DIY, July 2021

ISSUE 109 • JULY 2021 DIYMAG.COM

STARRING & GUEST EDITED BY...

Self Esteem

The Pleasure Is All Hers

&

Little Simz, Biffy Clyro, LUMP, ENNY and loads more

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INDEPENDENT MUSIC AWARDS 2021

GLOBAL LIVESTREAM

25•8•21 HOW TO WATCH:

AIMAWARDS.CO.UK/WATCH

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Our new guest editor’s office demands were a little more elaborate than we’re used to.

JULY 2021 Listenin g Post

Question! Guest Editor 's Letter

‘Prioritise Pleasure’ is the name of this issue's game. What is giving the DIY team pleasure right now?

SARAH JAMIESON • Managing Editor Finally being able to go back to restaurants, actually getting to see my family, starting to believe that my wedding might actually be able to go ahead after all (...touch wood). Oh, and I still love binge-watching Sex and the City in my PJs. Yes, I really am that basic.

EMMA SWANN • Founding Editor I've spent much of the final throes of this issue working out of a band's rehearsal space. Big, noisy, dirty guitars, the kind that'll make the floor shake, will never fail to put a silly grin on my face.

LISA WRIGHT • Features Editor I am typing this from the garden of my darling family who I have not seen in 18 long months and my heart is FULL. Oh, and the new series of Drag Race All Stars, obv.

LOUISE MASON • Art Director I've been happy since I first heard 'I Do This All the Time' and to have its glorious creator on this cover has been an absolute dream from start to finish.

ELLY WATSON • Digital Editor The fact that Love Island is finally back after a long 18 months and I can reintroduce “not my type on paper” into my everyday conversation.

CHOSEN BY SELF ESTEEM

Hi, it’s me, Rebecca Lucy Taylor, AKA Self Esteem. You may remember me from such indie bands as Slow Club and that brief while I sang backing vocals in Noah and the Whale. Or you might have found me through my solo stuff and accept me with no context. You could also be one of the men who’ve interpreted my last song terribly incorrectly and are trolling me and then falling silent when I correct you. However you’ve done it - welcome.

JOHANNA WARREN - TWISTED It’s a chugger where the vocal goes up and up and up in intensity, and she’s screaming on it in a way I haven’t heard vocally for a long time. The passion and the anger and the need and the want is there, but it’s the most melodic screaming you’ll hear.

I am so thrilled to be on the cover and guest editing DIY this month. As you can imagine I always saw myself as a cover girl and I’m so grateful to DIY for not only being up for putting my dial on the front, but also for matching the concept with what my second album is preaching: PRIORITISE PLEASURE. I hope you find things that pleasure you in this issue. I’ve banged on about Jensen McRae - an American artist who has the most beautiful vocals i’ve ever heard, writes with heart and vulnerability and does not shy away from classic pop melodic choices. Yum. I also talk about the Katy Perry album ‘Prism’ which, no hyperbole, in conjunction with walking the hills of South Yorkshire in 2013 saved my life.

I’ve also managed to NOT talk about Perfume Genius for once and instead remind you or introduce you to Beverly Glenn-Copeland, serpentwithfeet and iamdoechii. And if that’s not arousing enough, there’s a long interview with me talking about me - which I CANNOT recommend enough - as well as the usual exquisite music journalism from DIY.

JOANNA STERNBERG THIS IS NOT WHO I WANT TO BE I DMed them on Instagram saying that it had blown me away. I’m gonna cover it. It’s a piano ballad, and the lyrics are about drinking, poisoning yourself when you don’t want to but you don’t know how to get out of it. It’s gorgeous; they’ll get Daniel Johnston comparisons, but it’s just classic, vulnerable songwriting.

NAOMI ELIZABETH - GOD SENT ME HERE TO ROCK YOU I think she’s almost like a weird performance art project. It’s a really weird, long, electronic song that has moments of really unbelievable melody. It’s really obscure, and I don’t know what her deal is, but I’m here for it.

ISSUE PLAYLIST

Thanks for having me, remember you don’t owe them anything. All my love, RLT x

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

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C O N T E N T S 4 DIYMAG.COM

NEWS 6LITTLE SIM Z 10B IFFY CLY R O 12HALL O F FA ME 14MØ 16CREEPER NEU 22LAVA LA R U E 24HO RSEY 26JENSEN M C R A E 28PRIYA RAGU FEATURES 30SELF ESTE EM 38ENNY 42O SCAR LAN G 44LAURA M V U LA 48LUMP REVIEWS 52ALB UM S 64LIVE

Shout out to all at state51 (and extra special props to super chef Laura for crafting the exquisite gateau for our cover shoot); Studio 9294 for hosting our big bank holiday blow out and Signature Brew for scrabbling together to reschedule our Katy J Pearson show - now coming next month!; JD the van man; Laura Marling for letting us into your gaff; Tasha & Taff (AKA the dream team); and of course, our cover girl and guest editor Self Esteem, who has been an unmitigated delight to work with from start to finish.

We adore you <3.

Founding Editor Emma Swann Managing Editor Sarah Jamieson Features Editor Lisa Wright Digital Editor Elly Watson Art Direction & Design Louise Mason Contributors Bella Martin, Ben Lynch, Ben Tipple, BLACKKSOCKS, Chris Hamilton-Peach, Danielle Koku, Ed Miles, El Hardwick, Eloise Bulmer, Elvis Thirlwell, Emma Wilkes, Eva Pentel, Gemma Samways, Joe Goggins, Louis Griffin, Louisa Dixon, Matthew Davies Lombardi, Max Pilley, Nick Harris, Sean Kerwick, Seeham Rahman, Talie Eigeland, Will Strickson.

Cover photo Ed Miles This Page Priya Ragu by BLACKKSOCKS 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.

The New EP

American Noir CD • Vinyl • Digital

Out 30th July Featuring The Single ‘Midnight’

Strictly limited edition screen printed Roe & Annabelle vinyl, Roe & Annabelle cassettes and new merch available at the Creeper artist store to pre-order now

Catch Creeper On Tour 2021: 15/12 London, O2 Forum Kentish Town • 16/12 Brighton, Concorde 2 • 17/12 Birmingham, O2 Institute 19/12 Glasgow, Garage • 20/12 Manchester, O2 Ritz • 21/12 Leeds, Beckett University Students Union

creepercult.com roadrunnerrecords.co.uk

5

IN FOR

“I wasn’t settling for good, I wanted my pen to be amazing on this record.”

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NEWS

THE

KILL Slow and steady has been Little Simz’s route so far, but after game-changing third LP ‘GREY Area’, her fourth is set to take huge strides towards greatness. Words: Sean Kerwick.

“A

h man!” Little Simz exasperates while considering the track she’s most looking forward to fans hearing on her much-anticipated fourth LP ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert’. She lists ‘Point and Kill’, ‘I Love You, I Hate You’ and ‘Standing Ovation’ before she pauses. “Oooh, ‘Standing Ovation’…” she nods with a grin. “It’s cold, that’s my favourite right now.”

Expectation weighs heavy on Simz in the run-up to the album.

With her 2019 Ivor Novello-winning breakout ‘GREY Area’ receding into the rear-view mirror in a shimmer of awards, prizes and flashing lights, Simz faced a blank slate that often has the tendency to pull artists into a state of creative flux. “I didn't know what I was going to do next if I’m very honest,” she reflects on the time. “But I did know it would have to be amazing.”

The three songs released so far from the 19-track album due in September indicate she’s on to something. ‘Introvert’ landed in April, an epic opener marking her new era with cascading choirs and dramatic strings: a fierce statement of intent that took stock of the wild winds whipping around her.

Follow-up ‘Woman’ is a rich, luxuriant, head-bopping jam that snaps with pride and joy for womankind - “Self-made, ain’t nobody doing gold-digger”. Latest cut ‘Rollin Stone’, meanwhile, throws another left-hook that drops with a mammoth beat-switch at the midway point when its ‘evil twin’ steps into frame.

Instead of feeling the weight of the watching eyes, Simz explains that she pushed on unphased by the high bar she set herself on ‘GREY Area’. “I just kind of got back in and did what

I usually do,” she reflects. “Working with [producer] Inflo, we have such great chemistry and have done for a very long time - we go in and just make music. It’s not anything super deep or super complex, it’s literally just following our intuition and what feels right. I trust his taste and he trusts mine.”

Recording began in Los Angeles before Covid forced Simz back onto home turf; the break pinched the pendulum midswing, allowing her to reclaw some mental space which led to some intense pen-wielding. “When I was stationary, it forced me to hone in on my writing,” she recalls. “I pushed myself, I wasn’t settling for good, I wanted my pen to be amazing on this record. I wanted to surprise myself which meant I had to be really honest and hard on myself, but not in a way that’s disencouraging.” “Last year, pen was crazy / This year, tougher with the ink,” she spits on ‘Rollin Stone’.

The fruits of this labour also materialised in surprise EP ‘Drop 6’ last year before she packed up for Berlin to cool off for a while. “Going back into the album process was amazing just because we had this time away from it. I get bored and move on to new stuff really quickly so the fact I was still inspired and enthused by this music, for me that was the indication we were on to something. I still wanted to complete the songs and finish the album. That happened from September to December 2020. Four months of just solid going for it.”

S

imz cites the people around her as fundamental figures in satisfying the rigorous quality control she set herself heading into the album. “I need people around me who tell the honest truth about something,” she nods. “Whether they think it can be better or there’s somebody to tell me I’m doing too much. That’s really important to have as well as the trust I have within myself.”

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Inflo, who also produced ‘GREY Area’, returned as that key confidante. The growing super-producer possesses something of a golden touch that has graced the likes of Michael Kiwanuka’s 2019 self-titled breakthrough and the mysterious project Sault, who released four albums throughout 2019 and 2020. His is a timeless sound that could sit just as at home on a smartphone in 2021 or spiralling on a ‘70s turntable. “He’s just a blessed individual,” Simz says. “I feel really safe in an environment with him where I can try things that might not work, ultimately to be fearless with it.”

This sort of atmosphere was essential, especially with expectation and Simz’s own ambition climbing to equally great heights. She became a scholar of legendary albums in preparation, attempting to get to the bottom of their magic and longevity.

“Why is ‘Off the Wall’ a classic? Why did MJ choose to put this song here and this song there? I was just listening with a different ear,” she

continues. “My album is not a Michael Jackson album, it’s a Simz album. I just wanted to tell a story within it and make a classic record that people can keep going back to. That’s what I got with ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’; that’s what I got with Biggie Smalls’ ‘Ready To Die’; that’s what I got with ‘College Dropout’ - I wanted to have that same thing.”

The story she alludes to that develops across ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert’ is an exploration and exorcism of the self, the title reflecting that in its straight-shooting assessment and the fact it stands for her name: ‘SIMBI’. It feels as if these songs materialised in a state of clarity while ‘GREY Area’ journaled the unanchored searching of her early twenties. “There’s a lot of rage, a lot of confusion, a lot of vulnerability there.

When I did find myself listening back to it I was like, ‘Bro, I feel that’,” she laughs. “This album goes to the next level. I’m growing more and more into myself and peeling back layers - I’m turning inwards and looking within.”

Looking at the tracklist alone, there are very few features. It’s a conscious decision that allows the tracks to be surgically extracted straight from the self, but that doesn’t mean to say there aren’t other voices on the record. The singles hint at the presence of scattered versions of Simz slipping into frame through some clever narrative tricks: the robotic narrator on ‘Introvert’ acts as a conscience of sorts, while on ‘Rollin Stone’ a spectre of herself arises in the aftermath of the beat-switch. “Can't believe it's Simbi here that's had you listenin',” it says in a pitched up, spiral-eyed cadence. “Well, fuck that bitch for now, you didn't know she had a twin”.

NEWS When asked, Simz doesn’t divulge much on these decisions, nor does she let up on what the rest of the album has in store sonically. “What are you expecting from the album?” she inquires in response to the same question.

The guard is clearly up to protect the experience of the full album that is the product of her prolific penmanship. “It’s an album you’re gonna have to live with,” she smiles. “It takes a couple of listens I think because it is so musically and lyrically dense. There’s a lot to process but I think once you live with it, you’re gonna love it - I hope you do anyway.”

While the album is shaping up to be another jewel in Simz’s crown, it also feels like just another chapter to her. “When I look back at all my projects, I see growth within myself,” she nods. “I feel like each project is better than the last which means I’m getting better and stepping up which I want to continue. I know that people are going to be able to relate to this in a way that will hopefully bring people together,” she says of the album before pausing. “And if not, there’s just a load of bangers on there anyways.”

‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert’ is out 3rd September via Age 101. DIY

on the ‘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.

What you ordered vs how it arrived. (@wolfaliceband)

“I’m growing more and more into myself and peeling back layers.”

The year is 3024 and the nightclubs of ‘Earth’ have finally been allowed to reopen. (@grimes)

Looks like SOMEONE forgot to renew their AA breakdown cover… (@dualipa)

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OUT NOW

FEATURING SINGLES SHOOK, WILDFIRE, STRANGE LOVE (FEAT. SABA) & MORE 9

NEWS

NEWS

“It does feel fucking personal now, the problems I have with politics.”

- James Johnston

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NEWS

Darkest Before The

Dawn

Riled up and ready to go, Biffy Clyro have spent the year since ‘A Celebration of Endings’ banding together more than ever. Enter, Album Nine... Words: Sarah Jamieson. Photo: Eva Pentel.

“S

o, what’s the good stuff?”

ponders Biffy Clyro’s James Johnston of the last 18 months, chuckling down the phone from his Scottish home.

“The good stuff is that we have had moments together as a threesome, as a band, [where] we’ve done some really incredible things. We did a livestream from the Barrowlands, which I think was one of the best live performances we’ve ever done, we’ve been involved in loads of other projects, and we’ve made another record,” he casually mentions. “What I’ve been reminded of is that when life is tough, this is a shelter, our band.

It gives us purpose, it gives us drive.”

Having been plunged into lockdown last year just as they were beginning the promotional schedule for their eighth record - the almost ironically-titled ‘A Celebration of Endings’ - it feels like barely a moment has passed since Biffy were last delivering us new music.

But while the interim 18 months have included more than their fair share of worry and frustration for James and his bandmates - singer Simon Neil and drumming brother Ben Johnston, the pandemic has evidently provided some considerable positives.

Originally planned to act as a companion record to their last album, building around offcuts of material from previous recording sessions, what’s now turned into LP9 began to take on a life of its own when the band convened at their Ayrshire farm studio.

“It’s slightly pixelated to me,” James admits, thinking back to when the album first really started to take shape. “There is still a relationship to ‘Celebration…’, there’s no doubt about it with some of the songs.

But there’s this one song on the record where we got together in the practice room, and Simon came in… It starts, and is heavily based around the sound of a synthesiser - which is becoming a little more frequent for the band - but it still feels like new territory. It still feels really exciting when Simon’s like, ‘Right, we’re gonna plug in that fucking computer, and let’s see…’

“For me, that would be one of the points where it felt like the record had taken a shift,” he continues. “That was a couple of months before we actually started to record, and at that point, we were still talking about [it as] a sister record. But I think when you get a new song, it invariably starts to inform the older songs around it, and it sparks new ideas. It just gave us a feel for the colour of the record. So, there’s definitely still

a relationship to ‘Celebration…’, [and] lyrically, I feel like there’s a connection. It was a real natural, organic process; things changed and evolved.”

Speaking to James today, it’s clear that the making of this new album was the tonic they so desperately needed. Among a sea of very current problems for musicians - how the mess of Brexit will tangibly affect European touring; how festivals will survive despite still having little-to-no insurance support - he’s unsurprisingly vocal about the stress and mental toll these issues exert. “As I become older, and over the last few years, I have become more politically engaged, and I’m just getting really sick to the back teeth of everything I see,” he states. “It’s starting to make me feel quite disillusioned. It feels like we’re a rudderless ship; you, me and everyone else are below deck trying to fucking bail us out, and then the Tories are upstairs quaffing champagne, eating canapes and laughing at us.”

Dear Kenazi Dear Kenazi, "How do I get the bravery to say how I feel in actual life and not just songs?"

Rebecca Taylor, Self Esteem Dear Rebecca Every day you get out of bed, you are bravery. Every time you answer that phone call from your ex, you are bravery. When you call your boss and tell him the bus is running late (it’s not really, you’re just hungover), you are bravery. When you attend those reunion drinks that you really wanted to avoid but felt some sort of weird loyalty to a past that did not exist, you are bravery. The time you stood up for what you believed in, you are bravery. When you suppress your emotions for the benefit of others, you are bravery. When you smile, you are bravery. Look for bravery in the everyday, you do this all the time xoxo Kenazi

On their last album, Biffy began to explore how the personal had become the political, and 18 months later it’s still a topic that’s keeping them up at night.

“There’s definitely still anger [about] the way that some personal relationships have gone that refers directly to some of the songs on ‘A Celebration…’,” James continues of the new record. “And you know, personal hurt and heartache will always stick around a bit longer than, for me, something more political. But the political does start to become personal. It does feel fucking personal now, the problems I have with politics, and that does stick around. I do think about it when I go to bed, and it really sticks in my throat, and when it starts to affect you like that, it’s deeply personal.”

One thing he’s quick to emphasise, however, is how integral being able to make music has been for the trio over the last year. After more than 20 years together, it’ll take more than a global pandemic to bring Biffy Clyro down. “Being down there on our farm, there’s nothing to really compare against,” he says, almost wistfully. “We were just there making music and it felt very much for our sake. It was giving me purpose, and it was a totally different feel to every other record we’d made because of the pandemic and [the fact] we were doing it at home ourselves. It gave me so much strength.

“That usually emerges later down the line, you’re maybe halfway through a tour and the music hits you, but this really was immediate. I was going home every night going, ‘This is fantastic, I’m so happy to be alive with the boys’. It just felt incredible.” DIY

Th e I Y Drag-D ony Aunt

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NEWS

T ES

EEM SAYS

:

SE

L

“I’d had an awful, textbook gaslighting boyfriend; I was really unwell and I couldn’t get out of it, and then ‘Roar’ came out. I would walk for miles around my village listening to ‘Roar’ and it solved everything. That whole record, I just love it because I was so excited for more of that energy from her. When I was writing ‘Prioritise Pleasure’, I wanted it to be like ‘Prism’ for people.”

