Station to Station hit record store shelves in 1976. But he was a true artist to the end, leaving behind a jazzy, gothic, and mysterious final act that’s equal parts beautiful and terrifying. A fitting finale. By Kyle Kersey

2017 Algiers The Underside of Power (Matador, 2017) Atlanta-based Algiers’ sophomore album, The Underside of Power, landed somewhere after Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration and before the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. The rage unleashed by the band’s leader, Franklin James Fisher, on the opening moments of first track, “Walk Like a Panther,” was inspired by neither event. Rather, the frustration of centuries of indignities heaped upon Black Americans, going back to the slave trade, are leveraged in Algiers’ sounding of the alarm—“this is self-genocide” Fisher decries at the outset. The album’s opening three songs make for a chill-inducing intro to the band’s ethos. Production at the

list in 2017 and that year was also the first time we had Baker on the cover of the magazine. Though she would go on to fill out her sound with a full band on 2021’s Little Oblivions, Turn Out the Lights is nearly entirely Baker’s alone. She pushed her heart-rending writing and stark instrumental presentation to its absolute limits, offering a work of nearly unparalleled catharsis. That same catharsis is what has kept us coming back to the album ever since. By Caleb Campbell

Father John Misty Pure Comedy (Sub Pop, 2017) Pure Comedy sees Father John Misty fully stepping into the role of adroit cultural critic, taking on celebrity, neoliberalism, social media, and mankind’s impending doom in his own history of “the comedy of man.” Now, four years since the record’s debut, it feels all the more relevant. There are points where Pure Comedy nearly collapses under the weight of its own ambitions. Such would seemingly be the nature of writing a

M83 Junk (Mute, 2016) It’s never easy for a band to survive the departure of a key contributor, but it’s even rarer for one to rebound from it with an album this good. Inspired by warped VHS tapes and memories of watching TV with his grandfather, Anthony Gonzalez mined his past for Junk, channeling what he found into this bittersweet dance party. With appearances from Beck, Mai Lan, Susanne Sundfør, and Steve Vai, M83 found places for hair metal shredding, cheesy ’80s sitcom incidental music, and big-time pop posturing amongst the dreamy electronic soundscapes we know them for. Issue #57—which featured Gonzalez nestled between two escapees from a Sid & Marty Krofft production—must be tied with our Flight of the Conchords edition for having the most playful cover in Under the Radar’s history. By Austin Trunick

Radiohead A Moon Shaped Pool (XL, 2016) Long into a career full of left-turns and creative detours, Radiohead finally sounded almost comfortable on A Moon Shaped Pool. After the dense forest of sound that was The King of Limbs, A Moon Shaped Pool’s desolate beauty has proved to be a familiar balm to world-weary anxieties. It almost felt like a celebration of all Radiohead has become over the years. Longtime fans saw several live favorites finally appear on a studio album, including “True Love Waits,” over two decades after its live debut. Though it remains to be seen if A Moon Shaped Pool will be Radiohead’s final album, there’s a heart-wrenching finality to it. Thom Yorke’s ethereal plea of “Just don’t leave” says all there is to say, ending the album in devastating simplicity and unimpeachable beauty. By Caleb Campbell Also released in 2016: Bat For Lashes: The Bride, Blood Orange: Freetown Sound, Car Seat Headrest: Teens of Denial, Leonard Cohen: You Want It Darker, DIIV: Is The Is Are, Angel Olsen: MY WOMAN, Parquet Courts: Human Performance, Primal Scream: Chaosmosis, Weyes Blood: Front Row Seat to Earth, and Wild Beasts: Boy King.

M83 in Los Angeles, CA, 2016. (Photo by Koury Angelo)

hands of Portishead’s Adrian Utley ensures a listen that’s as unsettling in tone as it is intended to be in its message. That The Underside of Power portended an ever-widening gulf in race relations makes it both a document of history and a testament to the times that were in its immediate path. Though perhaps not known by mainstream America, The Underside of Power deserves to be linked to the dialogue of its continuing day. By Mark Moody

Julien Baker Turn Out the Lights (Matador, 2017)

grand treatise on the human condition. But for all of Josh Tillman’s self-aware winking and droll explorations of cosmic indifference, his most magnetic moments are when the veneer drops and his own humanity shines through. The result is at once a comedy of errors, a tragedy of epic scope and scale, and a moving vision of a world in flux. By Caleb Campbell

The Horrors V (Wolf Tone, 2017)

Masters of re-invention, Southend-on-Sea superstars The Horrors had already Julien Baker’s Turn Out the Lights is a impressed when they suddenly grew up bleeding open wound of bleak despondency, from being mid-’00s garage shock rockers to adapt Krautrock raw emotion, and glimmering hope. It’s also and incorporate shoegaze on acclaimed albums Primary one of the finest singer/songwriter efforts of the past 20 years. Colours, Skying, and Luminous. But when they began to Turn Out the Lights finished second on our end of the year make moves towards ’90s dance, there were concerns that

20TH ANNIVERSARY Faris Badwan and co. had maybe bitten off more than they can chew—even with the aid of BRIT Award-winning producer Paul Epworth. Fortunately, such fears were unfounded, as fifth LP, the fittingly titled V, proved to be another effortless expansion into a whole new realm of sound. “Press Enter to Exit” was more than just a clever title and glistens with pop perfection, “Hologram” took their dark and moody feel to more sinister depths, “Ghost” is a truly mind-blowing track, and “Something to Remember Me By” is both an epic end to the essential record and a truly heavenly experience whenever it’s played live. By Jimi Arundell

thoughtful arrangements to burst open at just the right moment, transforming instantly into majestic surges of emotion. Historian is the sort of album that will break you with a single delicate phrase and then build you back up with profound empathetic grace. By Caleb Campbell

Mitski Be the Cowboy (Dead Oceans, 2018)

Also released in 2018: Courtney Barnett: Tell Me How You Really Feel, Beach House: 7, Black Belt Eagle Scout: Mother of My Children, boygenius: boygenius EP, Christine and the Queens: Chris, Father John Misty: God’s Favorite Customer, Julia Holter: Aviary, Let’s Eat Grandma: I’m All Ears, Loma: Loma, Low: Double Negative, LUMP: LUMP, MGMT: Little Dark Age, Natalie Prass: The Future and the Past, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever: Hope Downs, U.S. Girls: In a Poem Unlimited, Kurt Vile: Bottle It In, Wild Nothing: Indigo, Wye Oak: The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs, and Young Fathers: Cocoa Sugar.

Mitski, already one of indie rock’s finest songwriters, ascended to her most vital Also released in 2017: Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile: level on her fifth album, Be the Cowboy, Lotta Sea Lice, Big Thief: Capacity, Phoebe Bridgers: conjuring her most intimate and intricate offerings yet. It’s Stranger in the Alps, Rose Elinor Dougall: Stellular, Baxter the kind of record that can go from a ’70s neon disco cut Dury: Prince of Tears, Girl Ray: Earl Grey, Marika to a lush, burning torch song, its songs ranging between Hackman: I’m Not Your Man, Japanese Breakfast: Soft wistful longings, tender confessions, and towering dramas. Sounds From Another Planet, King Krule: The OOZ, Alex It’s all arranged with a shimmering glossy sheen, one that Lahey: I Love You Like a Brother, Midnight Sister: Saturn barely conceals the anguish of its Angel Olsen central conceit: a devoted married All Mirrors woman longing to break free. Be the (Jagjaguwar, 2019) Cowboy transcended the trappings of the indie world Mitski had already Floaty, ambient, and punctuated by conquered, creating something Angel Olsen’s flawlessly breathy vocal more complicated, thoughtful, and delivery, All Mirrors is as marvelous as its singular in the process. By Caleb monochromatic but lavish cover art would suggest. From Campbell the piano-driven, flangy verses of “Spring” to the ominous, romantic string lines of “Endgame,” Olsen’s songwriting genius is on full display. Co-produced by John Congleton Parquet (Phoebe Bridgers, St. Vincent, Sharon Van Etten), the album Courts cemented Olsen as a modest superstar in the art pop space. Wide Awake! It’s well-rounded, polished, and goes down smooth. But, (Rough Trade, most of all, All Mirrors is a bashful yet imaginative 2018) encapsulation of indie’s more artsy side, the likes of which make up some of the genre’s most intriguing (and With 2018’s Wide Awake!, Parquet noteworthy) recent entries. By Hayden Godfrey Courts married seemingly discordant feelings of hope and anger to give voice to America’s particular social dissonance. In Weyes Blood the midst of the Trump era, the Titanic Rising optimism expressed on Wide (Sub Pop, 2019) Awake! wasn’t cheesy or fantastical. It was necessary. Rather than rely Titanic Rising was at once an album out of on cheap platitudes or escapism, time and entirely of its moment. Its most the band unflinchingly stared down immediate touchstone was the lush Laurel America’s dark and daily Canyon classics of the ’70s, but amidst the orchestra-backed realities (its bloody history on rushes of nostalgia lie a present search for meaning. Climate “Violence,” global warming on anxieties and a deep longing for love and connection tinge “Before the Water Gets Too High”), Natalie Mering’s lyrics, even as her arrangements explore and still they urged us to “Get love new galaxies of immaculate chamber pop delights. Her where you find it.” The songs— opulent doomsday odyssey eyes the world’s oncoming end crafted alongside production wizard in starry-eyed wonder, knowing only one thing for certain—“a Danger Mouse—remain the lot’s going to change.” By Caleb Campbell tightest in the art punk quartet’s Mitski in Los Angeles, CA, 2018. (Photo by Koury Angelo) discography and renovate the sort of warm fuzz you’d expect to have Nilüfer Yanya heard reverberating in the historic Miss Universe walls of CBGB decades ago. In its particularity of time and (ATO, 2019) Over Sunset, Mount Eerie: A Crow Looked At Me, The space, Wide Awake! continues to feel transcendent. National: Sleep Well Beast, Kelly Lee Owens: Kelly Lee By Chris Thiessen In 2019, Nilüfer Yanya had one of those Owens, Perfume Genius: No Shape, Slowdive: rare debuts that sounded like just about Slowdive, Moses Sumney: Aromanticism, St. Vincent: nothing else out there. On Miss Universe, Kamasi Washington MASSEDUCTION, The War on Drugs: A Deeper adventurous guitar arrangements, viscerally textured Heaven and Earth Understanding, Wolf Alice: Visions of a Life, and Yumi lyricism, and her truly inimitable vocals all enlaced for an (Young Turks, 2018) Zouma: Willowbank. eclectic introduction to Yanya’s talents. Add in a loose concept satirizing toxic wellness culture and you have an Preeminent jazz musician Kamasi album worth getting lost in. Yanya flirts with pop, indie rock, Washington doesn’t make music. He soul, and jazz, yet never committing to any one genre. makes abstract paintings you can only see with your mind’s eye. While Washington wields musical Rather, she blends and blurs them together, until the listener instruments, his creative kin are more like Dali or Picasso or is left enveloped in the inventive world of Yanya’s mercurial, Michelangelo. The paint splattering is simply in notation, not multi-faceted debut. By Caleb Campbell Lucy Dacus oily petal-born hues. Take for example Washington’s 2018 Historian masterpiece, Heaven and Earth. The 16-plus-5-track album Also released in 2019: Bat For Lashes: Lost Girls, Black (Matador, 2018) is a surge through oceans and rivers, a flotation over frozen Belt Eagle Scout: At the Party with My Brown Friends, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Ghosteen, Rose Elinor mountain peaks and needling pine trees. With one horn Dougall: A New Illusion, Ezra Furman: Twelve Nudes, If 2016’s No Burden was a stellar screen, Washington unveils the sixth dimension: woodgrain introduction to Lucy Dacus, Historian was sound made real invisibly. Case in point: the two-disc album Aldous Harding: Designer, Hatchie: Keepsake, her star-making turn. It opens with what is actually three. Inside, there is always the third option, The Julia Jacklin: Crushing, Jay Som: Anak Ko, Anna Meredith: FIBS, Piroshka: Brickbat, SASAMI: remains her best song yet, “Night Shift,” and Dacus spends Choice, beyond both Earth and Heaven. But you have to SASAMI, Strand of Oaks: Eraserland, Telekinesis: the rest of the album building a testament to her power as a literally slice open the packaging to get to it. In sum, the Effluxion, Hayden Thorpe: Diviner, and Sharon Van musician and lyricist. Dacus is an undisputed master of tri-records are meditative, propelling, and, ultimately, Etten: Remind Me Tomorrow. towering instrumental builds, allowing her reserved, nourishing. By Jake Uitti

2019

2018

20TH ANNIVERSARY

2020

2021

Phoebe Bridgers

Japanese Breakfast

Punisher (Dead Oceans, 2020)

Jubilee (Dead Oceans, 2021)

“I feel shitty and lucky every day. It’s the weirdest,” Phoebe Bridgers told Under the Radar’s Matt Fink when she first graced our cover in 2020. The duality of that statement is viscerally felt throughout Punisher, a masterwork of captivating songwriting and musical tension. On “Kyoto,” a jubilant horn section buoys Bridgers’ homesick melancholy; meanwhile, whistling winds and the ghost of an upright bass haunt the freedom-affirming call on “Halloween” to “be whatever you want.” On “Garden Song,” Bridgers gains everything she wanted; by the album’s closer, “I Know the End,” all is lost in an unforgettably chilling apocalypse. It’s in these beautiful, horrific juxtapositions that Bridgers speaks truly—sometimes in a feathery whisper, sometimes in a hellish scream—into the absurdity of our paradoxical world. By Chris Thiessen

2021 was the year of Japanese Breakfast. Michelle Zauner’s third album under the moniker soundtracked the abating pandemic, her Crying in H Mart memoir was so successful that a film adaption has already been commissioned, and she provided the score to the new video game Sable. With Jubilee, Zauner finds a way to make dream pop sound palatial—marrying cloudy croons, such as those on “Sit,” with jubilant brass and elating violins. Lyrically, the album explores joy and unapologetic desires (see: “Posing in Bondage”). But, because it’s Japanese Breakfast, there’s still plenty of longing and dolor (“Hell is finding someone to love”). “Aching for others, with a love that stops short,” she sings on “Tactics.” It’s a phrase that’s stuck with me, the first part because of its summation of 2020’s enforced solitude. But the second part because, while Zauner’s love may stop short, her triumphant Jubilee keeps on giving. By Hayden Merrick

Bartees Strange

to contemplate what came before (“The Ramble”). After the album’s release, Jenkins later gave us the makings of the album, slyly titled (An Overview On) An Overview On Phenomenal Nature. But what she has really left us is a legacy of a legacy mourned in the most open, honest, and intelligent way possible. By Mark Moody

Piroshka Love Drips and Gathers (Bella Union, 2021) Piroshka’s debut album, 2019’s Brickbat, punched at the present moment, but the British indie supergroup’s second sifts through dreamlike memories. Sun, sea, and sensory snapshots carry “Hastings 1973” into a warm groove where “Your arms around me/Nothing hurt.” “The Knife Thrower’s Daughter” compares rich and poor childhoods, recalling how imagination can bridge the distance: “I was living in a world/ Where nothing felt like something/Something to behold.” The shoegaze backgrounds of vocalist/guitarist Miki Berenyi (Lush) and partner/bandmate KJ McKillop (Moose) come to the forefront of Love Drips and Gathers. Bassist Mike Conroy (Modern English) and drummer Justin Welch (Elastica) give the record its agile physicality while co-lyricists Berenyi and McKillop trade remembrances without getting mired in the past. By Ian King

Live Forever (Memory Music, 2020) On one of The Clash’s early nonalbum singles, “(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais,” Joe Strummer complained of an all-nighter spent watching some of his beloved reggae and roots rock bands. Strummer found himself infuriated that more wasn’t made of the groups’ opportunity of the stage to get political. Washington, D.C. by way of Oklahoma songwriter, Bartees Strange, had his own eye on something far simpler than Strummer’s ideals—the stage itself. His earlier in the year sampler of covers of songs by The National, gave way to 2020’s gauntlet dropping album Live Forever. Breakout singles “Boomer” and “Mustang” conveyed life as a Black man home on the range, while Strange’s softer side appears on the “Versace dreams” of “Kelly Rowland.” In his early 30s, Strange is a veteran follower of indie rock and its handful of Black-led bands. Now that Strange has the baton in his own grasp, he’s taken himself skyward with no signs of flagging. By Mark Moody

Moses Sumney græ (Jagjaguwar, 2020) Moses Sumney’s voice is pure poetic magic. That’s the only explanation for the sprawling accomplishment of his second full-length offering, græ. An album about isolation in an increasingly insular culture—marked by esoteric, theoretical language and avant-garde experimentalism—should not feel so tangible. Yet, Sumney penetrates both flesh and spirit with every word sung. Græ never feels pedantic, only graceful and true. Humbly offered, yet confidently adorned. In 2020—when he first featured on our cover—Sumney’s search for freedom, connection, and identity resonated profoundly in a world filled with uncertainty. And yet, græ carries the promise of perpetual reverberation, a boundless magic that will delight and astonish listeners for years to come. By Chris Thiessen

Also released in 2020: Braids: Shadow Offering, Deep Sea Diver: Impossible Weight, HAIM: Women In Music Pt. III, I Break Horses: Warnings, JARV IS...: Beyond the Pale, NZCA LINES: Luxury, Perfume Genius: Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever: Sideways to New Italy, Jessie Ware: What’s Your Pleasure?, Waxahatchee: Saint Cloud, Westerman: Your Hero Is Not Dead, and Jess Williamson: Sorceress.

Moses Sumney in Ashville, NC, 2020. (Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern)

Cassandra Jenkins

Also released in 2021: CHAI: WINK, CHVRCHES: Screen Violence, Lucy Dacus: Home Video, Indigo De Souza: Any Shape You Take, Dry Cleaning: New Long Leg, Field Music: Flat White Moon, Flock of Dimes: Head of Cassandra Jenkins’ crisis of late 2019 preceded that of the world’s by a margin of Roses, The Goon Sax: Mirror II, Iceage: Seek Shelter, six months or so. Scheduled to tour Low: HEY WHAT, LUMP: Animal, Magdalena Bay: Mercuas part of David Berman’s band for his comeback tour rial World, Mdou Moctar: Afrique Victime, Mega Bog: as Purple Mountains, Jenkins instead found herself Life, and Another, Nation of Language: A Way Forward, mourning his death. But the seven songs of An Overview On Phenomenal Nature don’t seek answers to why or dwell Ora the Molecule: Human Safari, Arlo Parks: Collapsed in Sunbeams, Sleaford Mods: Spare Ribs, SPELLLING: on the morose, but rather document Jenkins’ efforts to cobble a path forward. The pull to heal takes her to Norway, The Turning Wheel, Squid: Bright Green Field, TORRES: where sometimes it was hard for her to discern land from Thirstier, The War on Drugs: I Don’t Live Here Anymore, air. Similarly, though the way ahead wasn’t always clear, Water From Your Eyes: Structure, The Weather Jenkins had support from her mother (“Bikini”) and friends Station: Ignorance, W.H. Lung: Vanities, and Wolf Alice: (the hypnotic centerpiece of “Hard Drive”), while also leaving Blue Weekend. the listener a seven-minute space at the end of the album An Overview On Phenomenal Nature (Ba Da Bing!, 2021)

20TH ANNIVERSARY

n the fall of 2004, Rob Schnapf and Joanna Bolme didn’t really want to talk to the press. Having combed through 45 hours of material to assemble the final Elliott Smith album, From a Basement on the Hill, they were the only logical choices to field the questions Smith was no longer around to answer. When Smith died in October of 2003, Schnapf noticed a trend in the press coverage surrounding his passing. Those who knew Smith best—former bandmates, friends, collaborators—weren’t the ones telling his story, and the one that was emerging was mythologizing him into a caricature, the joyless patron saint of self-destructive indie rockers. Bolme and Schnapf decided to talk, if only to remind everyone that Smith was a brilliant artist, too. “We wanted to control the narrative and keep it focused on the music and not the easy part of writing about ‘Oh, the sad suicidal troubadour, blah blah blah,’” Schnapf recalls, now 17 years later. “He wasn’t planning any of what happened. He was making a record, and this was the record he was making.”

20TH ANNIVERSARY Words by Matt Fink

The Second Draft of History

ELLIOTT f o g n i d r o c e R S ' SMITH Inside

l l i H e h t n o t n e m e From a Bas Wendy Lync by os ot Ph • nk Fi t at M Words by

Of course, after the album’s release in October of 2004, the sad, suicidal troubadour narrative is the one that stuck. A contemporary New York Times article— one of a handful that Schnapf and Bolme agreed to— was typical; Smith was Gen X’s Mr. Misery, the junkie poet and troubled genius whose last chapter was always destined to be tragic. (That article cranked up the melodrama a bit further, describing Bolme as running out of the interview in tears, when Schnapf says she was simply leaving to use the restroom.) The reviews were unambiguously positive, but even there the mythology was beginning to harden. From a Basement on the Hill was Smith’s musical suicide note, the skeleton key to unlock the last few tumultuous years of his life and explain why he would decide to bring it to an end. By the end of the press cycle, Smith’s actual music started to seem like a subplot in a larger human tragedy. Nearly 20 years later, the distance between Smith’s life and his work is negligible, the two so intertwined that there’s no parsing them anymore. For better or worse, his story has taken on a life of its own. He is the subject of two biographies and one documentary film, with a third book devoted to the controversy surrounding his death. Was it a suicide? A murder? The official autopsy report left open the possibility of homicide, as Smith’s apparent self-inflected stab wounds to the heart

didn’t fit the usual pattern of such cases. Now a generation after his passing, Smith has achieved a sort of ubiquity that eluded him during his life, with everyone from Phoebe Bridgers to Frank Ocean citing him as an influence. Free of the burden of having to be the album that was the culmination of Smith’s body of work, From a Basement on the Hill can now be seen for what it is—Smith’s loudest, rawest, most experimental release. But we’ll never know for sure what it would have sounded like had he survived to finish it.

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Smith returned home to Los Angeles addicted to heroin, soon graduating to crack cocaine. Still harboring resentment over an intervention from years earlier, he distanced himself from longtime manager Margaret Mittleman, and, by extension, Schnapf, her husband. Frustrated with DreamWorks—his label for his previous two releases—and their unwillingness or inability to get Figure 8 on the radio, he decided he wanted out. After recording a handful of tracks with Jon Brion, the much-heralded producer who had played in Smith’s backing band for a few TV appearances, their relationship ended abruptly. Brion reportedly refused to work with Smith if his drug use WHERE TIME REVERSES continued, and Smith was not the kind of artist who dealt well with ultimatums. “Burning every bridge that t’s hard to remember now, but when Smith began writing and recording the songs that would become I cross,” he would sing on one of From a Basement on the Hill’s more reflective ballads, “Let’s Get Lost,” From a Basement on the Hill in the spring of 2001, “To find some beautiful place to get lost.” By May he was regarded as someone who was coming 2001, he was living like he meant it. dangerously close to squandering his potential. After a few phone calls with David McConnell, a Despite a now legendary performance at the 1998 Los Angeles musician and producer who traveled Academy Awards for his Oscar-nominated “Miss in the same social circles, Smith was ready to start Misery,” international rock stardom never quite over. And just like that, he was loading up his car with materialized. Figure 8, his most recent full-length recording equipment, instruments, and reels of tape release at the time, had received somewhat mixed of half-finished songs. It was already 2:00 or 3:00 in reviews and slipped into the Billboard 200 at a the morning, but Smith had been staying up for days disappointing 99, perceived by some as a lessat a time and was ready to work. His destination was inspired version of 1998’s XO. At some point during McConnell’s home studio in Malibu, the house whose the Figure 8 tour, he began to unravel.

20TH ANNIVERSARY basement would eventually turn up in the album’s title. Smith had found his place to get lost, and, for the following few months at least, he knew exactly what he wanted. “It was going to be a double album, 32 tracks, and he had this very complete vision,” McConnell recalls, explaining that he and Smith quickly bonded over their love of analog equipment and experimental recording techniques. He wanted to make something less impressionistic, Smith said, to play with form in a way he never had before. Where his previous two records had been tightly constructed and focused, this one would sprawl, getting weirder and weirder until it dissolved into noise. As soon as he walked through the door, Smith was ready with his first assignment, asking McConnell to do a mix of a complicated piano ballad with the working title “True Love is a Rose.” A few hours later, satisfied with McConnell’s work, Smith would jump right into “Shooting Star,” a stinging rebuke to a former lover that served as a jumping off point for the near two years of experimentation that would follow. “There was a lot of energy in the air,” McConnell says. “But then Elliott, because he was using chemicals to help him, he would stay up sometimes for two or three days, and he’d want to work through the night. And I couldn’t because I’m not comfortable doing hard drugs, so I really struggled with sleep deprivation. So I would go nap for three or four hours while he was working by himself. And sometimes I was sleeping right in the control room on my bed in my bedroom, right next to him while he was recording. Then he’d wake me up a few hours later, like, ‘Alright, man. That’s enough sleep. Let’s get back to work!’ So he was very obsessive about the process.” Having proven his mastery of the confessional pop form on his previous two albums, Smith was eager to blow up his earlier templates. Though he had recorded workable versions of a handful of tracks with Brion, he had no interest in using them now. If XO and Figure 8 had been expert exercises in meticulous pop classicism, he wanted something that was wild and unpredictable, ugly and unkempt where his former releases had been clean and comprehensible. He wasn’t only burning bridges with those closest to him; he appeared to be burning bridges to prior versions of himself. “If his voice wasn’t on it, you almost wouldn’t know that it’s Elliott,” McConnell says of the music they were making. “He kept talking about going back to his roots, but he ended up just trying to create entirely new sounds. You could tell his songwriting was still very Elliott Smith, because it was so deep in its form and so complex. The writing was definitely progressing naturally, but it was the progression that he was looking to change at the time. He really liked the records he had done already. He knew that they were quality. He wasn’t dissing his former engineers or producers. He was saying, ‘I want something different now for this one. I really want to get out there with it a little bit and experiment.’ So that’s what we did.” The tracks they created represent the gnarliest and most visceral of Smith’s career, with knotty tangles of detuned guitars and thundering drums providing a perfect counterpoint to the haunted, aching ballads that were his stock in trade. Opener “Coast to Coast” hits as hard as anything in his catalog, rising like a monster out of a sea of noise, with churning drums and swirling guitar lines licking around the edges of Smith’s vocal. A master of metaphor, Smith never wrote more directly about addiction than on “Strung Out Again” and “King’s Crossing”—two tracks that ride a dark pulse of 66

queasy guitars to add a sense of menace to Smith’s soft vocals. He directly addresses the topic of death several times, even declaring his readiness for it at one point, but the album is more existential than funereal. Instead of a rumination on his coming demise, it’s a statement of frustration about what he has become—namely the sad, suicidal troubadour whose grief is his brand. Underlying it all is a subtle recognition that by making another album about despair and self-doubt, Smith was only reinforcing the narrative he was kicking against. From day one, McConnell says he knew that working with Smith was going to represent a different sort of challenge. This was the period when the chaos of Smith’s private life began to spill out into the open. At an August 2001 performance at the Los Angeles Sunset Junction Street Fair, he appeared gaunt and frail, fumbling through his set before apologizing for being too “fucked up” to play. He became paranoid, believing that DreamWorks was sending spies to follow him around Los Angeles in unmarked white vans, their agents breaking into his apartment to steal music from his computers. Though he talked often about suicide, McConnell says, Smith had decided he would rather slowly ruin his health through substance abuse than deliberately take his own life. He didn’t want to die—at least not all of the time—but was willing to take the chance.

“I just remember this one song. And it’s a beautiful piece of music, and you know exactly what he was going to do, but he just never got to do it.” – Rob Schnapf “He said, ‘Look, I do a lot of drugs. And I’m going to do them in front of you, and I don’t want you to criticize me for it,’” McConnell recalls. “And it was like, ‘Shit...okay.’ And so that was one of the first things that I knew I was dealing with. He didn’t want to be criticized for his poor choices, and I believe that’s probably best when somebody is struggling. So I didn’t. Instead I just tried to be supportive and be a friend and keep him safe. When he would do so many drugs where I got scared that he might have OD’d or that he might do something stupid, I tried to watch him and make sure he was safe. I was always ready to call for help if need be, and I tried to encourage him to stay focused on the recording process and eat. He didn’t like to sleep. Sometimes I would take him out to lunch, because I had to eat. I’d be like, ‘If you want to talk about the record, you’ve got to go to lunch with me.’” McConnell looks back on the period fondly, recalling long conversations about songwriting and late-night recording sessions that dissolved into

giddy fits of laughter as the two took turns telling jokes. Smith was a harsh critic of his own work, but he seemed genuinely content with the tracks they were making, McConnell says. The two of them would spend afternoons driving around LA, blasting the mixes they were making out of Smith’s car speakers. They became friends, so much that Smith presented McConnell with the acoustic Gibson guitar that he played on the Academy Awards as a gesture of gratitude. (McConnell returned the guitar to Smith’s family after his passing.) From a Basement on the Hill didn’t end up being the album they talked about making, but McConnell is quick to point out that Smith was an incurable perfectionist who frequently revised his ideas, making it just about impossible to know what the final album would have sounded like had he survived. Flush with major label cash, Smith was spending an obscene amount of money on illicit substances, so much so that McConnell encouraged him to redirect his spending toward building a studio just so he’d have something tangible left. That kicked off a new addiction, and Smith began spending so much time researching and repairing the gear he was buying on eBay for his eventual New Monkey Studio that he began to lose focus on making music. Eventually, Smith went to rehab and McConnell heard less and less from him during the last year of his life, one that by most accounts was relatively happy and stable. It was at New Monkey Studio that Under the Radar conducted the last interview of Smith’s life, finding him clean and sober and excited to explain why his new tracks represented a kind of creative rebirth. Given the fragile state of Smith’s newfound sobriety, McConnell believes that Smith’s new girlfriend, Jennifer Chiba, was pruning away anyone who had been associated with him during the turmoil of the preceding years. Smith wasn’t burning bridges anymore, but most paths to him seemed to be closed for repairs. “I think he really had a lot to prove to himself and also to the people around him,” McConnell says. “He really did care what people thought about him, despite what I’ve heard people say. And he was definitely a very sensitive person, like a lot of creative people are. People will tell you a lot of musicians are doing it because they want to find that love. They want to find their place. They want to find meaning in the world, but they also want to be appreciated. Unfortunately, when he died, a lot of his wishes died with him. The record still turned out great, don’t get me wrong. But there was some stuff that was really magic that didn’t make it onto the album—just amazing, like some of his best music ever. So I’m kind of bummed that we never got to finish the project and deliver it to the labels.”

A SETTING SUN

ob Schnapf doesn’t recall the exact reasons that the Smith family approached him and Smith’s former girlfriend and confidant Joanna Bolme about completing From a Basement on the Hill, but he remembers feeling a responsibility—almost paternalistic in nature—to help his friend one last time. Having produced Smith’s work stretching back to his days in Heatmiser—the next-big-thing post-punk act that dissolved when Smith’s solo career began to take off—Schanpf doubtlessly logged more studio hours with him than anyone else during his creative life. Though he hadn’t been involved with any part of the recording process, Schnapf says that Smith had been reaching out to him in the months before his death. With a reported

20TH ANNIVERSARY 50 tracks at some level of completion, it was clear that Smith left behind a mess. “We had the list of what he wanted, and that’s pretty much the record,” Schnapf says. “Then there was a lot of stuff that we just couldn’t find. ‘King’s Crossing,’ for example. That song I went to mix, and it was on two-inch tape, and it consisted of a stereo mix on the two-inch and a vocal. And it was impossible; I couldn’t mix it. They just didn’t go together. And it ended up being this forensic thing, because he had been recording on every single format. There were all kinds of digital formats; it wasn’t just ProTools. It was all of them,” he laughs. “So there was some stuff we couldn’t find or there was stuff that he never got to do the vocal yet. I just remember this one song. And it’s a beautiful piece of music, and you know exactly what he was going to do, but he just never got to do it.” The tracks seemed to span the length of Smith’s career, and Schnapf was convinced that he’d heard Elliott play early versions of some of them during their previous work together. Two songs from Smith’s list were left off. The family pulled back “Abused,” a solemn ballad that erupts into a power-pop anthem. Knowing that its title alone would make it ripe for misinterpretation, Schnapf decided against including “Suicide Machine,” a track that would have been one of the more upbeat songs on the album had it been included. Hoping that working on the unreleased material would provide a kind of catharsis, Schnapf soon found himself so lost in the work of editing and mixing that it was easy to forget Smith would never hear the final product. But Elliott was never far away, his presence reasserting itself in every chair creak and drag on a cigarette that surrounded the music on the tapes. Until the album was finished, at least, Elliott Smith was still alive. “I remember getting it all done, flying to New York to Sterling Sound, getting it mastered, and going out that night to meet GGGarth,” Schnapf says, mentioning Garth “GGGarth” Richardson, the producer known for his work with Rage Against the Machine and metal acts. “He’s an awesome guy. We went out for drinks afterwards that night, and he said, ‘How did it go?’ And I was just like, ‘Bwah…’ Something happened and I just cried on his shoulder,” Schnapf says with a tone of disbelief. “That’s not something I do.” After the album was completed, Schnapf couldn’t listen to it or anything else he’d done with Smith. Expecting From a Basement on the Hill to have its detractors, he was nonetheless frustrated by listeners who griped about the song selection or mixing choices. The reviews were fantastic, but Smith’s death had made every lyric carry a different weight, with armchair psychologists eager to solve the mystery of Smith’s death by piecing together the larger narrative of the album. The album that Schnapf and Bolme had hoped would be a celebration of Smith’s life had been rendered just another piece of evidence to figure out why he was gone. “A lot of that stuff—overdose, suicide—it’s just one flash of a mistake,” Schnapf says. “And that ends up marking the memory forever. And it just casts this huge shadow over your entire life, but, really, it’s this one decision. There aren’t clues. There isn’t

Elliott Smith at New Monkey Studio in Los Angeles in 2003.

meaning. This wasn’t planned. Who knows what the fuck happened there? I don’t know. And nobody is going to figure it out, either.” As the more salacious aspects of Smith’s life began to crowd out the discussion of his actual music, Schnapf had an uneasy realization. If a multifaceted individual such as Smith could be reduced to a caricature within days of his death, how many times had history reduced a person’s life—let alone a far more complicated historical event—into something that barely represented the larger truth? How could you trust anything you read in the media after seeing the process unfold in real time? By the end of 2004,

Schnapf was exhausted. His friend was gone, and finishing his final work had failed to bring any closure. He put From a Basement on the Hill out of his mind, filed it away as representative of something he just didn’t want to think about anymore. “What’s weird is that I listened to it last night for the first time since then, and I didn’t have any of those feelings when I heard the record,” Schnapf says. “I was like, ‘Ah, this is a really cool record.’ I never listened to it, just because of all of those feelings that happened to me, and I didn’t really want to go there again. And I didn’t get any of that. I just felt all of the music, and I just really enjoyed it. That was really nice.” 67

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Elliott Smith at his home in Los Angeles in 2003.

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Elliott Smith at New Monkey Studio in Los Angeles in 2003.

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Love and Dancing

The Secret Origin of Under the Radar Words by Mark Redfern

Wendy photographing Chairlift in Brooklyn, NY in 2011. (Photo by Mark Redfern)

The first known photo of Wendy and Mark, in Los Angeles, CA in December 2000. (Self-Portrait)

Mark and Wendy in the hallway of their Los Angeles, CA apartment building, early 2000s. (Self-Portrait) 70

At the Hillside Festival in Guelph, Canada in 2005 for our O Canada Issue. (Self-Portrait)

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hile a diehard music fan through and through, I’m also a comic book nerd at heart. So in the spirit of DC Comics, here I present the partially untold secret origin of how Under the Radar came to be and why it has stuck around for two decades. It may be self-indulgent, but it seemed like the 20th Anniversary Issue was a good opportunity to put our history on the record, for those who care to read it.

