DIY, August 2023

NEW ALBUM OUT NOW

AUGUST

Question!

SARAH JAMIESON

Managing Editor

My list of part-time jobs is woefully small, but the one I did have was a big ‘un: fve years cooking up pizzas in the hallowed halls of Domino’s in Durham. And yes, I can still remember every topping combo going, even now.

EMMA SWANN

Founding E ditor

Babysitting, a summer as a barmaid, BHS (RIP), and at H&M where me and a colleague once spent an entire day rearranging a wall of men’s underwear, the centrepiece of which was a fetching shiny silver jockstrap.

LISA WRIGHT

Features Editor

Anything that earned me money as a youth, I would do it. I worked at a Chinese takeaway and on a burger stand at Colchester United; in a fancy dress shop and a

Editor's Letter

haberdashery where grown women would inexplicably let a 16-year-old me pick out fabric for their wedding dress. Profuse apologies to the brides.

LOUISE MASON

Art Director

Oddly I worked in actual DIY (my dad’s hardware shop), from the age of fve, pretty much until I started working for this DIY... almost a complete life in DIY.

DAISY CARTER

Digital Editor

Between the ages of 15 and 21 I rose through the ranks at my village’s National Trust cafe, from lowly table clearer to the coveted role of tillperson / barista, serving endless cream teas to OAPs and tourists before they shuffed around a stately home. Lattes, fat whites, I can do it all - just don’t ask me to ‘make it extra hot, would you love?’.

Listening Post

FIZZ - THE SECRET TO LIFE

Whether it’s Dolly Parton, RuPaul or fried chicken legend Colonel Sanders, CMAT has spent the better part of the past three years building her camp musical world magpie-style; just one of the reasons we here at DIY are such big fans. So, as the singer gears up to release her fabulous second album ‘Crazymad, For Me’, we’re thrilled to invite her to our cover for the frst time to dive into its ambitious confnes.

We also delve into the genrebending world of Paris Texas, learn a little more about the demise of The Hives’ mysterious founder, and invite Jamie T and Willie J Healey for a cuppa to chat the latter’s new album ‘Bunny’. Plus, we’ve got the goss on an impending second album from Leeds heroes Yard Act. Strap yourself in, it’s a big one…

Sarah Jamieson, Managing Editor

An indie-pop supergroup featuring the likes of Orla Gartland and dodie, FIZZ’s debut is the opposite of chill. Two steps short of musical theatre, it’s bombastic, unashamedly OTT and all sorts of fun.

BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB - MY BIG DAY

Recruiting a stellar cast of collaborators for their sixth studio LP, the London indie stalwarts are pushing into unexpected and excellent new territories. Dare we say it’s their best yet?

UNDERSCORES - WALLSOCKET

Head to p19 for more info on underscores, the project of US-based April Carter Grey, and then get excited for the eclectic musical oddball’s incoming debut.

Scan the Spotify code to listen.

Cover star CMAT worked in TK Maxx and three separate branches of Debenhams before becoming her current pop star self. What jobs lurk in Team DIY’s past?

Contributors: Bella Martin, Ben Tipple, Burak Cingi, Ed Lawson, Elvis Thirlwell, Emma Wilkes, Eva Pentel, Hannah Mylrea, Ims Taylor, James Hickey, Jenn Five, Joe Goggins, Katy Hills, Leah Lombardi, Louisa Dixon, Matt Ganfeld, Matthew Davies Lombardi, Nick Levine, Otis Robinson, Sean Kerwick, Tilly Foulkes, Vendy Palkovič ová.

BEAVERTOWN PRESENTS:

DITZ + GRANDMAS HOUSE + SUEP

FEEL

HURRAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF (DUO ACOUSTIC)

OSCAR LANG

THE SOUTH LONDON SOUL TRAIN

CHRISTIAN LEE HUTSON

OLD DIRTY BRASSTARDS:

00s QUEENS OF POP

THE SOUTH LONDON SOUL TRAIN

TINY HABITS

DURAND JONES

Yard In the Studio with…

“There’s a very strong foundation between the four of us in the band; I feel very in love with them all.” - James Smith

Act

Following the whirlwind success of debut ‘The Overload’, Yard Act are peeling back the layers and looking within on its successor. Words: Lisa Wright. Photos: Jamie MacMillan.

f there’s a succinct anecdote to sum up the rise and rise of Yard Act over the past 18 months, perhaps it’s the fact that, in DIY’s Class of 2022 cover feature, the Leeds quartet were spitballing about their ultimate pie-in-the-sky ambitions; “I’ve had an idea that Elton gives Bernie [Taupin] the week off and I send him some of my lyrics to see what he does with them,” joked frontman James Smith. Within the year, they’d made it a reality, the Glastonbury-headlining legend joining them for a rework of debut album closer ‘100% Endurance’. From ludicrous pipe dream to premiere in seven months; it’s a trajectory that happens to few.

Zooming in from his Yorkshire living room on a rare break between relentless tours

I(they’ll be off to Japan later in the week), Smith is fnally starting to take it all in. “I feel incredibly emotional all the time at the moment,” he begins. “I keep welling up with tears every time I see the boys because I’m so proud of them as well, and the fact that we’ve been on this journey together. There’s a very strong foundation between the four of us; I feel very in love with them all.”

Where many bands require a mental detox from the people they spend their lives crammed into a tour bus with, Smith, bassist Ryan Needham, guitarist Sam Shjipstone and drummer Jay Russell have still been spending their down time together, hanging out, shooting the shit. When standalone single ‘The Trench Coat Museum’ landed last month - a bold, eight-minute expedition into previously-uncharted waters, with a ravey, ‘Screamadelica’esque climax - the band ended up in their local, “sat in the corner for fve hours just being friends - not to celebrate the release, just because the

four of us were free”.

It’s a wholesome picture of harmonious band life he paints; one where egos remain impressively low and nothing much really has changed. Except, of course, everything has changed for Yard Act. And, preparing to follow up the observational storytelling and idiosyncratic narratives of Number Two-charting debut ‘The Overload’ with a second record that fips the script, taking the hard-won lessons from the maddest two years of their lives and laying them out over an album that turns the lens inwards, James might be the same, down-to-earth guy in conversation, but creatively he’s clearly in a very different space.

Shirking the analogies and curious character studies of old in favour of getting right into the nitty gritty of it all, Album Two, says James, addresses the feeling of “getting pulled under and into a world that I felt like I had no idea how to navigate, where I felt very far away from the shore of the life I’d always known.” Though it won’t feature on the record itself, ‘Trench Coat...’ acts as a transition between the two releases, exploring ideas of legacy and of the self, of why we care so much about what other people think and what’s left when you stop, but with a healthy splash of Yard Act-ian humour soused liberally over the top.

“A museum is basically where we go to learn about the mistakes of our past, so that felt quite comical to me but also symbolic of where I’m at,” he notes. “I think it looks at the mistakes I’ve made in my train of thought about what’s important, and where my brain has focused its energy for so long. The museum is putting defnitive notions of right and wrong in glass cases and saying, ‘This is how I used to perceive the world’ and trying to move on to something that’s not as grounded in your own patterns of thought.” He pauses. “Do I sound like a space cadet?”

He sounds, across today’s lengthy conversation into the more philosophical avenues his lyrical pen has been wandering down, more like he’s done a shit-load of therapy, we suggest. “Maybe I have with this album; maybe this album’s my therapy session,” he muses in response. “I’ve learnt a lot from making this album, it’s revealed a lot to me over time. I think the character’s dropped

a lot more. There’s still an element of it in places; I’ve not been able to let go of the sarcasm and the facade in all senses, but I’m getting better at becoming more transparent and honest.

“The album is a love letter to my son and a message to myself to instil hope in him and to question everything and to be open,” he continues. “No matter how deep I spiral into these fears and these intrusive thoughts; no matter how far off I wander down these roads of meaning, I always fnd myself back at a point of believing in life and fnding hope in the world. It’s a letter of reassurance. The album’s a message to me to keep going, and a message to him to keep going.”

If all of that sounds like a potentially heavy listen, then don’t worry: Album Two should still maintain the cheeky wink that’s been at Yard Act’s humorous core from the beginning. “Is it still funny?” Smith guffaws in mock indignation at the question. “Course it is, it’s me! I’m hilarious! I can’t help but poke fun at myself. I still fnd hippies hilarious even though some of what they say rings true.”

Even on the road to the record’s deeper revelations, there’s been ridiculousness. “At the beginning, I started writing this whole concept about a roadie for U2,” he begins. Right… “One of the songs which might make it as a B-side is a three-and-a-half minute narrative story where technically it’s about a kid meeting his dad who he’s not seen for years. Technically it was great, but emotionally it wasn’t doing anything for me, so we stripped that narrative from it and suddenly it became about me being on tour and being away from my son

rather than having to put up the fucking story about a roadie. It was me all along - as if nobody saw that coming!”

Let’s all pour one out for the Bonobased concept album that could have been, but perhaps this story of peeling back the layers and the jokes to fnd the core within is one that best represents the route to LP2 as a whole. “The entire journey of Yard Act, from ‘The Trapper’s Pelts’ which is dripping in barriers and layers of sarcasm and a sardonic approach to life which prevents anyone from seeing any of me in it, all the way up to ‘100% Endurance’ with Elton John, which felt like an accentuated version of the album track and leaned even heavier into empathy - it’s all led slowly to the point where it’s all fallen down,” summarises the frontman.

Musically, meanwhile, the band have been going wider than ever. On their newest, you’ll fnd kids’ choirs and string sections; describing the sonic outlook of the record, James mentions everything from “a song that’s basically just a Chicago house track”, to one with “a real Nine Inch Nails feel to it”, to another where “the beat is just basically Wu-Tang…” Music obsessives through and through, their “magpie” policy of letting anything through the door that might excite them is out in full force - aided by Gorillaz producer Remi Kabaka Jnr and the not-inconsequential help of a major label

budget (“You can make art with whatever resources are available to you, but if you have ideas that require more and you have access to the utilities that will bring those ideas to life, you entirely should do it,” he shrugs).

It’s also, following their debut’s unassuming beginnings as a remote record, put together during lockdown by James and Ryan with little expectation of where it might take them, the frst time the band have sat down in the studio and realised exactly what they can do as a sturdy, four-piece unit.

Unsurprisingly for a group as tightly-bonded as Yard Act, the answer is a followup that channels this rapport into something they’re confdent will justify the reception to their debut and underline that they’re a band in it for the long haul.

“I’m self-deprecating in so many areas of my life all the time, but I believe in the music we’re making and where we’re going,” says Smith. “It makes it much easier to see [everything that’s happened] and go, ‘It could have happened to anyone else, and it should have happened to other people, but we deserve that it’s happened to us’.” DIY

“The character’s dropped a lot more. I’m getting better at becoming more transparent and honest.” - James Smith

*NB: James’ “transparent”, “honest” phase was just as ridiculous.

OCTOBER ‘23 TOUR

We’re called Royal Blood and this is rock music. Who likes rock music? Nine people? Brilliant.”

These were the words bouncing around the online echo chamber following Radio 1’s Big Weekend back in May. The Brighton duo faced a tough crowd, sandwiched between the twin pop behemoths of Lewis Capaldi and Niall Horan at Dundee’s Camperdown Park. The Venn diagram where fans of buzzsaw garage-rock fretwork and former One Direction members meet encompassed seemingly, well, around nine people.

Earlier this year, ROYAL BLOOD found themselves in the middle of a major social media pile-in following a viral festival appearance. Ahead of LP4, they’re dusting themselves off and focussing their sights forwards.

It was possible to feel frontman Mike Kerr’s twitchy frustration through the screen. By the end of their set he threw his guitar down and walked off stage with his middle fngers in the air. The clip quickly sparked a litany of conversations on everything from quote-unquote rockstar behaviour to what an artist really owes the people watching them, if anything. Mike and drummer Ben Thatcher appeared on BBC Radio 1 days later to both explain themselves and apologise.

A few months on, Mike’s feelings remain much the same. “The scale of that story was not in proportion to the severity of it,” he says calmly over Zoom. “It blew up in a way that I didn’t feel was in proportion to how bad it was. I think we were the cocktail of the moment, and when something spikes on social media, you have to form an opinion on it. It’s going to be black or white –expecting a nuanced view from social media is asking a lot.”

Is he concerned the incident will follow the band around, or overshadow things they have done or go on to do? “I’m not in control of that. We produced our own record – we quite enjoy being in control. But I’m also aware of the things that I can’t, and I’m not in control of what someone wants to think of me and my character,” Mike considers. “And I certainly don’t take validation from people that don’t know me. If someone wants to continue to use that as a reference point then honestly, they have every right to. That’s OK, I can’t decide that.”

Perhaps the immediacy of the explosion could be due to how unexpected their reaction was. Royal Blood are not a band known for causing controversy – indeed, they’re arguably one example of an artist whose music is better known than the people who play it. Mike is conscious of this discrepancy. “[Causing controversy] is not our reputation as a band, and that’s not my reputation as a person. That’s not part of the gig; it’s not what we do,” he says. “There’s obviously times on stage when you get something wrong and sometimes you say things that are unnecessary, but that isn’t the atmosphere of a Royal Blood show. They’re incredibly fun and there’s a really positive atmosphere, and anyone who’s been to one will testify to that.”

Onwards and upwards then, and the pair are intending to stride on. They sub-headlined Glastonbury on the Friday night as Arctic Monkeys, some of their earliest and best-known backers, returned to Worthy Farm, and today Mike is calling in from a sweltering Rome, where the duo are opening for their musical heroes, Muse. Once the summer packs up meanwhile, they’ve got a new era to usher in with their fourth album, ‘Back To The Water Below’.

A mere month after they’d signed off on their third album, 2021’s ‘Typhoons’, Royal Blood picked up their writing pens again, still buzzing with inspiration and the excitement of fnishing a project they felt especially good about. “It wasn’t necessarily pointing towards an album. There’s one song from that period which is on the record,” Mike notes. The groundwork wasn’t properly laid, however, until August last year. The band had three weeks off after fnishing a tour and, in need of some deserved R&R, Mike went on holiday, purposely leaving his guitar at home. It didn’t stop him working completely, however. In a spate of boredom, he started writing but, in what was a complete frst for him, he was writing lyrics without any music to set them to.

Writing an album the opposite way round and without intention had a substantial effect. “I think it made me approach the creation of songs in a much more traditional way,” he reasons. “I found myself staring at the piano with lyrics in front of me, and writing songs in a very pure way, without any riffs, without recording myself.” This approach also evoked a liberating feeling. “When you write a lot of the music frst, there’s a sense of restriction. You need the words to ft the mood of the song, and there’s melodies and rhythms [already there] and you can feel locked in before you’ve even begun.

BloodGuts

Words: Emma Wilkes.

Photo: Tom Beard.

BloodGuts

By not having that, there’s more room for expression and what I wanted to say could take more priority.”

It afforded Mike the space to spread his wings more than he had previously felt he could. He admits he hasn’t always been the world’s most confdent lyricist, having started his days in Royal Blood feeling somewhat underdeveloped. “I hadn’t been playing bass very long; I hadn’t been singing very long; I had a bit of impostor syndrome,” he admits. This time around, with more experience and more assurance, he found himself genuinely having fun putting words on paper. And, as a product of that experience, Mike wrapped his feelings more in metaphor, conveying emotion in more abstract terms.

Where ‘Typhoons’ made for a lyrically heavy listen, excavating the emotions that sprung from his journey to sobriety, this time Mike is hoping to leave a little more to interpretation. “I always feel like I kind of ruin it when I explain it. I’ve never felt like my lyrical content has been that cryptic, so I felt like I was doing it a disservice by re-explaining it again,” he says. Ask him, however, the reasoning behind the album’s title – a lyric from the gritty, piano-laced single ‘Pull Me Through’ – and more light is shed, albeit in a sideways sort of manner. “I felt like I was writing from a destination that was submerged, and that was in darkness, and was alone,” he nods. “That theme keeps popping up in the songs, and the image of being somewhere hidden. It felt like a fair representation of the record.”

It wasn’t, however, just in the lyrics where Mike found a sense of liberation. He describes the entire process of stitching together the record as “ruleless,” in which their vision wasn’t dictated by him and Ben beforehand, but shaped itself. The prescriptiveness with which they made ‘Typhoons’ - a shiny dance-rock behemoth, made not for dancing the anxiety away but for dancing within the feelings themselves – may well have been to a fault. “It restricted us, it meant that ideas were coming up and we were throwing them away because they didn’t ft what we thought the album was going to be at the time.”

Even the decision to self-produce for LP4 came unconsciously, with the band writing and recording at the same time to such an extent that Mike estimates 70 per cent of the album was done before they’d put a thought to who they’d get behind the desk. “Our vision felt clear enough to pursue that independently,” he states, confdently.

Across ‘Back To The Water Below’, this freedom exerts itself in subtly new and forward-facing ways for the duo. On ‘Pull Me Through’ the sonorous harmonies of piano intertwine with the band’s trademark ultra-distorted scuzz. The album contains one of the fastest songs - single ‘Mountains At Midnight’ - that Royal Blood have ever made (“We realised one day we didn’t have any fast songs, they were all slow!”), and there’s even one - ‘The Firing Line’ - with no distortion at all.

