DIY, May 2020 by DIY Magazine

How do you solve a puzzle like Mike Skinner? Contrary. Candid. Compulsively creative. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re listening to The Streets. 1

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MUSIC FOR CARS

The 1975

Notes On A Conditional Form

DH00753

22 May 2020

DIRT Y HI T 3

‘SET MY HEART ON FIRE IMMEDIATELY’ OUT 15th MAY 4

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Listening Post

What’s been worming its way around DIY’s collective ear-holes this month?

welcome

NADINE SHAH KITCHEN SINK

Not only a deeply relatable title (the only dramas any of us are having right now are the domestic ones, let’s face it), but a bloody excellent next move from Tyneside’s premier socio-political musical voice. Pour yourself a large glass of red and stick two fingers up to The Man when it arrives next month.

FONTAINES DC - A HERO’S DEATH

Question!

Lockdown has its ups and downs (mostly downs), but how low have Team DIY gone during isolation so far?

SARAH JAMIESON • Managing Editor Apparently in lockdown, I like to knock things over: so far, I’ve sent a full cup of coffee flying, dropped a jar of curry powder all over my kitchen, and had a bag of rice explode over me. Good use of those essential items, eh?

Yep, we’ve heard it. And yep, it’s exciting. Having teased us all with the title track from their wildly-anticipated forthcoming second LP earlier this month, the Dublin boys are set to follow up ‘Dogrel’ with a few left turns and some slow-burning curveballs. Verrrrrry interesting...

QUEEN - I WANT TO BREAK FREE

Every time we do the hoovering, we think of Freddie and pals’ iconic clip and have a little sing-song. Oh yes, we’re doing fine thank you. Oh no, we’re not losing the plot at all.

EMMA SWANN • Founding Editor Made like Edward Scissorhands and decided to give my hair a ‘trim’. Three inches later, ol’ Eddie’s mane itself would’ve been an improvement. Ow.

LISA WRIGHT • Features Editor Have become utterly obsessed and enraged with how often my flatmate washes the bath mat (literally every week FYI). What does she do on it to merit such frequency? Would this insanity hold up as a legit murder provocation in court?? Is maybe the real problem that I have nothing better left in my life to focus on right now??? WHO CAN SAY.

LOUISE MASON • Art Director Most of my conscious hours have been dignified, but my dreams are revolting. I’ve murdered pretty much all of you. ELLY WATSON • Digital Editor Got a bit obsessed with the new Dua album and thought it would be a good idea to do “a full 180” and bleach my dyed-black fringe platinum blonde. Sorry, not sorry.

Editors, Letter

Hello dear readers! We hope you are staying safe and well, and still managing to have a bit of a laugh during lockdown. Yes, things are still quite uncertain but if you’re in need of distraction, we’re chuffed to be able to offer up our May issue. This month we welcome the legendary Mike Skinner to our cover, as he digs into his endeavours over the last few years, The Streets’ incredible reunion shows, and the new (brilliant) mixtape that’s set to land this summer. And that’s not all: Sports Team finally make good on all that talk of a debut album, we get the lowdown on IDLES’ next record (!) and speak to other incredible artists such as Moses Sumney, PVRIS, Car Seat Headrest and loads more. So, go on - what are you waiting for?! PS: We’d like to say a huge thank you to anyone that’s supported us over the last month by ordering an issue, buying a t-shirt, or just watching our DIYsolation streams - it really does mean a lot. Sarah Jamieson, Managing Editor

Shout out to: All the legends who’ve popped up to play DIYsolation over the last month (follow on our Insta), Espero Studios, Lafayette for letting us drape Sports Team all over your beautiful bar, Netflix, iPlayer and Disney+ (no explanation needed), Steph Dutton and Nick Scott for designing us some killer merch, Zoom for the occasional times it waives the 40-minute limit and whoever invented wine. God bless you the most.

NEWS 8 LOCKDOWN LEGENDS 14 IDLES 18 ALISON MOSSHART 2 0 H A L L O F FA M E NEU 22 THE COOL GREENHOUSE 24 PUBLIC PRACTICE 26 CHARLOTTE A D I G É RY F E AT U R E S 30 THE STREETS 38 MOSES SUMNEY 42 DIET CIG 4 4 C A R S E AT HEADREST 48 PVRIS 50 SPORTS TEAM REVIEWS 54 ALBUMS Founding Editor Emma Swann Managing Editor Sarah Jamieson Features Editor Lisa Wright Digital Editor Elly Watson Art Direction & Design Louise Mason Contributors Ben Tipple, Ed Miles, James Balmont, Jenessa Williams, Jenn Five, Lindsay Melbourne, Martin Toussaint, Nick Harris, Patrick Clarke, Will Richards Cover photo: Jenn Five This page: Ed Miles For DIY editorial: info@diymag.com For DIY sales: advertise@diymag.com For DIY stockist enquiries: stockists@diymag.com DIY HQ, Unit K309, The Biscuit Factory, 100 Drummond Road, London SE16 4DG

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

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PRESENTS THE BRITISH MUSIC EMBASSY SESSIONS:

KING NUN

>>>>>> WATCH NOW 7

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Yes, it’s weird. Yes, it’s confusing. But during this singular and history-making moment of mass isolation, musicians and creatives have been doing what musicians and creatives have done for decades: taking a fucked up situation and turning it into brilliant art. Words: Lisa Wright.

t took precisely two weeks from the start of the UK's official lockdown period on 23rd March for Charli XCX - pop's premier wildcard, with a proven track record for eschewing the normal protocol - to announce her artistic response to the situation. “For me, staying positive goes hand in hand with staying creative, and so that’s why I’ve decided I’m going to use this isolation time to make a brand new album from scratch,” she revealed on Instagram. “I’ll be posting demos, I’ll be posting a cappellas, I’ll be posting text conversations with me and any collaborators… The whole thing in that sense will be extremely collaborative because anybody who wants to be involved can explore their creativity alongside mine.” Since then, Charli has been frequently and transparently revealing the process behind the making of new LP 'how i'm feeling now' - slated for release 15th May at the time of going to print. Fans have helped choose which demo ideas should be picked up and fleshed out into full tracks; artwork for each single has been based on home shoots and reworked by artists online; the video for first single 'Forever' was compiled from thousands of clips sent in by her followers, based around the idea of 'things to be cherished'.

“It feels really stupid and illogical to not try and be the best you can be each day of this shit.” - Self Esteem However, though Charli has always been the kind of artist to embrace the power of the internet and her online community, one who you would expect to thrive in strange times such as these, the way that many musicians have responded and adapted as a whole has been a reminder of exactly how strongly creativity can blossom among struggle. Of course, there have been huge losses shouldered within the industry that can’t be ignored tours and festivals cancelled; incomes battered - but as in previous times of global crisis, the silver lining is already the innovative and inspiring responses coming out of it.

If punk arrived as the result of a total youthful disenfranchisement with the '70s political landscape, and literate, angry, important bands like Manic Street Preachers were born from looking at the inequality and poverty around them and clawing at its seams, then the response to now seems far more peaceful but no less potentially interesting. With the world physically separated in an unprecedented way, the industry has had to find other ways to keep the doors open and let people in; instead of red tape, artists have been getting green lights quicker than ever. “Someone asked me before if I'd been told to be more present on social media in this time, and no I haven't, but just generally it's been helping me to be really present and open. It's a weird closeness that's happening with an audience who I hope will be there in real life when I'm on a stage again. Next time I get to be on a stage, I think I'll feel different,” says Rebecca Taylor - aka Self Esteem. During the first month of lockdown, she put together online festival Pxssy Pandemique - a three-day event of female-identifying artists that raised nearly £6,000 for Women's Aid. As well as making an important point about the gender inequality still present on the majority of traditional festival line ups, she explains that the experience also highlighted a more direct way of approaching ideas. “There's a lot of pomp and fluff in music, so there's something quite childlike about just going and doing it. When I was a teenager I was always putting things on, and you lose all that when you get a team and do things in the right channels. So it's made me think what's possible. Something like the Edinburgh Fringe is a good example - now that's been cancelled it might potentially make them rethink the model which has increasingly become very unfair on artists for a while,” she says. “Sometimes I have felt like, 'Why don't we do this?' and because it's not the done thing then it'll get met with a no. But there's a great big example now, and continuing examples that the audience are there.” Buzzy new artist and DIY fave Lynks Afrikka spent the first part of his time in lockdown making the 'Self Isolation Tapes' - a series of characteristically hilarious new tracks with accompanying green screenheavy performance videos, released

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“It’s like Mother Nature sent us to our room to think about what we’ve done.” - Tim Burgess daily on YouTube. “The rush of it meant there was no time to question decisions, so I just had to go with my gut,” he enthuses of the project. Since then, he's been performing live stream gigs almost every week (including one for DIY's own DIYsolation Festival) and building a rapport with fans that might have taken significantly longer under normal gig-going measures. “I'd say a great side of this has been developing a closer relationship with people that follow me and my music,” he says. “It's exciting finding new ways to connect with people that we'd never normally do in regular life. Like I'm gonna do a Zoom makeup tutorial webinar soon. Shit like that would never happen!”

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artists, because however you try to describe the emotional element to them, you can never quite capture it. It's only when they've done one that the full beauty of it hits them,” he says. “It's actually the perfect end result from having spent years making an album - whether it came out last year or last century. People listening to an album in full is one of the greatest gifts you can give to an artist. 90% of the listening party is just people around the world listening to the same record all the way through: something a lot of people didn't used to have the time for. But suddenly we all do.”

If social media has longsince been a game of two halves - its constructive benefits often outweighed by its competitive, unrealistic habits, then in these past months the real beauty of the medium has shone through. As Self Esteem states: “In the face of something so huge and dreadful like this, it's genuinely cool to be positive and nice and kind. It feels really stupid and illogical to not try and be the best you can be each day of this shit.”

From Metronomy TV - a weekly Instagram show where the band play warped covers, take part in Generation Game-style quiz shows and generally dick about - to Laura Marling’s online guitar tutorials; Miley Cyrus' daily show Bright Minded which blends massive celebs with social activism to Foals' recent streams dredging up never-before-heard demos from the archives, it's a rich and rewarding time to be a music fan right now. And that's without all the inevitably brilliant stuff getting created behind closed doors.

The Charlatans' Tim Burgess has been running #timstwitterlisteningparty since 2011, but it's only now that the idea has truly come into its own; “It's the slowest overnight sensation that's ever happened,” he laughs of the turn-around. At a nominated hour, listeners are invited to press play on a chosen album, with band members and relevant folk then tweeting memories and factoids about the record in real time; regularly, the parties trend on Twitter, with heavyweights such as Oasis, The Libertines and Blur all pitching up for a go. “It's a funny thing with bands and

Of course it’s not the same as going out and cavorting around your favourite venue, but in a scary and totally unknown time, there’s still plenty to be grateful for. “There's something meditative about how we have had to deal with this. It's like mother nature sent us to our room to think about what we've done,” says Tim. “Almost everything will change but we need to learn to look after each other. The future is uncertain but there are levels of kindness that maybe weren't as obvious as before. There's a world full of inspiring people out there.” DIY

“An absolute necessity” DIY “The voice of a generation” Independent “An absolute triumph” NME “Superb” The Evening Standard The Telegraph Financial Times

The Guardian The Mirror

The Sun Daily Mail

Pitchfork 7.6

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SHOW ME THE PUPPY

WE LOVE DOGS. YOU LOVE DOGS. HERE ARE SOME POPSTARS’ DOGS.

This month: Flume

On the

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

Rina Sawayama had really embraced the relaxed personal grooming approach to lockdown. (@rinasonline)

“Get yer ass over here Barbie, imma fuck you up.” (@amylandthesniffers)

When life mirrors art. (@haimtheband)

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Name: Percy Age: 2 years old Breed: Goldendoodle Favourite things: Dog TV, long walks on the beach, scavenging for food. Tell us a fact about your dog: Sometimes Percy likes to wear his hawaiian vacation outfit. It’s a huge hit on his Instagram, @lilfried.chicken.

The Hit List In the market for more than just new music? We’ve got you covered. This month, if you’re desperately missing the pub (sob) then here are some places bringing the outside boozing experience in.

Holy Island Gin Bundle Independent northern gin distillery Holy Island is taking the T (that’s travel) out of G&T with this fully-equipped home delivery bundle. You’ll get gin (normal or ‘Sea Pink’), tonic water, fruity garnishes and reusable icecubes - just BYO bougie attitude. RRP: £30 Buy it: holyislandgin.co.uk

WHAT A LEDGE THIS MONTH:

LADY GAGA If there was ever a question as to the owner of music’s most bulging phone book, then Lady Gaga stepped up to take the crown raising a whopping $128 million in the process - with last month’s One World Together livestream. Celebrity charity shows can often veer into mawkish territory, but, thanks to a ridiculous roll call of mates including Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Elton John and all four Rolling Stones beamed together via four-way video call, this two-hour megastar mash-up hit more high notes than most. With money split between the World Health Organisation and charities including food banks and housing organisations, you can picture the pennydrop moment when ol’ Gal Gadot realised quite how much of a misfire ‘Imagine’ was...

Signature Brew’s Pub in a Box Make your very own boozer in your front room with this handy do-it-yourself box of tricks. You’ll get a load of beers (duh), pint glasses, beer mats, snacks and a pub quiz - with delivery duties taken on by musicians to help them earn a bit of cash. RRP: From £25 Buy it: signaturebrew.co.uk

Cocktails by Lollipop Make like you’re in a fancy cocktail bar dahhhhling with these highend pre-mixed bevs, handmade by proper bartenders and delivered with garnishes. Choose between an Espresso Martini, Sangria, the tequila-based Paloma and more. RRP: £36 for six Buy it: lollipopup.co.uk

This is the instruction manual to ‘Joy as an Act of Resistance’. It’s important to love yourself, but how do we do that?” Joe Talbot 14

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In The Studio with…

IDLES

THE BRISTOL PUNKS HAVE ALREADY PROVED TWICE-OVER THAT THEY CAN PACK A UNIVERSALLY-CONNECTIVE EMOTIONAL PUNCH. NOW ON THEIR FORTHCOMING THIRD LP, EXPLAINS JOE TALBOT, IDLES ARE AIMING TO CHANGE THE GAME SONICALLY TOO. Words: Lisa Wright. Photos: Ed Norton.

