DIY, September 2024

STRIPPED

Away from MUNA, KATIE GAVIN is bringing it back to her musical roots.

t h e deb ut alb um • o ut n o w the debut album • out now

DIY

FOUNDING EDITOR

Emma Swann

MANAGING EDITOR

Sarah Jamieson

FEATURES EDITOR

Lisa Wright

DIGITAL EDITOR

Daisy Carter

DESIGN

Emma Swann

CONTRIBUTORS

Alex Doyle, Bella Martin, Ben Tipple, Brad Sked, Burak Cingi, Charlotte Gunn, Ed Lawson, Ed Miles, Elvis Thirlwell, Emily Savage, Eva Pentel, Hazel Blacher, Holly Whitaker, James Hickey, Joe Goggins, Kristen Jan Wong, Kyle Roczniak, Leah Lombardi, Matt Ganfield, Matthew Davies Lombardi, Megan Graye, Neve Dawson, Neive McCarthy, Nick Levine, Otis Robinson, Patrick Clarke, Rhian Daly, Rhys Buchanan, Sam McMahon, Sarah Pope, Sarah Taylor.

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.

It might have been a little while since DIY last dropped into your laps after our bumper double issue back at the start of summer, but now that it’s September, it’s time to get back to business. And what an issue we’ve got for you this month! We’re all for exciting new chapters, so we’re positively giddy to have Katie Gavin – aka one third of iconic trio MUNA – grace the cover this month; we head to her LA home to learn a little more about what to expect from her forthcoming solo debut, ‘What A Relief’.

Also in our September 2024 issue, we delve into the mythological depths of Paris Paloma’s first full-length, rendezvous with chaoscausers Fat Dog in the midst of their hectic festival schedule, and dig into the forthcoming new record from Amyl and The Sniffers. Plus, we meet the current talk of the musical town, The Dare, fresh from his internet-breaking collab with Charli XCX. Just turn the page and get stuck in!

Sarah Jamieson, Managing Editor

Scan the code to listen to our September playlist now.

When AMYL AND THE SNIFFERS first roared onto the scene, their brand of firecracker punk was a welcome respite from the outside world’s increasing turbulence. Now more reflective and nuanced – but no less fun –third album ‘Cartoon Darkness’ finds them championing hope amid dystopia.

Words: Daisy Carter

THE WORLD NEWS

PARTY AT

THE END OF

Over the past eight years, Amyl and The Sniffers have gone from Melbourne’s premier pub-punk band to international rock favourites, their name a byword for blistering riffs, raucous shows, and a gloriously no-filter, no-fucks-given approach (it does come from the Aussie slang term for poppers, after all).

Helmed by frontwoman Amy Taylor – a bleach blonde powerhouse of seemingly indomitable spirit – the band have stormed their way across stages the world over, from dingy back rooms to supporting rock titans Foo Fighters on their latest stadium tour.

In the face of such drive, determination, and raw energy, it’s difficult to imagine any chinks in Amy’s bikini-clad armour. But, as she tells us today, calling in mid-tour from her Portland hotel room, people think all too often that they’ve got the ‘Sniffers completely sussed. “Over the last couple of years of living in Melbourne, I actually felt super lost,” she shares, having recently relocated to LA alongside drummer Bryce Wilson. “I was pretty proud of everything that we’ve done – and we do have a lot of people that are rooting for us – but I felt like I had to shrink myself. I just felt like I couldn’t really be myself, and I still feel like that sometimes. I’m super self-assured and I have a backbone – I’ll take down anyone,” she laughs, before continuing: “But at the same time, I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing, just like anybody else.”

It’s in this spirit of confident, candid imperfection that they made their roaring return earlier this year with single ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’ – the first new music from the band (completed by guitarist Declan Martens and bassist Gus Romer) since second album ‘Comfort To Me’ in 2021, and a song

that gives a resolute middle finger to the naysayers and shit talkers. “I was in Naarm, working on my shit / While you were down in Tassie saying ‘flash those tits’ / I was in Gadigal, showing off my flesh / While you were up in Brizzie trying to show me I can’t do it like that,” Taylor chants on the track, the geographical name dropping a nod to her deep affinity with, and simultaneous frustration at, certain aspects of her home country.

“I guess that’s part of the reason why I’m standing so strong and so tall,” she affirms. “Because I think the right people will look up to me and go, ‘Fuck yeah bitch, if she can do it, then so can I’. Even if they don’t like our music, or they don’t like my flavour particularly, they should be competitive with us and go, ‘Fuck it, we’ll do better than them’.”

Well, good luck to anyone trying. Amyl and The Sniffers’ third album ‘Cartoon Darkness’ is their most multifaceted, polymorphic yet. Recorded with producer Nick Launey (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) at Dave Grohl’s Studio 606 in LA, it retains the signature ‘Sniffers sound while refining their early scrappiness into a more considered,

sonically diverse project. “Bryce and Declan said, ‘We’d really like to make something that’s a bit more like a studio album’,” Amy agrees. “We just wanted to push ourselves, to do something different; I hate repetition. A good way to describe us is as ‘experience hunters’ – we just want to experience new things.” And as experiences go, using the very desk that bore ‘Nevermind’ and Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ isn’t a bad one. “Steve Nicks’ signature was on it! So we were like, ‘If this album’s shit, it’s definitely our fault’,” she laughs. Did she leave a calling card of her own? “Oh hell fucking no! Maybe one day… I’m just grateful I didn’t spill any drinks on it.”

On the one hand, ‘Cartoon Darkness’ is – as we’ve come to expect – packed with full-throttle energy, attitude aplenty, and tongue-in-cheek lyrical zingers (‘Jerkin’’s “You are ugly all day, I am hot always” and ‘Going Somewhere’’s “They say you’re too big for your boots / Well, go and find a pair that fit” being particular choice favourites). “It’s meant to be uplifting and not too serious,” says Amy of these lighter moments. “It kind of seems like every day there’s just a new tire chucked on the tire fire of

“A good way to describe us is as ‘experience hunters’ – we just want to experience new things.”

civil unrest. And I really value the idea of comic relief in order for people – myself included – to be able to continue existing in the heaviness that is this current time.”

After all, you can’t pour from an empty cup, right? “It’s so funny you say that,” she smiles, “I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a bunch of old sayings, and they’ve actually never been fucking wrong! I just think it’s super important that every now and then, people can take even five minutes to just have a fucking laugh and release some of that tension, so that you can re-step into that [sociopolitical] realm with a lighter heart and a reminder of what’s important.”

Equally as integral is ‘Cartoon Darkness’’ readiness to deal in the more solemn parts of our psyche. While its sometime-playfulness is a reaction to – or distraction from – the dystopia of our contemporary world, there are also tracks on the record on which themes of existential angst, yearning, and unfulfilled potential are poignantly realised. “It’s a dreamer album in a lot of ways,” affirms Amy. “I think [it’s about] the pain of desire, I guess. There’s lots of notes of wanting change, and wanting difference; it’s about the agony of wanting more out of everything, whatever that means to the individual.”

‘Chewing Gum’, for example, is a yelp of frustration at a world that never lets you stop and smell the roses – so you may as well choose to love the weeds between the pavement cracks. ‘Going Somewhere’ and the ballad-adjacent ‘Big Dreams’, meanwhile, are the twin blades of ambition’s double-edged sword. The former, a swaggering, psych-rock self-belief anthem: “I know that I’m going somewhere, will you come there too?”. The latter, Amy describes as “a heartbreaking song”.

“It’s about the promise of being in your twenties and everyone having these big dreams, [versus] the reality of life,” she explains. “I hate to talk about the pandemic, but it stunted a lot of people; in the blink of an eye, everyone woke up in their thirties. Life’s moving so fast – it’s just this hamster wheel of trying to pay the rent and be creative at the same time. And I don’t want people in my life to stop dreaming because I really believe in them, and they’re so fucking good at what their passion is. I just really want them to be able to experience their dreams coming true. Even if it doesn’t equate to commercial success, when they do their fucking thing, it’s priceless to the people that get to witness it.”

‘Cartoon Darkness’, then, is an apt summation of LP3’s dual aspects: moments of technicolour fun in the face of a murky, shrouded future. Lifted from a lyric in album track ‘Doing In Me Head’ – “driving head first into cartoon darkness” – the phrase, to Amy, partly alludes to our world’s head-fucking, destructive current trajectory. “Between the climate crisis potentially coming really quickly, and AI, and just sadness and violence, the future’s super unknown. I feel like we are, as a species, driving

“I don’t want to be a politician – it’s not in my nature – but I do want to be political.”

– Amy Taylor

headfirst into darkness, but it’s so bizarre and I really just don’t understand it, so [there is] the naivety and sketchiness of cartoons. It’s not even realistic darkness; it feels like a make believe darkness [that] I think we’re heading into.”

There’s no denying that the current state of the world does feel especially bleak. But, we posit, perhaps people have always felt this way? “That’s what I wonder too!” she exclaims. “We look around and go, ‘This is such a hectic time’, but I wonder if people who are 80 are like, ‘Oh, shut up’. I would love to know – is this something that every generation experiences?” She warms up to the topic, theorising that “the way things are evolving is quicker than ever before in history – you know, first it was a toaster, and now we’re like, ‘Let’s get brain chips’. It’s like when people went from fucking walking on trails, eating nuts, to farming or whatever the fuck [happened]. I could definitely be wrong, but I think that we’re kind of existing through that time, and that’s why it’s particularly strange [at the moment].”

And yet, for an album that is undoubtedly – perhaps unavoidably – a product of our times, ‘Cartoon

Darkness’ isn’t a political record, per se. Amy is tentative to describe the band’s work as political or feminist, suggesting that if it is received in those terms, that’s not necessarily by design. “Existing is politics; to be a human is politics. But I feel like I’m still a baby in terms of where I am with my political education. I’m trying my best to learn everything I can, but even feminism is something that I only felt confident in learning about – something I kind of dipped my toe into – maybe five years ago. I know my opinion on stuff, but there are people who can say everything so much better, so I just try and platform their voices.” As she writes in an email following our conversation: “I don’t want to be a politician – it’s not in my nature – but I do want to be political.”

And, as she points out, politics and feminism aren’t theoretical concepts; they’re things you live. Tracks like ‘Tiny Bikini’, ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’, and bonus cut ‘Me and The Girls’ are prime examples of such; a set of eviscerating push-backs against tired criticisms of her self-presentation – from both her day to day life, and from within the industry. “I love being scantily clad, and I love being feminine at times, and I love makeup,” she enthuses. “Everybody in theory wants a successful female [who] they idolise and fantasise about and fetishise, but it’s the same old story. They’ll judge us ‘til the cows come home, and then when we drop dead, they’ll be like, ‘Yes queen, you were awesome’.

“I think it’s just bullshit really,” she continues. “You can’t be hyper feminine, and you can’t be ambitious, and you can’t want more than what you have. If you’ve done well, you’re not allowed to say you’ve done well. And it’s just a tired thing that I think people forget is actually still happening right now.”

We may be living in an apocalyptic hellscape – as Amyl and The Sniffers are only all too aware – but ‘Cartoon Darkness’ manages to empathetically acknowledge the state of it all without getting dragged down into the mire. “When we play, everyone’s just experiencing joy and relief,” Amy smiles. “When I’m feeling super down or just confused by the dystopian nature of our current days, and I see a piece of media or art that has that essence [of joy], I feel like I can breathe again. It makes me think, ‘We’re all in this together’. Whether we like it or not, all of us are driving head first into cartoon darkness.”

‘Cartoon Darkness’ is out 25th October via Rough Trade. DIY

WHAT A RELIEF

THE DEBUT ALBUM FROM

KATIE GAVIN

OF MUNA 25 OCT

LAST NIGHT IN SOHO

Putting an indefinite pin in his band black midi, Geordie Greep takes us on a boozy tour of the city and the inimitable musical landscape that makes up debut solo album ‘The New Sound’.

Words: Patrick Clarke

Photo: Ed Miles

Meeting in Soho over what will become the first of several whiskeys, Geordie Greep professes a hesitation when it comes to interviews.

“It feels like a missed opportunity most of the time,” he says. “A bit transactional.” Rather than treat this afternoon as a chance to flog his debut solo album ‘The New Sound’, he would much prefer to strip away the formalities – to “have an interesting discussion” instead.

He suggests a wander through the surrounding streets. Though we assume Greep would like to indulge in the neighbourhood’s rich countercultural history, he’s more attracted to its status today as a heavily gentrified hub for mediocre nights out. “If you go to a trendy area like Hackney, there are so many wankers,” he begins. “The people around here don’t take themselves so seriously. They’re idiots, but not really wankers.”

Before long we walk past a plaque marking the building where David Bowie recorded ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’, where our photographer suggests we dive into a nearby alleyway to take a couple of pictures. Greep politely declines. “I dunno man, I’m not The Clash…” He suggests we walk to Piccadilly Circus instead, so he can pose among the tourists, beneath the giant LED screens advertising cars and Coca-Cola. There, we muscle past the crowd circling a break-dancing street performer (“This guy’s cool,” Greep comments sincerely) and he climbs the steps of the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain. “A picture here will be like: ‘London! Let’s take the city!’” he proclaims.

For most Londoners, Piccadilly Circus is hellish; a heaving tourist trap to be avoided at all costs. But then, Greep is not like most Londoners – nor most people, full stop. Unguarded and charismatic, speaking in a distinctive staccato, conversation freewheels from his childhood in Walthamstow to a specific phrase from Van Morrison’s ‘Astral Weeks’, to his travels with his prodigious band black midi, which took them from Russia (“Before any of the current shenanigans”) to China (“Really bizarre”) to Portsmouth (“It sucks, bro. It’s a dirge, like Ed Sheeran. Don’t go. Southampton’s worse…”).

black midi, he says, are now on hiatus for the foreseeable future. “I felt like, I don’t wanna

do this forever,” Greep offers. The status it afforded him as a poster boy for the so-called South London scene, however, remains. He gets recognised on the street “about once a month”. “I don’t wanna be mean or anything,” he notes, “but it’s always the same kind of guy.” It’s not that he’s unappreciative; these are the fans that made a recently-announced six-night residency in a north London cafe an instant sell-out. By the time this issue lands, the residency will be complete and, when we speak, his plan is to make every gig there completely distinct – some rehearsed and tight, others completely improvised. He’s written an entire opera for one. He’s excited, he says, to keep his audience on the back foot.

‘The New Sound’ was initially conceived as part of a songwriting partnership with black midi touring member Seth ‘Shank’ Evans, with recording beginning during a gap in his old band’s touring schedule in Brazil. Greep roped in a cast of prodigious session musicians at the last minute, harnessing the tension between their supreme abilities and the immediacy of first-take recording. “I made a big deal for them to play it straight, to play the songs as if they’re playing ‘Billie Jean’,” he says. “The songs are really arranged, really slick, but not over-rehearsed. Over rehearsing takes the juice out the fruit.”

He was also keen to leave room for moments of straight-up messing around, like when ‘Walk Up’ descends into a lopsided comedy hoedown. “That was just me and Shank fucking around one night. Who knows if that’s a good idea or not. I like when you can tell something on an album was just a snap decision.” Shank also takes lead vocals for one song, ‘Motorbike. “I’m under no illusion that my voice is the easiest to listen to, so that one’s a little palate cleanser,” says Greep.

Having long-admired artists like Lou Reed and Frank Zappa, who produced solo work alongside their bands, he relished the opportunity to take full creative control. “Whether it’s a complete failure or not, it’s all on me,” he says. “I found this process about 50 times more satisfying than any of the [black

midi] albums. I like those albums, I had a fun time, but for almost every song I had this vision of how it would have been good if we’d just done what I’d wanted, and I reckon it was the same for the other two [band members].”

By now we’ve departed Piccadilly Circus, muscling past the hordes of (mostly male) post-work drinkers spilling out onto the pavements with their pints in plastic cups as they begin a long evening’s boozing – idiots, but not wankers, as Greep might put it. The lyrics on ‘The New Sound’, he says, are partly inspired by encounters in such spaces: “The people you meet when you’re out drinking late. When everyone starts telling you things they don’t wanna tell you, and it’s too late to take it back.” On the record, he inhabits several different unreliable narrators who give in to their basest desires, deluding themselves as they imagine their lusting and boozing as scenes from a grand romance, given weight by the record’s flamboyant instrumentation. “It was like, let’s have a go at seeing what that’s like,” Greep says. “Not to be holier-than-thou sanctimonious, but a lot of men really are bastards, even to themselves.”

Eventually we arrive at Trisha’s, the legendary Soho speakeasy of which he’s a member, where yellowing pictures of footballers, a life-size cutout of Frank Sinatra and a poster from Scarface clutter the walls. He admires its eccentricities. “It’s kinda cringy, but it’s also like, why not? Everywhere else in London feels like they’re afraid of doing anything that’s not Instagram.” By now several whiskeys in, conversation departs from ‘The New Sound’ entirely in favour of a passionate exultation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and a detailed critique of James Joyce’s Ulysses. As he had hoped all along, this has long-ceased to be a traditional, transactional interview, and instead has morphed into an evening as strange as this bar; as mercurial as the man himself.

‘The New Sound’ is out 4th October via Rough Trade. DIY

“I found this process about 50 times more satisfying than any of the [black midi] albums.”

in deep

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

The first Indonesian artist to ever play Coachella, Jakarta-born NIKI has already broken down the music world’s barriers. Now, on indie-leaning third album ‘Buzz’, she’s focused on breaking down her own.

Words: Rhian Daly

Photo: Eva Pentel

NIKI is a hard artist to pin down. On the two albums she’s released so far – 2020’s ‘Moonchild’ and 2022’s ‘Nicole’ – the Jakarta-born, LA-based singer-songwriter has taken us into her life via completely different sounds. Where her debut dove deep into noirish pop, rooting it in the same world as early records from Halsey, Billie Eilish and Lana Del Rey, just two years later she changed tact, distilling her teenage years into sweeter, bouncier alt-pop. Now, on indie-leaning third album ‘Buzz’, the star is switching things up yet again.

Still only 25-years-old, those albums are indicative of an already-accomplished and consistently varied career. As a teen in Jakarta, NIKI – born Nicole Zefanya – would write songs on her guitar in her bedroom and, at 15, won a competition to open for Taylor Swift on her ‘Red’ tour. After high school, she moved to Nashville to study music and, shortly after, was approached by 88rising: the music and media company that works to give Asian talent a global platform. Still in its infancy, NIKI became the label’s First Lady and, since those early days, she’s

made some towering achievements; in 2021, she recorded four songs for the soundtrack of Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, while the following year she became the first Indonesian artist to perform at Coachella.

However, NIKI’s seeming commitment to always trying something new – at least in terms of her albums – is actually what she calls the product of an “ongoing identity crisis”. As she began work on ‘Nicole’ during the pandemic, she started to envision how the songs would play out on tour. “The wheels started turning,” she tells DIY, perched on the end of a bench in an east London hotel room.

“The style was more singer-songwriter and more balmy because that’s where my heart truly lies, and that’s the kind of music that I will constantly go back to and be inspired by.”

The process prompted her to confront some awkward questions about what she’d made before, such as whether she actually liked her own music or if she’d willingly put it on in the car. “To be honest, I found at that time there were more ‘No’s in my answer than I wanted…” she admits. “It wasn’t all the way ‘No’, but just more than I wanted.”

Consequently embarking on a “personal

“I feel like the whole record is about being lost in your twenties and accepting that life is just a constant state of uncertainty.”

quest” to understand what it was that truly made her tick, the results led to her second album. But, like all of us, NIKI is constantly evolving and, as she points out, her artistry is one that’s wrapped up in persona; it stands to reason, then, that what fit the 25-year-old on past records might no longer feel right to her now. As the musician’s outlook continues to grow, expand and alter, it follows that her music will shift, too. And so we arrive at NIKI’s third recorded iteration: ‘Buzz’.

‘Buzz’ is full of new experiences and feelings, dealing with the dissolution of a meaningful relationship and wrangling with other unexpected life curveballs.

It’s often level-headed and strong despite the whirlwind of emotions contained within, which makes sense given how the record began.

“It started with me being really honest about my experiences on tour and how I felt like I had to be stronger than I wanted to be,” she begins – pausing to note that the latter half of her sentence is a lyric from Maya Hawke’s ‘Over’. “I wrote ‘Strong Girl’ and it evolved from there. I feel like the whole record is about an identity crisis and just being lost in your twenties and accepting that life is just a constant state of uncertainty.”

‘Buzz’ is out now via 88rising.

Read the full feature at diymag.com/niki.

DIY

A multi-hyphenate musician, actor, model and now mother, Suki Waterhouse is a rare talent who can do it all. Ahead of second album ‘Memoir of a Sparklemuffin’ and a stop off at All Points East, we meet an artist who’s negotiating the fame game her own way.

Words: Nick Levine

Diamond Girl

That Suki Waterhouse has written a song called ‘Model, Actress, Whatever’ feels like both a sign of her growing confidence as a musician, and an indicator of someone who, despite their increasingly high profile (Waterhouse recently graced the cover of British Vogue), clearly doesn’t take themselves too seriously. “It’s not an, ‘Oh, woe is me’ kind of thing. It’s meant to be light and humorous,” she says brightly, fresh from landing back in the UK. Fame first tapped Waterhouse on the shoulder at 16 when she was spotted “in Topshop or H&M” and subsequently started modelling for brands including Burberry and M&S. Then, in her early twenties, she branched out into acting with roles in the gritty drugs thriller Pusher (2012) and winsome romcom Love, Rosie (2014). Last year, we saw her as super-driven keyboardist Karen Sirko in Daisy Jones & the Six. Waterhouse says she was “desperate” to be cast in the series about a fictional, Fleetwood Mac-style band because she wanted to “get closer” to the rock star life.

The bridging manoeuvre worked for the Londonborn multihyphenate. After establishing herself as a fine singer-songwriter with gorgeous 2022 debut album ‘I Can’t Let Go’ – all mellow reverie and dusky Americana – Waterhouse is readying an excellent follow-up, September’s ‘Memoir of a Sparklemuffin’. Before that, she’ll open for Taylor Swift at Wembley Stadium on a date of the Eras Tour, and then play buzzy London festival All Points East alongside Mitski. “There aren’t many festivals as cool as All Points East,” says Waterhouse, who is now based in LA. “I can’t wait to be around English people in the park, drinking and having fun again.”

Waterhouse is speaking over Zoom, lying on her bed: an unusual interview position, but an entirely understandable one given that she’s just touched down in London and is currently getting “three or four hours” sleep a night. She and partner Robert Pattinson welcomed a daughter in March, just days after she put the finishing touches to ‘Memoir of a Sparklemuffin’. The album’s ear-snagging title reflects the playful way Waterhouse identifies with an Australian spider known for its iridescent scales.