Under the Radar was born out of love and that love was fittingly born out of music and dancing. It was in the dimly lit basement of Hollywood’s oldest Italian restaurant, Miceli’s, that I first saw her across a crowded dance floor. December 2, 2000 was the date. The occasion was Par Avion, a weekly dance club night focused mainly on international indie pop. Just as we began to dance together, the lights went up. We exchanged a few words at the bottom of the stairs and some awkward glances outside as we waited for our friends (one of mine had disappeared to the goth club next door), and then I walked off to my car. Halfway there I had a feeling that I would regret leaving it at that. Running back to Miceli’s, almost like a scene from a movie or a Pulp song, I was relieved to find that the beautiful girl was still there. Her name was Wendy and I gave her my number on a cheap business card I had printed myself. “When I saw Mark that night, in that tiny basement, my first thought was, ‘There he is again!’” Wendy remembers. “At this point, I had seen Mark twice before. Once at a Grandaddy in-store at the Virgin Megastore on Sunset Blvd., and the second time at a different club night called Club Bang! on Hollywood Blvd. that specialized in Britpop. Both times, with a girl, so no-go. But when I saw him a third time, and without the girl, I thought, ‘What are the chances!’ And the rest is history.” After our initial meeting at Miceli’s it didn’t take Wendy long to call me and it didn’t take long for our romance to flourish. We only had a short time before I was due to fly home to London for Christmas, so we had three dates in only two weeks. By the time I was back from London in January we were official. Without Wendy and I meeting, there would be no Under the Radar. Neither one of us on our own had great ambitions to start a music magazine, the genesis required the combining of our individual talents. Although, based on my parents’ careers, you could say it was foregone conclusion that I would embark on a career in music journalism. I was born in London in 1976 to a British father and an American mother. My mother, Mary Moore Mason, had grown up in Roanoke, Virginia. Her father had once been a pianist and the leader of a jazz band that toured the college circuit, before he switched to the more stable profession of insurance. My mother had found herself in London at the tail end of the swinging ’60s in search of adventure. She had been the first woman news journalist at the Richmond News Leader daily newspaper in Richmond, Virginia, but then became a travel writer after living in France and Greece. She then switched to public relations for the iconic Pan Am airline, which is what she was doing when she met my dad.

David Redfern had grown up in Derbyshire, a county in the East Midlands of England, “the son of a preacher man,” my dad used to say, quoting the Dusty Springfield song. It was while serving in the military that he discovered a joint love of photography and music and started photographing jazz and rock festivals. Eventually my dad went on the Magical Mystery Tour with The Beatles, capturing iconic images of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. One of his photographs from that tour landed on the cover of only the third issue of Rolling Stone. The list of legends he photographed over the years is long and impressive (Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, The Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and too many others to mention). The jet-setting music photographer life didn’t always jive with the responsibilities of family life. It had already ended my dad’s first marriage (which produced my half-brother Simon and half-sister Bridget), and by 1983 my parents were divorced

music became a foundation of the person I projected to others. Wendy grew up in Cocoa Beach, Florida, in the shadow of NASA in neighboring Cape Canaveral. She watched the Challenger space shuttle explode when her entire school went out to the playground to watch it launch, in part because one of the astronauts, Christa McAuliffe, was a teacher. Pieces of the shuttle would wash up on the beach for weeks after. Her father worked at the Applied Physics Laboratory and her mother was in local real estate. Wendy was into hip music way before me—Depeche Mode, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and The Cure (it’s a wonder she wasn’t instead at the goth club next door the night we met). After studying photography in college, Wendy followed her older sister Tricia to Los Angeles.

A MOVIE SCRIPT BEGINNING

Revisting Miceli’s restraunt in Hollywood, CA in 2018. (Photo by Rose Redfern)

and my mother and I were living in America for five years (first in Virginia for a year in the country with my widowed grandmother and then four years in New Jersey just outside of New York City, where I fell in love with the ’80s pop of Madonna, Hall & Oates, Genesis/Phil Collins, Huey Lewis and the News, and more). My high school years were back in London and then it was off to Los Angeles to attend USC film school. Musically, I was heading in the right direction in high school (R.E.M., U2, The B-52’s, early Radiohead), but in college I discovered indie rock, starting with Britpop (Pulp, Blur, Suede, etc.) and shoegaze (Lush, Ride, Slowdive, etc.), and then worked my way back to early ’90s (Massive Attack, Primal Scream) and ’80s (The Smiths, New Order) stuff I’d missed. In the summers I would go home to London and attend music festivals such as Glastonbury and stock up on singles and albums, with British music magazines such as NME, Melody Maker, and Select guiding the way. It was in these years that

hen we met, Wendy was working as a photo assistant to celebrity photographers, helping out on shoots with Jennifer Aniston, Monica Lewinsky, and others. Two years removed from film school, and after various failed attempts to break into the movie business (including interning for future Oscar-winning Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow), I was reading scripts for a living. Meaning I would provide “coverage” on new scripts submitted to a company called Film Colony, a division of Miramax, telling them whether or not they should consider buying each script (most were terrible) and sometimes providing notes on scripts they had already bought (including Finding Neverland). It was the bottom of the ladder and a far cry from dreams of becoming the next Ridley Scott or Quentin Tarantino that had carried me to Los Angeles. Around that time I had already started writing about music. It was college friend Lina Rivera that can be credited for helping to jumpstart my music journalism career. Post college she launched the music zine Mix Tape Journal, at first producing it via her home computer printer, then graduating to low quality newsprint. I took the initiative and started to reach out to labels and publicists in an effort to get review copies of CDs and interviews with bands. Somehow I landed my first interview, a phone conversation with British Warp Records indie electronic band Broadcast, who were at the time touring their 2000-released debut album, The Noise Made by People. My first in-person interview, at the Knitting Factory venue in Hollywood, was with Scottish indie pop band The Delgados, then touring their masterpiece The Great Eastern. Both artists graced the cover of the last issue of Mix Tape Journal I was involved in. There were some disagreements between Lina and myself about the direction of the publication. Still, without her and Mix Tape Journal I may not have had the confidence and experience for what happened next. Armed with some music industry contacts and some unpublished interviews, the seeds of Under the Radar were beginning to be cultivated. Wendy’s dream was to no longer assist photographers, but to be the one clicking the shutter herself. “I really just wanted to take portraits of musicians,” she says. “I wanted a chance to capture the artists whose music moved me and shaped my life.” And so we hatched the idea to launch our own music magazine. My words plus Wendy’s pictures. The first issue was put together in the summer and fall of 2001 and finally came out that 71

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December, a year after Wendy and I had first met. Issue 1 was only 57 pages and was all black & white. We printed one thousand copies and gave them away for free at record stores, shows, and clubs around Los Angeles and London. It featured interviews with Gorillaz, The Charlatans, Ladytron, Mogwai, Arab Strap, Black Box Recorder, Idlewild, Doves, Placebo, Scanner, Geggy Tah, Sebastian Tellier, and cover stars Grandaddy. I conducted all the interviews, except for one with Spoon, which was done by Zach Ralston, the friend who had disappeared to the goth club the night Wendy and I met. (My other friend there the night we met, Joseph Ragusa, was also soon writing for us.) Also joining us on the first issue were two friends of mine from college (Nick Hyman and Justin Sohl, who both wrote various reviews) and two friends from high school (David Balfour and Jumana Farouky, who wrote up a discussion on The Beta Band). There was a tribute to George Harrison, who had just died,

(photographed at Rhino after an in-store), and cover stars The Divine Comedy (aka Neil Hannon), who was photographed at a hair salon across the street from Canter’s Deli, where I interviewed him over lunch. It was the first issue to get any real distribution, as it was sold nationwide via Tower Records on their Zine Stand. The issue also brought us our longest serving continuous writer (besides myself). “I had just moved to Bloomington, IN for graduate school in 2001 and found this fantastic record store called All Ears,” remembers Frank Valish. “The sign was a giant wooden ear. Looking through the magazine rack, I found Issue 2, with Neil Hannon on the cover and fell in love with Under the Radar. It covered the indie music I wanted to read, and write, about.” Frank started writing for us with Issue 3 and has written for every issue since, including this one. He’s also been our Reissues Editor and Book

The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne in Los Angeles, CA in 2002. (Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern)

Elliott Smith in Los Angeles, CA in 2003. (Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern)

featuring quotes from Jonathan Donahue of Mercury Rev, Will Gregory of Goldfrapp, and Guy Garvey of Elbow, all artists we had just interviewed for features in our then upcoming second issue. The ever-opinionated Nick wrote an article titled “Why I Hated Shrek.” Zach reviewed the new Wes Anderson film, The Royal Tenenbaums, and contributed an irreverent cartoon entitled Tobacco City about a guy whose head had been ripped off. Justin’s friend Bob Canning also did a cartoon, Headshots, about a penguin trying to call into a radio competition. There was also a short story competition, where we asked readers to finish a weird little tale I had written called The Red Bagged Stomach, which was accompanied by photos of a lifeless hand on the ground holding a Twinkie in an alleyway (the less you know, the better). I don’t remember if we got any entries. The issue only featured two ads. The first was for California punk/emo label Hopeless Records. The second was for the late great Los Angeles record store Rhino. By the time of our first issue, I was also working at Rhino to pay the bills, at the checkout counter and also doing trades (I once bought used CDs from the actress Anne Archer, star of such ’80s and ’90s films as Fatal Attraction and Patriot Games). It was a bit more corporate than Championship Vinyl, the record shop in High Fidelity, but was a great musical education nonetheless. It also gave me the opportunity to hand copies of our first issue to some high profile customers, such as Shawshank Redemption actor Tim Robbins and legendary musician Tom Petty. Our second issue came out in 2002 and featured several photo shoots from Wendy, including with Elbow, Death Cab for Cutie, Mercury Rev, Stereolab, Bis

Reviews Editor for years. Issue 3 had some of our first color pages (it was still mainly black & white), including an all-color cover featuring Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips with a face covered in fake blood. Wendy was doing the photo-shoot with Coyne in the conference room of a Holiday Inn in Hollywood when a female hotel employee walked in the room, unaware of what we were doing, and shrieked when she saw Coyne’s bloody face. Issue 3 garnered us proper nationwide distribution and had a barcode. We were finally somewhat legit, but it was Issue 4 that put us on the map, for better or for worse.

ANTICIPATION AND NERVES

hen we started Under the Radar, Wendy said something to the effect of “just work it out for me to do a photo shoot with Elliott Smith and I’ll be happy.” The singer/songwriter had been off the grid since he had finished touring 2000’s Figure 8 and rumors were that he wasn’t in the best shape, fueled by some erratic local performances. But when Under the Radar was given the opportunity to interview Smith in conjunction with a clean needle benefit he was performing at, things appeared to be improving for him. It was agreed that we could have a longer follow-up interview to discuss the new album he was working on. The day we spent with Smith at his home and the New Monkey Studio recording studio he built is forever ingrained in my memory. Marcus Kagler, a fellow Rhino employee and a bigger Elliott Smith follower than me, conducted the interview with me and wrote the eventual article, which ended up

20TH ANNIVERSARY on the cover of Issue 4. And Wendy got her dream of photographing Smith. “It’s a blur as I was shaking with anticipation and nerves,” Wendy says. “I remember thinking, ‘At the right moment, I’m going to tell him how much he means to me.’ And sure enough, he and I were outside in the backyard and I did it. I said that his music changed my life and that it makes me joyful and anguished at the same time. I totally made him feel uncomfortable and awkward so I quickly moved on. But inside, I’m still glad I got to tell him.” Also present that day was Smith’s girlfriend, Jennifer Chiba. Elliott appeared to be a kind and quiet soul, albeit one who had clearly been damaged by years of drug use. I remember him offering us ice cream from the studio’s mini-fridge. But the highlight was the new music he played us, early versions of songs that ended up on his final album, From a Basement on the Hill, and some that didn’t. Several months later, it was at an Elbow concert at the Troubadour, hours after Wendy had done another photo shoot with the Manchester band for our sixth issue, that we found out that Elliott Smith had died by apparent suicide. Whispers traveled around the venue in an era before smartphones and Elbow frontman Guy Garvey later confirmed the news from the stage. It soon became apparent that we had conducted the last ever interview and photo shoot with Smith. As speculation about what really happened with Smith’s death (was it suicide or murder, some wondered), I started to receive uncomfortable calls from tabloid newspapers such as The National Enquirer. Our little DIY magazine was beginning to get some real attention, but for sad reasons. Issue 4 brought us another new writer, Gary Knight, who would go on to become one of our closest personal friends. “I was looking at magazines outside of Book Soup in West Hollywood in 2003 when I saw a picture of Elliott Smith on the cover of Issue #4 that shocked me a little (he had cut his hair and looked skinny/older),” Gary remembers. “I bought a copy because I was a big fan of his and wanted to see what he was up to (he had been avoiding press for a while, I think). I just remember being impressed by the interview. Marcus Kagler asked insightful questions, and I loved Elliott’s answers and hearing about his recording studio and the double-album he was working on, and I loved the photos that Wendy took, one of which has hung on my wall for 15 years.” Gary became a valuable member of the team for several years and even met his wife Chelsey because of the magazine. “I met the love of my life at a show Under the Radar sponsored: Emily Haines at The Viper Room,” he gushes. I remember it well and years later I was a groomsman at Gary and Chelsey’s wedding. Issue 5 found us at another turning point. I was laid off from my job at Rhino and around the same time Wendy was also let go from her job managing a photo studio in Hollywood called The LA Lofts. It was already quite tricky holding down a day job and trying to run the magazine, conducting interviews with the likes of Coldplay and Spiritualized in Rhino’s back room. I had also moved in with Wendy and her lovely cat Marley, in a one-bedroom apartment on the very edge of Beverly Hills, after my apartment building in Century City was marked for demolition to make way for a car dealership. They paid off all the residents $1,000 a piece, knocked down the building, and then never built the dealership. Almost two decades later it’s still an overgrown empty lot. We had recently brought on

Robert Gleim, a friend of our writer Laura Ferreiro, to sell ads for us. Wendy and I had to decide—do we get new day jobs or do we try to make Under the Radar work full time? We opted for the latter and I haven’t worked for anyone else since. Issue 6 in 2004 brought us another writer who has written for us continuously ever since, Matt Fink, who has gone on to write a large percentage of our cover stories. One of his most memorable moments with Under the Radar came early, with the following issue, which was our first Protest Issue. The concept was simple: let’s find the intersection of music and politics by photographing musicians holding protest signs of their own making, signs we would then auction for charity. At the time, President

on someone and we sped off in my car, the band ducked down in the backseat, to avoid being caught in the crossfire (how ironic considering some of the band’s song titles: “Six Barrel Shotgun,” “Riffles,” “Screaming Gun,” and “Loaded Gun”). Or when Jenny Lewis played me songs from Rilo Kiley’s More Adventurous at least seven or eight months before it was released, on cassette tape, also in my car. All the interviews I’ve done with my college heroes (Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker, Blur’s Damon Albarn, Suede’s Brett Anderson, The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft, The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon, and others). The times I’ve gotten to interview or meet some of the stars of my favorite TV show, Doctor Who, including David Tennant, Matt Smith, and

Posters for our 2011 and 2016 SXSW events. (Designed by Dewey Saunders)

George W. Bush was up for re-election and most indie rock musicians were displeased with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Matt was tasked with interviewing Yoko Ono, to accompany a photo shoot Wendy had done in New York City of the legend holding a protest sign featuring the Japanese character for peace. “I don’t get starstuck very often, but I genuinely froze that time,” Matt recalls. “I remember her publicist getting off the phone call after introducing us, and I just couldn’t force any words out. Yoko broke the silence and said, ‘Do you have any questions for me?’ and laughed. Honestly, I was more than a little intimidated by her, given her reputation. But she was actually quite warm and engaging, though not someone who elaborates much in her answers. It was an interview about the history of protest music, and it was beyond surreal to hear her talk about John Lennon and their work together during the late ’60s/early ’70s, knowing the key role those events played in the anti-war movement. She concluded the interview by saying, ‘Let’s have a beautiful future together.’ That’s when I froze a second time, because I had no idea how to reply. I still don’t.” The last 20 years have been populated with many such memorable moments for Wendy and I. Such as when the members of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and I watched a gun being pulled

Bradford Cox of Atlas Sound and Deerhunter at an Under the Radar SXSW event in Austin, TX in 2011. (Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern) Karen Gillian. When I briefly met the Bill Murray at SXSW and watched a Margo Price set standing next to him (instead of clapping after each song, he would snap his fingers in the air). In 2006 we launched our first SXSW event and did those for a decade, showcasing such performers as Fleet Foxes, Charli XCX, Glass Animals, of Montreal,

20TH ANNIVERSARY

Wendy and Rose at an Under the Radar SXSW event in Austin, TX in 2016. (Photo by Mark Redfern) Mumford & Sons (first on the bill when they were still unsigned in America), Atlas Sound, Car Seat Headrest, Reggie Watts, and Julien Baker.

BIRTHS, DEATHS, AND MARRIAGES

lot has changed for Wendy and I since first meeting 21 years ago. In 2007 we got married in the California mountain town of Big Bear Lake, surrounded by our family and friends, including many we met via Under the Radar. On New Year’s Day 2012 we left Los Angeles, moving across the country to Virginia to live at an old farmhouse built by my ancestors in the 1860s on land settled by family in the 1700s (we have the deed to the property signed by Thomas Jefferson, then governor of Virginia). My grandparents were the last people to live there, but the house had sat unoccupied for several years following my grandmother’s passing at age 97. It was only supposed to be a temporary move, but various factors necessitated a longer stay, some financial (the closing of the Borders Books chain significantly cut our print magazine distribution) and some personal. Then a year later along came our daughter Rose, cementing our desire not to uproot our lives anytime soon. We lived at the country house for five years before relocating to the nearby college town of Lexington, where we have made a life for ourselves. We do miss the big city life and the easy access to artists for photo shoots, but it is a wonderful place to bring up our daughter. Rose is now almost nine and is everything I could’ve hoped for from a child. She appreciates good music (favorites include Jessie Ware and CHVRCHES) and is flourishing with her piano lessons. At age six she entered her school talent show and performed a well-received original piano composition. She’s currently teaching herself how to play the Mandalorian theme. She collects comic books, is into video games, loves Doctor Who (even though the monstrous Weeping Angels terrify her), appreciates many other aspects of geek culture, and got almost straight-As on her last report card (only one B). Beyond all that, she’s kind, considerate, respectful, inquisitive, and loving. My dad died of pancreatic Mike Hilleary, Mark Redfern, and cancer in 2014 and got large obits Laura Studarus at SXSW in Austin, in The New York Times, The TX in 2011. (Photo by Wendy Lynch London Times, and The Redfern)

Guardian. Two years later we lost my older sister Bridget to breast cancer at way too young an age, leaving behind her then teenaged daughters Eleanor and Isobel. Mark Nockels took over our ad sales and has done a wonderful job. But the finances of running a print magazine in the internet age grew more difficult, so we’ve had to cut back the number of issues and focus more on our website than we used to, although we still get a greater thrill from finishing a new print issue than we ever do with anything we do online. In 2020 we launched the official Under the Radar podcast with host and producer Celine Teo-Blockey and we do take great pride in that, as it’s the most in-depth music interview podcast around. Celine says that one of her most memorable experiences with Under the Radar was interviewing Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips for the podcast in 2021. “Sometimes it’s not a good idea to meet your heroes but Wayne was like your cool uncle, the one that never quite grew up but you look forward to hanging out with at family gatherings. As an interview subject he’s genial and incredibly generous,” she says, adding that there were technical difficulties and her barking dog kept interrupting the interview, “but Wayne was such a trouper.” While Wendy still helps with Under the Radar, laying out and designing every issue and conducting photo shoots when possible, she also now works at our local library running the youth programs, from leading storytimes for preschoolers to managing afterschool programs and clubs for kids in elementary to high school. During the height of the pandemic lockdown in 2020, Rose and I helped Wendy produce a daily livestreamed storytime from our home, the success of which got her on the local news a couple of times. Wendy enjoys working with children and is a natural at it. The job gives us the financial security to keep Under the Radar alive and true to its original purpose. Under the Radar has never quite had the resources of some of our competitors, we’ve always felt like underdogs. But we have outlasted almost all of the print music magazines that were around when we started, including Magnet, Filter, Paste, Devil in the Woods, SPIN, Resonance, The Sentimentalist, CMJ New Music Monthly, Harp, Blurt, URB, Blender, and others. Some of those

Wendy and Rose with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth in London, England in 2016 during a Protest Issue photo shoot. (Photo by Mark Redfern)

20TH ANNIVERSARY continued online or morphed into other publications, others are gone for good. I would say that we’ve stuck around because Wendy and I still have a passion for it. Because we’ve kept our costs low and kept it independent. Because I’m not quite sure what else I would do with my professional life. But I also asked some of our writers about what they thought made Under the Radar stand out from the other publications they had written for or read. “Under the Radar feels especially curated and handmade, which you don’t get as much nowadays from the bigger outlets with huge, constantly rotating rosters of writers,” says Austin Trunick, who has written for us for over a decade and also handles our coverage of Blu-rays/DVDs, board games, and video games. “It feels like something made by people you know, rather than a product. Long before I started writing for the magazine, I’d built a sense of trust in the recommendations I found inside—it was even to the point where I’d identified certain writers whose tastes I felt matched my own and learned their names. I would skim through the reviews section to read their bylines first whenever a new issue arrived. Once I got a glimpse behind the scenes and got to know you and Wendy, I realized how much of yourselves you pour into Under the Radar, and it was obvious why the magazine had such a personalized touch. On top of that, it felt like a real passion for music was the number one quality your writers shared, and it came through on the page.” Our longtime writer Mike Hilleary offers this insider perspective: “The thing that really sets Under the Radar apart from other music magazines and websites is something readers likely have no clue about, because it’s behindthe-scenes. Typically when you freelance write for a magazine or web publication, your job is to develop your story, file it on time, coordinate with your editor regarding potential changes, and submit an invoice for your work. Freelancers are entirely hands off when it comes to larger machinations of a publication. That’s not the case with Under the Radar. Mark has this compulsive need—almost to a fault—of bringing in his stable of writers into the development of an issue of Under the Radar. It’s not a magazine of executive decisions. Everyone has the opportunity to weigh in on unique elements of the publication. We vote on who should be featured in an issue, who should be on the cover of an issue, what cover photograph or design looks best, and a host of other meaningful decisions that lead to a completed Under the Radar issue. It’s not just about creating content, but generating a product that comes from a host of contributing voices and perspectives.” Laura Studarus, who started out as an intern with Under the Radar before graduating to writing big print articles and cover stories for us, as well as now freelancing for many other notable outlets, agrees, adding: “There’s no

Rose with Future Islands in Charlottesville, VA in 2014 during a cover photo shoot. (Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern)

Rose playing her great grandad’s piano in Rockbridge Baths, VA in 2020. (Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern) formula. I’ve sat in on planning meetings, and I’ve heard the spirited debate. Every cover, and all the features, exist because someone on staff decided that this artist is worth sharing with readers.” Lily Moayeri, who has been our Television Editor for a long while, already had years of music journalism experience before joining Under the Radar. She says that loyalty has something to do with our longevity. “Under the Radar has always had a very defined identity. As the publication moves through eras and musical trends, it stays close to a through-thread that can be traced all the way back to its origins, which makes it a reliable source for its audience. It is also a loyal platform for the artists it champions, and continues to support them through their careers, even when those artists may have gone out of fashion with other media outlets.” In our first issue’s Letter from the Editor, I wrote: “We’re about good music, plain and simple.” Matt Fink says we’ve lasted by sticking to that mandate. “After 20 years, Under the Radar is still a magazine focused on out-of-themainstream music,” he says. “Given how much indie music has been subsumed into the larger popular culture over the last two decades, it’s to our credit that we’re still largely focused on discovering new acts that haven’t yet reached the NPR/New York Times/late night TV show level of fame. A lot of publications that started out like Under the Radar have slowly morphed into lifestyle magazines for people with disposable incomes, but we have remained focused on music.” Our writer Dom Gourlay, who’s based in England and is also our Live Reviews Editor, optimistically says, “Hopefully we’ll be talking about the 40th anniversary come 2041.” But I’m not so certain that we will still be doing this in 20 years. We are already working on ideas for some special issues in 2022. At some point, however, Wendy and I may look to new creative challenges, especially when Rose goes off to college in a decade. Then again, 20 years ago when we first sat around dreaming up Under the Radar’s first issue we had no inkling that we’d still be doing it all these years later. No idea the adventures we’d have. No clue of the lifelong friends we’d make. When asked if she thinks we will still be doing Under the Radar Wendy and Mark as WandaVision and when we’re in our 60s, Wendy jokes: Rose as Claire from Trollhunters on “Maybe we can start getting some Halloween in Lexington, VA in 2021. good music into AARP magazine?” (Photo by Kelsey Goodwin) 75

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First Issue Revisited A

s part of our 20th anniversary coverage we thought it would be interesting to conduct brand new interviews with some of the artists interviewed in our very first issue way back in December 2001. We weren’t able to talk to everyone for a variety of reasons and our first issue also featured interviews with Gorillaz, Spoon, Arab Strap, and a few others not included here. But luckily many of the first issue artists were game for a catch up to discuss their albums from the early 2000s and what they’ve been up to since. With each new interview we’ve included a small image of the layout of the first page of each artist’s original article from our first issue. By Mark Redfern

Mogwai Not Ancient Now Words by Dom Gourlay

on British politics hasn’t softened in the intervening years. Braithwaite is vocal about how Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has mishandled Brexit in regards to its negative affect on British touring musicians. “The way they’ve treated the music industry in comparison to the fishing industries is beyond a joke,” he says. “I think the UK government take the arts for granted. It’s something that makes a lot of money and gives the UK a lot of prestige worldwide.” Braithwaite is also very pro-Scottish independence and agrees that the failings of the current British government have been a pivotal factor in the campaign for Scottish independence gathering renewed momentum after the last referendum in 2014 failed. “I definitely think folks up here in Scotland don’t have a lot in common with Boris Johnson’s government,” he says. “I don’t think the majority of people in England do either. But they own the media and there’s no nice Mogwai in Los Angeles, CA 2003. (Photo by Celeste Wells) way of putting it. They’ve brainwashed people. They’ve brainwashed people into blaming things that are the government’s fault on foreign people. It’s not a new and various lockdowns. hen we interviewed Mogwai bassist trick. We’ve seen it all before throughout history. It’s like As the Love Continues was recorded very differently Dominic Aitchison in our very first Fascism 101.” to anything Mogwai have done in the past. It was issue the focus was on their album at the Mogwai has had incredible longevity, but Braithwaite produced remotely on opposite sides of the globe with time, 2001’s Rock Action, the Scottish band’s admits his surprise that the band is still going strong two Dave Fridmann (who the band first worked with on 1999’s third full-length, as well as the band’s tonguedecades after first in-cheek “Blur: are shite” and “Gorillaz: even sophomore album, Come On Die Young, and who also being interviewed produced Rock Action). It was a necessary requirement worse” T-shirts. Speaking to the band’s due to the pandemic but not something the band (which by Under the guitarist and sometime vocalist Stuart Radar. “I was in also features drummer Martin Bulloch and guitarist/ Braithwaite now, it makes more sense to keyboardist Barry Burns) wants to repeat again in a hurry. my 20s then and focus on the incredible 2021 they’ve had. you tend to think “We were all wearing masks, which I can live with,” people in their Having celebrated their 25th anniversary as a band Braithwaite says. “But doing things remotely isn’t 40s are ancient,” something I want to do again if I can help it. I do miss in 2020, their tenth and latest album, As the Love he laughs. “You the producer being around. I don’t think it affected the Continues, hit the number one spot in the UK albums can’t even record negatively but the experience would definitely chart in February, the band’s first time doing so. The imagine yourself have been better if we’d got to hang out with Dave all album was also nominated for the 2021 Mercury Prize, being that person, the time.” another first for Mogwai, and won the 2021 Scottish and I’m in my In our first issue interview with Mogwai, the band Album of the Year Award. 40s now. We’ve expressed their dislike for the British monarchy, with “That was amazing!” says Braithwaite of their just not stopped. Aitchison pointing out that part of the problem was unexpected chart success. “Really, really great. It is I guess that’s some UK citizens still viewing Britain as an empire. kind of surreal because apart from that, nothing’s really how you achieve “Britain is a fucking shit hole; it’s no more special than happened. Nothing was happening for anyone so I’m longevity. Never anywhere else so we don’t need a king and queen,” really looking forward to gigs starting up again,” he Aitchison said in our 2001 interview. The band’s stance quit!” adds, referring to the continued COVID-19 pandemic

FIRST ISSUE REVISITED

TheCharla tans Three Weeks in Wonderland

Words by Matt Conner

Tim Burgess in Los Angeles, 2005. (Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern)

he Charlatans were never supposed to arrive in Wonderland. Frontman Tim Burgess says The Charlatans were never supposed to maintain momentum beyond the Manchester scene that defined their early work. To make a single album was an achievement; a second one was unheard of. With 48 singles and 13 studio releases in the rearview mirror, Burgess and company have defied all odds with a

30-year-plus musical legacy. In the early ’90s the band was labeled as Madchester and by the mid-’90s they were associated with Britpop, a scene they have long since outlived. “It’s funny because when the band first started, we were considered to be part of a scene or, for some, the second wave of a scene,” says Burgess. “Grunge came along and was considered to have taken over the Manchester scene or the shoegaze scene or whatever it was. “In some ways, there was doubt about how long any of these bands would

last,” he continues. “Two albums was kind of unheard of. So I really went out guns blazing thinking we’d do one album and that would be it.” There was a bit of shock and even panic when The Charlatans were not, in fact, done despite what scenes were in or out. But it’s that all-in approach cemented on the first album that Burgess says has actually helped the band from the beginning. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, we’ve got a second chance. What do we do now?’” Burgess laughs. “I think that was good in a way. We never had a master plan.” It’s been over 20 years since Burgess decided to move to Los Angeles, where he lived from 1998 to 2010. It was a necessary personal shift to get away from local fame that jeopardized the band’s longevity. After five albums, the band had recorded Us and Us Only in response to the death of original keyboardist Rob Collins in a car accident. Their attempts to record thereafter fell flat, according to Burgess, so he decided to get away with a girlfriend to Southern California. “I think you sometimes have to look for new reasons to keep going, and Los Angeles was a reason,” he says. After failing to find time when they lived within a few miles of one another, Burgess said the invitation to come to LA helped each Charlatans member carve out the requisite space to come together. It was there that Mark Collins, Martin Blunt, and Jon Brookes joined Burgess for a three-week stint, just long enough to sort out the songs that would become 2001’s Curtis Mayfieldinfluenced Wonderland. “The whole thing was wonderful,” says Burgess looking back on the sessions. “It was just a California thing. I’ve been obsessed with Manchester music. I love New York, Berlin, LA—all these amazing cities that produce incredible music. So I was really on an LA trip— Gram Parsons, The Beach Boys, they’re just heroes to me.” It didn’t hurt to have Daniel Lanois swing by to play pedal steel or legendary session musician Jim Keltner to add some drums. However, Burgess also says the band’s drug dealer was there to add some creative input as well. “It was a moment,” he says. “We would start usually around 7:00 at night until 7:00 in the morning, but that changed from like 11:00 at night to 11:00 in the morning,” laughs Burgess, who gave up drugs in 2006. “Our dealer was there the whole time helping us make decisions. And I don’t know whether I’m dreaming this or not but we had Sly Stone’s desk. It was just full of that world, really. There were arguments and it was all cocaine decisions and all of that, but it was a moment. In fact, I wanted to stay in it so much that I made a solo album straight after that, in my opinion, could have been the follow-up.” 77

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Black BoxRecorder

When Will I, Will I Be Famous Words by Celine Teo-Blockey breathily delivered: “When boys are just 11, they begin to grow in height at a faster rate than they ever did before…they develop curiosities and start to fantasize about things they never did before.” “It was probably quite fun,” Nixey says of playing the role of sexy school teacher, “but mostly I enjoyed not having to act like a sweet little pop star, smiling for the cameras all the time. I did things my way. I styled myself, and I had a big part in everything we did as a band.” According to Nixey, The Facts of Life was a conscious effort from Haines and Moore to have a hit record and retire comfortably by the seaside. But while they were ambitious for that level of stardom and were excited when the radio stations started to play their songs, Nixey was more conflicted, she wanted their music to have an audience but she also liked her anonymity. Their third and final album, 2003’s Passionoia, mocked celebrity and the trappings of chart success with such songs as “Being Number One” and “The New Diana.” Knowing fully well that Nixey had a poster of George Michael on her wall as a teenager, on “Andrew Ridgeley,” named after Michael’s Wham! bandmate, Haines and Moore wrote these lyrics for her to deadpan: “I never liked George Michael much/Although they said he was the talented one.” inger Sarah Nixey has never regretted taking up the invitation “I think being as famous as Wham! were in the 1980s would have been great,” from Luke Haines (The Auteurs) and John Moore (The Jesus Nixey muses, “but now, in the era of social media, with people filming your every move, I would come to despise it.” and Mary Chain) to form Black Box Recorder—even if the band By Passionoia Nixey and Moore were married and had a daughter, Ava. Even never achieved the level of success of some of their other turn of after the couple went their separate ways, she remained their priority. “We had the millennium peers. And it’s questionable if they ever made good different ideas of family life,” she says of Moore, who she still remains close to. on the promise that “they would make her famous.” Nixey, who has since remarried and had two other children, continues to work as a solo artist. Her debut album, Sing, Memory, was released in 2007 and her “I laughed when they wrote that fax to me,” Nixey says via email from her most recent one was 2018’s Night Walks. London home, as she slowly recovers from contracting COVID-19 more than a Today, even while Nixey struggles with the prolonged effects of lung damage year ago. The trio had met playing in another band where she had sung back-up that she sustained from COVID and the pneumonia, she is still working— vocals. “Luke and John were in their 30s then and both quite jaded,” she adds. “Neither of them had broken into the UK charts and I didn’t see them as my route composing short melodies on the piano or scribbling lyrics for later. She also co-owns a business running recording studios around London with her husband, to success.” producer/songwriter Jimmy Hogarth. Nixey, then a recent drama school graduate, did believe in their talent as And as for coming good on the promise of making her famous, Nixey is songwriters. “I’d never met anyone so cynical, twisted, and charming before,” she unfazed. “I think if we had really wanted that level of success for Black Box explains. “At the outset, I think they saw themselves at Svengali-types but soon Recorder, we would have committed ourselves to the band…we would have realized that I was not a pushover.” benefited from touring much more and further afield.” By the time, they had It didn’t take Black Box Recorder too long to get some attention. Their first single, “Child Psychology,” from their 1998 debut album, England Made Me, drew released Passionoia they had lost momentum. “It seemed as though we came to on a typically English sense of drama and black humor, with Nixey sing-speaking a crossroads and all took different paths,” she says. Fame is a fickle thing anyway but good music is tenacious, taking its time to the internal dialogue of a withdrawn child, who grows up to be an angst-ridden teen, and then winds up expelled from school. The blunt, sardonic lyrics also hint eek out new fans in surprising places. Recently, “Child Psychology” went viral on TikTok. On YouTube an enterprising fellow has answered a fan’s request to at the repressed parents as the root cause of her misgivings, but with a line like “Life is unfair/Kill yourself and get over it,” they promptly got the song banned from slow the song down and play it looped for more than an hour, for maximum chill. The song’s re-emergence led the label Chrysalis to release an edited version of BBC Radio 1 and MTV. the song via Spotify. Nixey concludes with a hint of irony: “A new generation has Their single “Facts of Life,” the title track from their 2000-released second decided they love that song.” album, fared better. In the music video, Nixey is sat behind a school desk and

Photo by Steve Double (L to R: John Moore, Sarah Nixey, Luke Haines).

