& your ultimategu CARLY IS PLUCKING POP SUNSHINE FROM THE DARKNESS 2022SEPTEMBER•122ISSUEDIYMAG.COM MURA JOCKSTRAPALEXMASAGOLIVERSIMKASABIANFLOHIO of LIGHTR ae
FREE NOW are proudly sponsoring The Mercury Prize as part of our Move to the Music campaign. We believe in bringing you closer to the beating heart of the British and Irish music scene – from pop music that fires the imagination to Cornish language folk-rock. The 2022 Mercury Prize with FREE NOW shines a spotlight on the artists you need to hear, helping you Move to the Music.
Editor , s Letter
FERGUS MCCREADIE SKIN JOY CROOKES PLEASUREPRIORITISE SELF-ESTEEM
Seeing the frontman of a fairly big alt-pop band emerging from one of Reeperbahn’s strip clubs at circa 3am will always be a fave story to tell.
CARLY RAE JEPSEN - CALL ME MAYBE
PHOTO: ED MILES
The same year that CRJ was dropping the above, a little known band released their debut single ‘The City’. 10 years later, The 1975’s fifth LP ‘Being Funny In A Foreign Language’ is out next month with the group bigger than ever.
FOREST FLOOR
SARAH JAMIESON • Managing Editor
THE 1975 - THE CITY
3
TRESOR
Get your ‘We <3 Jeppo’ signs at the ready: this month we are incredibly excited to welcome the one and only Carly Rae Jepsen to the cover. One of pop’s most effervescent stars, we caught up with her ahead of the release of new album ‘The Loneliest Time’, a record which sees her becoming even more ambitious and open.
REASON TO SMILE KOJEY RADICAL GOINGSEVENTEENUNDER SAM FENDER The captivating jazz of ‘Forest Floor’ is the follow-up to Fergus Thesinglealbum,AnYouNow’,‘FeetalbumJoyacclaimedMcCreadie’s‘Cairn’.Crookes’debutfeaturingDon’tFailMeand‘WhenWereMine’.unapologeticpopfeaturingthe‘IDoThisAllTime’. Sung almost entirely in Cornish, Tresor is Gwenno Saunders’ third solo album. The latest project from the ‘Payback’,theLondoner,Eastfeaturingsinglesand‘Silk’.SecondalbumfromSamFender,withthesingles‘SeventeenGoingUnder’and‘SpitOfYou’.
Despite having always left Leeds on the Sunday night (yes, I’m the ultimate wimp) I did once watch a group of people pull down a lighting pole for
GWENNO
My solitary visit to Leeds over Reading. The campsite toilets had long turned to ash by the time I needed them on Monday morning, so had to make do with an (empty) Pot Noodle. Haven’t
ARCTIC MONKEYS - R U MINE?
Sarah ManagingJamieson,Editor Woodstock 99 documentary by now (and if not, why not?!), but have Team DIY got any of their own chaotic festival stories up their sleeves?
In honour of Jeppo on our cover, we’ve got to take it back to where it all began: the undisputed sugarpop classic that is ‘Call Me Maybe’. Still a banger a decade on, all together now: “BUT HERE’S MY NUMBER, SO CALL ME MAYBE!”
Listening Post
Don’t think I’ll ever fully recover from seeing at least three (three!) people openly shit on the ground at T in the Park. And they wonder why
Another 2012 banger from a band still killing it in 2022, in the words of Matty Healy at last month’s Reading & Leeds: “Arctic Monkeys and ‘75 in the same week? Get your Dr Martens and your fishnets and your vinyl and your Tumblr aesthetic out! Get ‘em out!” September playlist
Elsewhere this month, we talk Noughties and nostalgia with Mura Masa, delve into the brilliant new solo record from Oliver Sim, and take a peek into the weird and wonderful world of Jockstrap’s debut album. Plus! We take a closer look at the albums shortlisted for the 2022 Mercury Prize with FREE NOW in our v special dedicated section. Everyone’s a winner!
Scan the Spotify code to listen
HELLO SEPTEMBER
Supernormal had it all: pigs playing trumpet ballads, a moving Wicker Man singalong and a
KOJEY RADICAL REASON TO SMILE SAM FENDER SEVENTEEN GOING UNDER The captivating jazz of ‘Forest Floor’ is the follow-up to Fergus Thesinglealbum,AnYouNow’,‘FeetalbumJoyacclaimedMcCreadie’s‘Cairn’.Crookes’debutfeaturingDon’tFailMeand‘WhenWereMine’.unapologeticpopfeaturingthe‘IDoThisAllTime’. Sung almost entirely in Cornish, Tresor is Gwenno Saunders’ third solo album. The latest project from the OfUnder’‘SeventeenwithfromSecond‘Payback’,theLondoner,Eastfeaturingsinglesand‘Silk’.albumSamFender,thesinglesGoingand‘SpitYou’. THIS MUST-HEARYEAR’S ALBUMS THE 2022 MERCURY PRIZE WITH FREE NOW SHORTLISTED ‘ALBUMS OF THE YEAR’
DIYMAG.COM
FERGUS
MCCREADIE FOREST FLOOR JOY CROOKES SKIN SELF-ESTEEM PRIORITISE PLEASURE
GWENNO TRESOR
This third solo album and lead single ‘As It Was’ topped the UK charts on release.
JESSIE BUCKLEY & BERNARD BUTLER FOR ALL THAT THE
YARD ACT THE OVERLOAD
HARRY’S HOUSE HARRY STYES
NOVA TWINS SUPERNOVA
Wet Leg’s selftitled debut album topped the Official Albums Chart with barnstorming singles ‘Chaise Longue’ and ‘Ur Mum’.
HEART
LITTLE SIMZ
TEAR
The ‘100%namesingleYardfromDebutAretheirSouth,LovefromThe&JessiebetweencollaborationdebutBuckleyBernardButler.secondalbumduoAmyandGeorgiabuildingondebut‘WhoTheGirls?’.albumLeeds-basedAct,withtheofthesameandEndurance’.SOMETIMES I MIGHT BE INTROVERT
Working with friend and collaborator Inflo, the album features the singles ‘Woman’ and ‘Introvert’.
WET LEG
OUR DAYS
WET LEG
6 DIYMAG.COM Contributors Adam England, Alex Cabré, Alisdair Grice, Bella Martin, Ben Tipple, Bryony Holdsworth, Cady Siregar, Charlotte Krol, Chris Taylor, Dhruva Balram, Ed Miles, El Hunt, Emma Wilkes, Finlay Holden, Gemma Samways, Holly Whitaker, Ims Taylor, Jenessa Williams, Kate Garner, Kendall Wilson, Louisa Dixon, Max Pilley, Neive McCarthy, Nick Levine, Olivia Stock, Otis Robinson, Saffron Rose, Will Richards. For DIY editorial: info@diymag.com For DIY sales: advertise@diymag.com For DIY stockist enquiries: stockists@diymag.com All material copyright (c). All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, in whole or in part, without the express written permission of DIY. Disclaimer: While every effort is made to ensure the information in this magazine is correct, changes can occur which affect the accuracy of copy, for which DIY holds no responsibility. The opinions of the contributors do not necessarily bear a relation to those of DIY or its staff and we disclaim liability for those impressions. Distributed nationally. CONTENT S NEU 18 CHANNEL TRES 22 PIRI & TOMMY 24 PRETTY SICK Reviews 6068AlbumsLive NEWS 6 OLIVER SIM 10 FLOHIO 12 KASABIAN 16 FESTIVALS Founding Editor Emma Swann Managing Editor Sarah Jamieson Features Editor Lisa Wright Digital Editor Elly Watson Art Direction & Design Louise Mason Cover Photo: Kate Garner 52 38 WUNDERHORSE 50 46 CARLYJEPSENRAE MURA MASA ALEX G 26 MERCURYPRIZE
8 DIYMAG.COM The title [‘Hideous Bastard’] has so questionsmany–Why do I feel afraid? Why do I feel shame? – and so few answers.” SEEKING
And on his debut, he lays himself bare to the extreme. “Been living with HIV since 17, am I hideous?” he sings starkly on opening song
BEAUTY
It sounds, DIY suggests, like something Peggy Mitchell from EastEnders might have screamed at her feckless husband. “I mean, exactly,” Oliver replies with a smile. “A good friend of mine, Rose, calls me it regularly. And it has that English thing of, if you’re gonna talk about yourself at great length, make it self-deprecating.”
