DIY, October 2019

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DANIEL CAESAR CASE STUDY 01: TOUR

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OCTOBER

The Creature from the Black Lagoon: The Wistful Years

Editor’s Letter

Question!

As we go to print, Los Campesinos! have announced a nostalgia fest celebrating a decade of ‘Romance Is Boring’. What were Team DIY’s favourite albums of ten years ago?

SARAH JAMIESON •

Managing Editor Continuing my Paramore streak just ‘cause, I have to go with ‘brand new eyes’. ‘Ignorance’ is still a stone cold banger after all.

EMMA SWANN •

Founding Editor Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ ‘It’s Blitz’. Not just for the bangers (though ‘Zero’ and ‘Heads Will Roll’ are both undeniably such) but it also soundtracked my first visit to NYC, and will always remind me of being driven around in my pal’s car.

LISA WRIGHT •

Features Editor The Maccabees ‘Wall of Arms’ filled every corner

of my romantic indie heart. Give me the first six notes of ‘Young Lions’ and, to this day, I’ll still be in bits.

LOUISE MASON •

Art Director Obviously I can’t say my own, so ‘Jewellery’ by Micachu and the Shapes, for opening up a whole new world of pleasure and fun in production and structure that I’d never heard before.

ELLY WATSON •

Digital Editor Wish I could say something cool, but my 15-year-old self was an ardent JoBro stan and ‘Lines, Vines and Trying Times’ is an underrated classic.

Are there many artists out there as infamous, or as recognisable as Iggy Pop? Probably not. Which is why it’s an absolute thrill to have the man himself on our cover this month. Looking back on his past in The Stooges and delving into his career in the present day, the legend talks us through his musings on life and exactly why he’s been in this for the long haul.

Elsewhere in our October issue, we go back to high school with Tegan and Sara, celebrate the long-awaited release of King Nun’s debut, and discover the potent message of Kele Okereke’s new solo record. Plus, chats with DIIV, Caroline Polachek, Swim Deep and Pumarosa.

Not too shabby...

Sarah Jamieson, Managing Editor

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

GREEN DAYWAKE ME UP WHEN SEPTEMBER ENDS Don’t act like it’s not been running through your brains all month too.

THE WHITE STRIPES - DEAD LEAVES AND THE DIRTY GROUND Sweater weather may lead to the most beautiful of orange palettes around us, but it also often means slipping over on wet tree detritus.

GERARD WAY BABY YOU’RE A HAUNTED HOUSE

Because October means Halloween, and few know Halloween as well as G here.

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NEWS 6 KELE 12 PUMAROSA 16 SHAME 2 4 H A L L O F FA M E NEU 26 BIIG PIIG 28 DRY CLEANING 3 3 L A U N D RY D AY F E AT U R E S 34 IGGY POP 42 CAROLINE POLACHEK 46 KING NUN 50 DIIV 54 SWIM DEEP 5 6 B AT T L E S 58 TEGAN AND SARA REVIEWS 62 ALBUMS 76 LIVE

4 DIYMAG.COM

Founding Editor Emma Swann Managing Editor Sarah Jamieson Features Editor Lisa Wright Digital Editor Elly Watson Art Direction & Design Louise Mason Contributors Alex Cabré, Ben Tipple, Chris Taylor, Connor Thirlwell, Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy, Dominic Penna, Ella Braidwood, Felix Rowe, Gerald Lynch, Jack Doherty, Jack Johnstone Orr, James Bentley, Jenessa Williams, Jenna Mahale, Joe Goggins, Martin Toussaint, Matthew Davies Lombardi, Nick Roseblade, Sean Kerwick, Sophie Walker, Tom Sloman.

Photographers Burak Cingi, Dan Kendall, James Kelly, Patrick Gunning, Percy Walker-Smith, Will Hutchinson.

Cover illustration: Cristina Polop.

For DIY editorial: info@diymag.com For DIY sales: advertise@diymag.com For DIY stockist enquiries: stockists@diymag.com

m

DIY HQ, Unit K309, The Biscuit Factory, 100 Drummond Road, London SE16 4DG

Shout out to: The BPI, Hyundai, Big Group, DawBell, Patrick and Ben for all things Mercury Prize, Morad at Warner for his persistence, the team at Reeperbahn Festival and Molotow, Goose Island, Jack Daniel’s for the 9 (!) bottles of whiskey (yes they’re all gone), the residents of the former Maria Fidelis school for their patience and understanding, the Addison Lee driver who moved a 40kg bath on his own for us, Louis from Squid for introducing us to Mexikaner shots, and slowthai for doing what he does best.

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

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“It seems like the most arrogant delusion when black entertainers feel they’re above talking about race.”

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Party For One

Following a recent foray back with the old gang, Bloc Party frontman

Kele Okereke is returning with new solo

album ‘2042’ - a searing look at race, identity and culpability.

Words: Jenessa Williams.

K

ele Okereke exists in a world of quiet chaos.

He is preparing for a trip to LA to meet his second surrogate child, the builders are round, and there is nowhere in his house where he can get decent reception. Dinner is in the oven, and his parents are about to walk through the door. Creative ideas are flitting about his brain, slotting into their relative folders: Bloc Party; Solo; Miscellaneous. Life, as he puts it, is good.

“A big thing in my life is balance. I’m a Libra, so traditionally, I tend to have two different perspectives at one time to feel fulfilled,” he explains. “With that in mind, it made perfect sense to me to be out touring [Bloc Party’s debut] ‘Silent Alarm’ while at the same time working on the new, something that is an antithesis.”

Said “antithesis” is Kele’s fourth solo effort, ‘2042’. A celebration of Black-British identity, it subverts the far-right criticism of growing multicultural communities and turns it into something beautiful, addressing the ugliness of racialised society while sharing the nuances of his own Nigeria-meets-London upbringing.

What results is the perfect clash of cultures, infused with a bouncy energy that recalls his first band’s earliest work.

“I was listening to a lot of different things – a lot of West African afrobeats, Yemi Alade, Mr Eazi, Wizkid. I was listening to a lot of T.Rex as well; I’ve become slightly obsessed with Marc Bolan and watching his interviews,” he continues. “There’s something kind of mystical that I glean from watching him and listening to him speak, and the references in his music. As much as the record is quite beat orientated, I was keen for it to have this almost kind of glam rock strut, which I think we really achieved on songs like ‘Between Me And My Maker’ and ‘Cyril’s Blood’.”

Kanye West’s ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’ was also a big influence. “For me, that record has a very playful messing of genres, which was something I really wanted to get across with this record - a definite playfulness and a confidence,” he explains. “I can’t overstate the fact

that I am a massive fan of his and have been since ‘The College Dropout’ – referencing him in my music isn’t an attempt to start beef, it’s just a sense of heartbreak over what happened with him last year.”

Whispers of said beef stem from ‘2042’’s lead single ‘Jungle Bunny’, a confrontational take on the higher echelons of black celebrity who close their eyes to the realities of racism.

In it, Kele details police brutality and racial profiling, with a critical spot saved for a certain man who goes “home to your house in Calabasas / And your wife and your kids safe in the knowledge / On a gated street where life is sweet / But no one looks like you.” At face value, it seems like a direct dig at Kanye, but the singer says the message goes way deeper, recalling everyone from OJ Simpson to A$AP Rocky, whose comments on the redundancy of the Black Lives Matter movement seem somewhat ironic considering his recent jail stint.

“I feel like that attitude is something we’ve seen quite a lot recently with African-American entertainers. Race has actively played a factor in how A$AP Rocky was treated: I wonder if his attitude to the community has changed,” he ponders. “It just seems like a delusion really, the most arrogant delusion when black entertainers feel like they are above ideas of talking about race. Have I ever felt that I was above discussions of race in my work?

I mean… I don’t think so. That’s not who I am.

“I grew up in a West African household, where my parents were immigrants my domestic world was very different to the world I encountered when I left my house and went to school. So with all the success and the fame and the money I have encountered over the years, there was never a sense that I was leaving my roots behind. I’m proud of where I’ve come from and the lessons my parents have taught me about identity. It was never an option for me to bypass that.”

In a world where progressive conversations about race, sexuality and gender are slowly becoming more commonplace, it’s easy to underestimate just how revolutionary Kele and Bloc Party were at the turn of the century. 2006’s ‘A Weekend In The

7

City’ tackled terrorism and racialised stabbings, homosexuality and hedonism, all delivered through a palatable medium of infectious indie that felt as at home on a dancefloor as it did in a lecture hall. A rare black man in a predominantly white space, his approach to songwriting was a bold one, slipping important conversations into everyday consciousness.

Nobody else really did what they did, but it never seemed like a choice - Kele simply had too much that he needed to say.

“I feel like I couldn’t personally live with myself as a black artist if I didn’t articulate what I was seeing,” he explains. “I felt, certainly with ‘A Weekend In The City’, that I was maybe trying to cram too much in. So with [2008 follow-up] ‘Intimacy’, I was afforded a certain amount of luxury in space, being able to fashion an idea and live with it and see what the music afforded. That changed the songwriting process for me, and it’s been something I’ve flirted with over the course of the albums since.

With ‘2042’, there were certainly some lyrical phrases that I wanted to capture but I was conscious that it all needed to work musically.

There was a lot of rewriting, but I think I achieved a happy balance.”

“This album is trying to create [something] that isn’t just a caricature of what the white masses feel that being black is about.”

8 DIYMAG.COM

Again, we return to the idea of balance. Splitting his time between making a new Bloc Party record, scoring another musical (to follow January’s Leave To Remain, a show about interracial gay marriage), and already demoing the follow-ups to ‘2042’, Kele is also about to welcome great change in his personal life.

“Another baby is coming at the start of October, so I think there’s a certain amount of getting ideas off the ground before my world is turned upside down again,” he says. “I’ve had to learn to be super disciplined – previously I could spend all day and all night working on music, but now I have to be super focused on working in times where I’m not with Savannah [his first-born]. In terms of what I’m singing about, I feel like that has changed too. There is a sense that as an artist and a human being, I need to assert what being black and British means to me, and by extension what that will mean to my children.” It’s a noble intention, but there’s no denying that we live in bleak times - does he worry about the world that he’s bringing them up in?

“It’s my responsibility as the non-white parent to prepare them for that - a world in which, right now, the most powerful man in the world is a racist, and the Prime Minister in our country is a racist, and an unapologetic one at that,” Kele explains. “That’s where this album has come from - trying to create a sense of black Britishness that isn’t reductive and isn’t just a caricature of what the white masses feel that being black is about. I don’t claim to have the monopoly on the black experience and I wouldn’t want anybody to think that, but I do have a perspective and I do have a voice. I feel like I have to put this out there in the most unapologetic way possible. It’s what we need: we need more stories.”

‘2042’ is out 8th November via KOLA. DIY

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SHOW ME THE PUPPY WE LOVE DOGS. YOU LOVE DOGS. HERE ARE SOME POPSTARS’ DOGS.

This month: PIZZAGIRL Name of pup: Olly (after Olly Murs!)

Age: 36 in human years Breed: Bichon Frise Favourite things: Being annoying, weeing on the pile of shoes in my room, and a good book.

Please tell us a lovely endearing anecdote about your dog: It was Christmas time 2018, and there was a fresh cold few sips of Bailey’s left in a large glass on the table in our living room. Olly, using his cunning sense of smell and intuition to seek a thrill, lapped up said Bailey’s once the room was empty. Moments later he was drunk-stumbling round the kitchen and falling into various cupboards.

And if my memory serves me right, he was telling everyone he loved them and ordered a kebab too I think.

WHAT LEDGE

NE WS On the

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

Wolf Alice’s new line-up is looking well iconic. @ wolfaliceband

THIS MONTH: SLOWTHAI

“F

uck Boris” isn’t exactly a new sentiment ‘round most parts, but when slowthai rocked up for his Mercury Prize performance with an effigy of the PM’s (at the time of going to print, at least) head, screaming the mantra while also wearing a t-shirt featuring it, all the while still smashing ‘Doorman’, collective punches hit the air. Of course, not everyone admired the Northampton rapper’s chutzpah, and a sea of Daily Mail readers’ faces

S P OT T E D

turned crimson with rage. Cue: tabloid rag frenzy. How does our Ty react? By continuing to be legendary, of course.

“Last night I held a mirror up to this country, and some people don’t like the reflection,” he began. “We as a people are not being looked after and our best interests are not being served by those in government… This ‘act’ was a metaphor for what this government is doing to our country, except what I did was present in plain sight.”

Believe it or not, pop and rock stars sometimes do normal things, too. They get lost, go food shopping, and catch buses – all sorts. This month, we clocked a fair few of them roaming around…

Kaiser Chiefs’ Ricky Wilson having to queue like a normal person outside Hackney Empire. Mattiel trying on some new red trainers in JD Sports. The frontman of [redacted] heading into the ‘Blue Night’ strip club during Reeperbahn Festival.

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Felix doesn’t know how many times he’s told Yannis to stop wearing socks on his hands. @foals Look like *someone’s* been burning both ends of the candle... @charli_xcx

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“If everything’s laid to waste, and everything’s crushed around your feet, you’ve got to go somewhere from there.” Isabel Muñoz-Newsome

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Positive Destruction

NE WS

Upon the release of their debut album, Pumarosa’s world was turned upside down, and not in the way they expected. With follow-up ‘Devastation’, they’re taking that part of their history and owning it. Words: Joe Goggins. Photo: Louise Mason.

“It’s an active word.

Destruction is an active thing,” says Isabel Muñoz-Newsome. She’s talking

through the rationale behind titling Pumarosa’s second record ‘Devastation’ - an album born of an unequivocally turbulent time, one intrinsically swept up in visceral, bodily words such as these. “Sometimes, good can come out of that. If everything’s laid to waste, and everything’s crushed around your feet, you’ve got to go somewhere from there.”

Nick Owen, the band’s drummer, concurs: “It felt like a good reflection of everything that had happened. A lot of upheaval and a lot of change. I don’t think there was a morbidness to it; it was more about the idea of letting go of certain things, and pursuing regrowth.”

A little over two years ago, the London band were gearing up to release their first record. It was the culmination of a couple of years of hard slog, and the realisation of a sound first conceived in a dilapidated Homerton pub - what began as a straightforward punk duo expanding to encompass a swirling amalgamation of psych, space rock and electro.

With Dan Carey on production duties, Pumarosa were all set to deliver one of the debuts of the year, equal parts exhilarating and confounding and, when early reviews rolled in, the press agreed. Increasingly, the group looked to have the world at their feet.

What nobody could have known though, was that, as the date was approaching, the singer had bigger things on her mind. “An abnormal smear test,” she nods. “They knew something was wrong, and it was right as we were about to go out on tour. We did it anyway, and I went nuts; when you know it’s looking like bad news, you can be a bit selfdestructive, I guess.”

The same week that ‘The Witch’ was released to critical fanfare in May, Isabel was diagnosed with cervical cancer.

“We did Jools Holland anyway,” she says, laughing grimly at the absurdity of having carried on as normal. “It was a very strange time, but everybody was amazing. I really felt held by the band. We carried on doing the stuff we had planned up until I had surgery in June.” Three weeks later, whilst still in the early stages of recovery, the singer insisted on honouring their planned slot at Glastonbury. “I have to admit, when you were shuffling around in bed right before it, I was saying, ‘Maybe we should cancel…’” recalls Owen. “I just couldn’t imagine it happening. But it was actually fine.”

“It was better than fine!” she shoots back. “It felt really victorious. I had a chair ready on stage because I thought I might have to sit down. But as soon as you guys started playing, I knew I wouldn’t need it; I was that excited. And then afterwards, I had to lie down for about three days straight. In a weird way, though, the adrenaline might have sped up the healing.”

Now fully recovered and firing on all cylinders, Isabel is ready for a more celebratory release day when ‘Devastation’ drops. A much more personal affair than ‘The Witch’, for obvious reasons, the record swaps outward-facing reflections on politics and friendships for an introverted, thoughtful reckoning with the turbulence of her past couple of years. Musically, however, Pumarosa’s sound remains enormous and burns with cross-genre ambition. Heading to Los Angeles to work with super-producer John Congleton (whose credits include everyone from Lana Del Rey to Jamie T) and featuring, as a replacement for departing bass player Henry Brown, rhythm work from Justin Chancellor of Tool, the album takes the distinct palette of their debut and emboldens it even further.

“The subject matter is all much more cohesive in terms of the story that we’re telling,” Isabel explains, “so we knew it was important to have a consistency to the sound. John can bring the sort of amazing clarity and textures that you hear on those St Vincent albums, but also, you know, he worked with Swans; we knew he could handle that heavy, dark gnarliness too.”

Having pulled off that balance, Pumarosa are ready to mark a rebirth after no shortage of tumult and trauma; they’ve been battered and bruised but, the singer affirms, they’ve emerged on the other side stronger for it. “The experience has taught me to be a bit softer with myself, to back away from the anxiety that being like a dog with a bone with the band was causing me,” she continues. “There’s a lot of fallout from going through something like that, and it’s changed me quite fundamentally - in my head, more than my body. By the time I got back to writing, I had a lot of words ready to get out.

“I’ve worked through all of that on the record, and it’s been painful and personal, but we’ve ended up with something we really love. Plus, we can’t wait to get back on tour, after so long being on-and-off. It feels like we’ve been starved of the live experience - now, we’re fucking gagging for it!”

‘Devastation’ is out 1st November via Fiction. DIY

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NE WS

The Big Moon Your Light

..................................................................................................................................................................

Following on from 2017’s impeccable ‘Love In The 4th Dimension’, The Big Moon returned with the first teaser of follow-up ‘Walking Like We Do’ in the shape of understated bop ‘It’s Easy Then’. The second number to be revealed, ‘Your Light’ is an addictive ode to getting lost in someone to help you through hard times, a track driven by tight guitar parts, smart writing and a killer chorus. Taking more cues from synth pop, while still retaining the earthiness of their debut proves an inspired move, and shows a new side to the quartet. ‘Your Light’ is a shining effort from one of the most compelling bands in the country. (Dominic Penna)

Yak

Am I A Good Man? .....................................

If February’s ‘Pursuit of Momentary Happiness’ had Yak in full-on chaotic mode, ‘Am I A Good Man?’, the first taste of a forthcoming EP from the trio, has them in contemplative form.

Frontman Oli Burslem has swapped his trademark guttural yowl for something softer - at least temporarily - throwing the question into the air atop swirling, almost soothing, psychinfused keys. He may never find out the answer, but it’s fun listening to him try. (Emma Swann)

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Will Joseph Cook

Talk Show

Flume

The great philosophers Blur once said that modern life is rubbish and, to be honest, they weren’t wrong. But it’s a bit more rubbish now, with the climate crisis and everything, which makes Will Joseph Cook’s latest tune very timely. ‘The Dragon’ is a call to stay positive. To not fall prey to apathy and to actually try and do something, even if you feel powerless.

Plus, because it’s Will, it’s also a brilliant little pop tune so it’s not all bad. (Chris Taylor)

Incredibly, ‘Ankle Deep (In A Warm Glass Of Water)’ is only Talk Show’s second single, such is their currency right now.

And where debut ‘Fast & Loud’ set out their stall as ferocious post-punkers of the impeccably tight kind (more than backed up by their live selves, it must be said), this switches pace a little, frontman Harrison Swann delivering an almost Jarvis-esque monologue atop a dark Spaghetti western soundtrack, complete with rollocking drums. (Emma Swann)

From messing about in his teenage bedroom to dominating Coachella with the most festival-ready tunes around, Flume’s had a heck of a time. Now teaming up with Australian musician Vera Blue for ‘Rushing Back’, he seems to be warping and flipping the sound he’s become so renowned for. While Vera’s voice fits very much in the crystalline template of a Flume song, the world around her glitches. The last vestiges of summer slipping out of our grasp in fine fashion. (Chris Taylor)

The Dragon ..........................................