“They all felt like missing links,” says Mike. “It has to feel fresh to feel like you’re progressing. I think that’s the point of making a record, to progress.”

‘Back To The Water Below’ is out 1st September via Warner. DIY

“I’m aware of the things that I can’t control, and I’m not in control of what someone wants to think of me and my character.”

- Mike Kerr

DIYin deep

The man behind the mask(ing tape).

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

With debut album ‘Smiling With No Teeth’, Genesis Owusu became a star in his native Australia. Following it up with the conceptual, broadreaching ambition of hard-won second album ‘STRUGGLER’, it’s high time the rest of the world followed suit. Words: Matt Ganfeld.

DIYin deep

Genesis Owusu exists between worlds. A Ghanaian who moved to Canberra, Australia at the age of two, his music is defant in its eclecticism and bounces freely from one genre to another - often within the space of one verse. On home turf, he’s won numerous ARIA awards (Australia’s equivalent to the BRITs) and sold out an orchestra-backed performance at the Sydney Opera House; elsewhere around the globe, he still enjoys the status of ‘widely-tipped riser’.

As his Zoom connection cracks into focus, Genesis is on the fnal week of a US arena tour opening for Bloc Party and power-pop juggernauts Paramore in preparation for the August release of his second album, ‘STRUGGLER’.

“It’s defnitely given me a taste for the luxury of playing in stadiums,” he jokes, following last night’s performance in Pittsburgh. “Big basketball team locker rooms, free catering for every show, all that kinda stuff.”

As mismatched as the touring line-up might seem on paper, it’s diffcult to imagine any spectator leaving a Genesis Owusu show as anything but a convert. Much like everything that the artist exudes, his live setsbacked by his dancers / hype-men The Goon Club - revel in a juxtaposition of personality. At certain moments, the stage cuts a confrontational scene, complete with abrasive snarls and combative body language; elsewhere in the set, he plays the role of warm, congregational leader. It makes for a performance in which both the Jekyll and the Hyde within him deliver the goods with an equally arresting and convincing level of commitment.

The Goon Club, meanwhile, serve as a visual representation of the themes that Genesis - real name Kosi Owusu-Ansah - conveys within his music. During the extensive tour of his debut album ‘Smiling With No Teeth’, The Goons would begin each show in military vests and ski masks, emanating a threateningly cold demeanour. As the performance unfolds, the bodies on stage remove their uniforms and dramatically lighten their personas to the sound of soulful ballads and bouncing summertime melodies, placing the stereotype of the ‘violent black man’ under the microscope.

Genesis remains coy when discussing the evolving role that The Goons will play as he matures from his debut album cycle into his second. “They’re a very elusive group of people. They kind of infuence me in a lot of different ways; pitching here and there,” he says fondly of the troupe. “So they’re defnitely helping me to craft this world of ‘STRUGGLER’ for the next batch of live shows.” There is a composed pause before Genesis submits to his own excitement: “…And it’s coming out crazy!”

It’s a well-worn cliche that artists have a lifetime to create their frst album, with only a year or two to construct its follow-up. And this truism hits hardest when the creator in question injects as much of themself into a debut as Genesis. 2021’s ‘Smiling With No Teeth’ centred on two metaphorical black dogs; one representing depression that prowls internally, and another inhabiting the role of real world racism. He interacts with each of these antagonists throughout the album to create a piece of work that tessellates humour and a carefree groove between the most unlikely of topics, without diluting or undermining any of the subject matter.

‘Smiling With No Teeth’ went on to win four ARIAs in total, including Album of the Year and Best Hip Hop Release, from a haul that featured a tally of twelve nominations, laying a drastically different foundation for its followup to build from. “The frst album felt like the accumulation of a lifetime of things that I wanted to say, and then I said it,” he explains. “I’m not the type of person that likes to say things when I feel like I have nothing to say, so I was lost for a little bit as to how I was going to make this new one, and I was listening to the least amount of music that I’d ever listened to in my life up until this point, for some reason.”

Where his debut was created over six straight days of ten-hour jam sessions that Genesis subsequently revisited with a fne-tooth comb in order to fnalise the instrumentation, ‘STRUGGLER’ was created between Australia and the USA, without the mixed blessing of lockdown to focus his tunnel vision. “I was touring and doing things off the back of the success of Album One. It was a gift and a curse, not having the luxury of people not knowing who you are anymore,” he admits. “I was playing shows in LA, then going to Lithuania before moving on again and trying to fnd the time in between to fgure out how we were going to do this second album.”

Genesis, who radiates an air of down-to-earth self-awareness throughout the conversation, catches himself momentarily. “Obviously I’d never say, ‘Oh, woe is me. I have to play in your beautiful countries’ and stuff like that,” he laughs, “but it was defnitely a much different change of pace from Album One.”

When the well of sonic inspiration ran dry, however, Genesis began to fnd stimulation in literature, with Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis in particular arming him with the tools to re-evaluate and even weaponise the state of his creative slump. “I got really interested in these absurdist books and plays,” he explains. “I just got drawn to those stories narratively and they ended up providing the inspiration for this next album, alongside my personal experiences.” In a roundabout way, the early seeds of this second album were to be loosely about the diffculties of making said album. Or, to put it more poetically, “I guess being lost provided the inspiration of what this album became.”

‘STRUGGLER’ is out 18th August via Ourness / AWAL.

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

“I GUESS BEING LOST PROVIDED THE INSPIRATION OF WHAT THIS ALBUM BECAME.”

And just like that, we’re on the home stretch of festival season; alongside upcoming highlights a little closer to home (Reading and Leeds, All Points East, End of the Road - we’re looking at you!), we’ll be heading over to Spain later this month, for an extra burst of fun in the sun…

FESTIVALS

31st August - 2nd September

Sonora Mijas, Costa Del Sol

Sun, sea, sand and The Strokes. Can it get any better? We’re not so sure. Luckily, that’s exactly what’s in store at this year’s edition of Spanish festival Cala Mijas. What’s more, there are loads more incredible names taking to the stage across the weekend (Florence + The Machine, IDLES, Foals and many more), and if you need to cool off from all the excitement, you can walk just 15 minutes to jump in the sea.

Also heading to the sunny coast this year are Belle & Sebastian, following a hefty UK tour and their recently-released album ‘Late Developers’. Ahead of their spot at the weekender, we caught up with drummer Richard Colburn.

You recently fnished up a big UK tour which had been rescheduled from back in 2022 - how did it all go? What were some of your highlights?

The tour went really well. In fact, it was one of the most enjoyable tours we’ve done. Most of the tour was sold out and we played a lot of venues we’ve played in the past so we knew what to expect. Some highlights included two nights at The Roundhouse in London, the Usher Hall in Edinburgh, a nice walk along the beach in Aberdeen, a 6am walk along the Mersey, playing Belfast and Dublin.

SUNDOWNERS Q&A BELLE & SEBASTIAN Cala Mijas

How did it feel to fnally get to play those shows after waiting quite a few months?

To be back on the road felt great. The shows went down really, really well with all the audiences. To come back after a long time out and play to full houses most nights really helped us settle ourselves on stage. It’s a huge testament to our fans for showing up after a few false starts. The whole tour was great fun and we all enjoyed playing every show. I wish it could’ve gone on longer.

Earlier this year, you released ‘Late Developers’, which was recorded in the same sessions as 2022’s ‘A Bit Of Previous’; how was it making the two albums in tandem?

To be honest, none of us were really aware we were making two albums. Because it was our own studio, it was just like coming into work everyday and not like the usual

experience of making an album. Since 2002-3 we’ve decamped to another city or country to record albums. ‘Late Developers’ and ‘A Bit Of Previous’ is the frst time we’ve recorded albums back in Glasgow. We have recorded other stuff in Glasgow prior to that including the soundtracks for ‘Bagnold Summer’, ‘How To Solve Human Problems’ and ‘What To Look For In Summer’, but as far as recording in our own studio, this was a frst. Once we got on a roll, we just kept recording song after song and didn’t really notice how many songs we had. As far as I can remember, it was quite organic. Usually we record more songs than we need for an album, then try and piece the album together with a few songs left over, but this time we had two albums’ worth of songs.

You’ve got a handful of festival appearances happening this month. Do you have a favourite part of those sorts of performances? Festivals can be really hit or miss as far as performance goes. It depends on a few things: the audience, time of day, soundcheck or no soundcheck, daylight or darkness, how and when you get to the festival, set length, among many other factors. Playing festivals are usually seat-of-thepants stuff but enjoyable nonetheless.

You’ll be heading to the Cala Mijas festival on the sunny Costa Del Sol - have you played in Spain much before?

Yes, we’ve been fortunate to play Spain a lot over the years with festivals and our own gigs. The audiences in Spain are truly fantastic! They really know how to let their emotions out when it comes to watching live music. I’m really looking forward to playing Cala Mijas.

ROMY The Sea

With every new release Romy’s ability to create something deeply personal and evocative while remaining dancefoor-friendly continues. With credits for festivalconquering producer Fred again.. and longstanding pop go-to Stuart Price, ‘The Sea’ offers three blissful minutes of sundrenched euphoria. Moving like water, her ethereal vocals foat above woozy synths and softly pulsating beats: nostalgic and vulnerable, yet full of the promises of love. (Katy Hills)

HAVE YOU HEARD?

MITSKI Bug Like An Angel

“I try to remember the wrath of the devil / was also given him by god”: so goes the parting couplet of Mitski’s latest, the wholly immersive and tragically beautiful ‘Bug Like An Angel’. Cocooned in religious motifs, the track feels almost ecclesiastical, led by Mitski’s pure vocals and bolstered by an unexpected - but entirely welcome - choral echo. It’s well worth watching the video too; a four minute story of rock bottom and redemption, isolation and community, it sees Mitski herself as one of a musical congregation who try in vain to help a lost soul. Stunning stuff. (Daisy

Carter)

TROYE SIVAN Rush

Take a scroll through TikTok and one’s personal algorithm would have to be extremely niche not to stumble across the frst taste of Troye Sivan’s third album. But where engineered virality ensures only a fraction of Warhol’s prophecy, a truly great chorus is just that: a truly great chorus. Add a little less-than-subtle double entendre (Rush is the name of a brand of poppers), and present it with a proven pop entity that’s been threatening superstardom for aeons and if it’s not too late for another song of the summer contender in this hemisphere, it’s all but guaranteed in Troye’s home down under. (Bella Martin)

LYNKS Use It Or Lose It

Newly signed to Heavenly Records and with a slick accompanying video that proves how even a little bit more budget can go a long way, ‘Use It or Lose It’ is the perfect walk-on music for Lynks’ frst steps into the pro arena. Backed by the sort of tempestuous tango that could theme a sordid HBO drama, lyrically it treads the line between hedonistic, sex-positive call-to-arms and fretful neuroses with the sort of hilarious one-liners that the masked singer does so well. Anyone that can rhyme “death bed” with “more head” and the “lines on my forehead” can go straight to the top of the class. (Lisa Wright)

THE KILLS New York

The beautiful thing about The Kills is their commitment to simplicity: fve albums deep, and while the pair have played around with their glitchy, dark formula plenty, they’ve never really been tempted musically by rock’s maximalist ways. Even ‘LA Hex’, the fip side to this, which is calmer and distinctively cinematic in scope, hasn’t gone full Hollywood.

‘New York’ is the winner here, Alison Mosshart’s trademark gritty vocal and choice of words combining with an almost big band-infuenced percussive sound to belie what seems a wholly soft message: “I bust my lips on yours / How sweet, the night is dark enough / We’re only seeing stars.” (Emma Swann)

DumbFishingBuoysClub NEU

Set sail for an ocean of fun and puns, courtesy of Dan D’Lion and Havelock’s fshy new enterprise. Words: Ims Taylor.

Welcome aboard: Dumb Buoys Fishing Club has offcially opened for business, and the duo are ready for you to dive in. The project of musicians - and best matesDan D’Lion and Havelock, they might have no personal connection to the sea but that’s not stopping them. Impressively practiced in nautical wordplay, and dropping metaphors and puns non-stop, the outline for the brilliantly bizarre world they’ve constructed is one that could raise the eyebrow of even the staunchest seafarer.

“We were literally just casting our rods out to see what encapsulated us, just getting in the studio and taking the piss,” laughs Dan. “One of us said something along the lines of ‘Dumb Buoys’, or ‘Fishing Club’, and that threw us into this lane. Then we wrote a whole project where we play these two fshermen; every time we got in the studio, we were dressing up, making it fun, fshing in costumes. We fully submerged ourselves into these characters.

“But then also, we’re integrating real-life problems into the storyline of these two fshermen that we represent at their most exaggerated,” he continues. “There’s a lot of honesty in the story of these two fshermen.”

“It was subconsciously a manifestation of our own characters,” Havelock explains further, “but completely exaggerated. It was really helpful to be able to just detach completely and feel really free.”

Being such close friends meant it was incredibly easy to traverse the blurry line between reality and revelry, says Dan. “We’re best mates, so we talk about everything. The narrative between us and what’s going on in each other’s lives just naturally comes

out, and we both know exactly what needs to be said when we’re creating music. It’s this brother-from-another-mother thing!”

The Fishing Club - as well as being a way for Dan and Havelock to write about their own lives - is a prime vessel for the pair to push themselves creatively. “We’ve always looked up to artists that fully indulge in conceptual ideas, like Ziggy Stardust or Daft Punk, and use that whole setting to create a universe,” Havelock explains. “But we always thought there was a bit of a gap in terms of the sea thing. Obviously you’ve got ‘Yellow Submarine’, but…”

“It’s uncharted territory!” Dan continues.

“There’s so many points in the writing process where we’ve gone, ‘Has anyone ever said this in this way?’ It’s kept it so energetic. Then for us, with our live shows, we’re getting up and doing that like we’ve never done; we both play with bands for our solo projects, and now here we are with a DJ, climbing the speakers. The main thing is just going with our gut.”

Following a debut on DIY’s own stage at The Great Escape, the pair’s second ever live show was at this year’s Glastonbury - quite the inauguration. But with its production levels and magical, otherworldly atmosphere, the festival proved a ftting arena for the DBFC. Their frst headline show, meanwhile, is around the corner, and that’s being planned with the same meticulous, ridiculous dedication to the concept. “We’re doing that on a boat in London!” says Dan. “We want to do all these different cities on different boats, so the people that come into touch with the Dumb Buoys will see this indulgent experience, just like we’ve been wrapped up in this world, and they can be a part of the Fishing Club. The people that surround us know exactly where we’re at.”

The pair’s vision for the project has always been as an amorphous collective. “My mum’s in the club! My auntie!” says Havelock. “This goes beyond just the artists we collaborate with. We want to feel like, from a fan’s perspective, you’re part of the club.” “It’s not necessarily even the band and the fan,” Dan adds. “It’s like a family. People can feel like they’re putting whatever they’ve got behind the curtain just to embrace this - it’s like when you go to a really good movie or a play.” A flm that people would clap at the end of? “Yeah, standing ovation, please.”

They do have one particularly compelling co-sign so far - BROCKHAMPTON’s Merlyn Wood. “We’d met a couple of people over in LA,” Dan explains, “and we had pretty much everything done, but we were adamant about not sending it to anyone because it wasn’t ready. Even our individual teams, our labels hadn’t heard it, but our friend over there asked to play it to a few people - then we woke up with a message from Merlyn! Brockhampton’s energy, the way they played has a big infuence on how we wanted to do it, so that was crazy, but recording it felt really natural.”

“It captured the whole essence of feeling collective,” says Havelock. “Even in the nature of the name Fishing Club… Yeah, you’re in the club.” DIY

“We wrote a whole project where we play these two fshermen; we fully submerged ourselves into these characters.”

- Dan D’Lion

cumgirl8

shows are like an analogue Tinder.” -

cumgirl8 aren’t afraid of the haters. “When 4AD frst announced that we signed to them, there was a kid on their [Instagram] that was really very upset,” the band’s drummer Chase Lombardo notes, looking back on the announcement of their new deal in April of this year. “But we invited them to a show, he loved it, and went back on Instagram and said in all capital letters: ‘I TAKE IT BACK, THEY’RE AWESOME’.” Evidence of a job well done.

Having won over the trolls, the group – Chase, Lida Fox (bass), Veronika Vilim (guitar) and Avishag Rodrigues (guitar) – are currently gearing up to drop their ‘phantasea pharm’ EP; their frst release with the label. The project’s concept was initially born out of both an appreciation for Ella Fitzgerald’s ‘Old McDonald’, and a memorable show in Charlottesville, Virginia, where the quartet wore farm-themed outfts. Avishag was a lawnmower, complete with power button nipple pasties, while Lida was a “sexy rooster”. “A friend did once call our shows a baddie meet-up,” laughs Lida of their live reputation. “It’s like an analogue Tinder,” Chase continues. “There’s only sweet, cool, smart, hot people at our shows.”

That particular get-together kickstarted the ‘phantasea pharm’ which, as Chase explains, is “like an underwater farm-aceutical exploration purpose with the art of sound”. Dedicated to their late friend and dancer Bobbie Hondo, the genresplicing offering fuses powerhouse post-punk, squelchy electronics and indiepop hooks with the group’s typically audacious lyricism, resulting in earworm anarchy.