F

OF

Fame

Following the global phenomenon that was ‘Teenage Dream’, on 2013’s ‘Prism’ Katy Perry turned heartbreak into a crowning victory lap. Words: Lisa Wright.

Katy Perry ‘Prism’

FACTS THE

Released: 18th October, 2013 Key Tracks: ‘Roar’, ‘Dark Horse’, ‘This Is How We Do’ Tell your mates: When ‘Dark Horse’ was sued for copyright infringement of Christian rapper Flame’s song ‘Joyful Noise’, part of Perry’s defence centred around the fact that many songs - including ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’ - also sounded similar. We demand a mash up.

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L

ove her or loathe her, you’d need a heart of stone to have made it through Katy Perry’s emotional 2012 documentary Part Of Me without feeling a tug of sympathy for the singer. Following the star on her 2011 world tour, it documents a time when - to the outside eye - she’s riding high on the wave of the previous year’s chart-topping, multi-platinum-selling behemoth ‘Teenage Dream’.

Behind the scenes, however, her marriage to Russell Brand is straining; footage shows her breaking down before having to pull herself together, stick on a pop star smile and walk onstage in front of tens of thousands. Sunshine and lollipops, despite her cheery stage dressing, it is not.

And so when Katy returned with ‘Roar’ in 2013, having made it through the very public reporting of their separation, it could not have been a more pointed statement. Despite previously telling interviewers that she had planned to make a far “darker” record (a sentiment that would prove true on much of ‘Prism’), the first taster of her third KP album was anything but that, instead bursting out of the traps with joyous, life-affirming defiance and a feminist spirit that undid at least part of the damage from questionable debut ‘I Kissed A Girl’. “I went from zero, to my own hero,” she grins like Hercules gone pop, “and you’re gonna hear

me roar”.

Ditching much of the nudge-nudge wink-wink sugary coyness of its predecessor, ‘Prism’ marked itself out as a necessarily more grown-up thing. Sure, it wouldn’t take a genius to decode the more sprightly ‘Birthday’ (“I know you like it sweet, so you can have your cake / Give you something good to celebrate”), but elsewhere ‘Walking On Air’ takes influence from ‘90s club tunes, ‘Ghost’ rings with the knowledge of hindsight, and ‘Love Me’ is a RuPaul mantra by any other name: “I found I had to love myself the way I wanted you to love me”.

If ‘Teenage Dream’ was full of youthful promise, then ‘Prism’ was the sound of its author accepting that life isn’t always beach parties and short shorts. But the key to its success is how, although there are lessons learned here, Katy comes out fighting.

Equal but opposite to ‘Roar’ comes the album’s other crowning moment - the Juicy J-featuring, trap-influenced masterstroke of ‘Dark Horse’. In it, the singer plays the siren-like seductress, utterly in control but aware of her power. Like ‘Prism’ as a whole, it was Katy Perry owning her own narrative and coming back stronger, and nearly a decade later, she’s still one of the world’s biggest stars. How’s that for a pay-off? DIY

“You can stand under, under Ella, Ella, Ella…”

LORDE SOLA R POWER A betting man likely wouldn’t have taken a punt on bare bums, Jesus and some overt guitar nods to George Michael’s ‘Faith’ being the triptych of talking points to come from Lorde’s long-anticipated return, and yet here we are. If the aforementioned bum shot adorning its sleeve wasn’t enough to send the internet in a spin, then the line “I’m kinda like a prettier Jesus” will surely do the trick. As for the track itself, ‘Solar Power’ is more of a slow burn than an immediate sucker punch. Saving its energy (see what we did there?) for the second half, its first runs on minimal acoustic strums and breezy backing coos, as Ella throws it back to A Tribe Called Quest (“Can I kick it? Yeah, I can”) and paints a picture of the young and beautiful frollicking on a beach. It’s no ‘Green Light’, but there’s a cheeky playfulness to Lorde’s return that hopefully signals even greater treats to come. (Lisa Wright)

THE KILLERS & BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Dustland

Having promised us a record with “a lightness to it and a sort of joy,” the charmingly-titled ‘Big Skies, Silly Faces’ begins Orlando Weeks’ journey to LP2 with the kind of airy, slightly ‘80s sweetness that suggests he’s come good on his word.

Full of pillowy drum pads, warm backing vocals courtesy of Katy J Pearson and subtle keyboard nods to the likes of Prefab Sprout, it’s a notably cheerier thing than his debut - a slightly furrowed brow replaced with a wider eye. (Lisa Wright)

ALDOUS HARDING Old Peel

At times, it feels as if Aldous Harding is having us on. ‘The Barrel’, from 2019’s 'Designer', and its Lynchian video occupy the top spot in demonstrating her particular eccentricities, but new single, ‘Old Peel’, isn’t far behind. Typically skeletal, its jilted, probing instrumentation is arresting in its jerky simplicity, Aldous’s nasally vocals garnishing the song with additional Wes Andersonesque character. Whether she’s taking us for a ride or not, when an artist defines their niche as absolutely as Aldous does, all you can do is applaud. (Ben Lynch)

DAMON ALBARN

The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows Where 2014’s debut solo record ‘Everyday Robots’ was very much rooted in London, from the ‘Hollow Ponds’ of Leytonstone to the samples of the Central Line, Damon Albarn’s incoming follow-up trades in the nostalgia and smog of the city for the glacial landscapes of Iceland. It’s a country that’s long been a fascination for him.

Blur’s self-titled 1997 album was part-recorded there; earlier this year, he was granted official citizenship. And there’s a reverence that’s audible on ‘The Nearer The Fountain…’, from the crystalline ambience that encircles the track to Damon’s ever-recogniseable, melancholic croon. It is as unencumbered by the rat race as its possible to be in 2021, a gentle thing: measured, slightly sad, meditative. Damon’s always been a dab hand at giving you the goosebumps; his latest keeps up the form. (Lisa Wright)

NEWS

For the better part of fifteen years now - or, pretty much, since the release of ‘Sam’s Town’ back in 2006 - The Killers have had just about every Bruce Springsteen reference thrown their way. So it’s about bloody time that the two parties finally come together. Beginning life after a text from The Boss himself arrived as Brandon Flowers found himself en route home after the pandemic put their most recent promo plans to bed, their remake of the ‘Day & Age’ track ‘A Dustland Fairytale’ is as majestic as any fan of both (or either, tbf) could’ve hoped.

Now simply ‘Dustland’, Bruce’s gravelled vocals add a gravitas to this soaring American love story, yet it still feels as urgent, as vital as the original did in 2008. If ever there was a time for these two artists to finally unite, now feels like the right one.

(Sarah Jamieson)

ORLANDO WEEKS Big Skies, Silly Faces

HAVE YOU HEARD?

HAVE YOU HEARD?

HAVE YOU HEARD?

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MØ Music, Less Problems

Following the release of last month’s ‘Born To Survive’, Karen Marie Ørsted is channelling that resilient spirit straight into LP3. Words: Joe Goggins.

K

aren Marie Ørsted knew she’d be

spending 2020 in

relative isolation.

She just didn't realise the rest of the world would

be doing the same. 2019 had concluded with the singer - better known as MØ - ready for some serious downtime after a whirlwind seven years that ended with two highly-acclaimed LPs and a clutch of high-profile collaborations with Major Lazer (including ‘Lean On’ with DJ Snake and ‘Cold Water’ with Justin Bieber) that, between them, have been streamed nearly two billion times. It’s not a bad result for somebody who was writing songs in her bedroom less than a decade ago, and yet that’s precisely where she spent a good chunk of the past year.

“I’ve just been writing new music and chilling,” the affable singer says over the phone from her native Denmark. “It’s been a very big life change, going from travelling, and playing shows, and being surrounded by people all the time, to being kind of cut off from the rest of the world back here, just spending time with friends and family. It’s felt like coming back to my old life in a way - which is great, but super strange. I’ve had this crazy life for seven years, and now I’m a grown-up all of a sudden.”

MØ wrestled with the transition to adulthood on her second album, 2018’s ‘Forever Neverland’ - the title of which was a nod to Peter Pan syndrome. Now in her early thirties, she appears to have cleared that particular hurdle, only for another reckoning to arrive: this time, she’s been wrestling with the aftermath of a breakneck seven years of recording and touring that, at times, saw selfcare fall by the wayside in favour of a continuing sense of momentum.

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“That’s really what most of these new songs are about,” she explains. “During all these years of running and running and running, I never really questioned whether or not I could keep going. When I finally decided to take this break at the end of 2019, I was really burned out. I realised that you need to take time to restore and rebuild yourself or you’ll just end up looping around on the hamster wheel forever. That was something I’d neglected.”

Themes of rebirth and replenishment run through ‘Motordrome’, her upcoming third album, due for release later in 2021 (she’s reluctant to set a date until she knows she can keep it, after ‘Forever Neverland’ was delayed multiple times).

Lead single ‘Born to Survive’ has already given listeners a taste of what

to expect: defiant euphoria, on a track she describes as “an empowerment song, the message is, ‘I’ve had some scratches, but I’m back’.” Meanwhile, a couple of as-yet-unreleased cuts hint at stylistic wanderlust; ‘Kindness’ lays a slick synthpop template over a handsome string section, whilst the melodic electronica of ‘New Moon’ is built around a killer hook.

For her own part, MØ characterises ‘Motordrome’ as “dark disco”. “I’ve always loved that - pop music that has some darkness and heaviness to its themes, but with an uplifting pop spirit. I’m obviously experimenting with different elements and genres, because I’m an artist who jumps around a little bit, but the message is quite cohesive I think, which is that it’s about both the

“[The new music is] about both the sadness and the joy of making changes in your life.”

sadness and the joy of making changes in your life.”

She’s switched up her musical approach, too; in the popular imagination, the stratospheric success of those Major Lazer hookups, as well as past work with Elliphant, Iggy Azalea and Diplo, might mean that casual observers think her stage name is actually ‘feat. MØ’. On ‘Motordrome’, though, there are no features (‘Forever Neverland’ boasted turns from Charli XCX and Empress Of) and she’s worked solely with Danish producers. For MØ, it was a case of forging her own path, and reclaiming her identity.

“I love collaborating, and you can definitely put a lot of your own point of view into it, but I think I lost a little bit of myself over the years without really knowing it had happened. I’ve learned a lot about how I want things to sound, and once I figured out what I wanted to get out of ‘Motordrome’ sonically, and once the thematics began to fall into place in my mind, then it became easier to direct the producers - ‘This is what I’m looking for, this is what I want to reference’. I don’t need people to guide me the same way I did when I was starting out.”

The kind of record that she HAS made with ‘Motordrome’, however, is very much a MØ one, in that it sounds at once contemporary and also not quite like anything else around. “I just wanted to write something that would help me set my own boundaries, and keep me out of toxic situations, and I think I’ve done that,” she muses. “The pop landscape moves really quickly now, and I feel like I’ve just been here in Denmark, in isolation, working on these songs and kind of not paying attention to everything else that’s been going on.” DIY

NEWS

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NEWS

The Last Great American Dynasty When things didn’t quite go to plan around the release of their bold second album, Creeper decided to dig deeper, and out came ‘American Noir’. Words: Sarah Jamieson.

W

hat happens when you spend two years out of the spotlight, meticulously crafting an ambitious new album, only for it to be released just as the entire live music industry has ground to a halt? That’s a question Creeper found themselves facing for the past year, following their astonishing second record ‘Sex, Death & The Infinite Void’ landing in the middle of the pandemic. And while it doesn’t take a scientist to figure out that not being able to see your record reach its true live potential is a bit of a kicker, the Southampton punks instead decided to buckle down and do what they do best: open up another window to their world.

“When we were [originally] going to make the last album, we had experimented with loads of different types of songs in order to get to the place we wanted to be,” explains the band’s Will Gould. “It was almost like we had to start the entire band again from scratch. It was a proper blank page. We’d never written material like we did for the last album, and so we went through this elaborate process where we wrote 50 or 60 songs just to get to a place where we had some frontrunners that we thought fit.”

Unsurprisingly, a slew of tracks - even some the band had become particularly attached to - no longer quite hit the mark. “We just had this surplus of material and my girlfriend would be like, ‘Some of these are your best songs and you’re not even doing anything with them’,” Will confirms. It was only after a recent line-up change

(the band have now recruited new drummer Jake Fogarty) and their constantly shifting live schedule that Will realised things needed a jumpstart. The answer? This month’s EP ‘American Noir’. “We didn’t get to tour our last record, and to go out now and do exclusively what we were planning to do a year ago felt like it would be stale.

We needed something to refresh everything and I thought a really nice way to do it was this: it’s almost like an extended universe version of the last one, I suppose.”

The EP provides another glimpse at the album’s central characters, Roe - who died at the end of the record - and Annabelle, his grieving lover. “I was really specific about the songs we chose to use on this EP for that reason: to continue on with that narrative, and so that it all made sense with what we were doing,” Will explains.

“It was fun though because we were thinking on our feet with some of it. ‘Damned and Doomed’, I originally wanted as [the opener] for the last record.” A prologue of sorts, the track’s now been transformed into the EP’s closing piece. “It felt apt to close with it; it summarises what this story’s really about an apocalyptic romance. It’s a tragic love song, and now it’s telling the end of the story, rather than the beginning.”

‘American Noir’ is out 30th July via Roadrunner Records. DIY

There is a Light That Never Goes Out Not only are Creeper releasing a brand new EP, but they’re set to play a very special livestreamed show to celebrate. The band will be performing as part of new series There is Light - a series organised by live agency Wasserman Music and Twitch - and will be playing at London’s Lafayette later this month.

Check out the upcoming live show schedule below, and be sure to tune in to each of the sets over on twitch.tv/thereislight JULY 18th • The Vaccines 25th • Creeper AUGUST 1st • Orla Gartland 8th • The Snuts

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Big Bank Last month, we rounded up a host of your faves for two days of beers and bands - here’s how it went down.

Words Lisa Wright. Photos: Emma Swann.

Lynks

A

n impromptu cheer erupts from the crowd gathered at Hackney’s Studio 9294 as Nottingham’s Do Nothing kick into the opening line of set closer ‘Gangs’: “We’re all back together at last”. It’s a celebratory moment in a weekend - a Big Bank Holiday Weekender, no less - that’s packed full of them.

After a long, lonely, VERY quiet winter, the fact that DIY’s return to live events (with a little help from our friends at Marshall) is one drenched in sun, on a glorious, vibe-packed long weekend, seems only fair. Congregating a baker’s dozen of our favourite artists into the socially-distanced - but no less buzzy venue, from the first growl of Saturday opener Fräulein’s distorted, riffladen take on the two-piece rock’n’roll canon to the final notes of The Vaccines singer Justin Young’s closing Sunday night DJ set, the event is as close to a festival as we’ve been for a long, long time.

English Teacher

deep tan

And, much like any good festival worth its salt, there’s a sonic buffet on offer, with a delicious morsel to suit all kinds of tastes. Leeds post-punks English Teacher offer up a twist on the genre, singer Lily Fontaine eschewing the current trend for deadpan vocals to provide something more vibrant (complete with a section of off-the-cuff Macarena-ing), while London’s deep tan deliver a far more creeping, skeletal take on proceedings - all wiry guitars and minimal cool.

Goat Girl

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Tiña

If there is a bigger party to be found than that at a Lynks show then we’re all ears. Clad in a homemade red outfit that’s part burlesque, part lampshade, the singer and their Shampoo-esque backing duo Lynks Shower Gel begin on the ground instructing the crowd to pretend they’re Destiny’s Child popping out of the stage at the Super Bowl, before launching into a set of all-singing, all-dancing electro-pop anthems whose earworm status is second only to its capacity for endless one-liner lolz.

DIY Class of 2020 stars Talk Show have lost none of their vitriol since we first unleashed them onto a stage, singer Harrison Swann barking vocals, nerves tensed like a wound up coil, whereas Connie Constance makes for a far cheekier presence: giving major ‘Sucker-’era Charli XCX energy, her mix of pop smarts and playful indie sensibilities have the gathered crowd in the palm of her hand.

Rounding off Saturday, recent cover stars Goat Girl arrive to give recent second album ‘On All Fours’ a head-to-toe spin. Kicking off with the hypnotic swoop of ‘Pest’, the quartet run through the record in its entirety, dipping through the wonky bounce of ‘P.T.S.Tea’ to ‘Sad Cowboy’’s titular canter to a closing, meditative ‘A-Men’.

Do Nothing Sorry

Dr. Zoidberg has really upped his fashion game these days.

There’s no such calm from Sunday openers Gallus, whose magnetic/ manic (delete according to preference) singer Barry Dolan spends the set doing laps of the venue, stomping around the stage and unleashing a chunk of Glaswegian raucous energy into the afternoon crowd. Bristol’s Grandmas House might have a singer (Yasmin Berndt) whose 50-a-day rasp firmly ticks the growling punk box but their message is positive as well as pissed-off - a righteous, riot grrl spirit flowing throughout.

On Sundays (and, let’s face it, every other day) Tiña wear pink - but it’s not just singer Joshua Loftin’s natty sequinned top that’s drawing attention: bringing last year’s debut LP ‘Positive Mental Health Music’ to life, the South London band’s playful psych is a heady concoction of lolloping grooves and jamming wig outs. A suitably giddy precursor, then, to FEET, who come armed with a host of new tunes including recent banger ‘Peace and Quiet’. They’re still a party-starting live presence but the new songs are a step up, the shambolic energy of yore channelled into something a little more targeted and driving.

Energy

Holiday

NEWS

Before the aforementioned ‘Gangs’, Do Nothing have this year’s ‘Glueland’ EP to navigate, the pulse of its title track and the more spacious throb of ‘Uber Alles’ weaving around the spikes of their older material to showcase a band truly fleshing out their sound in increasingly exciting ways.

And if there’s a sound we’ve been waiting more than a year (!) to hear, it’s that of Sorry’s superlative debut ‘925’. Today, insanely, marks only the second UK show the band have been able to play since its release last April and, having been a permanent fixture on DIY’s home stereos ever since, its wares sound even mightier for the wait.

