Alex Doyle, Bella Martin, Ben Tipple, Caitlin Chatterton, Ed Lawson, El Hunt, Elvis Thirlwell, Gemma Cockrell, Joe Goggins, Kayla Sandiford, Kyle Roczniak, Otis Robinson, Phil Taylor, Rhys Buchanan, Sophie Flint Vázquez
In what feels like the blink of an eye, we’re getting ready to say goodbye to another year and, frankly, we just don’t know if we’re ready to! So, for our November 2024 issue, we wanted to reflect back on one of this year’s biggest success stories, all while also looking ahead to something incredibly exciting for 2025…
That’s why this month, we’ve got not one, but two incredible cover stars - and we don’t say that lightly! After returning this summer with her chart-topping, Rick Rubinproduced third album ‘This Is How Tomorrow Moves’, we’re thrilled to have beabadoobee return to the cover, plus, we’re positively misty-eyed to be welcoming back old friends
The Maccabees to the front of DIY, in celebration of their recently-announced reunion! Now if that’s not bang for your buck, we’re really not sure what is. Happy reading!
Sarah Jamieson, Managing Editor
NEWS FOLLOW YOUR HEART ⏏
As she ushers in her new era with sassy anthem ‘Who Said’, Scandipop icon MØ gives us a hint of what’s coming next.
Words: Sarah Jamieson
⏪ With Charli xcx and Chappell Roan, seeing how now they’re being celebrated for just doing their thing? It does have a healing power.⏩
Wind back the clock by a decade and things were looking a little different for Danish pop icon MØ. Back in the halcyon days of 2014, the singer’s star was certainly on the rise; her insatiable debut ‘No Mythologies To Follow’ had been released to the world, but what would come next was unchartered territory. In March of the following year, her Major Lazer and DJ Snake collaboration ‘Lean On’ hit the airwaves. Soon, MØ found herself at the helm of one of the internet’s first viral giganta-hits.
Ten years and two albums later, the singer – aka Karen Marie Ørsted – has shifted firmly into a new era of her career, one which honours both her former and future selves. Earlier this year, she celebrated the tenth anniversary of that debut with a handful of intimate shows in London and her native Copenhagen, in what turned out to be a brilliantly cathartic process for the star. “It was really nice to revisit those old songs, but also the mood and the vibe of that whole era,” she explains. “Although ‘No Mythologies To Follow’ had a gloomy side to it, there was also a lot of hope, and I think that same state of mind is something that I still just find myself feeling so inspired by. There was also a carefreeness to [it], which was really delightful for me to jump back into.”
Much like the current viral conundrum that many young artists face nowadays, it’s no surprise that, after the intense success of ‘Lean On’, MØ found herself amping up an internalised pressure and shifting her own creative goalposts. “I think there were many years where I was so caught up in the business of everything, and I wanted to do well and keep riding the wave,” she agrees. “I felt like when all that was happening, I needed to cling to it. I felt so privileged to have been given that opportunity – for which I still feel very privileged – but for so many years I was very caught up in the whole ‘gotta keep doing this’ instead of just creating from a place of wanting to express myself and trusting the process more. I think ‘No Mythologies to Follow’, and that whole era, reminds me so much of that time and that very pure feeling, and it’s been nice revisiting it.”
There’s undoubtedly been a shift in pop’s waters in 2024, spearheaded by contemporaries like Charli xcx and Chappell Roan, who have torn up the rulebook in the name of selfempowerment; in the current climate, it’d be challenging not to be inspired. “It’s almost like it’s healing something in me to see it,” Karen nods. “Not to go on this big tirade about how suppressed I think that female or non-male artists were a couple of years ago, but I definitely felt that you couldn’t just be you.
“I know that this is wrong by the way – no one ever told me, ‘You should not be you’ – but there was just this underlying feeling that you needed to be a certain way and the music needed to sound a certain way in order for it to be successful or applauded,” she continues. “With Charli xcx and Chappell Roan, seeing how now they’re being celebrated for just doing their thing? It does have a healing power. It makes me so excited; it makes me even more, ‘Ahh, fuck it! I’m just gonna do what I want’. I’m sad that it took me some years to come to this conclusion, but better later than never.”
It feels particularly satisfying, then, that MØ’s newest release also harks back to those more carefree days of her early career. Originally written as a demo back in 2015, her latest track ‘Who Said’ was revisited in the recent sessions for her upcoming fourth album and given a whole new revamp. “I’ve always really loved the chorus that I wrote on that old demo so when it got this new life, it just felt so right,” she nods. A deliciously sassy kissoff of a song, it doubles as the perfect way to usher in her next project – the follow-up to 2022’s ‘Motordrome’, which is set to land in 2025 – that sees her work alongside producer and James Murphy confidante Nick Sylvester.
“I think one of the things that’s a bit different between the new music and ‘Motordrome’ is that on this album I mainly just worked with the one producer, and we had very focused working time when we were together,” she notes. “It was really exciting for me to really go into it on a very focused level, and create a sound with one other person. That made the process more deep and wholesome for me.” As for the impact that Nick has had sonically on the album, “he was sort of trained by James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem, so [he brings this vibe of] electro-clubpunk. Combined with my Scandinavian pop melodies, I just thought there was something so exciting about that combination and exploring how to match those worlds. That’s something that I love about ‘Who Said’; I think it has this really Scandi electronic thing to it, but at the same time – and I can’t even explain why – it also has this minimalistic American retro feel to it.”
While MØ has faced her share of challenges along the way, you get the undeniable sense that – ten years older and wiser – this really does mark a new creative chapter for her. “It’s your thirties for sure!” she laughs. “You just start not giving a shit!”
‘Who Said’ is out now via Sony Music. DIY
HEAD TO HEAD
As McFly| and Busted| prepare to battle it out against one another on their huge 2025 ‘VS’ tour, we catch up with the two beloved bands for a (semi-serious) conversation about what they’ve got planned for the shows.
Words: Daisy Carter
Photo: Emma Swann
Forget the battle of Britpop or Charli and Lorde working it out on the remix - the musical headto-head set to rule the roost in 2025 is, of course, Busted Vs McFly.
Over 20 years since they both formed, the ’00s pop-rock favourites have announced that they’ll be hitting the road next year for a joint tour around the UK and Ireland. And it’s a run of shows that’s shaping up to be the ultimate battle of the bands: Busted initially threw down the gauntlet when they stormed the stage during McFly’s recent 21st birthday gig at London’s O2 Arena, and since then the bands have been firing shots at each other in interviews and across social media.
So, we did the only thing that made sense: got Busted’s Matt Willis and James Bourne and McFly’s Danny Jones and Dougie Poynter in a room together, made them play rock, paper, scissors and then forced them to give us an insight into exactly what we can expect from the shows. Here we go…
So, can you tell us a bit more about how the tour came about? Obviously you announced it at McFly’s birthday show, but what was the motivation behind the idea in the first place?
Matt: We’ve been talking about it - or have sort of had it in our minds to do a ‘vs’ tour - for years. There’s been a healthy rivalry between the bands ever since we all first started out.
Dougie: Ever since we won Record Of The Year…
Is that rivalry something that’s fan-driven?
Matt: It was media-driven, at the beginning.
Danny: I was sick of getting in a taxi and the driver would ask ‘alright mate, are you James from Busted?’
Matt: Well I was sick of drunk guys coming up to me and singing ‘Obviouslyyy, you’re out of my league!’,
and I’d be like ‘not my band, mate’.
Danny: And then obviously we confused matters even more with McBusted, so this is like the clean up operation.
Dougie: I’ve never had that…
You’ve never been mistaken for a Busted member?
Dougie: I never get recognised at all, so it’s hard… Matt: Aren’t you that girl from Girls Aloud?
Danny: This ‘vs’ thing is like the morning after on the bar strip in Ibiza, when all the trucks go in to hoover up the mess, and everything’s fine until the next night. Dougie: And these guys have been slagging us off ALL summer. They started it.
So how’s the tour going to work - will it be a coheadline situation, where you swap which order the bands play in? Or will you all be onstage at once, alternating the setlist between Mcfly and Busted songs?
Danny: Who said we’re going to play music?
Dougie: Nobody said anything about music. Matt: This is a massive mud wrestle to the death. Danny: We’re not gonna give that away, that’s what it is. But the staging is insane. We’re trying to create something that’s never been done before, so it’s a brand new space. I’ve never seen it be done, so it’s quite exciting for us all to get our heads together and come up with sick ideas for how we’re gonna make it work. And with 20+ years experience in keeping the energy up, keeping the audience involved, using all our tricks to make it the ultimate show, PLUS the ‘vs’ element… it’s gonna be great.
Over those two decades of playing live, has your audience demographic changed?
Danny: [Our original fans] have grown up with us, and then they’ve had more!
Dougie: They’ve Russian doll-ed it.
Danny: I spoke to someone the other day - they’d brought their mum along who was 50+, and she’s a fan, so it’s a family ticket really. It’s a ticket for everyone!
We see what you did there…
Dougie: He’s such a good salesman, isn’t he?
Matt: There are some people who are definitely McFly fans, and some who are definitely Busted fans, but there’s obviously a massive crossover fanbase as well. So it was just a question of asking: how do we put on the best show for everyone? Because that’s what we want to do - we want to put on the most epic show anyone’s ever seen. We wanna have fun, and to have a bit of fucking back and forth, and to make it as fun and as entertaining as possible.
Danny: We want the fans to talk about it - we want there to be discussions like ‘who’s the best?’, ‘who do you prefer?’
The tour poster features the strapline ‘Every saga has an ending’. Can you enlighten us as to what this means? It obviously hints at some sense of conclusion or finality…
Danny: Yep, for the loser.
How are you planning to decide the winner? Will there be some sort of huge clap-o-meter?
Dougie: We’ll poll the audience as they leave.
And finally, what’s the prize?
Dougie: You get to stay a band.
James: I like the idea that the loser has to cover and release one of the other band’s songs, that’s quite funny.
McFly and Busted head out on tour together from September 2025. DIY
in deep Sing it LOUD
One half of the most successful sibling partnership in modern music, FINNEAS O’CONNELL has already proven himself behind-the-scenes many times over. Now, with second solo album ‘For Cryin’ Out Loud!’, he’s raising his own voice both musically and publicly, and making his strongest personal statements yet.
Words: El Hunt
Together with his pop superstar sibling Billie Eilish, Finneas O’Connell has developed a pretty foolproof way of classifying some of history’s great albums. Music, he reckons, tends to fall into one of two categories: fear, or fart.
A ‘fart’, in short, is an ambitious album that exudes sheer self-confidence; the work of an artist enjoying the smell of their own, erm, creative emissions. Slightly more self-explanatory, ‘fear’ stems from a much more uncertain place, riddled with writer’s block and self-doubt. “Those two measurements are both from a place of ego,” Finneas explains. “They’re like, ‘I want this to be amazing. I’m not sure it is’.”
When asked which camp his second solo album ‘For Cryin’ Out Loud!’ belongs to, however, Finneas is somewhat foxed by his own logic.
“This album is probably part of proving why this was maybe not the most intelligent game we’ve ever created, really,” he laughs. “What I set out to do on this record was like, I don’t want to have too much pressure on this. I really want to just have a positive experience making this, and be collaborative, and have a great time with my friends. In truth... it would probably lean toward fart.”
Hearing Arctic Monkeys’ gnarled, ‘70s-shaped juggernaut ‘R U Mine?’ for the first time, he explains, was a major lightbulb moment. “Man, what a great lyricist and songwriter,” he says of Alex Turner. “I was 14 when that came out and I remember thinking, ‘This is so tough; very badass’.”
Inspired by the Sheffield lads – as well as, perhaps more surprisingly, My Chemical Romance – a teenage Finneas began recruiting his mates for jam sessions. “I was always sort of begging friends of mine to come and play music in garages with me,” he says. There was only one issue with this particular approach. “We sucked!” he laughs. “We were all terrible at playing our instruments.”
He’s perhaps selling himself short here; Finneas’ former band The Slightlys had their own brief moment in the sun. However, though it’s commonly reported that they played Vans’ prestigious Warped Tour, the reality was a bit less glamorous. “We actually played a Battle of the Bands HOSTED by the Warped Tour,” he admits, “and as a prize, you got to play one Warped Tour show.”
It’s certainly true that, in approaching ‘For Cryin’ Out Loud!’, Finneas opted to consciously shake things up. The stereotype of the lone producer, tinkering away for hours in a gloomy studio filled with banks of synths and tangled wires, exists for good reason; up until recently, that was exactly how Finneas tended to work. While this insular approach lent itself well to 2021 solo debut album ‘Optimist’, with its barbed takedowns of warmongering and existential musings on mortality, Finneas admits that, in retrospect, the whole process felt very “lonely”. This time around, eager for a less solitary way of working, he decided to rewind to the very beginning of his career (albeit with slightly better equipment), opting to gather some of his closest friends to record together in the same room instead. The results are looser, more spacious, and far warmer.
Opening the album with the classic-sounding, piano-led ballad ‘Starfucker’, Finneas sets out the two records’ differences from the start. “I was such an optimist,” he sings, slyly namechecking his own debut, “but you’re a fuckin’ narcissist.” Exploring the pain of a past, clout-chasing
After scooping victory at the initial battle, hosted at a local county fair, The Slightlys played exactly four songs on the tour itself, before getting cut off by the sound guy. “We’d taken too much time setting up that day. It was pretty funny.” Surely, this must rank as his proudest achievement to date – all those Oscars, Golden Globes and Grammys (10 of the latter and counting) be damned? “I mean I will say, as goofy as it sounds, it’s hard to beat the feeling of playing a Battle of the Bands as a 16-year-old and being like, ‘We killed that’,” he grins.
The Slightlys, in their own unique way, are also responsible for the success of Billie. Finneas originally wrote her eventual debut single ‘Ocean Eyes’ for the band, before realising something was off. “I was like, ‘This isn’t right, this isn’t how this song is supposed to sound. I’d love to hear a woman’s voice on it. I think that would be really powerful’. And, you know, I asked Billie if she’d be interested in seeing it, and she crushed it.”
The rest is the stuff of pop lore: the song went viral overnight, Eilish landed a major label deal with Interscope, and three of this century’s most interesting pop albums – each one crafted
“I’ve never had a feeling of like, you know, give me the spotlight. I’ve always been so lucky to be up here with my favourite person.”
relationship, it’s the only song on ‘For Cryin’ Out Loud!’ with a sole writing credit for the musician. Everything else – from the jangly, ‘90s-flavoured indie-pop of ‘Cleats’, to the bright horn parps of the title track – was written collaboratively with a tight-knit circle of friends.
While his production work, particularly with Billie but also alongside other collaborators such as girl in red, Tove Lo and Tate McRae, skews towards the widescreen and cinematic, ‘For Cryin’ Out Loud!’ zooms right in. The pared-back ‘Little Window’ recalls the stuff of early Coldplay, and the skipping, funk-tinged ‘2001’ and ‘Sweet Cherries’ wouldn’t sound all that out of place on a Harry Styles album.
Though many people might know Finneas best for the groundbreaking stamp he’s put on pop alongside his sibling, his heart – early on, at least – always lay with live bands.
by the sibling collaborators – followed. Still, does any part of Finneas wish that he’d hung onto ‘Ocean Eyes’ for himself, in light of what followed?
“I think there might be this misconception, especially because Billie and I have gotten so lucky in our careers and had these super lucky things [happen], that I want to go and do them on my own or something,” he says. “[But] whether it’s accepting an award, or accepting criticism, or performing, I felt so lucky to be up there with my sister. I’ve never had a feeling of like, you know, give me the spotlight. I’ve always been so lucky to be up here with my favourite person. It’s been awesome.”
‘For Cryin’ Out Loud!’ is out now via OYOY / Interscope. Read the full feature at diymag.com/finneas. DIY
Photo: Olof Grind
NEWS HAVE YOU HEARD?
Some of the biggest and best tracks from the last month.
ETHEL CAIN Punish
Those drawn in by gothic muse Ethel Cain’s pop dabbling on the likes of ‘American Teenager’ and ‘Crush’ will already have been blindsided by the eerie dirge that punctuates much of her acclaimed debut ‘Preacher’s Daughter’. On the tantalisingly titled ‘Punish’ – the first cut from her ‘Perverts’ project, one that has seen her channels awash with hauntingly bleak imagery - Hayden Anhedönia’s creation steps further into the darkness, presenting a near-seven-minute twisted love song; self-deprecating, resigned and through its many religious references, reverent. Melody is sparse on its bold ambition to draw out the claustrophobic density that already frames much of her work to date, a track that builds to a hushed crescendo driven by softly broken vocals and disarming, distorted guitars. Ben Tipple
LADY GAGA Disease
Stefani Germanotta has proven herself many times over as a true shapeshifting poly-threat; an artist capable of turning her considerable touch to epic power ballads (‘Shallow’), jazz standards (a pair of Tony Bennett collab albums), Hollywood acting turns and more. But the best Gaga will always be bonkers pop Gaga: the sort of wonderful eccentric who, in ‘Disease’’s video, merrily drools black bile while dressed as a BDSM Edward Scissorhandsmeets-Venom. The song itself is a squelching, sexy riot of belting vocals and club-ready beats - a welcome slice of fantasy after a period of musical adulting. Long may it continue. Lisa Wright
SORRY Waxwing
Ever forward-facing, Sorry are back with their first new music since 2022 second album ‘Anywhere But Here’, and ‘Waxwing’ finds the outfit - reassuringly - still crouched among the tangled weeds encroaching on alternative music’s front porch. Structured around lyrics lifted from Toni Basil’s ‘Hey Mickey’, the track distorts the sugar-sweet pop of the original version into something darker, choppier, and altogether more unsettling, its industrial synths lending the whole affair a sensual yet sinister edge. If the purpose of singles is to whet listeners’ appetites for more to come, then colour us intrigued. Daisy Carter
DECLAN MCKENNA Champagne
NAO
Wildflowers
A homage, says Nao, to the “wild, carefree” feeling of falling love, ‘Wildflowers’ - the first taste of the Londoner’s forthcoming fourth LPcaptures that effervescent idea of possibility in abundance. Deft and vocally buoyant, there’s a spaciousness to the track that’s the sonic equivalent of Nao’s emotional doors being blown wide open. Add to that a bass line that nods to Talking Heads’ ‘Once In A Lifetime’, and the result is a slice of spring joy within the grisly depths of winter. Lisa Wright
One of a pair of releases kicking off a new chapter of self-released music, ‘Champagne’ is, both figuratively and literally, a toast to Dec’s recent artistic independence. Buoyed by bright synths and a peppy, driving drumbeat, it sees him amp up the theatrical bombast once again for a fun yet self-aware number that, free from any label-related, radiofriendly criteria, is permitted a nearly six-minute runtime in which to go utterly all out. We’ll drink to that! Daisy Carter
Photos: Anastasia Xirouchakis, Joe Magowan, Laura Jennings, Silken Weinberg
lafayettelondon.com
FESTIVALS
LIVE & KICKING!
LIVE AT LEEDS IN THE CITY
16th November, various venues, Leeds
For almost two decades now, Live at Leeds has been transforming the incredible independent venues of its titular city into a massive shindig to celebrate new music, and while the festival might look a little different to its original guise nowadays (this year’s In The City takes place in November, while its sister In The Park event now happens in May), it’s lost none of its magic. And so, rather than having us wax lyrical about all the brilliant bands who are set to appear at this year’s Live at Leeds in the City (which include established legends like English Teacher, Everything Everything, Alfie Templeman and Marika Hackman, all the way through to soon-to-be-faves Luvcat, Jasmine.4.t, Soft Launch, and loads more), we decided to hand over to the people who really know best: the city’s own incredible music community.
Here, we’ve recruited some of Leeds’ most important music bigwigs and artists to reminisce about Live at Leeds festivals gone by, while also offering up some absolute must-see artists for 2024. Take it away…
WHISKAS
¡Forward Russia!, Launchpad, Music Local
It’s hard to pick a memory as I’ve had some involvement in the festival pretty much since the start. It’s hard to look past headlining the Town Hall in 2014 for the last ¡Forward Russia! gig. Past that, I remember in 2007 or 2008 I played in both Duels and Mi Mye in close succession, and had to fight my way through the crowd of Mumford & Sons, who were on before the latter at the Brudenell to be able to get on stage!