This month’s solo debut ‘Hideous Bastard’ finds The xx’s Oliver Sim opening up and letting the world in on his most personal truths.
Words: Nick Levine. Photos: Casper Sejersen.
ven in an era when artists are encouraged to be as raw and authentic as possible, few would name an album ‘Hideous Bastard’. But Oliver Sim, one third of era-defining indie band The xx, doubles down on the idea with artwork that shows his bloodied, sliced-up face covered in letters spelling it out: H-I-D-E-O-U-S B-A-S-T-
”YouA-R-D.know, a lot of this album is about sharing the stuff that has m ade me feel ugly or hideous,” Oliver says when we meet at his record label’s East London offices. “But I also wanted it to have a sense of humour, which not everyone has necessarily understood. ‘Hideous Bastard’ is hilarious to me as well. It’s quite, like, British.”
Oliver has been writing and singing beguilingly emotional songs with The xx for well over a decade, but ‘Hideous Bastard’ - a luminously beautiful collection of bruised confessionals - is his first solo album. Don’t worry about the group’s future, though: after this interview, he’s off to celebrate bandmate Romy Madley-Croft’s birthday. The trio’s third member, Jamie xx, produced ‘Hideous Bastard’ in its entirety. “I’m very fortunate that one of my best friends is, in my opinion, one of the best producers around,” Oliver says matter-of-factly. “If I had made the album with somebody else, I don’t think I could have been this vulnerable.”
When ‘Hideous’ was released as a single in May, it marked the first time that Oliver, 32, had publicly shared his HIV-positive status.
“My initial decision to do that was so impulsive,” he says today. “It was like, ‘I’m just gonna throw this into the world and be done’, because it’s way easier for me to be honest in songwriting than it is in person, in a conversation.”
Oliver says that though those closest to him already knew about his status, he tended to “put an invisible force field around it”; he’d tell someone he was HIVpositive, then never discuss it with them again. So when he played ‘Hideous’ to his mum, she gave him some very sensible advice: “How about you start having some conversations before you put the song out?”
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The musician listened to his mother and began broaching the topic properly with his nearest and dearest. “It was super uncomfortable,” he says, “but I kept at it and started working my way out from my inner circle. My mind wave was like, I knew exactly who knew, I knew if they told anyone else, and that’s my way of navigating this. It was about control, but I had no control.”
A watershed moment came when he started shooting Hideous, an “avant-garde three-part musical” accompanying the album made with visionary French director Yann Gonzalez. In it, he plays three characters - The Artist, The Phantom and The Monster - for a 20-minute short that cleverly blends horror elements with a touching coming-out narrative. He explains that he was thrilled to make Hideous because he’s loved horror since he was a kid –“It scared and excited me, but it could also be camp with amazing female characters” - but it meant playing ‘Hideous’ to an entire cast and “Theycrew.could have gone home and told anyone [about the “living with
‘Hideous’, a stunning ballad featuring guest vocals from Jimmy Somerville, legendary frontman of ‘80s synth-pop bands Bronski Beat and The Communards.
Hethat!”forged
As he acknowledges in the Hideous film with a pithy euphemism, he was never “part of the football crowd”.
‘Hideous Bastard’ is out now via Young. DIY
Today, Oliver says he was aware of this shame before he even had a name for it. “As a kid, I remember there were times where I quite enjoyed being a little more femme and feeling, like, totally at ease with that,” he recalls. “But then I slowly learned that this wasn’t OK. I do remember this marker point when there started to become a divide between what I could be at home and what I could be at school.”
He admits he felt lonely and isolated during the first Covid lockdown, which compelled him to reach out to queer artists who had always inspired him: Gonzalez, John Grant, Elton John.
“He’s very much what he puts out into the world,” Oliver says of the latter.
He also messaged Somerville, whose glorious voice had soundtracked Oliver’s childhood in South West London. “There are videos of Jimmy on YouTube from the ‘80s where he’s appearing on morning TV and consistently saying ‘HIV’, ‘AIDS’, ‘gay gay gay’ to all these families eating their breakfasts,” he says, still sounding impressed. “He seems quite combative, and I was like, I need some of
a friendship with Somerville before floating the idea of working together. “Getting to know Jimmy made me realise that he’s not fearless,” he says. “Like, he’s an anxious Manic Mary, he’s full of fear, which makes everything he’s done so much more cool and meaningful and human.” It’s no coincidence that Somerville, with his face covered in glitter, portrays Oliver’s guardian angel in the Hideous film. The short also features a cameo from another queer icon, recent DIY cover star Bimini, whom the musician describes as “so charismatic, so charming and just so fascinating”.
for being gay. “Far too femme,” he sings on the first verse. “You can dress it away, talk it away - go down the flame, but it’s all pretend.”
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“He’s very potty-mouthed, very loving, and super-interested in new music.”
He may not have found all the answers on ‘Hideous Bastard’, but it sounds as though the creative process yielded some important personal revelations nonetheless. “I’ve realised from airing all this stuff and getting feedback that a lot of what I’ve felt isn’t exclusive to me,” he says. “And it doesn’t make me as hideous as I have always felt. Things aren’t quite so black and white.” He smiles, then adds a heartening final thought: “You know, I always thought I was such an introvert, but I’ve realised through all of this that I actually quite like people!”
The title has that English thing of, if you're gonna talk about yourself at great length, make it self-deprecating.”
11 (OFALBUMTHEYEARMAYBE) guitar music by courting. the debut album. september 23rd. pre-order on courtingband.com
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“A
Naming those that have gone is powerful in and of itself, a way to honour, commemorate and imprint their memory forever onto the world. It’s an act just as important as honouring them in life, because grief is an ongoing conversation. “I try not to overdo it,” she notes. “I want them to rest peacefully.”
“The more I move in this music realm, the more powers I seem to acquire,” she says. “Extraterrestrial ones which make me stronger, not just as an artist but as a person.” And FLOHIO has needed these powers over the past few years.
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contentment, FLOHIO has created a confident project in ‘Out of Heart’. A steadfast, unapologetic statement, it’s a floor-raising album which signifies that the South London rapper is just as capable of creating a full-length project as she is commanding festival stages across the world and experimenting with her EP and single releases. ‘Out of Heart’ may have been a few years in the making but its arrival elevates FLOHIO to new heights.
South London rapper FLOHIO’s debut ‘Out of Heart’ may have been a long time coming, but its emotive, progressive wares show an artist more than worth the wait.
“I play games with my nephew, with my friends,” she says. “It’s something I do to relax my mind. I love the music, and the world you go into. It can also be a super friendly community. It’s how I made friends when I was younger. It helped me solidify friendships.”