From the sleazy grind of ‘Right Around the Clock’ to a twinkling ‘As The Sun Sets’ to the strange prowl of ‘Wolf’, theirs is a set that slopes into darkened corners but finds weird and wonderful grooves in every one - and we even get a new song, helmed by guitarist Louis O’Bryen as an added bonus. A perfect ending, no apologies necessary.

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18 DIFFICULT MONTHS FOR THE LIVE MUSIC INDUSTRY £250,000 WORTH OF BEER GRANTS PLEDGED TO HELP SAVE INDEPENDENT VENUES 35 PIONEERING, SOCIALLY-DISTANCED & SOLD OUT BREWERY GIGS 12 OUT OF WORK MUSICIANS HIRED TO SERVE & DELIVER BEER 2 LIVE NEWS APPEARANCES TO FIGHT FOR THE LIVE MUSIC INDUSTRY 1 STAGE HOSTED AT A PILOT MUSIC FESTIVAL 0 LOSS OF ENTHUSIASM FOR DEFENDING LIVE MUSIC …IN FACT, WE’RE JUST GETTING STARTED

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LAVA LA RUE “I really miss the era where the concept of a rock star was thriving,” muses Lava La Rue. “I think that one of the last Black rock stars who I was really inspired by who wasn’t making rock music but had that mentality was André 3000. It’ll be really interesting to see who is the equivalent in 2021…”

The NiNE8 Collective star breaking out and delivering genre-blurring queer stories for a new generation. Words: Elly Watson.

If you’re looking for modern trailblazing talent, however, you won’t need to venture much further than Lava - aka Londoner Ava Laurel - themself.

I want the UK Top Ten to have as many queer love songs as there are straight ones.

The singer grew up surrounded by soul and reggae artists; with their parents both certified ravers, they introduced Lava to music as an alternative lifestyle. “A lot of my friends at school were growing up on The Beatles and Fleetwood Mac and things that their parents listened to, and turned to hip hop to rebel,” they note. “Whereas I grew up with a lot of soul and R&B and rave music and free party culture, so I rebelled from that and went back to listening to old bands. I did it in reverse most people rebel from the dad music!”

This love of differing genres is clear looking through their discography, which has gone from taking cues from old-school hip hop to the more psychedelic-infused indie-rock sound seen on acclaimed February EP ‘Butter-Fly’. “That was the first body of work where I was like, OK, this is the sound I’m trying to hone in on: a more alternative hip hop, psychedelic R&B mixed with indie… A lot of buzzwords!” they laugh. “From the first EP that I dropped to the most recent one, there’s an audible shift in sound, and I feel like my last project was a gateway into that new realm of where I’m trying to take things.”

A sun-drenched collection of psychtinged queer love songs, ‘Butter-Fly’ saw Lava not only finding their feet musically, but also further establishing themselves as the queer voice that they were looking for when they were growing up. “I want there to be a point when you listen to the UK Top Ten where there are just as many queer love songs as there are straight ones,” they say. “Growing up, I’m non-binary and half-Latvian and half-Jamaican and I’ve never heard a musician who comes from the exact same background as me

make a love song! I was just thinking of how many other kids out there want that…”

Now moving into album mode, Lava has a “catalogue” of music that’s set to form their highly-anticipated debut full-length. “It’s all still very queer, just like the last project, with elements of observing the world around me and living in London and my perspective,” they explain. "I feel like I’ve grown a lot and now I’m making the music I always really wanted to make, whereas before, I was just having fun and flexing. Now I’m like, wow, shit, even if I didn’t write that song I’d want to listen to it.”

Elsewhere, Lava still keeps the fun and sonic experimentation high when working with NiNE8: the creative collective that they helped found back in 2014. “When I write music under Lava there’s a concept and a narrative and references that I might be the only person who understands,” they smile, “whereas with NiNE8, we turn up to the studio like, ‘Fuck it, what are we making today?’ And then we just have as much fun as possible.”

Made up of other creatives and musicians (including DIY fave Biig Piig), the group met at college and began creating genre-blending bops as a way to have fun on a Friday night.

Fast-forward seven years and they’re some of the most talked about young acts on the alternative scene. But what was the moment when Lava realised they were onto something special? “It would be in the moments where we’d throw our own parties, and I was barely legal! How the fuck did these people let us use their venues?!” they laugh. “The turn out would be so sick and we’d be like, ‘Where have all these people come from?’ The whole thing of NiNE8 is we’re not an elite collective, so when people were turning up it was so sick, like people actually care! And they’d turn up and sing our songs and I was like, holy shit. Whatever we’re doing, let’s just keep doing it.”

Killing it both within the collective and flying solo, Lava could just chill and soak it all in, but they’re already gearing up for what the future holds.

“I’m thinking about the project that’s happening after this project,” they smile.

“I’m already thinking three years ahead!”

2024 better watch out. DIY

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HORSEY Probably the only band in the world to simultaneously reference King Krule and Tenacious D. Words: Lisa Wright. Photo: Reuben Bastienne-Lewis.

All of the decisions we make are, what’s the dumbest thing we could do?” Jacob Read

Move along, nothing to see here…

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“What comes to mind is being pricks and thinking it was funny?” muses Jacob Read. “And also toilets. I remember we used to go in the toilet and poke our heads underneath, and the teacher would tell us off.” “It’s kind of the vibe of the band still,” nods Theo McCabe frankly, “just messing around and annoying people.”

Meeting at nursery aged three, the pair’s nascent career as pre-school delinquents might have enraged the teaching staff of South London, but a couple of decades later, their friendship has blossomed into ‘Debonair’ - their long-awaited debut LP as Horsey, alongside bandmates Jack Marshall and George Bass.

Having developed a cult following around the city over the past half-decade, the bonkers glam-jazz-rock opera tendencies of their musical output matched only by the pound shop gold sequin jackets they sport on stage (“I like the gold jackets because they’re fucking depressing and we look like some kind of weird wedding band…”), it’s a record that’s been a long time coming. Flitting between surrealist lyrical images of body parts and bizarre non-sequiturs, ‘Debonair’ spans almost 10 years of cherry-picked tracks and is ultimately defined by its distinct viewpoint more than anything else. It shouldn’t work together - if The League of Gentlemen was an album, it might sound something like this - and yet, beneath the dark humour and vaudevillian characters, somehow it does. “One

thing I really love about Theo’s writing is he doesn’t hold back on anything,” Jacob notes. “He gets to the meat very naturally.” “They call me The Butcher,” Theo nods.

The two clearly complement each other well. Theo, he decides, is the one who “outputs loads of shit”, while Jacob - otherwise known as noir crooner Jerkcurb - whittles it into something that sort of, slightly, resembles what most bands would call a song. “I find his creative brain really interesting. Even though I’ve known him for so long I don’t fucking get it. And the stuff that I hate, I often end up liking more because it tests my taste. I just think he’s got really bad taste,” Jacob laughs as Theo summarises: “I’ve got terrible taste and Jacob’s got good taste. That’s basically how it works.”

It’s worked well enough so far for the band to have enlisted the services of old friend and former tourmate King Krule for the album’s closing track ‘Seahorse’.

There’s also another band that they’ve been pondering too… “All of the decisions we make are, what’s the dumbest thing we could do? How much closer to Tenacious D can we get before we actually become Tenacious D?” laughs Jacob, as his bandmate bats him back.

“It’s a bit more subversive than that,” Theo decides. “We don’t want people to laugh at us, we just want them to think, ‘Why would they ever think that was good?!’”

Saddle up, it’s going to be a weird and wonderful ride. DIY

MALADY

RECOMMENDED

The London quartet eulogising their city in explorative new ways.

SIPHO Dirty Hit’s hypnotic new signee.

Even with only two singles to their name, London four-piece Malady already feel like vital new prospects within indie's latest incarnation. Thanks to the LCD Soundsystem-inspired debut ‘London I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down’ and their newer atmospheric rumination on purpose in ‘Famous Last Words’, their offerings meld together electronics, guitars and poignant lyricism in the most slick and satisfying ways.

LISTEN: ‘London I Love You But…’ is a glorious but realistic ode to the capital which so often bewilders its residents.

SIMILAR TO: Bloc Party and their '00s indie peers, brought into the modern rat race.

Debuting with powerful two-parter ‘MOONLIGHT PT.1’ and, you guessed it, ‘MOONLIGHT PT. 2’, Birmingham’s Sipho proved he had something a bit special. Following it up with June EP ‘And God Said…’, the project explores his identity as a Black man and his relationship with religion, all packaged up in mesmerising electronic-tinged R&B sizzlers driven by his goosebumpinducing vocals.

LISTEN: The warped shout-out to Monsta Boy’s classic ‘I’m Sorry’ in ‘BODIES’ is a stunner.

SIMILAR TO: Poignant powerpop that’ll have you waving your arms in the air.

LAURAN HIBBERD Isle of Wight’s latest exciting indie export.

Further proving that there’s something in the water off the South Coast, Isle of Wight’s Lauran Hibberd has been building buzz with her infectious indie gems, and it’s easy to see why.

With an eye for crafting relatable and humorous bangers tailored for yelling along with at full volume in your bedroom, Lauran’s pairing of fuzzy riffs with ‘90s-tinged anthemic melodies will have you hooked in no time.

LISTEN: ‘How Am I Still Alive?’ is a certified banger about Michael Cera. What more could you want?

SIMILAR TO: Something lifted straight from the ‘10 Things I Hate About You’ soundtrack.

neu

BNNY Minimal, atmospheric vignettes from the outposts of love and loss An album of two halves, ‘Everything’ - Bnny’s forthcoming debut, due next month - was written partly during the tumultuous final years of a relationship, and partly in its aftermath, following the death of singer Jess Viscius’s partner. These are, unsurprisingly then, achingly raw songs, but while the likes of recent single ‘Ambulance’ cut to the quick of grief, there are plenty of tracks that come shrouded in a strange, hazy beauty. ‘Everything’ sounds like an album written during stolen moments of 3am lucidity; Bnny weaves heaviness and light together masterfully.

LISTEN: ‘Everything’ arrives on 20th August via Fire Talk.

SIMILAR TO: Mid-‘10s heartbreakers Big Deal, after a Velvet Underground binge.

PINTY Milk-loving Peckham MC, fusing dub, jazz and more.

Named after his one-a-day habit (that’s pints of milk), and with May EP ‘Tomorrow’s Where I’m At’ picking up props from everyone from Elton John to King Krule - who produced his previous two releases and featured on a dub reworking of recent track ‘Off’ - Peckham MC Pinty is already carving out his own niche. It’s one that pits the South Londoner as the missing link between Mike Skinner and ‘90s house, with nods to the area’s rich jazz scene in there too. In terms of promise, his pint glass runneth over.

LISTEN: ‘Comfort Me’ features Emma-Jean Thackray and is an understatedly infectious club banger.

SIMILAR TO: The Streets having a Sunday chill out session.

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ES

TEE M SAYS

:

SE

“‘White Boy’ came up on my Discover Weekly and I dropped everything; I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I’m such a sucker for that old school Americana, Tracy Chapman thing - that’s a genre that hasn’t been rehashed yet and I’ve been dying for it to happen.

Her voice is unbelievable, and the EP is mainstream, American pop but it’s so beautiful you can’t deny it’s legit.”

JENSEN MCRAE

Offering up profound, meaningful songs delving into the issues surrounding her life, and throwing in the odd Phoebe Bridgers parody for good measure, Jensen McRae is already proving to be utterly captivating. Words: Sarah Jamieson. Photo: Jeannie Jensen McRae’s new EP ‘Who Hurt You?’ has only Jeannie. been out just over 24 hours when she Zooms in from her California home, and already it’s clearly making a mark. “I was Number Two on the Singer Songwriter chart on Apple yesterday, which is wild! I was second only to Joni Mitchell, who’s celebrating the 50th anniversary of ‘Blue’, so there’ll be no topping her...” she laughs.

And while chart positions and accolades have never been much of a concern for Jensen, it was, however, a poignant moment for the singer on several levels. “My manager pointed out that to have a Black woman at Number Two on that chart is astonishing,” she continues. “I’ve never been a person who’s particularly interested in those kinds of metrics, but when I realised it was an option to chart, I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it’. So when my fans responded, it was just really cool to see that chart order - with Joni Mitchell, Carole King, James Taylor, all my heroes. It was really cool that my work could be in conversation with their work.”

It’s little surprise that she’s already keeping such excellent company. Having learned the ropes during a stint at GRAMMY Camp - yep, those GRAMMYs - during high school (“They want for you to leave with some sense of what it would be like to be a musician and that was a real turning point for me”), she went on to study Popular Music at The USC Thornton School of Music, where she first began to write. That’s where ‘Who Hurt You?’, and her forthcoming debut album, first came to life.

“When we were talking about releasing an EP ahead of [the album], I didn’t want to at first, as I didn’t want to break apart this very large, cohesive body of work,” Jensen explains.

“But I’d always wanted to have a project called ‘Who Hurt You?’ - that title came to me a long time ago for something - and I thought I could use it for this.” From ‘Wolves’, her raw and arresting track about sexual assault, through to ‘White Boy’, a vulnerable exploration of racial injustice, via ‘Immune’, a Phoebe Bridgers parody track about love in the

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“The representation for Black women - especially in folk music, but really across all genres - is really limited.” pandemic that quickly went viral, the EP is a multi-faceted response to the title.

“One of the things I’m always trying to do in my work is to provide as broad a portrait of my experience as possible,” she nods, on what kind of songwriter she hopes to be, “because I feel like the representation for Black women - especially in folk music, but really across all genres of music - is really limited,” she explains. “I want to acknowledge every single aspect of my personhood: sometimes that’s political, sometimes that’s about love, sometimes it’s about mental illness, or gender, or gender violence.

“Coming of age is a really important theme to me as well, and I wanted to make sure that the music that I put out at least touches on all of those things. It’s a tall order, but I realise that, for better or for worse, I am an ambassador for my entire demographic,” she says, with a profound but light touch. “I want to make sure I’m providing as much variety as possible in terms of subject matter, because a lot of people genuinely do not think about the inner lives of Black women in that way, and I really want them to.” DIY

THE

BUZZ FEED

PLAYLIST

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:

All the buzziest new music happenings, in one place.

MEET ME @ THE ALTAR FEEL A THING For anyone who might’ve dabbled in the halcyon days of early-‘00s pop punk club nights, the genre’s recent influx of newer fans may come as a bit of a shock. And yet its resurgence feels both long overdue and, well, really bloody good. Leading the charge are Meet Me @ The Altar, with their latest offering ‘Feel A Thing’; a buoyant, energy-packed jam that pairs Edith Johnson’s sugary vocals with gnarly riffs and pounding drums. If this doesn’t have you headbanging even a little bit, something has most definitely gone wrong.

WET LEG CHAISE LONGUE

NICE GUYS FINISH FIRST Having drip-fed a steady stream of singles and EPs over the past four years, moving from insider cult favourite to five million monthly listeners on Spotify, Portland’s Still Woozy has finally announced details of his long-awaited full length debut. ‘If This Isn’t Nice, I Don’t Know What Is’ is set to arrive on 13th August via Still Woozy Productions/ Interscope, and comes preceded by new track ‘That’s Life’ - a bubbling slice of rich, funk-tinged bedroom pop that finds the singer, real name Sven Gamsky, travelling back through time.

“This song is my attempt to make peace with life’s inconsistencies,” he says of the newie.

Watch the video on diymag.com now.

GOING VIRAL Having developed a niche for frank, honest songwriting, it makes a lot of sense that Dublin’s Orla Gartland has decided to name her debut due 20th August via her own label New Friends the aptly-titled ‘Woman On The Internet’. Hoping to hit the nail on the head once more, she states that the album is a paean to future hope rather than pandemic misery.

“Announcing my debut album feels like a moment I’ve been waiting for for years,” she says. “Something clicked into place last year - I grew into my role as a producer and lyrically I knew what I wanted to say. Although this album was made in 2020 it isn’t laced with lockdown blues - it feels more like the soundtrack of new time to me; a sunnier time, a more hopeful time.”

Listen to new track ‘Do You Mind?’ and grab all the info on diymag.com.

‘MON THE GRIFF Fresh from the release of last month’s debut mixtape ‘One Foot In Front of the Other’ last month, BRITs Rising Star award winner Griff will be putting its title in practice and heading out on the road this winter.

Kicking off the UK and European run at Dublin Academy Green Room on 20th October, she’ll be taking in 14 dates including an upgraded London show at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire on the 27th.

Her first headline tour since taking the pop world by storm, tickets surely won’t hang around for long.

Isle of Wight newbies Wet Leg aren’t just rivalling Dry Cleaning for slightly odd band name choices; debut track 'Chaise Longue' is rife with the kind of witty lyricism and angular melodies that would make their peers proud. With particular gems coming via the Mean Girls-inspired "Is your muffin buttered? Would you like us to assign someone to butter your muffin?", it’s an infectious and intriguing introduction, complete with shining indie-flecked riffs that'll have you hooked straight away.

GEESE DISCO Newly signed to Partisan (IDLES, Fontaines DC, Laura Marling et al), the debut single from New York’s Geese has that rare ability to sound both tricksy and underground, yet indisputably widescreen and massive. Changing time signatures, moving through antsy Interpol-isms to bright moments of relief to something almost akin to U2 at their ‘80s finest, ‘Disco’ may be far removed from the dancefloor but it could already sound huge in the stadium.

LAZARUS KANE, MILK AT MY DOOR Shedding his previous silk kimonoclad, sunglasses-wearing skin and emerging sans the fake Southern US accent, Lazarus Kane (or Ben Jakes, as their leader now goes by) is back with ‘Milk At My Door’. Still as delightfully infectious as ever, the Bristol six-piece’s latest slice of wonk-pop goodness aims to “hold a mirror to the often darkly comedic and surreal ways in which we deal with difficult situations”. With punchy, bop-a-long beats and yelping vocals, LK 2.0 is here and he’s not going anywhere.

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

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PRIYA RAGU Fusing cultures and genres, the rich sonic world of the Swiss-Tamil singer is blossoming with every release.

Words: Seeham Rahman. Photos: BLACKKSOCKS.

neu

Many of us may have spent the past 18 months of uncertainty with hopes of bringing our creativity into fruition, but Swiss-Tamil banger-maker Priya Ragu was already 10 steps ahead.