Away from performing, I have fond memories of watching The Horrors at the much missed Church venue at the end of one
night, which seemed to be a perfect marrying of venue, band and time.
A MUST FOR 2024!
It feels like English Teacher’s set is going to be one hell of a homecoming. Out of the emerging artists, as ever we have a fantastic stage at Sela Bar of Launchpad-supported artists, and Dilettante playing on the BBC Introducing stage. Finn Forster and KOJ have also been building up some releases recently.
Launchpad will take over the Sela Bar throughout the day at Live at Leeds in the City.
SIMON RIX
Kaiser
Chiefs
My favourite Live at Leeds performance was Confidence Man in the Riley Smith Hall at the Uni.
It was a bit of a punt to go up there, risking being a bit off the beaten track, but we were very much rewarded for the trip. Despite a relatively small audience, Con Man gave it 101% and had everyone in the room entranced. I bought tickets for their next show immediately but couldn’t go because we had a Kaiser Chiefs gig obviously.
A MUST FOR 2024!
[There are] so many excellent artists from nearby, so everyone playing the Launchpad stage at Sela – go say hello to them. I also want to go see Life Aquatic Band
Kaiser Chiefs play at Temple Newsam, Leeds on 31st May 2025. “Come and check out some real hot new talent…”
SUNFLOWER THIEVES
LUCKY IRIS
Usually we like a dramatic walk-on moment, but there wasn’t any sideof-stage at the venue… so we had a different kind of memorable entrance, having to push through the crowd to get to the stage. This was last year after we were chosen by the team at BBC Introducing via Live at Leeds’ Apply To Play [scheme] and I’m pretty sure the room was at capacity all day! Especially for Jessica Winter who’s a total rockstar, and we actually played with again earlier this year when we supported Hannah Diamond!
A MUST FOR 2024!
We’re just back from Glasgow where we supported Master Peace at King Tut’s! He’s a true party starter, and really knows how to work the crowd, [so we] can’t wait to have him in Leeds. If you don’t catch him you’ll be missing out for sure!
Lucky Iris play the Launchpad Stage at the Sela Bar. Their ‘Something To Believe In’ EP is out now via Launchpad x EMI North.
We played Live at Leeds in 2021, for BBC Introducing and packed out Oporto to capacity, which was so fun! Emily Pilbeam hosted the stage, and we are ever grateful for her ongoing support across a region with so much creative goodness. We have a video of the crowd cheering before we played our last song, and it’s so lovely to have that to look back at, and remember how exciting and special this felt, a reminder of the community here and love for music in the city, especially after the lack of live music in the previous year.
In terms of other artists, last year, Amy saw Hohnen Ford for the first time, performing at Mill Hill Chapel, and couldn’t believe how effortlessly magical it was – so calming, so flawless. It’s so great discovering new artists in that way – just by chance, in one of several festival venues you could have chosen to be in at that same time.
A MUST FOR 2024!
Lily Lyons! Beautiful beautiful voice.
Sunflower Thieves’ ‘Same Blood’ EP is out on 30th October via Kartel Music Group.
SIMEON WALKER
Pianist, composer, Brudenell Piano Sessions promoter
Thinking back to something like 2013, I’d imagine, and Paul Thomas Saunders and his band at the peak of their power, playing at Holy Trinity on Boar Lane to a packed room, late-afternoon, his trademark effortless vocals soaring high throughout the stunning, reverberant space.
A MUST FOR 2024!
My tips would be a shout-out to a bunch of artists connected to Leeds – Lucky Iris, Dilettante, Nadia Kadek and everyone’s favourite, Spielmann
VENUS GRRRLS
I [Grace] remember being 14 years old when I saw Palma Violets at Live at Leeds. They always knew how to put on such a good show. I remember being tipsy in the mosh pit holding onto my older sister. Their song ‘14’ was a personal favourite because I was 14 at the time, even if it was about a bus.
A MUST FOR 2024!
Live at Leeds was our introduction to an inner city festival. It’s super important to support grassroots musicians and venues: make sure you check out GIRLBAND! and Lucky Iris on this year’s bill.
VENUS GRRRLS will play The Wardrobe in Leeds on Friday 25th April.
ADULT DVD
Confidence Man playing at Leeds Uni back in 2019. It was the first time I’d ever heard of them and the live show blew me away.
A MUST FOR 2024!
Human Interest – they’re a great band and lovely people, go check them out at Belgrave.
Adult DVD’s latest single ‘Do Something’ is out now.
ANTONIA LINES Come Play With Me COO
I’m going back to the golden days of Yooooooorkshire indie. In a world dominated by men’s needs and romantic types (IYKYK!), I made sure to seek out indie gals; you can’t be what you can’t see. I saw Sky Larkin in 2009 at The Cockpit, and I remember being absolutely OBSESSED with their album ‘The Golden Spike’, which was on heavy rotation for me for years after its release. I saw Slow Club that same year I think. I was equally obsessed with their album ‘Yeah So’ and wrote all the lyrics to ‘Giving Up On Love’ on a white t-shirt and wore it for my DJing gigs, where I played as much of both of their records as I could get away with in my two hour slots. As it turns out both Katie Harkin and Rebecca Lucy Taylor remain two of my absolute favourite songwriters to this very day, and I’m still so grateful for both of them during those indie sleaze years.
A MUST FOR 2024!
If I had to pick one artist to see, it would be Nectar Woode – she’s about to release an EP on Communion, but her last release ’Nothing to Lose’ from February is my favourite EP of 2024. I’ve never seen her live, so that would be the one I’d be down the front for. Also shout out to our Mercury-winning pop star friends English Teacher; the nicest and sweetest band in all of history. If you’ve not seen them live yet, go there!
The fourth volume of Come Play With Me’s compilation album Side By Side is out now. “If you’re looking to find your new favourite northern artists, they are probably somewhere within this series of releases!”
JACK SIMPSON
Hyde Park Book Club
I have so many memories of Live at Leeds from over the years, it’s an incredible event. I think The Longcut , which was maybe 2008, was special. They’d not played in a while from what I can remember, their music was changing and they’re just such a great band. The Milo lineups were great – that was such a scene, with John Newman working there, Spirit of John playing, Mark Crossley and everyone that was around at the time. I have a feeling we interviewed Richard Burgon for one, just before he became an MP for the first time – maybe that was the Black Swan. But every year you’re surprised by a great performance by somebody you didn’t know before. Then you look back over the years and you can see the great list of people who’ve played developing.
A MUST FOR 2024!
I think if you can get in to see English Teacher, it’s got to be them right? Such a good band, and one I think we all feel a bit of pride about here in Leeds. I also think Chloe Slater will be great – really nice hooks. It’s also nice to see bands from Eiger [Studios] playing Live at Leeds: English Teacher, Flat Moon and the Monomyth gang. It’s been a tough few years for people in various ways, but you can really see a great new scene
VAN HOUTEN
The Cribs at Leeds Town Hall in 2015 was pretty special. I played a Live at Leeds 5-a-side tourney that year too and came dead last. We’ve got a strong 8-a-side weekly game going including members of Treeboy, Bug Teeth and Tulpa so a large Leeds music footy tournament should be on the cards.
A MUST FOR 2024!
Lime Garden will be super fun and great if you like a boogie – they’re playing The Wardrobe after us so we’re stoked we will get to see them! Fuzz Lightyear are worth watching too, great bunch of lads who are on the heavier side, and Mynk are great too. We caught them recently when we played at Supersonic in Paris on our recent tour. Some really cool, moody guitar textures there.
The ‘Expanded Edition’ of Van Houten’s debut album ‘The Tallest Room’ is out now via Clue Records / EMI North.
Senior Label Manager, Dance To The Radio
at Brudenell Community Room a few years ago was just a dream, she’s so captivating. It was magic!
Annie-Dog, Terra Twin and L’objectif to take Belgrave by storm! They’re all in the middle of releasing some ace new music at the moment. Come
As
Photos:
Photos: Emily Bradley, Nick Porter, Misha Warren, Sarah Oglesby, Emma Swann
Singles from Dance To The Radio artists Terra Twin and
THAT PARK LIFE
LIVE AT LEEDS IN THE PARK
24th May 2025, Temple Newsam, Leeds
Not content with prepping for this month’s Live at Leeds in the City, LAL’s festival organisers have also been busy behind-the-scenes curating what’s set to be one of the biggest editions of Live at Leeds in the Park to boot. Returning to the city’s neighbouring Temple Newsam next May, the first names for the 2025 all-dayer have been revealed and they are looking particularly *chef’s kiss*.
Not only will be indie royalty Bloc Party be topping the bill for a special celebration of their iconic debut ‘Silent Alarm’ – which, believe it or not, turns 20 next year – but they’ll be joined by a host of ace acts across the day –as well as a few more surprising billings, for good measure.
Want to check out some buzzy new names – like Chloe Slater, Luvcat and Getdown Services – before having a bit of a jump around to Sigrid? Course you do. Fancy singing your heart out to ‘These Words’ by Natasha Bedingfield it all again, but this time, with Barry from Eastenders at Now is your time to shine! And what’s more, Leeds heroes Act will be making their official LAL debut; how’s about that? We catch up with the band’s James Smith to find out more…
Q&A
Yard Act
Hello James! How are you doing?
What’ve you been up to recently?
I am knackered and happy. We have just got back from Mexico and immediately commenced building our new studio. [We’re] hoping to get it sort of functioning before we head to Australia in November, then album three can start to take shape... maybe after Xmas.
You’ve obviously been out on the road playing a ton of shows across this year in support of ‘Where’s My Utopia?’ – what’s it been like bringing those new songs to life on stage?
I think expanding the live line-up for this album has been really fun. Anyone who’s seen it will attest to the pure energy Lauren and Daisy have brought on vocals and dancing, and though he doesn’t jump about as much, our keys and sax player Duffin has continued to lift the live show to the next level alongside the rest of us. ‘Trenchcoat Museum’ in particular has morphed into this monster track live, and the free form ending of ‘Down by the Stream’ gets wilder every night. I love that we delivered the album live as a band, and didn’t try to replicate the more produced record that it felt right to pursue in the studio. The songs are the songs.
Back in the halcyon days of summer you played your biggest show in Leeds yet, in the city’s Millennium Square. How did it feel to have been playing to an audience that size in your hometown? Did it feel like somewhat of a full circle moment?
I think that show was the first time since this band began where I actually got to take in a moment and soak in just how far we’ve come from me n Ryan goofing around in my spare bedroom. I loved that day. I think hearing the crowd sing Sam’s guitar solo in ‘Dream Job’ like we were Kasabian or something was particularly fun.
2024’s not even done and you’ve already started filling up your calendar for next year, with you confirmed playing at Live at Leeds in The Park next May. Have you got any memories of the festival? I actually took my son to it last year as a punter and he enjoyed watching Corinne Bailey Rae from the top of the hill and throwing straw in my face. Baxter Dury in the tent was a bit loud for him though. I’m excited to return as a player and sleep in my own bed at the end of it.
How does it feel to finally be playing at the Temple Newsman event – is there anyone you’re keen to see? And do you think you’ll have any special tricks up your sleeve?
I’m looking forward to Sigrid. Since Millennium Square we’ve kinda got a taste for pyro, so will probably dabble in that again. And lasers…
BEST LAID PLANS
As you can imagine, planning a festival is no easy task, but with 2025’s Live at Leeds in the Park, organisers were keen to inject the day with even more of a playful spirit than in previous years. We spoke to the festival’s promoter Joe Hubbard to find out more about how the day’s shaping up so far…
Congrats on announcing Live at Leeds in the Park 2025! This year it seems like you’re really going for gold, adding even more elements into the mix outside of just the music billing of previous editions. What’s helped make that decision?
It just came from the event growing. We’ve done three editions now, and this will be our fourth and it just seemed to be a natural thing; we’ve added something each time and it’s always gone down really well, especially this year when we had Mel C play in the afternoon. It just ended up being a really great moment. It’s just been a natural step to add more of the fun stuff that everyone loves. We are still at heart a music festival, and that’s always been the main drive, but we just wanted to add more fun stuff to add during the day.
Leeds is such a creative city as a whole that
been a longer process of each event finding its feet; now with Live at Leeds in the City, we’ve totally honed in on the music discover element, while Live at Leeds in the Park is a bit of that, but also bigger artists that people already know, and a fun time.
You’ve also got Bloc Party headlining and they’ll be celebrating the 20th anniversary of ‘Silent Alarm’ – we imagine that was quite exciting for everyone involved?
Personally, the first band t-shirt I ever bought was a ‘Silent Alarm’ one so, for me, that’s a lovely, serendipitous moment. I was 12 and it was that age where I’d just gone to secondary school and started discovering bands, rather than pop music. I was listening to rock music for the first time and I just remember seeing the ‘Helicopter’ video on music channels, then going online to buy the t-shirt. It’s a really full circle thing. We’ll all have a great time watching it because that album is just phenomenal. It does feel a little bit like everyone is just very up for having a good time nowadays; was that part of the thinking behind incorporating more nostalgic pop acts into this year’s bill too?
Yeah, part of the thinking of having Mel C this year, and Natasha Bedingfield next year is that, and that people are less tribal with their music tastes, and are more open to listening to different things at the same time. Everyone’s gonna have a fun time [during her set] I’m sure, no matter if you’re there to see Bloc Party, Yard Act or any of the other acts.
You’re also going to have an on-site pub that will be hosting a range of activities, including a round of musical bingo (hosted by yours truly –Ed). Can you tell us a little about that?
It’s gonna be called The Two Legs! One of the things that I’m very excited for is Shaun Williamson doing Barrioke; just Barry from Eastenders rocking up and getting people up to do karaoke. What is a better half hour than
ON YR STEREO
Get prepped and ready for both editions of Live at Leeds with our nifty playlist! Here are just a couple of bangers you’re sure to hear across both days...
BLOC PARTY - BANQUET
One of the ‘00s all-time great indie bangers, ‘Banquet’ is simply undeniable. A festival field anthem with an instantly recognisable, strum-theair guitar line, it’s the pinnacle of all that propelled Bloc Party from genre-bending cult favourites to critically and commercially acclaimed gamechangers. Next year’s Temple Newsam knees-up will see the beloved East London quartet play their iconic debut ‘Silent Alarm’ in full, as well as a whole host of other career-spanning favourites. Get ready to tuck in! Daisy Carter
ENGLISH TEACHER - YOU BLISTER MY PAINT
A rare love song for the Leeds quartet - something approaching a ballad, even - ‘You Blister My Paint’ is nevertheless characteristic of English Teacher’s inimitable style, spearheaded by their particular brand of strange, perceptive poetry. Capturing the beautiful, contradictory torture of love (“Your overexposure / Makes my eyes weak / But I can’t look away”), this cut from their Mercury Prize-winning debut album may not be the band’s loudest moment, but it’s certainly one of their most powerful. Having done their stomping ground proud and emerged as THE breakout band of 2024, Live at Leeds In The City will be a deserved lap of honour. Phil Taylor
NATASHA BEDINGFIELDUNWRITTEN
Purveyor of stone cold karaoke classics and rom-com soundtrack stalwarts (Easy A, Anyone But You, The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants), Natasha Bedingfield is one of those artists who, since her emergence two decades ago, has never really strayed far out of public consciousness. And ‘Unwritten’ is testament to why: the title track of her 2004 debut, it’s the perfect distillation of the era’s R&B-flavoured pop, pairing a gospel choir refrain with joyously uplifting lyrics of go-getting empowerment. Just picture it: it’s a bank holiday Saturday in May, the sun’s shining, and you and your mates are belting out “feel the rain on your skin” with untuned enthusiasm. Bliss. Daisy
CHLOE SLATER - PRICE ON
Appearing at both of Live at Leeds’ editions, on this addictive track indie newcomer Chloe Slater discusses the modern world through politicallycharged lyricism from a Gen Z perspective. Following her viral single ‘24 Hours’, the Manchester-based musician once again worked with Jack Shuter, resulting in an unapologetically noisy mix of punchy drums and boisterous guitar lines. It’s an intense yet simple blend of instrumentation that still fills a huge space with little effort, all the while allowing room for Chloe’s half-spoken, half-sung vocals to glide easily on top. Kyle Roczniak
Photos: Georgia Hurdsfield, Emma Swann
LISTEN ALONG!
NEU
New artists, new music.
“Every time I think I can predict something on TikTok, I get instantly proven wrong and humbled.”
Isabel LaRosa
Having grown out of the jazz jam nights where she grew up performing, Isabel LaRosa is settling into her own niche of darkly shimmering alt-pop.
Words: Caitlin Chatterton
Some artists might find pushing their music on TikTok a chore, or else feel intimidated by the sheer scale of the platform’s audience. But Isabel LaRosa – whose 1.3 million-strong following regularly floods her comment sections with fevered, all-caps adoration – sees it differently. “I almost think about it like, ‘How am I going to keep these people around?’” she explains, perched on a sofa in Sony’s London offices. “I get so scared because social media moves so fast. Instead of thinking, ‘Oh I’m nervous about posting this because a lot of people are gonna see it’. I’m like, ‘I HOPE people see it!’”
Happily for her, people do. A clip of her hypnotic track ‘i’m yours’ currently has 1.5 million likes; a snippet of the pouting, dramatic ‘older’ has over two million. “It’s weird, because you feel so much but [also] nothing at the same time,” LaRosa says of the staggering attention she’s received. “You’re thinking, ‘That’s a MILLION likes’, but then, literally that’s just a number on my screen. I don’t know what that looks like.”
Creating these viral moments is the goal for now. When she’s writing – always as part of a collaboration with her producer and older brother, Thomas – it’s with those few precious TikTok seconds in mind. “You wanna write the punchline, and then write the rest of the joke, you know?” she quips. That doesn’t mean she’s found a reliable way to best the algorithm, though. “Every time I think I can predict something on TikTok, I get instantly proven wrong and humbled,” she laughs. “I always believe in the hooks we have, but I try to never assume anything’s gonna do any sort of numbers, because I’m resigned to the fact I have no idea what’s going on!”
Her ethereal, infatuated new single ‘Muse’ – teased for ten months before its release – did in fact ‘do numbers’. Videos using the track’s snarling riff racked up hundreds of thousands of views, including one sharing photos of LaRosa at this year’s VMAs. That night was her first time on a red carpet; an exciting but daunting early career highlight. “I feel like, in moments like that, my brain shuts off,” she says. “I’ll get off the carpet and I don’t remember anything that just happened.” She did at least remember not to smile (“The most off-brand thing ever”), and came away determined to return as a performer. “It’s cool to have those moments where you’re like, ‘Oh shit, I’m at the VMAs right now!’” she grins. “It’s very inspiring.”
The 20-year-old from Annapolis, Maryland may have mastered the non-smiling, effortless cool girl look online, but behind the spiked boots and sparkly eyeshadow there’s a palpable anxiety about making the most of her ascent. “It sounds grim, but I try to operate like I may never have another song again,” she explains. “I’m always trying to just keep people interested and entertained, while also maintaining what I want to do.”
Away from the internet, she’s currently seeing a far more tangible version of her fanbase in the sold-out rooms of her ‘Heaven Doesn’t Wait’ tour. Last month, she played London’s Heaven: a bucket list gig since
she saw Tate McRae perform there last December. But even with her audience physically in front of her, LaRosa feels the same urgency to keep them onside that she does online. Once they start cheering, she needs to make sure they don’t stop.
“I think I have to learn how to relax onstage,” she admits. Last month she shared a bill with McRae and others at the Prudential Center Arena in New Jersey, but the Heaven headliner was still the more nerveinducing. “It’s less pressure when I’m like, ‘They’re here for Tate McRae, they’re not here for me!” she says. “Sometimes I think, ‘Damn, why do you guys care? I wouldn’t care this much if I were you’. I don’t know what the phrase is… is it imposter syndrome?”