“I came across the Sparklemuffin – which is wildly coloured, does this razzle-dazzle dance, and will be cannibalised by its mate if she doesn’t approve of the dance,” Waterhouse says. “It’s a metaphor for the dance of life we’re all in. The title felt hilarious, ridiculous and wonderful to me.”

Set for release on 13th September via revered indie label Sub Pop, Waterhouse’s sparkling second album is filled with scuzzy stompers inspired by her indie heroes Bloc Party and The Raveonettes, and offbeat, nonchalant pop with echoes of Sheryl Crow. “I can hardly wait to tell you all the shitty things that you’ve done when you’re blackout drunk,” she sings over hand claps and girl-group backing vocals on ‘Blackout Drunk’. Lead single ‘OMG’, which Waterhouse wrote with Jules Apollinaire and Natalie Findlay of London psych band TTRRUUCES, sounds like a lost classic from the so-called “indie sleaze” era of the late 2000s.

The unpolished, somewhat chaotic fashion of this time – think Karen O in a ripped tee and fishnets, or Pete Doherty rocking a trilby – has recently enjoyed a major revival on TikTok and Instagram. No one called it “indie sleaze” back in 2007; the term was popularised a couple of years ago by its new, Gen Z exponents. Waterhouse, who

“It already feels like I’ve had big ups and downs in my life.”

experienced this scene the first time around, says she can understand their clamouring for its grungy glamour and IDGAF attitude. She draws an astute comparison between the breezy hedonism of “indie sleaze” and Charli XCX’s similarly messy ‘BRAT’ aesthetic. “It’s not ‘BRAT’ but there’s something kind of adjacent to ‘BRAT’ about it,” she says. “I think people want that freedom of wearing a fedora hat and skinny jeans and smoking a bunch of cigarettes.”

‘Memoir of a Sparklemuffin’ is out 13th September via Sub Pop.

Read the full feature over at diymag.com/sukiwaterhouse. DIY

NEWS HAVE YOU HEARD?

Some of the biggest and best tracks from the last month.

SOCCER MOMMY

On ‘M’, Sophie Allison – aka Soccer Mommy – drifts away from the electronic experimentation of her 2022 album, ‘Sometimes, Forever’ and instead returns to the more organic sound of 2018’s ‘Clean’ and 2020’s ‘color theory’. ‘M’ effortlessly intertwines grief and nostalgia with stripped-back production, placing her vulnerable songwriting front and centre. “‘Cause I miss you / Like a loyal dog / Waiting to hear the lock turn,” she sings atop carefully layered hazy guitars. Weaving in and out of these guitars are soft, almost imperceptible synths and strings, making for a beautifully haunting dreamscape of a song. What’s more, strategically placed riffs and touches of electric guitar keep the track from feeling dull and add a touch of emo flair. As the song progresses, these elements converge, culminating in a final flourish: a flute and string arrangement. With its poignant songwriting and impressive production, ‘M’ sets a very exciting precedent for the singer-songwriter’s fourth album. Sophie Flint Vázquez

AMYL AND THE SNIFFERS Chewing Gum

Bursting with vigour, ‘Chewing Gum’ nods to Amyl and The Sniffers’ classic sound while navigating a pensive paradox filled with delicious metaphors. It’s a hedonistic anthem that revels in the moment, where clattering drum rolls melt into exhilarating crescendos and angsty vocals provided by punk firecracker Amy Taylor. “Life is short, life is fun, I am young and in love,” she belts, a self-assured swagger erupting through her jaded exterior. Figuratively comparing herself to a piece of chewing gum stuck on someone’s shoe, Taylor’s self-deprecation masterfully captures the intoxicating power of naive love. According to Amyl and The Sniffers, to be in love is to be dumb: we don’t know about you, but that proposition has never sounded so good. Neve Dawson

MOONCHILD SANELLY Big Booty

For anyone even vaguely familiar with Moonchild Sanelly’s live show, the fact she’s released a brand new track that doubles as an ode to her (incredibly fabulous) derrière isn’t all too surprising. An artist that completely embodies self-empowerment and love – especially when twerking her way through a set, and inviting fans on stage to do the same – ‘Big Booty’ arrives exactly as you’d hope. It’s deliciously fun; it’s in-your-face, and it’s a brilliant reminder for women everywhere to embrace their bodies, in whatever form they take. With lines like “If I had a big, big booty / I’d fuck up the world / Oh, I do and I already am”, this is a confidence-boosting banger of the highest form. Sarah Jamieson

PIXIES Oyster Beds

Almost channelling The Stooges and the modern day garage gods that are Ty Segall and John Dwyer, ‘Oyster Beds’ sees Pixies meander towards the more raucous, with some searing, snot-filled garage-punk. Clocking in at just over two minutes, the brisk yet immensely beastly single from the American riff-merchant quartet – also now featuring Band of Skulls’ Emma Richardson on bass duties – is an utter sonic frenzy, made for smashing back warm pints in sweaty venues. All the while, it’s still that mega scuzz-soaked, distortion-laden, tinnitus-inducing Pixies that we all know and love. A true modern punk banger. Brad Sked

LAURA MARLING

No One’s Gonna Love You Like I Can

Taken from her forthcoming album ‘Patterns in Repeat’, Laura Marling’s latest is an intimate, haunting slice of utterly beautiful folk. Minimal in its ingredients, there’s nonetheless an enchanting and warming richness to Marling’s almost lullaby-esque, mollifying harmonies and ethereal, dream-like pianos. The sort of tender offering you hope might soundtrack a walk through the golden heavenly gates, ‘No One’s Gonna Love You Like I Can’ builds towards an orchestral string serenade, making for a gorgeous cinematic-folk fantasy. Two minutes of sonic serenity, Marling’s latest masters the art of short but absolutely sweet songwriting. If this is a sign of things to come from her forthcoming LP, then it’s going to be an emotional heart-warmer. Brad Sked

FESTIVALS BACK TO THE CITY

The tents are packed away, our wellies are finally dry, and BRAT summer looks like it’s coming to an end (sob). But don’t worry, festival season keeps marching on. Join us as we start looking towards music’s next bright hopes: first stop, Hamburg...

REEPERBAHN FESTIVAL

18th – 21st September, Hamburg

When it comes to discovering music’s most exciting new acts, there’s no better place to do it than Hamburg’s Reeperbahn Festival later this month. As ever, the city will be transformed into Europe’s most exciting new music hub, with performances coming from some of the buzziest breakthrough acts about – including Lambrini Girls, Soft Launch, Wasia Project, Moonchild Sanelly and more – as well as some more familiar faces for good measure (Swim Deep, Kate Nash, The Lemon Twigs, Rachel Chinouriri, we’re looking at you...).

Plus, DIY will again be taking over the legendary venue of Molotow Club on the festival’s opening night for an incredible line-up featuring Personal Trainer, mary in the junkyard, Kapa Tult and Rum Jungle. Be sure to join us on Wednesday 18th from 7pm.

Another act who’ll be taking to the stage over in Hamburg this month is the incredible Palestinian-American artist Lana Lubany. Ahead of her visit to the festival, we caught up with her…

Q&A

Lana Lubany

Last year you shared your EP ‘THE HOLY LAND’ – now that you’ve had a little distance from the release, how do you feel about it?

I can’t believe it’s been over a year since the EP came out. I learned so much from that project, and it was the first time I truly felt like I was being myself in my art. I had been struggling with my identity at the time and writing the project helped me with my journey into re-discovering and getting to know myself honestly. In hindsight, I think I definitely found myself in creating the music, but that was only a part of my journey – the beginning. I am still exploring my identity to this day,

heard, and language is one of the ways I can tell it.

As well as sharing new music, you’ve also been out on the road supporting the likes of The Last Dinner Party and Saint Levant. How did the shows go? What was it like to play to those kinds of crowds every night?

Both tours were amazing to be on and I learned and grew so much after both of them. I was so lucky to be able to go on my first ever tour supporting a friend –Saint Levant, who is an incredible artist who continues to innovate. The crowds on that tour were so welcoming and a lot of people surprised me when they would sing along to my songs. The Last Dinner Party tour was very different, exposing me to a different audience, who were also so welcoming and supportive of me. I enjoyed every show and getting to watch the band perform every night was an honour, as they are incredible performers who I learned a lot from.

What do you think you’ve learned from the process of playing live more? Has it taught you much about yourself as an artist?

Firstly, my confidence has grown so much since I started performing live last year. So has my imposter syndrome. I learned what my strengths and weaknesses were and I’ve improved with every show. I both love and hate watching videos of myself perform after I go on – hate because I’m the most critical and harsh person on myself, and love because when I watch myself perform I kind of see it from a third party perspective and I can’t believe that it’s me on stage! So surreal. I can’t wait for my first ever European headline tour this fall.

You’ve going to be heading over to Hamburg for Reeperbahn Festival; how are you looking forward it? Have you been able to play at many festivals so far?

I’m very excited for Reeperbahn Festival! With every performance I do I fall in love with the art even more. I haven’t played too many festivals yet – only Bred in Abu Dhabi and Appletree Garden festival in Germany – but I hope to play a lot more in the near future around the world.

mary in the junkyard

Kapa Tult

Rum Jungle

NEU

New bands, new music.

The Dare

The ‘Guess’ collaborator and New York disruptor is 2024’s most polarising new artist. Charli thinks he’s with it – do you?

Words: Lisa Wright

When Harrison Patrick Smith appears on the screen for today’s call, the scene we’re greeted with is almost comically appropriate. Striding down the streets of Manhattan, black sunglasses on and slightly perspiring, with his wobbling iPhone screen panned up to background him with looming skyscrapers and bustling streets, it’s the exact image of an in demand man-about-town you might expect from an artist who’s titled their debut album ‘What’s Wrong With New York?’ Unusually for Smith, who’s been igniting and irking the pop culture-sphere in equal measure lately as The Dare, the set-up isn’t actually all-that considered. “I’ve had a bit of an insane 48 hours so I thought I’d walk and talk. Well…” he corrects himself, “it’s been insane for about a month but it’s reaching an apex right now.”

“Insane” is, by all metrics, something of an understatement. A couple of weeks before we talk, ‘Guess’ – his contribution to Charli xcx’s all-consuming ‘BRAT’ empire (co-written and produced by Smith) – blew up the internet with its sapphic Billie Eilish remix. Hitting the UK Number One spot on the singles chart, it cemented Charli as the undisputed queen of the summer while boosting Billie into top position as the most streamed artist on the planet. As for The Dare, the cultural tipping point of the last few months seems to have finally made him make sense to a lot of people: where his polarising 2022 debut single ‘Girls’ initially had the internet up in arms for its LCD Soundsystem-nodding electroclash and lyrics about “the girls who do drugs / girls with cigarettes in the back of the club”, now it’s all just, well, very BRAT.

“It’s funny… I think sometimes people need things explained to them. It’s hard to talk to the general public, especially if you’re into weird shit. Most of the public isn’t. I think Charli is amazing at not only creating new worlds and new styles of music, but she’s really good at bringing people into it and helping them feel good about experiencing those things. I’m worse at that,” he chuckles.

“And also at the time when I did it, I had no relationship to the public whatsoever, nor did I ever think anybody would give a fuck, so I wasn’t really concerned about helping people figure out what I was doing, I was just doing it. So then of course, when it DID hit a lot of people they were just shocked, which is really good, honestly. I guess if it made sense to people from the start there never would have been a spark; there has to be friction.”

Boil it down and friction and spark is really what’s at the heart of The Dare’s MO. Some things that Smith likes: proper rockstars, making a statement, pissing people off sometimes if it means not being dull. Some things he doesn’t care for: being palatable just to keep people happy or even really, it seems, being ‘liked’ in the sense that he wants the internet to be his mate. He makes music about fucking and suicide and rock’n’roll. He still thinks Matty Healy is “incredible right now”. In a world of cautious platitudes, Smith is very much not that guy.

The Dare, he says, is like the “id of [his] being”. “It doesn’t work in my best interests to be a fucking asshole all the time, but if I’m allowed to be that on stage I’ll definitely take that opportunity ‘cause art is the one magical place where you can kind of do whatever you want.” On ‘What Happened To New York?’ – a deliberate double entendre designed to point to music’s “funny little antagonistic relationship” with the city – that means serving up massive, braggy bangers called things like ‘I Destroyed Disco’ that nod to LCD and Peaches and the sort of hedonistic counterculture that, as a kid in Seattle, he looked to the city and

dreamed of. At his now infamous club night Freakquencies, it means creating somewhere “stylish and trashy and fun and not very exclusive or stuck up”. “As a response to more puritanical movements in culture and social politics, I think people are trying to loosen their ties a little bit and be OK with getting too drunk and being sloppy,” he suggests. “There’s a lot of forces that have been pushing things back to that era because of its looseness, glamour, dirtiness... people were uglier in a way...”

In conversation, Smith is actually very likeable: smart, switchedon, an obviously passionate music fan. It’s not that he’s trying to troll the world with his sharp-suited image and live sets that see him performing in front of a ludicrously massive amplifier stack, it’s just that he truly believes in the messy glamour of this business we call show. “Everybody seems content to be humble, or present this attitude of composed authenticity and I just think it’s a huge sham and a fucking boring way to be an artist,” he says. “I don’t want you to act like you’re working a desk job, I want you to act like a rock star. I think that’s why people love Oasis: the music is incredible but they’re also getting into psychotic fights and stuff, and that’s part of what makes rock and roll magical and unlike anything else.”

From BRAT ‘24 to Lads ‘25, there’s arguably no better time for The Dare to be promoting his brand of hedonistic, nihilistic party-starting. When he first moved to New York six-and-ahalf years ago, says Smith, “nobody really gave a fuck” about the underground electroclash he liked; these days, in the reinvigorated post-Covid world, people want to get dressed up and fucked up and he’s got exactly the soundtrack to do it to. Just like all the most exciting, disruptive artists and scenes before him, he knows it won’t please everyone but that’s exactly the point.

“I don’t like things that are boring and have nothing to say, or things that are too honest or too contrived,” he says. “I think if you strike the right balance in the middle, inevitably it’ll piss a lot of people off and other people will fall in love with it. I just value that much more over being very likeable and coasting along.” DIY

“Everybody seems content to be humble, and I just think that’s a fucking boring way to be an artist.”

Photo: Richard Kern

“We’re so lucky we had 20 venues that would book us as teens; that infrastructure of grassroots venues was there for us.” – Billy Ward

Man/Woman/Chainsaw

In an age of overnight TikTok sensations, Man/Woman/ Chainsaw have spent the time ahead of imminent debut EP ‘Eazy Peazy’ cutting their teeth the old fashioned way. Having already notched up over 100 shows to their name, each night spent in the musical institutions of London has been a vital step in their evolution. Vocalist and guitarist Billy Ward puts it simply: “We wrote for the stage because we just wanted to get out and play.”

Listening to their most recent single ‘Ode To Clio’, you get the feeling that the quintet’s expansive sound couldn’t have come together any other way. Drama lurks at every turn as they combine serene violins with keys on the complex ballad; “What do we do when lifetimes fall apart?” questions vocalist Vera Leppänen just before the song explodes into a thrashing and thrilling climax. M/W/C have come a long way since Ward and Leppänen first met at school and started bouncing between rehearsal spaces playing Nirvana covers, but the ethos of just having fun as pals remains. “I remember our first conversation being at a mutual friend’s 15th birthday party about The Beatles,” recalls Vera. “It never felt like we were in a band, it felt like messing around with friends.”

After a revolving lineup in their formative stages, a pivotal moment came when the band were completed by Clio Harwood

Emmie-Mae Avery

and Lola Cherry (drums). “It just started gaining a bit more momentum then,” says Ward. A testament to that comes with their first song penned as a unit, last year’s single ‘What Lucy Found There’ – a rhythmic beauty that instantly pulls you into their world. “I feel like that was us hitting more of a stride as songwriters, the sound was just bigger,” Billy nods. Considering the sweaty intimacy of the venues that have become their recent homes (Brixton’s Windmill and The Shacklewell Arms among them), theirs is a big noise to fit into a small space. “Sometimes big stuff sounds great in little rooms [though],” says Billy. “A small venue is a really good proving ground for new music. We’re so lucky we had 20 venues that would book us as teens; that infrastructure of grassroots venues was there for us.”

Indeed, these spaces inadvertently helped form the very bones of ‘Eazy Peazy’. “We were so busy doing shows we’d write the songs to get ready for the gig,” Billy continues. “They grew very slowly around our live set. It’s interesting because you can hear us learn throughout the whole thing because we’re trying things out.” The band credit the EP’s producer, Dan Fox of Gilla Band, for helping them hone their complex sound, which often teeters on the brink of chaos. “We’re always trying to cram as much in as possible, so that was an enlightening moment for us,” Billy enthuses. “I was like, 12 when I started

Meet the teenage experimentalists treating London’s DIY scene as their playground.

Words: Rhys Buchanan

Photo: Emma Swann

listening to Gilla Band. They were and still are the benchmark of how noisy a band can be.”

It’s a testament to their own growth that Man/ Woman/Chainsaw are now working with their own influences and following in the footsteps of scene heavyweights like black midi and Black Country, New Road. “We came up on so many of these bands,” says Billy. “It’s surreal to be moving into the same world as them, playing the same venues and seeing them in the pubs.”

Scaling up and already steamrolling into their next 100 shows, Man/Woman/Chainsaw are relishing the prospect of taking their sound onto bigger stages. “It’s weird that we’re suddenly playing festivals,” says Vera. “I’d never been to a festival you sleep at before this summer and now we’re playing them.” A cheeky grin appears on Billy’s face: “I’m just looking forward to turning my amp up louder.” DIY

(violin),

(piano)

Lutalo

Genuinely interesting guitar music giving indie a good (or at least better) name.

Having previously pricked up the ears of none other than Adrianne Lenker (she was spotted front and centre at their recent Green Man set), the forthcoming debut LP from Vermontbased multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer Lutalo sees them plug in, transitioning from the finger-picked folk of their earlier work to a more muscular sonic silhouette. And if the singles so far are anything to go by, then indie’s next coming is in safe hands; mature and considered, yet still full of feeling –this is what artistic evolutions should be.

LISTEN: As we go to press, it’s less than a month until said album, ‘The Academy’, arrives.

SIMILAR TO: There’s an air of King Krule to ‘The Bed’’s gravelly tones.

Being Dead

Austin garage rockers living on the lighter side of life.

Though Austin duo Being Dead already have an album under their belts (last year’s ‘When Horses Would Run’), it’s this month’s follow-up ‘EELS’ that seems to be turning the UK on to their off-kilter charms. As their chosen stage monikers – Falcon Bitch and Schmoofy – will probably attest, there’s a whole lot of fun to be found within BD’s particular house (graveyard?). But though the loose, scrappy charm of these tracks feels like distilling the energy of a basement show on to record, there’s also an ability to wrangle the madness and a melodic nouse that puts them as much in the world of ‘70s pastoral psych as it does Ty Segall.

LISTEN: ‘EELS’ is out 27th September via Bayonet Records.

SIMILAR TO: The early ‘10s heyday of Captured Tracks.

Fcukers

Nectar Woode

Good vibes only from the BritishGhanaian soul singer

“It could take my whole life / And I’ll still be right on time,” sings Nectar Woode on breakthrough single ‘Good Vibrations’ – a deep breath in aural form that’s surely crying out for a mindfulness app tie-in. There’s something utterly believable about the British-Ghanaian singer’s steady positivity; much like her name, Nectar’s honeyed vocals and relatively stripped-back approach to instrumentation lend her tracks an easy intimacy that’s soothing and hard to fake. Following spring debut EP ‘Nothing To Lose’ with a summer bop, ‘30 Degrees’, she’s a calming voice for all seasons.

LISTEN: ‘30 Degrees’ might be hopeful for September but we can dream.

SIMILAR TO: That warming beam of sunshine on a gloomy day.

julie

Think LA is all yoga studios and green juice?

Think again.

So achingly cool do julie seem, it almost comes as a shock to discover they’re based over on the West Coast – such shadowy sonics are starkly at odds with the SoCal sunshine. The young trio have been kicking around for a few years now, having followed up their cult debut ‘flutter’ with a run of interest-piquing singles, but their imminent full-length finds them deftly coming of age. Take latest release ‘very little effort’; though a title that’s almost asking for trouble, you’d be hard pushed to pick holes in its densely textured grunge, the dynamic push and pull between screeching feedback and frontwoman Alex Brady’s disarmingly sweet vocals making for an ever-intriguing listen.

LISTEN: ‘clairbourne practice’ is the paradigmatic lead single from julie’s debut album, ‘my anti-aircraft friend’.

SIMILAR TO: An art collective with instruments – they design all their own covers and assistant direct their videos, too.

NYC party starters who just wanna make you move.

With two thirds of the band having previously been in scrappy indie outfit Spud Cannon, Fcukers finds Jackson Walker Lewis, Ben Scharf,and Shanny Wise inhabiting an altogether sleazier world of beat-driven electro-pop. Aptly arriving at the crest of the genre’s Charli-driven new wave, their tongue-in-cheekily named debut EP ‘Baggy$$’ (out now) is the product of underground, word-of-mouth gigs, gleeful experimentation, and a wholehearted commitment to not taking themselves too seriously. It’s a formula that’s already won them fans in the likes of Beck and Julian Casablancas, and, with a UK tour supporting fellow rabble rousers Confidence Man on the cards, Fcukers are fast becoming the name on everyone’s lips.

LISTEN: Once it’s there, the earworm hook of ‘Bon Bon’ will be bouncing around your head for days.

SIMILAR TO: Between these guys and The Dare, the sound of BRAT summer isn’t going anywhere.

Gurriers

It’s no coincidence that Dublin has a habit of delivering when it comes to vital new guitar music. Since the welldocumented rise of now-household names, from Gilla Band to Fontaines DC and beyond, the pathway has never seemed clearer for those looking to push beyond the boundaries of the city’s vibrant scene. “It wasn’t always that way,” explains frontman Dan Hoff of Gurriers, the latest bunch to use the community on their doorstep as a launchpad for success. “Ten years ago it felt like there was nothing going on, but now there’s amazing music coming from every corner of the city. Naturally, when you see other bands making heavy guitar music and doing well, the whole thing becomes way more tangible.”

A project born in the depths of lockdown, Gurriers started life as a promise made good. “Me and Mark (MacCormack, guitar) were actually working in a fast food restaurant years ago and we always said we’d make a band,” says Dan. “We just started out together in lockdown where we were our own audience, trying to write songs away from the direction of everything else.”