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Idlewild

The Abandoned Painting Words by Jimi Arundell • Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern

o look at Idlewild singer Roddy Woomble

since the release of their breakthrough second 100 Broken Windows, for which Still boyish, dressed in a blazer, and nursing a glass of red wine; the Scottish singer gives off the air of the cool new arts teacher fresh out of college. When asked about his strongest feelings from the early 2000s, he fondly remembers an intense period for four young men—at the time the band also featured bassist Bob Fairfoull, guitarist Rod Jones, and drummer Colin Newton—yet to truly prove themselves. “It was almost like every gig was the last gig they were going to play so when we started getting onstage ourselves we had that approach,” he remembers. “We had no aspirations be famous or to be stars. We wanted to be in a band that appealed to music fans.” Roddy Woomble of Idlewild in Los Angeles, 2004.

Hope Is Important, and whilst they were worried that decision “went against a lot of the principles that to change us but from their point of view [they said],

100 Broken Windows

going to review it for the NME

of fans thanks to college radio, 100 Broken Windows was never fully supported by a reluctant Capitol records have always suffered from in America is they

DIVIDER R E C O R D S

100 Broken Windows with The Remote Part, which gave the band even also had a kind of American edge but also a very particularly my voice, he stopped me singing in an 100 Broken Windows harnessed the raw excitement of the live experience, brought forward

recent album, Interview Music who has also released several solo albums, including Lo! Soul, and also wrote the 2021 book In the Beginning There Were Answers: 25 Years of Idlewild, 100 Broken Windows

Broken Windows when you went to see the band, it was this mix of Yet despite feeling like they had created their best Broken Windows through the critics and they realized then that they

100 Broken Windows as

the photographs we chose of each other, everything

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Doves in Los Angeles, 2002. (L to R: Jimi Goodwin, Andy Williams, Jez Williams) 80

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UE REVISITED

Out of the Ashes Words by Lily Moayeri • Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern

t the height of the Haçienda’s popularity, it was a real mission to get into the legendary Manchester nightclub, which was open from 1982 to 1997. A spot on the Haçienda’s guest list was the motivation for twin brothers Andy and Jez Williams and their school chum Jimi Goodwin to form the dance act Sub Sub in the early ’90s. As Sub Sub, the trio would be counted as part of the music industry, therefore ensuring a smooth and gratis entry into the venue’s hallowed halls. “That was really as far as we were thinking,” remembers Andy Williams from his home in Lymm, UK, on the far outskirts of Manchester. “And it just took off.” That is an understatement. Sub Sub sold half a million copies of their UK Top 5 hit single, “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use).” The trio’s lives were funded for the next few years, as was a state-of-the-art studio. The studio burning down on the twins’ birthday is the stuff of indie lore, as it marked the end of Sub Sub and the start of Doves. “There is this theory that we became a rock band overnight,” says Williams. “That’s not the case. We’d started morphing back into that because we stopped going to clubs. Before it shut down, the Haçienda became quite a violent, unpleasant place we didn’t want to go anymore. It became more interesting to pick up our old instruments. The studio fire was the last nail in the coffin. But there’s no way Doves would have existed without ‘Ain’t No Love’ doing as well as it did.” While they were writing songs—now set up in New Order’s abandoned studio, thanks to the New Order’s manager Rob Gretton—the Williams and Goodwin kept waiting for a “Morrissey or a Jarvis Cocker” to walk in and “sprinkle the magic dust” over their musical creations, but they ended up accepting what Gretton was telling them all along: put Goodwin on vocals. “We realized we had the chops to do it within the band,” says Williams. “We were in the studio every day, six days a week. We were running it like a military boot camp. We were absolutely determined. We were going to do a record that we were going to stand by. We were on a mission.” The three worked on their own, engineering, producing, and recording themselves, with Jez Williams at the helm, to create their 2000-released debut album, Lost Souls. They only went to Steve Osborne (U2, Elbow, Lush) at the very end for “Catch the Sun,” which they couldn’t quite nail, and the producer ended up recording them live. “All our time spent in electronic dance music we brought to Doves,” says Andy Williams. “We didn’t want to be part of Britpop. There were bands we liked at the time, which took a more interesting, psychedelic, hypnotic approach to rock music. We weren’t doing anything radically different, but

we were relieved that people got Lost Souls, because the money was starting to run out. When people really liked Lost Souls, I remember thinking, ‘Maybe we’ve got a crack of this being our career.’ We were trying to create something honest. I think that’s what people connected with.” Doves brought everything they had experienced, both as musicians and music fans, to Lost Souls. The album had the build-ups and drops of club music plus the atmospherics of psychedelic sounds and the raw emotion of their formative years. The pull of “Break Me Gently” and breakdown of “The Cedar Room” carve out pain as much as they provide the salve for it. Lost Souls arrived not just at a tipping point for music, which the start of every decade is, but at the turn of the century, at the peak of CD sales and the era of peer-to-peer file sharing via Napster (and with iTunes on the horizon), as music blogs and websites started to compete with print music magazines, among the ashes of whatever Britpop bands Oasis and The Verve had accomplished Stateside and facing the surge of American garage rock bands like The Strokes and The White Stripes. On an early tour of North America for Lost Souls, Doves were the support band for The Strokes. From there they headlined their own 1000+ capacity shows in major markets, although this has never been reflected in the trio’s non-existent presence in the U.S. charts. “We’ve never made money out of touring the U.S.,” says Williams matter-of-factly. “In the old days, the label would have to pump money into making up the shortfall. I’m glad they did because we built up a very loyal audience in the States. Outside of the UK, States is our biggest fanbase. But how many British bands in the last 20 years have broken through in America? To do well in America you need to pretty much live there and just gig it and gig it and gig it. “When we [next] come back, there’s no such thing as tour support from the label. We will make it work, but we wouldn’t be able to afford to do what we used to, which was five, six weeks of playing everywhere. It’s a shame.” Still, Doves released four albums after Lost Souls, including 2020’s The Universal Want, which came out after an unintentional 11-year hiatus, during a time that was desperate for new music, particularly from a band that reminded people of a less complicated world. Williams thinks of the start of Doves as “simpler times,” pointing to actual album sales as the main reason for the band’s traction. “To be a new artist, the odds are stacked up against you,” he says. “So much white noise out there. The internet is meant to democratize things, and it’s amazing to be able to access the entire recorded history in the last 50 years, but it is just really tough to make an impression now. “But that’s not to say you shouldn’t do it. If that’s what’s in you, you’ve got to keep on cracking on and keep creating. You can’t let fear stop you doing something.”

The Julie Ruin 81 ⋆ Photo by Ray Lego

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FIRST ISSUE REVISITED

LADYTRON Built to Last

Words by Andy Von Pip • Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern

Ladytron in Los Angeles, 2008. (L to R: Helen Marnie, Daniel Hunt, Mira Aroyo, Reuben Wu)

Formed in Liverpool, UK in 1999, the band—Mira Aroyo from Sofia, Bulgaria and Helen Marnie from Glasgow, Scotland, alongside Daniel Hunt and Reuben Wu, both from Merseyside, UK—have celebrated the 20th anniversary of 604 via a repressed limited edition double LP in colored vinyl. It’s an artfully crafted album full of playful, seductive, minimalist electronic pop, featuring a number of propulsive instrumentals, as well as vocals by Marnie and Aroyo (who, at times, sings in her native Bulgarian). It’s certainly a body of work that didn’t follow the musical trends of the day and yet didn’t sound in any way regressive. Quite the opposite in fact. Hunt, the band’s principal songwriter and producer, certainly considers 604 to have been an album that was pretty unique back in 2001. “I’d be tempted to say it was of its time,” he reflects, “but then there were not actually that many similar-sounding records around back then. Parts of it stand up. I’m glad it is still well regarded.” Lead vocalist Helen Marnie agrees. “It’s a memento to a time,” she says. “Personally, it has a naivety that I’d never be able to recreate. I guess that in itself is a charm. There is a delicacy in the way I sang.” Ladytron were always sonically and visually arresting, including their Manga-inspired cover art notably on the Mutron EP, “Playgirl” single, and 604, drawn and designed by Wu (the re-released U.S. edition of 604 had a completely different cover and conveyed an almost post-Soviet Orwellian feel). The band certainly arrived with what appeared to be very carefully planned atheistic from the outset, with everyone dressed in matching black uniforms. “I think the greatest effort was probably finding Atari jackets on eBay, to be honest!” laughs Marnie. “The uniforms were made by a friend, so that was easy.” The music of German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk, as well as the darker side of 1980s synth pop, was often referenced in the press coverage of 604, but Hunt’s recollection is that wasn’t really in their thinking when creating the album. “We wanted people to hear past that,” he insists. “Plenty of that album, if played in isolation, would not be associated with the 1980s at all. It was a stab at modernity using the tools and influences at our disposal, and that’s probably what set it apart.” Although the band didn’t exactly embrace the electroclash tag at the time—a supposed genre that included the likes of Peaches, CSS, Goldfrapp, and Fischerspooner—in retrospect Hunt can see the positives of that

adytron’s debut album, 604, proved that you can acknowledge your musical influences whilst at the same time bring something fresh and exciting to the table. Despite being tagged as part of the electroclash movement, the reality is Ladytron offered something much more nuanced, sophisticated, and substantial than the latest à la mode musical fad. They were built to last.

FIRST ISSUE REVISITED

scene. “Electroclash was someone else’s idea, in which we were included, and we didn’t willingly play along,” he says. “But it was a fun ride, it was a colorful moment, and it was influential on the direction mainstream pop music would take in the years and decades since. We met kids on the road, in remote, unfashionable places, whose lives had been changed by that scene, whatever you want to call it. It was unlike anything that had happened for quite some time and broke through what seemed a rather gray moment in popular culture.” Twenty years later, and many of the songs on 604 are still firm favourites with fans. “I still love ‘Discotraxx,’ ‘Commodore Rock,’ and ‘Playgirl,’” Marnie reflects. “That’s probably down to the reception they’ve had in the live arena. There’s a great energy to those tracks, and they don’t sound like anyone else.” Hunt agrees, with many of these songs entwined with the excitement of a band releasing their debut album to pretty much universal acclaim. “Everything was new. All of it felt that way. ‘Mu-Tron,’ ‘Another Breakfast With You,’ or ‘The Way That I Found You’ aren’t remembered like ‘Playgirl’ is, but they all seemed like we had hit another level when we recorded them. But that record was the culmination of about three years of work, it wasn’t instant. The last few things we did for it were a world apart from the early tracks that were included, and have a lot more in common with what came after and since.” And just before 604’s release, Marnie still vividly recalls the excitement and anticipation. “I remember having my old ’70s radio with a built-in record player on in my flat in Liverpool and hearing tracks being played by John Peel and Radio 1’s Evening Session,” she reminisces. “That got me super excited. Having a song played on the radio was such a great feeling.” Hunt felt sure that 604 would make its mark. “We knew it was good, unique at that time, and it was getting a positive response already, so I’d say we were pretty confident.” The fact that Ladytron have stayed together for 20 years, releasing five more critically acclaimed albums (including their last album, 2019’s Ladytron), and all with the original line-up, would appear to be quite an achievement, but Hunt doesn’t particularly see their longevity as unusual. “I find shorter lived projects stranger, to be honest, as I don’t understand how you can just switch off the ideas. Both have a place.” At the time of our interview, Ladytron were working on their seventh studio album, which has been delayed due to the global pandemic. “We were recording in Castle of Doom, Mogwai’s studio in Glasgow, midMarch 2020,” reveals Hunt. “But three days into recording it became apparent what was happening and we decided to abandon the sessions. It was that eerie moment we all remember, when nobody really knew how it would be.” “We worked sporadically and remotely since,” adds Marnie, “but it was only this summer that we were able to finally start putting together album seven, in Liverpool, where the group began.”

GRANDADDY

Putting Off the Sunset

Words by Hays Davis Photos by Koury Angelo

“I

remember, back then I was kind of at the height of my powers: finally having a little bit of budget, and useful drive and creativity and capacity to experiment. It was just, ‘How can this be better? More interesting?’” recalls Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle as he looks back on the making of their 2000 album, The Sophtware Slump. “I think the name of the game back then was just always topping the last thing that I did, really, I don’t think with any specific intent. It was just like, ‘How can it be more badass than the last thing?’” When Grandaddy graced the cover of Under the Radar’s very first issue in December of 2001, they were wrapping up a year that had raised their profile considerably. The Sophtware Slump, which followed their 1997 debut album Under the Western Freeway, was met with widespread acclaim for its dreamy, melodic songs that, within some of their lyrics, found heart in a world of cold technology. Lytle recalls when The Sophtware Slump seemed to be shaping into something special. “If there are certain elements intact, which is like, ‘Oh, it’s catchy, and it’s

honest, and I think it’s interesting,’ that’s great, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you know what you just made,” he notes, speaking from the Los Angeles area. “And obviously it’s even worse for me because I’m building everything from the ground up, and doing the engineering and the recording and a lot of the playing a lot of the time as well. I’m so damn in it that it’s almost impossible to have any clear perspective on it while you’re in it.” For Lytle, the location of the album’s creation remains one of the elements that particularly sticks with him from that period. “It was this little farmhouse that was outside of Modesto [California]. I was renting it. It was an in-law quarters that was attached to the garage of this Portuguese family. They didn’t even speak English. I think they were confused as to what I was doing out there all hours of the day and night.” The tiny house became Lytle’s world for a while, where he lived as he sank into writing, recording, tracking, engineering, and mixing The Sophtware Slump, with the band popping in and out. “When I first moved in there, all I was doing was hauling in tons of gear. And it’s funny because, where I had the control room set

Jason Lytle in Tustin, CA, 2006. (Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern)

Grandaddy feature from Issue #1.

“I THINK ONE OF THE MOST WELL-KNOWN NOTABLES THAT BECAME A BIG FAN WAS DAVID BOWIE. HE ACTUALLY CAME TO A FEW OF THE SHOWS AND HUNG OUT BACKSTAGE, AND HE WAS REALLY AWESOME.” – JASON LYTLE

up, it was kind of like this underground attic area where the owner of the property, this old Portuguese guy, stored gear and farming equipment. Like a dug-out basement area underneath my control room that I’d set up in there. “Every now and then him and his buddies, these old Portuguese guys, would go down there and drink wine. And I’d be working with my headphones on, and I’d be like, ‘What the hell was that sound?’ I’d take the headphones off and I could hear these guys down there jabbering in Portuguese. That just added to the weirdness of it. Modesto is already a weird place. I was kind of set up on the outskirts.” The Sophtware Slump gained some celebrity attention that was memorable to Lytle, though he remembers that experience being different at a time when internet updates didn’t have quite their current immediacy. “That’s one of the benefits of living in Modesto—before the internet age, too. In

order for stuff like [celebrity attention] to happen you usually have to be on tour, and you usually have to play the show, and somebody from the label comes back and says, ‘Oh my God! Guess who’s here?’ Everything happened literally in real time. “I think one of the most well-known notables that became a big fan was David Bowie. He actually came to a few of the shows and hung out backstage, and he was really awesome. We’ve had a few moments like that, and you wonder how you would behave, and it was so surreal. I was just drinking it up. He was so nice, and I think he had that ability to put people at ease.” Three more albums followed The Sophtware Slump, and since announcing a split in 2006, the band has also pursued solo projects, reconvened occasionally for reunion shows, put out the 2017 album Last Place, and dealt with the 2017 death of bassist Kevin Garcia (who had a stroke at only age 41). In 2020, Grandaddy marked

the 20th anniversary of Sophtware Slump with a set that included The Sophtware Slump…on a wooden piano, which featured Lytle performing the entire album solo. More recently, it happened that Lytle was returning the day after this interview to the house The Sophtware Slump was recorded in for footage being shot as part of a planned documentary on the band. Otherwise, with hearing issues impacting the length of time that Lytle can work on music, these days biking and hiking provide a balance. Still, while presently rebuilding his studio, he sees Grandaddy on his horizon. “Musically, I’m working on a solo record that’s going to have a pretty distinct sound. After that, I have another big batch of Grandaddy songs, and I wouldn’t mind doing another album. And then I kind of wouldn’t mind just sort of fading off into the sunset,” he considers with a laugh, “and not talking about music anymore. And just, I don’t know, trying to be a good person.” 87

THE DIVINE COMEDY

Reflections on a Younger Self Words by Ben Jardine • Photos by Derrick Santini

Neil Hannon in Los Angeles, CA, 2002. (Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern)

eil Hannon has just eaten a bag of Hula Hoops. The popular UK snack, made of potatoes and corn, are shaped like rings—a fitting shape for Hannon, who celebrates 30 years of his baroque chamber pop outfit, The Divine Comedy. “If anybody can work from home, it’s me,” Hannon says from his home in County Kildare (just outside of Dublin), in Ireland. “I never really stopped writing silly songs.” Hannon, who turned 51 in November, has been releasing these

“silly songs” under the name The Divine Comedy for the better part of his adult life. He hit Britpop stardom in the mid-’90s with the albums Promenade and Casanova, and was interviewed for Under the Radar’s second edition to promote his seventh album, Regeneration. “I don’t remember them telling me that it was only their second issue,” he laughs. Hannon is marking The Divine Comedy’s anniversary with Charmed Life, a double album of 24 greatest hits that traverse his career, and a bonus disc, which includes some unreleased tracks. He’s also working on the music to the upcoming film, Wonka (starring Timothée Chalamet 91

as a young Willy Wonka), which he can’t really talk about. Hannon is, quite rightly, in a reflective mood. He’s spent the last couple of years looking back over his career, with remastered reissues of nine Divine Comedy albums and the box set Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time: 30 Years of the Divine Comedy that featured all 12 of his studio albums, including his most recent full-length, 2019’s Office Politics. In the process, Hannon has been revisiting his earlier material, and to an extent, his earlier self. “When you listen to the early stuff,” Hannon muses, “you’re judging it from the position that you are in now, which is ‘I wouldn’t write it like that now.’ So thank God, you wrote it like that then, when you had the chance, when you felt like that.” Hannon released his first album, Fanfare for the Comic Muse, when he was just 19. While he’s more or less disowned the album for its R.E.M.-esque jangle pop—discernibly different from later orchestral pop Divine Comedy albums—Fanfare was included in the 2020 reissue project. “People, when they’re young, should definitely just write the way they feel and the way they want,” he reflects. “There’s no point trying to write like a 70-yearold Leonard Cohen when you’re 30.” Speaking on his other work, though, Hannon is much more admiring: “I’m not sure I could write ‘Tonight We Fly’ now. And I’m sort of sorry that I can’t because I really, really love it. It’s just like three minutes of bliss.” Hannon is thoughtful, self-deprecating, and chatty, though not at all verbose. When asked about his songwriting process, he pulls out a Moleskine notebook. “I hope it’s not really moleskin,” he offers as an off-hand joke. “I write a lot of silly things in it. Often just a title, or a couple of lines.” He points out that writing notes in his smartphone doesn’t have the same effect, that his brain can’t make the “grey matter” that way. “I have to work extremely hard to get the lyrics to be really good,” he says. On certain occasions, Hannon will write music that he eventually scraps because it doesn’t fit the lyrics he has in his head, or in his notebook. In this way, Hannon is an incredibly intellectual songwriter: the stories come first, and the music appears later, as if to color in the gaps of his lyrics. He works on rhymes and turns of phrase that he finds amusing, and hopes that audiences will enjoy the wordplay as much as he does. “It’s about inviting people into your little game, and making them feel cozy and happy,” he says. Hannon is a dynamic songwriter, and has penned some of the most lyrically intricate songs in all of indie music. “I like it when lyrics have a lot going on,” he says. “Sometimes I like really stupid, dumb lyrics with nothing going on. That’s just another facet of songwriting.” Hannon’s catalogue is extensive, comprising hundreds of songs that all bend 92

and flex in their own way. In conversation, it’s clear that he has a distinct relationship to every song he’s ever written. He talks about a song on Office Politics called “Queuejumper,” which he says is “so mind-bendingly simple, but it’s all about the ferocious anger that I was feeling at the time. When you’re angry, you don’t make a lot of sense.” Then there’s “A Lady of a Certain Age” (from 2006’s Victory for the Comic Muse), arguably one of Hannon’s lyrical masterpieces, which he describes as the most “involved lyric” he’s ever written. The song is a story, a character study of an elegant older woman who “holidayed with kings, dined out with starlets,” who travels the world and lives the highlife. Throughout, Hannon paints a portrait with words and wry jabs at the subject’s “certain age.” “Jane Birkin [the British actress and singer/ songwriter] had asked me to write something for her,” he says. “So I started writing this song, and I’d been reading Noel Coward’s diaries. And I had [lyrics like] ‘jetset’ and ‘Givenchy,’ just the glamour of the ’50s. And I’ve often said that, when I sort of got halfway through, I realized I couldn’t give it to Jane Birkin because she might think it was a slight. But probably, it was more that I just thought it was so good I wanted it for myself.” But, as Hannon points out, the storytelling process isn’t always straightforward, and sometimes overly complex. “You set up the story at the beginning,” he says. “You start the ball rolling in a certain spot, and you realize, to your horror, that you have to go to the end, and you know it’s going to be hard. It’s a lot like standing at the bottom of a cliff and thinking you have to climb to the top of it. It’s very scary and sometimes I just can’t be arsed. But sometimes I get into the zone and work on through and I feel pretty good about myself.” On 2001’s Regeneration, Hannon took a very different approach to songwriting. The wordplay and the piano took a considerable backseat; angst and guitars took over. Hannon does keep things lighthearted, but everywhere on Regeneration, there’s a feeling of grit, of rumination. “It’s an odd one in the old back catalogue because I was trying something radically different,” Hannon says. “You have to remember, the ’90s had come to an end. I had been flavor of the month and I had had my three or four years of chart happiness. And it was quite obvious that the music press was going, ‘Well, that’s enough of that then. Let’s chuck out Britpop and everyone connected with it.’ And I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to metamorphose and be able to stick two fingers up to [the press].” Hannon’s record deal with Parlophone meant he had the money to bring on a notable producer. So, in seeking a sound “radically different” from the appropriately titled Fin de Siècle (1998), Hannon enlisted Radiohead producer and collaborator, Nigel Godrich.

Hannon also worked with a full band, and for the first time he wasn’t firmly sitting in the front seat of a car that he alone was driving. “Up until then, I pretty much produced all the albums,” he says. “And suddenly, because I wanted Nigel’s input to be huge, I took a step back. To the extent that, about three weeks into recording, he said, ‘You know, this is your album as well and you could stick your oar in at any time,’ which was devastating. I was thinking, ‘Oh, Jesus, I’ve screwed it up.’” But the result is Regeneration, which spawned some of Hannon’s most popular songs, “Bad Ambassador” and “Perfect Lovesong” (both of which are on Charmed Life). The album is indeed the most distant from Neil Hannon, the artist. “It’s kind of what might have happened if I was a different type of artist. And it was very much, ‘Let’s get the guitars out and make a hell of a lot of noise and make cool riffs.’” “There’s still quite a lot of Hannon-esque lyrics in there,” he adds. “But it’s got a lot more angst in it, a lot more ‘the world’s going to hell in a handcart.’ And as much as it is, I don’t get as much out of music that says it is. I do prefer it when my records are more optimistic and are being a little more positive about the good aspects of humanity.” Hannon is also deeply reflective on how music consumption and production have changed over his career. We talk about recent artists, such as Wet Leg, Tame Impala, Michael Kiwanuka, and The Goon Sax—some of which he found through Spotify, some he found through his 19-year-old daughter, Willow Hannon, an aspiring musician herself who released the Staring at Walls EP last year. “My daughter is more in the loop than I am, so sometimes I have to ask her, which is embarrassing. I have to say, ‘I was a bloody pop star. I should know more about it than you!’” When asked about how technology has changed the way music is made, Hannon shares: “I don’t think there’s any technology that has appeared in the last 20 to 30 years that has improved music. I’ll stand by that, though it sounds very ridiculous. Every single thing has been a way to make it all quicker and easier. That’s really not what music is about, and it’s not what makes great music.” The Divine Comedy’s first few albums were all recorded to tape, in a studio, without the aid of production technology, he points out. Then, when ProTools arrived, everything changed. “Now everybody can see the music,” he says. “Everybody sees the waveform as they put it down. [Before], you were just thinking about the music.” He does long for the old days, though, of recording music to tape and jokes that with his Wonka money he’ll buy a tape machine, a mixing desk, and two old microphones. Just before we go, Hannon provides another glimpse of his home life. “I have to make sure the dogs haven’t destroyed the downstairs.”

“I’M NOT SURE I COULD WRITE ‘TONIGHT WE FLY’ NOW. AND I’M SORT OF SORRY THAT I CAN’T BECAUSE I REALLY, REALLY LOVE IT. IT’S JUST LIKE THREE MINUTES OF BLISS.”

NILÜFER YANYA Getting to Her Roots Words by Celine Teo-Blockey • Photos by Derrick Santini

Neil Hannon, Nilüfer Yanya, Faris Badwan, Miki Berenyi, Guy Garvey, and Rose Elinor Dougal in London, 2021. (Photo by Derrick Santini)

Nilüfer Yanya in London, 2019. (Photo by James Loveday)

me her personal Spotify playlist of Turkish music. It’s diverse, from psychrock to chanson-inflected folk and traditional fare, much of it is affecting even though I don’t understand the language. And while Yanya admits she still feels a little disconnected from her Turkish heritage—partly she believes because her family weren’t afforded the opportunity to return there as often as they would have liked when she was younger and those foundational bonds are formed—she recognizes its influence on her. It helps that her father plays the Saz, a traditional Turkish string instrument that resembles the lute. “He said he always wanted to be a musician as well,” she is quick to add. Perhaps that’s why Yanya’s voice can be hard to define. Her vocals have a staccato, guttural quality, but when matched up with the right melody can be utterly beguiling. She’s also an artful guitarist and when all those elements pare up nicely, you have a track like “Crash,” off Feeling Lucky, her perfectly formed three-song EP, released in 2020. The stitching of acid jazz basslines with dreamy pop melodies on “Day 7,5093” and her feathering falsetto on “Same Damn Luck” serve to highlight her versatility. There’s a concomitant restless quality to her songwriting that, like her So unlike her peers, she didn’t spend her childhood mimicking the voices voice and music, could be tied up with a quest for identity or the parts of of reigning divas or pop stars? “No,” comes the abrupt reply, from the her identity that she’s never been able to articulate. Recently, her mother’s otherwise bubbly 26-year-old, from her cellphone in London. Later she sends sister unearthed their family’s connection to a West Indies sugar plantation

n the DNA of Nilüfer Yanya’s music you hear the unmistakable guitar strains of mid-aughts bands such as Interpol, The Strokes, and The Libertines. These were the albums that her older sister was listening to when Yanya was in her early teens. Her mother preferred classical music while her Istanbul-born father played a lot of music from his homeland. Growing up in an interracial family (her mother is Barbadian-Irish and her father Turkish), with parents who were both visual artists, Yanya and her two siblings were encouraged to indulge in creative pursuits—drawing, piano, nature, imaginative play—rather than the indiscriminate consumption of mass pop culture. This is the mélange that sets her apart from most.

and a slave owner called Thomas Daniel. He had donated to the coffers of churches in Bristol and has memorials, stained glass windows, and art dedicated to him and his name. “In the UK, the general public’s knowledge of this topic is so bad,” Yanya explains. “They’re like, ‘Oh, that’s America. No, we’re not that bad. We just abolished the slave trade.’ And it’s like, ‘No, this is this is the slave trade. We’re still living in it somehow,’” she says referring to the money that the British government paid out to slave owners like Daniel, that have resulted in the generational wealth, power, and access that their progeny have benefitted from. Back then people born enslaved had to take the last name of their masters. Yanya’s great, great, great grandfather was an enslaved man, who took the Daniel name. As direct descendants, Yanya’s family is seeking to get those enslaved recognized with an alternate plaque wherever Thomas Daniel’s name is mentioned. The death of George Floyd galvanized her aunt. “She really wants to and hopes to inspire other people of Caribbean or African descent, to do the same thing and find out their own links,” Yanya says. Yanya hasn’t had a chance to come to terms with the enormity of this revelation but she has shared this information on her Instagram to bring this collective history to light. In the hour that we speak and she busies about her day on the streets of London, she does mention grappling with issues of race, colorism, and white privilege. “This is like a therapy session,” she laughs, “I don’t really know how to talk about it.” After a few stops and starts, she says: “You see people look at you and they see just a white person—which is confusing cause obviously I don’t feel like it,” she pauses. “You’re growing up and people then project that on to you. It’s also what you identify as well. So, I don’t know. It’s weird.” In 2019, Yanya released Miss Universe, her debut album, to critical acclaim. She has a tendency, like the best auteurs, to be a perfectionist and can be hard on herself. There’s always more she can learn and master to make her art better, and the fact that she did have a number of different collaborators on the album didn’t always sit well with her. Yet, when she’s kinder to herself, she sees clearly the value of collaboration in helping birth a new song. Besides, where her music is concerned, she is not the type to suffer fools gladly. Yanya is now releasing her second album, Painless. The title is a reference to how easy the process of songwriting sometimes felt while doing the album—though she had started writing a handful of songs before the pandemic hit, much of the album was written during lockdown, and with one main collaborator, Wilma Archer (aka Will Archer, who also used to go by the name Slime and released his last album, A Western Circular, in 2020 via Domino imprint Weird World). Her friend, Jazzi Bobbi, who plays saxophone and keys in her band, also had a hand in a couple of songs. To begin with, the process was anything but painless. At the start of the pandemic Yanya didn’t feel creative. After two years of intense touring it would have been a good break and a time to write but the end-of-world mood of lockdowns, as most of us have discovered, aren’t exactly conducive to making art. She describes the rut: “I didn’t feel like 98

making [music]—playing guitar. It was strange.” Having Archer come to her with some ideas was a blessing. It motivated her to write songs like the album’s first single, “Stabilise”—a circular, meditative track that features an Interpol-like propulsive guitar solo that also captures the angst of being confined. “Will had written the guitar parts and the instrumentation, all I had to do was come up with the melody and the lyrics. So it was a very freeing process in a way,” Yanya says. And when she got stuck again, she folded that struggle into the lyrics and made it a part of the song’s momentum. “It was hard actually to finish that song,” she explains, “because the lyrics in the verse came quite easily. Like telling a story. And then the chorus, I was like, ‘Oh, I need to top this and make this better.’ And I couldn’t. It just kept being—‘I’m going nowhere. I’m going nowhere.’ And that was kind of it,” she laughs. “And I was like, ‘Okay, it’s just going nowhere.’” Creatively, her partnership with Archer, who also worked on her debut and produced her Feeling Lucky EP, was rendering good results. “Will and I got on really well,” she says affectionately, “and I think those working relationships don’t come by as often as you think they do. Forcing things is kind of horrible. We didn’t have to do that. It just kind of happened this year.” Bobbi had spent much of the pandemic in Greece. Like Yanya, she was also feeling frustrated that she didn’t have the creative energy to work on anything. But as soon as she returned to London, they wrote a song together. “Jazzy also helped me finish writing ‘The Dealer,’” adds Yanya, of the album’s opening track. Yanya was thankful that she was even able to continue writing the record through the various lockdowns that the UK went through. “I totally just got myself into the process because I thought, ‘This is better than just not doing anything,’” she says. “And I love the songs so it would be really sad if I didn’t make them, and it makes me angry at myself. Because I’m like, ‘What else could I have made if I was just a little bit more open?’” To be fair, by the time the UK went into their third lockdown in the depths of winter in 2020, she had every reason to feel down. “In the beginning it was more astonishing,” she explains how she found the early days of lockdown amusing. “That was when they taped up the benches. That was weird! In the park, you couldn’t sit down. If you did, someone would tell you to get off…it was kind of funny. Everyone was in the park because it was the only place you could go but you couldn’t sit down!” That was in March of 2020. By December, it was hard to see the humor in anything. “Everyone thought we were coming out of it… and you could feel everyone’s energy was kind of sucked out of you. And when eventually it was like, ‘Things are were going to open up again,’ you didn’t really believe it.” But by April of 2021, she had a batch of new songs and together with Archer she headed to Cornwall, a county on England’s southwestern tip where her aunt and uncle have a studio, to record the songs. And by the summer, they had another batch of songs so they went back into the studio there. “Both times were pretty good but the second time we went down the weather was amazing.

It was like a heat wave. It was so hot, we were swimming in the sea in the morning and then in the studio for the rest of the day. It was perfect,” Yanya remembers fondly. Cornwall proved restorative and away from the over stimulation of the big city, she was able to unlock different parts of herself in her songwriting. “The sea’s there and nature,” she reminisces, “you can tap into your own self a bit more easily.” There’s a song on Painless that has a definite Middle Eastern influence. Is it the Arabic scale I ask her? “Yes!” she answers excitedly. “I play the Saz, that line that comes in”—she quickly sounds out the melancholic, semitone-punctuated melody. Surprisingly, Yanya doesn’t actually play the Saz. It’s to her credit that she manages to play just enough to use it effectively in the song. She could hear it in her head and acted on her impulse. “So I took my dad’s Saz and recorded it really badly,” she giggles, “and then layered it so many times.”

“It was so hot, we were swimming in the sea in the morning and then in the studio for the rest of the day. It was perfect.” When asked what she thinks of the songs from 20 years ago that she had loved so much—religiously learning every guitar lick, and memorizing all the lyrics—she pauses then replies: “I wouldn’t listen to The Strokes now, not because I don’t think it’s good…it just feels very much, kind of in the past.” All those bands are also a part of her in a way that’s been acknowledged and trumpeted. “I feel like the face of music and the industry was just literally white male bands,” she continues, cognizant of the people that were excluded. Given the seismic shift in culture and her own reckonings with race and identity, she is conscious of bringing more parts unknown into her songwriting, and calling attention to them. She wants to employ her much-vaulted music as a means to explore her complex identity in a deeper way not just for kudos but that others with roots like hers will see, and also feel confident doing so. She thinks the pace of change has been too slow. “A lot of people I know, they didn’t feel accepted into that kind of music when they were younger,” she says about indie rock. “It’s kind of already affected people my age. Hopefully it won’t happen for the people 10, 15, or 20 years younger, hopefully things will be different.”

