DIY, May 2021 by DIY Magazine

DIY

ISSUE 107 • MAY 2021 DIYMAG.COM

SQUID JESSIE WARE THE VACCINES & MORE

Easy Life DIVING IN WITH BRITAIN'S BIGGEST CULT BAND

St. Vincent is back with a record of all-new songs. Warm Wurlitzers and wit, glistening guitars and grit, with sleaze and style for days. Taking you from uptown to downtown with the artist who makes you expect the unexpected. So sit back, light up, and by all means have that bourbon waiting, because…

DADDY’S HOME.

Available May 14th on vinyl, cassette, 8-track and more.

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QUESTION! This month, Liverpool threw a massive festival trial where punters didn't have to socially distance, and live music is coming back for the first time in ages - but which bands are top of Team DIY's live wishlist right now?! SARAH JAMIESON • Managing Editor I have to admit, I have such a hankering to see Arctic Monkeys right now. Just pass me a warm pint of cider, and plonk me in the middle of a field full of people singing ‘Crying Lightning’; I'll be very happy indeed. EMMA SWANN • Founding Editor I will cry many happy tears should I get to watch Jack White thrash his way around a stage again (and don’t even tease me about the idea of it being with Meg). LISA WRIGHT • Features Editor All I want is for Queens of The Stone Age to play a riff so thunderous it makes all of my vital organs vibrate. I don't think that is too much to ask.

MAY MAY MAY

ISSUE PLAYLIST

Scan the Spotify code to listen to our May playlist now.

P e

month?

REMI WOLF WE LOVE DOGS Technicolour pop as bright as the LA sun Remi lives under has been given some suitably funky reworks courtesy of Beck, Nile Rodgers, Tune-Yards and more - plus Dominic Fike pops up on a new take on ‘Photo ID’.

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D I Y 's c o l l

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ELLY WATSON • Digital Editor I have been dreaming about going to this The 1975/Charli XCX/Phoebe Bridgers/Pale Waves Finsbury Park piss-up for what feels like 10 years now…

NING

nd rou

-h ar

E T S

LOUISE MASON • Art Director I've waited years for my favourite Ukrainian metal band ever, Hoof Boy, to play the UK and it's finally happening.

EDITOR'S LETTER If the last year has taught us anything, it’s that sometimes, you’ve just gotta give in and go with the flow. And for the cover stars of our May issue, that’s definitely become a bit of a mantra. That’s right: this month, we’re celebrating the incredible rise of Easy Life, as they get ready to release their sublime and satisfying debut ‘life’s a beach’, an album that’s sure to soundtrack many a summer staycation. Elsewhere this month, things get topical with The Vaccines, who give us the first word on their new album (ooh-er), we keep the party going with Jessie Ware and dive headfirst into the bizarrely brilliant world of Squid’s debut. Plus, there’s chats with Iceage, Alfie Templeman, Bachelor, and loads more. What’re you waiting for?! Dive on in… Sarah Jamieson, Managing Editor

LUCY DACUS HOME VIDEO The singer-songwriter’s third solo record once again shows she’s a dab hand at storytelling while not losing her knack for an earwormy chorus. MY BLOODY VALENTINE BACK CATALOGUE While it’s probably a fair guess that anyone already knee-deep in MBV’s particular brand of feedback isn’t the biggest user of streaming services, novelty’s a good’un and their ethereal fuzz has soundtracked many a WFH sesh.

C O N T E N T S

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Shout out to: Beth @ Toast and all the Easy Life gang for being so cooperative and making our lives easier, Rupert and Annette for the pool and coffee, John Harbison for facilitating Team DIY’s return to pub life on Day One, Dan @ EMI and Bull for the Dalston Roof Garden screening fun times, Sinead O’Brien for the tinnies, and hairdressers (all of them, everywhere) for taming our lockdown manes.

Founding Editor Emma Swann Managing Editor Sarah Jamieson Features Editor Lisa Wright Digital Editor Elly Watson Art Direction & Design Louise Mason Contributors: Alex Cabré, Bella Martin, Ben Tipple, Dave Beech, Ed Lawson, Eloise Bulmer, Elvis Thirlwell, Holly Whitaker, James Balmont, Jenessa Williams, Joe Goggins, Louis Griffin, Louisa Dixon, Sean Kerwick, Sophie Williams, Will Richards. Cover photo: Eva Pentel. Photo this page: Louise Mason. For DIY editorial: info@diymag.com For DIY sales: advertise@diymag.com For DIY stockist enquiries: stockists@diymag.com

All material copyright (c). All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, in whole or in part, without the express written permission of DIY. Disclaimer: While every effort is made to ensure the information in this magazine is correct, changes can occur which affect the accuracy of copy, for which DIY holds no responsibility. The opinions of the contributors do not necessarily bear a relation to those of DIY or its staff and we disclaim liability for those impressions. Distributed nationally.

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PRAH

www.prah.co.uk @prahrecordings

Testing It’s a funny old time to be Justin Young.

“News in 2020 and music magazines in 2011,” went one viral tweet doing the rounds last year: “Very excited about The Vaccines”. “You know what? It’s not as bad as you’d expect,” the singer reflects of the second time he’s found his band’s name dominating internet discourse. “But it’s quite difficult to post anything on social media without some kind of warning of misinformation - and it might well be misinformation, but it’s not about a public health concern…” But if the vaccines (no capital letters) are objectively coming to save 2021, then The Vaccines are gearing up to have a decent stab at it too. A decade into their tenure at the top end of the indie sphere, the quintet - completed by guitarist Freddie Cowan, bassist Árni Árnason, drummer Yoann Intonti and keyboardist Timothy Lanham - are readying their incoming fifth album: a concept-heavy, excitable new opus crafted out in the Texan desert. And where 2018’s ‘Combat Sports’ was born - and titled - as a reflection of “quite a heavy feeling going on around the band at the time”, their latest, says Justin, “is the complete antithesis of that.” “We’re 10 years in and we still love being in the band. I love it personally more than I ever have, and I think that’s because we’re still finding ways to shake ourselves up,” he continues. “You have to have a reason to keep doing it, and I think creative fulfilment is a pretty good one.”

he album - whose title the band are keeping schtum about for now - has actually been ready to go for over a year. Recorded at the legendary Sonic Ranch studios in El

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“Great Vaccines songs have this kinetic energy and euphoria, and these songs have all of those things.” Justin Young

The Vaccines may have spent 2020 watching their Google ranking drop in favour of their more topical namesake, but heading into LP5, they’re back to give 2021 a shot in the arm. Words: Lisa Wright. Paso back in December 2019 with producer Daniel Ledinsky (the man behind the decks for stand-alone single ‘All My Friends Are Falling in Love’), Justin explains that the plan was always to take their time and refine the details in ways that they perhaps hadn’t on previous releases. “In the past, it’s felt like we’d finish a record and then a week later we’d have to hand in artwork and then make a video, so we wanted to put the brakes on and work out exactly how we wanted to present it to the world,” he explains. “Then when Covid hit, it ended up being 18 months.” The time frame, however, is a lucky one. Bedding down at the residential studio for a full month, the singer’s memories of “log fires and beers every night, coyotes howling” are a world away from the isolated experiences of the year that would follow. “I don’t normally get excited about studios, but it was the most fun we’ve ever had making a record,” he audibly grins down the phone. All currently residing in different countries and continents, the recording of LP5 was an evidently integral one to rejuvenate interband dynamics. “Nobody could say at 8pm that they had to meet a friend for dinner or turn up late - there were no excuses. It was kind of like being a band for the first time again, being with each other 24/7,” Justin says. “It was amazing for our friendship; everybody was on such good form, and I think you can hear that in the record.” Despite being written before their American sojourn, the singer highlights the “indie rock

Positive

Introducing The Vaccines’ new Album Five line-up...

on the

Morricone, desert sound” that had already emerged as a notable sonic trait throughout the record. But more than a surfy sidenote, there’s a bigger idea at play on The Vaccines’ newest. He may be still tussling with the idea (“It’s not ‘Dark Side of the Moon’...”), but Album Five it seems is, by all intents and purposes, a concept album. “It’s the first time [the idea came before the songs] and I think as soon as we’d created this place in our heads and worked out what existed there and what went on there, it became so easy to write about,” Justin begins. “I started thinking about these dystopias or sin cities Los Angeles in Bladerunner, or Fear City, or Vegas, or Tijuana, or even the love hotels in Tokyo. I read a series of articles on climate emotions [emotional responses to climate change] and I started thinking, what if we got to a place where people thought of emotion as a finite property that could run out?” he continues. “Where you forget to feel naturally and you have to go to places to plug in to feel something? So that was a skeletal idea and it grew out from there.”

ue later this year with a first single soon to drop, a cinematic album based around a future dystopia sounds a million miles away from where The Vaccines began a decade ago but, says Justin, the dots are there to be joined. “It’s a balance between thinking, if The Vaccines started today we probably wouldn’t make a record that sounds like ‘What Did You Expect...’, but equally there are things that are core to our DNA,” he posits. “When I think about great Vaccines songs, I think there’s this kinetic energy and euphoria, and I think [these songs] have all of those things. So what is a Vaccines song in 2021? That’s what’s always at the back of my mind.”

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“It was kind of like being a band for the first time again, being with each other 24/7.”

‘Gram These days, even yer gran is posting selfies on Instagram. Instagran, more like. Everyone has it now, including all our fave bands. Here’s a brief catch-up on music’s finest photo-taking action as of late.

- Justin Young What’s been at the front of their minds in recent months, meanwhile, has been the 10-year anniversary of that game-changing debut. Reissued last month in celebration, even a decade on it feels like the product of an entirely different time. “It felt like every door opened that we needed it to, and I can’t think of many people that’s happened to since,” Justin reflects. “I know the dinosaurs of rock like to peddle the line that it’s because artists aren’t good enough [now] but that’s bullshit - it’s just a cyclical thing of what’s in vogue and what’s not. “It was an incredibly overwhelming time - extremely exciting, but also incredibly scary,” he continues. “All four of us [including original drummer Pete Robertson] were put under the microscope in a way that we hadn’t expected to be and, when you’re 23 or 24, the ego and the heart and the mind are quite fragile things especially when you have no proper sleep for three years. There were definitely times where I’d be like, I don’t think I signed up for this? But looking back I wouldn’t change a thing. Even when the gatekeepers are opening the gates for you it’s ‘cos they’re hearing something they love or connect with, so I feel proud.” As then as now, whether crashing into the mainstream with their first record or shaking things up with their fifth, there’s always the sense that Justin Young loves nothing better than being in The Vaccines. “It’s fucking fun! It’s so fun! It really still is,” he grins, as he and his band rev up to go in for another round. “There was a little dip, but I think we’re having more fun than ever and I really believe we’re still getting better and we still have things to say, so that drives me. If you can continue to feel fulfilled and you’re having fun doing it, I can’t imagine why you’d ever want to do anything else?” DIY

Rebecca’s new bandmate was looking a little ruff. (@selfesteemselfesteem)

Ellie and Joel’s version of ‘Chopsticks’ has to be heard to be believed. (@wolfaliceband)

girl in red: she’s a real rock star. (@girlinred)

Sex City

and

the

R E LO CAT I N G TO LO S A N G E L E S , BIIG PIIG’S NEW EP

‘THE SKY

IS BLEEDING’ FINDS JESS SMY TH E X P LO R I N G A N D E M B R AC I N G H E R S E N S UA L S I D E . W O R D S : L I S A W R I G H T.

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a format that I don’t feel like I’ve ever expressed myself in before, at least publically, where I haven’t felt any kind of judgement,” she beams of the experience. “It just felt so good; I remember finishing the shoot and the adrenaline was so intense, it was amazing.”

ess Smyth is decked in a long, blonde, blunt-fringed wig and feathered lingerie, prowling around a room filled with masked lovers and scantilyclad revellers. At one point she delicately plucks a strawberry from the mouth of a woman, naked save for a selection of fruit; later, she dead-eyes the camera whilst being spanked by someone in a gimp mask. The latest incarnation of Biig Piig - as evidenced in the video for recent single ‘Lavender’ - is, it’s safe to say, a distinct jump away from the grainy street scenes and lo-fi sensibilities that accompanied her early output only a couple of years ago. Confident, slick and assured, the track and the world it dwells in is a revelation: a rarely-documented viewpoint of female sexuality, delivered unapologetically and with total power. “We talked about fantasies and where we were gonna go with it. [Director Ran Yatim] brought in the Eyes Wide Shut reference which I thought was so sick. It was really really cool, [working] in

I ’ V E TA L K E D ABOUT R E L AT I O N S H I P S B E FO R E , B U T THIS IS A LIT TLE MORE [A B O U T ] K I N KS AND THINGS T H AT I U S UA L LY FEEL AFRAID O F S AY I N G .”

Calling in from the LA bedroom where she’s been living since December, the Irish singer is effusive about the sense of freedom that making this month’s EP ‘The Sky is Bleeding’ has provided. Written in London pre-move alongside producer Gianluca Buccelatti, the release - six tracks of intimate, nocturnal slow jams, all whispered vocals and under-cover-of-darkness sensuality - might land in a different realm to last year’s disco-tinged breakthrough banger ‘Feels Right’, but it’s a record that’s clearly liberated more than just a new sonic palette. “I’ve talked about my relationships before - even sexually with the first track I released, but this feels a little more [about] kinks and things that I usually feel pretty shy or afraid of saying,” she explains. “[Usually] I feel like I’m gonna be judged, whereas I think with this project it feels the opposite. I don’t feel any judgement - if anything, I want to look at it because that’s just a part of what’s going on [with me]. “I had no idea that this sound was the thing I’d been missing to write about what I wanted to write about,” she continues. “It really brought something out of me that I hadn’t felt comfortable to talk about before in the same way. I felt really present in those songs, and I don’t know how people are gonna connect with it or how it’s gonna go - and I’m gonna sound like such an egotistical arsehole but I’ve been listening to them non-stop since we made them and I’m just like, even if the whole world doesn’t understand it, it’s so fine, and I’m grateful to have made them.” From the visions of escape that populate ‘Drugs’ (“I remember imagining coming over here and being in the back of a car, driving for hours and hours with these rows of car lights,” she recalls) to explorations of bisexualty in ‘American Beauty’ and ‘Tarzan’’s specific female gaze, ‘The Sky Is Bleeding’ may not have been written in the city she currently calls home, but they seem to nod to the move. Slowly building up a group of creatives who’ve helped the singer realise the aesthetic world around the release, there’s something in the striking, sunset-soaked image that adorns its cover - Jess in bunny ears, silhouetted against a hot pink desert sky - and ‘Lavender’’s first video tease that echoes the visceral, transformative thrill of finding your next phase in life. “I feel like this is just the start of that world, and even thinking about playing live, I think I’m gonna switch it up so it’s more in that world as well because it felt so good and I want that feeling all the time,” she grins. “I’m thinking lingerie, doing a dance routine during those tracks…” She’s also preparing to head into the writing for her long-awaited debut - scheduled tentatively to begin in September. Intending to stay in LA for the next year or two, now all that remains is for Biig Piig to harness all these moments of self and stylistic discovery into a manageable whole. “I’ve changed styles and crossed over genres so much, I don’t know where to land for the album but I think that’s fine,” she decides. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that you can make something in a bedroom or in a studio in London and see it reach all the way to here. It’s really surreal, but it’s really exciting.” DIY

SONG WARS! THIS MONTH:

Eagles

VS.

Swim Deep

Of all the words in all the world, sometimes artists just plump for exactly the same ones. But which of these identically-titled songs is technically, objectively the winner? Ready, set, FIGHT!

‘HOTEL CALIFORNIA’ EAGLES Year released: 1977 How has it aged? Sonically, it couldn’t be more ‘punk hasn’t reached LA yet’. Metaphorically, it’s still part of common lexicon, probably even among those who’ve never even willingly heard the song itself. What’s it saying? A cinematic vignette of various characters, real and imagined, in a not-entirely-fictional hotel (the group themselves spent a fair whack of time at the Beverly Hills Hotel). Very ‘70s and no doubt a large reason for many boomers’ relocation to the state at the time. Banger rating out of 10: It’s a bit long and boring, really, isn’t it? 5. SWIM DEEP Year released: 2015 How has it aged? To say the song didn’t quite reach the heights of its predecessor wouldn’t exactly be an understatement (‘Namaste’ is, after all, the banger of the Birmingham boys’ second), but as a study in breezy, baggy psych-pop, it still holds its own. What's it saying? A fever dream of a song, it’s a literal reference to the OG as at some point at least one member of the band was “drunk singing” the number. Banger rating out of 10: A grower, not a shower. 7. ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Result: Swim Deep edge it, thanks to actually being able to dance to their number, and it not lasting approximately 84 years. Six-and-a-half minutes, you say? Surely it’s twice that.

The lesser-spotted six-legged Mount, making a rare appearance (or should that be a-pier-ance?)

RETURN TO THE RIVIERA With a recently-released reissue of classic third album ‘The English Riviera’ welcoming us back into its idiosyncratic, seaside-y bosom once more, Joe Mount talks us through his memories of the record that changed the course of Metronomy’s career forever. Interview: Lisa Wright.

THE ENGLISH RIVIERA I was trying to write an emotional piece of orchestrated music, but because it was played by a single violinist, it ended up sounding much more fragile - it wasn’t supposed to sound as shonky as it does!

WE BROKE FREE The idea was that ‘We Broke Free’ would be the first proper track people heard on the album and it would be completely different to anything they’d heard from us before. You can only really do that one time in your career, so maybe that’s why [the album] worked so well.

EVERYTHING GOES MY WAY What I love about Roxanne’s [Clifford, guest vocalist] voice is that it sounds effortlessly English. It’s a bit of an old folk voice - when people can sing very beautifully and still have an accent that sounds like them when they talk.

THE LOOK I didn’t realise it was going to be ‘that’ song. The arrangement of it is quite unusual - there’s not a chorus, there’s not really a verse, there’s nothing but it’s this song that becomes bigger the more it stays around.

SHE WANTS I think it was a good decision to be the first single because it signalled that something different was

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happening. For the first time, I guess I was trying to write a song about an idea, of being awake and someone else being asleep…

TROUBLE ‘Trouble’ doesn’t have any synthesisers on it, and I was working a bit backwards - trying to do something less electronic and less synthesiser-y, and thinking about songwriting in a different way. It’s just about not wanting to go out, really!

THE BAY At the time, [bassist] Benga said the album was like Daft Punk meets the Eagles, and I think it was this song he was talking about when he said it. For a long time it was gonna be called ‘Hollywood’, but I guess the small moment of clarity - or genius? - was realising it was so much better to do a song that had all of that feel but was about Devon.

LOVING ARM I was listening to a lot of Stevie Wonder and in particular ‘Pastime Paradise’ from ‘Songs in the Key of Life’. This was supposed to be proper concept-album-album-track material - something that added to the atmosphere and the world of the album.

CORINNE It was recorded pretty much just because the label wanted another single - quite mundane. But now it doesn’t matter that that’s why it exists because it’s a cool track!

SOME WRITTEN Even though the way I got into making music was through computers and programming, I consider myself to be quite a good drummer. So with ‘Some Written’ I thought it would be fun to play the drums and play them well, and do this jazzy song - to be a bit muso.

LOVE UNDERLINED I’d recorded Anna playing this loop of drums and was trying to write songs around the rhythm, and ‘Love Underlined’ was what ended up being made. I think I wanted the album to have an outro, but I ran out of time. It’s funny cos you listen to someone waffle on about a classic record and the decisions behind it all, but it just happens to be that that’s when the album ended... ‘The English Riviera 10th Anniversary Edition’ is out now via Because Music. DIY

NE WS

What’s Going on With… Orlando Weeks A new album is incoming!