Ankle Deep (In A Warm Glass Of Water) .....................................

Rushing Back (ft.

Vera Blue) .....................................

2020

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EUROPE 04

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LONDON BIRMINGHAM LEEDS MANCHESTER GLASGOW DUBLIN

UK UK UK UK UK IRELAND W

BIG

THE SSE ARENA SOLD OUT WEMBLEY ARENA BIRMINGHAM FIRST DIRECT ARENA MANCHESTER ARENA SSE HYDRO 3ARENA

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AARON DESSNER

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37d03d Machine

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SPONSORED

DIY’S PICK OF LNSOURCE

WHAT’S GOING ON WITH… SHAME? It’s been over a year since South London quintet Shame released jaw-dropping debut ‘Songs Of Praise’, and, let’s be honest, we’re ready for some new songs to scream along to. So, after the group debuted six - SIX - newbies at End Of The Road, we decided to hop on the phone with Charlie Steen and Eddie Green to find out more.

You’ve been touring loads this year, when did you start working on new material?

Eddie: Because of the touring schedule, we didn’t have a lot of time where we had enough time to start writing, so we basically did it whenever we had a spare day or a spare few hours at the hotel. A fair amount of it has been written on the road, but also since we’ve been in London more stably we’ve also just been at it every single day, more or less. It’s been a bit stressful, not gonna lie.

What’s the status at the moment? Is there a second album ready?

Eddie: I’d say it’s largely completed at this stage. There’s still a few little i’s to dot and t’s to cross. We’re continuing to write even if we feel like it might be finished just because we want to have as much content as possible. I hate the word ‘content’, but we want to have as much as possible to potentially put on this record. We’re not going to stop trying to create until we’re actually recording it, which hopefully will be very soon.

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Has there been any pressure to continue the success of your debut?

Charlie: We wrote that first album when we were so young, like 16/17 years old, and never really dreamed of it turning into what it turned into, and so now it’s more of a reality you know? This is our full-time job, we’re no longer waiters on the side anymore.

There’s definitely a pressure, but it’s probably a good thing; it’d be bad if there wasn’t.

And what can we expect on the new album?

Charlie: Lyrically, it’s about selfidentity and sleep and dreams. I had a period after two years of touring where I found it really hard to get to sleep and then when I was sleeping I had really vivid dreams for long periods of time. Musically, what we want to achieve is a more mature sound, something that shows we’ve grown. But we still want to keep an element of the humour. There’s still a link to ‘Songs Of Praise’ but there’s a change. Change is good.

In desperate need of a live music fix but can’t decide where or who? If you feel too spoilt for choice, here’s just a few of LNSource’s upcoming shows worth getting off the sofa for.

Local Natives Concorde 2, Brighton, 10th

October / Electric Brixton, London, 16th October The California group return to the UK this month in support of April’s fourth album ‘Violet Street’.

Bay Faction Colours, London,

22nd October Formed out of Boston’s famed Berklee College of Music, the trio hit London following a North American tour.

County Line Runner Colours, London,

24th October Otherwise known as British singer-songwriter Adam Day, as his adopted moniker would suggest, County Line Runner takes its cues from Americana and heartland rock.

For more information and to buy tickets, head to livenation.co.uk or twitter.com/LNSource

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NEWS In Brief

Walk The Line Fresh from sharing new track ‘It’s Easy Then’ last month, THE BIG MOON have shared details of their second record! ‘Walking Like We Do’ is set for release on 10th January via Fiction Records and they’ve shared new song ‘Your Light’ to get us even more excited.

Could It Be Magic?

THE MAGIC GANG have announced plans for three all-day parties this November! Taking place in London, Leeds and Birmingham, the band will also be joined by loads of faves (Happyness, Do Nothing, Dry Cleaning, The Ninth Wave, to name a few!) Woop!

Someone’s been eating her spinach!

Back to Yak

JÄGER CURTAIN CALL

ZUZU

Phase One, Liverpool. Photos: Will Hutchinson.

A

s she returns home, twenty-four hours after a triumphant soldout show in London, there’s a sense that Zuzu is moving things up a gear.

She’s almost home, anyway; Liverpool-born but now a Birkenhead native, her reveal that she’s based in the latter draws the customary good-natured boos - remember, only true Liverpudlians qualify as Scousers. Not that you wouldn’t take her at her word; perhaps the defining feature of the slew of tracks she’s dropped to date is the breadth of her accent, which boxes character.

It’s been a slow build towards her debut record, something she earnestly points out tonight that at least in part is down to it taking her “a long time for people to give a fuck about me,” but now, finally, it feels

18 DIYMAG.COM

within reach. No date’s yet set but on the evidence of a set this polished, the material is well-honed; complementing the clattering pop-rock of the already established ‘Money Back’ and ‘Get Off’ is the breezy, playful storytelling of ‘Can’t Be Alone’, on which she channels Courtney Barnett, whilst there’s measure and witty maturity to an early take on ‘Seabed’, too.

Behind the accent and the attitude there’s real maturity, then, but never at the cost of a palpable sense of fun, something summed up by an impressively faithful cover of Lizzo’s ‘Truth Hurts’ at the midpoint.

By the end, the crowd are terrace-chanting her name back at her, ‘All Good’ is inspiring a full-scale singalong, and the band are sounding impressively sharp. The signs are positive across the board ahead of a what’s looking like a breakthrough 2020.

(Joe Goggins)

YAK have announced details of new EP, ‘Atlas Complex’, which was recorded in part at Jack White’s Third Man Studios in Nashville. It features the newly-released ‘Am I A Good Man?’, and is out 1st November.

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19

P R E S E N T S

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Photo: Jamie MacMillan

OCTOBER

02 King Tuts, Glasgow (w/ CRYSTAL) 03 Jimmy’s, Liverpool (w/ Trudy and the Romance) 04 Hawley Arms, London (w/ Italia 90) 17 Digbeth Arena, Birmingham (w/ Biffy Clyro)

HITTING THE ROAD DIY and Jack Daniel’s are teaming up for a mini-tour of the UK next month, and Sound of Summer winners Lacuna Common are joining us.

B

ack in June, we began the hunt for the UK’s best new band through the Sound of Summer competition with Jack Daniel’s and O’Neill’s and now we can reveal that Oxford quartet Lacuna Common are the final winner.

Sound of Summer kicked off with a series of 32 heats, which took place in O’Neills pubs across the country, before six semi-finals saw the list whittled down to six final acts. A panel of music industry experts then sat down to decide the final winner, with the quartet coming up trumps.

As part of their incredible prize, they’ll be playing this year’s Jack Daniel’s Presents in support of the mighty Biffy Clyro, as well hopping on a mini tour in the run up alongside CRYSTAL in Glasgow, Trudy and the Romance in Liverpool, and Italia 90 down in London.

Check out the live shows they’ll be playing next month below, and to get your hands on free tickets to the DIY and Jack Daniel’s Presents mini-tour, simply head to Eventbrite.

Always drink responsibly. See drinkaware.co.uk for the facts.

JACK DANIEL’S and OLD NO. 7 are registered trademarks. ©2019 Jack Daniel’s. All rights reserved.

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NEWS In Brief

Eyes on the Prize

It’s Over.

Again.

Not only did DAVE win this year’s Hyundai Mercury Prize for stellar debut ‘Psychodrama’, but he took his Mum up on stage with him to collect the award. The judges said his record was “the musical equivalent of a literary masterpiece.”

THE STONE ROSES have announced that they’ve broken up for the second time, confirming most people’s assumptions. The news was confirmed by guitarist John Squire during a recent interview; when asked whether the band had ended, he said “Yeah”.

So that’s that.

Hit The Floor Fresh from sharing a slew of euphoric, dancefloor-filling singles across 2019, GEORGIA has now announced plans to release her new album early next year. ‘Seeking Thrills’, the follow-up to her 2015 self-titled debut, is set for release on 10th January 2020 via Domino.

Aye aye, captain!

After the release of the brilliant ‘i,i’ album last month, BON IVER have now announced a European tour!

They’ll return to the UK and mainland Europe in April 2020 for over twelve shows - get more details on diymag.com.

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NE WS

of

Fame

New Young Pony Club - Fantastic Playroom Amid the Technicolor space oddity of new rave, New Young Pony Club were the deadpan cool kids eyerolling at the side of the party, and ‘Fantastic Playroom’ was their calling card. Words: Lisa Wright.

T

hese days, punk spirit and political savvy might be the traits dominating the alternative airwaves, but rewind back to the late ‘00s and life was altogether sillier. For a brief, beautiful, bonkers moment, it was possible for a band like Klaxons in all their MDMA-zing excess to win the Mercury Prize, and new rave - the late ‘00s pseudo-scene largely categorised by a penchant for weird synths and staying up late - felt like a breath of Technicolor, playful fresh air.

Fronted by lopsided haircut-favouring singer Tahita Bulmer - a woman with the bright, sparkling wardrobe of an ‘80s club kid and the dead-eyed vocal delivery of Daria reincarnate New Young Pony Club quickly became tagged as its next bright hopes. Breakthrough single ‘Ice Cream’ arrived in a rush of completely blatant sexual missives (“Drink me like a liquor / Come on and dip your dipper”) and saucy new wave beats - a catwalk strut of a song built for lusty longing across the indie disco.

But despite the context in which they came to fame, in debut ‘Fantastic Playroom’ the band delivered a record more in debt to Blondie and

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THE

FACTS Released: 6th July 2007 Stand-out tracks: ‘Ice Cream’, ‘The Get Go’, ‘The Bomb’ Tell your mates: The band released ‘Ice Cream’ as a single not once, not twice but thrice. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again...

the aloof cool of pop’s most worship-worthy of stars; really, NYPC weren’t that new rave (whatever that actually meant), they were just four people with good wardrobes and an even better line in deadpan dancefloor bops.

Released in the summer of 2007, the album took everything that the band’s early tracks had promised and extrapolated them into ten songs full of raunchy prowls, angular beats and an atmosphere that was shot full of icy cool yet somehow still euphoric: the audio equivalent of Kate Moss having a massive one. Whether making straight-up pop gold in single ‘The Bomb’, unleashing naughty sexual stutters in ‘Jerk Me’ or something altogether more strange in the joyful percussive clatter of ‘Hiding On The Staircase’, ‘Fantastic Playroom’ united all the band’s whims with a combination of hedonism and irony. Yes, New Young Pony Club could have happily been Nathan Barley’s favourite band (Google it), but listen back to their debut now and you’ll find a record that, out of context, still chimes full of great songwriting and lyrics with a cheeky twinkle in their eye. DIY

19 Nov • London The O2

25 Nov • Glasgow SSE Hydro

bjork.com metropolismusic.com ticketmaster.co.uk gigsinscotland.com A Metropolis Music + DF Concerts presentation by arrangement with WME

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BIIG PIIG

“The next EP is about confronting the part of yourself that makes really bad decisions for you.”

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Born in Ireland, raised in Spain and residing in London, Jess Smyth is amalgamating heritage and genres in increasingly singular fashion. Words: Sean Kerwick. Photo: Dan Kendall.

Jess Smyth is sat in the booth of a London pub - one of the settings she finds most comfortable. “I love a place where tales are told and usually that’s a pub,” she says, swigging a pint of lager as she begins to divulge a tale of her own.

However, unlike most of us, the musician going by the name Biig Piig didn’t become acquainted with local boozers under the wobbly spell of a teenage fake ID; instead, she grew up among the bustling bars her parents ran throughout her early youth in Spain. “I think you learn a lot about people when you’re surrounded by adults a lot of the time,” she ponders. “They don’t treat you like a kid - maybe that’s where the writing came from when I was younger.”

Having been nurtured in social settings, the 21-yearold rapper finds comfort in packs; these days, she’s part of a West London creative collective called NiNE8.

They’re a tight-knit group and, upon meeting Jess, you wouldn’t be surprised if she was the glue keeping the gang together. With a perpetual smile and lilting Irish accent, she holds the qualities of a social butterfly - conversations roll in her company. Yet this outgoing demeanour stands in stark contrast to the introverted atmosphere she presents on record, which often feels like snooping on a whispered diary entry: “Close the blinds / under covers,” goes the intro to second EP ‘A World Without Snooze’.

After a series of independent releases, Biig Piig signed to RCA in June. Her major label debut, ‘Sunny’, saw her insouciant rap glimmering in the light of the major key, underpinned by buoyant basslines and sun-kissed neo-soul. Forthcoming collection ‘No Place For Patience’, meanwhile, closes out the EP trilogy which has chronicled the ages of 17-18, 19-20 and 21 respectively.

“This one’s about confronting the part of yourself that comes out from time to time and makes really bad decisions for you,” she muses before going on to liken the process to making sense of an optical illusion. “Does that make any sense? I feel like I’m talking in riddles.”

Jess’ first language is Spanish. Her family lived in Ireland until she was four before they shipped out to Spain to improve her brother’s quality of life; suffering from severe asthma, he found the warmer climate kinder to his needs.

The move back aged 12, however, was a complicated transition that led to her

resitting school years. On a large majority of her tracks, she slides into the Spanish tongue: a space reserved for her darker, more abrasive observations.

“It’s usually directed to the person it’s about and I just don’t want them to know I’m talking about them,” she says of her shifting vernacular. “A lot of the time it’s way sadder than the other lyrics and way more honest; things I don’t want to tell people.”

After a further move to London in 2012, Biig Piig started cutting her teeth at open mic nights. Folk music became her first musical love, penning original compositions on the guitar and ukulele.

It wasn’t until a freestyling session with NiNE8 in college that rapping flagged itself as a potential prospect.

“I hadn’t listened to a lot of hip hop or neo-soul before, but I grabbed the mic and I was like, ‘Fuck!’. It all just came together,” she beams, recalling the moment of enlightenment. Both folk and hip hop remain integral strands in her musical DNA. “I don’t think they’re that different in a sense, in the way that storytelling is a big part of both genres, from old Irish folk tunes to Biggie,” she suggests.

When broaching the topic of the future, Jess seems wedged between excitement and nerves; her final EP is about to be wrapped and a headline date at London’s 1,000-capacity EartH has been slotted in for the end of October. “It’s a lot of tickets, so we’ll see how that goes,” she quips, laughing nervously.

Judging by the forthcoming EP’s lead single ‘Roses + Gold’, which finds her cool, collected vocal fluttering on a bubbling Motown sample, she’ll have no problem holding the venue in her grasp.

“I have a real vision in terms of the direction of the music and where I want it to go,” she asserts, locking eyes with a determination that belies her easy demeanour. “I don’t want my music to feel like it’s been rehearsed a million times. I want it to feel like you’ve walked in on something.” Just like stumbling across a good pub on a night out. DIY

27

Florence was OUTRAGED that they’d stopped selling mozzarella dippers.

DRY CLEANING neu

The year’s best new lyricists, delivering gloriously funny, fractured thought processes and sparse, rattling post-punk. Words: Lisa Wright.

“It’s just little bits of text that I write in my phone, which in a way is what people do all the time with messaging or social media,” she says. “It’s quite normal to be tapping away at little bits of stuff on your phone. That’s really all I do but it’s kind of the same as what everyone does.” True. But while Dry Cleaning, formed only a year ago when bandmates Nick Buxton, Lewis Maynard and Tom Dowse decided to try out their artist pal on vocals and found it immediately stuck, might downplay their methods as just the modern way, the results are more than the sum of their parts. Yes, Dry Cleaning’s deadpan, speak-sing vocalist is theorising the band might garner vague nods to The Fall or Sleaford about how, having never been part of any concrete Mods for their winning combo of clattering, musical project or expressed a minimal post-punk and dry delivery, but Dry previous desire to be in a band, Cleaning feel fresher, more human, more she has ended up releasing a “I sometimes think endearingly fallible than any of the angry men (hugely critically-acclaimed) EP comedy and saying that have come before. that contains the line, “She said have you ever spat cum onto funny things isn’t “I sometimes think comedy and saying funny the carpet of a Travelodge.” given as much things isn’t given as much gravitas as it Elsewhere across the ‘Sweet should,” nods guitarist Tom. “When we knew Princess’ release, Flo spends gravitas as it should.” [the band] would work was when Flo came ‘Traditional Fish’ listing the traders - Tom Dowse and started having these lyrics that were so along the high street (“News and refreshing. We didn’t want someone to come Magazine / International Calling and sing about big feelings in an overwrought Card / Chicken Burger Pizza”), manner, but she brought in a new way of looking at things single ‘Magic of Meghan’ digging into her complicated that’s incredibly funny but also moving and revealing.” relationship with the princess and ‘Phone Scam’ detailing the kind of pavement altercation with a stranger that will With an already inimitable turn of phrase that sets them be familiar to most fellow Londoners: “I felt very vulnerable apart from any of their buzzy peers, and a second that it was some kind of scam because I have been conned (excellent) EP set to land imminently, there’s no reason why before.” this lot shouldn’t clean up. DIY “Sometimes, when you’re doing something you’re not quite sure about, then you just go for it because what else can you do?” theorises Florence Shaw.

“Whenever I do something I feel a bit wobbly about, I tend to do it quite well, or at least with conviction...”

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29

BLUE BENDY Tumbling odd art-pop from - you

THE WHA Chess Club Records’ newest young hopes.

Early adopters of everyone from Wolf Alice to Jungle, Chess Club have got form in scouting out soon-to-bemassive talent. Their latest find comes in the form of Kilkenny teens The Wha and, judging by soaring debut single ‘Innocents’, they’re not about to break their successful run just yet.

Though there’s a familiar vocal snarl and chaotic indie clatter to be found, it’s the track’s cheeky classic ‘60s undercurrent that hints at something intriguing.

Listen:‘Innocents’ is all you’ve got for now.

Similar to: The jubilant flip-side to Ireland’s current batch of angry young men.

guessed it - south of the river.

If the phrase ‘buzzy new south London band’ is beginning to make you want to throw your phone in the sea, then don’t abandon your handy portable listening device just yet. Yes, Blue Bendy are more intriguing newcomers from that area. Yes, they play at Brixton Windmill on the regs. But they’re also deeply promising in their own right, debut single ‘Suspension’ a strange, careering ode to a bridge that couldn’t give a fuck about radio play (but might have tickled Mr. Peel’s fancy for that exact reason).

Listen: ‘Suspension’ is anxietyinducing, but like, in a fun way?

Similar to: When you’ve had two drinks too many and e’rrything starts to slurrr...

LAZARUS KANE Effortlessly cool, pop-funk newbie.

Emerging out of nowhere - although sources say he’s a recent UK-via-US transplant - Lazarus Kane is the latest recruit to Speedy Wunderground’s impressive roster that boasts the likes of Squid, black midi and Black Country, New Road. Crafting old-school-tinged pop-funk kneeslappers that take on classic modern day trappings - getting really pissed, spending all your time online, and being plagued by the Kardashians it’s slightly weird but overwhelmingly wonderful.

Listen: Latest track ‘Narcissus’ is seven minutes in heaven.

Similar to: Your intriguing art school mate who Depop’d a CBGB tee.

RECOMMENDED DO NOTHING Post-punk-art-rock-new-wave? Just call them a glorious hybrid.