“The beauty of IDLES,

and the reason why I’ve enjoyed our journey so much, is because I’ve always just kept my head down and focused on the present,” begins Joe Talbot. “I think I learnt that skill from going through some crappy stuff; realising that all you’ve ever got is the present, and to really absorb that. So I’ll look back [on these last years] with pure fucking bliss; the whole thing so far has been magic.” From slow-burning breakthrough act on 2017 debut ‘Brutalism’, to important, inspirational crossover success story with the following year’s ‘Joy as an Act of Resistance’, to now, as they stand on the cusp of a third that could turn them into festival headliners and more, it’s measured, unshowy proclamations such as these that have cemented IDLES as a new breed of star.

“Fandom isn’t important,” Joe continues. “What’s important is communication, and that comes from art, it doesn’t come from adulation.” More than any other artist in their peer group, IDLES have always worn their worldview on their sleeves. They’ve surged to success as a band of the people: one synonymous with humility and empathy, and one with an increasingly massive tribe of fans and supporters who’ve adopted their tenets as their own. It’s perhaps why, as Joe begins to talk about LP3 (slated for release later this year) over the phone today, he seems keen to go down a slightly different path. Though the forthcoming record undoubtedly still rings with the same need for connection and truth - “It’s exactly the same as the last two albums,” he notes, “hopefully it’s a window onto us and mirror onto you” - you sense that the frontman is keen to ensure IDLES are musicians first, and slightly inadvertent figureheads of a new movement second. “That’s why hopefully you’ll never see me in the tabloids, because it’s not about images of me, it’s about the art we create,” he continues, emphatically. “It’s important to keep that distance otherwise you end up becoming a celebrity and no one wants that, not really.” And so, while excitable chatter around the record might initially stem from its potential emotional impact - how it can progress the hammer blow hit of catharsis

that ‘Joy...’ landed two years back - the main talking points at play here look set to be sonic ones. The band have brought in hip hop producer Kenny Beats, known for his work with artists such as Vince Staples and JPEGMAFIA to team up with Nick Launay and Adam Greenspan, who produced their second - the modus operandi to “find a way to have the record stand up against pop and hip hop and everything else that’s on the radio”. “If you put a punk record from the ‘70s next to a track from ‘Yeezus’, it’ll sound like a fart in the wind,” says Joe. “Even ‘Back in Black’ doesn’t have a lot of sub-bass; you put that on and it doesn’t sonically hold up. So that’s what we wanted to do, to make something that does.” Recorded at France’s La Frette Studios and written “slightly remotely”, with the singer in Bristol and guitarist and main co-songwriter Mark Bowen in London having both recently become fathers, the coming together of the album too seems born from a determination to harness and progress their own musical powers. “I think we’ve found a similar joy in what makes a good song. Bowen is a very creatively engulfing person; he wants to do everything and make it massive and play all the time, but we’re learning the economy of sound, and space and silence within songs,” explains the frontman. “It takes a lot of writing to find out what you love about music, and 15

then you write what you love instead of trying to write the next Radiohead song. We found each others’ strengths and enjoyed each other’s skin.” Thematically, the band have honed their sights in too, with the record’s title forming a basis for them to “set boundaries and individually flourish” within its concept... except he won’t tell us what it is yet. “Absolutely not!” guffaws Joe at the - very reasonable, let’s face it - question of letting slip the titular key to LP3. But there are, however, some breadcrumbs to help establish the trail so far. Where their debut dealt with the very raw pain of a huge life trauma, and its follow up attempted to rouse a sense of defiant hope, IDLES’ newest is tasked with taking the logical next practical steps. “Emotionally I’m not healed, I’m healing and that’s what’s on the record. So this one is about processing and finding pragmatic ways of moving forward, and from your reaction to that trauma, you build something concise and beautiful,” he explains. “This is the instruction manual to ‘Joy...’. It’s important to love yourself, but how do we do that? This is how we do that: by building something instead of just talking. It comes a lot from the differences in therapy I’ve had. On the first album, I was talking about my past and accepting that how I felt was normal, and now I’m in CBT which is [about finding] pragmatic steps to change your outlook so that in the future you’re emotionally mature. “The songs are all projections of inner workings,” he continues. “I’m not

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preaching or telling anyone else what to do. I’m showing people what I’m doing to become a better person in the long run - no, not better, but a more productive person...” More productive than the 190 shows the band managed to plough through during 2019? “Numbers aren’t necessarily productive,” he answers, with a wry chuckle. “I probably wasn’t a very productive person by December last year, I was at my ends for sure...” Even when IDLES are pushing their artistic limits and attempting to make a heavy, thumping record to challenge hip hop’s greats, it’s comments such as these that show the band are still determined to allow themselves to be vulnerable. And, having debuted a

“If you put a punk record from the ‘70s next to a track from ‘Yeezus’, it’ll sound like a fart in the wind.” - Joe Talbot

handful of new tracks during last year’s winter tour run, the co-existence of these ideas is already easy to hear. The jagged sonic punctuation marks of ‘Grounds’, he explains, are centred around an idea of literally “setting ground work - saying enough is enough, this is who I am and moving forwards”. ‘Danke’, meanwhile, closed their Alexandra Palace set with a prolonged, slow-building sonic maelstrom, its huge hurricane of noise up there with the band’s most cathartic; its lyrics however, are centred around a singular refrain (“True love will find you in the end / You’ll find out just who was your friend”) taken from the late Daniel Johnston’s most poignant track. “I finished most of the songs lyrically in the vocal booth on the day that I sang them, and he died on the day we finished that song,” says Joe softly. “And I think [‘True Love...’] is one of the most beautiful songs ever written, so I wanted to throw it in there; it being the last track on the album, I wanted to leave with something positive. And if someone’s said something as earnestly and concisely as possible, then why try and change it? I don’t think anyone deserved love more than Daniel Johnston.” They may be setting their sights higher and wider than ever, but IDLES can’t help being a band for the heart and the mind as well as the eardrums. Now, they’re readying the tools to push both sides to their peak. “Self-belief, strength, unity: that’s all this record’s about,” Joe finishes. “It’s about doing and being and embracing who you are in the moment, and being as fucking awesome as you can. That’s it.” DIY

Photo: Grayce Leonard

HAVE YOU HEARD? HAVE YOU HEARD?

THE STREETS FT TAME IMPALA – CALL MY PHONE THINKING I’M DOING NOTHING One is essentially responsible for turning a generation of British indie kids onto hip hop; the other is a one-man by-word for futurefacing, perfectly-produced psych-pop. Both are true pioneers and icons of their respective areas, but aside from that? Let’s just say, on paper, Mike Skinner and Kevin Parker aren’t natural bedfellows. And yet, on ‘Call My Phone...’, the first cut from The Streets’ forthcoming mixtape, the odd couple prove something of a winning one. They’ve not tried to compromise on either of their distinctive sounds in any way - instead, Mike intones inimitable one liners (“You know I’d give you my kidney, just don’t ever take my charger”), before Kev swooshes in on a hazy daydream, like the angelic voice on his pissed-off shoulder. It’s a good cop / bad cop routine in a song, and proof that opposites do attract. (Lisa Wright)

ORVILLE PECK – SUMMERTIME Following the release of his debut album ‘Pony’ last year, masked cowboy crooner Orville Peck has offered up his first new material since in the form of brooding countrynumber ‘Summertime’. Lead by his mystical baritone vocals, the mesmerising new’un is a slow-burning sizzler, which will instantly have you pining for hot summer evenings and scanning Depop for some cowboy boots. Romantic and rousing, step aside Billy Ray, because it’s Orville Peck making country music cool again. (Elly Watson)

THE KILLERS – FIRE IN BONE If previous single ‘Caution’ found The Killers treading familiarly anthemic, expansive territory like the modern Springsteen acolytes they’ve always been, then on ‘Fire In Bone’ the now-trio’s influences take a little longer to shine through. Kicking off as a surprisingly sparse, surprisingly funky bass-led shuffle, there’s more Talking Heads than thumping Americana to be found in its opening moments. But this is Brandon Flowers - king showman and never a man to be knowingly understated - and so, before long, the speakers crank up, the crescendos appear and we’re back in the stadium. Still, it’s a sign that forthcoming LP ‘Imploding the Mirage’ might have some interesting twists up its sleeve. (Lisa Wright)

NADINE SHAH – TRAD To any woman who’s ever suffered through a family gathering containing the phrase “the clock’s ticking,” Nadine Shah’s latest (and, indeed, Nadine Shah in general) should be held dear like a talisman of sanity and relief. “Shave my legs / Freeze my eggs / Will you want me when I’m old?” she sings cuttingly over simmering, sparse beats. It’s clearly a moral ‘fuck you’ to the traditions of its title. And yet, as its yearning chorus kicks in (“Take me to the ceremony/ Make me holy matrimony”), it’s not all that simple, because nothing ever is. Another example of the Newcastle singer’s nuanced, open dialogue about the rollercoaster of clashing feelings that we call life, there’s few expressing it as eloquently and intriguingly as Nadine right now. (Lisa Wright)

HAVE YOU HEARD? HAVE YOU HEARD?

FONTAINES DC - A HERO’S DEATH Having spent the best part of their last two years playing shows across the world, you could forgive Fontaines DC for potentially being somewhat burnt out, but with ‘A Hero’s Death’ they continue their push forward. A hypnotic offering powered by Grian Chatten’s repeated gambit of “Life ain’t always empty,” the track spirals in surreal fashion, teetering on the edge but still never quite managing to trip. Set against a motoric beat, his “list of rules for the self” swirl with a headiness that feels both claustrophobic and liberating all at once, proving just how deft a band they’ve become. (Sarah Jamieson)

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WHAT’S GOING ON WITH...

ALISON MOSSHART Last month, rock’n’roll’s most badass frontwoman released her first ever solo offering, ‘Rise’. It’s not all she’s got in the pipeline, it turns out… Words: Elly Watson.

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“S

ometimes I think I should just pack a suitcase so I don’t lose that incredible skill of packing because I’m so good at it!” muses Alison Mosshart. “Like, what if I just become a terrible packer because I’m not going anywhere? This is a skill I’ve worked up my whole life!”

Currently in lockdown at her home in Tennessee, Alison is channeling her quarantine qualms into random skills, filling her Instagram with pictures of sculptures she’s made out of cardboard boxes and making videos like a self-proclaimed “crazy maniac”. But her most exciting output by far has been the release of debut solo single ‘Rise’. A seasoned pro in the game, the blistering song landed back in mid-April, marking the first real offering under her own name outside of her beloved bands The Kills and The Dead Weather. “It’s such a crazy time, but having that come out alone has made me feel quite normal,” she beams. “I actually wrote it in London in 2013 and I’ve had it for so long. I was asked to make something for [TV show] ‘Sacred Lives’, and I remembered it and I thought it was perfect. I finished that for them and they loved it, and a few months went by and then they asked me to record my own version for it so they could play it at the end of the season. It was really nice to realise my version and how I wanted it done.” Which begs the question of a full release. Having dipped her toe into solo waters, is a Mosshart LP something we can expect in the future? “I haven’t really thought about it,” she laughs. “I love recording songs and I love working with different people. But I really, really, really love being in bands. I

like the camaraderie and coming up with things together. It’s incredible what other people think - like, my brain only thinks like this but YOUR brain has all of THIS going on! It’s really interesting and fascinating. I like that, I like the challenge of that. Being a solo artist doesn’t excite me, however going in and recording songs and working with different producers and musicians, that sounds great. But I’m very ready to get a new Kills record done and get back out on the road, because that’s what I love.” Alison and Kills counterpart Jamie Hince were busy in the studio in LA cooking up the follow-up to 2016’s ‘Ash & Ice’ before she had to fly back to Tennessee to vote in the US primary elections. Originally wanting to head straight back to LA, a tornado stopped those plans and, three days after, the States went into lockdown. “I keep thinking maybe I’ll just Mad Max it across the country, but it’s like a four-day drive,” she giggles. “But we’ll see! I can do it and I’ve done it, but then it’s like where do you sleep because none of the hotels are open and I don’t really want to sleep in parking lots... So I’m just trying to be patient. “We’re still writing, but he’s in LA and I’m here and it’s a weird time. And I don’t wanna write a record about a virus, you know?” she notes. “I think I’m in shock and the world is in shock, and I can feel that energy and it’s really strange. I want to be able to navigate myself creatively through that with music, but something about music is so incredibly personal and I feel like my brain is a little bit frazzled with everything going on. But we’re both writing every day and sending stuff to each other, and I feel like I’ll be back in my rhythm more when this is a bit less insane.” Hoping to head back into the studio later this year and unleash the duo’s sixth studio LP next year, plans for her other rock outfit - Jack White-collaborating supergroup The Dead Weather - are sadly less certain. “Everyone’s got six jobs, so it just needs to magically happen,” she says of a fourth album. “It’s crazy because right now we’re all home which NEVER happens, and we can’t even hang out! It sucks! But I gave Dean [Fertita] some songs the other day and he’s been working away at them. I don’t know if they’ll be for Dead Weather or just songs that Dean and I do, but he sent me a few things and they sound fucking awesome.” Best get your perfectly-packed suitcase at the ready, because it looks like Alison is ready to embark on her latest exciting journey the moment this is all over. DIY

“I LOVE RECORDING SONGS, BUT I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY LOVE BEING IN BANDS.” 19

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Fame

Black Wire – ‘Black Wire’

Having surprise-dropped their long-lost second album on Bandcamp last month, we revisit the cult Leeds band’s mid’00s debut: a spiky beast that did dark-hearted, danceable danger long before the current crop. Words: Lisa Wright.

t’s a sad fact of musical life that history doesn’t always give credit where credit is due. The bands who initially sparked a scene aren’t necessarily the ones that go on to crossover success; the more interesting outliers are often the ones doomed to combust before the big cheques and bright lights come calling. Enter Leeds trio Black Wire: a seething mass of spiky riffs and wild hair, who released their selftitled debut and, until recently, only album back in 2005. During the early part of the decade, when you couldn’t move for exciting guitar bands twisting indie and its affiliated ideas into their own shape, the group - made up of frontman Dan Wilson, bassist Tom Greatorex and guitarist Si McCabe - still felt like a more dangerous entity than most. Drawing on post-punk and moulding it into a new danceable, dirty form, they were a bunch of blackclad rotters when the rest of the world were decked out in Converse and spivvy blazers. And yet their mainstream legacy will likely be remembered as a footnote in northern pals Kaiser Chiefs’ altogethermore-commercial career: Black Wire, during one fateful, riotous gig, were the band who inspired ‘I Predict a Riot’.