It’s no surprise that life can feel overwhelming for LaRosa given how much her platform has grown in the last few years. She credits the people around her with helping her stay grounded, particularly her brother. Their ‘alternative younger sister, producer older brother’ dynamic has already prompted countless comparisons to Billie Eilish and Finneas; “Oh my God – literally, I can’t escape it!” she laughs. “Sound-wise I feel pretty different from [Billie], but in terms of who I look up to as an artist – and Finneas as a producer and writer – I absolutely am such a huge fan of them.”
Like the O’Connells, the LaRosas were encouraged to pursue music by their parents, armed with jazz standards and taken to open mic nights by their father. When Isabel turned ten, access to YouTube allowed her to expand her musical horizons to the likes of Melanie Martinez, Ariana Grande and The Neighbourhood, leading to her love of alt-leaning pop. “All my stuff is pop hidden with cool production,” she suggests. “They’re all just pop songs — it’s not that alternative.” She did have a few dead-ends on the path to her current sound, which finally “clicked” in 2022 with the eerie, thumping ‘HAUNTED’. She admits she tries not to think about ‘GAMEBOY’, for instance: a bouncing hyperpop track from 2021. “I think it’s a cool song,” she clarifies. “It’s just SO different from what I do now. But I’m very grateful for any step that helped me find what feels like myself.”
Despite being so early on in her career, LaRosa’s sense of self does seem impressively solid. Her carefully designed aesthetic, catchy hooks and easy confidence draw you in — even if the confidence isn’t actually so easy. “Sometimes when things are too good I get anxious,” she confesses. “I’m thinking, ‘When is this gonna come down?’ I try to think, ‘I’m gonna take this in, and this is amazing’, and calm the anxious parts of me, but it’s a mix of the two. I’m still trying to figure it out, to be honest.” DIY
Photo: Sam Monendo
Paige Kennedy
The NONE
Word-of-mouth live circuit sensations, making thrilling new noise.
Don’t bother looking on Spotify for The NONE. The Birmingham / London quartet aren’t fussed with courting the usual platforms, instead opting to release their recent debut EP ‘MATTER’ solely on Bandcamp, buoyed by the buzz of their increasingly talked-about live reputation. Said reputation stems from a visceral melding of heavy noise and covert danceability; hardcore but with hooks. It also doesn’t hurt that they’ve got some seasoned pros in their middle: ex-Bloc Party man Gordon Moakes is on bass, while vocalist Kaila Whyte has previously popped up on these pages as part of Youth Man.
Joyfully left-field pop from a London-via-Kent visionary.
What do you get if you mix ‘00s dancefloors with modern hyperpop, psychedelic-soul, and lashings of queer attitude? One hell of a hangover, probably, but you’d also land somewhere in the ballpark of Paige Kennedy - the wilfully wacky multi-hyphenate (writer, producer, mixing engineer) who distils their brilliantly biting perspective on heteronormativity and tired societal norms into sub-three minute alt-pop bangers. Packed with intelligent observations, tongue-in-cheek wit, and creative character play à la Lynks, their just-dropped ‘Babylotion’ EP is both impeccably executed and irresistibly fun.
LISTEN: ‘What Does Your Girlfriend Think?’ is one of the best Neu tracks we’ve heard in some time.
SIMILAR TO: The lovechild of Ana Matronic, LCD, and The Dare.
LISTEN: ‘Railing’ shows this duality at its keenest.
SIMILAR TO: When ‘00s indie pops up in a basement gig pit.
Slow Fiction
New York noiseniks proving indie ain’t dead.
Coming from one of the world’s most renowned musical cities makes it hard to dent the consciousness of your postcode, let alone make a splash across the pond, but Brooklyn five-piece Slow Fiction have spent the past few months cementing an enviable reputation within European circles, earning co-signs from the likes of English Teacher, Sprints, and The Great Escape festival. At times echoing their Big Apple forebears The Strokes, at others indulging more shoegazey inclinations, their latest EP ‘Crush’ speaks of a band whose story is, ironically, moving pretty swiftly. LISTEN: New track ‘Brother’ is a moving ode to losing people, but never the love you have for them.
SIMILAR TO: Meet Me In The Bathroom, minus the revivalist cringe.
urika’s bedroom
The LA-based multihyphenate creating ambitious, enveloping sounds.
With a moniker as intimate-sounding as urika’s bedroom, it probably comes as little surprise to learn that the LA-based multiinstrumentalist has a knack for creating immersive, enveloping sounds. Having previously toured alongside the likes of St Panther and Youth Lagoon, their self-produced project comes spearheaded by the recently-released debut ‘Big Smile, Black Mire’, a textured, headysometimes jittery - offering that feels both stripped-bare and complex at the same time.
LISTEN: While there’s a whole full-length to dive into, ‘Junkie’ provides an intoxicating entry point.
SIMILAR TO: Their vocals possess the same knife-edge uneasiness that Billy Corgan is so renowned for.
Annahstasia
The most arresting voice you’re likely to hear all month.
Creating a burgeoning canon of what she calls “power-folk”, Nigerian-American singer Annahstasia’s vocals are a true one-off. Rich and resonant at one point and trembling and vulnerable the next, comparisons to Tracy Chapman feel the most fitting but the musician’s voice is its own unique instrument. Steadily dropping the tracks from just-released EP ‘Surface Tension’, she uses it across offerings that take in acoustic simplicity and gospel backing (‘Saturday’); deftly-picked, layered atmospherics (‘Sunday’) and rousing, big-lunged catharsis (‘Stress Test’). It’s stunning stuff.
LISTEN: ‘Surface Tension’ is leading into a full-length album in 2025.
SIMILAR TO: The sound of goosebumps.
How would you describe, in less than 10 words, the ethos behind Speedy Wunderground?
Dan Carey: Spontaneous, loud, minimal, direct, experimental, fresh.
What was the initial motivation for starting the label? Tell us a bit more about those early days. I felt frustrated by the length of time between finishing a record and its release. I wanted to have a system where we could record music and then have it available for physical release in a couple of weeks. As far as the aesthetic of the sound is concerned, I wanted the records to be spontaneous, clear snapshots of the day of recording, avoiding going back and overthinking... a process of following instincts and trusting the first thought. The idea is that the listener is easily transported into the studio and can feel what the recording was like at the time. While that’s not the way to make all records, I thought it would make an interesting musical diary.
What are some of your highlights or most memorable moments since founding the label?
Our SXSW showcase and EP recording session in 2023. Our Village Underground show last September, where a continuous stream of Speedy artists past, present, and future played through the night with none of their own gear, just some guitars. Seeing all 50 Speedy singles laid out next to each other. The various record fairs, where we get to have direct contact with the audience and fans of the label - we’ve had some really interesting conversations with people starting in music, as well as old school collectors.
If you could re-release any classic album on Speedy, what would it be and why?
‘Donnie Hathaway Live’: it’s one of my favourite albums, and although the musical style is quite different from Speedy’s, it affects me in the way I want to affect our listeners... I feel transported directly to The Troubadour.
What’s one piece of label-running advice you’d give your younger self?
Don’t be afraid to make a fool of yourself. Is there anything you can tell us about what Speedy has in the pipeline for 2025...? Heartworms’ debut album, and new Moreish Idols...
Photos: Hop Nguyen, Khari Cousins, Miles Wilson, Keira
Cullinane, Joshua Tarn, Emma Swann
Meet the Manchester multiinstrumentalist whose debut ‘I Blow Out Big Candles’ is a testament to leaning into her entire and unapologetic self.
Words: Sarah Jamieson
Freak Slug
Ask Xenya Genovese – aka Manchester singer and multi-instrumentalist Freak Slug – how she knew she was ready to begin work on her debut album and the answer is refreshingly frank: “I didn’t want to release an album until I had enough of a fan base, which I feel like I do have now.”
In a world of increasingly choreographed trends and heavily curated social media feeds, you get the sense that Freak Slug is really only interested in following the beat of her own drum. She’s been that way since the beginning. Having moved to London from her childhood home in Manchester to study Fine Art at university, it was only when she had relocated again – this time, to Barcelona –that the foundations for this project were first laid. Unexpectedly finding herself performing on stage, the thing she always considered a teenage hobby started to feel like something with far greater potential. “It was always supposed to be music,” she nods. “It just satisfies me so much more, it satisfies more parts of me.”
Since then, the world of Freak Slug has continued to flourish into technicolour life, with each of her EPs shaping a distinct corner of her sonic world. “It’s been a process,” she says today. “I had no idea what was coming for me at all.” But while her early EPs – 2020’s ‘Videos’, 2022’s ‘I’m In Love’ and 2023’s ‘Viva La Vulva’ – saw her delve into a more dream-soaked, sugary take on indie-pop, it’s with her debut full-length ‘I Blow Out Big Candles’ that she’s really laying herself out for all to see.
“I definitely liked a lot more light music at the time,” she explains, reflecting on the difference between her early work and now, “a lot of like, female-led vocal, dreamy stuff. I also just knew that I wanted to try something really, really different to my early stuff,” she notes, referencing a selection of mostly-unreleased material from the start of her songwriting days. “I knew that if I wanted a bigger audience, I needed – to an extent – higher production, less lo-fi, more front-facing lyrics. It was very, very intentional.”
With ‘I Blow Out Big Candles’, she’s returning to the grunge and scuzzy indie-rock that really holds her heart, with the likes of Stephen Malkmus, Mazzy Star and Slowdive all providing inspiration. “I’ve always really liked this ‘90s vibe. When I went to uni, the group that I chilled with loved Pavement and all that stuff, so that was a big part of me returning to indie. I had a big moment when I liked electronic stuff, but going to uni and chilling with artists helped me remember what I actually love; I’m an indie girl.”
As such, it sets a delicious sonic backdrop to an album that’s entirely and unapologetically her. From the reverb-drenched flirtation of ‘Sexy Lemon’ to the tongue-in-cheek kiss-off of ‘Piece Of Cake’, via the slinky but unapologetic ‘Spells’, ‘I Blow Out Big Candles’ is a no holds barred exploration of the spectrum of personality; dark and light, reflective and confident. “I don’t want to put this light façade on anymore,” she confirms. “That’s just not me. I want to be me; I’m not shy and sweet. I’m quite boisterous, so the music needs to represent me.” DIY
“I’m not shy and sweet; I’m quite boisterous.”
Photo: El Hardwick
THE NEU PLAYLIST
Fancy discovering your new favourite artist? Dive into the cream of the new music crop below.
EFÉ - you say that i’m crazy
It’s been a few months since we last heard from Dublin’s EFÉ. Where her earlier 2024 singles built upon dreamy, soulful tones to incorporate grittier textures, showcasing her ability to shape-shift through genres, ‘you say that i’m crazy’ marks a soft, welcome return. A minimal waltz formed of lo-fi vocals, delicate strumming, wispy synths, a plush bassline, and fluttery birdsong, it makes for a picturesque soundscape. The lyrics, however, tell an aching, alternative story: “Feeling so ruthless / How could you do this? / Everything remains / Now that I’m insane / Yeah you say that I’m crazy / But feels like a part of me dies”.Yet another dazzling offering from EFÉ. Kayla Sandiford
Automotion - Inferno
Windmill darlings Automotion are going short-form: instead of piecing together another cohesive EP to follow this summer’s ‘Dissolve’, their latest project will see them fire out nine entirely separate singles. It’s all in the name of giddy experimentation, and why not? The first offering from their cauldron is ‘Inferno’, which wraps hazy vocals in oscillating synths and fuzzy guitar. Even if it has no bearing on where the following eight tracks will go, it’s at least an early indication that experimentation looks good on the London quartet. Caitlin Chatterton
Ideal Living - Loving & Still
Brighton’s Ideal Living deliver a fierce and thought-provoking statement with ‘Loving & Still’, a track that showcases a compelling blend of gothic rock reminiscent of The Birthday Party and the theatrical flair of Tom Waits. It unfolds as a lyrical maelstrom, capturing a visceral sense of anger and confusion, as frontman Billy Marsh channels his frustrations about societal pressures surrounding success, critiquing the emptiness of modern expectations and personal dissatisfaction, wrapped in booming spoken word and orchestral overloads. With its haunting melodies and intense delivery, ‘Loving & Still’ stands out as Ideal Living’s most gripping work to date. Gemma Cockrell lobby
- folding out
This new single may have been 18 months in the making, but it’ss clearly worth the wait. Featuring members of Goat Girl and Leather.head in their line-up, here the band serve up a sumptuous two-part mini-epic. From aloof, ponderous beginnings, ‘folding out’’s quizzical violin scratches, banjo plucks and sultry saxophone strains lead us through uncertain mists towards a shoegazing, rapturous destination, soon ripping off the blindfold and revealing the sparkle of the world’s most glorious treasures. Elvis Thirlwell
UPDATE YOUR EARS!
Find the Neu Playlist on Spotify:
Chloe Qisha
Later this month, DIY are returning to East London to help kick off The Great Escape 2025 in style with their annual series of First Fifty shows. Ahead of her turn playing our stage at The Victoria, we get a little better acquainted with pop icon-in-waiting Chloe Qisha…
What’s your earliest musical memory?
I only vaguely remember this, but my mum always tells this story of me being obsessed with the song ‘I’m Like A Bird’ by Nelly Furtado when I was about two years old. Apparently I couldn’t stop singing it, and I would run around in circles chanting it in bookstores and shopping malls.
Who were some artists that inspired you when you were just starting out (and why)?
This one has stood the test of time – Troye Sivan was a huge influence for me when I started writing and is very much still a core reference of mine. I used to follow him on YouTube (back in his YouTuber days), and I guess I’ve just been an OG fan of his music from the day he started releasing. And sonically, his music has aged with me so every iteration of his catalogue is tied closely to a chapter of my life. I still love it and I’m here for it, and if anything ‘Something To Give Each Other’ has been my soundtrack of this past year.
How did you find yourself first making music?
I did a lot of jamming with friends in sixth form, but I’d say I didn’t start properly ‘writing’ and making music until I started doing sessions in my early twenties. I sort of fell into it, and just got referred to songwriters/ producers through meetings after posting covers on YouTube. It’s a rather uninspired way of getting into the craft; but I’m grateful for it and I think even though I got into writing later in the game, learning to write pop songs within the context of collaboration offered a great foundation.
You’ve just released your newest single ‘Sexy Goodbye’ which is another banger! Can you tell us about how it came to life and what inspired you to make the track?
Thank you! I think it started like any other day in the studio, Rob and I were sort of jamming out and he landed on this super fun ‘80s intro that was super sassy, and I think someone or other started singing “Waste a little time just me and the cats…” and the story sort of built from there! It took two days to finish,
and we finished a lot of the writing on a train home from Leeds (a trip we took to finish mixing ‘I Lied, I’m Sorry’) and we had a lot of fun naming Stacy, Charlotte, Chelsea, and Isabelle!
Your self-titled debut EP is also set to be released in a few weeks’ time; how did it come together, and what do you hope the EP says about you as an artist?
Writing for the EP was just a natural thing that ended up happening through sessions over a year. Rob and I were just having fun creating great songs (going in with no expectations and writing what we felt inspired by that day), and I guess at some point you look up and realise you have a bunch of songs that you love and sound like they’re a part of the same world. I’m super proud of this EP, I feel like there’s no filler songs, I think it packs a mean punch as far as debut EP’s go; and I hope people get excited by it, we’re here and we’re only just getting started.
You recently played your debut live show; how were you feeling in the run up to it, and what was it like stepping out on stage that night?
It was so much fun! I was a little nervous in the weeks leading up to it, but honestly as soon as we started rehearsals with the band, I was immediately at ease. I hadn’t done any live performances before that (apart from maybe one open mic in uni!) so I think it was just the unknown that scared me. But my bandmates are absolute vets and they’re just the loveliest people – so who wouldn’t feel confident with them supporting you!
When the day came, I was surprisingly calm – I think I even freaked my team out at how calm I was. But I honestly felt fine, and when I walked onto stage it was the best feeling ever. The songs felt incredible, and I can’t wait to do more shows now!
Next, you’re playing at The Great Escape’s First Fifty in a couple of weeks – how are you looking forward to it?
I’m really looking forward to it! I hope people walk away excited and itching to hear more!
Chloe Qisha plays the DIY stage at The Victoria for The Great Escape’s Fifty First showcase on 13th November, alongside Ray Bull and Disgusting Sisters. Her self-titled EP is out on 15th November. DIY
Chalk
Leading the charge for a new wave of dance-punk with a storming trilogy of early EPs, Belfast trio Chalk are testament to the power of three.
Words: Daisy Carter
Where, in the past few years, there seems to have been something in the Dublin water supply to supercharge the city’s guitar bands, its sister capital has carved out a musical niche of its own. The stomping ground of mainstream-crossover local heroes Bicep, Belfast is home to a flourishing electronic scene the likes of which might be more typically found in mainland Europe – and it’s with this musical backdrop in mind that the hybrid sound of Chalk begins to come into focus.
Taking all the best bits of the last decade’s post-punk boom (an unflinching lack of façade and compellingly visceral delivery) and injecting them with the vitality and vigour of the dancefloor, their soon-to-be-trilogy of ‘Conditions’ EPs speak of a band for whom genre is but a word. “We met at film school, and we were big fans of the whole post-punk scene as well, so I think we were maybe writing stuff like that ourselves,” guitarist and synth player Benedict (Ben) Goddard explains, speaking about the band’s earliest days. “But that just seems like such an easy solution when you’re first writing music together, and there are other bands we love like Holy Fuck – ” he pauses, endearingly apologising for swearing “ – that really
drive into that electronic soundscape. Those sounds just excite us a lot more.”
Feeding off what drummer Luke Niblock calls Belfast’s “very strong, punky ethos”, the trio (completed by vocalist Ross Cullen) spent “maybe two years” honing their sound, splicing their guitar band DNA with the city’s digital proclivities before diving headfirst into the world of live performance –the context in which they arguably thrive the most. “The live set is always something we’ve been quite proud of since the start,” Luke confirms. “We like to play with emotion in how we structure it; we didn’t want it to just be ‘crash, boom, wallop’.” Instead, he continues, they “adapt the tension throughout the set”, offsetting more atmospheric moments with “an explosion of one of those more guitar-centric tracks.”
The beauty of releasing ‘Conditions’ as they have –as three separate, but linked, EPs – Ross explains, is that it’s allowed them to push the envelope while still maintaining the same thematic or atmospheric touchstones. “There’s a feeling of euphoria and anxiety we’ve been going between since the first EP, which felt right to continue to explore,” he affirms. “But I think we’re moving away from the abstract
world [of earlier tracks] and beginning to find comfort in realism and more personal subjects.”
Sonically, the original ‘Conditions’ (2023) foregrounds weighty rock breakdowns, while ‘Conditions II’ (2024) and its forthcoming final piece ‘Conditions III’ (2025) lean far more into electronica, utilising sampling for a collagic masterclass in tension and release. Take the latter’s pummelling lead single ‘Tell Me’; much like the viral interview in which Charli xcx walks us through the sonic arc of ‘365’’s night out, it encodes a whole emotional journey in under three minutes, moving from anxiety-inducing closeness to stabbing synths that recall Psycho’s famous shower scene. Elsewhere, the tightly-coiled spring of ‘Afraid’ (the cut we suspect Luke has in mind when he speaks of “a big riff track”) erupts into driving guitars, echoing IDLES as much as Orbital, while ‘Pool Scene’ and ‘Leipzig 87’, Ross notes, make use of a Moog One synthesiser to “go deeper into the ‘club sound’.”
In a marked change from busy Belfast, this latest EP also saw the band upsticks to rural Iceland to record – a location which both thoroughly satisfied their cinephile tendencies, and injected a healthy dose of delirium into proceedings. “We didn’t see darkness for about a week, and I’m sure that just does something to your head,” Ben says cheerily. “Once, we were in the insane heat of the studio’s hot tub, then I was recording a guitar take literally two minutes later in a robe.” He grins: “I was like, ‘Should we be doing this?’ And our producer was like, ‘This is when we’ll get the great stuff!’” By the sound of Chalk’s third instalment, he wasn’t wrong. DIY
“There’s a feeling of euphoria and anxiety we’ve been going between since the first EP.” - Ross Cullen
Photo: Aaron Cunningham
THE MACCABEES
KISS AND RESOLVE
Their fans never thought it would happen - and frankly, neither did the band - but rejoice! After eight years away, The Maccabees are reuniting to headline All Points East next summer. It’s going to get emotional.