After ushering a swift goodbye to her nine-to-five in 2019, two years later she’s now signed to major label Warner, prepping for a European tour and gracing the airwaves with her sizzling sound - self-described as “Ragu Wavy”. “I really don't like to put my music into a genre. I just call it Ragu Wavy because I want to be able to tap into all styles and come up with my own sound,” Priya explains. “I would say it definitely has Tamil folk music in it, R&B, soul, hip hop and jazz.”

It’s this eclectic and mutating quality that enables each new release of the singer’s to fit intriguingly into the wider puzzle. From the easy warmth of breakthrough debut ‘Good Love 2.0’, to the tasty beats exuded in slick dance banger ‘Chicken Lemon Rice’ and the heartachingly nostalgic ballad ‘Forget About’, each new Priya track shows a different element of her genre-metamorphosing talent.

Perhaps it’s surprising, then, that making music hadn’t always been a pursuit she’d fantasised of undertaking professionally. “In Switzerland, you don't see people popping up internationally, so it was always difficult to imagine that something like this could have been [possible],” she says. While music had always been a key player in her upbringing, it floated around as part of family traditions before becoming a tool

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of her own. “Music was always around. We played at Tamil events; my dad created a band,” Priya recalls. “At that time, I didn't enjoy singing really. My dad kind of forced me into it. If I didn’t hit the notes it didn't matter because I was young, and it had that human factor. Then, eventually, I discovered new soul music and hip hop, R&B and soul, and I really dived into that world. When I saw Lauryn Hill, I was so blown away. Her voice touched my soul and I started to sing like her. It was never really my dream to become a singer, but I knew that my superpower was in music.”

Priya’s not wrong. Magically using her roots as a reference point for her music and style, she completely sets herself out from most other musicians operating in her sphere. The vibrant colours and traditional clothing in her videos provide an insight into the richness of her culture, whilst her recent shortlisting for the Dazed 100 with a project aiding Tamil-Eelam [a proposed independent state in Sri Lanka], shows her natural gravitation towards authentically sharing her heritage. It makes sense, she notes, because ultimately her community is integral to who she is. “It’s not something I’m ever doing forcefully because it's my identity. So I have to bring it!” Priya giggles. “It just comes naturally when you hear my Tamil influences, and it's just so much fun to be able to bring my two worlds together when it comes to visuals and music.”

That’s the most alluring thing about Priya Ragu: she radiates genuineness and optimism. When asked how lockdown has treated her, she chuckles again - “I just tried to focus on the positive aspects back in 2020. The thing with not being able to

It was never my dream to become a singer, but I knew that my superpower was in music.”

give concerts was, well, I wasn’t even ready!” She’s also clearly far too focused on keeping her own imagination happy to be held up by any negativity.

“I want to keep creating uplifting music about the things that I experienced in real life. The message I’d like to share with my music would probably be to find your true self - to listen to that inner voice,” she says thoughtfully. “I’ve just started this journey and I still have a lot of things to discover and learn. The main goal is definitely to give back to the community."

Right now, whilst getting ready for this winter’s headline tour, Priya is still creating music with her key collaborator - brother, rapper and producer Japhna Gold. She’s also meditating, whizzing between London and Switzerland, and working with other artists including JUNGLE and BRIT winner Griff. It’s something of a whirlwind ascent for a Swiss artist breaking through way outside of her home turf.

“Sure!” she starts to say, “there have always been doubts. Like, at first, I was suppressing my voice. I had a super safe job. I had my family, friends; everything was cool. But sometimes you just have to trust yourself and just go with your intuition, you know? To just be like, OK, let's do it!”

Like we told you: not only is Priya way ahead of the curve, she is the curve.

DIY

29

Bow Dow Rebecca Lucy Taylor has taken the path less travelled - one filled with hurdles and left-turns - to get to where she is today.

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wn Bitches

But on ‘Prioritise Pleasure’, her second album as Self Esteem, the singer is channelling every inch of it into a manifesto to live by.

Words: Lisa Wright. Photos: Ed Miles. Art direction: Louise Mason. Hair and make up: Natasha Lawes. Styling: Taff Williamson.

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I

t feels delightfully on brand that Rebecca Lucy Taylor has chosen Margate’s Dalby Cafe as the location for the first in-depth interview around ‘Prioritise Pleasure’: her justannounced, increasingly-anticipated second album as Self Esteem, due for release in October.

This is, she tells us as a team of hair and make-up artists transform her into a Marie Antoinette-meets-Madonna fantasy during the accompanying photoshoot, her inaugural graduation to the status of magazine cover girl (aside from one time the Sheffield Big Issue used her phone selfie as a last-minute option). Another notable moment in a series of many since the release of April’s game-changing single ‘I Do This All The Time’ (a BBC 6 Music A-list playlisting; a long sought-after appearance on Later… with Jools Holland; airtime on BBC Radio 1), the significance is not lost on the singer. Now 34, Taylor has been in the industry for almost half her life - first as part of folk duo Slow Club for just over a decade, and then under her current moniker since Self Esteem’s debut single ‘Your Wife’ back in 2017. Only now are things all finally lining up, at long last.

And so, of course, for this milestone moment, we’re sat in the place where Pete Doherty famously noshed down a mega-breakfast in less than 20 minutes to mark the occasion. It’s brilliantly ridiculous, but also… kind of perfect?

“If all this had happened at 25, I wouldn’t be eating a fucking big breakfast, I’d be starving myself like a crazy nervous shrew. But now I’m 34 and I don’t give a shit,” she grins, veggie sausage stuck on the end of a fork. “Looking back, I feel really sorry for that person who couldn’t be herself anywhere because she felt like it was too much, when I really wasn’t

doing that much at all. I feel really sorry for her. But I also think everything does happen when it’s meant to. It doesn’t faze me now. I’m so ready.”

M

argate, aside from being Rebecca’s current place of residence, is both the town where ‘Prioritise Pleasure’ was recorded and where the project of Self Esteem began to bloom as a whole. Moving out of London as a way to regain creative - and, implicitly, some form of financial - freedom, she explains was a jump born out of increasing necessity.

“It was really terrifying. I was really insane the whole time. My longest relationship had broken down; I was playing a fairy in a panto and I was the oldest person in the cast; I was in chaos mode for two years,” Rebecca recalls of the period. “Emotionally, stopping doing Slow Club was horrific but all unsaid.

At the time I would beat myself up constantly about not wanting to do what everyone else wanted. Like, what’s wrong with me? I was with these happy lads who were making music, touring America, have a few pints before bed, call your girlfriend and go to sleep.

Whereas for me, I was like: I feel all these things and I don’t know where to put them.”

Over their tenure, Slow Club had achieved a reasonable level of success. Enough to send Taylor around the world, but not enough to make those trips particularly comfortable. Musically, she speaks of feeling constantly stifled but not having the confidence to make it known. “When I got to have my lungs fill with air and blow it out my gob, I loved that, but loads of it wasn’t that. I never sang to the best of my ability until we covered a fucking Christmas song, and I would wait all year to sing that song again. No wonder I went mad when THIS was here the whole time,” she says, abstractedly referring to the vivacious, technicolour world she musically inhabits now, “but I just had such shame that I’m like

“The most radical, political thing I personally can do with my time is be 34 and do dance routines in little outfits and not be skinny and not be young.”

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“Often in pop music you don’t get people saying, ‘It’s alright if you fuck up’.” this. No one put that on me, but it was like the high school mentality of trying to fit in for a decade.”

More problematically, she recalls the specific tipping point that made her finally throw in the towel on the band in 2017. Among the steady stream of motivational, empowering mantras that make up ‘I Do This All The Time’’s spoken word lyrics, there’s a verse in someone else’s voice - a voice far less pleasant.

“We had a tour manager towards the end of the fourth album who was a misogynistic, woman-hating…” she trails off. “At the time, I hadn’t really discovered feminism at all and I just thought to myself, ‘Shut up, get on with it, because you’re complaining and everyone else is fine’. And this tour manager said to me, ‘You just need to get in that little dress darling’ and I just couldn’t do it anymore. And then I played Jamie T some songs and he said they were great so I thought, there must be something to this music. And it’s so silly sitting here now because I had some songs and I should have just made them [without external validation], and I should have just said to that tour manager, ‘Fuck off talking to me like that’.

“As a woman, we’re scared to just say what happened. We’re scared to say literally, ‘X, Y and Z happened’ because of everyone else’s feelings, while I’m having to deal with getting my vagina grabbed by a record boss. It’s no one in the band’s fault, but we toured the world with no one really looking after us, so I’m surprised more weird shit didn’t happen to me. And we wanted to be on the label, so I just kept quiet. And that shit was my twenties.”

W

hen you’ve been through the mill professionally, personally - there are various ways you can go next. And, as such, the defiant joy that rings through everything about Self Esteem is the project’s greatest calling card. If 2019 debut ‘Compliments Please’ began to question the status quo - “What

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I might have achieved if I wasn’t trying to please,” mused ‘Rollout’; “Remember you don’t owe them anything,” affirmed ‘Girl Crush’ - then it’s on Taylor’s second that she goes all in, running the personal gamut from exploring matters of consent to the delight of truly enjoying your body. ‘Prioritise Pleasure’ isn’t an album that claims to have all the answers. “I get DMs from people asking me what they should do about things all the time, but I only sound wise because I spent all my money on therapy over the last three years!” she laughs. But it is one that attempts to document the journey towards them, in all its contradictory, often messy, frequently beautiful forms.

“The least I can do is make this

Oh, the Drama!

As well as writing a solid gold album, Rebecca has also been writing not one, but two plays for the stage!

“The first one is a one-woman show about how I just watch so many crime things, and [the plot is] this weird thing where I fantasise about being the subject of one. It’s just me talking for an hour with a few songs. I’d like that to happen this time next year; it’s the thing I’ve got most to fruition. There’s a man in it but he doesn’t get a bow and he just takes his clothes off. And then I’m trying to do a full-blown musical at the Almeida with all the Self Esteem songs about the band, because we all get in the van every night and everyone’s had their shit going on, so it’s a cross-section of womanness - the musical.”

empowering record that says ‘Be yourself unapologetically, don’t care what anyone else thinks of you’, but often in pop music you don’t get people also saying, ‘It’s alright if you fuck up. It’s alright if you’re not a fucking girlboss every day of your life’,” she stresses. “We’ve had this whatever wave feminism we’re on now, but we’re [still] only listened to if we’re perfect, whereas I’m interested in the shabby flaws and the things that aren’t shiny in other people, so that’s why I put it in what I do.”

In the cutthroat, youth-fetishising world of pop music - a world that, though on the artier peripheries, Self Esteem with its choreography and beats has more in common with than the indie spheres of her old job - being a woman in your thirties is an inherently un-shiny thing. It’s something Taylor is all too aware of; even around her solo debut, she was still semi-indulging the party line that she was, in fact, 28. But now, that fear has gone too.

“I thought, fucking hell - this is the antithesis of my whole thing, but it still shows you how archaic some of my wiring is because of my age and where I’m from,” she admits. “The retraining of the misogyny that’s in me is part of what I do everyday as well. The only certainty is that we age and yet we’re really embarrassed about it.

And I had a real epiphany moment where I realised it’s not sad or embarrassing to do what I’m doing, which was previously reserved for people in their teens and twenties.

It’s actually fucking cool. The most radical, political thing I personally can do with my time is be 34 and do dance routines in little outfits and not be skinny and not be young.”

Perhaps equally radical is her readiness to admit the mental hurdles she’s faced in getting to that place. If, particularly on social media, the smallest admission of ‘imperfect feminism’ can be met with vitriol, then the singer is all for accepting that you can’t always just leap straight from A to X. “I was born in ‘86. I can’t just let my chin

35

“As a woman, we’re scared to just say what happened. We’re scared to say literally, ‘X, Y and Z happened’ because of everyone else’s feelings.”

Cool Jools Last month, Self Esteem featured on lauded, long-running music telly staple Later… with Jools Holland, thus fulfilling one of Rebecca’s career dreams…

“Obviously it was a shame it was socially distanced and not in the studio, but it was so special to me.

I’ve been going on about not being on that show for so long, and now the relief of being on it is better than actually doing it. The after bit, where now I can go, ‘It’s alright now’. Same with the Mercury nomination - just nominate me and then it’s done! I don’t have to win it, but I can get over [wanting the nomination].

I’ve been on the radio loads now, so that’s the rate gain people are talking about - getting more exposure.

Now maybe people won’t say I’m underrated, maybe now they’ll be fucking sick of me. That’ll be great.

That’s where I wanna be - that’s the goal for me!”

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hairs fly free - I just can’t!” she exclaims. “And that doesn’t make me less of a feminist, but you’ve got to have a bit of patience with us! In my teens there was sexual abuse across the board by today’s standards.

I had a boss who made me bend over in my school uniform; that was my teens. It’s only just changing and sometimes I forget what was so normalised until only recently.”

As well as its out-and-out battle cries, it’s these moments of flawed relatability that make ‘Prioritise Pleasure’ human. Yes, some of its more motivational lines could form the backbone of a decent self help book - “Getting married isn’t the biggest day of your life, all the days that you get to have are big” - but elsewhere, she allows herself to be bitchy on ‘Fucking Wizardry’ (“You should have wrote better songs, honey”) and make bad decisions on ‘Moody’ (“Sexting you at the mental health talk seems counterproductive”).

“Very few people are vulnerable and admit they don’t feel alright; there’s so much theatre going on all the time for everyone and it’s actually really exhausting,” she continues, “so even slightly saying what I feel like and having so many people say, ‘Oh my god, me too’, has really shifted how I look at everyone and everything.”

D

espite being written pre-pandemic, it all makes for a strangely perfect album to hold up after an 18-month period of selfreflection and reckoning. She laid down the record’s tracks alongside regular producer Johan Hugo of The Very Best in between lockdowns spent back at her parents’ house in Sheffield, having baths, exercising daily, living slowly. “I was having the most calm time I’ve ever had in my whole life, and something about the two things - that and making the record - I felt really ready to preach this shit,” she enthuses.

It’s a confidence that translates sonically. Taking the core ingredients of ‘Compliments Please’ and exploding them out, its follow up is bigger, bolder, brighter at every turn. Opener ‘I’m Fine’ features a rallying sample of conversation taken from a workshop she’d been leading at the National Youth Theatre in which a young woman talks of how she and her friends bark like dogs at groups of men they feel threatened by: “There is nothing that terrifies a man more than a woman that appears completely deranged”. ‘How Can I Help You’’s pummelling drums are a direct and purposeful nod to Kanye West’s ‘Black Skinhead’; ‘Prioritise Pleasure’’s chorus soars with a rich, strong choir of voices raising up its central message; ‘Moody’ is playful pure pop cut from the Carly Rae Jepsen school of smart bangers.

“I need to stop saying this, but I feel like there’s enough music. I just don’t think we need any more,” she chuckles. “So if you’re gonna do it, I need to hear something new, or for it to say something or make me feel something.

“In Self Esteem, I really want there to be a way to know it’s a Self Esteem song. I’ve always wanted consistency, for it to have an iconic sound to it - I just want it to be iconic!” she continues. “So for me, turn it all up to 11 every time. My taste buds are dying - I always have to have mustard or jalapeños, because I need to stimulate them. With booze, it’s got to be GOOD booze now; everything’s got to be more more more, because as a body I’m dying off, so I need to wake me back up. And in the same way I need a jalapeño, I need the music to be bigger, more widescreen, more cinematic, more in your gut.”

There is something about Taylor - prone to hilarious turns of phrase that are somehow simultaneously selfeffacing and strangely uplifting - that is immediately likeable. When we bring up the title track’s raunchily empowering climax (“Shave my pussy / That’s just for me”), she howls with laughter so loud it can likely be heard from the neighbouring town. “Aha, I forgot about that bit! But it is! I only used to shave my pubes if I was going on a date and now I do it if I feel like it. If I’m

going on a date and I haven’t shaved, it doesn’t matter,” she says, breaking down with laughter. “Oh my god, my poor parents…”

But then she pivots back. “We keep getting these Trojan Horse moments as women, like Fleabag where it’s like, amazing she’s saying all these things and she likes sex, but the crux of Fleabag is that she stops having sex with people. And I was like, no! You’ve painted this like she might be enjoying her life but no, it’s full of trauma and it’s seen as a vice. And I know what I enjoy and I’m so sick of feeling bad about it.

“And obviously I’ve had some bad experiences sexually too, with consent being a problem, but I didn’t want the whole record to be a ‘Fuck you for doing this to me’, because I refuse to have it taken from me because of one incident,” she continues. “I had a really bleak few months after because we all know the knickers in a courtroom thing - it was her fault - and that as a narrative. But I don’t think we talk about the smaller versions where something’s happened that you didn’t want to happen and you can’t say shit, and where do you put that? And I refused to let it take away one of the big joys for me which is having really great sex with really great people because how dare you? And that’s another big theme of the record - reclaiming any sense of your body and enjoyment and pleasure when you’ve been vilified for it.”

Across slightly more time than it takes to leisurely eat a fried breakfast, Rebecca delivers an almost endless supply of these sort of air punch moments that make you want to bang your fist on the table in a thankful show of solidarity. It’s a gesture - strong, loud, strangely grateful - that seems to sum up what Self Esteem is meaning to more and more people as time goes on.

And no one more than the singer herself.

“I thought some massive success would solve [my mental health problems] but the only thing that ‘solved it’ was truly having an idea, executing it, and it coming to fruition without people pushing back on it. Which sounds like I’m Angelica in the Rugrats, like ‘I want it now!’, but I also don’t think that’s bad. So many artists are like that and it’s only the women that get called a diva. Are you telling me Bowie was like, ‘Excuse me, sorry’? No!” She stops. “I’m on one again…

“But a lot of people keep telling me, this can’t go away now, it’s OK. I always used to save my Easter Eggs until Christmas because I was so stressed about not having any left. And that’s how I treat this [project].

But I keep having more and more moments where the clouds pass and I realise I’m doing it, and that maybe it’s gonna be alright...”

‘Prioritise Pleasure’ is out 29th October via Fiction.