Given the volume of pent-up frustration being channelled across the world in 2020, making something different was a tall order. But the band knew they had something special when they penned debut single ‘Approachable’. A step away from the more sardonic and spiky punk of their peers, the politically-loaded anthem is straight to the point as Dan draws from online political tensions around a scuzzy guitar line: “Once in a while I blacken out my

windows and roll a smoke / Turn on the PC, watch the right-side pixels floating slowly at me.” “That song really kept us going,” nods drummer Pearce Callaghan. “We kept it in the forefront of our mind; it was more than a group of guys in a room making loud music.”

This month, debut album ‘Come And See’ arrives to make good on that early promise. There’s a palpable sense of anger across the surface of the record, but amidst the chaos and urgency, the band rarely lose sight of the song. “We love catchy melodies and hooks,” says Dan. “We were developing the songs in a vacuum, being super picky and critical of ourselves. It was all about the songwriting itself rather than the live set dictating it. The songs had to stand up.”

Thematically, ‘Come And See’ aims to stretch beyond the oft-eulogised outlook of their hometown. “The undertone of the album is what’s happening around me in Dublin, but I want the songs to be a lot more universal,” explains the frontman. “People from Dublin are going to get it but it’s relatable way beyond that. ‘Approachable’ was about the Irish National Party but you can see across Europe it’s a universal thing. We also have the single ‘Dipping Out’ that’s a

straightforward song about Irish people emigrating [but also about] the wider theme of people leaving home.”

And there’s nuance buried within the anger of the political themes they attack. “I wanted to write about things that I haven’t heard about in rock, like online fear and misery and desensitisation to violence; themes that aren’t really touched on with guitar bands but you hear more of in hip hop,” says Dan. “The internet is a deep dark voyage of information and inspiration I think.”

Giants of the Dublin scene might well have created a slipstream for new bands to follow suit, but Gurriers say it’s the healthy competition currently within the scene that’s propelled them to new heights. “Everybody wants the best for themselves here but it’s not to the detriment of others,” says Pearce. “There’s a whole ecosystem of support.” Heading into their debut, they’re trying to bottle that motivation and winning feeling. “We’ve made so many sacrifices along the way to actually get here so you’ve got to soak up the pay-off, otherwise it can feel like sand in your hands when you’re trying to make it stick,” says Hoff. “We don’t take it for granted at all.” DIY

“The undertone of the album is what’s happening around me in Dublin, but I want the songs to be a lot more universal.” – Dan Hoff

The Dublin five-piece are finding their own voice within Ireland’s bustling guitar scene.

Words: Rhys Buchanan

Photo: Grayce Leonard

THE NEU PLAYLIST

Fancy discovering your new favourite artist? Dive into the cream of the new music crop below.

Lou Terry –Rollercoaster Therapy

Here, Lou Terry offers a joyfully awkward tale of private embarrassment. Ever the immersive storyteller, the South Londoner sings about falling in love and not realising it, confusing it with the highs of a rollercoaster ride or a feverish cold before eventually landing on the annoying truth – “it’s the girl! It’s the girl!” Aptly told via loose-as-hell slacker-rock as brightened by an indie-sleaze filter, it’s all centred around a wonderfully endearing gravel-trap vocal that has Terry coming across like the Dylan of Deptford. Elvis Thirlwell

Kate Bollinger –What’s This About (La La La La)

Toasted by a nostalgic, halcyon warmth, Kate Bollinger’s ‘What’s This About (La La La La)’ is the perfect companion for those slow, sprawling summer days. The LA-based artist draws inspiration from the indelible twee psych-pop sounds of Elephant 6 Collective stalwarts The Apples In Stereo and Of Montreal. A blanket on the lawn of buttery acoustic guitars, furbished with a picnic of sweet, ethereal vocal confection, in Bollinger’s world, every hour feels like golden hour. Hazel Blacher

Soft Launch – In My Bed

‘In My Bed’ is an example of the Irish indie-rock quintet’s more soulful, soft side, boasting soaring vocal harmonies layered upon a gentle acoustic guitar pattern and grounded drum groove. It feels wistful and has a sense of romantic longing (“I get lost, I get lonesome / I should call you up”), but despite the more sombre nature of the track, the Brighton-based group’s signature angular sound isn’t lost, with an interesting cacophony of eclectic synths and guitar to feast upon. Kyle Roczniak

Lucky Iris – universal

Yet another gem to emerge from the Leeds music scene, Lucky Iris return with ‘universal’: a magnetic pop number that taps into the current ‘BRAT’-inspired electropop frenzy. The latest cut to be lifted from their upcoming EP ‘something to believe in’, it finds the duo where they thrive most: countering lyrical deadpans on the state of the world with a rapturous, electronic backbone. The tone for the forthcoming project is well and truly being set, and it’s one that firmly secures Lucky Iris as ones to watch over the coming months. Emily Savage

UPDATE YOUR EARS!

Find the Neu Playlist on Spotify:

The Buzz Feed

Done and Dusted

Just a few weeks on from the release of their latest single, London six-piece Flat Party have confirmed plans to share a brand new EP.

The band – who offered up their “ode to hedonism” ‘Shotgun’ at the end of July – will release ‘It’s All Been Done Before’ on 15th November on Submarine Cat. It’ll follow on from their debut, self-titled EP, which landed earlier this year. “In comparison to the subtle optimism of our debut EP, the songs on our new EP are dark, hedonistic and dramatic,” the band’s Jack Lawther has said of their forthcoming effort. “There’s always been that side of the band present, so it felt right to represent it properly. Sonically, it’s all a lot more intense than the first EP too and we’ve really made the most of our musical arsenal when it comes to the arrangements.”

Alongside the news of the EP itself, they’ve also got a seven-date tour of the UK to mark its release, and they’ve also shared its title track. Head over to diymag.com to find out more.

Thank Goodness

Fresh from sharing her new summersoaked anthem, ‘Thank Goodness’, Hope Tala has shared plans for a special mini-tour, which will take place next month.

The West Londoner is scheduled to play three headline shows this October, taking place in London, New York and Los Angeles respectively. Following her recent inclusion on Barack Obama’s 2024 Summer Playlist (he included her previous single ‘I Can’t Even Cry’), she’ll perform at London’s O2 Academy Islington on 17th, NY’s Gramercy Theatre on 25th and LA’s EL Rey Theatre on 28th October. Tickets for the show are on sale now.

Speaking of the inspiration for the title of her new track ‘Thank Goodness’ – which you can hear over on diymag.com now – the singer has said: “I experienced a pretty horrible breakup not too long before writing this song. As I explained everything that had been going on in my life at the time to Caroline Ailin and Stint, who I made it with, I used the phrase ‘thank goodness’. Once we finished chatting, Caroline said we should use the phrase as a title. I was a bit taken aback at first – I probably wouldn’t have considered using it if I had been writing on my own – but once the song was finished I remember thinking wow, this is exactly what I’ve been wanting to say. Then it really became my ‘better off’ anthem.”

Let Her Entertain You

Three years on from sharing her breakout track ‘Punching Bag’, LA-based singer Wallice has finally announced details of her debut album, ‘The Jester’.

She’s set to follow last year’s ‘Mr Big Shot’ EP with her first full-length when it gets released on 15th November via Dirty Hit. Made in the wake of her dream-come-true slot opening for The 1975 on their world tour last year, the album is set to be fourteen tracks in length and will include her two brand new singles, ‘Heaven Has To Happen’ and ‘The Opener’.

“I went on a month-long tour opening for The 1975, which was a dream come true,” Wallice has said. “It was an amazing experience – but was also interesting to think about the job of an opener. Is it to warm up the crowd or just fill the empty space? Many people who were in the front of the crowd had been camping outside for hours in hopes to get barricade and be closer to The 1975, so they weren’t too enthused with my performance, someone they had never heard of,” shares Wallice. “I would always go watch the show after I played. One night, this girl bumped into me and spilled her beer on me – which then made me spill my tea – and she said a quick sorry and left. The experience kind of made me feel like I hadn’t just given it my all on the stage, like I was another faceless body in a big arena. ‘The Opener’ is about the accomplishments and failures in my career so far, and how some things are both at the same time.” Listen to her two new tracks over on diymag.com now.

Photos: Emma Swann, Sie Rosa, Monika Oliver

W H AT DI D

D on’t panic, MUNA fans: K AT I E G AV IN isn’t breaking up the band. I nstead, the f rontwoman is taking a s ojourn s ideways for a s ingers ongwriter s olo a lbum that tackles l ife and r elationships (with a little h elp from her m any m usical f riends). W ords: C harlotte G unn P hotos: K risten J an W ong

atie Gavin’s cat has forgotten his manners. He’s sitting between us, licking his nether-regions and letting ‘em rip. “It’s a cover story, dude?!” she pleads, frantically wafting the air. “Come ON! That’s psychopathic!” Button the tabby is unphased. We’re in his space after all – a cute little olive green LA Craftsman that he and Gavin call home. Their newest housemate, an eight-week old jet black kitten, dances on two legs with a toy next to us. Their mum is worried the house smells of cat (it doesn’t). Well, perhaps it does now.

It’s a few weeks since Gavin released her first solo single – ‘Aftertaste’, a poppy ode to running into an ex – and sent MUNA fans spiralling that it signified the end of their favourite band. “They were scared,” deadpans the verymuch-still MUNA frontwoman. Far from a pivot, however, Gavin’s decision to put out a solo album was one that happened organically, over years and – in spite of some recent ribbing from her bandmates via their podcast, Gayotic (“So Katie, what are the three biggest reasons you didn’t want us involved in the creation of this album?”) –with the full support of MUNA.

“It was chill,” confirms Gavin. “The truth is, they’re sweethearts and the conversation happened over a long period of time. When you’re on the outside, it seemed to happen very quickly but that wasn’t the case for us. Also… they just didn’t want to work on these songs!” she shrugs. “I would compare it to any long-term relationship. Ideally you’re growing together, but it’s not realistic to think that every direction that you’re growing in, they’ll want to do that with you. Sometimes you have to go on a little journey on your own, but it’s for the health and benefit of that relationship.”

The seeds of Gavin’s solo record began to sprout back in lockdown. Texting song ideas back and forth with her good friends, Okudaxij’s Eric Radloff and MUNA’s original drummer Scott Heiner, they decided to work on arranging ten of her tracks in a studio in Silver Lake. “It was full pandemic time, everyone was wearing masks. One of my dogs went into heart failure while making the record!” she recalls – a tragedy later to be captured on album track, ‘Sweet Abby Girl’. “It was a lot, but it was this very romantic, special, fun vibe. I did it with my homies; Jo[sette Maskin, MUNA guitarist] played on a lot of songs, as did Geo [Bolteho, MUNA bassist]. Naomi [MUNA’s other guitarist] played some keys and was helping us as an engineer. I was ready to put that out as a record.”

Around the same time, MUNA signed to Phoebe Bridgers’ label Saddest Factory, and Gavin sent the songs to her new label boss. To her surprise, she loved them. “The original plan was to put the songs out on my Bandcamp or

“I t makes me e motional to think that g irls like C happell R oan or R eneé R

app saw M UNA and were like, ‘OK, there’s s pace for m e in this w orld’.

”

“S ometimes you have to go on a l ittle j ourney on your own, but it’s for the h ealth and b enefit of that [group]

something, but Saddest Factory has first right of refusal. Then I was like, ‘Oh that’s cool that Phoebe wants to put them out’, but she asked if I would be down for polishing them a little bit with her producer, Tony Berg.”

Despite Berg’s credentials as an LA producing legend, something in those sessions didn’t quite gel. Perhaps it was Gavin’s attachment to the original demos and the vibe of the pandemic sessions but the project was put on hold as she headed out on the road for what would be MUNA’s biggest tour to date. It was only after a triumphant final homecoming show at LA’s Greek Theater that her head returned to the unreleased songs and, after some sage advice from a friend, she decided to head back to the studio with Berg, letting him “do what he does best” and starting the process over again, reworking the material from scratch.

The result is twelve tracks that make up her solo debut, ‘What a Relief’. Referring to it as ‘Lilith Fair-core’ after the female-focused travelling music festival, founded by Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLaughlan, throughout the record Gavin’s lyricism is given space to shine across a blend of folk, alternative and country-tinged tracks with a distinctly ‘90s flavour (think: Sheryl Crow, Fiona Apple, Tori Amos). Whereas ‘Aftertaste’ is something of a MUNA-coded gateway to ease fans into this new world (“It was the only track Naomi and Jo did eventually want to work on but I said, ‘I need a single. I’m keeping it!’”), the rest of the album leans more heavily in this new direction. There’s vulnerability in the pared-back, finger picking nature of the tracks – more than half of which forgo any kind of drums for occasional strings and acoustic guitar.

Too young to remember Lilith Fair the first time around, Gavin’s love for its lineup developed in her twenties. “I was 24, living in Glendale, without a car, watching full Tori Amos sets on YouTube like, this is the coolest woman who ever lived!” she remembers. “I really romanticised that time. I got to meet Sarah McLaughlan recently because she’s making a record with Tony [Berg] right now – it’s been so kismet, in the last couple of months I’ve met Katheen Hana, Sarah and Ani DiFranco… But I got to talk to Sarah a little about Lilith and she was like, ‘Yeah, don’t romanticise that time. It was really hard!’”

Lyrically, across the record Gavin explores love – both new and old – and mother-daughter relationships, most notably on ‘The Baton’ which lands at the realisation that your parents are only human and can only take you so far in life. Later, on ‘Inconsolable’ she nods at a childhood without “cuddles”. Is becoming a mother – or her own relationship with her mother – something that occupies her thoughts? “I think about it a lot. I think about it all the time,” she laughs knowingly, in what DIY’s BRAT-addled brain assumes must be a Charli xcx reference. “Being 31, you naturally start having more conversations about having kids and freezing eggs. I’m queer, so you have to be more intentional. But honestly, as a queer artist in the music scene, it’s 40, if at all.”

On writing ‘The Baton’, she admits to “carrying that metaphor” in her back pocket for a long time. “I was talking to Lucy [Dacus] about the record, I said there was this song called ‘The Baton’ and she said, ‘Oh, is it about intergenerational trauma as a relay race?’ I was like, yeah –she gets it.”

The track led to an emotional moment with her own mother. When playing it for the first time, they sat together and cried. “Then she said she wanted to make a music video for it,” Gavin laughs. “I have a mom who will text me random music video ideas – she has all these photos from my childhood. She wants to make a collage on iMovie or something.”

The fandom would want to assume that MUNA and Boygenius are best friends who hang out all the time. However, with Bridgers as label boss and Dacus sequencing the album, it seems like maybe that fantasy is more than just a sapphic dream. “Yeah, we do hang out. I love them. I don’t see Phoebe so much because she lives a little further away but Lucy’s my little sweetheart,” Gavin smiles. “We connected really quickly and easily. I think it’s important to have friends in this line of work who can validate certain things that are hard about it. You need a safe space to complain because I also understand we are the luckiest people. But yeah, I haven’t seen them recently because I’m in workaholic mode but I did text Lucy the other day, like ‘I miss you’ and she said ‘Well let’s fucking hang out’.”

Elsewhere on the album, ‘As Good As It Gets’ tells the story of the type of love you get when you stop chasing epic highs and hellish lows. It’s an incredibly real portrayal of a relationship that, to some, may seem depressing but, to others, is the very definition of true happiness. “It was Phoebe’s idea to have ‘As Good As It Gets’ be a duet,” notes Gavin. “So I texted it to Mitski, which was a huge swing, and she responded five minutes later and said, ‘I love this song, it’s beautiful’. She kind of bent over backwards to make it work because she was on tour at the time, and recorded it when she was home for a couple of days in the middle. I just really love her and she’s been really supportive and has been a homie. I think it will really help me.”

The pair met in 2020 when Gavin went to Nashville to spend the day writing. As a long-time fan, Gavin thinks, with hindsight, she was perhaps a bit intense. “I fully cried in the session,” she admits. “With Mitski now, I do feel like we’re kinda friends and I can talk to her normally. But she’s also my favourite songwriter of a generation – probably my favourite living songwriter. And so I think I can put energy on her that sucks to have put on you. I sort of consulted her as if she was an oracle,” she cringes.

On the day, she hit Mitski with the big questions – a casual “I don’t really know who I am or what I’m doing” – but her response may have led to the birth of ‘What A Relief’. “She said, ‘It seems like you have these songs – maybe you should just put them out?’ Gavin recalls. “I doubt she’ll even remember the conversation, but because it was Mitski, I took that totally to heart. Like, I guess I’m making a solo record then!”

In the wider pop landscape, 2024 has been a huge year for queer female artists seeing major chart success. “I feel really proud,” says Gavin, when asked about the rise. “I don’t want to have a crazy ego about it, but I do feel like MUNA definitely played a role in it. It makes me emotional to think that girls like Chappell [Roan] or Reneé [Rapp] saw MUNA and were like, ‘OK, there’s space for me in this world’.”

It was a shift Gavin discussed with Rapp when presenting her with an award at a recent New York Pride event. “We had a cute conversation. It’s such a trip how much things have changed and so quickly,” she smiles. “When we started in 2014, having an actual lesbian pop star… it wasn’t quite unimaginable because we were imagining it like, ‘Us…?’ But it was a distant dream, and so it’s amazing having those girls have this moment.”

For Roan in particular, despite slogging as a musician for a long time in cult circles, her stratospheric rise to the top of the charts has felt like it’s happened in a heartbeat. She’s been vocal about the toll that’s taken on her mental health. “Chappell knows how much I love her and we’ve been trying to hang out, but I honestly think she’s just on another planet right now,” says Gavin. “I can’t really fathom what she’s going through and I know that it must be a lot. I hope that we get some time and I also hope that she already has a community of friends. That’s one thing about doing this – even having a tiny taste of being a solo artist – it’s a lot more fun to do it as a band. So my heart goes out to all the solo artists. Chappell knows I’m here whenever she needs anything.”

hen we talk, Joe Biden has not long stepped out of the race to become the next President of the United States of America, paving the way for Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party candidate, who’ll go up against Donald Trump in November’s election.

“Honestly, I don’t know how I’m feeling about the country,” Gavin sighs when asked if she’s feeling optimistic. “I will tell you that after this interview I’m getting on a call for what is, I guess, my fourth job – organising with a group called Resource Generation, getting involved in a housing justice campaign in LA. I feel excited about some of the city council members that are running this year – Ysabel Jurado and Jillian Burgos. One of my ways to pay it forward is to just focus on staying politically active and having a political home in my city; people that I organise with and have real relationships with. It’s been really good for me. We’re in a time where it really does feel like the world is

L ILITH F AIR 2.0

Katie has dubbed the album ‘Lilith Fair-core’ so we wanted to know – if she were to bring back Lilith Fair in 2024, who would be on the bill? Girl came prepared.

“I actually have 25 people. Because Ani DiFranco had a joke with the Indigo Girls around the time of Lilith that they wanted to do a more radical version of it called The Rolling Thunder Pussy Revue. And so I was texting with her like, ‘Ani – let’s go!’

Who would I want? [consults notes] Kehlani, boygenius. There’s this cool punk band called Special Interest. CHAI – I love them. My friend Avery Tucker – he was in girlpool. Jasmine.4.t, who is signed to Saddest Factory. I want a lot of the OGs like Indigo Girls, Tori Amos, Sarah McLaughlan. [Also] Monaleo and Chappell Roan. I would want Young MA, Aliyah’s Interlude and Baby Storme – I don’t know if Baby Storme is British or just seems like she’s British because she’s cool, but she makes sorta emo pop music.

Hmm, more songwriters that I love... Charlotte Cornfield, Jensen McRae, Courtney Marie Andrews. We had this other person open for us called Amythyst Kia who I really love. I would try and get Billie, I would try and get Miley. I really love Miley. I have thought about this a lot.”

ending. There’s an active genocide which neither one of our candidates is supporting a ceasefire around.”

Clearly considering her responsibility to her fans, she reverts back: “I’ll just say, I’m going to vote for Kamala. But I’m really focusing my energy on more local politics and politics in a sustained way. The thing that annoys me is that there’s some shaming on the left like, ‘How dare you not show up and yell off the rooftops for Kamala when Trump is so much worse – you should be getting involved.’ My perspective is that we need people working for change from all different directions. We need the people who are super super far left, but we also need the people who are making compromises. But I feel like y’all are shaming us for not showing up a certain way when actually we are organising all the time. Maybe we would not be choosing the lesser of two evils if people were consistently organising. We can accomplish a lot more in four years than we can in 100 days. But look – I live in California and it’s a blue state. I would encourage MUNA fans, if they’re in a state that’s red, go vote for Kamala. But I’m not jazzed, let me say that much.”

Between her political work and music, life’s a little hectic for Katie Gavin right now. But she’s always been adamant that this stint in the solosphere could only happen if it didn’t interfere with MUNA. “I don’t want to let the fans freaking out weigh on me, but I do want to give them a new MUNA record really soon,” she says, generously. “So I’m now basically on cycle and off cycle at the same time. I’m writing the new MUNA record, promoting this one – and we have a podcast, so I spent a couple of hours today recording that. I’m spinning a lot of plates.”

Back in July at Pitchfork Music Festival, Gavin joined another hero, Alanis Morrisette, on stage to sing ‘Ironic’. “I was just on stage singing with her, holding her hand and staring into her eyes like, ‘I’m gonna start crying!’” she recalls. “It was really intense, but honestly, it just made me think how fucking cool would it be to be 50 and touring with MUNA and to sound that good.

“The thing about getting older,” she posits, as our time together wraps up, “is that you have time to keep getting fucking better.”

‘What A Relief’ is out 25th October via Saddest Factory.

DIY

“I don’t want to let the f ans f reaking o ut weigh on m e, but I d o want to g ive them a n ew M UNA R ecord really s oon. ”

The Bright Side of Life

It’s taken Katy J Pearson two projects and three albums to fully find her confidence, but with superlative new album ‘Someday, Now’ under her belt, there’s nothing left to stand in her way.

Words: Lisa Wright. Photos: Megan Graye.

It’s absolutely pissing it down as we ferry Katy J Pearson out of a taxi and into the drizzly wilds of Regent’s Park for today’s photoshoot, but the Bristolian singer couldn’t be more chipper. Gamely sitting on a secretly-concealed tote bag in an attempt to separate herself from the sodden bench beneath, she then hops up for a trot around the extremely slippery perimeter of a nearby fountain – much to the consternation of her watching manager, who’d rather not deal with any potential broken limbs. Chucking her jacket off so as best to show off her Fairport Convention T-shirt and barely asking for more than the occasional fringe status check, she is that most rare and wonderful of things: a seemingly egoless artist who actually quite likes doing press.