The band – who, when we speak, have just performed at Creepy Teepee festival

Chase Lombardo

in the Czech Republic and are still decked out in their stage outfts – frst formed in 2019 and, when asked what drew them together, Veronika answers with tongue frmly in cheek. “The energy of the universes colliding in and out of space… and the Internet. And somehow we made it to the Czech Republic today, and I think we’re all constantly confused how we made it here.”

For those watching from the outside, it’s less confusing. Having released two excellent EPs (2020’s self-titled debut, and the following year’s ‘RIPcumgirl8’), the band have also been fexing other creative muscles too; fashion line cg8 was praised in Vogue for its Y2K-infuenced runway show while, during the pandemic, they presented an online talk show interviewing the likes of Junglepussy. The scope of their ambition doesn’t stop there either, with dreams of creating a flm, a line of sustainable sex toys, and a “Spiceworld-type mockumentary a la Best In Show”. “I want to hear Jimmy Fallon say cumgirl8,” Chase adds to the list.

cumgirl8’s music is punk in spirit, passionately sex-positive and even fnds the quartet refecting on subversive political fgures: single ‘cicciolina’ is named for Hungarian-Italian porn star Ilona Staller who was elected to Italian parliament. Lida calls her “just a huge inspiration”, while the group affectionately refer to her as “cumgirl number one”. And while these choices might rattle more conservative audiences, that doesn’t faze the group. “We try to engage them,” says Lida when asked about how certain portions of the population react to them. “I think we try to invite people in a lot.”

“I think it kind of poses a question too. If it makes you uncomfortable, that says a lot about where you’re at with sexual politics,” Chase concludes. “Hopefully you’re endeared enough to ask yourself those questions and not be scared.” Scared? Not in cumgirl8’s vocabulary. DIY

More than just an internet-baiting band name, the New York quartet are here to challenge musical and societal preconceptions at every turn. Words: Hannah Mylrea.

“Our

UNDERSCORES

CONSTANT CURVEBALLS FROM WALLSOCKET, MICHIGAN.

You can hear why 100 gecs wanted to recruit underscores - the project of Filipino-American April Harper Grey - for their recent US tour. Though forthcoming LP ‘Wallsocket’ wrangles heavier, indier infuences than her hyperpop peers, there’s a similar sense of ‘anything goes’ sonic what-the-fuckery present. Somewhere in the venn diagram of Sleigh Bells, Beck, Remi Wolf, ‘90s slackers and very modern weirdo pop, you’ll fnd underscores doing very much her own thing.

LISTEN: Recent single ‘Locals (Girls like us)’ is the pop punk / nu rave mash-up of chaotic dreams.

SIMILAR TO: Very little else, which is exactly why it’s so exciting.

MEMORY OF SPEKE

IMMERSIVE LIVE SHOWS AND JAZZ-FUNK-PUNK GEMS FROM THE BUZZY LONDONERS.

Go to a Memory of Speke show and you never really know what you’re going to get. At one recent gig, they played in the dark lit only by head torches; at another, they entered all dressed as beekeepers. Fronted by Tegan Williams - creative director for supermodel Adwoah Aboah’s fashion label - the band are clearly having a hoot whilst, musically, their live set brings in global rhythms and a sense of party-starting good times; Tegan, meanwhile, is already a charismatic leader.

LISTEN: There’s nothing offcial released, but some live recordings are on Youtube.

SIMILAR TO: The sort of band you’ll stumble upon at End of the Road and end up talking about for weeks.

JALEN NGONDA

THE LONDON-BASED, MARYLAND-BRED SINGER WITH A FRESH TAKE ON SOUL. Listening to recent singles from Jalen Ngonda, it’s easy to be transported to what feels like another musical era entirely. Gorgeously mirroring his personal ‘70s Motown and soul infuences, the likes of ‘Come Around and Love Me’ and ‘That’s All I Wanted From You’ manage to sound both utterly timeless and completely fresh; it’s little wonder that the Maryland native has already scored slots opening up for the likes of Olivia Dean, Laura Mvula and Lauryn Hill.

LISTEN: ‘That’s All I Wanted From You’ is a gorgeous taste of his forthcoming debut.

SIMILAR TO: A warm hug in musical form.

ALIEN CHICKS

ONE OF THE BANDS AT THE HEART OF LONDON’S DIY UNDERBELLY. Brixton-based Alien Chicks are stalwarts of the Windmill scene, but their energy and ambition extends far beyond South London. Unpredictable time signatures and almost frenetic playing are tempered by the trio’s technical skill and on-stage chemistry, resulting in gigs that land just the right side of pure, unadulterated chaos. The handful of singles they’ve released thus far revel in genre-bending, biting social commentary that demands to be heard live - preferably from the centre of a pit with pints fying overhead.

LISTEN: Latest single ‘Candlestick Maker’ is saxophone like you’ve never heard it before.

SIMILAR TO: All the sensibilities of grassroots punk, but with added groove.

NEU Recommended

OSLO TWINS

THE BRISTOL DREAM-POP PROJECT WHO’VE ALREADY SUPPORTED YOUR FAVE NEW BAND. Relentless gigging over the past year or so has already seen Oslo Twins support everyone from The Last Dinner Party and Blondshell to English Teacher (to name but a few), and now they’ve just dropped a debut EP. Ethereal vocals with dancy hooks, the four-track project showcases an impressive command of alternative instrumentation (organ, fddle, bells, and more) and a confdence in their sonic identity.

LISTEN: The pounding drums of EP closer ‘Basilica’ make for an unlikely pre-night out hype track.

SIMILAR TO: If Kate Bush made trip hop.

MaeStephens

Viral hit ‘If We Ever Broke Up’ sent Mae Stephens careering straight into the Top 20. Now she’s ready to turn that golden moment into a fully-fedged pop success story. Words: Nick Levine.

“Everything is new to me, I’m like a newborn!” says Mae Stephens over Zoom from her home in Kettering. Mae makes no bones about the fact she pursued her musical breakthrough with laser-like focus; “Me and my dad studied the TikTok algorithm for years,” she says unselfconsciously. But now that it’s actually happening for her, pop stardom is still a lot to take in. “Everything excites me; everything shocks me,” says the 20-year-old singer-songwriter, her eyes widening. “But I’m at a point now where I kind of understand that this is slightly real and not some kind of dream.”

The pair’s research paid off right at the end of last year. Mae posted a 15-second video of her dancing to ‘If We Ever Broke Up’, which she captioned as “probably the funkiest song I’ve ever written”, then went off and got “very, very drunk” at a New Year’s Eve party. The next day, she woke up with “a hangover that felt like listening to drum’n’bass on repeat” and found herself inundated with notifcations from the platform. “I don’t normally get hangovers, but the one day I get one, I gain like 150,000 followers,” she says with a laugh.

“I remember my boyfriend looking over to me as if to say, ‘I think your song just blew up’.” His instincts were spot on, no small thanks to its slinky funk-pop groove and witty lyrics. “If we ever broke up, I’d call your dad / And tell him all the shittiest of things you’ve said,” Mae sings with a wink. She was soon summoned to London where she spent “an exhausting three days” meeting record label bosses before ultimately deciding to sign with EMI. When ‘If We Ever Broke Up’ was offcially released in February, it climbed to Number 13 on the UK singles chart and became a hit everywhere from Japan to New Zealand. Globally, it has now racked up 165 million Spotify streams.

Having quit her job at Asda, Mae is now fully embracing the pop star dream. She few to LA for songwriting sessions that yielded new single ‘Mr Right’ - a funk-fecked bop that features Meghan Trainor - and has also travelled to Japan for a promo trip, and supported Pink and Blackpink in Hyde Park. Somehow, Mae also found time along the way to move out of her family home and in with her boyfriend. “That’s helped a lot because I have my own space now,” she says. “And I’ve even set up a little home recording studio.”

For Mae, success feels even sweeter now having been so badly bullied at school that she even, briefy, lost her steely ambition. “I was told I was never going to make it, and because I was a big girl, that I’d never be on stage in a dress,” she says. “But I’ve proved that if you work hard, you can make it happen. Being an artist is the best job in the world and I’m not going to let it go.” DIY

“I don’t normally get hangovers, but the one day I get one, I gain like 150,000 followers.”

�

BuzzFeed Feed

All the buzziest new music happenings in one place.

VANILLA SKIES

Viji, aka Vanilla Jenner, has announced details of her debut album, ‘So Vanilla’.

Her frst full-length is set to be twelve tracks in length and is due for release via Speedy Wunderground on 27th October. What’s more, the twelve-track album was produced alongside Speedy’s own Dan Carey, predominantly at his London studio.

Viji’s also shared a frst taste of the record in the form of new single ‘Sedative’: “I wrote ‘Sedative’ about a girl,” she’s said, of the track. “She’s like a breath of fresh air, and there’s a fne line between friendship and attraction that was hard to navigate. Usually when I meet someone like that I wanna ‘be’ that person, but this time I wanted to be with her.” Head to diymag.com now to hear it.

PRAYING FOR AN ANSWER

SIPHO. has announced details of his debut album ‘PRAYERS & PARANOIA’ along with a new track, ‘SOBER’.

The Birmingham singer will follow up his 2021 EP ‘AND GOD SAID…’ with his frst full-length, out on 27th October. News of the album has arrived alongside a handful of UK and Ireland tour dates, which will take place this November.

Speaking on the track SIPHO. has said: “I’m always drawn to these badass characters, like Action Bronson, or Jet Li - these people that are almost like, unreal. I kind of based this on that. The lyrics are painting the picture of a badman, but it’s over the top - he’s in a suit, he drives a big Lexus. Someone that’s both feared and respected. But it shows their vulnerabilities. Some people end up in these places and they don’t know how they got there. And then you’re just lost and confused, left isolated by your power.”

For more info, and to see his full list of tour dates, head to diymag.com now.

NEPO-TASTIC

Brighton quartet Lime Garden have returned with their frst new music of 2023, in the form of whipsmart new single ‘Nepotism (baby)’.

The track marks their frst single since the release of ‘Bitter’ last October, and, according to the band’s Chloe Howard, “was written as a commentary on modern society, imagining my life as if I was someone born into fame. Writing the track gave me the feeling of being a teenager again, writing songs in my bedroom using three chords or less. The sound of this song pays homage to the beginnings of this band as four angsty teens who love guitars.” Check out its accompanying video - as directed by Jay Bartlettover on diymag.com now.

It’s also a frst taste of an “upcoming longer project” which is due early next year. Watch this space…

THE PLAYLIST

Every week on Spotify, we update the Neu Playlist with the buzziest, freshest faces. Here’s our pick of the best new tracks:

PETER XAN - PRESSURE

With surging guitars, crescendoing drums, and a vocal delivery that’s almost nonchalant, ‘Pressure’ is a mosaic of a track; the interplay between different sections draws the eye (or indeed the ear), but take a step back and the full work comes into focus. Proudly placing his Nigerian heritage front and centre of the accompanying video, Peter Xan is here to redefne all your preconceived notions of indie rock.

ROYAL OTIS - ADORED

Sydney duo Royel Otis indulge themselves in a frenetic fuzz on ‘Adored’. Somehow toeing the line between being absolutely laid back and pulsing with energy, the track is propelled along by a beat that’s just a fraction too fast for comfort, but the rhythmic jabbing of the guitar line and vocals keep up with it with ease. There’s something disconcerting about the juxtaposition between matter-offact lyrics about self-gratifcation (“I’ll beat on cue cause the music they are playing I like”) and an instrumental that sounds almost panicked, but it’s an addictive listen.

ZOLA COURTNEY - CALIFORNIA

In her frst release since 2021, Zola Courtney’s newest single ‘California’ sees her nurture a stripped back approach as she recounts the years she’s been away. With live strings and gentle piano, ‘California’ is guided by Zola’s breezy vocal and confessional lyricism. Despite its musings on separation, the track is brimming with self love and acceptance, built by a collection of heartfelt anecdotal refections. She walks the line of the intimately personal and the widely relatable, and for a few minutes, you are delicately placed in her shoes.

JAPAN, MAN - NOWHERE TO HIDE

Opening with snatches of whispered French, the latest from Lebanon-born Japan, Man - aka Laeticia Acra - blossoms into an irresistibly foot-tapping, head-nodding number complete with a prominent funk bassline and lilting strings. The second in a duo of singles marking a new chapter for the project, ‘Nowhere To Hide’ sees Laeticia ruminate on feeling panicked and trapped by the monotony of daily routine. It may be lyrically incongruous with the grooveladen instrumentals, but it very much works.

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

The hedonistic dance-punk duo, putting the art back into party. Words: Tilly Foulkes.

Fresh from Glastonbury and eagerly packed for another string of festival dates, hilariously chaotic, London-based duo Shelf Lives are in exceptionally good spirits right now. They’ve got a lot of reasons to be cheerful, too. Taking inspiration from the likes of Peaches and Gilla Band, Toronto-born vocalist Sabrina Di Giulio and Northampton guitarist / producer Jonny Hillyard aim to put “the punk back into house parties”. They’re a bit like if Confdence Man were formed in a grotty London squat.

“It kind of happened by accident, just for fun,” Sabrina explains of their wildcard outlook. “We were going to parties and they all seemed a bit too serious. They were only playing background music; it wasn’t, like, jumping around music. We were wondering, ‘Where did that vibe go?’ We just wanted to break stuff!”

“We were experimenting, making loads of different types of music, and then we just landed on this

Shelf Lives

sound. It makes sense to us, what we’re into as musicians,” Jonny continues. Their infuences swing between “underground, UK-based dance music” (Jonny) and “loads of rock music, particularly grunge” (Sabrina); Shelf Lives land somewhere in the centre. “I realised I didn’t know a lot of danceoriented rock bands that do it in a cool way,” says Jonny, as Sabrina adds: “A lot of rock bands that have electronic infuences tend to steer more to one side or the other, rather than go down the middle. Sometimes it’s good to sit on the fence!”

Meshing electroclash, dance, electronica and hardcore, Shelf Lives’ maximalist sound distorts the party until it’s something horrifying and grotesque. Much like an abominably debauched afters, it’s pushed to extreme exhaustion, always on the brink of collapse, before luring you back in. The so-called indie sleaze revival couldn’t have come at a better time for them. However, though they celebrate the cheap and trashy, and tip a hat to the controversial, in-your-face attitude of the genre (a la The Dare), there’s more to the pair than hollowed-out hedonism.

“We like to elevate all the shit stuff and make something fun out of it. It’s like you’re laughing while you’re drowning,” Jonny explains. Dance-punk is the ideal avenue, then - a space that combines

- Jonny Hillyard

reactionary punk values with club culture methods of coping. Their newest single, ‘Off The Rails’, further balances these two attitudes in a zealous examination of consumerism.

“The lyrics are: ‘You can’t go off the rails, because you’re none in a million’,” says Jonny. “It’s all about addiction - addiction to anything - and how we keep buying things to keep our mask up in society. And the other meaning is like, you can’t be off the railsmeaning cocaine - because, again, you’re afraid of not being able to wear that mask.”

“We’re always being marketed to, and taught we need all of this stuff to feel special. But then we’re not special, we’re all the same,” Sabrina continues. “But by realising we’re all the same and accepting each other for who we are instead of being whoever others want us to be, that’s how we’re going to feel better. It’s kind of a mean song, really, because we’re saying: ‘Don’t stop taking drugs, because you’re actually not that special!’”

Next up is a new EP, which they claim will be “still [Shelf Lives], but different.” After fring off a multitude of descriptors including “clubby”, “hip-hop chill vibes”, “experimental” and “melodic”, Sabrina grins: “So actually, we’re exactly the same - we’re all over the fucking map. But I think it’s better!” DIY

“We like to elevate all the shit stuff and make something fun out of it. It’s like you’re laughing while you’re drowning.”

A songwriter with a wicked lyrical pen and a performer that can outshine most on any bill, CMAT has long been a superstar in waiting. Now, with momentum tangibly building ahead of second album ‘Crazymad, For Me’, it’s time for Ciara MaryAlice Thompson to take centre stage.

Words: Lisa Wright.

Photos: Jenn Five.

mad about the girl mad about the girl

Emotional rollercoasters on a Glastonbury Sunday morning are usually reserved for those trying to push their way past the horizon of an imminent four-day comedown. But at 12.30pm in the Woodsies tent back in June, Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson was living out the sort of misty-eyed, memorable tipping point that careers are made from.

Having turned down a slot in 2022 in favour of waiting for “one of the big fve stages,” the gravitas and potential attention of playing the world’s most beloved festival was not lost on the singer better known as CMAT. “My whole last six months had been leading up to Glastonbury,” she recalls. “When we got it confrmed this year I thought, ‘Oh fuck, now I’ve got to be really good…’” But the reality was more than even she could have wished for.

