DIY, December 2022 / January 2023

You’re The future of music

DEC &JAN

LISTENING POST

As another year comes to a close, what, pray tell, have been Team DIY’s highlights of 2022?

SARAH JAMIESON • Managing Editor

The My Chemical Romance reunion shows fnally(!) happened and I got to live out all of my elder emo dreams and more. It didn’t even matter that I thought I’d broken my foot at one point during the frst show. It was worth the trip to A&E (I promise).

EMMA SWANN • Founding Editor

Harry Styles at Brixton Academy; actually leaving the country (!) for a jolly nice SXSW time; starting my Masters (and at the time of writing, still in the afterglow of receiving my frst - quite goodmarks!).

LISA WRIGHT • Features Editor

The whole of Glasto was a glorious, joyful fever dream but I also just discovered dipping sandwiches in gravy which is pretty gamechanging. Life is about the micro and macro.

LOUISE MASON • Art Director

Setting fre to a record number of things for many very fun cover shoots. And DIY Alive was a great weekend with no fre but lots of other varied fun.

ELLY WATSON • Digital Editor

The 1975’s Matty Healy telling the crowd “It’s just. Fucking. Bangers” before diving into ‘Chocolate’ at this year’s Reading Festival is a moment I’m still thinking about daily even four months on.

EDITOR’S LETTER

Well, dear readers, it’s December so that means only one thing: no, not that you can fnally eat chocolate for breakfast! Obviously, it’s that we’re introducing you to our Class of 2023.

Alongside our incredible cover stars Crawlers, who are already rapidly rising through the ranks, we meet superstarsin-waiting like Doechii, FLO, Dora Jar, The Dinner Party and many, many more. So if you want to know exactly who to have your eyes and ears on over the next twelve months, now’s the time to step into the inner circle…

Otherwise, we’d like to say another huge thank you to every one of you out there reading this. We hope you all have a brilliant festive period, and can’t wait to see you again in the New Year!

Sarah Jamieson, Managing Editor

YOUNG FATHERS - HEAVY HEAVY

The good thing about putting a band on the cover of your magazine, as we did with Young Fathers last month is that you get to hear their masterful new opus nice and early. From our smug pedestal, let us reinforce the fact that ‘Heavy Heavy’ fnds them at their richly explorative best. Now go back and read the feature you naughty little tinkers.

PARAMORE - AFTER LAUGHTER

It probably comes as little surprise that we’re already chomping at the bit to hear the newest full-length from the Nashville trio, but as long as we have to wait that little bit longer for ‘This Is Why’, you’ll fnd us having a bop along to the addictively funky pop of ‘Hard Times’ et al.

JULIAN CASABLANCAS - I WISH IT WAS CHRISTMAS TODAY

As we press print on this, our last issue of the year, we’re popping open the frst door on our advent calendars, digging out our jazziest Christmas jumpers and embracing all things festive. Which means whacking this indie Crimbo classic on repeat: his name’s not Jesus Christ, but he does have the same initials…

Dec / Jan playlist

Scan the Spotify code to listen.

It’sallherewaitingforyou. DISCOVER MORE

Contributors Bella Martin, Ben Bentley, Ben Tipple, Carolina Faruolo, Charlotte Krol, Christopher Connor, Ed Miles, Elvis Thirlwell, Emma Wilkes, Grace Medford, Jamie MacMillan, Louisa Dixon, Matthew Kent, Max Pilley, Moal, Neive McCarthy, Otis Robinson, Pooneh Ghana, Rhian Daly, Sean Kerwick.

For DIY editorial: info@diymag.com

For DIY sales: advertise@diymag.com

For DIY stockist enquiries: stockists@diymag.com

ll 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.

“I don’t feel that comfortable until I have the next album written, which is a terrible cycle really…”

MATT MALTESE

What do you do when you’re in the throes of your most successful career peak to date, when unexpected viral fame turns into genuine real-world success, sending you around the world to play for crowds of universally excited converts? Well, if you’re Matt Maltese, you have a little panic and write a new record in a prolifc three-week stint slap-bang in the middle of it all.

“I was a bit of a nutter maybe, where I was stressed about not having enough time and then it was almost like exams where it just came out in a spurt,” he explains, speaking from the abyss of “two jet lags,” having returned from shows in America and Thailand in immediate succession. “I know that sounds like the most uninspired way to write an album, but making myself write about my life and having a time pressure on it just works for me. Not in the healthiest way, but I also don’t feel that comfortable until I have the next album written, which is a terrible cycle really…”

If ever there was a time for the 27-year-old balladeer to feel like he could fnally take his foot slightly off the gas, it would be now. With three albums under his belt, the last year has marked a notable shift in Matt’s fortunes; following the TikTok resurgence of old single ‘As The World Caves In’, the crowds have grown to a level where even the everhumble singer himself can’t deny that things feel markedly different. “This whole year has really blown me away. I played Columbus, Ohio and Philadelphiaplaces where you think, surely when I’m away from the spots with the most people it’ll be less crazy. But in America, it’s quite relentlessly like that,” he notes.

“Maybe if this had all happened four or fve years ago, I wouldn’t have stopped to appreciate it as much. But it’s very nice to have had it when it wasn’t like that and to have it when it is like this now - for me, it’s been the right way round. When you’ve had shit shows and then you have shows like these, it’s just amazing. It’s that George Clooney vs Leonardo DiCaprio thing: Leo got famous at 21 whereas Clooney got famous when he was in his thirties after having loads of failures. I think having failure is good.”

Despite these objective career successes, however, it was from the midst of a personal quagmire at the turn of 2022 that Matt found himself back at his piano, writing what would become LP4. He’d relocated to North London (a bad move - he’s back South now) and just been through a break-up that had knocked him for six. “I just wasn’t feeling very hot [in general],” he recalls. “I was in this new place that I didn’t really like being in, and I’d gotten

out of this relationship that was kind of a whirlwind and then a quick reckoning. I just felt quite detached from myself and like I was searching and longing for something.”

The resulting material unsurprisingly mirrors some of these ideas, eschewing much of the wide-eyed romance of 2021’s ‘Good Morning, It’s Now Tomorrow’ for songs that address separation and sorrow. Matt’s customarily warm, sideways lens remains, however - such as on recent single ‘Mother’, which looks at the breakdown of a relationship through the eyes of a parent who’s also losing someone they’ve grown to love.

“I played it to my mum on a motorway, driving back to Reading, and she was really moved. It was from a real conversation we’d had, and I feel really happy that I’ve eternalised that conversation because it’s an important thing that I don’t think I’d really thought about until we talked about it.” In the video for the track, the singer’s reallife mum plays a starring role. “She’s an opera singer so she also loves the spotlight; she’s very happy about it.”

"Elsewhere across the record, Matt credits co-producer Josh Scarbrow as helping to push him into more varied sonic realms. If his last two albums, he concedes, “were quite in my comfort zone”, then their follow-up sees the singer often changing the pace. “I think I probably will be guilty of that Metallica thing of making the same record for 25 years, but it’d be nice if they were a BIT different…” he chuckles. A notable addition comes from Biig Piig, who lends her vocals to a duet. “Her intimacy as a singer, I just think it’s pretty second to none. She makes you feel like she’s whispering in your ear in a really believable way,” he says. “I met her a few times, writing for her a year or so ago. There’d been some confusion and she came in on the second session like, ‘I can’t believe you’re 19!’ I mean, I wish… But it was cool that she was down to have me in the room with her, thinking that; I’d never let some 19-year-old kid write for me…”

Clearly, the prolifc songwriter doesn’t need any help in the writing department. But even when he’s penning some of his most raw and tender material to date (“I listen back to the last song on the album and think, ‘Oh Matthew, you were so sad when you wrote that song…’”), there’s an everincreasing group of fans on his side, ready to prop him up when he’s down.

“The timing of [this last year] is kind of what most people will tell you about life: try and be who you really are and the most joy will come from that,” he nods. “When you’re comfortable in your own skin, people gravitate to it because they believe it.” DIY

BLACK HONEY

IZZY B. PHILLIPS LETS US IN ON NEW ALBUM ‘A FISTFUL OF PEACHES’ - DUE 17TH MARCH.

How does it move on from last album ‘Written & Directed’?

’Written & Directed’ was me knowing that I self sabotage and kind of being like, “I’m fne,” burying problems with booze and being generally destructive. ‘A Fistful of Peaches’ is what happened when I got therapy, started to unpack trauma and actually try and rebuild my brain back.

You’ve said that you had to be “more honest and vulnerable” while making this album. Can you tell us about the process for you? There was a day or two in the studio when I had a complete meltdown from pushing myself so hard. It hurts talking about trauma, sadness and sexual assault in songs. Going to sleep after writing felt like I was gasping for air; I had to sleep a lot more than usual. I could feel my brain working things out.

Are there any surprises that fans can expect?

I like ‘I’m A Man’ because I wrote it from the perspective of a rapist. [The line] “Just like a real man in a toupee and a tan, with a face like a thumb and a spine like a sponge… Sucking out that fun” feels really empowering to sing.

What do you hope that people take away from this record?

This album is for my fellow neurodivergents and people struggling with mental illness. I just want to make the music I needed to hear as a kid.

Penned quickly and prolifcally during a period of professional success and personal turmoil, LP4 is set to nod to both - creating some of Matt’s most vulnerable yet confdent work to date. Words: Lisa Wright.

“It’s what most people will tell you about life: try and be who you really are, and the most joy will come from that.”

When live music came roaring back in the summer of 2021, so did Dream Wife’s inspiration. They’d been trying to write new material for their third album throughout the pandemic, but everything they’d tried to wrangle out of that dull yet gloomy time ended up on the cutting room foor. “[The return of live music] fueled us with this fre,” explains vocalist Rakel Mjöll. “Every time we play a show, that’s when a light bulb goes off, that’s when we get our inspiration. We remember who we’re writing to.”

The album’s recently-released blazing lead single ‘Leech’ is a total embodiment of the trio’s desire to capture the full spectrum of the live music experience - its rawness, its energy, its sense of community, but also its darker side. As much joy as live music brings, it isn’t always a totally safe environment for women and non-binary people, with sexual harassment rife in live music venues, and too many men in bands or behind the scenes who are more than happy to abuse their power.

“At our shows, we try to implement safe spaces, but that is something that not just an organisation or a

band can do – it has to be the whole community,” says Rakel. “It’s a very important part of our shows, that people can let loose and enjoy themselves and feel safe.” “It’s not like we’ve come back to the music scene and all these [issues] have gone away,” adds guitarist Alice Go. “Coming back, [we have to] remember why it’s so important to uphold that conversation and [maintain] our part in that.”

’Leech’, however, isn’t just about calling out the industry’s predators. “It’s honouring community, it’s not just a song about frustration,” asserts Rakel. “It’s really just about owning your space.” Simultaneously calling upon the community to “have some fucking empathy,” it scorns those who become part of the problem by deriding others or staying silent. “It’s the sidelines,” they say, “that hurt most.”

“Empathy is one of the most important things we have as humans,” adds bassist Bella Podpadec. “There’s this idea that you have a certain amount of empathy and it’s a character trait, but [actually], empathy, like a muscle, can be strengthened. [By] coming together in music spaces, we can build our capacity to feel care and empathy for each other. That’s important for all of humanity coming forward.”

Dream Wife remain mostly tight-lipped about what’s to come on their forthcoming third LP, but the words that constantly come up are “rawness” and “humour”. Indeed, their second single, in contrast to ‘Leech’, will see them lean into their lighter side. “When we’re together, we have a lot of fun, and being silly has always been part of our exchanges as a unit,” says Alice. “It’s okay to have fun, and you can still, alongside that, make a statement. They don’t have to be completely separate entities. We have a laugh together and it’s a shame not to include that in our writing as well.”

Rakel grins. “Our shows have mosh pits AND conga lines!” DIY

"“Empathy is one of the most important things we have as humans.” - Bella Podpadec

THE

ALIST

As well as some of DIY’s personal faves, there are a bunch of bonafde superstars gearing up to release in 2023. Let chart battle commence…

DUA LIPA

We’ve been bopping along to ‘Future Nostalgia’ for two years now, and while all the songs still unquestionably slap (’Physical’! ‘Levitating’! ‘Don’t Start Now’!), we’re ready for Dua to bless us with some new pop goodness. Sharing a pic from inside the studio last year, it looks like she’s in full DL3 mode, even telling Elton John on her Service95 podcast that it’s already “50% done” and a “movement away” from her last album. Oooh…

PARAMORE'

‘This Is Why’

Due: 10th February

PVRIS

When we catch up with Lyndsey Gunnulfsen - also known by her stage name Lynn Gunnthe musician and chief voice behind PVRIS is preparing for a studio session with an undisclosed collaborator: one in a long line of creative workshops that are either directly or indirectly infuencing her forthcoming fourth album under the name. Recent sessions include working alongside Doja Cat producer Y2K and the genre-shifting Matias Mora, and she’s been taking inspiration from the free-fowing nature of hyperpop too. It’s here, Lyndsey notes, where the real risks are being taken.

“I think the resurgence that’s happening in pop-punk right now is the catalyst for me to refuse to do that,” she laughs, taking a further step away from the scene that PVRIS frst called home. “When it was coming back, and with artists like Machine Gun Kelly and Willow pushing to do this avant garde style of it, that’s when I put the pedal to the metal and decided I wanted to do something very different.

“I took a pause and thought about what I wanted to do moving forward; if I was stuck and if I wanted to break free of that, and what each of those things would look like,” she continues. “I told myself, this time there’s no hesitation as far as pushing the sound. Just make whatever feels the most exciting and most inspiring, and don’t compromise on that.”

Lyndsey describes the next record as a new chapter for PVRIS. Having parted ways with previous record label Warner following a few turbulent years, the

album is being released by alternative stalwarts Hopeless Records - a move that has allowed her the creative freedom she was searching for.

It’s evident in the duality of lead singles ‘Animal’ and ‘Anywhere But Here’: the frst an aggressive evolution of PVRIS’ heavier sound, and the second a rousing blend of electronics and R&B. “I felt like it was important to showcase both sides in this release. I really want to emphasise that there’s a lot of range and dynamics to what PVRIS can do,” Lyndsey reveals.

“I feel like there’s a bit more levity to it, a bit more joy and humour, but it’s still very real and self-aware. There are subdimensions that were missing in the past that are connected with it now. There’s this reach to seize the day as much as you can that’s been injected into it; this need for speed, need for joy, and need for fun. I think a lot of people can connect to that right now.” DIY

We’ve been praying for a Paramore return for a good chunk of the last fve years so, when the band changed their profle picture on social media in September, we were already fred up for what could be next. Giving us the goods, they confrmed that their sixth album ‘This Is Why’ is landing early next year, and if the title track is anything to go by, it’s gonna be a ‘00s alt-indietinged classic.

"100 GECS

‘10,000 gecs’

Due: 17th March

As the saying goes, better late than never, and while 100 gecs promised that their second album would be arriving in “early 2022," we’re still waiting nearly 12 months on. Thankfully, the teaser tracks they dropped during their live sets at Reading & Leeds this year seem to hint that we won’t be without their hyper-pop chaos for too long. Please. Please?!

RIHANNA

Rihanna has spent the last six years creating a beauty and lingerie empire, but one question will always follow her: Where the hell is R9?! Luckily, it seems like we might fnally get an answer in 2023, as RiRi has already shared two ballads for the latest Black Panther flm, and is set to perform at the Super Bowl half-time show. No better time to drop her next album, we think.

GORILLAZ

’Cracker Island’

Due: 24th February

We’re normally not ones to suggest joining a cult, but if it’s led by Gorillaz, we might make an exception. Initiation to their new tribe The Last Cult is set to be soundtracked by ‘Cracker Island’ this February, featuring collaborators including Thundercat, Stevie Nicks and Tame Impala. Where do we sign up?

“I think the resurgence that’s happening in poppunk right now is the catalyst for me to refuse to do that.” - Lyndsey Gunnulfsen

Purposefully swerving left from the pop-punk that made her name, Lyndsey Gunnulfsen is throwing open PVRIS’ creative doors on LP4. Words: Ben Tipple.

DIY NIGHT MUSEUM at

the

DIY In Deep is our monthly, onlinecentric chance to dig into a longer profle on some of the most exciting artists in the world right now.

Phoenix are no pawns of the industry.

For their seventh album, Phoenix decided to put the art into art-pop, decamping to the Louvre to create a record steeped in experimentation and forward-motion.

Words: Rhian Daly. Photos: Ed Miles.

Growing up in Versailles, the town south-west of Paris most famous for its decadent 18th Century palace, Phoenix felt like outsiders. Over the years since the band moved to the capital and found global fame for their intellectual indie-pop, they’ve likened their youth there to growing up in a museum: boring, lifeless, focused on the past. Now, though, they’ve been welcomed into another of France’s most prestigious institutions, the Louvre and its wing known as the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, to record their fzzing, fun latest album, ‘Alpha Zulu’.

“Next is Versailles – I’m still waiting for that to happen,” grins frontman Thomas Mars early one October New York morning as he and guitarist Christian Mazzalai join DIY over Zoom. Being invited with open arms into the place that they once felt so rejected would not only be a 360-degree journey for the band, but also a conclusion. “That would be our last album,” the singer notes. However that’s a fnal stop that the four-piece are thankfully nowhere near reaching just yet.

Despite their feelings about where they grew up, recording in a museum was something Phoenix often wondered about as they traversed around Paris. Christian and Thomas would often work around the Louvre’s jewellery garden in the early days of the band and dare to think about “all these rooms in that building that must be empty… How come we don’t have access to them?”

It might have taken over two decades but, eventually, they received the call. “It was very surreal because no one ever recorded music there before, I think?” Thomas notes. Meanwhile shortly after the band entered the museum’s hallowed halls, the pandemic hit, the usual bustle of visitors disappeared, and they were left alone, adding to the strange atmosphere in their new home. “It was so empty. It felt like both a fantasy and a dystopian, eerie world,” he continues. “But we’ll remember it forever because it was way more

intense because of the pandemic, plus the location. Even though there was sadness, there was excitement because [recording in that kind of space] was something we’d never experienced before.”

“There was the thrill of the unknown,” Christian nods, sitting next to his bandmate. “Going into a beautiful place with no songs and knowing we have to look at each other and do something out of nothing – that’s the most exciting thing.” He pauses for a beat and adds a concession: “It was a risk and a bit scary sometimes, but it was a good risk.”

He’s not wrong - ‘Alpha Zulu’ is Phoenix at the peak of their powers. It’s a kaleidoscopic adventure that fnds the foursome, as ever, refusing to rest on their laurels, instead packing in as many new quirks and experiments as they can. ‘All Eyes On Me’ is a shadowy dance-pop banger that feels made for running wild through nocturnal city streets. ‘Season 2’ marries the band’s knack for making big hooks with crisp ‘80s synthpop and the irresistible, inviting opening line “Giddy up, I’m bored”, while the title track kicks things off in deliciously off-kilter form, all “woo ha”s and “eh eh eh”s.

Working in the museum in the midst of global disorder gave Phoenix something grounding - a resemblance of normality that they’ve learnt over time works best. “’Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix’ is maybe the album that was the most successful for us and we did it from 10am to 5pm, like bank hours, and not like when our teenage selves were making a record like ‘Alphabetical’, which we did from 10pm to 6am,” explains Thomas.

That 2009 record proved they didn’t need chaos to make something good, as they previously believed while working on their frst two albums. “We were recording all night, we were living together, were together all the time in a very small room,” Christian recalls. “I think we had the least amount of vitamin D any French person had for six years,” Thomas chuckles. “For years we’d go to bed at sunrise and we’d wake up at sunset. It was ridiculous. But when you’re 20, you can eat junk food every single day, you can do the worst things and there’s zero issue.”

The making of ‘Alpha Zulu’ might have been far more orderly, but there were still a few moments that could have rocked the band’s boat. The record includes the very frst guest feature on a Phoenix song in the form of glistening anthem ‘Tonight’, which comes adorned by the voice of Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig. Although the four Frenchmen had avoided collaboration for the best part of 25 years - in part because of the music industry’s obsession with sandwiching together artists with no regard for what would actually serve the song - half of the group wanted to try expanding their creative circle.

“We’re the two in the band that have been pushing to collaborate,” Thomas reveals, motioning to himself and Christian. “We have a few rules in the band: 10 songs on an album, no collaborations, just the four of us,” the guitarist picks up, voice spiking in enthusiasm. “We were excited to break this rule.”