DIY

37

BECAUSE SHE WANTS TO

OVER THE PAST 12 MONTHS, OFF THE BACK OF MODERN CLASSIC ‘PENG BLACK GIRLS’, ENNY HAS BECOME THE UK’S INDISPUTABLE ONE TO WATCH. WITH A DEBUT EP ON ITS WAY, “THERE’S MORE SIDES TO WHO I AM,” SHE EXPLAINS. Words: Danielle Koku.

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“It was sick to see the words ‘Peng Black Girls’ in so many places, even places you wouldn’t expect.”

H

ailing from a small corner of South East London’s Thamesmead, ENNY - possibly the biggest UK breakout star of 2021 so far - is ready to make her mark. She’s opted out of playing the game and decided to just be herself. Quiet and unbothered, she’s here to “do what she came to do”. There’s no artificial TikToks; no larger than life glam team; no red tape. It’s all about her one woman band. “I just rap. I rap over anything,” she shrugs of her style.

ENNY’s love of music began in church, and continued when she and her friends created their own band, Room AA. Later, she would spend most of her school years diving headfirst into J Cole tumblr-adjacent fandom. Much like her musical influences, she’s not one for the fakery; “I’m gassed off real instrumentation,” she confirms.

Inspired by everything from the Golden Age of early 2000s hip hop to the later 2010 Golf Wang streetwear brand of troll-god Tyler the Creator, she’s always been stylin’ on em in her own way. Now, looking forward, she’s clearly quietly confident about where these early steps are leading: “It’s the same ENNY, there’s just way more support”.

In October 2020, what began as a passing daydream became ‘Peng Black Girls’: a

love letter to all the Black British women who grew up like her, between the culture of their parents and the new shores they made home. Humble and understated, ENNY’s jazzy style of rap started off making gentle waves, but soon the penny dropped as the song’s commentary began to do its work. Her scathing dissection of beauty standards (not wanting a fat booty like the Kardashians, but wanting one like her aunties instead) resonated deeply in the midst of a series of lockdowns in which people were forced to confront their true selves in the mirror. ENNY had already clocked the game of the superficial world she was going to dip her toes into, and she called bullshit from the beginning.

The track was taken to the next level a few months later when Jorja Smith joined for a remix, delivering yet another scathing takedown of the double standards Black artists endure. On it, ENNY cheekily leads with, “I was Black when it wasn’t even in style”, before passing the mantle to Jorja, who calls out the hypocrisy of a media that responds to calls for greater representation with silence: “These Black girls need to be in the shows, on the runways, not just on the moodboards/ On top of that we gotta see them on your teams.”

ENNY looks back on the experience with fond eyes. “Having her involved in the track

39

was really sick because of how it came about - it was really organic, it wasn’t forced,” she recalls. “It was sick to see the words ‘Peng Black Girls’ in so many places, even places you wouldn’t expect to see it. The message really connected with people.” Easy as she makes it seem, the combination of their voices has clearly struck a chord. The track now stands at over 14 million Spotify plays and counting.

I

n some ways, riding the wave of ‘Peng Black Girls’’ success made ENNY feel just as empowered as her listeners, but in others, she explains, it hemmed her in. She confesses, “I think it gave me more than a sense of direction; I gathered what people wanted from me after that. They wanted more political songs, but I know that I’m more than that. People will always have the assumption that if you’ve made a song about [a certain topic], it’s the one thing you’re about.”

Ironically, connecting with people that looked just like her placed her in a tight spot; as the track itself says, existing outside of the box the wider world assigns to you is near impossible. But she’s also self-assured enough to know that she’ll be able to surpass it. “There’s more sides to who I am,” she affirms.

“The multidimensionalism is something the song actually celebrates.” It makes sense then that she’s willing to stand outside of expectation, even if it’s from the very people she made the track for.

“I’m realising that you have to set milestones and targets for yourself, or what’s the point?”

No one could’ve predicted the snowball effect that ‘Peng Black Girls’ would create - besides ENNY herself. In her own words: “Everything always happens prior, and then the world catches on.”

Millions of streams, a debut on Later… with Jools Holland, and a collaboration with British luxe fashion house Mulberry later, and the world is clearly catching on thick and fast. With things going up and up, it’s no surprise that ENNY is on a different wave even from 2020 to now. 2021 has seen a series of firsts for her, including a ‘PBG’ performance alongside Jorja and Amia Brave on Glastonbury’s May stream. “That was really sick,” she reminisces. “It was really cool, a beautiful moment between the three of us girls.”

Ironically, ENNY herself isn’t a fan of the limelight, but it seems to love her.

“Anyone that knows me knows I hate the cameras, I’m proper awkward,” she concedes. When asked how an awkward person does it all, she bursts out laughing before concluding, “Fam! I’m still figuring it out. I play it off well but on the inside I’m having a ‘mare.” However, she’s still ready to dream even bigger.

“If you had asked me these questions two months ago I would just be like, ‘Yeah, sure, whatever’,” she says, “but now that I’m getting into this music thing properly, I’m realising that you have to set milestones and targets for yourself, or what’s the point?”

Crushing Glastonbury on her second single is setting some serious pace, so it’s no surprise her next stops are way beyond the Channel. She quickly reels off the US and Europe as some post-pandemic touring targets, before

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mentioning her home country, Nigeria.

Following last year’s widespread #EndSARS anti-government protests, she believes “Nigeria’s entertainment industry is it’s saviour at this point”.

“Hopefully it can effect some change in the government and get things popping that way,” she continues. Alongside some of the most vocal artists on the planet, including Wizkid, Tiwa Savage, Burna Boy and Mr Eazi, ENNY is standing tall amongst a legion of artists ready to defend their people.

T

here’s also a hugely-anticipated EP on the way. Named ‘Under Twenty Five’, it’s the product of yet more daydreaming. Turning 25, she explains, was a watershed moment: “Life was getting into my head as I approached 25.” Faced with choosing between the music career she truly wanted, and one in the professional world that she’d accidentally fallen into, she was at a crossroads.

In the video for ‘I Want’, she’s the same girl. Giving us fed-up Cinderella with her head in the clouds, she plays a waitress in your typical English cafe with dreams of pursuing a life she truly wants. The track itself was written in similarly undesirable circumstances. “I was working in a bank, and I had no business being there. I studied Film, but nepotism got me through the door,” she concedes.

Once she decided to make the leap from the world of finance, however, ‘I Want’ meant that she’d already written her story out. “It was manifestation, before manifestation became a thing,” she nods.

The videos for both ‘Same Old’ and ‘I Want’ are quintessentially Black British.

There’s West African red stew being stored in ice cream containers, girls breaking up fights between boys, and people grabbing slushies at the corner shop - memories woven deeply into the collective consciousness. Getting down to the true nitty gritty of the community, she confesses she’s a fan of the controversial beverage that makes an appearance in the latter of the videos: Supermalt. Between laughs about how there’s a lot of “hateration in the dancery” directed at the drink, she admits she does prefer a Magnum from time to time.

With touring in the UK still somewhat up in the air, it might still be a little while until ENNY is able to play on home turf, but she’s excited to finally match the virtual support to real life faces when it happens. “For artists, I feel that the most important moments are when you create the music, and when you get to perform it,” she says. “You get to live in the songs you’ve made, and watch it connect with people. You can have everything else, but if people aren’t connecting to the music when you go to your shows, who are you going to perform to?”

Connection, clearly, is something that she’s not struggling with. After a milestone year, and with so much still yet to come, there’s a lot of hope in the air for the rest of us, but for ENNY, there’s certainty. '‘Under Twenty Five' is out 16th July via FAMM. DIY

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Loraine James

Grand brothers

For Those I Love

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Grown-ish After three years of penning indie bops (etc.) in his bedroom, Oscar Lang is growing up - and unveiling a debut album that forms the perfect soundtrack for it. Words: Elly Watson.

42 DIYMAG.COM

F

or many, the working week is spent waiting for the weekend to arrive, but for Oscar Lang, the last three years in the ‘biz have felt like one long holiday. And last year was his best trip yet.

“Your brain doesn’t have the capacity to process what 200 of your friends are doing every week on Instagram!”

“I really hit my stride in 2020 with music, and I felt really confident with the music I was making,” Oscar reminisces. “I’m always super in my head, and music is such a big part of who I am that when the music I was making wasn’t sounding like I wanted it to sound, it would really affect me badly. [But last year] I was just making music that I really loved, and it felt right, and seemed like it was the right time to make a full album.”

Decamping to Liverpool for a month with a bunch of musical mates, the result is August’s upcoming debut album ‘Chew The Scenery’: a collection of lo-fi-inspired numbers exploring the age-old conundrum of growing up.

“It was the funnest month of the year, 100%,” he beams of the experience.

“They have these electric scooters, so we spent a lot of time on those going around Liverpool. They’re called Vois, so it was the boys on the Vois on a voyage.

That was our end of the day treat.”

When not “gunning it along near the sea” on scooters or having Tony Hawk competitions on the studio’s PS2, Oscar was busy crafting the coming-of-age gems that form the core of his debut.

“A lot of the themes of the album are to do with growing up and maturing,” he explains. “I think lockdown meant that a lot of people my age have matured and

grown up a lot in such a short amount of time. Some of the songs - ‘Thank You’ and ‘Take Time Out’ - are more based on self-reflection and admitting you’ve done things wrong, but being thankful for those things you did wrong because they help you do things right.”

With many tracks touching on Oscar’s relationship with his mental health, album opener ‘21st Century Hobby’ details the all-too-well-known pastime of endlessly doom scrolling on Instagram. “So many people talk about this topic, and how Instagram is bad for your mental health and it’s been a thing for years, but I was always like, ‘I can handle it’,” he notes. “Then I realised, no, that’s not true. I would spend hours and hours scrolling and then walk away having done nothing and feeling worse.

You’re not meant to see this! Your brain doesn’t have the capacity to process what 200 of your friends are doing every week!”

Tackling friendships, relationships and the emotional rollercoaster we call life, ultimately Oscar is hoping that people find solace in ‘Chew The Scenery’ and understand that they’re not alone.

And as if to demonstrate his capacity for an empathetic offering, old track ‘She Likes Another Boy’ is currently doing just that; released back when he was 17, the first song Oscar ever wrote is now getting a second surge of life thanks to social media. “I wrote it because I went to a party and the girl I had a fat crush on was getting off with a different guy across the room. I remember really viscerally that feeling when I was a teenager that it was the worst thing in the world,” he recalls.

“Now, it’s generating a bit [of hype] on TikTok. I go on and watch these TikToks of people crying, and look through the YouTube comments of everyone talking about their own story and that they’ve been through the same situation. That’s a really special thing, that I can capture that emotion in a sound and allow people to feel it and get it out.”

Not just contained to apps, Oscar’s reach and relatability has IRL proof too, his DMs currently flooded by fans excited to finally grab hold of his debut and get back in the mosh pit. “It’s still mad to see messages from people who have been there from the start. We have a few fans who have been coming to every gig since the first headline shows,” he smiles.

“I used to spend a lot of time thinking, ‘Oh this is where I wanna be’, and setting expectations for myself. But the last year has made it so that I’m not setting expectations,” he continues of what he hopes ‘Chew The Scenery’ will achieve. “In life, if you want something so much, it finds a way to avoid you.

I’m trying not to want anything for the record; I’m just happy to release music people want to listen to. Saying that, if it did get to Number One, I’d be fucking gassed!”

‘Chew The Scenery’ is out 13th August via Dirty Hit. DIY

Oscar Lang or Grandpa Simpson?

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LA VIE EN ROSE 44 DIYMAG.COM

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“I try to be my authentic self in whatever room I might be in.”

45

I

t’s definitely difficult to imagine Laura releasing material this unapologetically pop before ‘Pink Noise’, which she accurately bills as featuring “a lot of sass, a lot of soul, and a lot of celebration.”

Less surprising is the skill she’s shown in imbuing such a retro-leaning sound with enough fresh insight that it never strays into the territory of pure pastiche.

‘Got Me’ boasts a buoyant, Michael Jackson-meets-Billy Ocean groove, and arrives accompanied by a brilliantly tongue-in-cheek video featuring Laura living her best life, cavorting around a car wash in turquoise thigh-high boots, and flirting with a Ferrari-driving customer. ‘What Matters’ is a dry ice-drenched power ballad, featuring tender vocals from Simon Neil of Biffy Clyro. And then there’s the ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’-esque ‘Church Girl’, a burst of electro-pop so euphoric it moved Chris Martin to tweet his support for the track. Not that big name co-signs are a new experience for Laura: after all, this is the same artist who once turned down a feature from Prince.

“It's all well and good having all this critical acclaim, but I'd been dropped for a reason.

I'd gotten comfy.”

by abandoning all the stories about myself.”

When asked what she’s learned in the making of the record, she bats back, “That I’m fucking amazing,” without any trace of irony. “I don't just mean creatively,” she explains. “I mean that, as a human being, I do well. I try to be my authentic self in whatever room I might be in. I work really hard. I'm stronger than I think I am. Wiser than I thought I was. All I want now is for listeners to take me for who I am.”

‘Pink Noise’ is out now via Atlantic.

DIY

“He wanted to jump on ‘Overcome’ from the last record, which already had Nile Rodgers and [Miles Daviscollaborator] John Scofield on it,” she defends herself, laughing. “Somebody reminded me the other day that he just recorded his own version of it. It's in my email somewhere; I must look it up…”

An experience as much as it is an album, ‘Pink Noise’ is essentially an audacious, right hand turn from an artist who had - only recently secretly feared she might be “too old to be pop”. “That was just about my own insecurities,” she says, roundly dismissing those worries now. “One of the most important things Atlantic said to me was, ‘This is your time.

You've done so much: it's time to start having fun, and to enjoy the reckless innocence of it all’. And I was like, you know what? You’re right. It's time to actually live this stuff. It’s time to be in the moment and celebrate, even more so with the world coming out of lockdown.”

Thematically too, this renewed sense of self-belief runs throughout the record.

When, on ‘Church Girl’, she sings, ‘You don’t write the story, baby’, she’s openly abandoning the fallacy that her darkest moments define her. For Laura, like all of us, abandoning insecurities is an ongoing process.

“Even on this shoot I had a bit of a wobble,” she says frankly, and without shame. “Sometimes I get teary just before getting in front of the camera because I suddenly have a rush of panic, like, am I good enough? I still take in the baggage of narratives that I've identified with since I was 10 years old, like I'm not beautiful on the outside, or I don't know how to be sexy.

But there's a stillness within that I'm learning to tap into more and more on a daily basis, and I'm finding that I'm enjoying things much more fully just

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“I wanted to shed the skin of some of the [musical] hallmarks that I had come to be known for over the years.”

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ANIMAL 48 DIYMAG.COM

UMP may have only played seven gigs together, but each one left a lasting effect.

“The shows were better than anything I’d ever been part of,” reflects Laura Marling, the vocalist and lyricist for the experimental duo, ahead of the release of their second album, ‘Animal’. The words carry particular weight when you consider that, for 13 years, Laura has been considered among the elite of British music, her solo career earning near-universal acclaim as well as a BRIT Award.

But for the singer, LUMP represents something that had always been missing. “I’m not a session musician and I’ve never played in bands, really,” she says. “This was a proper band. You really get that euphoric feeling when you’re all playing together.”

LUMP’s self-titled 2018 debut album took many by surprise. Mike Lindsay, the

MAGI

Bringing their experimental, collaborative baby LUMP back into the world for a second glimpse, Laura Marling and Mike Lindsay are revelling in the freedom of the project all over again.

Words: Max Pilley. Photos: El Hardwick.

Mercury-winning producer and co-founder of avant-folk band Tunng, put together a set of warped, electronic psych recordings and invited Laura, who he barely knew, to his studio for a series of one-off visits. Mike would play Laura the tracks, and Laura would spontaneously write and record a set of lyrics on the day. By the time each session was over, the songs were fully formed.

That the album was so accomplished speaks both to the two musicians’ acumen but also to a chance chemistry that could not have been foreseen. After the album’s release and the success of the short run of live shows, the prospect of trying to recapture the magic for a second LUMP album became hard to ignore.

“I reckon it was a seven out of ten that we were going to do it,” says Mike, remembering the rush of excitement they both felt as the summer of 2018 came to an end. Their respective schedules kept them apart for most of the next 12 months,

49

“THE PERSONA OF BEING A STRONG FEMALE IS SOMETIMES QUITE LABORIOUS. LUMP IS A NICE BREAK FROM ALL THAT.” - Laura Marling although for a project whose inception relied on a sense of unfamiliarity, they agreed that the separation might be no bad thing.

As they neared the date of their first meeting back, Laura admits to having harboured anxiety about whether a process that had been so seamless the first time around could be replicated.

“I was a bit wary that it was truly just luck of chemistry on the first one, but it wasn’t,” she says. The synergy, it transpired, was still there.

“It was a similar process, just mumbling over the music until words and sentences formed and that’s it,” she says, with typical humility. What she describes as a system based on “laziness” and “impatience”, Mike instead sees for what it is: “There aren’t many people in the world that can do what she does, there is an element of genius going on.”

Even when confronted by a momentary lack of inspiration, as on the session for new track ‘Gamma Ray’, Mike recalls his creative partner’s dogged refusal to let the moment get away. “It was one of my favourite moments,” he says.

“We couldn’t get it, the ridiculous time signature was freaking out the mind, so she took herself down to the kitchen for about an hour and came back and it was all just… WHOOSH. She came straight onto the mic and said ‘Let’s record’ before I’d even heard it, and that was it. Now it’s my favourite track we’ve done.”

Laura jots down single words in the back of her notebook when she travels to the studio for the sessions. For the first album, she was drawing from the Surrealist Manifesto and the poems of Edward Lear, with a view to creating true nonsensical lyrics. This time around, thanks to her current studies for a master’s course in psychoanalytic theory, she found herself underlining words in her course textbooks and using those as launching off points for her subsequent innovations.

“Rather than it being a way of articulating myself, it’s a way of using language that I really enjoy,” she explains. “There’s a very common thing in psychoanalysis about how language very often has two meanings - a surface and an underlayer. That’s happening all the time in art and music:

50 DIYMAG.COM

you’re seeing one thing and it’s having a very different effect than it would seem.”

O Creature Comforts

LUMP is far from just a musical project. Right from its very inception, when Laura Marling’s then five-year-old goddaughter came up with the new band’s name, the duo were set on creating a real world manifestation of LUMP. Argentine motion graphics animator Esteban Diacono came up with a digital design, before a real-life version that Laura herself worked on made his debut at the live shows in June 2018.