Remember when you first heard LCD Soundsystem and they sounded simultaneously like everything and nothing else at once? Nottingham newcomers Do Nothing are already offering up a thrillingly similar sensation - partly because the cowbelltoting dancefloor oddity of ‘Gangs’ is a lil’ bit Murphy, but mostly because there’s so much more to them too. A dash of The Fall here, a splodge of Talking Heads there, a smidge of ‘Pistols sneer in ‘Handshakes’ (but laced over pretty guitars). It’s an intoxicating recipe.

Listen: There’s only three tracks so far, but they’re all slammers.

Similar to: The best kind of boundary-less brilliance.

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PLAYLIST

MASTER PEACE The South London rapper stan) blending influences into sharp songs.

If you’re gonna call yourself a play on the word “masterpiece”, you’ve got to be able to step up to the mark, and South London’s Master Peace is more than willing to accept the challenge. Raised on a healthy diet of pop behemoths like Bastille and The 1975, he weaves their influences, alongside indie, punk and rap, into his songwriting.

Although buzzing around the scene for a while now, his first official drop came early last month in the form of infectious booty-call bop ‘Night Time’ and it’s a promising intro into what the young artist is going to go on to achieve. Can’t call him a “masterpiece” just yet, but it’s definitely the first step towards excellence.

Listen: Get in the #mood with debut track ‘Night Time’ Similar to: If a cool AF SoundCloud rapper openly admitted they’d had a Busted phase.

THE

BUZZ FEED

All the buzziest new music happenings, in one place.

ON THE

(and low-key Matty Healy

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

GONE FISHING Sports Team have announced news of a massive winter tour (including London’s Forum), and top notch new track ‘Fishing’. Listen on diymag. com now.

If their first singles showed Another Sky as deft, intelligent songwriters able to genuinely cite Radiohead as legitimate, audible influence, ‘Capable of Love’ shows they can also do something pacier - though just as gut-punchingly dynamic.

404 ‘Blind Spot’

No Half Measures In support of new EP ‘Measure’ (out this month), Heavy Lungs will spend November on a UK tour including a Bristol Thekla headline for Jäger Curtain Call. Find out all the info on diymag.com.

“Mina’s voice will resonate forever,” say the remaining members of 404 of ‘Blind Spot’.

“The track serves as a testament to Mina’s talent as a writer and musician.” The second track to be released from this month’s ‘Guild Two - Forever’, it’s lead by the late vocalist and features live drums from black midi’s Morgan Simpson.

NANCY ‘When I’m With You (I Feel Love)’ A glittering return from the bizarre Brightonian, the new ‘un features melodic vocals over a jarring mixture of sounds, which somehow all seem to gel together to create an otherworldly arresting pop track.

On Your Marks...

The Great Escape is once again launching with a set of First Fifty shows this November, and DIY’s joining in the fun. We’ll be taking over The Old Blue Last on 14th November to bring you Do Nothing, Girls In Synthesis and The Cool Greenhouse - be sure to grab your tickets now!

FUR ‘Trouble Always Finds Me’ Another new cut from the band, it’s another nostalgiatinged pop number, which guitarist Josh Bowes describes as: “being a calamity.”

Whatever you say, Josh!

31

NEU/LIVE BEABADOOBEE The Grace, London. Photo: Patrick Gunning.

T

urning your cresting social media hype into a captivating live prospect isn’t easy. With her name on the heady roster of Dirty Hit’s pop powerhouse, song after finely-spun song of sultry angst piling up nicely on all the streaming services, charisma in spades, and a fanbase-inducing bob-cut the colour of sapphire, the rising stock of Beabadoobee’s (AKA Bea Kristi’s) name has come quickly, though she’s still to prove herself consistently on the live stage.

phen Malkmus’. In other words, there are slow songs, and there are heavy songs. Bea instructs her dazzlingly-clothed acolytes when to “fucking mosh!”, and when to “chill,” such as for swaying sing-alongs ‘If You Want To’, and debut single ‘Coffee’, the latter rightly finding her at a more intimate audience level. Among the heavy numbers is a surprise cover of Simple Minds’ signature '80s hit ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’, which receives an impressive grunge makeover here.

Tonight, the upstairs space at the Garage plays host to a beefy power trio, musically tied by the stark sea-changes evident in her rapidly evolving sound: there’s a marked gulf here in Bea’s set between the succulent balladeering of her early ‘Patched Up’ incarnation, and the spaced-out dream-pop - peppered with gutsy grunge - found on her latest crowd-enthusing rockers: ‘She Plays Bass’, and ‘I Wish I Was Ste-

As if to the package the evening’s succinct, if slightly hesitant, proceedings, Bea affectionately pillow-talks “We love you” into the mic and then abruptly leaves without notice. Beabadoobee is clearly still at an early stage as a performer, but an ability to generate excitement and ply her audience with irresistible earworms is certain to stand her in good stead.

(Connor Thirlwell)

MUST-SEE SHOWS Like being the first to see the next big thing? Get ready to brag to your mates about watching this lot before they go big, sell out, and spectacularly break up.

SQUID

Following last month’s ‘Town Centre’ EP, the band will be bringing their organised chaos to a handful of literal town centres across the UK, including Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Margate.

“She’s blue, beabadoobee-ba-da-da…”

EGYPTIAN BLUE

Between sets at Ritual Union, SWN and Neighbourhood festivals this month, the post-punk newcomers will also play shows in cities including Bristol, Leeds, Brighton and Glasgow.

MUSH

The Leeds gang have just finished work on a debut album, so expect them to bring some brand new potential bangers on the road - they’re hitting up venues in Bristol, London, Reading, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield from later this month.

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The NYC collective redefining the boy band label all over again. Words: Elly Watson.

neu

Boy bands have been having a much-needed rebrand of late. Gone are the frosted tips, double denim and general cringiness that plagued groups back in the day. Now, thanks to BROCKHAMPTON and the like, boy bands are cool. Like, super fucking cool. And New York five-piece LAUNDRY DAY are the coolest newcomers of them all.

Having met in their first year of high school, the now-17year-olds have been making music together for years.

Made up of Jude Ciulla, Sawyer Nunes, Etai Abramovich, Henry Weingatner and Henry Pearl, the quintet already have all the ingredients needed to become huge: emotive lyrics paired with saccharine vocals over banging beats (with the welcome added bonus of jazzy haircuts). But the NYC group are striving for something more than that with their Gen Z bops exploring the highs and lows of growing up in a big city.

“Each album feels like a journal entry for the time we’re making it,” beams Etai over a transatlantic Skype call.

“Just being 17, and being in a major city and just going through life, there’s a lot of experience to draw from.

Whenever we sit down to write a song, we always start off with ‘How are you feeling today?’, and just get that out on a vocal line or an instrument, and draw it from something really real.”

Inspired by their mutual love for Tyler, The Creator and, of course, Kevin Abstract and pals, the quintet’s main ethos champions being 100% true to yourself and it’s a quality that shines through. Blending elements of pop-punk, R&B, trap and indie, the three records they’ve released via own label Polo and Fomo (2018’s ‘Trumpet Boy and ‘Keep It Bright’, and March’s ‘HOMESICK’) feel undeniably current.

“We’ve got to a point where we’ve become more confident in the really unique things that we’ve done, so we’re trying to tell ourselves to keep that up moving forward,” Jude explains. “As we continue, we’re wanting to just push originality.”

Even within the last 12 months, it’s evident they’re doing just that. On ‘HOMESICK’, the band weave between genres, bringing unexpectedly delightful twists at every turn.

From the rock-infused opener of ‘10 SPEED’, to unabashed pop bop ‘Blue’, the LP shows their range of influences, even bringing in BROCKHAMPTON’s own Romil Hemnani to work on jazz-flecked piano ballad ‘FRIENDS’ and nostalgic hip-hop number ‘I Feel Good’.

So, are LAUNDRY DAY challenging their famous pals to the title of best boy band since One Direction? “We’re just trying to be the first LAUNDRY DAY!” they laugh instead.

We’re into it. DIY

LAUNDRY DAY “Each album feels like a journal entry for the time we’re making it.” - Etai Abramovich

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34 DIYMAG.COM

The godfather of punk. The patron saint of provocation. For 50 years, IGGY POP has been the man your mother warned you about. And though, these days, he’s more into exercise than ecstasy, the 72-year-old is still defying expectation with every turn. Words: Lisa Wright.

35

it’s a good day, I’ll just stare into space or jump into the ocean, put a bit of food in me and I’m good to go.” Ready for another 24 hours as punk’s last great icon.

Catching a glimpse of Iggy Pop is like spotting a unicorn.

A lithe old pensioner with the on-stage wiggle of a baby orangutan, skin the colour and consistency of tanned leather, and two perfectly-shiny sheets of blonde hair maintained with the well-groomed care of a beloved My Little Pony, he’s a magical creature that makes you look twice. His legend is just as mythical, too. There’s the infamous shot of the star, held aloft by a Cincinnati crowd in the early ‘70s, smearing peanut butter on himself. The numerous gigs where the then-Stooge would slice his chest open midshow, bleeding and contorting around the stage covered in red. Whether the story DIY once heard of how the singer, high as a kite, got squashed by a fridge and just... stayed there for a bit is true, who can say, but the bizarre rumours are proof of his status as music’s original wild child just as much as the concrete reality. What we will say for sure is this: Iggy Pop is literally credited as the man who invented crowd-surfing.

Now aged 72 and residing happily with his third wife in Miami, Iggy lives a less self-destructive life these days.

When he phones us from New York, it’s 9am; he’s already been up for two hours, rising at a regular 7am, as he does every morning. “I need routine now because I’m an older git,” he chuckles, unleashing the endearing, infectious laugh that’s become his interview trademark - one more worthy of a naughty schoolboy than a wizened old rocker.

He has a double shot of ristretto, practices “at least 15 minutes” of Qi Gong - the Chinese exercise ritual that’s been keeping him in shape for the last decade - and, “if

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It’s the kind of healthy, hearty routine that brings to mind some of music’s other, more softened elder statesmen: Mick Jagger and his love of yoga. The infamously tantric exercise habits of Sting. But, though his lifestyle might have become more wholesome, in all other areas Iggy is not, to paraphrase the Dylan Thomas poem that informs the penultimate track of his new album ‘Free’, going gentle into that good night. Still enthralling the festival circuit with a set more joyous and pure-spirited than most on any given bill, hosting a regular BBC Radio 6 Music show championing everyone from Amyl and the Sniffers to Stef Chura, and surprising people creatively with every move (on the cusp of 70 he posed naked for a life drawing class hosted by artist Jeremy Deller), he remains intrinsically infused with the wildcard spirit that’s been his calling card since day one. “There’s a great pleasure and passion that I’m privileged to experience in doing this sort of work,” he growls in that famously warm baritone. “But even back in 1974, it was still damn interesting to be me…”

B

ack in 1974, Iggy Pop was not at his best.

The Stooges, the band he’d formed as a 21 year old, had imploded in a whirlwind of heroin addiction and interpersonal bust ups.

Though their first three albums - a 1969 selftitled debut, the following year’s ‘Fun House’ and seminal ‘73 offering ‘Raw Power’ - would go on to be hugely influential, at that point, as Iggy notes in Jim Jarmusch’s 2016 documentary ‘Gimme Danger’, the greater public thought he was “trash”.

It’s hard, almost half a century on, to imagine the controversy and polarisation that the now-beloved figure initially provoked. “A lot of people wanted us to fail,” he says of that period. “But you know, look: there are people that like me, and people that don’t. People that liked The Stooges, and people that didn’t. And people that I like and people I don’t fucking like!” he exclaims. “And if I don’t fucking like you, then fuck you! So I’ll hear some dweeb in an art rock band say, ‘Durrrr, well nobody really liked The Stooges in Detroit’, and it’s like well, nobody wants to hang out with you, nerd!”

Now, in an age of social media backlash and cancel culture, a band with antics like The Stooges would surely be ripe fodder for the righteous comment sections were they to have emerged in this decade (you need only look at the fervour around the druggy, depraved beginnings of the Fat White Family for proof). It says a lot about Iggy and his cohorts, then, that he feels they had an even rougher ride. “I think... I was very cute, and good on stage, and the band was solid and the lyrics were what you might call cheeky. So I think there would have been an immediate flush of exposure and interest on what I would call a medium alt level,” he posits, at the question of how the ‘70s version of the band would fare now. “And then after that, if it was the true Stooges, there would be major problems, disintegration, death, drugs, all that... But the media of today would eat us more willingly than the media of yesteryear. They didn’t want to eat us at all.”

Despite the media apprehension and poor sales that plagued the band’s career (no Stooges album has ever broached the Top 40, on either side of the Atlantic), over the following decades there’s been a sizeable enough shift in the public consciousness to mean the band will be

“IF I DON’T FUCKING LIKE YOU, THEN FUCK YOU!” 37

“IT WAS ALWAYS CLEAR THAT THIS WAS WHAT I WAS GOING TO DO. IT WASN’T CONDITIONAL.”

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remembered in music’s history books as pioneers, and the true embodiment of wild-eyed, edge-of-your-seat visceral spirit. In 2010, following their 2007 reunion and by way of fully cementing the seachange, the group were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

steps away from the caricature.

“It’s just the way in life. As you step onto the ‘capital S’ Stage of Life and who you are emanates from you, the more the part becomes [a] stock [image],” he shrugs. “I’ll do something and there’ll be a complex piece written about it in one format and then later this morning I’ll be on network TV where [the interview will] be done at a jazz club!” he mocks, adopting an eye-rolling tone, “because, you see, the rock guy is doing jazz now!”

Maybe it’s because we know there’s a happy ending for the singer. Despite the drug problems, Iggy didn’t die; he may have been a tearaway, but really, he’s a pretty fucking lovable guy. But, for one reason or another, the man christened James Osterberg Jr way back when in 1947 still feels like the last untainted bastion of a certain kind of punk emblem. Others since have not fared so favourably. “I think people are periodically ready for something like that. If somebody came out and did the sort of things I was doing…” he pauses. “Initially, I didn’t look too messed up. When you’re a young kid and you’re just starting Over the last half century, Iggy’s to degenerate, you have a couple spawned a legion of devotees of years where you look really cute and helped birth the next while you’re doing it, a la Pete generation(s) of punk stars. We Doherty. It takes a while for your let some of them wax lyrical on skin to go bad, and for everybody to the inspirational Mr. Pop. be down on you.

REAL WILD CHILDREN

“Every so often, for example when The Libertines came out, Pete was a damn good artist and cute as a bug, so he had the initial great interest which was justified because there were so many [artists] just playing along with the system. I think it would have been something like that [for us] for a little while, and then some sort of major problems because we were vulnerable rustics.”

I

t’s some variation on this notion of, if not the “vulnerable rustic,” then the outlaw renegade that still informs the public image of Iggy Pop. Despite the fact that the singer spent a notable period in the mid-’70s experimenting with David Bowie in Berlin; despite the fact that, since then, he’s worked with everyone from Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto to Bosnian film score writer Goran Bregovic to Danger Mouse; despite the fact that he’s acted on the big and small screen, voiced a character in an Alice in Wonderland adaptation and previously become the face of a now-infamous car insurance commercial for Swiftcover (“If somebody asked you to do a commercial and offered you a leg up in your life, you might do one yourself. It’s just one kind of work I do…”), say his name and the image you’ll get will inevitably be of a man, naked to the waist, spitting out punk classics. Even after a lifetime of surprises, Iggy still has the capacity to raise eyebrows every time he

CHARLIE STEEN, SHAME ‘Funhouse’ by The Stooges is an album I’ll never be able to get over; I was shown it as we were starting the band at 17 and I haven’t been shown anything like it since. He’s an icon for the same reason that everyone becomes an icon: he has an unstoppable form of passion that doesn’t halt when criticised or mould when bribed.

MEZ GREEN, LIFE He’s an original; a whacked-out, yes-please, fucking legend. His Gonzo-fused music kicks and fits, and he has a voice that resonates the waves in ya head. He’s lived a life that no-one else has; a true artist, a true character and a pioneer - that’s Iggy Pop.

DANI MILLER, SURFBORT

“Iggy doesn’t give a fuck about what’s hip, he just exists as a burst of light and cathartic energy. Every bit of live footage of Iggy is insane in the ‘70s when people were losing their minds and starting riots. That’s my favorite part about him: shocking the normies with his moves. I hope he inspires people from now until forever to go wild and not follow traditional safe standards in life.”

As if to hammer the point home, a few hours before we speak to him a pre-recorded interview is aired on UK breakfast TV. On it, Iggy spends his segment fielding questions about how often he wears a T-shirt and whether he’d stage dive off a bed.

The jazz caveat, however, at least comes from a slightly more current touchstone in the form of ‘Free’’s collaborators - New York musician Noveller and trumpet player Leron Thomas. Much of the record was written by the two, with Iggy coming in to lend his vocals to the work they’d offer him. But even that, he states, isn’t such a curveball. “I’ve always fronted for other people when I write the lyrics anyway.

The stuff I wrote for The Stooges, essentially half of it was taking in the incredible personalities of the other people in the band who couldn’t articulate things for themselves, and I would articulate that for them. “‘Another year with nothing to do’ [from debut album track ‘1969’] that wasn’t my attitude. I was out to kill bears right from the beginning...”

These days, however, he’s less about killing and more about nurturing. Across the conversation, the legend is at his most animated (and he’s not a passive man) when he’s talking about the music that currently excites him. Whether he’s extolling the virtues of a particularly rowdy Sleaford Mods gig he recently attended (“It was like the second coming of Elvis”) or switching us on to Canadian punks The Booji Boys, he’s obviously not just on the radio because he has a rumbling speaking voice better than 99.9% of the planet.

The same goes for his new project.

Following 2016’s ‘Post Pop Depression’, a collaboration with Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme that became the most successful record of the singer’s career, it would have made cynical business sense to follow with something in a similar, heavy-hitting

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“I WASN’T, LIKE MOST MUSICIANS ARE, OBSESSED WITH GETTING MORE PUBLISHING [MONEY] BY WRITING MORE DRIVEL.” 40 DIYMAG.COM

vein. Instead, he went the other way.

TOP OF THE POPS

Iggy, as we know, is well up on his new music. Here are some of his current faves…

THE BOOJI BOYS

There’s a band I play on my showcalled The Booji Boys, and they’re a Canadian punk band and every song they release sounds like they took a really deep breath and just went ‘ARGHHHHHH’ and just went for it. I’ll play two or three really well constructed, intelligent, acceptable alt tracks – which are still good – but then I’ll wanna play the fucking Booji Boys.

SLEAFORD MODS

Jason’s a really unique and catchy vocalist, but it’s Andrew Fearn that really puts that fucking groove over it. You hear this incredibly butch, bellicose dirty bar-room bass that he often gets on their tracks, and the drums always make you move your ass, and he puts in these droll details to move the action along.

OTHER NOTABLE MENTIONS:

IDLES are a good band, and Queen Zee gets it too, and I like experimental, ambient stuff when it’s really good. I like what Holly Herndon does.

“These are good people; they should have the opportunity to make music.

If I see their credits, I get really happy,” he enthuses of his current writing partners. “I started trading licks with Leron, and he had some pieces that I thought had really interesting, good, funny, warm, soulful lyrics. The lyrics were already done and I wasn’t, like most musicians are, obsessed with getting more publishing [money] by writing more drivel, so if it’s done it’s done! It wasn’t important to me who wrote them.”