’Alpha Zulu’ is out now via Glassnote.

Read the full feature at diymag. com/phoenix. DIY

GETTING GRASSROOTS

As well as sponsoring the 2022 Mercury Prize, FREE NOW - the easy-to-use mobility super app - have also teamed up with Music Venue Trust to provide some well-needed support to Grassroots Music Venues across the country, underwriting 120 gigs until the end of April 2023. This month, FREE NOW are also putting on a very special Spotlight show, with Benjamin Clementine...

Fresh from releasing his latest album ‘And I Have Been’ in October, Benjamin will take to the stage at the legendary Bush Hall in London on Sunday 18th December. The show is part of FREE NOW & Music Venue Trust’s #MoveToTheMusic campaign, which is focussed on supporting live music in grassroots venues, and previously saw Public Service Broadcasting perform at Peckham Audio earlier this year.

Speaking on the importance of grassroots venues, Benjamin has said: “I call grassroots venues the mistake venues. The longevity and depth of an artist’s work can be affected by these venues, great musicians start there and never leave them behind. Bush Hall is probably one of the best grassroots venues left, and it’s beautiful.”

Mark Davyd, CEO & Founder Music Venue Trust continues:

“With live music venues and artists facing an incredibly tough next couple of years, it’s more important than ever that companies like FREE NOW are taking direct action to get audiences in front of great artists in great grassroots music venues. Benjamin has been a constant presence on the Music Venue Trust stereo across the last few years, and it’s an absolute joy to be working together with FREE NOW to bring this very special event to Bush Hall and give everybody a chance to #MovetotheMusic.”

“The Louvre was so empty. [Recording there] felt like both a fantasy and a dystopian, eerie world.” - Thomas Mars

SLOWTHAI i know nothing

The combination of heavy guitars and slowthai’s increasingly agitated delivery makes ‘i know nothing’ a damn-near perfect aural representation of frustration as has possibly ever been created. And just as brilliantly as those elements match, the on-paper dissonance between the words he’s saying –“Some people ain’t comfortable with their sexuality / It must be awful to wake up and live a lie” - and the ferocity of the way he’s choosing to say it amplify the message twofold. An idea of what’s to come from him, or just a smart way to sell headphones, it’s great either way. (Emma Swann)

HAVE YOU HEARD?

TEMPS no,no

A full throttle return to the more punked up side of Creeper’s repertoire, ‘Ghost Brigade’ marks another new beginning for the Southampton six-piece. Following what can only be described as a dramatic turn of events at their recent London Roundhouse show (more on that over on p72!), their latest release introduces the band’s newest era and doubles as another deliciously anthemic slice of dark pop-punk, its chorus’ soaring refrain calling “to say goodbye to endless nights”. (Sarah Jamieson)

If we had to guess the new hobby James Acaster developed during lockdown, precisely nobody would have said banana bread. Still, few more would’ve got the real answer: the comedian formed a band. Or, strictly speaking, a shifting, 40-strong collective of musicians, with some names as familiar as his own, in what seems like an attempt to place him as Kettering’s answer to Damon Albarn. Temps’ debut track ‘no,no’ features the likes of Shamir, NNAMDÏ, Xenia Rubinos and jazz drummer Seb Rochford. That quite literally sets the pace for the song, understated and fighty – but also quietly hypnotic: there’s an earworm in there, deep down. (Bella Martin)

PINKPANTHERESS

Do you miss me?

Cast your eye back twelve months, and PinkPantheress was a name on many a lip. Then a bedroom act (largely through necessity to be fair, given the you-know-what) who’d only played live for the frst time the previous month, now she’s shared a stage with Paramore, and featured on the new Black Panther soundtrack alongside Rihanna, Stormzy and Burna Boy, via a Reading Festival set that many couldn’t get anywhere near it was that busy. Not too shabby. ‘Do you miss me?’ continues with her signature sound: UK Garage-style beats with emo-tinged lyrics and that immediacy that won us over in the frst place. (Bella Martin)

SHAME Fingers Of Steel

‘Fingers Of Steel’, the frst offering from Shame’s third studio album, ‘Food For Worms’, sees the band looking more outwards than ever before, trying to portray the world around them. Recorded while on a European festival run, ‘Fingers Of Steel’ is wonderfully unique and sonically pleasing. The track arrives with a cinematic worthy music video directed by James Humby, that sees the band work 19-hour shifts creating fake social media accounts, on a mission to interact with their own material. (Katie Macbeth)

CREEPER Ghost Brigade

THE DINNER PARTY, SEB LOWE & NELL MESCAL DAZZLE AT THE GREAT ESCAPE AND DIY’S FIRST FIFTY SHOW

With autumn frmly taking hold, the memory of warm pints on sunny festival days may seem like a distant memory right now. But luckily, The Great Escape’s annual First Fifty night is here to remind us that it’s actually not too far away at all; tonight DIY are taking over the glitzy confnes of Hackney’s MOTH Club, for one of the event’s buzziest bills.

Taking to the stage frst this evening is London-viaKildare singer Nell Mescal. While on record, her offerings may sound more introspective, tonight her set is enriched with the help of her band, who help to elevate her stories of homesickness and selfdiscovery to a cathartic place. After the last minute cancellation of Essex quartet She’s In Parties, Manchester’s Seb Lowe steps up to the mark. But even with less than twenty four hours’ notice, his percussive politicised commentary acts as a stark

reminder of just how broken things really feel right now.

In an age where some have swapped liner notes for algorithms, there’s something particularly refreshing about the fact that tonight’s headliners have, to date, released precisely no music at all. But that doesn’t mean The Dinner Party don’t come prepared. Quite to the contrary, their set is seamlessly slick - and singer Abigaille is dressed in a corset that looks nabbed from the Bridgerton costume cupboard. From their brooding opener of ‘Burn Alive’ - which bursts into a gutsy glam-rock chorus - to the firtatious bounce of ‘Nothing Matters’, their set sees them crib from some of music’s most ambitious names - David Bowie, Kate Bush, Queen, Sparks - to create a truly joyful collection of songs. A starter of mystery paired with a hefty main course of fun, it’s little wonder The Dinner Party are the buzziest new act around: the hype is real. (Sarah Jamieson)

since Lynks saw off our Hello 2020 live series just under three years ago, we’ve been hooked on their larger-thanlife stage show, so we’re giddy to announce that the art-punk star will be headlining our brand new tour with Kilimanjaro next year!

Yes, that’s right: they’re topping the bill on the DIY Now & Next Tour - which is designed to give you a taste of the best artists of right now, and the not-so-distant future - alongside Glasgow newcomers VLURE and a host of new acts including Damefrisør and Ciel

Tickets are on sale now.

FEBRUARY

Leeds, Brudenell Social Club (w/ Circe)

Newcastle, The Cluny (w/ Circe)

Glasgow, Stereo (w/ No Windows)

Brighton, Komedia (w/ Ciel)

MARCH 02 Birmingham, Hare & Hounds (w/ Gag Salon)

DEADLETTER AND MELENAS SERVE UP A MEMORABLE

NIGHT WITH SON ESTRELLA GALICIA

While sipping on cold Spanish beer tends to be better reserved for a warmer site than November in East London, that doesn’t mean it’s not a welcome experience. Once again, SON Estrella Galicia have returned to Hackney’s Paper Dress Vintage for a second showcase, following June’s which featured DIY favourites Dream Wife and Belako.

Tonight’s show comes with a few different aims: to introduce new Spanish talent to the UK, to offer up the optimum experience for drinking Estrella Galicia itself and to open our minds a little more to how we can all make a more positive impact on our planet. The venue is transformed into a treasure trove of activity; upon entering, you’re greeted by Fair Enough, a mobile plastic recycling company based in A Coruña. Venturing outside of the venue

itself, alongside DJ sets from Mondowski and Black Doldrums’ Sophie Landers, there are also small bites from London’s Brindisa restaurant, who continue Estrella’s ‘Reduce, Re-use and Recycle’ mantra by producing a unique set of dishes using waste food, such as their delicious Jamón Croquetas.

Then it’s onto the live music; venturing upstairs, Pamplona’s Melenas are welcomed with open arms. Their brand of fuzzy indie-pop is a warm injection on an otherwise cold and damp night. Some of the crowd may not understand the lyrics, but that doesn’t matter; the gorgeous sonics are enough to get lost in. Fresh from the release of their new EP ‘Heat!’, tonight’s headliners DEADLETTER are clearly up for a good time. Serving as a double celebration - vocalist Zac Lawrence reveals it’s also guitarist Sam Jones’ birthday - their set is a blitz of glorious grooves and scuzzy guitar lines that shows them as a potent new voice in the world of postpunk. A brilliant melting pot of angular but danceable hooks that get the room moving, they provide the perfect ending to a special evening.

HELLO THERE

If the idea of 2023 is already making you feel a lil bit anxious, have no fear: we’re here to sort out your social calendar come January. That’s right - we’ll be returning to London’s Old Blue Last for our annual Hello… series, and we’ll be bringing some of the best new acts with us.

Hello 2023 will kick off on Tuesday 10th Januarywe thought we’d let you sleep off the rest of your hangover on the 3rd! - and will, as ever, take place every Tuesday night, plus entry will be free! What’s more, the likes of Gretel Hänlyn, Surya Sen, Panic Shack, Cathy Jain and VLURE - who’ll be warming up for the DIY Now & Next Tour - will be joining in the fun.

Keep your eyes peeled on diymag.com to fnd out the full line-up and come get involved next month!

15th November 2022 | Moth Club, London. Photo: Emma Swann.

Ever

ADVERTORIAL FEATURE

GRETEL HÄNLYN

It’s DIY’s Christmas Gift Guide!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year - unless, that is, you’ve spent your past weeks with your nose stuck in a copy of DIY (a valid choice, FYI) and forgotten to buy any Christmas presents. Doh! However, clueless perusers and last minute choosers fear not! For we’ve gathered together a selection of goodies that’ll keep the whole clan happy. Read on…

PERKY BLENDERS CHRISTMAS COFFEE

dingdong! for the tech fans for the liquid lunchers

Start your day off right with this special Christmas blend, brought to you by the good folk of East London’s premier roasters, Perky Blenders. Perfect for coffee nerds, bleary-eyed parents or just fans of really nice packaging, it’s an all-round winner.

RRP: £10

BUY IT: perkyblenders.com

8TRACK SPICED RUM

This rum brand’s commitment to music doesn’t just extend to its eye-catching speaker box design; 8Track also put grassroots events on throughout the country. Support the concept and have a tipple while you’re at it: we’re making their Sip It Whilst It’s Hot buttered rum cocktail. Yes please.

RRP: £31.95

BUY IT: 8trackrum.com

NEURITA TEQUILA

Any budding at-home mixologists will lap up this fruit-infused craft tequila - specifcally designed with margarita-making in mind. The Sicilian orangefavoured citrus bottle will erase the need for triple sec, while their berry-based Rosa variety makes a stonking margarita spritz.

RRP: £31.99

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AWKN HANGOVER SACHETS

Packed with Korean vitamin supplements, gift these to your mate whose eyes are a little too big for their liver function and watch them wake up on New Year’s Day, hangover-free and hugging you with gratitude. Just drink one before your night out and you’re golden.

RRP: £3.95

BUY IT: theawkn.com

for the superstans

Whether you’ve drawn a hardened Yard Act fan, someone who needs a little pep talk or Elton John himself in your Secret Santa, this rousing lyric print - taken from EJ-featuring single ‘100% Endurance’should do the trick.

RRP: £20

BUY IT: shop.yardactors.com

RINA SAWAYAMA HOT SAUCE

Know someone who claims to eat, sleep and breathe all things Rina? Well, now they literally can. Dash some of her This Hell hot sauce on your turkey whilst singing along to the pop mega-bop and scientists have proven that your Christmas will get at least ten times sassier. That’s just maths.

RRP: £15

BUY IT: store.dirtyhit.co.uk

CAROLINE POLACHEK THONG

Can you really say that you’re a Caroline fan if you don’t have underwear calling out last year’s iconic summer bop ‘Bunny Is A Rider’?! No, you can not. But luckily, sweet Caz can sort you out in a thong or brief style and provide you and your loved one with the ultimate couple’s costume for 2023.

RRP: $20 (about £17)

BUY IT: shop.carolinepolachek.com

SPORTS TEAM X THE 1975 T-SHIRT

When a tweet with a picture of Sports Team and The 1975’s frontmen Alex Rice and Matty Healy is captioned with the description “They R so sexy but not in a Harry Styles perfect man type of way like in a weird defnitely stink way,” there’s really only one thing you can do: slap the picture on a T-shirt for the whole world to appreciate.

RRP: £15

BUY IT: shop.sportsteamband.com

POLAROID P3 MUSIC PLAYER

Now we know what you’re thinking: “Polaroid? Don’t they do cameras?!” And while that is technically true, it’s now not all they do! They’ve recently launched a range of four state-of-the-art music players, in an array of different sizes and colours so that all of your moods are covered. Their Polaroid 3 model - pictured here - is a slick re-imagination of the classic boombox and includes up to 15 hours of playback time.

RRP: £169.99

BUY IT: polaroid.com

BOSS RC-505MKII LOOP STATION

Whether a vocalist, beatboxer or just your casual multi-instrumentalist, the BOSS RC-505MKII Loop Station is the perfect tool for creativity. Packed with more features than you can possibly dream of - we’re talking fve simultaneous stereo phase tracks, ultra-durable faders, 200 onboard rhythm patterns, and so much more - the tabletop looper is guaranteed to elevate your music-making experience to another level entirely.

RRP: £562

BUY IT: boss.info

MARSHALL MS-2 AMP

Good things, as the saying goes, come in small packages, and this diddy micro amp is a perfect example. It weighs literally one (1!) pound, is only 14cm tall, but packs enough of a punch for you to practise at home or on the go - with volume, tone and overdrive controls as standard. If only everything in life pulled its weight this hard.

RRP: £32.99

BUY IT: marshall.com

crawlers

Ask Crawlers how to sum up the past few months and one word immediately springs to mind. “Chaos,” says guitarist Amy Woodall straight off the bat, “but good chaos!” To say that the quartet - completed by vocalist Holly Minto, bassist Liv Kettle and drummer Harry Breen - have had a successful year would be to do them a bit of a disservice. From signing to Polydor back in January, through to their ‘Loud Without Noise’ mixtape debuting at Number One in the Offcial Rock & Metal Chart just weeks ago, 2022 has been packed with the kind of pinch-yourself moments (huge festival slots, supporting childhood idols, sold-out shows across the globe) that most young artists can only really dream of.

It’s a feeling that’s really hammered home at their most recent London headline show. Originally scheduled to take place at the Scala in King’s Cross, but soon upgraded to the larger-capacity Islington Academy, there are frissons of excitement in the air as the band take to the stage. A chunk of fans have brought along banners to hold aloft, while others throw handmade gifts through the crowd; hours before doors opened, the queue was spilling out onto the streets. Before playing their huge hit ‘Come Over (Again)’, meanwhile, Holly dedicates the song to a couple who she spots in the audience that got engaged during the song at a previous show.

Throughout the night, there’s a palpable sense of adoration and dedication, and it’s clearly a sensation felt by both sides.

“Our fans are really special,” enthuses Holly, when we speak to the band a few weeks on, during a rare day off between shows in Europe. “I’m not even joking to you, we had to get a trailer for our tour van because we have so much stuff that fans give us. The fact that they not only bought the ticket to come see us, but

they’ve spent time drawing us or making us presents, making banners… It’s so cute because it proves how much they really like us.” “Yeah, it’s strange because that was once us doing that,” adds Liv. “And now it’s people doing it for us. It’s a very, very strange feeling.”

While it was back in 2018 that foundations were frst laid for the band (Amy and Liv played music together in school, before Holly met Liv in college and things clicked into place), it was in the second half of 2021 that Crawlers’ ascent really picked up pace. Alongside the release of their debut self-titled EP came the aforementioned ‘Come Over (Again)’: a scorched offering that transforms from its intimate, acoustic-backed introduction into a blistering crescendo of emotion. Written after a particularly diffcult period for Liv, the track would not only become their masterstroke (over a year on, it’s had almost 40 million Spotify plays) and a TikTok trend all of its own, but it’s helped to usher Crawlers’ music into a new and even more personal space.

Take their mixtape, for example. Across ‘Loud Without Noise’’s six tracks, the quartet delve into a myriad of infuences and emotions, pulling from across the alt-rock spectrum to create an ambitious set of songs that still feel intensely intimate. Alongside the gnarly grunge of ‘Fuck Me (I Didn’t Know How To Say)’ comes an exploration of consent and sexual identity; tales of gaslighting and manipulation are backed by the industrialesque chorus of ‘Too Soon’; ‘I Don’t Want It’’s driving guitars and gang vocals delve into the idea of trying to change yourself just to impress another.

“There was a really distinct moment where I think we were in a hotel and I was looking at Amy, and I said I think I’ve got the name for the mixtape,” Holly explains regarding what exactly they hoped the MO of the mixtape to be. “I was like, ‘Loud Without Noise’, which is a lyric from ‘I Can’t Drive’. But if you listen to ‘Hang Me Like Jesus’, I mention something very similar: ‘Turn up the noise, so I don’t have to think’.

“All of the ideas are things that go on in the anxious brain of a person, and all the things that we try to distract ourselves from,” she goes on, “whether that’s heartbreak, whether that’s mental illness, whether it’s trauma, whether that’s politics. [With] all those things nowadays, especially for Gen Z - and us as older members of Gen Z - the way we react is we’ll go, ‘OK, I’m just gonna blare music or scroll on TikTok and Twitter and hope that I don’t have to feel these things anymore’. That kind of summed up every little thing on the mixtape for sure.”

With a dedicated army of fans and millions of streams under their belt, it might still be early days for this Liverpudlian quartet, but right now, it feels like there’s no stopping them. Words: Sarah Jamieson. Photos: Ed Miles.

“We had to get a trailer for our tour van because we have so much stuff that fans give us.” - Holly Minto

It’s this frank and open approach to creating music that’s seen the band’s fans grow ever-closer to the quartet over the past eighteen months. “I think with alternative music,” Holly begins, “nobody is a casual fan. It’s their world and that’s what’s so crazy, because that’s exactly how we were as kidswith My Chemical Romance, The 1975, with bands we really looked up to as individuals. They were our whole worlds, so the fact that some people are putting us in that position is scary, but that they love our art so much is really nice.”

“The alt-rock scene is very [unifed] anyway,” Liv picks up. “When you fnd your little group of - I don’t know, I want to say misfts - other people that you resonate with, you hold on to that. And even if years later you’re not listening to the band every single day, you might hear their song on the radio or in a bar and it throws you back to that time where you were like, ‘Oh, I found people who are like me’. I don’t think that ever really leaves you.”

And while their music admittedly does sit nicely alongside the current renaissance of emo - after their stint supporting My Chemical Romance in Warrington this May, they “had a lot of elder emos” coming to shows, says Liv - it’s also their ability to open up conversations around the very present concerns of young people that’s become an appeal. Their openness isn’t just resigned to their songs; the band also use their social platforms - most often, TikTok - to discuss everything from identifying as queer, experiencing panic attacks and misogynistic industry rumours, through to highlighting outfts fans have chosen to wear to their gigs.

Hoping to use all of their outlets to create a community of their own (“a scene we never had,” Liv says. “It’s really, really special to us that more and more people are fnding it and can carve out their own little space in it”), their message of acceptance and overcoming trauma is one that seems to be truly resonating with those listening. “We’ve been meeting fans a lot recently, and hearing how many of them connect to our songs because of what they’re about,” Holly says. “[We] write about what we’re feeling, whether that’s an observation or whether that’s something we’re going through all the time, and [having] people who relate and carry their own stories with our songs is the most important thing.”

It can, however, become a double-edged sword. While Holly refers to writing lyrics as “a form of therapy” for themselves, hearing frsthand accounts of how the band’s music has helped people can take a different kind of toll. “I think it’s getting a bit harder now as we’re getting a bit of a bigger

fanbase,” she nods. “This is heavy stuff, you know? That’s why, for recent gigs, I’ve been talking about recovery and how I don’t want to romanticise the things that we’re singing about.