Interweaving themes of childhood, self-discoveryloss,and
In that time, however, collaborations with the likes of Modeselektor, The Streets and Clams Casino have ensured that her resume is as long as it is varied. Where most rappers might choose to work with traditional producers and beats, FLOHIO seems fuelled by a fierce DIY aesthetic and disinterest to pander to the hip hop normative: an attitude that also translates to her debut. Almost two years in the making, and accelerated by the pandemic and the additional indoor time that ensued, ‘Out of Heart’ sees her bringing in frequent collaborators, the industrially-minded God Colony, to executively produce the album. “Whenever I have a problem, I go speak to my producer,” Flohio says. “We just talk it out on the track. They know my vibe, they know my creative space.” The features on it are minimal, with New York-based R&B alt-pop artist HAWA the only name with a significant contribution and credit.
ny problems I have, I just go studio,” South Londonbased NigerianBritish-rapper FLOHIO says over a Zoom call. She’s speaking ahead of the release of next month’s debut album ‘Out of Heart’: a 12-track project which skips confidently across sonic palettes to reveal new shades. Her voice is crisp throughout the release, bouncing with drunken bravado over sparse, crackling, anthemic beats which underpin the 29-year-old’s lyrical themes of self-discovery, vulnerability and a certain reckoning with the past. “Music is my way out of things,” she says. “If I’m stuck somewhere, I just have to enter that tunnel vision because music is my light at the end of that Acrosstunnel."the
hroughout ‘Out of Heart’, FLOHIO references her aunt, who recently passed away. She also constantly references Priscilla, one of her oldest and best friends. “Priscilla, I lost a while ago but I think about her daily,” she says slowly today. “You know how you have that one support system or that person that just knows wherever you are, they’re supporting you? It was like that because we were always together. That passing, of course, was premature. That’s why I always want to talk about her because she’d be my age right now, growing up right now.”
Now, however, FLOHIO is itching for the world to hear the project - not only because she’s immensely proud of it, but because she’s already working on new material. Hinting towards future collaborators she’d like to work with, such as a second link up with Clams Casino, FLOHIO is already setting down a path towards the brightest of futures. “Music is my light,” she says. “I just keep going, keep going, keep going.”
“The more I move in this music realm, the more powers I seem to acquire.”
“The consumerism of music is cheaper, faster, everybody wants it,” she says. “The debut album was something everybody was kind of looking forward to because you see new artists and you expect them to do it straightaway. I took longer and I think it was perfect timing because I needed the space.”
“Before youth clubs, my family’s living room was the youth club,” she says with a laugh. Soundtracks like those for Spyro the Dragon, Crash Bandicoot and Final Fantasy influenced the sonic palette throughout ‘Out of Heart’, and reminiscing over and paying homage to them via small Easter eggs became a way for FLOHIO to rediscover her sense of self.
album, ‘Out of Heart’ possesses a coiled energy which FLOHIO seems to unleash as if it’s years of conversation she’s exhaling into the project. It makes sense. Initially turning heads and grabbing headlines when she burst onto the scene in 2016 with pummelling breakout single ‘SE16’, hers is a debut that feels long overdue - the product of more than half a decade’s steady ascent.
T
Central, instead, is FLOHIO herself - her lyrical punches, urgent double-time flows and complex rhyme schemes hidden amongst wobbling bass lines and crashing cymbals. “Been in a messy place / The only way is up / I got my daddy’s trait / Baby I’m smooth as fuck,” she raps on ‘Grace’. ‘Out of Heart’ seems to revolve around a sense of discovery, of an artist finding herself again after grief enveloped her following the death of multiple loved ones.
For the 29-year-old, coming out of grief towards a state of peace involved looking inwards and rediscovering what made her happy. Those moments of contemplation brought about memories of playing video games as a child after her family had moved to London from Nigeria.
‘Out of Heart’ is out 7th October via AWAL. DIY
Words: Dhruva Balram.
14 DIYMAG.COM can't hold them down
Just shy of eight years later, Kasabian are gearing up for another momentous day in the musical calendar. It should be business - albeit particularly exciting business - as usual; the 80,000 people holding tickets for the first night of a twoday Knebworth run are there for Liam Gallagher’s crowning return and, playing second fiddle for the first time in a long time, the pressure should in theory be off. But try telling that to the six-foot-four ball of wired energy about to make his life change forever.
“As an experience, it was like jumping out of a plane,” recalls Serge Pizzorno of stepping out in front of an enormous, history-making crowd for the first time as his band’s newlypromoted frontman. “Going up in the plane you’re thinking, what am I doing this for? I was having a good time down there. Is the parachute OK? Weren’t you out last night… weren’t WE out last night ‘til 4am? Are you sure you’ve packed this properly?! And then you make the decision to jump and you have no choice but to do it once you step on that
B
the plate. “He made his choice so it was like, well what are we gonna do now?”
about Knebworth and imagine the likely outcome of what’s gonna happen, but once you step on stage, once you’ve jumped, then you’re flying. It was the most exhilarating, unbelievable experience. I said as a joke, I went to bed as Keith [Richards] and I woke up as Mick [Jagger]. I was that guy and now I’m this guy. To hold an audience that size, you’ve got to become something else…”
“Youstage.canthink
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ack in 2014, headlining Sunday night on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage felt like the last rung in the ladder for Kasabian to climb. As a wise man once said, if you can make it there you’ll make it anywhere and, having roused a 100,000-strong field full of four-dayhangover-weary punters into flare-waving, roaring abandon, their place at the top table of UK live music felt assured from thereon in. No stage too big for their brand of incendiary, turbo-charged mega-bangers, polarising as they could sometimes be as an entity, no one could dare question the band’s chops on the live stage.
‘The Alchemist’s Euphoria’ is out now via Columbia. DIY
Forced to sack the vocalist who’d stood front and centre stage for the past two decades, the road to Kasabian’s seventh album was one of big changes and big risks. With ‘The Alchemist’s Euphoria’, Serge Pizzorno is harnessing the reins and stepping back into battle. Words: Lisa Wright. Photos: Ed Miles. Art direction: Louise Mason.
“That whole period was just completely heartbreaking, and working through all that as a band was just horrendous. [But] it’s one of those things where, at that point, the band wanted to carry on and it didn’t seem fair that we weren’t allowed to or we shouldn’t because it’s our band and it’s my life’s work. It’s like choosing your regrets. I could have easily gone, ‘It’s too much, it’s too big’. But it just wasn’t really an option. Those songs and the vision are pretty much - well they are - I did it all. So to just not be able to do that just didn’t sit right, and I think we owed it to the band, so that’s where we’re at with it.”
“It’s your family’s and [your] life and you’re just coming to terms with it all yourself, so it was quite intense,” he continues of the public pressure put on the band in the immediate aftermath. “If I’m totally honest, I kind of kept away from [the online chat]. I could get a sense but then if you read too much into it you’d be frightened to leave the house. We loved and supported Tom through it all [before] so it’s not like we had anything to be worried about, we did all we could.”
“We thought it was over. We thought those days were genuinely gone and we’d never see them again.” - Serge Pizzorno DIYin 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.
At the time, the band were subjected to criticism from some quarters for only sacking the singer just as the incident was about to be made public. Did they get much notice from Meighan before the information was released to the press, we ask? Serge responds with a wry laugh: “It wasn’t dealt with very well on Tom’s side, let’s put it that way…
he circumstances surrounding the guitarist-turnedsinger’s switch to centre stage have, of course, been well-documented. In July 2020, former vocalist and founding member Tom Meighan was convicted of assault against his fiancée (now wife) Vikki Ager. In a statement the day before the news broke, the band announced Meighan’s immediate departure “by mutual consent”. “Tom has struggled with personal issues that have affected his behaviour for quite some time and now wants to concentrate all his energies on getting his life back on track. We will not be commenting further,” said the post.
Read the full feature at diymag.com/ kasabian.
“I’ve gotta be honest, I know people say, ‘Oh we’re so glad we’re able to do this’, but properly, genuinely, we’re blessed that people are coming to the shows and getting into the new music. We thought it was over. We thought those days were genuinely gone and we’d never see them again, so to get another crack at it is making it all the more beautiful.”