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THE

FACTS

Released: 27th June 2005 Standout tracks: ‘God of Traffic’, ‘Smoke and Mirrors’, ‘Hard to Love Easy to Lay’ Tell your mates: Black Wire’s members went on to form Televised Crimewave and Lord Auch: also both worth a listen, music hunters.

However, having surprise-dropped previouslyunheard second LP ‘Confetti’ via Bandcamp last month (the group originally split before it was released), then now is the time to revisit that debut and give it the props it deserves. Because while many records from the era (bonjour, The Fratellis!) may not have aged so gracefully, ‘Black Wire’ sounds, if anything, like it could have found a more natural home in the present day. Chock full of howling vocals and clipped, rattling rhythms, the likes of wild opener ‘God of Traffic’ or the chaotic stab of ‘Attack! Attack! Attack!’ take rage and revulsion and lead them onto the dancefloor. There’s sneering disgust on ‘Hard to Love Easy to Lay’ and bleak, dead-eyed moments on ‘800 Million Heartbeats’, but through all the darkness there’s always a palpable twinkle in the eye; like the blow-out at the end of the world, the record’s 10 tracks stake a convincing case that if you’re going down, you might as well go down in style, and do a couple of shots for good measure while you’re there. Will the band ever become posthumous superstars? Likely no. But in terms of the era’s most notable cult favourites, you’ll struggle to find better. DIY

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new bands new music

NEU

The Cool Greenhouse When Henry Rollins legendary Black Flag leader, punk agitator and active new music advocate - slides into your DMs, then it’s probably a sign that you’re doing something right. And so it was with no small amount of surprise that, after five years of “no-one paying attention”, The Cool Greenhouse’s titular leader Tom Greenhouse checked his Bandcamp orders last year and found one from a familiar set of initials. “Someone [listed as] HNRLNS or something had bought a single, so I emailed to see and it was him!” laughs the frontman. “And he’s very good at replying to stuff! He’s the real deal. If you email Henry Rollins, he’ll email back in about 30 seconds without fail.”

Repetitive, elongated, two-note melodies and strange, funny inner monologues wrenched from the awkward corners of modern living. Renegade? Weirdo? Tom Greenhouse is probably a bit of both. Words: Lisa Wright.

“I’m always trying to find strange, specific anecdotes; I have very little interest in transcendent emotional art.” - Tom Greenhouse

Playing the band’s 2018 track ‘The End of the World’ on his radio show, Rollins declared them “his new favourite post-everything existential music happening” - a summary that Tom agrees is fairly on the money. “It’s not far from what it is - trying to undermine everything all the time, but also trying to undermine ourselves too,” he suggests. But if all that sounds a bit holier-than-thou, then worry not, because despite making long, cyclical tracks, densely packed with lyrical one-liners that would give the current ‘Spotify success’ algorithm a migraine, The Cool Greenhouse’s aim is actually something closer to... pop? “I hate things like Frank Zappa where it changes all over the place and it’s all diddly diddly,” he dismisses. “Pop music is essentially repetitive - even quite elaborate pop music might have bridges and choruses but they do the same thing all the way through. If the aim of pop music is to be accessible... well, maybe we’re not accessible, but I’d hate to have people think we’re avant garde.” It’s a key point that’s notable throughout TCG’s previous EP releases (largely recorded as a solo project), and their forthcoming selftitled debut LP as a proper band: even though the ingredients that make up their twisted suburban tales might sound impenetrable on paper (“If you listen to the arrangements on the record, they’re just held by

two notes and there’s no classic chord changes or anything”), there’s something playful, and funny and self-deprecating there that means the result is always more than the sum of its parts. “If you restrict yourself and say ‘We’re not going to have a chorus’, then you have to find another way to make it interesting,” posits Tom. “So I think humour is very important because it’s maybe the thing that stops it from getting too boring. If people are switching off and you do a good joke then they might pay attention for longer. I guess a lot of people who are on stage singing are really trying to express their purest self, but I don’t think of it like that doing The Cool Greenhouse. I’m always trying to find strange, specific anecdotes that might then have a wider significance in some way; I have very little interest in transcendent emotional art.” Yet though the neurotic narrator in recent single ‘The Sticks’, slowly becoming a paranoid mess following his move to the country (“And sometimes when you close your eyes, there’s grinning Jimmy Savile’s painted on your inner eyelids / Other times it’s Yoko Ono’s on treadmills, stretching out into infinity”), or the hateful male in ‘Cardboard Man’ (“I didn’t ask to be comfortable / Well, pity the white man”) might not speak to the universals of love and loss, they do ring with a certain familiarity at every turn. Like many of the post-punk, speak-sing peer group (see: Dry Cleaning, Do Nothing et al) that The Cool Greenhouse have inadvertently found themselves on the peripheries of, their tracks might dig into unexpected corners and pull out cheeky lyrical oddities, but their foundations still lie in the mundane, maddening, mixed-up experience of everyday human life. Sound familiar? Just don’t mention the ‘F’ word... “People always compare us to The Fall and I can see why people do it, it’s a totally appropriate comparison, but The Fall have been so influential to so many bands, it’s like comparing any rap record to Grandmaster Flash,” says Tom. “They’re the godfathers of it, but it’s so rich and people are doing so much with those building blocks now. “I always wanted to make repetitive music that’s not alienating; to do things that were engaging, but different and not run of the mill,” he continues, “and I think [the album] has achieved what we set out to. It’s taken me by surprise, getting a label and being asked to play Glastonbury and stuff - I never in a million years thought that would happen. But either way, I’m sure i’ll just keep going at it forever really.” DIY

Photo: Greg Holland.23

Photo: Alexandria Foot

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“I’m interested in doing something more than four people with guitars looking bored on stage.“ - Sam York

Public Practice

Born from the ashes of shortlived NYC post-punks WALL, Sam York and her band have evolved into a disco-inflected, danceable force to be reckoned with. Words: Lisa Wright.

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When hyper-buzzy New Yorkers WALL split shortly before the release of their 2017 debut LP, there was a feeling that they’d combusted with a whole heap of potential untapped. However, speaking to Public Practice’s Sam York-– frontwoman and chief songwriter in both outfits alongside bandmate Vince McClelland - the decision to draw a line in the sand and reconfigure seems a simple one: away from the post-punk framework they’d previously set up for themselves, now they could set their sights on something more joyful, more uplifting, that just in general gave them more. “I learned a lot from WALL, but now I’m more interested in leaning into the positive aspects of life,” says Sam. “I think dancing really brings people together and I’d like to be a part of contributing to that. There’s still plenty to be upset about, but I’m finding more eloquent ways to express it.” Drawing influence from the more dancefloorinclined end of the city’s classic canon, it’s artists like ESG, Liquid Liquid and Blondie that permeate through to Public Practice’s self-proclaimed “dark disco”. And from their first singles back in summer 2018, they’ve presented the kind of sharp, stylish package that’s like a modern-day take on a night down CBGBs: chic yet sweaty, aspirational yet hedonistic at the same time. “I’m interested in doing something more than four people with

guitars looking bored on stage; I feel like we can make something more interesting than that, and we really strive to,” enthuses the singer. “But it’s also about trying not to take ourselves too seriously. Public Practice is about having fun, not just looking cool. Like duh, we’re fucking cool, but we’re also having a good time!” The first sizeable document of their celebratory mantra comes in the form of this month’s debut ‘Gentle Grip’ - 12 tracks of streamlined, shoulder-shimmying earworms that strut with equal nods to punk, funk and a host of ideas in between. There are real, fallible questions contained within its wares - “I think the subject matter is really human, and about the moral gymnastics of existing in modern society,” nods Sam. “All the songs fall under the idea of what it takes to be a good person in the world we live in” - but there’s unlikely grooves and nighttime sass built in equally at its core. “I’m always more prone to speak about the things that we’re for than the things we’re against, which is a big difference between post-punk and disco,” she explains. “We want this to be fun and inclusive, because what else is the point? Everything is so upside down in the world, the least we can do is try and make something that brings people together.” DIY

NEU

Charlotte Adigery

Drawing influence from her Belgian base and Caribbean heritage, and fusing it into a canon of playful electronic pop oddities. Words: Lisa Wright. 26

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of when I was five years old and my mum’s boyfriend’s son played some techno and I got really scared,” laughs Charlotte Adigéry. “I thought it was really scary music. But now I’m making scary music myself.” “Scary” might be a slight overstep but, since putting out her self-titled debut EP back in 2017, the Ghent-based singer has crafted a niche for the kind of tunes her childhood self might raise a slight eyebrow at. Born in France to a mother from the Caribbean island of Martinique, tracks such as 2018’s ‘Paténipat’ move between languages, drawing thematic ideas from her experiences lived between two cultures; musically, meanwhile, she’s been long-affiliated with Soulwax’s Stephen and David Dewaele, whose electronic fingerprints can be traced through to the singer’s own sprightly, effervescent take on the genre. It’s a melting pot of ideas that Charlotte’s cribbing from, and one that makes her a singularly exciting new alt-pop voice - but also one that’s seen her have to fight to be understood.

“I actively decided that OK, I’m done with fighting who I am and trying to be more.”

“Ghent is really boundary-less; people love all kinds of music and there’s not one thing you have to be a part of. The only pressure I’ve felt is, because I’m black, people presume that I make R&B and that makes me so angry,” she says. “People will describe my music, and they’ll always call it ‘electro R&B’. But sometimes it’s nice with these expectations, when you don’t confirm any of them. I think we [Charlotte and collaborator Boris Pupul] do talk about that in our music; we talk a lot about our frustrations. There’s a song called ‘Thank You’ that we’re going to put on the album, and it’s a passive-aggressive way of thanking people who say really hurtful or stupid stuff. Like, ‘I prefer your first EP more than this one’, or ‘Is that a wig? I don’t like it’. People have actually said this stuff and it’s like, what is my facial expression that you’d think I want to hear this?! So we put it into a song, and it’s like therapy so I can get all my anger out.”

Catharsis and acceptance are concepts that clearly run deep within the singer’s music. Throughout 2019’s ‘Zandoli’ EP, ideas around the complex grapple with identity abound, while recent track ‘Yin Yang Self Meditation’ finds Charlotte delivering a steady monologue on her own fears and frustrations. “Meditation is a way to free yourself from the mental carousel of things that don’t serve you but you still do them. So I thought, maybe if I write them down and record them, then I’ll be able to really let them go and see the futility of these thoughts,” she explains. “It’s such a privilege as an artist to share your voice, and I’m not Billie Eilish but with my small fanbase I thought, if I share this and even 10 people hear it and recognise themselves then it could be really freeing. Everyone’s doubting themselves and opening that up is super powerful.” It’s a journey that the singer has evidently taken herself, too. She recalls a particularly poignant message from a fan who “was this alternative black girl who didn’t feel like she fit in anywhere, but now she feels OK to be black and alternative, and to mix the culture of your parents with the culture you grew up in”; performing on stage, meanwhile, is credited as the way in which Charlotte has truly become comfortable in her own skin. “I think I actively decided that OK, I’m done with fighting who I am and trying to be more,” she nods. “Because when people relate to your story or to a song, it’s such an amazing confirmation.” And the bright, celebratory musical world that the singer has built around herself is proof of this rightful sense of joy. Whether making a strange ASMR clip for ‘Cursed and Cussed’ or embracing her blackness in the video for standout track ‘High Lights’ - a bubbling, Metronomy beat laced with ruminations on hair and identity - everything Charlotte does feels defiantly, brilliantly herself. Now she’s just excited to finish her debut album, and unleash it on the world. “We were playing ‘Thank You’ on tour in the States, and it’s such an ironic song that I felt like people felt really awkward [watching it],” she chuckles, “so I’m a little hesitant, but it comes from an honest place in my head so... deal with it.” DIY

Photo: Jorre Janssens

“I have a flashback

MICHELLE

KENNYHOOPLA

RICO NASTY

NYC sextet providing the effortless

Increasingly genre-blurring jams from the burgeoning Wisconsin star.

Part rock star, part pop star, part rap star, all superstar.

Press play on last year’s chaotically-titled ‘how will i rest in peace if i’m buried by a highway?’ and you’ll find a propulsive indie banger in the vein of Bloc Party’s finest. Previous single ‘Lost Cause’ is a lo-fi bedroom jam; recent track ‘the world is flat and this is the edge’, meanwhile, comes full of big drops and crunching production. The opening statements from Wisconsin’s KennyHoopla might all be wildly different, yes, but they’re united by being really very exciting; where he goes next is, intriguingly, anyone’s guess.