I don’t think it’s a pop record, but I want it to be really satisfying and joyful.

Hi Orlando! You’ve still not been able to play last year’s ‘A Quickening’ live yet - what can people expect when you finally give it an outing in October? When we do the shows, it’ll all have changed because there’ll be another album. [The new] record’s finished and music’s gonna start coming out in the next few months, so that’ll get introduced to the set and it’ll be a balancing act, but a nice one. Last year you said you weren’t sure what sort of musical project you’d do next - what form does the new album take? It started as a continuation of ‘A Quickening’; I felt like I’d missed some crucial elements of that experience [becoming a parent] so that was the beginning of writing

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this record. The last one had a thematic routing, and this doesn’t so much. It has much more of an atmosphere, and I hope what it has is an overall feeling and a lightness to it and a sort of joy - that’s what I’ve been trying to get to. What did you think you’d missed? I’m very proud of the last record, but I think what it missed or didn’t exhibit enough was how much pleasure and joy and excitement I felt. It got stuck in the mud of apprehension and anxiety, and all these things I definitely was feeling but it wasn’t the complete picture. So that was the start of this new record, but then it became about taking a huge amount of pleasure from thinking, ‘How can I make this sound more uplifting or lighter?’.

I’d got stuck believing that the way to justify the amount of time a song takes is to focus on something complicated or difficult and try and make something positive out of that experience by making something new out of it - catharsis of sorts. But [this] is sort of the opposite; I refined kernels of good vibrations and would then think how I can cultivate that. And it’s been a real eye opener. The pleasure of making it, and how quickly it’s come together - I feel bowled over by how idiotic I must have been for so long to not enjoy that aspect of making music. This has been the most fun I’ve ever had making a record. Have you made a pop record, Orlando?! Maybe I have?! No, I don’t think it’s

a pop record, but I wanted it to be really satisfying and joyful and a pleasure. I don’t think it’s even just brighter, I think it’s bright. Have you been working with anyone to hone these new tricks? I worked with a guy called Nathan [Jenkins] who makes music as Bullion, and I’ve got some fun people to sing on it but I’ll save that [information] for later… Anything else in the works? I’ve written music for a play at the National Theatre that’s coming out soon. It’s an adaptation of a film called Afterlife, and I think it’s quite an appropriate story for this time. I guess the music could be released as an EP - I’d really like for more people than can go and see a socially-distanced show to hear it.

NiNE8 Collective A SOCIALLY SPACED SHOW

SOLD OUT

FRI 21ST MAY JAZZ CAFE

Sam Dotia

Demae

A SOCIALLY SPACED SHOW

WED 16TH JUN ST PANCRAS OLD CHURCH

SOLD OUT

THU 24TH JUN LAFAYETTE

Black Country, New Road

Squid

black midi

RADA

A SOCIALLY SPACED SHOW

Wesley Gonzalez A SOCIALLY SPACED SHOW

FRI 28TH MAY (2 SHOWS) HACKNEY CHURCH

TUE 8TH JUN MOTH CLUB

THU 10TH JUN RIO CINEMA

Visions Festival

Pan Amsterdam

Skullcrusher

SAT 7TH AUG VARIOUS VENUES, HACKNEY

FRI 3RD SEP PECKHAM AUDIO

WED 8TH SEP THE LEXINGTON

Virginia Wing

Kings of Convenience

WU-LU

SOLD OUT

MATINEE & EVENING SHOW

SOLD OUT

TUE 14TH SEP ELECTRIC BALLROOM

Anna B Savage

THU 15TH JUL SCALA

THU 23RD SEP PRINTWORKS

FRI 24TH SEP MOTH CLUB

SUN 26TH SEP ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL

THU 30TH SEP PECKHAM AUDIO

Bo Ningen

Loraine James

Grand brothers

For Those I Love SOLD

TUE 12TH OCT THE LEXINGTON

WED 13TH OCT VILLAGE UNDERGROUND

SAT 16TH OCT STUDIO 9294

TUE 19TH OCT EARTH

TUE 19TH OCT OUT SO WED 20TH OCT LD OUT SOLD OUT THU 21ST OCT COURTYARD THEATRE

King Hannah

Joep Beving

black midi

Drug Store Romeos

Damien Jurado

SOLD OUT

WED 27TH OCT THE LEXINGTON

FRI 5TH NOV QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL

THU 11TH NOV ALEXANDRA PALACE THEATRE

Porridge Radio

Buck Meek

Yard Act

THU 29TH JUL SET

WED 17TH NOV SCALA

THU 18TH NOV EARTH

The Beths

Bikini Kill

SOLD OUT

THU 30TH SEP 2021 THE LEXINGTON

SOLD OUT

TUE 23RD NOV WED 24TH NOV VILLAGE UNDERGROUND

THU 20TH JAN 2022 OMEARA

THU 17TH FEB 2022 VILLAGE UNDERGROUND

MON 4TH APR 2022 O2 FORUM KENTISH TOWN

SUN 12TH JUN 2022 O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW MON 13TH JUN 2022 ROUNDHOUSE

Fame OF

Tyler, the Creator - GOBLIN

The subversive, at times uncomfortable, first steps from one of modern rap’s most important figures. Words: Joe Goggins. His balaclava don’t want none unless it’s ‘GOBLIN’, hun.

ven at ten years’ distance, the nature of Odd Future’s 2011 gatecrashing of the mainstream still feels like a fever dream; nobody since has staged quite such a hostile takeover, with everything from Tyler’s stripped-back and shocking ‘Yonkers’ video to his performance of ‘Sandwitches’ on Jimmy Fallon with Hodgy Beats, scored through with a thrilling sense of unpredictability. By the time the rapper’s solo debut dropped, ‘GOBLIN’ served as the culmination of one of the most thrilling upendings of the musical rulebook in recent history, and one that excited and frustrated in equal measure - as much now as it did then. There are moments of towering innovation across the record - the manner in which raw minimalism meets slick production on ‘Yonkers’ and ‘AU79', for instance, or the swirling meeting of menace and beauty that came to characterise so many of the album’s instrumentals. There’s also the creeping sense, however, that early-career Tyler leaned unnecessarily heavily into shock-tactic lyricism, with the dark dioramas he draws on ‘GOBLIN’ routinely unsettling; you wonder how much of it he would get away with today.

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FACTS THE

Released: 10th May 2011 Key Tracks: ‘She’, ‘Yonkers’, ‘Window’ Tell Your Mates: In ‘Yonkers’, Tyler professes to wanting to stab Bruno Mars in the oesophagus. Bruno’s response? “[Tyler] has to wait in line if he wants to stab me. He’s definitely not the first guy that’s said something like that to me and he’s not going to be the last.” Fair play, mate!

The record’s a stark reminder, too, of just how much talent existed in the Odd Future pool at the time. Frank Ocean, now THE pop enigma of his generation, makes a memorable contribution on ‘She’, his mellow vocals blended with a woozy beat that threatens to veer off the rails at any given minute, while the star-studded ‘Window’ does so much with so little, taking a basic but thickly atmospheric synth loop and using it as a backdrop over which Domo Genesis, Hodgy Beats and Mike G queue up to deliver softly sinister verses. By the time Tyler chips in with his own, the track’s quietly taken on a nightmarish air. His lyricism on ‘GOBLIN’ remains a blend of cattle-prod provocation, flirtations with horrorcore, and a genuinely unsettling appetite for the macabre. It’s astonishing, now, to think that a rapper hailed as a queer icon for his insights on ‘Flower Boy’ and ‘Igor’ was once brushing off justified criticism from the likes of Tegan and Sara with the same homophobic slurs on social media that ‘GOBLIN’ itself is littered with. In 2018, the man himself claimed that he’d only keep seven of the record’s fifteen tracks, but to revise ‘GOBLIN’ retrospectively would be to do a disservice to its spirit - it remains a messy, discomfiting monument to mainstream subversion. DIY

U O Y E V A H ? D R A E H

LITTLE SIMZ - INTROVERT Easily the most majestic of introductions to a record 2021 has seen, if not the boldest, ‘Introvert’ does anything but make like its name. Sprawling, thunderous orchestration reverberates around Little Simz’s bars - impassioned, expressive and completely to-the-point on the personal (“Angel said, ‘Don’t let your ego be a disturbance’ / Inner demon said, ‘Motherfucker, you earned this”) and political

CHVRCHES - HE WOLF ALICESMILE SA ID SHE SA ID Returning with their first new music since 2018 album 'Love Is Dead', Chvrches are back with a banger. An electro-pop slammer, with a bit of hyper-pop flair, their latest is driven by Lauren Mayberry's powerhouse crystalline vocals. From its first line ("He said: You bore me to death"), the mesmerising track follows a tonguein-cheek exploration of stupid shit men have said to Lauren IRL, topped off by its huge chorus of "I feel like I'm losing my mind". In Lauren's own words: "Being a woman is fucking exhausting and it felt better to scream it into a pop song than scream it into the void." And this is the perfect pop song to scream along to. (Elly Watson)

Is there anything more satisfying than when an already-brilliant band writes the song you’ve always dreamed of them making? We would say ‘no’, but we’re too busy thrashing around to the absolute MONSTER that is ‘Smile’: Wolf Alice’s greatest moment to date, and an offering that acts as a gloriously defiant, sass-filled anthem for those sick to death with society’s judgemental bullshit. Bubbling up and crash-landing with a sledgehammer riff that’s bound to cause serious injuries when mosh pits are back in action, Ellie Rowsell’s quietly snarling, almost half-rapped lyrics are perfection - a series of unapologetic, pissed-off put downs, capped off with a crowning, “If you don’t like me, then that isn’t fucking relevant”. Cue mic drop. Cue gloriously gnarly guitar line. Cue Wolf Alice’s continued world dominance. (Lisa Wright)

(“Knocking down communities to re-up on properties / I’m directly affected, it does more than just bother me”). The slinky chorus courtesy of West London singer Cleo Sol acts as counterpoint, while the compelling spoken-word outro from actor Emma Corrin echoes the rapper’s gravitas while amping up the drama for a suitably theatrical close. (Emma Swann)

SELF ESTEEM - I DO THIS A LL THE TIME

Ever the knowing entertainer, Rebecca Taylor has spent a fair amount of Twitter time (half)jokingly berating the greater public for not acknowledging her obvious genius, but with ‘I Do This All The Time’ - the first taste of Self Esteem’s forthcoming second LP - you sense the singer won’t have to worry about those things for much longer. A spoken word monologueslash-meditation that takes the exhaustion, frustration, pain, hope and humour of life in a warm embrace, it is magnificent: a track that will leave you winded by its relatability and nourished all at the same time. Come its redemptive, soaring chorus, you’ll probably have a joyful tear in your eye too. (Lisa Wright)

BILLIE EILISHYOUR POWER

“I feel very vulnerable putting this one out because I hold it so close to my heart,” wrote Billie Eilish on releasing ‘Your Power’, the third single from the all-conquering pop superstar’s forthcoming second album. It’s easy to hear why - over minimal instrumentation, the singer adopts her near-whisper to tell a tale of a toxic relationship with a dangerous power imbalance. It’s probably not one to set the bank holiday weekend’s barbecues alight (there’s still previous single and certified bop ‘Therefore I Am’ for that), but it’s definitely one that’ll - quite rightly - make millions think. (Emma Swann)

THE BIG BANK HOLIDAY WEEKENDER!

t’s been a quiet old six months since we were able to even sniff a live gig in any sort of IRL form, but come May 17th socially-distanced shows are back back back baby! And so, to celebrate, we’re putting on a bank holiday shindig, aided by our pals over at Marshall, and featuring some of DIY’s favourites, new and old(er).

Coming to Hackney Wick’s Studio 9294 on Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th March, The Big Bank Holiday

Weekender will host two full days of live music from 2pm ‘til late, with tables inside for watching bands, and tables outside for (hopefully) sun-soaked boozing. Tickets for each day are priced at £30 and will be super limited due to social distancing. Oh, and the all-important line-up? Check it out now, featuring our not-so-secret Saturday headliners (clue: they graced our cover this year) (clue #2: it’s not exactly a hard guess is it…).

CATCHING UP WITH…

Connie Constance Hi Connie! What have you been up to so far in 2021? I’ve been making more choons, watching Trailer Park Boys and taking dance classes. I finally learnt a lockdown skill: I can now braid my own knotless jumbo braids so I’ll be saving a lot of pennies there. Tell us a bit about your latest banger ‘Electric Girl’. Well, she’s the worldy, living and thriving superhuman that’s in every single one of us when we are in sync with our divine energy. But put more literally… It’s a classic Connie Constance indie banger to get ya in the mood for living ya best life. Have you got any more new music currently in the works? Yeah I feel very in my flow at the mo. Got some more choons coming soon. I’ve pushed the boat out a little bit hoping to blow ya socks off to the moon if possible. What can people expect from a Connie Constance live show? ENERGY. Lots of sweat. A few sarcastic comments. An abundance of hair whips. I’m here to break ya hearts and fill your ego

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with sassy Capricorn realness. What’s your idea of a perfect bank holiday weekend? Honestly, I’m not a fan. I’m a

workaholic and proud, so I’m grateful to be spending this one performing for you guys. We’re grateful to have you!

SAT 29TH MAY Special guest headliners

“Hoof Boy” Connie Const Co nstance ance Talk Show Lynks deep tan English Teacher Fräulein & DIY DJs

CATCHING UP WITH…

FEET SUN 30TH MAY

The Orielles Do Nothing FEET

Tiña

Grandmas House Gallus & DIY DJs

It's been a while since we last heard from you FEET, how have you been filling your days? Oli Sasha [bass]: Living within a close proximity of one-another, we seem to have struck a good balance between when you look at your instruments and when you don’t. There’s a real art to avoiding people throughout the day - the dos and don’ts of when to enter communal spaces, and how to identify a kettle click from the floor below. As much as we’ve been writing and rehearsing, what’s mostly kept us afloat has been our other activities. Cooking nice food and the odd walk to the Heath: now that’s a recipe for success. Tell us a bit about your new song ‘Peace and Quiet’. We wrote ‘Peace and Quiet’ just before our last tour. Back then it was just a two minute set opener to get people and ourselves moving. Through the lens of the past twelve months though, the song has come to serve as much more of a vehicle for our frustration at the inability to do what we love. In the video, you all go and get haircuts - was that

just a clever excuse for a trim during the pandemic? Unfortunately it was George in the chair, the only one of us who didn’t need one. During the pannie we’ve more than once opened the in-house bathroom salon after a couple of Ribenas. To say that results may vary would be a criminal understatement. You're playing DIY's bank holiday weekender! For people that might not have seen you, what can they expect from a FEET gig? In the past we’ve done our best to throw ourselves needlessly around a stage, as if to compensate for notthe-most-concise grouping of sounds. 14 months on from our last show, and with new material sounding like it all came from the same room and century, hopefully the resulting gig will reflect that also. Will you be debuting any other new material? Absolutely. We’ve got a four track EP out in August that I’m sure will find its way into the set, as well as a couple others in the works that we’re hoping to throw in, and some obvious immortal classics from the first record.

Photo: Percy Walker Smith

All the songs we do are accidents!” Louie Pastel 20 DIYMAG.COM

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Back in February, The LA rap duo music Twitter was blasting apart set alight with tradition with every the sudden drop new drop. Words: Elly Watson. of a song called ‘HEAVY METAL’. Blending thrashing guitars with slick rap beats, and sizzling with a rare kind of electricity, praise came flooding in from all angles for the unknown group behind the attentiongrabbing debut. Who were the masterminds behind it all? Enter Paris Texas - aka childhood pals Louie Pastel and Felix. “We met at school and he rapped and I was learning how to rap, and he was way better than me so I thought, let’s practise together,” Louie smiles of their beginnings. “I think it was like, the second beat he ever showed me [when I thought], ‘Oh yeah, this is gonna be crazy’,” Felix adds, sitting next to his bandmate on their sofa in LA.

!"#$%&'()"% Clearly locking into the right premonition, the pair began crafting bangers together and playing live for their local community. As soon as the feedback from their live shows started rolling in, Louie and Felix knew they were onto something. “We kind of knew we were doing something special,” Felix affirms, “but obviously when people are gravitating towards your sound really early on, it’s very interesting.” Now with three songs officially out in the world - ‘HEAVY METAL’ is joined by the creeping synth world of ‘SITUATIONS’ and lo-fi leaning ‘FORCE OF HABIT’ - each release has seen the experimental duo hailed for their refreshing style and knack for playing with genres. So has their aim always been to shake shit up with every offering? “I think a lot of the time it comes off that way - but in the process? No, never,” Louie laughs. “It’s funny, I attribute this to not being a very good producer. I’m always trying to do something I’m inspired by - I won’t snitch on myself and say who - but it’s not what I imagined it would be, it just came out cool. All the songs we do are accidents! We try to do something completely different and then it’s like, ‘Oh, this is cool too. This is also pretty fire, fuck it!’”

“There’s intention, but not all the time like, ‘This is going to be that one song!’” adds Felix. “When I first realised we had something special, I’d just written a verse and I was listening to the beat he made and I was like, ‘Yeah, this is crazy. No one’s doing it like this’. But it’s never really going into it like, ‘This will be the next best thing’.” “It’s never premeditative,” Louie nods. “Did I say that word right?! Anyway I think that’s why, when people were giving a lot of attention to ‘HEAVY METAL’, it’s like, this is all kind of accidental. Hope you don’t expect it again!” Luckily, the beauty of Paris Texas lies in their ability to deliver the unexpected - accidentally or not and forthcoming debut project ‘BOY ANONYMOUS’ is similarly full of sonic twists and turns. Comprised of eight captivating, shapeshifting tracks, both Louie and Felix brush off questions of pre-drop nerves with the kind of confidence you can only really rock when you know you’re creating something unique. “The only thing I’m curious about is if people are gonna be very honest when they hear it,” Louie says. “I think when people have a lot of attention and hype around them, sometimes it can blind them. People are like, ‘I fuck with this thing, so it must be tight. It’s different so it must be tight’. I really do love the project and I already know what it can do, but I’m curious if it’s gonna hit anybody in a good way, if it’s gonna be memorable.” “You want it to get the hype it deserves,” Felix adds. “You don’t want it to be over-hyped and then people are just sheep. You want a genuine reaction. But this is the first one! We’re talking about it as if it’s our magnum opus but it’s one tape. We haven’t even really grabbed anything by the balls yet!” Overall, the pair want ‘BOY ANONYMOUS’ to act as an introduction to the world of Paris Texas and an invitation to jump on and enjoy the ride. “I want people to go into this knowing that we went into it not knowing who we were, being young and not being certain about anything,” Louie notes, “and listening to it with that same energy of not really knowing and embracing it. Not really putting a pin on it, like ‘This is so and so’, or ‘This is rap-rock’: don’t do that. ‘This is the new fucking yada yada’: don’t do that. Go into it like, I don’t know what this is, they’re having fun with all these different sounds, they’re finding themselves. Hopefully all our fans can find themselves with us. Hopefully we can all go on this journey together.” DIY

"*+#(, -*-"

Audrey Nuna: the Rapunzel of pop.

Representing her dual Korean and American identity via a catalogue of diverse and genre-shunning bangers. Words: Sophie Williams.

Studio Ghibli films, streetwise pensioners, and outlandish, brightly coloured billboards: these are just a few of the pick’n’mix inspirations that make up genre-busting artist Audrey Nuna’s ever-changing world. “I literally have a camera roll of random grandpas that I see around my neighbourhood - they don't even realise that they're so fly,” the 22-year-old laughs over the phone. “Visually, their style continues to plant the right seeds in my brain.