MIKI BERENYI OF PIROSHKA AND LUSH Decades of Memory Words by Frank Valish Photos by Derrick Santini

fter forming in 1988, seminal shoegaze band, Lush, spent the better part of the ’90s leading the genre along with contemporaries Ride, Slowdive, Moose, and Chapterhouse. After 1996’s Lovelife found the band some crossover success in the burgeoning Britpop scene, it suffered a devastating loss in the suicide of drummer Chris Acland, and Lush officially disbanded in 1998. Following two years in limbo after Acland’s death, frontwoman Miki Berenyi felt adrift. The loss was described as “a full on body blow,” and for more reasons than one, she felt like she could not go on with the band. “Chris died, the band ended, and I needed a couple of years to just regroup,” says Berenyi, talking from her London home just a day before her current band, Piroshka, which she formed with her partner KJ “Moose” McKillop (formerly of the aforementioned band Moose), was to begin a short tour of the UK. “So I pissed about a bit doing not very much. I started going out with Moose only that year. We just hunkered down and watched a lot of TV. We had one particular group of friends that we spent a lot of time with, which was exactly what I needed. Just to retreat. And then we started looking for work.” Berenyi describes “lucking out” by finding a day job as subeditor of computing magazine, Web User, settling into a 9-5 Miki Berenyi in London, 2016. (Photo by James Loveday)

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that there was another side to her. “There were people I’d known for the last 20 years, people who my kids were at school with, families I’d gotten to know, work colleagues, who never knew that side of me,” says Berenyi. “They had no awareness of it. So I thought it would be quite fun. I thought it would be fun for my

Lush in London, 2016. (Photo by James Loveday)

Piroshka in 2019.

kids to find out there is a different side to mom, and it has relevance. I don’t want to get all worthy, but I do think when your children can see their parents achieve things, they can feel it’s a bit more in touching distance for them as well.” Ultimately, the reunion was a success. The band sold out shows across Europe and America and even managed to write and release an EP of new songs, the fantastic Blind Spot, released in 2016. However, it ended, not as a rewritten happy ending, but instead in a disappointing morass of inter-band tension. It did, however, help spawn what became Berenyi’s new band with her partner McKillop, Welch, and bassist Michael Conroy (also of ’80s New Wave icons Modern English). Having recently released its second album, the sublime Love Drips and Gathers,

Piroshka has avoided the pitfalls that befell the Lush reunion, and with it, Berenyi has managed to revive her own love for music, which she had avoided for so many years. It has also given her the chance to reflect upon the status of the industry she left in the late ’90s and the one she’s reentered all these years later. “It’s quite difficult to separate what’s different about the industry and what’s just different about you and where you are in life,” says Berenyi. “I do despair the lack of any kind of money anywhere, unless you are right at the top of the heap. There wasn’t much money about when [Lush] started, but I think life was just cheaper generally, so comparatively, it didn’t feel like quite such a disaster. Rent was cheap. Food was cheap. Food was shit, but it was cheap. And rent was cheap because the places were shit. Everyone’s got a higher living standard now, but that also requires a higher income, and it just doesn’t match up with music at the moment.” Berenyi also talks about what a boys club the Britpop scene became toward the end of Lush’s first incarnation, how with success came the more distasteful element, and how this ultimately factored in her decision not to maintain an artistic presence after Lush disbanded. “[Britpop] became chart bound, and that brought a whole different thing,” says Berenyi. “It wasn’t just this community of underground rebellion. It became mainstream, and that was really the problem for me…. There’s a lot of blokes who dream of being in a band, and part of that dream is the idea of an endless running tap of pussy. When you go and work in a fucking magazine, those people did not go into that job because they thought they’d get their cock sucked. So there’s a different sort of expectation. They might still be dickheads in a different way. But that world became really grating to me, the more successful the bands were that I started to mingle with.” “I always find it more disappointing when you encounter that kind of sexism from your people, as it were,” she continues. “It’s more jarring and it’s more of a shock. When I was walking around with red hair and fucking shorts and doing what the fuck I did, I expected it from a load of blokes, the rugby club or going to some shitty pub where there’s a bunch of pissed lads. Fine, I can take it from them because I don’t

Piroshka photo by Neil Stewart. (L to R: KJ “Moose” McKillop, Mick Conroy, Miki Berenyi, and Justin Welch). Lush L to R: Phil King, Emma Anderson, and Miki Berenyi.

life whereby she was able to start a family, have children, and change the course of her life. It was a newness that she maintained for 17 years until Lush reunited at the end of 2015. “I didn’t tell anyone I used to be in a band,” says Berenyi. “The people who knew would be like, ‘Are you sure you want this job?’ I actually applied full time, and they were like, ‘Don’t you want to go back to doing what you were doing?’ And I was like, ‘No, this is great. I love it.’ I finish at five or six, and then I go home and I don’t have to fucking think about it. I don’t have to worry about managers and other fucking bands and whether we’re still in favor and how we’re getting along between ourselves. It’s none of that headache. It’s just, clock in, do the job, leave. Go to the pub and have a fucking laugh. People tend to think, ‘God, it must be a real comedown after having toured and done all these things.’ But actually it just felt like a massive fucking relief.” Of course, Berenyi’s homebody life didn’t last forever. Lush, and bandmates guitarist/vocalist Emma Anderson and bassist Phil King, with drummer Justin Welch (formerly of ’90s Britpop heroes Elastica) in the place of Acland, came calling in the form of, in her eyes, a most unlikely reunion. “Emma and Phil still had contacts in the music world, and they were the ones who flagged up to me that shoegaze was this resurgent popular genre with young people, and I was like, ‘Fuck off, there’s absolutely no way,’” says Berenyi. “I spent about six months thinking about it. Because it meant Moose doing all the child care and me being away. I had to coordinate it with work, because I was like, ‘I’m not losing that fucking job.’ So I had to sort out all that practical stuff. The first time I was in Lush, it was everything. It was my social life. It was my friendship group. It was my job. It was my identity. Everything was the band. This was different, because the band had to slot into the rest of my life, which was not fucking going anywhere.” Ultimately, Berenyi saw the Lush reunion as an opportunity, a chance few get to play the music again and perhaps to end the story on a different note. Also, she had spent the better part of the last two decades immersed in a very different life, and it would be a chance to show not only her new friends but also her own children

expect anything better of them. But when it’s actually your own tribe, people who write songs that are meant to be quite sensitive and quite aware, and then you find out that they’re exactly the fucking same, it’s actually quite disappointing and alienating, and it makes you think, ‘Shit maybe I don’t belong here.’” Ultimately, Berenyi left that life behind, and it seems that she was content to leave it forever. Of course, that wasn’t to be, and the Lush reformation ultimately led Berenyi to realize all she was missing. Now, with Piroshka, she finds herself revitalized, comfortable with her life’s balance both inside and outside of music, being creative on her own terms without need for the music machine to prop anything up. Her daughter is now 20 years old and her son is 17, so soon enough she will find herself in yet another phase of her musical and personal life. “Funny enough, in Lush, especially when it all ended [in 1998], it seemed like a bit of a trap,” says Berenyi. “It really was like, ‘Shit, I can’t do anything else. This band has to succeed, and if this band doesn’t keep going, I’m fucked.’ You’re investing so much and it’s so stressful, because if the record doesn’t go right, it feels like it could all be over. All of these things are stressing you out. We don’t really have anything to lose now. We don’t actually have very much. So in a way, it is purer, in that you’re literally doing it because you want to. Because there’s no fucking other reward.”

ROSEELINOR DOUGALL Joining the Dots

Words by Andy Von Pip • Photos by Derrick Santini

The Pipettes L to R: Rose Elinor Dougall, Gwenno Saunders, Rebecca Stephens.

ose Elinor Dougall has enjoyed a roller coaster of a ride since she first stepped into the spotlight with the Brighton-based über pop band The Pipettes, which formed in 2003. “It’s weird looking back through my career,” laughs Dougall, “even though I feel I’ve got a strong identity I have been seen in a wide variety of contexts so I can kind of understand why the industry is confused as to where I fit in.” There was a sense of inevitability that Dougall would pursue a career in music, in some shape or form. “I think I was singing before I could even talk,” she reflects. “My dad was always writing songs and both my parents had huge record collections. I started piano lessons when I was about eight years old but I wasn’t too keen on the theory side. As I grew older, I really wanted to learn ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’ by Marvin Gaye but sadly my piano teacher wasn’t really up for it.” It was when she was 17 that Dougall met the people who would go on to form The Pipettes, including co-vocalists Rebecca Stephens and Julia Clarke-Lowes. “They were all a little bit older than me,” she recalls. “At that stage, I certainly hadn’t really thought music would be a profession for me.” The Pipettes started to take off around the time Dougall had enrolled at Art College. “As the two paths diverged I was faced with a choice, so I thought, ‘Fuck it I’ll go with the music.’” The original idea for The Pipettes, to update the classic girl group sound with contemporary themes, was devised by Bobby Barry and Clarke-Lowes. Barry also played guitar as part of The Pipettes’ all-male backing band The Cassettes. Clarke-Lowes left before the debut album to form art-pop band The Indelicates and was replaced by Welsh singer songwriter Gwenno Saunders, “Bobby and Julia had been at Goldsmiths [University in London] together and Bobby was studying contemporary music there, so there was a sort of intellectual angle to it,” Dougall explains. “It was presented to me as a modern take on the ’60s Phil Spector/Brill Building produced girl groups. Some of those early Shangri-Las songs were pretty subversive so we wanted to take out the cute whilst utilizing some of the aesthetic.” Whilst some of their Brighton contemporaries such as The

Electric Soft Parade, British Sea Power, and Brakes were being offered big record deals, The Pipettes initially stuck to their DIY pop group ethic. Eventually they were licensed to a major label “and that’s where it all slightly lost its way for me,” sighs Dougall. When the touring and promotion cycle for their 2006-released debut album, We Are The Pipettes, came to an end and a second album was mooted, Dougall wasn’t sure if she had anything more to add to the concept. “I was finding it bit limiting to be honest and I wanted to explore different things musically. We also had been licensed to Interscope and being put in the room with different songwriters was quite challenging. Beforehand we had been such a tight unit and doing things on our own terms was pretty much the whole point of the band. It was our own construct, that of being we were a DIY pop band. Ultimately the label ended up repackaging the album and we had various meetings about the new artwork. We’d always been adamant that The Pipettes was all about real girls who didn’t look like traditional pop stars, girls who have strength and energy, which was really

The Pipettes in London, 2006. (Photo by Derrick Santini) 109

important to us on a feminist level. I vividly remember being handed back the final CDs and somebody had actually Photoshopped my body to make me look thinner on the cover. That was a big turning point for me. I thought, ‘This is so fucking far away from what this was meant to be about.’ Somebody at the label had made an executive decision to represent us in that way without telling us.” Dougall left the band and Stephens followed soon after, leaving Saunders the only member of the main trio to appear on The Pipettes’ poorly received second (and final) album, 2010’s disco-inspired Earth vs. The Pipettes, where she was joined by her younger sister Ani. Saunders went on to release a number of acclaimed solo albums as Gwenno. After quitting The Pipettes, Dougall was faced with the reality of making music on her own. “Initially it felt quite liberating and then I thought, ‘Fuck, what now?’” she laughs. “Previously I’d had six other people to fire off and when I joined the band I was going out with Joe [van Moyland] who was the drummer who actually left before I did. So there was a whole level of emotional support that was no longer there.” And of course there was the financial aspect, there was no label support and no wage from being a member of The Pipettes. “It took me a while to work things out,” Dougall says. But she began the process of starting to reconnect with the music that meant the most to her. “Stuff like Broadcast and Stereolab, PJ Harvey and Nico all felt like a natural state for me to write from.” As she began putting the finishing touches to her debut solo album, 2010’s Without Why, Dougall was thrown a curveball in the shape of pop producer/musician Mark Ronson. “It turned out Mark had been a big fan of The Pipettes’ first album,” Dougall explains. “He’d said it had influenced some of direction he wanted to take with the Amy Winehouse [album]. He got in touch and asked if I’d like to come into the studio and chat as he was working on an album. And then he asked me to go to Brooklyn to write and the next thing I knew I was on a plane to the U.S.!” Dougall ended up in Ronson’s The Business Intl. band and featured on the 2010 album Record Collection, which was credited to Mark Ronson and The Business Intl. and featured such guests as Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran, Boy George, Q-Tip, D’Angelo, and others. She co-wrote the album’s closing track, “The Night Last Night,” and went on tour as part of Ronson’s band. “I’d planned to become this really earnest singer/songwriter and I’d ended up back in the pop world playing on stage with fucking Ghostface Killah to thousands of people. It also led to me appearing at the Royal Ballet as part of a project called Carbon Life, choreographed by Wayne McGregor and scored by Mark and Andrew Wyatt.” Without Why was followed by the expansive New Wave synth-pop of 2017’s Stellular and the more introspective baroque pop of 2019’s A New Illusion. After three acclaimed solo albums, which were all independently released, Dougall admits it hasn’t always been easy. “I’ve always found a way to make music 110

somehow whilst having fuck all money,” she laughs. “It can be tricky and the way people access music now is so different than it was 15 years ago. I think one of the hardest things is getting yourself heard above the noise. In the UK there’s only BBC 6 Music, there’s barely any music TV anymore, and of course, print media is an ever decreasing pool. This is why it’s so great that Under the Radar still exists. It has always been hugely supportive of me over the years and is very much appreciated.” For all the ups and downs Dougall is still driven by the passion and need to create, with

new music planned for 2022. “I’ve made a collaborative record with someone who I’ve been a fan of for years, which is a dream come true,” she enthuses. “I honestly think it’s the best thing I’ve ever made and it might be yet another unexpected twist to my weird career so far. It never fails to amaze me how things happen and the amazing miraculous redemptive power of music. Making music has caused me a lot of pain, and I’ve been heartbroken numerous times, but all that evaporates when you get to work in the studio and something magical happens.”

Rose Elinor Dougall in London, 2014. (Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern)

“It never fails to amaze me how things happen and the amazing miraculous redemptive power of music.”

THE HORRORS

The Art of the Response Words by Jasper Willems Photos by Derrick Santini

fter 15 years of playing venues and festivals, creative arcs can become a bit stale and predictable. Thoughts about greatest hits compilations or nostalgic anniversary deluxe editions start to creep in. The danger of becoming a facsimile of the self suddenly becomes clear and present. The Horrors in this case are quite the oddity among rock bands operating on a larger scale. Perversely so, the British band—Faris Badwan (lead vocals), Joshua Hayward (guitarist), Tom Furse (keyboardist), Rhys Webb (bassist), and Joe Spurgeon (drummer)—have been content being their uncooperative, volatile selves; chaos agents with a knack for courting unusual circumstances. Not that the band is consciously contrarian in breaking their own continuity, as Badwan casually underscores.

The Horrors in Los Angeles, CA, 2009. (Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern)

“I feel like we’re a little bit of an anomaly in some ways; we’ve never really been part of a scene with loads of other bands,” he says. “I feel The Horrors have always existed a little bit outside of whatever else is going on. I think that just comes from having conviction in what you want to do and not really thinking about what’s currently happening. What people get into is so cyclical and you just have to get on and do what you think is right in whatever moment, you know?” Right now, Badwan seeks the most comfort in continuously creating. “I’ve been doing a series of The Horrors in Stockholm, Sweden, 2011. (Photo by Per Kristiansen) 115

‘responsive paintings’ over the lockdown. Because I had no social contact with anyone. When I started speaking to friends again on the phone, I started painting while I was in conversation with them. You know when you start drawing without thinking about it? You have a piece of scrap paper and a pencil you have lying around, you naturally start to create stuff. I basically wanted to explore that further. What happens if you take that idea and push it further, expand it into full paintings?” Badwan already had an exhibition of these responsive paintings displayed in Dubai, and he’s planning on exhibiting them in London as well. He says that making visuals while corresponding with another unlocked an intuitive character in his work he could not recapture otherwise. Curiously, he noticed distinct patterns, frequencies, and “continuity in the visual language” between works that were made when speaking with the same person. “It’s like a parallel dialogue,” Badwan says. “I’m actually doing one right now while we’re talking. It’s a language my subconsciousness has created, and it’s there to be explored and understood. Kind of like a snapshot of a moment in time.” Intrigued by these outcomes, Badwan wanted to see what would happen if he talked to strangers instead of familiar faces. “I met this girl online and we were talking over a number of months, and we got to know each other quite well. There was a point where we were talking three times a week or something. We’d have quite long conversations. We talked about a lot of personal stuff, sometimes hours at a time. So I got these whole series of paintings from talking to her. There’s a real range as well. You see them sort of develop as the relationship develops. But what was really interesting and weird to me was... after the lockdown I got back to London and we met up in person.” He briefly pauses. “And there was no chemistry.” Noticeably puzzled, Badwan says that they had been in contact on Zoom and FaceTime, knowing from one other what they sounded and looked like. “But when we were actually in person together, the chemistry was just off. We spent the day together and walked around the park. While the conversation itself wasn’t difficult, the actual chemistry was not there. And it made me question what connection really is. How much of it is projection? Maybe when you’re on the phone you’re reaching out for human connection, and maybe you start to fill in a lot of gaps. And maybe start filling them in incorrectly. Who is this person you have created in your head? And how much resemblance do they have to the

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actual person?” Badwan did find a lot of inspiration in the work he made while talking to his new friend. But the overall outcome left him a bit discombobulated. “I don’t know, I’m usually fairly good at reading people and sensitive towards what someone is like. But for it to be so off the mark in terms of relating to one another in real life, I would find it quite weird. I’m still trying to understand it. We haven’t really spoken since right after we met in person. We both agreed that the connection was wrong. It’s so interesting what the brain does when you’re in a situation where you need to share your inner feelings with someone. Maybe it’s reading into something that isn’t there.” With musicians trying to find proxies for live performances during the pandemic through streams touches on a similar question: how much does being in a physical space with another define you, especially compared to digital spaces or intermediates such as a simple phone connection? Maybe our extended reliance on long distance communication has caused a big rift in our identities? “The Horrors have been around a long time now, we’ve seen the music industry change a lot,” Badwan reflects. “But the last two years have reminded me that certain things are never going to change. People will always respond to live shows because you get the sort of connection you can’t get anywhere else. No matter what changes around that, people always want that human connection. I think nothing can ever replace shows in a live setting.” That might explain The Horrors’ rather violent left turn over the past two EPs, both released in 2021. Lout and Against the Blade—both self-produced and recorded by the band over a long distance—introduces not so subtle bouts of industrial, noise rock, electronic punk, and alternative metal. It’s the kind of eyebrow-raiser of a direction that’ll split their established fanbase right down the middle, and also pull in curious gatecrashers previously unfamiliar with The Horrors. Not that the band is a stranger to surprising both audiences and themselves. The more psychedelic/Krautrock abstractions of 2009’s album, Primary Colours, were a strong departure from the bratty garage rock of their 2007 debut album, Strange House. In those days, The Horrors themselves didn’t position themselves as debonair architects of new sounds, but as oblivious wanderers plunging through a new realm of possibility. In numerous interviews, Badwan admitted that the band didn’t even know about records that were later referenced in the reviews, most notably Mother Sky by CAN. Bands that take themselves more

seriously might look clumsy or out of their own depth in this situation, but The Horrors’ charisma and attitude allowed them to go brazenly through the motions, achieving their own brand of originality in the process. Back then though, Badwan’s extraverted stage antics had to find a new evolution within Primary Colours’ more oblique experimentations. But now, after the more polished Paul Epworth-produced V (from 2017), he has to adjust physically again to the new music’s more gnarly aesthetics. “When we did Primary Colours it was so different to Strange House and also because we were so much younger. It felt like a real new beginning,” Badwan says. “It was kind of confusing playing those songs for the first time. When I first got on stage to play them, I didn’t really know how to react at first. The way of transmitting these songs was so different. But in this case, because The Horrors have been through a few of those situations before, I feel the new songs push the older songs more in a new direction themselves. We’re starting to reimagine how some of the old songs can be. And the whole set will be different, we basically had time to reimagine what a Horrors show is. It’s an opportunity to reinvigorate the band. We get bored and excited by new things, and we want to chase the things we’re excited about at this very moment, and inject as much of that as possible into what we’re presenting.” As evidenced by artists as far reaching as Rico Nasty or 100 gecs, the time for subtlety seems to have gone the way of the dodo. Heavier, more angst sounds are becoming more pervasive, or maybe more necessary. “We definitely wanted to make something that felt like a primal release, especially to play live,” says Badwan. “Delivering music like this can be a bit cartoony, it can be a little bit exaggerated. It is supposed to be larger than life, and over the top.” When day to day life doesn’t quite add up, well, why the hell not. The strange intangibles that allow The Horrors to maintain their longevity certainly gives pause to think on what it means to deeply connect with others. Is it a matter of surrender or a matter of concentrated effort? “It’s an ongoing process right? You don’t get it right every time,” Badwan responds. “Every time we make something I want it to be genuine, I want it to capture whatever feeling I have at the time, whether it’s a painting or a piece of music. When you get that right, there are always people responding to it. Maybe it’s not the same people every time. I don’t mind or expect the same people to like everything we’ve done, but I do want them to see that value of a real human connection.”

“I FEEL THE HORRORS HAVE ALWAYS EXISTED A LITTLE BIT OUTSIDE OF WHATEVER ELSE IS GOING ON.” – FARIS BADWAN

ELBOW

They’ve Never Stopped Words by Matt Conner • Photos by Derrick Santini

Guy Garvey in Manchester, England, 2003. (Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern)

uy Garvey would get there eventually, to the subjects at hand, but first he had to show me his whiteboard.

Before our scheduled Zoom conversation about the 20th anniversary of Elbow’s debut, Asleep in the Back, as well as their brand new release, Flying Dream 1, Garvey gave me a quick tour of his home studio. Dominating one wall was a blank canvas upon which he’d written two words in all caps: “ELBOW 10.” It was a space upon which to dream about the band’s yet unwritten 10th full-length album. Even when sitting down to discuss a full-length studio LP that wasn’t yet released, Garvey is already looking ahead to Elbow’s next set of songs, a forward-focused creative mindset that’s defined the frontman of one of the U.K.’s most acclaimed bands of the last 20 years. “We stopped once after the first album [Asleep in the Back],” says Garvey. “We were touring it and we stopped writing. Getting back to that was really fucking hard. I suppose it was like anything you do every day and concentrate on every day and then you suddenly stop concentrating on it for a year and then try to get back in that mindset.” Garvey’s wheels are ever in-motion for deeply personal reasons—action rooted in realization. “I get seriously cranky if I’ve not written anything in a

couple weeks. I feel like I’m wasting the opportunities I’ve been given. I feel like all this stuff is afforded me. “I suppose it goes back to when the first of my friends died,” he says. “My sister said something very interesting—and she was talking in very general terms—but she said women contemplate their mortality in childbirth often for the first time, not just because of the incredibly taxing physical situation involved but because of what it is. Then she said men tend to ponder it when they lose a contemporary or almost lose their own life. That was the case with me.” Garvey points to the death of his close friend and fellow musician Bryan Glancy as the turning point for his devoted songcraft. Glancy—whose nickname, “The Seldom Seen Kid,” was both the name of Elbow’s 2008 album and a single off of their latest LP—was a vital part of the same Manchester music scene in the band’s early years who passed away unexpectedly in 2006. For Garvey, it was a key turning point that made him keenly aware of his own privilege and position. “In moments of depression and doubt or perhaps just overdoing it, I used to think, ‘Is this stuff real? Are these relationships real? Is this all based on some fantasy and a load of alcohol?’ But it only took losing one of them to make me realize, ‘Hang on a minute. These are our times and this is who I am.’ 121

Elbow in Los Angeles, CA, 2004. (Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern). (L to R: Guy Garvey, Craig Potter, Mark Potter, Pete Turner, Richard Jupp)

If I wasn’t already sort of working in earnest, it made me more determined to never stop,” he says. It’s one thing for an individual to channel an inner drive, but group dynamics complicate the picture, which is why so many bands have come and gone while Elbow is still going strong. While Garvey doesn’t believe that a band has to call it quits (“There’s no reason for a band to call it a day, I don’t feel”), he’s also quick to acknowledge the hard work to keep everyone inspired to remain together (“There’s a science to keeping a group of people working together”). “You’ve gotta change it up, y’know? There’s a fascinating documentary on The Beatles that said, during their last days, if any three of them were working together, the work ethic was the same amazing, unstoppable thing it’d always been. But as soon as all four were present, a spirit of lethargy was in the room. “I recognized that. I remember that beginning to happen to us years before [Richard] Jupp left the band, our original drummer. We started talking about the group dynamic then and having different days off so that there was always a different group of people working. You’ve got to keep it fresh and never assume that you know the other parties or the hierarchy you’re in, because then how can anyone surprise you?” Even after nine studio albums, Garvey was taken back several times by the music he’d receive from his bandmates during the COVID-19 pandemic. While working away from each other in their respective spaces, Garvey says lyrical inspiration was never an issue given the musical ideas he’d

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receive for Flying Dream 1. “They still astonish me every time,” says Garvey about his bandmates— guitarist Mark Potter, keyboardist Craig Potter, and drummer Pete Turner. “The piece of music for [lead single] ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ is this skippy, jaunty, jazzy, mellow drumbeat that Craig had programmed originally before Al [Reeves, percussion] played it. It’s got this extraordinary brave woodwind arrangement. As it dips in and out of dissonance, as he adds more and more parts, it seemed to be full of hope and uncertainty and comfort and fear and then it settled into this bed. “I was listening for hours and hours, and when I’m swimming around in a piece of beautiful music that one of those guys has sent me trying to think of something to sing about, it’s never lost on me what a great job I’ve got.” The band wrote the album remotely in their home studios. Then they convened in person and perfected the songs in the empty Brighton Theatre Royal, where they also recorded the album. 2021 has been a busy year for Elbow with both the release of Flying Dream 1 and a 20th anniversary reissue of Asleep in the Back. Alongside stated hopes of “shedding a new light” on the work and “getting people who might not have even been alive to listen to it,” Garvey admits the reminiscing required for the reissue was important to maintain perspective on the band’s original intent and to judge how far they’d come. “We wrote from where we were on that album and where we wanted to go,” say Garvey. “I don’t know if this is still the case anymore, but you

didn’t make an album unless you’d been signed at the time we made Asleep in the Back. You made demos and sent them away, but you didn’t release demos. It was a means to an end. “If a band showed promise that was almost there, if you had an A&R man worth his salt, you went into the studio with the right producer and you captured that evolutionary step. What you have is a bunch of young, hopeful artists playing and writing and creating to the very edge of their ability and you try to capture that becoming.” Garvey points to Definitely Maybe by Oasis as a prime example for capturing such a turning point in the early stages of a band’s career, but he also knows Asleep features that same “becoming” thanks to a calculating approach in the studio. “Going back to Asleep in the Back, we heard the demos that had all the elements but weren’t quite there. We listened to the extra stuff we decided to leave out, not because it wasn’t good enough but because it upset the balance of the album. There isn’t a note or even the breath on a note that wasn’t considered on the whole thing. There’s nothing accidental about that record.” For all the recollecting of the last year, however, Garvey laughs when analyzing the band’s early live performances. It’s not that he’s embarrassed by some sort of early arrogance or inexperience; rather, it points to the painful realities of aging. “I can’t believe how deft we were, actually, when I look back at early performances. I was triggering samples and playing guitar and singing and throwing myself all over the place like it was nothing. I get out of breath looking at it.”

“When I’m swimming around in a piece of beautiful music that one of those guys [in Elbow] has sent me trying to think of something to sing about, it’s never lost on me what a great job I’ve got.” – Guy Garvey

WEYES BLOOD

Clarity Amidst the Confusion Words by Stephen Axeman • Photos by Koury Angelo

rappling with the contradictions of late capitalism, Weyes Blood—aka Natalie Mering—sounds both inspired and restrained, cautiously navigating a world of increasing polarities. Speaking of the changing face of the indie-sphere and the disintegration of its broader social cohesion she is cautiously optimistic. “We aren’t mourning the loss of a particular scene, like we used to, say 15 years ago. I feel like in this time is a general understanding that things have become more disparate and, in that disparateness, it isn’t easy to change, because we have all been geared into our own little private self. We are all thrown in the mix together and we have to figure out how to connect and reignite the flame.”

After a whirlwind year of unexpected obstacles, the music industry is emerging from its cocoon to proffer the delights of live entertainment yet again. Still, in the face of deepening social atomization, exacerbated by the pandemic, many artists have found the key to reuniting in turning inwards. For Mering, this has meant working in the studio on the follow up to 2019’s acclaimed Titanic Rising. Following in its prehistoric sized footsteps, the follow up promises to catalyze an awareness of our social position with all the rapturous cinematic grandeur that defines her work. Speaking about her as of yet untitled new album, Mering remarks on the songs’ devotional qualities. “The last record was like an alarm signal, and this next one is two years after the alarm has been blaring and just seeing where we are at,” she previews. “Which seems like it can only be explained in a non-linear fashion, because things are changing faster than we can fully comprehend. The songs themselves are more devotional and actually more personal, even though they are covering universal themes. I think it’s coming from a place of wanting to return home in a very isolating culture.”

Questions of belonging loom large in the thematic content of the album, as one of the key inspirations for Mering’s recent inquiries into the fragmented nature of our social lives is cultural historian Christopher Lasch’s 1979 book The Culture of Narcissism, which locates a predominant ideology of pathological narcissism as the defining feature of post-WWII American life. “I think we’re all really softened by the experiences of the last couple years,” Mering says. “It’s been kind of the disintegration of our consensus reality. We don’t have a general consensus as a population anymore. It feels like we’re all just noticing the level of isolation caused by modern capitalism plus the pandemic.” If the sense of alienation that is so endemic to our contemporary condition paints a grim picture of the future, Mering sees this as the necessary starting point to the sorts of changes that reestablish and perhaps even enhance community. Remarking on the conflictual nature of social change, Mering says that “anytime people try to make a good social change, it is met with so much resistance that it causes this pendulum.” The balance of the countervailing forces of reaction and progress produce a residue that holds a magnifying glass up to the sorts of communities and spaces we occupy that challenges us to define their contours. The tendency of the pendulum to swing back against social progress necessitates the further defining of the goals of progress. Mering sees this dynamic at play in the profusion of identity groupings that typify Gen-Z’s social organization. “The young kids are so defined, and the groups they form are very cellular. They then have stronger communities because

Weyes Blood in Los Angeles, CA, 2019. (Photo by Koury Angelo)

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they feel they have to remedy this alienation ASAP.” This pendulum effect is depicted clearly in the twin tendencies towards noise and ambience that characterizes much of the palate of modern music. “For most of history, music has been this very homogenized thing,” Mering says. “It’s been very pedestrian for a long time. What makes our generation kind of worried about this ongoing trend of people wanting something to shop to that’s pretty inoffensive is that we witnessed this very brief golden age where artists who were actually innovating and being revolutionary and rebellious had a mainstream audience, which isn’t the case anymore, except for in hip-hop.” While Mering sees a golden age of music as having occurred in the 1970s up until the end of Nirvana in 1994, she evinces less a cynicism than an informed skepticism about the unqualified promotions of the music industry’s flavor of the week. Speaking about this tendency to promote the pastiched as the new, Mering is frank. “I think the music industry is overrun by lifestyle brands. There’s some real weak sauce passing for music because it has all the markers of music. But palate-wise people are really stretching the envelope in terms of sound and what is acceptable.” Mering sees the general loosening of genre strictures as a net positive, with pop now bordering on the fringes of noise and vice-versa. While the opportunities for creative collaboration and innovation are ripe for the taking in this new cross-pollinating framework, there are certain alterations that have occurred at the level of song structure that have Mering worried. “I think less people are good at writing songs nowadays,” she observes. “The terms of what a song are feel very loose now. We have reached the point where we are reflecting back the machines. The noise was always very fringy, but now it feels like it’s at the center.” Her own music is an example of these twin tendencies towards abstraction and structure. Replete with ornate baroque orchestration and embedded in the song structures that recall the West Coast folk-pop of the 1970s, Mering’s music is marked by her elegiac vocals that soar and land like some diaphanous bird of unspecified origin. One need only take a listen to any one of her albums to see the marriage of pop and experimentation. Take for example, the symphonic swells of orchestration that comprise the rising and falling action of the title track to her wondrous Titanic Rising. As ever, this dynamic of the revolutionizing of the sonic palate and the attendant innovations in form run up against the antiquated double standards in a still sexist music industry. Reminiscing on such figures as Joni Mitchell in a 2019 discussion with Under the Radar on her all-time favorite album, Mitchell’s 1976 release Hejira, Mering recollected: “As a woman, growing up, I didn’t recognize how rampant sexism was and how people wrote certain women under the table for being really innovative, and instead of being praised for their innovation they were essentially crucified because people wanted them to stay a certain way.” Though the standards of evaluation remain

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Jason Lytle, Kamasi Washington, Natalie Mering, Natasha Khan, and Lauren Mayberry in Los Angeles, CA, 2021. (Photo by Koury Angelo)

anachronistic, Mering sees most innovative indie rock, and innovative music in general, as emanating from women creators. It’s no small feat for a profusion of women artists to have come to dominate the current conversations on new sounding music, and with festivals featuring more and more female headliners, the incentives to play it safe and not push the envelope too much are commercially rewarding. Yet, even despite such enticements and with the added additional pressure of struggling to break even as a woman artist in the first place, Mering sees the procession of the formerly avant-garde towards the center as a mostly women-led phenomena. Mering is undoubtedly part of this creative vanguard, even before her Mexican Summer or Sub Pop days when she got her start opening for noise acts in a much more deconstructed version of her solo project. The visceral texturality of her approach to sound has

shaped her sonic journey even as the noise has been replaced by warmer ambiences. Her own growth as an artist, from making noise to regal rococo chamber pop, has been a process of clarification, from obscurity towards cohesion, and this is perhaps what gives her such an optimistic attitude about the future. While there are innumerable symptoms of social decay that must be addressed, the primary means of addressing them remain the same: we must rely on one another and envision a dream of the future that places community above selfish-ambition. Mering sees our potential salvation in the optimism of our will. “The institutions seem to be crumbling and, in that wake, there are a lot of interesting possibilities if everybody can keep it together and pay attention to creative endeavors as opposed to scrolling on their phones,” she says. “We’re just kind of at the tip of that moment right now.”

“Anytime people try to make a good social change, it is met with so much resistance that it causes this pendulum.”

BATFOR LASHES

Manifesting Dreams Words by Andy Von Pip • Photos by Koury Angelo

ritish musician Natasha Khan, as Bat For Lashes, has always had an eye for the theatrical and cinematic. Her career in music began when Myspace was still in its heyday, but this was a time when artists still had to be proactive to get their music out there. Her first release was a CD-R of demos entitled Who Stole Petretski’s Thunder that she’d hand out at shows.

“Bloody hell that was a long time ago!” laughs Khan from her Los Angeles home. “I was a nursery school teacher back then, which paid the rent and of course it was lovely working with the kids. I planned to do a gig every month until I could progress to a stage whereby I could make an album. I remember taking my mini CDs down to Edgeworld Records in Brighton. I gave them to anybody who’d take them.” A pivotal moment arrived when Khan opened for Brighton band The Electric Soft Parade. “Their manager Dick O’Dell saw me and something resonated with him,” explains Khan. “In the past, he’d worked with the likes of The Slits and Nico and had been at Bowie’s first Ziggy Stardust shows. He approached me and said, ‘You really need to make an album. If you let me manage you I can arrange some meetings with labels.’ He ended up managing me for seven years, I joined Chrysalis, who had a small record label called Echo, and I was able to have my first record released on my own label, She-Bear Records, with Echo. A big factor in me getting a deal was that I’d presented them with a bound document that had all my drawings, lyrics, visuals, photos, and mood boards to show the kind of magical world I’d been creating. They gave me my first check, which meant I could give up working and do music full time. I remember going to school on my last day and crying because all the little kids had made me presents. But I was happy because I was going off into the world to do what I wanted to do. I remember looking at the check thinking, ‘Now I can pay my student loan off and make an album.’ It was just a magical moment.”