I

t might not be a sentiment that vomits on stage or rips itself open with broken glass, but it’s an anti-establishment, anti-capitalist way of thinking that remains pretty fucking punk nonetheless. As the need for that aforementioned commercial probably hammers home, Iggy has never made his millions. Indeed, he’s recently wrapped up another “weird” ad for a coffee company, he tells us, that casts him as a patient on the therapist’s couch. And yet his attitude remains steadfast: he’d rather suck it up and do the odd TV gig to pay the bills as long as he can keep every shred of integrity where it matters.

It’s fabled that the Ramones met because they were the only four kids at school who liked The Stooges, but in the decades since then, every punk band that can lay true claim to the title almost without exception owes a debt to Iggy. “That’s a nice thing, if somebody that’s a little different woke up one day and thought, well Iggy Pop is getting away with this so maybe I could do something?” he smiles. “That’s how it is I think. It’s not that I’m necessarily going to be an artistic mentor to their art, but it’s more the idea that maybe somebody can be a little more outside the game and still do something.”

As has often been noted in the past few years, following first the death of Lou Reed in 2013, and then David Bowie in 2016, of that holy trio of musical friends and pioneers, Iggy is the last man standing. The outpouring of love and tribute that greeted both occasions was huge; when David Bowie passed, it felt like the world stood still for a short time. Watching his peers, the other musicians who paved important routes, provoke so much public emotion must have had an impact, we suggest. It must make you think about your own legacy.

For the first time in the conversation, his voice - the throaty rip that’s spent all these years wanting to search and destroy - sounds gentle, almost small.

“That’s just creeping up on me now,” he replies softly. “Even three weeks ago, I would have said, ‘Ah, maybe I’d like three people I know privately to remember me in a nice way’ because you do want that in your life. A life lived completely publicly is a nightmare, because then the only people you know privately are the people who are the tools of your public life and it gets really fucked up and you end up in a bathtub somewhere. But in my case, all of a sudden I’m noticing something where it seems like I did something OK. So that’s pretty good, I reckon…

“I would never have guessed what the trajectory would be, but I’ve been asked that sort of thing before and it always makes me think very simply of a day when I was 19 and I’d decided to drop out of university and I was gonna be a musician,” he continues.

“My Dad, who was a wonderful man, was really upset for me, and we were in the trailer [where the family lived throughout his childhood] and he said, ‘Jim, if you’re gonna do this, you’re gonna have to knock me out of this door’. My Dad could beat the shit out of me so I thought God, this is gonna be bad, but I made the move to the door, and he stepped aside.

But once I’d walked through that door that day, it was a lifetime thing - whether I ended up in a bar band [or here]. The length of the life didn’t matter, it was always clear that this was what I was going to do. It wasn’t conditional. So then once things are not conditional, then the rest of it... it doesn’t really matter, and that’s how I feel. I’m in it for the full haul.”

Would there ever be a time when Iggy Pop would retire? Live out his twilight years as simply James again? “I probably can’t,” he chuckles. “I think it sounds really good, but I probably can’t.”

And it makes sense. Just as how, since that day 53 years ago, the musician’s fate has almost been out of his hands, there’s an understanding that the tail end of his tenure could only ever be the same.

He might not have been christened that way, but Iggy Pop was born not made. The man with the insatiable lust for life until the end.

‘Free’ is out now via Caroline International / Loma Vista. DIY

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With Chairlift, Caroline Polachek almost had to destroy the success she’d found to become creatively happy. On the release of new solo LP ‘Pang’, she’s following that steadfast artistic path into new waters.

Words: Jenna Mahale.

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NATURAL L

ife for Caroline Polachek has often been about following her gut. Whether that’s by uprooting to Los Angeles (a recent move), finally putting out a record under her own name in the form of new album ‘Pang’ or even, as she explains on the phone from across the Atlantic, choosing to commit to music in the first place.

“I’d interviewed for this Chelsea gallery called Elizabeth Dee,” she recounts of the time she decided to turn down her former dream job and fully dive in. “I was set to start as an assistant there, and I had to call them and say, ‘I’m really sorry, but I’m going on tour with a band called Ariel Pink, and I’m not going to be able to start work.’”

In 2008, Caroline was in the final year of her degree at New York University, simultaneously working four low-paying, arts-adjacent jobs. At night, she would write and record for Chairlift, the independently-minded synthpop project she’d started with Aaron Pfenning a few years earlier, along with Patrick Wimberly, who

“Chairlift had been swept up into this whole new, branded, ‘Urban Outfitters’ existence.” joined the group in early 2007. However, that year, their song ‘Bruises’ launched them into the spotlight when it was featured in a ubiquitous iPod Nano commercial, quickly turning them into the poster children for US indie in the late ‘00s. But notoriety wasn’t necessarily something the group wanted for themselves.

“We were very suspicious of the mainstream, actually,” Caroline recalls. “Chairlift was coming from a very DIY, experimental background. We were really in love with the ways in which underground music could exist: playing in basements, garages, coffee shops; mostly illegal shows in aban-

doned car parks.” One show she attended in far east Brooklyn, she says, featured eight drummers playing at the same time underneath a giant subway overpass. “I was definitely underage. I was like 20, drinking a giant PBR [beer]...”

The period was a special one for New York-based outfits like Chairlift, who benefitted from the community of a thriving indie scene, but it was also a particular tipping point for the wider music industry.

“You started seeing the real, palpable influence of cracked production software.

These were the tools that were used in the big studios - we’re talking $10,000 software leaked online,” she says cannily.

“Everyone with a laptop had the crack and had access to it. So what you were seeing was these bands that had quite an underground ethos being able to make music with the same kind of palette as the major labels. I think that really set the scene for bands like MGMT, Yeasayer, and Chairlift.”

Suddenly, Caroline and her collaborators found themselves at the centre of an “international indie pop circuit” that, while exciting at the time, wasn’t quite how they wanted to form their identity. “It was only once Chairlift went back to the studio for a second album that we actually got some perspective on how we’d been swept up into this whole new, branded, ‘Urban Outfitters’ existence,” reflects Caroline. “We were really pushing back against that with our second album, which a lot of fans weren’t into, and which our label certainly wasn’t into. But I think that’s when we actually found ourselves as musicians.”

N

ow, in 2019, Chairlift have been disbanded for over two years, and Caroline is gearing up for the release of ‘Pang’. While the record is not the artist’s first solo project, it marks the first time Caroline will be releasing music under her full name as opposed to her stage moniker Ramona Lisa, or her initials, CEP. “It just felt really clear to me that now was the time to do that,” she explains. “I’d been in a collaboration so long, for 12 years, and I was really excited not just to stretch my wings as a solo

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artist, but also to not have to build any sort of conceptual disguise for what I was doing anymore.”

For Caroline, ‘Pang’ is distinct for its lack of confines conceptual or otherwise. “In the past, those limitations have been really exciting for me. Having a bandmate who you have to reconcile all opinions with is also a really useful form of limitation. And the two solo albums before [2014’s ‘Arcadia’ and 2017’s ‘Drawing The Target Around The Arrow’] were very much concept projects. Those concepts again helped to keep me on task and keep the palette really meaningful. But this time around I felt like I had a lot to say, and I really just wanted to present my voice in a very straightforward way.”

What Caroline feels is most ‘her’ about the record is that vocal, which she describes as “more raw and balls-to-thewall” than usual. What is “balls-to-the-wall” singing like, exactly? Caroline pauses only briefly to answer. “It’s really going for a line that you a) don’t even know if you can hit and b) probably haven’t even written yet. So, very much improvising in front of someone, praying blindly.”

Caroline’s powerful, versatile voice is the guiding instrument of ‘Pang’, an album that glistens with pop shimmer and a tremendous amount of emotion. Co-produced with PC Music’s Danny L Harle, the record leaps from despair, uncertainty, and exasperation to euphoria and back again, even dipping into ice-cream-sweet infatuation with ‘So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings’: a boisterous, synth-charged ode to longing.

“There was a lot going on in my life while I was writing this album. I was feeling a lot of big change, and a lot of self-doubt, a lot of self-questioning. To write about anything else would have seemed crazy,” she says. In the past, Caroline has spoken about her determination to specifically avoid making music about love and romance, citing the bloated size of the canon as the logic behind her reasoning.

But ‘Pang’ demonstrates a significant departure from this ideology. “As I’ve gotten older and more sentimental, I’ve started listening to love songs very differently: not necessarily as songs about a person or a relationship, but as songs that are essentially devotional or spiritual, [ones] about your relationship with life and existing.”

“As I’ve gotten older and more sentimental, I’ve started listening to love songs very differently.”

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However, as is the norm with much personal work nowadays, Caroline made the album with an eye towards the political, intending the record to be in some measure a critique of late capitalism and modern mainstream feminism.

“We have this idea that we’re all individuals in charge of our fate, and the responsibility of ‘living the American Dream’ is on us,” she begins. “And I think the version of feminism that women are being sold right now in pop culture is that being a good feminist is an extroverted act in terms of loudly defending yourself and pushing against things. The idea of giving into something that you’re not in control of is identified with the old model of femininity, or the model of femininity where you’re controlled by men.

But this record isn’t about giving in to a man per se, or any sort of system. It’s about giving in to a part of yourself that you’re not consciously in control of, and taking instructions from your intuition.”

There’s that intuition again. Currently, Caroline is settling into her new LA life, following that gut feeling across the country, if only for a couple of years. Where she’ll artistically head next, who knows, but chances are it’ll be led by that same inner intrinsic impulse. “I want to try my hand at scoring. I want to try my hand at acting. I guess being in LA is conducive to those kind of things,” she says. “It’s a

good place for making things right now, but who knows [about the future]. Life is long.”

‘Pang’ is out 18th October via Columbia. DIY

ROUNDHOUSE

RISING FESTIVAL

DI S COVE R TO MO R R OW ’S H EAD LINE RS

1 5- 2 9 O C TO B ER G AI K A PRESENTS

PHOENIX RISING – BEYOND THE SPECTACULAR EMPIRE BIG ZUU • KAI WHISTON • STEALING SHEEP • ANAÏS • SINEAD O’BRIEN GREENTEA PENG • Æ MAK • COLOSSAL SQUID • EVA-LINA • IORA PRIINCESS KEMZ • MARTHA DA’RO • HMD • WEIRD MILK • R.A.E CULT ARCHITECT • NUTRIBE • ELENA ŠILJIĆ • ELOI TRANSMISSION ROUNDHOUSE • NIHILISM CHELSEA CARMICHAEL • PYJÆN • EGO ELLA MAY WEYLAND MCKENZIE • DIPS & LO-WU RISING SOUNDS ALBUM LAUNCH

Roundhouse Rising also features events showcasing work by emerging artists from our youth programme.

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KING NUN

First catching our eye as eager teens, have taken their time and played the long game. The result? Debut album ‘MASS’: a darker, more mature move than any early adopters could have guessed. Words: Elly Watson. Photos: Emma Swann.

T

here’s a point during any classic coming-of-age film when everything falls into place. A big, definitive moment that harnesses the journey so far and makes it all worthwhile. Judd Nelson’s triumphant air punch as Simple Minds’ ‘Don’t You Forget (About Me)’ chimes in at the end of The Breakfast Club; John Cusack holding a boombox above his head in the climactic final moments of Say Anything.

It doesn’t always have to be the grandest of scenes, but it has to be hard-fought and it usually contains a fucking good soundtrack.

It’s a well-thumbed narrative that might normally root itself on the big screen but, for Londoners King Nun, it’s one that’s finally coming into view, too. After nearly three years of rumbling buzz and drip-fed releases, this month the quartet are finally dropping long-awaited full length debut album ‘MASS’; having first emerged as eager teenagers, now they’re ready to begin the next chapter.

First getting together over six and a half years ago, the group - made up of vocalist Theo Polyzoides, bassist Nathan Gane, guitarist James Upton and drummer Caius Stockley-Young - have done a lot of growing up, both musically and personally, since those early movements.

Their first official song, 2016’s ‘Tulip’, was rife with teenage angst and raucous punk - traits that continued through their following singles up to last year’s EP ‘I Have Love’.

“I think at first we wanted to make really fast, very loud, very aggressive music, and then as things went on, we’ve learnt to refine that so it’s more tangible,” Theo explains. “We’ve learnt a lot about the things we want to express and that’s what we’ve really tried to do with this album. We’ve tried to get that same punk response, [but] by using different kinds of songs.”

Their new slant is evident right from the get-go in the album’s lead single, ‘Black Tree’. Evolving from the young, inexperienced scamps creating facemelting punk that established them as Dirty Hit’s resident gnarly group, the first cut from ‘MASS’ instead showed a completely different side to the quartet.

Delivering a sizzling, cinematic slowburner, full of dark imagery and a sense of foreboding, it marked not only a sonic

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change but a starkly heightened maturity from the band.

“We were taking a chance doing a really slow, symphonic song as the first single,” discloses Theo. “When we release stuff, people usually want us to do the really fast punky stuff. And that’s still represented on the album, but the first single is a bit of a curveball. We led with it to set the mood.

That song is really indicative of a lot of what’s going on [in the record].”

A

n introduction to the narrative ideas that run through the album, ‘Black Tree’ welcomes in a sense of darkness that writes its way across ‘MASS’’s sermon. Whereas previously, the band had tried to use their material to convey an optimistic message about how punk can be a force for good, this time around, King Nun allowed their thematic scope to widen. With emotions flowing out naturally, they found themselves writing brutally honest, autobiographical stories about the hardships that they were experiencing and the highs and lows of growing up.

“We’re not hiding behind anything on this album,” Nathan states. Nodding, Theo elaborates: “As we were making it, we were in a really dark place. There were several things that were happening across all of our lives that were really inescapable and, honestly, quite horrific, so we couldn’t really hide that.”

We’re all for saving resources, but it’s probably about time to change the water now, eh lads?

“We’re not hiding behind anything on this album.”

- Nathan Gane

Unholy Communion

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“This album feels like the album we had to do, and I mean that in a very sentimental way.” - Nathan Gane Exploring a variety of issues faced as you get older, the record as a document is unflinchingly raw and heavily heart-on-sleeve. They may still coat meaningful lyrics in their signature surrealist imagery, but at no point do they let them lose their power. ‘Black Tree’ explores depression through oppressive metaphors; ‘Transformer’ - the song that got the group initially signed to Dirty Hit - accelerates and shakes off past demons; ‘Cowboy’ looks at the pressures placed on young men, whereas ‘Sharing A Head With Seth’ delves into everyday anxieties through the gaze of its titular character.

“I think if we were doing it a year ago I’d be kind of anxious to open up so much, but thankfully I don’t feel like that anymore,” confides Nathan. “It feels like the right time, and it feels like it has to be done. This album feels like the album we had to do, and I don’t mean that in the sense of outside influences or that we had a deadline - I mean it in a very sentimental way. This is - as people - what we had to do at this time in our lives.”

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Yet though the band are emphatic in their assertions of how the record was born from a perfect amalgamation of added time, experience and confidence, from the outside there’s still been pressure.

A quick Twitter search of the words ‘King Nun album’ brings up hundreds of tweets dating from the last year and a half of people wondering when they’ll finally be able to hear a full length from the quartet. “Our first singles got a really good reception and that does lead to people asking for a follow up, but this is literally everything to us,” Nathan reasons.

“We didn’t go to university; we all worked menial jobs. If we could do anything, we’d do this, so we’re going to do it right. And if that means it takes six months longer than it should, we’re not going to release something that we don’t believe in.

“Some people might think it took a bit too long, but we’ll always persevere, whatever we do, to do it to the best quality that we can. In anything creative, there’s a balance between trying to master your trade and just doing what feels right to you. If everyone tried to please other people, you’d end up with nothing new or interesting.”

Taking their time to craft the debut they wanted, ‘MASS’ should make people see the four-piece in a whole new light. With some songs penned a few years ago and updated, and others birthed in the studio while recording, it’s an album that captures King Nun at an exciting axis: more confident and meticulous than in the past, but with the future wide open.

Though not nearly as cinematically cheesy as those Judd Nelson or John Cusack scenes, throughout its 11-track run, their debut paints an equally compelling portrait of teenage angst, youthful naivety and personality-shaping memories, all caged in something musically ambitious and epic; on the other side, the quartet have emerged older and wiser, their past demons exorcised.

“You know when you see a film and you really enjoy it, and it ends on a ‘To be continued...’ and you’re excited because you don’t know what’s going to happen next?“ Nathan asks, excitedly. “This feels like that! It feels like a statement, but we’ve only just started.” “This is some first act shit,” Theo agrees. Metaphorical air punch.

‘MASS’ is out now via Dirty Hit. DIY

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Over the last chequered decade, Cole Smith and his band have weathered all kinds of personal and public storms. But, with new LP ‘Deceiver’, DIIV are finally addressing those issues and emerging out the other side. Words: James Bentley.

DEEP DIIV

Over the last chequered decade, Cole Smith and his band have weathered all kinds of personal and public storms. But, with new LP ‘Deceiver’, DIIV are finally addressing those issues and emerging out the other side.

Words: James Bentley. Illustration: George Ramsay hen DIIV released their second album ‘Is The Is Are’ in 2016, it was against a backdrop of controversy. Former bassist Devin Ruben Perez was still in the spotlight after making a series of racist and homophobic comments on infamous web forum 4chan. Drummer Colby Hewitt had left the band due to “multiple drug addictions”.

And the 2013 arrest of frontman Zachary Cole Smith, for possession of “42 decks of heroin” while driving with then-girlfriend Sky Ferreira, was still vivid in the memory of fans and media alike.

W

changing the narrative surrounding DIIV. With themes of redemption and recovery, Cole had put out the message that the past was behind them. But in February 2017, the singer returned to rehab for the second time in barely three years, having relapsed once more into heroin addiction.

‘Is The Is Are’ was supposed to be an important step in

Beside him sits Cole, who nods in agreement. He’s long

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“There were specific moments where it felt like the band was really going wrong,” says multi-instrumentalist Colin Caulfield, sat at a picnic bench in a Shoreditch bar. “We went on a break. We ended. We definitely entertained the idea that the band was over.”

“I don’t think I’d had fun in five years.” Cole Smith

since shed his Kurt Cobain-esque bleached blonde locks, and he looks sophisticated, wearing a pair of small-rimmed glasses. “Our last record was all about recovery - but truthfully, I didn’t buy in,” he admits. “I had been exposed to a lot of the ideas I was singing about, but I was trying to find an easier way, and ultimately I found out that there isn’t one.”

In August 2017, Cole announced on Instagram that he was six months sober, having undergone an intensive period of self-improvement while living with a community of fellow addicts. Now, meeting him in September 2019, he’s hit 30 months clean and looks notably healthier than the thin, pale figure that was once the subject of constant press scrutiny.

“I had to look at myself really deeply and confront a lot of things that were difficult to stomach,” he says. “Drug addiction is a symptom of a larger problem. At rehab you

examine that, and then you make sure you don’t repeat those behaviours that make you act a certain way so that you don’t fall back into active addiction. I don’t regret that album; it’s part of my story now. But I now know that failure and relapse can also be a part of a person’s eventual success and recovery.”

With a refreshed perspective, Cole uprooted to LA in order to continue his re-assimilation back into society. Aside from the sunnier climes of the West Coast, revisiting past hobbies proved to be an important part of the process.

“Once your life is a gigantic shitpile you have more time in your life to focus on what’s important, and have fun. I don’t think I’d had fun in five years,” he begins.

“Things like skateboarding and playing [trading card game] Magic: The Gathering helped me to engage with people again. That was incredibly important for me. Rehab is a very large, extremely inclusive and incredibly important community, and being exposed to that, and the closeness that you can have with people was key to my recovery. We came from a really supportive scene in New York. I needed to find that in LA.”