Words: Lisa Wright
Just over seven years ago, Orlando Weeks, Felix and Hugo White, Rupert Jarvis and Sam Doyle walked off stage at Alexandra Palace and closed the curtain on what they were sure would be their last show together as The Maccabees. For any of the 10,000 people in attendance that night (the final of three at the hometown venue), the emotion in the air was physically tangible; the applause after each track a visceral amalgamation of gratitude and sadness, climaxing in an extended closing outpouring that all-but-refused to let them leave. When they finally did, after 13 years spent in each other’s pockets growing from hopeful teenagers to beloved festival headliners and one of their generation’s true success stories, the five men that were no longer a band went back to their shared dressing room for the last time and shut the door.
“We were there just the five of us and we all cried for I don’t even know how long,” remembers Hugo. “That moment was really, really intense; we really grieved it. And because it was so amazing and the atmosphere was so incredible, it just heightened all of that. It was such a [strange] experience to end it on such a high, knowing it’s over but not understanding or knowing what your life is without it.”
In the years since, they’ve all done a better job than many of figuring that out. Orlando has released three solo albums and moved to Lisbon; Hugo and Felix have paired up once more as half of 86TVs, alongside a host of production work for
the former and an entire multi-prong sportingpodcasting-journalistic empire for the latter. Sam has made short films and music videos, while Rupert, now a carpenter who proclaims himself “so out of the industry”, still found time to moonlight as a touring bassist for The Vaccines and on Jamie T’s latest LP. Some of them have young families; all of them have found a rich life after the band. But every time, says Felix, that he would go to All Points East in the summer, he’d feel a familiar twinge.
“It’s the one time when it would always sting a little bit because I’d think, ‘Fucking hell, that could have been us’,” he says. “You’d go into that fantasy for 20 minutes in that situation and think: ‘Oh shit. Fucked it’. And then you’d forget about it again.”
When Orlando, Felix and Hugo pop up on Zoom for the first part of today’s summit (the vocalist is in Portugal, but the other four live within short enough distance to make a later South London pub trip an easy commute), it’s an hour since tickets for their own All Points East headline show went on sale and a week since the reunion that no one dared expect blew up the indie internet. Felix isn’t worried about the show itself. “I know the playing will be great; I know when I hear Maccabees music, my hands will do exactly what my hands did before.” But everything else around it is clearly imbued with far more gravitas and weight. “The analogy I keep thinking about is that it’s almost like an Indiana Jones film where they take an artefact out of the ground but when they take it out all these skeletons and ghosts all come out at the same time,” he says. “It’s scary having all those feelings and that history get unearthed.” “I think that’s called opening up a can of worms,” his brother notes wryly.
“The contrast of internally knowing that we were reaching the end while externally looking like we were reaching the top level, it was incredibly confusing.”
- Hugo White
Ironically, the public unearthing came somewhat quicker than intended. When the band started the announcement ball rolling with a functional changing of their logo on social media, they didn’t expect internet sleuths to catch on quite so quickly. “We genuinely didn’t realise,” laughs Hugo. “We thought we were gonna announce it in a few weeks, but then the logo changed and it just went off, everyone’s phones were going mad…” Such was the excitement surrounding even the tiniest morsel of potential, the news was picked up everywhere. However, that potential had been long in the cultivation. In fact, had you been having a pint at Brixton’s Effra Social last Christmas, or watching Jamie T’s album launch gig in Ladbroke Grove the year before, or – admittedly less likely – hanging out at Hugo’s wedding back in 2020, you might have seen the stitches slowly being made to pull the friendships and, eventually, The Maccabees back together.
There was, all parties readily admit, a lot of suturing to do. While, to the outside world, the band had announced their split in August 2016, eventually playing their final farewell tour the following summer, behind the scenes they’d already spent an entire year under the ominous cloud of what was looming. Exhausted and overwhelmed by how entirely all-encompassing the band had become, Orlando had announced
his intentions to leave shortly after finishing up 2015 fourth album ‘Marks To Prove It’. In solidarity for what they’d created, the quintet decided to present a united front when it came to how they would tell the world. And so, with a host of commitments still to complete, they embarked on the most objectively successful year of their career, scoring their first chart-topper, headlining Latitude, playing a memorably celebratory Other Stage set at Glastonbury and fielding endless questions about the sky-high possibilities of where it could all go next while knowing the answer was nowhere.
“The last shows were the most emotionally-taxing things. To have started a band when you were 16 with the dream of getting to that kind of place, and with everything that had gone into it over the years, and then you’re finally reaching that peak while it’s falling apart…” begins Hugo. “The contrast of internally knowing that we were reaching the end while externally looking like we were reaching the top level, it was incredibly confusing.”
For Orlando the need to release the pressure valve was constantly in tension with the weight and consequences of his decision. “There was the feeling that [the band] was all and everything, and if it wasn't all and everything it had to be nothing. But that nothing felt so final and serious,” he says. His own experience of that final gig night was, unsurprisingly, painfully polarising.
“Because it was the end, then the compression of that all-ness was released a bit, but then I could also look around and see it in all their faces, and
“It wasn’t in the nature of us as a group to want to burn it all down; it’s not what we as a group represented.” - Orlando Weeks
that was hard,” he continues slowly. “That was hard. But I wasn’t second-guessing myself. I felt very compromised because I could see how that feeling was writ large on the other boys’ faces, but I was feeling a release that I hadn’t felt for a long time.”
With hindsight, Felix notes that they were probably all reaching a tipping point. “I think we were all exhausted and maybe no one else was gonna say it or do it. It just happened to fall on Land to take that responsibility for how he was feeling,” he suggests. Yet even among the pain and conflicting viewpoints of the split, The Maccabees kept their heads held high and their dignity – towards each other and the thing they’d created – intact. Unlike another band with brothers who joined the reunion circuit this year, they never aired any grievances in public or gave anything except their everything on stage. It left their memory among fans bright and untainted but, more importantly, it also left a strong foundation for the five old friends to start to rebuild on.
“I’m sure it happens with lots of bands and dynamics, where those things can fall apart. Whereas we were like, ‘We’re not gonna go out that way. It’s been too much to end this band in a mess’,” says Hugo. “It wasn’t in the nature of us as a group to want to burn it all down; it’s not what we as a group represented,” nods Orlando. “And I think that the empathy that was required across the board [to enable that] is what’s meant that we have the opportunity to now do something like what we’re doing. It’s testament to that compassion that was hardearned by us all as people that we’re in the position that we’re in now, and that is no mean feat. That is pretty amazing.”
Re-adjourning in a Camberwell pub later in the evening, the White brothers, Rupert and Sam have the easy manner of old friends toasting the day’s activities; tickets for the show are selling fast, and they’re already getting cheeky requests for guestlist from more brazen members of their social circles. It’s Halloween night, however, and the band members are all off to their various individual engagements after we’re finished: Hugo to a gig down the road and Rupert back to help with his kids’
trick or treating, while Felix is gearing up for an inaugural watch of The Wicker Man.
Though conversations about getting the group back together have been bubbling under the surface for more than a year within a comically top secret WhatsApp group called NO SUBJECT, they only received the offer from All Points East a month ago. Going from an idea where, as Hugo notes, “there was an opening to do it again but it might not be for a few years” to something that was happening literally right now has given the decision, it seems, a sense of impromptu fun with no time to overthink it all. The band haven’t played a note together since performing ‘Pelican’ at the guitarist’s wedding, while Sam’s drum kit is currently stacked up in the living room of his flat and being used as a lighting display. “It’s my Christmas tree. Last Christmas I did actually hang baubles off it. So yes,” he grimaces, “I’m definitely going to be doing lots of rehearsing.”
In many ways, the total commitment to the cause that dominated The Maccabees’ previous tenure was the magic ingredient that kept them moving forward and rising above the competition, making four albums in 2007 debut ‘Colour It In’, 2009’s ‘Wall Of Arms’, 2012’s ‘Given To The Wild’ and then ‘Marks To Prove It’ that significantly leapt forward in skill and maturity each time. “That all or nothingness, you can really hear it in the records,” says Felix. “I don’t know if we always got the records right in how we sounded, but in terms of how the music was made and the parts and detail and feeling, you can really feel the commitment that went into it and that’s why it’s lasted.”
But, free from the demands of constantly pushing for the new, there’s an ease to the way the band speak today that feels like something of a relief for them all. They’re not secretly sitting on an album; there are no plans to play any new material when they take to the stage next August. Instead, says Felix, the show is a chance to celebrate everything they achieved without the nagging worry of what might come next.
“The cool thing of listening to The Maccabees catalogue, musically and lyrically, is every time we made a record you could really hear that we’d become older people. It had changed to be very recognisable but also unrecognisable between the first and the fourth album, and I think that’s a really cool and rare thing for a band to have that specific arc,” he enthuses. “So to get outside of it and just enjoy reflecting on that for a second might be a powerful thing for us and for people that love The Maccabees.” Hugo puts it simply:
“The idea that we can come together and do something like that seems, to all of us, like how could we turn that down?”
If the old adage goes that it takes half the length of the relationship to get over the break-up, then The Maccabees have got it almost bang-on schedule. They’re enjoying these first steps back into the throng – new press shots; first interviews – with a renewed vigour now that the band can be a treasured part of
“Getting Oasis tickets made me double down on the fact that this was a good idea, thinking that there’s gonna be people that feel that way about us.”
- Felix White
their lives, but not the whole, entire thing. “We just kind of slipped back into old dynamics, it was surprisingly easy. Tall person at the back, classic formation,” chuckles Sam. When Felix, a lifelong Oasis obsessive, got his hands on tickets for Wembley next summer, it dawned on him just how much moments like this can mean.
“The feeling of when the screen said: ‘You’re going to see Oasis’, it did make me double down on the fact that this was a good idea,” he smiles, “thinking that there’s gonna be people that feel that way about us.”
As the reaction to the announcement has shown, people in their droves do undeniably feel that way about The Maccabees. Full of heart, able to excel at both effervescent melodic joy and tender introspection, and comprised of a group that bounce off each other’s differences to create something inimitably theirs and greater than the sum of its parts, they’re a band that have inspired just as much glee upon their return as they did tears upon their farewell.
Whether All Points East is the start of a whole second act or just a heartfelt addendum to the story is still yet to be seen. “I think we don’t really know. To begin with, it’s a reunion for the show, and we’re gonna see what it feels like,” says Felix. “The idea is, we play this gig, we come off stage, and go: Did you enjoy it? Are we doing more?” nods Hugo. Either way, don’t worry about them accepting the job lightly.
The Maccabees might mean a lot to many but, having fought for their friendships and each other, there’s no one it all means more to than The Maccabees themselves.
“I was so conscious that if we did it again, it would somehow change what that last gig was. But that moment is gonna be exactly the same for everyone forever,” says Felix, “that’s not gonna change. So if we still love each other, and we still want to do it, then life’s short so why not feel that thing again? It could be really magical.”
The Maccabees headline All Points East on 24th August 2025. DIY
Photos: Phil Sharp, Emma Swann, Carolina Faruolo, Tim Easton
THE FAME
From viral moments to internet toxicity, via misogyny, teenage mistakes and the Taylor Swift whirlwind, 24-year-old beabadoobee has experienced it all. About to round off her biggest year so far with a sold-out UK and EU tour, she reflects on the world’s most renowned double-edged sword.
Words:
Daisy Carter
FAME GAME
“Iwas never meant to have this many people looking at me,” states Beatrice Kristi Laus simply. “I can say that for a fact. I’m not used to being… I don’t even call myself famous, but [I’m not used to] people giving a fuck about me, basically.”
She might not use the phrase herself, but Bea – better known, of course, by her stage name beabadoobee – really is, by anyone’s metric, pretty famous. One of the OG breakouts from the last decade’s bedroom pop explosion, she shot to cult stardom as a teen after uploading debut single ‘Coffee’ to YouTube in 2017 – a track that quickly saw her get scooped up by label Dirty Hit, and which has since had a second turn at virality after Canadian rapper Powfu sampled it for his TikTok-driven megahit ‘death bed (coffee for your head)’. To date, it’s been streamed over 1.7 billion times on Spotify alone. As beabadoobee, Bea has sold out shows all over the world, had a UK Number One album with this year’s ‘This Is How Tomorrow Moves’, and was the main support for Taylor Swift on the first US leg of the A-lister's Eras Tour.
Essentially, people give a fuck about her. Quite a lot of fucks, actually. And so when she picks up the phone to DIY, having just wrapped on her own US headline dates in support of her chart-topping third LP, it’s hard not to warm to Bea's complete lack of either pretension or self-censorship. “My cat just keeps chewing the hair off her bum. It basically looks like she has a Brazilian,” she laughs, explaining that she’s got an afternoon of vet appointments and other similarly mundane errands ahead of her. Ah, the glamour. She smiles: “It’s honestly the most humbling, but nicest experience. The thing I miss most while I’m on the road is normality.”
Across ‘This Is How Tomorrow Moves’, that feeling of homesickness crops up more than once; atop ‘California’’s scuzzy instrumentation, she sings of the mental strain of living out of a suitcase, while the aptly named ‘Coming Home’ is a waltzy, ‘60s-tinged love letter to domestic life. Ahead of the album’s arrival, Bea made the blanket decision to cap her touring stints, ensuring that she’d no longer be away from home for more than three weeks. “I’ve been touring since I was 18, so I’ve had my fair share of tour meltdowns,” she explains. “I’ve cancelled shows; I’ve done the whole ‘having a panic attack on stage’ thing. And it’s not cute. I don’t think it was my fault – obviously there was a part of me that felt like I HAD to be on the road and promote my album – but then you realise that your mental health should be prioritised.”
Conversations around performance-induced burnout have been far more prominent in the public consciousness in recent years – just look at Chappell Roan, who has been staunchly (and rightly) unapologetic about cancelling numerous dates on her Midwest Princess Tour, or The Last Dinner Party, who have similarly pulled out of or rescheduled shows in order to give themselves a much-needed break. And make no mistake, such decisions aren’t taken lightly: nobody, Bea says, is more aware of their obligation to fans than the artists themselves. “I was so disappointed in myself every time I cancelled a show,” she says. “I felt like shit and just thought, ‘Everyone’s going to hate me’. I was overwhelmed and overworking myself, and got to a point of extreme exhaustion. I’ve pushed through illness and depression to play a show, and it doesn’t make anything better. But [when I cancelled dates] I’d have to turn my phone off and not read comments, because people would get so angry.”
This sort of reaction represents a darker side to fan culture – a side which, thanks to social media, has proliferated into something strangely close to trolling. Social media trades in an illusion of intimacy: in some cases, this means that fans develop a sense of entitlement over artists’ behaviour and off-stage lives. “People like to plant a personality onto someone they don’t know,” nods Bea. “There’s a weird parasocialness that I’ve noticed this generation of kids have with musicians in the public eye. And if you don’t meet their expectations – if you don’t meet their idea of what they think you’d be like – you’re a horrible person.” And, as Chappell has pointed out, these expectations are far more frequently projected onto female artists than they are their male peers.
“I think it’s really easy to find a woman way more annoying than to find a man annoying,” Bea muses today. “We have to adhere to more societal expectations than men do, and if we don’t meet that mark we immediately get faced with backlash.” She posits: “‘Oh, she’s a bitch!’... no, I was just standing up for myself.” Along with ‘annoying’ and ‘bitch’, we suggest, there are a whole host of adjectives levelled at female artists that are inherently gendered: ‘bossy’, ‘diva’, ‘high maintenance’, ‘hysterical’. “I still see comments like that,” she nods. “All those words
“I just want to be a true, honest version of myself. And if people find that annoying, they find that annoying.”
are so female-driven – they all contain this sort of underlying shade [towards women].”
Like indie pop contemporaries Rachel Chinouriri and Cat Burns, who have recently released a song, ‘Even’, on the subject – Bea also exists in the crosshairs of racial stereotyping. “As an Asian woman, I feel like there’s a pre-judgement or an expectation on how I’m meant to act,” she shares. “I’m meant to be very behaved; I’m meant to make classical music; I’m meant to shut the fuck up and not swear and not be loud. So on top of being a woman, I also have societal expectations of my race.
“There’s a lot of shit we have to carry, but I don’t want that to be the reason that I have to hide my true self,” she continues. “Yes, I probably have to make twice the effort. But I don’t want to change myself just so [other people] can listen to me or be more interested in me. I just want to be a true, honest version of myself. And if people find that annoying, they find that annoying.”
Much has been made in recent years of redressing the music industry’s gender imbalance, especially with regards to festival bookings. Last month, Barcelona’s Primavera Sound unveiled its 2025 lineup and, as well as featuring the likes of beabadoobee herself, FKA twigs, and Haim high up the bill, it sees three female pop artists – Charli xcx, Chappell Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter – at the top. From where we’re standing, the booking feels significant; a major European festival acknowledging that “the three most important artists of the moment” (as stated in a Primavera press release) are women, and thus legitimising female and LGBTQ+ fans –who are frequently derided and dismissed – as significant shapers of culture.
But as someone who’s been inside the music business machine since her teenage years, does Bea actually feel like there’s been much tangible change? “Man,” she sighs. “People say, ‘It’s getting better!’ But I think people are just hiding it better. Pop girlies are ruling the industry right now. I think that’s empowering in itself, and obviously it is an improvement, but it still doesn’t mean…” she pauses. “I think the only change is that women are getting more confident, and women are being more outspoken. We don’t stand for shit anymore. If I feel disrespected, I’m
“Women don’t stand for shit anymore. If I feel disrespected, I’m gonna say it.”
gonna say it – and I remember being 18 and not saying it. In my opinion, that’s the change.”
Personally and professionally, Bea has come a long way since then. “There [were] so many moments where I felt like my ideas weren’t taken seriously,” she recalls of those early days. “I feel like I didn’t even notice it at first because I was just so timid. I basically felt like a punching bag at points.” On those first tours, too, she became “quite lost”. “It got quite sad – I’d be getting really fucked up in my room, I’d be taking drugs I didn’t wanna take,” she shares. “I was young, and I didn’t have my parents around. I was just a confused kid trying to navigate this strange new life. Boys didn’t even look at me when I was a teenager, and [then] there was all this newfound attention that I just didn’t know how to handle.”
Going through the usual teenage rites of passage – experimenting with substances, exploring your sexuality, resisting authority figures – is a rollercoaster regardless; add in constant upheaval, skyrocketing public attention and a tireless work schedule to that hormonal cocktail, and it’s no wonder it all felt so overwhelming. “100%,” she nods. “Everybody goes through it, every teenage girl. But imagine being thrown onstage aged 18, after living your whole entire life not being looked at, and now everyone’s looking at you. And on top of that, boys want to kiss you! That had never happened ever in my life. So I think [intoxication] just made me more confident. I just felt like I needed something to bring me out of my shell more.
“But,” she continues, “I wouldn’t be the person I am today, and I wouldn’t be doing the tours I’m doing if I hadn’t gone through that. I feel like the best way I learn is by making mistakes and learning from them.” These days, Bea has “[her] head way more screwed on”. Staying sober on tour (“California sober, to be fair,” she laughs) lets her be more present with her fans, band, and crew. Now, when she does let her hair down, “it’s more like a fun treat.”
If 2020’s ‘Fake It Flowers’ was an angstfuelled opening statement proper, and 2022’s ‘Beatopia’ was a more expansive, coming of age affair, then ‘This Is How Tomorrow Moves’ is the sound of Bea firmly staking her claim as one of her generation’s defining voices. Both bolder and more nuanced, her latest represents a distinct maturation: lyrically, she
takes accountability and displays astute selfawareness; sonically, she pays homage to her well-worn touchstones (specifically, ‘90s alt-rock and cult songwriter-pop) while re-casting them in her own mould.
Its conception was also the first time Bea had broadened her collaborative horizons beyond longstanding creative partner Jacob Bugden to include another producer – namely, music legend Rick Rubin. But, she explains, heading to Malibu to work with Rick at his hallowed Shangri-La studio initially represented a huge leap of faith (an experience immortalised by album standout and Bea’s personal favourite track, ‘Beaches’). “You get people who are out of your world who work on a song with you, and they just make you feel like shit. Rick was the first person [beyond her team] who made me realise, ‘Oh, maybe I am a good songwriter’. It was everything I needed and more.”