If it’s a notably buoyant vibe that Pearson is giving off today, then it’s for good reason; anyone who’s dragged themselves out of a rough patch will recognise the familiar joy emanating from a person who’s managed to find their way back to themselves. Though both of her solo albums to date – 2020 debut ‘Return’ and 2022’s ‘Sound of The Morning’ – had received near-universal praise, the 180 of emerging from the nothingness of lockdown into a constant cycle of activity had taken its toll. “I was just mentally fucked. I was absolutely exhausted. I was like Ken: my job is music and this is all I have,” she says. “The first two records were so close together and I just lost a sense of what I was doing. I didn’t go to uni, I went straight into music very young, so my whole identity was being a musician. I needed to just fuck off and chill out for a bit.”

She impromptu booked flights to stay with family in Australia for three months (“on Klarna because I didn’t have any money,” she caveats, “pay in three!”) and “came back, like, healed”. But as well as giving her the space to physically take a breather and remember a life outside the pressure cooker of the industry, the time away also gave Pearson a chance to really focus on what she wanted from Album Three.

“I’ve loved both my other records but I really wanted to zone in and make a body of work where I was at the helm, whereas before I’d let someone else

“When you’re young, you’re so easy to manipulate and it takes so long to shake off those shackles.”

guide me because I’d not given myself time to process things,” she explains. “People always say when you get older you start to know yourself more, but I think it’s all very true. Especially as a woman, in the past I’ve been so doubtful of my control in something and I’ve always let go of the reins thinking someone else knows better. So I was really excited about working with [producer] Bullion, and I actively chose my band because I trusted them not to be sexist and misogynist in the studio. And it’s a shame that’s a thing but I think most people in music have the same stories.”

Before emerging under her solo guise, Pearson and her brother made music as indie-pop duo Ardyn. Signed to a management contract aged 15, a major label aged 19 and then subsequently dropped aged 21, by the time she’d come back as Katy J, the singer had already experienced an entire cycle of arguably the worst side of the industry. Inevitably, the impact of being developed and shaped from such a young age had lasting effects on Pearson’s own sense of self. “Even though it was my music and I was writing it, when you’re that young you’re so easy to manipulate and it takes so long to shake off those shackles,” she reflects. “It took me ages to realise because I used to think I was a really confident person, but when I started going to therapy I realised I was extremely insecure. You can really trick yourself into thinking you’re being such a boss bitch and it’s like, no, you’re not!”

She recalls recording ‘Return’ in a state of total stress-induced, lethargic shut-down. “I don’t know how we even made it because I was so depressed and sleepy. It was really terrifying because I’d had such a bad experience before, so making that record I was…” she grips the table, hyperventilating. “Then making the second record was even more confusing because there were two producers and I was like, what’s happening? So finally getting to this point is like… OK,” she pauses, taking a deep breath. “Cool.”

If the emotional rollercoaster to third album ‘Someday, Now’ is one that’s been more than a decade in the making, however, then its pay off is suitably sweet. Finally allowing the pop influences that she’d forcibly sidelined since Ardyn to fully come to the table and lift her established palette of lilting indie-folk, Americana, synthpop and more to new heights, Pearson’s newest is a wonder. Playful, confident in its own skin, and constantly seesawing around the axis of unexpectedness and familiarity, we’re earmarking it now as an early contender for a 2025 Mercury Prize nod.

For Pearson, it’s the result of standing up for herself but also letting her guard down with the right people. “Some people I’ve worked with, it’s just bonkers. I said to someone earlier, ‘The bar is in hell’,” she groan-laughs. “So this just felt really fun. I was showing Bullion the demos I used to make [for previous albums] and they’re so far removed from how [the albums] ended up sounding but quite like how this album sounds, so it felt like I was finally at the helm sonically. It’s much brighter. I think the actual sound of it represents my personality a lot more. It sounds like I’m really finding my feet and it doesn’t feel forced and it just feels very ME.”

Bullion came into Pearson’s orbit when the singer guested on Orlando Weeks’ second solo album ‘Hop Up’, which he also produced. Himself an artist dealing in warm, nostalgic electronic pop, the pair

soon began to bond over a love of ‘80s artists like Tears For Fears, Kate Bush and Bowie’s ‘Modern Love’. In the studio, they built a playlist that helped her to reference the breadth of influences that she’d always found hard to fully articulate when talking about her own work: “Operating Theatre, Anna Domino, Beck, Broadcast, The B-52’s, Eurythmics’ ‘There Must Be An Angel’ – that was a big one that I just wanted everything to sound like. It felt like, for once, I’d revised properly for the exam and I’d really thought about it,” she says.

Alongside the producer, Pearson also assembled a band including Huw Evans (better known as H.Hawkline), Boy Azooga’s Davey Newington and fellow Broadside Hacks collaborator Joel Burton to play on the album. Genuine friends as well as hired musical help, they would act as cheerleaders-cum-therapists when she began bringing lyrical ideas to the table. The breezy catharsis of ‘Maybe’ contains an affirmation that feels crucial to the energy of ‘Someday, Now’ as a whole: “Maybe I don’t need your love / To show me I’m good enough / Yes, I am deserving”. Behind the scenes, however, it took a stern shake from Evans to get the singer to see sense.

“That lyric used to be, ‘Maybe I needed your love to show me…’, and then we were rehearsing and Huw was like, ‘Katy, you don’t need that person’s love to know you’re good enough’. Oh my god, feminist ally in the room!” she laughs. “But it was such a good point! So when we changed the narrative, that’s when we worked out what the song was; it was stuck because the lyric was wrong and it wasn’t empowering. Same with ‘Long Range Driver’. It used to say, ‘Because I’M that piece of gum that won’t leave your shoe’ and now it’s ‘YOU’RE that piece of gum’. Like, Katy, why are you being so rude to yourself?!”

Even though ‘Someday, Now’ still contains plenty of heartsore lyrics (“Classic me,” Pearson guffaws at the suggestion), the overall takeaway of the record is one that wants to overcome these hurdles; of an artist who, through it all, chooses herself. “When Huw brought that up, it made me realise that even in my lyrics I was putting myself down which is just… so sad?” she says. “I wasn’t realising that I was being shit to myself on stage, just singing like, ‘You’re a piece of shit’. And then when we changed it, it was great vibes. Those little things, realising that even in the ways you songwrite you can be putting out that insecurity, you can think that people won’t notice but they do. It’s so interesting that changing a lyric can help you find the sound so much more. Changing the narrative and how you’re speaking to yourself can make everything click into place.”

About to release the third album of her second project, Katy J Pearson has already lived a lot of life in her 28 years. Returning to Rockfield Studios in Bath – the place she’d first visited with Ardyn a decade ago – to lay down ‘Someday, Now’ felt, she says, like a way to “reorder those memories”. “It felt really powerful to reclaim that experience,” she smiles. “Being back on my third record it was like, ‘Fuck. Here I am.’ It’s not like I got dropped and then stopped doing music. I’m a really resilient person.”

Now surrounded by trusted friends and collaborators, Pearson is arguably one of the best connected young musicians in UK indie. As well as popping up on Weeks’ record, she’s contributed vocals to Yard Act’s second album, released her own collaborative Wicker Man EP featuring Wet Leg, Drug Store Romeos and more, and is a member of folk supergroup Broadside Hacks. Where her first teenage musical forays were categorised by loneliness and struggle, these days she’s exactly where she wants to be. “This album represents a real reflection on how I’ve navigated things – and not in a bad way, but it’s all been so crazy and that’s OK. It’s all me learning to be a better artist and, you know, Stevie Nicks wasn’t in Fleetwood Mac until she was 31 so everything’s fine!” she laughs.

“I keep saying the phrase ‘radical acceptance’ but I think I’m just doing some big accepting of the way things are. That there’s nothing else I’d choose to do more than make albums, but that it’s still gonna be weird and shit sometimes and I’ll need to ring my mum,” she says. “I still feel like it’s only the beginning. I’m three albums in, soon I’ll be six albums in, it’s all just carrying forward and seeing what you’ll do next. I’ve realised recently that you should never feel like something defines you; it’s a period of time where you’ve made something and then you’ll make something else. I’m not so worried. I was an anxious person but I’ve found my peace somehow.”

‘Someday, Now’ is out 20th September via Heavenly. DIY

Katy J Pearson’s Pearls of Wisdom

Tbh we could all do with a friend like KJP to give us some sound (and hilarious) advice.

On going at your own pace

There’s this performative pressure with other musicians to say you write every day to get your suffering out, and I just don’t see it that way. Obviously I love writing songs, but I don’t think I’m someone where I have to write everyday to survive. Some people are like, ‘How many songs do you write a day?’ And I’m like… none.

On being well-rounded

Being a musician is only one part of me. I’ve been playing a bit of football, I’ve been doing a lino print course, working a bit in a coffee shop because it’s very lonely just doing music. I’ve been learning the violin, but my brother recently left my Fender Mustang and my violin on a Flixbus and they’ve gone missing so maybe this article can call out Flixbus to find my possessions…

On success

I’m buzzing for [upcoming tourmates] The Last Dinner Party, it’s so lit, but I don’t think I could cope with getting that big. I think I’d freak out and move into a hole in the ground.

“This record sounds like I’m really finding my feet and it doesn’t feel forced and it just feels very ME.”

FRONTMAN ZAC CARPER MAY HAVE SPENT MUCH OF THE LAST FEW YEARS TRYING TO FIND A SENSE OF INNER CALM, BUT ON ‘SURVIVING THE DREAM’, FIDLAR ARE STILL AS RAW AND RAUCOUS AS EVER.

WORDS: LISA WRIGHT

IDLAR’s Zac Carper has been trying some new tricks. In a concerted effort to be more consistent with his songwriting practice while penning the tracks that would make up the LA trio’s incoming fourth studio album ‘Surviving The Dream’, the frontman invented a new technique that he would like to christen: ‘microfesting’. “Everybody manifests things but they do it in such a big way like, ‘I want a million dollars! I want to buy a house! I’m gonna manifest my partner!’,” he says, sitting in his car and puffing on a roll-up. “But I just took that concept and went in the micro with it. Like, ‘I’m gonna micro-fest a burrito’, and then somehow, during the day, I go get a burrito and I’m like, ‘Woah wait? That happened?! That worked?!’ Then I started doing that with my songs. Maybe I just need to write the verse, so I’ll do that. I’ll just do it in chunks.”

Micro-festing might not be making its way into the dictionary any time soon (its definition essentially being, ‘having a thought and then doing it’), but the idea does nod towards some bigger changes that have been going on in Carper’s life since the band’s last album, 2019’s ‘Almost Free’. In the interim period, the frontman was diagnosed with a form of bipolar disorder that presents as “hypomanic states”. “Basically whenever I’m working on something creative – even drawing or painting or producing another band – my brain just cannot stop,” he explains. “I’ll get into a hyper – focused state, but I couldn’t figure out how to stop doing it, so I’d just go and go and go for days and then crash like crazy.”

In some ways, these times would be perversely productive; “When I’m in those manic states, I get so much music done,” he admits. But the toll it was taking on him mentally and beyond was far from worth the sacrifice. “Oh, definitely not!” he splutters at the thought. “So learning how to manage it is the newest adventure I’m on and, for me, it just requires a lot of strict routine and surfing and exercising and meditating. I’m learning how to take breaks and put a timer on. Every two hours I’ll stop working for a bit and then go back in. I’ve just become a crazy routine guy.”

he idea of Carper’s new healthy regime is a far cry from the image of FIDLAR that first skateboarded up a decade ago in a cloud of weed smoke. The posterboys of reckless punk hedonism, their self-titled debut was full of young and purposefully dumb odes to taking drugs and swilling tinnies, literally called things like ‘Cocaine’ and ‘Cheap Beer’. Last year, the band – completed by drummer Max Kuehn and bassist Brandon Schwartzel – celebrated the record’s tenth anniversary, a milestone that Carper explains made him feel not nostalgic but just “fucking old”.

“That was just a crazy time of life, just chaos. I was so broke, and so hungry – physically – all the time,” he recalls. “But when I look back, those were some of the funnest times I’ve ever had in my entire life. When you get bigger and start growing, the business becomes real and you follow it and grow it and do your best. But in the beginning, it was just a complete drive that I had to make this thing work.” He pauses. “I guess it worked!”

However, beneath the group’s wild exterior has always laid this sense of ambition; a perhaps more professional side to FIDLAR than the average onlooker may have expected. On tour, Carper says that they’ve long been a band who’ve focused on

staying match fit. “Neil Young has that line: ‘The road keeps you clean’. When I’m on tour, that’s the most routine [we have], and playing shows is the pay off at the end of the day,” he says. “I don’t drink on tour. I try to keep crazy healthy on tour. The hotels we go to have gyms and every day I’m in the gym. I try to go to bed pretty early. It’s always been the case.”

There have been well-documented struggles with substances along the way, and Carper isn’t totally sober – “Not really,” he shrugs. “I’m sober but… you got any blow? That’s my joke.” Yet really, what’s always made FIDLAR who they are – a raucous celebration of wild energy and unhinged communion – isn’t whether they’re clean-living or total carnage, it’s about the hour or so of complete freedom that they present when they’re on stage. “I write music to play shows, and I really do always have the thought in my head of ‘Is this gonna go off live?’” he grins. “I like ballads and we have a slow song on this new record, but ballads are just so fucking boring to play…”

urviving The Dream’, then, is a missive not from the other side but from a band still in the thick of it all. Full of the push-and-pull of life, its songs are troubled howls from the depths. Seven out of 13 tracks have a lyric about either getting or being “fucked up”; the other six aren’t any less bleak. Though Carper might be trying to manage his life and his mind in healthier ways, his songs are still direct and unadorned – a particularly primal form of therapy. “FIDLAR fans are FIDIOTS, that’s what we call them. They’re a very specific breed of people, and I think with the lyrics they can relate to the

struggle of addiction, of being a crazy person,” he says.

For their new record, not only did writing become therapy but therapy also became writing. For the past two years, Carper has been trying all sorts of techniques, from the EMDR light therapy that inspired ‘Low’’s central message (“You gotta let it go / So you can start to grow”) to more traditional talking therapies. One pivotal thing has been journaling. Every morning, he’ll purge his thoughts in a stream of consciousness onto the page; returning to them, some of the sentiments became lyrics on the record. “I never go into it with the intention that there’s gonna be a song in there,” he says, “but my brain is chaos all the time.”

When the band first broke through, the idea that FIDLAR might still be going a decade later seemed an unlikely one. “I had no idea that I was gonna be able to make money off of making music,” says the frontman before chuckling: “But now I’m never gonna stop. I’m gonna be a fucking 60-year-old screaming, ‘I drink cheap beer / So what / Fuck you’.” And in many ways, that dichotomy is exactly the point. Carper is, in his own words, “a different person – I’m better”, but he still gets his biggest kicks from letting his demons all out on the stage. “That adrenaline for an hour and half – it’s crazy. I’m just really stoked to be able to be in a position to keep doing it,” he says. “Playing shows is the gnarliest drug in the world.” Maybe FIDLAR never needed anything stronger, after all.

‘Surviving The Dream’ is out 20th September. DIY

What Lies

Having broken through with last year’s darkly powerful single ‘labour’, Paris Paloma is following it up with her debut ‘Cacophony’ – a rich, complex portrait of pain, struggle and strength that proves her status as one of new music’s most vital voices.

Words: Sarah Jamieson

or anyone familiar with the warm, folk-flecked output of Paris Paloma so far, it might come as a surprise to learn that the moniker she’s given her debut usually comes defined as a ‘mixture of loud, unpleasant sounds’. But, dig a little deeper into her first album ‘Cacophony’ and – Oxford Dictionary be damned – you’ll understand why the phrase would become the perfect, evocative title.

Digging, as it so happens, is an integral part of the 24-year-old singer’s first full-length. Written over the course of the past two years, ‘Cacophony’ may be Paris curating her opening body of work – “a central gathering point for all of my music so far” – but it also sees her embarking upon an intensely personal journey of her own. “There’s something very archaeological or anthropological about this album specifically,” she muses over coffee in a central London hotel bar, with just a month to go until the album’s release. “There’s lots of themes to do with burial and unearthing, digging back up and discovering remnants. That archaeological element is a lot to do with [the idea that] you bury things emotionally and you dig them up – it’s a cycle constantly.

“I’ve been in therapy for a long time, and you constantly revisit and excavate things all the time, or you bury them when you don’t want to deal with them,” she continues. “Then you dig them back up when you’re virtually a different person in your emotional journey, and it looks completely different when you do unearth it that time. I think that’s something I was feeling as I was curating the album. There’s a very animalistic, ancient tone to some of the songs that talk about the inevitability of that journey and [how] it’s not a bad thing. It’s all to do with healing.”

With its title inspired by Stephen Fry’s 2017 book of ancient Greek retellings, Mythos, and bearing reference to Joseph Campbell’s A Hero’s Journey,

I’ve always felt a need to place importance on things that everyone goes through but that are just invisible.

Lies Beneath

The love you receive from people – especially the women in your life – it never dies.

‘Cacophony’ tells the story of Paris’ own path through trauma and growth, all while leaning on similarly mythological or historical metaphors. “I’ve always felt a need to place importance on things that everyone goes through but that are just invisible,” she notes. “Whether it’s historical, mythological or art historical, drawing from those things that exhibit the same themes – those human failings or imperfections of stories that happened time and time again – gives this platform, this validation to what is otherwise a very silent struggle in the human experience.

“I think that’s why, from when I started releasing music, I persistently would use metaphor and draw from Greek mythology, or literature, or art history, in order to tell the stories about ‘my little life’,” she continues. “It’s not little, it’s my entire universe – it’s these massive feelings – and people are just going through it every day and sweeping their feelings under the rug and thinking that it’s not important, whereas in myth and legends, people have felt this and it’s also very painful a lot of the time. I think that’s why I’m so drawn to those kinds of influences.”

Curated to roughly tread a similar path as Campbell’s hero, ‘Cacophony’ deftly moves through the trials and darker moments that have littered Paris’ formative years. Opening with the haunting ‘my mind (now)’, its repeated chants of “What did I do wrong / Will you tell me what I did wrong?” feel stark and mesmeric ahead of the explosive sonics that soon kick in. The opening scene is set with “an absolute metamorphosis,” Paris says. “An electrical storm. The idea that every aspect of your brain chemistry is changing by something

you’ve gone through; it’s not your nature but something’s happened in your environment that just absolutely rewires you. ‘my mind (now)’ is just incredibly painful, in a metamorphic sense, because you have to [change]. You sink or swim.”

From then on, she traverses intense feelings of isolation and loneliness (‘pleaser’), disconnect (‘his land’) and the ever-present threat of misogyny and the patriarchy, which looms large over the record as a whole. Yet, within the darkness, there are moments of light. Take ‘knitting song’, a tender love letter to the women in her life, which acts as a powerful reminder that – much like the law of conservation of energy, which claims energy can neither be created nor destroyed – love is similarly cyclical. “The love you receive from people – especially the women in your life – it never dies and you become it and it is reincarnated,” she notes. “‘knitting song’ is about that, and how I have so many wonderful female friendships who taught me what love is.”

It would be easy to assume that ‘Cacophony’’s pinnacle would arrive around ‘labour’; first released in March 2023, after a variety of viral successes it’s now been streamed over 150 million times on Spotify. But it’s her delicate, self-described “apocalypse trio” of tracks – ‘escape pod’, ‘last woman on earth’ and ‘bones on the beach’ – that cut the deepest. “Those three songs are all different reflections on the darkest point in my life,” Paris explains. “‘escape pod’ is isolation, it’s loneliness and this hopelessness; this grief that I was just carrying around all the time. ‘last woman…’ is the presence of patriarchy and the fact it’s never separate from your life when you’re a woman, that it shapes everything, while ‘bones on the beach’ is just the absolute exhaustion after all of that.

“‘last woman on earth’ is probably the song I feel most vulnerable about releasing on this album,” she

notes pointedly of the track, which deals in the idea that, even after a woman has passed away, she can still be exploited and abused. Having originally shared a clip on social media during its earliest stages last year, the response from many of her female listeners was powerful. Since DIY’s interview, meanwhile, the singer has taken to social media to highlight the current epidemic of violence against women in the context of recent high profile news stories across the world, further contextualising the terrifying issue at the song’s heart.

“That song is an entire metaphor for the way that people talk about women, view them and treat them,” she explains today. “It’s so harrowing that that doesn’t even end in their death at all, whether it’s people like Marilyn Monroe or Amy Winehouse; they will continue to be exploited. It’s something that a lot of women and queer people are becoming incredibly vocal about, and the lack of tolerance that there should be for that. On a personal level, it’s the part of the album that deals with the role that patriarchal violence has played in stunting my personal growth. There’s just so much pain in that song that shouldn’t have to be there.”

While the “apocalypse trio” unequivocally represents Paris’ most challenging moments, the tracks also helped to provide something of a turning point for the singer. They say the night is always darkest before the dawn, and it was only through romanticising the exhaustion – “the idea of just resting forever” – at the centre of ‘bones on the beach’ that she realised she was beginning to miss out on the moments that really mattered: “You can fall back in love with life,” she nods, “and you can find rest, and beauty, and sentience within life.”

Much like the final act of The Hero’s Journey, ‘Cacophony’’s closing track ‘the warmth’ sees Paris finally accepting her struggles and striving to move past them. “‘the warmth’ was specifically so profound to me because I’ve historically always been a really black and white person, where if I wasn’t completely better, I wasn’t better,” she notes. “While I struggle with OCD, and struggle with anxiety – and I did have depression for a long time – I would hold on to all the still-present aspects of those things and take it as symptoms meaning ‘I am not better yet’; that ‘better’ is some distant time in the future, if ever. ‘the warmth’ was when I was realising for the first time that they’re still there, but the warmth is returning to me.” It’s not so much the end of a journey as the realisation that life keeps playing on regardless of whether you try to stifle it. “The cold is still there, but it doesn’t present the threat that it once did.”

A brave, deeply personal examination of the pain and strife women and non-binary people are still faced with everyday, ‘Cacophony’ reflects Paris’ own journey to some form of self-acceptance: a feeling she wants to imbue listeners with, too. “I think, empathy for themselves,” she nods of her hopes for the album’s lingering message, “and to feel held by it. To feel whatever it is that they need to; to have whatever pain they feel be validated and heard. The artists I love the most are the ones who have articulated my pain in a way that I couldn’t or haven’t done before – not even pain but my needs, my love, the mass of feelings I feel – and to share in it with people that they feel close to, to help them better understand each other.”

‘Cacophony’ is out now via Nettwerk. DIY

Under The Great Oak

As well as getting ready to release her debut, Paris has had a busy summer ticking off her bucket list. Not only did the singer make her first appearance at Glastonbury, she also opened up for none other than Stevie Nicks at this year’s BST Hyde Park show…

“It was just nuts. Glastonbury felt a little more normal because I’d just come off tour and the stage wasn’t too different a size to what I did on tour, and it’s not supporting someone who’s an actual legend. But at BST, that was one of the best days of my life, ever. Playing that stage with my friends – my wonderful band – and seeing the crowd… I had my friends there, which I don’t always get to do at festivals, and it was absolutely magical. The stage was so perfect for it, on the Great Oak Stage.