Serge explains.
And so, having “never wanted to be a frontman or thought that was part of the story”, Serge found himself at the mic. In November 2021, Kasabian played a series of - for them - lowkey shows, including an opening night at Glasgow’s O2 Academy and a stop off at London’s Brixton Academy. Their toe-in-the-water first gigs back, the reviews were unanimously positive, the crowd reaction as fervent as ever. “We had no real idea how anyone would take it or what it would feel like, but within 30 seconds of the Glasgow gig it was like, this is gonna be a lot of fun,” he smiles.
Three months after the trial, Tom embarked on a solo career. Serge says that he’s yet to listen to any of the tracks (“I’m not ready yet, but I’ll get there”), but that his former band mate’s decision alleviated any aboutperipherallingeringdoubtssteppingup to
There’d Better Be A Mirrorball
‘Black Mascara’ was written about - as she told DIY last issue - when her drink was spiked. But it could just as easily be referencing her much-discussed label turmoil (“Heart broke but I’m still looking like millions”), or simply a troublesome ex (“You made your bed / Lied your lies / And fucked my mind up”). In true disco style, the teary lyricsoften given weight by the singer’s emotive vocal - are underpinned by a building, euphoric pop soundtrack to create a pure earworm. Listen close enough, and your mascara will run, too.
ARCTIC MONKEYS
TEGAN AND SARA Faded Like A Feeling
HEARD?UYOHAVE
Via 2019’s ‘Hey, I’m Just Like You’ and the pair’s memoir released the same week, Tegan and Sara were getting nostalgic before the rest of us were forced into it. That record saw the Canadian duo revisiting demos recorded in their teens - and so it’s probably little surprise the ‘90s deep-dive has swayed them back to their indie-rock roots for Album Ten. ‘Faded Like A Feeling’ is a sweet, understated number that’s closer to their early work than the alt-pop bombast of their mid-‘10s output, relying more on the vocal interplay between the twins than ‘80s-indebted synthwork. A sort of ‘everything is just OK’, if you will. (Louisa Dixon)
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Approximately 50% of FIDLAR’s output is about diving headfirst into intoxicated chaos, while the other half details the guilt and regret of the aftermath; the perpetual cycle of frontman Zac Carper’s demons laid out for all to see. ‘FSU’ is thematically business as usual, then. But as 2019’s immaculate ‘Almost Free’ gave us deliciously hi-fi noise, and ‘Too’ before that built on the LA group’s scruffy punk roots with expansive glee, future FIDLAR looks to be gloriously heavy. Pummelling drums underpin a bluesmetal riff that’s slowed down to emphasise the dirge, while Zac’s screaming is at its most unhinged yet. More like this, please. (Emma Swann)
FIDLAR FSU
THE 1975 I’m In Love With You
(Bella Martin)
RAYE Black Mascara
They’re back! And on the long-awaited first taste of ‘The Car’, Arctic Monkeys are on as fine form as ever, refining the luxe crackle of 2018’s ‘Tranquillity Base...’ into something more moving: “Sci-fi is off the table. We are back to earth,” Alex Turner recently said of the Sheffield icons’ forthcoming seventh record. Over a looping synth and Matt Helders’ light, jazzy drums, ‘There’d Better Be A Mirrorball’ is just that: an earnest heartbreaker that trades lunar humour for sepia-toned strings and Alex’s smoothest falsetto. In a word: gorgeous. (Alex Cabré)
After giving the track its debut at their recent triumphant live returns, the latest taste of forthcoming album ‘Being Funny In A Foreign Language’ comes in the shape of the decidedly feel-good ‘I’m In Love With You’. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to say to you, but I just can’t do it,” sings Matty Healy over the plucky backing, before diving into the infectious repeated chorus of “I’m in love with you”. Channelling previous single ‘Happiness’ in its shimmering indie-pop stylings, ‘Being Funny In A Foreign Language’ looks set to be one of the ’75’s best yet. (Elly Watson)
Making the specific universal is an enviable skill when it comes to songwriting - but then RAYE’s track record in this area suggests she’s able to make almost every other penner of pop bops jealous.
I did manage to run away for a little holiday on my one week off just before festivals started, though. It’s been a great and very full festival season. It’s a good job being on stage is one of my favourite things.
You're playing Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg. How have any previous shows in Germany gone?
FESTIVALinNewsBrief
I’ve played two shows in Germany this year - with Viagra Boys in Hamburg and Cologne. They were incredible.
We last saw you back in March at SXSW - what have you been up to in the interim?
We'll be returning to Europe's favourite venue - Molotow - on Wednesday 21st, with The Mysterines, STONE, The Goa Express and Lime Garden.
Playing Glastonbury for the first time was of course a dream come true! I ended up doing five shows at Glastonbury I think.. Bluedot felt like a very special show as well.
Nuha Ruby Ra, meanwhile, travels to Hamburg hot on the heels of a summer that's taken in festivals across the continent following a spring that saw her support Class of 2022 superstars Yard Act, post-punk outfit Bambara and work with some big names.
Q&A Nuha Ruby Ra
The first acts for next year’s Slam Dunk (27th - 28th May) have been revealed, with reunion shows for Kids in Glass Houses and The Academy Is confirmed alongside acts including Creeper, Billy Talent and Noahfinnce
Deer Shed will return in 2023, taking place for the thirteenth time on 28th - 31st July once again at Baldersby Park in North Yorkshire.
I’ve been on tour ever since! With maybe three or four days off in between. I’m very tired, frequently insane, often emotional and very happy. After SXSW I went on tour with Warmduscher, then did a couple of shoots with two of my favourite photographers - Hedi Slimane and Maisie Cousins. I’m a huge of fan of both their work so they were high points for me! Then I carried on backto-back touring with Bambara, Viagra Boys, Yard Act, and King Gizzard.
show at the British Music Embassy which felt insane on many levels, it was the best start to the week! I had a great crew of friends who were also playing this year. I spent my days mostly with Sinead O’Brien and band and Faux Real. Between us we know how to find a good time.
Tickets for Reading & Leeds 2023 are already on sale. The festival will take place between 25th and 27th August, at Richfield Avenue and Bramham Park respectively.
21st - 24th September. Various venues, Hamburg.
This month will see the full-on return of Reeperbahn Festival as Hamburg prepares to play host to acts from across the globe. From big names (Joy Crookes, Anna Calvi) to newer favourites like Crawlers, Honeyglaze, Naima Bock and Sinead O'Brien - the streets will be literally paved with buzz.
ReeperbahnFESTIVALSFestival
Any standout festival highlights so far in 2022?
I got a very warm reception and there was high energy. I am a big fan of both.
Animal Collective, Black Country, New Road, Do Nothing and BODEGA are among acts confirmed for Brighton’s multi-venue Mutations (3rd - 6th November), with Wunderhorse, Lynks and Coach Party also on the bill.
Where has been your favourite place to travel through touring this year?
Austin and SXSW was electric! I got off the plane straight to play the DIY
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“We know what traditional house music is, but I do a version of house that’s not so traditional.”
Sharing the record’s funky first taste ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ in July, Tres describes his debut as like a “trip down memory lane”. “It's a story of progression, mixed with survivor's guilt-slash-[being] like, ‘But I got to do this’,” he continues. “There’s personal sacrifice, and all those things you feel when you want to achieve something beyond where you grew up. Are you going to do something beyond the limitations that you were given?
blurring sound, finding fans in the likes of JPEGMAFIA, Tyler, the Creator and Swedish pop queen Robyn. “It’s an honour,” he notes of their past collaborations including 2019’s JPEG-featuring track ‘Black Moses’ and 2020’s Tyler team-up ‘Fuego’. “It’s cool to work with people that came before you and did a lot of things. You learn tidbits and try to take what you can, and when I'm in the position to do the same thing I want to do that as well.