Already a fairly established name in the rap scene, Washington DC-born Rico Nasty has been shaking shit up with her genre-blending, no-holdsbarred musical style for several years. Combining a punk mentality with punchy wordplay, her hard AF tracks pull influence from hip hop, pop, metal and rock, to create undisputed girlpower bangers made to be moshed to.

soundtrack to being young in the city. Picture a scene: it’s a balmy early summer evening, you’re sat on the steps of a New York City brownstone, waiting for your pals to arrive and the rest of the night’s unknown adventures to reveal themselves. New six-piece MICHELLE are already marking themselves out as the sound of that image, the kind of timeless gang who pull a dappled synth line from over here, a cosy harmony from over there, a nod to ‘90s R&B from over there and tie it all together with the general attitude of being young with the world at your feet. Listen: Recent single ‘The Bottom’ sparkles like an aural hit of Vitamin D. Similar to: People who were equally obsessed with MGMT and Aaliyah.

Listen: ‘how will i rest in peace…’ will make you want to pull on your Converse and have a big old mosh. Similar to: The best example of what modern ‘everything all the time’ listening habits can produce.

Listen: Latest track ‘Popstar’ is the anthemic amuse-bouche before her debut album lands later this year. Similar to: If Harley Quinn decided to make punk-rap.

RECOMMENDED neu

DOCUMENT Manchester’s newest punk prodigies.

REMI WOLF Technicolour fun from pop’s effervescent new star-in-the-making.

With a knack for creating bright and buoyant pop songs, LA multi-instrumentalist Remi Wolf deals in effortless fun; to say her offerings are downright infectious would be very much an understatement. Her debut track - the rather aptly-titled ‘Woo!’ - comes complete with a trippy, technicolored world of weirdness in its video that feels like the zaniest children’s TV show ever. And if that’s not enough to lift your spirits right now, we just don’t know what is. Listen: ‘Woo!’ Even for the name alone… Similar to: The literal sound of summer. 28

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In these apocalyptic ‘unprecedented times’ that we all now find ourselves in, sometimes you need a soundtrack that matches the mood, and Manchester newbies Document fit the bill perfectly. Crafting ominous spinetingling soundscapes, the quintet match Joy Divison-esque lyricism with Shame-style ferocity, pulling you into their noir world and ensuring that you won’t want to leave. Listen: Debut EP ‘A Camera Wanders All Night’ is the perfect accompaniment for the end of days. Similar to: If your angsty diary entries weren’t too cringey to be enjoyed by the world.

L A Y

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

Human Nature Not content with being in one massive, widely-beloved band, Slaves’ Laurie Vincent has unveiled new project Larry Pink The Human, alongside producer Jolyon Thomas. Heading in a more lo-fi, contemplative direction, the pair recently dropped debut single ‘Love You, Bye’ with an album on the way. “There is so much more of ourselves we still want to explore and achieve. LPTH spilled out of my chaos-fuelled mind during the establishment of a ‘comfortable’ life, a deep desire to turn left when everyone expects you to turn right,” says Laurie. “I feel the essence of LPTH is me truly becoming myself for the first time.”

All the buzziest new music happenings, in one place.

BUZZ FEED

ON THE

All Aboard! Following on from the solid first steps of ‘Oh Lola’ and ‘Breakdown’, buzzy new Chess Club signings Coach Party have announced details of their debut EP ‘Party Food’ - set for release 12th June. It’s preceded by rip-roaring new single ‘Space’, which the band’s Jess Eastwood says is about “the emotion of putting your feelings on the line and how tormenting someone can be when you break up. The control someone has over you when they know something you don’t want others to know.” But it sounds, y’know, more fun than that. We promise.

CHILDREN OF THE STATE ‘Big Sur’ Channelling Beach Boys vibes and ‘Submarine’-era Alex Turner melodies, the Doncaster lot’s latest explores themes of escape and loneliness, oozing with nostalgia and surf-rock riffs.

BLACKABY ‘Adam’ Like Matt Maltese, Jerkcurb and a small clutch of other recent favourites serving a darker undercurrent to their seemingly sweet offerings, William Blackaby’s latest might seem like a tender piano lament, but there’s something strange in the waters.

Feeling Flush

YARD ACT ‘The Trapper’s Pelt’

Sunderland lads Roxy Girls have released propulsive, brilliantly sneering, sub-twominute newie ‘Dirtier’ alongside news of a forthcoming EP. ‘A Wealth of Information’ will follow on from last year’s debut ‘A Poverty of Attention’, and lands 5th June. Recorded in the basement of hometown musical landmark Pop Recs Ltd, the EP focuses “on the tropes of 21st century living and the mundanity that comes with it... on themes that have, in one way or another, affected each mortal modern human life,” says frontman Tom Hawick.

Leeds post-punks Yard Act surge straight out of the, er, traps with their debut: an immediate and blisteringly punchy number that swaggers along on growling basslines and speak-sing one-liners. PUBLIC BODY ‘Naughty On My Bike’ Excellent title? Check. Clattering, two-and-a-half-minute joyride full of silly musings on public transport (“Train ticket/ Bus ticket”) and a repetitive, earwormy riff that makes sense of their recent Squid support slots? Check.

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WHEN MIKE SKINNER BROUGHT BACK THE STREETS FOR A SERIES OF INCENDIARY REUNION GIGS, HE COULD HAVE EASILY CASHED IN THE NOSTALGIA CHEQUE AND CALLED IT QUITS. INSTEAD, HE’S ABOUT TO DROP A MIXTAPE, WITH AN ALBUM AND FEATURE FILM IN THE MAKING. WE MEET UP WITH A CERTIFIED LEGEND, WHO’S STILL TRYING TO PUSH THINGS FORWARD WITH EVERY NEXT MOVE.

Words: Patrick Clarke. Photos: Jenn Five.

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“I

don’t really hang out anywhere these days, to be honest,” Mike Skinner deadpans as he sits, a little restlessly, in a busy, hipsterfied Brick Lane coffee shop. He disparagingly examines the deliberately-exposed brickwork, and the enormous waxed moustache and goatee beard of the man at the table next to us. “This is just a coke den, isn’t it? Although I guess that has its place...”. 40 years old and a father of two, he seems at ease, if a little weary. “They say you can tell who all the dads are on tour because everyone else is partying, and the dads just want to lie in a dark bunk.” When he ended The Streets in 2011, Skinner was, by all accounts, burnt out. “Maybe when I'm 40 and broke I might come back, but it all feels a bit pants really,” he said spikily back then before the release of that year’s ‘Computers And Blues’ - the project’s last studio album to date. His return to the moniker in recent years, however, has been defined by a newfound sense of purpose. “Burnout comes from when you don’t really know what you’re there to do, and that’s horrible,” he says. “But I know exactly what I need to do to get through every day now. I literally don’t stop from when I open my eyes in the morning to when I close my eyes at night. But I don’t feel stressed. Stress would be doing this shit and not knowing why I’m doing it.” And indeed, throughout The Streets’ hiatus, and in the months following a series of incendiary

comeback gigs in spring 2018, the musical polymath has been remarkably busy - even if to the outside world his output has been somewhat sporadic. “Some people spend five years making an album, and other people don’t do anything for four years and then make an album in one. As a fan it’s not easy to see the difference, but there is a difference,” he says. “I’m definitely the former. Really, the only thing that matters is if it’s right.” In the interim, he’s teamed up with The Music’s Rob Harvey for two albums as The D.O.T and UK rap group Murkage for a 2015 EP and a series of parties, billed as Tonga Balloon Gang. Currently, he’s working on a film, to be titled The Darker the Shadow The Brighter the Light, which he’s writing, directing, producing and starring in; “Imagine ‘A Grand Don’t Come For Free’, then imagine that being a film,” he suggests of the piece. He’s also releasing a new album that will serve as the soundtrack, which was inspired by his constant DJing. Meanwhile, as the film takes shape, Mike is putting out a mixtape called ‘None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive’ that features guests including Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker and IDLES’ Joe Talbot. “For a long time, I had a lot of different interests, directing and producing and DJing; I had all the different things I was doing, but now everything’s converged,” he says. “The moment I realised that it was all coming back to one thing, that’s when I announced the reunion tour.”

he Streets’ return was riotous, selling out within seconds. Though the rapper peppered new material among his considerable canon of crowd pleasers, it felt like an opportunity to celebrate The Streets’ triumphs; footage of those gigs finds Skinner swaggering cooly onstage with the nonchalance of a man who knows exactly how much his

“If I could talk to my [younger] self and offer advice I think I would say, ‘Take more advice’.” 33

Mike Skinner: He’s first class.

“THERE’S LOADS OF ARTISTS THAT I LOVE WHO PROBABLY WOULDN’T WANT TO“There’s WORK loads of WITH ME, AND artists that I love who THERE’Sprobably LOADS wouldn’t OF PEOPLE WHOto work with want me,TERRIBLE and there’s loads MAKE of THAT people who make MUSIC terrible LOVE MY MUSIC!”music that

love my music!”

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It puts the star in something of a privileged position; if he wanted to, he could milk every penny from the nostalgia circuit. Yet it’s heartening how much he recoils from such a prospect. “A lot of success like that is actually… It can be really bad, because it’s not making you grow,” he considers. Would he play ‘Original Pirate Material’ in full, like so many artists wheeling out the classics for a run through in recent years? “Oh… no. No,” he says firmly. “Most music that you make just disappears nowadays, but when it works, it’s nothing to do with you any more. You might spend a long time trying to get it right, but as soon as it goes on Spotify it’s purely in the mind of the listener. And also, I’ve forgotten what most of my own music sounds like, some of it totally. Unless I’m performing it, I’ve literally forgotten it.” Nevertheless, Skinner is aware of his status, something he’s grown to be more comfortable with over time. “I remember the very first time I sang ‘Let’s Push Things Forward’ in the UK, at Reading Festival in 2002. Everyone sang back the words and I just thought, ‘Wow, what if I’d written that sentence a bit different?’,” he remembers. “When you’re young and you’re from Birmingham, all of that is like, ‘What the fuck?’. I mean, even just signing an autograph or something... You feel like you’re accepting something when you sign an autograph.” Can he remember the first time he was asked for his signature? “No, but I probably would have said ‘No’ and laughed at them,” he says frankly. If he was asked today? “I’d sign it. Because if I was talking to Thomas Bangalter from Daft Punk, and I said, ‘Mate, I love your Tron soundtrack, you are literally a god’ and he was like, ‘Fuck off mate’… It’s like, well yeah I’d like him to be down to earth, but accept that I love you. I’ve put a lot of time into this love. You’re not accepting that you’re amazing [in that situation], you’re respecting the time that a fan has spent with you. I think that’s the difference.”

here are moments such as these where it’s clear that the Mike Skinner of 2020 is a more considered character than the 22-year-old that dropped his debut back in 2002. Even compared to the Mike Skinner at the end of The Streets, you sense he’s mellowed - he may be still prone to moments of spikiness and deliberately contrary statements, but these days he’s employing them a little

more sparingly. In his 2012 autobiography The Story of The Streets, Mike wrote somewhat disparagingly of outwardlypolitical music. “If I’m going to learn something about politics, it’s not going to be from some drug-taking guitarist,” he noted at the time. The intervening decade, however, has been tumultuous to say the least, and now one of the most prominent political frontmen in Britain appears on his new mixtape. Does this mean his position’s changed? “I don’t like IDLES because they’re political,” he answers diplomatically, “I like them because they make good music. I don’t think it’s as simple as to say that musicians shouldn’t be political. But musicians are like, pretty crap at everything apart from music. We literally have an opinion that is no better - probably a good sight worse - than the average person on the street. It’s a bit like saying our politicians need to be good musicians. “Artists don’t change the world, they don’t,” he continues. “Think of the best art you possibly can. Did Of Mice And Men change the world one bit? Maybe. ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’, did that help? Perhaps it did. But these are like, some of the greatest of all time. Personally, I like to talk about very specific, small things. I think small things can become universal, and political even. ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ is literally about nothing, isn’t it? Politics is just humans doing stuff, and I write songs about humans doing stuff. I try to be basically moral.” Whatever his responsibilities politically, Skinner is nevertheless intent on not resting on his laurels. After two decades in the game, he’s still got a fighting spirit that you might not expect from a man who’d already won the creative and commercial jackpot before he was out of his twenties. “When you tour your albums, people are literally paying to see you. They’ve bought a ticket six months in advance, so you’ve kind of won that boxing match before you enter the ring,” he continues. “Whereas DJing can go very wrong very quickly. You have to park your ego completely. DJing has taught me a lot about just being a good soldier, as the Germans say - just being good at your job. When you’re DJing you might be in Germany or in Preston. If you can come away from that having made people have a good time, that’s soldierly, isn’t it? To make music and just be in nightclubs twice a week, it’s a gift.” Of The Streets’ reunion shows, he muses that he “could drop something and somebody would pick it up - I mean, I’m convinced I could get someone to hold my chewing gum on tour.” His experiences of DJing, however, have often been far less glamorous. “My worst ever [set] was in Dubai, at a garage night on the roof of a hotel,” he recalls. “I got out there and the DJ before me was completely not-makingeye-contact drunk. He was DJing from a laptop, literally fell off the stage and completely disappeared. I had to unplug the laptop and set up the mixer in the way that it’s supposed to be - it’s not like

When Joe met Mike

music means. To cement the air of triumphant revelry, the shows broke Brixton Academy’s bar records, becoming the beeriest gigs in the venue’s considerable history. However, the run didn’t only attract returning old-school fans, but a second wave of younger ones too. “I don’t see The Streets as having two eras,” he says of the divide, “but it has two different audiences. There’s an audience that doesn’t know what I’ve done for 15 years, and then there’s an audience that does.”

IDLES frontman Joe Talbot lends his pipes to the title track of ‘None of Us…’ Turns out, he had quite a nice time doing it too. Joe: “It was amazing [doing the track]; Mike’s a hero of mine. I took a lot of inspiration in life from his music, and meeting him, I sort of shit myself. But he’s very welcoming and calming and fucking amazing at what he does. He’s a hero that I’m glad I met and I’d be happy if he ever wants to work together again. Just the way he works: it’s comforting to know you can make amazing songs with ease and love. He’s created his own language in music, and there’s not many people on earth that can say they’ve done that. And he does it cos he loves it; he’s not there to blow smoke up his own arse, he just loves it and that’s fucking cool.”