I was absolutely petrified beforehand, and I was doing a lot of work to do it, and be confident and feel powerful enough to do it. In the end you always are, but no matter the stage size, you always have a bit of imposter syndrome – a bit… a lot! I had never felt as on top of the world as when I finished that set. It was amazing. And Stevie was amazing – I did cry! When she played ‘Landslide’ with lots of photos of her and Christine [McVie], me and my friend were just holding hands and sobbing.”

Photos: Jennifer McCord, Phoebe Fox

JUNGLE THU 12 SEP THE O2

CAT CLYDE THU 12 SEP THE LEXINGTON

MAINA DOE THU 12 SEP THE WAITING ROOM

ISOBEL WALLER-BRIDGE SAT 14 SEP ICA

LAURA MISCH THU 19 SEP UNION CHAPEL

EBBB THU 19 SEP

CORSICA STUDIOS

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER MARTIAL ARTS

CHRISTIAN MUSIC MOST THINGS THU 19 SEP

DREAM BAGS JAGUAR SHOES

LÅPSLEY SAT 21 SEP MOTH CLUB

DOG RACE WED 25 SEP

CORSICA STUDIOS

COSMORAT THU 26 SEP ST PANCRAS OLD CHURCH

ROSIE LOWE THU 26 SEP ICA

SAM EVIAN FRI 27 SEP LAFAYETTE

MARY IN THE JUNKYARD THU 3 OCT ICA

NICO PLAY SAT 5 OCT THE SLAUGHTERED LAMB

MOIN

THU 17 OCT / FRI 18 OCT ICA

LANKUM SAT 26 OCT EVENTIM APOLLO

THE ORCHESTRA (FOR NOW) MON 4 NOV & MON 11 NOV ST PANCRAS OLD CHURCH

JUDELINE TUE 5 NOV THE LOWER THIRD

GLASS ANIMALS THU 7 NOV THE O2

CRYSTAL MURRAY THU 7 NOV BERMONDSEY SOCIAL CLUB

OKAY KAYA FRI 8 NOV VILLAGE UNDERGROUND

KABEAUSHÉ FRI 8 NOV

CORSICA STUDIOS

IDER TUE 12 NOV HOXTON HALL

KELLY LEE OWENS THU 14 NOV TROXY

YAYA BEY MON 18 NOV LAFAYETTE

MILAN RING TUE 19 NOV FOLKLORE

W. H. LUNG THU 21 NOV ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL

KAI BOSCH FRI 22 NOV COURTYARD THEATRE

CLARA LA SAN WED 27 NOV & THU 28 NOV CORSICA STUDIOS

GOAT GIRL THU 28 NOV HEAVEN

PALACE SAT 30 NOV EVENTIM APOLLO

ML BUCH SAT 30 NOV UNION CHAPEL

CUMGIRL8 THU 5 DEC THE UNDERWORLD

LANDLESS SAT 8 FEB BUSH HALL

MAKE AN ALBUM BECAUSE WE WERE

FULL CIRCLE

HINDS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A FLAGSHIP BAND FOR HAPPY-GO-LUCKY BEST FRIENDSHIP, YET THE LAST FEW YEARS HAVE BEEN ANYTHING BUT SMOOTH SAILING. FOURTH LP ‘VIVA HINDS’ MAY NOT BE THEIR FIRST RODEO, BUT IT’S THE START OF A NEW CHAPTER FOR THE SINGULAR SPANISH PAIR.

WORDS: DAISY CARTER

PHOTO: HOLLY WHITAKER

It’s 2014, and Madrid-based best friends Ana Perrote and Carlotta Cosials are in crisis. Their fledgling band, Deers – a scrappy but freshsounding, infectiously fun garage-rock project – has just started to gain attention from the UK music press, but a Canadian outfit, The Dears, has threatened them with legal action over their name. Faced with little choice but to pick a new moniker, the pair settle on Hinds – or “female deers”.

Although hindsight (no pun intended) can confirm that the rebrand didn’t hinder their prospects, at the time it felt like a huge obstacle to overcome. “Because we were forced to change, we didn’t feel like Hinds,” Carlotta – or CC, as she’s affectionately referred to by Ana – sighs. “So the fans started screaming ‘Viva Hinds!’ at shows – like, ‘Hey, we don’t care what the hell you’re called!’ The phrase has remained a [source of] strength for us, a chant. And during these last couple of years, which haven’t been easy for us, it’s become like a mantra: Viva Hinds. Don’t lose it. Don’t lose the enthusiasm. Because if you lose faith in the music, you’re out of the game completely.”

Sitting today in what Ana has pronounced “the best pub garden in London” (The Faltering Fullback in Finsbury Park, for anyone keen to compare notes), the pair come across like a solid unit. However, titling their fourth album ‘VIVA HINDS’ is as much a defiant assertion of endurance as it is a fond homage to their roots: both a celebration of how far they’ve come, and the mission statement of a record that, at one point, they weren’t even sure would be made.

The four-year gap since 2020’s ‘The Prettiest Curse’ has been the longest Hinds have gone without releasing new music since they started doing so a decade ago; debut LP ‘Leave Me Alone’ arrived in 2016, and was soon followed by sophomore effort ‘I Don’t Run’ in 2018. With the pandemic putting paid to their third album tour, it also kickstarted a series of unfortunate events that saw Ana and Carlotta part ways with their management, their label and, most significantly, their longtime bassist Ade Martin and drummer Amber Grimbergen (they play with live bandmates Paula Ruiz and María Lázaro now, but Hinds is essentially a duo).

“It’s been a domino effect of slaps in our face, basically,” says Ana, smiling grimly. “Everything was started by the pandemic, for sure; that hit us really, really hard. We spent all our savings recording our third album, then we released it during lockdown, which obviously didn’t go very well. We were all pretty sad and very disconnected for two years.” She pauses, considering her words. “CC and I reconnected and got over that sadness. We shook each other and went, ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourselves and just start doing something’, and [Ade and Amber] just didn’t really jump

Bruised, confused, but clinging to the liferaft of their foundational friendship, the pair took some time to regroup. “For a very long time we really didn’t want to make an album because we were angry at the world,” says Carlotta. “Then we were waiting: for the pandemic to finish; for a record deal; for a manager; for things to come back to normality. But what is normality any

Eventually, they realised that there would never be a ‘right’ time to resurrect Hinds. As with the band’s unceremonious re-christening, they instead

needed to set about stoking a new fire from the ashes of the old. “We just said, ‘We don’t care if we have to record [‘VIVA HINDS’] in fucking GarageBand, we’re going to do it’,” Ana grins. “As soon as we changed to that mentality, things started happening and life started getting a tiny bit easier.”

Though Ana and Carlotta founded Hinds, and have always been the primary songwriters, Ade and Amber were very much part of the fabric of the band – the completion of a quartet who embodied a sense of female community, unselfconscious enthusiasm, and an inspiringly doing-their-own-thing attitude. Hinds was the gang you wanted to be part of; it felt empowering without a ‘girl power’ schtick. For fans, then, it was a real shock to hear of their departure. “It was a huge surprise,” Ana affirms of their own reactions from the inside. “We didn’t want them to leave; we didn’t kick them out or anything. It had been a very hard few years, with no money and stuff. And obviously…” she hesitates. “The project was never theirs, you know? It kind of felt like it was a bit of a test: ‘How much do you want to be in Hinds? No but really – is it for fame? For the money? For success?’”

There’s always been a direct, diaristic quality to Hinds’ lyricism – a combination of their no-punches-pulled honesty and the fact that, more often than not, they’re singing in their second language. It’s perhaps inevitable, then, that echoes of this turbulent time can be heard on ‘VIVA HINDS’, and yet even so, recent single (and standout album track) ‘Superstar’ is starkly forthright. Introduced via gentle guitars and a tender, shared vocal line, it quickly builds into a howl of frustration at its eponymous “local superstar”, concluding with a biting outro: “You made your choice / You lawyered up / You threatened us / You changed the past / You didn’t even say goodbye”.

“We don’t really want to go into detail with that,” says Ana of these lyrics. “It’s kind of like a magician revealing the truth behind a trick, you know?” She continues: “We’ve had to grow up a lot, in a bad way. We’ve had to deal with things that we felt like we were too young to be dealing with – a lot of money situations, betrayal, sadness. It’s definitely a bit of a darker album, and we show a side that maybe we haven’t [before].”

There’s no doubt that ‘VIVA HINDS’ is the band’s most multifaceted record to date. On ‘En Forma’ – a track about the often overwhelming demands of being a woman – they sing entirely in Spanish for the first time; given their position as trailblazers for non-native English speakers who’ve successfully entered the orbit of British alt-rock, it’s somewhat of a milestone. The Grian Chatten-featuring ‘Stranger’, meanwhile, is about the dissociation Ana felt during “one of the darkest summers of [her] life”. Of their collaboration, she says simply: “Grian’s been a friend for a while. He knows more about the depths of everything that’s happened to us, so it felt like the [right] moment to have a song together.”

Alongside this maturity, however, is also a marked return to their roots. Lead single ‘Coffee’ is a sassy testament to pleasurable vices that could easily find a home on ‘Leave Me Alone’’s tracklist, while ‘Mala Vista’ could be a reverb-drenched reincarnation of LP2 cut ‘The Club’ and ‘Boom Boom Back’ (featuring Beck) channels their early-days playfulness with irresistible swagger.

Decamping to secluded houses in rural France to record, they worked free from the logistical constraints which birthed the live sounds of ‘I Don’t Run’ (a record that Ana says “clearly sounds like a band that has been touring nonstop for a fucking year and a half”), or the experimental inclinations which informed the comparatively high production of ‘The Prettiest Curse’ (“So much polish!” laughs Carlotta).

The result is a record that possesses the same rough edges and rawness that made audiences – particularly English crowds – fall in love with them in the first place. “Si, I think we’re somehow coming back to the very beginning,” Carlotta nods, as she and Ana exchange a knowing, affirming glance. “In here,” she taps her chest, “you guys always trusted in us.”

A return to their roots in much more than just name, ‘VIVA HINDS’ is a reintroduction to a pair who’ve always operated on their own terms. The stakes may have changed, but one thing is for sure – Hinds are betting on themselves again.

‘VIVA HINDS’ is out on 6th September via Lucky Number. DIY

24 HOUR

AS FAT DOG PREPARE TO REVEAL DEBUT ALBUM ‘WOOF.’, WE JOIN THE ABSURDIST QUINTET FOR A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE UK’S MOST CHAOTIC BREAKTHROUGH BAND.

WORDS: MATT GANFIELD

PHOTOS: SAM MCMAHON

PARTY PEOPLE

heck one two, check one two,” Fat Dog frontman Joe Love repeats into a microphone, amid the occasional screech of an amplifier through the PA system. His eyes are fixed on a sound technician on the other side of the tent, as he soundchecks above the rabble of a crowd who have long filled the space to capacity and are now spilling out into the surrounding area. It makes for a humble opening to a performance which is – in a fashion now familiar to Fat Dog fans – nothing short of pandemonium. Ferocious punk colludes with techno samples and touches of klezmer to transform the Latitude festival marquee into a scene which sits somewhere between a squat rave and a Jewish wedding (the latter comparison heavily assisted by revellers that stack onto each other’s shoulders before being swept up into a cascading circular moshpit).

Joe has opted for a cowboy hat and camo military vest look, often overseeing proceedings from within the centre of the circle pit like an overzealous preacher. His bandmates exchange bare bones choreography and heavy instrumentation from beneath a smoke machine that casts a red mist over the audience, creating a scene that feels as apocalyptic as it does joyous.

Fast forward 30 minutes and the band are part of a very different tableau. Keyboardist Chris Hughes is sat on the grass alongside Joe and saxophonist Morgan Wallace; a yoga session is taking place beneath an awning mere metres away, and Morgan is eating crumble and custard from a nearby food van. It’s a tranquil scene that couldn’t be more juxtaposed from the chaos of their performance, but Fat Dog are used to pinballing between modes these days. A pair of festival goers have already stopped by to inform the band members that their show has been their favourite of the weekend so far. “It’s only Friday afternoon,” Chris responds in a tone that’s more confused than it is dismissive. “How many sets have you even seen!?” “That’s nice of you to say, thanks,” Joe interrupts, sparing them the need to answer.

It’s an interaction that the group have experienced evermore frequently in recent months while riding the wave of an unforgiving tour schedule as anticipation builds for their debut album ‘WOOF.’. “We’ve had it ready for like, six months,” says Chris of the record. “We’ve released most of it and we’re ready to move on to new stuff now… We’ve essentially spoiled the movie in the trailer.” Morgan laughs: “It’s actually true!”

The release marks the most recent instalment in a hat-trick of autumnal milestones for the group. 2022 saw Fat Dog signing to indie stalwart label Domino in a backstage room at Camden’s Roundhouse following a support slot with Sports Team. In the closing leg of 2023, meanwhile, the band were officially delivered to

the masses via their rollercoaster of a debut single, ‘King of the Slugs’ after many months of gathering buzz throughout London’s spit and sawdust venues. “We were touring for ages before we’d released anything,” Joe says of their tactics. “We didn’t want to release tracks that nobody was going to listen to. Maybe we should shelve the album and give it another year, just blue balls people to the max and keep them waiting…”

He’s joking, of course. And in fact, below their casual demeanour, the group evidently place real value in the legitimacy attached to sharing a full body of work with the world. “It’s a target for every band isn’t it, releasing a debut album,” Chris says. “We used to be asked a lot whether or not we were ever going to release an album, but we’re a band –it’s what bands do.” “It was as if people expected us to avoid doing it,” Morgan continues, “as though that would be an edgy thing to do.” “We care about what our debut says about us too,” says Joe. “It all has to sound good and stand up as an album. And if listeners don’t have the attention span to listen to 30 minutes of music then we’re all fucked, aren’t we.”

Ironically, ‘We’re all fucked, aren’t we’ isn’t a bad subtitle with which to present ‘WOOF.’. A sense of dystopian chaos begins with the album’s cover art and looms heavy over the LP’s nine tracks, from the prophetic heft of the opening monologue (narrated by Dead Man’s Shoes actor Neil Bell), to the frenetic violence of ‘Running’. Salvaged from the darkness by Fat Dog’s eye for a humorous lyric and ear for killer danceability, the force of personality presented throughout ‘WOOF.’ makes for an inaugural release which would leave even the most articulate music fan wanting in search of suitable reference points.

“I always read everything,” Chris says immediately when asked whether he keeps an eye on the group’s

“WE REQUESTED AN ELVIS IMPERSONATOR FOR OUR GREEN ROOM PREVIOUSLY, AND WE INSISTED THAT HE JUST SIT IN THE CORNER.” – CHRIS HUGHES

critical

reception. “All of the YouTube comments,” Morgan nods in agreement. “And I get so bitter about them,” continues Chris. “I read a negative live gig review from last year and I found out where the guy bloody lived! He’s called...”

“Let’s not name drop him in the interview,” Joe interjects, “but we would like to make it clear that we know where his kids go to school.” He addresses this last line towards the recording device. “He didn’t even slag off the show, he was just a bit of an arsehole…” “Maybe we’re the arseholes for reading it and thinking that he’s an arsehole?” Chris reasons. “We’ve had a lot of haters, now that I think about it, actually.” Joe

tries to steer things back on course: “A lot of lovers too.”

“Yeahhh, but a LOT of haters,” Chris notes. “Should we really be talking about this?” Joe stops to question, facing his bandmates. “It’s probably quite a bad trait. I don’t see any other interviews where the bands talk about Googling themselves.”

In serendipitous timing, two more people gingerly make their way over to the group to declare their Fat Dog fandom. “We’ve paid upfront for another eight people to come over while this interview is taking place,” Chris says, pretending to check his watch after the fans leave. “The others are actually pretty late, the interview will be over soon.”

It’s difficult at times to distinguish humour from sincerity within the group – particularly when paired with their often absurdist songwriting. “I tried to put more of myself into the lyrics,” Joe says, when asked how much vulnerability is portrayed beneath ‘WOOF.’’s abstract narratives, “but Domino said we’d get cancelled if I didn’t change them.” Chris chimes in: “We were pre-cancelled to spare us the mass cancellation down the line. Let’s just say the album was initially an Alex Jones podcast.”

But seriously? “Nah, politics and shit like that doesn’t really have any place in what we do,” Joe concedes.

“If you’re a political band then you’ve got to know everything about the subject you’re talking about.” Chris picks up the baton once more: “We’re kinda idiots when it comes to political stuff and I’m not sure I’d want politics to be part of the brand for this band; it’s not for us.”

Whether it’s this insistence on keeping things light or the undeniable chemistry between the outfit’s members, Fat Dog have taken to the promotional module of the rockstar syllabus like a duck to water. “Chris and I get wined and dined while we do press, I don’t understand why so many artists complain about doing it,” Joe reasons. “We were hoping that Chris would be the guy to promote us on TikTok, to get a bit of extra hype going.” “I’m not the guy for that!” Chris responds, delivered with the exasperation of an ongoing point of contention. “We do have TikTok and all that stuff, but it’s just maintained by a man who lives in a broom cupboard at Domino. I don’t particularly want to be a TikTok band.”

Festival regulars across Europe and America will be aware that Fat Dog are no strangers to performing two or more sets in the space of one day, a developing trait that they insist is not by their own design. “We didn’t know we were playing two gigs until yesterday,” Morgan claims as she lifts herself from the lawn and greets the band’s new bassist Jacqui Wheeler and Johnny Hutchinson, better known as their masked drummer.

Today’s itinerary, specifically, leaves the freshlyreunited gang with around nine hours to fill between performances. There’s a photoshoot in the woods, a potter around the festival site and a quick lap of the pond courtesy of a transit boat – a romantic goldenhour foray across the water that might feel out of character were it not for the presence of a dog mask slumped over Johnny’s face, latex tongue a-wagging in the early evening breeze. Then it’s back to the confines of the tour van to pass the aux lead around.

“We used to have pre-shows rituals, mainly playing [Endor’s] ‘Pump It Up’ loudly,” Chris recalls. “That was when we used to get really nervous before gigs.” It’s almost 1am and he, Joe and Morgan are gathered in a portakabin green room. A pink piece of paper is stuck over the sole clinical light source to present a studentchic brand of warm lighting. The capers of earlier in the day feel like a distant memory and energy in the room is languishing as the trio slouch in fold-up picnic chairs around a table.

The band are riding the crest of a year which has seen them play festivals and headline shows across Europe, Australia and America, with SXSW in Texas setting the tone for their excessive scheduling. “We did 12 shows in 4 days,” Chris clarifies alongside a well-timed yawn. “Some of our shows were like, 10:30am after we’d played a set at 2:30am that morning. People turned up hungover as shit in the blazing heat, trying to eat breakfast while watching us.”

America might not be an obvious fit for Fat Dog’s abrasive electro-punk-klezmer, but apparently there’s one demographic who’ve immediately taken them to their hearts. “Aunts,” Morgan states with immediacy. “Yeah, mostly aunts,” Joe adds. “Aunts and a Larry David lookalike who came to about four of our sets over SXSW.” “One of the venues had a window behind the stage,” Morgan continues. “He was stood behind us on the street for the whole show, looking in.” “It was tripping me out, frankly,” Chris concludes.

Much like their relationship with reviews, it’s the bad shows that leave a lasting impression on the group. “I keep a clear

“POLITICS AND SHIT LIKE THAT DOESN’T REALLY HAVE ANY PLACE IN WHAT WE DO.” – JOE LOVE

memory of every single shit gig that we’ve done,” Joe claims, before rolling up his sleeve to show the assemblage of backstage festival wristbands that adorn his arm, pointing at one after another: “Shit. Shit. That gig was alright actually. Shit. Shit… To be fair,” he pauses, reasoning, “I’d say recently our split is 80/20. 80% good gigs. One of the worst that we’ve ever played was our first ever headline, at Corsica Studios. James Ford [superstar producer with whom the band went on to create ‘WOOF.’] was watching that night.” Chris shudders at the memory. “You know it’s going badly when Nathan from Fat White Family is shaking you by the shoulders and telling you that you’re an embarrassment.”

A member of the team knocks on the door and presents a fistful of drink tokens. “We used to just get drinks but now we sometimes get cheese and salami,” says Morgan. “We always seem to have Yakult too,” Chris adds. “We requested an Elvis impersonator for our green room previously, but he wasn’t allowed to speak. We insisted that he just sit in the corner.” “That was in Belgium,” Morgan laughs, “they’ll give you anything you ask for if it’s on the rider. The guy just sat there with his eyes pointing straight ahead.” “You’ve got to treat yourself sometimes,” Joe shrugs as though the request was as humdrum as a packet of digestives. “He looked bare like Elvis too.”

The Portakabin is vacated and the wider band are united in killing time ahead of their set. “We were mostly joking earlier, but I’m dreading the album reviews,” Joe muses once more on ‘WOOF.’’s imminent arrival. “I know people will keep coming to the live shows, but I’ve spent a lot of time on these songs and I want the album to be regarded as good,” he pauses. “Because I know that the album is good.”

The group take to the stage once more, with another capacity crowd bustling with excitement and reaching fever-pitch. Chris is wielding a baseball bat as the set’s cacophonous opening monologue cascades through the speakers to the sound of deafening cheers. “We’re Fat Dog!” he bellows into the microphone. “Love us. As we will love you.”

‘WOOF.’ is out now via Domino. DIY

THE DARE

What’s Wrong

With New York?

Polydor

Teaming up with Charli xcx for ‘BRAT’ bonus track ‘Guess’ (and its subsequent Billie Eilish remix) was an inspired move on the part of The Dare. Where certain criticisms of last year’s introductory EP ‘The Sex’ accused the US artist of aiming for transgression and missing the mark, electroclash revival record ‘What’s Wrong With New York?’ has all the too-cool-for-school irreverence and ecstasy of Charli’s clubby project. It’s another hedonistic pop bible for disillusioned ne’er-dowells with a penchant for bumps and lines – albeit one less for coquettish IT-girls than metrosexual lotharios. Coming at the end of BRAT summer, The Dare’s debut intercepts the baton perfectly.

Across the record, Harrison Patrick Smith – a scuzzy pied piper in a nondescript suit that comes on like an indie sleaze Alex Turner – wanders Dimes Square: New York’s post-ironic, lockdown-refuting cultural hub where everything’s too serious and nothing matters, but like, it’s not, and it does actually. His brand of party hit is a fashionably deadpan rager; a careless, indifferent, post-Covid middle finger where hyper-sexuality and recreational drug use mask an underbelly death wish and indulgent nihilism.