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t was this new lease of life that eventually opened the doors for DIIV to come together as a band again. “He was strong for us,” says Colin, alluding to some of his own struggles during the years preceding the band’s return. “He didn’t just come and apologise - he really proved that he was sorry, and that he had made these changes. It was like he set an example for us as well.”

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The sense of warmth and love that the pair have for each other, and for bandmates Andrew Bailey and Ben Newman, is palpable. “We really do support each other, because we’re friends. We always have been,” Colin says. “And that’s what it really was at first when we moved over to join Cole in LA. We were easing in again as friends, going to shows, listening to music. It was natural for us.”

Cole and Colin describe their mutual struggles as a “shared experience”, and it’s this intrinsic understanding between the group that had a huge effect on what would become the band’s third record, ‘Deceiver’. For the first time, songs were written communally, rather than by Cole as the primary songwriter. As a result, the themes of the album are ones that are deep and personal to every member of the band.

“There’s lightness and darkness in almost every song on the record,” says Cole. Tracks like ‘The Spark’ and ‘Blankenship’ are a testament to this. They’re immediate and bright, and upbeat - they’re fun. But they’re also compounded with a shoegaze slant that’s darker and heavier than anything the band has attempted before.

It’s a duality most evident on final track ‘Acheron’. At over seven minutes, it’s the longest offering on the record, moving through distinct phases as it draws towards a deafening, My Bloody Valentine-style conclusion. It’s also the only track on the album that is “wholly dark”, and, as they describe it, without any notion of hope.

“There’s this John Hersey book about Hiroshima that includes the line ‘shikata ga nai’, which means ‘it cannot be helped’ or ‘nothing can be done’,” says Cole. “I think that sums up the metaphor of this song. In recovery there’s a lot of surrendering your own self-will. It’s often easier to turn something over that you can’t control if you know it’s in the hands of something bigger - it’s like saying it was the

will of God. But there really is no resolution to some things.

Sometimes you just have to surrender to [that].”

It might sound fatalistic, but Cole’s perspective comes from a humble place. He talks about acceptance as an important step towards happiness and, more than anything, this new approach is something he wants to share with others. “A lot of the tools I learned in recovery are universal.

It’s a guidebook for how to approach life with honesty.

Applying those lessons to the band was a huge deal, and the process really worked for us.”

In its title and its content, ’Deceiver’ is an obvious reply to the most recent and troubled period of DIIV. But beyond the walls of sound and swells of guitar distortion, there’s a strong sense of retribution at its heart. It’s perhaps displayed no better than on ‘Skin Game’, a track built around an imaginary dialogue between two addicts: “I can see you’ve had some struggles lately,” Cole sings, “I can’t live like this anymore.”

DIIV are alive, though, and they are rejuvenated. In itself, it’s a fact that seems incredible considering some of the comments Cole made around the release of ‘Is The Is Are’ many of which suggested that he felt he might not even live to make another record.

“The future of the band feels really exciting and optimistic.

It’s fresh for us now,” says Colin, finally now a world away from that dark place. “In no way do we feel like we’ve exhausted our potential,” nods Cole. It’s hopeful, at last, but also true. Far from exhausted, DIIV’s potential seems greater now than ever.

‘Deceiver’ is out now via Captured Tracks. DIY

“I had to look at myself really deeply and confront a lot of things that were difficult to stomach.” - Cole Smith

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MUSIC INDUS TRY CONFE RE NC E 14.11.2019

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Swim Deep had fundamentally misunderstood the point of Supermarket Sweep.

shine on

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From buzzy beginnings to interpersonal switch-ups and creative blocks, it’s been a rocky road for SWIM DEEP. Returning with third LP ‘Emerald Classics’, the Birmingham quintet tell us how they found the light at the end of the tunnel. Words: Lisa Wright. Photo: Dan Kendall.

“N

o-one actually knows what happened to Swim Deep in the last four years...” says frontman Austin ‘Ozzy’ Williams, peroxide blonde and supping on a Wetherspoons Guinness. “I couldn’t tell you,” shrugs bassist bandmate Cavan McCarthy. “It was like a black hole.”

It’s a statement that seems to hint at lost weekends of excess and oblivion. But, though they may have indulged in the odd few highs, the time following the release of 2015’s second album ‘Mothers’ turns out to be one more categorised by its trials.

Having emerged at the start of the decade as one of the initial wave of B-Town buzz bands, first album ‘Where The Heaven Are We’ landing next to debut releases from hometown pals Peace and Superfood and marking them out as similarly-minded, happygo-lucky indie scamps, Swim Deep’s second found them treading into more experimental waters.

Baggier, and influenced by ‘90s rave, it might have been a shock for the die-hards, but it was one that

“ABBA and Prince are both direct influences on some of the songs.” James Balmont cast them in a new light. “It wasn’t a difficult second album, it was the complete opposite,” enthuses Cav. “It was an easy second album, and we were buzzing after it. It did fairly well critically, and we became quite a good band and experimented. It was all quite natural; it was all good. It was only when we went away to try and write again that it wasn’t so good...”

With touring for the record complete, Ozzy, Cav, keyboard player James Balmont and thenbandmates Zach Robinson and Tom ‘Higgy’ Higgins immediately headed back into the studio to pick up where they left off. But with their contract with RCA at an end, the reality was less fun. “None of us had a penny. We were jumping the tube to get there, and [all we’d have would be] some biscuits and a bit of hash. The vibes were so low,” recalls the singer.

“Not one song came from it, and that’s when it was clear that something had to change. I don’t think anyone wanted to be there,” Cav continues, before Ozzy picks back up: “I think the easiest thing we

could have done then is to have just knocked it on the head for good. The hardest thing was that we knew we had to carry it on, and that’s when me, James and Cav decided to really go for it.”

Temporarily down to three, they recruited new guitarist Robbie Wood (who Cav had met while on a modelling job) and former Childhood member Thomas Fiquet (“He used to play bass, so we stuck him on drums...”), and soon, Ozzy explains, they started to “feel like a gang again”.

Yet though line-up changes and cold hard reality might have knocked them temporarily, if there’s one thing that strikes about Swim Deep these days, it’s how much hungrier they seem for it. “On the second album we took it for granted; we’d been touring loads, we were signed to a major label and there was obviously going to be a second record,” nods James. “This time we took stock and realised that making the music itself is where the joy has to be.

It’s made me realise the value of what we’ve got.”

“There’s no rose-tinted glasses anymore,” adds Ozzy.

It’s a sentiment that’s written all over ‘To Feel Good’ - the single that heralded the introduction of third LP ‘Emerald Classics’ (named after a pub Cav grew up hanging out in). Full of gritty monologues, backed by a choir and featuring a Mike Leigh-esque video, it’s as far-flung a leap from the jaunty bop of early single ‘Honey’ as you can imagine. “[Producer] Dave [McCracken] would come round and say, ‘What’s it saying though? And no-one had ever asked us that before,” explains the singer of its weightier mood.

Across the rest of the record, however, the band say they were more interested in pop nuggets than hard-hitting poetry. “We’ve all been DJing loads, and you realise that what’s fun is to play big hits that get people dancing. It really got us in tune with artists like ABBA and Prince, who are both direct influences on some of the songs,” James explains. “‘Mothers’ was us trying to do something weird, but with this album, we riffed on things like Madonna’s ‘Like A Prayer’.”

Chances are the resulting record will be seen as yet another left turn, but for Swim Deep, reclaiming the energy and excitement that they thought was lost means the battle’s already been won. “Love Island was happening the whole time we were making it; for a while we were going to win the World Cup; the weather was amazing,” recalls James excitably. “I think that energy is definitely in the music. It was quite magical.”

‘Emerald Classics’ is out now via Pop Committee. DIY

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How many members of Battles does it take to change a light bulb?

“With two of us, there’s less people-managing…

I don’t know how Arcade Fire do it…”

- John Stanier

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Donaghy. Photos: Percy Walker-Smith.

I

The Odd Couple

Now streamlined to a duo, BATTLES might be dwindling in numbers but they’re still bursting with ideas. We meet them on the cusp of new album ‘Juice B-Crypts’, as they prepare to get their inimitable show on the road once more. Words: Daniel Montesinos-

an Williams and John Stanier - the two remaining members of New York experimental stalwarts Battles - are considering what their days consist of when they’re not in the throes of making warped, wonderful noise.

This early September afternoon, Ian has taken his one-year-old to a toy shop, met up with his wife and discovered a juicy-sounding modular synth in Bushwick. Meanwhile John has stayed put, relaxing in his apartment and taking in the end of the summer. “The older I get, the more I realise that it’s important to turn off the machine,” he begins, a marathon-strength drummer who has pounded the living shit out of his kit for three decades.

“So…”

His bandmate - a guitarist whose tall frame is usually seen jutting over buttons, knobs and keys - takes over. “So you need to keep yourself from going to a bar every night and drinking until three in the morning to feel like you’re still on tour?” “Exactly, yeah,” deadpans John, nailing the routine. Having toured the world together many times over, Battles know how hard it is to switch off. Luckily for their fans (and bar owners alike), the duo will soon be picking up again where they left off.

Formed in 2002, Battles have turned genres into mulch and made regular instruments transform into uncanny, liquid-like sounds ever since. They’ve been earmarked as touchstones for acts as varied as Foals and Lorde, whose high-school group was influenced by the band.

Across three albums - 2007’s ‘Mirrored’, 2011’s ‘Gloss Drop’ and most recent LP ‘La Di Da Di’ (2015) - they’ve evolved from glam-tinged experimentalists into designers of kooky, complicated labyrinths. With mysteriously titled new album ‘Juice B Crypts’, meanwhile, their genre-agnostic take on guitar music sounds looser than ever, a sunny atmosphere and sharp groove running throughout.

The record also marks their third lineup amendment to date - former vocalist/guitarist Tyondai Braxton left in 2010 to further his

work as a composer; bassist/occasional guitarist Dave Konopka quietly exited stage left last year. Yet Battles’ streamlining appears to have impacted the band only positively. “Being in Battles,” Ian explains, “everyone involved has a lot to say, let’s put it that way. You know, it was a battle - no pun intended.

“There only being two of us now, there’s less people-managing. John and me have to figure out when to do a thing and it’s a little bit easier. You know,” he pauses, sounding thoughtful, “I don’t even know how Arcade Fire do it...”

All due respect to Win Butler and his fellow multi-multi-instrumentalists, but there’s no way you could imagine them crafting something as giddily dense as ‘Juice B Crypts’. One minute, prog-rock god Jon Anderson is cooing alongside Taipei avant-folksters Prairie WWWW; the next, subterranean glitches of bass are being driven above ground

by John’s breakbeat-style percussion. In-between, there’s a howling piece of indie dancefloor disassemblage, a ‘90s-tinged hip hop collaboration with Shabazz Palaces and lots of clanging cowbell. With a host of guest musicians popping up with gleeful abandon, it may be the first time Battles have perfectly captured their live show’s magical sense of songs being creatively assembled and disassembled before you, and it’s infectious.

John, however, is more pragmatic about the record’s glass-half-full attitude. “The album’s probably more positive and light-sounding,” he nods, “because we got to go and sleep in our own beds every night.”

Where ‘La Di Da Di’’s recording process could be summed up by one moment from its tie-in documentary - an unshaven Ian hovering over a laptop, his unkempt bed a few feet away - on their newest, Battles allowed themselves a less oppressive routine.

Previously, the band (then a trio) literally ate, lived and breathed the recording process, which eventually fed into the minor-key strokes that ran through their last album. This time around, something had to change.

“There was an aspect of comfort making ‘Juice B Crypts’, like, commuting to work on the train, making music and then going home at the end of the day. It actually sort of let us remain a little bit more sane.

Waking up with a guitar next to you adds a... certain level of disruption to your life,” Ian explains with a deadpan wryness.

Eventually, talk turns back towards the touring lifestyle, as both members do their best to convince us that playing a festival with jetlag is worse than doing so with a hangover. This mundane Brooklyn afternoon may be their last time to truly relax before the album’s released and they, in their own words, “learn how to play the record.” But they’ve dipped their toes back into the live routine as a duo, with a short festival stint earlier this year, and are revving to go.

“I’m actually looking forward to touring. And it’s easier. I hate to say it, but with two people it’s so much easier,” says Ian before considering their recent, first shows back with a grin: “We slammed them.”

‘Juice B Crypts’ is out 11th October via Warp. DIY

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School’s

Out

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Digging back into their teenage diaries and formative demos, and emerging with a new record alongside a deeply personal memoir, Tegan and Sara are continuing to write their own unique trajectories and inspiring at every turn.

Words: Ella Braidwood.

I

n their two decades as a band, it’s fair to say that Tegan and Sara Quin have achieved quite a lot.

Starting out in the late ‘90s in their home city of Calgary, Alberta, the identical twins got their first big break when, aged 18, they won a local competition called Garage Warz; within a year, they’d signed a deal with Neil Young’s Vapor Records. Since then, the pair have released eight studio albums, played everywhere from Coachella to the Academy Awards, nabbed a Grammy nomination and morphed from cult indie artists to mainstream pop stars and LGBTQ+ icons.

It’s been one hell of a ride.

But the road hasn’t always run as smoothly as their credentials might imply. On the cusp of their next releases - potentially their most revealing to date - Sara is candid, open and eloquent about her battle to come to terms with being a gay teen, which at one point she tenderly reveals, left her feeling “really paralysed” and with little confidence about the future. “I remember feeling like, ‘Oh god, I’m a girl and I’m gay, there’s just no way I can do music’,” she explains.

It’s the band’s formative years that are addressed in new album ‘Hey, I’m Just Like You’, which came about as the sisters laid the groundwork for recently-released memoir High School. Like the new LP, the book tracks their teenage years - from struggling with their sexuality, through their first (secret) relationships with other girls, to experimenting with drugs, failing school grades, and their parents’ divorce. With Tegan and Sara taking it in turns to tell each chapter (Tegan, today, is absent, called off on other press business), it’s emotional and moving stuff - and a potential lifeline for any closeted queer kid who might see their future as hopeless.

When researching the book, Tegan set about the task of finding the pair’s old recordings, made years ago on cassette. After months of searching, alongside what Sara describes as a “smattering of luck,” they stumbled across

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FROM THE PEN OF SARA QUIN… Tegan and Sara have been pretty damn inspirational LGBTQ+ figures: this much we know. In need of still more quotable bon mots from the singer?

Let us provide…

On Appearance…

I tried to make myself look as gay as possible.

I mean, to this day I am very shocked when I’m sitting on an airplane and I get chatting with someone and they’re like, ‘So do you have a husband?’

And I’m like, me? Do I look like I have a husband? Are you serious right now?!

On Their Early Press...

It was almost like the music press wasn’t mature enough to think that, at 17, we could be having a complicated, textured, sophisticated experience. So I was like, ‘Never mind, when you guys grow up we’ll talk about it…’

On Self Belief…

In the early part of our career there was a lot of bad advice, and a lot of misogyny and a lot of misdirection. [Sometimes] it was like, ‘Can you play up your gayness more?’.

And we were like ‘No, we’re just gonna be us’.

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“I feel grief about how much I hated myself when I was a young adult because I know I learned that from the world around me.” - Sara Quin

dozens of songs they had penned between the ages of 15 and 17, ones which hadn’t been heard for more than 20 years. Perhaps surprisingly, they found that the material wasn’t naive, or immature or dated; sure, it was melodramatic in parts, with a dousing of defiant teenage angst, but it was also eloquent, insightful and poignant. “It felt more sophisticated than we had remembered it in our minds,” explains Sara. “By sophisticated, I just mean that the songs were more song-like than I actually remembered them. My recollection was of more ambiguity around arrangements; I didn’t necessarily remember lyrics being fully formed, and narratives being fully formed.”

way to dreams of big, fizzy futures; conversely in ‘I’ll Be Back Someday’, they’re back to shredding as if they’re Rancid.

Impressed by the recordings, the twins decided to rework the tracks and put them out hand-in-hand with the book as their ninth LP. Channelling their younger selves, the resultant record sees the band make a partial return to their rock roots, with hearty licks of ‘90s grunge nodding to their early influences of Nirvana, Hole and Green Day. The tracks were then pumped through the pop lens that catapulted them to mainstream success in 2012, following the release of ‘Heartthrob’, when slick banger ‘Closer’ broke them into the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time, bagging them support tour invites from megastars like Taylor Swift and Katy Perry.

In particular, Sara remembers writing ‘Please Help Me’. It’s a snapshot into her mind, mid-bender in the 11th grade, when she would use booze to cope with navigating an undiscussed open relationship with a secret girlfriend. Subject-wise, it’s also a big nod to the band’s 2016 hit synth-pop single ‘Boyfriend’, which was inspired by the musician’s experience of dating a woman, who was also dating a man and keeping her a secret. “We were sleeping together and possessive of one another, and yet she was also sleeping with boys,” recalls Sara.

“I was totally depressed about it. I had crushes on other girls. I felt like I had this like uncontrollable monster living inside of me because I was so compulsively thinking about girls, desiring girls. I was fighting with my parents, my grades were shit. I’d got blackout drunk and fallen down and broken my arm, and I wrote this song because I really was afraid that I was going to amount to nothing.”

Genre-wise there were no rules, says Sara. Instead, working with Australian producer Alex Hope, they focused on how to “honour” their 17-year-old selves. “The goal wasn’t like, let’s make a grunge, or a pop or an alternative record; we just kind of went with the flow.” The process, too, was refreshing as it meant the band could play simple songs (these are, argues Sara, harder to write), formed from back when the band “were not self-conscious yet, and weren’t trying too hard.” Now as adults, she jokes, their songwriting is sometimes hampered by “the need to probably add something, or do this, or think about pensions.”

The result is twelve tracks that seep with nostalgia, smashing the sounds of their youth into their current currency of electro-pop. In doing so, the album does indeed reflect those teenage years: a bit messed up, and with a looming shadow of uncertainty. But, at the same time, complex, profound and beautiful. In the album’s electronic and spacey title song, the twins reminisce on days spent tripping on acid, when their infighting would give

Lyrically, it’s a whistle-stop tour through young love, from those first sticky kisses to the all-consuming grief that can only stem from that first deep-dive into heartbreak. Take ‘I Know I’m Not The Only One’, an indie-pop cracker in which Sara comes to the painful realisation that she’ll fall in love again - just not with the girl who broke her heart, or the bass-heavy ‘We Don’t Have Fun When We’re Together Anymore’ (the sentiment of which is plain for all to see).

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he entire LP is underpinned

by Tegan and Sara’s closeted queerness in high school and, as such, it holds out an invaluable hand to every LGBTQ+ kid feeling alone. ‘Hey, I’m Just Like You’ is crammed with internalised homophobia and early relationships shrouded in secrecy, existing in a more turbulent time before both sisters came out and shaved off all their hair to celebrate their first demo deal.

“Tegan and I can represent, or our music can be relatable to anyone, of course,” she explains. “But, in those early years, it was those queer people in our audience who made me think, ‘You know what, you need to stop hating on yourself. You need to deal with your homophobia; you need to deal with your self-loathing; you need to deal with your shit,” she pauses, before adding with a laugh: “And you need to be better at being gay!” On

top of the band’s fans, she credits a woman she dated in her twenties for helping to give her “the confidence to care about my identity - to care about myself.”