Being co-signed by one of the industry’s most celebrated minds can’t do bad things for the old self-confidence, but in her time Bea’s also learned that dwelling too much on external noise – particularly from the online world – is a fool’s game. Talking about her relationship with social media, she reflects: “I’m in a very blessed position where I can get someone else to post for me. I’m so appreciative of all the lovely comments, but the internet has gotten so much grosser recently; I don’t like going on Twitter because of what people say about me. I feel like lots of kids online don’t understand that people in the public eye have emotions and feel like shit too. People fucking forget that.” She pauses. “People can say ‘ignore it’, but that’s way easier said than done.”
For Bea, the key to “doing alright in music, mentally” is to remember that “all those comments and all those opinions people have just live on the internet. None of it is fucking real; as soon as I turn my phone off, I get to go out and have fun and hang out with my friends. It makes me realise that the internet is just a tiny fraction of my life.” And having the room to flick that switch – to log off from beabadoobee and just live as Bea – is something that she’s incredibly grateful for.
Supporting Taylor Swift opened her eyes to a world that most of us can hardly fathom; as well as being “awesome” and giving her “SO much respect for [Taylor]”, Bea also admits that the experience “freaked [her] out”. “It did make me appreciate that I can go out and get fucked up in Camden, and people won’t recognise me,” she says. “With the music I make, I think it’s almost impossible to get to a point where I can’t be out in public; most of it is definitely for an acquired taste, I think.” This slightly left-of-centre positioning allows Bea “to just make the music [she] wants to make and still have a completely normal life, living in a flat with two cats and [her] boyfriend.”
She shrugs: “People don’t really care – I can go into a pub, I can go to Tesco and look shit. It’s just strange that on the internet I feel so loud; as soon as you turn your phone off, it’s just irrelevant.”
Though certainly not the case for everyone, it’s perhaps because Bea was lifted up so young that
“On the internet I feel so loud, but as soon as you turn your phone off, it’s just irrelevant.”
her feet remain so firmly on the ground. When she first started playing shows herself, she’d only ever been to two gigs as a punter: One Direction, and Tame Impala at Alexandra Palace. Now, she’s gearing up to headline a sold-out Ally Pally herself. “It’s kind of a trip going back – I haven’t been there since,” she says with a smile. Going from attending a 10,000 capacity venue in your home city to standing on its stage is an undeniable milestone, but to Bea, it’s what HASN’T changed that will make the night all the more special. “All the friends I have are still the same girls I knew since I was 10, and they’ve been to every single London show I’ve played. They still treat me the same, they still take the piss out of me.” She mimics being teased for developing a slight American twang while over in the States. “It’s really important to have them there – the people that knew me before.”
As conversation turns to Camden (“It’s always going to be a good night”), costume snobbery (“The one outfit we should delete off the face of the Earth is ‘sexy schoolgirl’”) and that night’s Halloween Soft Play gig (“I’m going as a cheetah – there’s a lot of faux fur”), it’s obvious that the down-to-earth authenticity and genuine warmth that makes her work as beabadoobee so beloved isn’t going anywhere, no matter how high her star rises. “What I craved growing up was seeing a girl that looked like me that just fucked up all the time but learnt from every mistake she made,” she laughs. “I think it’s important to be honest, and that’s what I’ll continue to do. I genuinely can’t help it.”
‘This Is How Tomorrow Moves’ is out now via Dirty Hit. DIY
Photos: Jordan Curtis Hughes
RE-
LOADED
Now aged 63 and gearing up to release
PRIMAL SCREAM ’s
12th studio album, Bobby Gillespie’s message is still as politically-charged as they come. On ‘Come Ahead’, however, he’s finding newer, grander ways to deploy it.
Words: Rhys Buchanan
“W
e’re a hard bunch to put down, we’re always up for the fight,” declares an energised Bobby Gillespie as he picks up the phone to DIY from his North London home. It’s rather fitting then, that the unmistakable Primal Scream frontman has decided to title the band’s soaring twelfth studio album ‘Come Ahead’: an ominous term for squaring up used in his native Glasgow. “This record is a complete statement,” he muses. “We’ll take on all comers, you know?”
Primal Scream aren’t just survivors of their generation-defining rise, they’re a band continuing to shape the cultural landscape. You don’t have to look much further than Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage over the last decade to see their influence looming large over a new generation. Whether it was HAIM offering backing vocals for a flurry of ‘Screamadelica’ classics during the band’s opening slot before The Rolling Stones in 2013 or, more recently, Dua Lipa re-sampling ‘Loaded’ to get the party started at her own hedonistic headline this summer, Primal Scream have remained something of a fixture on the music world’s most hallowed triangle.
Gillespie is clearly warmed as he pauses to consider that undeniable influence. “It’s lovely that younger artists – especially female artists – like Primal Scream; it’s a really special thing,” he says. “Dua did an interview leading up to her album [‘Radical Optimism’] discussing ‘Screamadelica’, so if a handful of her fans have discovered us through that, then that’s cool. When you’re a young person getting into music you need some guidance, and more often than not that comes from the stars
His mind trails back to his own formative teenage years in Glasgow, where he got his political and musical education on the football terraces at Celtic Park and via the prism of watching the punk explosion roll through the moody city. “Growing up in that city shaped my outlook on life,” he says. “You need to learn a lot of things really quickly to live there. My education came from bands like The Jam and The Sex Pistols, but also progressive bands like Can. I learnt through reading interviews with my favourite bands and I’m sure Dua Lipa’s fans are no different today.”
The inspiration isn’t only a one-way street for Gillespie, either. With the indie landscape in rude health as bands like Fontaines DC and English Teacher continue to thrive, the frontman says he takes excitement from a new generation of artists with ideas of their own. “I’m a fan of Fontaines,” he says. “I’ve seen them twice and I’m friends with Carlos the guitar player. I think Grian is brilliant; they’re a great band. It’s very much their time and they’re seizing it with both hands, you know.”
There’s a timeless grandeur to ‘Come Ahead’ – an album that flickers between beautiful gospel refrains and disco-infused grooves as Gillespie’s vocals float triumphantly throughout. It’s a continued departure from some of the gritty rock and roll thrills the band delivered through the mid-’00s on the likes of 2006’s ‘Riot City Blues’ and 2008’s ‘Beautiful Future’, but that sonic shift doesn’t mean that Primal Scream have lost their political edge thematically.
Just take the jangly ballad of ‘Love Insurrection’, where Gillespie quietly dispatches some of his most potent lyricism to date over swirling strings; “You punish the poor for being poor and celebrate greed,” he sings. Elsewhere on the grooveheavy ‘Innocent Money’, which is written from the perspective of a rough sleeper, backing vocalists drop profound lines on the state of the world: “The system is rigged like a Vegas casino.”
“I’m saying that generally people who make money come from money,” Gillespie says with a new flicker of anger in his Glaswegian accent. “The whole idea that you can make it really big in this society and that it’s a level playing field is a lie. People who have inherited wealth run the country, that’s why the British state exists. Parliamentary democracy is set up in such a way that the state is immovable. If you’re born into the lower orders of the working class, generally that’s where you stay. You’re sold this lie that it’s a meritocracy and it’s not.”
On the subject of the wealth divide and greed, what did he make of the dynamic ticket pricing debacle that circled around Oasis’ reunion shows earlier this summer? “The music business is no different from any other corporate business in the world,” Gillespie says. “Everything is about gaining maximum profit for the shareholders at the top. I don’t
“The whole idea that you can make it really big in this society and that it’s a level playing field is a lie.”
– Bobby Gillespie
“I’ve got a lot more clarity now, I’m stronger in knowing who I am.”
– Bobby Gillespie
know why people in the music industry are so surprised at this. It’s like, ‘For fuck sake’ [but] that is the business model and these are the rules.
“It doesn’t have to be though,” he continues. “The Cure are very vociferous about it and they do things in a different way, and more power to Robert Smith for that. The dynamic ticket pricing model was brought in by the American ticket corporations and the promoters. It’s weird because I had a friend who was a ticket tout for many years and he was getting arrested for this kind of thing, but it’s all fucking legal now.”
It’s unsurprising that a question regarding the recently proposed £1 ticket levy on stadium and arena shows to support grassroots venues sparks an impassioned dialogue on the importance of protecting such cultural institutions. “The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Primal Scream, The Stone Roses, we all started playing little clubs and venues, so of course you want to support the grassroots,” says the frontman. “Making music is a democratic artform; especially now, you can make music in your fucking bedroom and play gigs on your laptop. I’m always going to support that kind of thing.
“None of us can escape the financial system we live in though,” he notes. “It’s not about putting money into venues or helping local communities, far from it, it’s a vampire fucking system. Corporate behavior impacts everything. Predatory capitalists take as much money out of the pot as possible to go to the shareholders. The same people who govern the music business are the people who work in the banking system, the oil business, it’s the same corporate mindset. It’s a dog eat dog situation and the strongest survives.”
When it comes to attacking such themes through Primal Scream’s music, Gillespie prefers a lighter approach these days as opposed to the more intense, claustrophobic sonic palette they used to lean towards on brooding and starker classic tracks like ‘Kowalski’ or ‘Swastika Eyes’. It’s something he attributes to a renewed mindset at the age of 63.
“We’ve always liked the idea of having this duality in music. You can have this really beautiful sound that can be gentle or pretty, but then you’re singing about this hard subject matter. I always thought that was a more subversive way of getting your point across,” he suggests.
“If people are dancing and they’re happy, their defences are down and that way you can plant seeds. People are more open than when you’re hitting them with a barrage of fucking noise. I’m more interested in trying to whisper in people’s ears and seduce them with poetry.”
Moments on ‘Come Ahead’ like ‘Heal Yourself’ show an openness that we perhaps haven’t heard from the band before. Gillespie dreamily unpicks pulling through the turmoil of darker chapters and finding clarity through love and family: “Only weak men run away / You have to face yourself someday.” “I think when you’re younger the noise can serve as a metaphor for what’s going on in your head or your soul or your life,” he considers. “That’s the attraction I think for young people towards industrial music, it just pummels your senses and you can lose yourself in it. There’s a safety there; it chimes with the rage and the uncertainty in a young person.
“But I’ve got a lot more clarity now at my age, I’m a lot stronger in terms of knowing who I am. I’m a lot more relaxed and I can express myself on direct terms more than I could before. Back in the day, I might have hidden behind metaphor and imagery as a way of [hiding] myself. Now I feel like I don’t need that protection.”
With this newfound sense of direction, the way Bobby Gillespie speaks about Primal Scream’s 12th album is as though it’s their first. “We’re incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved,” he affirms. “I’ve given a good account of myself and how I feel about things and my life at this point in time. It feels really exciting and fresh, like we’re doing something new. Let’s fucking have it.”
‘Come Ahead’ is out now via BMG. DIY
Photos: Adam Peter Johnson
I’LL BE YOUR CLOWN
A SELF-AWARE SKEWERING OF LIFE INSIDE THE HYPE MACHINE, ‘THE JESTER’ CASTS WALLICE AS A SMART NEW KIND OF INDIE POP STAR. LET HER ENTERTAIN YOU… WORDS: LISA WRIGHT
As far as introductions go, the first lines of Wallice’s long-in-the-making debut ‘The Jester’ might rank among record levels of knowing selfdeprecation. “Someone spilled their beer on me,” sings the Los Angelian on ‘The Opener’ over quiet strums. “Wash it off, I rinse and repeat.” Penned during an Australian support tour with The 1975 in 2023, it deftly straddles the strange duality of being an artist on the rise. On one hand, you’re playing arenas on the other side of the world, living the dream; on the other, she recalls, “literally in the front row, somebody on the barricade will have their eyes closed.”
‘The Opener’ sets the tone perfectly for a record that tackles this conflicting reality head-on. Stepping up to the role of travelling entertainer and taking it back to the earliest version of the artform, Wallice’s protagonist is a tragi-comic figure who’s self-aware yet defiant; “They’re a sad, rundown jester but who still has a lot of ambition and believes in themselves, so it’s not just one or the other,” she notes. They’re also, given the recent Joker Folié a Deux film, not alone in the current cultural court. “And then also I’ve seen recently that clown-core is coming back as an aesthetic. So many photoshoots have ruffles and face paint and it’s like, ‘I really have been planning this for ages!’” Wallice sighs. “But now it seems like I’m on trend…” She might be up against Gaga for 2024’s best musical harlequin, but Wallice’s tale is one specific to the exact life and career point she finds herself in. Having first broken through in 2020 with debut single ‘Punching Bag’ and viral hit ‘23’, the years in between have been a seesaw of excitement and struggle – surging ahead of the pack one minute, and watching her peers come up from behind the next. Both on record and in conversation, the singer is candid about the toll these comparisons can take. “Especially online, you see [artists’] best achievements every week and it’s like, ‘Ugh I’m not doing ANYTHING this year because my album’s still being finished’,” she says. ‘Look At Me’ repeats its title in a whisper, before declaring: “My prime is behind me / I feel so tiny”.
This acute recognition of the passing of time also writes itself across ‘The Jester’ as Wallice wrestles with an industry where youth remains the highest currency. ‘Heaven Has To Happen’ mixes imposter syndrome with fears of missing her shot, while ‘Flash In The Pan’ tackles a doomed relationship but also nods to these neuroses. “I’m 26 now and it’s my debut album, and it’s really easy to compare yourself to people – even beabadoobee who’s on my label, she put out her first music when she was 18,” Wallice notes. “In the scope of the world, I don’t feel old. But when I’m near a lot of 22 or 24 year olds who are also in music and, on paper, more successful, it’s hard thinking I wish I was where I am four years ago. But the album wouldn’t have been as good if I’d made it four years ago, so I’m very aware of trying not to think I’m old because I’m not.”
From Wallice’s first moves, the singer displayed an immediate affinity for documenting the nuances of life’s specific, knotty stages (she still gets regular DMs, she smiles, from 22-year-olds calling the yearning ‘23’ “the most relatable song” they know). Yet ‘The Jester’ is undoubtedly a work that needed more time to unfold: an album in the classic sense, with a literal opener and a set piece finale in ‘Curtains To Close’. In many ways, it is not a move that tallies with the current algorithmic playlisting culture but, says Wallice, the future seems brighter on that front. “I feel like we’re starting to move away from [the culture of] wanting a TikTok hit because it broke so many people for so many years,” she muses. “I’m also really happy that right now – and maybe it’s because of Taylor Swift starting it, and ‘Brat’ this summer – people are
listening to a whole album. I’m really excited for people to be open to that in a time of such short attention spans, and I hope they listen to the whole of ‘The Jester’ to see the bigger picture.”
In among that picture are moments that push the singer into notable new directions. Defying ‘The Opener’’s own misgivings (“I don’t know how to sing about sex / Those parts of my life don’t intersect”), on the lusty ‘I Want U Yesterday’ she pairs Talking Headsnodding pop with lyrics about ripping a potential lover open “like a gift bag”. To get in the zone, she channelled the spice of a fellow Californian. “I kept coming up with boring things, but then my producer David had these writing prompts that suggested pretending to write as another artist,” she laughs, “so I did Remi Wolf. There’s a line that goes, ‘horny for your red flags’, and then after I wrote that, a couple of months later she put out ‘Toro’ where she sings about a matador, so I was psychic!”
Another musical spirit guide, meanwhile, crops up in physical form. One listen to the fizzing guitar lines of ‘Clown Like Me’ and it could be the work of only one indie hero. “David showed the song to his friend who was like, ‘Honestly dude, I would tell you you could never put that out because it sounds like an Albert Hammond Jr rip-off if it wasn’t him playing’,” Wallice laughs. “He has such a unique, recognisable way of playing guitar that’s like, one of the most influential things of the last 20 years. And he’s so sweet and humble. He’d be like, ‘That one sucked’ and it would be literally the best guitar I’ve ever heard.”
It’s easy to see why The Strokes’ axeman would want to stamp his co-sign on ‘The Jester’. Channelling alternative heroes and pop smarts in a way that should rightfully leapfrog her over a bunch of the young whippersnappers she’s had her eye on, it comes good on the promise that Wallice has spent the last three years nurturing. She’s hoping that, much like ‘23’ now seems like an endearing vignette in the rearview mirror, her future self sees this debut in the same way. “I hope I will continue to grow to – like Charli says,” she chuckles, “a place of commercial success, and that I can look back and be like, ‘Oh that’s so funny that I was so worried’. It’s really cool having music that I write as these markers in my age. So when I look back at this album, I hope I’ll be like, ‘I was so young, why was I stressing?’”
‘The Jester’ is out 15th November via Dirty Hit. DIY
“IT’S REALLY EASY TO COMPARE YOURSELF TO PEOPLE. I’M VERY AWARE OF TRYING NOT TO THINK I’M OLD BECAUSE I’M NOT.”
New Moon Rising
Listen to even just the first few lines from the opening track of mxmtoon’s new album, and you get a sense of where the singer’s head has been at this past year. “I’m not looking for a gradual change,” she sings delicately – almost prophetically –over the buoyant, finger-picked guitar line of ‘dramatic escape’. “No thanks...”
“Yeah, it’s definitely been a lot…” laughs the singer, real name Maia, when the lyrics in question are brought up today. “I think, maybe in retrospect, I would absolutely take some gradual changes, as opposed to these big, life-altering shifts!” Calling in from Berlin, where she’s about to embark on a series of press engagements before heading on to Paris and London, the US singer might be jet-lagged but you wouldn’t have guessed; instead, her energy is infectiously optimistic about this next chapter. “I feel like with this album specifically, I’ve never felt more attached to anything that I’ve ever created.”
For Maia, the last eighteen months have certainly mirrored that opening gambit of ‘liminal space’’s opening track. Having released her second record ‘rising’ back in May 2022 – an album that reflected on her own growth and identity as a young woman, while dealing with her expanding online audience – she knew that going into her third would be a different experience, with the more insular, pandemic sessions of recent years mostly a thing of the past. It was as she was beginning work on her follow-up, though, that her family received news that would change everything.
“So much of the narrative for ‘liminal space’ was defined by a moment last year where I found out my mum had a cancer diagnosis,” Maia explains today. “It really shifted my entire perspective on what I was doing with my music, who I was working with, what was my goal, what stories I was going to be telling. Music is obviously a really great tool for self expression and processing things that you’re going through, but it’s also deeply vulnerable to share your story and know that a lot of other people are going to hear it, including your family; especially when you’re having a lot of really mixed emotions about something that is happening in your life, and I certainly did around my mum’s diagnosis. But I felt really grateful too to know that music has always been an outlet for me to talk about things that have been hard to discuss, and this album was something I needed and a very pivotal point of my life while watching my mum go through what she was going through.”
Much like with any kind of unexpected turn in life, when dealing with the diagnosis Maia found herself faced with a slew of conflicting emotions, some of which she’d barely wanted to address out loud to herself previously. “I think a lot of the conversations that I was having with myself on this record were things that I’ve thought about for years but never decided to write about because it felt like it would be too damaging for my family or friends to hear about,” she says. After such world-shaking news, though, this time it felt necessary, with the catalyst arriving in the form of tender track ‘rain’. One of the first written for the record, it marked the singer’s first time admitting that she perhaps didn’t want to follow her parents’ guidance or what they thought best.
“If I had not written ‘rain’, I think I would be living in a different place than I currently moved to,” she says, having recently made the switch from NYC to Nashville. “I really do feel very deeply that this chapter of music has impacted my life beyond just writing the songs. I remember
After being faced with some unexpected, lifechanging family news, mxmtoon ’s perspective shifted entirely. But on third album ‘liminal space’, she’s fighting through the challenges and learning to trust her instincts along the way.
Words: Sarah Jamieson
I’ve been very interested in this transition that happens when you go into adulthood of becoming a peer to your parents for the first time.”
sharing ‘rain’ with my family and it was the first time that I had expressed to them that I had a lot of confusion about the idea of moving back to California and not feeling ready [at that point] to leave New York behind. I remember my mum just being so moved that I had written something like that. I’ve never had conversations with my parents before where I’ve told them that, ‘maybe I don’t want to do the thing that you guys are expecting me to do right now’, and ‘rain’ opened the door for me.”