Bat For Lashes in New York City, NY, 2009. (Photo by Crackerfarm)

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Her Mercury Prize-nominated debut album, Fur and Gold, released in 2007, introduced the world to Khan’s immersive world of mystical beauty. It combined a sense of theatricality with elegantly structured songs leading many critics to compare her to the likes of Kate Bush and Björk. And since pursuing music fulltime Khan has had her fair share of magical moments. “I feel very fortunate. I think my first real ‘wow moment’ arrived when we made the ‘What’s a Girl to Do?’ video,” she says, referring to the main single from Fur and Gold. The video featured Khan cycling with BMX bikers wearing animal masks. “We did a 22-hour shoot and then found out the film stock was corrupted! So we had to do it all over again. The second shoot turned out so well, it was misty and we’d had a shimmer of light rain so everything was glittery. Working with director Dougal Wilson provided amazing synergy, I remember driving home thinking, ‘Wow I’ve just manifested my dream world into a physical reality.’” Other “wow” moments included playing at the Sydney Opera House with a string orchestra. “Or when I was supporting Radiohead for their In Rainbows tour in Europe,” Khan remembers. “The band and I would stay up and watch them every night and cry. It was such a treat to watch them perform one of the greatest albums ever made every night!” Khan has always been very open to collaborations to help bring her cinematic

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universe to life. “As a visual artist and musician you’re always trying to translate what’s in your mind as perfectly as possible into the world,” she explains, “and sometimes these ideas can get diffused. But when it all comes together perfectly, they are the moments that give me the greatest pleasure.” Working with renowned photographer Neil Krug for the cover art and packaging for The Bride, Bat For Lashes’ 2016-released fourth album, was what Khan describes as a real “goosebumps moment.” It fittingly features Khan in a white wedding dress. “The whole visual aesthetic around that was such a highlight,” she remembers. “We drove around the Angeles Crest mountains, with its David Lynch Mulholland Drive style roads, and the way Neil lit my veil with a pink light, which was all done in the camera, was just so cinematic.” In 2015 Khan took an interesting sonic detour releasing an album as Sexwitch, a collaborative project with English psych-rock band TOY and producer Dan Carey. The idea involved reinterpreting Middle Eastern folk and psych tracks but the project did attract some controversy. “I loved doing Sexwitch, it’s a very different record from what people might have expected from me,” she recalls. “TOY was so much fun to work with, we just got into this psychedelic trance-like state and I love Dan Carey, who oversaw the whole project, he’s such a joy. Some people had a beef with it, the fact we were playing songs from Iran and North Africa. However, being half Pakistani myself I genuinely felt I had a real kinship with the music. My relatives would play and listen to that sort of music, it feels like part of my soul. That sort of home grown folk music—be it Iranian or English or Pakistani—is grassroots music and that can resonate with us all no matter where we are from. For me, it felt like I was fusing the Western and Eastern parts of myself. I’m very proud of it and I’d definitely love to do something like that again.” After completing a 10-year record deal with Parlophone, Khan decided it was time to try something new and moved from London to LA. “It was a perfect storm of circumstances,” she explains, “there was Brexit, which was grim, and London was getting so expensive. All the people I love were moving away whilst at the same time, a lot of friends from New York and London had moved to LA. I also wanted to get into scriptwriting and explore the visual aspect of my work and LA is just so cinematic with the desert and highways and its sense of surrealist faded Hollywood glamour. It just felt like the right place to be. However, I’ve been in LA for five years now, and I’m coming home to the UK next spring. I love LA but I miss my band and the producers. I’ve also recently had my first daughter, Delphi, my family are in the UK, it’s my home and it’s where my music began.” Bat For Lashes’ most recent album, 2019’s Lost Girls, came about when she was asked to contribute a song for the Stephen King TV series Castle Rock. However, Khan and co-writer/co-producer, Charles Scott IV, enjoyed working together so much they decided to carry on collaborating, resulting in a full album. “I think it’s one of my best albums and it’s a shame it sort of went under the radar coming out just as the world started to have so much to deal with,” Khan reflects. “I do love the dark side of the ’80s, like The Cure, and this album kind of balances that side with the pop side. It’s a dark album you can dance to.” Khan took inspiration from the landscape and what she describes as “a synthesis of my version of LA and that sense of nocturnal vampiric romance.” The cult movie The Lost Boys and the Drive movie soundtrack were also huge influences as Khan fashioned an album around a fictional protagonist Nikki Pink, who meets the titular vampire girl gang The Lost Girls.

Khan still hopes to bring a screenplay to life at some point. “I have a synopsis for Lost Girls as a movie but the reason the project hasn’t moved forward as yet is down to the fact that studios always want you to work with scriptwriters. I haven’t found one whose mind is weird enough to explore that Twin Peaks style of aesthetic with me. They do exist, I just haven’t met them yet. So at the moment, I’m developing something that I’m really excited about. I think it will be a unique way of combining film, performance, music, and storytelling.” She also reveals she’s been working on a new album for her little girl Delphi, who was born in July 2020, called Dream of Delphi, which she describes as “a sort of avant-garde ambient semi instrumental music project.” Recently, Khan joined Patreon (the crowd funding platform that enables fans to directly support artists for their work) and has liked the creative control and direct connection it affords. “I really enjoy sharing my visual art and things that inspire me through it,” she says. But after leaving a major record deal, Khan doesn’t believe the existing streaming services offer a viable business model to support artists. “Having signed my record deal before streaming became popular, I was protected at the start of my career,” she explains. “I was getting

“I see it as almost like social service, our job is to provide escape and beauty, to lift people out of the day to day.”

my advances and tour support, which was great but when my deal finished I was like, ‘Oh my God! Nothing is coming in from streaming, there are no advances and no tour support!’ It felt a bit like returning to the start of my career and doing things DIY again. But I do hope artists start to get fairly compensated. If artists aren’t supported they won’t have the space to thrive and develop their craft, from bedroom artists to professional musicians. It’s an industry that at times seems to only celebrate the commercially successful artists. However, we need to support and develop the ones who think outside the box, the innovators, the ones who ask questions. The space I sit in feels a lot smaller these days and sometimes I wonder where I fit in. But it doesn’t stop me from doing it. But I think change will have to happen because the current situation is bullshit.” For many, music and the arts have provided succour and reverie during the pandemic. Khan sees that aspect as a key component of her art. “I see it as almost like social service,” she laughs, “our job is to provide escape and beauty, to lift people out of the day to day. I think we’ve discovered over the last 18 months how important that is. I need that myself from other artists, filmmakers, and musicians too. I seriously think if we don’t start to value it and invest in it more we are going to be living in a very sad, drab world.” 135

KAMASI WASHINGTON Searching for Higher Musical Ground Words by Jake Uitti • Photos by Koury Angelo

amasi Washington plays his father’s saxophone. But the Grammy-nominated artist who rose to fame working with legends like Kendrick Lamar and Herbie Hancock didn’t start out on the horn. Nor did he or his musician father ever think he’d play sax at all, the instrument for which he’s now become famous. For at the beginning, young Washington imagined himself a drummer. Today, he remembers seeing pictures of himself playing drums as young as three years old. His father, Rickey Washington, was the sax player in the family. So, the younger Washington tried his hand at piano, then later clarinet. At this point, around the time he was 12 years old, his dad was a little fed up with his son’s musical wanderlust. He kept telling his son that the clarinet was (essentially) the same thing as sax. But that never felt true for the aspiring Washington. The day he picked up his father’s horn and played—that’s when he knew. “I said, ‘Oh, man, this is it!’” remembers Washington. His father had left one of his soprano saxophones out and Washington just picked it up and started playing. Something about it felt right. Not long after, as a new student at the Academy of Music of Alexander Hamilton High School in Los Angeles, Washington’s jazz band teacher asked all the kids in music class one day if any of them had a tenor saxophone. Washington raised his hand, knowing his father had several in the house. So, he borrowed one, took it to school the next day and was now an official tenor sax player. The only trouble was, he didn’t tell his dad. “He thought someone stole it!” Washington says. To this day, ever since he was 13, Washington has been playing

Kamasi Washington in New York City, NY, 2018. (Photo by Ray Lego) 139

his father’s horn, exclusively. Top tier talent often has long roots. And Washington’s go deep. Ever since he was a “baby,” he’s known some of the world’s best artists, including the mind-melding bassist, Thundercat. He’s also long been close with musicians such as Terrace Martin and instructors like Reggie Andrews in South Central, LA, where Washington was born and raised. He’s worked with these players on all-time records like Kendrick Lamar’s classic, To Pimp a Butterfly, which bridged rap and jazz in a way that no other record did as successfully and as provokingly before. This is the stuff that transpires from a life immersed in song. “When I switched to saxophone,” Washington says, “I just felt like I found my voice. That’s when I fell in love with music.” But loving something is different than living with it. Washington says he found his honestto-goodness work ethic, his reason for musical pursuit, during a concert as a young player. He and his jazz band, conducted by Andrews, were set to play at the Hollywood Bowl, in front of thousands. At that time, he dug music but didn’t quite live and breathe it. But during the performance, Andrews gave Washington a surprise sax solo. The occasion ended up leaving Washington feeling flat. “At that point,” he says, “I hadn’t become that serious about music. It was something I did but I wasn’t completely obsessed with it, you know? Reggie Andrews gave me a surprise solo at the Hollywood Bowl in front of thousands of people and, honestly, I didn’t like the way I sounded.” Up until that point, Washington says, music had been fun for him; something to do. But after feeling a sense of incompleteness with a performance, he began to work. He rebelled against ever feeling that feeling again. He began to practice with urgency, earnestly. He realized how deeply he could feel about music and his performance of it and he didn’t want to feel that sense of personal inadequacy again. “Once I started really practicing,” Washington says. “Music started opening up to me. It became the real, true love of my life.” Today, other than mortality itself, there is seemingly no end to Washington’s range and possibilities. Within the same calendar year, he’s worked with Michelle Obama scoring her documentary, Becoming, which is based on her best-selling memoir of the same name. For Washington, the effort was surreal, monumental, and an honor. It was life-changing to write music to how the former First Lady’s life changed so dramatically under the spotlight. “Regardless of how you feel politically,” Washington says, “it’s undeniable that that’s an important story, an important historical milestone, what she and Barack and her whole family went through. To be able to be a part of telling that story was a great honor for me. I learned a lot just from listening to her words and listening to her talk. She’s such a down-toearth and wise person.” 140

Washington has also recently worked with famed heavy metal band Metallica on a recent anniversary tribute collection to their popular release, The Black Album, covering the band’s song “My Friend of Misery.” He also played with some of Metallica’s members at the Hollywood Bowl this past summer. But these achievements, while of rare air, for Washington, aren’t the driving force for his efforts. Finding new creative ground is. “It’s a journey I’m hoping I get to stay on for the rest of my life,” Washington says. “I’m always studying, always searching, always trying to find something new to inspire me.” The artist’s 2018 double-album, Heaven and Earth, exemplifies his prowess. At times, Washington is less a musician and more of a painter of imaginations. His peers are Van Gogh and Monet as much as they are Coltrane and Davis. The double-LP unveils worlds that only appear as song. Washington’s prior release, 2015’s The Epic, showcased both an understanding of traditional jazz sensibilities and forward-thinking composition. Even a random YouTube search of the musician’s live or recorded music can lead to a rabbit hole of melodic revelation. Washington is a student of his instrument. The way he explains it, the saxophone was originally an instrument composers tried to use to take the place of strings in marching bands in the late 19th century. It was also used sparingly in classical music. But Washington likes the instrument, in part, because it found its voice in jazz. So too has Washington, who recently turned 40 years old. With the new temporal milestone, Washington says he’s thought a bit about mortality of late. It’s not that he worries about it, per sé. Rather, for him, it’s a motivator. “When you get to a certain point,” he says, “you start to get to see the horizon of your mortality, you can kind of feel the reality of the temporary nature of life. And it definitely has given me a better focus. That’s the biggest thing it’s given me—it’s brought me more to the present.” Another thing Washington doesn’t stress much over is the conversation—or, confrontation—between folks aspiring to define exactly what “jazz” is. For many, it’s about the tradition. For others, it’s about experimentation and growth. For Washington, the conversation is moot, so he mutes it in his mind. Instead, he cares much more about making moving music. “I don’t think about it,” he says. “To me, the goal of most musicians is to make music that’s timeless. As far as all the different bickering people do over the word ‘jazz,’ I’m definitely not one that’s so interested in that. I understand certain arguments and I understand why people feel the need to have them, but for me, I’m more concerned with making beautiful music.” When Washington explores new ground, that often means he does so internally. Everything is a universe, philosophically

speaking, and that’s especially true with the human consciousness. Washington says he takes advantage of this and glides within his own thoughts often. “I spend a lot of time,” he says, “just kind of surfing around in my own consciousness, my own imagination, searching for a place to go.” During the pandemic lockdown, Washington spent a lot of time writing music. He indulged his ideas and began to explore his many goals. He’s “deep into creating” a new ballet. He’s working on a new graphic novel. He has new concepts for an album in the works, too. “There’s all types of stuff in the works,” Washington explains. “That’s what I’m saying. As you get a little older, you have all these things you want to do, so you better start doing them.”

“When I switched to saxophone, I just felt like I found my voice. That’s when I fell in love with music.” For Washington, who today is known for his innovative solo and collaborative work (like that in the super group Dinner Party, as well as his many records and collaborations with artists like Snoop Dogg and Flying Lotus), music provides a way for people to exchange their ideas, personalities, and stories at a “higher level.” Either on recording or simply jamming. By being a student of and participant in song, Washington says, he’s received something more, beyond the notes, measures, and rhythms. Music, as an art form, transmits something else entirely, through time, over generations. “Even though,” Washington says, “I’ve never met John Coltrane, I feel like I know him. In a certain way, I feel like I’ve learned from him. Part of him has guided me in my own life. And that ability for music to connect people through time and space, through anything, it’s really beautiful and really powerful.”

CHVRCHES

Murder Ballads and Internet Trolls Words by Celine Teo-Blockey • Photos by Koury Angelo

n CHVRCHES’ latest album, Screen Violence, the songwriting is direct, unambiguous, and personal—making it some of their best work yet. The Scottish trio of multi-instrumentalists Lauren Mayberry, Iain Cooke, and Martin Doherty employ the language of cinema, slasher films in particular, as a device to unlock the storytelling, with synthesizers favored by the genre’s auteurs to augment that reality in their musical soundscapes. This suited the darker musical space that the band had found themselves in after an attempt at a more pop process with their previous effort, 2018’s Love Is Dead. Endless song cycles of enduring the hate and violence of internet trolls also peaked and took its toll on Mayberry in the spring of 2019, and meant she found refuge in the confines of this made-up world of the slasher film. No matter how bad the violence, it was on celluloid, and not in real life where she was receiving death threats. Writing the music through the lens of a horror film, for her was less about artifice and more artistry. “There was this kind of cinematic layer to it and I think it made it easier for me to feel comfortable being more truthful,” says Mayberry, speaking from inside a Zoom screen, at her Los Angeles home. “There was a lot of bullshit that was happening around the band,” she says of that spring when CHVRCHES issued a statement against working with “predators and abusers” after Marshmello, one of their previous collaborators, had gone on to work with Rihanna’s abusive ex-boyfriend, Chris Brown, which garnered a barrage of negative responses online. “A lot of it was very aggressive, very violent and I think it’s easy for people to say, ‘It’s just the internet, those people aren’t real,’ but psychologically you don’t process it like that…you go into feral animal state in your brain.” That meant panic attacks and a real fear of death. She felt a huge responsibility to the band and their fans so they beefed up their security but didn’t want to cancel any shows or promos. “I think me being so stubborn, a lot of the time it’s been really good for the band,” she explains. “But by the time we got to that round of

touring…I was starting to recognize that it was bad for my brain…I was started to notice that things were going a bit wrong psychologically.” It was against this backdrop that they started writing Screen Violence. They had decided on the album’s title before the process began, and though she wasn’t sure how much of her experience would make it to the album, she knew that she wanted to process and unpack what she was going through. When the pandemic hit and they had no choice but to retreat into lockdown, the forced isolation served her well in exploring the album’s themes in deeper ways. As a result, the lyricism throughout the album is impeccable. Opener “Asking for a Friend” sets the stage with an honest list of her foibles, what she calls “a list of things you despise about yourself,” before it rallies the listener with the help of a crescendo of synths, to the comforting chorus “you still matter.” One of the best rhyming triplets can be found on “Good Girls”—“Killing your idols is a chore/And it’s such a fucking bore/But we don’t need them any more”—where she succinctly puts to words how exhausted we all are about having to reconcile the music we love with the misogynists whose deeds we can’t condone. But she rallies for everyone to take a stand—speaking to the #metoo movement and the cultural moment in an artful way.

CHVRCHES in Glasgow, Scotland, 2015. (Photo by Pal Hansen) L to R: Martin Doherty, Lauren Mayberry, and Iain Cooke. 145

Mayberry outdoes herself on “How Not to Drown”—which features Robert Smith of The Cure no less—a handy signpost to the more macabre themes of the album. She masterfully updates the traditional murder ballad through the prism of her own experience with online trolls. “The record is about the fucking panic attacks you have in a hotel room when somebody sends you a picture of the outside of a venue and says that at a certain time you’re going to get killed,” Mayberry explains. Doherty and Cook use scary synth effects and their electro-pop wizardry for maximum impact. While the vivid, watery imagery as a site for violent death echoes one of modern pop’s best murder ballads, “Where the Wild Roses Grow,” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds featuring Kylie Minogue. But here it is the victim—though Mayberry herself would never call herself one— that gets to write her story. Cave’s penchant for fashioning beautiful songs out of violent narratives is unsurpassed, but like many murder ballads, they are often told from the male perspective. The murdered heroine objectified. Cave also wrote the words for Minogue’s Eliza Day, in their duet. Mayberry doesn’t waste time telling us whose story this is, with the song opening with the lyrics “I’m writing a book on how to stay conscious when you drown.” Quickly she usurps the male gaze, delivering a defiant how-to guide in surviving the worst. She then recounts her story of being in a seemingly enviable position where she can sing all she wants but if she dares speak her mind, they will come for her guts—like an allegory for this modern affliction. The images she conjures are frightening (“I wasn’t dead when they found me/ Watch as they pull me down”), but also poetic (“What to do after you grew to hate what you used to love”) and strikingly truthful (“This is the first time I know/I don’t want a crown/You can take it now”). Smith then enters and delivers the damning second verse (“I’m watching a chapter of what to do after they dig you up”) as an indictment of how society treats women who it deems transgressive, and is ever-ready to dissect what went wrong after an artist succumbs to addiction or worse fates, while comfortably casting a blind eye to its own culpability. Here, the male voice is a sympathetic narrator rather than the obsessed lover/murderer of Cave’s version. It’s a role that Smith picked for himself. The band had given him a cache of their demos and free rein to change lyrics or rework the music. He can be heard singing back up on “He Said She Said,” but appears that he was drawn to “How Not to Drown.” It’s a song where he succeeds in bringing a little more of himself without changing much. Mayberry had originally written all the lyrics from a first person perspective. Smith made minor tweaks to the second verse like changing “my guts” to “your guts.” She explains: “If the song was a film you see it from my point of view…and in the second verse he becomes the narrator.” Smith eventually plays some bass and guitar on the song as well. “Robert was incredibly generous creatively, he spent so much time on it, and so much care 146

and attention,” Mayberry says, with a warm smile. Having now met her fair share of ineffable folks in the music industry, she chimes: “I think now I would just be like, ‘If Robert Smith can be nice, you can all be fucking nice.’ Just everybody get over yourselves.”

“The record is about the fucking panic attacks you have in a hotel room when somebody sends you a picture of the outside of a venue and says that at a certain time you’re going to get killed.” – Lauren Mayberry Her directness and willingness to call things out has always been part of the band’s appeal and is a dream for those of us that write about music from a feminist stance. But that too has fed the beast. She’s been vocal about this harassment that women face online in interviews and op-eds since their early Soundcloud success, but it is interesting to note that they’ve been largely absent as themes from the songs in their last three albums. Finally, on Screen Violence it’s all laid bare in the explicit and sometimes harrowing lyrics, we see her recount how it’s contributed to nightmares and made her second guess her craft and career. The album comes almost a decade after Cook and Doherty first got together with Mayberry in a Glasgow studio. “Eight to nine years of that has been people asking, talking to me about my gender, about feminism, about the internet,” she explains, “And I didn’t write about any of those things ever.... Until this record—nobody’s ever asked about lyrics or storytelling…. They just want me to be a talking head for the quote

that they want and that they need.” Still, she understands what she signed up for and is often amenable to those conversations. “I would rather have that conversation, than the one that feels vapid and pointless,” she says, but is quick to also point out, “I guess it was a self-fulfilling prophecy that it was going to make its way into the work in some way because that’s how you experience the world. And that’s going to come in through your filter into your work.” While some critics will often opine that the band peaked with The Bones of What You Believe—their stellar 2013 debut buoyed by the hit “The Mother We Share”—Mayberry isn’t phased. The band has no regrets about any of their albums when measured against any kind of perceived success or failure. They were more than happy to head back to Glasgow to work on their sophomore album, 2015’s Every Open Eye, after the overnight success of their debut. On their third album, 2018’s Love Is Dead, they decided to work with much in demand Los Angeles producer Greg Kurstin and a host of other male collaborators, including Dave Stewart of Eurythmics and The National’s Matt Berninger. “I feel like every album should sound different,” she explains. “It should feel different. It should be about different things. You shouldn’t be writing the same things at 33 as you were when you were 23.” For Mayberry, lyric writing, like singing, can be very vulnerable and emotional. She remarks on how eye opening it was to hear Shirley Manson’s podcast and her interview with Liz Phair where the two indie-veterans discussed the emotional experience of learning to sing in public. Mayberry had always been in bands but was a reluctant lead singer. One of her early roles was behind a drum kit. As a singer who also writes, she says “there is nothing between you and your instrument.” She admits that up to now she has wanted to psychologically avoid the more personal in her songwriting because in her real life, she often felt like she was in survival mode. “Sometimes I’ve wanted to cosplay and just have more strategically pop lyrics,” she adds. Hence, their songs have largely been about relationship trials or the search for hope in a world that was burning, rather than the misogyny manifesting itself in unrelenting death and rape threats across their social media accounts. Perhaps it was denial, or not giving her haters the satisfaction, or simply self preservation but she rationalizes: “There’s been times in the band where I haven’t felt like I want to fully inhabit that, and I don’t think that makes that work any less valid. It was just a different style of lyric writing.” But she also feels grateful that she has come to this stage in her art and evolution as a songwriter now. “I’ve spoken to other women who work in music and they’re like, ‘Yeah, I got there in my 40s,” she says. According to them, their 20s and 30s were spent fighting for their existence and putting out fires. Mayberry adds: “And then the war is over. And you felt like you had space and time to invest in your own art history.” Mayberry feels she got there earlier partly because after 10 years in the music industry she had “definitely hit my ‘fuck that’ stage.” The lyrics for “Good Girls” were based on what she had written in an old notebook about

her conversation with some male musician friends who felt torn about their idols. Mayberry realized then that unlike her male peers, her attitude towards troubling male artists was much more cut and dry. “You can make excuses for these men because what they’re doing have never and will never affect you in that way,” she says of her friends. “There’s a level of privilege in that, whether it’s about gender, race, orientation, or whatever. It’s easier for people who will never be affected by that kind of hatred to still hold on to the records and be like, ‘Oh well, he’s never going to say this slur at me.’ Or be able to affect that kind of violence. And I think it was just interesting to sit there and be like, ‘It’s not the same for me.’” Granted, the artists she admires most are largely women. And she is grateful for these strong women artists that preceded her—such as the aforementioned Shirley Manson (of Garbage) and Liz Phair, as well as Alanis Morissette—and all her contemporaries that are also speaking their truth to power. “I do think that it’s helpful,” she says, “it’s nice that we’re on an upswing that coincides with people being able to do more of that.” She also revels in the fact that there’s a lot in this record for the ladies. “Good Girls” speaks out on the double standards placed on women. “Final Girl” alludes to the concept of the last girl standing in horror films, where she sometimes feels like she should perhaps give up that fight and “maybe go get married.” That lyric is sure to resonate with women everywhere, at some point in their lives, for any number of reasons. “I guess the grass is always greener,” she explains of the lyric, “we’re all comparing ourselves to these made up standards that we think everyone else is achieving, even if we’ve achieved loads of things ourselves.” She continues: “I’m proud of that lyric and certain other things on the record because I feel like those things could only be written by a woman.” Not that she’s ever thought of CHVRCHES as a band specifically for women, or in her words, speaking only to women. “I don’t think that’s true,” she concurs. In a moment, where the true breadth of the pandemic has yet to be understood and the generational trauma fully felt, she wants to offer hope and some small comfort to all their fans, and concludes: “I hope that anybody who is feeling underneath anything heavy in their lives, can find something on this record.” 147

See Through You (DEDSTRANGE)

Longevity is a facet that can’t be bought, yet for A Place to Bury Strangers it’s something that comes naturally. This is primarily due to the fact that they’ve never stood still, preferring instead to constantly evolve to the point where no two records ever sound the same. While founding member Oliver Ackermann is the only constant from the band’s formation nearly 20 years ago, his dogged refusal to slip into a formula is a key factor in their progression. Another factor is the ever-changing line-up that brings with it a whole new dimension in terms of collaborative ideas. The band’s sixth album, See Through You, marks their first with recently acquired members John Fedowicz on bass and his spouse Sandra on drums. The two new members also perform as noise rock duo Ceremony East Coast. It isn’t the first time Fedowicz has teamed up with Ackermann, having initially played together in Skywave prior to forming their present bands, so it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that much of See Through You owes as much to the textured, darkwave sounds of yore as it does the brutal sonic annihilation that’s become synonymous with A Place to Bury Strangers over the years. Opener “Nice of You to Be There for Me” screeches and glides, dispatching all kinds of aural mayhem before “I’m Hurt” takes inspiration from early Sisters of Mercy. Lead single “Let’s See Each Other” and the caustic “I Disappear (When You’re Near)” are perhaps the nearest A Place to Bury Strangers have ever come to recording a bonafide love song, albeit dressed up in sonic belligerence. While parity is restored (for those familiar with APTBS’ more visceral excursions) on the blistering likes of “Anyone But You” and “Broken,” it’s New Order-esque closer “Love Reaches Out” that provides the biggest surprise, and possibly overall highlight. As with all five of its predecessors, See Through You is a dish best served whole, as long as one is prepared for some unexpected moments. (www.aplacetoburystrangers.com) By Dom Gourlay

Damon Albarn The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows (TRANSGRESSIVE)

Throughout his decades-long career in music, from the lead singer of Britpop’s famed Blur to being the mastermind behind the collaborative Gorillaz, Damon Albarn has managed to maintain a global influence. Although such inspiration has taken varied forms with each passing year, Albarn’s artistry focuses on a constant global 150

discovery of music that frequently crosses over into his own. As a distinctly recognizable vocalist, some of his songs may sound similar on the surface, but his willingness to constantly strive to grow sets new material apart in his vast discography. Such is the case on Albarn’s new album, The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows. Although he has been active in other projects, primarily Gorillaz, this release marks his first solo material since 2014’s Everyday Robots. The record’s original intention was to purely consist of instrumentals after Albarn drew inspiration from stunning scenery in Iceland. However, as most artists went into lockdown, their projects morphed with the changing world, and Albarn’s is an example. In tone, The Nearer the Fountain… feels increasingly somber to those familiar with his previous creations. On the subtly percussive “The Cormorant,” Albarn reflects on memories from a place of feeling trapped, singing, “There was black in the last year/I swear, sometimes, I can see beyond the lighthouse.” He also elaborates on themes of giving up on the piano ballad “Daft Wader” and events becoming nonexistent during “The Tower of Montevideo.” Despite Albarn’s fluctuating nature between the emotional and instrumental highs-andlows, his greatest strength on The Nearer The Fountain… is having an ear for cohesiveness. Most of the songs seamlessly track into the next while maintaining a distinct identity of their own. With each rotation of the record, Albarn’s artistry allows for discovering new puzzle pieces in a masterfully crafted way. (www.damonalbarnmusic.com) By Lexi Lane

Arca KICK (XL)

Musical multi-hyphenate Arca understands more than any artist in the public eye that flux is a natural part of the human condition. It’s illuminated in her music, performance, visuals, and whatever medium she uses to illustrate facets of her self-expression. The world Arca has created through her art defies any sort of binary, be it of gender, genre, or form itself. In-between states are explored endlessly, and liberation is found in entropy and chaos. “Speak for your self-states,” she proclaims near the climax of “Nonbinary,” the opener to KiCk i (and the KICK anthology as a whole). This statement reads as a call-to-action not only for the listener, but for Arca herself. It is a thesis for the overall body of work she has just birthed, with each subsequent album revealing a different facet of identity that lives within her. The respective album artworks, which begin with Arca in human form on KiCk i, undergo drastic experimentation with differing forms and bodies to finally reveal her as a goddess on the cover of kiCK iiiii. The project’s title, according to Arca,

refers to the kicks of a fetus in utero; gestation and transition, birth and rebirth are explored as cyclical and continuous processes. The differing self-states explored across the KICK anthology are manifested in the overall sonic palettes of each record, whether it be the bombastic reggaeton of KICK ii or the orchestral minimalism of kiCK iiiii, which sees Arca at her most subtle and understated. Powerful guest appearances run amok, with Björk’s sung rendition of Antonio Machado’s “Anoche Cuando Dormia” providing the crux of “Afterwards,” and electronic legend Ryuichi Sakamoto delivering haunting guest vocals on “Sanctuary.” They all work together to support the vision of Arca, whose voice cracks, malfunctions, and explores the flux of its existence in tandem with the music. (www.arca1000000.com) By Joey Arnone

Band of Horses Things Are Great (BMG)

Their transition from Seattle folk rock outfit to South Carolinian alt pop heroes reflects Band of Horses’ sheer ambition and collective ability. With no shortage of either, the group’s sixth album finds them returning to their roots, swiftly usurping 2016’s largely subpar Why Are You OK. Things Are Great works especially well as a lens of maturity through which to revisit previous releases. “Crutch” melds Mirage Rock’s energetic jangle with the polished Americana pop of Infinite Arms, while “You Are Nice to Me” feels something like an intensified distant cousin of 2006’s “Monsters.” Elsewhere, “Lights” and “Coalinga” possess enough grit to maintain the album’s overall edge, recalling rowdier classics such as “Weed Party” and “Laredo.” Lyrically, Things Are Great explores the decade’s discontentment through fragmented visions of various familial, romantic, and professional relationships. “Warning Signs” finds frontman Ben Bridwell confessing in his signature drawl, “Small talk with a registered nurse/Not to cry in front of people at work/Well that’s hard, hard, hard, at times you know.” Subsequently, “Tragedy of the Commons” sharpens its folksy commentary with the more overtly political observation, “The hate train pray that it crashes/Jaded chattering of neo-fascists/ The clatter of the ever-warring classes,” Bridwell ultimately declaring, “Babe I’m dog tired, can I cancel it all?” Likewise, standout “Ice Night We’re Having” finds him “laughing at the tough guy revival in Washington,” concluding, “It matters who you know, when you don’t know/ Anyone.” In the end, Things Are Great is Band of Horses’ most intimate outing in over a decade, its plainspoken sincerity and artistic intensity keeping it consistently affecting. While their glory days may or may not be behind them, Bridwell and company have managed to carve

out a cozy space, their legacy having been secured. (www.bandofhorses.com) By Austin Saalman

Big Thief Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You (4AD)

If anything, Big Thief and its members are prolific. In just over five years, the group has released four albums, including two in 2019 alone. Over the same span of time, vocalist and songwriter Adrianne Lenker has released three solo albums, guitarist Buck Meek has released two of his own, and drummer James Krivchenia has appeared on a who’s who of almost every other indie artist’s records. Added to this comes Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, a new 20-song double album that explores more territory than ever before. Recorded in four different and far-flung studios, the group focused on certain styles in each environment and whittled things down to what appears here. Though lines can be traced through many of Dragon’s songs back to prior albums, two not-so-utilized approaches provide for some of the album’s best moments, most obvious and joyful of which are the three shamelessly countrified songs that feel pulled straight from a barn dance hootenanny. The beloved live set gem “Spud Infinity” finally gets its recorded due, replete with rubbery jaw harp and plenty of fiddle. The color themed “Red Moon” and “Blue Lightning” are nearly as infectious, with the latter’s bluesy two-step invoking the shuffle of boot heels across a sawdust strewn floor. Perhaps most arresting, though, are the handful of truly folky, in the buckskin fringe jacket sense of the word, stunners. The band’s music has always been grounded in such roots, but the stripped down duets, with Lenker leading and Meek harmonizing, have not been heard so plainly on their full band releases. “12,000 Lines” is the loveliest of these, sharing an understated melodic line with Townes Van Zandt’s “Two Girls.” “Certainty” and “Change” are just as restrained and all the more gorgeous for it. Touches of experimentation creep in on “Time Escaping” and “Heavy Bend,” while most other tracks are reminiscent of prior efforts. The mild distortion of “Love Love Love” points to Two Hands, “Little Things” shares the hazy hue of “U.F.O.F.,” and “Simulation Swarm” cozies up next to “Shark Smile” as having one of the group’s most grooviest of grooves. Whether Lenker is singing of life, death, sex, aliens, potatoes, or taking her revenge on a skillet of onions that made her cry, it all comes as naturally and organically as the band has always had a mastery for. If Dragon ends up being a fan favorite just for the fact that it has the most songs, the most sounds, and the ability to make you notice a new favorite each time through, that’s a perfectly fine way to view it. (www.bigthief.net) By Mark Moody

L to R: Big Thief (Photo by Alexa Viscius), Shamir (Photo by Marcus Maddox), Black Country, New Road, SASAMI (Photo by Angela Ricciardi), Sea Power (Photo by Hollywood.jpg), Soft Cell (Photo by Andrew Whitton).

A Place to Bury Strangers

Black Country, New Road Ants From Up There (NINJA TUNE)

Anyone who’s seen Black Country, New Road (BCNR) play live in the past six months knows that a change is underway with the London-based seven-piece. The once self-proclaimed “World’s second-best Slint tribute act” no longer sound as angry and brash as when they first broke through in 2019. “Sunglasses,” the grinding, sneering rallying cry of a single has all but disappeared from their setlists—and that after an already controversial album version, slower and less barking. On their second record, Ants From Up There, the band take another step forward down that new road. If BCNR are paying tribute to anyone here, it’s not Slint: it’s Arcade Fire. Ants From Up There takes the strands of sincerity that recontextualized the snark on their debut, For the First Time, and shines a stronger spotlight on them, softening the edges and bolstering their greater emphasis on matters of the heart with suitably grandiose instrumentation. Think chamber pop, think David Bowie, think…the modern Scott Walker. It’s almost like they had this planned all along. For those not knee deep in BCNR lore—essentially anyone who hasn’t been sharing grainy bootlegs or feverishly comparing hypothetical tracklists online—the first single “Chaos Space Marine” was blindsiding. Gone were the post-rock overtures, replaced with a lighthearted whimsy; brightly ascending saxophones, playfully lilting violins, and a tendency for switching out instruments rather than slaloming them in between one another. Singer Isaac Wood’s most notable trait was once his caustic half-sung half-growled ranting, but here he’s practically crooning, warbling about the love lives of celestial warmongers. When the song hits its momentously melodramatic hook, he sounds positively earnest. That overblown hearts-on-its-sleeve chorus mainly serves to demonstrate how close to the surface the emotions are for the rest of the album, a far lower slung, melancholy affair than the twee kitsch of its opener proper. Black Country, New Road have always been romantics—proclaiming love in front of fellow scene-mates black midi, and fucking like they mean it—but there’s less youth-inrevolt contempt clouding those proclamations now. Instead, Wood applies his askance observations to quiet heartaches; the conflicts arising from crumbs left on a partner’s bed-sheets in “Bread Song,” or the imagined intergalactic anxieties that arise from a whirlwind, one-sided romance in “Good Will Hunting.” What Ants From Up There gains in emotional maturity, it does lose somewhat in immediacy. Expecting a band to make the same record ad nauseam reeks of entitlement, but the slower pacing and frequently pensive atmosphere will likely turn off fans who fell in love with the eruptions of mangled brass and guitars that defined their early work. Everything here builds slowly, whether on the steadily ascending strings of “Haldern,” or the rising caterwauls of folksy blues number “The Place Where He Inserted the Blade.” Even when things do break down, as they do at the halfway mark of 12-minute closer, “Basketball Shoes,” it’s far more controlled, guitars tipping into overdrive in a tight procession. What’s not been lost is the richness and intricacy of the band’s arrangements, an organic interlacing of quasi-improvised melodies and noodling diversions. There may be order when compared to the less mannered cacophony of their debut, but the band are never far from an atypical time signature, or one of their number freewheeling into the fold from an unexpected angle. Taken with some perspective, it’s gratifying to see a band like Black Country, New Road already making such a hard left turn only a year out from their first LP. Taken from an aerial view, it’s hard to be anything but impressed with what a cohesive, intentioned work they’ve created as a result. Taken on their terms, this is easily one of the most richly rewarding projects of 2022 so far. Just don’t ask them to play “Sunglasses.” (www.blackcountrynewroad.bandcamp.com) By Blaise Radley

BODEGA Broken Equipment (WHAT’S YOUR RUPTURE?)