“I’ve honed my photography skills to the point where I can make it seem like I'm taking a selfie,” she continues. “But in Korean culture, there’s a hierarchy; grandmas and grandpas are shown so much respect because they just have this attitude about them - they just don't give a fuck!” It’s that same remarkably self-assured attitude that makes Audrey’s futurist melange of R&B, hip hop, trap, pop, and flashes of soul so compelling. Born and raised in New Jersey to Korean parents, the singer-rapper grew up an incredibly shy child - “I couldn't even order my own food at a restaurant!” - but the stakes changed in her late teens when Roc Nation producer Anwar Sawyer discovered her via Instagram. The pair would then go on to record over 100 songs together, before Audrey was accepted into the world-renowned Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University - later quitting in order to focus on her creative vision.

“I’ve always had this focus on trying to be more than one thing at a time.”

Today, Audrey still credits Sawyer for developing her

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self-confidence. “Working with Anwar has been one of the most important relationships in my life so far,” she nods. “He fostered an ecosystem for me when I was a teenager, and raised me musically in a way that helped me to realise that my work is about giving to others.” Debut EP ‘Liquid Breakfast’ - due later this summer - further progresses these formative musical experiences, carrying a forthright and versatile energy that sees Audrey effortlessly flit between boasting her rap credentials (‘Comic Sans’) and more subdued, soulful moments (‘Space’). “So many different sounds make up this project because I'm always like, ‘How can I have everything?’. I'm just a greedy bitch!” she exclaims. “Though, subconsciously, I think I have always had this interest in weird combinations. I love mixing fat 808s with beautiful chords; I’ve always had this focus on trying to be more than one thing at a time. “It stems from growing up, where I knew what it was like to walk this tightrope between two different worlds,” she continues. “At school, everyone spoke English, there was no diversity. Meanwhile, I’d go home to a culturally rich environment, so I felt like I could access and manoeuvre both areas so well.” This burning desire to rail against convention comes to the fore on ‘Liquid Breakfast’, on which Audrey not only goes about deconstructing genre ideals, but racial stereotypes too. “I am conscious of the fact that there just aren't a lot of Asian-American faces doing [music] yet, so setting a precedent for others is something that’s so important to me,” she affirms. “My only responsibility is to be 100% true to what I want to do – and to do it with a level of excellence.” DIY

WALLICE Bedroom pop gets a kick up the arse.

DAINE

FOUSHEÉ

Charli XCX’s new

Jumping into the ‘Deep End’ of 2021’s most promising breakout talents. Though gaining notoriety via viral TikTok fame is fast becoming a commonplace route to success, New Jersey singer Fousheé did things slightly differently. An uncredited sample of her song ‘Deep End’ hit the big leagues on a drill track; only when she was unwittingly riding high at Number One in the app’s chart did the singer reveal her identity. Now however, Fousheé’s delicate, mystical vocals are rightfully earning the singer her own spotlight - co-signed by famous fans including Steve Lacy, Kali Uchis, King Princess and more. LISTEN: Recent single ‘gold fronts’ features a guest verse from the legend himself, Lil Wayne. SIMILAR TO: SZA at her most stripped back and magical.

GRANDMAS HOUSE Bristol queer punk trio taking zero shits.

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#(./00(-+(+

Though there’s a woozy, entirely modern quality to New York-based newbie Wallice’s early output - a collection of self-deprecating pop nuggets including ‘Hey Michael’ with its American Psycho protagonist, and last year’s insatiable debut ‘Punching Bag’ - there’s a chutzpah here that elevates the 23-year-old into a different niche than merely another bedroom pop Gen Z-er. That Wallice grew up listening to Weezer and other indie rock staples makes perfect sense: these are tracks with subtle grit beneath the sheen. LISTEN: ‘23’ is a yearning, wide-eyed clarion call. SIMILAR TO: If Clairo and The Vaccines sat down for a writing sesh.

“I am charming, I am confident / When I wear my suit jacket you want to be me,” begins ‘Always Happy’ - the deadpan early 2021 single from Bristol trio Grandmas House that positioned them as exactly the sort of disruptive spirits that could rip the scene a new one. Taking the scrappy sensibilities of some of ‘70s punk’s best exports (X Ray Spex, The Slits etc) and updating them with a modern brand of storytelling, the band are already carving out a strong and recognisable voice. LISTEN: Recent single ‘Small Talk’ is a clattering, frenetic joy. SIMILAR TO: Poly Styrene’s long lost Bristolian children.

favourite pop star. Hailing from Melbourne, FilipinoAustralian artist Daine has been steadily setting the hype machine alight. Concocting immersive emo-pop gems with licks of dark bedroom-pop, she pairs deep, diary-like lyrics with trap backings, grabbing the attention of certified pop tastemaker Charli XCX in the process. Now dipping her toes into the wonderful world of hyperpop with a recent Dylan Bradyproduced single, Daine’s pop always packs an extra punch. LISTEN: Her first hyper-pop outing ‘boys wanna txt’ will have you moshing in no time. SIMILAR TO: Your new go-to hairbrush-asmicrophone pop singa-long.

STILL WOOZY Bubbling slow jams from the Portland-based singer-producer. Still Woozy - aka Sven Gamsky - has been bubbling along for a while now, steadily drip-feeding singles since 2017 debut ‘Vacation’. However, what he might lack in speed (a debut album is still yet to land), the polymath singer-producer makes up for in style; his fusion of psych, R&B and intimate bedroom pop has already seen him rack up hundreds of millions of streams. Just imagine what he’ll do with a whole record. LISTEN: Latest single ‘Kenny’ is his dreamiest yet. SIMILAR TO: The sweet middle spot between Rex Orange County and Unknown Mortal Orchestra.

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“Before I made the decision #".1(2 to become a singer, I wanted to become a criminal &.1$-/*#$#$ psychologist.”

Breaking through with her brand of open and honest songwriting back in 2019, the Croydon singer is highlighting the darkness and the light even more deftly two years on. Words: Sarah Jamieson. Photo: Louise Mason.

It’s just five days until the release of Rachel Chinouriri’s latest EP when we meet via an early morning Zoom and, even through DIY’s fuzzy laptop lens, she’s sizzling with excitement. “I’ve been hassling people on TikTok for the last five days!” she grins, straight off the bat, when asked about how she’s feeling in the run up to the release of ‘Four° In Winter’. “I’ve literally just been posting on social media every day to try and get as many people as possible, because even if it’s one new person, it’s still one new person.” It’s this optimistic and open spirit that seems to define the Croydon singer’s attitude. Even when delving into the darkness that presides within her new EP’s eight tracks - from the mental battle of ‘Darker Place’’s main character to the existential doubt that flows through ‘Lose Anything’ - there’s a lightness to her touch that feels disarming. “Before I made the decision to become a singer, I wanted to become a criminal psychologist,” she unexpectedly offers up, of why exactly she finds herself so drawn to the darkness within people. “I’m very intrigued with how people’s brains work, and I don’t like judging people based on the crimes that they commit. Because I’ve delved into that dark side of myself, and from researching other people, I just have more to write about with those sorts of things. As a

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person I’m not dark, but I understand myself enough from both sides.” For anyone previously familiar with Rachel’s work, her subject matter may not come as too much of a surprise (“I feel like I write better when I write about things that are sadder or I guess, more depressing, as it’s just a way that I can move on and heal from things,” she notes), but her newest sonic direction may be. “I feel like this EP is closer to the sound that I actually really want to make,” she confirms. While previous tracks ‘So My Darling’ and ‘Mama’s Boy’ sat more closely to emotionally-charged, folk-indebted artists like Daughter and Laura Marling, ‘Four° In Winter’ feels bolder, utilising slick beats and electronics to bolster her deft - and at times devastating - vocals. And while the past year certainly wasn’t a good one for her - “I feel like I was kinda robbed in a way, not being able to earn anything, having so many other battles within my life like my dad being ill in another country,” she explains Rachel still manages to possess a sense of optimism and hope. “2020 has definitely been a blessing in disguise. I think it’s prepared me for whatever happens in the future, like it’s introduced me to getting therapy, so I know how to handle situations and handle stress better. It’s prepared me in ways that I didn’t expect,” she nods. “I guess you’ve got to go through the dark times to see the light.” DIY

All the buzziest new music happenings, in one place.

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!2",2$%' Every week on Spotify, we update DIY’s Neu Discoveries playlist with the buzziest, freshest faces. Here’s our pick of the best new tracks:

2*0$-/*%&8$+&9 0/*-'"$-&.#,%'"2% The experimental pop artist and the man behind Phoebe Bridgers’ ‘Punisher’ visuals gives us a window into debut album ‘at the end of the dream’ with the folktinged 'Mountain Crystals' - featuring a spoken word verse from Phoebe herself. A twinkling and compelling song, it channels waves of Neutral Milk Hotel, flits between pop and folk, and is the perfect soundtrack for any new coming-of-age story.

!1/(5(&4#((-&9&$+8 Over the past 18 months, Manchester’s Phoebe Green has developed a knack for the kind of deadpan storytelling that sits adjacent to the current crop of speak-sing narrators (Dry Cleaning, Sinead O’Brien etc) but in a far more technicolour, pop-influenced world. The clever trick with ‘IDK’ is that it never feels like it’s trying that hard; synths putter as Phoebe monotones about being misunderstood. Yet the result is strangely brilliant: magnetic, cheeky and knowing all at the same time.

%3*"+&4/"2% Brooklyn indie grungers Pom Pom Squad have shared news of their forthcoming debut album ‘Death of a Cheerleader’, alongside new single ‘Head Cheerleader’ - we sense a theme here! The LP is set to land on 25th June via City Slang, and you can wrap your ears around the angstily bright (it’s a thing) track on diymag.com. Of ‘Head Cheerleader’, singer Mia Berrin states, “[It] was an effort to lean into the overarching trope that makes Pom Pom Squad what it is - almost like parodying myself. Heart shaped lockets and scary cheerleaders and young adult chaos and self discovery and deep ungraceful discomfort.”

!(-4&'$-4 Recent Neu fave Greentea Peng (check out our interview in April’s magazine) will unleash debut ‘MAN MADE’ on 4th June via AMF Records. It comes with a typically mystical manifesto from the singer - aka Aria Wells, which teases that the record will be “out of tune with the industry and in tune with the universe, this is a 432hrz production. Deliberately detuned out of any Babylon standard!” For an early taste, head to diymag.com to listen to the smooth grooves of new track ‘Kali V2’.

2"-4&'$0(&./0$-4 And, rounding off a trio of incoming first LPs, is Dirty Hit favourite Oscar Lang, who’ll be offering up ‘Chew The Scenery’ via the label on 16th July. Get a taste of it via riffy new track ‘Stuck’, which the singer describes as being “about the feeling of replaying embarrassing situations in your mind to the point where you feel overwhelmed”, or head over to YouTube where you can relive Oscar’s set for Hello 2021 earlier this year.

'1(&4/"&()!#(%%&&9& %(./-+&'$0( While Pennines-bred gang The Goa Express are better known for their often frantic garage-psych hybrid, latest cut ‘Second Time’ has them showing their softer side. They’ve slowed things down, got a little wistful, and ended up sonically somewhere in the post-baggy, pre-Britpop wilderness. Which is to say, it’s some mid-paced evocative storytelling backed by wholesome, jangly guitars.

%0//'15/$& (6#"&9&%'*.8 Forgive the terrible moniker and you’ll find in Smoothboi Ezra a 19-year-old songwriter with a knack for Phoebe Bridgers-esque storytelling and piquant, evocative indie folk. “The worst year of your life started when you met me/ You say I shouldn’t take it personally,” goes ‘Stuck’ over delicately-picked, sparse acoustic guitar; the ingredients are minimal, but the effect is far, far greater than the sum of its parts.

Want to stream our Neu playlist while you’re reading? Scan the code now and get listening.

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I think my position in life is to

make an absolute fool of myself 24/7 to make it easier for everyone else.”

26 DIYMAG.COM

Dublin’s newest cowgirl, answering the question of ‘What would happen if you made a 2021-style Dolly Parton eat an 80-piece chicken bucket?’. Words: Lisa Wright. Photos: Sarah Doyle.

.0"'&& When we convene with Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson better known these days by her CMAT acronym - for a 9.30am chat, the singer has already been out and about, roller skating around the East London streets where she’s currently staying between recording sessions. The aim, she explains with a twinkle in the eye, is to be something akin to the FKA twigs of the roller world. “I think she’s the only pop star who does being a pop star well, which is going, ‘I have all this time so I’m going to do every single hobby and justify going really intensely in on it by making it part of my brand’,” she enthuses with a chipper Irish twang. “So for me so far, I’ve learned how to ride a horse specifically for the ‘I Want To Be A Cowboy’ video, and now I’m gonna go really hard on the roller skating and get just about good enough to do it for a video and then do something else.” Taking things to the campy, highly-entertaining extreme is very much the CMAT way. To promote 2020 debut ‘Another Day (KFC)’, the singer live-streamed herself eating an 80-piece chicken bucket: a feat that she says, grimacing at the thought, gave her the shakes for four days after. “There was just so much salt; they should have put me on a drip,” she shudders. In life, as increasingly in her art, she’ll do anything for a gag. “I think my position in life is to make an absolute fool of myself 24/7 to make it easier for everyone else that’s not as confident,” she chuckles. “I’ll be the loudest person in the room so everyone else feels like they can do whatever they want and knows they won’t be as annoying as I’m being.” It’s a confidence that served her particularly well one fateful pre-CMAT day back in Manchester, when she was still a struggling writer, attempting to help pen songs for other people. Put in a room to help workshop and give notes with Charli XCX, she recalls the pop icon taking her to one side after giving some typically vocal suggestions. “She was like, ‘What’s going on with you? I feel like you’re a musician but you’re not doing anything with it. Why are you in Manchester? You need to do music. You need to actually do something.’ “It was literally the best thing that ever happened to me, because she was totally right,” she continues, “so that was the catalyst for me moving back to Ireland and blowing everything up. I packed up all my belongings, moved into my mum’s house and I had nothing, so I spent all my time actively learning my craft and it all

snowballed from there.” Has she kept in touch with Charli since? “Oh no, she has no idea who I am!” she guffaws. “Charli did that messiah thing of, ‘My child - go and fix this’ and that’s the only interaction we’ve had and it’s all I need. Oh, I did give her a demo of my songs on a USB and then I had to message her after because I realised I’d given her something that actually had the entire second season of Golden Girls on it…” Ensconced back in Dublin, CMAT’s take on country - a string of, to date, five singles that combine the classic ‘70s sensibilities of the genre with hilarious one-liners and modern woes - is a world away from the moody young men that have recently come out of the city. While the Dublin indie world spent its time glowering in darkened corners, Ciara would spend her evenings in drag bars, searching for something altogether more colourful and joyous. “The thing that’s happening in the Dublin scene right now is something that I have no relationship with because it’s just not fun enough for me,” she shrugs. “Drag is camp and some of it is really slapstick, but I think there’s something really rebellious about it, so that’s the scene I related to in Dublin way more than the music scene, and I think what I’m doing now is trying to blend those two things together. “I genuinely believe in the value of entertainment as an artform and I think a lot of the time - in alternative music specifically - they think that art and entertainment are two separate things, and if the art you’re making is too entertaining then it’s not valid or worthy. But I need jokes! Gimme a joke cos I’m dying here!” Undoubtedly hilarious in conversation as on record, what makes CMAT’s still-early output so appealing however is that, beneath the punchlines, there’s obvious integrity too. She’s “an encyclopedia on country music”, she professes - one who desperately hopes that the mainstream incarnation of the genre (which at the moment she classifies largely as “appalling”) will return to its true roots before long. “You get the sense with a lot of those really old school country writers that they NEEDED to write songs, that they HAD to deal with their problems by writing it out. That’s why I write songs - because I need to get it out of here,” she says, pointing to her head, “and deal with the problem at hand. My priority is always that, but I can’t ever be earnest because… I’m Irish. That’s the way we deal with our problems! But sometimes the thing that’s funny is the thing that’s sad and they’re literally the same thing.” DIY

From growing up on a farm and selling jacket potatoes for a living to fronting the UK’s next huge cult band, Murray Matravers has taken an unusual route to the top. On

Easy Life’s divine debut album ‘life’s a beach’, he proves it was worth the wait. Words: Will Richards. Photos: Eva Pentel.

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What can we say, the love for Easy Life has really blown up recently.

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smartphone recently, meanwhile, when the need to access emails for band-related activities necessitated it.

urray Matravers has a mantra for the success of his band Easy Life: don’t try too hard. As he explains with equal parts glee and flickers of shame, most of the band’s formative moments have come in the form of happy accidents, trusting gut instinct and spur-of-the-moment decisions over meticulous planning and torturous self-examination. As for a potential band motto, ‘Go with the flow’ wouldn’t be too far off. “Try less hard, that's the only way I can write good music,” the frontman reflects ahead of the release of their widely-anticipated debut album ‘life’s a beach’ this month. “Unless the song came instantly, it never made the album.” Growing up on a cattle and sheep farm on the outskirts of Loughborough in Leicestershire, it was Murray’s older brother who first nudged him towards a life in music. Looking up to his sibling six years Murray’s senior and his best friend to this day - Murray tentatively started playing the piano at a young age, before getting his first drum kit.

“I'm totally insecure about everything we do, and that's the greatest gift ever.”