Throughout 40 minutes of carefully-constructed chaos, in which belting heart-on-sleeve vocals, stand-up style banter, drag-esque extroversions and some really, really very good songs combined, the peripheral shade-dwelling bystanders all rose to their feet. By the end, as Thompson led the entire packed tent in a slowly swaying two-step to the strains of 2020 single ‘I Wanna Be A Cowboy, Baby!’ - a song she’d prefaced as being about a time in her life when she’d felt at her loneliest ebb - the whole crowd sung its chorus back. Thompson, in a perfect visual metaphor for everything her project is about, stood front and centre in a T-shirt emblazoned with ‘CMAT is a silly bitch!’ and earnestly, gratefully sobbed.

For the past few years, since the release of ‘... Cowboy’ and the witty, country-fecked quartet of songs that made up 2021’s ‘Diet Baby’ EP, CMAT has been something of a cult secret beloved by those in the know. Like drag culture, she says, “it’s a private joke that’s only for the people who get it”. But in recent months, it’s one that has begun to spread. Following that Glastonbury show, Ciara headed back home to support Florence + the Machine on a pair of Irish dates. The day we meet, she’s premiering the video for her new single ‘Where Are Your Kids Tonight?’, a duet with one of her longterm heroes, John Grant. Later that evening, Robbie Williams will take to Instagram to post about his love for the song, not once but twice.

CMAT is, undeniably, in demand. But she’s also not there yet - a reality that Thompson, sat in a meeting room at her label’s offce, make-up spread over a table as she attempts to eat a spicy paneer salad, curl her hair and conduct this interview simultaneously, is all-too aware of. “I read this interview recently where Dua Lipa’s personal trainer said that, for her to be performing at an optimum level, she has to sleep for 16 hours a day. And she’s able to do that, whereas I am just out of my house all of the time, constantly,” she says. “I’m probably as busy as someone like her, but the level is so much lower that I’m just dirty all the time. I’m the mangiest pop star going.”

For what it’s worth, Thompson smells perfectly fne from where we’re sitting, but the underlying point behind the gag still stands. Underpinning her hardwon rise at every step has been graft and resilience, an unwavering sense of self belief and the ability to pick herself back up from the darkest of corners. CMAT might be a silly bitch, but Ciara is a far more complicated character.

Born in 1996 in Dublin, Thompson spent the majority of her youth in the tiny commuter town of Dunboyne before moving back to the Irish capital to study, and then across to Manchester with her then-boyfriend to pursue music. Throughout these periods, the constant thread was a feeling of frustration at the lack of opportunity afforded to her. “A lot of loneliness came from feeling like I was trapped in poverty, in the sense that I felt I was really talented and good at writing songs, but no one fucking listened to me because I was working in a TK Maxx,” she says. “Nobody had any time of day for me. I wrote 75 million songs and a lot of them were good, and I’d be bringing them back and forth to London but no one cared because I wasn’t interesting enough because I didn’t have any resources to be interesting.

“I felt like, for a lot of years, there was a thing I wanted to do but I literally couldn’t see a way of executing it. I had two jobs - I was also a sexy shots lady - because I just wanted enough money to get the Megabus to London to do writing sessions and gigs, and all of my spare time and effort and energy went into trying to be a musician and a pop star. I was so angry and frustrated all the time that no one was paying attention to me because I didn’t have any money. And that was how it felt, that there was no way to get my foot in the door because I didn’t have any connections or resources.”

Eventually, she would crack the door open by leaving her old band Bad Sea, splitting with her partner, moving back to Dublin and beginning to put her songs on YouTube where she was scouted by a management team. The fights of fantasy coupled with feelings of extreme isolation that populated last year’s full-length debut ‘If My Wife New I’d Be Dead’ capture the intensity of this time, while October’s forthcoming follow-up ‘Crazymad, For Me’ acts as a potted document of that breakup and the years of anger, questioning and resentment that would follow. However, where CMAT’s poetic leanings and tendency for the swooning epic might lend a romantic hue to many of these offerings on record, the reality was far less rosy.

“I fnd it funny, because I get a lot of people telling me I should write a book but my life was not fucking interesting,” she explains. “I didn’t do anything. All my drug-taking was sad and weird and not that social, and that’s another thing - that entrapment directly leads to substance abuse and that was very much the same for me. I was stonked

“I know that this second album is probably going to be the best album I ever make.”

“People fnd loud women off-putting and I am as loud as they fucking come.”

“People fnd loud women off-putting and I am as loud as they fucking come.”

out of my brain on hash the whole time that I lived in Manchester because I did not want to be in my reality. So temporarily getting out of it for a bit was like, ‘Great, love it’.”

Still, however, Ciara wouldn’t let herself give up. Upon leaving Manchester, she remembers landing her dream proper job as an auctioneer’s assistant but acknowledging that, if she was ever going to make an album, she would have to turn it down for fear of being “too content”. “In an alternate universe, I’m itemising Tupperware from the 1960s - I could have been a contender!” she laughs. “But even when I was working in a shop, and had no money, and was a normal girl by textbook defnition, I also wasn’t relatable because I was a fucking freak. I was selling cigarettes and scratchcards on the till and in my head I was like, ‘None of these people know how good I am at writing songs…’ I’ve never been humble in my life.”

In conversation, it is easy to spot the difference between CMAT and Ciara. Where her pop star persona is a fun-loving rhinestone cowgirl, slaying her way across the stage and popping out choreography and splits at every turn, Thompson is a fast-talking overthinker with an intriguing mix of supreme confdence and ready self-criticism. The two are both sides of the same coin, but they’re also fundamentally separate. “The way I’ve always thought about it is, CMAT is singing songs about a girl called Ciara, but CMAT is not Ciara,” she begins. “When CMAT is on an Instagram Live it’s all, ‘Hey girl, slay’ and you have to do that so people fnd you pleasant. I don’t want people to come into contact with me outside of me singing and be put off immediately.”

Do you think you’re off-putting?

“Oh 100%. I’m really annoying,” she answers immediately. “I’m not saying this to rag on myself, but I know I’m off-putting because I had a diffcult time until I became a pop star and I would regularly meet people who just did not like me because I talk so much all of the time. People fnd loud women off-putting and I am as loud as they fucking come, and I’m very much a woman - I’m very girly - but I don’t do the demure thing. I’m the opposite of chic.

what’s got her this far. There’s a hustle mentality to the singer that knows if you want to make it, you’d better buckle up, strap in for the ride and keep your skin thick. It’s an ambition that also comes through in spades on ‘Crazymad…’ - an album that takes the melodic bones of her debut and bulks it up into a concise portrait that balances granular lyrical detail and widescreen sonic ambition.

“Objectively I know that this second album is probably going to be the best album I ever make,” she shrugs. “I think it’s the best collection of songs, and they’re really instinctive, and it’s about something really real and raw and quite simple, so on some level I think it’s gonna be the one that everyone likes the most. I wanted to make something that people could say was objectively really good. I don’t know how close someone like me can get to the George Michael thing of being omnipresent, I obviously can’t get anywhere close to that, but I’d like to think this would be my version of an attempt at doing something big: that’s why I’m excited.”

Dear John…

CMAT tells us why getting Mr Grant for ‘Where Are Your Kids Tonight?’ was crazy mad, for her.

The whole time I was writing that song, I was thinking about John because I love him SO much. I worship the ground he walks on. I think his body of work and his lyrics really heavily infuence the way I put songs together, and the topics he talks about and the laser focus has really resonates with me. There’s no one alive who has a lyrical body of work that refects my own life and feelings as closely as his - people with a religious upbringing, religious trauma, not living the predisposed life that’s been etched out for them, looking around at their surroundings and not liking it. It’s all very relevant to me. Also he’s FUCKING FUNNY, which is what Leonard Cohen had as well. Being a person that contains multitudes is not very marketable, but John is just himself.

“I’m very selfsh, and I know that about myself, and it’s hard not to be selfsh and self-centred when the thing that brings me the most joy and fulflment and peace is just me talking about myself, which is what my music is,” she continues. “I watched that Wham! documentary the other day, and George Michael is one of the nicest men ever to work in music - so talented and so brilliant - but when I watched that doc I really related to the bit when he cried because ‘Last Christmas’ didn’t go to UK Number One because he wanted four Number Ones in a year, and instead Live Aid went to Number One. He’s fucking fuming even though he also sings on that, but he didn’t write the song so it wasn’t good enough. I really related to that.”

It’s rare to fnd a burgeoning pop star in 2023 that’s ready to be truly candid, and far far rarer to fnd one that’s willing to own and admit their faws in such an open-book way. Thompson’s lack of artifce might be polarising for some (even her bandmates, she says, sometimes won’t talk to her in rehearsals for fear of incurring the brunt of her ambitious criticisms), but it’s also undoubtedly part of

With her second album mere weeks away, CMAT has every reason to feel this way. It’s no coincidence that, in the run up, she’s been ticking off bucket list moments from a Spotify featured artist billboard in New York’s Times Square to a Radio 1 Hottest Record in the World launch for recent single ‘Have Fun!’. ‘Crazymad, For Me’ takes the detritus of a toxic relationship with a man that Thompson describes as “blowing through my life like the Tasmanian devil for fve and a half years and using me like a scratching post”, and turns it into a superlative document of pith and pain.

‘California’ opens as a meta introduction to the album-writing process itself; a song about “egging [her] on” to make the record in the frst place, set to an epic exhalation of freedom. “The guy in question is not going to be happy about this album; I’ve not spoken to him in six years and I probably won’t speak to him ever again because he was lowkey an evil bastard and I don’t want him anywhere near my life,” she says. “I had this thing that people are gonna think I’m a fucking sadcase for bringing it all up six years later, but California is me going, ‘Well I’m gonna fucking do it anyway’.”

On the bass-led stalk of ‘Phone Me’, she draws parallels between Cassandrathe character in Greek mythology whose prophecies were never believed - and Rebekah Vardy. On the gutting ‘Such A Miranda’, she fits between Sex and the City references and the sucker-punchline: “Grown ups just get on with it / But I’m still not as old as you were when we frst met”. The stormy, atmospheric pop of ‘I… Hate Who I Am When I’m Horny’, meanwhile, brings to mind The Maccabees’ most enveloping moments whilst weaving in some wholly CMAT one-liners (“So

“What I want to do is be, objectively speaking, the best songwriter ever.”

Hot or Not?

CMAT’s a chatter. Here’s what we learnt about her loves and hates over the course of our cover story conversation.

HOT Lil Nas X

Everything that he’s done - him dominating the charts has really saved my soul a bit. There’s very few other people in music I can relate to because I don’t see that weird, dictatorial, omnipresent creep hanging over everything, where it’s like [puts on gremlin voice], ‘Everything has to be fun and cool and interesting and really heavily referenced with a wealth of time and energy put into everything at all times and no one’s allowed sleep’. There’s not a lot of people like that.

Drag

Saying [my show is] ‘draggy’ is the highest possible compliment. Most of my closest friends do drag and that was defnitely at numerous points in my life a fucking lifeline. Drag is the one thing I’d go to see that I wouldn’t get really fucked up for. It was the only time I was really compos mentis and sober.

Brazilian fans

I found a subsection of CMAT stans from South America and one of their usernames was Pedro Bogdanovich [after debut album track ‘Peter Bogdanovich’] - I followed them back because I thought that banter was hilarious.

NOT Working a performativity

I fnd it disconcerting that you have pop stars from the landed fucking gentry who are like, ‘I’m going to get McDonald’s, it’s crazy!’ They perform relatability and it’s manipulative - you don’t have to have something in common with everyone.

Shit songs

I’m trying really hard to not care if someone is bad at music but I’m still not that good at it; if someone puts a [bad] song on the radio, I struggle to sleep at night knowing that it exists on some level.

you ask me frst off what am I into / I say ‘God, self destruction and a Britney tune’ / You know she’s so lucky, she’s a star”).

The whole thing is a supremely smart knitting together of pop culture references high and low; the product of a songwriter who “spends most of [their] time reading things on the internet,” but who is equally committed to the craft of what they do, of making things witty and beautiful wherever possible. “I think you’ve gotta do some songwriting, dontcha?” she laughs of her approach. “In the nicest way possible to the established way of doing things at the moment which is: ‘What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me? I’m going to write a song about it and not do anything except type the story up’. And sometimes that’s beautiful; Sam Fender can do that and it’s really effective, fabulous. But a lot of people are attempting to do that [badly].

“I think it just has to be poetic. Guys, we can do poetry, it’s not illegal! We can do things in a creative way when making creative things! Talking about things is diffcult, I’m very bad

at therapy. I go when I’ve had a bad mental break which has happened to me a couple of times, so after that I’ll go almost as a way of proving to myself that I’m looking after myself. Give myself a pat on the head, ‘Look at me I’m going to therapy and I don’t want to die ha ha ha’. But I’m not good at it because I can’t describe my emotions unless I’m using Rebbekah Vardy and visuals and melody and things that are on a different level than language. I have to deliver my own feelings to myself through songwriting otherwise I’ll never know what happened.”

In Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson’s 27 years of life so far, a lot has happened: some good, some bad, some hard and, more recently, some completely life-affrming. Entirely unsurprisingly, her dreams are both sky high and totally true to herself. She would like, specifcally, to win the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically, “because if I hit that mark then I know I’ve been doing what I want to do, which is be, objectively speaking, the best songwriter ever,” she explains only with a slight hint of a wink. But she’s also aware that, having

fought long and hard to get to a point where her own unique vision of the world is being seen and understood, she’s not ready to let that go any time soon.

“I don’t need to be recognised by everyone. I love pop music but I’m not willing to sacrifce my own communication in order to make something palatable,” she nods, tooth gems glinting, as she adorns herself with the gold hoops and bright red curls that turn her into CMAT. “I don’t think my goal is for people to see me as a normal girl. If I was to be a fgurehead that inspires anything of anyone, I would like to inspire normal people from normal backgrounds to be very creative and very investigative. I don’t need people to think anything of me except, she’s a bit fucking annoying but at the end of the day, that song fucking bangs.

“Put it on my headstone: At the end of the day, that song fucking bangs.”

‘Crazymad, For Me’ is out 13th October via AWAL. DIY

“I was so angry and frustrated all the time that no-one was paying attention to me because I didn’t have any money.”

GOD GAVE ROCK & ROLL TO THEM

Well into their third decade as a band, The Hives are still the most fun rock’n’roll party you can fnd. Welcoming in ‘The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons’, Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist and co are feeling more alive than ever. Words: Elvis Thirlwell. Photos: Oliver Halfn.

While most bands over the course of a long career will ‘mature’ their sound, absorbing new infuences and expanding their sonic horizons in an attempt to keep themselves relevant, The Hives are riding high while mastering the opposite. Broaching 30 years since their formation, not only are the Swedish quintet charging back into the fray with their frst studio album in over a decade - tackling arenas and stadiums across Europe with Arctic Monkeys, and tearing up Glastonbury while they’re at it - they’re doing so while sacrifcing none of their founding principles, nor the enthusiasm, energy or sense of abandon that frst brought them fame at the turn of the millennium. In other words, The Hives are adamantly refusing to ‘grow up’.

“All that stuff about growing up and changing the way you do things, on a broader scale as well,” begins frontman Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist, “it’s like, no, you can actually do what you want to do. If you’re older, it is possible. You don’t have to play mature music, you can play whatever music you want.” “It’s more like fast wood-chopping,” suggests guitarist Nicholaus Arson, in his typically deadpan manner. “I guess there’s a way of chopping wood in a slow and graceful way. But whenever we grab a guitar or a microphone or drumsticks, you know, it’s hammering!” “And screaming!” laughs Pelle.

“A lot of people have asked me,” Nicholaus continues, more sincerely now, “how

can you keep your energy for so many years while other bands lose energy? I think the reason why we can do that, and why time is moving so fast for us, is that we’re in love so much with the actual craft of playing music; playing punk, playing rock music. Being in a sweaty room and playing music is our favourite thing in the world. I think you start having problems when you start feeling like your energy is dwindling when you’re supposed to do shows. That’s when I think you’re in danger; that’s when your music grows up, in a way that I wouldn’t necessarily want for The Hives.”

Like hammerhead sharks, keeping themselves charging forwards seems key to The Hives’ longevity. Fuelled with a determination “to come back with a bang”, latest record ‘The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons’ sees the band sounding more like themselves than ever, if such a thing were possible. Sticking true to their tried-and-tested formula of matching black and white suits, gung-ho garagepunk riffs, and Iggy Pop-esque bawling vocals, their sixth studio album fnds the quintet sounding even bigger, brasher, louder - and less ‘grown up’.

“For this record it just felt so much more fun, after a 10 year break, to come back less mature than the last record,“ laughs Pelle. “It seemed like such a boss move [if people] are like, ‘I wonder what the new Hives album is like now that they’re older?’ And it’s more childish and stupid. I think that’s cool.”

Recorded in the same Swedish studios where ABBA laid down their early

“The intersection of something destructive, something sexual and something euphoric - I think that’s a timeless feeling that we try to reach.”

- Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist

Their Old Favourite Band

All your favourite legendary artists love The Hivesand here’s proof.

Jack White

In 2019, the band recorded a straight-to-acetate live album at the Nashville HQ of Jack White’s Third Man Records. Almqvist’s footsteps also featured on The Raconteurs’ ‘Consolers of the Lonely’ album, as stated in a diary entry published on The Hives’ website in 2007: “April 21: Had breakfast with Jack White. Recorded footsteps for the new Raconteurs album. Those are some great guys.”