“We are just a band and we aren’t the people fxing our fans or anyone who listens to our music,” Holly continues. “They’re the ones doing their own journey of their own mental health and recovery, and we’re so proud of all of them.” “That’s the thing: they pull from themselves,” adds Liv. “They try to place that on us, and it’s like, no, we didn’t tell you to get up and keep going. That was you. They don’t give themselves enough credit for how strong they really are.”

With their crowds growing bigger with every show (“Over the summer, we’ve noticed different people are starting to pay attention to us,” Liv comments), it seems little wonder that Crawlers’ list of objective outside achievements is beginning to increase too. And while, of course, few bands ever release something with the hope of charting well, there was a certain level of satisfaction that came with their mixtape’s success.

“It was pretty mad,” Amy admits. “We make the music for ourselves, but when we were told that it could chart, we were like, ‘Well, if we’re gonna go for it, then we’ll really go for it’.” It paid off, not only landing them the aforementioned Rock & Metal Chart top spot, but also reaching Number 22 in the Offcial Albums Chart too. “We didn’t realise it was Number One in Rock & Metal until later in the evening,” laughs drummer Harry Breen. “Someone texted me and I was like, ‘…guys, apparently, we’re actually Number One! What the fuck?!” To celebrate the achievement, his mum has promised to get a tattoo. “She didn’t specify whether it had to be the Offcial Chart,” he jokes, “and this said Number One so… that’s good enough!”

Harry’s mum wasn’t the only woman keeping a watchful gaze over the record’s success, either. On release week, the band took to their TikTok channel to share a special ritual, in which they lit candles around a printed photo of Charli XCX and chanted the chorus of her iconic single ‘Vroom Vroom’ while holding hands, in an attempt to summon the chart spirits. “She actually commented on our TikTok!” exclaims Holly. “I was so ill yesterday and I couldn’t play the show. I had no voice, and I was in the middle of Subway just checking my notifcations, and I saw that she’d commented: ‘I’ve done this ritual before - it defo works’. She is our motivation for getting up in the morning, no joke! So seeing that, I was like, ‘What is going on in my life right now? Like, what the fuck?’”

An act of higher power, or just all of the band’s hard work starting to pay off, it seemed to do the trick. Now, with their debut album on the horizon - “We’re working on [it] currently and can’t say more than that,” Holly tells us - let’s hope Chaz is keeping a guardian eye on Crawlers for the foreseeable future too. 0

“All of the ideas are things that go on in the anxious brain of a person, and all the things that we try to distract ourselves from.”

Holly Minto

Joining the dots between punk rock and electronic music, with jungle, dancehall, drum and bass and some wild techno crossovers thrown in for good measure, bassobsessed artist Grove has had a fruitful past two years. 2021 heralded the release of their frst two EPs‘Queer+Black’ and ‘Spice’ (the former featuring a collab with art-punk renegade Lynks); this year, they’ve followed it up with a handful of standalone singles and live dates at Glastonbury, All Points East and more.

But as well as fusing a niche of their own that makes sense equally at a sweaty basement punk gig or a rave, Grove has used their music as a vessel for political messaging.

‘Fuck Ur Landlord’ from ‘Queer+Black’ skewers the housing system’s suffocating grip, its choral sloganeering of “off with their heads” delivered with a raucous roar.

Meanwhile, on ‘Black’, Grove rejects the dominant white gaze with the affrmation that “Black is the power”.

“I think there’s been an incredible shift in recent years in terms of the attention that’s been put on us,” Grove begins, spotlighting Bob Vylan - the Black punk-grime duo they supported live recently - as a band who have also been subverting assumptions about guitar music’s historic affliation with white indie circles. “In turn, I think that’s going to lead to an exponential growth of young people interested in punk and seeing themselves represented in those scenes,” they add. “It’s only going to embolden people wanting to share themselves in that way.”

Grove has seen a change in how audiences are responding to punk and electronic music crossovers, too. “Over the summer [my music] appealed to people in the Czech Republic at this hardcore punk

Infusing a bass-heavy, patchwork sound with a proudly queer stance and strong political standpoint, the Bristolian’s only genre is themself. Words: Charlotte Krol. Photos: Louise Mason.

grove

“My

festival called Fluff Fest as much as it did at [the danceorientated] Outlook Festival in Croatia. I feel super grateful for that,” they note.

What’s most pleasing for the Bristol-based artist – real name Beth Griffn – is that they haven’t compromised on making music that’s authentic to them. Attracting fans of different genres “isn’t particularly intentional”, they say, but their music is “intentional in terms of knowing that it FEELS right”. “It takes infuence from my Jamaican heritage and also from the deep, heavy sounds that Bristol is known for,” Grove continues. “A lot of my sound has happened as a result of moving there [in 2019], and being exposed to infnitely more soundsystem gigs than where I grew up in Cheltenham.”

This year Grove has released ‘Feed My Desire’ - a UK Garage-infuenced song featuring some of their most syrupy, soulful vocals to date - and a banger of a cover of Girls Aloud’s ‘Sound Of The Underground’. Again the music is very bass-oriented because Grove feels “that’s just what I’ve always naturally gravitated towards”. But the thrust of that sound also brims from “the frustration and angst” they felt growing up in a place where “there’s very obvious class divides”. “That’s what brought the punk

element in,” they note.

Cheltenham was where Grove got their musical start, from being mentored by hip hop collective 5 Mics to playing in bands. Being a self-taught guitarist, bassist, keyboard player, singer, rapper and producer has played into the richly dark, energetic music they make today. Bristol, with its fabric of drum and bass, dubstep and more, has boosted their love of bass culture as well as provided a stronger link to the queer community.

Although Grove feels grounded in the city, a future move isn’t off the cards. “It has its downsides,” they say, referencing the fact that London by comparison has a more vibrant and “tight, queer people of colour community”. “There’s obviously a lot of music that has stemmed from there: dubstep, the roots reggae culture, soundsystem culture and there’s St Paul’s Carnival that’s rooted in Black culture, but you see fewer Black and Brown faces there than you’d hope to see.”

They’ve always resisted the pull of London owing to its expense, but that’s changing. “Bristol is being gentrifed at an alarming rate. House prices are absolutely wild and there’s people bidding on rent. That’s quite unsettling,” Grove says. “Obviously Bristol’s known as a hub of protest and culture, and people like to own a sense of that while also gentrifying it. It’s a really strange conundrum.’”

While they plan out their next geographical moves, work is simmering on Grove’s debut album, which they say will “loop back to ‘Queer+Black’’s sensibilities with big, strong political messaging”. But Grove’s future music will also hear them explore “me more as a person”. One move in recent years has been to employ a Jamaican singing style (see: ‘Spice’ cut ‘Skin2Skin’) atop dutty bass to pay homage to their late maternal grandmother who taught Grove bits of patois. “I very much enjoy how the Jamaican accent sits within jungle music. I think it makes perfect sense. It’s beautiful,” they say.

Grove notes that they’ve covered outward politics at length, and lyrics about sexual experiences (particularly seen on ‘Spice’) sprung from a previously “repressed” position where Grove felt that “being socialised as a woman” dulled focus on female sexuality due to social taboos. “Music and lyrics are the main way I’ve actually explored my emotions and sexuality because I was a very shy young person, and it felt like a safe space to map out what these experiences meant,” they say. “And then hearing dancehall tunes where women are very open about their sexuality… I found that incredibly empowering and just wanted to do that in my own way.”

On the horizon, then, is a project that will see Grove “being truly vulnerable in terms of what my life has been like so far”. Just don’t expect the dutty bass to go. 0

“Hearing

tunes where women are very open about their sexuality is incredibly empowering.”

Throwing splashes of techno and punk, a laser-sharp aesthetic and a unified gang mentality into their confrontational sonic melting pot, Glaswegian quintet VLURE are the cool kids with a heart of gold. Words: Lisa Wright. Photos: Ed Miles.

“S

omething I always fnd lovely about this band is that we’ll come off stage and people will be a wee bit scared of us and think we’re gonna be a certain way, but we’re really nice people! We’re all pretty bubbly and happy!” VLURE vocalist Hamish Hutcheson laughs. “This music is our outlet that allows us to get that pent up angst and aggression out on the stage.”

Catch the Glasgow quintet - completed by guitarist brothers Conor and Niall Goldie, drummer Carol Kreikaard and synth player Alex Pearson - in their natural on-stage environment and you’d be forgiven for being somewhat intimidated. Fond of getting right in the faces of the front row and blessed with a thick Scottish bellow that seems to resound from the very bones of his being, Hamish is a magnetic commander of a frontman. Meanwhile “ask ten different people in a room what they think we’d be infuenced by musically,” he suggests, “and it’ll jump from the Amazing Snakeheads to Faithless to The Murder Capital”; at the centre lies a wall of sound that’s intense and all-consuming and various other adjectives that add up to the idea that VLURE are not to be messed with.

Scratch the industrial surface, however, and in the likes of 2021 debut single ‘Shattered Faith’ or the desperate plea of ‘Show Me How To Live Again’ lies vulnerability and heart to spare. And, forcibly rallying against any ideas of coldness or unapproachability (“We’ve never really considered aggression as part of what we do,” notes Conor), it’s this sense of empathy and kindness that elevates VLURE from aloof art school types to a band to really believe in.

“The root of creating something comes from trying to understand your place in the world around you, and projecting that out on stage can sometimes feel like such an unnatural thing but we just try and rip the flter off. There are probably some horrendous screen shots of our faces from our performances because we’re not putting anything on,” Conor grins. “We have a folder of photos from gigs that are just horrendous, but it’s part and parcel of the game,” Hamish nods. “We wanna create an environment where everyone feels like they can be in that moment together.”

Part of this desire can likely be attributed to a musical adolescence that spans wider than your traditional guitar band education. Head to VLURE’s Glasgow club night Euphoria (named after this year’s debut EP), and you’ll fnd techno DJs rubbing shoulders with rappers and punk bands; truly eclectic in their tastes, they also attribute the fertile happy hardcore scene of their youths as contributing to the venn diagram of what they do now. “There’s lots of darkness in a lot of the music we’re inspired by but, in happy hardcore, there’s no dark, it’s just dance,” Hamish enthuses as Conor picks up: “There’s a punk ethos to it as well. A lot of those

producers based in Glasgow at the time making those tunes were just doing it on their laptop. The directness is the same as picking up your frst guitar, learning three chords and wanting to be Iggy Pop. It all comes from the same place.”

However, though VLURE are undiscriminating and broadreaching in their music tastes, there’s a united front to their fve members that present like a band in the truest sense of the term. Slick and aesthetically-minded, you can tell the quintet haven’t been thrown together just by circumstance - they’re a proper gang, invested in growing and nurturing this togetherness as much as possible. “Even the frst photos of us, we were succinct then and we’re succinct now,” Hamish nods. “We have our own tweaks individually but that commonality has been there since the beginning. The fve of us gravitated towards each other really quickly, and we took time to really get to know each other and learn each others’ intricacies before we moved into doing live shows and started releasing anything so that when we did come forward, it really projected us as a whole.”

And, since that frst single, the results of this considered and fully-realised attitude have been tangible. Early next year, they’ll build on a string of sold out headline shows by supporting masked art-pop disruptor Lynks at DIY’s own Now & Next Tour, while their next release - January’s ‘Cut It’ - fnds the singer embodying a cult leader-like character, backed by their most feshed-out music yet.

“We always want to ask the big questions. That’s maybe where our brains meet and why we’re friends in the frst place - we’re always asking questions and want to know more,” Conor says of their upcoming material. “Every decision you make from the moment you get up - are you gonna have a coffee or a glass of water? Are you gonna make your bed or not? These tiny decisions shape your life in the smallest ways but they build up, and every day you decide how you’re going to be. Whether you’re going to be selfsh or generous, good or bad,” Hamish continues. “Trying to translate those battles in your head into lyrics is what interests me, especially when you try to embody the other version of what you could be.”

Putting a sense of warm heart into sometimes cold sounds, VLURE are the best of both worlds: a band asking questions and writing their own rulebook of answers. 0

Embodying the resilient spirit of the character she created at her lowest ebb, the Florida-born rapper is coming out fighting and ready to take her place at music’s top table. Words: Grace Medford.

“I have things to do that are bigger than me.”

Towards the end of 2020, Jaylah Hickmon - known at that time as iamdoechii - was listing her intentions for the next fve years: collaborate with some of music’s greatest fgureheads; up the budgets; infuence pop culture in a real and tangible way. Fast forward to November 2022 and the artist now known as simply Doechii is already three years ahead of schedule. “I got there a little quicker than expected!” she admits. “I’ve already hit marks that I thought were so far off. I need to revisit the drawing board and fgure out where I want to take it.”

Doechii is speaking via Zoom from the kitchen of her home in Los Angeles, where she’s making pasta. Is she a good cook? “No. Horrible,” she says, plainly. In some ways it’s reassuring to know there’s at least one thing the 24 year old isn’t good at. Her ascent has been seemingly rapid and faultless. In the space of just a year she has blown through the milestones she laid out in 2020 at a rate of knots, a speed referred to in entertainment as ‘overnight’.

She’s opened shows for SZA, made a spectacular live TV debut on The Tonight Show hosted by Jimmy Fallon, dropped a verse on a David Guetta single that also featured Missy Elliott and walked in Balenciaga x Adidas for the starstudded Vogue World runway show at New York Fashion Week. She’s released the foor-flling, houseinfuenced ‘she / her / black bitch’ EP and delivered an electrifying BET Awards performance that had her snatching her own wig off on stageand that’s just the tip of the iceberg. How does it feel to be Doechii? “This is exactly what I’ve been praying for my whole life. I just feel gratitude all the time,” she says and then adds, with a laugh: “Well, not all the time, but most of the time!”

The ‘overnight’ version of Doechii’s success story begins in the middle of 2021, when she scored a genuinely organic viral hit off the back of a TikTok trend which utilised a short clip of the single ‘Yucky Blucky Fruitcake’ and its nowubiquitous opening phrase: “Doechii, why don’t you introduce yourself to the class?” She didn’t even have a TikTok account at the time. As her streams multiplied in the hundreds of thousands, Doechii found herself on the radar of Anthony ‘Moosa’ Tiffth - the son of Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) founder Anthony ‘Top Dawg’ Tiffth and current president of the legendary label responsible for launching Kendrick Lamar.

Moosa few her out to LA and took her to a session with producer Kal Banx. “It was my frst time in a professional studio,” Doechii says. “I was like, I don’t really know

how this works, I don’t know what they’re gonna want me to do, I just know that I don’t want to go home and I really want to be a part of this legacy.” She took a shot of tequila, went into the booth, and rained fre over the frst beat she was played. The rest, as they say, was history. “I just went crazy,” she says. “But I didn’t have any words. I got signed off of gibberish.”

There is, of course, far more to the story than that. To understand how “a weird, creative, dirty little hoodrat” came to be one of music’s hottest tips for 2023, we have to go back to Tampa, Florida, where Doechii was born and raised, the eldest of three siblings (she has twin sisters) in a single-parent household. Her mother encouraged her to take part in extracurriculars such as cheerleading, dance and choir, and when she reached her teens, Doechii pushed to attend a historically Black high school for performing arts - her vocals impressing enough at her audition that she was accepted despite living outside the school’s district. She was classically trained there and, when graduation rolled around, she had intentions of pursuing a career as a professional choral singer or teacher, before realising it was possible to make music as an independent artist. She threw herself into writing songs and recording lifestyle vlogs, growing a small fanbase on SoundCloud and YouTube and playing live shows anywhere she could get booked.

“I was working every aspect of my business at that time,” she says. “Making my own content, marketing, flming myself, taking pictures, styling myself, writing the music, shooting the videos. I did everything myself. A one-woman situation.” She quickly outgrew Tampa’s underdeveloped music scene, where the concept of paying artists to perform was considered a novel one, and moved to New York City in 2019 to further advance her career. Taking a job as a student advisor at a medical school - “Imagine me being your student advisor, I didn’t even go to college!” - Doechii soon realised that she couldn’t make music and work at the same time. “A big part of why I chose to do music is not only because I loved it, but because I really wanted to escape a job,” she says. “I hate the idea of jobs and having a boss. It was ‘choose them, and invest your eight hours into them, or invest everything into you’. I had to pick one.”

Doechii chose herself. When the pandemic hit in 2020, she quit the job she was “completely unqualifed” for and used her unemployment benefts to fund the creation of the ‘Oh, The Places You’ll Go’ EP, which dropped in November 2020. Her

return on investment was swift.

‘Yucky Blucky Fruitcake’ blew up the following April and she entertained several uninspired offers from major labels before she became the frst female rapper in TDE’s 10-year history to join the label’s roster.

In March 2022, Doechii released ‘Persuasive’ - a sultry purr of appreciation for spending the whole day faded - in line with the announcement of her joint signing to TDE and Capitol Records. The “gibberish” she laid down in that frst session would eventually translate to follow up single ‘Crazy’, which throbs and crackles with raw, unrestrained energy. In the video, easily the year’s best, Doechii and her team of dancers perform in a stark, concrete skeleton of a building, lined up like an underground militia for their stomping choreography, running around toting guns and baseball bats, setting fre to cars. The fow is unchanged from the deal-sealing frst cut, but the lyrics presented a challenge.

“I felt the theme in my soul,” says Doechii, pointing at hits like ‘Toxic’ by Britney Spears or Beyoncé’s ‘Run The World (Girls)’ as examples of songs with a storyline and a message, tied together with a snappy hook - the kind of songs she aspires to write herself. “I didn’t want it to just be, ‘I do this, I do that, blah blah blah’. I knew I wanted to make a statement so people could actually learn from it and be inspired by it for real.”

The motivation to “embody freedom and fearlessness for somebody else” can be traced back to Doechii’s origins. The moniker pre-dates her music career by over a decade; it was the name she gave to herself as she recovered from a suicide attempt following a sustained period of horrifc bullying. She was just 11 years old. “I decided that you will not kill me,” she says now, remembering how she came to rebuild her life after wanting to end it. “You will not kill me. You will not stop me. I found something to live for. I have things to do that are bigger than me.”

This philosophy forms the foundation of her highlyanticipated debut album. The tracklist is currently on its fourth iteration and she’s reluctant to share too many details while the project is still in fux, but the core message remains consistent. “I’m more focused on art right now rather than just entertaining people,” she says. “I want the music to feel big and alive and to make people feel things again. It’s getting quite numb in the world.”

Although Doechii isn’t exactly on a deadline - “My labels

and my whole team agree that we need the best product, so fuck a date at the end of the day; if it ain’t ready, it ain’t ready” - recently she has been in the studio “non-stop” working to fnish the album up. To her dismay, this has felt a lot like having the kind of job she was so keen to avoid. “I think every artist goes through this in their career,” she says. “I gravitated towards art because it feels limitless. It feels like it’s not a job. But it’s actually more time-consuming and demanding than a 9-to-5. I work a 24/7. The rose-tinted glasses are off.” Currently, she’s trying to shift her mindset so she can fully enjoy the process again. “I don’t want to be conscious of time, that’s not what art is about.”

It’s not just about the hours she’s putting in. Doechii holds herself to extremely high standards and the album won’t be fnished until it meets them. “I keep taking songs out because I’m making new shit that’s better or closer to my point,” she says. “I’ll know it’s done when I don’t have any critique. I don’t wanna cringe or be embarrassed about anything. I want to love every song and be able to listen to it over and over and over.”

Her “demonic” ambition comes from a lifetime of “doing everything in excellence,” an attitude that was instilled in her from a young age. “Just growing up as a Black woman, I was never allowed to half-ass things or I wasn’t included,” she says, with an audible it-is-what-it-is shrug. “I’m lowkey reacting out of trauma. There is no dark-skinned, mainstream female rapper, who is a pop star, who is commercial. I put a lot of pressure on myself.”

She’s all too aware from her own adolescent experiences that there is a very specifc intersection of racism and misogyny that makes Black women - and dark-skinned Black women in particular - targets for hatred and discrimination. She also knows better than to think that the music industry is any different than the school playground. Nothing has changed since Doechii was a pre-teen, except for Doechii herself; now she knows what she’s up against, and she knows what she can handle. “I’m not scared,” she says. “I’m a soldier. I’m a leader. I’m gonna die fghting and I’m not gonna let my environment, or how people perceive me, stop me from doing what I love.”