In many ways, both the LP and the book are a gift to the LGBTQ+ community where, particularly in lesbian culture, Tegan and Sara have achieved cult status. In 2014, they won the Outstanding Music Artist title at the GLAAD Media Awards, beating household names like Elton John and Lady Gaga. Among some younger queers, meanwhile, they’re cherished as gold-gilded living statues, topped off with the ultimate mark of the crème de la crème for every celesbian: a guest appearance in cult television series The L Word.

They’ve inspired a generation of gay girls, who craved seeing themselves represented in the media while, in 2016, the sisters founded the Tegan and Sara Foundation, which fights for health, economic justice, and representation for LGBTQ+ girls and women.

All this progress in mind, was it hard for the band to go back to their volatile teenage years and relive the traumas of their youth? “It was very challenging,” nods Sara. “Like with most people, I think the early part of writing the memoir required a little bit of cognitive dissonance.” Their high school ordeals took their toll, too. “I feel grief about how much I hated myself when I was a young adult because I know that I learned that from the world around me,” she admits. In the end, says Sara, the band wanted to treat the material and their younger selves with the kindness that they didn’t get back then from the music industry. The project is all about making young Tegan and Sara proud of who they are.

“Now, as women, we’re 39, and we can sort of advocate for 17-year-old Tegan and Sara in a way that no-one ever advocated for us,” she says.

“These were girls who had already fallen in love, and had broken hearts and had complicated sexual and romantic relationships.

“They were kids who had already had really adult experiences, who had suffered traumas, who had suffered experiences that were worthy of valuable art – art that has substance - and now it feels like we can go back and say: ‘Look at these kids, they’re not idiots’.”

‘Hey, I’m Just Like You’ is out now via Sire. DIY

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A record imbued with a high  FOALS

T

FOALS

Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost - Part 2 (Warner) ‘Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost, Part 2’ (Warners)

he issue with double albums is that, even at their best, there’s usually some excess fat to be trimmed. The Clash’s ‘London Calling’ could almost certainly nix ‘Lover’s Rock’; ‘The White Album’ would not be left wanting without ‘Ob-LaDi, Ob-La-Da’; tbh ‘Generation Terrorists’ - Manic Street Preachers’ incendiary, 18-track debut could probably be sliced by a solid 30% and come out fine.

In order to combat this potential pitfall, when Foals emerged from their latest batch of recording sessions with 20 viable offerings, they decided to divvy them up into two manageable portions. Part 1, of course, landed earlier this year, teed up by quotes from the band that it contained the more expansive, cerebral end of their forthcoming wares; six months later and

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it’s become the now-quartet’s most acclaimed LP to date, narrowly missing out on the UK Number One spot, earning them a Mercury Prize nod and garnering five-star reviews across the board.

So it’s with no small level of anticipation that we reach the second chapter. The one with the riffs. The one that, in theory, hones in on the visceral, wild-eyed, positive fury that’s become Foals’ calling card: the thing they do better than anyone else right now. And if a double album comes inbuilt with problems, then a two-parter heralds its own even greater weight of expectation. Though the records are ostensibly two sides of the same coin, there’s still the underlying thought in everyone’s minds: that one was good, now do better.

But Foals aren’t fools, and there’s a reason they opted for the order of this particular one-two. Where ‘Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost’’s first instalment tackled the confusion of modern life via twitchy tetchiness and moments of elegiac release, on its follow-up they go right down dirty, bracing themselves for the coming apocalypse head-on with monstrous guitars and scorched vocals before bursting into the ether with ‘Neptune’ - a 10-minute, epic finale and the sonic equivalent of that enddays ball of flames. If this all sounds a little theatrical then it’s with reason: from the opening, cinematic instrumental of ‘Red Desert’ - a piece with the tension and build of a big screen epic - Foals have crafted a record imbued with a high-stakes sense of drama. There are no half measures here; from the first howled clarion call of ‘The Runner’, Yannis Philappakis’ vocals are sung at breaking point, while riffs crunch and swagger, embracing the band’s most primal side.

As they made clear with first single ‘Black Bull’ – a rampant rager of a track, as uncompromising and thrillingly dangerous as its spirit animal – there are BIG songs here, just as

Illustration: Narcsville.

stakes sense of drama. promised. ‘Like Lightning’ swaggers along with an unusually bluesy strut, like the cocky prowl The Black Keys wish they could still capture even 15% of; ‘Wash Off’ is a mathier, pricklier thing but with an insatiable sense of forward motion and one of those prolonged, circular instrumental builds Yannis and guitarist Jimmy Smith do so well. The payoff is, of course, cathartic as hell.

But not everything here is big by way of being blatant. ‘10,000 Feet’ is atmospheric, moody and bass-driven – more like the kind of spacious epic Pearl Jam might unleash at sunset, while ‘Into The Surf’ cleverly picks up on the twinkling keys of the first album’s ‘Surf Pt. 1’, swelling it into a big, cathartic outpouring. If there’s the smallest of quibbles to be found, it’s that ‘Black Bull’’s “future / kombucha” line might not be the singer’s most poetic accomplishment, but overall ‘ENSWBL, Part 2’ picks up the baton of its predecessor and sends it surging to the finish line, leaving Foals legions ahead of their competitors. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Black Bull’, ‘Neptune’

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DIIV

Deceiver (Captured Tracks)

Only since the release of, and tour behind, 2016’s ‘Is The Is Are’ has lynchpin Zachary Cole Smith finally been able to kick his drug habit, making ‘Deceiver’ the first DIIV music to be written from a place of total sobriety. Accordingly, it sounds clearer, more focused, and with a distinct, continuous sonic palette. It’s also a considerably more referential piece of work than anything that preceded it, harking back in heart-on-sleeve fashion to the ‘90s, where he mines the likes of Dinosaur Jr. (stormy opener

‘Horsehead’) and ‘Loveless’-era My Bloody Valentine (‘Like Before You Were Born’) for inspiration. There are flashes of the melodic guitar of old, especially on the achingly pretty ‘Between Tides’, but elsewhere the emphasis appears to be on drawing order from the chaos of ‘Is The Is Are’ by focusing on heavier sounds than ever before; the freewheeling ‘Blankenship’, all urgent riffery, is a case in point at one end of the tempo scale, and then at the other, there’s monolithic slow burners like closer ‘Acheron’. The difference, this time out, is that Cole is riding the crest of the waves of reverb, rather than allowing himself to be battered by them.

‘Deceiver’ is his first truly clear-eyed artistic statement - it’s also his most mature. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Blankenship’

It’s Lana Del Rey’s world, we’re just living in it. 

LANA DEL REY Norman Fucking Rockwell!

(Polydor)

Where would we be without Lana Del Rey? Five albums in, Lana has done more to romanticise the old school American dream than anyone else. The faded lustre of classic Hollywood, the sparks of early rock’n’roll: Lana has been more than happy to explore and re-explore the same scene. To walk the same paths but still unearth new curiosities, to sample new flavours and find new angles on the same landscape. The opening trio of songs here, ‘Normal Fucking Rockwell’, ‘Mariners Apartment Complex’ and ‘Venice Bitch’, somehow survive the weight of the majestic grandeur poured all over them, the latter offering an intriguing change in pace with almost six, spiralling, psychedelic minutes of what could be considered an outro. As close to sugary pop as the album comes is the candyfloss chorus of ‘Fuck It, I Love You’ before the surprising reworking of Sublime’s ‘Doin Time’. Nothing that could have been expected is missing; ‘California’ is the sultry slowburn, ‘Cinnamon Girl’ offers a beautiful, delicate touch and the crowning achievement might be ‘The Greatest’. A song full of iconic lines and razor-sharp observations, there’s a strange satisfaction in seeing Lana Del Rey - maybe Kanye West’s strongest competition as the era’s most defining artist - end a song with “L.A. is in flames, it’s getting hot, Kanye West is blond and gone, ‘Life on Mars’ ain’t just a song. Oh, the livestream’s almost on”. It’s easy to make it sound easy, and Lana Del Rey has found myriad ways to make it look easy. But if it wasn’t impeccably written, beautifully sung and intriguingly structured, ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell!’ could have been something far less than what it truly is. It’s Lana Del Rey’s world, we’re just living in it. (Matthew Davies Lombardi) LISTEN: ‘The Greatest’

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Inherently vital. 

DANNY BROWN uknowhatimsayin¿ (Warp)

For a man who opens his fifth studio record by reminding us to “never look back”, Danny Brown is in a surprisingly nostalgic mood. Fresh off the back of a successful talk show, ‘uknowhatimsayin¿’ catches him at his chatty best, with a new found affection for a ‘less is more’ approach. The languid beat of ‘Change Up’ and ‘Theme Song’ softens his flow into something far less hyperactive, while the horns on ‘Combat’ have him addressing the realities of staying on top and out of trouble with wit, candour and - shock - a certain sentimentality. In a world of diminishing attention spans, he keeps it moving - most tracks don’t linger longer than three minutes, giving the whole thing an inherently vital quality, a record you can let wash over you just as well as getting the party lit.

Where ‘uknowhatimsayin¿’ thrives best is in its well curated choice of sparring partners. ‘3 Tearz’ spits neck-jarring staccato against Run The Jewels, middle finger thrust high in the air, while ‘Negro Spiritual’ makes uses of JPEGMAFIA’s nervous energy, racing against the clock towards the brooding chorus of ’Shine’, which utilises Dev Hynes’ lower register to excellently moody effect. The whole thing is executive produced by Q-Tip, and it shows - three years on from ‘Atrocity Exhibition’, it’s head and shoulders above Danny’s usual production value, paying undeniable homage to the solid-gold ‘90s era of West Coast rap. By learning to play nicely with others, Danny Brown is headed for the jackpot - commercial viability without compromising his unique voice. (Jenessa Williams) LISTEN: ‘Shine’

“FFS VIRGIN MEDIA I’VE ALREADY GIVEN YOU MY PREVIOUS ADDRESS THREE TIMES NOW”.

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 REX ORANGE COUNTY Pony (Sony)

It’s been two years since Rex Orange County shared ‘Loving Is Easy’ and, on a surface level, you could say his life has looked pretty sweet ever since. With two critically acclaimed albums already under his belt and a lauded appearance on Tyler, The Creator’s 2017 ‘Flower Boy’, it would be an easy assumption, but a first listen to his forthcoming third LP ‘Pony’ shows it’s been anything but.

Frankly, Rex has not been feeling good and throughout the record he documents the struggles he’s been facing over the last few years, coating his difficulties with jazzflecked bittersweet indie melodies. The ten tracks follow his journey of adapting to his new life, as he deals with feelings including exploitation in ‘Stressed Out’ and understanding that it’s OK not to be okay all the time in ‘Always’. Stunning six-minute closer, ‘It’s Not The Same Anymore’, perhaps lays out his current feelings most candidly, dictating how he’s coping and overcoming past struggles, as he croons “It’s not the same anymore, it’s better.” A beautiful new offering, ‘Pony’ is equal parts heart wrenching and hopeful, and shows Rex back at his very finest. (Elly Watson) LISTEN: ‘It Gets Better’

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KING PRINCESS Cheap Queen

(Zelig / Columbia)

Genderqueer, gay and of Jewish descent, Mikaela Straus has been demonstrating the complexity of identity ever since she chose the moniker King Princess. Her personal brand of kiss-off pop is as relatable as it is glossily distant, appearing as if out of nowhere in early 2018. Arriving in her 20th year, King Princess’s debut speaks strongly to the dichotomies of modern existence. She is at once ’50s pop purveyor (‘Homegirl’) and jealous emo string-plucker (‘Watching My Phone’), with no attempts to hide her own flaws or fears. In ‘You Destroyed My Heart’ she labels herself “a better fag, and you’re an amateur”. It’s willfully provocative, and it’s no surprise that it’s her favourite line on the record, delivered with sassy panache. Much like Lorde’s ‘Pure Heroine’ before it, ‘Cheap Queen’ possesses the perfect amount of devil-may-care attitude to counter the heaviness with which it feels its emotions. Whimsical ‘Useless Phrases’ uses cutesy lift music to lay the groundwork for ‘Ain’t Together’’s rejection of relationship labels, while ‘Do You Wanna See Me Crying’ is lush, hip R&B, a brief dash of glitter on the pillow amongst floods of teary kohl. “I’m so bad with attention” she laments on ’Tough On Myself’, her Brooklyn accent lounging against the sparse musical furniture. She better start getting used to it - it’s about to arrive in spades. (Jenessa Williams) LISTEN: ‘You Destroyed My Heart’

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 BODEGA Shiny New Model

(What’s Your Rupture?)

‘Shiny New Model’ arrives barely a year after ‘Endless Scroll’ cemented BODEGA as one of the most wildly fun acts in Brooklyn. By the sounds of this mini album, they’re still having a blast. The title track is about being in an actual bodega (a corner shop to us Brits). It starts out with a jaunty guitar lick and Pavement-style vocals, as intermittent choruses declare “you can increase up your service charge, but you’re competing with a shiny new model”. Ben Hozie’s clearly not too enthused about the latest wave of technological advancements, but he sounds like he’s enjoying yelping about it. Tracks like the whirring ‘No Vanguard Revival’ and the buoyant ‘Realism’ are barely a minute long. To make up for that, final track ‘Truth Is Not Punishment’ (a reworking of ‘Endless Scroll’’s original version). A bustling jam of sing-a-long vocal hooks and angular guitar solos, it voyages through dynamic peaks and lulls with the same toe-tapping spirit that was promised on the band’s debut. Channeling everyone from Talking Heads to ESG, BODEGA remain as giddy and funked-up as ever. (James Bentley) LISTEN: ‘Truth Is Not Punishment’

 JULIEN CHANG Jules

(Transgressive)



SWIM DEEP Emerald Classics (Pop Committee)

When the shit hits the fan, you can do one of two things: wallow in the mire or pick yourself up and turn the experience into something positive.

‘Emerald Classics’, Swim Deep’s third, is all about the latter - coming through the hard times to find some sense of victory in the face of adversity. The band went from touring with The 1975 on their last album to signing on the dole and almost imploding, losing two members in the process. They retreated, wounded, to their Birmingham local, The Emerald. But rather than calling time, they’ve returned invigorated with a celebratory album of redemption. Throughout its ten tracks, the lingering melancholy is laced with hope - and plenty of massive choruses. ‘Bruised’ is accompanied by an irresistible slinky guitar line that Lionel Richie might have turned down for being just a little too smooth, while ‘World I Share’ is New Order at their most optimistic and uplifting. On ‘To Feel Good’, a children’s choir re-imagining of Rozalla’s club classic, never has checking in at the Job Centre sounded so blissful. This is one of many early-‘90s touchstones across a record that recalls the comedown after the acid house hedonism that preceded it. Washed-out vocals and synths swirl around in space over Casio pianos and baggy beats.

At times, you yearn for a little more grit among all the blissed-out euphoria, but ultimately the hooks are big enough to sink in and take hold. (Felix Rowe) LISTEN: ‘World I Share’

Classically trained and supposedly influenced by an eye-opening period of his musical education in which he was simultaneously exposed to “Pink Floyd, Tchaikovsky and Gregorian chants”, the debut from Baltimore teen Julien Chang is every bit the magpie-like, slightly precocious entity that you’d expect from a young artist whose tried everything all at once and found that actually, he’s pretty good at most of it. Largely, however, ‘Jules’ is split into two rough categories. There’s the funk-tinged numbers (the Neon Indian-esque ‘Of The Past’, or the more UMO-recalling space-psych of ‘Moving Parts’) where his jazz background comes to the fore. These are good. When Julien is much, much more than good, however, is when he strips things back to their most spine-tingling. The gorgeous ‘Butterflies From Monaco’ is like an angelic chorus doing early Grizzly Bear, early single ‘Deep Green’ may crash into action but it does so subtly and with nuance, while ‘Two Voices’ is so intimate you’ll want to cradle it and keep it all for yourself.

Full marks for exploration, but in this case the simplest tricks work the best. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Butterflies From Monaco’

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REFUSED War Music

(Spinefarm / Search & Destroy)

When Refused first released their seminal record ‘The Shape of Punk To Come’ over twenty years ago, the Swedish punks had no real sense of the impact the album would go on to make. With long-awaited return ‘Freedom’, which landed back in 2015, they picked up where they had left off, but in a decidedly more restrained fashion. While lead single ‘Elektra’ was deliciously frenetic, the album as a whole saw the band become a more taut, muscular beast. It’s with their new album, however, that they revisit the hectic rhythms and fidgety energy that defined ‘Shape...’ two decades ago. An album with a decidedly more live heart, tracks like ‘I Wanna Watch The World Burn’ and ‘Blood Red’ are potently political - unsurprising really, considering the band’s history - while ‘Malfire’ packs the power of a charging bull, and ‘Damaged III’ evokes a sense of chaos not too dissimilar to that of ‘New Noise’. An invigorating listen that flirts with the eclecticism of their 1998 album, ‘War Music’ continues to set Refused apart from the pack. (Sarah Jamieson) LISTEN: ‘REV001’, ‘Death In Vännäs’

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KIM GORDON No Home Record (Matador)

Kim Gordon is a certified pop culture icon. As a founding member of Sonic Youth she became a role model for a generation. Since then she’s done everything from producing a critically-acclaimed Hole record to writing a much-lauded memoir. It seems crazy to think that it has taken until 2019 for her to release a solo album. ‘No Home Record’ is everything a Kim Gordon record should be: provocative, challenging and effortlessly cool. Lead single ‘Sketch Artist’ is a textbook example, featuring blasts of throbbing bass and Nine Inch Nails-esque white noise.

‘Earthquake’ is a similarly disorienting blur of creaking metal and distant guitar strums. And the post-punk guitars of ‘AirBnB’ supply a crunching chorus that could easily have been lifted from a Sonic Youth record. At times, ‘No Home Record’ sounds like the workings of some monstrous factory. It’s a strange, industrial trip that’s full of experimentation. Like with the best moments of her career, here she is uncompromising in her artistic vision. (James Bentley) LISTEN: ‘Sketch Artist’

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BIG THIEF Two Hands (4AD)

 KING NUN MASS

Less than six months after the release of ‘U.F.O.F.’, Big Thief release the “earth twin” to their third album. The swift turnaround might not have been anticipated, but its little surprise that album four is every bit as enticing. Vocalist Adrianne Lenker almost seems to transcend the music. Her quavering vocals provide a captivating focal point as the song culminates with a poetic mantra - “forgotten tongue is the language of love.” The title track features glittering guitar melodies as a rhythm of gentle maracas and brushed drums build a delicate soundscape. And with a hooky groove and lashings of giddy soloing, six minute lead single ‘Not’ might be the band’s best in years. A restrained pace imbues the album with a feeling of deep sedation. It’s a blissful listen from start to finish. (James Bentley) LISTEN: ‘Not’

(Dirty Hit)

King Nun’s ascent so far has been a long old tale with precious few chapters followed by an EP in 2018.

Worth every second of the wait, though, ‘MASS’ is a gorgeous display of a close-knit clan finding their voice and coming of age. Chief songwriter Theo Polyzoides is a natural-born poet, and his grappling with love, faith and their respective absence makes up the album’s framework. While there’s ambiguity in his evocative verses, lines like “yes I fucking love you darling / I’ll love you until I die” on ‘Mascara Runs’ paint a pretty clear narrative. Suggesting Nick Cave or Brian Molko, his droll vocal is stronger than it’s ever been but still feels like it might shatter at any moment. It’s the perfect vessel to carry such romantic, bittersweet sentiment. ‘MASS’ also sees the boys step into new territory instrumentally. ‘Low Flying Dandelion’ packs a punch with a meaty bass riff from Nathan Gane while drummer Caius Stockley-Young powers juggernaut belter ‘Cowboy’. James Upton’s guitars flesh out an almost gothic resonance across the record, too. All together, King Nun’s is a sound to be reckoned with - it may seem chaotic and wild to the untrained eye, but these guys are in absolute control and you’d better not forget it.