Thankfully, LUMP is set to return to the stage with the band this September. He is, according to Laura, “less shaggy these days, he’s morphed. He’s now toolbased, too. He regenerates.”

“Superheroes put on costumes to become their thing,” says Mike.

“LUMP is our superhero.” “Yeah, LUMP is our costume,” adds Laura.

“Literally and metaphorically.”

ur interview takes place in the middle of a rehearsal session as the duo prepare for an upcoming run of live shows and, even now, Laura seems taken aback by the depths of their results. “Performing them, I’m surprised how sincerely I’m feeling the tone of the songs, which I didn’t anticipate,” she notes. “The lyrics seemed so random at the time.”

One welcome upshot of the process behind LUMP, she continues, is the ability to break free from the pressures associated with her solo persona. The four-time Mercury Prize nominee is often followed around by

where one ends and the other begins, that’s just the way it is.”

Asked if she feels trapped by other people’s perceptions, she pauses. “I do think, particularly in this time, when the bracket of ‘woman’ or ‘female’ - even though it’s supposed to be opening up - seems to be closing in. That’s a statement of fact rather than value.

So it’s nice to not think about being a woman, I guess? I don’t know, but the persona of being a strong female is sometimes quite laborious. [LUMP] is a nice break from all that.”

The change is evident to anyone who hears ‘Animal’. Laura’s voice often slows almost to the point of spoken word, her lyrics chatty and more colloquial than on her solo material. On occasion during the studio sessions,

machines that I’ve been enjoying.”

Lurking somewhere inside the sonic playground that Mike has created, however, lies something decidedly more unsettling. From the name down, there has always been a dark side to LUMP, a thread of danger laced all the way through. It’s hard to pinpoint, exactly, even for LUMP themselves.

“There are definitely dark undertones to LUMP world, aren’t there?” says Mike. “We were describing it a bit like the Upside Down in Stranger Things.

There’s an unknown: bits of a parallel universe that aren’t at all playful or friendly.” Laura agrees. “LUMP is playful and innocent, until it comes up against the world. It is unsettling.”

“THERE AREN’T MANY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD THAT CAN DO WHAT LAURA DOES, THERE IS AN ELEMENT OF GENIUS GOING ON.” - Mike Lindsay adjectives like ‘earnest’, ‘mature’ and ‘measured’, and she admits that at times the sense she has of herself as an artist can begin to blur with the image that she knows others have of her.

“I think they exist together, they were formed together,” she says. “I was so young when I started, it’s hard to tell

Mike was really starting to feel like a third wheel in LUMP’s relationship.

a trace of Laura’s solo persona would creep in, but “Mike would swiftly bash that down, any of that sincere bullshit,” she jokes.

For an artist so used to writing and performing alone, the spirit of collaboration has been particularly appealing too, especially within the rigid LUMP framework put together

by Mike. Previous attempts to use her talents outside of her solo work have, after all, been somewhat less successful. “People think it’s whimsical to have me come in and write for pop people,” she notes, “and it never works because I can’t write pop music. I’ve done that a couple of times for 16-yearolds that you’ve never heard of; I find it incredibly difficult to do anything other than what I do. So it’s nice because with LUMP, I don’t get confused between the two voices.”

In the time between the two albums, Mike moved to Margate and, inspired by the nature of waves to arrive in cycles of seven, set about composing this new set of tracks, many of them in 7/4 time. The characteristic digital mischief remains intact on ‘Animal’, although this time there is a greater emphasis on live playing, with propulsive live drums and handheld woodwind flourishes lending a much more organic flavour to the recordings.

“It’s in one way more accessible than the first record,” he says, “but it’s also I think a lot more experimental as well, with the twisted time signatures and these lovely, strange, bubbling wonk

I

t may take more LUMP albums for the full extent of the mystery to reveal itself and, fortunately, the prospects of Mike and Laura continuing to work together look strong. Both members were able to divide their time between their separate careers and the making of ‘Animal’ quite easily and look forward to doing so again. For Laura, balancing the two even had a surprisingly freeing effect on her approach to 2020’s superlative album, ‘Song for Our Daughter’.

“I think the fact that I knew that LUMP was becoming a more permanent part of my life meant that ‘Song for Our Daughter’ was purely a songwriting album,” she says. “It’s not trying to be a techno songwriting album, or nu grunge, or whatever the kids are up to. It’s just a straightforward songwriting album and I don’t feel as self-conscious about that as I would have done, did I not have something a bit more out of the box in my life.”

For Mike too, the formula that they’ve stumbled across couldn’t be more ideal, and, just as was the case with deciding to make this second album, it all comes down to the promise of playing live. “We engage in this studio environment and then ignore each other for the rest of the time, until we get to put it together as a live thing.

Then we get to drink the wine and it’s all worth it.”

‘Animal’ is out 30th July via Chrysalis / Partisan. DIY

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revie Gleefully throwing a ton of ideas at the wall and finding that nearly all of them stick.

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ews 

TYLER, THE CREATOR Call Me If You Get Lost (Columbia)

When Tyler, the Creator released ‘IGOR’, the only question he’d left unanswered is where he’d go next. It felt like the culmination of a redemptive arc for him; over the span of a decade, he’d gone from gleefully courting controversy in the early days of Odd Future’s success, littering his lyrics with homophobic slurs and hurling more of them at critics in public, to openly exploring his own sexuality on 2017’s ‘Flower Boy’ and then, with ‘IGOR’, being fully embraced by the mainstream at exactly the point that he was musically making his most ambitious moves.

Now, ‘Call Me If You Get Lost’ feels like a hitting of the reset button. Not in terms of it marking any kind of emotional regression; he continues to spill out his feelings honestly.

Instead, musically speaking, the album is a return to his roots, a sprawling sixteen-track affair that has the feel of a mixtape in the modern sense of the word, at once both polished in its production and undisciplined in its stylistic approach - think Drake’s ‘If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late’ or ‘More Life’, in terms of process if not delivery.

We’re reminded that Tyler is a rapper; ‘LUMBERJACK’, the lead single, both samples horrorcore pioneers Gravediggaz and channels them, while the confrontational ‘LEMONHEAD’ invokes the aggressive minimalism of ‘GOBLIN’.

Elsewhere, the woozy ‘WUSYANAME’ plays like a paean to the laid-back R&B samples that came to characterise so much of ‘90s hip hop, while ‘MANIFESTO’ is a classic rap confessional that reflects unflinchingly on Tyler’s early rabblerousing ("I was cancelled before cancelled was with Twitter fingers.”)

Across the course of ‘Call Me If You Get Lost’, we see every side of his split personality; the adversarial spinner of bleak lyricism we remember from ‘BASTARD’ and ‘GOBLIN’ is present and correct, but so is the quietly vulnerable guy who did so much introspection on ‘Flower Boy’. Crucially, the album doesn’t undo the sonic strides made on ‘IGOR’; take ‘SWEET/I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO DANCE’ as a case in point, a near ten-minute soft funk odyssey that slaloms between styles as it winds on. ‘Call Me If You Get Lost’ should feel like a diversion from the ambitious trajectory Tyler looked to be on when ‘IGOR’ dropped, but instead, by taking the time to delve back into his rap upbringing, he’s progressed further, gleefully throwing a ton of ideas at the wall and finding that nearly all of them stick. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘LEMONHEAD’

A careerdefining return that most artists can only dream of.

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LAURA MVULA Pink Noise (Atlantic)

Laura Mvula hasn’t had the easiest ride over the past few years. 2013 debut ‘Sing To The Moon’ captured praise for its stellar songwriting, orchestral flourishes and diamondcut balladry, but peppy 2016 follow-up ‘The Dreaming Room’ arrived to muted fanfare despite the quality of its contents. Following this second effort she was suddenly dropped by her label (via email, pre-pandemic) which jump-started a few years off the mainstream grid. When listening to the sheer power of ‘Pink Noise’, it’s crazy to think Laura seriously considered the prospect of returning to teaching in this downtime. She directly channels recent setbacks into the heart of the LP: on ‘Conditional’ she sings of “another blow to the ego” among sludgy industrial synths and sudden maniacal bursts of saxophone runs. The record largely takes its cues from ‘80s synth-pop, an age of music frequently mined by artists but when it’s done well - as it most certainly is here - it can fashion some real showstoppers. You can almost feel the dry ice submerging ‘Safe Passage’, a stark opener that lays down the laws of the land with its sparkling synth-play. ‘Magical’ is a chest-pounding love song that builds and soars, drawing back only at the point where it feels as if it’s about to genuinely pop; “Do you remember the time when we were together?” she howls as her voice lifts to the peak of its powers. It’s an album of varying moods, too. Vulnerability rears its head among the swelling brass notes of ‘Golden Ashes’ - “I lost my way again,” she sings before pleading the powers that be to stop her from drowning again. Almost every song here could pass as a single.

The title track is catered with slices of tight funk guitar and slinky synths that Prince would be proud of, later ‘Got Me’ bops with its knowing nod to Michael Jackson. Simon Neil from Biffy Clyro guests on the slinky funk ballad ‘What Matters’ with his unmistakable delivery sparkling in the disco lights - a surprising, yet perfect casting. Punchy, fun and beautifully constructed, ‘Pink Noise’ is the triumphant sound of Laura Mvula finding her feet. A career-defining return that most artists can only dream of; pure synth-pop ecstasy. (Sean Kerwick) LISTEN: ‘Magical’

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VINCE STAPLES Vince Staples

(Blacksmith / Motown / EMI)

A glance into the sketchbook of Vince Staples. 

DOJA CAT

Planet Her

(Kemosabe / RCA)

If you’ve been anywhere near your phone in the last few months, it’s likely you’ve already heard snippets of pop-rap phenomenon Doja Cat’s third full-length offering ‘Planet Her’. Pretty much the internet’s unofficial soundtrack by this point, SZA-featuring closer and disco-infused standout ‘Kiss Me More’ - complete with its instantly catchy line of “I feel like fucking something” - quickly shot to viral fame. Elsewhere, sizzling sexy jam ’Need To Know'’s lyrical flows (“Need it in me like a Chuck E. need cheddar”) have unsurprisingly been doing the rounds, and now Doja has arrived with the rest of her sci-fi concept album to fully cement her online domination. Opening with Afrobeat-infused ‘Woman’, ‘Planet Her’ hops from genres, soaring around pop bops (Young Thug-featuring ‘Payday’) and R&B-infused ballads (‘Been Like This’ and easy-breezy ‘Love To Dream’), showing Doja’s comfort and ease with adopting differing genres and flowing between rapping and singing.

She even goes toe-to-toe / voice-to-voice with Ariana Grande in the melody-driven ‘I Don’t Do Drugs’. Effortlessly doing whatever the fuck she wants within the 14 tracks, highlights from the record come in the form of the vibe-heavy ‘Get Into It (Yuh)’ which sees Doja embracing a similar fiery rapping style to Nicki Minaj - even giving her a shout-out at the end - and ‘Ain’t Shit’’s effortless bad-bitch energy. All together now: “That’s not cheatin’ if I wasn’t with your ass!” Throughout the record, Doja has the method for seeing soaring stats down: Instagram caption-ready lyrical quips, a flurry of famous pals (The Weeknd and JID also appear), and an effortless kaleidoscopic pop soundtrack backing it all up.

With her finger on pop’s pulse, ‘Planet Her’ is certain to be all over the internet faster than you can say “Bitch, I’m a cow”, but whether the record’s legacy will hold past the next trend cycle is not quite written in the stars. (Elly Watson) LISTEN: ‘Ain’t Shit’

Vince Staples seems like a man who’s short of nothing, least of all critical acclaim. Breaking out with 2015's undeniable masterpiece ‘Summertime '06’, he’s only continued to deliver musically-diverse and high-quality albums since. At first glance, for a fourth album, self titled at that, this raises an obvious question - is this the typical take-a-step-back “here I am as an artist” type album? The answer is essentially yes. Grabbing producer Kenny Beats for the project is a smart choice. There’s just enough instrumentation to add depth and texture to Vince’s characteristically excellent delivery, but the rapper still stands front and centre, allowing a less bombastic tone to shine.

Opener 'Are You With That?' proves that stripping it back to hooks only is no bad idea, offering up one of the most chill-but-anthemic choruses that could be wished for. Feeling almost ever-present and unflinchingly successful it’s easy to forget Vince is only 27, but when he raps “everyone that I’ve ever known asks for a loan” it’s obvious that only a short time in his position can weary anybody. The ethereal misty beeps of 'The Shining’ play sweetly with the scratchy percussion alongside the melancholy message of “dying, living, with broken hearts”. The highpoint for this vision is 'Take Me Home’, a soulful, remorseful, revealing confessional. The album represents more of a glance into the sketchbook of Vince Staples, a quiet and heartfelt chat at the end of a hectic night, than main stage at Coachella.

If you arrive looking for the hooks of ‘Norf Norf’ or the explosive chemistry of ‘BagBak’ you could be leaving half empty-handed. But if you’re here for Vince Staples, you might just see more of him than ever. (Matthew Davies Lombardi) LISTEN: ‘Take Me Home’

An effortless kaleidoscopic pop soundtrack.

Doja Cat: she’s feline out of this world.

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INHALER

It Won’t Always Be Like This (Polydor) The sins of the father are not those of the son and all that, but even with zero prior knowledge of the lineage of Dublin upstarts Inhaler, the chances are you’d successfully place the uncanny familiarity of frontman Eli Hewson’s vocal within minutes. And while ‘Bono’s son sounds like Bono when he sings’ is hardly high in the shock value stakes, it is unfortunately the most memorable part of the group’s debut album. For while much of pop and pop culture - is mining Y2K in exciting and clever ways - ‘It Won’t Always Be Like This’ is inexplicably reanimating the era’s penchant for plodding, drivetime indie-rock. Take the lethargic, montage-baiting ‘My King Will Be Kind’, or ‘My Honest Face’, which sounds like the bargain bin of a mid-’00s HMV. And yet when they try to inject proceedings with any urgency - see the peppy synths of ‘When It Breaks’, the shimmer of ‘Who’s Your Money On (Plastic House)’, or the remarkably 1975-a-like ‘Totally’ - it jars, as if wearing a costume that isn’t fully theirs. The one point there is a spark here is then a case of too little too late, as the comparably insistent ‘In My Sleep’ makes like a lost ‘Pablo Honey’ cut. (Bella Martin) LISTEN: ‘In My Sleep’

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REBECCA BLACK

Rebecca Black Was Here (self-release) Ten years since “Gotta get down on Friday” was the only thing you’d hear regardless of whether it was nearly the weekend or not, Rebecca Black turned her accidental viral joke into a hyperpop banger, featuring genre legends Dorian Electra, Big Freedia, and 100 gecs’ Dylan Brady, simultaneously reclaiming the track’s narrative and showing that this time around she’s doing whatever the fuck she wants. Debut project ‘Rebecca Black Was Here’ further cements this, re-introducing the new Rebecca as a blossoming hyperpop prodigy and finding the artist finally creating the music she’s always wanted to make. Over these six tracks, Rebecca presents queer love songs with refreshing glitchy flair, driven by her crystalline pop vocals, à la PC Music’s Hannah Diamond. Particular standouts come with the sharp ‘NGL’ which finds Rebecca in the aftermath of a relationship (“Tell your friends that you left me / If it makes sleeping easy”), bouncy pop ode to rekindling love ‘Girlfriend’ (“I’m getting back with my girlfriend / Ready to dive in the deep end”), and sparkling ballad ‘Personal’, which Charli XCX will probably be jealous she didn’t write. Summing it up in her own ‘Friday’ words: “fun, fun, fun, fun”. (Elly Watson) LISTEN: ‘Personal’

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LEON BRIDGES

Gold-Diggers Sound (Columbia) Leon Bridges is anything but predictable. 2015 debut ‘Coming Home’ harked back to 1960s soul and its follow up - 2018’s ‘Good Thing’ - spanned the breadth of classic R&B. His latest hones in on tight, intimate R&B that brings us musically and emotionally closer to the artist than we’ve ever been. Having mastered writing about the hopeful immaturity of young love, on ‘Gold-Diggers Sound’ even the sweetest tracks have grown up enormously. The album is split in two by the horn of the ‘Gold-Diggers’ interlude, with the first half including the ‘Good Thing’-reminiscent ‘Steam’ and stripped-back ‘Magnolias’. It’s the second half that steals the show though. From the enchanting ‘Details’ and sensual ‘Sho Nuff’ with slick jazzinspired instrumentals and Leon’s smooth vocals never more at home. As the album ends with ‘Blue Mesas’, he opens up a final time admitting: “There’s a hurting deep down in my soul but I learn not to let it show”. While more of a slow burn than his previous efforts, ‘Gold-Diggers Sound’ sees Leon Bridges shine brighter as a songwriter, as an artist and as a man than ever. (Will Strickson) LISTEN: ‘Sho Nuff’

Q&A

From going viral as a teenager to finding her footing in the ever-growing hyperpop community a decade later, Rebecca Black is back and ready to introduce herself all over again. Interview: Elly Watson.

From 2011 to now, you’ve had quite a journey. Looking back on that time, what’s it been like?

I’ve just tried to keep moving in the way that my gut tells me to. A gut feeling was something I really didn’t have for a long time after ‘Friday’ or something that I really ignored after my experiences as a teenager. I feel so much more secure in myself now that I’ve been able to harness that more and just feel like I am finally in control in my life in a way that feels right and that we all should be.

It really felt like the release of your remix of ‘Friday’ was you getting back your power around that song…

I really just wanted to create something that I felt so excited about! It was really nice to see over the years that people had started changing the way they talked about that song and I really wanted to do something insane with it. I wanted to challenge myself and push boundaries of what people maybe would’ve expected me to do if I’d have done a remix. It was just something I wanted to own for myself and do from my perspective now.

‘Rebecca Black Was Here’ really feels like an introduction into your world. How did you come about crafting that?