Like she said: it’s bigger than she is. Bigger than her next target - 100k album sales in the frst week. Bigger than a fve year plan, or even a ten or twenty year plan. Doechii is thinking in lifetimes. “Eventually, I’m going to be someone’s ancestor,” she says. “And I’m gonna want them to channel me when they feel like quitting. So I wanna keep transferring that energy and be myself as much as possible so other people can be inspired by that, because I needed that when I was young. That’s how Doechii came to be. She was me when I couldn’t be me. I needed Doechii, and now I am her.” 0

Dinner Party

Without a note of music released, this quintet have already supported The Rolling Stones and become London’s buzziest word-of-mouth new band. Are they THAT exciting? Well, actually, yes…

Words: Lisa Wright.

Photos: Jamie Macmillan.

If we’ve told you once we’ve told you a hundred times: no glitterball games on set.

To put it into a parlance that seems ftting, summer 2023 for The Dinner Party was like skipping starters and going straight to mains. Having released not a jot of music, and with only a handful of increasingly buzzy live shows under their belt, the London-based quintet found their name plastered across London tube posters nestled under a very famous band indeed: The Rolling Stones.

“It’s the biggest stage I’ve ever seen; we were just running up and down the ramps,” laughs bassist Georgia of their turn supporting the bonafde legends at Hyde Park. “But in a few months we’d gone from playing Brixton Windmill to Shepherd’s Bush Empire supporting BENEE,” picks up guitarist Lizzie, “so obviously the Stones show was a ridiculous gig, but it wasn’t our frst stupid ‘How did we get here?’ moment…”

So, how did they get here? “We tell different journalists different stories,” pipes up vocalist Abigaille, with a keen sense of myth-making already in place. And while, for today’s summit, the band have ditched their decadent IRL dinner party line for something a little more truthful (meeting over pizza and cider during a squashed Freshers’ Week gathering), that’s about the only slice of everyday mundanity you’re likely to fnd from the fve-piece.

Instead, The Dinner Party embrace an aesthetic of maximalism, grandeur and excess. The reason they’ve already caught the eye of rock’n’roll’s fnest? Because they already look and sound like they should join them. “Most nights, we’d be at gigs seeing four men playing guitars and shouting about politics. Where’s the fun?” questions Abigaille. “We wanted the band to be fun and joyful and euphoric, and we want to try really hard. We don’t want it to look effortless or like we don’t give a fuck, because we give so much of a fuck.”

It’s an attitude written over every increasingly buzzy step the band have taken so far, and one that’s literally written across a series of moodboards excitedly put together during The Dinner Party’s early ideas sessions. Nodding

to David Bowie and Queen, aestheticism and gothic literature (“We made it as pretentious as possible. Our music’s for the scholars,” deadpans Abigaille), for each gig they’d conjure up a theme replete with optimum opportunities to play dress up. “The frst one was ‘Princess Di in an advert for American Apparel’. Then we had ‘David Bowie Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Italian Renaissance Vampire’,” the vocalist informs.

Musically, too, the band’s ideas pull from disparate sources, uniting them with a sense of high melodrama and glorious theatricality. Take a peek at one of their live sets on YouTube, and there’s a confdence and adventurous spirit that belies their infancy as a unit. With two of their number (guitarist Emily and keyboard player Aurora) trained classically at the Guildhall School of Music, the bombastic rock opera of ‘Portrait of a Dead Girl’ or ‘Burn Alive’ with its sweeping Kate Bush nods come bursting with widescreen scale and ambition: a world away from the speak-sing post-punk dominating the London guitar scene of late.

“We have a 12 bar blues weird trumpet song, and a really Nine Inch Nails industrial song, and a Queen euphoric moment - experimenting [is what’s at the centre]. I think it makes sense to have a terrifying industrial track next to a sweeping operatic score,” Abigaille shrugs. “It’s the soundtrack to a really intense flm,” Georgia nods.

Having spent the frst two years of their formation in lockdown, Lizzie recalls that, by the time they were able to play a show, they were “probably overprepared”. But it’s this meticulous thought and care that’s causing The Dinner Party to set so many tongues wagging. For all the annoyance of the pandemic-centred delay, the band also understand the importance of creating a little mystique - hence their decision to press pause on putting out a single until the new year. “I like the old school idea of, ‘If you want to see this band, you have to see the show’,” says Georgia, while Abigaille confdently summarises: “We didn’t just want to put out music and wait for people to come and fnd it; we wanted there to be some rabid interest before we dropped anything.”

And with the quintet currently in the studio, prepping an album that they hope will land before 2023 is out, the buzz around the band is escalating by the day. Last month, they headlined London’s MOTH Club for DIY and The Great Escape’s First Fifty showcase, packing out the venue despite no one really knowing what they were going to see.

“The other two bands playing had descriptions on the [event] page like ‘indie pop’. And ours was just ‘music’,” Abigaille laughs. “Our genre is just… music.”

She might be joking, but maybe the best way to introduce yourself to The Dinner Party is to remove any stylistic constraints or preconceptions. Throw away the menu, toss out the stuffy ingredients list and get ready to feast. 0

with confidence (and with a trajectory that proves she’s probably right to be feeling good about herself), teen pop sensation Joyce Cisse is aiming for world domination. Words: Elly Watson. Photos: Eva Pentel.

Joyce Cisse is standing in one of London’s many Prets in a white shirt, blue sweater vest and some “very well-tailored” white trousers. It may seem like a fairly standard scene for anybody

dwelling in the capital but, for Joyce, she’s about to experience her frst ever pinchyourself moment.

“There was this girl and her family, and they were just wandering around outside contemplating if they should come in or wait for us to go out,” she recalls. “By the time she’d made up her mind, I came out, and she was bright red and crying and her hands were shaking.”

star, I didn’t know anything about music. I just wanted to be famous, that’s it,” she notes. “But now, [I want to be] a superstar.”

It was only around 2020 that Joyce found herself getting more immersed in music, highlighting Tame Impala as the band that truly ignited the fre within her. “It gave me this overwhelming feeling that I wanted to cry because it’s so beautiful,” she reminisces. “That made me want to make music. I was like, I want people to feel the same way I feel, because I felt like that’s what happiness felt like.”

Though she didn’t want to replicate the Aussie psychrock outft’s sound, Joyce got to work at harnessing

It was the frst time that Joyce - aka fowerovlovehad been recognised in the street, but it’s a situation that’s getting more common by the week for the South London teen. In the two years since debut single ‘Kiss & Chase’ arrived, she’s walked fashion shows, appeared on dozens of hype lists, and garnered a growing legion of loyal followers. Now, with her star ever further on the rise, Joyce always makes sure to wear a fre ‘ft in case of another fan run-in. “Even going

that feeling, beginning to create music with her brother in his bedroom or in their garage. “It’s a trustworthy environment when he’s there. I feel like good music is being made when he’s there. It feels honest when he’s there,” she smiles.

Her early singles embraced that easy, breezy, summerready feeling - emboldened by the fower imagery that

feel like I’m 20 years more mature than a regular 17 year old.” flowerovlove

to bed, I’m in a matching pyjama set,” she laughs. “If I’m gonna get kidnapped, the kidnappers will be like, ‘She’s too stylish, we’ve got to let her go!’”

Yet while her career check-points are being marked off steadily, Joyce is adamant that she’s just getting started. In fact, she won’t settle until she achieves her ultimate goal: namely the pop equivalent of “world domination”. It’s an aim Joyce has been reaching for ever since she can remember. Growing up wanting to be Justin Bieber, she was drawn to groups like Fifth Harmony and One Direction who were playing on the radio. “When I was younger and I wanted to be a pop

she’d adopted in her artist name. By the time debut EP ‘Think Flower’ arrived last year, she’d carved out a path soaked with nostalgia-laced, woozy pop gems, and this year’s follow-up ‘A Mosh Pit In The Clouds’ saw her further build on that vibe, creating a refreshing and warm project that feels both timeless and wonderfully modern. “I just make music for how I feel at the time,” she explains. “As long as it makes sense, your music doesn’t have to sound completely different because I don’t like that, it just feels forced. But it can sound like you in so many ways, and my music sounds like me.”

“I

While many of us likely had no clue who we were at 17, Joyce is certain of her identity and armed with the creative vision to prove it (“I’m not going to change who I am,” she states on recent track ‘All The Same’). Carrying herself with the kind of confdence that many spend years cultivating, her young age has obviously been a talking point for many, but it doesn’t bother her. “I think it does help me remember that I’m young, because I do feel like I’m 30 sometimes,” she explains. “I think I’ve always felt a little bit older mentally. I feel like I’m 20 years more mature than a regular 17 year old.”

Yet, youth still oozes into her music. Adolescent crushes manifest in this year’s pure-pop single ‘Will We Ever Get This Right’, while ‘Out For The Weekend’ is an ode to getting dressed up with your best pals. ‘Hannah Montana’, meanwhile, sees Joyce pay tribute to the titular teen icon. Even outside of her music, she’s hooked into the digital world, flming TikToks of her airdropping tracks to fans or promising people in Trafalgar Square that she’ll give them £10 to pre-save her music.

“When I was younger, I always pictured it like you had to be signed to release music, and if you were signed you were defnitely going to be famous,” she says. “Now, it’s actually a lot more work. There’s more stages to it, and a lot of it you do yourself. You have to be on it! If more people are online, YOU have to be online.”

It could wind up a tricky situation to navigate, especially for someone still growing up, but Joyce’s 30-year-old inner voice has made sure that she balances her online and private life. “I don’t like people to know too much about

what I show people. You catch my personality, but you don’t know anything about me. But, if you want to be a global superstar, people are going to fnd out stuff, so I’ve just gotta get ready.

“For me, it’s about the people,” she continues. “My goal is always to reach people, and numbers on a screen are always numbers on a screen, but when people recognise you in real life, it feels real.”

With those numbers rising daily - both online and in real life - Joyce is getting ever-closer to her world domination goal, and she’s more than sure that she’s ready for it. “I think my music’s good enough. I think if the whole world hears it, they’ll love it. It’s something I want and it’s something I deserve. As soon as I make a song, I listen to it on repeat because I think it’s so good,” she laughs. “I’ve stopped doing that though because it takes away the beauty of the music. I’ve made a lot of songs which I love which I now only rinse, like, once a week…”

Backing herself to the end, Joyce’s love and admiration for herself and all that she does is one of her most refreshing and endearing traits. Confdent and self-assured, she also channels her self-love into her music, aiming to “make people fall in love with themselves” whenever they listen to one of her songs. It’s a compelling aim to have, and one that she’s standing frm in. “I’ve seen way too many signs now that say that it will happen for me to not believe it,” she decides. “I only have a Plan A, and this is it.” 0

Forget tying a cherry stem, Joyce can tie an entire Windsor knot with her tongue.

“I think my music’s good enough. I think if the whole world hears it, they’ll love it.”

Residing in the madcap midpoint where The Fall meets, er, Mr. Farts, the London-viaBrighton septet are a party in and of themselves. Words: Max Pilley. Photo: Ed Miles.

And lo, it was pronounced that, having pulled the sword from the mossy stone, Keg shall be granted fame and fortune forevermore.

There is, in KEG bassist Joel Whitaker’s words, a “mischievousness” in the air at Brighton Komedia tonight. It’s the band’s frst hometown show since most of the group moved up the A23 to live in London earlier this year, but the love and camaraderie in the room remains; testament to how much KEG’s presence and development has meant to the Brighton music ecosystem since they began back in 2019.

With a big twelve months ahead of them, it may come as no surprise that the seven-piece have now made the capital their home. Following a 2022 packed with headline tours and show-stealing festival performances, and capped off by the release of their ‘Girders’ EP (their best work to date), 2023 should by rights see the momentum continue apace. If you ask them what happens next, however, a number of things come to mind.

“We’ve got a few months off the road now, so we’re going to hunker down,” says Joel. “Yeah, and get a bit healthier,” frontman Albert Haddenham chips in. “And hopefully look less grey,” adds trombonist Charlie Keen, as the rest collapse into laughter.

The mischievousness around KEG begins with the band themselves - an endlessly affable, evidently game-for-a-laugh bunch who happily deck themselves out in makeshift cloaks and chainmail for today’s Knights of the Round Table-themed photoshoot (a concept suggested by them). Meanwhile, it’s easy to get the sense that a long year on the road might well have been made more gruelling by their, shall we say, full-on embrace of the touring lifestyle. As minds begin to settle now, though, attention will inevitably soon turn towards recording their debut album.

“At the moment we’re just writing as much material as possible,” says Albert. “We’re not sure how long it will take, but we’re writing with an album in mind, for sure. It just seems an exciting thing to look forward to, releasing a big statement thing. At the moment all the songs sound quite cohesive; I’d just like to make a big piece of work that will stand out.”

The music KEG have released on their two EPs to date (’Girders’ and 2021 debut ‘Assembly’) is witty, wiry and withering - the sound of a band deeply immersed in arch, literate post-punk and the outer reaches of experimental pop. Jules Gibbons’ and Frank Lindsay’s guitars squall and grind, but they manage to jive and dance at the same time, while Albert’s lyrics are self-referential, walking a line between genuine expression and surrealism. Their art-for-art’s-sake aesthetic is not about to change, either.

“I respect those artists that just bash out albums, and they do it for the love of the music rather than thinking about how it’s going to land, or whatever,” says the frontman. “I think that’s more important in a lot of ways, doing it for the creation rather than for how you think it’s going to be received. It’s more important, in my eyes, to be like The Fall – just keep going, keep producing stuff, and if it resonates, that’s

“It’s fun to see where the rabbit hole goes sometimes…” - Albert Haddenham

What might be changing, however, is the band’s overall sound. Still young, and with a voracious appetite for discovering stranger and more diverse styles of music to obsess over, their recent writing stints have been yielding increasingly varied fruits. “We’ve dropped a couple of new ones that we’ve written in the last couple of months into the sets recently and already, going from those into ‘Heyshaw’, it feels like a different band,” says Joel, referring to ‘Assembly’’s lead single.

Currently, their stereo choices range from the sublime to the ridiculous. ‘Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares’ - the 4AD-released collection of Bulgarian female choir recordings - gets a shout out, while other notable mentions go to the Star Wars soundtracks and fatulent cartoon beatmaker Mr. Farts. “It needs to be quite tranquil in the van, sometimes,” is Albert’s roundabout attempt at an explanation for the latter.

“The more we condense our infuences into tracks more concisely,” he continues, trying to drag us back into the land of the sensible, “the more we know what we’re good at and where our strengths lie. And also, we know what we’d like to make. It’s becoming a lot clearer.”

Studio experiments for KEG have a tendency to take on a life of their own, especially given their eclectic musical histories (Frank, for example, is a hip hop producer on the side, while Charlie has a background in jazz improvisation). “There was one in the rehearsal room that we were doing a couple of days ago that just sounded like Primus, and we thought maybe we wouldn’t continue with that because it was just too on the nose,” Albert notes, “but it’s fun to see where the rabbit hole goes sometimes.” “There’s a little batch of nuggets that could easily just go on a funk album,” adds Joel. “Yeah, watch out for our swamp rock album when we’re in our forties…” quips Charlie.

Whichever maverick leftfeld stylistic impulses the band decide to pursue, the decision will be entirely their own: having self-produced their frst two EPs, KEG are set on continuing to do so for the foreseeable future. “We did all of the frst EP at home, but I think we’ve kind of decided that that’s how we’d like to work again, just to relieve a little bit of the pressure of the studio,” says Albert.

It’s the sign of a justifably confdent band that they’re comfortable enough to follow their own path so independently. KEG might be cheeky jokesters in some areas, but when it comes down to pursuing the band’s next moves, they’re clearly taking the challenge suffciently seriously. Six-sevenths of the band now call South-East London home; an area of the city teeming with kindred musical spirits who’d no doubt be queuing up to work with them. But KEG are holding strong that their path is the best: exactly the sort of attitude we’d look for in our knights of the musical realm.

0

The multihyphenate singerrapperproducerfilmmaker has already shown he has ideas and ambition to spare. Slowly piecing together a one-man creative empire, in 2023 the sky’s the limit. Words: Charlotte Krol.

Photos: Ed Miles.

Wesley Joseph is delving straight into the imagery of his self-directed music video for latest single ‘MONSOON’. “The image is of an angel with an AK47 aimed at her. It’s [held by] the same person, but a version of her as the devil. She’s staring it dead in the face, unfinchingly. That’s just a metaphor in itself: in the face of phobia, you’ve made that decision.”

The metaphor for the track’s visuals, explains the Walsall-raised, London-based soloist, stands in contrast to its lyrics, which question one’s purpose in life in “to the point” fashion. “One line is about my relationship with phobia and how I stare it in the face - how as a result of that I’m stronger,” he says. “I have so many phobias but one is my fear of not reaching my own potential.”

Indeed, the 26-year-old singer, rapper, songwriter, producer, flmmaker and artist has ambition writ large. Wesley takes a holistic approach to his work - from making his own beats and branching out to collaborate with the likes of A.K. Paul, The Invisible’s Dave Okumu, and Leon Vynehall, to directing his music videos and teaser trailers. The former flm student’s art intersects naturally. “That’s what I love about flm and music. With the flm work, it contains a lot of abstract and metaphor, with powerful scenes that people can interpret differently,” he says. Wesley, however, prizes music above all. “Music is the most powerful engine that allows me to have a consistent sense of presence,” he affrms.

‘MONSOON’ - a track that fnds him hopping effortlessly between supple rapping and lacy falsetto - features on his forthcoming second project ‘GLOW’. In summer 2021, meanwhile, Wesley released his debut project ‘ULTRAMARINE’ featuring ‘Patience’a collaboration with his childhood friend Jorja Smith, with whom he was also formerly in the West Midlands music collective OG Horse. Chatting today, the multihyphenate is already a couple of weeks into working on his debut album with help from some of those collaborators, following a recent feature on Loyle Carner’s new album. He has a “hit list” of guests to secure for his own, but doesn’t want to reveal the names for risk of jinxing.

If that sounds like a busy creative mind at work, then that’s because it is. Wesley, who says he’s an anxious person, can’t help it; his brain is fring on all cylinders at all times. Although he didn’t know it at the time of making ‘GLOW’ (arriving 17th February via Secretly Canadian and his own EVIL TWIN imprint), the artist now realises that it’s been an antidote to his “phobia” about his career aspirations.

“Before I fnished ‘GLOW’ it had a therapeutic, soulenriching and liberating purpose for myself. It allowed me to grow personally,” he explains. “By the end of it, I listened to it and realised it had a reassuring warmth to it. I hope it provides people a sense of security, growth and fulflment in the same way. I guess it’s like an introvert’s blanket.”

’GLOW’ undoubtedly shows Wesley’s development as a songwriter. He’s more sonically curious than on ‘ULTRAMARINE’, deploying melancholic strings on project highlight ‘Cold Summer’ or twisting AutoTuned vocals to make a Middle Eastern-tinged fute sample on ‘I Just Know Highs’. Lyrically, he at points plays more loosely with narrative - particularly on the Jekyll and Hyde voice play of that latter track. “I just know lows, and you just know highs / That’s where I go blind,” he sings with a rap lilt. Of the lyrics, he explains today that “it could be a relationship with yourself, or it could be relating to a relationship. I love that it can be taken either way; it’s purposely an overarching metaphor for loads of things.”

On another ‘GLOW’ cut - the rattling, eerie hip hop number ‘Hiatus’ - he raps about the “small town mentality” pertaining to his home town. After the welcome move to London in 2016 to study flm (“I felt like a grown man in a child’s bedroom, creatively and spiritually, in Walsall”), he completed the song that he’d started as a teen.

“I had a rough version of it when I was a depressed teenager in Walsall,” he says. “I was working a retail job. I hated it and I was super anxious and really pessimistic. Everyone who I’d try to relate to at that time just kind of looked at me like I was some weird alien or didn’t understand that I wanted more - [which is] not to say that people at home don’t want more.

“I found myself at times speaking to people and it felt like the general consensus was that the childlike dreams you have aren’t realistic, like, ‘Why do you still think like that?’ That’s what the ‘small town mentality’ line was about,” he continues. “Now, the song’s more liberating and powerful because of where I’m at. The only consistent thread between the two [versions] is that I never stopped working; I never had a ‘hiatus’. It’s like the teenage superhero anthem I never had.”

Wesley wrote ‘GLOW’ more collaboratively. It wasn’t devoid of his usual solo bedroom songwriting, but it was a less isolated process than ‘ULTRAMARINE’ where he’d completely “mapped” out songs: something he says often felt stilted. For ‘GLOW’, instead, he decided to make whatever he felt in the moment the priority.