“Politics is just humans doing stuff, and I write songs about humans doing stuff.” going straight to the next Netflix episode - and doing that when there’s a load of people trying to take selfies while you’re unplugging cables is literally why I love DJing. I mean it IS the reason I love it.”

Live Photos: Lindsay Melbourne

It’s a particular creative outlet that’s essentially at the root of everything Mike is doing now. It gave him “something to write about for his film,” and its sense of immediacy has influenced the decision to release a mixtape while the film takes shape rather more slowly. “The mixtape started off as doing something quickly, to carry on the nightclub stuff that I’ve been doing. It’s a way of carrying on with The Streets while this bigger thing happens,” he nods.

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‘None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive’ is a mercurial release: dynamic and energetic as it jumps from old-school UK garage to contemporary trap, via forays into psychedelia with Tame Impala, and the sound of IDLES’ Joe Talbot pushed out of his comfort zone towards thudding, aggressive rap. The

mixtape’s freewheeling style and wild, joyous abandon belies the fact, however, that despite intending for it to be something immediate, the release actually took longer than his main project’s soundtrack. “Usually I do everything myself, mixing the album, recording the album, mastering the album. I wake up in the morning and think, ‘I need to work harder’,” he says. “Whereas when you’re working with other people, you can’t be emailing them every day. I’ve always been desperately impatient, and I think I’ve developed patience on this project specifically.” In a way, ‘None Of Us…’ serves simply as a snapshot, one of many possible results from a period of multi-faceted creative exploration. “This mixtape is just the songs that ended up happening - there could have been a Matty Healy record, there could have been a Skepta record, an Octavian record,” he reveals. "Those were actual conversations. There were studio sessions. But like…. you have to know when it’s working and when it isn’t,

and appreciate that that’s completely out of your control.” Those tracks will likely never see the light of day, he says. “The main thing about a feature or a collaboration is that they both have to be into it. There’s loads of artists that I love who probably wouldn’t want to work with me, and vice versa. There’s loads of people who make terrible music that love my music!”

kinner’s slight prickliness, and the way The Streets has often been painted as his singular vision, belies the fact that collaboration and the championing of other artists has always been intrinsic to the project; even now, the big names on the new mixtape are outnumbered by a horde of up-and-coming MCs. From his label The Beats that launched the careers of Professor Green and Example, to its successor Mike Skinner Ltd. and a slew of recent features traded with Flohio, Jaykae and Grim Sickers, he’s been hands-on with his interest in the next generation. “I do think I’m a pretty good educator, I think my advice is pretty good,” he says. “I know when it’s bollocks and when it isn’t.” Yet he’d stop short of calling himself a mentor. “I think there’s a reason why most rappers have never been signed by other rappers. I think good artists have a very clear idea of what it is they’re there to do, and what it is the art is there to do, and that’s not good for another artist because every artist needs to have their own idea.” It’s an attitude that perhaps comes from his own youthful belligerence and refusal to accept a helping hand. “I think I’m terrible at taking advice,” he laughs. “Terrible. You read magazines when you’re a kid and it’s all these old guys going, ‘It doesn’t matter what equipment you’ve got, just get a really good set of speakers and a really good room’, and you’re like, ‘Fuck off mate. Literally fuck off. You old man. OK Boomer’. And then you spend 20 years wasting music until you realise you just need a really good set of speakers and a really good room. If I could talk to myself and offer advice I think I would say, ‘Take more advice’.” DJing is also the root of Mike’s forthcoming film: “The best way of describing it would be if you imagine the person I am in ‘A Grand Don’t Come For Free’,” he begins, “then imagine they got older and became a DJ, and then imagine The Streets never happened.” The project, which is moving slowly by its nature, feels massive on a personal level; there’s a shift in the way he acts when the subject comes up, his speech suddenly focused and direct. “I’ve spent years trying to make a film,” he says with newfound nervous energy.

The release will be unlike anything Skinner’s done before, but in a way it serves as a reminder, as well as a climax and a new beginning: it’s notable how often he compares it to his early work, and he says that in some ways it’s not dissimilar to making a debut album, “in just having no idea what the hell I’m doing.” He might be laughing when he says it, but there’s a determination there too. Having emerged from his time away from the project and come back renewed, it’s clear The Streets have never before been operating with quite so much purpose. ‘None of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive’ is out 10th July via Island. DIY

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and, instead, celebrating the beauty of the indefinable. Words: Jenessa Williams.

With the second part of ambitious, affective new album ‘græ’ completing his latest

Photos: Alexander Black

Shades In Between

statement, Moses Sumney is defying categorisation

rom first look to first listen, we as humans are conditioned to put people in boxes. Whether we’re sizing up a potential friend or analysing a stranger’s sense of style, it’s hard to ignore the psychological impulse that calls out to us, inviting us to make meaning out of what we see. We do it to others, but we also do it to ourselves, setting parameters that may or may not be useful. Moses Sumney has never been an artist interested in such boundaries. Having broken through with his 2017 debut ‘Aromanticism’, the 29-year-old has spent a lifetime reinventing himself, finding a skin that truly fits. On latest record ‘græ’, an expansive two-parter of twelve and eight songs apiece, he comes pretty close - drawing on a soaring falsetto that ties together R&B, pop, soul, indie and plenty more besides.

are some personal statements on there for sure, but it’s art y’know?” he reflects. “It became very one sided. It’s definitely contributed to me wanting to make an album about greyness, about gradients, because nothing is ever that simple. I was most invested in freedom when I was working on this record, and I pursued it fiercely; I stopped caring what the genre markers were and just did whatever I wanted to do.”

Finding that elegant voice, however, took some time. “I his shift in mindset brought Moses much closer probably only found out I could sing, like two years ago,” to the idea of multiplicity. Themes of isolation are he laughs, dialling in from his home in North Carolina. “I still in fine evidence on ‘græ’, but they’re reflected guess I had an interesting upbringing. I grew up writing through a prism of many facets: the idea of selfsongs, because I could do that in the safety of my bedroom, but the singing was a little tricky. I’ve been incubation as a means of regeneration, preparing for the next practicing since I was 12 or 13; I would get my dad to phase of ever-changing, fluid identity. A vocal Twitter user, he regularly expresses frustration over the way his music is routinely buy me CDs and I’d try to imitate them in my bedroom… coded as R&B, seeking a more nuanced state of representation. Destiny’s Child, Usher, Justin Timberlake, Brandy, Nelly Furtado, all the golden age stuff. We moved from San Bernadino to Ghana when I was 10, so I had no “It’s far more complicated than just racism,” he says. “It was really funny when I went on one of my Twitter tirades and was like, ‘OK, here’s knowledge of a counter-cultural scene or of playing in a bunch of black artists who are not as well known as I would like them bands. I’m of the American Idol generation, but I figured to be’, and then somebody was like, ‘Thanks, can you put the genre out pretty quickly that that wouldn’t pass with me - I for each artist next to their name?’ Noooo! But it’s just human nature: wanted something a bit more creatively fulfilling.” if we can’t name something and put it in its place, it is very difficult for us to understand what it is and what it’s trying to communicate. The search for creative fulfilment required some It’s a huge cultural flaw that a lot of society suffers from. The thing adjustment. Moving back to California with his family we’ve missed is that it’s just completely unnecessary, especially for at 16, Moses joined his high school choir, where he our generation. We’ve grown up during the age of LimeWire and made friends and began to realise the emotional illegally downloading all types of songs, and now streaming - we all impact his voice was having on people. Going on have our own playlists that have a bunch of different shit on them.” to attend UCLA as a creative writing major, he began performing publicly aged 20, releasing two Moses’ own playlists have led him in the direction of some pretty EPs that would pave the way for ‘Aromanticism’. impressive collaborators. Having worked on projects with the likes of Sufjan Stevens, James Blake and Solange (“She has like, an “Making ‘Aromanticism’, I was so conscious of encyclopaedic knowledge of musicians”), ‘græ’ features the work of setting up limitations for myself,” he admits. Thundercat, Oneohtrix Point Never and London group Adult Jazz. “Obviously I had the first limitation of having no money, which controlled a lot of the “Collaboration is a pretty straightforward process - you just scope and the sound, but I was also deeply have to give me a pint of your blood first,” Moses jokes. “I invested in minimalism, and the fear of losing guess I’m quite picky - when I played the demo for ‘Me In 20 people by combining too many strokes from Years’ to Oneohtrix Point Never, I was like ‘Well, if you don’t different genres.” The record performed like this then this isn’t going to work’. But he was like, ‘Oh my well, but critics became stuck on its god, this sounds like an old lady screaming in the middle of sentiment of lovelessness, painting him Whole Foods to herself’, and I was just like yes! You get me! as a pretentious loner fixated on isolation. He really presented this idea to me that the vocals on a lot of my music go so hard, that the instrumental also needs to “I think the funny thing about ‘Aromanticism’ kinda punch you in the face for me to justify going off like that. is that the record, the actual album, never said love is bad, or unobtainable - there “I do want to make music that people can connect with, but I also want to challenge them,” he explains. “I go back to songs sometimes, and think ‘OK, this is a little too plainly stated for my tastes, how can I fuck it up a little bit?’ So the end part of ‘Cut Me’ or ‘Bless Me’ have these weird ambient noises and high-pitched sounds; sometimes the only way you can explain the way you’re feeling is through a scream.”

“Sometimes the only way you can explain the way you’re feeling is through a scream.”

Occasionally, challenge comes in quieter forms. One of ‘græ’’s standout moments ‘Polly’ is devastating in its simplicity, teamed with a single-shot music video that focuses on Moses’ face as he stares into the camera, t e a r s

“I was most invested in freedom when I was working on this record, and I pursued it fiercely.” rolling down his cheeks. “I think the thing that makes ‘Polly’ fucked up is the confrontationally bare and honest quality of the lyrics,” he says. “To say as a man, very quietly, ‘I don’t want to live here / Sometimes don’t want to live at all’… I don’t need to give you crazy production right there for that lyric to hit, you know? I just try to be honest, and I think that’s the great thing about pop music - sometimes to just sing the melody or to plainly state something is the most honest thing you can do.” At once defiant and humorous, ambitious yet intimate, Moses Sumney is set to become somebody who means many different things to many different people. His one hope is that listeners might follow his lead. “Almost as soon as I put ‘Aromanticism’ out, I moved on beyond the idea of ‘-isms’,” he says. “I think, on a personal level, ‘græ’ captures the way I’m feeling right now, but who knows how I might evolve beyond this point? I don’t think there is any one social group that suits me, or even really welcomes me. I’m feeling incredibly and fiercely individual, but also connected to other people through that individuality. Culturally, I think a lot of people are waking up to the idea that you can be many things - if not all at once, then definitely over the course of your life. I hope that people identify with it, if only by realising their own multiplicity.” ‘græ’ via

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is out 15th Jagjaguwar.

May DIY

OUT NOW

out 15.05.20

Just A Reflection

Photo: Em Dubin.

On DIET CIG’s newest ‘Do You Wonder About Me?’, Alex Luciano and Noah Bowman have followed up their firecracker of a debut with a chunkier second: a thunderous reckoning with past selves. Words: Will Richards.

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Diet Cig are really stepping up with this new one.

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hen a band returns from tour after their debut album, having criss-crossed the globe for years and relentlessly set out their stall, they’re rarely the same people that left. For Alex Luciano and Noah Bowman - aka Diet Cig - the period following their four-year-long tour around ‘Swear I’m Good At This’ brought with it a heavy dose of reflection. The questions Alex would ask herself got about as deep as they could possibly go: “Who am I now? Have I grown? How have I grown? Who was I before?” And so, after throwing themselves into the homebound hobbies that they’d neglected while on the road (Alex learned how to screenprint, while Noah spent his days on lengthy bike rides), the duo wrote ‘Thriving’ - their recent single and the first step towards new album ‘Do You Wonder About Me?’. A driving powerhouse, the song beckoned in a new era of the band that’s slower, chunkier and more deliberate. “I’ve been holding my breath for way too long,” Alex sings on the track, with the deep exhale of coming back home bringing a whole load of unanswered questions with it. “‘Thriving’ made us realise that we don’t have to be so in everyone’s face anymore,” Noah reflects. “With this record, we have our fans now and we’ve tried things out, and we have people that wanna hear this record. So we’ve been trying to slow ourselves down, really think about what we want to do, and be more intentional instead of just big, loud, everything in your face as fast as we could play it.”

while ‘Night Terrors’ finds Alex as adept at delivering evocative hushed vocals as she is screaming her head off on previous tracks. It’s ‘Broken Body’, though, that puts Diet Cig’s flag in the ground. “I’m still all the people I’ve ever been,” Alex sings on a visceral reckoning with her past, realising that, in order to move forwards and change as a person, you don’t have to resign all the regrettable versions of yourself to the bin. “It’s so not fair to yourself,” she says. “You would never pick those pieces apart about somebody else. It’s this cruel way we look at ourselves and pick ourselves apart. It’s OK to have grown and to celebrate that growth, but to also accept that the things you’ve grown out of are still a part of you, and that’s OK. “Writing songs is such a cathartic process emotionally, and I don’t often let myself think through feelings like that,” she says of the album’s vulnerable, honest tone. “My gut reaction is, ‘Oh no, don’t dredge that up!’. Writing these songs really allowed me to get vulnerable with myself, and I feel like every time I write and record a song and then hear it again later, it’s almost as if my past self was like, ‘Oh, Alex - this is the feeling, this is the message’ and I’ll listen back and be like, ‘Wow, I really get me!’. Sometimes even in the moment of writing a song, I don’t even really fully grasp the entirety of the emotions that I’m unpacking, and then I’ll listen later and see it all. It’s like my subconscious is sending a nice message to my regular brain.” Throughout ‘Do You Wonder About Me?’, Diet Cig re-evaluate themselves, as people and as musicians, from the ground up. Preconceptions and social pressures are cast aside, and instead the band lay all the pieces out, examining their whirlwind past half-decade and ever-changing personal landscapes, before picking up the ones that still fit and building something bigger, better and stronger.