DIY
up in Compton, Tres was originally drawn to West Coast music as a kid, citing Dr Dre and Ice Cube as early influences, as well as the gospel music his great grandparents would play. However, it wasn’t until he discovered Outkast in 2003 and picked up Kanye West’s landmark 2004 debut ‘The College Dropout’ that he truly saw his path. “I was able to relate to them being from the hood and not necessarily being a part of the lifestyle, but growing up around it,” he explains. “I clung to them because they were able to bridge that gap between kids like me and being in that world with the gangsters, and it made it cool.”
Lucky that it did, as he’s since become renowned for his genre-
Though we’re sure the artist - aka Sheldon Young - would have been an excellent asset in putting out a fire, his decision to focus his energies on creating exciting musical blazes seems better-placed. An experimental hip hop artist with a unique take on rap, house and dance, Tres is already proving himself an intriguing new voice who sits at the centre of the
Growingthree.
“When I was younger,” begins Channel Tres, “I wanted to be a firefighter, I wanted to be a teacher, I wanted to do all these things to show that I can be a man and have a sustainable lifestyle. But then I was just like, ‘Fuck it, I’m done pretending. I want to be a musician.’”
CHANNEL TRES
“And also when that happens, how to deal with it and what feelings it brings up, because people want success or want to get to the other side, but on the other side it's not always just rosy. It’s a lot of other things,” he nods. “It's new problems, it's new things. It's putting those feelings into a record, but being able to dance through them and feel good.”
Creating his Channelself-describedownnicheofComptonhouse,Tresisdancingallthewaytothetop.
Having produced his first beat at the age of 11, Tres continued to experiment musically with consistently one aim: to “make people move”. Fast-forward to college and an accidental trip down a YouTube wormhole that ended with him binge-watching house music documentaries, and it all clicked. “I just needed a different type of music to fit what I was doing, staying up to study for a lot of classes, and [house] music helped me stay awake!” he laughs. “I then just started flipping samples and putting it to that tempo, and it just kind of crept up on me.”
“It’s just like, maybe all those times I wanted to give up or all those times I was questioning myself or this didn't get as much likes or some shit, you just think back and be like, ‘What am I in it for?’” he continues. “I'm in it to contribute to music and be a voice for my community and do what I'm supposed to be doing, you know? I've taken a lot of things from those people and from the moments that I spent with them.”
Now set to release new album ‘Real Cultural Shit’ later this year, he’s ready to share his music with a wider audience, as well as providing any new listeners with “a proper introduction to Compton house”. “That’s just the way I can express myself at the moment,” he shares of the description. “We know what traditional house music is, but I do a version of house that’s not so traditional. I named it Compton house, which is basically just West Coast me over the type of music that I made. It’s just me, you know?”
Words: Elly Watson.
LISTEN: 2021 single ‘Lucy’s Odyssey’ is a gorgeous, weirdly sensual slice of psych-pop that perfectly showcases the band’s joie de vivre.
tick that box quite like having resident crooner
SIMILAR TO: Fellow Dubliners Sprints, stripped back to their bare bones.
M(H)AOL
Blue Bendy’s debut EP ‘Motorbike’, released at the start of the year, introduces a band stretching the fabric of traditional genres. Behind the esoteric, booming voice of frontman Arthur Nolan is a kaleidoscopic wonderland of punk, folk and jazz which swells and retreats like the waves and always teeters on the edge of chaos. It makes little sense on paper but sounds utterly delightful.
LISTEN: ‘Spring 100’ is the ideal introduction to their innovatively strange noises.
SIMILAR TO: A history lesson wrapped up in a fun and silly package.
Alissic’s music is torn between the past and the future. On recent single ‘Superstitious’, she mines the Latin American pop sounds from her homeland of Brazil, while follow-up ‘Everybody’s Dead Inside’ is an early-‘00s pop-rock smash. Then, enter the plastic-y future-pop of huge new track ‘Bugfood’, which flips the script entirely and sounds like Chvrches fronted by Alice Glass. Keep an eye on this one.
SIMILAR TO: A curious new pop star trying on many different hats.
BLUE BENDY
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Matt Maltese-tipped dreamy song-writer.
If you need any indication that you’re in the running to be the next best musician,heartstring-pullingLondon-basedfewthings
Post punk-laced patriarchal frustration.
ALISSIC
MARCUSETTA
LISTEN: Indie-tinged recent single ‘Crown’.
Matt Maltese jump on an early track for a duet. Enter Etta Marcus and last year’s gorgeous ‘Salt Lake City’. Following it up with a string of equally mesmerizing singles, Etta’s emotion-fuelled songwriting and rich vocals will have you dealing with feelings you didn’t even know that you had.
Glorious, charismatic surf-pop from South Wales.
SIMILAR TO: Your new go-to emotional cab ride home soundtrack.
LISTEN: ‘Bored of Men’ is their most concise missive to date.
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RECOMMENDED
With saxophones, delicious harmonies and buckets of wit in tow, Melin Melyn are on a mission to expand the horizons of Welsh language music. Their songs - which straddle psych, pop and indie - are amiable, melody-packed ditties on the surface, but dig a little deeper and you see studies of Welsh history and ancient tales brought into the present day with a refreshing lack of pretension.
Inventive, exploratory art-rock from the South London cauldron.
Malleable, charismatic pop from Sheffield via Brazil (really!).
Pronounced ‘male’, the purposeful skewering of Dublin quartet M(h)aol’s chosen moniker tallies perfectly with the barbed, feminist post-punk the band have put out into the world to date. Last year’s debut EP ‘Gender Studies’ rattled in on five short, antagonistic tracks filled with social and self examination; this summer’s single ‘Bored of Men’, meanwhile, saw the band gritting their teeth at the constant barrage of headlines afforded to problematic males.
MELIN MELYN
LISTEN: ‘Superstitious’ and ‘Bugfood’ represent the breadth of her ambition.
SIMILAR TO: Very little else, and that’s their power.
Dora Jar’s first single for Island comes off the back of a huge arena tour in support of Billie Eilish. It’s clearly had an influence on ‘Bumblebee’, too. The new track is a fizzing, vibrant indie-pop gem able to command any arena on earth. “I’ll become a bumblebee / pollinate the stadium,” she sings, with everyone who comes into contact with the eccentric future star set to be instantly converted.
“To me, ‘The Lazer’ always felt like my big Personal Trainer anthem,” frontman Willem Smit said of the song, and it’s a brilliant first statement to preview the album.
“I wanted the vocal to sound like somebody drunk and feeling sorry for themselves,” says the band’s Andreas Christodoulidis of the track. “I then wrote the lyrics to the chorus, which are loosely about getting away from a place and a feeling, but sensing that you won’t ever manage to.”
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NO MATTERLAUGHING
This November, the exciting duo will strike out alone and have detailed their debut UK headline tour! Alongside slots at Live At Leeds, SWN Festival and Pitchfork Paris, they will play a host of headline shows, finishing up in London at The Lexington on 28th November. Full dates and ticket details can be found on diymag.com now.
QUEENS OF THE ROAD
COURAGEDUTCH
BUZZ FEEDAll the buzziest new happeningsmusicinoneplace.
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Amsterdam seven-piece Personal Trainer have announced that they’ll be releasing their debut album ‘Big Love Blanket’ on 4th November. The album is being previewed by first single ‘The Lazer’, which you can listen to on diymag.com now. Headline UK tour dates follow later in the year.