I really wanted to create as much of a world around this project as I could and especially knowing how many people had been re-introduced to my world through the last year, I wanted people to feel like they had something to be as invested in as I was. I get really excited about visuals and anything that feels new and hasn’t been done that way before. I’ve been able to work with people on this project who have had that same mindset, especially people like Weston [Allen] who’s directed the music videos and worked with me on a lot of the creative elements of this. He’s the most unafraid to push a boundary and also be a bit self-aware. I never want to take anything too seriously because it’s fun to take a risk and look back in a few years and be like, "That was fun at the time!" It felt challenging and fresh. With the music as well, I just tried to bring in my references and not be afraid with what I brought to the table in terms of starting an idea or a direction to go in, and I was able to work with people who were really stoked by that and up for the job. It was just so fun to create something and I felt like a lot of times I’d leave the room and be like “I don’t think I’ve heard anything like this before” and I love that! I don’t ever want to be “the next” anything. I want to find my own path.

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BOBBY GILLESPIE & JEHNNY BETH Utopian Ashes (Sony)

Bobby Gillespie and Jehnny Beth veer slightly away from the sonic identity they’ve made a name with individually for a set which takes its cues from the laws of rock, country and a pinch of Motown. It makes sense that the pair’s musical connection was formed while performing Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Some Velvet Morning’ back in 2016; especially when listening to the dust bowl-dipped strum of ‘You Can Trust Me Now’. Dramatic opener ‘Chase It Down’ holds a funky undercurrent throughout its verses led by Bobby before Jehnny takes hold of the mic amid sharp strikes of disco-tinged strings on the chorus. “And I don’t even love you anymore,” they sing, setting the scene for the LP’s concept that finds two lovers at a loose end. The duets feel like exchanges in conversation at times. On ‘Living A Lie‘, Jehnny half-speaks, “You wonder why I never have sex with you anymore / Well, without trust, how can there be love?” as flourishes of harp shimmer beneath. Never has a lover’s tiff sounded so elegant. (Sean Kerwick) LISTEN: ‘Living A Lie’

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CREEPER

American Noir (Roadrunner) Billed as an epilogue to last year’s ‘Sex, Death & The Infinite Void’, ‘American Noir’ delves into the immediate aftermath of central character Roe’s death. Despite comprising of tracks written alongside their second full-length, the tale sees the EP lean even more heavily into the grandiose theatrics Creeper previously cemented.

Their confidence in melodrama is immediate, from the dramatic spoken word of ‘Midnight Militia’ to the piano breakdown accompanying co-vocalist Hannah Greenwood on the driving ‘Ghosts Over Calvary’. Throughout, ‘American Noir’ delivers a vibrant and fitting homage to the recently departed Jim Steinman; the eight tracks harking to his musical opus. Hannah and Will Gould play off each other, embodying the dynamic relationship between the music’s protagonists.

The concept of Will as the frontman is immediately deconstructed on ‘Midnight’, as both step into the spotlight. What could feel frivolous brims instead with creative brilliance. By further exploring their dramatic side, Creeper continue to blur the lines between rock, pop and musical theatre. It both reimagines and modernises the magic that has propelled the likes of Bat Out Of Hell’s stage turn and Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds to unparalleled cult status. Yet much like their stablemates, Creeper succeed only because of the craft on display.

When ‘America At Night’ lets loose, shifting between Hannah and Will’s huge vocals, it conjures the very darkness on which ‘American Noir’ is built. As the eerie Stranger Things vibe of ‘Frozen Night’ leads the record to an abrupt end, it’s immeasurably tempting to just stay in Creeper’s world. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Midnight’

Blurring the lines between pop, rock and musical theatre.

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LUMP

Animal (Chrysalis / Partisan) Originally billed as a one-off project, ‘Animal’ picks up where the LUMP lineage was meant to end on their 2018 debut, ‘Curse Of The Contemporary’. While that record danced in a sparse, ambient light - this ten-song collection is largely more groove-oriented with beats and baritone guitar tickling the instrumentals’ undertow; but lovers of the first outing be rest assured, it’s just as fantastically weird and obtuse. LUMP is a true meeting of minds where duties are strictly assigned - Mike Lindsay (of the acid-folk collective Tunng) fashions the instrumentals while Laura Marling lays down vocals and lyrics. Laura, who in her day-job tends to work within the laws of the singer-songwriter, allows her words to spill out across Mike’s instrumentals with little editing or preconception. This allows her lyrics, which have always shone with a literary elegance, to enter a refracted light, conjuring some fantastically odd imagery along the way. Sometimes they feel as if they hit on a truth of sorts as they venture close to biography; “Those who find themselves acclaimed go to God to get renamed / it took one God seven days to go insane,” she sings on opener ‘Bloom At Night’, perhaps with an eye on her densely-populated awards cabinet. The instrumentals woven by Mike hang inspired throughout. The aforementioned baritone guitar knocks against the mutating ‘Gamma Ray’ which trails off with Laura’s vocal receding and expanding under the influence of the H949 harmoniser, a vintage device used most famously on David Bowie’s ‘Low’. The piano-led ‘Red Snakes’ is animated by shrouding flutes that offer a dream-like backdrop to Laura’s vocal; “Wandered in search of a new age / slipped on the rivers of old rage,” she sings. Elsewhere, a spooky guitar solo re-surfaces triumphantly midway through ‘Paradise’, dragging the track kicking and screaming into a cinematic finale. Indulgent by design but illuminated with imagination, it takes a few listens for the LP’s diamonds to truly shine, but when they do, they really shine bright. (Sean Kerwick) LISTEN: ‘Paradise’

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HALF WAIF

Mythopoetics (ANTI-) Where some have used extended periods of isolation for forced self-discovery, for Half Waif’s Nandi Rose, ‘Mythopoetics’ arrives as something of an accident.

Originally teaming up with longstanding collaborator Zubin Hensler with the aim of reimagining older material, instead Nandi left the studio with a vibrant collection of new music. Void of any contrived plans to release a new full-length just over a year since her last, the result appears both more freeing and deeply personal. In direct contrast to the album’s title - itself related to myth - the fifth Half Waif album is instead an unfiltered discovery of Nandi’s place and role in the world. Stepping away from the introspective pain that has dominated much of her work, ‘Mythopoetics’ is more firmly grounded in reality. It focusses on growth in adversity, and on acceptance of mortality. In these serious themes it looks bright eyed towards hope, not least on ‘Orange Blossoms’. Here, she confronts the notion that she or her husband will outlive the other. Like much of the album, it flips the narrative, focusing on the freedom in realisation. It’s cemented on ‘Sodium and Cigarettes’. “It’s too late now to take it back,” Nandi sings, “so I better start looking forward.” It’s testament to important lessons learned. Broadening the creative scope, Half Waif is given the space to breathe both lyrically and musically. ‘Mythopoetics’ glides from the stripped back piano and layered vocals of opener ‘Fabric’ and the intimate closer ‘Powder’ to the electronic flourishes that have elevated Nandi’s sound across four prior records.

It’s immediately obvious how far both Nandi and Zubin have come, striking the delicate balance between gentle and powerful. It provides a stunning backdrop to Half Waif’s newfound empowerment, not least as she repeats her mantra on ‘Swimmer’. “They can’t take this away from me,” she commands with a consistent fiery beauty. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Orange Blossoms’

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CAUTIOUS CLAY Deadpan Love (The Orchard)

RECO MMEN DED Cover star Self Esteem lets us in on some of her favourite new-to-her discoveries.

SERPENTWITHFEET Deacon

I love it when people use a handful of instruments and they don’t deviate from it; when there’s a real sonic throughline.

I think they’re always a really beautiful songwriter, but this album doesn’t jump around as much - it’s just all distilled down into really beautiful songs.

BEVERLY GLENN-COPELAND Primal Prayer

I'm into it for obvious reasons.

The lyrics are like, ‘You are beautiful, you are wonderful, you are marvellous’. And I’m like, yes I am! But it’s still very fucking cool music with really interesting choices. This kind of album stops me from getting disillusioned.

IAMDOECHII

Oh The Places You’ll Go She has really confessional lyrics, and everything just sounds really heavy and delicious. I really like how she performs and I think there’s an undercurrent of emo weirdo goth there that really gets me.

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Three years since the Cleveland, OH native’s buzzy internet breakthrough - debut track ‘Cold War’ quickly racked up a six-figure stream count - Cautious Clay’s debut full-length arrives. ‘Deadpan Love’ is by no means a misnomer, the collection a gentle, understated trip through influences from R&B (the shimmering ‘Whoa’), soul (the soaring ‘Roots’), and folky indie (the barelythere strumming of ‘Wildfire’). Soothing to the extreme, but still with enough variation not to lose attention, he’s on to a winner.

(Louisa Dixon) LISTEN: ‘Whoa’

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TORRES

Thirstier (Merge) This fifth record from Orlando singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott sets its stall out early; opener ‘Are You Sleepwalking?’ starts with a crunching, grungy riff that suggests Torres has made her first out-and-out rock album, only for the chorus to veer off gleefully into considerably dancier territory. This ten-track effort feels like it was made with the handbrake off; it follows sharply on the heels of last year’s ‘Silver Tongue’, but it seems as if Torres has broadened her horizons within that quick turnaround time, finding room for all manner of stylistic twists and turns over the course of ‘Thirstier’.

‘Don’t Go Puttin Wishes in My Head’ is an exercise in driving, freewheeling country rock, whereas ‘Big Leap’ is a handsome, glacially-paced confessional. There’s space on the record for both the softly anthemic title track, the heartbroken key line of which ties the album together - “The more of you I drink, the thirstier I get” - and the synthdriven swagger of ‘Hand in the Air’. Elsewhere, there’s experimentation - closer ‘Keep the Devil Out’ flirts with electronic rock, while ‘Constant Tomorrowland’ is a decidedly off-kilter pop song - as well as classic, riff-driven indie rock songwriting, ‘Hug from a Dinosaur’ being a case in point. With ‘Thirstier’, Torres has delivered her most varied set of songs yet; trying on so many different costumes suits her. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Don’t Go Puttin Wishes In My Head’

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WAVVES Hideaway

(Fat Possum)

Over the course of seven records, Nathan Williams’ Wavves, currently rounded out by bassist Stephen Pope and guitarist Alex Gates, have veered from fuzzy punk (2007 self-titled debut) to Nirvana-inspired grunge (2012’s ‘Afraid of Heights’) and indie-psych (2017’s ‘You’re Welcome’), with divergent results. Teaming up with TV On The Radio’s Dave Sitek for production this time around, Wavves have created their most varied collection so far. Written in his parents’ shed, an old creative stomping ground, ‘Hideaway’ sees Nathan feeding on a well of influences.

Scuzzy jolts of malaise and frustration remain (‘Thru Hell’ and ‘Planting a Garden’), but he also does a remarkable job incorporating country (‘The Blame’) and sparse psych (‘Sinking Feeling’). ‘Hideaway’’s ranging styles are mirrored in what are Nathan’s most interesting lyrics yet, his intensified self-reflection at times hopeless, as on the sultry ‘Honeycombe’, and others proactive and hopeful, most implicitly on ‘Help is on the Way’. The standout though is undoubtedly the title track, a dense, sleazy tune. Framed by the protagonist’s paranoia and wish to escape, it both bears the hallmarks of the band’s previous output and nods to the more introspective state they’re currently occupying. (Ben Lynch) LISTEN: ‘Hideaway’

Q&A

TORRES discusses her love affair with the UK and how the pandemic impacted her writing processes.

Interview: Eloise Bulmer.

Why did you decide to record the record in Devon?

I just keep going back to wanting to make records [in the UK], it's like something keeps calling back to me. I just really like making records in the English countryside, there's something about not really having anything familiar around you, or any friends or family. There's just space - all you can do is go on a big walk or a run.

How was the writing process affected by the pandemic?

I had the vantage point of being in it with everybody. It's rare that you have this opportunity where the whole world is going through the same thing at once.

Knowing that people's lives became a lot smaller than they were before, maybe a lot smaller than they would have liked them to be, I wanted to write something that would be really freeing and energising. I just figured they'll probably need it, why not make something that's gonna make people feel good?

What's your favourite track on the album?

It's always changing but one that I'm really excited about is the last song, 'Keep the Devil Out'. It's the most different thing I've ever done. It's almost got a - dare I compare myself - I think it has a Nine Inch Nails thing about it. It's got a really heavy, almost metal chorus but a little Madonna also. It's funky.

What was the experience of filming a music video with your partner like?

Jenna [artist Jenna Gribbon] has a really great eye, a way better eye than I have.

She's a painter so it's her job - getting a shot, setting a scene, knowing which lighting to use, she's really good at that stuff, so from a technical standpoint it was really good to have her involved. She's been in a couple of my music videos and it's actually really nice and comfortable to have the subject of the video be the person I'm actually in love with, there's a comfort to it. Jenna really sees me the way I want to be seen and if I can have her involved and directing the lens that other people get to see me through, it's really helpful for me.

26.08.2021 / / /

BRISTOL THEKLA /////////

31.08.2021 / / /

O X F O R D O2 A C A D E M Y 2 / / / /

01.09.2021 / / /

MANCHESTER CLUB ACADEMY

03.09.2021 / / / 07.09.2021 / / /

NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY / STUDENTS’ UNION /////// B I R M I N G H A M O2 I N S T I T U T E 3 /

09.09.2021 / / /

LONDON SCALA /////////

D E M O B - H A P P Y. C O M / L I V E N AT I O N . C O . U K / T I C K E T M A S T E R . C O . U K A L I V E N AT I O N P R E S E N TAT I O N I N A S S O C I AT I O N W I T H I T B

PHOTO: MARY HELEN COCHRAN LIBRARY

THE LOUNGE SOCIETY

BILLIE MARTEN

BILLY NOMATES

THIS IS THE KIT

PVA

THE ANCHORESS

DO NOTHING

GREENTEA PENG

WIDNES, 27/06/21

BIRKENHEAD, 04/07/21

PORRIDGE RADIO

LANCASTER, 12/09/21

HULL, 09/09/21

MUSH

BLACKPOOL, 15/10/21 ASHTON-IN-MAKERFIELD, 17/07/21 & WIDNES, 18/07/21 WILLIE J HEALEY COVENTRY, 02/10/21

THOMAS HEADON

OLDHAM, 24/10/21

LANCASTER, 31/10/21

ALBERTINE SARGES

LANCASTER, 12/11/21

CHUBBY AND THE GANG

LEIGH, 07/08/21 BIRKENHEAD 08/08/21

L DEVINE

SEETICKETS.COM

GETITLOUDINLIBRARIES.COM

HULL, 17/10/21

COVENTRY, 06/11/21

LANCASTER, 14/11/21 COVENTRY, 27/11/21

JUNIORE

LANCASTER, 12/03/22 BIRKENHEAD, 13/03/22

CLAUD

BIRKENHEAD, 28/11/21

PENELOPE ISLES

BLACKPOOL, 5/12/21,

THE DISTRICTS

LANCASTER, 23/01/22

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TEN TONNES

So Long (Silver Heat) The weather might’ve taken a turn for the worse (location depending), and to suggest the world was under anything other than a metaphorical dark cloud would be a complete lie, but that’s not stopped Ten Tonnes - aka Hertfordshire singer-songwriter Ethan Barnett - from putting together a short but sweet collection of breezier-than-thou perky indie pop. Packed into just four tracks are hooks aplenty, big, booming choruses and a large swathe of optimism, whether the peppy ‘Go’, the jangly ‘Forget It’, or glam-influenced ‘Girl Are You Lonely Like Me’. (Bella Martin) LISTEN: ‘Girl Are You Lonely Like Me’

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TKAY MAIDZA

Last Year Was Weird Vol. 3 (4AD) Tkay Maidza returns with the third instalment of her ‘Last Year Was Weird’ EP series - a title that feels, if anything, like a dramatic understatement. Luckily, the eight tracks contained within aren’t meditations on life in lockdown, or anti-mask anthems à la Van Morrison - no, these songs look forward to a life postCovid. There are moments here that feel almost aggressively summery, that make you look out of the window and long for the limbo to edge by just slightly quicker.

Tkay covers an incredible amount of ground, veering from a whisper to a scream in the course of a single song, but convinces no matter what she’s turning her hand to. From the irresistible R&B of ‘Onto Me’, to the verging-on-bubblegum-pop of ‘So Cold’, you get the sense that she’s just flexing her muscles - she never feels stretched beyond her comfort zone. There are two features, with Yung Baby Tate’s turn on ‘Kim’ a particular highlight, but there’s no questioning that this is the Tkay Maidza show.

She closes the EP with the longing, vulnerable ‘Breathe’, asking us to “just stay here” - and by the end of ‘Last Year Was Weird Vol. 3’, we’re happy to oblige. (Louis Griffin) LISTEN: ‘So Cold’

There’s no questioning that this is the Tkay Maidza show.

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ROBBING MILLIONS

THE GOON SAX

Holidays Inside (MGMT)

Mirror II (Matador)

For the first outside release on

The third record from The Goon Sax recommits to the post-punk hinterland for which they’ve become known since arriving with their first single back in 2015. Recorded in Bristol by Portishead’s Geoff Barrow alongside producer John Parish, ‘Mirror II’ sees the Australian trio amp up the weariness of their first two albums - balancing disaffection, at times, with softer new wave textures.

A smoother baritone quality emerges from frontman Louis Forster, vocal gymnastics that reflect, on the surface at least, a versatility that’s carried to a greater extent than before. Leading with ‘In the Stone’, The Goon Sax lay their reverb-rich cards down, a similar melancholia that haunts ‘Psychic’, a perfect marriage of synth and strings recalling The Chameleons’ bittersweet unearthly drone. A sense of an increasingly assured outfit emerges, shifting tempo with offbeat irregularity, their earlier inclination towards indie-leaning jangle-pop falling by the wayside, substituted with a definition that sets the band on an ever more consistent path. (Chris HamiltonPeach) LISTEN: ‘The Chance’

their independent label, MGMT (yes, that MGMT, they of ‘Kids’ infamy) have scouted out a seasoned songsmith from Brussels, Lucien Fraipont, to release his quietly adventurous second LP. Lucien has, in recent years, bent his ear towards an arresting style of whizzing, progressive avant-pop that bears much of the humorous, leftfield eccentricities of his patrons. Composed dayby-day within the introversions of Lucien’s home, and produced by indie-pop journeyman Shags Chamberlain (Drugdealer, Ariel Pink, Weyes Blood), ‘Holidays’ valorises the nooks and crannies of domestic comfort - tea drinking, sit down meals with the family - with a commensurately homespun sonic palette - dinky keyboards atop tick-tocking shuffles; squeaks, wobbles and scratches nesting among piquant, blossoming guitar licks. Containing barely a jot of tedium, ‘Holidays Inside’ is a smartly paced, highly impressive listen that manages to exceed the sum of its parts. (Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘Back’

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Public Display Of Affection

Get Up Sequences Part One

MASTER PEACE

THE GO! TEAM

(EMI)

(Memphis Industries)

Master Peace has been riding a wave

During production for their fourth outing, The Go! Team mastermind Ian Parton contracted Ménière’s disease, leaving him deaf in one ear. A traumatic scenario for any musician, the resulting LP from the collage-pop wizards is intriguing, if not erratic.