’ULTRAMARINE’ frst allowed him to “understand my artillery, my strengths, my own methodology” so that he was ready to take things up a gear, he explains. “That’s why you could say the quality of music technically and musically [on ‘GLOW’] is better, because there’s a confdence there and there’s a

“I have so many phobias but one is my fear of not reaching my own potential.”

spontaneity.” He’s managed to utilise that spontaneity, ironically, by being eminently prepared.

“In order for the most seamless sense of magic to happen in the spontaneous moments, I prepare for them,” he elaborates. “So, for example, I might have spent days prior [to the session] making a vocal preset that sounds like a fute. I do that [preparation] constantly. I recycle and make samples, sounds and presets; I make vocal settings; I draw ideas; I write things down; I screenshot things; I assemble things. I make roughly 10 voice notes a day. If I wake up from a dream and there’s a song playing in it, I make the noise into my phone. It’s a consistent stream of ideas.”

That’s why, whenever he’s asked about who or what infuences him, the answer eludes him - even if in the past he’s counted Frank Ocean and Kendrick Lamar among his musical mainstays. “I honestly can’t think of any singular names,” he says. “I might just skip through a book, or maybe I watch a scene [in a flm] I’ve liked, but just the colour of it sticks. Then I’ll keep that in mind for the colouring of another scene [in his videos].”

Wesley challenges himself to keep his art as fresh as possiblesomething that must be intrinsically diffcult to maintain. He takes a pause from his lunch and stares at the ceiling like a contemplative philosopher at the idea. “The truth is, you can either chase the dragon and you never catch it because you’re relentlessly trying to chase it. Or you can wait for the bird to sit in your hand and plant seeds and you just wait,” he says.

“For me, I just need to be completely immersed in life itself: having conversations with people, reading, seeing things, taking it all in. Literally, there’s no limit to life itself. And as long as your brain’s programmed to constantly be ready for that moment of inspiration, it always comes. If you can harness that feeling, that’s literally the cheat code.”

As with ‘GLOW’, Wesley Joseph is willing to let his creativity spark for his debut album without too much overthinking - even if his mind barely switches off. In the future he has ambitions to write a score, make a feature-length flm, make a series, venture into the art world and design clothes. As he affrms: “There’s no limit whatsoever.” 0

“As long as your brain’s programmed to constantly be ready for that moment of inspiration, it always comes.”

altar

Take a closer look through the lineup for When We Were Young - the recent Paramore and My Chemical Romance-headlined throwback to the heydays of emo - and one thing immediately jumps out: there’s an important shift in the lower part of the billing. On a poster dominated by the white men that have led the charge across the scene for the past two decades, there’s a new wave of alternative voices rising through the ranks - something that isn’t lost on Paramore’s iconic frontwoman Hayley Williams.

Stashed away for safekeeping inside the glovebox of rising trio Meet Me @ The Altar’s van, there’s a letter from Hayley, written from that Las Vegas show. “It’s going to give us good luck,” drummer Ada Juarez smiles, met with nods of approval from vocalist Edith Victoria and guitarist Téa Campbell. “The letter talks about how we are really opening the doors for Black and Brown people who want to create music, and for a lot of women who want to create music too,” Edith continues enthusiastically. “And that we’re doing really good work.”

The letter acts as a physical representation of the band’s welcome role in changing the landscape of their subsection of rock, joining contemporaries such as new friends and viral sensations The Linda Lindas. That line-ups such as these rarely diversify isn’t the source of any anger, however; instead Meet Me @ The Altar are proud to be part of a noticeable change.

“We always knew what we were getting into, even from the start,” recalls Téa. “When we were 15 or 16 starting a band, we were kind of waiting for something like us to come along as we were growing. Now, I guess it’s us. We knew how much having a band that looks like us, that we could see ourselves in, would have meant to our elementary school selves. It’s really cool for us to be in that position. It’s important to talk about and get the conversations going, and draw attention to the fact that there needs to be more women and people of colour in this scene who are being uplifted by the people who are already in power.”

That path hasn’t always been easy though. The band formed in 2015, welcoming Edith into the fold two years later. Momentum was slow at the start, but a wave of fans found their way to the trio in 2020. As bands grappled with the emerging obstacles of remote creativity, they had experience in that feld already; Téa had met Ada through drumming videos on YouTube and bonded over a shared love of Twenty One Pilots, meaning MM@ TA had worked across US state lines since their inception. With a clear passion for their musical heritage, unfazed by isolation and spurred on by global uprising, they drew the attention of scene stalwarts such as Dan Campbell of The Wonder Years. A deal with iconic Gainesville, Floridabased record label Fueled By Ramen followed.

“We’ve been mentally preparing for these days,” Téa takes stock. “This was always the plan from

the start. It’s taken a while, but it’s so fulflling to know that we were right to trust ourselves and to go against the grain no matter what people said. We’ve put our all into this band for the past seven years, and it’s so cool to see it start to pay off.”

Having packed in their day jobs to take the band full time, and with global tours and festival appearances under their belt, Meet Me @ The Altar have no plans to slow it down. In fact, their frustration at a current limbo between touring and the release of their debut album - due in the spring - is palpable. “We want to be a household name!” Téa exclaims with infectious ambition. “We want to be one of the greats. We fully believe with our entire being that we’re going to get to that place we want to be. We know we are going to get exactly what we want.”

That their moment has come seven years after forming doesn’t deter them either. “If anything, we’re stronger than ever before,” Edith says, mirroring Téa’s self-belief.

“Once you get a little taste of something, you want a lot more. It’s defnitely stronger, and very much here. You want to keep going and going and going.” “That’s literally the secret,” Téa laughs. “That’s how we got here. You have to be delusional as fuck and you have to do the work.”

Their new music looks to continue that trajectory, and fnds Meet Me @ The Altar still working very much on their own terms. Self-described as in the world of rock but a softer step away from easy-core, it’s set to propel them onto new stages in front of diverse audiences. They’ve recently completed shows with queer alt-pop powerhouse MUNA and are heavily inspired by Taylor Swift’s recently announced shows with Paramore, Phoebe Bridgers, HAIM, Beabadoobee and more - breaking boundaries and celebrating women in music, regardless of genre.

“I feel like artists and bands confne themselves too much in a certain box sometimes because it’s comfortable and that’s what they’re used to,” Téa expands. “I feel like you can only grow so much if you are stuck with the same thing. It’s cool to branch out.”

It’s all part of the band’s subtle mission to change the face of rock, and to show the world that music can stretch beyond and embrace all. “There’s a lot of beauty in thinking about when people will just see any band like how they see a bunch of white dudes up there,” Edith concludes. “A lot of our fans that really ride or die for us, they just see a band and we just happen to be who we are. The act of just being us is really enough.” 0

She’s already got Obama and Florence Welch fighting her corner; now the West London singer is aiming to cast her net out and ensnare the rest of the world. Words: Max Pilley. Photos: Pooneh Ghana.

“So much is transient and forgettable now and I don’t want to make something that’s like that.”

Hope Tala is standing side of stage at the Hollywood Bowl, watching Florence Welch whirl and stride its width in front of 18,000 people. She’s refecting on her own role that day, opening for one of her favourite musicians at one of the world’s most famous arenas. She’s remembering that just a year ago, she had barely ever played a gig of her own. It is all a lot to take in.

“The scale and gravity of what she does, it was so inspiring for me,” says Hope just a few weeks into the afterglow of those memories. “It was a real experience to see her do her thing. She’s the best at what she does.”

Florence may be at the top of her game, but there is a reason that she picked Hope to support her for those two shows. The 24-year-old West Londoner’s early releases have presented her as an artist at the vanguard of contemporary R&B and pop; from the suave, elegant, ‘80s groove of ‘Leave It On the Dancefoor’ to the sultry, stately ‘Stayed at the Party’, she’s a standout-from-the-crowd new voice that demands attention.

With the boost of that stadium experience still under her sails, Hope is now turning her attention to completing the debut album that she began recording in January 2021. “It’s almost two years in the making,” she says, “but when it’s the right time for it to come together, it’ll come together. The music is very nearly ready. Defnitely, 2023 is the goal. It’s just important that all my ducks are in a row frst.”

After a breakthrough trio of EPs released between 2018 and 2020, the singer was raring to take the immediate next step. She relocated semi-permanently to Los Angeles and made a connection with legendary producer Greg Kurstin (Adele, Sia, Beck). “There are a lot of amazing producers in LA that I’ve had the opportunity to work with,” she smiles. “My team is here, and I love it out here. It really is a place that I love to be in and there is an amazing creative community here, of course. And there’s great weather!”

Not unreasonably, Hope considers herself to be a genre-less artist, believing in the very 2020s notion that all things exist simultaneously at all times. Certainly, traces of bossa nova, alt rock and Latin jazz regularly pop up in her tracks, all seamlessly and expertly interwoven into a fnal product that is distinctively her own.

“I’m someone who doesn’t like being put in boxes,” she says. “I think most people would probably say that, but I’m a mixed-race person, I’m a queer person, I’m a gender-queer person. So, saying ‘I’m just this one thing’ is never how I’ve been since the day I was born.”

Hope’s upbringing was one of rich musical immersion too, from her mum’s love of the neo-soul of Erykah Badu and India Arie, to her dad’s diverse tastes, ranging from Chic to Foo Fighters to Cheryl Cole. Her own obsessions went through major Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Beyoncé phases, only to reach her current all-inclusive state. “We just live in such a global world, where we go on our streaming platform of choice and everything is at our fngertips. People no longer necessarily form their identity around one genre of music; it’s such a mishmash now, which I love. My sonic infuences are very varied.”

It makes it diffcult to predict exactly how her eventual album will sound - even Hope herself is not sure. “I think that people will be pleasantly surprised. I want to present a variety on the album. I want it to be cohesive, of course, but I want it to represent the extent of my infuences and of my potential,” she decides. “My biggest hope is that people listen to it as a project and can return to it in fve or ten years’ time. So much is transient and forgettable now and I don’t want to make something that’s like that.”

One individual who would appear to be waiting in anticipation is Barack Obama, who included the singer’s track ‘All My Girls Like to Fight’ on his ‘Favourite Music of 2020’ playlist. “I was literally watching the Strictly Come Dancing fnal with my mother, and I had my phone off because I wanted to avoid knowing who won because we were watching it slightly delayed and we’re big Strictly fans,” she laughs. “I turned my phone back on and someone had DM-ed me saying, ‘You’ve made Obama’s list’. Me and my parents and my brother were celebrating all night. My dad got very drunk, which is very uncharacteristic of him. It was literally

the happiest moment of my whole family’s life; we lived on the high of that for a very long time.

“I’ll have to get that album out to give him more to choose from next time,” she continues with a grin. “I just close my eyes and imagine him listening to my music while he’s in his house in DC, making French toast or whatever he eats. It’s such a wonderful thing.”

One gets the sense that Hope Tala does not require too much in the way of confdence boosters, and nor should she. But with endorsements like that under her belt, who knows where the musician can go next. “It keeps life interesting,” she says, refecting on her future. “I’m very interested to see how 2023 will play out, knowing how unpredictable 2022 was for me. Hopefully, it brings lots of unexpected, fun adventures.” 0

ur mums and dads are very impressed,” informs Opus Kink frontman and chief spokesperson Angus Rodgers on their year just gone. A rather wholesome refection, perhaps, for this most grimy, boisterous, and chaotic of bands, but one that you’d be hard-pressed to argue with either.

Completed by keyboardist Jazz Pope, trumpeter Jack Banjo Courtney, saxophonist Jed Morgans, and brothers Finn and Sam Abbo on drums and bass respectively, the Brighton-raised sextet call their music ‘jazz-punk’. Underlying Angus’ romantic, sepia-tinted chronicles sit tarantellas and wartime, raving rhythms that come punctuated with fanfares of brass and woodwind, adding a bebop abandon that might have made John Coltrane lift his brow.

While the growing presence of horns in UK guitar bands is not lost on them - “It’ll be out by next year,” quips the singer with a wry smile - Opus Kink go about their work with such theatrical levels of tongue-in-cheek melodrama as to create an aesthetic that feels uniquely theirs. And as their rapid growth over the past 12 months indicates (a sell-out 100 Club show in February; a debut EP in June; a recent support tour with Warmduscher), it’s an appeal that can only grow from here.

“We are relishing it,” he says of the bigger rooms they’ve found themselves playing of late. “If the sound’s good and it’s coming at your face, that’s one thing. But when it’s coming up your arse as well…”

Despite their distinctly alternative approach, Opus Kink’s music makes sense in these spaces; feverish entertainers at their core, their catalogue is already full of unabashed crowd-pleasers. Be it their irresistible mosh-friendly energy, proclivity for tantalising false endings, or the no-nonsense choruses that just beg to be bawled back stagewards (“Tarantula!”, “Mosquito!” and “Wild Bill!” comprising just three of them), so maximal is their intensity and infectious abandon that enjoyment ceases to become something voluntary, but more a fantastic obligation.

Meanwhile, we’re assured that a second Opus Kink EP will spill onto our laps before the summer. “With this record we hope to have left the sound tarnished, blemished and ruined in the way of a live show,” offers Angus by way of cryptic teaser. “It’s an attempt to bottle whatever feebleness and malevolence might seep out of us in a raw form.”

Will they get more serious from here on out? “Never,” he asserts frmly. “The worse and more of a joke it becomes, the more serious it becomes at the same time. We’ll become more serious through further debasement and jokes. It’s as serious as your life, man.”

Pop’s spellbinding new star, already bringing her surreal magic to some of music’s biggest stages. Words: Elly Watson. Photo: Erica Snyde.

“My seventh show in my life was in an arena! That’s like, straight into the deep end!"

Dora Jar: pop star by day, sock puppet snake charmer by night.

Picture the scene. You’ve bagged a spot at the frst-ever London show from one of music’s hottest new tickets. You turn around and see arguably the biggest pop star in the worldnamely Billie Eilish - in the crowd behind you. The lights dim and the show starts, however instead of the singer you’re expecting, a body bag is brought onto stage. Then it unzips and, as soil pours out, in the midst of it all is the mastermind behind the madness: Dora Jar.

It sounds like a surreal fever dream, but this sort of scene is all in another day’s work for 24-year-old, New York-born alt-pop artist Dora Jarkowski. Calling us from her tour van as she speeds past tree-lined highways en route to Boston from her home city, Dora is currently injecting that same unpredictable magic into her nightly rituals as she embarks on her debut US headline tour, delighting the ever-growing number of fans (whose stan names range from Jarheads to The Crumpets) packing in to see her each night.

“There’s this group of four people who came to the frst three shows and they all coordinated what they were going to wear,” she smiles. “The frst night, they were dressed up as full-blown wizards; the next show they were tigers; the next show they were bumblebees. That, in itself, has been very inspiring. We’re just expressing ourselves, and being silly and freeing ourselves through that.”

It’s this sense of freedom and fun that’s at the core of Dora’s music. Releasing debut single ‘Did I Get It Wrong’ in October 2020, the brooding and pulsating number marked not just an intriguing introduction, but an indication that the singer was wanting to do things a little differently. Her music since has found her playing characters and drawing inspiration from unexpected sources, like the Hawaii-shaped scars that informed last year’s single ‘Scab Song’, or the mermaids in her irresistible track ‘Lagoon’ (“I’d like to be suddenly discovered by you / When I’m washed up on the shore / And you’re travelling through”).

“Walking inspires me more than anything,” she notes. “That’s how I clear my head and connect back into the stream of consciousness where I think my best ideas come from. And Disney flms! And old musicals! There’s a lot of magical, hidden archetypes. I’ve been talking about Pinocchio a lot because we watched it in the van the other day, and a lot of random lyrics come to me just from how present old Disney is in my subconscious.”

It’s no shock that Dora’s music has found itself described as surreal - a description she agrees is the most apt. “I don’t see my music as like a diary entry, I see it more as, ‘How can I expand my imagination and consciousness and stay excited about new ideas?’” she explains. “I think I just genuinely have no idea what’s going on, and I don’t think many people do. I don’t like stating opinions a lot, I fnd that it feels wrong to say anything in a very convinced way. That way, I can change my mind a lot and not have to be one thing. I think that’s why all of the songs sound so different, and there’s these different personas that come through, and conficting desires.”

Evident on her shapeshifting EPs - 2021’s ‘Digital Meadow’ and this year’s ‘comfortably in pain’ - her unique and intriguing approach to pop music has seen her gain fans in the likes of Remi Wolf, Conan Gray and Billie, who invited Dora to open her Happier Than Ever tour earlier this year.

“I love these artists as artists frst, and they love my music, which is crazy, and then I get to know them as people and I love them as people after the art,” she beams. “It makes the world smaller in a really sweet way.”

Dora continues: “My seventh show in my life was in an arena! That’s like, straight into the deep end! But just seeing the fans, that’s a huge inspiration. Seeing how people connect with the music is mind-blowing and that’s really what it’s all about: expression. We get to express ourselves together in the same context and share those moments.”

As well as building the fan rapport, Dora’s been soaking up the lessons she can learn from watching some of music’s biggest stars in their natural habitats, too. “I get to be in the presence of these people who are so amazing at what they do, and they’ve given me the opportunity to learn in these scenarios,” she enthuses. “They’ve given me this amazing opportunity and I get to grow within it.”

And, with a series of bucket list experiences already ticked off, the whirlwind last two years have cemented the fact that making music is clearly what Dora is meant to be doing.

“In the hardest time, like two or three years ago, when nothing was making any sense and nobody had heard my music before and I was just kind of like, ‘When is this gonna work?’, the driving force was probably just that I knew I had something in me that needed to come out,” she explains.

“It’s like this mysterious calling.”

Dora is now gearing up to welcome even more people into her world as she sets out to create an eagerly-awaited debut album - although, admittedly, she knows “nothing” about what that’s going to be like yet. But frst comes a post-tour plan to head over to mainland Europe, with a personal pilgrimage of sorts to Poland in her sights. “That’s where my DNA is from and there’s always a deep connection to spirit and ancestors when I’m there, which is a very strong throughchannel to creativity,” she assures.

It’s a theory that’s already been proven to be true. She penned this year’s glitchy single ‘Bump’ there while drinking “a lot of tea,” before marrying the track with a visual idea she got from a dream several years ago (teapot feet, of course) for its music video, which has been watched over 170,000 times in two months. “At any point in the day, I’ll close my eyes and I’ll just see things behind my eyelids,” she smiles of her off-kilter sources of inspiration. “A lot of the time it’s just really weird combinations of things!”

Right now, Dora says she has been pouring over YouTube videos of trapeze and Cirque Du Soleil performers, becoming “obsessed” with the latter’s visuals. “It’s like a Dali painting come to life! It’s so creepy and beautiful, so I’ve been thinking a lot about that,” she says, continuing: “I did [trapeze] a lot when I was in middle school, but I never really got that far and I had a lot of back issues so I stopped, but I’d like to swing on one again!” With that comes another subconscious-fed idea that we’ll no doubt end up seeing in a Dora Jar video or on stage soon enough. “I also used to have this recurring dream where I’d escape my own wedding with a trapeze,” she says with a laugh.

With her unique ideas ever-evolving, Dora has already established herself as an artist intent on keeping her fans guessing and marvelling at each new visual and plan. Heading into 2023, she’s ready to fully kick open the gateway to who Dora Jar truly is. “I just want to keep playing shows with new music that feels true to me and I want to keep knowing who I am as an artist in a deeper way,” she says. “This industry is so fucked up and it’s really easy to forget who you are. I’m just gonna disappear for a bit and come back with my truth again.”

R&B-pop’s brightest new hopes, Renée Downer, Jorja Douglas and Stella Quaresma are breaking out of their ‘Cardboard Box’ and reaching for superstardom. Words: Lisa Wright.

“A

n average day is - you’ve got a meeting in the morning, then a ftting, then a vocal rehearsal,” begins Renée Downer. “Then you need to go home and take out your hair and wash and blow dry it and run on your treadmill, and then practice because the next day you’re doing a video shoot, and the day after that you’re doing another video shoot, and then next week you have a MOBOs performance. That’s the situation right now.”