Every week on Spotify, we update DIY’s Neu Discoveries playlist with the buzziest, freshest faces. Here’s our pick of the best new tracks:
Across 2022 so far, Prima Queen have played our very own festival, DIY Alive, joined us on Brighton Pier for the DIY stage at The Great Escape and toured with the likes of Wet Leg and Sunflower Bean.
DORA BUMBLEBEEJAR
CATHY GASLIGHTJAIN
Want to stream our Neu playlist while you’re reading? Scan the code now and get listening.
LIPOCHRISSI
Next off the post-punk production line are Alcopop!-signed KEG, a band with the intense, fizzing energy of a vat of Coke and Mentos. New track ‘NPC’, the latest preview of upcoming EP ‘Girders’, is written about the “sonic torture” endured by prisoners at the hands of the British Army, and while it certainly has intensity at its heart, the final product is more delight than torment.
“I wrote ‘Lipo’ because I was upset with a guy who sexualised me and then decided he couldn’t be with me because he didn’t want his friends to know what he’s into,” Chrissi explains of her new song, and this mix of shame and subsequent empowerment following heartbreak is a powerful combo, translated by brilliantly charismatic vocals and luxurious instrumentals. “Everyone has to kiss a few frogs I suppose,” Chrissi reflects of the experience. “Made a banger out of it though!” Too right she did.
Glasgow quartet Humour have shared news of their forthcoming debut EP, with the cheerily-titled ‘Pure Misery’ landing on 25th November. Ahead of the release comes new single ‘Alive and Well’, which wails into life with an onslaught of bawling vocals and a searing, doomy bass line.
The first taster of Cathy Jain’s upcoming EP ‘Spacegirl’ is, she says, a track “about crushing on someone and then acting extremely weird in the whole situation”, and this disorientation is transmitted perfectly via ‘Gaslight’’s gloopy synths. Its chorus, though, hints at a sense of clarity as her gorgeous, melodic vocals rise through the fog and create something more anthemic than intimate. It’s a sonic juxtaposition that works perfectly.
Releasing their disco-infused first single ‘it’s a match’ last year, they soon began to pull inspiration from dance, jazz and funk as well. “If you hear a break in a certain way, or just a rhythmic pattern, you’re like, ‘Ah, I’ll use that, that’ll be cool,” tommy explains of his process. “Then I just jam, and try to create a vibe.” piri nods, saying: “We hear a lot on the radio and we’ll be like, ‘Ooh, we should make a track for this vibe’."
The duo’s subsequent offerings have seen them hailed as a revitalisingly fresh asset to the UK dance scene, from their effortlessly catchy hit ‘soft spot’ to recent sunshine-soaked single ‘on & on’. “Overseas in America, the new youth - like Gen Z and youngerhaven’t really heard much drum’n’bass or all these old school UK sounds,” piri notes. “With the pop songwriting as well a dreamy vocal, it makes it a lot more accessible to a lot of people rather than just instrumental dance music, which is a little bit more niche. [Our sound] marries these two really popular things in a cool way, I guess. Also we just try and make good songs, that’s always the goal.”
PIRI & TOMMY
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“I want to make a proper disco record,” notes tommy of their next venture. “I just want to be in Chic, basically. That’s the goal. Just make big, big disco tunes. That would be really hard and I like a challenge. You’ve got to keep setting the goals high, you know? It’s so important. You’ve just got to go for it. Anything is possible!”
Words: Elly Watson
piri & tommy have even picked up a few famous fans along the way, getting shout outs from the likes of PinkPantheress and Charli XCX. “Obviously, between ourselves, we were going mad,” piri laughs. “But on the outside, we were trying to be cool and not be annoying. It’s hard when you’re starstruck!”
It’s something the duo will only have to get more used to as their debut mixtape arrives later this year. Based on their first year of writing music together, they promise lots of different genres, “all good vibes,” and a debut lead vocal from tommy. And they’re already pumped for what the future holds, with that forthcoming mixtape’s follow-up already halfwritten when we speak.
irst dates can often lead to their fair share of unexpected surprises. Seldom, however, do they end with a partnership that can also call itself one of the hottest new names in UK dance. Yet, for Manchester-based piri & tommy, not only did an Instagram DM slide lead to a new relationship, it also conjured up a musical viral success story and an eagerly-awaited forthcoming debut project. They have slight differing opinions on how it all started though…
Currently boasting nearly half a million monthly listeners on Spotify, the pair have tapped into an escapist and euphoric sound that’s already winning them legions of fans: check their recent TikTok viral moments for proof. “It really came out of nowhere,” piri recalls of seeing ‘soft spot’ shoot up everyone’s For You page. “I was obviously trying to promote it, but then this totally random video just blew up. Then a couple of others blew up, and it was just really lucky.” “It was the most life-changing moment really,” tommy smiles. “It was just like, ‘Bloody hell, I can do this’.”
Music,‘Validation!’”piriexplains, never felt like a realistic career path until this project. “I didn't really ever intend to be a musician. I always played guitar, but I didn't really see any way to make actual music. It seemed like, super impossible. I would always just write songs, [but it was] very much a hobby”.
Partners in and out of music, the Manchester pair’s intrinsic bond is taking them from viral newcomers to UK dance’s next big hope.
“The accessiblesongwritingpopanddreamyvocalsmakeitmorethanjustinstrumentaldancemusic.”-piri
“That was not at all how it was!” singer piri - aka Sophie McBurnielaughs after her producer boyfriend-bandmate Tommy Villiers hints that she began singing right after he first showed her how he makes beats. “I did not just sing in front of you straight away, I was bare nervous!” she corrects, adding: “tommy was a proper musician and I didn’t consider myself a musician, so I was obviously very, very intimidated. I went on GarageBand on my phone and wrote down a million different ideas and eventually showed him one, and I had to leave the room while he was listening to it. Then he liked it and I was like,
But ever since they first met online, piri & tommy have excelled together. With tommy having previously cut his teeth in several bands including fellow Manchester outfit Porij, from the first time the pair started writing together, they knew they were onto something special. “It was definitely that dance vibe straightaway,” piri notes. “I was like, ‘Man, this is straight up the most ethereal vibes’,” tommy recalls thinking. “It sounded like Fleetwood Mac house!” piri agrees: “Yeah, it just kind of worked, literally from the go.”
DIY
“I feel like this album in particular is what young me wanted to do the whole time. It’s those direct influences of Hole and Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana, and a little bit of The Velvet Underground and The Doors and the stuff I grew up really loving - that’s what this album is to me, to the point where I’m almost like, shit…” laughs Sabrina Fuentes, “I’ve been working my way up to these influences for so many years, now what?!”
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Though still in her early twenties, Sabrina has already clocked up a decade writing under the moniker of Pretty Sick. The project started aged 13 in New York and, via various incarnations of the line up, is currently based in London, where the singer-guitarist moved to study four years ago. Despite NYC’s storied history of guitar bands, she explains that it’s only been since her transatlantic relocation that things have truly started to click into place. “New York’s a really hard city to play music in because it’s so expensive. I think the move here is what made me feel like I could be a full-time musician because in New York that didn’t seem like an option,” she nods. “Moving here is what made me feel like this is actually real. It’s something I always dreamed of and didn’t think I was necessarily going to
PRETTY SICK
Channelling the grizzled catharsis of ‘90s grunge, Sabrina Fuentes and her band have crossed the Atlantic and come out fighting.