With no prospect of angry neighbours, he was given ample space to thrash about. “I'd just stick it out in a garage somewhere on the farm and I was content,” he recalls. “That was a big part of my musical upbringing - the ability to actually have a drum kit. A very shit drum kit, but it was great at the time.” Murray describes his parents as “salt of the earth” and strongly environmentally-focused; their family farm is entirely organic. Growing up, he had no access to television or video games, and still doesn't touch social media (“I don't believe that that’s important to me”). He only bought his first

“That was the way I grew up, and because of that environment, I had a lot of time on my hands compared to my mates who would play Call of Duty all the time,” he says. “So I'd just be bored. That's why I wanted to play the drums or bash on the piano. I still kind of only write music when I'm bored.” As well as their philosophical impact, his parents also had a deep effect on him musically, and their respective tastes can easily be put together to resemble something close to the sound of Easy Life. While his mum blasted the huge choruses and sugary pop melodies of ABBA and the Bee Gees around the house, his dad’s influence - classical music and jazz - represents the leftfield-leaning elements of the band Murray would later go on to form.

fter leaving school at 18, Murray was faced with a decision similar to many British teenagers his age - choosing whether to take a punt on a university course or make his own way down a different path. “That whole time, for the next three years, I really just didn't have a fucking clue what I was doing,” he reflects, having waved many of his friends off while deciding against enrolling himself. “And I see that in everyone that leaves school. Whether or not they go to uni, no one has a fucking clue and it's a really difficult time in people's lives. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.” In the intervening years, with his friends spread out across the country, Murray worked as the manager of a milkshake shop (“The whole place closed down because I was the worst manager ever...”) and sold jacket potatoes at Leicester Market. The latter job, which he held for three years, was “a world I understood,” he says, after a

- Murray Matravers

uninhibited live shows and music that traverses R&B, pop, house and jazz, the five-piece are a product of their generation’s genreless attitude, with no idea off the table. Across three mixtapes (2018 debut ‘Creature Habits’, 2019 follow-up ‘Spaceships’ and last year’s Top 10-charting ‘Junk Food’), the band have slowly honed their sound, bringing together the cheekiness of Jamie T with sunny sprinkles of jazz instrumentation and languid, beach-bound pop songs. Via huge crossover hit ‘Nightmares’, which soundtracked a pivotal moment in Michaela Coel’s stunning BBC show I May Destroy You, Arlo Parks collaboration ‘Sangria’ and more, Easy Life have gathered a set of songs more than capable of creeping them up festival line-ups towards the top of the bill - something that will surely await them upon the release of debut album ‘life’s a beach’. A defining part of the band’s sound is Murray's distinctive voice, a velvety speak-sing that's as much a rap as it is a pop vocal. As he explains, it came about as another example of working within his limitations. "I could never be a singer like Aretha Franklin or Bill Withers or something," he says. "My music teacher in primary school would always say that anyone can sing, and I've carried on the company line! Anyone can sing! “I just sang because I liked to write lyrics and singing was the only way of getting those lyrics out,” he adds, his love of rap and poetry leading him to "just speak" the lyrics he was writing. “It's another happy accident I guess,” he grins. “Once again, not trying so hard seems to be the only thing that works for us.” Another key to the band’s dramatic rise has been their fervent and everswelling fanbase, who follow Easy Life around the country on tour and sprinkle their shows with flags, inflatables and every kind of colourful ephemera. childhood of traipsing after his parents to farmers' markets across the region. “That whole time I lived in Leicester, I had no fucking money,” Murray remembers. “Don't get the violins out - it's not a sad story at all - but it's just what happens when you leave school in the UK. I was still doing music and still trying to make it work, but because I was so hard up, I used to get fucked up all the time. “I was trying to write a big song, because I thought that if I wrote a massive pop song, then people would give a shit [about me]. I wasted two years trying to write a song for someone else. Trying to write a song has never been good for me, but at the time I hadn't lived long enough to understand that. Those years will never come back; I was wasting my time and going nowhere.” Aged 21, it was when his friends returned home to find him still working at the market that acted as an unwelcome but necessary jolt for Murray. "I started to get fed up, and started hating music and not wanting that anymore," he remembers. Discouraged, he began to apply for jobs in the military, seeing the opportunity as “a way to get away from England”. And then just when he was about to give up on his musical dreams,

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the frontman wrote ‘Pockets’: Easy Life’s breakthrough hit. Working with childhood friend Rob Milton - the frontman of Nottingham indie band Dog is Dead, who had just been dropped from a major label deal - the pair bonded over a frustration at falling short of their dreams and penned the song with a “fuck it” attitude. Once again, it comes back to Murray’s recipe for success: after busting a gut to try and write a hit for years, it was only when he essentially stopped trying so hard that he hit gold. “Easy Life came out of the despair of going nowhere,” he notes. With the momentum of a first song behind him, Easy Life then officially formed while, as Murray delicately puts it, "absolutely steaming" at a Horse Meat Disco night in Leicester. At the night, the band Murray, drummer Oliver Cassidy (aka Cass), bassist Sam Hewitt and guitarist Lewis Berry - asked "local legend" Jordan Birtles, who was notorious in the city’s music scene as a member of local reggae band By The Rivers, to join Easy Life as percussionist and multiinstrumentalist, and the band we see today was born.

ince ‘Pockets’ landed at the end of 2017, Easy Life have slowly and organically become one of the UK’s biggest cult bands. Based out of their Leicester studio HQ, and defined by hugely fun,

“We are a live band, that's our forte,” Murray confirms. “That's a thing we can do better than other people. We sell more tickets than we should really, I think. Bigger recording artists don't do as big shows as us, and that's because our fans are hardcore. They just wanna party with us, and we wanna do that same shit with them. They make it so sweet.”

“I love just going on stage and getting my kit off and going mad.”

- Murray Matravers

“Easy Life came out of the despair of going nowhere..” - Murray Matravers

like it. It’s a message saying, ‘You can fucking do this. Celebrate your flaws’. “I'm glad it helps other people, but I did do it for myself,” he continues. “I read a lot of autobiographies for that reason, because if I read about someone else's life, I can draw parallels with mine and then it'll help me. It’s the same with the music: if you listen to me do my thing and struggle with my shit, it might help you through yours.” Alongside raising visibility for vital issues, Easy Life’s debut also vibrates with a refusal to take itself too seriously - an idea that’s at the very core of the band and Murray’s whole life. “I'm totally insecure about everything we do, and that's the greatest gift ever,” he says. “I'd hate to take it too seriously, and I don't think we could. From the start, we were just blagging it. When we got signed, we thought it was actually nuts, and it still is now. It's completely ridiculous. Obviously we take the piss out of ourselves, because what the fuck! It’s a joke!”

f Easy Life’s first three years marked them out as a superbly fun prospect, then debut album ‘life’s a beach’ is set to confirm that they’re also a very important one. Though Murray consistently plays down the gravitas of his band - “I'm just a glorified entertainer that’s been put on a pedestal by some people” - there are moments on the record that will undoubtedly resonate with their fans and beyond, chiefly opening track ‘A Message To Myself’. Written as a pep talk to himself to forget his detractors and keep moving forwards, the self-help mantra opens ‘life’s a beach’ with a defiant message on mental health as Murray tells himself to “stay focused, stay hopeful”. Though written as a selfish exercise, the openness and frankness with which the frontman tackles his problems and puts them to tape makes sure its ripples will travel far further than that. “'A Message To Myself' is a really important song for me,” he says. “It was just for me, and I wrote that in about half an hour and never thought anyone would

It’s only fitting that Easy Life wrote ‘Life’s A Beach’ from the UK city that’s geographically furthest from any coastline. After slagging off his hometown in a number of previous interviews, an older, wiser Murray wants to say sorry to the jewel of the Midlands. “I think I gave it a bad sell. I often say in interviews that Leicester's so shit, and that's why it's great, but as I'm getting a bit older and wiser to throwing dirt on the place, I want to say that I think it's a good place. A good part of the world. Anything goes in Leicester!”

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Across ‘life’s a beach’, the band take the joke to deliciously vibrant sonic plains. ‘Ocean View’ places Murray’s voice next to spine-tingling, pitched-up backing vocals while he sings of “working on my tan lines,” while ‘Lifeboat’ circles around an aching, autotuned vocal and the restrained ‘Compliments’ feels cut from the same cloth as Frank Ocean’s melancholy masterpiece ‘Blonde’. Then there’s lead single ‘Skeletons’ - an electric, partystarting house track that will define festival season when it finally arrives. Despite being convinced that their status as the UK’s next crossover success is all a big wind-up, the band do a perfect job of ensuring that they’ll make it to the next level regardless. “We're the most unlikely pop stars ever,” the frontman grins. “It's all a very elaborate joke that's got out of hand. I'm definitely not the best songwriter ever. Definitely not the best singer. Definitely just here for a good time. I love just going on stage and getting my kit off and going mad. I love that shit, it's so much fun. “I know for a fact that I will never take myself too seriously, because that's just who I am. I don't think most people do to be fair,” he adds, distilling the appeal

"[My lyrics are] like hearing your mate talk to you." you - MURRAY MATRAVERS

of Easy Life down to its core. They're five mates who are still blagging it, carrying on with an open heart and self-deprecating humour, and rolling with the punches of what life can throw at you. As an audience member who’s also flawed, messy and prone to mistakes, seeing that reflected on stage is more powerful than it’s given credit for. As Murray says, “[My lyrics are] like hearing your mate talk to you”.

it’s exactly what it was. After a debauched night out with co-writer and producer Fraser T Smith, who’s worked with Adele, Stormzy and more, Murray found himself in the studio at 3am, desperate to get some kip but determined to record something first. Stepping into the vocal booth with only a few disparate notes on his phone and a spinning head, he proceeded to nail the sprawling and largely improvised track in one take.

At the end of the album sits ‘Music To Walk Home To’, a spoken word track that sees Murray monologuing about the walk home from a messy night out of “cocktails and disco biscuits” over a slowly shifting mix of tropical house and disco. Something close to a Midlands version of Arab Strap’s ‘The First Big Weekend’, it’s an effortlessly charming epilogue to the album that sees Murray fantasising about the slice of toast that awaits him at home as his drunken legs get tired and he tells himself: “Come on Murray, not far now - keep on going”.

“Obviously we never thought it'd make the album, but why the fuck not?” he says. “Again, don't take yourself too seriously. We all get drunk sometimes don't we!”

If it sounds like a loose, drunken ramble, that’s because

As is now abundantly clear, the message remains the same: when the urge strikes, don’t wait. Life might not always be easy, but it’s there for the taking. Go out and grab it. ‘life’s a beach’ is out 28th May via Island. DIY

review

EASY LIFE

life's a beach (Island)

After years of colourful live shows and songs about sangria, sunburn and boozy weekenders, Easy Life’s debut album opens with a handbrake turn. First track ‘A Message To Myself’ is a self-help mantra from frontman Murray Matravers, preaching self-love and individuality. It’s a touching opening statement that shows the band have the power to be a force for good as well as purveyors of sunny, festival-ready bops. “All you have to do is look within,” he sings to himself and the wider world, reflecting a troubled year that was full of soul-searching for many. Alongside the self-interrogation, there are also heavy doses of escapism here too. ‘life’s a beach’ was largely written by Murray in lockdown, giving the record a daydreaming quality of wishing you were somewhere else. Even if he were allowed outside in 2020, the band’s hometown of Leicester is the farthest UK city from the seaside anyway; this is a record that yearns to be somewhere else, on many levels. Over twelve warm, genre-bending tracks, the band prove themselves instantly likeable and relatable; “Life’s too short to give a shit, don’t let the seagull steal your chips,” Murray sings on ‘Have A Great Day’. But when he’s not skewering Middle England stereotypes, he’s also unafraid to get serious. On the UK garage-inspired ‘Living Strange’, the singer turns to darkness again, singing: “I hang myself from the ceiling, it’s a real pretty art installation”. While the sun-drenched wonky pop hits remain (‘Skeletons’, ‘Ocean View’), ‘Life’s A Beach’’s lasting impact is its confrontation of depression and selfdoubt: this is a record that will make you feel deeply as well as provide a soundtrack for your first post-lockdown festival. (Will Richards)

U n k now From releasing in lockdown to being nominated for the BRITs’ Album of the Year - all while becoming an unexpected podcast juggernaut - little about Jessie Ware’s fourth LP was expected. Now gearing up to give ‘What’s Your Pleasure?’ the deluxe treatment, the South London singer is taking things in her stride. Words: Sarah Jamieson.

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plea

“It was a bit like when the lights go on in the club

and you’re like, ‘Oh man, does it have to be over?” Jessie Ware nods at her laptop camera. “It was like, 'Where’s the afterparty?!’” It feels apt that the South London singer would use this kind of metaphor to describe how it felt once her latest record had finally been released in the middle of 2020; a slick, flirtatious romp, ‘What’s Your Pleasure?’ marked the most upbeat, effervescent output Jessie has released in her 10-year career. Like many artists who remained focused on persevering with their release plans - “I was adamant that I didn’t want the record delayed,” she says, “I was finding so much solace in listening to music” - Jessie soon faced the reality that, without the ability to make promotional appearances and play live shows following its release last June, the album’s lifespan could well be cut short. And yet, despite the obvious hurdles that stood in the way, things began to click more into place than ever. “I think that there’s the traditional, orthodox way you can put a record out; you’re allowed three singles,

“It felt like I was a new artist again.”

a suR Es

and then it’s like, ‘Dead’,” she gestures. “But there was a power in this record and I’m so appreciative of how people were sharing it. It felt like I was a new artist again.” With listeners locked in their homes, kitchens became dancefloors, while Jessie herself approached things from an altogether more pragmatic place. A performance on The Graham Norton show was filmed in her daughter’s bedroom with accompanying strobe lights, while hair and make up soon became a do-it-yourself job. “There was a forgiveness in it being a bit rough around the edges, which I appreciated,” she confirms. “And in weird ways, we were able to do far more with building the world and the picture of ‘What’s Your Pleasure?’ by being able to do these low-budget videos for more songs than just your regular singles.” That expansion of her world - the determination to continue on, regardless - paid off. Not only did ‘What’s Your Pleasure?’ become her highest-charting record so far, but Graham Norton invited her back to his show for a second round, this time in person. Then there was the casual accolade of the album’s call-to-arms closer ‘Remember Where You Are’ finding its way onto Barack Obama’s Favourite Music of 2020 playlist. “When Barack Obama put that on his playlist… I really think that he kickstarted the campaign, to be honest,” she laughs. “Barack and Graham granted me that afterparty!” Now, there’s the small matter of her two BRIT Award nominations. “The BRITs album nomination…” her eyes light up. “Not to discredit the Best Female nomination - I’m very appreciative that I’ve been up for that on every record - but to have the album one, that felt like a real cherry on the top.”

peaking to Jessie today, there’s a sense of ease with which she looks back on the challenges of the past twelve months. But rewind the clock back a few years and her feelings seemed very different. Following the release of her third album, 2017’s ‘Glasshouse’, the pressure of pursuing her career and balancing her personal and family life had started to take hold. “I think I’ve always felt like music is something that feels so odd to call your job. It should feel like a privilege, but for a good while it became this very heavy, daunting, life-sucking entity,” she admits. “That sounds very dramatic but I was grappling and struggling with how to be a mother - which was always my true kind of desire but also to hang on to a music career, which seemed harder and harder to do.” It was around that same time that Jessie launched her new endeavour Table Manners. A podcast hosted with her mum, Lennie Ware, the pair would invite some of their more high-profile mates around for dinner and a chat, to discuss favourite childhood

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food memories, final meals and karaoke choices. As it so happened, what began as an entirely uncalculated passion project - “My mum is the star, we all know that,” she adds - soon began to take on a life of its own, with guests ranging from Ed Sheeran to Kylie Minogue, and David Schwimmer to Dan Levy. “It felt so different to how the industry works, and it was me just being myself…” Jessie offers up. “Then it became more and more popular, and gave me a confidence boost, which I could then take into the studio. “It’s incredibly liberating and affirming and empowering,” she now says of no longer feeling tethered to one specific element. “I think, particularly because of the success of ‘What’s Your Pleasure?’, it’s been amazing to see that my music career - which is my first job and first love - is going from strength to strength. I feel like I’m becoming the artist that I’m supposed to be, on my own terms, and that’s supported by this other aspect which is such a part of me - socialising, being nosy, eating - which doesn’t feel like work ever. I feel incredibly spoiled that I have these two jobs which are really able to enrich and make me very appreciative. But it also feels like we’re only getting started!” That much is true. As well as getting ready to release her very own ‘food memoir’ (“It makes me feel a bit sick if I just say a memoir!”), ’What’s Your Pleasure?’ is fast approaching its first anniversary. To celebrate, it’ll be given a deluxe reissue featuring eight new tracks which help to broaden its narrative horizons even further. This time, “it’s a different vibe, it’s slightly more acid-y, and slightly less sophisticated, and I don’t mind that. “I had so many songs that I hadn’t used but also they didn’t fit. I was very focused in the story and the journey that ‘What’s Your Pleasure?’ mk I offered up, and then I was just like, ‘I’m not done with this record’. I just feel like my fans have been so good to me and received it so well, I thought, why not give them as much as possible? “It just felt like the story wasn’t finished,” she grins, “so let’s go into the second room for another little rave. [With] the new song ‘Please’, it feels like there’s an optimism to it and a cheekiness that is hopefully tangible, and nearly a possibility. It felt like the perfect opener to this second bill. We had the desperate ‘Save A Kiss’ - which was not meant to be a Covid song but it became one - and this is about how we’ve been apart, but now it’s like, let’s fucking get together, let’s flirt, let’s be naughty.” ‘What’s Your Pleasure? The Platinum Pleasure Edition’ is out 11th June via Virgin DIY

When Barack Obama put ‘Remember Where You Are’ on his playlist - I really think that he kickstarted the campaign, to be honest.

WHEN JAY SOM’S MELINA DUTERTE AND PALEHOUND’S ELLEN KEMPNER MET, THEY INSTANTLY BECAME BEZZIES. A FEW YEARS LATER, THEY’RE INTRODUCING BACHELOR: A COLLABORATION BUILT ON MUTUAL, BIG-HEARTED ADMIRATION.

TWO'S

WORDS: LISA WRIGHT. PHOTO: TONJE THILESEN.

“Everything’s designed to pit us against each other and that’s a part of music that’s so dumb.” - Ellen Kempner

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ou could guess a few theories behind why Bachelor - the new ‘supergroup’ project of Melina Duterte (aka Jay Som) and Ellen Kempner (aka Palehound) - might have named themselves as they have. A meeting of minds behind two of US indie rock’s most thoughtful protagonists, perhaps it was a stab at a still male-dominated industry, or even a nod to their own new union following predominantly solo careers? “You know The Bachelor? I’m a HUGE fan of that extremely chaotic TV show - I’m obsessed, I love reality TV, I love Love Island and all of it,” chortles Melina. “So I got Ellen into that when we were recording and she was the one who said we should name it Bachelor. It’s funny because we are two of the gayest people that are naming ourselves Bachelor, and it’s such a hetero word.” “Today one of the bachelors came out as gay so I’m not saying we had anything to do with that, but we didn’t NOT have anything to do with it,” notes Ellen sagely. “I feel like we put that vibe out there…” In conversation, it becomes quickly clear that an evening spent hooting at the exploits of TV’s more eyebrow-raising stars is far more befitting of the pair’s mutually adoring friendship than anything overly serious. Meeting for the first time at a shared gig in 2017, both profess to having been rapturous fans of the other’s work before they became pals; immediately feeling “a really special bond”, from there the

Written during a two-week stint out in Topanga, California, the pair describe the experience as one entirely full of “hyping each other up, having fun, laughing”. Rather than an ego match between two people used to fronting their own projects, Ellen recalls the tone of divvying up their new wares: “‘You can sing this one if you want to!’, ‘Ah no man, you take this one’ - that was the vibe the whole time, never any fights or weird tension,” she smiles. “I'm an Aries and Ellen is a Gemini and I think that’s a match made in heaven,” says Melina. “It just works well like that. You’ve got to trust astrology.” Though they fondly regale tales of ‘crazy time’ - the inevitable 7pm point in the day when neither could function - there’s evidently a bigger shared viewpoint and mutual understanding that lies at the heart of the record’s sonic freedom. Loose-sounding and smart, yet warm and inviting, ‘Doomin’ Sun’ rattles between tracks like the heavier ‘Stay In The Car’ and the slow-burning ‘Sand Angel’ with an ease that’s palpable. “We were having these really deep and vulnerable conversations with each other that made it really easy to share ideas,” explains Ellen. “Writing lyrics is embarrassing, no matter who you are! But I didn’t really feel embarrassed [here] because we really had gotten very raw with each other already in every way.” “We grew up at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of music taste, but we were both gay, and being two queer musicians that’s something we can talk about with each other - about how it affects our daily lives and our careers.” Offering a support network between each other and between musicians in general

COMPANY

seeds of this month’s debut ‘Doomin’ Sun’ were sown.

is something Bachelor are vocally passionate about. Like boygenius (the trio of Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker) before them, Jay Som and Palehound’s musical union is a notable two-fingers to notions of competition and rivalry within their spheres.