(Alex Cabré) LISTEN: ‘Low Flying Dandelion’

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 FEET

What’s Inside Is More Than Just Ham (Clapped)

Timing, as they say, is everything. So you have to feel for Coventry’s FEET that ‘Petty Thieving’ - their under-the-radar 2016 single, re-purposed for this debut - has a nearidentical propulsive opening salvo to Shame’s much-loved 2018 offering ‘Concrete’. Maybe it’s this accidental doubling up that’s led the band to create such a purposefully quirky world for the rest of the record; there’s little chance of similarity when you’re writing an ode to the life of a hotdog.

It’s a shame (sorry) because, beneath the slightly grating kookiness, FEET’s songwriting is genuinely exciting.

‘Axe Man’ lollops along like a lost early Blur gem, ‘Good Richard’s Crash Landing’ flits between heady build-ups and big, brilliant riffs while ‘Ad Blue’ is pure giddy Britpop bounce. “I’m just taking the piss / Having a laugh” goes closer ‘Wiggy Pop’. Which is all very well, but really FEET are good enough not to rely on just being 2019 indie’s wacky cousins. (Lisa Wright) Listen: ‘Axe Man’



SORCHA RICHARDSON (Faction)



ANGEL OLSEN All Mirrors (Jagjaguwar)

With each record, it’s becoming clear that Angel Olsen’s evolution is akin to an auteur director. ‘Half Way Home’ and ‘Burn Your Fire For No Witness’ were her scrappy independent films, burning with a creative fire and a passion for the art. ‘My Woman’, meanwhile, was Angel going Technicolor. It was crisp, expansive, adventurous; full of moments to lose yourself in. Now with fourth album ‘All Mirrors’, Angel goes full IMAX, revealing everything she possibly can, filling your senses with her ideas. It’s a sprawling go-anywheredo-anything blockbuster that, while perhaps not as supremely constructed as ‘My Woman’ was, reinforces her artistic nous. Showcasing her ability to take disparate thoughts and turn them into something astonishing, much of the magic of ‘All Mirrors’ is down to the malleability of Angel’s voice.

It can, one minute, sound like that of a ‘60s rock’n’roll icon, the next of someone wrenching their heart out.

A whisper becomes a yell with such startling ease that it makes every line strike harder. Change is inevitable, and to hold on to the past is to hold yourself back.

For Angel Olsen, it feels like it’s been a long road to discovering that simple idea, but ‘All Mirrors’ shows that the path to understanding is both beautiful and rocky, but it can also be an essential one. Roll credits. (Chris Taylor) LISTEN: ‘Chance’

With a glut of artists touting safe synth-addled folk in recent years,it’s tempting to dismiss the sub-genre as an exhausted, sometimes derivative, exercise. Sorcha Richardson goes some way in bucking the trend; pairing perky electro-pop songcraft with plucky acoustic antics, avoiding beige in favour of colourful traction. Tapped from recent transatlantic travels, a spell in Brooklyn and subsequent return to the Irish capital, the Dublin singersongwriter flaunts confessional, coming-of-age spirit with a sense of pure unspoilt vitality. Sorcha flits between wistful and the playful with ease, dealing in tight melodies that fizzle in a sugar-coated mix. ‘First Prize Bravery’ excels in this; lead single ‘Don’t Talk About It’ is rendered with punchy polish, while the bubblegum bliss of ‘Oh Oscillator’, along with ‘Red Lion’, bask in collective kinetic glitz, “an endless vacation / a movie scene” that keeps on rolling.

Sorcha scores heaps of charm and charisma on this fulllength debut - kicking out the jams, without a doubt. (Chris Hamilton-Peach) LISTEN: ‘Oh Oscillator’



WILLIAM DOYLE

Your Wilderness Revisited (The Orchard)

William Doyle’s two records under the moniker East India Youth were dizzying pieces of work that flicked between Berlin Bowieesque krautrock and electro pop. And on ‘Your Wilderness Revisited’, his ability to conduct these ideas is still very much in effect. References to the likes of broadcaster Jonathan Meades and Brian Eno, who has a feature on ‘Design Guide’, never come across as an attempt to show off his cultural capital. Instead, William balances his idiosyncrasies perfectly with the base human emotions that are at the heart of all these songs, never letting it feel like an exercise. Because, at its core, this is simply an album about growing up in the suburbs. A heady blend that’s easy to get lost in, ‘Your Wilderness Revisited’ might be his most accessible record to date. (Chris Taylor) LISTEN: ‘Blue Remembered’



HALFNOISE Natural Disguise (LAB)

If Zac Farro entered into the making of this third HALFNOISE full-length intending to keep up a clear dividing wall between it and his work with Paramore, he’s only been halfway successful. ‘After Laughter’ was defined musically by its melodic vibrancy and while ‘Natural Disguise’ does not seek to imitate that album’s ‘80s pop stylings, it’s sonically every bit as bright and breezy. ‘Natural Disguise’’s successes revolve around its cohesiveness - the consistency with which Zac draws from the same instrumental palette, which chiefly consists of disco guitar, a smattering of shiny synths, and his own giddy vocals. It’s a neat trick, this sort of quicksilver blend of funk, psych and pop, but it’s one that’s repeated to the point of potentially wearing thin by the end.

Still, it’s a likeable diversion, and evidence of his burgeoning ability as a composer and songwriter. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Who Could You Be’

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LIFE

A Picture Of Good Health A sonic mirror held up to what’s going on outside - it’s indispensable.



BRITTANY HOWARD Jaime There’s a fierce imagination at play on the Alabama Shakes vocalist’s solo debut.



VIVIAN GIRLS Memory

An unexpected return from the trio, and one full of genuine exhilaration.

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



Boundary Road Snacks & Drinks

Devour You

Juice B Crypts

DRY CLEANING 

TEGAN AND SARA Hey, I’m Just Like You (Sire)

Two decades on from debut album ‘Under Feet Like Ours’, Tegan and Sara dove deep for ninth fulllength ‘Hey, I’m Just Like You’. Taking its beginnings from the discovery of long-lost demo cassettes, the pair reworked tracks written when they were teenagers. It makes for a welcome blend of candid lyrics and mature musicality, all expertly held together by upbeat, contemporary production.

Joyously catchy opener ‘Hold My Breath Until I Die’ perfectly captures the spirit of the record, soaking in romance and regret in equal measure.

The same glorious pop sheen is present on the assertive ‘I Don’t Owe You Anything’ and the title track - two of the sharpest tunes on show.

Elsewhere, ‘I’ll Be Back Someday’ benefits from its pop-punk influences, topped off with a stadiumsized chorus, while the duo strip their sound back to its bare bones on the evocative ‘Hello I’m Right Here’ and the simple, but devastatingly effective ‘Please Help Me’. ‘Hey, I’m Just Like You’ is a record underpinned by raw emotion, melancholy, and a quiet but clear sense of hope, making for one of the group’s most vital efforts yet. (Dominic Penna) LISTEN: ‘I Don’t Owe You Anything’

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STARCRAWLER

BATTLES

(Rough Trade)

(Warp)

Jumping in puddles used to be a right laugh, didn’t it?

Nothing used to beat putting your wellies on and just having a little run around in the rain. You probably miss it. Starcrawler certainly do.

‘Devour You’, Starcrawler’s second, pines for the good times, making you realise that the whole adulthood thing is completely overrated.

‘Lizzy’ is pure unhinged Bo Diddley, Arrow De Wilde’s yelp having a new-found depth, adding a tinge of sadness to Starcrawler’s madness. ‘Home Alone’ is the song Yeah Yeah Yeahs might’ve made if they’d decided to inject Iggy Pop’s aging phlegm directly into their veins rather than mess around with those synthesiser things. It’s all hips, handclaps and riffs, lots and lots of riffs. It isn’t perfect, but you’d be hard pressed to find a record as fun as ‘Devour You’. So, next time it’s chucking it down outside, you know what to do. The puddles are calling you. (Jack Doherty) LISTEN: ‘Lizzy’

It’s not always been obvious, but since their inception in 2002, Battles have been on an almighty quest for the funk. Definitive, allconquering, funk. On ‘Juice B Crypts’, their fourth studio album, they might just have found it. Opener ‘Ambulance’ is business as usual, the track filled with enough chaotic repetition to make Mark E Smith’s belly hurt.

It’s Battles-by-numbers, and there’s nothing really wrong with that. However, from this point it’s apparent that something has changed with the group. As you’d expect, there are bleeps and bloops aplenty, but underneath it all is a sexy, if slightly bizarre, groove. This new found funky outlook is no more apparent than on ‘Titanium 2 Step’ & ‘Izm’. The tracks pump along with such swagger that you can’t help but be a bit disappointed that George Clinton hasn’t popped in to lay down a few lines. (Jack Doherty) LISTEN: ‘Titanium 2 Step’

(It’s OK)

After bursting out with Lyric Of The Year contender “She said have you ever spat cum onto the carpet of a Travelodge” back in August, South London’s shiniest new post-punk promise Dry Cleaning have a lot to live up to on ‘Boundary Road Snacks and Drinks’. Coming only two months after the release of debut EP ‘Sweet Princess’, the six-track newbie doesn’t disappoint following its predecessor’s hype, albeit omitting any hotel carpet wonderings.

Mixing their urgent postpunk backing with vocalist Florence Shaw’s deadpan delivery, her spoken-word vocals remain the standout star here, from her rapid observations on opener ‘Dog Proposal’ to the more melodic offering of ‘Sit Down Meal’. Once again highlighting the quartet’s sardonic take on modern life, Dry Cleaning are only just getting started. (Elly Watson) LISTEN: ‘Dog Proposal’

capturedtracks.com

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CAROLINE POLACHEK Pang

(Columbia)

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CURRENT AFFAIRS

Object & Subject (Tough Love)

Place the needle on ‘Object & Subject’ and you could be in a particularly hairsprayfavouring corner of 1979.

Hailing from Glasgow, Current Affairs dredge up the noirish, gothic end of post-punk that reached its critical peak at the end of the decade; ‘Eyes’ is all Siouxsie and the Banshees jagged edges, ‘Object’ brings to mind Joy Division’s ‘Transmission’, while ‘Crimes’’ maudlin romance and reverb-laden guitars are pure Cure. The Scots clearly have their musical predilections, but they do it well, singer Joan Sweeney’s wiry, icy tone the perfect, dead-eyed counterfoil to the voodoo being summoned around her. More than just a homage, Current Affairs are worthy successors to their influences. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Crimes’

On ‘Insomnia’, the midpoint on Caroline Polachek’s otherworldly first full-length album under her own name, the classically-trained vocalist beautifully merges traditional folklore with the processed vocals and synths that dominate across ‘Pang’. It’s indicative of the record’s reluctance to be confined, reimagining the notion of pop in collaboration with PC Music stalwarts Danny L Harle and AG Cook. Despite bursting with vast electronic sounds, their delicate production builds around Caroline’s multifaceted vocals, from the subdued wails of the album’s title track to the Haim-esque pop brilliance of ‘So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings’. Much like the force of the record’s title, ‘Pang’ is immediate and remarkably unique. Building on the soundscapes of early pioneers - not least Imogen Heap - Caroline joins contemporary and fellow PC Music collaborator Charli XCX in innovation. The underlying experimentation is powered by her vocal ability, generating a pop record that effortlessly overshadows the tried and tested. Three years since the demise of cult-favourites Chairlift, and two since her instrumental offering under the CEP moniker, Caroline Polachek has built a distinctively personal voice, unafraid to show vulnerability through a powerful and original sound. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Pang’

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Body Negative

first timer

MNNQNS

PIZZAGIRL

(FatCat)

(Heist or Hit)

‘Body Negative’ is a beautiful yet bizarre debut. MNNQNS (pronounced mannequins, obviously), formed over an existing love of post-punk and going out drinking in their native Rouen, but it’s in frontman Adrian D’Epinay’s time spent studying in Cardiff that they found their groove: there’s early British post-punk stamped all over the record, not least via experimentally acute guitar lines and drum parts packing constant momentum. Single ‘Desperation Moon’ merges moods of teenage nostalgia and looming adulthood, while ‘Urinals’ bleeds the need to feel listened to.

The album really hits its stride in the second half, though, with the slower, spacier ‘Stagnant Pools’ and ‘Wire (Down To The)’ which brims with confidence and intent. (Martin Toussaint) LISTEN: ‘Wire (Down To The)’

As well as being a fan of the lower case, Liverpool’s Pizzagirl is a musical magpie. At its best, debut LP ‘first timer’ sweetly bridges the gap between classic ‘80s synth-pop and contemporary indie. Single ‘dennis’ is a parodically breezy ear worm, while the creeping lyricism of ‘cut and paste’ hits like a digital-age rendition of The Police’s ‘Every Breath You Take’. Occasionally, though, it drifts too far into cliche. ‘Yesterday’ sounds like a song your mum might’ve slow-danced to at a school disco back in the day, while ‘Daytrip’ brings back suppressed memories of the Lightning Seeds’ football anthem ‘Three Lions’ (and, as we know, it didn’t come home). Still, there are enough strong tunes on ‘first timer’ to get toes tapping, and it’s definitely worth a spin if you’re looking to sport a mullet at some point in the near future. (Jack Johnstone Orr) LISTEN: ‘dennis’

PUMAROSA Devastation

Featuring the recently-released ‘Heaven’, Isabel Muñoz-Newsome and gang’s second full-length is out 1st November.

THE BIG MOON Walking Like We Do With both comeback number ‘It’s Easy Then’ and single ‘Your Light’ set to star on the record, The Big Moon’s second is out 10th January BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB Everything Else

Has Gone Wrong No, it’s not a mirage! Come 17th January, the boys’ unexpected fifth album will actually exist.

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ANNA MEREDITH FIBS

(Moshi Moshi)

Anna Meredith went into the making of this second full-length without the distinct advantage that she held as she was putting together 2016’s ‘Varmints’ - relative anonymity. That album earned her an avalanche of plaudits, meaning that there is already a built-in audience for ‘FIBS’, and with it a bar of expectation that was lofty enough even before she raised it higher still with last year’s score for Bo Burnham’s ‘Eighth Grade’. Her response to the pressure? If everything was already turned up to eleven on ‘Varmints’, consider it cranked to twelve on ‘FIBS’. Her first album was precisely the opposite of minimalist and yet, somehow, she seems to have made this collection an even more vibrant affair, all clattering beats and racing synths held together with production polished enough to see your face in. It’s an overwhelming listen first time around, with everything tearing along at a hundred miles an hour, but it’s all fizzing and crackling so exhilaratingly that you’re happy to let her sweep you along. The scintillating aural technicolour of opening one-two ‘Sawbones’ and ‘Inhale Exhale’ soon give way to more experimental pop territory - the mercurial ‘Calion’, the chirpily offkilter ‘Killjoy’ - but holding everything together is a a zest for the limitless possibilities of electronic music. That said, there’s a masterful sense of control running underneath the whole affair, reminding us of Anna’s years of experience, and ensuring that she never overplays her hand. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Inhale Exhale’

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A Pill For Loneliness

Nude Casino

CITY AND COLOUR

IGUANA DEATH CULT

(Still)

(Innovative Leisure)

Ever since the release of his solo debut ‘Sometimes’ all the way back in 2005, Dallas Green – under his City and Colour moniker - has been an expert in creating stark and moving offerings, set against luscious sonic backdrops.

With his latest, and sixth album, ‘A Pill For Loneliness’, he treads a similar path, but this time with an added sense of pathos. A reflective record which sees Green looking back on his time as a musician so far, tracks such as ‘Living In Lightning’, ‘Astronaut’ and ‘Me and the Moonlight’ offer up a real sense of the confusion that surrounds a lifetime spent away from home and those you love. Doubling as perhaps his most creative and experimental sound so far – swapping the more organic instrumentation of previous records for warm, electronic soundscapes - it stands an album which feels distinctly profound in both its lyrics and musicianship.

(Sarah Jamieson) LISTEN: ‘Imagination’

Remember when Kings of Leon were good? Iguana Death Cult do. And they’re here to fill the southern-fried void. Rotterdam might not have quite the same ring of authenticity as Nashville, but they taste as good as the real thing. ‘Prelude’ sets the tone, reverb-laden whistling and gently-plucked guitar invoking the opening scenes of a Sunday afternoon Western. Just as you’re settling into the mood, it’s ripped apart with a barnstorming stomp. Singer Jeroen Reek also has the indecipherable drawl down to a tee. You can’t really tell what he’s singing half the time, but with titles including ‘Carnal Beat Machine’ and ‘Spasms’, you get a pretty good idea of where his mind’s at. Their brand of ramshackle new wave barn rock belongs in a sweaty back room with sawdust on the floor and spittoon in the corner. (Felix Rowe) LISTEN: ‘Prelude’

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LIZ LAWRENCE Pity Party

(Second Breakfast)

On ‘Pity Party’, you get the sense Liz Lawrence wanted to make sure that whether she succeeded or failed in what she set out to do, she would do so precisely to her own blueprint, but in truth she doesn’t really do either; she lands squarely in the middle of the road.

Some of the simplest tracks offer up its most engaging moments; the handsome, mildly bluesy pop of ‘But Love’ for instance, or the unvarnished interlude that the bare-bones ‘Shoes’ provides. For most of ‘Pity Party’, though, the whole package never quite comes together; it’s either musically milquetoast while ideologically provocative, or thematically bland while sonically interesting. Only on ‘USP’ do both sides of the coin really click, as she delivers a stinging rebuke to industry misogyny over an assured groove. There’s promise, but Liz Lawrence remains a work in progress.

(Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘USP’

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

Nicole Kidman / Anne Hathaway

Crush

Dream Girl

HANA VU 

THE MENZINGERS Hello Exile (Epitaph)

Having established themselves as expert storytellers, ‘Hello Exile’ sees The Menzingers firmly cement their place at the top of the pile. Throwing themselves further into the Americana tinge of fellow troubadours, and winning comparisons to iconic heavyweights such as Bruce Springsteen, the band deftly craft vivid worlds with their distinctive heartland punk. Two years on from the acclaimed ‘After The Party’, they further hone their emotionally-tinged songwriting on ‘Hello Exile’ to depict the power of change. From the overt political statement of opener ‘America (You’re Freaking Me Out)’ to co-vocalist Tom May’s environmental rallying cry on ‘Strawberry Mansion’ and the introspective pain of ‘I Can’t Stop Drinking’, the four-piece delve into the implications of shifting circumstance, both personal and global. ‘Anna’ deals with troubled relationships, ‘Farewell Youth’ with the loss of a loved one, and ‘High School Friend’ with the certainties of getting older.

Poignant and sharp yet delicate and immensely personal, The Menzingers have built their reputation on this powerful relatability and ‘Hello Exile’ presents lyrics destined to resonate with the masses. With their sixth studio album they bolster an already impressive catalogue with intricate explorations of the self in an evershifting world, accepting the inevitability of change and offering the solace of a shared community to an always-growing fan base. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘America (You’re Freaking Me Out)’

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(Luminelle)

What were you doing at 19? By the age of 17 Los Angeles songwriter Hana Vu had already released the glorious ‘How Many Times Have You Driven By’ EP. Two years on, she’s following it with the sublime and formidable ‘Nicole Kidman / Anne Hathaway’. On the record - a double EP - we find Hana struggling with, and overcoming issues of success, empowerment and leaving home for the first time. The highlight comes via ‘Insider’, with delicate vocals, wonky synths and a vibe that isn’t too far away from idiosyncratic pop luminaries St Vincent or even Lana Del Rey at their most neon. It’s filled with inventive melodies, catchy choruses and a general spirit of fun and adventure that is hard to ignore. Hana is a genuine talent that is poised to take herself to the next level, if this EP is anything to go by.