“It’s like a ‘you did this to yourself’ mindset - you got yourself here and you’re gonna have to get yourself out and you can’t blame anybody else,” she nods. “Whereas when I was younger, I felt a bit more woe is me, my life is so hard. Now it’s like, the call is coming from inside the house…”
to Dirty Hit for the release, this month’s debut LP ‘Makes Me Sick, Makes Me Smile’ lands as a raw exploration into the darker recesses of Sabrina’s mind, fuelled by ragged vocals and fuzzy melody, and
“As an artist, it’s Fuentes-anything.”trydoesn’tthismean,whatsayeasyoftentohalfofyoubutalbumtohideSabrina
Words: Lisa Wright.
produced by alt-rock legend Paul Kolderie - the man behind the desk of, among countless others, Hole’s ‘Live Through This’ and Radiohead’s ‘Pablo Honey’. The unadorned, ugly-beautiful nature of the record is there from its track titles - ‘Drunk’, ‘Sober’, ‘Dirty’ - outwards. Citing that “with each release, a bit of a philosophy goes along with it”, Fuentes labels ‘Makes Me Sick…’ as “ about overcoming the parts of you that are holding yourself back”.
If the call on Pretty Sick’s debut is sometimes a 999 emergency, then it’s one that’s thankfully unlikely to be life-threatening. Though frustration and angst run rife, there are also moments of prettiness and big grungey melodic kicks to be found that should see the band find a happy home when they join Beabadoobee on the road this autumn. If you’re looking for a new band to let it all out to, Pretty Sick have all the ingredients lined up for a cathartic purge. “As an artist, it’s often easy to say half of what you mean and then imply something else, or say what you mean but over a really happy song, but this doesn’t try to hide anything,” Sabrina says. “It’s just really laying it all out there, cut and dried, as straightforward as possible.” DIY
of
Styles’ shortlisted albums all corners of brilliance British music; the next few pages, just what impact the twelve shortlisted albums have made so far.
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he past twelve months have seen the release of some incredible albums from British artists, all spanning a huge variation of musical genres and backgrounds. Now, once again, the 2022 Mercury Prize with FREE NOW is highlighting twelve of the most standout examples.
This section is brought to you as part of our media partnership with FREE NOW, the mobility super app! Move to the music with FREE NOW and get 50% off your first 2 rides with code FNXDIY22. FREE NOW THE MOBILITY SUPER APP
‘Harry’s House’, this year’s
we explore
THE PRIZE ALL EYES ON
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Fergus McCreadie Forest Floor (p26) Gwenno Tresor (p27) Harry Styles Harry’s House (p28) Bernard Butler and Jessie Buckley For All Our Days That Tear the Heart (p29) Joy Crookes Skin (p30) Kojey Radical Reason To Smile (p31) Little Simz Sometimes I Might Be Introvert (p32) Nova Twins Supernova (p33) Sam Fender Seventeen Going Under (p34) Self Esteem Prioritise Pleasure (p35) Wet Leg Wet Leg (p36) Yard Act The Overload (p37) THE 2022 MERCURY PRIZE WITH FREE NOW SHORTLIST IS…
From the intoxicating and important exploration of equality in Self Esteem’s ‘Prioritise Pleasure’, to the inspiring coming-of-age story within Sam Fender’s ‘Seventeen Going Under’; from the tour de force that is Little Simz’ ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert’ to the glorious, accomplished pop sheen of Harry
It varies track to track, but I’d say the ratio is between 30-40% composition and then the rest is improvised.
FORESTMFERGUScCREADIEFLOOR
The obvious thing is that people are finding the music, I suppose. The two hard things about being an artist are making good music in the first place, and then getting people to actually listen to it. That’s the other half of the battle, so anything like this helps a lot. There’s a big uptick in Spotify [streams] and I’ve had a lot of people who aren’t even jazz fans post or message me saying they really like the album. Jazz has this unfortunate reputation about being all weird notes or whatever, or something that’s really intense. Hopefully this album proves that jazz and improvised music can be really beautiful.
Ahead of the 2022 Mercury Prize with FREE NOW, we caught up with Fergus to talk about the impact of the shortlisting, the connection between nature and improvisation, and the importance of diversity to institutions like this. Interview: Max Pilley.
To what extent is your music improvised?
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Every gig becomes different as we explore little corners of the tune that we’ve never explored before. The songs evolve over time by leaving them open, which makes it fun for us and hopefully for the audience too.
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AlthoughMcCreadie.Fergushas
Jazz is very flexible; it can go either way. I always veer towards the improvisation side because, as a trio, we can get such a good dialogue going between us. I want to leave the compositions as frameworks as much as possible, that can be altered during performances.
People will be able to tell from the track titles alone that the album is inspired by nature and the wild, and it’s like you can hear the changing of the seasons in the songs. You returned to your
In among this year’s big hitters, we find ‘Forest Floor’: the third long-player from Scottish jazz prodigy Fergus
very year, the list of shortlisted artists for the Mercury Prize contains a small handful of legitimate surprises, and 2022 is no different.
I was actually just sitting at a piano, practicing, and the guy who runs my label called and said he had some news. He didn’t even say it was good news, I was preparing for the worst. But he said I’d been shortlisted for the Mercury, which was the best news it could have been! No, it’s great, it’s such a surprising thing. These kinds of things make a huge difference, especially if you’re a jazz artist and less mainstream - to be up for a mainstream thing, it’s crazy. It’s unusual for me.
It was during lockdown, and I just had so much time to find places around the home that I’d never found before. It’s difficult with music, it’s not like I’m telling the listener what they should be thinking about when they listen. The reason that improvised music can be so provocative is that it is by nature unpredictable, which is true about nature as well. You can research everything about it, but you’ll still be surprised. That confluence between improvisation and nature works quite well in trying to evoke something.
quietly been amassing a loyal following in jazz circles since his debut album ‘Turas’ in 2018, his inclusion on the list has skyrocketed him into a new stratosphere. Recorded with his regular trio (rounded out by double bassist David Bowden and drummer Stephen Henderson), ‘Forest Floor’ acts as a showcase for Fergus’ outstanding skills as a pianist. Its tracks are inspired by the beauty and natural ruggedness of the Clackmannanshire countryside that surrounds the family home that he retreated to during lockdown; we hear the seasons change and the ecosystem churn and regenerate before our very ears.
family home in Clackmannanshire to record. How did that place inspire the music?
Have you noticed the effect of the shortlisting already?
“HOPEFULLY THIS ALBUM PROVES THAT JAZZ AND IMPROVISED MUSIC CAN BE REALLY BEAUTIFUL.”
Congratulations on being shortlisted for the 2022 Mercury Prize with FREE NOW! Tell us what receiving that news was like.
It’s incredible! It’s brilliant and surreal; I mean, I’m on a list with Harry Styles! It’s the first non-English language album [ever to be shortlisted], so that’s huge, I think. I’m really happy to be the first and I hope we’re definitely not the last. What’s been fantastic has been to get to this point having not compromised. This has been a decade-long collaboration between myself and Rhys [Edwards, her producer and husband]. When we first met, we sat in a pub in Soho and we wrote everything down in a list - I don’t think the Mercury Prize was on it - but we had this mission. Rhys is from North Wales and I’m from South, but we’re both very passionate about the communities that we come
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Was part of that list in Soho ten years ago that you would focus solely on making records in Welsh and/or Cornish?
My relationship with the language has been evolving. After ‘Le Kov’, I’d gotten to know a lot of Cornish artists, and my whole thing with the language is that it needs to grow with me. I really wanted to force the language to be useful for me, having been through the process of becoming a parent, and being aware that it was now my responsibility to be the sole source of this language for my child. I felt, with Cornish, that there were experiences to do with being a woman that hadn’t been explored before, because historically a lot of what is out there is manuscripts from the Middle Ages and a lot of the text was written by white, middle-aged men. There are texts written by women, but generally they talk about Cornwall as a country, rather than from a personal perspective. So, those were the driving factors, I wanted to make something very emotional. If I’m emotionally expressing myself in a language, that expression of desire comes through.
“IF I’M EMOTIONAL EXPRESSING MYSELF IN A LANGUAGE, THAT EXPRESSION OF DESIRE COMES THROUGH.