Elsewhere, the album sees her run the full gamut of life-reckoning scenarios across a series of stripped bare, moving moments: facing the complex tangle of heartbreak (‘i hate texas’, ‘passenger side’), self-worth in the face of the patriarchy (‘the situation’), the uglier side of our emotions (‘just a little’) and the complicated relationship between child and parent, especially when faced with their mortality (‘VHS’, ‘now’s not the time’).
“I know that I’ve been very interested in this transition that happens when you go into adulthood of becoming a peer to your parents for the first time in your life,” Maia says, “and I feel so deeply about these songs being the first reckoning of what that experience has been like, and certainly how expedited it was as a result of the news I got last year with my mum. It’s just so complicated, I am always untangling it and I feel really grateful that I got to do that on this album. It feels like a lot of ‘liminal space’ was just bursting to get out of me, and I’m really glad that I took the time to piece together what areas of it I needed to give voice to.”
Digging deep into personal experiences isn’t exactly a pivot for Maia, who first rose to prominence via her YouTube channel of coming-of-age home recordings. But when working on songs so connected to the lives of both her and her loved ones, she knew she had to feel entirely supported during the recording process. To do so, she settled upon an integral rule for ‘liminal space’ of working with an entirely female creative team. “Oh my gosh, it changed everything,” she enthuses today of the decision, which saw her record alongside co-producers Carrie K (Noah Kahan, Suki Waterhouse) and Chloe Kraemer (The Japanese House, Wet Leg) and a myriad of other talented women. “I just remember being 19 and going into a session and talking about my boyfriend at the time with some dude who I’ve never met, who’s sitting on a computer, kind of listening to me but not really. I just remember thinking like, ‘Yeah, I’m young but don’t my stories matter?’. I just felt so frustrated and really anxious to walk into these rooms where it felt like I was rolling a dice to figure out whether or not someone would listen to me.”
In what shouldn’t feel like such a revolutionary move, the singer no longer felt anxious or unseen. “It changes a lot,” she nods. “I think when you’re telling stories that are about your life, and especially attached to your gender, making those alongside people that really do get it in a way that is unspoken sometimes is really different and very, very impactful. It shouldn’t be this jarring for someone to decide to work with just women on a project that’s about her life as a woman. I remember having these conversations even early on and just being like, ‘Hey, I want to do this thing’ and people telling me that’s going to be hard. I was like, ‘But why?!’. It’s not like we have a shortage of talented women working in the music industry – we have a shortage of people that have given them the opportunity to be talented and be in the room.”
Given a new sense of confidence in the studio (“With Chloe and Carrie, I was just excited to come in every single day and really felt so welcomed”), Maia also found herself more comfortable exploring new sonic territory. While ‘rising’ saw her dabbling with poppy melodies and synths, ‘liminal space’ embraces the more delicate, stripped-back storytelling that’s always been at the heart of her own tastes. “A lot of the stuff that is on this record is the most similar to things that I’ve been enjoying listening to for my entire life. mxmtoon obviously started with me on the ukulele, but I didn’t really listen to that kind of music. I do listen to pop music and I listen to produced stuff, but I would say by and large, I still return back to this playlist I made when I was 14, and a lot of it is these indie folk records that are so honest and really narrativedriven and really stripped down, and are just someone with a guitar half the time. It felt interesting to think about finally bridging that divide between the things that I was making and the things that I enjoy, and I really do feel like I hit the nail on the head here.”
Much like its title, ‘liminal space’ may be a record that embodies some of Maia’s biggest transitions, but now – freshly settled in Nashville, with her mum in remission – it sees mxmtoon entering a much stronger era in her life. “So much of the learning process was just really about trusting my gut,” she notes. “I couldn’t have done this record without really trusting my intuition; whether it was knowing that I wanted to work with more women or writing songs about topics that I have wanted to write about for years, but never actually gave a shot, I think it really just opened up the door for me to feel like I deserve the space that maybe I’m occupying.”
‘liminal space’ is out now via AWAL. DIY
It’s not like we have a shortage of talented women working in the music industry – we have a shortage of people that have given them the opportunity to be in the room.”
THE BOLD
Back in action and with their idiosyncratic spark still blazing, FRANZ FERDINAND’s sixth album might be called the ‘The Human Fear’, but Alex Kapranos and co are creatively showing none of it.
Words: Lisa Wright
BOLD TYPE
Ahead of Franz Ferdinand’s 2018 fifth album ‘Always Ascending’, a group of superfans concocted a game. 14 years on from the self-titled debut that had delivered an art-rock-shaped shock to the indie system back in the distant early days of the millennium, such was the instantly-recognisable niche that Franz had created, they could now merit their own bingo card. “[The categories were] whether certain themes in songs would appear on the record or not,” says frontman Alex Kapranos. “Searching for some unreachable religious faith? Bingo. A sense of isolation? Bingo. So I thought, ‘Wow, I guess there are themes running through it all…’”
To those more existential lyrical throughlines, we’d add some overtly, unmistakably Franz-ian sonic ones to the card: the rare ability, from the sing-along guitar stabs of era-defining second single ‘Take Me Out’ onwards, to tick both critical and mainstream commercial boxes. A knack for marrying massive hooks with idiosyncratic ideas that always kept them elevated far above the so-called ‘indie landfill’. A melodic directness that made their subsequent 2022 greatest hits (so far) collection, ‘Hits To The Head’, make perfect sense as a title.
You can spot a Franz Ferdinand song from a mile off because, says Kapranos, they’ve never tried to be anything but themselves. “It’s about not wanting to follow the paths of everybody else and that’s always the secret to doing something fresh – being aware of what’s going on around you and then trying to do the opposite; to do what excites you,” he suggests. “And that sounds like a really stupidly obvious thing to say, but I always find it shocking how many bands you see trying to chase contemporary trends and, as a result, making themselves instantly unfashionable.”
Now aged 52, and calling in from the French house he shares with his wife and young son, Kapranos’ passion for music and art and the band that he’s stood at the front of for more than two decades still rings out of his every word. His more recent domestic duties mean that, in his personal life, he’s somewhat calmed down. “I definitely don’t drink as much as I did or go quite as wild as I did,” he nods. “But I’d like to think, in my creative life, I’m still just as reckless.” And it’s with this spirit that the singer, joined by original bassist and co-conspirator Bob Hardy and completed by more recent additions Julian Corrie (keyboard, guitar), guitarist Dino Bardot and drummer Audrey Tait, approached new album ‘The Human Fear’.
There are not many bands of Franz Ferdinand’s lengthy tenure that would open a record with a track called ‘Audacious’ and then come good on the premise.
Where the traditional path is to mellow over time (“Hey, I’m a mellow guy!” the frontman interjects), the Glaswegians seem to have no such inclination. That track kicks off Franz’s
“I find it shocking how many bands you see trying to chase contemporary trends and making themselves instantly unfashionable.”
- ALEX KAPRANOS
sixth with a knowing throwaway – “Alright, here we go with riff one…” – before jangling into play and subsequently exploding with a massive, arms-around-your mates terrace chorus. It’s unashamedly big and melodic: a tendency that, Kapranos explains, was, from the beginning, one of the most audacious moves you could make as a bunch of guys from art school.
“When we formed our band, the music that our contemporaries in Glasgow were making was very much about making noise, and making something impenetrable that was difficult to listen to but easy to create. Whereas I wanted to make something that had a degree of complexity to it, but that was easy to comprehend,” he recalls. “That’s what I love in my favourite artists, and not just musicians. If you stand in front of Guernica, that’s one of the greatest pieces of art of the 20th Century but you understand immediately what it’s about; same with if you read someone like Raymond Carver or Oscar Wilde – there’s beautiful artistry in the writing, yet it’s a joy and a pleasure to read. That’s what I always want to do with music, not to prove to the audience that you’re having a difficult time understanding it so I,” he says, emphasising the directive with an eye-roll, “must be fucking intelligent. I must be more intelligent than you. I’m not interested in that.”
From the earliest days of the band’s press duties, Franz were famously quoted as saying they just wanted to write “music to make girls dance”. In 2024, after the greatest summer for buoyant, characterful female pop stars in recent memory and amid a generally genre-less modern playlisting culture, it’s a statement that might not seem all that exceptional. Back then, however, it immediately set the band apart from their peers with an “anti-macho” ethos that they still carry through today. “You had post-rock music for guys sitting cross-legged on the floor, hanging on to their beards and nodding on one side, and then you also had this post-Britpop, very blokey, FHM Magazine male swagger [on the other side], which we’ve never, never connected with at all,” he says. “And I suppose that glib statement summed it all up to a degree.”
The process of getting from there to here, then, has consistently been one not of reinvention but refinement; of finding “new things to do while being you”. “I’m not trying to search for a new identity,” Kapranos says. “I know what my identity is. But I’m still trying to find new things to say to the world and new ways of saying them. I think [the key] is being able to say: ‘This is who I am and I’m very glad about who I am and I’m comfortable’. And that’s not just about being in a band, that’s about being a successful human being in general.”
Successful human beings might have created Franz Ferdinand’s latest but even successful human beings are complex things and, running throughout the record, are ripples of paranoia, passion, longing and, of course, fear. Fear, in their world however, is not something to run from but to run into. “Putting yourself in the situation where you have that fear in your stomach, whether that’s getting on stage or going on a roller coaster, if you go through life not having those feelings then is that even living? You’re just plodding along,” says Hardy. “I like ‘The Human Fear’ as the idea of embracing being alive. And then afterwards, when you’ve completed the task that’s given you that feeling, then you feel amazing.”
On ‘Hooked’ – the sleazy synth number whose lyrics give the record its title – that fear comes in the form of diving headfirst into a new relationship; ‘Tell Me I Should Stay’ begins with gothic melodrama as it slinks into visions of a tryst that could become more. ‘The Doctor’, meanwhile, is a propulsive, self-contained vignette that’s classic Franz Ferdinand. Stemming back to the singer’s childhood hospital trips at the mercy of his chronic asthma, it narrates an entire trepidation-to-institutionalisation story arc in 140 seconds. “I’d often spend extended periods of time in the hospital and, when you first arrived, you’d be panicking. But as the days go by, you’d find yourself getting comfortable and being looked after and cared for,” he recalls. “So when it was time to be discharged, I remember very distinctly thinking, ‘Maybe there’s still a bit of a wheeze and I need to stay a few more days!’ That’s what institutions do to you.”
Hardy explains that drilling down into these concepts was as integral to creating the record as figuring out the music within it.
“I’ve got zero interest in jamming. I just don’t get the point. But I like to talk about music and I like the potential of what a band can do and can be,” he says as Kapranos picks up: “I think that’s probably the thing that sets us apart from other bands more than anything else. Most bands exist because there’s a bunch of musicians that want to play, so they sit down and go, ‘Let’s play some music’. Whereas with Bob it’s [always been] more about the big things: What does a band do? How do you reach the world? What are the things you’re trying to say with it, rather than the tedious minutiae of whether someone can play a blues scale or not. That’s boring; it’s the big ideas that are exciting.”
And Franz Ferdinand have still, undeniably, got big ideas. When we question if the seven year gap since their last indicated a wobble as to whether a sixth LP would in fact emerge, the frontman looks as confused, as if we’d suggested he might want to lop off a finger for a laugh. “The things that delayed us were Covid and doing the greatest hits record, but there was never any question that we wouldn’t go back in the studio,” he quickly clarifies. “I hope the next album doesn’t take seven years; I’d be really pissed off with both myself and the band if it took us that long and I don’t think it will.”
Describing the period of collating ‘Hits To The Head’ as “frustrating,” and the subsequent retrospective tour as one he “particularly didn’t enjoy”, Kapranos is firmly a forwardfacing kind of guy. Where many of their early-‘00s peers, from Kaiser Chiefs to Bloc Party, are gearing up for a rose-tinted 2025 of anniversary tours, Franz are clearly happy to have hopped off that train and moved back into their own lane. If they were that way inclined, the band could probably dine out on the nostalgia circuit forever, but for the Glaswegian indie stalwarts, the only real satisfaction of assessing what had come before was to cement where they went next. “It showed me what the strengths of the band were and what I LIKED about the band. It clarified very distinctly what made Franz Ferdinand, Franz Ferdinand,” the frontman says. “And there’s nothing more motivational than a sense of frustration to make you want to get things done.”
When it comes to truly defining Franz Ferdinand, then, maybe the game card needs a whole other section. A bloodyminded devotion to the creative cause? Bingo. A selfdescribed “stubbornness and contrariness” in pursuit of the things that matter? Bingo. A commitment to keeping things smart and interesting that hasn’t wavered in two decades?
B-I-N-G-O. “I’m not a particularly nostalgic person. I don’t have a romanticised idea of the past or think that the past is necessarily a better place to live; it’s just the place you were rather than the place you are at the moment,” says Kapranos. “And the place you are or the place you’re stepping into for me is way more exciting.”
‘The Human Fear’ is out 10th January via Domino. DIY
“I know what my identity is. But I’m still trying to find new things to say to the world and new ways of saying them.” - ALEX KAPRANOS
“I’ve got zero interest in jamming. I just don’t get the point.” - BOB HARDY
DO YOU WANT TO? (NO)
When it comes to modern listening habits, Alex Kapranos knows what he likes, and he knows what he doesn’t give a shit about.
“I have a funny relationship with most music around me at the moment or at any time. There’s always three or four things I find exciting, like right now I like English Teacher and Sprints and Chappell Roan. I love all of those things. And there’s occasionally the odd thing that I really don’t like which I tend not to talk about because what’s the point of bitching? The rest of it I tend to just not care about and not listen to it, and I feel like my attitude is the same as I have to people.
Think about walking around London and all the people you pass everyday in your life - most of them, you just ignore! They’re there but you’re not paying them any attention; you notice them, but it doesn’t move you in any way. But then you have your friends and the people you like and you’re really excited to see them - and maybe there’s a couple you don’t like who you want to avoid - but the majority, you just ignore them, and that’s how I feel about music as well. Most of it’s just there and who cares!”
REVIEWS
This issue: FLO, Father John Misty, Michael Kiwanuka, Katie Gavin and more.
Access All Areas
Island
FLO - comprising Jorja Douglas, Renée Downer and Stella Quaresma - carry the vocal-based pop baton passed down from the likes of Sugababes, SWV and “countless other iconic baddies,” to use the words of Wicked actor Cynthia Erivo on the record’s red-curtain opener ‘Intro’. This legacy is reanimated full-throttle by the 2023 BRIT Rising Star recipients across debut ‘Access All Areas’.
It’s meta in its imitation, depicting a staged showcase of inspired, energetic, throwback R&B that infuses “bad bitch replenishment” to a post-Destiny’s Child world with campy reverence. Its soulful vignettes recapture the confident essence of the turn-of-the-millennium anti-fuckboy trope: see the summery percussion of ‘Caught Up’, which warns against unfaithful players, or the deep rhythm of the post-breakup ‘Shoulda Woulda Coulda’. Yet the trio push the pastiche beyond nostalgia: flourishes of contemporary R&B feature across, for example, ‘How Does It Feel’, with its dark pop refrain; the nightlife synths of ‘IWH2BMX’; Rihanna-meetsPussycat Dolls standout ‘Nocturnal’, with its waxy, melty outro, and the punky concert showstopper ‘I’m Just A Girl’.
A “feast for [the] ears” indeed, ‘Access All Areas’ is a throwback homage and then some. Music for girls, gays and theys with stupid boyfriends, this lush album wields trending nostalgia and ‘00s era sisterhood to relight the torch of a bygone R&B zeitgeist. A definitive debut. Otis Robinson LISTEN: ‘Shoulda Woulda Coulda’ FLO
A definitive debut.
KATIE GAVIN
What A Relief Saddest Factory
Signed to Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records, it seemed inevitable that MUNA vocalist Katie Gavin would one day flex her singer-songwriting muscles beyond the confines of the three-piece pop outfit. Across their 11-year existence, whispers of Americana and country teased an itch to sway from gargantuan power-pop bops towards cardigan-and-a-cuppa kneetappers, and on debut solo record ‘What A Relief’, dusty rays of fiery dawn reveal that at Katie’s core lies a knack for Alanis Morissette-adjacent, acoustic soft-pop.
Here, she explores the human condition through the lens of domesticity: the mundanity of long-term romance; the slow death of codependence; reckless complacency; the loss of identity when lovers leave, and the inevitability of mimicking familial romantic failures. To an imaginary daughter, she admits they’re destined to share more in common than they’d like (‘The Baton’), yet Katie also makes efforts to undo generational trauma before the roots become too stubborn (‘Inconsolable’). Meanwhile, the off-piste delirium of ‘Sanitised’, the record’s most animated cut, paints the cutting reality of malleability - and gender pressures - in love. Here, her pen is as deft as ever, pointing to neuroses yet-mined by even the most introspective romantic.
Among the cobwebbed corners of a home riddled with swept-underthe-rug tension, Gavin is fairly content with those little devastations, the disappointments and obsessions that come part-and-parcel with love and lineage, because in the aching tedium often lies familiarity, meaning and, ultimately, home - as aptly described on standout Mitski collab ‘As Good As It Gets’. ‘What A Relief’ is subtle in sound but wildly rapturous in its admissions, an intricately crafted depiction of comfortable heartache. And in her solo debut, Gavin moves towards the hall of fame status of the poetic songwriters that made her. Otis Robinson
LISTEN: ‘As Good As It Gets’
Subtle in sound but wildly rapturous in its admissions.
MXMTOON Liminal Space AWAL
Since her 2017 YouTube debut, mxmtoon has steadily risen to indie-pop prominence. Propelled by TikTok virality, collaborations, and even a few placements on the soundtrack to streaming hit Heartstopper, she has cemented her place in the genre as well as building a loyal fanbase along the way. Three albums and three EPs later, enter ‘liminal space’. Born after her mother’s cancer diagnosis, ‘liminal space’ sees Maia grapple with the decisions she was forced to make during this time. Faced with life-altering scenarios, she could have retreated to the familiar comfort of her bedroom pop roots. Instead, she rises to the occasion, making ‘liminal space’ her boldest project to date. Despite this sonic self-assuredness, uncertainty still runs through the album’s lyrics. On ‘god’, an acoustic, confessional piece, Maia grapples with her faith (or lack thereof). Similarly, on ‘rain’, she contemplates possibly moving back to California after her mother’s diagnosis. Musically, however, ‘liminal space’ leans fully into exciting, unexplored territory. For example, ‘i hate texas’ is a country-tinted track with big, bold choruses that transition into jaunty string arrangements. Similarly, the Kero Kero Bonito feature on ‘the situation’ fits like a glove, with Sarah Midori’s playful voice adding a sense of whimsy to what is, at its core, a profoundly sad song. These risks, where she balances familiar diary-like lyrics with ambitious new sounds, make for an introspective yet refreshingly unpredictable album. ‘liminal space’ is a definitive step forward for mxmtoon. Her most confident and self-assured to date. Sophie Flint Vázquez LISTEN: ‘god?’ Introspective yet refreshingly unpredictable.
CRAWLERS
The Mess We Seem To Make
Sonically rich and musically accomplished, Crawlers transformed from buzzy newcomers into genuine rock contenders.