“That’s one thing I’ve noticed over these last couple of years, the gatekeeper-ness of the industry and how unfriendly it can be, how people want to pit you against other people because you also are a person with a guitar and you play this sort of music, but it shouldn’t be a competition,” says Melina, as Ellen picks up: “Everything is designed to pit us against each other. Shit’s designed to feel very competitive and we’re supposed to be insecure and we’re supposed to be trying to outdo each other. People love competition and comparing people, and it’s a part of being in music that’s so dumb. Sometimes I feel like I’m on a reality TV show…”

Reality TV is clearly inescapable, but thankfully the premise for any show based on these two would be a far less provocative one. It might not make scandalous gossip column inches, but theirs is the perfect formula for a truly solid, supportive relationship - and one that’s only set to get stronger. “Ellen is moving to LA and you know what that means!” grins Melina. “We’re just gonna be closer to each other!” “That’s one of the main reasons I’m moving,” beams Ellen, “it’s really exciting the idea of being close and doing this [band] whenever we want to.” Sod creating pointless conflicts to vie for an imagined crown - this Bachelor’s all about shared victories and mutually manifesting something magical. ‘Doomin’ Sun’ is out 28th May via Lucky Number. DIY

Age The

New album, new sound, new attitude: after a decade in the game, ‘Seek Shelter’ finds the hard edges of

Iceage’s

magnetic frontman Elias Bender Rønnenfelt finally beginning to thaw.

Words: Louis Griffin. Photo: Mishael-Phillip.

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Enligh

lias Bender Rønnenfelt is sat in his apartment in Copenhagen, and winter is beginning to melt into spring. “Winters are harsh here,” explains the Iceage frontman. “Any street life you have is just people commuting from A to B, but now people are starting to sit outside a bit more and you actually see people rejuvenating themselves in the street life – that’s a bit of an injection of hope.” It’s fitting, really, as the band are on the verge of releasing what is perhaps their most hopeful album to date. ‘Seek Shelter’, the Danish band’s fifth effort, feels full of life and optimism at a time when neither is in particularly plentiful supply – it’s a surprise, too, from a band known best for dour, philosophical rock.

there’s maybe been a need for nurture that perhaps wasn’t there before, a longing for something that grabs you around the shoulder, and gives you a squeeze, and says that things are OK. If it’s uplifting at times, it wouldn’t be uplifting if there wasn’t something that you had to lift up from.” It’s almost strange hearing him speak so candidly about the vulnerability at the heart of the album. Over the years, the frontman has built up quite the reputation for being a difficult interviewee, point-blank refusing to answer questions, and giving cryptic answers when he does. But the Elias we meet today is an open book – guarded at times, but far from the prima donna you might expect. Indeed, he’s keen to set the record straight. “In the early days, we didn’t really know why we were doing things yet,” he sighs. “We were 17, 18 years old when we released our first record and caught the attention of the world, and then all these smug, older journalists want a piece of you, and want to know why you’re doing things. Fuck, I don’t know why I’m doing these things!” he laughs. “You’re so new into this, and so instinctively you’re trying to protect some core of what you’re doing before everybody gets to paint the picture of whatever they think you are.”

Iceage have been peddling their blend of guitar music’s gothier and punker ends for well over a decade now, and have built up a reputation for skewing towards the maudlin. Yet as they’ve travelled further from the icy post-punk of their earliest material, their sound has thawed into something quite difficult to label – you only need look at the strings and horns of previous album ‘Beyondless’ by way of example. It’s a path, explains Elias, that has evolved yet again with ‘Seek Shelter’. “‘Beyondless’ was a record that was heading into the storm, and ‘Seek Shelter’ is a record that is situated inside the storm, but is longing to get away from it,” he offers. “I find within the record that

It’s hard not to wonder what the younger him might make of his older counterpart’s frank answers and downright upbeat sound. “I don’t

“The fact that I’ve found a sense of purpose and kind of a home in the pursuit of songwriting - that’s quite something to me.” Elias Bender Rønnenfelt

htenment 43

know, because I think the younger Elias was without anything to lose, without any direction, and without aspiration,” he admits. “The fact that I’ve found a sense of purpose and kind of a home in the pursuit of songwriting, and I’ve found meaning in it - that’s quite something to me. Because I don’t think I always expected to be able to find that anywhere.” He grins. “No, I imagine he’d be OK with this...”

egardless of his new-found desire for approachability, there’s still an air of mystique to the consistently-compelling frontman. A few weeks ago, Elias announced that he intends to spend the summer travelling around Europe with an acoustic guitar, with an email listed for anyone that fancies hosting him. Far from the received wisdom of carefullycalculated tour schedules and pitch-perfect press releases, the move seems to hark back to a more honest time in music - one imbued with a certain artistic romance.

“There’s maybe been a need for nurture that wasn’t there before, something that grabs you around the shoulder and says that things are OK.”

“I am a musician, and that is what I do,” he asserts. “So, desperate measures, but not in a bad sense. I’m just not going to sit around another summer and wait for something, so I figured I’m going to leave it to chance. I miss getting out there, and I’ve always had a sense of enjoyment at putting myself in situations where I don’t know how to get back: you leave a possibility for magic to happen. So, yeah, I’ve had an overwhelming amount of requests from all over Europe so far, and I’m just gonna take off and see where the fuck this summer can lead me. And if I can get lost in the process, then good.” It’s easy to see that he's getting itchy feet staying in one place. He’s spent the majority of his adult life on the road and, at this point, the nomadic lifestyle of a touring musician seems to be inseparable from his songwriting. “I’ve [been] in Copenhagen for longer than I have been in a good decade or so,” he considers. “Often I’ve had a tendency to finish an album and feel completely empty inside; I have nothing, I have nothing to say, I have nothing to draw from. So sometimes I would have a tendency to go out searching until I’m exhausted and find myself with some ingredients to cook from again.” He pauses, looking out of the window. “I can miss the stillness of things when I’m out there, and vice versa, but I feel like it’s a part of me. Which is interesting now that I’ve finished an album and that hasn’t been

- Elias Bender Rønnenfelt possible in the same kind of way, but then you realise that you do find these little ways of filling up that gap, even if you can’t geographically move as you usually do.” ‘Seek Shelter’ feels in many ways an ideal album to soundtrack the possibility of a more vibrant summer, but Elias is quick to refute that it is in any way a COVID-inspired record. “A lot of journalists I’ve been talking to think that it’s been written about and inside the pandemic, but the record itself had no idea that this thing was gonna happen. It’s interesting to see how the record has been reapplied to their immediate reality of the changed world.” The album flirts with many of Iceage’s classic themes – love, religion, defiance – but casts them in a new, celebratory light. Indeed, the album sees Elias interpolating the classic American gospel hymn ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken’ on rousing second track ‘High and Hurt’. Why choose to rewrite that song? “To be honest, I became aware that I was in the middle of ripping off the melody,” Elias confesses, “and I was thinking that maybe that’s not such a bad thing to do, especially with the cocky nature of that song? It felt like, well on one hand it would add to the whole meaning of the song and elevate it into that place between religion and something quite scumbaggish, and also it just seems like such a thing not to do, that we couldn’t just not do it.” If there’s one thing ‘Seek Shelter’ has to say, it’s that life’s too short not to just do it. ‘Seek Shelter’ is out now via Mexican Summer. DIY

ICEAGE: The Story So Far… New Brigade (2011)

Fast, hard and raw, Elias and co. didn’t pull any punches on their debut. It’s the kind of music that every angsty teen dreams of making, with titles like ‘Rotting Heights’ and ‘Total Drench’.

You’re Nothing (2013) Iceage’s second effort proved that they were far from a one-note act: this is the album where you really start to hear their emotional range. ‘Morals’ is the standout moment.

Plowing Into The Field of Love (2015) Fast-forward a couple of years, and the band were taking even more notes from Nick Cave, with strings and horns starting to creep in. The same fury their debut had is still there, but the delivery was markedly different.

Beyondless (2018) This is the album that marked the band’s full transition from punk to widescreen rock. ‘Beyondless’ even found them teaming up with Sky Ferreira for ‘Painkiller’, their biggest earworm to date.

Seek Shelter (2021) Iceage’s fifth adds even more strings to the band’s bow, bringing in hints of baggy psychedelia and Britpop; recorded with Pete Kember of Spacemen 3, it’s their most unashamedly joyous record so far.

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From bedroom pop confines to one of indie’s shiniest new stars, on ‘Forever Isn’t Long Enough’ Alfie Templeman is showing that you can push forward whilst still having heaps of fun. Words: Elly Watson. Photo: Blackksocks.

ack in the doom-scrolling days before pubs finally reopened, Weetabix decided to post a nightmare-inducing tweet of bake d beans covering their iconic cerea l blocks. The result was nearuniversal outrage. Alfie Templema n took it one step further with his reply: “1k likes and I eat this on camera”.

The challenge soon hit its desired target, so has Alfie delivered on his promise yet? “I’m yet to do it!” he laughs, Zooming in from his sister’s bedroom. “Someone just made a website about it. It’s like that ‘Is it Christmas yet?’ website, but it’s for me, and about eating this Weetabix. I’m really not looking forward to it, whic h I guess is why someone made a website so I have to do it…” With hasalfietemplemaneatenbeans onweetabixyet.com thankfully giving the world those all-important updates, Alfie’s fans - affectionately known as Templestans - are right fully more excited about the arrival of the singe r’s brand new mini album ‘Forever Isn’t Long Enough’ than whether or not he’ll fulfil his questionable breakfast choices. The longest release he’s put out to date, the mini album marks an exciting step forwa rd, with the now-18-year-old taking his vibra nt songwriting to new heights. Take the dreamy, Tame Impala-inspired ‘To You’, which sees the singer experimenting with synth sounds, or his confident swagger throughout the infectious ly catchy ‘Wait, I Lied’. “It’s just more polished,” he affirms. “It took longer and I made sure every thing was perfected. There’s a lot more layer s in the songs too, the songwriting is deeper. For the first time it felt like I was really singing from the heart rather than whatever rhymed.” Bringing together ideas for track s that had been floating in the archives, the relea se also finds Alfie diving into song ideas he’d penned back in his early teens. “There was defin itely some stuff which was really terrible, but I was like 15 or whatever!” he laughs of their early incarnations. Any particular howlers? “Probably trying to make a really long prog-rock song…” Luckily leaving prog firmly in his past, Alfie had some help this time around to glow up a few of his plans, hopping in the studio with Jungle’s Tom McFarland, as well as Kid Harp oon, who’s worked with the likes of Harry Style s and Shawn Mendes. “They open up the next level of how your songs can be interpreted and how they sound,” he beams. “One idea can change your whole outlook on the song. I did all these songs when I was 16, 17, so I was still very young and working things out for myself, and those guys just helped me bring out the best in them .”

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e n O

s t ep

le mates, lp of a few notab Yet despite the he ing it all do e Alfi ds fin y stl the record still mo , as it dio stu the around in alone, “tinkering prodigious his for n ow kn dy always is”; alrea ss and can play guitar, ba musical talents (he his of lk bu producing the drums as well as t ‘Forever tha g pin ho ’s he material himself), next ’ shows people the Isn’t Long Enough never one to sit d, An . ed ch rea step that he’s lows next, looking at what fol still, he’s already ted ipa tic -an rly his eage with 20 songs for under his belt. y ntl rre cu r pe debut album pro d do the ing to change an “I’m constantly try d making the rte sta dy ea alr next thing and I’ve dif ferent to ich is completely debut album wh ring around ke e just been tin this,” he says. “I’v g things up. hin itc sw d an ds un with dif ferent so dif ferent of ds kin all d with I’m messing aroun stuff. It’s d an minute, sitars instruments at the ment mo the at it for going got a ‘70s sound lly trial rea all It’s . that goes so we’ll see where but album de the at wh t’s and error and tha guessing fun! It’s a bit of a is becoming. It’s d what I’m an do e what I can game really to se capable of.”

beyond

seen Alfie ses have already His previous relea s, hopping itie bil pa ca his constantly pushing k to -pop to heavy fun between bedroom d back again: an ers ng ba ie jazz-flecked ind entation lness and experim its sense of playfu genrehis t ou ent through is the one consist Isn’t Long er rev ‘Fo y. ph blurring discogra scribed ception to this, de Enough’ is no ex and a chance to s” me ga d an n by Alfie as “fu m recorded and [bassist] Ca play about. “Me alls. “We’d rec he ,” bedroom ‘Hideaway’ in my stuff and then pid stu g yin sa s record ourselve little ing all kinds of fun reverse it. Just do the ke Ta .” dio in the stu things you can do ed by tropical ck ba lo so r ita track’s funky gu said fun. prime example of drum beats as the reach new nging himself to Consistently challe already s ha ind erk ge wund goals, the teena es that he’d ton les mi al gin ori shot past any not look himself. “I tend to previously set for been I’ve d an ing or anyth at socials or stats n’t know what’s do I , Is it a bird! Is it a ch mu so sitting at home otify I’m plane! No, it’s just I do look at my Sp Alfie Templeman going on, so when ays alw s “It’ s. he exclaim doing a seagull like, bloody hell!” pect it and ex r ve ne impression in a field. u yo e; quite out of the blu Form’ has ppiness In Liquid it’s really cool. ‘Ha which is fy oti n plays on Sp nearly got 10 millio this shit?! to ing en list o’s just like, what? Wh I always rked that out and “I still haven’t wo “But I . es nu nti co t,” he wonder about tha it cool that d fin t fun part! I jus guess that’s the what I do and d an ke ma I at people enjoy wh y.” ppens, I’m happ as long as that ha t now via ng Enough’ is ou ‘Forever Isn’t Lo Chess Club. DIY

I tend to not look at stats or anything, but when I do look at my Spotify I’m like, bloody hell! hell!” 47

A BRAVE NEW From domestic ‘Houseplants’ to AI technology and musings on future dystopias, Squid’s journey to debut ‘Bright Green Field’ has been a forward-facing odyssey.

WORLD Words: James Balmont. Photos: Holly Whitaker.

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We’re living in a reality that’s relatively synonymous with dystopia.” - Louis Borlase

ith a reputation built on infallible, visceral live performances, the notion that Squid would spend an enforced year off-stage seems a particularly unjust one. It was the same month the Bristol five-piece signed to Warp - one of the biggest dance labels in the country - that the world came to a standstill. No wonder, then, that there’s such a deep sense of foreboding across their titanic post-rock debut. A year on, the band are caught up in London with a hectic week of promo (including recording a live-to-vinyl release for this year’s Record Store Day) ahead of them. But the world evidently still feels an enduringly strange place to the quintet. “If you turn your head a bit, you can see Canary Wharf looming over the skyline,” observes guitarist-vocalist Louis Borlase with a distrustful tone, from a room above a Ladbrokes in Stepney Green. It’s an apt scenario, given the world-weary character of this month’s much-anticipated LP ‘Bright Green Field’. Forgive the idyllic title - this is a waking nightmare of noise and experimentation, laced with dystopian themes and futuristic technologies. The bookies downstairs may have only just reopened, but we’d bet there are few records more fitting of the post-pandemic era. The first album experience, it turns out, belied the band's expectations in more ways than one. Fans enamoured with the cultured intricacies of their live show might have anticipated anything (a minimalist percussion ensemble in a toilet factory? A Frank Zappa acid trip down the Ganges?). But it was a scene from a pretty bog-standard crime drama - something more befitting of Squid’s humble origins in a Brighton bedroom - that shaped their vision initially. “I remember watching CSI as a kid,” says keyboardist Arthur Leadbetter, gesticulating excitedly. “To solve the crime they had to get a guy in a music studio to tell whether someone’s voice in a recording was really them.” “They came into this studio and he was sitting at a mixing desk listening to [soul singer] Bill Withers, and he swivels around in his chair, like, ‘Yeah, that guy is a legend’. And I just remember thinking at that moment: I want to work in a studio like THAT.” Drummer-vocalist Ollie Judge felt similarly misled when his escapist fantasy didn't come to fruition for

their own recording experience: “I was expecting it to be more like the episode of Peep Show where they go into the studio to do the Honda advert.” But what the band ended up with was, in many ways, something far more conducive to the restrictions of the present day. Instead of glitz and TV glamour, they decamped to lauded Speedy Wunderground producer Dan Carey’s heatwave-afflicted studiodungeon in London, to shelter from the spiralling pandemic that loomed outside. “It never quite lived up to it,” concludes Arthur of his CSI daydreams. “But I’m not sure if Dan’s ever worked on a case like that.”

ittle surprise, then, that ‘Bright Green Field’ has ended up sounding so ominous. You can hear it in the dissonant guitar crunches of ‘Peel St.’, the avant-garde structure of ‘2010’ and the relentless whelps of Ollie’s vocals: this is an album wrought with chaos. Former BBC Radio 6 favourite ‘Houseplants’ (notably absent on the record) remains the closest the band have ever had to a threeminute pop song, but nothing much resembles that early single here. Instead, three seven-anda-half minute maelstroms paint an image of the band’s current perspective of the world: a place full of harsh terrors. “We’re living in a reality that’s relatively synonymous with dystopia,” begins Louis, describing the album’s deeper philosophical themes. “You walk around and see things built in the ‘60s that were part of this idea of a social utopia - designed with the understanding that we’ll be saved through technology and social movements. But everything has been undone. You can see it in the emptying of estates, and the encouragement to consume through advertising.” It’s probably why the tracks that embrace a sense of doom on the album do so with such aplomb. Eight-minute leviathan ‘Boy Racers’ boasts the presence of a medieval instrument during its apocalyptic four-minute climax, which reaches a level of intensity that surpasses all else on the album. But it’s also “definitely the most coming-of-age song on the record,” says Ollie, somewhat unexpectedly. If his claim is true, then it points to a rather questionable upbringing for the Squid boys, but considering their genesis as a funk covers band, it makes at least some sense. “It’s a bit like you’re being beamed up,” acknowledges Louis of the track’s otherworldly synth palettes and brain-melting drones, which they recall took “about 10 hours” to cook up in total. “That’s

PICTURE PERFECT

when you’ve reached puberty,” concurs Arthur.

Squid, a handful of disposable cameras, inevitable cabin fever while recording ‘Bright Green Field’, what could possibly go wrong?!

Sliding into Album One like…

Squid’s reaction when you prank them with a one star album review.

‘Bright Green Field’ in a bright green field.

Signing their lives away.

Frontman of band in ‘big mouth’ shocker.

‘Bright Green Field’ is by no means a gloomy record. As Ollie points out, “the relationship between utopia, dystopia and arcadia is actually quite blurred”. But the brightness of the album’s title remains at its most tangible in the band’s enduring live performances - which, after a period of incubation, seem to have transformed into a whole other beast.

Take their scintillating SXSW showcase this year. Tracks like ‘Paddling’ - never performed live prior - reveal a powerful sense of musicianship as the band face inward, assembled in star formation. It’s much less Slade than it sounds; with their interpersonal connection embodied through giddy call-and-response vocals and beaming grins, each player gels effortlessly to reveal the ecstatic depths of their work. Follow any one instrument and you’ll find a completely different story; embrace them in totality and you’ll find something greater than the sum of its parts.

espite the band’s affable sense of unity, naming the album was much less straightforward - a “paradox” that the band are only too quick to admit themselves. “We had this list of about 40 names,” says Ollie, prompting bassist Laurie Nankivell to burst into laughter. “They were all shit.” The abandoned ideas range from the benign to the bizarre: ‘Data Glove’, ‘Log Command’ and ‘Walkie Talkie’ all went on the back burner. “We had ‘Tunnel Boring’,” continues Ollie. “And then ‘Boring Tunnel’ as well.” What they settled for, however, reflects the inner workings of the band itself - it’s an imaginary place where minds figuratively meet, reveals Laurie. “We juxtaposed that idea with the image of the opposite of a city - somewhere bright and artificial,” he continues. The resulting ‘Bright Green Field’, then, is a utopian ideal undermined by the album’s computergenerated cover artwork. And if the aforementioned ‘Boy Racers’ evokes images of the Fast and the Furious films in its

More appropriate ‘BGF’ content.