Smith doesn’t shy away from acknowledging it, either. See the sordid, Metro Station / 3OH!3-inspired ‘Good Time’ where momentary intimacy acts as a distraction from repressed pain. “I might start a fight / ‘Cause we’re all on the brink of suicide,” he shouts, instructing: “Touch me / Then say you need me / Fuck me / Like we were meant to be.” Although suicidal ideation runs rampant beneath the record’s escapism – see the unrelenting, industrial dance of ‘I Destroyed Disco’ – there is, paradoxically, hope at the party. On the MGMT-style wiry electronic cut ‘All Night’, he comforts his anxious cohort: “If you’re feeling scared / Know they’re only tears / You will be alright / We can feel alive / All night.”

This confident debut is fully loaded with post-millennium cultural references – there’s even a nod to Coldplayesque post-Britpop on ‘Elevation’. At times, you could be forgiven for thinking Smith’s a Brit abroad: as much as the spirit of LCD Soundsystem looms large, his debut also conjures the rabble rousing of early Blur through a Peaches-meets – XCX lens. As a whole,

‘What’s Wrong With New York?’ is a beaming and brilliant moment for both The Dare and its inspired take on historical noughties pop. It may not be transgressive, but it’s ingeniously timed for an audience hungry for stylish and nostalgic catharsis. Otis Robinson LISTEN: ‘Good Time’

JACK WHITE

No Name

Third Man

When this record appeared both impromptu and incognito, a 12” smuggled in alongside unsuspecting customers’ purchases from his Third Man Records empire, word spread that this un-labelled record – now given the suitable moniker of ‘No Name’ and officially released under Jack White’s own – was ‘like a new White Stripes album’.

This, as one might have imagined once the initial fuss died down, turned out to be somewhat of an exaggeration; there’s as much of a thread from anything else the multi – hyphenate has done since to pin-point, such as the melodic nature of opener ‘Old Scratch Blues’ presenting a beefier Raconteurs, perhaps, or the hip hop beat underpinning his vocal delivery on ‘Archbishop Harold Holmes’ nodding to both 2022’s ‘Fear of the Dawn’ and 2018’s ‘Boarding House Reach’.

Instead, ‘No Name’ is closer to Jack presenting his younger self with everything he’s learned since – a reset of sorts. It’s minimalist – a return, perhaps, of his famed ‘rule of three’ which dictated the sonic limits of the White Stripes – but less dogmatic. This could just as easily be ascribed to two

decades’ worth of built confidence as to a relaxation of his self-imposed restrictions, of course, but the juxtaposition of sounds from his early back catalogue alongside more recent formulae strongly suggest the former.

Take ‘It’s Rough On Rats (If You’re Asking)’: its riff-as-hook and ever-so-slightly tardy drum beat is as euphoric as it is familiar, but there’s a funky element on show too. The garage rock of de facto single ‘That’s How I’m Feeling’ pulses, but with a swagger. There’s the fluidity of ‘What’s The Rumpus?’, the deranged laughter of ‘Morning At Midnight’, and the twangy refrain of ‘Underground’ that lands somewhere at the mid-way point between hoedown and wig-out yet somehow never escapes into itself. The contrast is more direct still with the sonic fuzz of rollicking garage punk number ‘Bombing Out’ against the comparative clarity of what surrounds it, and the use of “girl” as repeated punctuation in sprawling, epic closer ‘Terminal Archenemy Endling’ that echoes ‘White Blood Cells’ track ‘I Can’t Wait’. A re-embrace of earlier sounds, then, that’s simultaneously no rejection of anything that’s followed, it’s a move made only smarter by an understated release method that carefully side-steps any suggestion of the latter. There’s joy in its familiarity, but exhilaration in the lightness of its delivery – even when the music itself gets heavy. Emma Swann LISTEN: ‘Bless Yourself’

Presenting his younger self with everything he’s learned since.

SABRINA

CARPENTER

Short N’ Sweet Polydor

If all the best pop stars have a ‘thing’ – Lana’s all-American melancholy; Olivia’s pop-punk adjacency; Taylor’s ferocious, insatiable capitalism (come at us, internet) – then it’s with ‘Short n’ Sweet’, Sabrina Carpenter’s sixth album, that the pocket-sized Pennsylvanian finally cements hers. Where 2022’s ‘Emails I Can’t Send’ put Carpenter on the mainstream, grown-up pop map following a now-standard Disney entry route, its follow up is a personality bomb of a record that unites its disparate genres with an overflow of character at its centre: Sabrina’s ‘thing’, as it turns out, is being a thirsty sexpot with a proclivity for racy, hilarious one liners and silly, silly boys.

Though the topics of lust and love, heartache and heartbreak have been eulogised in every possible which way over the years, there’s a nudgenudge wink-wink sensibility to her that’s naughty and fun in a way that feels genuine. When she got her Radio 1 Big Weekend performance censored for a particularly racy ‘Nonsense’ outro, you can picture her management team in the sidelines, head in hands, crafting an apologetic email saying they really, truly did tell her not to. It’s why the equally ridiculous “that’s that me, espresso” refrain of ‘Short n’ Sweet’’s first big hit landed so well: like A-list pop’s version of Barbara Windsor in a Carry On film, Sabrina is totally in on the joke.

‘Short n’ Sweet’ skips around within the equally petite framework of its 36 minute run time. Going from the big breezy pop of ‘Taste’ to the acoustic, Rodrigo-esque balladry of ‘Dumb & Poetic’ to the country twang of ‘Slim Pickins’, the album is – probably smartly, given the modern playlist culture – a series of relatively unlinked singles rather than a record that necessarily begs to be listened to as a whole. Some styles suit her more than others – ‘Coincidence’’s stripped-back strums allow the zingers to really shine (“What a surprise, your phone just died / Your car drove itself from LA to her thighs”), while ‘Bed Chem’’s retro ‘90s breathiness is camped up to levels that befit its equally tongue-incheek lyrics (“Come right on me / I mean camaraderie”). Others, like the R&B adjacent ‘Good Graces’ lack the same sonic punch, but even on ‘Short n’ Sweet’’s less standout moments, Sabrina is still the spicy kick at its centre, ready to deliver a cheeky wink at every turn. Lisa Wright LISTEN: ‘Espresso’

Naughty and fun in a way that feels genuine.

Photos: Richard Kern, David James Swanson

Pond Recordings

For Mura Masa to describe this fourth, independently released full-length as “anti-narrative” perhaps says more about the boxes into which his magpie-like electronic pop has been put than ‘Curve 1’ as an album itself. Until now, any ‘narratives’ around the artist have largely ended up as ‘wunderkind super producer’ rather than thematic analyses of his records. But where past releases have been headlined by their guest appearances – ASAP Rocky, Charli xcx and Nao on his self-titled debut; Ellie Rowsell, Clairo and Georgia on 2020’s ‘RYC’; PinkPantheress, Lil Uzi Vert and Shygirl on 2022’s ‘Demon Time’ – the different voices heard throughout ‘Curve 1’ don’t take centre stage. Instead, skittish, hypnotic rhythms dominate, creating a fully coherent throughline via which deceptively deft hooks permeate. Take ‘Drugs’, for instance, where Daniela Latita’s repetitive vocal loses then gains meaning as the track continues; or ‘We Are Making Out’, where yeule’s voice acts as counterpoint to the almost industrial-meets-hyperpop scuzz of the song’s topline. Closer ‘FLY’, meanwhile, takes a sample from late-‘00s girlband Cherish’s 2008 single ‘Killa’ – a song which reached the giddy heights of Number 52 in the UK – and transforms it into a euphoric dancefloor filler. Best of the lot, meanwhile, is ‘SXC’, its French vocal hook of a level any former GCSE-level student should grasp (“Je me sens sexy / Et je ne sais pas pourquoi”), that’s both frivolous and fun – two words that sum up the record as a whole. Ed Lawson

LISTEN: ‘SXC’

Viva Hinds

Lucky Number

Anybody who’s ever been to a Hinds show would find it difficult to imagine that the Madrid outfit have ever been through tough times. Their delightfully exuberant brand of lo-fi garage rock is like a musical byword for joy, and to see Hinds play was always to watch dual vocalists Carlotta Cosials and Ana Perrote grinning at each other all night. Since 2020’s ‘The Prettiest Curse’, the group have lost half their lineup: bassist Ade Martin and drummer Amber Grimbergen having moved on. That makes Carlotta and Ana the core of the new lineup, and they have made bold strides on ‘Viva Hinds’, enlisting A-list guest stars and following the lead of their last record by venturing into fresh territory: ‘Mala Vista’ pairs Spanishlanguage vocals with a groove – driven guitar, while there’s a touch of dream-pop to spacey closer ‘Bon Voyage’. The ebullience of old is in plentiful supply, too – ‘En Forma’ simmers towards a huge roar of a chorus, while ‘On My Own’ is irresistible power pop. Then, there’s those big-hitting collaborations: Grian Chatten’s vocals on ‘Stranger’ might not be strictly necessary, but the track does play like Hinds and Fontaines meeting in the middle, a smart blend of post-punk and pop. ‘Boom Boom Back’, meanwhile, is the album’s standout, featuring Beck at his danciest. ‘Viva Hinds’ is an instructive title; where once their future appeared in doubt, they’ve now opened an exciting new chapter. Joe Goggins

LISTEN: ‘On My Own’

GIA FORD

Transparent Things

Chrysalis

“I’m a ghost in daylight on a crowded street,” broods Gia Ford on opener ‘Poolside’; the perfect summation of her debut album.

‘Transparent Things’ sees the singer embodying a series of outsiders across varied sonic landscapes. She dabbles in macabre imagery: ‘Falling in Love Again’ paints the picture of a widowed man, asking his new partner to dress in his dead wife’s clothes. Meanwhile ‘Paint Me Like a Woman’ owes its subject matter to Charlize Theron’s portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in the 2003 film Monster. ‘Loveshot’ channels the funk of Talking Heads, while ‘Alligator’ is underscored by tumbling keys and woozy guitars as she alternates between metaphors of monstrosity and innocence: “I’m a newborn baby / Need the world to save me.” Deeply cinematic with a sense of foreboding, Gia’s vision is specific: polished production, seemingly effortless vocals, and introspective lyricism. On ‘Transparent Things’, she finds the balance between spectacle and subtlety. Sarah Taylor

LISTEN: ‘Paint Me Like A Woman’

If you absolutely had to draw a comparison between furious Brixton post-rave-punks Fat Dog and another band, you might lean towards IDLES’ vocal delivery or fellow chaotic live show outfit VLURE, but you’d only be marginally close to the perfect atypical vortex that highly anticipated debut full-length ‘WOOF.’ delivers. Because where do you even start? There’s the high-speed marching band brass section of ‘Wither’, the subversive auto-tuned build on ‘Clowns’, the ominous spoken word opening of ‘Vigilante’, the absolute choral absurdity laid out across seven-plus minutes on their debut single ‘King Of The Slugs’, and of course the bonkers decision to even release a seven-plus minute epic about slugs as your introduction to the world. And all that’s before you reach what can only be called euphoric rage on ‘All The Same’. ‘WOOF.’ is the end to any conversation that originality in music is dead. It’s also proof that everything but the kitchen sink can come together when placed in the right hands (a washing machine does, in fact, make an appearance on ‘Kings Of The Slugs’). As barbaric as it is chaotic, there’s somehow and inexplicitly an order to things that the album’s dystopian nightmare fuel perfectly hinges on. It’s unhinged, disturbing, and certainly not a relaxing listen, brimming instead with the live energy that the band are increasingly renowned for. ‘WOOF.’ is brilliant, dark, and downright batshit crazy. Ben Tipple

LISTEN : ‘All The Same’

‘WOOF.’ is the end to any conversation that originality in music is dead.

SUKI WATERHOUSE

Memoir Of A Sparklemuffin Sub Pop

While ‘Memoir of a Sparklemuffin’ is an objectively terrible album title, it goes a fair way to describe the jist of this second album from – in the words of one of its tracks – ‘Model, Actress, Whatever’, Suki Waterhouse. Which is to say an often whimsical, occasionally scattershot yet wryly self-aware collection of songs which run a musical gamut from Lana Del Rey’s Old Hollywoodchannelling balladry to grunge pop – or more succinctly, much like a late noughties Tumblr given the same name. Take the knowing wink, perhaps of ‘Legendary’, placing itself in the direct lineage of Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Vampire’ and Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ in its opening chords. Or the beautifully cutting line “I was still in primary school when people thought your band was cool” in ‘Faded’, which features a similar cheeky sonic nod to early-‘00s also-ran indie. Suki’s vision feels more coherent within the record’s heavier tracks – the petulant, nonsensical (yet wholly fun) chorus of ‘Big Love’, for example, or ‘Supersad’, which lands somewhere between early Wolf Alice and a scuzzier Blondshell. With eighteen tracks there’s definitely a case for the album falling a little too long – but as anyone who has ever used a particular microblogging platform should know, it’s easy to get carried away.

Bella Martin

LISTEN: ‘Supersad’

Photo: Sam McMahon

TUE 10TH SEP SCALA

IAMDDB Rodrigo Amarante

THU 12TH SEP NO90 HACKNEY WICK SAT 14TH SEP SHACKLEWELL ARMS WED 18TH SEP TROXY

Zola Jesus

King Hannah

Wu-Lu

FRI 20TH SEP HEAVEN SAT 21ST SEP KINGS PLACE TUE 24TH SEP GRAND JUNCTION

The Golden Dregs

THU 26TH SEP FRI 27TH SEP THE GEORGE TAVERN

Great Lake Swimmers

Sam Akpro

THU 17TH OCT RICH MIX THU 3RD OCT CORSICA STUDIOS

Discovery Zone & Freak Heat Waves

Caroline Rose

19TH OCT (EVENING & MATINEE) MILTON COURT WITH LCO

John Francis Flynn

deary

Clarissa Connelly

Amanda Bergman

WED 25TH SEP BUSH HALL WED 25TH SEP LAFAYETTE

20TH SEP OMEARA

Daniel Norgren

Cléa Vincent

Julia Holter

Geordie Greep

Geordie Greep Bria Salmena NiNE8FEST Moses Sumney

22ND OCT THE FLEECE, BRISTOL

Military Genius Joep Beving & Marteen Vos mark william lewis

MJ Lenderman & The Wind

Cola Alexandra Streliski Porridge Radio Penguin Cafe

Mattiel Muireann Bradley Karate Dustin O’Halloran TR/ST SASAMI mui zyu

ALBUMS

FIDLAR

Surviving The Dream

Self-released

If asked to succinctly describe FIDLAR’s output to date, one might suggest ‘melodic punk fury with acutely self-aware lyricism’. The five-plus years since 2019’s ‘Almost Free’ may be a musical lifetime away, but the outfit’s decision to wait until mosh pits opened up to road-test new material proves a fruitful one. ‘Surviving The Dream’ brims with the band’s exhilarating live presence as much as it distils their best qualities into song; it’s as oversharing with its lyrics as it is escapist in its sound. The tension and release of ‘Nudge’; the stop-start of ‘Dog House’; the delicious petulance of ‘I Don’t Want To Do This’ (all the better for never finding out what ‘this’ is); the overstimulated ‘fuck off’ to everything and nothing that is ‘Get Off My Wave’ all bristle with liveness, owing in part, one would imagine, to the group’s decision to self-produce. It’s clean but not slick, precise but with edges left unshaved. Frontman Zac Carper’s lyrical selfawareness too reaches new heights: the almost comically clean pop-punk sound of ‘Sad Kids’ is met with the similarly tongue – almost-in-cheek lines “I keep chasing dragons / And jumping off the wagon / Fucking up is my passion”. In the same vein, ‘Making Shit Up’ ruminates on rumination, using a jarring ukulele sound at increasing speed to impeccably mirror the song’s message with musical claustrophobia. The record also features some of the best songs the band have written. Opener ‘Fix Me’ features a huge breakdown along with what could be a coda for the record – or even band – itself: “I’m the type of crazy that’s not the cute type”. ‘Orange County’ moves from Blink-182-like verses to a giant, Weezer-like chorus, while the pinnacle comes with ‘Change’ (also indebted in part to Rivers Cuomo and pals via, naturally, some certain predecessors from Boston), its chorus pure live punk euphoria and its guitar solo surprisingly – and satisfyingly –sprawling. ‘Surviving The Dream’ is the kind of record that incites every emotion, all at once, in the most rewarding way. Emma Swann

LISTEN: ‘Change’

BEABADOOBEE

This Is How Tomorrow Moves

Dirty Hit

Ahead of laying down third album ‘This Is How Tomorrow Moves’, producer Rick Rubin instructed Beabadoobee – real name Beatrice Laus – to boil each track down to the bones of its simplest acoustic form. Where the comparatively naive indie-rock of 2020 debut ‘Fake It Flowers’ may have struggled to shine under such exposing conditions, two albums on Laus has become a songwriter of real nuance. Toes are dipped into smoky jazz bar shuffles on ‘Real Man’ and languid bossa nova on ‘A Cruel Affair’, but beneath the sonic outfit-changing, these are confident tracks full of melodic subtleties and a knack for using minimal ingredients to their fullest. ‘Coming Home’ dreams of domesticity via a simplyplucked Parisian guitar waltz, while the piano-led ‘Girl Song’ could almost be a teary Disney ballad. Unashamedly leaning into the tumults of youth, its vulnerability is genuinely touching: “In a way I’m figuring it out at my own pace / Just a girl who overthinks about proportions or her waist”. Then, there are more traditional forays back into fuzzy alt-rock (‘California’), and The 1975-adjacent pop-rock (‘Ever Seen’). Having recently completed a stint on Taylor’s Eras Tour, the continued ascent of Beabadoobee seems both assured and deserved. Lisa Wright LISTEN: ‘Real Man’

NILÜFER YANYA

My Method Actor Ninja Tune

“What you looking for?” asks Nilüfer Yanya on the opening track of her third album, ‘My Method Actor’. It’s the first question of many in an album that is brimming with curiosity and exploration – an album on which, from the off, Nilüfer strives to make an excavation to the core of who she is. More expansive and undiluted than its predecessors, she seems to find room to explore both sonically and lyrically. On ‘Like I Say (I runaway)’, she dips her toe into more grungier pools, dark guitars and scattering beats building into something cathartic, while the title track embraces similar soundscapes, creating leeringly distorted moments right beside an off-kilter, jazz undercurrent. ‘Binding’ is lyrically quite heavy but sonically cooling and calm as it unfurls across five minutes. ‘Ready For Sun (touch)’ is arguably the album’s highlight, coming into being with distorted beats and giving way to an atmosphere that is haunting and ghostly, yet still comforting. Across ‘My Method Actor’, Nilüfer seems to search within these different sonic worlds and within herself for answers – whether she is questioning how others perceive her, how rapidly time moves or a myriad of other things. In the end, she seems to find and in turn offer some solace in acknowledging that there’s always going to be questions to be answered, but that’s the beauty of it. Neive McCarthy LISTEN: ‘Ready For Sun (touch)’

The meme era’s cartoon villain, JPEGMAFIA returns at his most abrasive and confrontational with the characteristic trail of destruction in his wake. “This is an official decision: I don’t give a fuck,” in his own words. Five albums deep into his all-gas no-brakes run, despite the relentless genre-blending and beat-switching, Peggy has yet to misstep. By adopting a darker tone, adding metal-influenced guitars and pushing further than ever into dissecting his trolling tendencies, Peggy morphs his erratic swagger into a fearsome march. Not only one of the most intriguing and thought-provoking rappers of his era, he effortlessly proves to be one the most inventive producers. Basing entire tracks on five-word vocal clips from Succession or dipping into Brazilian funk, ‘I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU’ proves impossible to pin down, writhing and thrashing into seemingly more impossible forms. Throw in some inch-perfect guest spots from Denzel Curry and Vince Staples, and some production credits for Flume and Kenny Beats, and it’s all too obvious – despite its scattergun aesthetics – that the album is working from an impressively solid and cohesive foundation. It’s a worthy platform for JPEGMAFIA’s verbal melee of relentless referencing, fourth-wall trashing and surprising introspection. More often than not it’s funny, perceptive and weirdly philosophical, perfectly exemplified in ‘Exmilitary’’s lines – “Every morning, I get down on my knees for a God that I can’t see / Every tweet, it come with a cost, every enemy, painted as soft / If you break up, delete it and crop, fuck my ex and fuck every cop.” Despite the winks, nods and middle fingers, you’re only seconds from the next shout-out hook, the next searing guitar break, the next total dynamic shift. For a guy who always sounds ready to go toe-to-toe with his loudest critic, JPEGMAFIA unerringly shows the skill, finesse and the sheer unique button-pushing mastery to gain nothing but fans. Matthew Davies Lombardi LISTEN: ‘Exmilitary’

JAMIE XX

In Waves Young

That it has been nearly a decade since solo debut ‘In Colour’ falsely suggests Jamie xx hasn’t kept himself busy. Most recently, of course, he helped out on both xx bandmates’ own work, Oliver Sim’s ‘Hideous Bastard’ released in 2022, and last year’s ‘Mid Air’ from Romy. And while, on Jamie’s own second full-length ‘In Waves’, it could be ‘Waited All Night’ that takes centre stage – featuring both bandmates, taking their vocals and chopping them up, cut-and-paste style, to create a strangely disconcerting mood that’s familiar in its sounds yet not in its arrangement – it’s actually Robyn’s turn that’s the cherry on the top of Jamie’s late-night cake. Where most of the record –ostensibly designed as chronicling a night out –meanders through skittish beats, soothing piano licks and the kind of scattershot sampling that can only in reality have been meticulously plotted, ‘Life’ provides a pure pop moment of the most joyous kind. Enlisting the Swedish icon to soundtrack a moment of dancefloor euphoria is in itself a masterstroke, but the track’s looped hook possesses the kind of earwormy immediacy that brings to mind Y2K staples ‘Lady (Hear Me Tonight)’ from French duo Modjo and Spiller’s Sophie Ellis-Bextor featuring ‘Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)’. Notable, too, is the appearance of The Avalanches on ‘All You Children’, a similar – if less in-your-face – pop moment, a meeting of dancefloor collage-making minds of sorts. Ed Lawson LISTEN: ‘Life’

Skittish beats, soothing piano licks and scattershot sampling.