Beach House Once Twice Melody (SUB POP)

In the middle of the 19th century, French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr coined the term “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” or, for you Anglophiles out there, “the more things change, the more things remain the same.” Quite how this fairly unremarkable Parisian saw Beach House coming is something that it seems we’ll never understand. But, when it comes to explaining the trajectory of Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally’s journey until this point, there simply isn’t a more accurate phrase to use. The entirety of Beach House’s back catalogue exists as a set of slightly different immaculately conceived sculptures, each carved from the same stone, using the same tools, by the same people. The ingredients that go into making each of their records have remained fairly consistent throughout their career. In terms of creating a uniquely identifiable soundscape, the pair have become the modern masters. What they have continued to get better at throughout their many records, though, is their ability to introduce noticeable changes without ever disrupting their sonic identity. On 2018’s 7, tracks like “Lemon Glow” represented, in Beach House terms, at least, grand departures from what they had produced until that point, with its textural identity firmly rejecting the space-age wonderment that defines a lot of their output.

“Statuette on the Console” or Hozie’s tale of misadventures in the film industry, “How Can I Help Ya?” Both songs are propelled by an affable, scruffy punk energy à la The Jam’s first few albums. More jubilant skewering of the anathema of TED Talks and the horrors of a misplaced dongle would have gone a long way to offset clunkier moments, like the indulgent virtual belt-notching of “All Past Lovers.” (www.bodegabk.bandcamp.com) By Mark Moody

Camp Cope Running With the Hurricane

Beach House photo by David Belisle.

(RUN FOR COVER)

The artsy NYC ensemble BODEGA are back with their second long player. Broken Equipment’s predecessor, Endless Scroll, was a bracing kick in the teeth to the electronic age. And this album starts off gamely enough towards the same agenda, with second track “Doers” being the early disenchanted standout and sure-to-be live set highlight. Leader Ben Hozie (aka Bodega Ben) grouses on about a life spent in 10-minute tech-dominated intervals, and bites off the chorus’ mantra of “bitter, harder, fatter, stressed out,” to great effect. Sadly though, much of the album is given over to high school level observations, like the shocker on “NYC (disambiguation)” that “New York City was founded by a corporation.” Or just simply uninspired tracks like the Nikki Belfiglio-led “Territorial Call of the Female,” that recalls the hollow tribal electro-rhythms of early-era MTV bands like Bow Wow Wow. Much better is her lead on

Melbourne trio Camp Cope made their names on feverish indie rock, exploring melancholy and anger in equal measure, but they’ve also already begun pushing at those boundaries. Frontwoman Georgia Maq followed their 2018 breakthrough with a solo record of shimmering synth pop, and the band’s latest evolution shares that same wistful core. Whereas their previous record opened with acerbic lyricism and screams, Running With the Hurricane opens with “Caroline,” a softly thrumming ballad featuring gently swelling melodies and starry-eyed lyrical gems. Much of the record operates in this same warmhearted lane, coloring the band’s usual intensity with shades of 2000s radio rock and ’90s country. Maq’s vocals are joined with sweet

And on their new album Once Twice Melody, the duo have pulled off this feat with even more fervor. The acoustic—yes, you heard that right, ACOUSTIC—stylings of centerpiece “Sunset,” on paper, feel like something very much outside of the band’s wheelhouse. Yet, falling in the middle of this double album—the first that the pair have released—it couldn’t feel more natural. With great additions to the Beach House catalogue featuring either side of its emergence— “Superstar,” “ESP,” and “Over and Over” in the run up, “Only You Know,” “Masquerade,” and “Modern Love Stories” in the latter half—it gives the record a purpose, welcoming into a new decade one of the 21st century’s most complete musical acts. It still doesn’t feel like a record that’ll lift the blinkers from Beach House deniers, but expecting that to arrive at this point would be naïve. In actuality, this record, for the most part, feels like Beach House at their most extreme and experimental, something that an album of this length undoubtedly needs. It contrasts warm compositions with cool vocals well throughout, and gives fans a near 90-minute exhibition in the cathartic power of dream pop and shoegaze. Eight studio albums into their career, it is difficult to imagine how Once Twice Melody could’ve landed any better than it does. Constantly interesting, even exciting in many places, it reaffirms the long-held consensus that these two musicians have stardust in their fingertips. Their ability to embody their sound and still find new avenues for it to travel down remains unparalleled. And whilst it may not be instantly identified as their best record, the longer you sit with it, the more deserving of that title it becomes. (www.beachhouse.com) By Michael Watkins

harmonies on tracks like “Blue” and “Jealous,” while the rollicking title track is burnished by jangling saloon pianos. Even the band’s softer material sees new additions, offering fresh depth to their most intimate moments, such as the resonant horns coloring “One Wink At a Time” and the soaring piano balladry of “Sing Your Heart Out.” Amidst all of the album’s polished beauties, the band does lose some of their previous intensity. Though there are a few bursts of freewheeling euphoria, there’s no moment as meteoric as Maq’s iconic “Show em’ Kelly” on “The Opener.” Still, the band’s fundamental elements continue to shine. Georgia Maq’s voice is one of the best in indie rock, but equally central are Kelly-Dawn Helmrich’s loping melodic basslines and Sarah Thompson’s steady drumming. When they all come together, the results are truly special, and Running With the Hurricane offers enticing glimpses of a more settled band, one teeming with soft hope and resolute joy. (www.campcope.bandcamp.com) By Caleb Campbell

CAN Live in Brighton 1975 (MUTE)

Following the release of Live in Stuttgart 1975 earlier in 2021, the second in an ongoing series of live archival releases overseen by CAN 151

affecting entry. The WWII-era jazz standard “I’ll Be Seeing You”— previously covered by Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, and Norah Jones— passes similarly, the vocals a low-pitched lilt atop twinkling piano counter-melodies and fingerpicked chords. It may be another four years before any new Cat Power material is released, but with 11 albums to idly browse through in the intervening years, the time will undoubtedly fly by. (www.catpowermusic.com) By Hayden Merrick

Cate Le Bon Pompeii (MEXICAN SUMMER)

Mitski Laurel Hell (DEAD OCEANS)

Laurel Hell, the latest album from Mitski, was over three years in the making. Several songs were written before or during 2018, the same time Be the Cowboy catapulted her to indie stardom. Yet while that breakthrough was a grand statement of female empowerment, Laurel Hell is grounded in the details of imperfect relationships and mistakes compounded. “Everyone said don’t go that way,” Mitski sings on “Everyone” over a pulsing synth that feels like a ticker. Naturally, she doesn’t listen: “So, of course, to that I said/I think I’ll go that way.” Mitksi wants to remind us that she isn’t perfect, that she makes mistakes, that she’s human. Fans who have followed the artist’s trajectory won’t exactly be surprised by the musical direction of Laurel Hell, which was produced and recorded by regular collaborator Patrick Hyland. The songs are shinier, the arrangements more elegant, Mitski’s voice more aching than ever. “Stay Soft” and “That’s Our Lamp” evoke the quiet glamorous disco of Be the Cowboy standout “Nobody.” Elsewhere, gritty guitars are exchanged for bouncing synths and dramatic piano lines. Lines like the ones that decorate opener “Valentine, Texas,” where Mitski details an evening to visit the song’s namesake (“Let’s step carefully into the dark,” she sings). On “Heat Lightning,” crescendos of rumbling percussion and twinkling

keyboardist Irmin Schmidt is this absolutely searing set, also from 1975. By this point, vocalist Damo Suzuki had been gone for several years, leaving the band without a permanent lead singer. As such, guitarist Michael Karoli became their defacto lead vocalist, and while albums such as 1975’s overlooked Landed saw the band leaning more towards established “rock” (in their own unique way, of course) as opposed to the free-jazz and minimalist-influenced psych/space-rock they’d perfected earlier, it was a different story live. With seven movements only labeled “Eins” to “Seiben” (one to seven in German), there are fragments of existing songs in their canon with unique live parts embellished onto it, thus making this show and others of that time period (one would surmise) a must-see experience. While Karoli takes lead vocals on “Drei,” drummer Jaki Liebezeit’s thunderous parts dominate “Vier,” and there is the very recognizable “Vitamin C” jam in “Seiben” as well. By and large, though, this is an instrumental, blown-out, prog-rock tour de force that shows why CAN were and still are considered to be one of the best and perhaps one of the most influential groups that came out of Germany’s incredibly vibrant psychedelic music scene in the late 1960s. (www.spoonrecords.com) By Matthew Berlyant

Covers (DOMINO)

There are always long gaps between Cat Power records. Chan Marshall’s cozy yet 152

faintly unnerving style—grounded by her guitar and distinctive vocal delivery—is not something that can be rushed. Her third covers album unfurls with an idling reflectiveness, as though she is sat on her living room floor browsing through her record collection for the perfect song to revise. Covers follows 2018’s Wanderer, an album that was outright rejected by long-term label Matador and led her to find a new home with Domino, safe in the company of Franz Ferdinand, Animal Collective, and Julia Holter. This is Marshall taking some time to enjoy herself after the unpleasantness surrounding her last record: “I started pulling out lyrics from ‘Bad Religion’ and singing those instead of getting super depressed. Performing covers is a very enjoyable way to do something that feels natural to me,” she says in a press statement, referring to the album’s opening track, a cover of Frank Ocean’s “Bad Religion.” Marshall takes songs by Iggy Pop, The Replacements, Lana Del Rey (a previous collaborator) and arranges them into her intimate, sparse style. While it doesn’t feature her own lyrics, the record still ambles through archetypal Cat Power moods—insouciance, worry, bliss—steering clear of the pulsating synths à la “Manhattan” and sticking with the stripped-back worry-pop of Wanderer. Her guitar leads the way, socializing with a gentle vibrating organ on The Pogues’ “A Pair of Brown Eyes,” and shimmery lap steel and stand-up bass on Kitty Welles’ 1952 proto-feminist country hit “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.” Cat Power has one of the most recognizable and mesmerizing voices in alternative music; it glows and glides with melancholic seclusion, best evidenced on “These Days.” Nico’s rendition is beautiful in spite of—or perhaps because of—its imperfection. But here, Jackson Browne’s composition is given the vocal performance it deserves, supported only by crisp, clear Danelectro plucks. The result is the album’s most

Let’s Eat Grandma Two Ribbons (TRANSGRESSIVE)

2018’s I’m All Ears was a giant leap forward for Let’s Eat Grandma, the indie pop outfit from childhood friends Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton. Their sound expanded into an avant-garde genre-blend, brought in new directions by newly ambitious songwriting. But if that album saw the young songwriters truly stretching their creative talents, their latest effort, Two Ribbons, finds the duo settled and mature, though with their gifts for pop melody remaining fully intact. Part of growing up is finding your own way—separating from childhood friends and discovering who you are apart from others. In the three years since I’m All Ears, Hollingworth and Walton have been exploring these boundaries creatively and personally. On previous records, the two operated in near-complete accord, so much so it was difficult to even tell the pair apart on record. On Two Ribbons, they diverge for the first time, exploring unique paths with distinct thematic focuses. Hollingworth wrestles with the loss of her partner, the late musician Billy Clayton. Meanwhile, Walton had moved to London and found herself in the midst of a host of new experiences, from finding her first love, to exploring her sexuality. Two Ribbons is the sound of the pair reuniting, and it offers excitement from its opening moments. Ebullient synth melodies and pulsating rhythms open “Happy New Year,” steadily building into a triumphant fireworks show. Similarly, “Levitation,” “Watching You Go,” and “Hall of Mirrors” are all danceable synth pop odysseys, among the best the band have ever delivered. But Two Ribbons also feels like two albums in one, with the first half a sampling of potent synth pop and the second turning towards sprawling balladry. The expansive second half is more organic and reflective, tinged with acoustic guitars, trumpets, and starry-eyed beauty. The gentle sheen of “Sunday” sees Walton reflecting on a difficult break-up, while the soaring balladry of “Strange Conversations” reframes romantic longing into almost religious devotion. Finally, the record’s emotive apex comes with “Two Ribbons,” Hollingsworth’s aching love letter to Walton, with her wishing for the simplicity of the

Mitski photo by EbruYildiz.

Cat Power

glistening keys showcase Mitski at her most contemplative and ominous. The examination of love’s power dynamics lies at the core of Laurel Hell, a theme that also drives the recent release Valentine by Snail Mail. Yet while Lindsey Jordan focuses on the self-destructive aftermath of heartbreak, Mitski’s approach feels more collected, albeit no less insightful. On the effervescent single “The Only Heartbreaker,” Mitski confidently takes on the title’s role, declaring “So I’ll be the loser in this game/I’ll be the bad guy in the play.” Nevertheless, there’s a pain in her voice, a knowing reluctance. Being the dumper sucks just as much as being the dumpee. Indeed, Mitski’s offering of different perspectives is one of the defining strength of Laurel Hell. The jaunty album standout “Should’ve Been Me,” for example, sees her thrown into a head-spin upon finding her lover cheating with someone just like her. This reality presses on a very real pain of rejection; yes, the other couldn’t accept everything about you, especially your flaws. Laurel Hell ends with the grooving “That’s Our Lamp,” where Mitski documents the final moments of an ending relationship. “You say you love me/I believe you do,” she sings, yet seconds later admits the truth: “‘Cause you just don’t like me/Not like you used to.” The key to the song, like everywhere else on Laurel Hell, is Mitski’s delivery. Her vocals are bright yet melancholic, hopeful yet knowing. Sometimes, love isn’t enough to hold things together, but that doesn’t make anyone involved a bad person. Mitski reminds us to be kinder to ourselves. (www.mitski.com) By Carlo Thomas

My imagined travelogue listening to the newest Cate Le Bon goes something like this: Dreaming of stardust on the French Riviera, then collapsing into a cesspool in an abandoned hotel, and finally, feeling fine linens as the ash from Vesuvius engulfs and petrifies you, immortalizing you in your final gesture. There’s something so cold and remote about these visions, but also an intangibly intimate quality birthed from the shards of our collective memories. This antagonism between confession and obscuring is what underlines the strange alchemy of Le Bon’s work. Le Bon, who I had formerly regarded as a sort of chanteuse guitarhero with an uncanny ear for the most unpredictable melodies, began to strip her compositions back and let them breathe a little more beginning with 2019’s Mercury Prize-nominated Reward. Her transformation into a producer, arranger, and sought-after creative collaborator is largely because of the uncompromising nature of her songwriting, a thru-line that has existed the entirety of her career. I want to say she’s moribund, but she’s more abundant than simply elegiac, and to call her a canary in a coal mine does a disservice to the atmospheres she so deftly conjures. Still, she’s our poet prophetess of yearning and to not wade into the murky depths of her lyricism is to experience only an adumbration of the figures she is sculpting. That isn’t to say that the album is simply about the lyrics. Its sound contains all of the ironic and evanescent qualities that these hymnals rest upon. From the slinky, sultry Madonna-esque chamber pop of “Harbour” to the swaying, resigned bliss of the dirgey “Cry Me Old Trouble” to the Fripp’d out distorted chorus guitars of “Remembering Me,” Le Bon has welded the sumptuousness of their sound to the faltering melodies that animate them. The supposed influence for the sonic approach on the album was a painting by frequent collaborator and kindred spirit Tim Presley that hung in the studio. The result is a picture of sound as a process, a depiction of a searching state of mind asserting itself. Compared with Reward, these songs fill up greater volumes, but they still in many ways feel like companion pieces, united by a reverential dedication to the oblique as the direct, the spasm as control, the heart as the mind. (www.catelebon.com) By Stephen Axeman

pair’s days gone by. The bond between Hollingworth and Walton has always been at the core of Let’s Eat Grandma. Two Ribbons represents reunification and renewal for that bond. Inexorably changed by the past three years, the pair’s reunion plays like meeting up with an old friend—an initial burst of pure joy, reminiscence, and nostalgia. Then you begin to realize how you both have changed, the different paths you’ve taken, and the new scars you both sport. But what Let’s Eat Grandma have is something rare and vital, and Two Ribbons is a powerful celebration of growth, change, and fidelity. Through all the pair faces, they make one thing clear from the opening moments of “Happy New Year”: “You know you’ll always be my best friend.” (www.letseatgrandma.co.uk) By Caleb Campbell

Pinegrove 11:11 (ROUGH TRADE)

Radiohead Kid A Mnesia (XL)

Radiohead’s consecutive experimental masterpieces Kid A and Amnesiac have continued to intrigue, perplex, and ultimately astound. Recorded during the same 1999–2000 sessions, their vast sonic landscapes remain objects of envy and emulation. Twenty years later, both releases have been reissued and combined into Kid A Mnesia, a monumental triple album release from XL. The group’s fourth studio album, Kid A made waves upon its release in October 2000, garnering as much controversy as it did praise. The much-anticipated follow-up to the groundbreaking OK Computer eschewed the album’s accessible guitar rock and Britpop for an icy electronica-based landscape. Despite its drastic stylistic left turn, Kid A boasts some of Radiohead’s finest music. “The National Anthem” and “Idioteque” remain ingenious classics, while “Everything in Its Right Place,” “Morning Bell,” and the positively beautiful “Motion Picture Soundtrack” have never ceased to astound. 2001’s Amnesiac continues Kid A’s stark, disaffected narrative. Opening track “Pakt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box” introduced audiences to a far darker sound—a nocturnal counterpart to the lingering dayspring of Amnesiac’s predecessor. The phantasmagoric “Pyramid Song” and jazzinflected “Life in a Glass House” prove just how far the group is willing to go to break the mold, and “Knives Out” continues to reiterate their status as leading revolutionaries of the alt rock movement. In hindsight, Amnesiac may well stand as one of Radiohead’s strongest efforts, a key entry in an already legendary musical canon. A third disc, Kid Amnesiae, features 12 previously unreleased tracks, most notably the mournfully beautiful “Fog (Again and Again Version)” and “Follow Me Around,” which make the entire disc worth the listen. Also featured are alternate versions of “Like Spinning Plates” and “Morning Bell,” which will certainly be of interest to fans. In addition, Kid Amnesiette, a companion cassette, features album B-sides and fan favorites such as “Cuttooth” and “The Amazing Sounds of Orgy.” Long-awaited, Kid A Mnesia is a testament of Radiohead’s phenomenal abilities, and stands as one of this year’s most exciting reissues. Fans of the group may rejoice, while newcomers will receive the full experience of two of the 21st century’s major creative achievements. (www.radiohead.com) By Austin Saalman

Pinegrove’s fifth album in the past decade finds leader Evan Stephens Hall pushed over the lines he said he wouldn’t cross. Though certainly politically minded, Stephens Hall has never put those thoughts to music so openly. Closing song “11th Hour” declares an “actual emergency” in its closing notes, while the most outspoken track here, “Orange,” calls out specifics in big government’s failure to do anything to reverse the climate crisis. And 11:11’s overall tone matches the lyrical call to arms. Gone are the subtle shadings of pedal steel and piano of the group’s last two releases, as are any instantly indie radio friendly tracks. And though most songs clock in at under the four-minute mark, all are fully formed and find this long-lived iteration of the band locked in and at their most urgent. Though there are some softer shadings on display, the album ironically carries few vestiges of the band’s Americana leanings. Only “Flora” has an out and out country tinge to it, while one of the group’s prettiest songs to date, “Iodine,” starts with a simple enough acoustic structure but soon blossoms into a myriad of filagreed strands anchored by co-founder Zack Levine’s drum work and the gravitational pull of Megan Benavente’s basslines. But lest any longtime fans fear that Pinegrove has only new territory to plow, there are plenty of the band’s trademarks to latch on to, from impassioned quotable lines like “I scream like a kettle” on the nearly eight-minute opener “Habitat” to Stephens Hall’s most stretched out “aaaaaah” moment to date on “Swimming.” And where Stephens Hall may have painted in broader strokes before, such as on Marigold’s “Endless,” here he offers a more Lee Ranaldo direct recounting of the innumerable crush of days In Virus Times portrayed on “Respirate,” or the literal packing and (MUTE) unpacking of “So What,” that musically recalls the tangle of their earliest songs. For those looking for a more focused and less restrained approach by Embracing the comfort of the band and Stephens Hall himself, 11:11 makes simplicity was a necessity in for a timely delivery. (www.pinegroveband.com) the fall of 2020. An unobtrusive sonata for acoustic By Mark Moody guitar would have provided a welcome 22 minutes of headspace from pre-election anxiety and Punch Brothers pandemic chaos. Unfortunately, Lee Ranaldo’s composition has only just arrived. And I find myself Hell on Church Street (NONESUCH) wondering why the one-take noodle took over a year to release. In Virus Times is about the environment in A tribute to Tony Rice’s Church which it was performed rather than the musical Street Blues, Hell on Church properties. Recorded in the Sonic Youth alumnus’ Street is a respectfully tight work of bluegrass Lower Manhattan loft in September 2020, incidental homage that contrasts shimmering harmonies with sounds trickle into the four-part improvised fragmented string lines to perfectly encompass instrumental—the shuffle of clothing as Lee adjusts the Brothers’ modern take on traditional acoustic in his seat, a woman murmuring in the distance, a structures. The band’s covers of covers all take on police siren whirring outside. This is what makes lives of their own, at times appearing as nebulous Ranaldo’s creation come alive—how it captures the bluegrass cacophonies and then, in almost the mundane intimacy of quarantine quietude. same breath, crystalizing into stunningly These pleasant interruptions are rare, however. harmonious folk arrangements worthy of the The listener finds oneself wanting the constant record’s storybook-like facade. Especially background hum of the city or for an indistinct scintillating are the dextrous “Cattle in the Cane” conversation to break out, for the concept to be and Chris Thile and company’s haunting, rustic taken further, for it to consume them. take on Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the “I wanted to hear the notes and chords ringing Edmund Fitzgerald.” (www.punchbrothers.com) out, hanging in the air for a long time,” Ranaldo By Hayden Godfrey says in a press release. He achieves his aim,

but an artificial reverb mars the natural resonance of his guitar, so that it sounds best when he is playing continuously. The piece starts strongly—the guitar work is most enjoyable in parts one and two, the latter containing the majority of these accidental sounds. But the momentum wanes during part three, as Ranaldo enters zen playtime, unthinkingly searching for natural harmonics up and down the fretboard. In Virus Times isn’t going to be anyone’s release of the year, but it’s unfair to judge it by that criterion. The recording is a time capsule, cathartic for its creator and a candid audio tour through the living room of one of alternative music’s best ever guitarists. He just doesn’t sound like it here. (www.leeranaldo.com) By Hayden Merrick

SASAMI Squeeze (DOMINO)

on the more melodic side, “Call Me Home” and “Tried to Understand,” share the modern day ache of HAIM at their catchiest, with heaping spoonfuls of additional guitars added to the mix. And the gripping closer, “Not a Love Song,” carries the ancient pull of an Appalachian folk song drug kicking and screaming into the modern era. On the blunter side, the industrial clangor of “Say It” is layered on to reach a density that Trent Reznor likely couldn’t have imagined in the ’90s, while “Need it to Work” would fit in well with the more provocative grievances of Cherry Glazerr, where Ashworth spent a brief stint. Squeeze tears you down and gives you a hug at the same time, which is no doubt disorienting, but certainly as Ashworth intended. For fans of Fleetwood Mac and Nine Inch Nails that have no qualms about listening to both at the same time. You probably know someone like that. (www.sasamiashworth.com) By Mark Moody

Sea Power Sasami Ashworth’s (performing as SASAMI) sophomore album, Squeeze, is a marked departure from the dream woven delivery of her 2019 self-titled debut. Squeeze is a study in alternating currents (the type that can kill you) that no doubt gets your attention, but can also make for a jarring experience. The opening pummel of “Skin a Rat” recalls the first track uncharacteristic ugliness of “Pig” from Sparklehorse’s Good Morning Spider, but unlike that album, Squeeze doesn’t settle into a bucolic groove thereafter. The opening track abrasiveness of distorted vocals and buzzing guitars recurs via a revolving door of hook-filled power pop ballads interspersed with a much grittier dynamic. In full disclosure though, even the softer moments are delivered with more than a fair share of punch. A couple of standouts

Everything Was Forever (GOLDEN CHARIOT)

A lot has been made about the name change that accompanied the announcement of this sextet’s first album in half a decade, but the rechristened Sea Power (formerly known as British Sea Power) is having no trouble with that teacup-sized storm. The band’s never been particularly shy about its politics, in any case. “Waving Flags” from 2008’s Do You Like Rock Music? praised immigration and integration, while “Who’s In Control?” opened its 2011 successor Valhalla Dancehall by capturing the simmering national mood in suitably anthemic fashion. Their seventh album, Everything Was Forever, borrows 153

part of the title of Alexei Yurchak’s 2005 book, and eagerly wears its politics on its sleeve. The uneasy peace of “Scaring at the Sky”—on the surface, their most tranquil opener to date—is shattered by the riff-driven ruckus of “Transmitter,” on which co-lead vocalist Yan Scott Wilkinson bares his teeth: “All of this used to mean so much to me/It doesn’t mean so much anymore.” There’s a struggle between apathy and activism across much of the album, such as on the devastating “Folly,” on which Neil Hamilton Wilkinson surveys the anxiety surrounding the climate crisis and asks, “When’s it gonna happen?/Are we all fucked?” “Doppelganger” captures the band at its most intense and brooding, while “Fire Escape in the Sea”—a shelved Machineries of Joy demo in a previous life—is a sweetly uplifting six-minute track that confronts adversity head-on with steely resolve while remaining locked in an irresistible groove. Informed by darkness, Everything Was Forever nonetheless strives to find light where it can. The six-piece enters its third decade as a band with a truncated name, but what hasn’t changed, as Sea Power sails into a new chapter, is its indomitable creative spirit. (www.seapowerband.com) By Gareth O’Malley

Shamir Heterosexuality (SELF-RELEASED)

The question of why Shamir Bailey isn’t a bigger star by now needs answering. Throughout a back catalogue of daring moves that have almost always landed, the Las Vegas native has built a discography of varied textures and unapologetically queer anthems. And yet, at a time when his art is most needed, the arena shows and “household name” label have passed him by. On new album Heterosexuality, Bailey is at his most stoic. Finding strength in the pain of modern queer existence, the 27-year-old crafts an album of considered celebration and defiant indulgence. Striking a vocal tone that exists in a unique space between Prince and Janis Joplin, there is noticeably more grit in the voice on this album than was present on his debut full-length, the dance-pop inflected Ratchet. The years since that 2015 breakthrough have seen Bailey tread the road less travelled, and the artistry that has followed has increased its intrigue as a result. To go from a record like Ratchet to the lo-fi stylings of 2017’s duo releases Hope and Revelations is hardly the trajectory anyone would’ve envisaged for him. And, a few more albums down the line, Heterosexuality feels like the most completely realized of Bailey’s post-Ratchet records. Finding a delicate balance between bombastic ballads (“Cold Brew”), underground art-punk (“Abomination”), glitchy dream-pop (“Caught Up”), and acoustic lullaby (“Father”), Bailey manages to pull off a varied record that never feels disjointed. The most exciting thing about Bailey is the element of surprise. No matter how far through one of his projects you get, you never feel safe or comfortable that you know what is coming next. His singular artistry deserves to be celebrated by a wider audience. And if records as good as Heterosexuality continue to come along, it won’t be too far in the future when that dam finally breaks. (www.shamir.bandcamp.com) By Michael Watkins

Silverbacks Archive Material (FULL TIME HOBBY)

Released a year and a half after the Irish five-piece art rockers’ debut Fad, Archive Material sees Silverbacks continuing their effort to defy categorization by creating sonic pastiches from fragments of widely varying genres into a jovial racket with wild shifts in dynamics and tempo. 154

At their best, Silverbacks’ musical touchstones include the jumpy rhythms of Bodega and the buzz-rock of Deerhoof played with the nervous energy of Talking Heads mixed with the snarky attitude of Cake. If you like the touchstones, you will certainly like some of Archive Material, but probably not all. On the title track and standout tracks such as “They Were Never Our People,” “Econymo,” and “I’m Wild,” Silverbacks loosen it up a bit and weave some colorful and catchy melodies throughout the dramatic post-punk, creating the perfect yang to the yin of their bristly and frazzled sound. But the art of weaving catchy melodies into the mix escapes them sometimes, so tense songs such as “Different Kind of Holiday” and “Recycle Culture” create a dense and cluttered mix that sounds a bit muddled and smothers the inner beauty, losing any appeal they had to begin with. Silverbacks cram a lot of music into their songs, making each one a densely packed mix of angular guitar riffs and jittery alt-rock, often played with chops, alternating boy/girl vocals, and a need for shouted, repeating phrases. It is an acquired taste that often perks up the ears and brings pleasure but just as often fails to carry a melody and disappoints. Archive Material is definitely worth a listen for those adventurous souls looking for something unique with a different spin on popular culture. (www.silverbacksband.com) By Matt the Raven

the same general tonality as most of the band’s smash hits. After a more typical ballad in “Long, *Happiness Not Long, Long Time,” “Break the Man” fittingly breaks Included the mold thanks to jarring, explosive chords and (BMG) a glorious sunshine-soaked chorus that treads in cautious optimism and relatably jocose romanticism. Soft Cell’s place in the history Elsewhere, “My Demons” dispenses books as one of the most innovative duos to dystopian, quick-witted lyrics that are tonally ever grace music is already assured. As it should contrasted by the airy, open “Rivers of Mercy.” be. The 45 that launched them, a 1981 cover The band’s keyboard player, Doug Petty, supplies of Gloria Jones’ Northern Soul classic “Tainted choral strings on “Please Be Happy,” while more Love,” went on to become one of the biggest typical pop and rock sensibilities take center selling singles of that decade. While each of the stage on “Master Plan.” Finally, Smith runs three albums released by Soft Cell during their through a hazy, arena-like atmosphere on “End of undisputed early ’80s heyday has gone on to Night,” only to come back home to the cavernous define their uniqueness and versatility, they also and drippy acoustics of “Stay.” bookended the first chapter of an outfit who’ve Perhaps most impressive of all, the record endured their fair share of turmoil and strife. actually has a unique identity separate from Having initially broken up in 1984, both vocalist Tears for Fears’ darkly melodic trove of ’80s Marc Almond and electronics genius David Ball gems; it doesn’t ride exclusively on the coattails went on to have iconic careers in their own right, of their past success and presents a variable, Almond as a successful solo artist and Ball as independent addition to their catalogue. It’s not one half of influential dance act The Grid while a paradigm-shifting revelation that defines the simultaneously producing records for the likes modern pop rock genre (or even the band’s own of Kylie Minogue in between. So, while 2001’s career), but it certainly could be one that’ll make brief reunion brought about the duo’s critically fans out of those who previously shunned the acclaimed fourth album Cruelty Without Beauty, band for their perceived cheesy hooks and they’ve been dormant ever since, until 2018’s decadent synth pads. To use a hackneyed reunion (and farewell) concert saw them writing expression, this isn’t your father’s Tears for Fears. together for the first time in over a decade and When describing the process of writing and a half. recording The Tipping Point, Orzabal nostalgically Indeed, it’s probably fair to say the response recounts how he and Smith, through all of their garnered by that show and subsequent singles years of sometimes tense collaboration, “always “Northern Lights” and “Guilty (Cos I Say You Are)” seem to find each other again.” It may be a trite are partially responsible for this next chapter in sentiment to stew within when the topic is rock Snail Mail Soft Cell’s illuminated history. With its asterisk music, but it’s an appropriate one for a revival this Valentine serving as a disclaimer for the album’s content, great. (www.tearsforfears.com) (MATADOR) *Happiness Not Included deals with the present, By Hayden Godfrey and in doing so, takes aim at inequality caused by capitalism while questioning the rise of populist Yard Act Under the semi-ironic politics. Although not overtly political, it’s an album stage name Snail Mail, The Overload that focuses on the present while occasionally Maryland-born singer/songwriter Lindsey Jordan citing the past as a reference point. The (ISLAND/ZEN F.C.) constructs cerebral, approachable indie rock minimalistic “Polaroid” being a prime example, worthy of her delicate, prodigious veneer. To as Almond declares “New York City 1981, I was most, her 2018 debut Lush heralded the arrival Leeds outfit Yard Act, who lost in the junkie jungle.” of indie’s next whiz kid. On her long-awaited consist of former Post War However, this is anything but a retrospective second album, Valentine, carefully arranged Glamour Girls frontman James Smith (vocals) and ride through 1980s nostalgia. Instead, Almond love songs are placed on a glasslike pedestal Menace Beach’s Ryan Needham (bass), unleash and Ball have created an album that deals with and surrounded by confident, unobtrusive vocal a savagely brilliant debut album in the form of The what’s happening in the world today, such as on performances, the likes of which fans have come the industrially sheened title track (“No one’s Overload. Smith and Needham are joined by Sam to love and appreciate. coming to save us or set us free/When they’re piling Shjipstone (guitar) and Jay Russell (drums) as There are times on Valentine when Jordan they shine a light on the fractured nature of society up the bodies and pointing at me”) and dissonant very clearly plays it safe and sticks to her guns; with a mixture of acerbic wit and deadpan ennui. “Heart Like Chernobyl” (“Oh dear, it feels like on “Glory,” she harkens back to the Lush song Beats, loops, and grooves meld with Smith’s North Korea in the winter”), where Almond’s dark “Speaking Terms” and channels her breathy self biting monologues which, whilst owing a debt to sense of humor comes to the forefront. on “Headlock.” These songs could have very the lineage of punk poets such as John Copper While not quite in the same bracket as the well fit in nicely on Lush in all of their simple and Clarke, take the medium into an exciting and groundbreaking Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, straightforward glory. In that sense, Valentine is a *Happiness Not Included provides a welcome—if contemporary new place. Smith’s caustic northern bit underwhelming, since it doesn’t see her take English brogue has drawn lazy comparisons to mature—diversion to the horrors and evils that any monumental steps forward in terms of surround us. Which is as good a reason for a new Mark E. Smith and The Fall, but some of the musical or compositional complexity. narratives arguably have more in common with Soft Cell album as any. (www.softcell.co.uk) But even in its sometimes underwhelming the observational satirical wit of Nigel Blackwell By Dom Gourlay safety, there are some truly spectacular moments, (Half Man Half Biscuit) and even hints of John with the buzzy creaks of “Light Blue” and the Shuttleworth (the fictional singer/songwriter Tears for Fears beautiful “Mia” among them. On “c. et al.,” Jordan created by English comedy actor and musician The Tipping Point brings us right up to her aged acoustic guitar, Graham Fellows). (CONCORD) taking all the energy out of her voice to give a The title track sets the tone for the album, as gorgeously exhausted performance. “Madonna” Smith skilfully highlights hive mind groupthink is, similarly, a welcome change of pace, with its and the lack of critical thinking therein. The When a band from a bygone smooth, off-kilter melodies framing relaxed and outstanding “Dead Horse” brilliantly skewers the era makes a comeback almost Rule Britannia Brexit mentality stoked by a warbly verses. 40 years after the release of their debut album, Of course, Jordan’s first kick at the can was government of philistines intent on causing already so mature that it was almost unrealistic to the expectation is that the effort in question will be division, as Smith scathingly observes “Are you somewhat artificial, noisily glossy, and scrupulously seriously still trying to kid me that all culture will expect her to exponentially jump to even deeper overproduced. It’s happened with loads of artists; be just fine?/When all we’ve left is knobheads levels of narrative insight and expanse. Given a hyped up return to form falls flat in its perpetually Morris Dancing to Sham 69?” that, some of its safer (and, at times, lacklustre) tired and self-important mediocrity. choices are still executed well, it’s hard to Elsewhere, “Tall Poppies” combines pathos In Tears for Fears’ case though, their first holistically criticize the album’s approach. and hilarity in equal measure, with absolutely no record since 2004, The Tipping Point, is clean, Like many sophomore efforts, Valentine is an sense of punching down as Yard Act explore the respectfully confident, and actually has a incremental improvement on what was already myopic ambition engendered by the limitations of purpose that justifies its subtle grandiosity. Like a solid foundation. This isn’t a new version of a generationally ingrained small-town mentality. Lindsey Jordan. Instead, we’re witnessing a slow its cyclical, relatively busy album art, the apparent At its heart, The Overload is a hugely impressive 10-year-long development process that preceded debut bubbling with sardonic wit, wisdom, anger, but sure march towards a Lindsey Jordan that the album cements Roland Orzabal and Curt is more confident, more sure of herself, and and compassion. It’s also an album that highlights Smith as shadowy, colorful creatives with distinct the hypocrisy of self-righteous “no-compromise” more heartbreakingly honest in her delicate songwriting styles. songwriting. No Snail Mail fans are going to be tribalism, which ultimately leads to antagonism, It begins modestly, with the acoustically shocked or shaken by Valentine’s 10 tracks, but animosity, and division, whilst letting the real wholesome “No Small Thing” transitioning to the they’ll definitely be delighted at their continued political enemies off the hook. skippy title track, the latter of which is remarkably (www.yardactors.com) elegance. (www.snailmail.band) divergent and unexpected, even if it traffics in By Hayden Godfrey By Andy Von Pip

Soft Cell

NILS FRAHM OLD FRIENDS NEW FRIENDS ALBUM OUT NOW LEITER-VERLAG.COM

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The End

Joseph Mount of

METRONOMY Words by Mark Redfern

Read on as Mount discusses how he’d like to die like a famous movie character, what songs he’d like played at his deathbed and funeral, his favorite endings, and why he hopes heaven is a place with less TV streaming choices. How would you like to die and what age would you like to be? I would like to die EXACTLY the same way Don Corleone does in The Godfather. However, I’ve just Googled his age at death and Wikipedia says 67. Cause of death is a heart attack. Seems a bit young. So, I’ll say in my garden, something quick and painless, and at least 75 years old please. What song would you like to be playing at your deathbed? “Veridis Quo” by Daft Punk. What song would you like to be performed at your funeral and who would you like to sing it? “Qué Será, Será (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)” by Sly and the Family Stone sung by Sly and the Family Stone.