Arctic Monkeys

There are several videos circulating of Matt Helders joining The Hives on stage during a recent show in Athens, and he’s also cited the band as a key inspiration for the Monkeys’ earliest days as a band. Almqvist returned the praise, having recently labelled Arctic Monkeys “the only good really popular band”.

Josh Homme

The Queens of the Stone Age frontman produced and performed on two bonus tracks for The Hives’ 2012 ‘Lex Hives’ album. “Basically, if you have the best of American rock and the best of European rock in a room together, you owe it to the cosmos to make some music happen,” Almqvist humbly said at the time.

Cyndi Lauper

Very much a deep cut in the band’s canon, The Hives recorded an unlikely Christmas duet with Cyndi Lauper, of all people. ‘A Christmas Duel’ features such festive lyrics as, “I bought no gift this year, and I slept with your sister”. When asked if Lauper was a fan of the group, Almqvist replied simply: “Isn’t everybody?”.

records, and with producer Patrik Berger behind the desk, having worked on huge pop moments like Robyn’s ‘Dancing On My Own’ and Charli XCX’s ‘Boom Clap’, The Hives clearly weren’t approaching things by halves. The album’s genesis too is typically, nonsensically them. Having supposedly uncovered a trail of cryptic clues left by the band’s mysterious founder and mentor Randy Fitzsimmons (a shadowy fgure who’s been written into Hives lore from the start), the group claim they were led to a gravesite illegally situated in Fagersta, Sweden - birthplace of The Hives - where they uncovered the demo tapes for their new record and fve pairs of matching white lightningemblazoned suits to defne a new era. “The guy wants to remain anonymous so it’s always a little delicate,” nods Nicholaus sagely of their aloof leader. Seems legit.

Speaking from their hotel between Arctic Monkeys dates, talk turns to the debilitating heatwave currently sweeping much of Europe. In typical Hives fashion, however, not even 40-plus degree temperatures can stop the band from executing their legendary hell-for-leather live shows.

“The only little trick I fgured out is to keep a towel in a bucket of ice water and then slam

it in your face between songs,” says Pelle. “I guess the hottest we’ve ever played was at Coachella, in top hat and tails. Like 49 degrees or something like that, some ridiculous desert temperature. But I would probably be less comfortable in shorts and a T-shirt because it would feel wrong, so this is as comfortable as it’s going to get I think.”

Having once suffered a major concussion after falling three metres off a stage onto concretehis worst on-stage injury, Pelle says - The Hives tend to carry on, no matter what. Just this June during a show in Manchester, the frontman merrily continued the set with blood streaming down his head, having been whacked in the face by a fying microphone. Getting his suit stained was his only real concern.

“We get a little hurt, like there are a lot of cuts and scrapes and nicks and bruises and stuff like that, but that doesn’t stop you,” he grins, almost as a badge of honour. “I think it’s good for you to have a little bit of, you know, bruised knees and stuff. It’s like when you were a kid. It keeps you young, a little bit. I think that’s good.

“On this tour, Arctic Monkeys cancelled a show because [Alex Turner] lost his voice,” he continues. “I remember thinking, ‘Why did he do

that?’ Then I realised, we’ve done so many shows that sounded like shit because we just refused to cancel. So I just realise now, after being in the band for 30 years, that maybe we should have cancelled some of those shows!”

Perhaps it’s partly their reckless attitude to health and safety, but The Hives’ sheer unabating commitment to maximal entertainment value has kept the band’s stock high all these years. Breaking through alongside the garage rock revival of the early‘00s; producing some of the most iconic rock songs of the 21st Century; outlasting most of their contemporaries and the countless bands that spawned in their wake, while retaining all of their youthful vigour… Safe to say the band have clocked up a fair few achievements throughout an undeniably illustrious career.

But to a whole new generation falling in love with The Hives all over again, maybe it’s something more intangible that keeps reeling people in. “I think it’s that kind of rock’n’roll feeling,” suggests Pelle. “It’s timeless. It’s something everybody feels. It’s like the

intersection of something destructive, something sexual and something euphoric. And I think that’s a timeless feeling that we try to reach.

“You’ve got to recruit new fans all the time, as you keep going,” he continues. ”We know many good rock bands who got older, and the crowds got older with them, and then all of a sudden you fnd yourself 15 years down the line at a really boring show. You need kind of… fresh blood!”

Do the band see themselves like The Rolling Stones, continuing to do this well into their sixties and seventies? Surely they can’t keep this up forever?

“This is the weirdest time-fuck, I know,” muses Pelle. “We supported the Rolling Stones 20 years ago, so we were 25.” “We never thought we’d do it past 30. And I guess Mick was like, 60 or something at the time then?” picks up Nicholaus. “He was running around like crazy for three hours. It was the frst time that I saw someone do it like that, at that age. And almost it felt like he was competition for us, you know? Being an energetic rock band and this guy in his sixties or whatever, he feels like strong competition. So that’s when we noticed you could do this for what felt like forever.”

“I also think you only get so many things in life that you actually love doing,” concludes Pelle, somewhat rosy-eyed. “And if rock’n’roll is one of them… The only reason I would quit, I guess, would be if other people told me to. Like, ‘That’s enough!’ Or people stop listening. I’ve got no other plans. This is fun now, and I hope it stays fun.”

‘The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons’ is out 11th August via FUGA. DIY

“For this record it just felt so much more fun, after a 10 year break, to come back less mature than the last record.”Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist

TUNNEL

elatively speaking, there aren’t many people who have represented their country on an international stage, spending months preparing for one brief moment. There are even fewer who have done so and done so unsuccessfully, but nonetheless still won the hearts and minds of their audience. Eddie the Eagle, Bukayo Saka… Mae Muller. The 25-year-old Londoner was the UK’s entrant for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, following the surprise success brought by human golden retriever Sam Ryder in 2022. Catchy, confdent, and a little bit camp, Mae’s number ‘I Wrote A Song’ had all the ingredients needed for the perfect Eurovision cocktail. But, as it turns out, things didn’t quite go to plan.

“Obviously, it didn’t feel good,” Mae says over a cup of tea in her North London stomping ground a few months later. “I gave myself a day of thinking, ‘My life is over’ and being really upset, and then after that I just had to take control of the narrative. I don’t like being looked at as a victim; I felt like people were pitying me and I was thinking, ‘Girl, no! I’m OK, really!’” These sorts of phrases pepper today’s conversation, as do mannerisms which are best described as chronically online; the sort that are diffcult to explain to, say, your dad, but which instantly ground her chat in humour and shared reference points. “If anything, the fact [the Eurovision results] were so extreme was a talking point. People were like, ‘Oh my god, REALLY?!” Mae exclaims, looking faux-scandalised before grinning: “But I got a Top Ten out of it!”

In fact, ‘I Wrote A Song’ wasn’t Mae’s frst taste of chart success. Having reached the Top 40 in 2021 with single ‘Better Days’ (a collaboration with NEIKED and Polo G), she had released EPs and toured with Little Mix long before Eurovision came knocking. So when it came to the competition’s aftermath, she was able to navigate it with honesty and more than a little self-deprecation - something that speaks to a uniquely British sense of humour. One memorable TikTok features Mae wearing a neon pink top emblazoned with the word ‘Eurotrash’, which she “saw in a shop in Sweden and thought, ‘That needs to be mine’.”

Warm, direct, and with a born-and-bred London accent, there’s an air of Lily Allen about the singer. It’s easy to understand how the Eurovision experience - much as she loved it - was a little constraining. “I just say what’s on my mind, and I’ve always been OK with not everybody agreeing with me. I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve had to watch what I say,” Mae acknowledges.

“You’re part of the BBC machine then, so it was odd, having that pressure.” For her, this was being in the public eye in a different way, swapping social media and live shows to being broadcast into Middle England’s living room via Alison and Dermot on This Morning. Although it may have

Rtemporarily been a slight personality straightjacket, Mae explains that the rigorous media training she underwent actually helped equip her for all sorts of scenarios.

“It’s like you’re putting on all this armour. I was at the [Capital Radio] Summertime Ball recently, and on the red carpet one person asked me, ‘So what do you think of the state of the world right now?’” she says, miming holding a mic. “Before, that would have completely thrown me off, but I saw what they were trying to do and thought, ‘Not today, Sataaan!’”

Far from tight-lipped on worldly affairs - or indeed any other topic of conversation - Mae has instead learnt to share her opinions on her own terms. When right wing commentators dug up years-old tweets of hers criticising Boris Johnson’s handling of the pandemic to push the narrative that she ‘hates her country’ - something Mae ironically notes “wasn’t ideal”she maintained a dignifed silence until postEurovision. Then, she made a TikTok of herself sipping drinks in Ibiza to a soundbite of someone calling her “a foul-mouthed, radical left-wing activist”. Sharp, smart but a little bit silly, she’s Dua Lipa for people who don’t take themselves too seriously.

And for Mae, one of the biggest pleasures of creating her debut studio album was the opportunity to explore these different facets beyond the limitations of a threeminute single.

Clocking in at 17 tracks that run the gamut from cheating to social media and damaging online culture, ‘Sorry I’m Late’ deftly proves that she can do more than write a club banger (although she’s got that nailed too).

There’s ‘Tatiana’, which sees Mae addressing another woman - the song’s namesake - about an unnamed man in the vein of a modern day ‘Jolene’. Or ‘Me, Myself & I’, which scans like an inverted ‘Mambo No. 5’ of reasons why she, in fact, doesn’t need to be with various boys. “I’m sure there are loads of people out there who will think [the songs] are about them when they’re really not,” she laughs. “But a lot of it is my personal experience - if I’ve had something go on in my life, my way of getting it off my chest is to write.”

In addition to these earworm lead tracks, ‘Sorry I’m Late’ also showcases slower, sensitive cuts like ‘Porn Lied To Us’ (“There’s too much pressure when

From the ashes of a less than ideal Eurovision result, Mae Muller has emerged as a likely candidate for the crown of Britain’s next big pop girly. On her debut album ‘Sorry I’m Late’, she’s ready to stake her claim.

Words:

Daisy Carter.

Photos: Mila Austin

VISION

“I gave myself a day of thinking, ‘My life is over’ [after Eurovision], and then I just had to take control of the narrative.”

this was meant to be fun / It ain’t a performance / Why do I feel I’m on stage”). It’s refreshing to hear a pop star be so candid, discussing sex in a way that acknowledges the insecurity and complexity that comes with being intimate. “I’ve always been very open about sex,” explains Mae, “and I think that element of vulnerability is a really important part of being a role model. To be confdent and empowered is great for young girls to see, but it’s also important to show that it’s not like that everyday.”

How does she fnd working in an industry that’s notorious for marketing sexuality? “I’m really lucky in that I’ve got a team of women around me that make me feel really

comfortable, but I think it’s just about [doing] what makes you feel confdent,” she muses. “Sometimes I wake up and I am feeling myself and want to show some skin; sometimes I feel sexy wearing a turtleneck.” In this way, Mae epitomises the shifting landscape of social media celebrity. Ten years ago, to be big online was to be aspirational, whether in terms of beauty, wealth, or status. Now, it seems that audiences crave relatability - something ‘Sorry I’m Late’ can give them in spades.

Ultimately, Mae seems to thrive off connecting with people, whether that’s her fanbase online or the elderly couple having lunch that we exchange pleasantries with (who she pronounces to be “goals”). “Touring is my favourite thing,” she smiles. “There’s nothing more magical than hearing songs

fans who are proper OGs - they’ve been to every tour, I know their names, and they’re like family.” Do her stans have an identifying group noun, a la Lady Gaga’s Little Monsters? “Well…” Mae says, pulling a face. “During Eurovision, someone came up with the Muller Corners, which is cute. But then my OG fans call themselves the Mullshitters.” There’s a moment of stunned silence before she explains: “I’ve tried to gently move away from it a couple of times, but they won’t let me. So if that’s what they really want…”

Whatever they’re called, chances are that there’ll be a lot more Mae Muller obsessives once ‘Sorry I’m Late’ arrives. Already woven into pop culture history, she’s an artist who epitomises 2023 like few others; her debut album has arrived right on time.

think that element of vulnerability is a really important part

EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALL AT

EVERYWHERE, AT ONCE

Out of a period of personal and professional turmoil, THE XCERTS have emerged closer and more united than ever; ffth album ‘Learning How to Live and Let Go’ fnds a band relaxing into themselves and reaping the benefts.

Words: Sarah Jamieson. Photos: Louise Mason.

Rewind the clock back to 2019 and life, for The Xcerts, was looking a bit different.

Following the release of fourth album ‘Hold On To Your Heart’ in 2018 - their biggest to date - the band then wrapped up a celebratory tenth anniversary tour of cult debut ‘In The Cold Wind We Smile’; a run that saw them pack out rooms across the country, with fans bellowing back the lyrics to their tales of youthful introspection. But, as 2020 crept in, things began to come undone. “We’d just done this tour and then all of a sudden, it felt like things were unravelling,” nods bassist Jordan Smith. “It was scary, we had no control anymore.”

For once, the ensuing pandemic wasn’t even fully to blame. Having spent the better part of 18 months prepping demos, the Brighton trio soon found themselves parting ways with their management. “It was time for us to move on. We got to the point where both parties felt we’d achieved all we could together,” frontman Murray Macleod explains over a pint in an East London pub, more than three years later. Then, their offer of a new label contract was rescinded. “That was a carpet pulled out from under our feet,” Murray nods. “We had an offer on the table and, in between lockdowns, we all went celebrating - socially distanced in a park. Then about fve months later when we said we were good to go, they retracted their offer. That was pretty heavy; then it felt like we were really lost, especially without management as we didn’t have anybody holding the reins. It just felt a little stranded at sea.”

For a band who had spent the better part of their adult lives making music together, the about-turn felt jarring, leaving them pondering their place in the world. “We just found ourselves adrift,” confrms Jordan. “There was that feeling of, ‘Oh shit, are we even in a band? We still feel like one but we don’t really have the means to be a band’.” But rather than let themselves be taken out with the tide, they accepted an offer from longtime friendand Blood Red Shoes drummer - Steven Ansell to head into his studio, where they began work on what would become their ffth full-length, ‘Learning How To Live and Let Go’.

It will come as little surprise to learn that the album’s weighty title is indicative of a record loaded with stories tangled up in life’s more complex moments. Written largely ahead of the pandemic, it wasn’t isolation that was fuelling Murray’s thoughts but a time before - one that was far more chaotic, but just as unstable. “Life just got really, really messy,” Murray begins. “I can’t lie; [being that messy] was so much fun, I had a riot, but everything became a volume thing; even when it was quiet, the room was always too loud, and I needed to deafen it out by being out and preoccupied.

“It seemed like a lot of my friends were going through a hard time, and everyone was a bit…” He pauses. “I don’t know why, but a lot of my friends were having [moments of] quiet self-sabotage, and I had it with them.”

Stemming from a “really awful toxic relationship I’d entered into - and I take full accountability for it as well”, the tumultuous period soon found the

“We’ve never wanted to be vulnerable before, but actually being vulnerable is the most fucking punk rock thing.”

- Murray Macleod

singer struggling, trying to reconcile himself with his strengths and faws, successes and failings.

“A lot of [the album], in a very twisted way, is an ode to a lot of my loved ones - including the guys - who were there and saw it in real time,” he explains. “If it sounds like the narrator on the record is struggling, there’s always someone else there who is leaning on them with love.” These ideas burst through on ‘Ache’, with its lyrics on the “beauty in the darkness waving”, or the mates we’re told to cherish in ‘My Friends Forever’.

“Then, a lot of what I’m talking about is also just rooted in ego,” Murray admits. “We’d had some problems in the band in the past as well because of, more often than not, my behaviour, which was just pure ego and pride. And it just had to go, all of it: fear, ego, pride, it all just had to go and be shed because it was just this fucking horrible waltz between the three of [those ideas] that wouldn’t end.

“It’s about shedding that and realising that you’re enough, and the people that you love so much love you for a reason, and it’s not this bravado, it’s not because you play music,” he continues. “It’s because they think you have a good heart and are a good person, fundamentally. And I had fucked that up numerous times by acting like a fucking asshole. It was shit, we had some awful times.” “But the fact that we’re all still here is testament to that,” Tom adds, in support. “Shout out for being vulnerable,” Jordan nods. “We’ve never wanted to be vulnerable before, we didn’t think it was cool,” Murray laughs, “but actually being vulnerable is the most fucking punk rock thing.”

In line with the band’s newfound open-book policy came a shift in their sonic outlook. Having always managed to dwell on the peripheries, but with a fercely loyal fanbase, The Xcerts’ knack for creating intriguing but ambitious pop-imbued alt-rock had seen them support the likes of Manchester Orchestra, Biffy Clyro, The Get Up Kids and more, all while maintaining their status as fan and peer favourites. Now, it was time for a drastic change. “Steve said that he wanted people to hate us!” laughs Jordan of their producer’s unusual input. “He said, ‘You’ve been loved for too long, I want people to hate this’.”