Arthur w/ headphones

“This is us taking a break from writing ‘Peel St.’, being back together again after months apart.”

Laurie w/ trumpet.

Louis w/ cheesy grin.

“Wow! What a stretchy chord. Working on ‘Boy Racers’ at the old road with a glockenspiel which has one note featured on the entire album.”

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I was expecting [the studio] to be more like the episode of Peep Show where they record the Honda advert.” - Ollie Judge

lyrics (“It’s about growing up with macho boy racers around you,” affirms Ollie), then the record’s lead single ‘Narrator’ alludes to the opposite. The track was inspired by Ollie’s experience watching “Lynchian” Chinese art film ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ in the cinema by himself - a more seminal outing than he had anticipated. “I booked tickets for me and my girlfriend,” he says. “But then her grandad passed away, so I was sat in the middle of the cinema, alone, watching this really weird film that has no plot, really. There’s this very long 3D sequence at the end, which was absolutely incredible, but I came out feeling really confused. You’ve got to do the work to figure out what it meant - which is a nice way to go about writing songs, as well, I think.” It’s obviously an idea that stuck, because the band later sent off their music to a lab in East Asia after learning of a Japanese neuroscientist who had created an AI algorithm to decode “the mind’s eye”. The method requires the use of an fMRI scanner to create images based on what people are thinking. “We wanted to know whether we might be able to see an image of someone’s thoughts whilst they listened to the album,” the band explained in a press release - and though it sounds like an ominous statement, the idea was more Damien Hirst than Dr Frankenstein. “It was Ollie’s birthday, and we were sat at the pub,” recalls Louis of the fledgling concept. There, the band conspired to send images relating to specific musical moments on the album, including high rise buildings, burning cars, and a picture of Louis Theroux, to professor Yukiyasu Kamitani, who would show them to his subjects while playing snippets of the band’s music. “He’s a really nice mad scientist,” Louis concludes

of the adventure. “The scans he sent back became elements of the artwork, like the grass on the cover.” These images, of course, are exactly what makes the finished product look so uncanny. The album art is full of familiar objects warped into something alien: a transition not unlike the band’s own across recent years. “There’s one that came back looking like the Eastenders river image,” says Ollie. “But then the one for ‘Paddling’ looks like Boba Fett’s spaceship from Star Wars.” Speculative thinking and technological innovation are now at the crux of what Squid do. This is, after all, an album campaign that includes everything from 3D environment rendering in the video for ‘Narrator’ to the band’s website being transformed into a Google Earth randomizer. But the future, it seems, is equally mindboggling. “You’ll be able to see the rays of 5G going into your brain soon,” offers Ollie, deadpan. So when the city is communicating via hologram phones, and driving around in wind-powered cars, will the band be here to reckon with it? “We’ll be the same as ever, innit?” says Arthur, dashing Laurie’s hopes that we might have reached another dimension by then. “There’s definitely going to have to be some kind of tomfoolery to stop us.” Whether we’re in some fearsome new reality or not, then, at least we’ll have a fitting soundtrack. ‘Bright Green Field’ is out now via Warp. DIY

CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON OR FINDING NEMO? Chinese art films and zeitgeist-y documentaries may be more in tune with Squid’s boundary-breaking music, but after a 14hour day performing and recording in London, it seems that crowdpleasers work best. “We’ve had quite a selection over the past few days,” says Laurie of the band’s recent viewing habits. “The first night we watched Bruno. Night two we watched The Mask. And then last night we watched an amazing film called Top Secret - a comedy spoof from the makers of Airplane.” “It’s got Val Kilmer, preBatman!,” exclaims Ollie, enthusiastically. “Very, very handsome.”

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ews ST VINCENT Daddy's Home

(Loma Vista)

Of course, the best pop stars just are. Shape-shifting chameleons of their own design. Plotting their new era before the demise of the last; pilfering from all echelons of culture past and present, a nod to an all-time hero there, a metaphorical high-five to a wilfully obscure reference there. All told, St Vincent had easily reached this level by the time her last album, 2017’s ‘Masseduction’ was released, a neon-coloured electronic invasion, raising an arched eyebrow to the celebrity world in which she’d not long found herself entrenched in. Should anyone have questioned if one-time indie hero Annie Clark had really crossed over into pop icon territory, her appearance at the 2019 Grammys, mirroring Dua Lipa on a performance of the latter’s ‘One Kiss’ provided one overwhelming answer: the only difference, one shreds. And, like all great pop stars, ‘Daddy’s Home’ sees St Vincent transformed once again, both musically and visually. The record is a trip through the early American ‘70s, before punk had its way. It’s sonically warm, tinged with the hue of tobacco stains. But, thanks to countless deft touches by Annie and co-conspirator Jack Antonoff, never marinates in its own nostalgia. Take ‘Somebody Like Me’, a folky number with slide guitar - just as it threatens to welcome normality, in comes a trip hop beat; the Joni Mitchell-like ‘...At The Holiday Party’ does similarly with funk, or there's ‘Down and Out Downtown’, where Annie’s spoken word briefly falls into a hip hop rhythm. Similarly ‘The Laughing Man’ rhymes “Playstations” with “suicidal ideations”, and if that concept brings to mind Alex Turner’s last outing - it’s not far off. The record’s also littered with pop culture references whether literal (‘Melting of the Sun’ and its allusions to famous women’s pain) or musical. That there’s never a Bowie comparison further than six feet from Annie at any given moment makes the ‘Fame’-like echoed “Down” of that track all the smarter (that she’s also perhaps less intentionally matched One Direction’s ‘Drag Me Down’ also equally deserves a gold star). The tension in the squelchy, jazz-backed title track is broken spectacularly by a James Brown scream. And the glorious ‘My Baby Wants A Baby’, with the most relatable of couplets “I wanna play guitar all day / Make all my meals in microwaves,” is based on the chorus of Sheena Easton’s 1980 hit ‘9 To 5 (Morning Train)’. Crate digging? St Vincent has you. And if glistening choruses, sleazy funk breakdowns and hazy euphoria wasn’t enough, the inclusion of a trio of interludes, fading in and out as if walking past an open window, or dozing, only cement the cinematic nature of the record. “Wurlitzers and wit, glistening guitars and grit, with sleaze and style for days,” went the pseudo advertising slogan on the poster teasing the record’s announcement. On all fronts, with ‘Daddy’s Home’, St Vincent has delivered spectacularly. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘Down’, ’My Baby Wants A Baby’

BROCKHAMPTON

ROADRUNNER: NEW LIGHT, NEW MACHINE (Question Everything / RCA)

From their infamous inception on a Kanye West chat forum to their breakthrough jaw-dropping ‘Saturation’ trilogy, Brockhampton have always been seen as a pinnacle of refreshing excitement. ‘ROADRUNNER: NEW LIGHT, NEW MACHINE’, allegedly the band's penultimate record, finds them tapping into the feverish excitement that has always surrounded them, carving a record that packs an emotional punch while finding the collective as accomplished and explorative as ever musically. The death of Joba’s father forms its emotional core - most poignantly discussed on the gospel-soaked ‘DEAR LORD’ and his raw and unfiltered verse on ‘THE LIGHT’ (“When I look at myself, I see a broken man / Remnants of my pops, put the Glock to his head”). Elsewhere, other members confront what they’ve been going through, from Kevin speaking on sexuality (“I still struggle with tellin’ my mom who I love”) and racism (“Only take the Jeep if my boyfriend drivin’ / Plus he got the kinda skin that make the police like him”), to Matt dealing with the pressure of fame (“Tryna get red carpet fly, I don’t flex my life, don’t lie / Treat life like I might die, don’t like myself sometimes”). But above all, ‘ROADRUNNER…’ finds Brockhampton exploring the hopefulness that comes with facing these struggles. Preceded by a cryptic teaser video proclaiming “The light is worth the wait,” the album finds the group reaching for optimism and hope in the darkness that surrounds them. A sense of hope also weaves itself through the music, with a joyous feeling fizzing throughout. Mixing easy, breezy R&B and pop with whiplash-inducing hip hop and rap verses, ‘ROADRUNNER…’ combines Brockhampton’s known experimental flair with flashes of ‘Saturation’-esque hardness and ’GINGER’’s pop melodies coming together to create an exciting journey. While their sixth also sees producer Jabari Manwa stepping up to the booth as vocalist, the biggest standout in terms of cast rotation is the number of high-profile features. Danny Brown drops a verse on attention-grabbing lead single and album opener ‘BUZZCUT’ while JPEGMAFIA serves up several slick bars on vibey follow-up ‘CHAIN ON’. Shawn Mendes and Ryan Beatty offer vocals on poppy ‘COUNT ON ME’ before A$AP Rocky and A$AP Ferg electrify ‘BANKROLL’, and Baird brings the vibes on indie-tipped ‘OLD NEWS’. Charlie Wilson (of ‘Bound 2’ fame) also features on bouncy R&B bop ‘I’LL TAKE YOU ON’, a nod that is bound to make fellow Kanye stans smile. An album which finds a band who’ve been through a lot finding their stride and searching for joy from within the bleak, ‘ROADRUNNER…’ sees Brockhampton silencing any of those who feared they might have lost their spark. It’s a record that - if it is truly one of their last - sees the lads going out with a bang. (Elly Watson) LISTEN: ‘BUZZCUT’

reviews PARIS TEXAS

BOY ANONYMOUS (Paris Texas LLC)

SQUID

Bright Green Field (Warp) ‘Bright Green Field’ seems manufactured in the cold, hard grind of a climate-wrecking factory; arrangements are icily wrought like the clanking cogs of industry, hypnotically rotating in perfect tandem for maximum sonic profit. As a sequence of songs, it is masterfully constructed. Tracks skilfully blur into each other, as angular post-punk dystopias (‘G.S.K’, ‘Narrator’) find temporary respite in havens of post-rock ambience (‘Resolution Square’), before being uprooted by the blood-curdling efficiencies of German motorik (‘Peddling’). Shifts from the serene to the breakneck psychotic (with echoes of black midi), are as unsettling as they are absorbing. Lyrically too, Squid fully flesh out their own imagined city-scape of harsh alienation. Singer Ollie Judge could bark almost any absurdism and infuse it with an eerily-relatable Ballardian prescience. Images of global freezing, of bodies being mangled by trees, of insomniac nights soiled by night sweats and the sobs of existential terror, are vocalised with the same rabid intensity as benign observations on British weather and Easter Egg prices. “Open wide, we’ve got everything you like”, he not-too-inaccurately threatens the listener with on majestic closer, ‘Pamphlets’. And they’re not wrong. Squid always seemed destined to have an epic album in them, and they’ve delivered just that. (Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘Peel St’

BIIG PIIG

The Sky Is Bleeding (RCA) Think of a sexually-charged modern pop song. If your mind hasn’t instantly jumped to ‘W.A.P’, maybe it’s gone to Megan Thee Stallion’s equally unapologetic ‘Body’, or Ariana Grande’s ‘34 + 35’ (no maths degree needed for that one). In recent months there’s been no shortage of lusty, headline-grabbing, female-led tracks designed to take up space in an area so often co-opted by a male gaze: a worthy pursuit. But with new EP ‘The Sky Is Bleeding’, Ireland’s Biig Piig has struck on a sound that’s subtly powerful, but no less hot under the collar. Helmed by lead single ‘Lavender’ - all slinking beats and cooing half-whispers (“It's his forté, on his knees…”) - Jess Smyth’s latest is a steamy affair from beginning to end. ‘Remedy’ opens with tales of secret pleasures; ‘Tarzan’ coils around a chorus of bodies glimpsed through candlelight, while closer ‘American Beauty’ does good service to the heady sexuality of its titular film. It’s all played out, however, over the sort of immediately distinctive sonic palette - soft, muted drum patterns, languid guitar lines and a general nocturnal sensibility - that completely supports and underlines yet doesn’t make a show of its themes. Instead, there’s a quietly unflappable confidence here that feels genuinely fresh - and racy as hell. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Lavender’

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Emerging out of LA with a certain dynamic mysticism, Paris Texas are a duo happy to let the listener fill in the blanks of their story. Luckily for us, ‘BOY ANONYMOUS’ drops more than enough tasty breadcrumbs to keep everyone fed. Roaming influences like a two-man Brockhampton (or even an early Odd Future), this is hipster-hop with impeccable flair, the two members riffing off each other with the sort of twin-brained camaraderie that only true friendship can yield. Though a little blokey in some of its brags, it’s a mixtape of undeniable charisma. ‘AREA CODE’ and ‘BETTER DAYS’ are classic rap skits with a scuzzy edge, while ‘HEAVY METAL’, ‘FORCE OF HABIT’ and ‘SITUATIONS’ embrace the NYC indie-boy swag of the early noughties, leather-jacketed and knowing full well that they’re cool as fuck. Best of all is ‘CASINO’, the sort of opener that would have ‘Notes’era Matty Healy clenching his teeth with jealousy over its sky-high synths and no-holds-barred confidence: “Paris Texas / next big thing / might get that tatted on my teeth”. We might skip the dentistry, but we fully believe in their ambition - this is a duo ready to make a serious mark. (Jenessa Williams) LISTEN: ‘CASINO’

This is hipsterhop with impeccable flair.

reviews CHLOE MORIONDO Blood Bunny

(Fueled By Ramen / Public Consumption Recording Co)

Michigan teen Chloe Moriondo made her start in music through YouTube, posting covers of songs by Rex Orange County, Billie Eilish and the like from her sun-soaked bedroom. That was a few years ago - scroll through her feed today and the covers have gradually faded out, replaced by her own original material. In 2018 ‘Rabbit Hearted’, a collection of intimate, ukulele tunes, introduced Chloe as an artist in her own right. Now ‘Blood Bunny’ finds her more confident than ever, dialling up the volume with a no-fucks-given attitude. From the get-go, it's a riot. ‘Rly Don’t Care’ is a bombastic coming-of-age opener with Chloe celebrating getting her driver’s license (move over Olivia) over a zippy wash of pop punk, while ‘I Eat Boys’ uses wry lyrics and a saccharine melody to hammer home a serious anti-douchebag message. The crazily hooky ‘GIRL ON TV’ and ‘I Want To Be With You’ make for a formidable back-to-back combo, Chlo channelling serious Hayley Williams energy in her smiley delivery. There are bursts of live energy - ‘Vapor’ has a touch of Smashing Pumpkins in its fizzy chorus and ‘What If It Doesn’t End Well’ builds to a sprawling Phoebe Bridgers ‘I Know the End’ style climax - but it would be great to hear Chloe in more of a collaborative, band set-up in future. Hopping across to music from the world of YouTube takes talent, charisma and determination, all of which Chloe seems to have heaps of, and despite its flaws ‘Blood Bunny’ does a great job to showcase what this bright young star has to offer. With this record she enters the pop canon as someone who, like her heroes, deserves to be covered by teenagers in their sun-soaked bedrooms. (Alex Cabré) LISTEN: ‘Rly Don't Care’

BLACK MIDI

Cavalcade (Rough Trade) It’s hard to define a distinct difference within the eight tracks of ‘Cavalcade’, because the world black midi built on 2019 debut ‘Schlagenheim’ was so utterly their own. What is immediately apparent on its follow-up though, is its richer instrumentation, a broader shift in tempos and the same wild imagination still loom at large. This is apparent from the off on ‘John L’ strings thrash in a Psycho style as frontman Geordie Greep outlines the trappings of the world’s “infernal din”. ‘Chondromalacia Patella’ sways fantastically from drop-D guitar thrashes to funk to swooning jazz in the blink of an eye, the instrumental sounding as if it's being cranked to its limits in the closing 30 seconds as it spirals further out of control. ‘Diamond Stuff’ and ‘Marlene Dietrich’ set a slower pace against the more manic tracks that surround them. The latter - an odd ode to the cabaret star - borders on musical theatre at points, while the former warps slowly into a woozy mania, shedding itself of its structure as it goes. And within the lyrics, which are hard to follow due to Geordie’s fantastically odd delivery at rattling speed, it feels sometimes as if they don’t contribute to an overall picture. While there are whispers of the turmoil of our times within ‘John L’ and epic ten-minute closer ‘Ascending Forth’, the topics and characters can feel a little randomly selected. Assuming the group’s appetite for literature expands as broadly as their music does on this LP, this is to be expected - instead the music behind these multi-layered images that slip into frame set the laws of black midi’s universe. ‘Cavalcade’ is the sound of a band looking to broaden their horizons, but building from a sound already so idiosyncratic and unpredictable, they end up in some head-scratching corners. It’s still thrillingly entertaining nonetheless. (Sean Kerwick) LISTEN: ‘Chondrolamacia Patella’

BACHELOR

Doomin’ Sun (Lucky Number) A new project from the dream-pop duo of Melina Duterte (Jay Som) and Ellen Kempner (Palehound), Bachelor’s 'Doomin’ Sun' - also featuring guest appearances by members of Big Thief and Chastity Belt - was written during a prolific two week burst in a rental house in Topanga, California early last year. A deeply lyrical record, 'Doomin’ Sun' delivers a ten-song set of sexy, hot-blooded, high-stakes romance, rooted in the guitar-laden atmospherics of fuzzy, '90s indie giants like Mazzy Star and Yo La Tengo. Melina and Ellen have chanced upon a rich vein of creativity with this auspicious collaboration, segueing seamlessly, song-by-song, between folky, high-flown meditations on celestial bodies, tangy bubblegum melodies, and blustering power-pop nostalgia. While 'Doomin’ Sun' glimmers with a canny musical vision that is equally adept at handling both stripped back production and thickly layered walls of sound (as on the magnificently luxuriant ‘Spin Out’), it is perhaps the open-wound lyrical content that is most captivating here. Each song pirouettes on the emotional chasm between intimate, physical union, and lonesome psychological vulnerability, with a delicate poetic language drawn from the mundane wellsprings of everyday experience. Take ‘Stay in The Car’, to give but one example, where the unassuming setting of a woman unloading her supermarket groceries becomes a charged scene of broiling sexual tension: “plastic bags digging into her wrists / blood stuck in her fingertips”. All in all, it is as engrossing as it is innocently delightful. (Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘Spin Out’

A ten-song set of sexy, hot-blooded, highstakes romance.

reviews

THE BLACK KEYS Delta Kream (Nonesuch)

From the outside, the disconnect between The Black Keys the world saw last with 2019’s obscenely slick and vastly overblown ‘Let’s Rock’ and that here, celebrating Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney’s bond formed over the Mississippi blues on an uncharacteristically lowkey release, is a vast one. ‘Delta Kream’ sees the pair rework blues canon - largely the work of Junior Kimbrough and RL Burnside, recruiting bandmates Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton respectively - to suitably warm effect. The pair’s love for the material is palpable throughout, Dan’s signature howl swapped for a vastly softer vocal, as if in awe of the material he’s embodying, even on the vibrant ‘Coal Black Mattie’, a song recorded only decades after its inception, or the strutting ‘Do The Romp’. Still, while the studio’s energy is palpable on record, ‘Delta Kream’ is likely to appeal mostly to Dan and Patrick’s fellow blues nerds over anyone else. (Ed Lawson) LISTEN: ‘Do The Romp’

Sonically, they’re testing out a whole new palette.