INDIE

ALBUMS

KATY J PEARSON

Someday, Now Heavenly

Consisting of ten glistening tracks, ‘Someday, Now’ is Katy J Pearson’s most assured release to date. Recorded at Rockfield Studios over a period of two weeks, Pearson’s third album shines with authenticity, showcasing her versatile voice and impressive vocal range. Produced by Nathan Jenkins aka Bullion, the singer-songwriter’s quintessential sound is re-moulded through the experimental cast of his more electronic-leaning production. Opening track ‘Those Goodbyes’ sets the scene for Pearson’s biggest shift in drive and sound yet, its first moments coming into view by way of a distorted, synth-laden take on the Irish blessing: “May the wind always be at your back”. Across the album, meanwhile, Pearson’s focus has become more personal; her lyrics are introspective and pay homage to trauma, feelings of self-worth and the trials of romance. She’s at her most vulnerable on ‘Siren Song’ while, on ‘It’s Mine Now’ and ‘Grand Final’, Pearson disregards the established boundaries of genres, blending together infectious guitar riffs and baroque-pop-inspired organs. On ‘Someday’, her vocals metamorphose into raw and raspy syllables, displaying a sound that’s matured into something wholly her own. ‘Someday, Now’ is a departure but a truly successful one, full of sublime vocals and creative confidence. Neve Dawson

LISTEN: ‘Grand Final’

PARIS PALOMA cacophony

Nettwerk

When Paris Paloma first released her charged, patriarchy-beating single ‘labour’ last year, it was clear that she was going to make a stir. Now, for her debut full-length, she’s offered up a cacophony; not just in name, but in defiant spirit. A journey through which our narrator is faced with some of her darkest moments and warmest touches, it’s an album that feels both daring and delicate, tracking the growth of Paris personally and professionally. Opening track ‘my mind (now)’ offers an unexpected start, with its mesmeric opening lines (the evocative swathes of “What did I do wrong?” are devastating in context) soon thrust aside in favour of a more calamitous noise, nodding to the life-changing cacophony the album’s named after. Much like with her breakout track, her deft lyricism is haunting across the record, as she explores the pain and abuse faced by women, girls and trans people at the hands of our patriarchal society (take ‘last woman on earth’’s unnerving refrain, “Leave me to the beast and / Bears, I rather that the feast is / Theirs, they can’t reserve neighbouring plots / Or request to be buried on top”). Throughout, her dark subject matter still manages to seem rich and beautiful. An affecting record that has one foot in the worlds of myth and another firmly planted in the modern day, ‘cacophony’ proves Paris Paloma to be a powerful voice, telling stories that demand to be heard. Sarah Jamieson LISTEN : ‘bones on the beach’

Smitten

Dirty Hit

The return of Pale Waves’ retro alt-pop falls in line with vocalist Heather Baron-Gracie’s coming-of-age movie marathon, taking a step back to focus on identify and to engage heavily with queer art. It’s a far cry from 2022’s ‘Unwanted’ – a record which owed more to Avril Lavigne than it did to the ethereal synths that return at the forefront of their newest, making it more akin to breakthrough debut ‘My Mind Makes Noises’. Written in isolation separate to ‘Unwanted’’s touring cycle, ‘Smitten’ sees Heather lead the thematic charge, peppered with references to past and present loves and romances, pulling together her self-discovery with the sound that the band are the best at making. Produced back in the UK following a brief Stateside dalliance, ‘Smitten’ offers an altogether more refined experience, one that pairs all-out pop melodies with tales of struggle, loss and heartbreak. Each track unfolds as an autobiographical timestamp, some universal and some specific, not least ‘Gravity’’s reference to the stranglehold of religion on queer relationships, ‘Hate To Hurt You’’s overt depiction of falling for somebody else, or standout opener ‘Glasgow’’s end of the line. It’s a welcome return for the Manchester outfit, who over the past half-decade had pivoted away from the sound that first turned heads and garnered acclaim. But it doesn’t rest on what has come before, landing somewhere between the ‘80s new wave of their debut and mainstream pop, now with the self-expression of a far more confident songwriter. Ben Tipple

LISTEN: ‘Glasgow’

A touchstone for what a great band can achieve.

Midas Communion

With such a stellar live reputation, Wunderhorse’s approach for their second album makes total sense: having gone from the solo project of Jacob Slater to a fully-fledged band proper, the four-piece wrote and recorded as a unit, rough and ready, with as little overdubbing as possible. ‘Midas’ is a raw, visceral record that relies on its performance. Where debut ‘Cub’ felt like an indie artist writing rock songs, this feels like a bonafide rock band with a knack for indie classics. The title track sees Slater attack four chords under a Dylan-esque vocal delivery, barely pausing for breath, while ‘July’ is one of the most scorching, blindsiding rock performances from recent years. Everyone gets their spotlight, with Harry Fowler’s guitar solo on sensitive closer ‘Aeroplane’ or Peter Woodin and Jamie Staples’ dramatic stabs in ‘Emily’ serving to reinforce the band’s cohesion. There are subdued moments, like the soaring high of ‘Superman’, and old fans will not be lost, but there’s something deeper and more primal driving the whole record. ‘Midas’ has the excitement and energy of a debut album, but the wisdom and restraint that comes from experience, making it a touchstone for what a great band can achieve. James Hickey LISTEN: ‘July’

Hysterical Strength

SO Recordings

If ‘Hysterical Strength’ is one thing, it’s uncompromising. Appearing as if an increasingly anxious stream-of-consciousness, the group’s penchant for pairing kitchen sink cacophony with frontman Zac Lawrence’s booming, pissed-off delivery is ever-present, making for a coherent record, yes, but also one which constantly threatens to veer into one-note territory and is at points an exhausting listen. Its best moments come when hinting at something aside from the well-worn 2020s angsty post-punk sound that otherwise pulses through its motorik veins: the hints of Madness that provide the hook on ‘Mere Mortal’; the threat of a pop chorus on ‘Deus Ex Machina’; the Britpop-style storytelling of the title track. Because elsewhere, as opening number ‘Mother’ crashes into life, the jazzy intro of ‘Relieved’ fades away or closer ‘Auntie Christ’ bristles, there’s the looming feeling that any one of a number of a rotating cast of gravelly, agitated vocals could appear and we’d be none the wiser. Impeccably recorded and formulated with pin-sharp precision, but in need of a little more of a distinctive voice. Ed Lawson

LISTEN: ‘Mere Mortal’

DORA JAR

No Way To Relax When You Are On Fire Island

There’s a decently sized argument for Dora Jar’s standout skill being her ability to shape-shift, and between the Phoebe Bridgers-like straightforward title track and the gloriously kitsch ‘Smoke Out The Window’ – a pop number that makes like a novelty 1990s dance track in its hyperactivity and places Dora’s own sugary vocal adjacent to hyperpop’s proclivity for pitchshifting – there’s enough here to show that’s true. See also ‘Ragdoll’, which drips with a similar throwback electronic slant to that which made PinkPantheress her name, and ‘Puppet’, bristling with Sparks-like oddities, her vocal at once coquettish and demonic. But under the bells and whistles – and what curious bells and whistles they are, with 2010s lo-fi guitar wobbles, scattershot drum’n’bass beats and piercing operatic vocal stabs among them – at the core of ‘No Way To Relax When You Are On Fire’ stands some really excellent songwriting. The same production quirks that transform ‘Cannonball’ from singersongwriter also ran are used skilfully to hazily mask what otherwise could be unashamed bangers: opener ‘This Is Why’ might, in another life, soundtrack pints-in-the-air festival euphoria, while the playground rhyme cadence of ‘Timelapse’ has every bit the viral potential, and ‘She Loves Me’ could, in other hands, be a noughties indie-pop ad-friendly track, with its peppy bassline and elongated “eeee” of its chorus. If this sounds confusing, then perhaps that’s the point: here, Dora Jar has one foot in singer-songwriter world and the other in pure pop and it makes for a more interesting listen than a first glance might allow for.

Alex Doyle

LISTEN: ‘Smoke Out The Window’

NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS

Wild God

Bad Seed Ltd / Play It Again Sam By now, everybody knows about the events that have defined Nick Cave’s last decade; the double tragedy that has seen him lose two of his sons, Arthur in 2015 and Jethro in 2022. The two records he has made with the Bad Seeds in that time, ‘Skeleton Tree’ and ‘Ghosteen’, sought to work through the immensity of his grief not by pushing it away, but heading into it and surrounding himself with it; ‘Ghosteen’, especially, was a maelstrom of emotion, and along with it, perhaps his most handsome album to date. Anybody who saw This Much I Know to Be True, Andrew Dominik’s chronicle of ‘Carnage’, Nick’s 2021 collaboration with Warren Ellis, will know that the Australian is very happy to follow his nose creatively; the film opens with a scene that reveals that he has become a ceramicist in lockdown, crafting small sculptures of the devil. Unsurprisingly, religious iconography comes to the fore on ‘Wild God’, which seeks to move past the emotional tumult of ‘Ghosteen’ and into a space that transcends Nick’s grief whilst at the same time, still acknowledging it. His reunion with not just Warren, but the rest of the Bad Seeds (as well as Colin Greenwood of Radiohead) is one that has them venturing into new territory; the piano is key, whether quietly (as on ‘Joy’) or rousingly (the terrific ‘Final Rescue Attempt’). Often, as on the fantastic title track, the band are swept along on a wave of ebullience, with Nick’s lyrics seeming to extol the virtues of music and communion. It is genuinely moving to hear the one-time Prince of Darkness finding so much beauty in the world around him, even after everything life has thrown at him in recent years; ‘Wild God’ aims for transcendence, and finds it. Joe Goggins

LISTEN: ‘Final Rescue Attempt’

BRIGHT EYES

Five Dice, All Threes

The eleventh studio album by Bright Eyes judders into life the same way as the ten that preceded it; awkwardly. Conor Oberst and company seem to revel in kicking things off obliquely, and this time around we get a blend of field recordings and studio chatter that does little to give away what might be coming next. The last Bright Eyes record, ‘Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was’, was their first in nearly a decade and, in many ways, sounded like it; it was a sprawling work that was stylistically undisciplined and sounded like Conor and his core collaborators, Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott, were spilling as many of their pent-up ideas into the mix as possible, just in case they never got to make another one. ‘Five Dice, All Threes’ shares some similarities; as so often on Bright Eyes records, we are taken around the houses musically, with everything from ramshackle rock and roll (‘Bells and Whistles’, ‘El Capitan’) to softer, tender moments of signature Oberst storytelling, as on ‘Real Feel 105°’ and ‘Tiny Suicides’; these tracks are scored through with instrumental nods to the more rustic moments in the recent Bright Eyes oeuvre. What the record does have that ‘Down in the Weeds...’ didn’t, though, is a cohesive mood, one that reckons with life’s ups and downs – Conor sounds exuberant in some places and endearingly ragged in others. Plus, as is always the case with an artist as restless as him, there are ventures into new territory; the spacey ‘All Threes’ features beautiful vocal work from Cat Power, and the giddy ‘Spun Out’ has to be the first song in the band’s catalogue to marry record scratching with noodling guitar work. The album’s title suggests consistency, but in fact, it is a thrillingly unpredictable musical journey. Joe Goggins LISTEN: ‘Spun Out’

Home in Another Life

Run For Cover

THE VOIDZ

Like All Before You Cult Records

“Give the humans what they want / Some music for them to blow their brains out to,” sings Julian Casablancas on the meditative pianos of ‘Like All Before You’’s centrepiece ‘Spectral Analysis’: a total red herring (albeit a rather lovely one) amongst an album that sounds like an ‘80s video game version of the future, all robotic, vocoder-drenched vocals and warped genreflitting. In his work with The Voidz (and, far more frustratingly, during The Strokes’ often barelyaudible festival shows), Casablancas has shown he has little time for delivering the former sentiment: what the humans want is what he used to give them, but JC doesn’t really give a shit about any of that. As for the second half, while The Voidz’ third album is unlikely to cause anyone to reach for the revolver, there is an overriding sense of anxiety and paranoia to the palette they create that’s the opposite of a straightforward listen.

‘Prophecy of The Dragon’ drops unexpectedly into a grizzled section of metal guitars, while ‘7 Horses’ combines a strange mix of reggae and pensive, riffy noodling; somehow, it actually works.

‘Flexorcist’ delivers the record’s catchiest (only?) proper pop moment, however on ‘Square Wave’, Casablancas’ treated-to-the-extreme vocals are basically Vic Reeves’ club singer gone electronic. It’s this mash of ideas that’s the record’s biggest sticking point. In isolation, there’s a lot to enjoy among these tracks, but together, ‘Like All Before You’ requires a lot of listens and maybe a couple of aspirin to translate. Sarah Pope LISTEN: ‘Flexorcist’

Glance down the tracklisting for Enumclaw’s second record ‘Home In Another Life’, and it seems to paint a rather remorseful picture. Yet while some titles might offer up specifically vivid images of regret – ‘I Still Feel Bad About Masturbation’ says it all –there’s so much more here than first meets the eye. Much like on the Washington quartet’s debut, 2022’s ‘Save The Baby’, the album grapples with the full and often rough-around-the-edges spectrum of human emotion, as told via the compelling and, at times, wry songwriting of Aramis Johnson (“Change makes nothing the same / A stain on my pants can ruin my day,” he sings in a bizarre but brilliant one-two on ‘Haven’t Seen The Family In A While, I’m Sorry’). Sonically, the band are a scuzzy but tight unit, managing to play fast and loose enough with the rules of their garage-rock heartland to remain invigorating, all while evidently being that much more accomplished as musicians after two years of touring their first full-length. Another compelling chapter in Enumclaw’s story so far. Sarah Jamieson

LISTEN: ‘This Light of Mine’

A scuzzy but tight unit.

Photo: Colin Matsui

SARAH KINSLEY

Escaper

Verve Forecast / Decca

If there’s one thing you can immediately grasp from listening to ‘Escaper’, it’s that New York’s Sarah Kinsley has left no stone unturned in crafting her debut, both in terms of her emotional commitment to the project, and her willingness to musically throw it all at the wall (among the instruments she turns her hand to on the record are piano, guitar, synth, violin, and, er, glass bowls). Where ‘Beautiful Things’ and ‘Barrel Of Love’ are cast in the balladic, melancholic mould of Lana Del Rey or Weyes Blood, the sweeping strings and exponential pace of opener ‘Last Time We Never Meet Again’ is thrillingly evocative – who can hear the lyric “I hope I hear your name and feel absolutely nothing” and not be immediately put in mind of one particular person?

‘There Was A Room’, meanwhile, offers more electronic flavours, its skittering beat fidgeting with impatience before bursting into a technicolour chorus. It’s the audio equivalent of the very moment of falling in love; it’s Elbow’s ‘Starlings’ through an alt-pop prism. Aptly, Sarah too has a song named after the birds, though hers is an ode to the fulfilling depths of platonic friendship, rather than romantic connection. More multifaceted than your average singer-songwriter and yet not really a pop girly either, Sarah Kinsley occupies a curious space between the two, merging dramatic, ambitious, and undeniably catchy arrangements with a vocal dexterity and lyrical sensitivity that are truly transporting. If latest single ‘Realms’ imagines the huge scope of alternate realities out there, to listen to ‘Escaper’ is to believe their existence possible. Daisy Carter LISTEN: ‘There Was A Room’

EPS, ETC*

*anything they refuse to call an album.

YANNIS & THE YAW

Lagos Paris London

Transgressive

Consisting of five songs built around some of the last music the late Tony Allen worked on, that ‘Lagos Paris London’ is somewhat scrapbook-like in nature should come as little surprise. Neither too, should the fact that the majority bear more than a passing resemblance to The Yaw’s titular Yannis’ agitator: beyond the obvious familiar vocal, there’s those mathy guitar lines (opener ‘Walk Through Fire’), soaring subtlety (‘Rain Can’t Reach Us’) and tension (closer ‘Clementine’ makes a case for being Sunday Afternoon Foals, so close is it in style, if not delivery). So it’s in the less expected that ‘Lagos Paris London’ offers most; the sheer softness of ‘Under The Strikes’ displays a vocal turn that in other contexts may prove completely unrecognisable; and in particular the introspective, sparse yet groove-laden ‘Night Green, Heavy Love’, on which a staccato bassline contrasts with Yannis’ high-pitched vocal to create a wholly disorienting mood.

Bella Martin

LISTEN: ‘Night Green, Heavy Love’

THE WAEVE

City Lights

Transgressive

There’s more than a touch of the self-indulgent to ‘City Lights’, but what are side quests for if not selfindulgence? Across its ten tracks, ‘City Lights’ carefully meanders along the line between maximalism and pop nous, all the while sounding sonically full, whether in the swooping strings of dreamlike closer ‘Sunrise’ or via the early ‘80s as on industrial post-punk number ‘Moth To The Flame’. As expected, it’s the interplay between hard and soft that takes centre stage, whether via the pair’s dual vocals as on ‘You Saw’, the thematic tenderness of ‘Song For Eliza May’ and its abrasive, squalling guitar, or even through following the dreamy, melancholic ‘Simple Days’ with an enthrallingly unholy guitar sound on the deceptively pop ‘Broken Boys’. And against the full fever dream wig out that ‘Druantia’ falls into, is the opening title track, its classic songwriting accommodating a wiry (or should it be Wire-y) guitar line. Like stepping into a universe of the duo’s making, almost, it’s the kind of sonic escapism that’s akin to reading a good book. Bella Martin

LISTEN: ‘Broken Boys’

 HUMAN

INTEREST

Smile While You’re Losing (An Audio Guide To Wellness)

Nice Swan

“I can’t decide if we’re living in heaven or hell / I’m trying my hardest to read in between the lines”. So begins ‘Matrix’, the penultimate track on Human Interest’s latest – an EP which sees the East London alt-rockers strive for moments of human connection and mutual understanding amidst the oftentimes horror show of the contemporary world. Like 2023’s ‘Empathy Lives In Outer Space’, ‘Smile While You’re Losing (An Audio Guide To Wellness)’ showcases the duo’s particular lyrical knack for interweaving the micro and the macro, zooming in on their personal experiences of social masking (‘Shapeshifting’), apocalypse anxiety (‘Nuclear War’), and more for a markedly truthful examination of our collective consciousness. From its spoken word ‘Intro’ – which is part Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Sunscreen’, part yoga instructor – to the Palma Violets twang of opener proper ‘Wearing Faces’ and the effortless harmonies of ‘Better Press Repeat’, this is a project which deals equally in highs and lows; and which recognises that actually, one cannot exist without the other. Daisy Carter LISTEN: ‘Wearing Faces’

A handy lil’ list of albums worth getting excited for.

ORLA GARTLAND

Everybody Needs A Hero

Proving she doesn’t know the meaning of ‘time off’, the FIZZ member’s second full-length will be out 4th October.

OUR GIRL

The Good Kind

The trio’s second album, with production credits for both the band’s Soph Nathan and Big Moon bandmate Fern Ford, hits shelves on 8th November.

SOCCER MOMMY

Evergreen

The singer-songwriter’s fourth studio album and follow up to 2022’s ‘Sometimes, Forever’ is set for release on 25th August.

PORRIDGE RADIO

Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me

Dana Margolin and pals’ fourth album is due to be released on 18th October.

Photos: Ed Miles, Dougie Chalmers

LIVE

GARBAGE

MAD COOL Villaverde, Madrid

Photos: Sinéad Grainger

To say that it’s sweltering in Madrid would almost be doing Mother Nature a disservice, with the Spanish capital’s temperatures easily reaching the mid-30s on Mad Cool’s opening day. But, even with the sun beating down on the festival’s second outing at their Villaverde site, festival goers are in good spirits ahead of what’s set to be a big day of music.

Claiming that the Spanish are rather enamoured with rock music is somewhat stating the obvious – just cast your eye across the titans of the genre that are appearing across the bill here in Madrid this week – so it’s unsurprising that Scottish icons Garbage are given such a hero’s welcome as they emerge into the sun for their set. The band’s Shirley Manson is a vision in red and peach tulle, looking every bit as cool as you’d expect as she saunters off the stage and into the pit for a sizzling rendition of their 1995 hit ‘Stupid Girl’. Melding together tracks from their barbed, most recent record ‘No Gods No Masters’ with cuts from the early chapters of their discography, their electronic-infused wares are even given even more clout live on stage. Set clashes are arguably the most frustrating thing about festival season, but – considering their own love of scuzzy rock – the fact that Crawlers overlap almost entirely with The Smashing Pumpkins’ turn on the Region of Madrid stage feels rather unjust. Regardless, there’s a dedicated throng of fans gathered in the Mahou 0,0 Tostada stage – one of the festival’s two intimate indoor areas – for the Liverpool quartet’s explosive set. Meanwhile, closing out the festival’s opening day are ‘Pumpkins who, despite having fostered a reputation for being more than a little selfindulgent, have aced the festival setlist, packing in hits from across their formidable career and cutting some of their newer, more noodly offerings. Billy Corgan even looks – whisper it – rather happy.

Early on the fest’s second day, there’s a sizable queue to get into the Mahou Cinco Estrellas stage in which Black Honey are busy ripping things up. The venue acts as the perfect

stage for the quartet, who revel in this kind of rowdy crowd energy. Diving into a short but sweet set, the band’s Izzy B Phillips is her usual affable self from the off, throwing out Spanish phrases, before encouraging all the girls to head forward to the front of the crowd for a rowdy introduction to ‘Corrine’.

While Canadian outfit Alvvays might have the somewhat unenviable job of taking to the Orange Stage just as the sun has dropped into their direct eye-line on Mad Cool’s third day, their musical wares still sparkle in the evening heat. Meanwhile, Unknown Mortal Orchestra emerge onto Mad Cool’s main stage, their woozy offerings working to ease festival goers into the festival’s third day perfectly. Their big-hitters like ‘Multi-Love’ and ‘Hunnybee’ are given an extra oomph with the help of the full live outfit, the latter packing a staggeringly funky stomp.

If anyone was concerned that Sum 41 wouldn’t be pulling out all the stops on this final tour, they needn’t have worried; as the largest crowd of the weekend gathers in front of the festival’s Region of Madrid stage, the Canadian quartet burst into life in a frenzy of pyro, before a series of flames, fireworks and confetti are thrown up near-constantly throughout their epic set.

Thinking about the speed at which Måneskin have risen through the ranks to become a festival headliner is enough to make anyone’s head spin, but tonight when they emerge on Mad Cool’s main stage, they look and sound every bit the part. Arguably one of the coolest-looking bands in rock right now, the quartet are slick from the off, diving headfirst into rapid renditions of ‘Don’t Wanna Sleep’, ‘Gossip’ and their Eurovision hit ‘Zitti E Buoni’ in quick succession. Unsurprisingly, tracks from their recent record ‘Rush!’ take the driving seat tonight: ‘Gasoline’ is given a ew darkly heavy edge, with Ethan Torchio pummelling his drums throughout, before moody cut ‘The Loneliest’ comes preceded by a near-ten minute guitar solo by Thomas Raggi. But while, on paper, the band barely put a foot wrong throughout – the show feels streamlined but still showy, with the hefty lighting rig behind them adding an extra

There are true moments of magic.

intensity to the whole thing – there’s a certain air of aloofness to the band that feels a little jarring compared with previous performances.