“Writing these songs really allowed me to get vulnerable with myself.” – Alex Luciano

‘Swear I’m Good At This’ introduced Diet Cig in a whirlwind of bubblegum pop and impassioned, yelped lyrics that remain as savage as they are sweet. Looking back on its relentless nature while working on its follow-up, the band wondered, as Noah explains: “What if we just took a breath and gave everyone a chance to think about it and feel it more, instead of just the crazy energy?”

Subsequently, the rest of ‘Do You Wonder About Me?’ picks up the baton set by ‘Thriving’ and runs with it. Highlight ‘Who Are You?’ packs a wonderfully sweet chorus into a background that feels more robust than the band’s beginnings as purely a guitar-and-drums duo,

“I don’t wanna say that we were scared before,” Alex reflects, “but there was a subconsciousness on our debut where we needed to prove ourselves and prove that we fucking rock - its title, ‘SWEAR I’m Good At This’, says as much. That record was about trying to show everyone that we belong here. “But this album has got us to realise that yes,” she smiles, “we do belong”.

‘Do You Wonder About Me?’ is out now via Frenchkiss. DIY

Four years on since mainstream-baiting LP ‘Teens Of Denial’, Will Toledo is back with a banger. But if you thought you knew what to expect from Car Seat Headrest, then get ready to make a sharp U-turn... Words:

Photos: Carlos Cruz Sol

Elly Watson.

Odd One Out

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Will Toledo is really taking quarantine chic to a new level.

“I was driving the van through the middle of nowhere

in America, just getting to the first stop on tour, and we were thinking maybe we had a flat tire. So we pulled into this auto repair shop and the guy spotted us as soon as we got out of the van and said, ‘Are you Will Toledo?!’,” Car Seat Headrest’s resident mastermind laughs. “And he rolled up his sleeve and he had the ‘Twin Fantasy’ tattoo! It’s still pretty random when that happens to me. It’s just like a different world.” However, though the notion of celebrity may still seem like something of a parallel universe for Will, it’s a realm he’s firmly becoming a part of. A prominent figure in US indie rock for almost a decade now, Car Seat Headrest’s 2011 offering ‘Twin Fantasy’ (their sixth LP) amassed a huge cult following; then, five years later, ‘Teens Of Denial’ - their second for Matador - gained widespread acclaim and pushed the group even further into the mainstream consciousness. But now, with twelfth LP ‘Making A Door Less Open’ - their first in four years - on the horizon, Will’s getting ready to throw Car Seat fans a bit of a ‘Kid A’ curveball. “I kind of want to freeze myself cryogenically for a few months until people have really had the chance to sit with it,” he chuckles. “It’s sort of been a curve from when people first hear it and they’re like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ and then they keep listening to it and they start finding pieces of it that they engage with, and then it all clicks at a certain point and they really start to like it.” Announcing the new record earlier this year

with ‘Can’t Cool Me Down’, the soaring, synthladen song marked a transition away from the lo-fi sound most associated with the Virginia band. They followed this up with the release of ‘Martin’ in March, accompanied by a video showing Will as gas-mask-wearing character Trait, lifted from his tongue-in-cheek side project 1 Trait Danger with Car Seat drummer Andrew Catz, and raising a few ‘Why the mask?!’ questions in the process. “For me, I’ve always been very into the sound and into the music. So the visual aspect of just putting on a show and being on stage... that’s always been hard for me to find a way where it’s clicked,” he explains of the reasons behind the character. “So for me, the mask, and finding a bit of a costume, it’s just kind of an experiment to see if it clicks more.” Didn’t want to find a more breathable fabric though, eh Will? “I do better when I sweat! We’ve done a few summer shows when the A/C has gone out and, for whatever reason, I feel like it connects me more to the crowd because everyone’s on that same level of misery…”

irst beginning work on ‘Making A Door Less Open’ back in 2015, it was always on Will’s agenda to create something a little different. “‘Teens Of Denial’ was such a concentrated rock’n’roll album, and I’ve made a lot of records before then - that’s not always what I do - so I was interested in doing a 180 and looking more at electronic stuff,” he elaborates. “The first material that I started generating was these synth loops and more experimental instrumental stuff.” One of the first pieces that came from this period of experimentation was album opener ‘Weightlifters’: a track Will describes as a weird dance song that’s “maybe a little nasty and maybe a little ‘70s cokedup Bowie, but Car Seat style”. “I was kind of thinking about doing a whole record like that,” he continues, “and then ultimately it got mixed with a lot more different stuff, just because over the course of that many years you get interested in different stuff and you don’t wanna limit yourself to a strict aesthetic boundary if the song can benefit from something else. I think it ended up being a way more organic mix of more traditional rock stuff, electronic stuff, and then everything but the kitchen sink - just whatever I was into at the time.” Writing a lengthy statement on Car Seat’s website, Will explained how the songs he’s been creating contain “elements of EDM, hip hop, futurism, doo-wop, soul, and of course rock’n’roll”, detailing how his creative process has changed. A true nerd, Will found himself diving into the back catalogue of what his own favourite artists would listen to, and following the trail from there. “When I was young, I was listening to rock music, ‘60s stuff, and I listened to a lot of indie music when I was a teenager and starting to make music. But it just feels like, in order to continue engaging at that level, you do have to branch out and listen to other types of music,” he explains. “‘60s and pop and rock - that came from other genres; indie music from the ‘90s and early ‘00s - that came from earlier genres. That sort of leads you into all sorts of seemingly disparate genres where you can listen to folk or classical or jazz, and it’s just kind of trying to stay engaged on that level and seeing what you can create from these different sorts of genres and make something new from that.” This changed mindset has also expanded into the way Will writes, moving away from his classic lengthy style (2016’s ‘The Ballad of the Costa

“I think the hardest thing to do is write simply.” Will Toledo

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Concordia’ clocks in at 11 minutes 30, while oldie ‘Beach Life-In-Death’ stands at just over 12) and challenging himself to pen shorter tracks. “I know people associate Car Seat with longer songs and more passages and long lyrics etc, and that’s something I’ve always been interested in. But I’ve also always been interested in very concise songwriting that can fit a lot into your three minutes or less,” he explains. “I wanted to put myself in the hot seat for that and push myself to write in that mode.” However, fear not, long-form Car Seat cravers - penultimate track ‘There Must Be More Than Blood’ still remains a seven-and-a-half-minute sizzler. Throughout the record’s 11-track run, Will explores themes ranging from frustration (‘Hollywood’) to pining for someone (‘What’s With You Lately?’), pinpointing hip hop inspired ‘Martin’ and the heartstring-pulling ‘Life Worth Missing’ as the peak of what he was trying to achieve with his songwriting. “It’s just simple words, simple lyrics that you can remember, but they add up to something which I think is powerful,” he emphasises. “That’s hard. I think the

hardest thing to do is write simply. I think it’s easier to sort of delve into specifics and write long lyrics and longer songs because you can get more and more specific about what you’re talking about; it’s harder to use a minimum of words and still convey something unique that is what you want to convey.” Translating his experimentation into a shapeshifting and captivating record, Will’s hoping for his twelfth offering to find a firm place in fan’s hearts, just as ‘Twin Fantasy’ did nearly ten years ago. “When I get into a band with a big discography, usually the weird one is the one that ends up being my favourite,” he muses. “I’m hoping that it’ll have that spot in Car Seat Headrest for a lot of people, where it’s the one that’s kind of outside the box of everything else that we did, but that resonates with people who might not be into stuff that’s connected on a more basic level or more mainstream level. I like the idea of just having this odd album out that can also be a favourite.” ‘Making A Door Less Open’ is out now via Matador. DIY

R is in g From The

Photo: Sasha-Samsonova

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However now, with the pain behind her and a new sense of life coursing through her veins, Lynn's ready for the future, and feeling stronger than ever: “I just want to move forward, and move forward healthily and honestly and transparently; this felt like the best next step.”

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“I never had anyone to look up to, doing what I’m doing,” she continues. “I think a lot of women, especially in the more rock or alternative community, you feel kinda pressured to shrink yourself. Even if you are doing the amount of work you’re doing, and rightfully deserve to be given credit, there’s still this really deep guilt and shame, which I know I personally had. I really felt like I had to shrink, and not talk about it.”

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Seeing so many other female musicians and peers striking out on their own, Lynn notes, has also helped solidify her mindset. “I think now, more than ever, women are being supported and people are listening to women,” she enthuses. “I finally feel like I'm personally in a place to step up and be something that I never had growing up.

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“It’s kind of ironic because anybody who knows me knows that I get really uncomfortable with attention,” she laughs. “But it was almost an act of self-love at this point; things had just naturally progressed this way. The boys,” her bandmates Alex Babinski and Brian MacDonald, “have always been supportive and encouraged me to talk about [being the band's core protagonist]; they were a really big support through all of this.”

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A record that sees her facing her demons head on (a glance at track titles such as 'Gimmie A Minute', 'Dead Weight' and 'Old Wounds' all paint a vivid picture of her frame of mind), it also marks a new era for the trio, where Lynn finally takes her place at the head of the table. Having recently relocated to LA, she admits that 'Use Me' “just turned out to be even more of a solo process, and so it felt like the visuals for this album needed to match that.

They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and it was this experience - and her more recent diagnosis of not one, but two autoimmune diseases - that Lynn would channel into new album 'Use Me'. “We had a very different approach this time,” she offers up. “[Musically], I really wanted us to break out of our comfort zones, and test that a little bit. The goal is to keep evolving and expanding.” And with her voice still not having quite recovered, Lynn found herself almost re-learning how to write for her adjusted range. “The ['Hallucinations'] EP leans into my vocal problems a bit, but by the time JT [Daley, producer] and I were tracking the full album, a lot of it came back,” she recalls. “We got to try a little bit of both, and I think it just expanded my style of

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It was during the touring of that record, which debuted at Number Four in the UK charts and has since managed to rack up over 200 million streams, that a number of challenges were thrown singer Lynn Gunn's way. Vocal problems, stage fright and pain all became everyday fixtures in her life, and even the process of getting on stage - something that had felt so intrinsic before - became a hurdle. “I had a really difficult time with not having a functioning, working voice,” she admits, calling from her home in Los Angeles, “and having to do an entire [worldwide] tour... Everywhere we went, I really had to try and make it comfortable, no matter how my voice felt that day. There were a lot of ups and downs. I was also pretty bummed because we had all these really big opportunities, and some of the biggest shows of our career, and I didn’t feel like I could give my best for them.” Among their run were a slew of festivals across the globe, and a sold out date at London's Brixton Academy. “By the end of the album cycle, I was definitely relieved, just to be able to have time off and rebuild and restrengthen and reflect on everything.”

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writing, and how I think about melody.”

The gift of hindsight can be a powerful thing. When Boston band PVRIS released second album 'All We Know of Heaven, All We Need of Hell' back in 2017, they drew its title from Emily Dickinson's poem My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close. What they weren't to know, however, was that its themes - overcoming a series of emotional losses only to face the fact that darkness is now a regular part of life - would continue to ring true.

'Use Me' is out 10th July via Reprise / Warner. DIY

“I finally feel like I’m in a place to step up and be something that I never had growing up.” - Lynn Gunn 49

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There’s always one, isn’t there. 50 DIYMAG.COM

YOUR G AGAINST ALL ODDS, SPORTS TEAM HAVE GONE FROM A WORD-OFMOUTH NOVELTY TO GENUINE CONTENDERS, HARKING BACK TO THE GLORY DAYS OF INDIE WITH THEIR FAN COMMUNITY AND GOBBY ANTICS. WITH DEBUT ‘DEEP DOWN HAPPY’, THEY’RE AIMING FOR THE GOLD MEDAL. Words: James Balmont. Photos: Ed Miles.

iven their impractical personnel numbers, Google-averse band name, Cambridge University background and a frontman who finds being in the studio “painfully boring,” Sports Team have never been the obvious choice for guitar music’s next great hopes. But on the eve of their debut album, the band aren’t just surviving, they’re thriving. Against all expectations, these six pals are leading an indie scene revival. And they know it, too. “I think we’re pretty much the most successful band in the world at the moment,” ruminates Alex Rice, apparently oblivious to the irony that he and his bandmates are dining out on a spread of off-brand crisps for lunch. The singer has made a name for himself in recent months for his outspoken comments in the press, yet while he is once again in quotable form at the pub today, his words have at least a grounding in humility. “It’s been gruelling, a

lot of it. It felt like pretty hard graft for us to get here,” he continues. “We can’t willingly give the impression that it’s all just been a saunter up the pole, as much as we like to make out that it has.” It’s a fitting time for reflection. Sat in McGlynn’s Free House, Sports Team are just a couple of streets away from London’s Scala, where they had their self-professed “Robbie Williams at Knebworth” moment 18 months ago, having headlined the venue off the back of a single EP. Next month, they release debut album ‘Deep Down Happy’, which they’ve been working on ever since that 2018 show. As the band’s primary songwriter Rob Knaggs points out, it’s been an arduous journey. “Scala was really the start of us all living in the same room, and being in a band nearly every single day,” he says, nursing a pint of lager. “Every spare second since then has been spent writing songs, doing artwork, getting 14-hour ferries back from Holland… Even when SXSW was cancelled this year we ended up booking in rehearsals instead of taking a week off. We don’t just want to sit back - in fact, I feel very panicked if we do.” Hard work aside, the band can’t hide their relief that a series of increasing gambles have paid off as well as they have. If Scala had been a bold move, then their show at Camden’s even larger Electric Ballroom a year ago was audacious. They completed a hat-trick of unlikely London triumphs in December 2019, meanwhile, when, against the odds, they managed to pack out Kentish Town’s 2,300-capacity Forum for an end-of-year show. It was

a defining moment in the band’s career so far, and one where they definitely felt they had bitten off more they could chew. “I mean, come on, who buys a ticket six months in advance for a band like us?!” says Alex of the fearful anticipation ahead of that climactic show. “It’s come down to the last week every time [to sell the majority of tickets] - by which point we’ve already gone through a list of which parts of the venue we can shut off to make the main room look busy. Every single time we panic about it. But a gig or the amount of tickets you’ve sold is not an objective assessment of how successful you are as a band. To us, it’s more about making a great night out for everyone involved.”

he flamboyant singer is doing himself a disservice; if there’s one thing the band have nailed, it’s their live show. But for all Alex’s outrageous dance moves and audience engagement, the culture Sports Team have generated among their fanbase is something that goes a lot deeper than the hour or so they spend up on stage. In the group’s eyes, it’s something that's absolutely necessary in order to succeed as a guitar band. “It feels amazing to announce a show 12 hours before you play and have 500 people turn up to the pub the next day,” says the singer, referring to the band’s surprise performance earlier this year at The Nag’s Head in Camberwell. It was a show that harked back to the heady days of The Libertines, who would famously invite fans from internet

NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH Think that Sports Team’s big band shared house sounds like an indie episode of Friends? Try ‘The One Where They All Nearly Got Done By The Council’...