On frst listen, the endorphin rush of opening track ‘GIMME’ is a shock to the system. After the soaring, classic songwriting of 2018 LP ‘Hold On To Your Heart’, their new album’s scuzzy, breakneck frst offering - one that packs in vocal effects, sirens, and hyperpop sounds into its 100-second playing time - marks a total change of pace.

“We all agreed we had to shake things up,” Murray begins. “I had a conversation with the guys, as I had presented them with a couple of songs and they were awful. I was taking too much of the infuence of other people; it wasn’t us. Very quickly, the guys were really good and said, ‘This ain’t it’. We’re close enough to say that, and so we completely restarted.

“I remember having this idea of where I thought I could take our sound, this space that we wanted to fll in alternative music, which drew sonically from hip hop but had really noisy and shoegazey guitars, but still mad pop sensibilities, and incorporate more of our punk and emo leanings, but also our love of glitchy stuff,” he continues. “Because we had all this time, we fnally felt free, completely free. It’s the most freeing record we’ve made because there was no pressure.”

Instead of a more traditional writing set-up

(“Usually in the past, we’ve been a band who writes songs in a room together with instruments,” Tom explains), they began to mess with the format and, as the drummer puts it, “do whatever we wanted”. “You don’t realise at the time, but it’s actually very easy to paint yourself into a corner,” Jordan agrees. “We realised, ‘Oh, we’ve actually just put up all these walls and constraints about who has to be on bass, and who has to be on guitar, because we had been doing it for so long. We just shed all of those.”

Less of a reinvention, and more a “rejuvenation”, as Murray puts it, their new record paints a more multifaceted picture of The Xcerts. Granted, some of their past rules may have been put to bed, but the fngerprints of their discography so far are all over the record. “It’s not like with

“It’s the purest Xcerts album we’ve ever made because you can hear all of [our history].” - Murray Macleod

‘Hold On To Your Heart’, ‘There Is Only You’, ‘Scatterbrain’ and ‘Cold Wind’…”, Murray starts, “we’re not embarrassed of those records or [acting] like they’re not our DNA. Personally, I feel like on this record, you can hear every album.” “You can hear all those records distilled into one,” agrees Jordan. “On ‘GIMME’, you can see the thread from ‘Scatterbrain’,” Murray adds. “‘Drag Me Out’ has got a bit of a ‘Hold On To Your Heart’ thing; ‘Blame’’s quintessentially us. That’s why I keep saying it’s the purest Xcerts album we’ve ever made because you can hear all of it.”

Even after being dealt a series of tough blows, the sense that The Xcerts are in their best state so far is palpable. Whether that be down to growth, uncertainty or just the fact that all bets were frmly off for a while, their ffth album sees the band entirely content with themselves. “Maybe at times, we were like, ‘This is the frst time the band has stopped since we were 14’ and at one point I did think, ‘This is awful, I’ve lost a limb’,” Murray ponders. “But I realised, ‘I am still here, I’m still breathing and smiling’ so it was like, ‘OK, if this was to go, I’m OK…’ That was maybe in the back of our heads, where we were like, ‘Fuck it, if this is our swan song, this is our swan song…” before he grins: “But it’s fucking not.”

‘Learning How To Live and Let Go’ is out 18th August via UNFD. DIY

Life is like a box of chocolates - you never know which indie star you’re gonna get.

“I got immediately in contact with [Willie] to say, ‘This is amazing’ and we’ve just stayed in contact ever since.”

- Jamie T

Friends

United WILLIE J HEALEY & JAMIE T

Bonded by a love of the musical craft, Willie J Healey and Jamie T have developed a frm friendship. Both are what you’d call ‘daily songwriters’: they live and breathe the art form with a dedication that consumes them and spurs the other on, as is evident from their constant slinging of demos back and forth to each other.

The pair collaborated on Willie’s slinky earworm ‘Thank You’ from forthcoming album ‘Bunny’ (the line, “Thank you for the drum machine J!” is a direct shout out to T) and, like the single, his third LP oozes with a sunny disposition that simmers in funk, referencing the likes of Prince and Sly and the Family Stone. On the release, timeless melodies are weaved through these new sonic blueprints which combine to form his best and most vibrant work yet.

Earlier this year, meanwhile, Jamie recruited Willie to support him at the biggest gig of his career, playing to 45,000 people in Finsbury Park back in June. Jamie is one of Willie’s many admirers; everybody from Florence Welch to Nick Lowe and Alex Turner are fans. Hot off the heels of supporting Arctic Monkeys on a run of European dates, today we’ve sat Willie down with his musical pal at an East London cafe. Less master and student and more songwriting peers, their conversation is peppered with jokes, laughter and a genuine affection for each other’s work as they chat about songwriting, sartorial choices, and the soul band they’re allegedly forming with Joe Talbot from IDLES…

Jamie T: When’s your record out?

Willie J Healey: 25th August, you’re on it mate!

JT: Ah yeah!

When did you frst come across each other’s work?

WJH: Well, I’ve known Jamie a lot longer than he’s known me! I would have been a teenager when you really landed in Carterton, the town I’m fromeverybody I knew that was worth talking to was a Jamie fan. I remember watching your videos over and over again.

JT: I found you probably quite a while after your frst album came out. I was just immediately taken by it and very inspired. I think I got immediately in contact with you to say, ‘This is amazing’ and we’ve just stayed in contact ever since.

WJH: We slid into each other’s DMs quite heavily. I remember it made me really happy because the praise from that album kind of died down, and then you messaged!

JT: Yeah, I found it a bit late didn’t I? I still listen to that album a lot. How long ago was that?

WJH: I must have been 23. So we’re sort of old friends now!

Tell us how your collaboration on ‘Thank You’ came about.

WJH: I remember Jamie’s verse coming through really early in the daythe early bird caught the worm.

JT: We send a lot of demos back and forth with each other. It’s inspiring when all of your mates are sending you things; it makes you think, ‘Fuck, I better do something as well’. I sent him a drum machine. My friend Jason Cox who is in the Gorillaz lot gave it to me as a Christmas present.

Words and interview: Sean Kerwick. Photos: Eva Pentel.

I’d been up in Damon Albarn’s studio and had seen Damon coming up with some crazy shit on it - I was like, ‘I need one of them’. It’s really simple but great and I thought it’d help Willie write some songs.

WJH: Quite legendary, that drum machine really. I felt very lucky. I don’t think you realised, but up until the handover of that drum machine I was pretty much fat out of ideas, I didn’t really know what to do. I always struggle with drums and I think you sensed that.

JT: Yeah, I do as well. It’s fun that machine because it kind of has a mind of its own; it goes up in volume, goes down in volume and puts drum flls wherever it decides to. Sometimes you have to just smack it on the side.

What did you learn about each other’s writing styles?

JT: One thing that’s always struck me about Willie’s stuff is the arrangements - the movements from verse to chorus to bridge are really strange, and something I fnd really inspiring. It never goes where I would go or expect it to go; I took quite a lot off that for sure. And the lyrical content has always got a tongue-in-cheek-ness to it that’s really fun.

WJH: That’s what I always think about yours; I love your lyrics so much. Sometimes the demos are so funky and weird sounding, I call it the ‘good stuff’, you know before it’s all been messed with - like it’s an unpolished pearl or something. The lyrics are always on point.

JT: I think that’s where we’re similar in a sense. We like to have a lot of fun with lyrics and ideas.

WJH: I can get really caught up in the actual recording and making them sound nice but your stuff is so direct and there’s no faff. It makes me worry less because sounding raw and cool with no frills is where it’s at.

JT: I do have a Dropbox fle of all your recordings. I made an effort to save them all, because you’ll send me bits over on voice memos and they sound so great. I remember years ago you sent me a cover of the Townes Van Zandt song ‘Pancho & Lefty’ and I just love it - and I still get that out occasionally.

WJH: We’ve got a lot in common. I don’t know many other people I can call at 10 o’clock in the morning and know that they’re going to be in a fairly similar position to me. We’re both solo and I think there’s quite a lot of comfort in being able to talk to each other and share music. It makes me feel like I’m not on my own in this.

JT: Totally, I feel the same way. You have quite a different life to somebody in a bandit’s a bit more solitary and you can kind of lose your way more often. It’s good to stick together really. Plus, nobody else is in on a Saturday night. Everybody else is out.

Any truth to you guys starting a soul band with Joe Talbot from IDLES?

WJH: We had this really fun chat about it and loved the idea of it. Then looking at what we’d do on paper - like, who actually does what?

Three people that can

kind of sing like they’ve got a sandwich in their mouth want to do a soul thing…

JT: Yeah, like who’s actually doing the soul bit? I like the idea of it though.

What were your reference points for ‘Bunny’? It’s defnitely a new direction for Album Three.

WJH: Things like Sly and the Family Stone. Loren [Humphries, producer] is so the opposite to me. I don’t care that much about detail but he’d know where the drums were in the room when they made ‘Imagine’ - for Loren, that’s his whole thing. It’s amazing having him covering that side of things because I’d just use the frst thing I could get my hands on. I think it ended up working well; we met in the middle.

JT: Yeah, it’s a good balance. I mean ‘Carry on the Grudge’ defnitely had a different feeling compared to [my] second [record]. But then again, my frst album was written when I was 18, I was 27 when the third one came out which is quite a long time, and that naturally changes things.

WJH: Yeah, from the age of 18 to 27, you’re a completely different person.

JT: Yeah, you might have an idea of who you actually are. The new album still stinks of you though!

WJH: Yeah, it’s sort of like if you wrote a metal song, it’d still sound exactly like you. I guess there are certain things - whether you like it or not - that you can’t get away from, which I think is a good thing.

JT: You move quite quickly really don’t you? When did you fnish it?

WJH: A year or two ago. It’s never that quick because of label stuff. If you listen to the albums you’d think they’re really different and there’s a lot of change but actually there’s a lot of time in between. I’ve completely changed my style - I’m wearing different trousers and shoes. I’m wearing tassel jackets now. In a year’s time, who knows, I might have a different haircut.

JT: The tassel jacket actually started years ago. It took a while to come out of the wardrobe - a lot of time in the mirror saying, ‘Come on, you can do this. It’s not wearing you!’

WJH: Things just move on don’t they! I have a fairly similar mood whenever I put an album out. I don’t worry too much because you can’t really control it.

JT: I generally just turn it all off. I’m not good with things like that at the best of times. I’m more concerned with what I’m going to eat next, otherwise I’ll worry too much and get nervous.

WJH: Then it gets to the point when you get a Number One album and you’ve gotta answer your phone.

JT: Well, you don’t…

Willie, you recently supported Jamie at Finsbury Park and just came back from supporting Arctic Monkeys’ European leg. Did you pick up any tricks?

WJH: It’s the biggest thing I’ve been part of. Something I always come away with after seeing Jamie play is the thrill of being your total self on stage, which I think is harder than you think.

JT: Yeah, be yourself - whatever that means! Or whatever version of yourself you are that day.

WJH: The tassel jacket version of myself! Those

“Something I always come away with after seeing Jamie play is the thrill of being your total self on stage.”

- Willie J Healey

shows took a little second to adjust tojust the size of it and to submit to the fact that if people are gonna like it, they’ll like it. If they don’t, they don’t.

Jamie, how does your approach to shows compare to Willie’s?

JT: It really depends on moments in time - I get really bad stage fright sometimes. Other times I feel really at home, it’s like turning a switch a bit. Recently it’s felt really comfortable. I go through long periods of not playing, like six years between albums, which can make it quite daunting but I love it now.

WJH: You look like you love it.

JT: I’d do it more now if I could; I love the camaraderie of it. That’s the thing about being a solo artist - we play with bands so you get the best of both worlds. I’m really close with my band, when we go on tour now it’s like seeing your family again. Plus, people actually turn up on time now - it’s wicked, there’s so much love in the room. I love it more and more. Before that gig the other day [Finsbury Park], I hadn’t played guitar in months - I literally had to teach myself to play guitar again.

WJH: No big deal, literally 45,000 people with your shorts on playing guitar.

JT: The stress! I was literally sweating out in the kitchen with the acoustic trying to remember how to play chords.

Jamie, would you ever brave a tassel jacket?

JT: What goes on in the house stays in the house. You get to the front door and suddenly go, ‘I can’t do this!’

WJH: Or worst case scenario, you’ve left the house and you catch yourself in the mirror.

JT: I’ve strictly got myself into a good place now where nobody expects me to wear anything but a cheap jacket and jeans - and there’s a lot of comfort in that.

Quite a wise decision, people are gonna expect big things from your wardrobe decisions Willie.

WJH: It’s a dangerous path to tread!

JT: White jeans are something I struggle with. I’ve got a lot of respect for people who get away with that…

‘Bunny’ is out 25th August via YALA!. DIY

“You have quite a different life to somebody in a band - it’s a bit more solitary and you can kind of lose your way more often.” Jamie T

 Genesis Owusu

STRUGGLER (Ourness / AWAL)

Where most artists credit other musicians as their inspiration, Genesis Owusu has listed two seminal pieces of literature – Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot – as the fuel for ‘STRUGGLER’. This isn’t surprising when listening to the album’s tale of a nihilistic roach, but what is striking is the diversity of its sonic palette. ‘STRUGGLER’ relies a lot on the textures of rock, channeling modern goths Molchat Doma on ‘The Roach’ or the post punk of Shame on ‘Balthazar’, but this is all punctuated by production that leans more electronic, and often minimalistic – take ‘Leaving the Light’, which blends the fun bounce of Lynks with the sinister air of Sleaford Mods. There’s a healthy lineage of artists that cast the same juxtaposition, be it Talking Heads, Outkast or Gorillaz, and as with them ‘STRUGGLER’ manages to explore exciting new ground while being rooted in danceable, fun grooves. There’s a little less edge than on debut ‘Smiling With No Teeth’, but a softer lens offers more variety, and Genesis Owusu sails the spectrum of human experience with ease to make something just as weighty as the literature that inspired it. (James Hickey) LISTEN: ‘The Roach’

Just as weighty as the literature that inspired it.

A triumphant debut.

ALBUMS

Disclosure Alchemy (Apollo / AWAL)

Disclosure - aka brothers Howard and Guy Lawrence - are artisans of liberation. A typical track from the pair captures the dewy exhaustion that comes with clubby festival ecstasy, blending deep house with UK garage, trance and radio-friendly pop - and a collaborative nature that has seen them make use of a string of about-to-break vocalists at precisely the right moment. But on fourth record ‘Alchemy’, things fzz up a bit. Following a departure from their major record label, a marriage, a moving of half the duo to LA, a heartbreak and a 150-day tour, there’s catharsis to be had. To extricate themselves, the pair reclaim creative control: ‘Alchemy’ has no features, no samples, and utilises only their own voices and superb, tropical, warpy production - reiterating an eclectic love for house that made them their name. Largely, it’s perfect party music - as if they’ve set up decks in a back garden at dusk in summer - and leans further into the undeniably attractive pop that forged their names in the fre. Occasionally the presence of a recognisable voice or two wouldn’t go amiss, yet regardless, its standouts (the buzzy ‘Simply Won’t Do’, playful, bubbling ‘Go the Distance’ and immensely poppy ‘Talk On The Phone’) prove the brothers can stand on their own feet to keep up the pace. In search of freedom, Disclosure craft it themselves: ‘Alchemy’ is a lush cacophony of future house, which reacts with pop like Mentos in Coca-Cola. Although the British summer is a mixed bag of rain and more rain, ‘Alchemy’ could convince anyone there’s sun outside. (Otis Robinson) LISTEN: ‘Talk On The Phone’

 Be Your Own Pet

Mommy (Third Man)

How do you reignite a candle that burned twice as bright for half as long? For most of their brief, tumultuous time together in the late noughties, Be Your Own Pet were not old enough to legally drink in their native US and yet became held up as beacons of indie sleaze, their snarling, kicking, precocious punk a perfect soundtrack to the hedonism of an era that, in 2023, is being romanticised. After all, the group burned out frst time around, collapsing under the pressure of living up to their own notoriety as hard partiers, as well as the often poisonous media attention centered on singer Jemina Pearl. As a band so wedded in the musical imagination of that era, where do they ft today?