Mount started Metronomy as a bedroom project as a teenager, in his native Totnes, in southwest England. By the time his debut album, Pip Paine (Pay the £5000 You Owe), was released in 2006 Mount was 23 and living in Brighton. Over the years Metronomy’s lineup grew to include Oscar Cash (saxophone, backing vocals, guitars, and keyboards), Anna Prior (drums and vocals), Olugbenga Adelekan (bass guitar and vocals), and Michael Lovett (on keyboards and guitars, and also of NZCA LINES). The band’s 2011released third album, The English Riviera, proved to be their true breakthrough, landing on multiple album of the year lists and garnering a Mercury Prize nomination. Three more well-received albums followed—Love Letters (2014), Summer 08 (2016), 156

and Metronomy Forever (2019)—and 2022 sees the release of Metronomy’s seventh album, Small World. Small World’s infectious first single, “It’s Good to Be Back,” welcomes the return to almost normal life following two years of the pandemic. While COVID-19 is still a present concern, those who are vaccinated can breathe a little easier and live music has begun to return. “Part of me was thinking, ‘What is the lamest platitude people are going to be saying coming out of the past two years?’” said Mount of the single in a press release announcing Small World. “But at the same time, I was thinking how it will be true and how it might feel doing things again.” Mount added: “I’ve been remembering what it was like as a kid when I’d be sitting in the backseat of my parents’ car and they’d be playing their music and I’d think, ‘This is awful,’ but there’d be one or two songs I would like. I thought it would be fun to make that kind of album, and this is the song the kids might like. This is the ‘cool’ song.”

What’s your favorite series finale last ever episode of a TV show? The final episode of Happy Valley series 2 is genuinely the best season finale I have ever seen. If you’re able to watch it in America I strongly recommend it. What’s your favorite last song on an album? “I Am Music” by Timbaland and Magoo from the otherwise patchy album Indecent Proposal. What’s your favorite last album by a band who then broke up? The Score by The Fugees. What’s your favorite way a band broke up? I’m pretty sure this doesn’t count, but my old housemate Zack got fired from Patrick Wolf’s band because he feel asleep playing the drums during a gig. It’s on YouTube somewhere.

If you were on death row, what would you like your last meal to be? Mom’s spaghetti. What’s your concept of the afterlife? I don’t believe in an afterlife I’m afraid. But it’s enough that I’ll become a home to some creatures and some fertilizer. What would be your own personal version of heaven if it exists? It’s a TV streaming service with just one incredible film choice that you’ve never seen before. It’s a smart phone with never ending battery life. It’s a place where Metronomy is number one in the charts all year round. It’s a place where everyone is happy and laughs constantly. It’s a place that is always sunny and warm. It’s a place that is never dark and it never rains. It’s a place where you spend ETERNITY with your close family and friends…ETERNITY. What would be the worst punishment the devil could devise for you in hell, if he exists? (See heaven above.) If reincarnation exists, who or what would you like to be reincarnated as? I’d like to come back as a dolphin or a great white shark basically. What role or achievement would you most like to be remembered for? I had the idea of those Bluetooth suitcases that follow you around airports before the person who now produces them. What would you like your last words to be? Flames to dust Lovers to friends Why do all good things come to an end? Flames to dust Lovers to friends Why do all good things come to an end? Come to an end, come to an... Why do all good things come to an end? Come to an end, come to an... Why do all good things come to an end? [Taken from Nelly Furtado’s “All Good Things (Come To An End).” ]

Photo by Alex Lambert. (L to R: Olugbenga Adelekan, Joseph Mount, Anna Prior, Oscar Cash, Michael Lovett)

To conclude, we ask Joseph Mount of British electro-pop band Metronomy some questions about endings and death.

What’s your favorite ending to a movie? The mad garden dash in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and even the end credits.

Whose passing has most affected you? The wonderful Philippe Zdar.

Aeon Station photos by Ebru-Yildiz

My Firsts Kevin Whelan of

AEON STATION Regeneration

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR Words by Mark Redfern and Joey Arnone

y Firsts is our email interview series where we ask musicians to tell us about their first life experiences, be it early childhood ones (first word, first concert, etc.) or their first tastes of being a musician (first band, first tour, etc.). For this My Firsts we talk to Kevin Whelan of Aeon Station (and formerly of The Wrens).

Aeon Station is the new solo project of Whelan’s. His debut album as Aeon Station, Observatory, came out in December on Sub Pop. This was after The Wrens spent many years laboring over the follow-up to 2005’s The Meadowlands. In 2014, The Wrens tweeted that they had a fourth studio album completed and ready to put out, an album that it was later revealed was turned into Sub Pop in 2013, but Whelan’s band-

mate Charles Bissell reportedly put a halt to those plans in order to develop the album even more. By 2019, Bissell was ready to release the album, but a disagreement between him and Whelan put the album’s release in limbo. Bissell subsequently stated that “The Wrens were dead.” Whelan is now using his new moniker, Aeon Station, to

release some of the songs from the album that never came to light. Read on as Whelan talks about playing the piano, crushing over Bono, and opening for The Fixx after recording one demo.

it, I believe I wrote about it in my diary for like two weeks: “how could they do this…” e tc. First movie you saw in the movie theater?

First word? I have absolutely no idea—I asked my 83-year-old mother and she said, “I can’t remember your birthday, how would I remember that?” First best friend? My brother Greg Whelan, who is also a member of The Wrens. First pet? Never had a pet. My parents were allergic but I believe that was a lie and they just didn’t want to walk a dog or buy pet food. First broken bone? No broken bones. I did get 33 stitches in the forehead by running into a wall in third grade.

The first movie I saw in the theater without my parents was The Blues Brothers—which was also the second album I bought with my money. Those songs, the car crashes, the outfits were just perfect.

“The first time my heart was broken was when Tom Baker (Doctor Who) regenerated. I was so torn up about it.”

First time you had to go to the hospital? To get my tonsils out. It seems like it was a ’70s thing to get your tonsils out First time you fell in love? I fell in love with my Snoopy stuffed animal. The doll had no dog ears so it sort of looked like a scary old man. First person you kissed? The first person I ever kissed was actually Jerry MacDonald’s (The Wrens’ drummer) wife, Bridget. Jerry and Bridget have been married for 25 years with four amazing children. Bridget is really the reason why The Wrens came to exist. We were looking for a drummer and I remembered that her boyfriend at the time was a drummer—so I called her up and asked if she would ask her boyfriend if he wanted to play drums. Over 30 years later, Jerry is still my best friend on the planet and truly the secret weapon on the Aeon Station songs.

First TV show you were obsessed with? I lived in an area where we didn’t really get TV channels. We even had a huge antenna in the attic of my house. Even the channels we got were usually all snowy and weird. First record your parents played for you? The Mamas and the Papas. To this day, those songs have this weird vibe of sad harmonies, cool songs, and me wondering why my parents liked them. First album you bought?

“The Night Chicago Died” by Paper Lace. The song is crazy as hell—super weird intro and it just moves through so many sections. But I had the 45, it was even broken. I had a nickel taped to the record player needle so the record could play without skipping. First musician you had a crush on? Wow. Hmmmm. I guess I would have to say Bono. When you see that glorious mullet in the “New Year’s Day” video it just commands you to love it and love him. First concert you went to? First concert was ELP—but it was not with Carl Palmer, it was with Cozy Powell. I was pretty disappointed that it was not Palmer but it was soon forgotten once Keith Emerson took the stage. First instrument? The first instrument was the piano my mother bought from her school teacher friend. It sat in the dining room. No one in the house knew how to play but I remember looking at it like it was some sort of weird time machine. The keys were busted up but when you pressed those keys together, it opened up the musicverse. First band you were in? The Wrens. I was only ever in one band. It’s like marrying your high school sweetheart. First professional recording session? I recorded a three-song demo with my brother in this wack-crazy studio in Atlantic City, NJ. The songs were absolutely horrible but it got us our first ever show which was to open for The Fixx. However, The Fixx canceled—we played but there was no “Saved By Zero” that night.

The first album was Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band 1979 movie soundtrack. Oh my god!!! With Peter Frampton, Bee Gees, Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, Earth Wind and Fire…and George Burns. Complete and utter madness but wow did I love that double record.

First time you performed in public?

First favorite band?

First bad review?

Actually, I would have to say it was Liberace. I started playing piano and his style and ability to play so well just mesmerized me. Even with all those rings, he could play so fast.

The first bad review is to this day one of my favorites of all time. The Wrens released their first seven-inch, which we were so proud of. We got one of our first reviews and all it said was: “Why do The Wrens exist?”

First time your heart was broken? I read this in the Peter Brewis of Field Music Firsts that he did for Under the Radar. I also love Field Music as an aside. However, I agree, the first time my heart was broken was when Tom Baker (Doctor Who) regenerated. I was so torn up about

First favorite song?

I played Scott Joplin rags at this ice cream parlor in Cape May, NJ. It was one of those places where all the waiters and waitresses sing songs. I was the sole nerdy piano player who would accompany the singers and play a solo.

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NATION OF LANGUAGE Bringing New Magic

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR Words by Charles Steinberg | Photos by Ray Lego

f there was one unifying pursuit of all consumers of music in the past two years, it was for profound catharsis. We dove deeper into the catalogs of favorite artists in search of it. We caught virtual concerts that stood in for visits to our favorite neighborhood venues for a sense of connection. The introduction of a new band with the It factor that makes you beam with emotion, however, did seem like a phenomenon on indefinite hold. Enter Brooklyn’s Nation of Language. It’s quite something to discover a band whose music elicits singing and dancing, shouting and crying, and remembering and reflecting all at once. The tingles and shivers, and that very specific lump in your throat you get from listening to evocative music are priceless reactions, and you get them in waves when listening to a Nation of Language song. The immediate power of the music created by this breakout trio from Brooklyn is that it’s transportive, a quality which ingratiated them to the masses of harbored listeners isolated in pockets when their music first emerged in 2020. This is just what gives the first two albums—2020’s Introduction, Presence and 2021’s A Way Forward—a significance beyond their core splendor. The music distills nostalgia. Rather than try to disguise their direct early ’80s New Wave/post-punk influences, Nation of Language gladly cites them. Their magnetism as a band has a lot to do with how adoringly they emulate their heroes, grabbing their favorite elements from cherished records and embracing them warmly.

The band’s recognition has surged recently, helped by the sparkling A Way Forward, and the electricity in the air when people have gathered to see them perform is palpable. With a presence charged with the same kind of vivacity his music inspires, frontman Ian Richard Devaney delivers songs of synthesizer, guitar, and programmed percussion with crisp, concise, and clever structure, sprinkled with fairy dust layers of texture. Then, his beautiful, soaring voice brings the whole thing home. Joined by his wife Aidan Noel, keyboard player and self-professed “hype man” for Devaney, and bassist Michael Sue-Poi, who rolls through lines and riffs with a savior faire that makes it seem like he’s barely trying, Devaney commits to his music and its performance with irresistible sincerity. Sometimes it all boils down to this: if you can sock-slide around your living room alone, voice bursting, eyes closed, a tiny little part of you picturing yourself on stage with onlookers swooning, an attachment has formed to the source of that elation, and you’ll follow where it leads. Finding their way forward with an outstretched hand to the past, Nation of Language has become the new band to follow with open hearts. Charles Steinberg (Under the Radar): The first thing that comes to mind when I think about your album is it feels very timely. Maybe it’s because it’s this ebullient, emotionally charged music right when everyone needs it. Ian Richard Devaney: The vibe I get from people is that our music can serve multiple purposes depending on your mood. If you

were feeling stuck at home and you just wanted to get a bunch of energy out, you could dance to it. If you wanted to mope a little, you could. The idea that there was emotional utility in multiple aspects to the songs came through. It feels like a great record for coming out of the holes that people were in for so long. It’s the perfect kind of music for going out again. Ian: We felt that too. We were obviously so excited to be on tour after that long period of time. To feel that buzz in the rooms as they are filling up is so electrifying. Aidan Noel: Before the pandemic, we never sold a show out. The rooms would feel full and we were all having fun but there was still a calmness about it. There is something very different about these post-pandemic shows. People are acting like it may never happen again...like it’s the last night on earth. When I saw you guys in Seattle, what jumped out at me right away was Ian’s stage presence. You had this command of the room and your dancing animated the music in a visually arresting way. Has that always come naturally to you or is it something you’ve grown into? Ian: It always came naturally to me. I first started playing in bands in middle school and high school. I saw old footage of those shows and I was wild on stage. I don’t know what I was channeling because I didn’t really have any references at that point. Then when I got into punk music, I did the whole stand and 163

shout sort of thing. But with this music, I’ve found my way back to dancing. There’s no plan really. You know when you see people speaking in tongues? It feels like that. Aidan: It’s like an out-of-body experience. Ian: Whatever I’m feeling, I’m going to go with it on stage. If I’m so excited that I want to do a weird thing, I do it. I think that’s what makes me addicted to performing. It’s the freedom to shout and throw my body around and shed the inhibition you have in 90 percent of the rest of daily life. The nature of this music being more intentionally danceable also gives a little more structure to the movements [laughs] because there’s a solid beat to follow. I see a lot of people dancing at the front of the stage during these new shows and it’s a back and forth that I’ve missed so much over the past two years. To be able to feel like you’re dancing with people you don’t know in a new space is a very specific and magical feeling. The KEXP performance was pretty big for you guys. It seemed like one of those it’s all coming together moments. Did it feel that way? Aidan: Definitely. Honestly, I don’t think we’d be where we are without John Richards. To be able to meet him and do anything for him was [a big deal]. Ian: Yeah, because we had been chatting with John a lot over the internet since he had found our music and was playing it all the time. Really all of KEXP, but especially John, was especially enthusiastic. To be able to talk to someone who you know likes really cool stuff and he’s telling you your stuff is cool, it’s validation. You say to yourself, “Whoa, my stuff must be cool!” Especially when we weren’t able to go out to play shows and get that crowd validation, to have that kind of support from him was so important. Also to be the first band back in that studio in 18 months. I was thinking how sweet it would be to play in the studio that I had been watching videos in for years. To actually step into that space was the coolest thing. When I’m particularly moved by something, I’ve developed this tendency to want to understand why it’s so affecting. Your music takes me back to very formative encounters with film when I was very impressionable. I think of movies like Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful when during those culminating scenes, there were New Wave synth-pop songs playing behind the dialogue. Are you mindful of that association? Ian: I think it’s a matter of form and function working well together. Because so many of our influences are from a certain era, those things happen to come together nicely. I’ve always liked writing about yearning or nostalgia or things that have been lost that can’t be gotten back. I was talking to someone last week about a friend of ours having a bad break-up and he told her to indulge in the things that she loved in their younger years to separate from the pain she was feeling. Our influences manifesting the way they do seem to remove people from the struggles of their current situations and take them back to whatever they simply enjoyed when they were younger. I don’t think I was even born yet when Pretty in Pink came out but there is something so quintessentially coming of age about it that you didn’t need to have been in high school at that time to automatically make that connection. Aidan: It’s kind of a universal connection. We weren’t alive then but it’s still nostalgic for us. It’s funny because at some point on the tour 164

L to R: Michael Sue-Poi, Aidan Noel, Ian Richard Devaney.

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we got interviewed by someone who thought that because of our ’80s New Wave influences, we were teens back then. When she arrived at the interview she said, “You guys look a lot younger than I thought you’d be.” [Laughs]. It’s more than just hearing these past bands in your music though. On A Way Forward, it’s as if that style is channeling through you more majestically. I hear more of a vibrant, celestial space that these melodies of the past are leaping into. I’m curious to know how that’s achieved production-wise. Ian: Part of it is that the producers and engineers we worked with are so amazing, but we were having discussions before and during the recording related to what it is about that era of synth music that is so distinct and magical. I was also exposed to new things I hadn’t heard much when we were recording, like Laurie Spiegel and other early electronic artists. Sometimes when people make ’80s inspired music, there can be a bit of kitsch involved, but the earlier you go, that kind of gets eliminated. There’s no kitsch with Laurie Spiegel. We’re treating it with sincerity as opposed to a wink and a nod.

“No one would have ever heard of Nation of Language if Aidan wasn’t in the band. I might not have even told people I made music.” – Ian Richard Devaney Speaking of Laurie Spiegel, I noticed you use that sort of use of arpeggio synth on songs like “In Manhattan” and “Former Self.” Ian: Yes, there’s a blending of arpeggios going on in those songs and it was about trying to live in that similar space of things flowing over each other and cascading. It was so much fun to try those things in the studio. Aidan: It’s definitely a new and exciting pocket for the band to live in. Ian’s voice flows so well over that. We were listening to a test pressing of the record yesterday and I had just gotten my eyes dilated so I was letting it all flow into my ears with my eyes closed. I got this rush of tingles because I was hearing so many sounds layered up. But you don’t feel overwhelmed by it. It’s very textural. Some of your lyrics come across to me like haiku. For instance: “Crawl my way/Anytime/Rapid, Indirect Feelings/I qualify.” These little passages that you’re left to figure out in your own way as a listener. Ian: Something I definitely strove to do more of on this record was to spend more time with the lyrics and create 166

little vignettes of my life and my past. It’s nice to hear people at shows come up and talk about what these little moments mean to them or how they’re interpreting them. It’s really gratifying to hear because I spend a lot of time listening back through the songs and thinking that something about a line doesn’t feel right. There’s a lot of editing and re-editing. “A Word and A Wave” is a good example. Originally it was just the first verse and it had established this little world so clearly for me that the second verse I added just flowed out immediately. I don’t usually write that fast. It was cool that the walls had been built around me with that first verse and I knew what that place was. What’s it like for you guys as a married couple in an artistic endeavor? Are there strengths and weaknesses that the other one balances out? Ian: More than balancing out strengths and weaknesses, it’s trying to keep each other inspired and creative. Aidan: I have unfettered confidence in Ian and I’m his champion trying to push him towards everyone, which he won’t necessarily do on his own. I’m happy that I can help him present himself to the world but in an integral way and not just as his wife on the side going, “He’s great!” I force him to do things because I know what’s possible for him. I have big dreams for him. Ian: No one would have ever heard of Nation of Language if Aidan wasn’t in the band. I might not have even told people I made music. How aware are you of being a New York band? I’m from here and I haven’t been as excited about a New York band since the early 2000s. No disrespect to the bands that emerged here in the past few years but there hasn’t been that breakout group for a while. I feel like you guys are a big jolt to the scene here. Aidan: I feel like that comes up a lot. People keep saying that there hasn’t really been a New York scene that’s known outside the city for a while. Ian: All those bands really felt like New York bands, but from what I’ve gathered, history has written all of them as being closer than they actually were. So, if there’s a scene like that beginning again, I might not know about it. Growing up with my dad being into bands like Blondie and Talking Heads and the whole ’70s New York scene and me being in high school when The Strokes and Interpol and Yeah Yeah Yeahs were my favorite bands, it felt like we were getting our own little version of that. I definitely want to be known as a New York band. I don’t want to boost you too high but it felt amazing to hear a voice like yours in this scene again. Tunde Adebimpe, and Karen O, and Paul Banks, and Hamilton Leithauser all had these distinct, powerful voices. Ian: They really did. It was an era of incredible front people. You have that kind of voice. My heart just soars when I hear it. Aidan: I agree. There’s nothing like it now in my opinion.

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All Our Friends

Laura Studarus and Austin Trunick enjoying Death Metal Pizza at SXSW 2014.

Under the Radar’s Writers on Our 20th Anniversary and Their Most Memorable Moments Words by Mark Redfern

ome of Under the Radar’s long-term writers I’ve never actually met in person or have only met once or twice, others I’ve been in their weddings or vacationed at their houses, and yet all of them feel like part of our community. Under the Radar seems to attract not only some of the best music writers out there but also those who are in it for the right reasons (in other words, not the money nor the fame). Most of our writers have other professions as well as writing for us, so they are in it for the passion of championing new albums and artists they love. As a music journalist, there’s nothing like discovering an amazing brand new band and getting to tell the world about them. While most of Under the Radar’s communication is accomplished via email, I try to include our writers in the decision making process as much as possible. They get to weigh in of such decisions as who we put on the covers of our print issues, which other artists are mentioned on the covers, which cover photos to go with, who else should be interviewed in an issue, which questions to ask when we’ve done email artist survey interviews, the best albums and

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songs of each year, which special issues we should publish, and more. In that way, I hope our writers feel like they have some agency in the creation of each issue, beyond just being a freelance contributor with no say in anything. My goal in this ever-fractured world is for the inner-workings of Under the Radar to have some sense of teamwork and community, even though our writers are scattered across the globe in far-flung places like China, New Zealand, Netherlands, England, Canada, California, New York, Virginia, Washington, Connecticut, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. As part of our 20th Anniversary Issue I emailed the same set of questions to some of our feature writers who have written for us for a while (some as far back as the early 2000s) and have also conducted interviews for us (rather than only writing reviews), to get an insight into how they came to write for Under the Radar, their most memorable interviews for us, and their thoughts on why we’ve stuck around for 20 years. Yes, these are people who technically work for Under the Radar, but I also consider all of them my friends.

Austin Trunick W

e first met Austin Trunick when he was a publicist for DC Comics, when we started reviewing comics. Soon enough his love of indie music became apparent and he started writing for Under the Radar. That grew into Austin becoming an editor of various sections for us: cinema, Blu-rays and DVDs, video games, and board games (a position he created). He still handles all of those sections expect for cinema. He’s also written for Mental Floss and Consequence and in 2020 he published his first book, The Cannon Film Guide, Vol. 1 (which chronicles the infamous 1970s/1980s film company), with Vol. 2 due out this year.

Austin was born in Warren, Ohio, but grew up in Burghill, Ohio, which he describes as “cow country” and a “30-minute drive from the movie theater, music store, or comic shop.” These days he lives in Granby, Connecticut with his wife Sara and their kids Vera (6) and Lyell (3). When he’s not writing for Under the Radar or working on his books, Austin says his goal is to “mostly keep the kids from accidentally setting stuff on fire.” Do you remember when you first discovered Under the Radar? Was it via the print magazine and if so which issue? I picked up an issue while I was out record shopping, probably upstairs at Kim’s Video but it could have been one of the other long-gone record stores on St. Mark’s Place. I grabbed a

couple more single issues after that, and then I think the first one I received in the mail was the initial Tegan and Sara cover. What’s the most memorable interview you’ve ever done for Under the Radar and why was it so memorable? There are too many to count. Having the chance to have sat down with the late John Hurt and Martin Landau are two memories that I’ll always cherish. Meeting Robert Redford was as incredible as anyone would imagine. Steve Martin, Terry Gilliam, Jarvis Cocker, John Carpenter—there are quite a few bucket list interviews I’ve checked off. Not to mention, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Weird Al—some of my childhood idols! What’s been your favorite issue of Under the Radar so far, as a reader, and why? I loved the Wasted on the Youth issue. It was really fun to hear everyone let down their guards and just gush about the things they loved as children. Those interviews were so earnest, as if no one was worried about sounding uncool. The cover was great, too, featuring Matt Berninger with his daughter. That kid is probably a teenager by now, which really makes me feel old. What do you think sets Under the Radar apart from other music magazines and websites? Under the Radar feels especially curated and

hand-made, which you don’t get as much nowadays from the bigger outlets with huge, constantly-rotating rosters of writers. It feels like something made by people you know, rather than a product. Long before I started writing for the magazine, I’d built a sense of trust in the recommendations I found inside—it was even to the point where I’d identified certain writers whose tastes I felt matched my own and learned their names. I would skim through the reviews section to read their bylines first whenever a new issue arrived. Once I got a glimpse behind the scenes and got to know you and Wendy, I realized how much of yourselves you pour into Under the Radar, and it was obvious why the magazine had such a personalized touch. On top of that, it felt like a real passion for music was the number one quality your writers shared, and it came through on the page. Do you have any other thoughts about the 20th Anniversary of Under the Radar? I’m calling dibs now on reviewing the 20th Anniversary Edition of Japanese Breakfast’s Jubilee in our 40th Anniversary Issue. Which living musician would you most like to still interview that you haven’t gotten to yet? I’m sure Beck is the one artist who would still render me starstruck. Deep inside I’m still that awkward teenager who spent hundreds of futile hours trying to find deep meaning in the lyrics of Odelay. 169

Ben Jardine B

en Jardine was born in Auckland, New Zealand, but moved to Southern California when he was young, so considers both New Zealand and Los Angeles home. In 2018 he moved back to New Zealand and now lives in Wellington. As well as writing for Under the Radar, Ben also writes about music and technology for the New Zealand website The Big Idea, as well as writing and publishing poetry and short stories in various publications in his home country. Prior to Under the Radar Ben also wrote for mxdwn.com and The Owl Mag. These days he lives with his partner, Liz Butler, “who is an incredible comedian and singer. We have an improvised music act, which we’re touring around New Zealand in early 2022.”

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English was quite limited. My questions would be translated into French in real time and then I would hear Mdou answer in French and then the translator would respond in English. My French is pretty limited, but I could understand some of what he said. Mdou spoke about his village and his region and some of the difficulties they were going through (all themes on his most recent album, Afrique Victime), and how he uses his music to help support people in his home. It was just a really unique experience: a somewhat non-linear form of interviewing that I found challenging and exciting all at the same time. I still think about it quite a lot.

Do you remember when you first discovered Under the Radar? Was it via the print magazine and if so, which issue? I think I first found Under the Radar on the web but I don’t actually remember which feature or review I first stumbled across.

What’s been your favorite issue of Under the Radar so far as a reader, and why? The 2021 Protest Issue (Issue 68). I love the idea of a protest issue and love the visual power of the protest sign photo shoots. Hearing artists talk about the things that matter most to them, aside from music, is a great way for Under the Radar to use our platform to discuss the problems that pose the biggest threat to our world and society.

What’s the most memorable interview you’ve ever done for Under the Radar and why was it so memorable? Mdou Moctar, for a web exclusive interview that came out in early 2021. I spoke to Mdou in the early morning in New Zealand (where I live), which was in the evening for him in Niger. We were joined by a translator because Mdou’s

What do you think sets Under the Radar apart from other music magazines and websites? The name says it all, but I think Under the Radar focuses on what’s next in music. What does the music zeitgeist look like tomorrow, not today? Other outlets focus on what’s big in the music industry today, but Under the Radar has

always done a great job of giving new artists a voice and a platform. As a writer for and a reader of the magazine, I’ve discovered more new music from Under the Radar than any other music magazine—and not only that, I’ve been able to learn a lot about the unique personalities of emerging artists. Do you have any other thoughts about the 20th Anniversary of Under the Radar? It’s been really cool to think about the last 20 years of music: how the industry has changed and how it hasn’t. I’ve enjoyed talking to artists about how they’ve seen music change, with the rise of streaming technology and social media as the major forms of exposure to new audiences. I also think retrospectives are good opportunities to take stock and celebrate the work that’s gone into this magazine. Under the Radar is a mycelium network of people who are passionate about music, both artists and writers. The magazine is far-reaching, strong in its foundation, and incredibly necessary for a culture to thrive. It’s a thrill to be a contributing part of that network that has such a historic impact on music and music journalism. Which living musician would you most like to still interview that you haven’t gotten to yet? Oh, so many. Living legends like Paul McCartney, Beyoncé, Joni Mitchell, Thom Yorke, or Patti Smith. But also more recent artists like Aldous Harding or Stu Mackenzie from King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard.

Celine TeoBlockey T

hese days Celine Teo-Blockey may be based in Hermosa Beach, California, near Los Angeles, but her origin is much farther afield. She was born in the small island nation of Singapore, but actually spent some of her formative years in a neighboring country. “I grew up with my grandparents, along the Strait of Malacca, in Malaysia,” Teo-Blockey explains. “I spent the first six years of my life living with them in a little enclave called Portuguese Settlement. Then I had to return to Singapore to begin primary school—and eventually a Catholic boarding school. It was an incredibly difficult transition. The national psyche of these two countries are like chalk and cheese.”

As well as writing feature articles for our website and print magazine (including cover stories), TeoBlockey produces and hosts our Under the Radar podcast, which is not presented in a standard Q&A format, but instead each episode is expertly edited together to tell a compelling story and each episode features immersive sound. The two seasons so far have featured interviews with Courtney Barnett, Lucy Dacus, Ezra Furman, London Grammar, Everything Everything, Sleaford Mods, SPELLLING, and more. Celine has also previously produced radio stories for Sound & Vision, a podcast from the Seattle public radio station KEXP, and a sonic postcard for Sounds LA, from the Los Angeles public radio station KCRW. She’s also written for Her World Singapore, Marie Claire Singapore, Marie Claire Indonesia, FHM Singapore, The Red Bulletin, RIFF Magazine, and more. When she’s not working hard writing articles and producing podcasts for us, Celine is spending time with her husband Paul, their two sons James and Alfie, and their Cocker Spaniel Arlo. Do you remember when you first discovered Under the Radar? Was it via the print magazine, and if so, which issue? When we lived in London in the early 2000s, I used

to hang out at the Borders Bookstore on Oxford St. I used the bookshop—which also had a Starbucks— like a library that I would bring my work to, do research at, and could also have a coffee and lunch. Often I would grab all the music mags I could find and sit at a table by the window and try and go through them all—NME, Q Magazine, Rolling Stone, Uncut, etc. I would only ever buy one magazine in the end. I don’t remember if I ever bought Under the Radar, but I recall it was always in the pile somewhere. Over a decade later, we moved to San Francisco from Sydney, and Green Apple became our favorite local bookstore where our kids would buy picture books and we would thumb through the vinyl covers. I remember seeing the Under the Radar cover with Matt Berninger and his daughter—I remember reading it and from then on would ask the bookstore when they would expect the next issue, making trips there specifically to buy Under the Radar. What’s the most memorable interview you’ve ever done for Under the Radar and why was it so memorable? Wayne Coyne from The Flaming Lips for the Under the Radar podcast, because The Flaming Lips are such a cult band that have also achieved commercial success on a massive, global scale. Sometimes it’s not a good idea to meet your heroes but Wayne was like your cool uncle, the one that never quite grew up but you look forward to hanging out with at family gatherings. As an interview subject he’s genial and incredibly generous. That interview sticks out in my mind because we had so many audio issues (on Zoom, it had to be done in two parts, my dog kept interrupting us and they didn’t manage to record the audio on their end), but Wayne was such a trouper. We all just went along with it and the episode is still one of our most popular ones. In terms of the print magazine, the interview with MUZZ stands out. For goodness sakes, I got to interview Paul Banks!!! And being a supergroup, it also included Josh Kaufman and Matt Barrick. Doing a Zoom three-way (or is it 4-way?) at the start of the pandemic was on the one hand overwhelming because we were all still grappling with the technology,

but they were the nicest, nicest bunch of people. The fact that they were so at ease with each other (Kaufman and Banks have known each other since they were teenagers) also allowed glimpses into their characters that you may not ordinarily have had in any other given situation. And their album is still one of my all-time favorites. And a lot of Interpol fans reached out to me. What’s been your favorite issue of Under the Radar so far, as a reader, and why? In recent years, my favorite issue has been the one with the cover featuring Phoebe Bridges on the front, and Moses Sumney on the back. It’s totally selfish because Moses Sumney was my first U.S. cover [story], but as a reader it’s the kind of story that I want to read about music these days. I want the perspectives to be less “vanilla.” I feel we do a disservice to our readers if we don’t intentionally include voices that have been traditionally overlooked in the indie rock space. I enjoyed the Phoebe Bridges interview as well and thought the two interviews paired well together. I loved the art design of those two covers, they looked stunning together. What do you think sets Under the Radar apart from other music magazines and websites? The fact that we’re still around and writing about music in a way that connects with people and also reflects the shifts in culture. I also love the fact that I still meet music fans who know the title and love the magazine. And people will find ways to reach out to me if they read a particular story that resonates with them. Do you have any other thoughts about the 20th Anniversary of Under the Radar? These days I’m grateful that any music magazine makes it to publishing their 20th anniversary issue in print. Never mind one that I’ve long admired and have now had the opportunity to write for. Which living musician would you most like to still interview that you haven’t gotten to yet? Julian Casablancas from The Strokes, Alex Turner from Arctic Monkeys, and Patti Smith. 171

Dom Gourlay B

ritish writer Dom Gourlay came to Under the Radar after years of writing for the great British music website Drowned in Sound, which alas went largely inactive in 2019. “I wrote for Drowned in Sound from 2001 to 2019,” Gourlay says. “I’ve also written for Gigwise and Artrocker and currently write for FMS as well as Under the Radar. I’ve recently written a chapter for Marc Burrows’ book Manic Street Preachers: Album By Album, which came out in October.” Dom was born in Mansfield, England, but has resided in nearby Nottingham since 1998, where he lives with his wife Juliana and son Johnny. When he’s not championing new music, he’s also a regional secretary for the Unite trade union. Do you remember when you first discovered Under the Radar? Was it via the print magazine, and if so, which issue? I first discovered Under the Radar through my friend and former colleague at Drowned in Sound, the late great Dan Lucas. He was an incredible writer that told me about UTR when he first joined DiS, and I started to follow it from then onwards, which would probably be

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some time around the early 2010s. I don’t recall which issue was the first one I read, but I liked that it seemed to cover a wide range of acts and give license to writers to express themselves rather than follow a formula or template. What’s the most memorable interview you’ve ever done for Under the Radar and why was it so memorable? There’s been a few! Nicky Wire from Manic Street Preachers last year is one because any opportunity to interview my favorite band is always a personal highlight, and the conversation often becomes a catch-up, especially as it was the first we’d spoken since before the COVID-19 pandemic. Others that stand out for me would be Joey Santiago from Pixies, Jonas Bjerre from Mew, and Jimi Goodwin from Doves. Mainly because I’ve been a long-standing fan of their music, but also because they were really lovely and didn’t give the impression they were just fulfilling a PR exercise. What’s been your favorite issue of Under the Radar so far, as a reader, and why? Probably The Protest Issue (#68) because it focused on a lot of political and social issues,

while raising awareness among its readers. What do you think sets Under the Radar apart from other music magazines and websites? Again, Under the Radar doesn’t follow a formula or stick to any templated pattern. It covers a multitude of acts, has a diverse set of writers, and isn’t just about focusing on the established or hyped names of the day. Long may this continue! Do you have any other thoughts about the 20th Anniversary of Under the Radar? It’s a difficult time for music journalism. Most of us have other jobs to make ends meet, and a lot of publications are struggling to stay afloat. So for Under the Radar to have survived 20 years in the current climate is a remarkable achievement, and hopefully we’ll be talking about the 40th anniversary come 2041. Which living musician would you most like to still interview that you haven’t gotten to yet? There’s several. Kevin Shields, Liz Fraser, and James Murphy are three that immediately spring to mind.