LOU HAYTER

Private Sunshine (Skint) Best known as one fifth of primary-coloured nu rave stand-outs New Young Pony Club, in the decade since parting ways with that band Lou Hayter has dipped a toe into various musical projects but never managed to skewer the zeitgeist quite as brilliantly as with her first outfit. Debut solo offering ‘Private Sunshine’ - a slick slice of glimmering yacht pop that may as well come with a free pair of designer sunnies - might not be destined for dizzying commercial heights either, but it does showcase Lou as a songwriter with a distinct knack for an atmosphere: an expensive-sounding, plush playground where beautiful people brush shoulders in the beating sun. From the more downbeat, Sky-Ferreira-goes-’70s eyelash flutter of the title track, to the slow-jam, synth strut of ‘Telephone’, ‘Private Sunshine’ is a polished affair - but it’s this slightlytoo-perfect detachment that often also stops the album from truly hitting deep. Though ‘Cold Feet’’s relatable tales of a “momentary love” say all the right things, Lou’s vocal is too glossy to convey the necessary emotion, while a cover of ‘Time Out of Mind’ stays reasonably true to the Steely Dan original but again removes much of the warmth. There are moments where it works; ‘What’s A Girl To Do?’ in particular has a more playful hint of early-’90s Madonna to it. But though ‘Private Sunshine’ comes wrapped in a desirable, effortless package, you’re left wanting a few more layers to unpack beneath it. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘What’s A Girl To Do?’

ICEAGE

Seek Shelter (Mexican Summer)

CHAI WINK

(Sub Pop)

When Japanese quartet CHAI released 2018 debut ‘PINK’, their MO was a straightforward one. A bright and brilliant blitzkrieg of hyperactive dance-punk, they arrived with the self-labelled genre of ‘Neo-Kawaii’ - the new cute - and a canon of tracks aiming to promote self-acceptance and make a giddy, glorious racket whilst doing it. The following year’s ‘PUNK’ cast them as the lost band nu-rave always wanted, but it’s with third LP ‘WINK’ that the four-piece are trying something akin to restraint. Opening with the gloriously-titled ‘Donuts Mind If I Do’ - a hazy, nostalgic pop track born for a chiffon-clad, ‘70s Top of the Pops performance - what follows is an unexpected curveball; the linguistic quirks remain, but sonically, CHAI are testing out a whole new palette. Take ‘Maybe Chocolate Chips’ (featuring rapper Ric Wilson) - yes, it’s a pure-CHAI analogy about loving your moles, but musically it’s an R&B slow jam of breathy, cooing vocals and stripped-back, woozy keys. The Booksmart-inspired ‘Nobody Knows We Are Fun’ (an absolute whopper of a lie for a start), meanwhile, is all wobbly basslines and chilled house. Even when they’re going slightly bigger - ‘END’ nods to a Beastie Boys style of hard beats, while ‘PING PONG’ sounds like it’s been trapped inside a ‘90s Game Boy - there’s still a measuredness that wasn’t there before. We’d never want CHAI to lose their pep, but there’s something pleasing about watching them grow into something new. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Donuts Mind If I Do’

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The trajectory Iceage have followed over the course of the past decade has made for fascinating viewing: starting out as an incendiary punk outfit that sold branded knives at the merch table at their myth-making live shows, the then-teenagers from Copenhagen have matured before our eyes, and their sound along with it. Die-hard adherents to the nihilistic mayhem that came to characterise debut LP ‘New Brigade’ and follow-up ‘You’re Nothing’ might view the band’s arc since as one that’s involved a mellowing - a rounding off of sharp edges, and a gradual introduction of polish where once there was only scuzz. This fifth record, ‘Seek Shelter’, feels like a culmination of the journey they’ve been on since 2014’s ‘Plowing Into the Field of Love’. A rollercoaster ride of diverse influences, the album takes us everywhere from nods to the freewheeling indie rock of ‘90s Jesus and Mary Chain (‘Dear Saint Cecilia’) to glossy, sixties-inflected love letters (‘Drink Rain’), via handsome, string-backed introspection (‘Love Kills Slowly’) and, on the standout ‘High & Hurt’, there’s a thrilling rework at the midpoint of the classic hymn ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken?’ that imbues it with moody menace. At the centre of it all is a thoughtful, almost earnest lyrical throughline from frontman Elias Rønnenfelt - not something many of us ever expected to hear from the band who brought us ‘New Brigade’. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ’High & Hurt’

reviews

WATERPARKS Greatest Hits (300 Entertainment)

ALFIE TEMPLEMAN

Forever Isn't Long Enough (Chess Club)

Still in his teens, Bedfordshire’s Alfie Templeman has already established himself as a veritable force of British indie pop, with a plethora of releases to his name and an impressively broad scope of musical styles ventured. Continuing to perform all instruments with his multi-talented fingers, ‘Forever Isn’t Long Enough’, the singer-songwriter's most comprehensive release to date, turns up the production slickness while sacrificing none of his affable, boyish charm. Throughout ‘Forever…' Alfie takes a percussive Foals-esque indie disco as his primary rhythmic mantra, dousing his tracks with crowd-pleasing choruses and hip-shifting backbeat chops. Opener ‘Shady’, produced by Tom McFarland of Mercury-shortlisted collective Jungle, announces this record’s grand ambitions, the pristine polish of its groove rivalling chart-giants Harry Styles and The Weeknd for its effortless pop sensibilities. ‘Wait, I Lied’, with its delicious funk-bass riff, takes Arctic Monkeys’ ‘Why’d You Only Call Me...’ and injects it with propulsive, youthful urgency. There are plenty of retro-leaning ideals on show too. Lyrical reveries of “Sweet nostalgia” and “1983” are reflected in the chunky, Tears for Fears-ish beats of ‘Everybody’s Gonna Love Somebody' and shimmering ‘80s synths of ‘Film Scene Daydream’. A final switch to lo-fi on intimate bedroom-core closer ‘One More Day’, gives another indication that Alfie Templeman is not one to rest on his laurels, not afraid to constantly tinker with his sound to discover fresh forms of pop satisfaction. (Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘Wait, I Lied’

Titling your fourth album ‘Greatest Hits’ is arguably both brave and ballsy in equal measure, but for Texas trio Waterparks, a move such as that feels almost like business as usual by now. Following on from their ambitious 2019 record ‘FANDOM’ - which saw them take a self-aware dive into the fickle nature of fame and stan culture - their latest release is as bold a gesture as its title suggests. From the frenetic rapping of ‘Numb’ to the starkly classic piano intro of ‘Snow Globe’, via the self conscious monologue of ‘Just Kidding’, the band flit between sonic styles with the blink of an eye - like musical magpies, continually drawn to shiny new elements - making ‘Greatest Hits’ feel like a whirlwind of genres and textures that far exceed the “pop rock” label that’s been placed on them. Even in its extreme eclecticism - take the electronic-drenched ‘The Secret Life of Me’ - there are chorus gems, tailor made for massive singalongs. But while, on the whole, the impact of their whip-smart offerings is striking, throughout the album’s staggering seventeen tracks, it does become easy to get a little lost. Brave and ballsy? ‘Greatest Hits’ absolutely is, but will it live up to its grand ambitions? Only time will tell. (Sarah Jamieson) LISTEN: ‘The Secret Life Of Me’

RACHEL CHINOURIRI

Fourº In Winter (Atlas

Artists / Parlophone)

At just 22, South Londoner Rachel Chinouriri is an artist ready to plumb serious depths. Setting out to celebrate her growing confidence in production, ‘Four° In Winter’ is an EP that uses her voice boldly, a composite layer of the atmospheric soundscapes she uses to capture a heavy-hearted search through her soul. Knowing that acknowledging your woes is the first step towards healing them, Rachel doesn’t hold back. On ‘Darker Place’, she crouches in a near whisper, playing hide and seek with a chunky daytime R&B groove, whereas on ‘Plain Jane’, she recalls the vulnerable dignity of Denai Moore’s electronic-infused ‘Modern Dread’, melting through the ice with the barbed heat of her youthful turn of phrase - “Saw your new flame / She’s a peng ting / The way you’re used to”. ‘Through The Eye’ puts things even more starkly; “It’s my cry for help / No one else should stand no more of my struggling...” Set to a beautifully tumbling melody, her turmoil is obvious, but like her beloved Coldplay and Daughter before her, she knows exactly how to balance sombre lyricism with moments of head-bobbing levity, inviting catharsis rather than pity. Rachel may be feeling blue, but her shade choice is royal – the kind that’ll make plenty of listeners feel less alone. (Jenessa Williams) LISTEN: ‘Through The Eye’

Photo: Louise Mason

reviews MAN ON MAN

Man On Man (Big Scary Monsters) “It’s so fun to be gay,” declare MAN ON MAN three tracks into their self-titled debut, setting the tone for the record’s unrestrained celebration of love. Born in isolation, the collaborative project sees Faith No More’s Roddy Bottum and boyfriend Joey Holman explore their relationship through an escapist blend of lo-fi indie punk, harnessing the beauty of their companionship in the sun-kissed soundscapes. It paints a deeply personal portrait of romance and intimacy, underpinned by an ever-present sense of fun, not least on lead single ‘Daddy’ or the piano-led ‘Please Be Friends’. It’s in this overarching joy that the duo cement the simplicity of love in otherwise complex circumstances. “You would make a perfect husband,” the rousing ‘Lover’ remarks as it builds to a wave of euphoric instrumentation. It’s just one of many moments that so perfectly capture the creators’ shared emotion. MAN ON MAN focus inwardly on a carefree love, one only strengthened through their time together, rather than looking at external impacts on LGBTQ+ relationships. With that, the album offers a heart-warming snapshot of a loving relationship that at its very core is untarnished by societal norms and expectations. Above all else, it delivers a positive view of a genuine and lasting relationship removed from the artificiality that often surrounds gay representation, led by two creatives who this far into their musical career continue to break the mould. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Lover’

WYLDEST

Monthly Friend (Hand In Hive) After the reverb-drenched sound of 2018 debut ‘Dream Chaos’, Wyldest’s second full-length proper, ‘Monthly Friend’, is a sharper, more focused release - both sonically and in concept. Produced and mixed as well as written by the outfit’s Zoe Mead, it's an exercise in self-sufficiency as well as a demonstration of the record’s concept: womanhood and all the ways it can exist despite constraints. The album is full of the dreamy, intricate guitars she has come to have a reputation for, and her music is still buoyed with an indie pop sensibility, but this time there’s also a renewed presence and focus. The burbling ‘Hollow’ celebrates change, something Zoe believes “is the only way the human race can continue to exist” with barely-there vocals and glints of guitar, while on ‘Heal’ she's full of conviction about the abuse that is often inflicted on women. Documenting her journey with clarity and confidence, ‘Monthly Friend’ is an accomplished album that shows off Zoe Mead’s command. (Eloise Bulmer) LISTEN: ‘Hollow’

WEEZER

Van Weezer (Crush / Atlantic) Without entertaining the perennial miserablism that surrounds the release of a new Weezer album, that ‘Van Weezer’ wasn’t likely to be the group’s finest work wasn’t a tough prediction. The band’s strengths have largely lied when they’ve embraced the awkward; from the coming-of-age of their debut self-titled ‘Blue’ album, to the quite literal ‘Maladroit’. When Rivers Cuomo sang of “my favourite rock group Kiss” in ‘In The Garage’, it’d more often than not be welcomed with an ‘aww, bless’, not wondering if he’s about to try and emulate them. And here’s where the record is most confusing. While shoehorned references and clumsy couplets have long been Weezer’s staple (to various degrees of success), the marriage of their stillundimmed knack for a melody with the pure braggadocio and comically large riffs that are staples of what anyone too young to remember ‘80s American hard rock imagines it is becomes a pure oil-water situation. Given its title, that ‘Van Weezer’ launches immediately into an extended tapping sequence makes complete sense. Following in the same song with a line as “huh?” as “You got me crying / like when Aslan died”? Much less so. So while a misty-eyed retread of their youths could be the intention (it’s unlikely ‘I Need Some Of That’’s “Listening to Aerosmith / later on I will call my mom” is a line from 50-year-old Rivers’ journal), we’re left with a contrast that never quite works. Instead, it’s where the concept is applied metaphorically that ‘Van Weezer’ finds some green shoots. ‘Beginning of the End’ is, on paper, the cheesiest of all things - a song about being on tour - but is a welcome reminder of some of the band’s own signature sounds. Similarly, ‘Precious Metal Girl’ is musically subtle, but lyrically witty. It’s telling that ‘OK Human’, a record that paired soaring harmonies with Abbey Road orchestration to almost sickeningly-sweet effect queue-jumped this release: it just doesn’t make sense. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘Precious Metal Girl’

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MAD SOUNDS SALEM

Salem II

(Roadrunner)

For vocalist Will Gould, lockdown allowed him the space to delve fully into his punk rock fantasy. With Salem, he transferred the overt theatrics of main project Creeper into short, sharp, guitar-led flourishes. Teaming up with Matt Reynolds, the duo’s debut EP marked an altogether rawer sound, adjacent to but separate from the melodramatic world created through Will’s other work. Their second EP continues on the same trajectory. The five tracks unfold with a melodic punk and roll urgency, underpinned by unshakable nostalgia and unashamed playfulness. The big choruses, primed to be belted back at the stage, sit against an atypical blend of over-thetop instrumentation and unrefined energy. Opener ‘William, It Was Really Something’ places dramatic pianos against its anthemic chorus. Vampiric love story ‘Draculads’ pairs unrestrained retro punk with a brilliantly campy breakdown. Together, the pairing of sounds creates a fascinatingly eerie feel. ‘Salem II’ conjures images of vampires in dive bars, the audible partner for the likes of Tarantino’s ‘From Dusk Til Dawn’ or any of the ‘80s twisted love stories. Cinematic and playful, it injects a raucous punk rock energy into Will Gould’s distinctive world. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘William, It Was Really Something’

Will Gould lets us in on what he and Matt were listening to while ‘Salem II’ took shape.

RAMONES ROCKET TO RUSSIA While writing the EP, the Ramones came up a bunch of times in the room. Matt and I have been fans for a long time and tried to combine the cocky energy of the songs on ‘Rocket To Russia’ with the sound we’d already been developing.

THE DAMNED MACHINE GUN ETIQUETTE This band has been an influence on Salem from the very beginning both in terms of sound and look, ‘Machine Gun Etiquette’ is one of my favourite albums of all time! In many ways The Damned were the first to be responsible for goth punk. The first time I played ‘Draculads’ to a friend of mine he told me the intro sounded like ‘Love Song’. It’s one of the coolest compliments we’ve had!

JAWBREAKER DEAR YOU It’s impossible for me to think of the lyrics i write and not see Blake [Schwarzenbach] as an influence. Growing up for me ‘Dear You’ was such an important record. It was clever and sarcastic, funny yet tragic. I think they are all very important qualities for a punk rock lyricist.

reviews LEMONDAZE

Celestial Bodies (self-release)

RECO MMEN DED Missed the boat on some the best albums from the last couple of months? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

GIRL IN RED

if i could make it go quiet Her charm lies in her wide-eyed excitability across this soaring debut.

SKULLCRUSHER Storm In Summer

Awash with sweeping shoegaze and ambient rock, ‘Celestial Bodies’ is a curious introduction to Cambridge-formed, London-based trio Lemondaze. The band proudly wear their influences on their four-track debut. The slow building ‘Twin Paradox’ introduces the outfit as sprightly, fresh responders to diffusive classics like ‘Loveless’ and ‘Souvlaki’ with touches of more modern appropriators like Beach House and Wolf Alice in the mix too. ‘1990 nine’ is a highlight, starting soft before kicking into gear to reach a sweet spot of rapturous, dissonant guitars, which the hefty ‘io’ only adds to. Celestial Bodies’ is easily compared to a long list of names, testament to how well the outfit evoke their heroes, however there’s not a lot here that feels original. It would be interesting to put the trio in a room with a producer like Craig Silvey (The Horrors) or Speedy Wunderground’s Dan Carey - a more curated approach might help the trio achieve a sound that grabs the attention more effectively. It's clear there's an artistic vision here, even if it's yet to be exercised in its fullest form. (Alex Cabré) LISTEN: ‘io’

CRUMB

Ice Melt (Crumb) Boston-formed Crumb’s breakthrough came with ‘Locket’, a surreal, psychedelic track from an EP of the same name which mixed sonic textures and tempos with wide-eyed playfulness. Their full-length debut ‘Jinx’ which followed in 2019 was just as trippy and colourful, an adventure to enjoy getting lost in. ‘Ice Melt’ struggles to reach the same bright heights as its predecessor. From the off, it’s simply boring: ‘Up & Down’ has the bones of a great alt-pop song – its chorus melody is lush and intoxicating – but its fidgety percussion and abrupt breakdown totally kill any momentum it ought to have as the opening cut. ‘BNR’ feels just as stunted; lolling along with little direction or meaning, it’s completely skippable. This theme continues for most of the record. 'Retreat!' has some spring in its step but still feels like part of a homogenised bulk of noise that’s not nearly intricate enough to summon the joy ‘Jinx’ did, nor dissonant enough to work on an ambient level. And it’s a shame. This outfit are tight, and with Jonathan Rado on production duties you’d expect warmer tones from these songs which broadly sound cold and sterile. Perhaps the main issue is vocalist Lila Ramani who expresses no discernible emotion on a single track. There are a couple of sweet spots on ‘Ice Melt’ in the form of the shimmering ‘Balloon’ and the creamy ending title-track, but not enough to warrant a whole album’s worth of material from what could have easily been shaved down to an EP. (Alex Cabré) LISTEN: ‘Balloon’

JORJA SMITH

Be Right Back (FAMM) As its name very much gives away, ‘Be Right Back’ is a stop-gap of sorts for Jorja Smith; a follow-up to 2019 debut ‘Lost & Found’, yes, but in place of the kind of grand statement one might expect from a BRIT-winning, Mercury-shortlisted and Grammynominated artist, is a snapshot of where the West Midlands singer is right now. It’s a record of two halves; the former a collection of evocative vignettes, the latter a vehicle for her impressive vocal. And while the latter does have its moments - closer ‘Weekend’ is the kind of sprawling epic that brings to mind earlier Jessie Ware - it’s in the first half, shorn of any jazzy accompaniment, that ‘Be Right Back’ is truly interesting. The trip hop-like ‘Addicted’, R&B jam ‘Gone’ and the glitchy Shaybofeaturing ‘Bussdown’ allowing the same personality that made early cut ‘Blue Lights’ so compelling to come to the fore. (Bella Martin) LISTEN: ‘Bussdown’

It perfectly captures her push and pull between beauty and devastating isolation.

COBRAH COBRAH (Gagball)

DRY CLEANING New Long Leg

There's a charming purity that runs through the London-based group's debut.