Even in the gaps between schedule commitments, FLO barely have a moment to themselves; when they log into today’s call, bandmates Jorja Douglas and Stella Quaresma are dimly lit in the back of separate cabs on the way home from a rehearsal, while Renée is hurtling down the road trying to intercept the driver of hers. It’s taken several weeks of reschedules and postponements to even manage to lock down this shaky Zoom connection with the London-based trio. Everything for FLO right now is relentlessly go, go, go.

It began a mere nine months ago, with the release of debut single ‘Cardboard Box’, and has snowballed ever since in a way that suggests things aren’t likely to calm down any time soon. That song picked up the box to the left of Beyoncé’s kiss-off anthem ‘Irreplaceable’ and channelled its empowering spirit into a harmony-soused song that seemed to naturally ft into a lineage of classic girl groups past: TLC, Sugababes, Destiny’s Child.

Jorja recalls “literally crying with relief” when their label, Island, fnally gave them the go ahead to release the track. “We fought so hard for it to be our frst song, so for it to really exceed our expectations and give us the best launch ever, it’s been such a relief and such a reward,” adds Renée.

Their expectations might understandably have included a certain level of viral success. During their 2021 incubation period, the group would upload intricately harmonised covers of Doja Cat, Silk Sonic and more to TikTok, watching the anticipation build and the comments roll in (“Destiny’s grandchildren” stands as a particular highlight). But it’s the welcome mat that’s been laid down for them by their peers and idols that really marks FLO out from the pack. Kelly Rowland swung by the studio during the recording of withering R&B banger ‘Not My Job’; SZA and Missy Elliott have both gone on record as fans; Brandy has become something of a regular fgure in their lives.

“We were doing a media training Zoom,” Jorja reveals in a move that probably wasn’t in that meeting’s advice, “and our trainer is friends with Brandy. When we were talking about our inspirations she was like, ‘Oh! Let me just text her!’ Then all of a sudden, Brandy’s joining in the Zoom and we’re just sitting there in disbelief that she’s talking to us. Since then she’s been supportive on Instagram and everywhere.”

Like many things with FLO, the pieces all seem to be naturally ftting into place: a benchmark that began with the group’s creation.

- Renée Downer

Though girl group auditions bring to mind a very X Factor-style way of constructing a musical unit, the three members of FLO all had previous experience with each other before they reunited at Universal HQ. Renée and Stella had gone to school together, while Stella and Jorja had met “in a group setting”; when the three were teamed up together to workshop a mash-up, they all picked the same songs, realising straight away that their tastes were naturally aligned. “The way it all came together,” says Renée, “why would it not be 100% meant to be?”

The shout outs they give today seem to naturally fall into two columns: the greats of American R&B (Faith Evans, Mary J Blige, Brandy) and classic, attitude-driven girl groups (Spice Girls, Pussycat Dolls). At

“The way it all came together - why would it not be 100% meant to be?”

the centre of the venn diagram sit Destiny’s Child - held up as the perfect example of what the genre can be. “The standard they held themselves to is what we appreciate there,” Jorja says. “In my opinion, there’s no other girl group who had that level of choreo and vocals, and the way they carried themselves is as close to perfection as a girl group has ever seen.”

FLO evidently hold themselves to equally high standards; recently, they posted a rehearsal video to social media, showing them exercising while singing to practise their breath work in preparation for any intense future choreography. Also notable is how much the trio evidently embrace the notion of the girl group and all it entails. They don’t want to be a band, they want to be a group - with the emphasis on unity. “In a band people are doing different things, but in a girl group we have to work together to make it perfect,” Jorja notes.

Female solidarity is also a recurring sentiment throughout FLO’s output so far, particularly on gal pal bop ‘Summertime’ and its accompanying video, which sees the three larking about in Greece. “We were brought up by our mums and we’ve always grown up with that same message of female empowerment and strength,” says Stella. “I think [what we want to represent is] to go with your gut and be strong in what you believe in, and that your voice holds weight.” At one point during today’s chat, following an enthusiastic foray into the “passion, conviction and emotion” found in US R&B, Renée suggests that the Spice Girls’

message was preaching the same ideas. “All of their songs just give so much energy and that translates onto whoever’s listening to it. You just wanna get up and have fun and go crazy, and be Baby Spice or be Mel B. It’s the same effect.”

FLO aren’t bothered about nurturing the individual aesthetics that their Spicy forebears were so famed for, however; instead they want to advocate for their cohesiveness as a trio. “It’s more about us becoming more alike than something in us growing and sticking out,” says Renée after an attempt to glean their girl group personas results in the not-hugely-marketable ‘Organised FLO’ and ‘Chill FLO’. And, as they prepare for the release of an incoming December single (all we’re allowed to say is that, as Stella notes, it’s “ftting for the time period” of a Christmastime release) and an even bigger 2023, their six-legged pop juggernaut is coalescing into one unstoppable whole.

There are plans for guest stars, a new live show and a debut album - none of which they’re prepared to even remotely divulge today aside from the fact that the new material will be “not all about boys all the time”. But even though the details are scarce, the excitement around the future of FLO is tangible. Brandy knows it. Kelly knows it. The global audience who watched them already make their US TV debut on Jimmy Kimmel know it, and the 2.6 million people who’ve made TikToks to their songs are extremely on board. Going with the FLO, then, seems like a no brainer. 0

“In a band people are doing different things, but in a girl group we have to work together to make it perfect.” - Jorja

Rachel Chinouriri

Throwing off the stereotypes that had limited her early career, Rachel Chinouriri is harnessing the power of self-belief (and a good splash of ‘00s indie).

Words: Max Pilley.

Photos: MOAL.

Chinouriri I

f 2023 is set to be Rachel Chinouriri’s defning year so far, the timing could not be better. The Croydon singersongwriter has been amassing a formidable head of steam with her esoteric, leftfeld indie pop music for the last few years, but she admits that only now does she feel ready to take the next step. “I feel like if this was happening to me when I was two or three years younger, it would’ve gone really wrong,” she says.

After weathering a turbulent period in her personal life, Rachel spent 2022 putting her instincts frst. The results - including last summer’s ‘Better Off Without’ EP - have been resounding. “This is the year when I’ve doubted myself the least and said no to a lot of different things,” she explains. “In return, it’s been my most well-received year and the music has been the closest to what I want it to actually sound like. “I feel really excited,” she continues, eager to look towards the year ahead. “It is a slightly anxious feeling,

Constance.

The experience coincided with a diffcult break-up and, as she emerged from that period, Rachel redoubled her efforts to make the type of art that she felt was the truest expression of her identity - something she realised she had previously allowed herself to be distracted from. “I did try to change my sound, and accommodate certain things, and look a certain way,” she refects. “And as much as I loved that music and that sound, it was not entirely who I was.

“I would literally be sitting in the studio and be like, ‘Black artists that do well in the UK, what do they sound like?’,” she recalls. “I started shifting the way I would think in a creative space. As someone who has been writing things since I was six, seven years old, I’ve always written things for myself. So the fact that, entering the industry, I had started to think, ‘What will people say? What will the press say?’, that was the frst time I’d ever done that and it really messed up the process for me a bit.”

On the contrary, ‘Better Off Without’ arrived in May as a bright and sparkling testament to the real Rachel Chinouriri: a strikingly confdent electro-pop bonanza. ‘All I Ever Asked’ is the quintessence of the change - a hooky, irresistibly slinky number that blossoms with primarycoloured shoots of life. And yet, beneath the bustling positivity of the tunes, there remains a lyrical darkness borne from Rachel’s real life circumstances. “It was the worst break-up of my life,” she says, describing her ex-partner as being “too cool for joy” and explaining that he also contributed to the sense that she had to in some way alter her public identity. “I ended up so depressed, so I started trying to fght it,” she says. “And it worked out for me, thank god. I’m very happy now.”

but more because you want to prove yourself because you’ve been given the platform and space to deliver the music you want to make. There are a million and one people that would love to be in this position, so the fact that I’ve been granted it, it just makes me excited to show what I’ve got and prove to people that I can be an indie pop artist.”

The genesis of her newfound self-assuredness can be traced back to the start of 2022. She posted an Instagram message in January, outlining her frustration at being mis-categorised as an R&B or neo-soul artist, despite her records bearing none of those traits. “In my early days, to be put into genres I never grew up listening to was so bizarre to me, then it clicked it was because of my skin,” she wrote. The post became widely shared and prompted supportive messages from her peers, including Arlo Parks and Connie

With that identity crisis now frmly behind her, the singer exudes excitement when discussing the plans for her debut album. Some around her wanted her to travel to Los Angeles to record, but Rachel put her foot down, choosing the familiar comfort of the English countryside instead. “I did go to LA at the beginning of the year and it was incredible,” she says. “But I feel like I want to just write it at home. When I’m in LA, I make very ‘LA-sounding’ music, I think. For my frst album, I don’t know if that’s the right vibe.”

She’s currently in a cycle of heading to Herefordshire for week-long writing and recording sessions, determined to further develop the musical direction that electrifed ‘Better Off Without’. The earliest indication of the results is the recent ‘I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Trying)’ single - another pristine, propulsive alt-pop nugget. She describes the track as the perfect bridge between the last EP and the album; a shift

towards being “more organic” and “more British”.

“I’m a Londoner through and through and I want to show that, especially being a Black British person in the indie scene,” she affrms. “I’m also someone who is unapologetically proud of being African and Black, so I need to show that there are Black British people and Black Londoners who do enjoy this music and who call London their home.”

It is spiriting to hear Rachel, who only just turned 24, speaking with such reverence for the enduring importance of the debut album: something she clearly believes remains the ultimate yardstick by which a new artist can attempt to stake their claim at immortality. “I was thinking, what would my younger self want my frst album to sound like?” she says. “Because when I was younger, the idea of making an album was a dream.”

As a child of the early 21st century and a devotee of guitar music, she names bands like Arctic Monkeys, Blur and The Wombats as examples of the kind of arms-in-the-air celebratory energy that she would like to infuse into her record, although her own idiosyncrasies will inevitably lend nuances all of their own. “I can already tell it’s going to be my most personal piece of work,” she says. “Some of the song titles are just horrifcally sad.”

The one song from her back catalogue likely to survive onto the album’s tracklist is ‘So My Darling’, her 2018 breakthrough release. An acoustic re-working of the song that she released in January 2022 is her most-streamed number - a delicate, intimate and charmingly endearing paean to real love. Together with ‘All I Ever Asked’, the two songs serve as a reminder to the singer that her most successful work emanates from her inner voice. “There is a reason why those two are doing the best, so now I’m just writing and I don’t care about anyone else’s opinions. That’s a good thing. It’s trusting my instincts and remembering that the music is coming from me,” she says.

It perfectly captures the new Rachel Chinouriri mindset. “I’m someone who laughs through my trauma. Being yourself is just always the best way to be. You can’t really try to be cool, you just have to be yourself.” 0

Rachel’s crystal ball predicts you’ll all buy 2023 subscriptions to DIY as soon as you fnish reading this. Don’t let her down!

“I’m a Londoner through and through and I want to show that, especially being a Black British person in the indie scene.”

Jessica Winter

Who is Jessica Winter? Among these pages, it’s a fair question to ask. What’s maybe more unusual, though, is that that’s exactly what Jessica Winter herself was pondering at the dawn of her newest solo project.

Having frst found music at a very young age, her passion solidifed early on. Following a diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and surgery to correct her hip dysplasia when she was just two years old, the story goes that her mum placed her on a piano stool as it was the best spot for her to sit in, and her love affair with the instrument soon began. “Now, whenever I see a piano I light up,” she nods.

Despite her more classical beginnings, Jessica soon found solace in a heavier kind of music, with the likes of Nine Inch Nails, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Lacuna Coil all entering rotation. A move from her home of Hayling Island - just south of Portsmouth - to Brixton soon followed, where she became one half of experimental dancefoor duo PREGOBLIN and rooted herself within the local music scene; something that’s continually shaping her art. “Even though I’ve gone solo, I’ve carried that band mentality with me so I’m always up for collaborating,” she notes.

But despite her deep-seated passion for writing, playing and producing music, it hasn’t all been plain-sailing. A decade of male management and a string of unsavoury experiences in the music industry soon took their toll. “I had them telling me what I should look like and who I should be, what I should sound like. I had male producers coming in, trying to go, ‘You need to be a baby, you need to sing like a baby’ to the point where I was like, ‘I don’t even know who I am anymore’,” she explains. “I was trying to do all these things and jump through these hoops to impress these men, and they gave me nothing in return. My previous manager tried to get me into the porn industry. Honestly, I’ve had it all!”

Unsurprisingly, this slew of experiences led to a period of intense self-questioning. “I’d had enough of [it], so becoming Jessica Winter was like, ‘Who is she?’ I didn’t know, it had been completely drummed out of me. I had no idea who this person was.” However, having changed her entire team (“Now I’ve got a female booking agent, manager and publisher - and a male label, which is fne as we need an equal world!”) she fnally feels supported enough to try and fnd herself once again.

Having already racked up a hefty list of production and writing credits including The Big Moon, Sundara Karma, Jazmin Bean and Walt Disco, whilst gaining fans in The Cure’s Robert Smith and Metronomy’s Joe Mount to boot, Jessica’s open and honest, no-holds-barred approach to making music is clearly paying off. While her 2020 EP ‘Sad Music’ saw her channelling the likes of Robyn and Kate Bush in a selection of darkly delicious synth-pop hits, its follow-up - last year’s ‘More Sad Music’ - built upon its catharsis while opening up her sonic remit even more. There’s more music on the way, too, in the form of her forthcoming EP ‘Limerance’ - a collection of songs “written around a similar period of time, that

on love and addiction”, due out February 2023.

“This is almost like a self-rediscovery,” she notes of her journey so far. “And it’s hopefully inspiring to other women that maybe don’t ft the mould: you can ft whatever mould you choose.” 0

focuses

Embarking upon both a solo career and a journey of selfrediscovery, meet the singersongwriter-producer who’s breaking the mould and making delicious synthpop while she’s at it. Words: Sarah Jamieson. Photo: Emma Swann.

BROCKHAMPTON

The Family (Question Everything / RCA)

Brockhampton have always been unpredictable. Beginning life as a bunch of kids bonding over music on a Kanye West forum 12 years ago, few would have guessed that the group would go on to become one of the most buzzed-about and forward-propelling collectives over the past decade. Against the odds, they managed just that.

performance. But just when we thought it could be all over, a clip played as they left the stage. They’d be dropping a fnal album this year. “I love you guys and I miss you guys,” de-facto leader Kevin Abstract said in the visual. “Basically, like, I went to New York, made something. It’s not a solo thing, it’s a group album. It’s about the group, it’s about… that’s all I’ma say.”

BROCKHAMPTON

Armed with their tagline “the best boy band since One Direction,” their experimental, genre-blurring and - perhaps most notably - inclusive ethos to music and community has attracted them just the sort of ardent fanbase that they previously would have formed a part of for their own musical heroes. But the road hasn’t always been smooth. From founding members being kicked out to multiple shelved albums via perceived fractions in the group perpetually dissected online, Brockhampton’s legacy is one peppered with obstacles and diffculties; release delays, tour cancellations and long-running rumours of an imminent split have all had a look-in. But, through it all, they seem to have been a group that thrived under chaos.

2018’s ‘Iridescence’ was created in a mere ten days at London’s Abbey Road after scrapping the alreadyannounced ‘PUPPY’ - and went on to become their frst chart-topping album. And while rumours and personal tragedies would surround the band, 2019’s ‘GINGER’ and last year’s ‘Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine’ arrived as two emotionally rich and impactful LPs showing growth.

Cancelling their tour at the beginning of this year, the band confrmed an indefnite hiatus following their Coachella

Enter ‘The Family’: billed as the group’s fnal release and a record that plays like an unwieldy and unravelling ode to all the twists and turns of Brockhampton’s journey. Led almost entirely by Kevin, the 17 tracks chart the collective’s story - past, present and future. “I had to save the truth for the last shit,” he states on upbeat opener ‘Take It Back’, over a pitched-up backing instrumental that’s reminiscent of Drake’s ‘Tuscan Leather’.

Elsewhere, the band give fans an inside peek on some of the hurdles they’ve faced along the way. The thumping ‘Gold Teeth’ hints at inter-group tensions (“Do we see each other? / Hardly”) and label obligations, while ‘All That’ tackles expectations and the pressure of fame, as well as the group’s past dramas. “The show is over / It ended overseas / Take those plaques down / It’s time to move on / Call up my real family / It’s time I go home,” notes Kevin on ‘Good Time’, before ‘The Family’ sees him spit fre over melodic backings, joined by bearface on vocals towards the songs end: “You tried to keep it alive / But I’ll be fne”.

With bearface providing the only non-Kevin Brockhampton vocal, it’s hard for the album to create a true family portrait

with many of its main characters missing (“The group is over without being on the album,” Kevin spits on ‘Big Pussy’). The absence of most of the group feels jarring at times; a catalyst that undoubtedly prompted Kevin to release a statement to fans upon its release: “Over the past few years, the members of the band began to move our separate ways and focus on our individual careers and passions. With this project, a few of us were inspired to make something that would bring closure to the past, and set the table for all of us to fnally be able to explore our individual futures.”

Instead of an ensemble, on ‘The Family’ Kevin favours sped-up soul samples and late-‘90s, early-‘00s mixtape fow, which almost feels like a love letter to the music that Brockhampton were raised on (a song is even titled ‘RZA’, named after the Wu-Tang Clan head honcho). The fnal track - aptly named ‘Brockhampton’ - marks the longest offering on the whole record, as Kevin sums up the band’s rise to fame, relationships with each other, and his own personal issues, specifcally struggles with alcohol that impacted the group. Dedicating lines to each member over a stringled backing, the odes quickly turn to a yelling of “The show is over / Get out your seats!”, before the track ends on a poignant note.

“After all that we’ve been through / Breaking up is hard to do.”

That all seems to be that, then. However - as unpredictable as ever - just as ‘The Family’ is released, the band unveil something more. Thus ‘TM’. Brockhampton’s fnal “fnal” album. “When we started the album we went thru almost every song we ever made, looking for things that we felt may have been

left along the way,” the group’s Matt Champion explained. “Reshaping and putting them together like they were a group of friends that had heard of each other but only just met.”

‘TM’, unlike its predecessor, is a full family affair. Matt offers up fawless fow on the lo-f leaning ‘NEW SHOES’, Joba and Jabari Manwa trade melodies on the haunting ‘DUCT TAPE’, and Merlyn Wood goes back to back with bars on the banging ‘KEEP IT SOUTHERN’, which was originally previewed during the group’s Technical Diffculties streams.

Throughout the record’s 11 tracks, the group address their past and future, providing their own take on issues raised by Kevin in ‘The Family’. “Packin’ my bags and I’m gone / Catchin’ a fight in the morn / Gotta leave, gotta tell you I’m gone,” Jabari sings on the chilled ‘ANIMAL’, while Matt addresses their early days living in the same house on ‘CRUCIFY ME’ (“Back when we kicked it on the driveway / Even the pen, we were blasé”) and Kevin highlights their ‘Saturation’ recording days in LA on the Ryan Beatty-featuring ‘MAN ON THE MOON’ (“A mismatched friend, but LA’s good to me / Place I call home that’s history”).

Joba and Matt provide the fnal send off on last track ‘GOODBYE’, an emotive indie-leaning number that acts as Brockhampton’s swan song. Alluding to the dizzying highs and lows that have peppered the journey for the boyband, it’s a ftting send off for a band who have gone through it all over the last decade.

“This oughta be the best time, the best time of our lives,” Matt sings, a poignant illustration of the conficting feelings towards fame and success that have followed the band throughout, and an emotional look back to their often fractious time together.