Gary Knight and his wife Chelsey Coy.

ary Knight is one of my lifelong friends, but that’s only because he started writing for Under the Radar, in part because of our most famous interview (the last ever with a musical icon). Wendy and I became fast friends with him. When we first met him, Gary was single, but we were there when he met his future wife, Chelsey Coy, at a show sponsored by Under the Radar. We were the only other people there when Gary proposed to Chelsey at the Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles. Both Gary and Chelsey came to our wedding and I was a groomsman in their wedding. All because Gary reached out to write for Under the Radar.

Gary was born in Philadelphia, PA (he’s a big fan of the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team) and grew up in Bucks County, PA, but he and Chelsey live in Los Angeles (and also lived in Queens, New York for several years). During the day he works in administration for a PR firm that represents restaurants and at night he dotes on their three cats: Scout, Boo, and Ella. While Gary doesn’t write about music anymore, he and Chelsey also head up the Americana band Single Girl, Married Girl (named after The Carter Family song), with Chelsey as the singer/songwriter and Gary also contributing songwriting and being involved in studio recordings (but not live performances). Their latest album, 2021’s Three Generations of Leaving, garnered positive press from The New York Times, American Songwriter, and elsewhere. Do you remember when you first discovered Under the Radar? Was it via the print magazine, and if so, which issue? I was looking at magazines outside of Book Soup in West Hollywood in 2003 when I saw

Gary Knight a picture of Elliott Smith on the cover of issue #4 that shocked me a little (he had cut his hair and looked skinny/older). I bought a copy because I was a big fan of his and wanted to see what he was up to (he had been avoiding press for a while, I think). I just remember being impressed by the interview. Marcus Kagler asked insightful questions, and I loved Elliott’s answers and hearing about his recording studio and the double-album he was working on, and I loved the photos that Wendy took, one of which has hung on my wall for 15 years. At the time, I had been contemplating a side career in music journalism and was inspired to reach out to Mark about writing for the magazine, which sent me on a lifechanging path (I formed a close relationship with Mark and Wendy, developed as a writer and music listener, interviewed one of my favorite artists, Jason Falkner, discovered great music—Feist and Grizzly Bear, both of whom I interviewed and covered, and met the love of my life at a show Under the Radar sponsored: Emily Haines at The Viper Room). What’s the most memorable interview you’ve ever done for Under the Radar and why was it so memorable? I interviewed Paul [Smith] from Dengue Fever in 2005 right before the release of Escape from Dragon House, an album that I love. All I remember from that night was how kind and open he was discussing the band, but we smoked pot in his car, so my memory is hazy. There’s an audio recording of that interview that I will listen to again when I’m feeling brave (and perhaps wanting to laugh at myself). What’s been your favorite issue of Under the Radar so far, as a reader, and why? Issue #4, for the impact it had on my life.

What do you think sets Under the Radar apart from other music magazines and websites? There’s a personal touch and obvious love for what’s being covered, and there is credibility akin to other publications I admire, like The Big Takeover and No Depression. I also admire how the coverage has grown to incorporate other media (comic books, movies, etc.). Do you have any other thoughts about the 20th Anniversary of Under the Radar? I just think it’s a wonderful testament to its quality and readership that you can walk into a bookstore or magazine shop and buy a physical copy of Under the Radar in this day and age. Even though I don’t write much about music anymore, I am still a fan and always in awe at the passion and care that goes into making every issue. I could not be prouder of Mark and Wendy for what they have accomplished (for what they have created for themselves and discerning music and pop culture fans all around the world). It’s a better world because of their contributions, and I’m sure there are many, many artists who are grateful for them. Which living musician would you most like to still interview that you haven’t gotten to yet? Probably Jeff Tweedy, because he’s certainly in the Under the Radar wheelhouse, but because of what he’s accomplished as an artist and as part of one of the best bands of the last two decades-plus (consistently-good/ adventurous albums, interesting poetry, top-notch live shows, well-curated festivals, stellar production work, an insightful and enjoyable memoir, ethical behavior, a celebrated studio and love for gear, respect for fans, self-sufficiency, and a constant celebrating of artists, past and present). 173

Hays Davis H

ays Davis grew up in West Tennessee, near Memphis, but currently lives in the Richmond, Virginia area with his wife Melissa (with whom he has two daughters). Even though he’s based in Virginia, he actually came to Under the Radar when we were still based in Los Angeles. He also writes for his local daily newspaper, The Richmond Times-Dispatch. On top of all that, he’s truly one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. Do you remember when you first discovered Under the Radar? Was it via the print magazine, and if so, which issue? I can’t recall the exact issue, but I first discovered Under the Radar in 2010 through print copies at a Barnes & Noble. It was such an across-the-board match with my interests that I immediately felt compelled to contact the magazine about contributing. What’s the most memorable interview you’ve ever done for Under the Radar and why was it so memorable? My most memorable interview for Under the Radar may have been in 2015 with Nicky Wire of Manic Street Preachers. After observing the 20th anniversary of their album The Holy Bible the year before, the band was planning

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a short (and rare) U.S. tour where they would perform the album in its entirety. Talking with Wire about performing a set of songs that were not only challenging to play, but that also would forever be emotionally linked to the 1995 disappearance of guitarist Richey Edwards, definitely sticks with me. Naming a single interview for this question isn’t easy, though. Interviewing Irmin Schmidt of the widely influential German band CAN was a high point, and my last one, with Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle, was one I had looked forward to, having been a fan of their work for as long as Under the Radar has been in print. What’s been your favorite issue of Under the Radar so far as a reader, and why? It’s hard to settle on a favorite issue, but the 10th Anniversary Issue definitely holds a warm spot with me. It was a great buzz to be involved with celebrating that notable milestone, with Joanna Newsom and Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold on the cover, and realizing that 10 years have passed on their way to the present anniversary catches me by surprise, frankly. What do you think sets Under the Radar apart from other music magazines and websites? I think those who are longtime or even casual

readers of Under the Radar see it as a trusted brand that serves as a source for interviews, reviews, and other content involving some of the most worthy artists of the moment as well as significant up-and-comers. Do you have any other thoughts about the 20th Anniversary of Under the Radar? With a number of music magazines having gone strictly online or out of the picture over the past 10 years, it’s fantastic to see Under the Radar alive and well for its 20th anniversary, both in print and online. In the way that music fans have long enjoyed sitting down with a vinyl or CD copy of an album and getting to know it, there has also been a similar experience in picking up print issues of music magazines, and it has been great to see Under the Radar continuing in print while thriving online as well with a unique presence. Which living musician would you most like to still interview that you haven’t gotten to yet? As a longtime fan of The Who, stretching back to childhood, interviewing Pete Townshend or Roger Daltrey would likely top my list. Had I not already interviewed Ray and Dave Davies of The Kinks, among a few key others, that would be a more crowded field.

Jake Uitti J

ake Uitti is a relatively new Under the Radar writer, joining the team in January 2020, just before the pandemic took hold. But in the last two years he’s also been one of our most prolific interviewers, talking to all sorts of people for us (including musicians, actors, directors, authors, and more). He was born in Princeton, New Jersey, but these days lives in Seattle, Washington with his wife Eva, who is the frontwoman for The Black Tones (who are putting out a single on Sub Pop). Jake has also written for American Songwriter, Guitar World, and Interview Magazine. In April he has a book, Muggsy: My Life from a Kid in the Projects to the Godfather of Small Ball, due out. It is a memoir from basketball legend Muggsy Bogues, written with Jake.

Do you remember when you first discovered Under the Radar? Was it via the print magazine and if so which issue? Under the Radar was one of those publications that always seemed in the air— it’s numinous. One of those you hear about in record stores, second hand. But the first time I dove into it was when I started to want

to write for it. That’s when the research and the pitches to the editor came. What’s the most memorable interview you’ve ever done for Under the Radar and why was it so memorable? Cat Power, for this print edition. Sometimes you just click with a subject—you see eye to eye. It was lovely talking with Cat (aka Chan) about her life, her sound, and what made her tick. It even felt like we became friends, in a way. My wife ended up talking to her on the phone and now they chat on social media. Who would have guessed? What’s been your favorite issue of Under the Radar so far as a reader, and why? The Protest Issue was great recently because you got to see what artists thought outside their work. What do you think sets Under the Radar apart from other music magazines and websites? Dutiful effort towards the undiscovered while also not ignoring pop culture. Do you have any other thoughts about

“Sometimes you just click with [an interview] subject—you see eye to eye.” the 20th Anniversary of Under the Radar? Big congratulations and I hope there’s more to come! Which living musician would you most like to still interview that you haven’t gotten to yet? Method Man and Miley Cyrus. I bet they have stories for aeons. 175

Jasper Willems J

asper Willems was born in Leiden, The Netherlands, but grew up in ‘sHertogenbosch, the birthplace of 15th century Dutch painter Hieronymous Bosch. He’s currently based in Rotterdam and as such is one of our more far-flung correspondents. As well as writing for Under the Radar he’s also written for Drowned In Sound, Bandcamp Daily, and Beats Per Minute, as well as writing copy and features for the Le Guess Who? festival. In 2020 Jasper wrote the book Rotterdam Goddamn, which he says is “about the fringe punk scene of Rotterdam featuring bands like Rats on Rafts, Lewsberg, and The Sweet Release of Death.”

Do you remember when you first discovered Under the Radar? Was it via the print magazine, and if so, which issue? I honestly can’t remember exactly. Under the Radar has always been part of the many outlets I’ve followed throughout the decade. I reckon I just clicked on an Under the Radar article on Twitter and just started to follow the account one day. I think fellow music writer Laura Studarus linked me up with Mark (Redfern), and that’s how I ended up writing for it. What’s the most memorable interview you’ve ever done for Under the Radar and why was it so memorable? Even though it was just 30 minutes of phone 176

conversation, it was amazing to finally interview Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips. They have been my favorite band since my late teens so it was quite surreal to finally speak with him. But as far as the quality of the conversation itself, Deradoorian was a really intense, memorable, and mindblowing interviewee. What’s been your favorite issue of Under the Radar so far as a reader, and why? I loved issue #67, which had an amazing cover story and photo series about Phoebe Bridgers. What do you think sets Under the Radar apart from other music magazines and websites? I like how Under the Radar isn’t preoccupied with the current trend in music journalism that everything an artist conveys has to be molded into a snappy statement. There’s a lot of humanity in the content, and a lot of room for artists to just be themselves and not just be in this mode of having to pontificate their work in depth. Moments of banality, relaxation, and goofing around have their place, which actually helps getting to know them a bit better as people as opposed to getting these projected impressions. I also love that the website plugs lesser-known artists who don’t benefit from big PR campaigns. Do you have any other thoughts about the

“I like how Under the Radar isn’t preoccupied with the current trend in music journalism that everything an artist conveys has to be molded into a snappy statement.” 20th Anniversary of Under the Radar? I wish I could’ve written more content for it, just as a gesture of thanks that I’m still on board. But I’m sure there is plenty of meaty stuff to nosedive into. Which living musician would you most like to still interview that you haven’t gotten to yet? Honestly, I have interviewed so many great ones already, kind of feels lame to wish for more. I consider myself a really lucky person. But yeah, PJ Harvey would be very cool.

Kyle Mullin K

yle Mullin is our only writer based in China, but he’s actually from New Brunswick, Canada. These days he’s an English literature teacher at an international school in Beijing, where he lives with his wife Linlin and their daughter Grace. As well as writing for Under the Radar, Kyle has an impressive resume of other publications he’s also written for, including National Geographic, The Guardian, Spin, Wired, Forbes Asia, Complex Canada, Exclaim!, and Slate.

Do you remember when you first discovered Under the Radar? Was it via the print magazine, and if so, which issue? 2015, when I was seeking out new publications to write for and found your website. What’s the most memorable interview you’ve ever done for Under the Radar and why was it so memorable? Johnny Marr, because he complimented Morrissey’s vocals on “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” rather than showing animosity to his ex-bandmate years after The Smiths broke up. The fact that that song is Marr’s favorite Smiths song, rather a more obviously guitar centric track, is also a surprising testament to his nuance and thoughtfulness. What’s been your favorite issue of Under the Radar so far as a reader, and why?

Putting Kamasi Washington on the cover was a fantastic recent choice that shook things up a bit at the publication. It felt like a milestone issue and the publication has since built on that momentum with eye catching cover subjects like Moses Sumney and Japanese Breakfast. What do you think sets Under the Radar apart from other music magazines and websites? This publication very much lives up to its name by discovering swaths of up-andcoming acts that might have otherwise slipped under readers’ radars. Bands like Wolf Alice were championed by the magazine and have become some of the current biggest stars in the world. I’m looking forward to seeing the next Pleased to Meet You interviewee become a household name. Do you have any other thoughts about the 20th Anniversary of Under the Radar? Mark and Wendy are warriors that have kept this publication going in the face of myriad industry challenges. I feel that, in recent years, Under the Radar has been gaining fresh momentum by making more space for POC and artists from other genres on its cover, and I’m excited to see what the publication has in store next. Which living musician would you most like to still interview that you haven’t gotten to yet?

“Johnny Marr [was my most memorable interview], because he complimented Morrissey’s vocals on ‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me’ rather than showing animosity to his ex-bandmate years after The Smiths broke up.” Killer Mike from Run the Jewels, Willie Nelson, Adam Granduciel of The War on Drugs, and Mitski. 177

Laura Ferreiro L

aura Ferreiro was an early addition to the Under the Radar team, coming on board in 2002 in time for our fourth issue the following year. She fast became a close friend to Wendy and I and eventually became the godmother to our daughter Rose. She was born in New York, but grew up in Southern California and currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband Ray Flotat, a fellow music journalist who founded the music and entertainment website mxdwn.com in 2001, the same year we launched Under the Radar. As well as writing for Under the Radar, Laura has also written for NME, Los Angeles Times, Variety, Rolling Stone, Yahoo, LA Weekly, and more. She’s also a brand storyteller consultant and founded M4G Media (www.m4gmedia.com), working with Red Bull, Gretsch Guitars, and others, often partnering companies and non-profits together. She’s also one of the sweetest and kindest people you’ll ever meet and is currently working on her first fiction novel.

What’s the most memorable interview you’ve ever done for Under the Radar and why was it so memorable? One of the most memorable interviews I did for Under the Radar was with rising NYC band stellastarr* in the early ’00s. Along with Under the Radar publishers Mark and Wendy, I shadowed the band on their first trip to L.A., just before they signed to a major label. We started by picking them up from 178

LAX and shuttling them around town, doing a photo shoot on a rooftop with views of the downtown L.A. skyline, and interviewing them backstage at the Troubadour, where they performed. Although their star didn’t rise quite as high as anticipated (please forgive the bad pun), we had a blast getting to know them and doing an in-depth feature over the course of several days. What do you think sets Under the Radar apart from other music magazines and websites? Under the Radar is unlike any other publication in that it covers many of my favorite bands with informative, well written, and in-depth features as well as news and reviews, and gorgeous photos that capture the artists’ personalities and help tell their stories. As an independently owned magazine, it has maintained its integrity since its inception 20 years ago, which is incredibly impressive and no small feat. Do you have any other thoughts about the 20th Anniversary of Under the Radar? I’m thrilled that Under the Radar is celebrating its 20th anniversary. It’s so inspiring that it has stayed true to its mission and ethos for two decades, still leads the pack in discovering great new music, and has continued publishing print issues in a time when so many magazines have thrown in the towel. It is truly a gift to music lovers around the world. Which living musician would you most

“Not only is [Patti Smith] a groundbreaking female musician, but the books she has written are gorgeous and endlessly inspiring, and I greatly admire her humanitarian work.” like to still interview that you haven’t gotten to yet? I would love to interview Patti Smith. I’ve come very close, but it hasn’t happened yet! Not only is she a groundbreaking female musician, but the books she has written are gorgeous and endlessly inspiring, and I greatly admire her humanitarian work. Fingers crossed it will happen one day.

Laura Studarus L

aura Studarus came to us an intern. She had an inauspicious start with us, when at first we thought she didn’t show up to the job interview, but it was only because there was confusion as to where the coffee shop we were supposed to meet her was (she just ended up being late). Once she joined the team it turned out she was an incredibly fast learner and a fantastic writer. As well as working with us on a day-to-day basis, she assisted on photo shoots and helped us out at our SXSW events. Post internship she stayed with Under the Radar, handling our social media for several years and continuing to write for us, eventually writing cover stories (the only former intern to write a cover story for us). She still works with Under the Radar, producing the Why Not Both podcast we present and still writing features for us from time to time. She’s also a travel and lifestyle journalist, which means that when there’s not a pandemic on she’s rarely found at home in Southern California, instead traveling the world as a travel writer, such as going to a sauna in a Burger King in Helsinki, Finland. Her byline has appeared in all manner of impressive places and she currently writes for Shondaland and The Daily Beast. She is also “currently living with a black cat named Kyoto who moonlights as a comedian.” And she really, really hates snails. They terrify her and gross her out and I have pranked her many a time by sending her a link and she discovers it’s a close-up video of a snail eating or mating. Fun times.

Do you remember when you first discovered Under the Radar? Was it via the print magazine, and if so, which issue? I was working at a bookstore after college, hating my life and questioning my purpose. Literally the only thing that made me happy was paging through the magazine stand— where I found Under the Radar. I used a chunk of my inadequate pay to subscribe shortly after. (I still have my Tegan and Sara issue!) But it took another six months or so before it occurred to me that writing was something I’d like to do full-time...and maybe I could talk them into taking me on as an intern to hone my skills? (Spoiler: They did—and if you order a back issue, there’s a high likelihood it has my fingerprints on it.)

assisted with the photo shoot, and seeing Ben Gibbard, Jenny Lewis, Deerhunter, and Devendra Banhart together (in a creepy mansion no less!) was such an overwhelming reminder of everything I love about music. What do you think sets Under the Radar apart from other music magazines and websites? There’s no formula. I’ve sat in on planning meetings, and I’ve heard the spirited debate. Every cover, and all the features exist because someone on staff decided that this artist is worth sharing with readers. Also: a special thank you to Matt Fink for constantly setting a high bar and forcing me to up my game.

What’s the most memorable interview you’ve ever done for Under the Radar and why was it so memorable? Definitely writing the Future Islands cover! We started the conversation at SXSW—while I was recovering from the worst stomach flu of my life. I was immediately taken by the guys’ charm and honesty. A week later, Sam [Herring] called me to finish the interview, with the understanding we’d talk for about an hour. We finally hung up almost three hours later after multiple rounds of laughter and tears. I’m still thankful for their generosity.

Do you have any other thoughts about the 20th Anniversary of Under the Radar? I’m just proud to be part of the Under the Radar community. Everyone who works for Mark and Wendy has a story about how the magazine has led them to friends, partners, and experiences far beyond what they imagined when they first signed on. It’s rare that something so rooted in passion is successful for so long, and the fact that it’s still touching people (and exploring some truly excellent music) 20 years in is awesome.

What’s been your favorite issue of Under the Radar so far as a reader, and why? The Best of the Decade issue [in 2010] will always have a special place in my heart. I

Which living musician would you most like to still interview that you haven’t gotten to yet? Kate Bush! Maybe we could chat after running uphill. 179

Lily Moayeri L

ily Moayeri was already a prolific music journalist when she came to Under the Radar, getting her start in the business nine years before we even launched the magazine. The list of iconic musicians she’s interviewed is just as impressive as the number of notable outlets she’s contributed to: Billboard, NPR, Los Angeles Times, Grammy, Variety, LA Weekly, Spin, Los Angeles Magazine, A.V. Club, DJ Mag, Mixmag, Flood, Mix, Book and Film Globe, Rock and Roll Globe, Fine Art Globe, DJ Life, and New Noise. “I am a contributing editor to The Guerilla Guide to the Music Business and I am contributing a chapter to the upcoming anthology The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Record Store: A Global History,” Lily adds. On top of all that she’s also been our Television Editor for many years, writing, assigning, and editing reviews of TV shows for us.

Lily was born in Washington, D.C. but grew up in “various parts of the Middle East as my father was a diplomat and we moved with his assignments.” These days she lives in Los Angeles with “Laurence Schroeder aka Regal Standard, podcast partner and rock star husband” and is a teacher librarian at Abraham Lincoln High School in LAUSD. You can find her writing and her podcast at her website (www.pictures-of-lily.com). 180

Do you remember when you first discovered Under the Radar? Was it via the print magazine, and if so, which issue? Every time I was interviewing an artist in-person, they also had an interview scheduled with Under the Radar. This put Under the Radar on my radar and made me want to become one of their contributors as we seemed to have so much commonality in our music taste. What do you think sets Under the Radar apart from other music magazines and websites? Under the Radar has always had a very defined identity. As the publication moves through eras and musical trends, it stays close to a through-thread that can be traced all the way back to its origins, which makes it a reliable source for its audience. It is also a loyal platform for the artists it champions, and continues to support them through their careers, even when those artists may have gone out of fashion with other media outlets. Do you have any other thoughts about the 20th Anniversary of Under the Radar? Making it to 20 years through so many upheavals in the publishing industry is a feat for any publications, let alone one that continues to release a physical magazine. Under the Radar is a true labor of

“As the publication moves through eras and musical trends, it stays close to a through-thread that can be traced all the way back to its origins, which makes it a reliable source for its audience.” love that comes out of dedication to the music that moves and the artists that create it. Which living musician would you most like to still interview that you haven’t gotten to yet? My first ever favorite band when I was very young was Bee Gees and they still occupy a top space in my all-time favorites. There is only one living member, Barry Gibb, and it is my mission in life to have a face-to-face sit-down with him before we lose one of the greatest songwriters of all time.

Mark Moody M

ark Moody was born and raised in Houston, TX, where he also went to college. These days he lives in Tampa, FL but misses “bigger city music scenes and tours.” He resides there with his wife, Christa, a professional photographer (“we’ve worked on many live shows and festivals together,” Mark says). They have three kids—Kate, Emma, and Will—who Mark says are “all moved out barring a second pandemic!”

Like many music journalists, Mark also had another profession. “I have worked my entire career in financial services, but am an indie music and music review fan going back to high school—avid reader of No Depression and Option magazine back then and beyond,” he explains. Mark is a somewhat more recent addition to Under the Radar’s writing staff, coming to us in 2019 after writing for the British music website SoundBlab, when they went on hiatus, and has also written for No Ripcord, another UK-based site. He acclimated to Under the Radar easily and has since conducted many notable interviews for our website and print magazine. Do you remember when you first discovered Under the Radar? Was it via the print magazine, and if so, which issue? I have been a long time indie music fan and had certainly heard of Under the Radar. I fell out of touch with what was going on in the field until my kids were older and when apps

like Spotify came along, so I starting reading reviews on Under the Radar a few years back, and then when the site I was writing for previously went dark, I reached out about writing for Under the Radar and am now on the site daily. What’s the most memorable interview you’ve ever done for Under the Radar and why was it so memorable? All of the artists I have interviewed have provided great memories. I’d have to say my favorite though was interviewing Kate Stables of This Is the Kit. It was my first video interview during COVID-19 and she was hilarious. I had to call at 7 a.m. since she was in Paris and I was in the U.S. I’ve never laughed so hard that early in the morning and she also showed me her board game collection and pinhole camera. Video interviews have really opened up new ways to connect. What’s been your favorite issue of Under the Radar so far as a reader, and why? Issue 68 for somewhat selfish reasons (it was my second to contribute to), but also because it was a Protest Issue in the midst of some of the most tumultuous times we have seen in my lifetime. So it was much more impactful to read about artists’ views on racism, climate change, and other topics when we were right in the midst of chaos. What do you think sets Under the Radar apart from other music magazines

and websites? Certainly the fact it is still in print is a huge factor. Also that it focuses on emerging and new artists—I would always rather hear something new and exciting than something I already know. Also the amount of daily news on upcoming albums, tours, and up and coming bands is incredibly valuable. Do you have any other thoughts about the 20th Anniversary of Under the Radar? As a relative newcomer to the magazine, I am just happy to be a part of any segment of Under the Radar’s 20 years in print. Though I mainly focus on what is ahead, it was great to reminisce about great albums over the past 20 years and get to write about a few. It’s certainly a testament to Mark and Wendy’s dedication that the site and magazine remain fresh and a daily go to for many music fans. Which living musician would you most like to still interview that you haven’t gotten to yet? That’s a tough one and as much as I like to focus on new artists outside the mainstream, I’d have to say Tom Waits. He totally changed his sound in the mid-’80s and has become something of a cult figure that seems to have suddenly disappeared. The quality of his writing, off key perspective, and innovative approach to sound I’ve always found compelling and would love to know more about him and what motivates him today (even if it’s not music). 181

Matt Conner M

att Conner was born in Southern Indiana and now lives in the state capitol, Indianapolis. He resides there with his wife Lindsay and their eight-year-old son, Elliot. For his day job he is an editor for Minute Media. Matt has also written for several other noted publications, including Vox Media, Indy Star, No Depression, Wired, and Relevant. He primarily writes feature articles for us and can turn around interviews in no time at all. For the last year or so he has been Under the Radar’s Cinema Editor, assigning and editing our film coverage. Do you remember when you first discovered Under the Radar? Was it via the print magazine, and if so, which issue? I was either at a Borders or a Barnes & Noble bookstore when I first discovered Under the Radar. I used to spend a lot of time in those places just to listen to new music at listening stations and read the latest magazines to stay in the know. It was always nice to read Under the Radar and any other publication that didn’t feature the exact same artists on the cover in the same month. What’s the most memorable interview you’ve ever done for Under the Radar and why was it so memorable? I’ve talked to a lot of my favorite artists over the years for Under the Radar, from Andrew Bird and Sigur Rós to Spoon and Low, but nothing

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will ever be as meaningful as being assigned a tribute to Scott Hutchison. I was a diehard Frightened Rabbit fan with a deep personal connection to their songs and Scott’s vulnerability about his own mental health issues. Speaking to so many of his colleagues in the industry—from the band’s manager to Frightened Rabbit bandmates to friends in other Scottish acts—was so heartening and healing even for me. Even more, speaking with his brother Grant for a couple hours in the aftermath was revealing in how those issues affected everyone else. I’ll likely never have another story like it. What do you think sets Under the Radar apart from other music magazines and websites? There’s a pretty solid filter for the music itself, which really forms the heart of it all, and a dogged indie approach that adds to the credibility. Given the longevity as well, it’s just a unicorn in the industry. Do you have any other thoughts about the 20th Anniversary of Under the Radar? Kudos to the Redferns! Which living musician would you most like to still interview that you haven’t gotten to yet? Bruce Springsteen. Not sure if he’s under the radar, however. :)

“I’ve talked to a lot of my favorite artists over the years for Under the Radar, from Andrew Bird and Sigur Rós to Spoon and Low, but nothing will ever be as meaningful as being assigned a tribute to Scott Hutchison.”

Matt Fink N

o one has written more cover stories for Under the Radar than Matt Fink, because no one quite writes cover stories like Matt Fink. He is able to peel back the complex layers of an interview subject like few others and has the ability to weave together long articles that are never less than compelling from start to finish in a manner rarely matched. He’s also one of our longest serving writers. He first started writing for us with Issue 6, in 2004, where he interviewed Modest Mouse about what would become their biggest album, Good News for People Who Love Bad News. He’s written for every print issue since.

the time, and I remember seeing the cover of the issue they were on and thinking, “How have I not heard of this magazine?” I think I inquired about writing for Under the Radar approximately five minutes after finding out it existed. I’m glad I did.

Matt was born in Brookville, Pennsylvania, but “grew up about 45 minutes north of Pittsburgh in a little town called Distant, Pennsylvania.” He was also a longtime contributor to Paste, as well as writing for All Music Guide, Stop Smiling, Death + Taxes, Skyscraper, Pop Culture Press, Skope, Tiny Mix Tapes, and “probably a dozen others that I can’t think of at the moment.” When Matt isn’t writing amazing articles for Under the Radar, he’s an academic advisor at Kent State University. He currently lives in Akron, Ohio with his wife Lisa, their daughter Lillian, and their son Elliott. “I have a cat named Ozzy,” he adds.

What’s the most memorable interview you’ve ever done for Under the Radar and why was it so memorable? The most memorable interview might be the first time I talked to Yoko Ono. I don’t get starstruck very often, but I genuinely froze that time. I remember her publicist getting off the phone call after introducing us, and I just couldn’t force any words out. Yoko broke the silence and said, “Do you have any questions for me?” and laughed. Honestly, I was more than a little intimidated by her, given her reputation. But she was actually quite warm and engaging, though not someone who elaborates much in her answers. It was an interview about the history of protest music, and it was beyond surreal to hear her talk about John Lennon and their work together during the late ’60s/early ’70s, knowing the key role those events played in the anti-war movement. She concluded the interview by saying, “Let’s have a beautiful future together.” That’s when I froze a second time, because I had no idea how to reply. I still don’t.

Do you remember when you first discovered Under the Radar? Was it via the print magazine and if so which issue? As far as I recall, I think the first time I came across Under the Radar was when I was looking at a press kit for The Flaming Lips in late 2003. I was doing a lot of freelancing at

What’s been your favorite issue of Under the Radar so far, as a reader, and why? I’m still a fan of the Music vs. Comedy issue. Those two cultures have always overlapped to some degree, but that issue was the first time I really understood to what extent. It was a really well-executed concept.

What do you think sets Under the Radar apart from other music magazines and websites? After 20 years, Under the Radar is still a magazine focused on out-of-the-mainstream music. Given how much indie music has been subsumed into the larger popular culture over the last two decades, it’s to our credit that we’re still largely focused on discovering new acts that haven’t yet reached the NPR/New York Times/late night TV show level of fame. A lot of publications that started out like Under the Radar have slowly morphed into lifestyle magazines for people with disposable incomes, but we have remained focused on music. Do you have any other thoughts about the 20th Anniversary of Under the Radar? Having been freelancing since 1999, I realize just how few publications have managed to survive over the past 20 years. My portfolio is a graveyard of magazines that never made it past a handful of issues and quite a few that finally collapsed after having far longer runs. I can only assume that Under the Radar is still going because everyone involved loves doing it and wants to continue the conversation that started back in 2001. Which living musician would you most like to still interview that you haven’t gotten to yet? Paul McCartney. There’s no living artist whose work has meant more to me, and there’s no songwriter who has had a more pronounced influence on the larger culture over the last half century. People will still be talking about him 500 years from now. 183

Mike Hilleary M

ike Hilleary was born and raised in Fredericksburg, VA and now lives about an hour away in Richmond, VA with his wife and two sons. He began as a freelance writer for us and then became our News Editor for a while. He also wrote big feature articles and cover stories for Under the Radar. He’s also written for Vanity Fair, GQ, Pitchfork, Inside Hook, Spin, Grammy.com, Paste, Filter, and FLOOD. This all led to his first book, 2020’s On the Record: Music Journalists on Their Lives, Craft, and Careers, for which he interviewed a slew of notable music journalists, editors, and publishers, including yours truly. These days, for his day job he is the Multimedia Editor for the American Medical Group Association.

Do you remember when you first discovered Under the Radar? Was it via the print magazine, and if so, which issue? I’ll always remember the first time I was introduced to Under the Radar. Out of college in the late aughts I had a habit of frequenting big box bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders—back when they existed—to see what new music magazine issues had been put on the shelves. I was already familiar with publications like Paste and Filter, but it was in spring 2008 that I found Under the Radar. It was impossible to ignore the cover. It was issue #21 and featured Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie looking absolutely ridiculous parodying the album cover of Captain & Tennille’s 1975 debut Love Will Keep Us Together, complete with drooling English bulldogs. So really it was Wendy Redfern’s photography that drew me into the magazine 184

before I read a single feature or review. She’s still one of my favorite magazine photographers. What’s been your favorite issue of Under the Radar so far as a reader, and why? It’s difficult what my favorite issue of Under the Radar is, but if I had to choose I would have to pick issue #29, the Best of the Decade. Not only did I have the opportunity to interview two of my favorite living songwriters, Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, and Jenny Lewis, I got to talk to them about their careers as a whole and not just venture into whatever new project they were involved in at the time. Getting artists who have not just managed to create a moment in time, but a body of work that is worth looking back on, that’s a special thing. And to have an entire issue dedicated to those artists that made an impact over an extended period of time makes for a lot of great reads. What do you think sets Under the Radar apart from other music magazines and websites? The thing that really sets Under the Radar apart from other music magazines and websites is something readers likely have no clue about, because its behind-the-scenes. Typically when you freelance write for a magazine or web publication, your job is to develop your story, file it on time, coordinate with your editor regarding potential changes, and submit an invoice for your work. Freelancers are entirely hands off when it comes to larger machinations of a publication. That’s not the case with Under the Radar. Mark has this compulsive need—almost to a fault—of bringing in his stable of writers into the development of an issue of Under the Radar. It’s not a magazine of executive decisions. Everyone has

the opportunity to weigh in on unique elements of the publication. We vote on who should be featured in an issue, who should be on the cover of an issue, what cover photographer or design looks best, and a host of other meaningful decisions that lead to a completed Under the Radar issue. It’s not just about creating content, but generating a product that comes from a host of contributing voices and perspectives. Do you have any other thoughts about the 20th Anniversary of Under the Radar? It’s remarkable to think that an entirely independent music magazine still exists today, let alone one that maintains in print format. Under the Radar may not come out as often as it used to, and isn’t able to contend with the immediacy and timeliness of the internet’s content-economy, but I’m so happy it lives and breathes in the lane it has carved out for itself. The fact that Under the Radar has survived in any form for 20 years is a testament to Mark and Wendy’s love for it—with maybe a hint of masochism. Which living musician would you most like to still interview that you haven’t gotten to yet? While he certainly wouldn’t fall under the category of Under the Radar’s criteria of coverage, if I had the opportunity to interview Paul McCartney, that would be a highlight of my life right up there with my wedding day and the birth of my kids. The fact that after all these years McCartney still has this kind of teenage glee when it comes to songwriting, while at the same time having this objective understanding and humility when it comes to the impact his work has had on popular music, he’s a unicorn.

WET LEG | S AII MAIL | LADYTRON |

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AT T GRA DMA

20th Anniversary Issue NILÜFER YANYA q THE HORRORS THE DIVINE COMEDY q ELBOW ROSE ELINOR DOUGALL q MIKI BERENYI

Redun_Radar_01 2022

Articles inside

Radar

Cat Power

Let’s Eat Grandma

Radar’s First Album

Nation of Language All Our Friends: Under the Radar’s

alt-J

Basement on the Hill