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If uncanny robot-turned-real-girl metal-pop star Poppy had grown up listening to Peaches and PC Music instead of Marilyn Manson, you could imagine the result being something akin to COBRAH: the Stockholm-based singer bringing electroclash fetish bangers out of the underground and blinking into the light. This selftitled EP follows on from 2019’s Charli XCX-endorsed ‘ICON’ (a natural pairing) and, while the hallmarks are still there - tactile, subversive lyrics and whomping, club-ready beats - ‘COBRAH’ has upped the production by several notches, the result a quintet of tracks that bubble and ping with a metallic edge that plays off its subject matter with glee. Previous single ‘DIP N DRIP’’s icy vocals and punishing tempo add a dead-eyed pleasure to the particularly fruity imagery of its title, while the insatiable, wobbly bassline of ‘GOOD PUSS’ is a kinky empowerment anthem to rival ‘Fuck The Pain Away’. ‘GOOEY FLUID GIRLS’ will have you yearning for sweaty dancefloors, while ‘BANG’ is like Brooke Candy at her most playful, and closer ‘DEBUT’’s grinding bass is pure filth. Your granny might be shocked and appalled by ‘COBRAH’, but those of a broader mindset will have a ball. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘BANG’

reviews GRUFF RHYS

Seeking New Gods (Rough Trade)

BILLIE MARTEN Flora Fauna (Fiction)

Signed to a Sony offshoot the day before she sat her maths GCSE and having released her debut full-length, the agreeable ‘Writing of Blues and Yellows’, at 17, you wonder whether the penning of this second record from Billie Marten, ‘Flora Fauna’, occurred under pressure to turn out a record that felt like a coming of age relative to its predecessor. If it did, it doesn’t show. Like her hero, Kate Bush, Billie was an accomplished songwriter long before she was out of her teens; unlike Kate, however, she’s yet to strive to break any new music ground, instead cleaving to a sonic palette tried-and-true for the confessional, reflective singer-songwriter - vocals to the front, guitar in the back, minimalist percussion. All of which is to say that the onus on ‘Flora Fauna’ is on her voice, in more ways than one. For as polished as the album sounds - handsome production, neat arrangements - the lyrics are palpably raw. ‘Garden of Eden’ speaks earnestly to the mental health toll of burnout. ‘Pigeon’ is a thoughtful response to the overwhelming ubiquity of materialism in London, to where Billie is a transplant from Ripon in North Yorkshire. Perhaps the standout is ‘Human Replacement’, a track tragically more relevant than ever in its address of the capital’s streets at night as a fundamentally unsafe space for women. ‘Flora Fauna’ is the sound of a measured spreading of Billie Marten’s wings - of careful progress. She’s still really young: there’s more to come. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Human Replacement’

Gruff Rhys’ 7th is a loose concept album about Mount Paektu, an active volcano situated on the border between China and North Korea. It’s curious subject matter for a pop record, but one that nevertheless produces charming results. Executed with the slick piano balladry and blushing brass fanfares of plush ‘70s soft-rock (think Queen’s ‘You’re My Best Friend’ and you’re half-way there), Gruff binds his soul with mystical properties of Paektu, suggesting the mountain’s crags, rumbles and eruptions as geological metaphors for the glorious struggles of a humble human existence touched by the magnitudes of love, life and death. Oddly, these worldly themes have produced one of his more tender and restrained sounding records of recent years. ‘Seeking New Gods’ moves with a steady, awe-inspired plod, raised to the heavens by a spate of cute, highly infectious choruses (‘Can’t Carry On’, ‘Loan Your Loneliness’) and ethereal textures evocative of dreamy mountain vistas, such as on dazzlingly pretty ‘Distant Snowy Peaks’. Only on ‘The Keep’ are we offered a suggestion of any fearful reverence towards this destructive natural monument: seismic cymbal crashes and unhinged saxophones breed a moment of molten, earth-shattering magnificence in an album that prefers softer touches for the most part. Less wildly daring than its predecessors, yet remaining totally assured in its vision, ‘Seeking New Gods’ stands as another finely-crafted addition to Gruff Rhys’ illustrious repertoire. (Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘The Keep’

Q&A The singer-songwriter talks switching up her sound for ‘Flora Fauna’ and happy accidents. When and where did you record the album? I recorded it in the very building I wrote most of it - Premises Studios in Hackney. I've actually spent most of my life there, come to think of it, so it feels incredibly natural to do anything there and I always live nearby. [Producer] Rich Cooper and I made ‘Flora Fauna’ over the course of about ten days, essentially just polishing and finessing the demos we had, so the sonic disparity between demo and finished product is not too dissimilar at all. I also accidentally went down to London (after spending the first lockdown up North) three months early, because I got the recording date THAT wrong, but we settled in to record in mid-August in the end, which was that sweet spot of notso-covid summer. We couldn't have a full live band in at the time, so the record would've sounded a touch more raw, but to be honest we're very good working between the two of us with the occasional guest coming in, so I don't think it would've changed that much at all. Was there anything in particular that made you want to explore new and different aspects to those listeners have come to know you for? I was getting increasingly tired of my own image I'd made of myself, which was then exacerbated by others - that of the wistful, floating, mournful waif. It meant every sound that came out of me then had to be incredibly close and small and introspective, which became more and more oppressive to me. Towards the end of 2019 I really felt this active surge to evolve into something different, and I learnt to not take myself so seriously, which then allowed this bigger more immediate sound to come out I guess. It's wonderfully freeing to experiment. ‘Flora Fauna’ - what are your favourite flowers?! Excellent question! At the moment my clematis is nearly flowering and I love how well they can climb anything, I love magnolia, gypsophila, sunflowers, cornflowers, anything meadowy and natural. A friend to all fleurs.

KELE

The Waves Pt. 1 (KOLA / !K7) Kele Okereke can certainly be classified as a prolific force. No more than two years have passed since 2005’s ‘Silent Alarm’ without the Bloc Party frontman releasing an album of sorts - somehow he’s found time to pen two musicals as well, and ‘The Waves Pt.1’ keeps up the creative pace. As lockdown set in, Kele decided he needed a break from words; especially in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. Which brings us to this stripped-back collection that makes up about a 70:30 split of sung and instrumental tracks. Opener ‘Message From The Spirit World’ sets the subdued mood, as a voice filters in atop a wash of dreamy guitar and throbbing bass - “I think you should record this because other people need to hear it” - it’s almost used to talk himself into the idea. ‘They Didn’t See It Coming’ finds him exploring spoken word as he recounts a moonlit walk which became part of his routine in the creation of the record - “the world is turning and so must I”, he sings; the spidering thumps of the guitar beneath almost resembling footsteps. The instrumentals here are lo-fi but bear a charm, and find Kele offering up his best guitar work in years; two opposing lines flutter beautifully on ‘The One Who Held You Up’ creating a hypnotic effect. And even though the LP manifested solo, he invites other characters into the mix: on ‘Isolation’, a voice floats in and out asking questions and guiding as if it were a therapy session - “what thoughts come to mind?”, it asks. The peppering of instrumentals also give the album room to breathe, ‘Dungeness’ grows deeper and darker in layers under a tick-tocking melody, while the dissonant beginnings of ‘The Patriots’ is suddenly undercut with monstrous strikes of distorted guitar. The Pt.1 tacked on the end of the title suggests this could be the first instalment in a series. As long as the results are this enveloping, let the tide keep rolling in. (Sean Kerwick) LISTEN: ‘The One Who Held You Up’

PAUL JACOBS

Pink Dogs On The Green Grass (Blow The Fuse) First making his name on UK shores as the drummer of Canadian art-punkdisco infiltrators Pottery, Paul Jacobs has actually been cementing a reputation as a true creative soul for a while now. Releasing his own music and art, the image you get of Paul is a nostalgically romantic one - the Syd Barrett-esque sonic explorer, holed up in his room, creating his way out one blissful track at a time. And it’s with this in mind that ‘Pink Dogs on the Green Grass’ thrives; like if Kevin Morby cheered up a bit and took a reasonable amount of mushrooms, it posits Jacobs in a lineage of modern singersongwriters, but with a pleasingly eccentric heart. Opener ‘Christopher Robbins’ has touches of Unknown Mortal Orchestra in its bubbling psych, while ‘Most Delicious Drink’ is undoubtedly the most propulsive flute track you’ll hear this month. ‘Dancing With The Devil’ skulks along like The Moonlandingz doing the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, ‘Kathy’s Bible’ is a lush, pastoral thing, while even the more straight-up, acousticpicking numbers (‘Day To Day’, ‘Underneath The Roses’) have a sun-kissed, ‘60s lilt that takes them to a fresh plain. ‘Pink Dogs…’ by rights, should herald Paul Jacobs as a true cult favourite. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Kathy’s Bible’

ERIKA DE CASIER Sensational (4AD)

Copenhagen-based artist Erika de Casier has a slick line in intimate R&B, her delicate, often hushed vocals a wry counterpoint to her instrumentals’ various debts to dance music past. On ‘Sensational’, the singer’s second full-length, this is best shown by nods to Y2K garage-pop via earwormy opener ‘Drama’ and the suitably-named ‘Busy’, both able to conjure up nostalgic vibes while, thanks to her pin-sharp production, keeping things strictly 2021. Similarly, ‘Polite’ has echoes of both Janet Jackson and, in the devil-may-care delivery of its spoken word, Billie Eilish, and ‘Someone To Chill With’ makes like FKA twigs taking on a TLC number. All great company to keep, but whether down to Erika’s understated vocal, or the shallow pool from which many of the musical textures come, things do elsewhere get a little samey. A shame, as ‘Sensational’ starts so bright. (Louisa Dixon) LISTEN: ‘Drama’

GLÜME

The Internet (Italians Do It Better)

BACK TO THE

DRAWING BOARD W I T H PA U L J A C O B S

That ‘The Internet’ is intangible is remarkably fitting for LA newcomer Glüme’s otherworldly sound, sitting somewhere between the concise theatrics of St Vincent, the stylised melancholia of Lana Del Rey, and the early morning hours in a Berlin nightclub. Perfectly made to be turned up loud on a night drive, the swirling mix of heady synths, minimalist electronics and haunting vocals seemingly exist in a void between genres, evoking an emotion all their own and brilliantly matched to an ethereal digital footprint. Bookended by tracks that wouldn’t feel out of place in a dystopian stage show, the majority of ‘The Internet’ builds around rhythmic pulses, providing a backdrop for Glüme’s soft vocals that at once feels futuristic and retrospective. In theme, the tracks are notably despondent and often bleak, the likes of ‘Blossom’ pairing ambition with an overwhelming sense of unease, and the title track longingly searching for a connection. It’s in these genuinely eerie moments that ‘The Internet’ shines, both transient in sound and firmly rooted in the Los Angeles underbelly. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Blossom’

WHITE FLOWERS

Day By Day (Tough Love) This debut record by Preston duo White Flowers came together over the course of a few years, and it sounds like it, too; glacially paced, the ten tracks on ‘Day by Day’ were apparently inspired by the band’s return north after a spell as art students in London. Sonically speaking, though, it appears instead to have taken most of its cues from the dream-pop canon. Comparisons with Beach House are inescapable on a level that goes much deeper than their boy-girl pairing and enigmatic aesthetic; everything from their woozy guitar tone and skyward synths to Katie Drew’s swooning vocals and the general sense of the ethereal on ‘Day by Day’ recalls the Baltimore outfit. Jez Williams of Doves is perhaps an unlikely candidate for the role of producer, but he imbues the record with a subtle varnish - polished, but not overly bright. The tracks are built to the same profile - swirling electronics, crisp percussion, cooed turns from Drew - with ‘Night Drive’ and ‘Stars’ in particular possessing the feel of quietly unsettling lullabies, ones that would have made White Flowers shoeins at Twin Peaks’ Roadhouse. In actuality, though, the most interesting moments emerge when they push beyond these self-imposed parameters; the sprawling soundscape of the title track, for instance, or the unpredictable, shape-shifting ‘Portra’, which evokes Portishead. This is a slick debut, albeit one that suggests better is to come if White Flowers can get out from under the weight of their influences. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ’Portra’

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Coming Up

reviews

BILLIE EILISH HAPPIER THAN EVER Announcing via giant billboards seems still too small a splash for how massive this is bound to be. Out 30th July.

ONLY SUN

Tangled Mind

(Close Up / Modern Sky)

SONS OF RAPHAEL

Full-Throated Messianic Homage (Because)

To say Sons of Raphael’s debut album has been a wait would be an understatement. The London duo reached their still-buzziest back in mid-2018, amid what felt like a concentrated effort to create rock lore around them with scant regard for such frivolities as facts - and little success. Titling this eventual release ‘Full-Throated Messianic Homage’ doesn’t seem to suggest much has changed in the interim: just why would anyone care if its delay was indeed due to a lost basketball game? Still, what the record does well is create a mood - one would imagine most of Ronnel and Loral Raphael’s literature to have been born of the Age of Aquarius, such is its indebtedness to meandering '70s psych. What it’s less adept at is giving us anything memorable; a song; even something to feel. Imagine, if you will, the stubbornly contrary incarnation of MGMT a decade back, cryogenically reincarnated (just without the ability to write a hook) and you’re halfway there. (Bella Martin) LISTEN: ‘Let’s All Get Dead Together’

On their debut, High Wycombe indie poppers Only Sun mine a rich vein of influences from the early ‘00s onwards. Opener ‘The Switch’ is a bold and propulsive way to kick off proceedings. Angular and frenetic, a far cry from the sun kissed indie-pop of their earlier singles. It’s followed quickly by current single ‘Weird Wins’ a fizzy, synth-driven number that has echoes of Everything Everything, an influence that can be heard elsewhere in ‘Switch Off, Fall Off’ and ‘Penny Drop’. Of course, the bright and breezy Only Sun hasn’t been left behind entirely. Previous single ‘Extraordinary’ succeeds in harking back nicely without feeling dated. As does ‘Bad Decisions’. It’s those more unexpected moments that make ‘Time In Tangled Minds’ the record it is, however. ‘Conspiracy’ for instance, is bold and bombastic, having more in common with Fall Out Boy or Panic! At the Disco. 13 tracks of button-bright indie-pop, ‘Time In Tangled Minds’ is the sound of a band coming into their own. (Dave Beech) LISTEN: ‘The Switch’

FIGHTMILK

PEOPLE CLUB

Contender

Take Me Home (Kartel)

(Reckless Yes)

LITTLE SIMZ SOMETIMES I MIGHT BE INTROVERT Confirmed via the massive 'Introvert', the rapper's fourth album will be out on 3rd September.

JAPANESE BREAKFAST - JUBILEE Not only is Michelle Zauner releasing this third album on 4th June, she's following it in August with a whole damn book!

“I’ve fucked it, sorry,” Fightmilk singer Lily Rae can be heard saying within the first five seconds of this, their second album. Presumably, it was left in as a scene-setter, on the off-chance that anybody had been expecting a particularly self-serious effort from a band named after a faeces-infused alcoholic protein shake “for bodyguards, by bodyguards” from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Their 2018 debut, ‘Not with That Attitude’, was a breezy, Britpopinflected affair - pleasant, if unremarkable. On ‘Contender’, with the addition of former Wolf Girl member Healey on bass, a subtler expansion is underway, both in the scope of their sound and in the manner in which they’ve allowed more of their personality to seep into the songs. Sonically, the Fightmilk palette has broadened to include pleasantly melodic nineties alt-rock (‘I’m Starting to Think You Don’t Even Want to Go to Space’), effervescent pop-punk (‘Banger #3’, the ego-puncturing ‘You Are Not the Universe’) and, perhaps improbably, occasional tender reflection, with ‘If You Had a Sister…’, lyrically vulnerable and musically tentative until it explodes into a climactic, freewheeling guitar solo. There’s wit, warmth and - crucially - selfawareness to Fightmilk’s lyrics, which reflect on love and life through a particularly droll prism. ‘Contender’ is a marked step forwards from one of Britain’s more endearingly idiosyncratic indie rock outfits. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Banger #3’

Berlin-based gang People Club purport to make ‘indie soul’ that harks back to ‘70s R&B while also ruminating on important messages. Lofty goals in anyone’s book, but fundamentally ‘Take Me Home’ doesn’t score a single one. Now EPs don't need to have any great singular identity - they are, after all, most often stop-gap releases in lieu of having anything bigger to say - but at the core of this record is that nothing really gels. Take the self-titled opener; a slinky refrain introduces jazzy vocals, but in place of anything to truly connect with are ghostly synths. Or ‘Francine’, which appears to replace the entire concept of a hook with a breathy vocal. Ironically, they’re at their best here when eschewing the musical styles they put at the forefront; closer ‘Lay Down Your Weapons’ has a raucous blues stomp in it that shorn of fiddly effects and ‘70s soft-rock lens, would be quite the earworm. (Bella Martin) LISTEN: ‘Lay Down Your Weapons’

MANDRAKE HANDSHAKE

Shake The Hand That Feeds You (Nice Swan)

JUNGLE - LOVING IN STEREO While we've been busy earnin', this floorfilling duo have been busy... working on this new album. Out 13th August.

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A nine-piece collective from Oxford with a fondness for acid-soaked visuals and long, lustrous locks, Mandrake Handshake are nothing if not committed to the world they’re aligning themselves with. Yes, they probably own at least five lava lamps between them. Yes, their practice room almost certainly smells of Nag Champa incense sticks - and it’s into that Pinterest board that debut ‘Shake The Hand That Feeds You’ lands. But while it’s tempting to judge a track named ‘Gonkulator’ (Urban Dictionary definition: a gadget that serves no purpose other than to demonstrate the geekiness of the owner), there are definite pleasures to be found here - albeit in a mildly irksome way. That track is in and out within two-and-a-half-minutes of Brian Jonestown Massacre jangles, while the six-minute ‘Eclogue 11’ is a highlight: an enticing, and surprisingly uncluttered, ‘70s psych slow builder. If opener ‘Mandragora’ tends towards the noodling, then closer ‘Monolith’ is less vital than its titular figure but more focused and intriguing nonetheless. Which begs the question, what is it that doesn’t completely click about Mandrake Handshake? Is it a latent hangover from the Kula Shaker school of gap year psych, or just our own horrible cynicism? Maybe both. Still, ‘Shake The Hand…’ lands as decent groundwork but with a little more convincing to do. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Eclogue 11’

IT’S YOUR ROUND

A big inter-band pub quiz of sorts, we’ll be grilling your faves one by one.

NO BROUW GHT TO YO U VIA ZOOM !

MASTER PEACE Where: Rotherhithe Drink: Supermalt. Price: £1

General Knowledge

Specialist Subject: Grime 1. Which grime group formed out of the garage crew, Pay As U Go Cartel? Ooh. Was that Roll Deep? Yes! C’mon! I knew Wiley was in Pay As U Go, so definitely Roll Deep. 2. What was the name of Lethal Bizzle’s first album? I don’t even know that you know! I literally can’t remember, I’m not gonna lie. It’s ‘Against All Oddz’. Mad! Peak, one down. 3. Which grime MC wrote a song for IKEA’s Christmas advert in 2019? D Double E. Correct!

4. Lord Of The Mics II features a clash between Skepta and which Birmingham-based MC? Devilman. Straight away, nailed it! 5. Name one of the many grime artists that performed ‘All Day’ with Kanye at the Brit Awards in 2015. I remember Storrmzy was there, that’s why he made ‘Shut Up’ because someone called him a back-up dancer for Kanye. Skepta, Novelist… Those are the ones I 100% remember being there. The other ones you could have had were Krept & Konan, Fekky and Jammer. I got the main ones though, innit.

6. Which TV show recently equalled the record for the longestrunning live-action comedy in US history? Friends? No, it’s It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia which has now got to 14 seasons. 7. Which UK city is situated further west Bristol for Edinburgh? Bristol! It’s in fact Edinburgh! Oh no! Oh Peace man… 8. Football manager Jose Mourinho has been in charge of how many different teams? 4? No, it’s 8. Fuuuuuck.

9. Beirut is the capital city of which country? I don’t know. I don’t really leave London! It begins with an L… What country begins with an L? Lithuania? Lebanon! 10. Which British star won the Best Supporting Actor award at the 2021 Oscars? This is going to be so embarrassing, he’s everywhere! His surname begins with a K! He’s in Skins! I know this, I really do know this. Daniel... Daniel Kaluuya! I knew that!

4/5 FINAL SCORE:

0/5

4/10

Verdict: “The grime one was easy, general knowledge I don’t have a Scooby what’s going on, I’m just taking it a day at a time.”

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DOOMIN’ SUN

THE DEBUT ALBUM OUT MAY 28TH