Picking right back up where Måneskin left off with their headliner set last night, the gnarly rock of Mexican outfit The Warning sounds massive as they open Mad Cool’s final day from the main stage, after a last minute cancellation from Tyla sees the trio bumped up the bill. Moving over to the Region of Madrid stage, Arlo Parks has perhaps underestimated the early evening’s heat, as she emerges on stage wearing a jacket. Needless to say, it promptly gets removed after her first song, but the soothing stylings of her musical offerings do provide some relief in the intensity of the sun, and her set comes infused with a real sense of joy.

Much like her oversubscribed performance at Glastonbury last month, Avril Lavigne’s appearance in Madrid tonight sees her greeted by a sea of eager fans. Marking the final European show on her greatest hits tour, she’s in good spirits from the off, shaking up a bottle of champagne to spray on the crowd in introduction to ‘Here’s To Never Growing Up’. “Cheers to summer 2024! Cheers to never growing

up!” she proclaims, as the bubbly explodes onto the crowd: “Ain’t nothing like a champagne shower!” Unsurprisingly, it’s tracks from her early albums, 2002’s iconic ‘Let Go’ and its 2004 follow-up ‘Under My Skin’ that receive the biggest reactions, with the angsty ‘I’m With You’ and ‘Complicated’ providing huge singalongs.

By the time that Bring Me The Horizon are due to take to the stage, excitement is at fever pitch across the Villaverde site. It’s a shame, then, that the band’s performance ends up being so delayed: it’s only after twenty minutes of waiting that the band eventually emerge, looking somewhat crestfallen. What caused the delay remains a mystery through their set, but they soon settle into the swing of things, via the explosive one-two of ‘DarkSide’ and ‘MANTRA’. Sadly, their set gets cut short by a handful of tracks but the epic conclusion of ‘Drown’ into ‘Can You Feel My Heart’ is hugely cathartic, and closing gambit ‘Throne’ sounds utterly ferocious.

If there was ever a perfect band to headline the final night of a festival, it’s The Killers. For over twenty years now, the Las Vegas outfit have honed their skills as entertainers, and – unsurprisingly – tonight they

pull out all of the stops for Mad Cool’s final hurrah. Continuing on from their epic UK ‘Rebel Diamonds’ headline run, their show in the Spanish capital doubles as their only European appearance on this run. Needless to say, it’s a feast for the senses, with the Madrid crowd lapping up every moment of their epic greatest hits-skewed set.

Swerving through their back catalogue with a sense of gleeful assuredness, they barely put a foot wrong during their huge headline slot; even their cover of Erasure’s ‘A Little Respect’ slots seamlessly alongside ‘Rebel Diamonds’ cut ‘boy’ to dazzling effect. As ever, there are true moments of magic, and even their encore feels somehow larger than life: the silly bombast of ‘The Man’ dives into the huge-sounding ‘Human’, before a bizarre but brilliant megamix of their biggest hits bursts into life after two different renditions of ‘Mr Brightside’. It’s giddy, it’s ridiculous; it’s the perfect way to close out such an incredible four days. Sarah Jamieson

MÅNESKIN

AVRIL LAVIGNE

BRING ME THE HORIZON

FLOW

Suvilhati, Helsinki

Finland’s capital may perhaps, at first, seem a more unlikely musical mecca come summer than some of its Mediterranean counterparts, but Flow – Helsinki’s annual Nordic knees up, now in its 20th year – has both the booking chops and the production value to make it a deserved big-hitter on the European circuit.

Every inch the ‘50s Hollywood siren (save for the fact she’s barefoot), RAYE’s turn on the Main Stage is, quite simply, a masterclass in performance – in not only entertaining a crowd, but commanding their attention with humour, heart, and grace. She spends the set’s first half indulging in dramatic outros, scatting, and Adele-like chatty interludes, taking us from a New York jazz club to South London in a

heartbeat. The only slight question mark lies with her pivot to a dancier section that features a brief medley from her time as the industry’s go-to featured artist. A canny move to play the hits to a foreign festival crowd, perhaps, but ultimately their inclusion only serves to underscore the remarkable arc of RAYE’s career – that is, to emphasise just how much better her output as a creatively free, independent tour de force really is.

As a city, Helsinki seems to pride itself on welcoming LGBTQ+ people and notable allies, and Flow is its ideal ambassador. While Halsey headlines Friday night, bringing the rockier side of her alt-pop back catalogue to the fore, the festival’s standout pop performances come courtesy of Janelle Monáe and Jessie Ware Rounding out Flow’s first day with a late night slot, the former’s show is an impeccably executed concept piece, complete with separate chapters, indefatigable dancers, and multiple extravagant outfits. Her status as a true triple threat is self-evident; not only are the vocals pitch-perfect and the dancing impeccably choreographed (particularly for MJ –channelling closer ‘Make Me Feel’), but she also transitions seamlessly between chapters, genres, and

characters, here exuding the cool confidence of braggadocio rap, there the romance of lovers rock. Jessie, meanwhile, is pure drag mother, glowing in the Sunday evening sun as she welcomes us to disco haven The Pearl and introduces us to her onstage entourage, The Pearlettes.

If there’s one throughline between all of Flow’s three days, it’s a real platforming of electronic music –from the underground hardcore and afro house that can be heard at the Resident Advisor Front Yard Stage, to James Blake’s blissed-out Silver Arena set, to the Mercury shortlisted Barry Can’t Swim’s triumphant Saturday night turn. And it’s evident just how much the Finns appreciate it, too. Nothing, though, compares to the sense of fervid anticipation for Saturday’s headliner Fred again.. – the musician, DJ, and producer whose signature sampling style has seen him become the face (and sound) of dance music’s mainstream infiltration. He’s hardly a stranger to huge shows, yet he possesses the remarkable ability to make these huge events seem surprisingly intimate. The best received tracks are those lifted from the third in his ‘Actual Life’ trilogy, yet, true to form, Fred rarely executes anything verbatim. Rather, there’s a sense that he’d get bored with even his own work if he wasn’t consistently making tweaks – that any and every variation in performance is as much for his benefit as it ours. And, when such creative restlessness produces moments like his run through the crowd to deliver part of the set from a platform hovering above the sound desk, who can complain?

Widescreen pop productions and eclectic electronica may have dominated this year’s line-up, but that’s not to say that Flow doesn’t have skin in the game when it comes to more indie

offerings. Blur headlined in 2023; this weekend, it’s the turn of PJ Harvey and festival closers Pulp to prove just why the ‘90s revival is going nowhere. Having said that, anyone in the audience whose familiarity with Polly Jean starts and ends with ‘Dry’ are in for an education, as she spends at least half her set showcasing the eerie beauty of more recent work

(namely last year’s ‘I Inside the Old Year Dying’). Pulp, in contrast, are one band for whom playing to the audience is all part of the fun. Clad in velvet, making a real effort to speak Finnish, and climbing atop any amp he can get near, it’s no exaggeration to say that Jarvis Cocker is one of the world’s greatest living frontmen. The setlist for their ever-expanding ‘This Is What We Do For An Encore’ reunion tour (originally announced back in 2022) is at this point a finely tuned thing of beauty. But, having earlier brought out fellow Sheffield legend Richard Hawley to play one of his own tracks, ‘Sunrise’, Pulp have one more trick up their sleeves – the full band live debut of a new song. Tender, understated, and backgrounded by a serene oceanic horizon, Hawley co-write ‘A Sunset’ sees Jarvis strip away the flamboyance and consider the gap between wealth and what’s truly valuable. It’s a thoroughly moving, goosebump-inducing moment, and one which guarantees that the 20th edition of Helsinki’s Flow Festival is truly one for the history books. Daisy Carter

photos:

Konstantin Kondrukhov

JESSIE WARE PULP

PJ HARVEY

RAYE

FRED AGAIN..

ROCK WERCHTER Festivalpark Werchter

Photos: Leah Lombardi

Boasting a packed line-up of global stars – from Dua Lipa to Foo Fighters –alongside the hottest rising acts, Rock Werchter tends to cross genres and demographics at a breathless pace; unsurprisingly, this year is no different. Opening the festival on the main stage come STONE , who only last year featured on the altogether more intimate fourth stage, The Slope. It’s testament to their continued rise, energetic presence and hook-laden songs that they may not be leaving huge stages any time soon. A brief twinkling sway through Bombay Bicycle Club leads only back to the main stage,

Crosses

genres and demographics at a breathless pace.

to greet Swedish favourites, The Hives. With their charisma and razor-sharp wit only outdone by their razor-sharp outfits Howlin’ Pelle taunts and delights the crowd, blasting through classics like ‘Hate To Say I Told You So’, ‘Main Offender’ and ‘Walk Idiot Walk’.

A hulking behemoth of a stage, akin to dropping a 25,000-seater arena into a field in rural Belgium, The Barn is a spectacular sight to behold. It feels a worthy amphitheatre for two acts that won’t feature far down the list of rock’s singular legends – PJ Harvey and Jane’s Addiction. The former entrances the huge audience. It’s a masterful set – delicate when it sways with grace through ‘The Nether Edge’ but furious and vital when it bears its teeth with ‘50ft Queenie’. Harvey, in her illustrated robe and elegant movements, seems not just incapable of a misstep, but guaranteed to stroll, stomp or twirl through whatever is front of her. Still why have one icon when you can have three? Enter rock band Jane’s Addiction, here to prove why that name is so often preceded by “legendary”. Singer Perry Farrell and guitarist Dave Navarro take the stage in mysterious outfits ready to burn through a set of beguiling, twisting, genre-escaping rock; Farrell himself strikes

a unique figure, like the ongoing process of an evil spirit possessing a wiry cowboy.

Frank Carter is the man to welcome day two, spending most of the time in the crowd before Ireland’s hotly tipped post-punkers Sprints take to The Slope, starting their set with the blistering one-two of ‘Heavy’ and ‘Cathedral’. Arriving in a chaotic flurry, T he Armed soon kick off their set with a ridiculous energy, the singer surging into the crowd to scream in unsuspecting spectators’ faces with the ludicrously heavy and punishing ‘All Futures’. A band of unknown members and famed misdirection, it’s only possible to say a huge, bearded man delivers deafening roars, a guitarist seemingly breaks each bone in his upper body to punish his guitar, while a woman in fingerless gloves is laid on her back screaming over it all. It’s then almost reassuring to return to the main stage for the simple expectations and smooth hooks of Sum 41 and Yungblud; with ‘Fat Lip’ and ‘In Too Deep’, the former prove they’ve still got it even on their farewell tour, while with ‘Funeral’ and ‘Fleabag’ Yungblud suggests he might just have it.

taste in rising bands via HotWax and Scowl. The depth, variety and hooks of HotWax are a treat, while Scowl deliver ultra high-octane metal in an utterly irresistible concoction: whisper it, but they may have the crossover potential of Bring Me The Horizon or Turnstile running in their veins.

Drawing a huge crowd, Royal Blood make short work of their lofty slot, with a smartly paced set that never leaves anyone too far from a real highlight like

After a technically excellent performance from Noname, The Last Dinner Party arrive and, for everything that’s been said about this band so far, it’s easy to tell the compliments are right. They’re tight, they’re theatrical, they’re dramatic and entertaining. Their rises and falls are impeccably timed, and when you can deliver a great set all before wheeling out tracks as huge as ‘My Lady of Mercy’ and ‘Nothing Matters’, you seemingly can’t have much left to prove.

Janelle Monáe soon emerges draped in flowers for an outrageously watchable set at The Barn, before a pink and black two-toned Avril Lavigne rolls back the clock with ‘Complicated’ and ‘Sk8r Boi’. Given arguably the strangest billing of the festival, Khruangbin bring their psych-on-an-alien-planet vibe to the main stage before – of all acts – Dua Lipa.

Matt Maltese brings the festival’s final day into life with his anachronistic appeal. It’s hard not to buy into him at his piano, with his affable demeanour and his achingly clever, utterly heartbreaking songs. Later, The Slope once again demonstrates its immaculate

‘Out Of The Black’, ‘Little Monster’ or ‘Figure It Out’. At this point, the festival’s been nearly everything you could wish for, so who would even be worth asking to top it? Dave Grohl and his Foo Fighters aren’t such a bad bet. True to the roots of rock – even in the set’s overblown unwieldiness – Foos really do stretch every single sinew, and pull every trick to deliver, proving why they’re a band that will be remembered for generations. There’s tens of thousands here in a field in Belgium that won’t forget it any time soon, and with that, Rock Werchter once again reminds, with flamboyant ease, why it should be near the top of everyone’s list of must-attend festivals. Matthew Davies Lombardi

FOO FIGHTERS

NONAME

THE LAST DINNER PARTY

SCOWL

NOS ALIVE

Passeio Marítimo de Algés, Lisbon

Nestled on the coast just West of Lisbon lies Oeiras – a place that you can imagine is fairly unassuming for eleven months of the year, all stunning local beaches and hidden gem lojas (Portuguese for ‘store’, as Orlando Weeks’ latest album has taught us – Ed). But come July, there’s an annual addition to its oceanside vista: the rainbow-arched entrance of NOS Alive, one of this festival season’s most eclectic European offerings.

Having previously played host to some of music’s best-known names, this year – its 16th iteration –pulls no punches, recruiting the likes of viral dance newcomer Kenya Grace, ‘90s alt-rockers T he Smashing Pumpkins, indie stalwarts Arcade Fire and disco queen Jessie Ware to kick things off on its opening day.

Come Friday, though, and pop reigns supreme. Over on the main stage, Ashnikko’s set is a masterclass in statement-making, playful performance: from the pounding bass that precedes the opening bars of ‘You Make Me Sick’ to their Camden-coded ensemble of purple space buns, fishnets, and knee high Converse and their tongue-in-cheek intro to 2019 cut ‘Working Bitch’ (“even if you don’t know the lyrics, just make sounds – that’s what I do”), their debut performance in Portugal is one which epitomises just how effectively their provocative, boundary-pushing pop has cut through the noise. This is how we imagine the Eras tour might look if it took place in the Upside Down.

From the ridiculous (in a good way, obvs) to the sublime, the arrival of AURORA has NOS Alive’s second stage bursting at the seams, her benevolent yet commanding presence recalling that of something ethereal – a fae, perhaps, or an angel. That being said, her latest LP ‘What Happened To The Heart?’

Broad in scope but surprisingly intimate in atmosphere.

is a project all about fostering a very human kind of connection, and, judging by the rapturous reception its tracks receive, we’d say this set sees AURORA’s mission accomplished.

Having taken her Glasto-headlining setup on the road, Dua Lipa steps out to the iconic spoken word intro of Primal Scream’s ‘Loaded’, the anticipation in the crowd palpable, before the pulsing beats of opener ‘Training Season’ take hold. Dressed like a ‘70s Bond girl and armed with a catalogue of Balearic bangers that here are in their spiritual home of the Med, she barely pauses for breath over the next 90 minutes, her high-octane choreography firmly putting to bed any lingering internet aspersions over her dancing efforts. 2020’s ‘Future Nostalgia’ big hitters – ‘Levitating’, ‘Hallucinate’, ‘Break My Heart’ –

are the obvious highlights; given that most people will have first heard their disco grooves amidst pandemicinduced social isolation, their crowd-pleasing calls to dance take on a new, special shimmer when rendered live before so many people. As the set ends with the frankly triumphant triple threat of ‘Physical’, ‘Don’t Start Now’, and ‘Houdini’, there’s no doubting that the pop star has more than proved herself as headliner material, both on home soil and further afield.

Come Sunday, and the crowd demographic is notably older – you can’t walk more than five metres before spotting another band tee, the majority of which pay homage to today’s well-curated, ‘90s-leaning line-up. Without wanting to fall into cliche or patronisation, there’s something quietly powerful about watching

The Breeders take to the main stage. In an industry that seems increasingly obsessed with young artists, seeing a female-majority guitar band who first emerged thirty-odd years ago (and who clearly still enjoy the utmost respect from both fans and peers) perform with such skill and evident glee is nothing short of a joy. Combining the signature sound of ‘90s grunge with Kim Deal’s distinctive, often quite delicate vocals (the feather / hammer artwork emblazoned on screen is an apt metaphor for this seeming contradiction), the quartet may drop their big-ticket tracks – ‘Cannonball’, ‘Drivin’ on 9’ – mid-set, but keep their feet firmly on the accelerator right up until triumphant closer and Pixies cover ‘Gigantic’.

And now we’re onto the home straight with poppunk stalwarts Sum 41 – though perhaps one of the festival’s more unlikely bookings, they throw everything at the wall to make their turn a capital-S Show: pyro, smoke, confetti cannons, the works. They’re clearly having fun, too, as frontman Deryck Whibley teases us with a slate of instantlyrecognisable riffs from the likes of ‘Smoke On The Water’ and ‘Seven Nation Army’, before the encore’s beloved teen anthems ‘In Too Deep’ and ‘Fat Lip’ make for a fittingly raucous close.

From the moment the on-screen, red theatre curtain parts for final headliners Pearl Jam, the crowd is near-constantly illuminated by the glow of countless phone screens striving to immortalise the Seattle rockers’ hugely-anticipated, guitar-worshipping show. Band leader Eddie Vedder has rather sweetly learned some rudimentary Portuguese for the occasion, reciting a prepared speech in the language that concludes with an invitation to the crowd to ‘cheers’ – something they don’t need asking twice. For their part, the legion of fans gathered before Pearl Jam are utterly enraptured, just as crowds here have been all weekend. Broad in scope but surprisingly intimate in atmosphere, NOS Alive punches above its weight to deliver three days of sunshine-soaked music that won’t soon be forgotten. Daisy Carter

Photos: Hugo Macedo, José Fernandes

AURORA

THE BREEDERS

PEARL JAM

OPEN’ER

Gdynia-Kosakowo Airport

Photos: Burak Cingi

On paper, the city of Gdynia might not be the obvious choice of location for the biggest music festival in Poland; nestled on the Baltic northern coast of the country, it is hundreds of miles from the likes of Warsaw and Krakow. What it does have, though, is a storied recent history of breaking new ground.

This year, 130,000 people make the trip to the festival’s unfinished Kosakowo Airport, the third-highest figure in the festival’s history. The main attraction on day one is obvious; Foo Fighters’ headline performance on the main stage marks their first show in Poland since 2017, and from speaking to fans on the ground, it’s clear the faithful had travelled from all corners of the country. They get what they came for; over two hours of furious rock and roll in a set that actually involves a few risks – in among the usual big hitters, they bring back deep cuts, including the off-kilter breeziness of ‘Generator’, the shape-shifting ‘Arlandria’ and an appropriately-sparse ‘Skin and Bones’, which sees Dave Grohl and an accordion –wielding Rami Jaffee take to the centre of the crowd.

Ordinarily, festival headliners on any given bill tend to be of roughly equal standing, but that was never going to be the case at Open’er this year once Dua Lipa was announced as topping the bill on day two; she very much feels like the main event. It’s been a long and complicated road to the main stage for her. Two years ago, she was on site and ready to play when a biblical thunderstorm rolled in and forced both the evacuation of the grounds and the cancellation of her set. The difference between then and now is that her 2022 show, as she finally went out on her COVID-delayed ‘Future Nostalgia’ tour, would have been an adaptation of her arena setup; now she is ready for the step up to stadiums, and this scintillating set suggests that she’s making the transition with consummate ease. For all the choreography of every other aspect, from the lighting to the dancers, Lipa is that rare breed of performer who oozes such stage presence that all she really needs is that, along with a setlist full of irresistible pop bangers. Either side of it, there’s the chance to catch two Mercury winners, with Benjamin Clementine making the Alter stage feel genuinely intimate in the early evening before Michael Kiwanuka makes a soulful, late-night turn in the Tent.

Day three brings a real change of pace up and down the airstrip. As is customary, this year’s line-up is studded with Polish acts; a highlight among them is a Friday evening set by Skalpel, Wroclaw’s own nu jazz pioneers, who cloak the Alter Stage in a thick layer of Lynchian atmosphere with a set that pairs live jazz instrumentation with inventive break sampling reminiscent of DJ Shadow’s ‘Endtroducing.....’.

Later, a huge, white-framed oblong box has arrived on stage in the Tent, as if having just landed from outer space. Those familiar with Air’s latest live undertaking will already have seen photos of the stage set for this tour, but they won’t

quite have done it justice. They’re marking their 25th anniversary of their classic debut, ‘Moon Safari’, by playing it entirely live, employing vintage synthesisers and live instrumentation to bring the album’s sumptuously dreamy electronica to life.

As is customary, a number of major rap names hit the festival across the weekend, including Doja Cat, Noname, and 21 Savage, who is on blistering form. Perhaps the hip hop highlight, though, comes on the Saturday evening courtesy of Loyle Carner, who plays an endearingly stripped-back set in which his signature brand of laid-back rap belies some of the deeper themes he delves into. Now a father of a three-yearold boy, he speaks movingly of his urgent need to eschew toxic masculinity to be a role model to his son, and given his ability when it comes to emotionally literate introspection, it’s something he needn’t worry about.

The act following him has an altogether different vibe in mind. Open’er pulled off something of a coup by being one of a handful of festivals to book Charli xcx, given that BRAT summer is now very much in full swing. The Tent is rammed, its biggest crowd of the weekend, for a relentlessly energetic hour-long set that may just be Charli and a backing track, yet still emerges as a serious contender for the stand-out show of the festival.

The ‘BRAT’ tracks meld into each other at breakneck pace – ‘Guess’ into ‘365’ in particular – and for the uninitiated, the searing pace of this hour of pop perfection would serve as an ideal introduction to her music; lurid, overwhelming, irrepressible. Given that the summer is hers off the back of ‘BRAT’’s success, she seems a fitting choice to bring the curtain down on the weekend. Open’er, like Charli, have once again proven themselves to be masters of capturing the zeitgeist. Joe Goggins

LOYLE CARNER

DUA LIPA

Trentemøller

The Kiffness

NewDad

Yot Club

King Hannah

Good Neighbours

Jane Weaver

Mothica

Holly Macve

Ibibio Sound Machine

Joep Beving

BODEGA

Suuns

Master Peace

Swim Deep

Eaves Wilder

Humane The Moon

swim school

Maria Chiara Argirò

Molly Payton

Pacifica

Monophonics

Somebody's Child

Bess Atwell

The Grogans

RVG

Divorce

Hannah Grae

Sam Akpro

Pale Blue Eyes

Kite

The Shivas

Des Rocs

Andrew Cushin

Hohnen Ford Porches

Sarah Julia

H31R

Asha Jefferies and many more