For much of ‘Get Up Sequences Part One’, it’s business as usual: sampleridden, comic-strip indie doused in fanfare trumpets and jubilation. The gloriously upbeat ‘Cookie Scene' is hip hop wrapped in candy-floss, while ‘Pow’ intersplices tub-thumping break-beats with idyllic melodies. If anything, the collection suffers from pulling itself in too many directions at the cost of a cohesive vision: the mawkish ‘Tame the Great Plains’, offers little else but distracting filler.

While its inconsistencies might betray the circumstances of its creation, it’s comforting to know that The Go! Team’s defiant experimentalism remains undiminished. (Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘Cookie Scene’

of buzz for some time now, and with an EP and a single already gone by, a lot of artists in his shoes could start to lose that aura of hype. But ‘Public Display Of Affection’ easily dodges that pitfall by being his most enticing release to date; as if the vision he has had all along - a rapper heading up an indie band - has finally come to full fruition. What's more, we also hear an intensity that he's not yet shown us: imagine Playboi Carti fronting The Cure. The EP’s concept remains consistent throughout, filtering through the narrative about a breakup - easy to follow, but with depth and angles to consider. It's even exciting to imagine this record in a live setting, especially when anthemic closer ‘Hold You Back’ has such a strong chorus. It's impossible to fault what Master Peace has done here: a flawless meeting of intention and execution. (Nick Harris) LISTEN: ‘Hold You Back’

Matilda Mann The Ninth Wave

+ Special Guests

+ Special Guests

GOOSE

Walt Disco

+ Special Guests

+ Special Guests

Wed 06 October Lafayette London

Fri 08 October Omeara London

Thu 14 October Colours London

Fri 29 October Moth Club London

Chubby & The Gang

Finn Askew

Friedberg

Josie Proto

+ Special Guests

+ Special Guests

November UK Tour

Thu 11 November The Courtyard Theatre London

Tue 23 November The Courtyard Theatre London

Kelly Lee Owens

Ajimal

KAWALA

Dutchkid

November/December UK Tour

+ Special Guests

+ Special Guests

+ Special Guests

+ Special Guests

+ Special Guests

+ Special Guests

Wed 24 November O2 Institute2 Birmingham

Thu 25 November The Waiting Room London

Mon 06 December The Globe Cardiff

Fri 10 December Oslo London

Wild Youth

The Chats

Pomme

Son Little

+ Special Guests

+ Special Guests

March 2022 UK Tour

March 2022 UK Tour

Get Your Tickets at

+ Special Guests

Fri 29 / Sat 30 April 2022 Omeara London

+ Special Guests

Sat 17 September 2022 Oslo London

lft 61

Coming Up

reviews

CHVRCHES SCREEN VIOLENCE The Glasgow pop trio only went and got Actual Robert Smith on one of their songs, didn't they?

This fourth album is released on 27th August.

LORDE SOLAR POWER After what seems like forever in hiding, the New Zealander's third fulllength is coming 20th August.

DEAFHEAVEN INFINITE GRANITE The notable noiseniks have teamed up with producer Justin MeldalJohnsen (Paramore, Wolf Alice) for their latest. Out 20th August.

THE VACCINES BACK IN LOVE CITY The indie stalwarts return with LP5 on 10th September.

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Yellow (Movementt)

Hotel Surrender (Detail / BMG)

EMMA-JEAN THACKRAY

CHET FAKER

With a brace of EPs and guest appearances already to her name - most notably on Squid’s ‘Bright Green Field’ - it is with ‘Yellow’ that Emma-Jean Thackray delivers her first major statement as a solo artist. What is more, it’s a statement that makes no bones about its cosmic intentions.

Festooned with planetary hymns and gushes of free-love sentiment, the LP achieves the kind of celestial ecstasy it so avidly craves. Surging opener ‘Mercury’ spirals into euphoria with Kae Tempest-like spoken word; ‘Say Something’ deliciously innovates jazz flair with a driving disco-house beat; ‘Third Eye’ darts around like a streaming comet. While ‘Yellow’ mixes it up nicely with freak-outs, group chants, P-funk and mellowing R&B, it is lyrically where the album wearies: Invariable repetitions of the same love-thy-neighbour / free-your-mind maxims, and the trite turn of phrase (“My babe is golden green, smells like biscuits...”), can pull focus from musical virtuosity so abundantly on show. (Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘Venus’

Few artists go through quite as much of a shift between albums two and three as Chet Faker has done. After 2014’s ‘Built On Glass’, he abandoned his moniker and began releasing music under his birth name, Nick Murphy. But after the pandemic and the loss of his father, he was pulled back into the familiarity of his pseudonym, using it for what he now terms a “mass therapy”. It worked: ‘Hotel Surrender’ must surely be one of the most cathartic records of the year. From the laid-back cool of opener ‘Oh Me Oh My’, it seems the Faker brand of chill beats is back. The self-production adds to the organic nature of the record, and is often quite bold, with strings and saxophones aplenty. Peaking at the Mark Ronson funk of ‘Feel Good’, this album otherwise keeps a consistently drowsy pace, which perhaps holds it back a little; but by the end of nostalgic closer 'In Too Far' it's hard to be bored. It comes from a place of heartfelt truth, and reinvents itself throughout to suit.

(Nick Harris) LISTEN: ‘Feel Good’

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Abysmal (Brace Yourself)

Baw Baw Black Sheep (BMG)

MUCK SPREADER

REJJIE SNOW

This rabble of London-based jazzpunks take a turn for the sordid in more than just name; the musical landscape of ‘Abysmal’ pedestals the depraved, manic and absurd above all else: blood-boiling, PereUbu-esque rhythms spiked with howling saxophones; effusive lyrical montages shifting from the violent to the benign; vignettes of unsavoury law-enforcement and nuclear warmongers pickling with rabid canine yelps and mock-Yankee versifications of spaghetti and basted turkey. The ever-escalating grooves of ‘Mass Graves’ and ‘A Peculiar Shade of White’ draw from the King Shabaka school of cosmic jazz to grace the rings of Saturn with their raw beauty. Lyrical nuggets of gold too glisten beneath the muddy veneer: abandoned construction projects are mythical like “the minotaur”; there are faces with “cheekbones so defined they could cut glass”. It’s this constant juxtaposition of the sublime with the despicable that makes ‘Abysmal’ a complex and fascinating listen. (Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘A Peculiar Shade Of White’

On ‘Baw Baw Black Sheep’, Rejjie Snow reaches for a more conceptual take on his laid-back sound, but stumbles on the execution. The Irish rapper’s debut, 2018’s ‘Dear Annie’, was full to the brim with beats and his own effortlessly breezy flow, and his follow-up retains much of his early material’s likability. He picks up and shrugs off guises with ease - tropical keys here, jazz drums there - each time fitting snugly into where he needs to be. Problems arise, unfortunately, with the very first track, Rejjie introducing a recurring childhood motif; he pitches it as a Willie Wonkastyle tour through the album, seen through the eyes of a comically high-pitched narrator. But when taken as a whole, the contrast between these sections of the album and the almost sleazy R&B found elsewhere just feels completely disjointed. It’s a shame, because there’s lots to like: a scene-stealing turn from the late MF DOOM on ‘Cookie Chips’ stands out as a particular highlight. But ultimately, ‘Baw Baw Black Sheep’ just doesn’t quite work. (Louis Griffin) LISTEN: ‘Cookie Chips’

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DZ DEATHRAYS

Positive Rising: Part 2 (Alcopop!)

On the second part of DZ Deathrays’ ‘rock saga’, the Aussies want you to know they haven’t given up hope.

While describing the two records as separate parts of a single whole may be a bit of a stretch, the overarching belief in the need to retain faith and push through adversity does unite both releases. On ‘Part 2’, the band’s well-oiled formula of cavernous riffs and Shane Parsons’ rising vocals is truly dialled up to 11. Nuances are trundled over on occasion, such as on ‘Make Yourself Mad’, which fails in confronting internet addiction, but the closing title track provides a far more engaging narrative, in which contemporary political discussions of foreign ‘aliens’ inspired Shane to imagine an actual one crash landing on earth and living underground. ‘All Or Nothing’ and ‘Fear The Anchor’’s formidable resolve only make DZ Deathrays’ case all the more clear; as things turn to shit, it’s important to become active participants for good if we’re going to make things right. (Ben Lynch) LISTEN: ‘All Or Nothing’

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DUSTED III (AWAL)

Dusted could not be further removed stylistically from Brian Borcherdt’s day job; whereas Holy Fuck’s stock in trade is explosively loud electronic maximalism, Dusted sees him instead turn his hand to hushed indie folk.

This particular set of songs came together as he geared up for a major life change, moving his family back to where he grew up in Nova Scotia, and on the epic drives across his homeland that marked the transition, he came to realise the heavy emotional nature of the tracks, which are largely about putting disappointments in the rear-view mirror. The sound of them is delicate, the production slightly lo-fi - they occasionally put you in mind of Elliott Smith, particularly on the hazy ‘Cedar Tree’ and fragile, barely-there ‘They Don’t know You’. Setting ‘III’ apart from Brian’s peers in what is stylistically a crowded marketplace is his clever working in of field recordings, particularly on opener ‘Not Offering’ and closer ‘Palmer’; they feel like literal reminders of what the album effectively is - a series of snapshots of a former life, lovingly delivered. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Cedar Tree’

New album out July 16 Features the singles Low, Get High, Whatever Tomorrow and Feel Good chetfaker.com 63

LIVE

DOWNLOAD PILOT Donington Park. Photos: Ellie Mitchell, James Bridle, Matt Eachus.

Nobody can quite believe this. The fans standing shoulder to shoulder with people they’ve had to keep two metres away from for fifteen months can’t believe it, and the artists on stage are similarly incredulous.

For ten thousand lucky punters and forty bands, live music is no longer a distant dream. The sheer joy of the whole experience, miraculously put together in a matter of weeks, brings more than one frontperson close to tears. Above all, the Download Pilot feels like an escape from a pandemic-ravaged reality, and a glimpse into a more hopeful future.

Even if festival-goers are unable to see Death Blooms early on Friday evening, they can certainly hear them from the second stage as they put up their tents. The pilot’s more compact site means campers can step out of their tents in the morning and look out over the whole site, which offers quite the atmosphere.

Creeper

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The party really starts when Hot Milk take to the main stage, and once they’ve found their footing a couple of songs in, they ooze potential, with Han Mee’s gyrating hips and cheeky grin earmarking her as a performer to watch. Later, Blackpool’s Boston Manor perform with the slickness of a well-oiled touring machine, while Holding Absence more than live up to the hype swirling around them. The cry of “I’m alive,” that opens ‘Celebration Song’ could demolish the emotional defences of the hardest-hearted person, contrasting with the ebullient ‘Afterlife’ that commands a spectacular singalong.

As the sky darkens and the rain continues to pelt the crowd (some things never change), Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes rise to the challenge of headlining a festival. They have everything they need – the energy, the crowd participation and the special guests (IDLES’ Joe Talbot, Lynks and Cassyette) – but where they really stand out, as they always have done, is their commitment to inclusivity. Frank starts a female only mosh pit for ‘Wild Flowers’, encourages the women to crowd surf in safety

(“Don’t be fucking cunts,” he warns the men in the crowd) and stops ‘Kitty Sucker’ after the first verse to check on the welfare of someone near the front.

Saturday is a day of winners and losers: WARGASM draws a remarkable crowd both for an early afternoon slot and for an unsigned band playing their first festival. Sam Matlock and Milkie Way fill the stage impressively for a duo, and the crowd’s hunger is never satiated, chanting “One more song!” as they finish their set with a cover of N.E.R.D’s ‘Lapdance’. The biggest surprise of the weekend arguably comes from Vukovi - frontwoman Janine Shilstone’s spectacular stage presence, dancing, lounging on the stage, sitting on the barriers - thrills the crowd to the point where the stewards become a little frazzled running to catch all the crowd surfers.

Other bands are less fortunate. Tigercub fail to enthral their audience, the tent emptying as their set goes on, while Twin Atlantic are beleaguered by technical issues leaving frontman Sam McTrusty inaudible.

Saturday’s closing trio of sets threatens to become the stuff of Download legend: While

She Sleeps unify, enlighten and create a truly electric atmosphere, while Creeper’s theatrical spectacle is a thing of true beauty, peaking when a singalong of ‘Misery’ led entirely by the crowd leaves frontman Will Gould in tears. Enter Shikari, meanwhile, are the perfect headliners for this event, encapsulating the joy of live music's return and the poignancy of the last 15 months with a dazzling light show and rapturous chants of “OH, ENTER SHIKARI!” The earlier acts on Sunday seem to have drawn the short straw, faced with the challenge of livening a crowd weary from two days of partying. Employed To Serve deserve better than the lukewarm reaction they get given the beast of a set they deliver. Loathe’s gloriously hellish metal fares better until technology fails them during ‘Two-Way Mirror’ but vocalist Kadeem France recovers beautifully, finishing the song, aided by the fans, a cappella.

As the weekend draws to a close, it appears that the final

three acts on the bill are in the wrong order. Bullet For My Valentine’s frigid performance feels the least like a headline set out of the three bands topping the bill this weekend, and its most exciting moment isn’t contributed by anyone in the band itself. Fresh from a performance as riotously fun as any fan would expect, Skindred’s Benji Webbe pops up during a cover of Iron Maiden’s ‘Run To The Hills’ to interject with a few lines of ‘Nobody’. It’s a moment of unexpected genius that Bullet’s audience, preferring to slouch on camping chairs than mosh, was crying out for. Frank Turner is a more fitting headliner for the second stage, offering the sunniest punk rock show around that incites moshing one minute and waltzing the next.

The Download Pilot is a weekend of pure euphoria, a showcase of the incredible talent in British rock and metal in 2021, and a chance to feel hopeful at the prospect of a future without social distancing or masks. It’s good to have you back, live music. Never leave us again. (Emma Wilkes)

“Did you just cough??

WELL DID YOU?!”

LIVE YOUR HIGHLIGHTS

CARL, BEXHILL “It was amazing to not have to think about every step you make, to not get too close to anyone and to make sure you always have a mask in your pocket. My favourite act was Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes! Frank really knows how to get a crowd going and bringing on Joe Talbot, Cassyette and Lynks will be something I will never forget.”

KRISSIE, LEEDS “It’s absolutely fantastic to be back at a festival. I missed it, I loved it. I think my favourite act was Elvana.”

MATT, COLESHILL “It’s been very strange, the whole idea of these restrictions completely [going away] but I’ve really missed being in the mosh pit! It’s been really great to see Hot Milk and Neck Deep.”

Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes

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IT’S YOUR ROUND

A big interband pub quiz of sorts, we’ll be grilling your faves one by one. now brought to you via zoom!

THIS MONTH:

TEN TONNES Where: Ideally in a pub in Hertford. Actually, at home in Bristol.

Drink: A pint of squash. Price: Free.

Specialist Subject: The Simpsons The Simpsons was originally a series of shorts on which TV show?

I believe it was the Tracey Ullman show.

Correct!

I might do better than I thought I would…

The first Treehouse of Horror special appeared in which season of the show?

It’s too obvious to say number one, so I think series three?

Ooh, it’s actually season two.

That was my first thought!

In 2020, voice actor Eric Lopez took over which Simpsons role?

Would you say it’s an iconic role? …Yes. I’m going to say Bumblebee Man It is!

What is Lisa's age?

She is 8 years old.

She is!

In The Simpsons Movie, what does Bart write on the school chalkboard?

I’ve watched that film so many times! It’s something meta and self-aware about the film, like “Who’s idea was this?” It’s not that, but it’s something like that…

It’s “I will not illegally download this movie”.

That’s the one!

General Knowledge Which country will host the next UEFA European Championship in 2024?

Ummm… I know Qatar are doing the next World Cup. Is it France?

Germany.

Ohhhh.

How many planets are in our Solar System?

Ahhh! Eight?

Correct!

That number was just in my head. Must be embedded deep from primary school.

Vil in new Disney liveaction film Cruella?

Emma Stone.

She does indeed.

What is the capital city of Brazil?

Rio de Janeiro? No, I do know this. Wait, no I don’t.

Brasilia.

Oh, I did know that.

What was the bestselling album of the 2010s in the UK? It’s got to be Ed Sheeran’s ‘Divide’, right?

No, it was actually Adele’s ‘21’!

Who plays Cruella de

2/5

3/5

FINAL SCORE:

5/10

Final thoughts: “Not to criticise the quiz, but there’s two geography questions in there and I’m not good at geography…”

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JULY Fri 23 - Yung Filly: Yeahhh Man Parties Sat 24 - Swiftogeddon Tue 27 - Clean Cut Kid Thu 29 - Joel Culpepper Fri 30 - Trevor Nelson Sat 31 - Spoony’s House

AUGUST Fri 6 - Yung Filly: Yeahhh Man Parties Sat 7 - Mr Jukes & Barney Artist Sat 12 - Gang Of Youths Fri 20 - Eloise Tue 24 - Amber Marks Thu 26 - Sigrid Fri 27 - Heatwave Presents: Hot Wuk Tue 31 - Arizona Zervas

SEPTEMBER Sat 11 - City Of The Sun Sun 12 - Guvna B Mon 13 - Ashe Tue 14 - Ashe Wed 15 - Margaret Glaspy Wed 22 - Natalie Imbruglia Fri 24 - Frisco Mon 27 - Sophie & The Giants Tue 28 - Liz Lawrence

11 Goods Way, N1C 4DP

lafayettelondon.com 67

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