‘Mommy’ answers that question in thematic terms as early as its second track, the deliciously witty ‘Goodtime!’, a tonguein-cheek lament of FOMO on which Jemina refects on her much-changed circumstances, quipping: “I can’t be that way no more, I got two kids and a mortgage!” The ferocious energy that defned Be Your Own Pet frst time around, however, remains, as does their knack for a nagging earworm of a chorus. Searing hooks and soaring melodies channel through a frontwoman with limitless charisma; perhaps her standout moment here is on the furious ‘Big Trouble’, which is surely destined for anthem status. Be Your Own Pet have retained the vitality of their youth while leaving behind the baggage. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Big Trouble’

 Miles Kane One Man Band (Modern Sky)

Assessing the musicians that Miles Kane comes co-signed by versus the music he makes himself has always proved something of a head-scratcher. On his collaborative CV sits his tenure alongside Alex Turner in The Last Shadow Puppets and a guest spot on Lana Del Rey’s 2021 LP ‘Blue Banisters’: two of this century’s objectively greatest songwriters. Across his own solo canon, however, the Merseyside musician has settled in a retro-classic lane of indie-rock that tests few boundaries; there’s a solid background of obviously skilled musicianship on ffth LP ‘One Man Band’, but even on the snarl of ‘Never Taking Me Alive’, it all feels very safe. The ‘60s-nodding ‘Heartbreaks (The New Sensation)’, with its romance between a girl with a “vintage Kodak” and a “retro boy” with a cigarette, exemplifes the idea. It’s just all a bit obvious. That said, though Miles might not be breaking any vast new ground with his ffth, there’s an energy to the hopefully-literal ‘The Best Is Yet To Come’ that will inevitably hit hard come tour time, while the album’s title track is a winner, its more unusual guitar lines making the chorus’ anthemic pay off all the better. ‘One Man Band’ has solid moments, but he shouldn’t shut the door to potential collaborators any time soon. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘One Man Band’

 Paris Texas

MID AIR (self-released)

Technically the duo’s debut album, with 2021’s double-header of ‘Red Hand Akimbo’ and ‘Boy Anonymous’ - the latter featuring blistering breakthrough single ‘Heavy Metal – billed as an EP and mixtape respectively, that ‘MID AIR’ comes across as a snapshot of the world via Paris Texas’ collective eyes makes complete sense. Giving up none of their penchant for mixing up styles as they see ft – gnarly opener ‘tenTHIRTYseven’ pivots to the much smoother, more R&B-based ‘Split-Screen’ in the blink of an eye - it’s simultaneously on edge, celebratory and humorous. Take ‘Everybody’s Safe Until…’ where a hook of “There’s people tryna kill me / Other than me” is delivered in an almost joyous manner while the track itself turns increasingly claustrophobic. Or ‘Ain’t No High’, which uses an emo-rock palette with truly tender lyrical delivery, only to fade out with the type of sound effects that suggest the song’s ‘high’ is not in fact emotional in nature. Best of the bunch is ‘Full English’, a track which pairs a crunchy, repetitive Blur-like riff with an inventory of Britishisms: “Cheerio with my London bitch / Nando’s with my London bitch,” “Tesco with my London bitch / Let’s go with my London bitch.” Not always an easy listen, but a consistently thrilling ride. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘Full English’

 Various

Barbie

The Album (Atlantic)

Being entirely cynical, that a movie would gather one of pop’s best-known producers to assemble an all-star cast of artists for an album of original songs probably says more about both industries’ reliance on algorithms than anything deeper, but when it’s giving as much as Mark Ronson and assorted pals’ ‘Barbie The Album’ does that really matter? Musical styles run the full gamut, from the heartbreaking centrepoint of Billie Eilish’s ‘What Was I Made For?’ drawing full, unfltered parallels between the parasocial and dress-up natures of both play and pop stardom, to the ‘80s excess nod that is the use of Slash on the record’s most unexpected smash, Ryan Gosling’s ‘I’m Just Ken’. Similarly, knowing winks are made to artists’ existing personas: Charli XCX sings about driving; Tame Impala on existing between worlds; Sam Smith’s knowing winks about Ken in the kitschy ‘Man I Am’. And that’s without considering how impeccably many of the tracks here are used throughout the flm itself (no spoilers here). The only dud is GAYLE’s ‘butterfies’, which does nothing more than showcase the record’s corporate origins. Sampling a Y2K hit would have surely looked good on paper at some point; in reality it’s a confused mishmash of sounds, the sample appearing as an add-on, the newcomer without the star power of her peers here to hint lyrically at anything of note. That aside, life in plastic does indeed sound fantastic.

(Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘I’m Just Ken’

A frontwoman with limitless charisma.

Jungle Volcano (Caiola / AWAL)

Jungle’s deceptively massive name has thus far been built on radio-friendly earworms (case in point ‘Busy Earnin’’ with its Saturday Night Fever-style ‘70s stomp) and a relentless positivity as last displayed on 2021’s ‘Loving In Stereo’. It’s the latter which congregates most obviously throughout this fourth full-length: of the titular ‘Volcano’ picture not the perilous eruption but instead the trickle of lava, or gradual dissipation of ash. The vibe is still high, but there’s a free, relaxed nature to it all: more boozy backyard barbecue than sticky dancefoor. And while the outft’s dedication to ‘70s soul is such that repeated moments inspire a ‘Wait... is that a sample?’ query (the euphoric backing vocals of ‘Holding On’ akin to something the Avalanches might dig out, for example), guest slots from Channel Tres (‘I’ve Been In Love’) and Bas (‘Pretty Little Thing’) ground the record fully in the 21st Century, as does the propulsive beat of opener ‘Us Against The World’. Jungle’s latest is more breezy bops than all-out summer smashes, but nevertheless extremely rich and warm in sound. (Ed Lawson) LISTEN: ‘Us Against The World’

 Art School Girlfriend

Soft Landing (Fiction)

So feather-light is Polly Mackey’s touch – whether her breathy vocal delivery or the manner by which she weaves disparate sounds between each other – that it’s quite possible for ‘Soft Landing’ to pass by without leaving much of a trace. Whether that’s a positive or negative is up to personal taste, to be sure, but for those who tend to seek the kind of “personal euphoria” the multi-instrumentalist suggests her second full-length is akin to, there’s a good chance it’ll aid. With trip-hop indebted beats and a consistent rise-and-fall, it’s akin to ‘90s Ibiza chillout if delivered via headphones, solo instead of within post-club community. The bleeps and Polly’s barely-there whisper collide to (almost) euphoria on ‘Heaven Hanging Low’, while the record’s greatest aural impact comes via ‘The Weeks’, its layered guitars building with ambition. A record which clearly fnds contentment in its sonic solitude (Bella Martin) LISTEN: ‘The Weeks’

 Shamir

Homo Anxietatem (Kill Rock Stars)

Shamir isn’t afraid of a bit of hard work. ‘Homo Anxietatem’, translated from Latin as “anxious man”, marks the Philadelphia based multi-creative’s ninth studio album across eight years, and his second since the world emerged out of lockdown. Whereas his previous full-length - ‘Heterosexuality’ - delved into many facets of queer life soundtracked by a riotous, everchanging soundscape, his latest effort adopts indie-pop as its lifeblood, and stretches his thoughts further beyond sexuality. In message, it’s as poignant as ever. The defant ‘Words’ presents Shamir’s self-confdence with a profound simplicity. “The words don’t hurt anymore,” he celebrates over subtle percussion, his distinctive tone cutting through with a newfound sense of self-belief. ‘Without You’ notes the individual’s responsibility in climate change, its lyrics remarkably simple and direct, yet cuttingly dark. “I can’t help but wonder what they could be without you,” he sings of the planet. Born of Shamir’s growing anxieties during the pandemic, ‘Homo Anxietatem’ jumps between shared experiences and his own, as beautifully inconsistent as much of his catalogue to date. On the surface it may appear comparably safe in tone; a softer and arguably less frustrated sound runs throughout. Yet it never shies away from the unmistakable fact that Shamir has something to say, and that it’s always worth listening to. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Words’

 Jacob Slater Pinky, I Love You (Communion)

As frontman for Wunderhorse, and previously Dead Pretties, Jacob Slater has proven himself capable of any favour of indie-rock, be it thoughtful or growling. But on ‘Pinky, I Love You’, he defes expectation once again with a collection of delicate, yearning songs. Almost without exception, he plays guitar and sings unaccompanied: sometimes in hushed tones, like on the breathtaking ‘I Do’; sometimes in a gathering crescendo, with ‘Untitled’ ending with his already distinctive voice reaching heights he’s not shown on record before. With such a stripped back record, there are easy comparisons to draw, with ‘Dead Submarines’ echoing Nick Drake’s unsettling chord choices and wistful lyricism, or ‘Kissin’ Booth’ sharing the same music box arpeggios as Adrianne Lenker on her solo works. But these comparisons come at face value, and the songs themselves earn a deeper respect. Jacob conjures a feeling of familiarity while being a wholly fresh voice, and ‘Pinky, I Love You’ confrms him as a fne songwriting talent.

(James Hickey) LISTEN: ‘I Do’

 The Xcerts Learning How To Live And Let Go (UNFD)

From the cult-amassing 2009 debut ‘In The Cold Wind We Smile’ to 2018’s stadium-ready ‘Hold On To Your Heart’, The Xcerts have consistently demonstrated their ability to pen a perfect pop banger. As contemporaries have risen and fallen around them, their drive and work-ethic has powered on regardless with barely a blip in their catalogue. That their ffth studio album arrives following the longest break between records is telling. Pesky pandemic aside, the breathing space has kicked them up another notch, landing on a musical consistency that might have otherwise escaped them. ‘Learning How To Live And Let Go’ takes  a small step back from the all-out pop of their previous record, and lands a stylistic throughline that the band were perhaps always destined to make. ‘GIMME’ launches the record with the unexpected ferocity that defned The 1975’s ‘People’. That band’s infuence rings out on the immeasurably catchy ‘Lovesick’. It’s perhaps the one-plus minute ‘Inhale(her)’ that presents the trio at their most thrilling, a haunting melody uniquely drenched in scuzzy guitar. It’s dangerously tempting to ask whether ‘Learning How To Live and Let Go’ will be the moment that pushes The Xcerts to wider recognition. Regardless, this is a fully realised version of who and what they have always been. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Blame’

 Willie J Healey Bunny (YALA!)

There’s a timeless quality to Willie J Healey’s penmanship that, over the course of now three albums, has cemented his status as your favourite songwriter’s favourite young songwriter. Alex Turner loves him; Florence + The Machine took him on tour; Jamie T is such a fan that he even pops up on the warm lilt of ‘Thank You’ - a track that contains many of the hallmarks (gospel choir backing, funk-fuelled bass, a general sense of nostalgic ease) that populate ‘Bunny’ as a whole. Indeed, where WJH’s frst two albums cast the singer as a modern day successor to George Harrison’s richly melodic solo work (and still, opener ‘Woke Up Smiling’ sits in this realm), ‘Bunny’ often strikes for a different side of the ‘70s. ‘Dreams’ is funky in a Stevie Wonder Moog synthesiser way; ‘Tiger Woods’ is a sultry slow jam that thankfully has little to do with the US golf supremo, while ‘Chrome’ utilises his falsetto and baritone to create a pseudo-conversation with himself. Best is ‘Sure Feels Good’: one of those intensely melodically satisfying tracks that hark back to the golden age of the skill. We’ll ignore that ‘Black Camaro’ brings to mind Gabrielle’s ‘Rise’; ‘Bunny’, for the most part, justifes why Healey’s little black book is quite so heaving.

(Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Sure Feels Good’

As poignant as ever.

ALBUMS

 The Hives

The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons (Fuga)

While we’ve learned by now that The Hives operate with their collective tongue suffciently close to cheek for us not to always take them at face value, there is something fascinating about the title of this record, especially coming as it does at the end of a long period in the wilderness; their last album being ‘Lex Hives’, released in 2012. ‘The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons’ comes off the back of a stadium run with Arctic Monkeys that confrmed that the group’s incendiary live energy remains undimmed. By apparently killing off the shadowy Fitzsimmons, long-established in Hives lore as their imaginary founder and sixth member, are they signalling the arrival of a new, perhaps more grown-up era?

The short answer is no. If those wildly entertaining shows with the ‘Monkeys reminded us of anything, it’s that nobody wants to see The Hives stroking their chins and adopting a refective mood; they want the rollicking, freewheeling and irrepressibly fun rockers we’d come to know and love before their disappearing act. If anything, ‘The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons’ feels like a return to their roots; there’s a pleasing lack of polish to the production on what is a succession of punk rock blasts, from quick-fre bursts like ‘Trapdoor Solution’ and closer ‘Step Out of the Way’ to sustained salvos, with the bass-driven ‘Countdown To Shutdown’ a case in point. There’s playful evidence of new ideas being worked in, too, including the witty ‘Crash Into the Weekend’, an exercise in pop-rock minimalism, and the sixties-infected swagger of ‘Stick Up’. Fitzsimmons may be dead, but on this evidence, reports of The Hives’ demise have been greatly exaggerated. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Countdown To Shutdown’



Dizzy

Dizzy (Communion)

There’s a beautiful ambition to the way Dizzy launch into this third album that suggests limitless scope: ‘Birthmark’ with its layered, euphoric backing vocals brings to mind CHVRCHES, or even Canadian compatriot Carly Rae Jepsen. Yet the rest of it offers a suspicion that the Ontario outft tried their hardest to head in the opposite direction, to the record’s detriment.  Take ‘Starlings’, with its suggestion of something transcendent dissipating repeatedly to frustrating ends, or ‘Salmon Season’ whose production ultimately tempers any threatening earworm despite vocalist Katie Munshaw’s straightforward delivery meshing well with the track’s hint of bedroom pop. Sure, ‘Knock The Wind’ is pretty enough, and ‘Are You Sick Of Me Yet?’ does eventually hint at the record’s earlier energy, but after that blistering beginning, the remainder meshes into the unremarkable. (Louisa Dixon) LISTEN: ‘Birthmark’

EPS, ETC.

 Miso Extra

MSG (Transgressive)

As a stop-gap reminder of her existence over a year on from the release of her ‘Great Taste’ EP, ‘MSG’ (spot the obvious theme on show) works well. But where Miso Extra’s earlier releases had the impetus of her status as an exciting new discovery behind them, what’s on show throughout this fve-track follow-up is a little too samey to be much more. The squelchy sounds that open ‘R10’ along with Miso making use of her nonchalant lower register are where things are their most intriguing, and the chorus of closer ‘SC Club’ echoes just enough of the recent UK Garage revival to build a hook around, but elsewhere – such as on the so-laid-back-its-horizontal ‘Wise’, it’s far too easy to zone out. (Louisa Dixon)

LISTEN: ‘R10’

 Girl Ray Prestige (Moshi Moshi)

On the whole, albums conceived during the dreaded Covid years have seemed to fall into one of two categories: either introspective, melancholy explorations of the writer’s social-starved psyche; or upbeat, determinedly optimistic paeans to parties. ‘Prestige’, the third offering from London trio Girl Ray, is undoubtedly the latter. The band have taken a disco-pop motif and unapologetically run with it, pairing bouncing basslines and funky rhythms with synths galore. It’s a sound which has had its fair share of attention in recent years from pop monoliths like Dua Lipa and Kylie, but here there’s an added sense of context, as inspired by the queer ballroom scene of 1980s New York and disco’s origins as a genre of sexuality and social subversion. Lyrically direct and melodically accessible, its best tracks are buoyant club numbers about falling in love and flling the dancefoor - see the earworm groove of lead single ‘Everybody’s Saying That’, or the Wham!-adjacent, playful percussion of ‘Hold Tight’. This isn’t necessarily an album that contains multitudes, but therein lies its pure escapist charm. (Daisy Carter) LISTEN: ‘Everybody’s Saying That’

 cumgirl8 phantasea pharm

(4AD)

“Take out your phone / I’m on dramamine on the mezzanine / If I fall down and bleed / Take a picture of me,” sing cumgirl8 collectively on the intoxicatingly electroclash ‘picture party’. One of three big entries on the New York band’s third EP, the six-track ‘phantasea pharm’, it showcases the outft at their most fun: a parody of femme objectifcation, satirisation of terminally online attention culture, a bombastic synthy sound and a feature from fellow performance artist Christeene. ‘cicciolina’ then idolises the pro-sex, anti-war philosophies of Hungarian-Italian porn-star and politician Ilona Staller over erratic glam-rock suited perfectly to a dark, sticky venue, while the reverberating, witchy ‘gothgirl1’ is undeniably Elvira: Mistress of the Dark in attitude. Then, their irreverent irony reaches a cutesy peak on ‘pritney LLC’ (an ode to the band’s manager, a “party slut” pink Pomeranian) despite an ill-ftting ‘Old MacDonald’-style melody. Although on ‘phantasea pharm’ there’s never too much commitment to a singular idea, and there’s often too short a thread to tie them together, cumgirl8 are infectious enough in their playful, hodgepodge freedom to be infatuating - and maybe that’s the point of their boundless fantasy. (Otis Robinson) LISTEN: ‘picture party’

ComingUp

ROYAL BLOOD - BACK TO THE WATER BELOW Unenthusiastic festival crowds be damned! The duo’s latest is out 1st September.

POPPY - ZIG

Presumably the pop-metal superstar’s follow-up will be ‘Zag’. Released 27th October.

VIJI - SO VANILLA

Will the world’s favourite ice cream favour become favour of the month? Find out on 27th October.

THE STREETSTHE DARKER THE SHADOW, THE BRIGHTER THE LIGHT Mike Skinner’s got a physics lesson packed in with his next fulllength. Released 20th October.

LIVE MAD COOL

Marking their frst time at their brand spanking new site in Madrid’s Villaverde, the sun is blazing high in the sky by the time fans are let through the gates on the frst day of this year’s Mad Cool festival.

And huddling in the shade cast by the Region of Madrid stage, the audience gathered for King Princess’ early set may begin as a small one, but they’re a dedicated throng; swinging off every note of Mikaela Straus’ captivating pop, which, on stage, is given a more ragged but satisfying edge. The frst big crowd of the day is reserved for The Offspring. To think that next year, the band will be celebrating their fortieth anniversary seems quite unbelievable, but as they blitz through huge hits like ‘Want You Bad’, ‘The Kids Aren’t Alright’ and ‘Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)’, you’re quickly reminded of just how integral their place in punk music has been. It’s a deliciously fun, if not a little nostalgic, set.