Al: The biggest moments for us outside of the big London headline show were really just the small things like moving to London, where we could all have our own rooms. Rob [interrupts]: Five of us have our own rooms. One of us has to live with our parents. Sorry, I have to clarify: we did an interview with another magazine and we ended up having a big house inspection by the council as a result because they had reason to believe that there were six people living in a five tenant house. Al: They also gave us notice that they have the legal rights to bug our house, and we don’t know whether or not they’ve done it… Ben: This all happened about a day after we all watched [house-bugging spy film] The Lives Of Others...

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forums into their homes for secret living room shows, or bring whole venues to the pub with them in what was a warmly inclusive scene. Sports Team have done well to imitate this culture themselves in 2020. Annual bus trips to Margate, where fans, bands and booze collide for unscripted antics, have helped cultivate a dedicated fanbase who all interact through the band’s infamous WhatsApp group, which features hundreds of fans

“No-one’s gonna be sitting around waiting for a second Sports Team album, let’s be real.” - Alex Rice as well as every member of the group themselves. “It’s really important, especially for guitar music, because you really want it to mean something to people,” says drummer Al Greenwood. “It should be about more than just music. Thinking back to when I grew up, your week revolved around the next gig you’ve got a ticket for, and you’re all talking about it on Myspace and it becomes a big event. That’s where you see your mates and have a night out. How else do you recapture that?” “It feels like it’s just as much about them as it is about us,” says Alex, likening the band’s social media output to the fanzines and music weeklies of the early ‘90s. “The tropes are exactly the same, all the gags and the humour, the in-jokes and weird, edited photos of people. It’s basically the same as the meme culture we have nowadays. A lot of it is just people ripping the shit out of us. It all feels like traditional fandom, still alive today. “It feels satisfying to know that we’ve got that immediate sense of connection with people,” he continues. “We’re not just trying to sell a one-hour gig of Sports Team playing their back catalogue. I wouldn’t buy a ticket for that. It’s everything else around it, and that’s what I want people to think about when they think of us.”

o do the band still have something to prove with their debut album? They certainly think so. “It’s not necessarily fashionable to be in an indie band in 2020,” says Rob. Alex offers his own take: “No-one’s gonna be sitting around waiting for a second Sports Team album, let's be real. The novelty of us has a

massive appeal, we know it already. But that’s where our ambition is and that's why we want to keep the drive going. You’ve got to be constantly entertaining.” “When we started about two years ago, our biggest dream was to play at the Old Blue Last to 20 people,” continues Rob. “But then these bands like Shame, IDLES and Fontaines DC came through and proved that guitar music can be cool. At the end of the day, you’ve got to have the view that your work is a part of something important. We’re trying to make a great piece of music for the people who want to hear it. We’re not trying to sell snake oil here.” “We did do that though, actually,” interrupts Alex. “I was reading about this thing called pheromone dating, which is where you smell someone’s sweat and agree on meeting them based on the smell. So we made a pheromone spray when we lived in Westbourne Park. We bought a pot of eugenical snake oil from a local shop, and I was sweating into a load of T-shirts and mixing it in with that. We tried to sell it as merch, but then eBay pulled it.” Creative merchandising opportunities aside, Sports Team, like any band, are likely to be judged in time on the quality of their debut. And ‘Deep Down Happy’ is a fitting title in their eyes, one that sums up their journey of “moving to London, sleeping on a rehearsal room floor for a year, and questioning whether we’re all still mates through all the ups and downs,” in Alex’s words. He sums it up better on ‘Stations of the Cross’, a song the band are all particularly excited to share with the world: “It’s not that you’re unhappy, you’re just happy on and off,” he yelps on the album’s closing track. In spite of Alex’s claim that he “hated every minute of being in the studio” (“I just watched The Ashes and Saturday Kitchen instead. I’d rather be in the pub with the producer than behind the sound desk”), he, along with the rest of Sports Team, are quite certain that ‘Deep Down Happy’ is the best album of the year. And for all their ruminations on the benchmarks set by bands like Pavement and Franz Ferdinand before them (the latter’s first album, they agree, set the bar for indie debuts), they’ve got a chance at making a real impact. On their first LP, Sports Team prove they’ve got the goods to back up their talk - and with a dedicated fanbase behind them, they’re hoping to storm the charts, too. “I’m pretty confident it will do alright,” concludes Alex. “Even if it doesn’t end up being a Number One, it still feels like one.” ‘Deep Down Happy’ is out 19th June via Island. DIY

TRACKILIST: 01. THE 1975 02. PEOPLE 03. THE END (MUSIC FOR CARS) 04. FRAIL STATE OF MIND 05. STREAMIN 06. THE BIRTHDAY PARTY 07. YEAH I KNOW 08. THEN BECAUSE SHE GOES 09. JESUS CHRIST 2005 GOD BLESS AMERICA 10. ROADKILL 11. ME & YOU TOGETHER SONG 12. I THINK THERE’S SOMETHING YOU SHOULD KNOW 13. NOTHING REVEALED/EVERYTHING DENIED 14. TONIGHT (I WISH I WAS YOUR BOY) 15. SHINY COLLARBONE 16. IF YOU’RE TOO SHY (LET ME KNOW) 17. PLAYING ON MY MIND 18. HAVING NO HEAD 19. WHAT SHOULD I SAY 20. BAGSY NOT IN NET 21. DON’T WORRY 22. GUYS

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THE 1975 ‘Notes on a Conditional Form’

T 54

(Dirty Hit / Polydor)

he 1975 have never been ones to do the obvious. Second LP ‘I Like It When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It’ landed with a neon-pink boom, silencing haters of their 2013 self-titled debut as they wove the huge pop tracks they’d become known for with more genre-blending introspective ballads. When ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’ ushered in their ‘Music For Cars’ era in 2018 with its bold and beautiful shape-shifting nature, it became clear that the lads were striving to shake shit up even more; now, fourth offering ‘Notes On A Conditional Form’ arrives as their most ambitious and extravagant yet.

tour, between knocking out arena shows across the globe in the evenings, its original February release date was inevitably pushed back. But throughout the delays they’ve maintained its lengthy tracklisting, and it’s this that weakens its punch.

A huge, 22-track opus, ‘NOACF’ marks nearly 40 songs the band have released in less than two years. Written largely on

Lyrically, meanwhile, the record sees Matty Healy once again flexing his knack for one-liners, exploring relationships and

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See, when ‘Notes…’ hits, it hits hard. The singles they’ve already released rank among the band’s finest ever: the normally innuendo-heavy self-titled opener morphed into a poignant call to arms from Greta Thunberg; ‘People’’s boneshaking punk-leanings; the ‘00s pop nostalgia of ‘Me & You Together Song’ and the sax-heavy ode to getting freaky on FaceTime, ‘If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)’.

AMONG ALL THE KILLER, THERE’S ALSO A LOT OF FILLER.

hardships in Tumblr-ready quotes. ‘Playing On My Mind’’ - one of the four tracks featuring Phoebe Bridgers on backing vocal duties - is a delicate love song and ode to modern romance, Matty crooning “Let’s find something to watch then watch our phones half the time,” while the house-y ‘I Think There’s Something You Should Know’ has him sharing feelings of uncomfort (“I’m feeling like ‘someone else’ like ‘somebody else’ I don’t feel ‘myself’.”) On the hip hop-infused ‘Nothing Revealed / Nothing Denied’, he throws cleverly back to ‘Love It If We Made It’ (“I never fucked in a car, I was lying”), while there’s no more evident an example of the singer’s penchant for stoking the fire than on the country-inspired ‘Roadkill’: “And I took shit for being quiet during the election and maybe that’s fair but… I’m a busy guy!” However among all the killer, there’s also a lot of filler. Third track ‘The End (Music For Cars)’ is a grand orchestral instrumental - beautiful in its own right, but jarringly-

placed following ‘People’. The same goes for ‘Streaming’ - a 90-second track that’s just… there, while six-minute, production-heavy instrumental ‘Having No Head’ feels like an obstacle to overcome to get to the record’s end. In their dedication to keeping their promise of 22 tracks - and never ones to particularly censor themselves anyway - it’s hard not to imagine the band chaotically digging through George Daniel’s demos to find anything to make up the deficit. Over The 1975’s fourth record, there are moments of brilliance, with the kind of boundary-less scope and forward-thinking ethos that proves why the band are one of the greatest in the world right now. Had they filtered the cacophony of ideas a little more, ‘Notes…’ could have matched ‘A Brief Inquiry…’ as a modern-day classic; as it stands, its legacy looks set to be slightly more conditional. (Elly Watson) LISTEN: ‘Then Before She Goes’, ‘I Think There’s Something You Should Know’, ‘If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)’

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HAYLEY WILLIAMS Petals For Armor (Atlantic)

Hayley Williams has never been shy about putting her feelings on the line. After all, throughout her time in Paramore, she delved deep into her own experiences and transformed them into relatable pop rock anthems. It’s within her first solo album, however, that it feels as though she’s really peeling back the layers to examine what’s inside. An intricate, raw record centred around a build-up of life crises, ‘Petals For Armor’ is a patchwork of emotional shifts and sonics, seeing her process rage, grief, desire, femininity and more, all through her most bold musical move yet. Opening with the scorching ‘Simmer’ - a song bristling with quiet rage - the record’s 15 songs see Hayley lifting the lid on her repressed emotions, and reclaiming the narrative around her well-documented life. “Sorry, I was in a depression... I’m trying to come out of it now,” goes the quiet voice note recording that introduces funky lynchpin ‘Dead Horse’. Pointing directly to the sense of vulnerability that flows through the album, the track soon launches into the most frank and, at times, harrowing reflection of her late marriage that she’s offered up so far (“Held my breath for a decade / Dyed my hair blue to match my lips / Cool of me to try / Pretty

HER MOST BOLD MUSICAL MOVE YET.

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cool I’m still alive.”), proving just how deep she’s delving here. But much like any rumination on life, there are also moments of light. From the redemptive message of ‘Over Yet’ (“If there’s resistance / it makes you stronger”) to the ‘80s R&B-indebted dedication of ‘My Friend’ (“You’ve seen me from every side / you’re still down for the ride”) via the infectious ‘Vogue’-esque ‘Sugar On The Rim’, ‘Petals For Armor’ also unearths nuggets of hope and confidence buried within its deep reflection. A record that perfectly proves how much strength is in vulnerability, it’s undeniably Hayley’s most powerful move yet. (Sarah Jamieson) LISTEN: ‘Dead Horse’, ‘Crystal Clear’

Hayley’s well in to her floral notes.

ALBUMS 

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LAURA MARLING

MOSES SUMNEY

Song For Our Daughter

græ

(Jagjaguwar)

Unashamed in the ambition of his experimental, alternative jazz-pop, Moses Sumney makes no bones about his uniqueness, and insists that you shouldn’t either. “I’ve reached a point where I am aware of my inherent multiplicity / And anyone wishing to meaningfully engage with me or my work must be too” goes ‘also also also and and and’, a spoken word interlude that would make Solange proud. A Seat At Your Table? He’d rather DIY his own throne. As expected, his inimitable voice remains an instrument of breathtaking force, weaving around an understated brass section on ‘Cut Me’, soaring above plaintive guitar on ‘Polly’, and plucking glorious, impossible high notes out of the ether on ‘Me In 20 Years’. Gender, genre and race are deconstructed one by one, challenging the listener while soothing them with the balm of melody, lulling them into comfort before pulling out the theatrics. Equal parts elegant and antagonistic, it comes together to be every part the listening experience that he wanted it to be - complex, unconventional and ultimately, essential. (Jenessa Williams) LISTEN: ‘Polly’

(Chrysalis / Partisan)

With ‘Song For Our Daughter’, Laura Marling presents a snapshot of womanhood in today’s society, returning to her stripped-back folk following a split with her label and time spent embracing other facets of her creativity. Gone are raspier moments of predecessor ‘Semper Femina’, instead seeing a confident return to the ‘70s psychedelics of lead single ‘Held Down’ and the Dylan-esque ‘Strange Girl’. From the perspective switch of opener ‘Alexandra’ - a response to Leonard Cohen’s ‘Alexandra Leaving’ - ‘Song For Our Daughter’ presents a poignant snapshot of the complexities of femininity - both ones imposed by society and ones engrained in Laura’s past. Some moments are remarkably candid; the bittersweet ‘Fortune’ delves into her mother’s struggle to follow her own path. Some are universal; the gut-wrenching ‘Blow By Blow’ presents one of the most accurate depictions of heartbreak written in recent memory, complete with a majestic string section. Written as a series of learnings for an imaginary child, ‘Song For Our Daughter’ embraces realism above all else. “Lately I’ve been thinking about our daughter getting old,” she sings with her distinctive soft vocals void of melodrama, “all of the bullshit that she might be told”. Yet far from definitive, a subtly empowering positivity underpins the record, a notion that the future can be changed. As ‘Fortune’ references her mother’s running away fund, Laura celebrates the ability to break free of shackles. “I won’t write a woman with a man on my mind,” she sings on ‘Only The Strong’, “hope that doesn’t sound too unkind”. This caveat quickly proves to be unfounded. With all the understated power of the record, it feels far from unkind. Instead it’s an absolute necessity. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Fortune’

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CAR SEAT HEADREST Making A Door Less Open (Matador)

Four years since ‘Teens Of Denial’, Will Toledo and crew are back with something special. Moving away from the lo-fi sound they’re known for, ‘Making A Door Less Open’ sees Will experimenting with more electronic soundscapes, opening with the spiralling synth-heavy ‘Weightlifters’ - the perfect introduction to this new Car Seat sound. Across the record, Will plays with elements of EDM (‘Hymn’) and hip hop (‘Famous’), pulling influence from his and drummer Andrew Katz’s 1 Trait Danger project, and he’s even altered his writing style to create one of the most concise Car Seat albums yet. But though its outside appearance may be different, the core sees Will doing what he does best, penning some of his most beautiful and heartstring-pulling Car Seat lyrics to date. “He looks like you but he’s not,” he laments on acoustic ‘What’s With You Lately’, where ‘There Must Be More Than Blood’ - the longest track on the album - sees him questioning “There must be more than blood that holds us together?” If you can’t shake shit up for your 12th studio album, when can you? (Elly Watson) LISTEN: ‘Hollywood’ 57

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DUA LIPA

Future Nostalgia

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PERFUME GENIUS

Have we stopped rinsing this one since last month? Have we fuck. Bangers galore.