Though neither record will go down as Brockhampton’s best, ’The Family’ and ‘TM’ are a bittersweet but ultimately triumphant fnal bow from the group. As the band have previously said, “All good things must come to an end”, but with Brockhampton, who really knows? (Elly Watson) LISTEN: ‘Brockhampton’ / ‘KEEP IT SOUTHERN’



STORMZY

This Is What I Mean (#Merky / Def Jam)

On ‘This Is What I Mean’, we fnd Stormzy patient, spiritual and raw in the aftermath of heartbreak. For a majority of its 12 tracks, his delivery is rich, melodic and considered - seldom do we get the ferce snarl that swept the likes of ‘Big For Your Boots’ or ‘Audacity’. It wouldn’t serve the songcraft here. Opener ‘Fire + Water’ runs to eight minutes and shifts several times among infections of jazz futes and famenco guitar. “A fre from this perfect match to burn us to the ground,” he sings, setting the scene for his state of mind. And while the album is certainly softer in sound, it never plays it safe - experimental pay-offs are peppered throughout. One of the most interesting turns comes in the shape of its title track, where a pitch-shifted Jacob Collier crafts an icy atmosphere as vocal samples whirr and strike in the background. “I’m Harry Styles, the way I fne-line tread, you’re goin’ mainstream,” he raps, alluding to the balance he’s managed to strike between grime and pop. These quips demonstrating his stark self-awareness allow his soul-bearing moments to shine brighter. There are a smattering of ethereal tracks here which reveal the breadth of his pop songwriting skills too; ‘Please’ is a spiritual release, one of the purest songs he’s ever put to tape. “Please, Lord, give me the strength to forgive my dad for he is fawed and so am I / So who am I to not forgive a man who tries, I see his soul, I know it cries,” he raps. Sampha is given the spotlight on a reprise of ‘Please’ which is a gorgeous lament atop climbing piano chords. While spirituality and heartbreak rears its head, there’s still room for love‘Firebabe’ shimmers with its lovely melody and ‘Need You’ is cast in a smooth, sumptuous groove - all moments which add up to a truly fulflling experience. While second album ‘Heavy Is The Head’ found Stormzy wrestling with the pressures of fame and his newfound position, ‘This Is What I Mean’ fnds him relying on his instincts. Where he goes from here is uncertain which is the most exciting place an artist can leave themselves in. (Sean Kerwick) LISTEN: ‘This Is What I Mean’

404 GUILD

False Dawn (Dirty Hit)

December isn’t really the ideal time to release a debut album: there’s a strong chance 404 Guild will fnd themselves lost in the perennial sea of rehashed greatest hits and festive crooners that take over come mid-November. But perhaps the idea of a hidden gem suits them: ‘False Dawn’ is at once bleak, beautiful, emotionally charged and completely heartbreaking. For every bit that last year’s ‘Guild Three: Open Water’ EP was raucous and confrontational in style, the group’s debut album proper uses a more subtle palette to show another side of those same raw edges. Vulnerable to extremes, it’s a microcosm of city life at its most anxious, peppering tender lines with trivial references to heavy effect. ‘Approach’ shows of small-hours insomnia (“My mind’s eye got blinded by ricochet”) while the “freak out in aisle three” of ‘Still’ is cutting in its everyday nature. Then there’s this gut-punch of a couplet in ‘Dead Air’: “I can see the past / It’s the future I can’t face.” ‘New Health’ does an immaculate job of playing with light and dark; the thematically soft “There is a hell on earth / And I’ll always share the dangers with you” is repeated with increasing angst as the song – clubby with added funk; think if Mike Skinner had Mark Ronson round for a guitar sesh at the turn of the millennium – manifests euphoria. ‘Sodium Light’ could be a Gorillaz cut – not least because of its Damon-like choruses – and ‘Evening Star’ is hypnotic in its almost jazz-like noodling. But the crushing blow comes with ‘Weak’ and ‘World Gets Better’. If the latter, a track which increases in vocal intensity to express pure spite at the very existence of spring and the newness it brings was one thing, that it follows a number that’s almost entirely based on a recording of the group’s Silvertongue – aka Mina Topley-Bird – who took her own life in 2019 makes for as pure and real a portrayal of grief as it gets. “The trains are still running / They’ve never been on time / My heart’s still beating / But I don’t feel alive,” it’s heart-wrenching. The context isn’t even needed to hit right where it needs to, either - the record does a spellbinding job of putting inner chaos into gorgeous, often soothing sonic form. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘World Gets Better’

THE MURDER CAPITAL

Gigi’s Recovery (Human Season)

As ‘Existence’ opens the album with foggy ambience before James McGovern mournfully vocalises a profound despair -  “The strange feeling that I’m dealing with / I can’t admit it / Lose my grip... Existence fading” - it’s clear that The Murder Capital have staked their ambitions high for album two. Recorded under the mantra, ‘The Evolution will not be compromised’, the fre-spitting Dubliners of 2019’s ‘When I Have Fears’ have valiantly mellowed their textures and tempos here. Those raw riffs have been smoothed out; the production sanded down and varnished. Yet their grandeur and steadfast intensity has only increased. Operating under aesthetics of slowness, stateliness and spatiality, ‘Gigi’s Recovery’ reaches for poetic levels of emotion and psychological drama. Proudly rock, everything is calibrated for hugeness: the pumping choruses of ‘Ethel’; the smart builds and breakdowns of ‘The Stars Will Leave Their Stage’; the brooding Radiohead-esque strains of ‘A Thousand Lives’. As the recent Just Mustard, Fontaines DC and Gilla Band albums have shown, there’s an unparalleled moodiness in the dark recesses of alternative Ireland, to which The Murder Capital are mighty fne contributors. While some might mourn the loss of their one-time raucousness, ‘Gigi’s Recovery’ shows that their momentum swings only forwards. (Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘The Stars Will Leave Their Stage’

FUCKED UP

One Day (Merge)

Fucked Up don’t do things by half measures, do they? The last time we heard from them, they delivered a maximalist monolith of a record in the form of 2018’s 80+ minute opus ‘Dose Your Dreams’, but this time around, they’re challenging themselves differently. Album Six was written and recorded in just twenty-four hours, a mammoth undertaking with some very real risks attached. However, this album feels neither rushed nor undercooked – it is, understandably, more streamlined than the Canadians’ previous efforts, but its back-to-basics approach is no less enticing. There’s a playful jubilance to the hop, skip and jump of the riffs in ‘I Think I Might Be Weird’ and the gentle trills of violins behind frontman Damian Abraham’s scratchy roar, while ‘Huge New Her’ charges in with a spirited sense of urgency before the similarly life-affrming ‘Lords of Kensington’ arrives hot on its heels. Arguably, however, a record made in one day was never going to be the most immaculate, and this one does fnd itself running out of steam a little towards its conclusion without enough robust new ideas. For the most part, though, this bold experiment pays off, and Fucked Up can be admired for their ambition as much as they can for their enviable productivity. (Emma Wilkes) LISTEN: ‘I Think I Might

 IGGY POP

Every Loser (Atlantic / Gold Tooth)

‘Every Loser’ (the 20th studio album from 75-year-old Iggy Pop) begins with a gnarled barrage of sweary insults - “You fucking prick / You goddamn dick”- and ends with a song entitled ‘The Regency’, whose main objective, it quickly transpires, is to “fuck” said institution. From a modern band of London punk oiks, we’d call it cliched; but the crucial point here lies between the parentheses. Is there any other man on earth who, in his eighth decade, could still summon this much bile? Who could still make a well-placed curse sound this vitriolic? Who could still discover this much glee in being a naughty little tearaway? ‘Every Loser’ isn’t just an exercise in returning to Iggy’s roots, however. Vocally, he switches masterfully between the resonant baritone that’s categorised his later life (the atmospheric, ‘80s-ish ‘Strung Out Johnny’ or ‘New Atlantis’) and a snotty punk sneer that harks back to the Iggy of old (‘Modern Day Rip Off’ with its closing howls or the Green Day-ish ‘Neo Punk’). There’s even a strong line in wry spoken word that’ll satisfy fans of his inimitable radio voice. By embracing all sides of his 50 years in the game, ‘Every Loser’ is Iggy throwing out the late-career rulebook and having a whole bunch of fun. Which is, of course, what made him so brilliant in the frst place. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘All The Way Down’

 FOUSHEÉ softCORE (RCA)

If last year’s soulinfused ‘time machine’ found Fousheé delicately grappling with insecurities, debut album proper ‘softCORE’ is the cathartic scream into the ether to fully get them out. A punk-indebted record, it’s the sound of an artist fully letting go - and having fun doing so. “Simmer down, I don’t fuck around,” she screams on Runaways-esque opener ‘simmer down’, before the pulsating ‘die’ fnds her yelling about how “I looked so good he died”. A fun and fery record, Fousheé excels when she pushes herself to her limits, the screaming interludes of ‘i’m fne’ expertly underscoring her stunning vocal delivery on the rest of the track’s guitarled melodies, while ‘bored’’s raucous thrashing injects the track’s pop-punk stylings with the kind of electricity that sends shivers down the spine. Even in the album’s more chilled moments (’unexplainable’, ‘smile’, ‘let u back in’), Fousheé grabs attention, and ‘softCORE’ holds it long after you’ve fnished listening. (Elly Watson) LISTEN: ‘simmer down’

CIRCA WAVES

Never Going Under

(Lower Third / PIAS)

Circa Waves’ previous two records - 2020’s ‘Sad Happy’ (fully released as the world plunged into unsociable darkness), and predecessor ‘What’s It Like Over There?’, which somehow viewed the States through rose-tinted spectacles despite landing slap bang in the middle of Donald Trump’s calamitous reign –showed a band who’d lost their way. While their frst two records had showcased their ability to pen indie disco bangers (2015 debut ‘Young Chasers’) and a wide-eyed ambition (2017’s ‘Different Creatures’), the Merseysiders’ ffth full-length doesn’t quite have them back on that form – but it isn’t that far off. For one, they’re looking a lot closer to home, literally. ‘Northern Town’ has them trying out a huge chorus for size – and suggests they’ve paid attention to the success of Sam Fender. There are hints of Royal Blood’s recent turn on the opening title track and ‘Do You Wanna Talk’ could only get more Two Door Cinema Club if it hopped over the Irish Sea with a bright red microphone in tow. And therein lies the ‘almost’: while featuring some perfectly fne pop songwriting – the chorus of ‘Carry You Home’ a defnitive case in point with its festival feld-ready “aah-aahs” - not enough of Circa Waves themselves can really be heard. (Bella Martin) LISTEN: ‘Carry You Home’

 BRENDAN BENSON

Low Key (Schnitzel)

If there’s one thing this decade has offered, it’s an abundance of thinking time. And where for some that’s led to an almost blinkered idea of the road ahead, for Brendan Benson, it seems to have done the opposite. It can’t be easy existing in the shadow of a more famous name: you can be twice Gold-certifed singer-songwriter Niall Horan, say, but there’s always a Harry Styles. But where his past releases – successful by most artists’ gaugeoccasionally gave off a mild air of feeling the need to assert his own distinct identity, ‘Low Key’ lives up to its name by being lighter, more free-fowing. It’s all the better for it. While the McCartney to another’s Lennon may be a comparison beyond cliche, Brendan does, after all, bring the melodic, ballad-driven side to The Raconteurs. And there’s both something Macca-esque about the “oohs” on ‘People Grow Apart’ - a heartland rock number that possesses a repetitive full circle of its title that’d make Stewart Lee proud – and the track’s ability to skirt the line of cringe. It doesn’t work, until it does. The piano-led ‘I Missed The Plane’ offers the most Raconteurs-like moment of the record, but where ‘Low Key’ gets really interesting is ultimately where Brendan isn’t worried about being Brendan at all. Opener ‘Ain’t No Good’ uses a drivetime radio pop palette to showcase his fair for natural pop songwriting. Then there’s ultimate standout ‘All In’. While its opening line of “I’m a keep doing my thing regardless” seems to echo the sentiment of ‘Low Key’ as a whole, the track brims with the kind of awkward confdence Rivers Cuomo is famed for; whether it’s the repeated telephone impressions for a “who’s calling” response, rhyming “lonely self” with “lonely self,” or such gems as “Peter Pan / Neverland / Bought some land / That’s what’s up” and “This is not up for debate / No matter what I’m a get me some cake.” Do we know what he means? Not at all. Is it a joy to hear him sing it anyway? Yes, it is. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘All In’

 DAVE ROWNTREE

Radio Songs (Cooking Vinyl)

Dave Rowntree may be best known as the drummer for Blur but he has, in recent years, also been working on a range of scores for flm and television like the BBC’s The Capture. Now, like bandmates Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon, Dave is embarking on a solo career. Debut ‘Radio Songs’ is titled for memories of building radio kits with his dad as a child and his love for all things static. Given the musical breadth of Blur and his bandmates’ associated projects, it’s not really surprising that the record takes from many styles. There are elements of trip hop, pop, lo f and even classical; opener ‘Devil’s Island’ captures the most trip hop favour of the record, built around his vocals and its chorus of “You roar like lions, but you die like lambs”. ‘London Bridge’, meanwhile, incorporates both electronic and grunge elements, making it a fascinating listen. ‘HK’ features cut-up recordings of radio broadcasts from Hong Kong while he was there recording Blur’s last record in 2015, while ‘Black Sheep’ is a sumptuous piano-based ballad, and ‘Who’s Asking’ is a gorgeous instrumental, which began life as a choral piece for a flm score but feels at home here in the sprawling sonic variety on display. Still, there are moments where the experimentation doesn’t quite pay off: ‘Tape Measure’ seems to come from a different project altogether. As one has come to expect from a Blur side project, ‘Radio Songs’ isn’t quite a standard LP yet, impressively, Dave’s voice holds up well throughout, showing vulnerability. It makes for an exciting, experimental, laid back 11 tracks, and we can only hope this isn’t the last solo work from him. (Christopher Connor) LISTEN: ‘Black Sheep’

 SAMIA

Honey Grand Jury)

If 2021 belonged to Olivia Rodrigo, and Phoebe Bridgers became everyone’s go-to in 2022, it looks like 2023 is primed to be Samia’s year. ‘Honey’ - the second album from the Nashville-via-NYC songwriter - hooks into the same kind of raw and honest songwriting as ‘SOUR’ and ‘Punisher’ did before it. Led by the singer’s crystalline vocals, she tells heartstring pulling stories across 11 tracks of pop-leaning gems. “I hope you marry that girl from your hometown / And I’ll fucking kill her / And I’ll fucking freak out,” she sings on opener ‘Kill Her Freak Out’; “I don’t wanna talk / I don’t really wanna work it out,” she notes on goosebump-inducing ‘Sea Lions’. “I was trying to imagine looking back at the end of life and what I’d have to say about it right now,” Samia explains of ‘Honey’, resulting in a bright and inviting pop album that brilliantly captures the emotional snapshots of life. (Elly Watson) LISTEN: ‘Kill Her Freak Out’

AudioLust & HigherLove (PMR / EMI)

Getting drunk on the heady rush of disco and the thrill of adrenaline that comes with a particularly reckless night –these were the main agendas of SG Lewis’ 2021 debut album, ‘times’. On his follow-up, ‘AudioLust & HigherLove’, there’s still some of that energy that pulses with the ecstasy of catching eyes with someone from across a dark club. However this time he doesn’t just provide the soundtrack to the high-energy, hedonistic night, but also everything that comes afterwards – the day spent nursing a headache, the continued love affair, each high and low along the way. ‘Holding On’ is no doubt one of his best tracks yet; the falsettos and sparkling synth are amplifed by a guitar solo that rips impressively through it. It’s a high-tension moment, but ‘AudioLust & HigherLove’ offers release, too – ‘Another Life’ is a stratospheric escapade through shuffing beats and ethereal strings. ‘Lifetime’ remains one of the album’s strongest pursuits; lovestruck and introspective, each beat keenly felt. The album revels in this on a whole; a lovelorn sheen which dances between interludes. It’s less dancefoor fller, more earnest confessions and professions of absolute adoration. That’s not to say the party has swung to a close, though. He dances on, just this time with a different outlook that casts a rose-tinted glow over the entirety of ‘AudioLust & HigherLove’. (Neive McCarthy) LISTEN: ‘Holding On’

YOU ME AT SIX Truth Decay (Underdog / AWAL)

The story goes that when You Me At Six were making their seventh album ‘SUCKAPUNCH’, they half-believed it could be their last. And while evidently it wasn’t, the record clearly offered some sense of rebirth. With ‘Truth Decay’, the band fnd themselves taking the more experimental turns of its predecessor, and melding them with the brand of emo-rock that they honed so well across their early career. Inspired by the current rise in notoriety of their heartland genre, this time around they’ve delved back into the hooky pop-rock rhythms (’God Bless The 90’s Kids’) and epic singalongs (’Traumatic Iconic’) that they made their name on, while still pushing their own sonic boundaries in the process. It’s also, perhaps, their most frank record to date, with Josh Franceschi’s lyrics evidently grappling with the impact of their career on the band’s mental health (“Oh we were just boys back then / Hanging on by a thread” goes ‘Mixed Emotions…’). Where ‘SUCKAPUNCH’ was a bold move to reforge their identity and rejuvenate their dedication for the band, it’s with ‘Truth Decay’ that they seem to have found their sweet spot. (Sarah Jamieson) LISTEN: ‘God Bless The 90s Kids’

 SG LEWIS



JOHN CALE MERCY (Domino)

Having reached the ripe age of 80 last March, John Cale - founding member of the Velvet Underground - unravels all his long-earned wisdom and worldliness on this frst album of original songs in a decade. Coming on like some arthouse, high-brow Gorillaz-lite project, ‘Mercy’ enlists noteworthy collaborators from across the leftfeld - Weyes Blood, Animal Collective, Fat White Family - to aid in seducing you into its sequence of sensual, slowburning art-pop gyrations. As measured and dungeon-like drum machine grooves plough through and swathes of synthesisers waft along like spectres, John’s crooning baritone romances, haunts and comforts. There are tales of love here, but also of the fractured political landscapes of Europe, the US and beyond: “The grand land that was Europe is sinking in the mud,” he sings on ‘Noise of You’. Once you’ve accepted the diffculties of the ambling paces, vast spaces, and all-consuming emotionality here, ‘Mercy’ becomes a gorgeous, enriching experience. The signature violin tremble of ‘Moonstruck (Nico’s song)’, or the beatifc vocal duets with Weyes Blood on lead single ‘Story of Blood’, to name but two examples, are as delicately pure and ethereal as stained glass windows. Much like David Bowie’s ‘The Next Day’, ‘Mercy’ provides another delicious example of an esteemed old-timer triumphantly pushing his creative frontiers into a much-shifted modern age. (Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘Story Of Blood’

ITALIA 90

Living Human Treasure (Brace Yourself)

From the South East English accents, to the Wire-Public Image Ltd sonic sensibility, right down to theSwell Maps-ian stage names (Les Miserable, Unusual Prices, J Dangerous, Bobby Portrait), Italia 90 are about as old-school as it’s possible to get. Almost everything about the Brighton-via-London quartet’s debut album feeds off retro. There’s the keening, Johnny Rotten drawls of ‘Competition’, the viscous guitar fuzz of Wire’s ‘Chairs Missing’ to opener ‘Cut’; the chorus-bass propulsion of ‘Funny Bones’ is itself a pallid slice of OG goth. While the black midi jitteriness of ‘Golgotha’, or the gloomy pianos of ‘Mumsnet Mambo’ remind us this is the 2020s still, the most striking aspect of ‘Living Human Treasure’ is its polemical lyrical postures. Hocking leftwing ideology on its sleeve, lyrics like “liberation comes from state,” or “It’s my job to come down on Middle England and speak for you” pull no punches. Energetic, furious and deeply lamentful, perhaps the main achievement here is how Italia 90 so forwardly address a near ffty-year old cultural heritage which so many depend on yet take for granted. It’s noteworthy too how, in doing so, they confront some of the bleakness of post-Brexit Britain more directly than most. (Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘Golgotha’

JOESEF

Permanent Damage (AWAL)

“Permanently on my own / I think I miss Glasgow,” Joesef’s voice rings out on ‘East End Coast’, the third track on the Glaswegian’s debut album. Uprooted, unmoored: ‘Permanent Damage’ is an unravelling of the self, disappearing into the bare bones of who Joesef truly is after a complete shattering of the heart. Picking up the pieces, on ‘Permanent Damage’, Joesef undergoes a journey of absolute turmoil and teaches you how to live with what comes next. At times, Joesef’s voice aches with despair and tenderness, pleading in the twilight hours on ‘Just Come Home With Me’. Then he twists, shapeshifting into the unapologetic, bold Joesef we meet on ‘Didn’t Know How To Love You’, with its funk-leaning, drumbeat driven soundscape. There’s never any indication of which version of himself Joesef might slide into next – he might exist grinning in the centre of the dancefoor or slipping along dark streets, inhaling melancholia. There is a surety to ‘Permanent Damage’, however, in the sheer force of lyricism at play. With soulful, silk-like vocals, Joesef weaves this narrative, deftly dealing the blows of this world in absolute destruction, before showing that ultimately, some marks never fade and that’s OK. (Neive McCarthy) LISTEN: ‘Didn’t Know How To Love You’