AMYL AND THE SNIFFERS
Cartoon Darkness
Rough Trade
Anyone wondering whether international infamy would affect Amyl and The Sniffers’ musical output can rest easy just one line into opener ‘Jerkin’’: “You’re a dumb cunt”. For the most part, the Aussies’ third full-length is refreshingly familiar, eschewing the seemingly perennially attractive mode of sanding off hard edges and slowing the tempo. Instead, the outfit’s sonic maturity lives in the varied spaces they create for vocalist Amy Taylor to revel in the spotlight, such as with the classic rock riff that underpins ‘Tiny Bikini’, or her impassioned yell in tandem with a sprawling guitar throughout ‘Do It Do It’. When things do take a turn for the less punchy, there’s always a payoff: as ‘Big Dreams’ threatens to descend into plod, for example, it cuts out for ‘It’s Mine’ to thunder into life like a musical gotcha; Amy’s almost-soft singing on ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’, meanwhile, amplifies the smirk of the line, “You were down in Sydney getting jacked off”. While, yes, the faster, noisier tracks are the standouts here‘Pigs’ and in particular ‘Motorbike Song’, the latter a glorious paean to hedonism - the album’s most impactful moment is perhaps saved for its closing gambit. The central refrain of ‘Me And The Girls’ taps directly into much of the group’s output, but here, the line and its implications are used as an impeccable device. In the song’s first verse, it follows a take on the playground staple theme of ‘girls rule, boys drool’ (“You and your boy band, ugly and hairy / Me and the girls look snazzy and hot”); by the second, it’s “Me and the girls are stealing our napkins / Me and the girls don’t want to be taxed / Me and the girls, we want free abortions,” and “Me and the girls, we don’t want protection / Me and the girls don’t want to be boxed / Me and the girls are gonna go party / You and the boys can shut the fuck up”. On a record from a band who know only raw and real, it’s somehow all the more of a sucker punch. Moreover, the song almost directly takes its musical template from Blondie’s ‘Rapture’, a funky strut with Amy delivering the final verse as a proto-rap monologue much like punk foremother Debbie Harry did in 1980. Musically soundtracking a good time but lyrically soundtracking a real time is pretty much what most want from an Amyl and The Sniffers record, and on that ‘Cartoon Darkness’ delivers. Bella Martin LISTEN: ‘Me and the Girls’
WALLICE
The Jester Dirty Hit
Over the past four years and three EPs, Los Angeles native Wallice has continued to grow as a creatively intriguing prospect, documenting the early 20s female experience with scuzzy guitars and a wry wink. It’s with her debut full-length ‘The Jester’, though, that her true talents are fully revealed. Eschewing virality in favour of something ambitious and broad in scope, the album’s fourteen tracks hang around a conceptualised tale of the titular jester, in what’s a gloriously witty - and sometimes meta - metaphor of young artists today. ‘The Opener’ is at once heartbreaking and exhilarating in its deadpan delivery (“I’m just the opener / Talk right over me,” she croons), while the country swagger of ‘Hurry Babe’ amps up the song’s cautionary tale, as provoked by our narrator’s hectic schedule (“I know I should slow down but I’m in a rush”). Sonically, too, the record runs the gamut of genre, with the fidgety guitars of Albert Hammond Jr adding a piercing indie rock edge to ‘Clown Like Me’ before ‘Manipulate’ later leaps down a glitchy, almost-industrial rabbit hole. A captivating, gutsy debut that keeps listeners on their toes, ‘The Jester’ proves just how adept Wallice is at entertaining. Sarah Jamieson LISTEN: ‘Hurry Babe’
THE LAST DINNER PARTY
Prelude To Ecstasy 11 tracks of sky-high, grandiose ambition.
TYLER, THE CREATOR CHROMAKOPIA
Columbia
It’s hard to think of an artist who has gone on such a steep learning curve, growing up in public and undergoing quite such an extreme personality arc, as Tyler, the Creator. At the end of his teens, he released debut solo records ‘Bastard’ and 2011’s ‘Goblin’ - the latter of which included the rape-glorifying ‘Tron Cat’, a song that saw him temporarily banned from entering the UK. 13 years later, however, and ‘Chromokopia’’s ‘Hey Jane’ sees the rapper delivering a thoughtful verse on female body autonomy, the set-piece in a track about an unwanted pregnancy that’s unrecognisable from how, you imagine, he might have dealt with the topic long ago: “You gotta deal with all the mental and physical change / All the heaviest emotions, and the physical pain / Just to give the kid the man last name? Fuck that”.
Of course, 13 years is a long time. But the memory of what came before only serves to underline the emotional range of Tyler’s eighth: a deeply personal album that tackles ageing and possible parenthood (‘Tomorrow’), racial pride (‘I Killed You’) and his relationship with his father (‘Like Him’). Where the latter topic has regularly cropped up throughout his canon, here it ends with a snippet of closure-giving words from his mother Bonita Smith - “I’m sorry I was young, but he always wanted to be a father to you”; one of several times in which her presence acts as a guiding force steering the musician throughout these moments of reflection and discovery. Musically, ‘Chromokopia’ is just as vital. The glammy guitars of ‘Noid’ are amped up by a sampled vocal from ‘70s Zambian musician Paul Ngozi, lending a prowl and threat to a track about stalking and fan fear. The aforementioned ‘I Killed You’ tumbles along on barely more than a simple African drumbeat and sing-song backing vocals, while ‘Sticky’ (feat. Glorilla, Sexxy Red and Lil Wayne) is a straight-up banger.
There are multiple nods across the record to Tyler’s own growth and desire to move past the decisions that defined his early career. “See, T changed like the ‘fit got dirty / I was young man, then a n**** hit thirty,” goes ‘Thought I Was Dead’; “That version of T you knew is a memory,” goes ‘Tomorrow’. ‘Chromokopia’ is not only a testament to the importance of allowing people to grow and change, it’s also - by anyone’s standards - a nuanced, creatively exciting document of a time of life in flux. Lisa Wright LISTEN: ‘Noid’
A testament to the importance of allowing people to grow and change.
Bleachers
Freeing, open, and profoundly relatable; that Jack Antonoff has spent much of his time collaborating and still has so much left for himself is remarkable.
This Could Be Texas
Champs
If there’s one thing State Champs have perfected, it’s the art of writing a top-notch pop-punk tune. So it should come as a surprise to nobody that this new self-titled album is packed with exactly that: anthemic, high-energy tracks that stay true to their roots while continuing to craft their sound. Their signature angsty niche is still there, but robust guitars, strategically placed backing vocals, and even occasional impactful moments of silence make for an impressively well put together record. Take ‘Hell Of It’, for example, where grinding guitars build tension before its ambitious choruses. Similarly, the delightfully grungy instrumentals in ‘Silver Cloud’ provide a textured base for Derek DiScanio’s vibrant vocals. Derek’s vocals are a highlight throughout; blending grit with his staple bold intonation, he creates moments that invite heartfelt singalongs. From the explosive bridge of ‘Sobering’ and the joyous choruses in ‘Light Blue’ to the raw emotion during ‘The Constant’’s “like a fucking con artist” line, ‘State Champs’ is an album made for singalongs during their raucous live shows. ‘State Champs’ isn’t reinventing the wheel, but it doesn’t need to. Instead, it showcases what State Champs do best: blend infectious hooks, punchy vocals, and anthemic choruses for a roaring good time. In fact, five albums into their career, they may have just made the quintessential State Champs record. Sophie Flint Vázquez
LISTEN: ‘Hell Of It’
TWO SHELL
Two Shell Young
Even those who’ve touched grass within the last decade will find it requires putting a lot of cynicism aside not to roll eyes at the idea of another enigmatic artist ‘playfully’ hiding their identity. In short, it’s just as well ‘Two Shell’ is as good as it is. Somewhere between cut-and-paste, and the sound of an hour’s daytime radio pop sliced into tiny pieces to be reconstructed, familiar sounds sit disconcertingly alongside jarring repetition, while the mood veers from cult underground club to overpriced East London designer boutique. Like a post-PC Music Jamie xx, skittish beats intersperse slick pop moments, such as on the hip hop indebted ‘(rock✧solid)’, the (relatively) subtle ‘dreamcast’, or ‘Stars..’, which crams pop, hyperpop, drum’n’bass, and the recent UK Garage revival sound into a sub-fourminute track which also provides one of the record’s cleanest pop moments. It’s a club record, no doubt: ‘come to terms’ and especially ‘Everybody Worldwide’ sit on the radio-friendly side, while ‘₊ ˚ ⊹gimmi it’ lands on the other end of the spectrum. The oddest moment, though, is reserved for ‘be somebody’ - a banger whose titular hook bears unexpected similarity to Kings of Leon’s 2008 hit, ‘Use Somebody’. A sonic journey, and a consistently interesting one at that, which never threatens to become inaccessible: ‘Two Shell’ can’t fail to be a winner. Ed Lawson LISTEN: ‘be somebody’
A beauty of a record.
MICHAEL KIWANUKA Small Changes
Polydor
It would be easy to assume that, following the overwhelming success of his partially self-titled release five years ago, that Michael Kiwanuka might have felt the pressure this time around. Judging by the effortless ease with which his fourth album saunters into view, though, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Once again returning to work with producing masters Danger Mouse and Inflo - completing, at least for now, a trilogy of collaborations - ‘Small Changes’ is a beauty of a record, once again showcasing Michael’s innate ability to produce songs that feel both timelessly classic yet still grounded very much in the present. Take the dreamy instrumentation that backs opener ‘Floating Parade’, which manages to evoke images of just that, or the gorgeous piano and haunting vocals of ‘Rebel Soul’ that make for a truly arresting offering. The featherlight fingerprints of his musical inspirations feel to be all over the album - take the relatively (for him, at least) lo-fi feel of ‘Lowdown (part I)’, a track inspired by his love of ‘70s Afro-rock, which bares echoes of Blur’s epic ballad ‘Under The Westway’ - in a way that never feels overwrought or heavy-handed; working instead to add to its nostalgic splendour. An intimate but confident record that reveals more of its magic with every listen.
Sarah Jamieson
LISTEN: ‘Floating Parade’
Arguably THE defining album of 2024, it has its own colour palette, aesthetic, and now dictionary definition. Need we say more?
Photos: Luis “Panch” Perez, Marco Grey
Soft
album that sees Billie hitting somehow even higher highs. It’s her best yet, and an affecting sign of the times.
CHARLI XCX BRAT
Unless spoiling for a fight, you really don’t want to hear the words ‘Come Ahead’ in Glasgow. Two words plucked from Bobby Gillespie’s home city, you’ll usually hear the ominous saying in a thick Scottish accent from someone a few Tennent’s deep just before a scrap. It makes total sense then, that Primal Scream are a band meaning business on their twelfth studio album. That’s clear right from the gospel chorus introducing the album on ‘Ready To Go Home’ before a disco bassline pulls the listener straight for the nearest dancefloor. Having taken some time out through lockdown to pen his memoir ‘Tenement Kid’ in the run-up to the record, their unmistakable frontman said “he didn’t want to make another straight up rock and roll album”. That’s clear in tracks like the disco-infused ‘Love Insurrection’ as he swoons over a jangly guitar-line with some of his most potent lyricism to date: What do we believe? / When we punish the poor for being poor / And celebrate greed.” Elsewhere, ‘Innocent Money’ is built for a festival mainstage as the swirling ‘Screamadelica’tinged anthem cuts into a spoken word segment and a backing singer fumes of the wealth divide: “The slugs at the bottom feed the wolves at the top.” An album packing plenty of highlights, it’s clear from ‘Come Ahead’ why Primal Scream remain such a respected and unique force in music today. A group refusing to stand still, this is another chapter in a band priding themselves on forward movement while celebrating their storied past. Rhys Buchanan
LISTEN: ‘Love Insurrection’
FREAK SLUG
I Blow Out Big Candles
Future Classic
You don’t call your project Freak Slug if you’re particularly bothered with toeing the line of the perfectly put-together and traditionally feminine. The pseudonym of Manchester’s Xenya Genovese, debut ‘I Blow Out Big Candles’ instead positions the musician in a ‘90s-influenced world that leans heavily into distorted fuzz and effect-laden, dreamy vocals that teeter between alluring and bored, giving the general vibe of someone who probably spent a lot of her school hours smoking behind the gym shed. However where, with some artists, this laconic approach can sometimes result in a lack of actual, y’know, tunes, Genovese also has an ear for melody that gives these tracks something tangible to hang onto within the haze. ‘Spells’ is an easy highlight; a slinking, sleazy thing that hooks around a hypnotic bass line before bringing in the sort of odd, twitching synths that elevate the track into original, exciting territory. Likewise ‘Hello’ begins in approachable, jangly fashion - something like early, wide-eyed Swim Deep - before the tide turns, flipping the middle eight into dirgy, creepy greatness. It’s when Genovese lets the Freak overtake the lackadaisical Slug that ‘... Big Candles’ is best. ‘Cherry Pie’ is clearly attempting a stylistic choice with its constantly repeated “I won’t get bored”, but the end product veers too close for comfort; instead, opt for tracks like opener ‘Ya Ready’ where, even with stoned tempos and minimal ingredients, Genovese’s innate idiosyncrasies shine through. Lisa Wright
LISTEN: ‘Spells’
BERWYN
WHO AM I?
As skilled in pop immediacy as it is emotional expression, here BERWYN can, seemingly, do just about anything.
The Great Impersonator
Anti-Pop / Columbia
Much has been made of Halsey and team’s series of photographic transformations in the lead-up to the release of this fourth album - a quite frankly astonishing level of detail went into each image, in which the singer appears as one of their inspirations; a literal take on the title ‘The Great Impersonator’. In reality, few of the artists paired with tracks from the record are obvious partners: the warm bassline of ‘Panic Attack’ does indeed bring to mind the work of Stevie Nicks, ‘Letter To God (1983)’ is indeed very Springsteen, and there’s a discernible hint of PJ Harvey in the low strum of ‘Dog Years’. But, pair ‘Ego’ (“I think that I should try to kill my ego / ‘Cause if I don’t, my ego might kill me”) with the closing title track (“…and then I redesign / And put myself together like some little Frankenstein”) and the record’s premise shifts to ego death as a concept in itself – Halsey’s impersonations aren’t those of their Instagram account, but of Halsey themself. The stylistic turns – which are at times disconcertingly whiplash-inducing in their frequent changes – are attempts at trying on personas or styles to see which one fits, in order to re-find their ego. It’s here the best tracks emerge: ‘Darwinism’ riffs off Pixies’ ‘Where Is My Mind’ with a piano line that introduces a dark, affecting number; there’s a curiously trip-hop tone to the claustrophobic ‘Arsonist’, while ‘I Never Loved You’ is quite possibly the most Jack Antonoff track with zero public traces of the man’s work attached to it. Together, the collection of songs reads like an audible exercise book, Halsey working through a tumultuous time in their personal life via song. It shows they’re an artist decently versed in multiple styles, but in requiring a backstory for the result to not ultimately seem messy – and, be sure, the lyrics do in fact reflect a messy time, so that’s not a word chosen dismissively – the likes of opener ‘Only Living Girl in LA’ and ‘Hurt Feelings’ just sound dated. Overall, the whole doesn’t quite hit as some hefty emotional lyrical turns (‘Arsonist’’s “You built a small container to keep all of me confined / I am water, I am shapeless, I am fluid, I’m divine”) indicate it should. Bella Martin
LISTEN: ‘Arsonist’
JACK WHITE
No Name
Re-embracing earlier sounds without rejecting what’s followed, ‘No Name’ presents his younger self alongside everything he’s learned since.
Able to disarm and surprise us, even after all these years.
So iconic an indie rock figure is Kim Deal in her own right that it feels like some trick of the mind that this, at the age of 63, is her first full-length solo record. She threw herself whole-heartedly into bringing back The Breeders after her departure from the Pixies’ fold a decade ago, and the Dayton band’s comeback record, ‘All Nerve’, suggested her songwriting chops had not abandoned her. ‘Nobody Loves You More’, though, feels like a different beast entirely; ambitious and stylistically varied, it demonstrates new sides to Kim both musically and thematically. The title track opens the record with a triumphant blend of horns and strings that suggest nothing was off the table for her when approaching these songs. Sure enough, she finds room here for styles both classic - there’s slide-guitar doo-wop on ‘Are You Mine’, jazzy impressionism on ‘Summerland’ - and contemporary; ‘Crystal Mind’ is dark dance-punk, while closer ‘A Good Time Pushed’ might be the closest thing on the record to the breeziness of The Breeders. This is a diffuse set of tracks, some of which Kim has been working on for years, but bringing them together reveals an openness and vulnerability to both her lyrics and the sound of her voice, especially on the cautiously optimistic ‘Disobedience’. Like her contemporary, Kim Gordon, did with ‘The Collective’ earlier this year, Deal demonstrates an appetite for sonic adventure and an ability to disarm and surprise us on ‘Nobody Loves You More’, even after all these years. Joe Goggins
LISTEN: ‘A Good Time Pushed’
Romance
Taking the art seriously, but themselves not at all.
KATY J PEARSON
Someday, Now
Re-moulding her quintessential sound via the experimental cast of production, it’s a departure - but a truly successful one.
Photo: Steve Gullick
OUR GIRL
The Good Kind
Bella Union
Our Girl’s debut album, ‘Stranger Today’ came in a period of time during which frontwoman Soph Nathan appeared to have a superhuman ability to be everywhere at once, its 2018 release following both The Big Moon’s debut album and Marika Hackman’s ‘I’m Not Your Man’ (on which the TBM play). Six years on, and despite her other band’s schedule appearing to slow – Top Ten third album ‘Here Is Everything’ having been released in 2022 – still the announcement of Our Girl’s ‘The Good Kind’ appeared to come from nowhere. That’s the most surprising thing on offer, the record saturated with a familiar warmth that on occasion belies its largely melancholy tone. Shoegazey layering and classic indie rock are met with a reliable pop sensibility, such as on the building ‘Who Do You Love’ or the foreboding ‘Unlike Anything’: on the latter, it never really becomes clear if the titular “unlike anything else” refrain is intended to be good or bad. Subtle shifts in sound balance out the tendency to softly lull - see the strings of the title track, or the drum loops of ‘Relief’. ‘The Good Kind’ is a slow burner, but a rewarding one. Bella Martin LISTEN: ‘Relief’
TOTAL TOMMY
Bruises
PIAS
It’s unsurprising to learn of the electro-pop sensibilities to Jess Holt’s former project, because – reintroduced as total tommy – she now writes chorus hooks that can move mountains. The Sydney artist’s debut album couples shimmering indie-grunge guitars with the warm, fuzzy nostalgia of youth, as Holt stakes her claim to break out as Australia’s next great guitar act. Her personal snapshot into the emotional rollercoaster of young adulthood, ‘bruises’ – referring to the wounds that heal along the way – is coated in guitar influences, ranging from Fontaines D.C. to Momma. Holt half-whispers through the restless catchiness of ‘ADELINE’, while the loved-up euphoria of ‘Girlfriend’ ascends into another stratosphere. The punk-tinged ‘SPIDER’ shakes off an unwanted “stage five clinger” from her life, while parts of ‘SODA’ could be a long-lost Lorde track, blissfully ringing out from the depths of the ocean. Consistently produced yet multi-faceted through the pacing of its storytelling, ‘bruises’ represents an artist who’s clearly taken time to intricately hone their craft. Here, Holt’s sonic versatility and emotional horsepower ensure that total tommy is en route to becoming one of guitar music’s guiding lights. Rishi Shah
LISTEN: ‘ADELINE’
FIDLAR
Surviving The Dream
Brimming with the band’s exhilarating live presence, this fourth album distils all the SoCal trio’s best qualities into song. OCTOBER
DU BLONDE
Sniff More Gritty
Mama Bird Recording Co
The dual strengths of ‘Sniff More Gritty’, the fourth album as Du Blonde from the North East singer-songwriter Beth Jeans Houghton, come from the artist’s knack for writing a killer hook, and an astute way of choosing their collaborators. The former runs the length of the record, in particular on grungy opener ‘Perfect’, through to the gang vocals of ‘TV Star’ and the power pop of ‘Dollar Coffee’. With the latter, they’ve hit a masterstroke. Starting at home, The Futureheads’ Ross Millard and Paul Smith of Maximo Park join in on ‘Radio Jesus’ to form a sort of North East indie holy trinity. ‘Next Big Thing’ - possibly the record’s biggest moment, with a ‘90s inspired huge chorus pierced by visceral gnarl - features a turn from Skin, with the song’s lyrical theme (misogynistic comments received over the course of her career thus far) being echoed in the way the Skunk Anansie frontwoman steps in, almost as backup, as she makes her appearance.