(Nick Roseblade) LISTEN: ‘Insider’

FLOATING POINTS

ANNA OF THE NORTH

(Ninja Tune)

(Play It Again Sam)

After releasing his swirling debut collection ‘Elaenia’ in 2015, Floating Points, aka Sam Shepherd, quickly ascended to the top of UK electronic music’s pile. He’s now come full circle with the release of ‘Crush’, managing to combine the delicate electronics of ‘Elaenia’ with the heft of 2017’s ‘Reflections - Mojave Desert’. Single ‘LesAlpx’ is case in point: spiralling synths are paired with a rumbling bassline that buzzes through. It’s a headrush of a tune and it feels more thrillingly spontaneous than anything he has crafted before. Opener ‘Falaise’ is stunning. The sweeping strings provide a distinctly human touch to the stuttering synths: it’s a gloriously pretty curtain raiser. Put simply, ‘Crush’ is a triumph: the ideal meeting of brains and brawn over a journey that manages to feel both concise and exploratory. (Tom Sloman) LISTEN: ‘Environments’

‘Dream Girl’ is a diamond: glittering and multi-faceted with edges and smoothness - enough to dazzle your eyes as it catches the light. The record deals with matters of the heart, meaning the highest of highs, and the lowest of lows. ‘Reasons’ features the soft vocals of Charlie Skien, which makes Anna’s own ring sharp and true over the minimal, nocturnal instrumentals.

The song gives a sense of balance to an album that is otherwise an open letter to a complicated relationship.

‘If U Wanna’ is a visceral closer, raw and exposed, and ‘Leaning on Myself’, with its lurching bassline, is a eulogy to the bittersweet taste of freedom and being lost. ‘Dream Girl’ is a canvas spattered with a thousand colours, as Anna of The North experiments with a spectrum of sounds and moods. (Sophie Walker) LISTEN: ‘Lonely Life’

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TYLER, THE CREATOR Brixton Academy, London. Photos: Burak Cingi.

A

fter four (enforced) years away from London, Tyler, The Creator attempted to make his first return earlier this year at a surprise show in Peckham: it ended in overcrowded carnage, causing the whole event to finish before it even began. Now, for the second time this year, he’s come back to the city - but this time to finish the job, playing his first first of three sold-out shows at Brixton Academy. Hot off the heels of ‘IGOR’, easily his finest album to date, the show is one of the buzziest of the year - made even more buzzy by Instagram overlord Kendall Jenner deciding to pop down to Brixton to see what’s good.

There is a thunderous noise as Tyler steps onto the stage in full ‘IGOR’ persona: bright yellow suit, check. Blond wig, check. He stands motionless, baiting the crowd, illuminated by a spotlight as the beat of ‘IGOR’S THEME’ rings out across the venue. He pops like a coiled spring towards the end of the track, with the audience going absolutely ballistic as the last notes ring out.

Tracks from ‘IGOR’ dominate the setlist, the sound of plush synthesisers and ticking beats ringing off the walls of the Academy - Tyler in full lounge-lizard mode. It’s a far cry from the caustic early days of Odd Future - which get a look in towards the end of the set when break-out tracks ‘Yonkers’ and ‘She’ are played back-to-back.

They’re a world away from where Tyler is now, but the energy provides a much-needed step up in pace from a set that was threatening to hurtle off on a wave of Tyler bopping around to his own backing tracks.

This is one of the only nags of the show. As much as Tyler has improved as a producer, vocalist and performer, there are a few points where the track is left to do too much of the work. These moments feel most suited to the hardcore fans that hang off his every word and who can blame them, it’s pretty momentous he’s back - but it just feels a bit undercooked. Really, there’s not much satisfaction in seeing someone tear about a stage to a recording of their own vocals, no-matter how famous they’ve become or which Prime Minister they’ve been banned by.

The set shines when he pushes all of his abilities to the fore, whether it’s the majestic piano-based rendition of heartbreaker-bop-of-the-minute ‘EARFQUAKE’, or the full-throated raps of ‘NEW MAGIC WAND’, ‘OKRA’ and ‘WHAT’S GOOD’ that threaten to obliterate the venue.

These moments are truly ones to treasure and it’s a sign of the phenomenal leaps Tyler has made since first appearing as an angsty firebrand at the turn of the decade. All-in-all It’s a fascinating return, sometimes thrilling and at times just a bit head-scratching. One thing is for certain, Tyler, the Creator is never dull. It’s great to have him back. (Tom Sloman)

HE POPS LIKE A COILED SPRING.

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REEPERBAHN FESTIVAL Various venues, Hamburg. Photos: Emma Swann.

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opping on The Festival Train from Berlin to arrive in Hamburg in style, Reeperbahn 2019 kicks off with an interesting twist. Three of the locomotive’s carriages are taken over by a series of acoustic gigs for some lucky passengers. First off, indie-folk two-piece Amistat soundtrack the start of the journey. They’re followed by folk duo Farafi. Then, London indie four-piece Bloxx successfully translate their alt-rock stylings into the stripped-back setting. Having to slightly reposition themselves to navigate playing guitars around a train table, drummer Moz opts for bottle caps and a half-drunk beer as his percussion kit.

Heading down the eponymous street the following morning, Reeperbahn Festival 2019 once again sees some of the world’s finest new talents being showcased. Like Brighton’s The Great Escape, there’s something to see on every corner, and the infamous Molotow is where the party is at. Leicester’s Easy Life take to the stage in the packed out club room, diving into recently released track ‘Earth’. Wowing the crowd with their unique blend of jazz, hip hop and indie, the five-piece are buzzing, with tracks like ‘Sunday’ and ‘Afters’ from March’s ‘Spaceships Mixtape’ going down a storm. And who doesn’t love a trumpet solo?

Pushing through the packed crowd to the venue’s back yard, Mattiel mesmerises with her impressive power pop. Playing tracks from her 2017 ’60s rock-inspired self-titled debut and July’s “more experimental” follow-up LP ‘Satis Factory’, set highlights include ‘Food For Thought’ and ‘Send It On Over’ where her powerful voice keeps every onlooker hooked. Not playing a guitar herself and backed up by her four piece band, she has the space to bust some pretty good moves on the stage, but it’s her voice that really shines throughout.

The real highlight of Wednesday night, though, comes from Nottingham newcomers Do Nothing. Having built hype for their live show, the group don’t disappoint. The crowd hangs off of every chord as the four-piece reel through their post-punk meets art-rock bangers. With only three official songs out ‘Waitress’, ‘Handshakes’ and ‘Gangs’ - you get the feeling that you’re witnessing the beginning of a #moment as frontman Chris leads the pack with Jarvis Cocker swagger and their LCD Soundsystem-esque sound keeps the audience fixated. Introducing new song ‘LeBron James’, it’s a certified set highlight and an exciting look at what the newbies will achieve next. As they exit the stage, the onlookers call for more, and the band eventually return for an impromptu encore.

Although it’s still only early days for the group, the sizzling excitement is palpable in the room from both the band and the crowd; throughout, their show gives a nod that Do Nothing are something a lil’ bit special.

Heading back to Molotow for Day Two, buzzy London-based six-piece Black Country, New Road leave the crowd waiting in darkness for a few minutes past stage time, unsure as to whether this is part of their theatrical leaning jazzy post-punk or just a matter of taking a while to herd the six of them into the room. Eventually emerging in a haze of blue light, the group dive into July’s eight-minute-long track ‘Sunglasses’, the distinctive drool

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SPORTS TEAM

SQUID

of “Welcome to the best new sixpart Danish crime drama” kicking off the set. Debut track ‘Athen’s, France’ creeps over the crowd as their darkened punk builds up to its apocalyptic climax keeping the audience gripped with every snarling guitar lick.

Running upstairs to the Skybar, up and comer Alfie Templeman is joking that he’s performing without a band because they’re all in detention, a nod to the fact that he’s still a teenager. Reeling through his hip-hop tinged indie-pop bops, the rising star races through tracks from 2018’s ‘Like An Animal’ EP and June follow-up ‘Sunday Morning Cereal’.

BLOXX

Strolling down the Reeperbahn to the Imperial Theater, Celeste sees the night off with her mesmerising soulful singing. Based in Brighton, her alluring vocals have seen her garner comparisons to Amy Winehouse, and catching her IRL it’s clear to see why. Opener ‘Father’s Son’ and ‘Beloved’ leave everyone awestruck.

Going into Friday, Brooklyn-via-Dublin’s Sorcha Richardson is starting the day off right with her effortless lo-fi indie rock.

Her performance takes place on top of a bar, the audience spread out on deck chairs below in the chillest gig set-up we’ve seen for a while. Although the weather hints at an impending downpour, Sorcha’s delicate yet impactful songwriting shines through, as she wows with tracks like ‘False Alarm’ and ‘Ruin Your Night’.

MATTIEL

DO NOTHING

Later in the evening, North London’s Sorry take to the stage at Molotow Skybar. The DIY Class of 2018 alums impress as they always do, with co-vocalists Asha Lorenz and Louis O’Brien delivering their signature deliciously dark sound with an exciting shimmer.

Latest track ‘Jealous Guy’ - their first new music of the year - is an undeniable standout, with Louis and Asha’s sardonic vocals leading the eerie anthem and driving their drooling-pop banger with biting intensity.

With the Saturday sun still ringing out, we head to the Backyard at Molotow to see Brighton postpunks Squid deliver one of the best sets of the weekend. Taking place on the one year anniversary of the release of ‘The Dial’, although they’ve not played it within their sets recently, they give the lucky audience a glimpse at what kicked it all off, playing the heavyfunk number in its brilliant entirety.

Going on to play songs from recently released EP ‘Town Centre’, ‘Match Bet’ and seven-minute-masterpiece ‘The Cleaner’ are

undeniable highlights, with one of the audience even getting his wife up on FaceTime so that she doesn’t miss out. Ending on fanfave ‘Houseplants’, by the time the fantastically frantic song has ended, there’s not one person in the crowd not totally won over by the group and certain that they’ve just seen something special.

Kicking off our takeover of the Molotow Club in the evening, first off are LA indie rockers together PANGEA. The quartet’s garage-punk offerings build to a sweaty climax with older classics like ‘Looked In Too’ from 2015’s ‘The Phage’ EP before set closer ‘Too Drunk To Cum’ sees the crowd go off with head-banging ferocity.

Next up are Canadian duo Partner, accidentally playing the entirety of ‘Everybody Knows’ from their 2017 record ‘In Search of Last Time’ to the room during soundcheck. “There’s two ways to get into the subconscious: emotion and repetition,” they laugh before playing the weed-paranoia anthem once again for the audience. The perfect introduction to the pair - made up of Josée Caron and Lucy Niles - the track glistens with the humour and playfulness that runs throughout their entire set.

Aussie singer-songwriter Ali Barter brings her power-pop to the Molotow stage next. A slight change in pace, her crystalline vocals and pop-rock backing seem like they’d slot perfectly onto an American teen surfing show soundtrack, full of shimmering grooves and sunshine-soaked sounds.

Sports Team round off the night - and this year’s Reeperbahn Festival - with a characteristically charismatic performance that sees mosh pits form and pints spilled. Coming on to Robbie’s ‘Let Me Entertain You’, they deliver on that promise, reeling through their energetic hits like ‘Kutcher’ and ‘Here It Comes Again’. “You look like you’ve been to loads of gigs,” frontman Alex Rice asks a particularly badass bearded gig-goer at the front, “what do you think of this?”

Diving into ‘M5’, a mosh pit gradually swirls bigger and bigger, which Alex eventually jumps into himself. Latest track ‘Fishing’ wows the audience, while yet-to-be-released ‘Races’ is yet another crowd pleaser; it’s brilliantly chaotic. Closing on ‘Stanton’, it’s the final glowing performance and further proof of Reeperbahn saving the best ’til last. (Elly Watson)

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PIXIES Alexandra Palace, London. Photos: James Kelly.

“C

an you hear my voice? Can you hear the drums?” asks king Pixie, Black Francis, the last words he’ll say for the night without the syllables being torn from his throat as if Satan himself were driving a combine harvester up and out through his larynx.

The signature scream is there with all its menacing majesty intact as the group rip through a mammoth 38 songs at London’s Alexandra Palace, in support of new album ‘Beneath the Eyrie’.

It’s a fire-and-brimstone start, kicking off with ‘Doolittle’ bangers ‘Gouge Away’ and ‘Dead’, collapsing into a breathless ‘Crackity Jones’.

The joy of being a band that was born looking middle aged means that time is eternally kind to Pixies, playing with the same acidic attack that they did 30 years ago. As ‘Vamos’ descends into Joey Santiago’s nowcustomary sci-fi sonic shredding breakdown, the guitarist (wrenching his flat cap across the guitar’s pickups) teases more weird out of his instrument than a lifetime of Elon Musk tweets.

There’s an absence, of course. No Kim, no deal, right? No problem, actually - Paz Lenchantin, the hardest-working bass player in alt-rock, a veteran of A Perfect Circle and Zwan among others, cements her full-time place as Kim Deal’s replacement. Squint and you might think The Breeders star is still up there, but Paz plays with a swagger all her own.

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Having a back catalogue spanning three decades sees Pixies fall foul of a problem all ‘heritage’ acts suffer from, though. For every ‘Debaser’ there’s a ‘This is My Fate’, for every ‘Bone Machine’ a ‘Daniel Boone’, and a tanked-up Friday night crowd visibly cools as the new material fails to keep the frenetic pace. There’s even a touch of self-sabotage, with the band stalling the tempo in the second verse of ‘Nimrod’s Son’, the crowd waiting for an explosion that never comes.

‘Tame’, a reminder of when the band were anything but, closes the set, with Black Francis still willingly lacerating his vocal cords for the benefit of that terrifying roar.

The elation of the LOUDquiet-LOUD dynamic remains intact after all these years then - it’s just a pity the night as a whole doesn’t quite elevate above GREAT-okayGREAT. (Gerald Lynch)

THE S.L.P.

SUNDARA KARMA

EartH, London. Photo: Patrick Gunning.

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fun game to play when picturing what the debut live shows of The S.L.P. – aka Kasabian’s resident songwriter and lovable space cadet Serge Pizzorno – might look like, is to imagine the request list made to each venue: three pound shop glitter cannons, a pulpit and a screen to project a skit about extra durable condoms, please. What do you mean, is he joking?

Of course, the thing to remember with Serge – the thing that turns him from prime lad material into a mere cheeky prankster – is that, most of the time, the answer is actually ‘yes, he’s having a right laugh’. And if you got the sense that the musician was indulging in a giggle or two with his main band, then in the relatively intimate, theatrical belly of Hackney’s EartH, with all expectation and stadium-filling pressure stripped away, he’s clearly fulfilling his most audacious fantasies.

The show (and truly, tonight is more of a performance art spectacle than a ‘gig’) begins with a series of monochrome projections, sort of a mix of James Bond and Connect 4, each circle filled with his face. His band are silhouetted behind screens throughout, leaving the big man and his newly-shorn leopard-print hairdo as the sole truly visible person on stage.

Sometimes, as he bounds around, it looks like he’s fighting his own shadow; sometimes it looks a bit like a scene from ‘8 Mile’. Never, however, is it dull.

Yet it’s not all high jinx. Tracks from his recent self-titled debut genuinely sound pretty massive; though there are more unexpected flourishes and less riffs to be found, the songwriting sensibilities that have propelled Kasabian into arenas aren’t that easily left behind. Whether in the Little Simz-featuring ‘Favourites’ - replete with frenetic projections that give the impression of a small breakdown – or the swaggering ridiculousness of ‘The Youngest Gary’, The S.L.P. might be an experiment but it’s not a purely self-indulgent one. Then there’s the aforementioned pulpit for ‘Meanwhile... at the Welcome Break’, an absolute ripoff of David Byrne’s recent show in the ‘everybody walks around wearing their instruments’ staging of ‘The Wu’ and a final ‘((trance))’ where Serge manages, somehow, to crowdsurf at a seated gig.

It’s a strange mix of rowdy show vibes and art show spectacle, a combination that you can only ever really imagine Serge even attempting. “You’re a lot less freaked out than they were last night, so thanks for that,” he chuckles at one point.

Bet he loves it, really. (Lisa Wright)

EartH, London. Photo: Emma Swann.

T

onight is part of War Child’s Safe & Sound series, and the misty confines of downstairs at EartH is packed with people ready to support the cause - and have a dance while doing so. After opening spots from fellow Chess Club artists and buzzy newcomers Alfie Templeman and Phoebe Green, it’s time for the headliners. Returning from a triumphant homecoming Reading Festival show the previous weekend, any postfestival blues are nowhere to be seen as Sundara Karma play a tight show.

The four-piece’s stunning set spans favourites from both their 2017 debut ‘Youth Is Only Ever Fun In Retrospect’ and March’s ‘Ulfilas’ Alphabet’. Although their older classics, like ‘Flame’ and ‘She Said’, may invoke a larger response from the indie-anthem-loving crowd, it’s their latest songs that shine with that certain special Sundara quality. Oscar’s voice is operatic and hypnotising throughout, ringing out around the room during sizzlers ‘Sweet Intentions’ and ‘Home (There Was Never Reason to Feel so Alone)’. ‘Illusions’ is still an instant dance along number and shimmering show closer ‘One Last Night On Earth’ ends the night on a glorious high. (Elly Watson)

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

THIS MONTH:

SWMRS

Location: Reading Festival.

Drink: (Quite warm) beer.

Cost: A fiver.

Specialist Subect:

General Knowledge

Harry Potter Technically it’s Snape dressed in his grandma’s clothes, but we’ll give you half.

1. How many staircases does Hogwarts have?

Cole: Oh shit.

Joey: Four?

Max: Six? Higher!

Joey: Twelve?

142.

Cole: Oh shit!

4. What was James Potter’s nickname?

Joey: He’s Prongs!

Yes!

2. Which potion is known as ‘Liquid Luck’.

Cole: Fuck! You’re choosing some obscure shit. Can we phone a friend?

Sadly not. It’s ‘Felix Felicis’.

3. What does Neville Longbottom’s Boggart appear as?

Max: His grandma!

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5. How many Quidditch fouls are there?

Seb: Wow, that’s a deep cut.

Max: I thought there was just one?

Cole: 172?

700.

Joey: Wow, we’re gonna need a sit down soon.

1. How far is it to the sun in kilometres?

Max: 700 million?

149.6 million km.

2. In Shrek, who voices Donkey?

Joey: Eddie Murphy!

Indeed.

3. Which planet does Superman come from?

Seb: Krypton.

Yep!

We’re not from here so that’s not fair.

5. What Madonna album is ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ on?

Max: Was she British yet when she made that album? Had she got the accent yet?

Cole: It’s not the album with ‘Vogue’ on it?

No it’s not, it’s ‘True Blue’!

4. What is Adele’s surname?

Seb: Um, Stephanie?

No, Adkins.

Joey: Oh surname!

1.5/5

3.5/10

Verdict: “Does anyone ever get any of these?”

2/5

DIY

TO YOUR DOOR

EVERY MONTH

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