BILLY NOMATES CACTI (Invada)

For anyone whose knowledge of Billy Nomates is just in passing, ‘CACTI’ might come as somewhat of a 180-degree swivel: the minimalist post-punk of ‘NO’ or her turn with Sleaford Mods on the Nottingham pair’s ‘Mork n Mindy’ sounds all the coarser in comparison to even the most rudimentary on the Bristol-based multi-instrumentalist and producer’s second full-length. There’s still that personable rawness to her production – the synthetic drums and often sparse arrangement mirroring her frequently despondent lyrical themes (“The death of everything real has happened...” begins ‘apathy is wild’). But her vocal offers warmth: whether via punkish means on opener ‘balance is gone’, or somewhere between Chrissie Hynde and Sheryl Crow on the distorted, Americana-tinged ‘spite’. “Don’t you act like I’m not the fucking man,” she almost drawls. The standout, meanwhile, is ‘fawner’, an acoustic-led showcase of vulnerability, which positions sounds and words in refective ways. “The ladies in waiting don’t want me around / And that’s why I’m gonna stay,” she delivers softly, while the sounds of a small venue tinker below, bringing to mind the old adage of never being more alone than when in a crowd. (Louisa Dixon) LISTEN: ‘fawner’

 LÅPSLEY

Cautionary Tales Of Youth (Believe)

On third album ‘Cautionary Tales of Youth’, atop teary synths, Låpsley is untethered - the record’s electronic sound mimics the reckless placelessness that surrounds the emotions of a break-up. Debut ‘Long Way Home’ and follow-up ‘Through Water’ saw self-assertion through moody experimental music, but this time she embraces cooler, bigger, brighter, more cohesive pop sensibilities, and never loses her invaluable intention. A willingness to enjoy rediscovery means there’s little time to collapse into grief, and in hotels, high rises and planes she breaks - then regenerates - her devotion to love (“I just want a love that makes me levitate”). ‘32 Floors’ is an infectious UK garageinspired earworm about jumping headfrst into a new relationship. ‘Smoke and Fire’ is mournful yet wistful, indebted to a vast choiry bridge and bleeping synths reminiscent of Lorde’s teen crises on ‘Pure Heroine’. Meanwhile, the arid, euphoric ‘Hotel Corridors’ exposes the loneliness of the in-between over reverberating, tugging synths. There are whispers of similarity to her queer contemporaries, too, from Shura (’Pandora’s Box’) to Years & Years (’Nightingale’), that make this break-up record much more exciting than its conveyor belt competition. (Otis Robinson) LISTEN: ‘32 Floors’

CVC Get Real (CVC Recordings)

CVC - or Church Village Collective, to give them their full name - work around the simple mantra of music as harmless fun, as light entertainment, as an avenue for raising smiles and lifting-spirits. As noble and honest a philosophy as any, mix in a strong dose of songwriting smarts and musical virtuosity, and you’re left with joyous results. Into the sensibilities of ‘70s rock, psychedelia, and blue-eyed soul, ‘Get Real’ tattoos those classic infuences proudly on its chest.

Venerations of Steely Dan, George Harrison, Neil Young and the like are enshrined in its make-up. Solos are ripped with mischief and electric organs are hammered with glee. The old-school vocal harmonies of singer Francesco Orsi and guitarists Elliot Bradfeld and David Bassey - related to the Manic Street Preachers frontman and Dame Shirley, respectively - swing and soar with Bee Geesesque precision. Whether it’s ‘Mademoiselle’’s sizzling fared-jean funk, ‘Anogo’’s pub-rocking admissions that “Last night I smoked all my weed on my own”, or the Pink Floyd-ian immersion of ‘Sophie’, there seems little end to CVC’s capacity to refresh and beguile. As debuts go, it’s disarmingly polished and self-assured. (Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘Mademoiselle’

LADYTRON

Time’s Arrow (Cooking Vinyl)

Ladytron were granted an unlikely surprise last year when their 20-year old tune ‘Seventeen’ went viral. While the group’s recent albums are far more lush and fantastical than the skeletal electro espoused upon their formation in Liverpool in the late ‘90s, it’s no surprise that their subtle futurism still resonates. Now, with their seventh studio album ‘Time’s Arrow’, Ladytron continue to push their immaculate synthscapes into ever-more utopian climes. Smothering each track in dream-sequence levels of reverb, keyboards pile up into vitreous obelisks of sound, while drum machines charge ahead with regimental vigour. The vocals too remain as inimitable and distinctive as ever, pitched exquisitely between mechanical coolness and warm-blooded vulnerability. There are numerous highlights: ‘City of Angels’ and ‘We Never Went Away’ strut and swagger in that vintage, evergreen Ladytron vein, while ‘Misery Remember Me’ sways with a Cocteau Twins angelicness, showcasing the group’s underlying dream-pop allegiances. While the album may fnd itself guilty of treading the line of pretty-but-unassuming at times - the sheer beauty of every detail is impressive, if not a little tiring - ‘Time’s Arrow’ remains a sumptuous listen. (Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘We Never Went Away’

GAZ COOMBES

Turn The Car Around (Hot Fruit

/ Virgin)

Over 30 years at the helm of Supergrass and a solo career already numbering 10, Gaz Coombes has quietly proven himself one of the UK’s most underrated songwriters. Not as mouthy as a Gallagher or mind-bogglingly prolifc as an Albarn, despite Gaz’s line in deceptively intricate melody and a vocal that can do rousing rallying or elegiac balladry with equal skill, his solo material has fown under the radar. ‘Turn The Car Around’, however, is yet further proof that there’s true treasure to be found in these parts. From the cerebral slow-build of opener ‘Overnight Trains’, which crashes two-thirds in to an escalating declaration of hope, Gaz’s fourth creates a nocturnal palette that’s familiar yet sonically adventurous. ‘Feel Loop (Lizard Dream)’ is part antsy early Radiohead and part Beck groove; ‘Not The Only Things’ - written for his autistic daughter - elevates from acoustic-plucked beginnings to a gorgeous fourish of layers and harmony, while the off-kilter rhythms and cowbells of ‘This Love’ give way to a central chorus line that’s almost Bowie-esque. They’re big reference points but ‘Turn The Car Around’ uses them masterfully to drive down its own sonic motorway. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Not The Only Things’

HOTEL LUX

Hands Across The Creek

(The State51 Conspiracy)

With ‘Hands Across The Creek’ coming fve years after their initial breakthrough, Hotel Lux are in the unlucky position of having successfully distanced themselves from being dismissed as the nth breakthrough from a once-fertile Brixton Windmill scene only to end up with a debut album that - to anyone unaware of its lengthy gestation - sounds as if it’s reaching for the coat-tails of indie’s subsequent wave of popularity. The chorus of ‘Common Sense’ could ft right in on a Yard Act set, while ‘Eastbound And Down’ is akin to what one imagines Sports Team’s Alex Rice might sound like should he end up on a commuter train following a week without sleep. Yes, the elephant in the room is that Lewis Duffn really likes to talk-sing, and ultimately anyone’s enjoyment of ‘Hands Across The Creek’ depends on which side of the divide one stands. Unlike many of his peers, however, he does like to enunciate. “Could you make a better man of me?” he asks in ‘Points Of View’, making like Art Brut’s Eddie Argos in a perpetual existential crisis. Their attempts to switch it up a little musically are valiant – the organ in ‘TEN’ is a particularly gorgeous addition – but they’re ultimately best when peddling that observational melodic post-punk. (Bella Martin) LISTEN: ‘Eastbound And Down’

UPSAHL Sagittarius (Arista)

The problem with starting your EP with two utterly sublime pop songs is that you’ve only got yourself to blame when your other three perfectly decent - better than many! - pop songs don’t quite reach their heights. Such is the way with ‘Sagittarius’, the follow-up to Upsahl’s 2021 debut LP ‘Lady Jesus’. Opener ‘Kickfip’ with its effortlessly cool, half-rapped delivery and grinding, party-embracing chorus (“I’m feeling like I’m gonna go hard…”), and previous single ‘Into My Body’ - a self-love anthem that could sonically sit next to Charli XCX’s ‘Good Ones’ and make for a riotous pair - are fawless. ‘Antsy’, even, could join them in the top tier, with a Billie-esque vocal lilt and lyrics that hit sharper than perhaps expected (“I’d run back home except politics broke up my family/ No wonder I’m antsy”). But the hometown ode to ick ‘Skin Crawl’ and closer ‘Toast’ - they’re just, y’know, fne. Which is fne, apart from when we know Upsahl can be way better than that. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Into My Body’

 ††† (CROSSES)

PERMANENT.RADIANT (Warner)

Having made their last offcial outing back in 2014, it’s been almost a decade since ††† - more easily known as Crosses - have released anything more than a single, and the arrival of new EP ‘PERMANENT. RADIANT’ is a somewhat mixed affair. On one hand, Chino Moreno’s unmistakeable vocals are always welcome, and can’t help but conjure up the more mellow, electronic-infused side of Deftones’ discography; opener ‘Sensation’ is a slinking beast of a track. But through the EP, the band dart around styles a little too much. The chorus of ‘Vivien’ is darkly glitchy until a pop chorus - which feels rather close to one of Britney Spears’ hits - kicks in, ‘Day One’ comes imbued with a reggaeton vibe, before closing track

HEARTBREAK YOU CAN SCREAM ALONG TO. BIFFY CLYRO

O2,

Biffy Clyro are one of those rare bands who - twenty years in - still manage to have a foot frmly planted in both worlds: whether headlining festivals, or playing to tiny, packedout rooms, the trio’s fery passion feels impossible not to connect with. Following their last visit to London - a rather more intimate affair at London’s Kentish Town Forum last Novembertonight’s huge show is the jewel in the crown of their recent UK run with Brighton metallers Architects; needless to say, they’ve brought out all the bells and whistles. With their stage set-up boasting multiple layers and different heights, the presence of the trio - who are backed by touring members Mike Vennart and Richard ‘Gambler’ Ingram, and a string section to boot - is huge, while their slick but artistic light show works to elevate proceedings even further, the painted-white stage working as a blank canvas to be flled with colour.

Mostly dedicated to 2020’s ‘A Celebration of Endings’ - only three tracks are aired from their most recently-released ‘The Myth of The Happily Ever After’, including the spiralling opener ‘DumDum’tonight boasts a mammoth set of twenty-four tracks, with the band weaving and winding their way through their discography with aplomb. They even steer clear of that old cliche of only playing newer material; both ‘57’, from their 2002 debut, and ‘Infnity Land’’s glitchy hit ‘Glitter and Trauma’ are aired tonight. But even in a more eclectic set - ‘A Celebration…’’s woozy outro ‘Cop Syrup’ is a delightful albeit daring inclusion partway through with its near-seven-minute run time - there’s still something unfathomably wonderful about when they play the hits; the response to ‘Mountains’ is electrifying, while the roaring singalong to ‘Bubbles’ feels joyful, and their more quiet moments (’Machines’, ‘God & Satan’, closer ‘Many Of Horror’) are still gorgeous enough to send a shiver down your spine.

A turbocharged arena show that still bears their trademark fngerprints of intimacy, it’s little wonder why the trio still suit both worlds so well. (Sarah Jamieson)

TOVE LO

Tove Lo is fresh from the release of ffth record ‘Dirt Femme’, her frst album as an independent artist. Leaving Island looking for greater freedom of expression, while the Swedish songwriter’s often raunchy and provocative lyrics have never been tame, ‘Dirt Femme’ unleashes even more of what fans already love about her. Filled with club-ready bangers and brutally honest lyrics, it features some of her best work date. Kicking things off with oral sex anthem and SG Lewis collaboration ‘Pineapple Slice’, Tove struts into view wearing a gladiator-inspired gold corset, complete with protruding plastic nipples and what appears to be a plushie penis. Her parents and husband being in the crowd tonight only spurs Tove on to give her absolute best.

Channel Tres collab ‘Attention Whore’ and ‘Lady Wood’ lead ‘Cool Girl’ see Tove twerk among a sea of clouds, her stage set for the night a throwback to debut album ‘Queen Of The Clouds’. ‘Popcorn’-sampling ‘2 Die 4’ has the entire room jumping as they aggressively mimic the song’s instrumental hook. ‘Talking Body’ is utterly rapturous - and features a now-signature fash, while throbbing fan favourite ‘disco tits’ is an early climax for those in the know. The album’s centrepiece ‘Grapefruit’ – a propulsive dance track that details Tove’s battle with an eating disorder – is the ultimate exercise in catharsis as she notes: “It feels funny to have hated my body so much in my youth and now I’m standing in front of you half naked.” While the ‘Dirt Femme’ tour celebrates the new album it also pays homage to some of Tove’s incredible back catalogue from ‘Sunshine Kitty’ standouts like the Kylie-featuring ‘Really don’t like u’ to ‘Blue Lips’’ monumental “Hey you got drugs?”, it’s a stripped-back performance of ‘Moments’, from her frst record, which really showcases every inch of Tove Lo’s star power and completes this greatest hits extravaganza.

She closes with ‘No One Dies From Love’, the album’s opening track and lead single which combines heart-wrenching melancholy with pure euphoria. It’s heartbreak you can dance to - and in this setting scream along to. As fans flter out of the Roundhouse, leaving the liberation of Tove’s dance foor behind there’s a mass sing-along to ‘No One Dies From Love’ (again). While the show may be over, there’s a sense of community in the air, even if the outside world is cold and cruel. (Matthew Kent)

Roundhouse, London. Photos: Kenny Laubbacher.

The

London. Photos: Emma Swann.

FONTAINES DC

OAny concern that energy might be running low for Fontaines DC’s third consecutive night at Manchester’s industrial Victoria Warehouse are quickly quashed moments into the scuzzy drone of opener ‘Big’. Masked by a murky haze, frontman Grian Chatten steps onto the monitor to screams otherwise reserved for some the world’s biggest pop stars as the crowd surge and clamber onto shoulders, raising celebratory Irish fags into the air. It’s a special kind of gritty euphoria that the Dublin fve-piece have been mastering since 2019’s ‘Dogrel’. They’ve come a long way since the biting spoken word of ‘Boys In A Better Land’ – still met by tonight’s biggest reaction. This year’s ‘Skinty Fa’ marks a natural step in their evolution, adding an avant-garde edge to their understated bravado. The sludge of ‘Big Shot’ shrouds the venue in a newfound density, while the dirge of ‘Jackie Down The Line’ or ‘How Cold Love Is’ appears remarkably upbeat.

Fontaines DC have rapidly forged their own path, evident in their perfectly-collected performance, driven by an effortlessly muted energy led by the relentless guitars that underpin much of the band’s sound and the stage production that masterfully captures their downtrodden despondency. It’s mirrored in the eerie glow from the stage, plunging the warehouse into deep greens and reds. They’re reinventing the sound of a jilted generation, broken and dreary yet brimming with creativity and innovation. Rising from the dive bars of Dublin to a weekend playing to over ten thousand fans, it’s no accident that everything so perfectly falls into place.

A sound built on monotony that skates around the darker ends of punk should be a tough sell, but it’s far from it; it’s a redefnition of energy, and a masterclass in the borderless opportunities in the increasingly undefnable world of indie, one that translates to the stage with an understated power all of its own.

(Ben Tipple)

CREEPER

Amile down the road, almost four years to the day, Creeper laid debut album ‘Eternity, In Your Arms’ to rest. Paying homage to his 1973 retirement of Ziggy Stardust at what’s now Hammersmith

Apollo, frontman Will Gould paraphrased David Bowie: “Not only is it the last show of this album, but it’s the last show that we’ll ever do.” The front rows were distraught. The band had only meant to give the record a theatrical send-off in the manner of one of their heroes; they’d instead convinced their fans that was it. And it ended up being a longer break than they’d intended, too. In contrast, tonight’s more literal take on the death of an era –closer ‘Misery’ ending with a masked vampire holding an eerily accurate representation of Will’s severed head aloft –immediately ushers in a new beginning: new logo, new label, new single ‘Ghost Brigade’ released that very minute on streaming services.

It’s the biggest headline show yet for the band: and prosthetics aside, they’ve pulled out all the stops. A screen showing horror flm style footage accompanied by spooky music drops once they take the stage; string accompaniment; a whole song’s worth of time for drummer Jake Fogarty to show off; arguably excessive amounts of pyro.

As Will leads classic arena chants across the sold-out, three-thousand plus capacity room, there is the sense that yeah, this is a band only an album away from arenas. Yet curiously, for a group whose rise was built on myth making through cryptic stories and fctional characters, they’ve also never seemed more human, melodrama playing second-fddle to the visible connection between those on stage and those in front. Creeper may have emerged touting a cult, but tonight proves they’ve created a community.

A Creeper fan can be spotted a mile off: they’re usually wearing

the band’s merch. At least three-quarters here are wearing either t-shirts (mostly from this specifc tour) or have one of the group’s patches attached to their jacket. There’s a steady stream of crowd surfers, fans on shoulders; barely anyone misses a single lyric throughout the evening. When Will fails to make it through a gorgeous, cello-backed ‘All My Friends’ without breaking down (the song written while guitarist Ian Miles was suffering from particularly severe mental health issues – and this notably being the frst time they’ve taken it on stage), they’re there to pick back up, a chant of “Ian” repeated once it ends. There’s a band-led cheer for anyone who’s a frst-timer. The band’s lyrics may often tell dark stories, but the positive energy tonight extends all the way to the upstairs seated area. Wanting a show to be a ‘moment’ can often prove overwhelming for an artist; meticulously planning for everything to be ‘just so’ ultimately getting in the way of the performance itself. But when ffteen minutes in, part of the stage setup fails, it barely registers. When a guitar won’t play ball, or keyboardist Hannah Greenwood’s having thrashed around the stage has her out of breath, it’s shrug, laugh, move on. An original ‘70s punk mainstay, having hosted the Ramones as early as 1976, there’s no doubt the choice of the Roundhouse was deliberate: it hosted the Ramones as early as 1976, and perhaps more pointedly, was where, in 1970, David Bowie and his newlyformed backing band The Hype, embraced glam rock for the frst time. And for all its celebratory tone, tonight - much like then must have done - feels like the start of something bigger. (Emma

Swann)

Victoria Warehouse, Manchester.

Photo: Carolina Faruolo.

Roundhouse, London. Photos: Emma Swann.

Will got absolutely legless at Creeper’s big show. And arm-less, and torso-less…

IT’S YOUR ROUND

THIS MONTH: LEWIS DUFFIN, HOTEL LUX

Where: In his work’s staff ‘cupboard’.

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE SPECIALIST SUBJECT: IAN DURY

Ian Dury often claimed to be born in Essex, but where was he actually from? Harrow! Correct, he was born in Harrow Weald in Middlesex.

Before forming Ian Dury and The Blockheads, what band was he in? Kilburn and the High Roads. That’s right!

‘Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick’ was Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ only Number One single in the UK - what year was it released? 1977?

So close. It was released in 1978.

In 1998, who incorrectly announced Ian Dury’s death on XFM radio? No idea… Chris Moyles?

It was actually Bob Geldof. Sounds like a silly sort of thing Bob Geldof would do…

Ian’s son Baxter is also a musician. What was the name of his 2020 album?

I really should know that, but I don’t. One of the songs was ‘I’m Not Your Dog’, is that the title? Sadly not. It’s ‘The Night Chancers’.

What is the population of Scotland to the closest million?

Oh no… I feel like I’m gonna give a stupid answer. 60 million? 5 million, or 5.4 to be exact. Oh my god. See, stupid answer.

In which decade did the GRAMMYs frst take place?

The '70s?

It was actually the '50s.

A big inter-band pub quiz of sorts, we’ll be grilling your faves one by one. Now brought to you via Zoom!

Who is the number one ranked darts player at the moment, according to the PDC? Is he Dutch?

No, he’s Welsh.

Oh I defnitely don’t know then. It’s Gerwyn Price. Otherwise known as the Ice Man.

What element is represented as Na in the periodic table?

It’s been a long time since GCSE science. Nitrogen?

Sodium!

What was the most streamed show on Netfix this year? The Crown?

It’s Stranger Things!

FINAL SCORE 2/10

Verdict: “I’m happy about the Ian Dury part but feeling slightly embarrassed about general knowledge. But it happens to the best of us!”