And even smarter still is the contribution of Laura Jane Grace on the angsty ‘Solitary Individual’. This feature first complements the record’s American slant; its grungy indie rock is closer to OG emo, slacker and college rock than anything this side of the Atlantic. And, considering the song’s message of ‘us against the world’ (“I am a solitary individual / I know exactly who I am”) alongside the Against Me! frontwoman’s status as a trans rock pioneer and Du Blonde’s own non-binary identity, the layers can thus be peeled off one by one. There are points here where it threatens to remain a little samey – the ‘80s radio pop of ‘Yesterday’ quickly becomes repetitive, while ‘ICU’ hints at something more yet never quite gets going – but mostly ‘Sniff More Gritty’ is another solid release. Alex Doyle LISTEN: ‘Next Big Thing’
FATHER JOHN MISTY
Mahashmashana
Bella Union
Conciseness is not a concept that’s ever been readily associated with Josh Tillman’s work and it seems a strange word to associate with a record that unwinds gradually, deliberately, its eight tracks having an average length of over six minutes. And yet, something about ’Mahashmashana’ feels succinct; there is a clarity of vision here, as well as a willingness to cut loose stylistically, that means it avoids some of the past pitfalls of Father John Misty records. It takes its title from mahāśmaśāna, the Sanskrit word for “great burial ground, all things put going thither”, and into this particular furnace Tillman throws a smorgasbord of different ideas and melds something cogent from them. There is groove and strut to ‘She Cleans Up’, and jazzy slow-burn storytelling on ‘Josh Tillman and the Accidental Dose’. On the album’s lead single, ‘Screamland’, he crafts a seven-minute, softly psych-inflected wonder, incorporating a soaring chorus to underscore the song’s themes of redemption and love’s power in the face of adversity. He is on powerful lyrical form here, having learned to get out of his own way after the overblown, too-clever-forits-own-good ‘Pure Comedy’; his writing has improved palpably with every release since, and across the board, ’Mahashmashana’ might be his best to date, an album that ploughs a relentlessly adventurous furrow while striking a compelling balance between the epic and the intimate. Joe Goggins
LISTEN: ‘She Cleans Up’
CHRISTOPHER
OWENS
I Wanna Run
Barefoot Through Your Hair
The former Girls frontman has rediscovered all his old songwriting tools.
LAURA
MARLING
Patterns In Repeat
A tapestry of love, lineage, and the inextricable links between parents and their children.
COMING UP!
A handy lil’ list of albums worth getting excited for.
BIIG PIIG
11:11
It’s been a long time coming, but the October cover star’s debut full-length will hit shelves on 7th February.
LAUREN MAYBERRY
Vicious Creature
Not much warning for this one, but after that year-long wait, Lauren’s solo debut is out on 6th December.
MANIC STREET PREACHERS
Critical Thinking
Fifteen albums in, and we’ve the sneaking suspicion the band’s messages will resonate as much as ever. Released 31st January.
CENTRAL CEE
Can’t Rush Greatness
Technically the rapper’s debut album (2022’s ‘23’ was a fifteen-track mixtape, so you’d be forgiven for assuming he’d already had one out), it’s released on 24th January.
Photo: Katie Silvester
EPS, ETC*
*anything they refuse to call an album.
ALICE COSTELLOE
When It’s The Time
Moshi Moshi
Continuing her musical reintroduction, Alice Costelloe - now releasing under her full name, after one too many queries as to whether the ‘Al’ diminutive she’d been using was in fact ‘A.I.’ - builds on the soft, sweet indie pop of last year’s ‘So Neurotic’ with a second EP, this time making use of the synth menagerie of producer Mike Lindsay. Centring on Alice’s delicate-yet-deliberate vocal once again, ‘When It’s The Time’ sees her dip in and out of an electronic palette – the surprisingly bassy line of the title track, the pep of ‘I Never Dance’ – while keeping focus on where her strength lies: providing a contemporary take on the kind of indie pop the ‘90s made a name for. ‘My Whole Life’ is every bit as wistful musically as its lyrics tell, while the best in show is ‘If I Decide’, fizzing with nostalgic warmth. Bella Martin LISTEN: ‘If I Decide’
Empty Space FADER
There’s a distinct theme of intoxicated revelry to Peter Xan’s latest EP, ‘Empty Space’; a tracklist boasting the central run of ‘Nicotine’, ‘Opium’, and ‘For The Weekend’ should give a decent clue that the music therein isn’t exactly soft-edged and subtle. The successor to last year’s ‘GOD SAVE THE KING’, it’s a project which builds on Xan’s well-laid foundations (he’s already earned co-signs from guitar music royalty Dan Carey, Grian Chatten and Pete Doherty) and further cements him as the kind of vital new voice that rock institutions like Reading and Leeds would do well to keep a very close eye on. Alongside stadium-sized riffs, Xan’s most striking quality is the space he allows himself to really flex his vocal range: where at points the delivery is biting and visceral (‘Empty Space’), at others it morphs into more of an assured flow (the densely-packed ‘Nicotine’ or jangly ‘Opium’), or even out and out melody (‘For The Weekend’; ‘Twisted’). An East London lad of Nigerian heritage, on ‘Empty Space’ Xan’s trump card is the way he skillfully nods to nostalgia, tapping into the brain-burrowing potency of a near-universal, teenage punk-rock ‘phase’ while simultaneously bringing a fresh perspective to the table. Daisy Carter LISTEN: ‘For The Weekend’
PARTY
It’s All Been Done Before Submarine Cat
As ominous synths underpin Lana Lubany’s ghostly vocal on opener ‘I Wish I Was Normal’, it’s near-impossible to imagine that the Palestinian-American artist only began to incorporate Arabic in her songs just two years ago. Where previous EP, last year’s ‘The Holy Land’, showcased shape-shifting alternative pop, here Lana fuses her two musical worlds seamlessly, and with compelling effect. Still in an introductory phase, the six-track collection sets Lana’s stall out well, switching conversationally between Arabic and English, making use of styles and sequences from her homeland – ‘YAFA’ named for her home city – as well as the American pop and R&B she grew up with. ‘Another Year’ takes on turn of the millennium R&B, toeing the line between nostalgic and referential expertly, while better still, closer ‘Set Her Free!’ pairs the mix with the kind of lyrical turns TLC might admire: “Your alibi’s got more holes than a sinking boat”. A captivating and infectious listen. Ed Lawson
LISTEN: ‘Set Her Free!’
AZIYA BAMBI
Atlantic
Though their name - a bipartite phrase formed of two quotidien words - might, at face value, suggest a band inclined to the sort of angular post-punk for which the capital has proved fertile ground, Flat Party are altogether more interesting. On second EP ‘It’s All Been Done Before’, they hone in on the best aspects of their January self-titled debut - wry lyrical self-awareness, straight-shooting riffs, and a penchant for flamboyance - to step into a sound which feels distinctively theirs. Opener ‘Circle’ pairs hallmarks of ‘00s indie with frequent dynamic shifts, gang vocals, and utterly unapologetic guitar solos, such that the overall effect is of a grand, almost ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’-type affair. A similar confidence is carried through the project’s remaining four tracks, too: ‘Paranoia/Delicate Dawn’, for example, channels mid-century pop (not dissimilar to Chicago outfit Brigitte Calls Me Baby) and ‘Shotgun’ has the sassy stomp of ‘Parklife’-era Blur. The closing title track, meanwhile, has its big crescendo two-thirds of the way through, electing instead to bid us adieu with a jazz piano outro. ‘It’s All Been Done Before’, as it turns out, is a winking push for originality. Daisy Carter
LISTEN: ‘Circles’
From posting one-woman-band covers of PJ Harvey and Jimi Hendrix to revelling in the new wave-inspired post-punk of her early work, London-based polymath Aziya has unapologetically crafted herself a genre-defying creative world. Arriving as an emphatic follow-up to her self-produced 2023 EP ‘LONELY CASTLES’, ten-track mixtape ‘BAMBI’ deconstructs patriarchal expectations through the lens of her experiences as a young woman in her twenties. Marked by the defiant statement of intent laid out in opener ‘magdalene’, it quickly becomes clear that Aziya’s voice isn’t the only one that we will be hearing throughout the record. Drawing on the narratives of various female figures, stretching from the darker tones of The Virgin Suicidesinspired ‘call my name (lux lisbon)’ to the voice memos of the women she surrounds herself with on ‘bambi summit’, it’s a resonant showpiece of the strength found in sisterhood. Woven together by her rule-bending guitar-based ethos, the project sees Aziya balance moments of vulnerability and emotional strength. While ‘party’s over’ and ‘crush’ navigate the fading beginnings of romantic connections, ‘bbydoll’ taps into a refreshingly self-assured side to her artistry. Reaffirming her newfound sense of identity with the closing title track, ‘BAMBI’ is not only a celebration of Aziya stepping into a new version of herself, but equally one for the women who remain by her side through it all. Emily Savage LISTEN: ‘bambi summit’
LOREN KRAMAR WED 6 NOV THE LOWER THIRD
GLASS ANIMALS THU 7 NOV THE O2
CRYSTAL MURRAY THU 7 NOV BERMONDSEY SOCIAL CLUB
OKAY KAYA FRI 8 NOV VILLAGE UNDERGROUND
IDER TUE 12 NOV HOXTON HALL
YAYA BEY MON 18 NOV LAFAYETTE
MILAN RING TUE 19 NOV FOLKLORE
TONY NJOKU WED 20 NOV ST MATTHIAS CHURCH
THE DARE WED 20 NOV
TUE 26 NOV WED 27 NOV HEAVEN
FRANCIS OF DELIRIUM THU 21 NOV STOKE NEWINGTON OLD CHURCH
W. H. LUNG THU 21 NOV ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL
MEYY THU 21 NOV ST PANCRAS OLD CHURCH
GORDI FRI 22 NOV ST PANCRAS OLD CHURCH
KAI BOSCH FRI 22 NOV COURTYARD THEATRE
CLARA LA SAN WED 27 NOV THU 28 NOV CORSICA STUDIOS
MARIA SOMERVILLE WED 27 NOV
CHATS PALACE
GOAT GIRL THU 28 NOV HEAVEN
PALACE SAT 30 NOV EVENTIM APOLLO
ML BUCH SAT 30 NOV UNION CHAPEL
POL
MON 2 DEC SHACKLEWELL ARMS
SODA BLONDE TUE 3 DEC CORSICA STUDIOS
CUMGIRL8 THU 5 DEC THE UNDERWORLD
FAT WHITE FAMILY WED 11 DEC THU 12 DEC FRI 13 DEC THE COLOUR FACTORY
LANDLESS SAT 8 FEB BUSH HALL
GEORGIE & JOE THU 13 FEB
CORSICA STUDIOS
HALF WAIF FRI 14 FEB KINGS PLACE
MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND FRI 21 FEB THE GRACE
SALOMÉ WU THU 27 FEB THE OLD CHURCH
MARY IN THE JUNKYARD THU 27 FEB
FABRIC
CHLOE QISHA THU 6 MAR OMEARA
SHARON VAN ETTEN & THE ATTACHMENT THEORY MON 10 MAR ROYAL ALBERT HALL
KELLY LEE OWENS THU 13 MAR TROXY
IDER TUE 18 MAR HEAVEN
LUXE THU 20 MAR ICA
SUNFLOWER THIEVES WED 2 APR
ST PANCRAS OLD CHURCH
ROSIE LOWE WED 9 APR ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL
THE ORCHESTRA (FOR NOW) THU 10 APR ICA
KABEAUSHÉ WED 14 MAY CORSICA STUDIOS
JULIA SOPHIE THU 22 MAY NEXT DOOR RECORDS TWO MOIN SAT 31 MAY BARBICAN HALL
LIVE
SŴN FESTIVAL
Various venues, Cardiff
Of all the new artist tastemaker festivals dotted throughout the increasingly packed yearly calendar, Cardiff’s Sŵn is a true winter gem in the crown. A genuine platform for spotlighting local talent as well as a magnet for returning heroes (headliners English Teacher) and country-wide breakthrough stars alike, it marries both sides of the coin while maintaining a spirit of true music fandom. You won’t find lanyard-waving fast passes or ridiculous, impossible queues here; instead, Cardiff is wonderfully manageable, with most of the 10 venues in hopping distance from each other.
One such venue, located in the vibey basement room beneath Jacob’s Antiques Centre – home to vintage wares, characterful bargains and a chirping parakeet – is where DIY’s stage parks itself up for the Saturday. Before the evening’s entertainment, however, it’s up to the venue’s roof garden for a trio of special afternoon treats that begins with a live podcast recording featuring main stage second headliner Antony Szmierek. Joining for a chat through his frankly ridiculous childhood as part of DIY’s Before They Knew Better pod (heading to a streaming service near you soon), the Mancunian reminisces about his wild school bus trips, where kids would regularly rip the lights off the ceiling, and simpler times sat in a peg basket as a toddler, watching the washing machine spin. A perfectly normal start to a festival day.
London’s Ellie Bleach is up next, performing a short, stripped-back set including a sad girl rework of the sassy ‘Doing Really Well Thanks’ and a country-tinged take on ‘Hottest Man Alive 1995’. Like Father John Misty without the Y chromosome, the sparser arrangements allow Bleach’s superlative, wry songwriting to really shine. Cardiff’s own Melin Melyn, meanwhile, are local celebrities in these parts and, following a secret set earlier in the day that sees their queue at Clwb Ifor Bach stretching down the road, their turn on the roof is packed. With an idiosyncratic and wonderfully
Welsh touch that puts them as natural successors to the likes of Super Furry Animals, it’s not just in winning tracks like ‘Vitamin D’ that they thrive. Dressed in matching Wes Anderson-adjacent outfits and with enough bants to fill a stand-up set (“This is a stripped-back set, so that means we’re going to take one item of clothing off after each song”), the band are a treat for all the senses.
Down to the basement, and if the uncharacteristically sunny afternoon had lured people into a false sense of security, then Alien Chicks are here to blast that irrefutably away. One minute they’re wild like black midi gone hardcore, then next comes a bossa nova bit, then we’re back to chaos. Cobwebs be gone. Though fellow Brixton Windmill regulars mary in the junkyard might conjure up a quieter storm, their following set contains just as much intensity. Vocalist Clari FreemanTaylor’s tone is naturally ethereal but beefs up on the climax of ‘Ghost’, stretching into falsetto on debut single ‘Tuesday’.
MELIN MELYN
AZIYA
ELLIE BLEACH
If Radiohead took a weird walk through the creepy bits of Moominland, you might end up here.
Having supported the likes of Black Honey and Jesse Jo Stark, Aziya has everything needed to make the jump up to big stage top billings herself.
Amping up the heavier side of recent tracks ‘bbydoll’ and ‘crush (tom verlaine)’, and ripping out guitar solos, tonight she’s an icon in the making who could straddle the pop and rock worlds with ease. Meanwhile, it’s friends reunited as Fräulein and Cosmorat – who recently joined forces for a remix – provide a magnetic one-two punch. The former, the PJ Harvey-channelling duo of guitarist
Joni Samuels and drummer Karsten Van der Tol, sound fuller and more confident than ever as Samuels manipulates her voice from resonant purr to full-on scream; the latter are a whirlwind of buoyant energy, with frontwoman Taylor Pollock the sort of magnetic leader you imagine will send Hayley Williams fans racing for the merch stall. When they come together to play their aforementioned collaborative take on Cosmorat’s ‘Backseat Baby’, it’s a joyful, unexpected treat.
The night rounds out with local favourites Half Happy who, now on their second set of the festival, still pull the punters in with lashings of ‘90s-influenced dream-pop. You can hear nods to Cocteau Twins in some moments, and Alvvays in others; as a whole, it’s a warm aural bath to relax in. And with a final set from Manchester trio Nightbus, who honour the legacy of their hometown with the sort dark, driving post-punk that nods so heavily to Joy Division it literally interpolates ‘Shadowplay’ into their own ‘Mirrors’, it’s time to emerge back onto the Cardiff street (via a goodnight to Jacob’s resident parakeet). Lisa Wright
THE BEST OF THE REST Automotion
Fronted by co-vocalists
Jesse Hitchman and Lennon Gallagher (yes, son of Liam), it’s commendable how Automotion have entirely swerved both the nepo route, instead plugging away firmly at the toilet circuit, and any real signs of Britpop 2.0 descendancy. Instead, the majority of their set at Clwb Ifor Bach leans into post-rock territory, creating dense walls of sound before throwing in a bit of baggy lightness and a bonkers mathy number at the end for fun.
The New Eves
Brighton quartet The New Eves feel like relatively solid bets for a big 2025 - not because their music is obviously commercially friendly; no, this is psych-folk, chanty, pagan oddness to the nth degree. But, through their complete commitment and understanding of the niche they’re channelling, there’s a cohesiveness that feels fully-formed and ready to go.
The NONE
Gathering pace as a true wordof-mouth live band, The NONE might still have no music available on traditional streaming services but the message has clearly reached Cardiff’s packed Clwb room. Fronted by the powerful, aggressive vocals of frontwoman Kaila Whyte, there’s heaviness and hardcore sensibilities here but also nods to the ‘00s indie dancefloor - thanks, likely, to the presence of Bloc Party’s OG bassist Gordon Moakes.
Casual Smart
Cardiff’s Casual Smart, playing upstairs at the Tiny Rebel taproom, are almost certainly too baby-faced to get served at the bar below, but their youth is their greatest weapon. Like The Moldy Peaches before them, there’s a ricketyness and fragility on show here, not least in recent debut single ‘It Doesn’t Get Any Easier’, that’s charm personified.
DUA LIPA Royal Albert Hall, London S
andwiched roughly halfway between her headline performance at this year’s Glastonbury and next summer’s shows at Wembley Stadium, the Royal Albert Hall’s spot in Dua Lipa’s holy trinity of iconic British stages may be somewhat of a diminutive one (its capacity is about equivalent to Brixton Academy or Hammersmith Apollo, for comparison), but tonight allows the pop superstar to firmly silence any remaining naysayers.
For, where the internet’s “go girl, give us nothing” meme was swapped for a viral dance moment at this year’s GRAMMYs, and her Glastonbury show took arena-filling pop moments to the hallowed outdoor setting of the Pyramid Stage, here the pomp of the room – and the addition of the Heritage Orchestra - allows a different side of Dua’s remarkable star quality to shine. For the most part, the focus is wholly on her vocal delivery and presence.
The entire floor is taken up by the stage: a shiny, strip-lit raised walkway snakes around to divide the orchestra pit in two while keeping it part of the show. Given the performance is being filmed for television broadcast, there are cameras at every turn; a drone on a zip wire travels across one side of the circular space, while others shuttle back and forth along curved dolly tracks. With Dua’s outfits echoing firstly a combination of Jessica Rabbit and Marilyn Monroe’s iconic pink dress, and then for the encore, both a Disney villain and princess, the scene set is less ‘an evening with…’, more ‘70s Vegas special. To compound this, at one point a 1950s-style microphone drops from the ceiling on a cord, seemingly entirely for a picture-perfect visual setup.
It’s the evening’s special guest that will likely get most headlines –Elton John appears from among Dua’s chorus of backing singers for a glorious ‘Cold Heart’, after neither appeared at the other’s consecutive Glastonbury headline sets to perform it - but it’s where the unique staging highlights less obvious aspects of Dua’s skillset that feel most significant.
‘Anything For Love’, one of a handful of live debuts, culminates in a pin-drop moment as the song’s sole piano backing drops out for Dua’s voice to go solo; later, she honours “fellow London girl” Cleo Sol, covering the singer’s ‘Sunshine’. Both providing spine-tingling vocal moments in which not only Dua’s range – the latter making use of her lower register in particular – but her ability to convey emotion vocally are showcased spectacularly.
It’s no surprise that ‘Love Again’ provides a standout string section moment, as does the Barbie soundtrack’s ‘Dance The Night’, with its pre-existing string arrangement. But ‘Pretty Please’ offers a less obvious highlight of musical translation, its bass line given extra impact via double bass and its synth lines provided by a pumping brass section - something that’s perhaps less obviously magical than Hollywood strings, but far more interesting than the oft-used mechanism for pop songs of simply adding additional instrumentation, or drastically altering its arrangement to ‘fit’.
The evening is, most importantly, fun from start to finish, and will no doubt be a wholly enjoyable watch on screens of various sizes in the coming months. But, as another feather in Dua Lipa’s pop star cap, its focused nature allows her to show herself off a little more as an artist. Emma Swann