Fresh from their huge Finsbury Park show, the high concept backdrop of The 1975’s current touring run may not be present here today, but that doesn’t seem to concern the crowd that greet them. Admittedly looking a little worse for wear, the line between Matty Healy’s aloof on-stage character (hip fask in one hand, cigarette in the other) and the frontman himself still seems a little fuzzy, but it’s tracks from latest album ‘Being Funny In A Foreign Language’ that sparkle brightest. A more subdued set than we’re perhaps used to from the arena-fllerstheir closing on ‘I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)’ comes as a surprise - but with the promise that they’ll return to Europe with their full ‘At Their Very Best’ tour in tow shortly, the appetite of their Spanish fans has been satiated for now.

While on the surface, Robbie Williams might seem like an unusual booking for an event like Mad Cool, his opening night headline set proves that he’s certainly more than just an icon to a UK audience. It’s an incredible but irreverent run through his career, taking in moments from across his whole discography. Much like on his arena run, big-hitters like ‘Let Me Entertain You’, ‘Rock DJ’ and ‘Kids’ whip up a frenzy, while the likes of ‘Monsoon’ and ‘No Regrets’ sound especially epic. But,

Nuevo Espacio Mad Cool, Madrid. Photos: Emma Swann.

Peppered with the cheekiness, humour - and, at times, tenderness - we’ve come to expect.

Robbie Williams

of course, it’s not just about the hits. Whether schooling barrier-positioned audience member Gerard with a potted history of his time in Take That (bursting into renditions of Oasis’ ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ and subjecting an unsuspecting Madrid crowd to his “bum bum” in the band’s ‘Do What U Like’ video), or asking the crowd for translations for sex (“sexo!”) and drugs (“drogas!”), he’s the ultimate showman throughout, and his set comes peppered with the cheekiness, humourand, at times, tenderness - we’ve come to expect.

If there’s one on-stage accessory that’s probably not well-suited for playing in 33 degree heat, it’s a rubber alien mask. Nevertheless, when Maynard James Keenan’s Puscifer take to the Madrid Is Life stage early on Friday, that’s exactly what a handful of back up dancers are toting. A surreal thing to witness, the theatrics almost entirely distract from the music, with the band’s Men In Black schtick coming off a little too daft so early in the day.

While the day boasts some of the UK’s most exciting new bands (both scuzzy trio HotWax and Liverpool’s boisterous STONE have early appearances), it’s the Main Stage slot of Sam Smith that most of today’s audience are patiently waiting for. This might be the debut outdoor performance of their ‘Gloria’ show, but there’s still a good dose of pomp and ceremony to the whole thing, Sam emerging in their iconic chandelier-esque corset for the show’s frst act before a variety of costume changes and slinky dance breaks. Their setlist, too, works seamlessly, moving majestically from the crystalline heights of early classics ‘Stay With Me’, ‘I’m Not The Only One’ and ‘Like I Can’ through to their more sassy new era, with the disco stomp of ‘I’m Not Here To Make Friends’ and, of course, the glorious ‘Unholy’ arriving towards the end. A slick, sexy, and celebratory show for an artist who feels to fnally be revelling in their musical multitudes.

In almost complete contrast, the arrival of Queens of the Stone Age is a frenzied one; within mere moments of the rockers kicking into the opening chords of ‘No One Knows’, the crowd bristles with electricity and pints go fying into the air. The band swagger through hefty tracks like ‘My God Is The Sun’ and ‘Little Sister’ alongside newer, more funk-infused cuts ‘The Way You Used To Do’ and ‘Emotion Sickness’. It’s easy to tell they’ve been missed, originally booked for 2020 but unable to attend since. But the wait seems to have been worth it for their Spanish fans; the band are on the some of the best form of their career so far, and after over 25 years in the game, that really is saying something.

The anticipation for Saturday’s line-up is huge; very early on the festival’s fnal day, there seems to be many more people on site. On the plus side, it means that Years & Years’ crowd a little over an hour after doors open is a vast one. Dressed in a lace top and thigh high leather boots, Olly is as fabulous as ever - even in this heat - with his current ‘Night Call’ show managing to feel slick and, yet, well-worn this far into its run, with the singer exuding a tangible sense of confdence while on stage. A real highlight comes with his cover of Pet Shop Boys’ ‘It’s A Sin’, which shimmers with emotion as the sun begins to dip in the sky. In almost complete musical contrast, Touché Amoré’s cathartic brand of post-hardcore gathers a dedicated throng. The frenetic likes of ‘Home Away From Here’ and ‘Method Act’ sound blisteringly tight, while ‘Reminders’ provides a gorgeous singalong moment. The fact that festival stages aren’t their natural habitat doesn’t even seem to matter much; they still make it their own.

The audience gathered at the main stage for Liam Gallagher is the biggest of the weekend so far. With most of his set today consisting of Oasis covers - classics like ‘Wonderwall’, ‘Rock and Roll Star’, ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’ and ‘Champagne Supernova’ all get a look-in - thousands are hanging off the singer’s every word, such is the universal power of those songs.

Walk around the festival’s site today and it’s immediately obvious who tonight’s headliner is: the amount of Red Hot Chili Peppers merchandise on display is staggering - there’s even a couple wearing matching literal chilli outfts, posing for selfes with strangers. Unsurprisingly then, by the time the band take to the stage - for their frst show in Madrid since 2016 - the anticipation is at fever pitch. But while their swaggering brand of rock and roll starts off strong (with a double header of ‘Around The World’ and ‘The Zephyr Song’) it begins to lose momentum mid-way through, their setlist omitting some of their biggest hits (‘Can’t Stop’, ‘Under The Bridge’, ‘Scar Tissue’) in favour of cuts from more recent albums. Ava Max, however, is intent on pulling out all the stops. The star’s shimmering brand of pop is a dazzling display for the senses during her late night set, as she whips through tracks from her recent ‘Diamonds & Dancefoors’ album in a fowing red cape. A somewhat more dynamic offering than the headliners across the feld, it also provides a giddy, glistening note to end the festival on. Hasta la vista, Madrid; we’ll be back. (Sarah Jamieson)

King Princess

ROCK WERCHTER

If a festival can open with Weyes Blood and immediately follow with Anna Calvi then they’re probably boasting a line up that true music fans will bother focking for. A brief bounce-along to King Princess follows and then, case in point, it’s time for rock’s latest breakthrough band: Militarie Gun. Blending hardcore, pop-punk and some anthemic choruses these Californians turn an audience from intrigued to rabidly captivated across their 40-minute set.

Watching Iggy Pop isn’t just watching Iggy Pop. It’s drinking at the fountain of music history, it’s tapping into something ageless and timeless yet immediate and all-encompassing. At 76, the oldest act ever to play Rock Werchter, Iggy still boasts an unquenchable inferno within, and has lost none of his wit, vigour or pure showmanship. The set is packed with Stooges songs that sound fresh, new and vital even as they turn 50 and as the set roars to a close with ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ and ‘Search And Destroy’ there’s no doubt everyone in The Barn tonight has been brushed by greatness.

If there’s any band you’d be after for a mid-afternoon slot with all their “Ah”s, “Na”s, “La”s and radio-friendly bangers, Kasabian the following afternoon aren’t a bad shout. The ever charismatic, brightly Balenciaga-clad Serge Pizzorno drives ‘Club Foot’, ‘Underdog’, ‘LSF’ and ‘Fire’ to maybe surprisingly overshadow The Black Keys and Liam Gallagher to follow. Headliners Red Hot Chili Peppers do not disappoint, meanwhile, on top form from the opening jam that becomes ‘Can’t Stop’ to the closing note of ‘Give it Away’. It’s a lesson in crowd-pleasing, and the crowd is suitably pleased.

Early on the main stage is a somewhat odd situation in which to see black-suited New Yorkers Interpol, but that’s where they are on Saturday. Pulling heavily from ‘Turn on the Bright Lights’ and ‘Antics’, they never fail to deliver. While at times it seems like Machine Gun Kelly is a worldwide persona non grata, here he plays an entertaining set to an adoring main stage crowd. There’s a lot of visual drama, not unlike professional wrestling and when he climbs the two-storey sound tower you almost wonder if he’s about to Swanton Bomb off it. He also punches a fan in the face on request, which is as confusing as it sounds and at times he himself looks confused.

Muse’s headline begins in a predictably pantomime way with Queen-like songs about basic political ideas – ‘Thought Contagion’, ‘Will of the People’, ‘Compliance’ - alongside genuine classics such as ‘Plug in Baby’, ‘Hysteria’ and ‘Supermassive Black Hole’. But then something happens... the sound cuts. ‘Knights of Cydonia’ fzzles and fails. Twice. They leave. There’s boos. Only to return and play a furious version of almost-never-heard ‘Showbiz’ and destroy their amps and guitar. Nothing even glows or foats and there’s no unskippable cutscene about robots fghting people or people fghting robots

or even robots fghting robots in the future. It’s just an incredibly talented band playing with the same fury and energy that put them in stadiums and arenas in the frst place. For those four minutes it’s easily one of the most exciting things the trio have done in 15 years.

Arguably, by the fourth day, a lot of festivals might be spent by this stage. So who does Rock Werchter wind out the Sunday with? Arguably the best newcomer of the last three years – Lil Nas X. Arguably the best rock band of their generation –Queens of the Stone Age. And arguably the biggest rock band in the world right now – Arctic Monkeys. Some fex. Not to race into that though, earlier in the day no one can get enough of Nova Twins. With support slots for Bring Me The Horizon and Muse it feels as though the stadium-metal baton has been passed frmly to the duo and if they keep driving their unstoppable anthems like ‘Antagonist’ and ‘Choose Your Fighter’ into crowds like this you might as well weld that baton to their hands.

By the time ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefoor’ and ‘R U Mine’ roll around, all that’s left to do is bask in the glory of a band that are only ever a blink from a complete change of direction. Arctic Monkeys are the best British band of their generation, as the 80,000 or so Belgians here would attest, and with that the festival’s remarkable line-up has met its end credits. Cue the literal freworks. Iggy Pop, Queens of the Stone Age and Arctic Monkeys continue to redefne the scale of their legacy while so many great new bands here only start to write theirs.

(Matthew Davies Lombardi)

For those four minutes it’s easily one of the most exciting things the trio have done in 15 years.

Festivalpark Werchter. Photos: Leah Lombardi.

Militarie Gun

Muse

Nova Twins

OPEN’ER

For two decades now, revellers from across Poland - and further afeld - have made a midsummer surge to this disused airstrip on the Baltic coast. Open’er descends on the site for four days every year with lineups that are continually ahead of the curve in their blending of global rock, pop and hip hop alongside a healthy complement of homegrown acts.

This year, rap reigns supreme at the top of the bill, accounting for four of the fve headliners, although the rest is a much more varied affair. On Wednesday, proceedings get underway with some stylistic whiplash as Central Cee, fresh from a star-making turn at Glastonbury that saw him bring out Dave, continues what has been a triumphant frst European festival run.

He’s followed on the main stage by a set that’s advertised as OneRepublic but should in truth be labelled ‘Ryan Tedder plays a medley of his hits’, as the seasoned chart-botherer fres through his consistently beige CV as a co-writer in thirty-second increments, introducing every track as one he’d written with a friend, in what at times feels like an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for most name-drops in under an hour.

Playing the fnal gig of what’s been a lengthy European run, SZA appears not fatigued but, if anything, invigorated by the knowledge that these are her fnal couple of hours on stage for a while. Her show is nuanced, blending hip hop ferocity with stadium-level singalongs, and while her newer tracks embrace the popper side, you still come away impressed by how little she’s had to compromise to reach top billing

Before that, though, the day unfolds with a real diversity of sound. Los

Age team up for a one-two. As the latter ease back into live swings of things after a tumultuous few years for frontman Josh Homme, even by his own standards, they nevertheless don’t settle for too many easy options. Their 75-minute set opens with the evergreen ‘No One Knows’ in rain-lashed conditions and closes, the clouds having parted, with a particularly intense ‘A Song for the Dead’ against the backdrop of another glorious sunset.

Arctic Monkeys’ Glastonbury headline may have split opinions among the masses, but here, a thousand miles away, they are shorn of the expectation that comes with playing on home soil - and, in particular, the implicit demand from their Glasto naysayers that to simply bring their stadium show to the festival wasn’t enough. In Poland, it’s OK for them to just be Arctic Monkeys in their latest iteration: stately, understated, arch and playful, not afraid to sprinkle in rabble-rousing classics but really soaring when they demonstrate how good they’ve become at subverting expectations. How is a band producing work as weird as ‘Sculptures of Anyone Goes’ playing to audiences of this size?

Open’er’s fnal day, and there’s a return to its hip hop focus: Kendrick Lamar headlines with another virtuoso demonstration of his often unbelievable technical ability. At just over an hour, his set feels slightly truncated, but even if Kendrick had played all night, he couldn’t have matched the scintillating display that Young Fathers put on in the intimate confnes of the Alter Stage a little earlier. The Edinburgh outft have always been intense but, on recent shows in support of February’s ‘Heavy Heavy’, they seem to have somehow found another gear entirely. This is the kind of musical experience that scorches your eyes, your ears and the marrow of your bones, as the combined stage presence of Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and G Hastings, all of whom look as if they should be fronting different bands entirely, come together to create something both chaotic and deeply soulful.

Gdynia-Kosakowo Airport. Photos: Burak Cingi.

Arctic Monkeys

Young Fathers

POHODA

that Wet Leg are still fnding their feet as a live group. With Hester Chambers still seemingly too shy to speak, live members take on the responsibility of providing stage dialogue. Meanwhile ‘Too Late Now’ is performed at an ever-increasing tempo until the outft are helplessly chasing their own composition down a hill, watching it gain more and more velocity and roll out of site.

close the evening, taking to the Europa stage at midnight. Offerings from this year’s ‘Food For Worms’ receive a hefty reception, frontman Charlie Steen tearing off his shirt for ‘Six Pack’ while the rousing ‘Adderall (End Of The Line)’ takes on a life of its own as an unlikely singalong anthem.

Crowd sizes for the outdoor showcases on Saturday are affected by the unforgiving sunshine. It allows for taking in some of the Slovakian talent on show under cover, such as duo Waterbased whose cold, industrialised electronics are neutralised by warm vocal melodies as the duo pair a melodic, shoegaze-adjacent delivery with abrasive punktronica performed with cymbals which are bent out of shape to underpin tracks with an intoxicatingly deadpan thud.

Yard Act ’s James Smith has sensibly eschewed his usual trench coat today as he delivers stage patter which combines his regular wry charisma with a rich dose of Englishman abroad. After garnering a reputation as one of the hardest working bands on the circuit, tracks from last year’s debut ‘The Overload’ refuse to succumb to stagnation and hit spectators (who are furiously squished into slithers of accessible shade) with as much might as they initially offered.

Prior to their closing gambit, the frontman soaks in the scenery and talks about appreciating the moment and making the most of the cards we’ve been dealt, before the band close with ‘100% Endurance’, punctuating the tone for what is an idyllic weekend in a beautiful part of the world… tarmac ‘n’ all. (Matt Ganfeld)

Viagra Boys

A once-in-a-lifetime dream gig, designed and curated this month by...

VENUE: SHEPHERD’S BUSH EMPIRE

I’m just settling back into London life so I want to base it here and Shepherd’s Bush Empire is one of my favourite venues. My lighting engineer Paula works there when she’s not on tour, so you know it’s gonna be the best in the biz. I’ve played there a few times and I’ve seen bands there; it’s the perfect size because it can feel intimate even though it’s quite big. You’ve got the option of the balcony and standing so you can choose your gig experience.

OPENER: THE ADAM AND JOE PODCAST

They record it live at Christmas and I tried to buy tickets for it the other day but it sold out, so I’m gonna shove them in here. I’d probably give them 40 minutes so they’ve got time to settle in, but it’s not too long for a gig atmosphere. I think it’d be quite a unique and unusual way to open people up.

MAIN SUPPORT: QUIET BOY AND BRIGITTE APHRODITE

Brigitte is one of my favourite performers ever; she’s this magical, theatrical actor/ singer/ writer who’s taken shows to Edinburgh Fringe and put on musicals. She’s like a ‘50s theatre star - that Barbara Windsor magic. Her and her partner make these beautiful theatre pieces about sad things; she’s made a musical about depression and he’s made a music show about grief. It’s really vulnerable and brave and I feel like it would be a good stepping stone from Adam and Joe into some theatre that’s musical but deep.

HEADLINER: JAPANESE BREAKFAST

I’m having a bit of a music romance with Michelle Zauner right now. I just read Crying in H Mart and loved it, and Japanese Breakfast are my band of the summer; I’m having a bit of a moment with it all. It also connects to the grief that Brigitte would put on which is maybe an unusual theme but quite beautiful. Then we’ll have a funeral at the end. We’ll bury Nigel Farage alive - joking!

WHAT ARE YOUR PRE-GIG PLANS?

If you get too full before a gig then you don’t want to go out, but Michelle

Kate Nash!