Set My Heart On Fire Immediately (Matador)

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THE STROKES The New Abnormal

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RINA SAWAYAMA SAWAYAMA

The singer’s debut is a smart pop record doused in selfawareness.

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Disturbingly prescient title aside, the New Yorkers’ sixth has them remembering exactly how magical they can be.

For a record that begins with a line (“Half of my whole life is done”) attesting to its narrator being midway to the grave, it’s a wonder how totally, vitally alive Perfume Genius’ fifth LP goes on to be. Having blossomed from timid piano narrator to an expansive, confident presence on stage, there’s the feeling that now Mike Hadreas has fully embraced the core of himself, he can go on to try different guises on for size. As such, ‘Set My Heart On Fire Immediately’ burns with the same need for stimulation and newness as its title; packed full of wildly varied ideas, no two songs pull from the same pool, the record instead brimming with a palpable, passionate sense of exploration. Vocally, he moves from tremulous falsetto on the baroque ‘Jason’ to gruff, masculine command on ‘Leave’, the characterisation of his delivery as integral and malleable an instrument as any of the music around him, while sonically ‘Set My Heart...’ somehow moves easily between effervescent ‘80s pop (‘On The Floor’), sparse orchestral melancholia (‘Moonbend’), crunching electronics (‘Nothing At All’) and more besides. It’s an absolute tour de force, a record full of drama and emotion and pleasure and pain. If this is Perfume Genius’ quest for sensation, then his latest is absolutely fizzing with it. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Just A Touch’

AN ABSOLUTE TOUR DE FORCE.

ALBUMS BACK TO THE

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HAPPYNESS Floatr (Infinit Suds) London’s Happyness have never been a band to deal in cheap thrills, with sonic quirks and lyrical oddities always nestled beneath the melodic slacker rock surface. And if their semi-recent interpersonal changes – they’re down to a duo, with drummer Ash Kenazi now performing in drag – can be heard within third LP ‘Floatr’, it’s in the way that Ash and singer Jonny Allan lean into these traits more than ever: the delicate ‘When I’m Far Away (From You)’ is so fragile it could break any second, whereas previous single ‘Vegetable’ takes in a cast of unlikely characters including tub-thumpers Chumbawumba and drag queen Jujubee. ‘Floatr’’s title track opens the album, building into a dense, piano-led, defiant crescendo, while it’s hard not to find something poignant in ‘What Isn’t Nurture’’s closing line (“With a little make-up, I’ll be numb to anyone at all/ I’ve been so unbelievably impatient anyway”). Emotional yet playful, soft yet strong, Happyness’ newest is the sound of a band fully settled in their own skin. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Floatr’

DRAWING BOARD

with

Happyness

Q1: Where did you record the album?

Q2: What does the ‘Milk Float’ look like?

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GHOSTPOET I Grow Tired But I Dare Not Fall Asleep (PIAS) That the ominous anxieties of Ghostpoet’s ‘I Grow Tired But Dare Not Fall Asleep’ would so accurately mirror the UK’s current reality will come as no surprise to him. Across its ten tracks, he plays with the surreal and the concrete, from the unanswered hello of ‘Black Dog Got Silver Eyes’ to the comparably theatrical call and response of ‘This Trainwreck Of A Life’. The birdsong that opens ‘When Mouths Collide’ is brilliantly eerie, seemingly the calls of the only survivors of this musical apocalypse. It’s a vast leap from the already unclassifiable sounds Ghostpoet has created. His vocals themselves are at times reverted to whispers, his rhythmic delivery building on the menacing atmosphere, and when joined by the likes of Art School Girlfriend or Skinny Girl Diet’s Delilah Holliday, the juxtaposition between his gravelly delivery and their delicacy is perfect. “Get me away from the clutches from the ones that wish me harm,” he pleads on ‘Black Dog Got Silver Eyes’, “this place just ain’t a paradise to me.” On the powerfully poignant ‘Rats In A Sack’, he tackles the right wing’s attitude towards immigrants with an unfiltered blunt force. Social despondency and visceral frustration run throughout ‘I Grow Tired But Dare Not Fall Asleep’, a masterful soundtrack to a failing society - one that carries even more weight as we redefine community, connection and togetherness. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Rats In A Sack’

Q3: What is your favourite (or least favourite) ‘Vegetable’?

Q4: What is an ‘Anvil Bitch’?

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Do You Wonder About Me?

Future Teenage Cave Artists

(Frenchkiss)

(Joyful Noise)

DEERHOOF

DIET CIG

With their first record, Diet Cig dug deep into the core of their firecracker live show, and created an album worthy of matching it. It’s with its follow-up - the reflectively-titled ‘Do You Wonder About Me?’ - that they find themselves making an impact in different ways. While there’s still undoubtedly moments that recall the livewire energy of their debut (‘Flash Flood’ is a feedback-laced kicker), their new full-length also sees the duo effortlessly shifting the gears; ‘Night Terrors’ and its reprise are more contemplative mid-paced offerings, ‘Priority Mail’ is a stripped-back track that sees Alex Luciano accompanied by just a piano, and ‘Broken Body’ is a soaring, scuzz-drenched examination of Alex’s own insecurities. And while it’d be easy to assume that this new approach doesn’t hit quite as hard, that couldn’t be further from the truth; poignant, refined and still packed with relatable energy, the duo feel even more confident second time around. (Sarah Jamieson) LISTEN: ‘Broken Body’

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PUBLIC PRACTICE Gentle Grip (Wharf Cat)

Prowling out the traps with ‘Moon’ - a cross between the jagged edges of first album Savages and the needling beat of LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Movement’ - on their debut LP, New Yorkers Public Practice set their stead from the off. Born from the ashes of hyped post-punks WALL,

The title of this record is much like the music it bears - you squint at it for a minute, trying to work out what it means, and then suddenly it all makes sense. Or at least, you want it to. In a seemingly impossibly sub-40 minutes album, Deerhoof cover just about everything - from the wild ‘Abbey Road’ guitar leads on ‘Sympathy For The Baby Boo’, to the Lemon Twigs chill of ‘Fraction Anthem’. They’re a band with a very definite foot (or hoof?) stuck in the past, everything they touch holding a vintage sheen of some kind, but it’s such a broad and masterful selection that there’s no sense of pastiche. The lyrics across the record let it down - they match the random patchwork of the sound, but take a step too far in the direction of gibberish for the most part. But come closer ‘I Call On Thee’, an instrumental piano piece that both soothes and haunts, the music shows it carries its own meaning, and demands a replay to make sense of the nonsense. (Nick Harris) LISTEN: ‘Farewell Symphony’

their new incarnation still borrows from the dead-eyed stares and clipped precision of yore, but this time, they’ve found their groove too. Take ‘Each Other’, which runs on a simple, bouncing riff before descending into rallying gang chant vocals; the ingredients are pared-back, confident, no nonsense, yet at all times delivered with a cheeky wink and an invitation for a shimmy. With one foot in the classic NYC underground scenes that paved the way, ‘Underneath’ is pure bass-led, disco ball-flecked Studio 54, while the dance-punk footprints of ESG are all over ‘Cities’’ irrepressible hook and ‘Compromised’ tips a hat to godmother Debbie Harry. ‘Gentle Grip’ sounds timeless. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Compromised’

PURE BASSLED, DISCO BALL-FLECKED STUDIO 54. 60

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ALBUMS

AUSTRA HiRUDiN (Domino)

HiRUDiN, the fourth LP from Canadian singer and producer Katie Stelmanis, is texturally inventive and positive. Named after the chemical released by leeches to prevent blood clots, a major lyrical theme present throughout this album is the need to break free from bad influences; “You make me so angry, I love you” go the frustrated opening lyrics of ‘Anywayz’. ‘Mountain Baby’, featuring Cecile Believe, is constructed of an almost-early ‘00s hip hop beat, a nostalgic piano loop, and call-and-response vocals, breathing with so much excitement and confidence that it comes close to falling over itself - but never quite topples. ‘It’s Amazing’ is uplifting and atmospheric, starting calmly with heavenly vocals and a soulful bassline, but after drawing tension falls perfectly into a powerful chorus filled with fizzing synths and marching drums. While the unique sonics and instrumentation of this album are notably brilliant, they at times feel disjointed on a track-to-track basis. (Martin Toussaint) LISTEN: ‘Mountain Baby’

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THE COOL GREENHOUSE

Coming Up ORLANDO WEEKS - A QUICKENING The former Maccabee has taken his sweet time to launch his solo self proper, but he’ll be doing just that on 12th June.

The Cool Greenhouse (Melodic)

Considering that none of ‘The Cool Greenhouse’’s 11 tracks contain more than two notes apiece, the London band’s debut is a surprisingly demanding listen. Without the easy entertainment of big hooks, it’s left to vocalist Tom Greenhouse’s vocals to do all the legwork - and dense, bizarre monologues they are too. To really get the most out of the record you have to do what the last ten years of casual listening has trained us not to: to really LISTEN and CONCENTRATE. But within lies gold - tiny, precise nuances about buying ugly vases at jumble sales (‘Life Advice’), and maddening, perfectly-described characters from the dickheads that tell you to ‘Smile, Love!’ to the grubby internet trolls of ‘4Chan’. Brilliantly evocative, each track could probably be made into its own black comedy sitcom; consequently, the sparse backing seems almost an afterthought, but as a framework for the excellent pictures being painted within, it mostly works. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Smile, Love!’

JEHNNY BETH - TO LOVE IS TO LIVE Savages’ resident death stare contest winner will unleash her solo debut on 12th June.

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JOSEF SALVAT modern anxiety (Columbia)

PHOEBE BRIDGERS PUNISHER As prolific as she is whipsmart, the singersongwriter’s second fulllength is out 19th June.

Coming Up

Growing up gay in the ‘90s in a community he describes as 15 years behind the times, Josef Salvat turned to music to document his turbulent journey of self-discovery. Through atmospheric electro-pop he explores the source of inner demons, from overwhelming love to uncontrolled desire and pained addiction. ‘modern anxiety’ is a snapshot of an all-too-commonly stolen coming of age, one pushed back by unwelcoming attitudes to the LGBT community. “There’s no vacancies for freaks like you and me,” he laments on ‘no vacancies’. This whirlwind of self-discovery later in life plays out through individual tales of his romantic encounters, simultaneously juvenile and remarkably profound. These lyrics sit against comparably upbeat melodies, built on rousing synths and rhythmic beats - a mark of his desire to blend the light and the dark. “I don’t distinguish between listening to music to feel seen or to dance,” he noted in a recent interview. “You can do both.” And both he achieves. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘paper moons’

Specialist Subject: The Barrera v Morales boxing trilogy

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

THIS MONTH: WILLIE J HEALEY Where: His flat (obvs) Drink: Lemonade Price: Probably about 70p

What was Barrera’s nickname? The Baby-Faced Assassin. Correct! What weight category were both fighters in during their first fight? They were both Bantamweight in the first one. Then Featherweight in the second, then Superfeather in the third. Correct and, fun fact, they both weighed exactly 122 lbs in the first one. In which venue did the second and third fights both take place? It was the MGM Grand. Also correct. Woo! Vegas baby.

When he won the third fight, what did Barrera shout victoriously? Ooh, I don’t know this. He held two fingers up and shouted “Dos!” because he’d beaten him twice. He must have slipped his gloves off to have done the two fingers, otherwise it would have just been a fist. Who ranks higher on ESPN’s list of the all-time greatest boxers? Before the fight it would have been Morales, but after I think it would be Barrera. That is correct, Barrera’s at 43 and Morales is a lowly 49.

4/5 General Knowledge Who directed A Clockwork Orange? That’s Stanley Kubrick. Correct! What is the second rule of Dua Lipa’s ‘New Rules’? Oh my gosh, I don’t have a clue. Um… OK, second rule is… don’t kill my vibe? Wrong. It’s “Don’t let him in, you’ll have to kick him out again”. I was close! You got one word correct, yes. What year did the Normans invade England?

1865? Way off. 1730? It was 1066. The big one. That’s a long time ago. What are half-hitch, reef and bowline all types of? Knots. Correct! What were Starburst called before they were called Starburst? Errr… fruit… burst? It was Opal Fruits! They changed it in 1998. I was four then, so I probably was eating them but I didn’t know.

2/5 FINAL SCORE:

6/10

Verdict: “I’m quite happy with that,” says Willie. And he should be! Get this man on a Zoom pub quiz, stat!

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