Records that recognise the influences of the music that we love, from Welsh and Cornish language artists, but also from international artists too. We’re not an isolated community of people, everybody is interconnected. It was about being very confident about this music being as good as anyone else’s, because music is an international language. It’s about being confident about your differences as well. If it’s good, it’s good, and that’s all we’re focused on, making good records.
TRESORGWENNO
he fact that Gwenno’s third album ‘Tresor’ has been shortlisted for the 2022 Mercury Prize with FREE NOW is an immense achievement in itself, but even more so when you discover this is the first time an album sung entirely in languages other than English has appeared on the
her previous album, 2018’s ‘Le Kov’, ‘Tresor’ is predominantly sung in Cornish, the Celtic language that had been declared extinct back in the 18th Century. Having grown up surrounded by the language - thanks to her Cornish father, the poet and journalist Tim Saunders, and her Welshspeaking mother who successfully campaigned to have Welsh named the country’s official language - it was after the success of ‘Le Kov’ that Gwenno was credited by the Cornish Language Board as helping to bring about an increase in the number of people taking Cornish language exams in 2018. Unsurprisingly, her latest album is already surpassing its predecessor’s achievements, and the rugged, rustic earthiness of its production, matched with the wondrous beauty of its compositions are a fine match for the contours of land that the record
Tell us about what being shortlisted means to you.
from and that they should have a place in the landscape of popular music - or at least marginal, independent popular music! The fact that we’ve reached here, it just feels really validating and encouraging. It’s such an obvious thing, but the more you are expressing what you are, the easier it is for other people to understand you.
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Yes, but also we just wanted to make records that we wanted to hear.
You travelled to St. Ives to write the songs on ‘Tresor’, which you didn’t do for ‘Le Kov’. How do you think that changed the final album this time?
2022 Mercury Prize with FREE NOW, we caught up with her to talk about the album. Interview: Max Pilley.
Flanked once again by the writing dream team of Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson, Harry knows the value of good interior design. Across 13 tracks, ‘Harry’s House’ achieves an effortless balance between retro and modern sounds, seemingly knowing that he will reach the ears of a multi-generational, multi-demographic fanbase. ‘Music For A Sushi Restaurant’, meme-ily named after hearing his own album playing in an Asian eatery, is fittingly inspired by Japanese City Pop, a parping chorus that begs for joy and effortlessly receives it. It was a natural opener at his recent stadium shows, scatting and squeaking its way into instant feel-good territory.
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Whether he’s going for noodling observations or hip-swaying sex songs, Styles’ greatest schtick has always been his ability to make music that champions positivity and kindness. He’s attempted state-ofaffairs - or 'Sign Of The Times' - anthems before, but ‘Matilda’ proves itself to be his most affecting ballad to date, paying tribute to a person brave enough to shun an unloving nuclear family and write themselves into happier being: “You can let it go / You can throw a party full of everyone you know…You don't have to be sorry for leaving and growing up.”
ne of the most famous pop stars of his generation, very few could claim not to know Harry Styles. But while his self-titled debut showed that he could do folky ballads, and his second record rendered him the prince of technicolour pop, you could never be quite sure of exactly where this ex-boybander hung his musical hat. On his third solo outing, he proves that the skill is not in limiting labels, but in tasteful curation; blending soulful lyrics, playful melodies and an abundance of fruity-foody innuendos, he has once again done things Harry-style, producing a work that feels confident in its sense of self.
On ‘Satellite’ and ‘Cinema’, he embraces the feel of a late night ‘70s radio station, loosely-intimate funk-pop that captures him in an ‘LA Mood’. Lead single ‘As It Was’ appears to nod to the kind of carefree noughties indie that would have soundtracked his teenage years,
Taken to the hearts of his young, often LGBTQIA+ audience, the only thing lighter than Harry’s feather boas is the touch with which he interacts, giving his fans mantra through which they can find the courage to build new abodes for themselves. He might not need the prize winnings financially, but a Mercury Prize nod is one of deserved artistic credibility - a songwriter who knows the value of laying down his doormat and making space for people of all walks of life to comfortably reside. (Jenessa Williams)
KINDNESS.ANDPOSITIVITYCHAMPIONSMUSICTOABILITYBEENHASSCHTICKGREATESTSTYLES’ALWAYSHISMAKETHAT
pulling it off with preppy panache. Stans might have latched on to the “leave America” lyric as a TikToktrending way of willing him home to the UK, but it’s clear from the music video that a piece of his heart still belongs here - careening round the Barbican, he softens the brutalist edges with his gently chiding, fourth-wall breaking demeanour: “Answer the phone / Harry you’re no good alone.”
“THERE WAS A STANDOUT FEELING [WITH THIS PROJECT] WAS
As we understand it, you both knew each other’s work before you ever met?
What is interesting is, on the one hand, her inexperience - and I say that in a kind way because it doesn’t show, of course. But she just hasn’t done all the studio and sound work that I’ve been doing for years, and that brings a brilliant simplicity and naïveté to her approach. She just wants to create; she’s not interested in any of the technical aspects at all. She wants things to be open and unscripted. She often talks about this with films, how she loves it when there’s no script and you get to improvise and just purely create in the moment. And that’s what she brought to this too.
What does it mean for you and Jessie to be included on the list?
THAT SOMETHING
Is there any sense that her skills as an actor bring something different to the role of singer or musician?
on your door one day and you get to know each other and you go on a little adventure together. It’s no surprise to me that this one stands out, in a way, because it’s been quite an inspiring journey for me. There was a standout feeling that something was different.
DIFFERENT.” - BERNARD BUTLER
or Jessie Buckley - the Oscar-nominated star of Fargo, Chernobyl and I’m Thinking of Ending Things - music has always been an inspiration, with her star-making turn as an aspiring Scottish country singer in Wild Rose proving her vocal credentials are not in doubt. Bernard Butler, meanwhile, has been a driving force in British music for three decades, first as a founding member of Suede, and then subsequently as a producer for Duffy, The Libertines, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and countless others, as well as being part of McAlmont & Butler and The Tears.
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Having first bonded over a shaky FaceTime connection, the pair’s creative meetings in Bernard’s London home became more and more regular, until they had written an entire album of material, which would become 'For All Our Days That Tear the Heart', now shortlisted for the 2022 Mercury Prize with FREE NOW.
We caught up with Butler to talk about the unique nature of this collaboration, what sets Buckley apart from every musician he has ever worked with and how the disciplines of acting translate to music. Interview: Max Pilley.
THETHATOURFORBUTLERBERNARDANDBUCKLEYJESSIEALLDAYSTEARHEART
Yeah, I knew who she was. I’d seen Chernobyl and I really liked her in that, and then I saw Wild Rose after seeing her sing a song from that on an American chat show. I think the only thing she knew about me was she was looking to find a collaborator to create some music with and a mutual friend suggested me. I don’t think she knew anything about me, but when we first spoke, she told me that she knew ‘Old Wow’ by Sam Lee, which is a record I made about five years ago. That took me back a little bit, because I could count the people on one hand that have listened to that record, but it’s probably in the top three records I’ve ever made, and nobody’s ever heard it. For Jessie to pick up on that one record was quite a big thing for me.
I’m a big indie-head. That was my s**t when I was like 11 - I thought I was the coolest motherf**ker walking around with a Rough Trade bag! When I was recording ‘Poison’, my drummer walked in and said, ‘This reminds me of Young Marble Giants’, which is exactly the reference; they’re like my favourite band. The sample on ‘Kingdom’ is from ‘White Mice’ by the Mo-Dettes which has a really sick drum break. They’re probably all yummy mums in Dulwich now, [but in 1979]
You’ve made it as far as the shortlist. What would it mean to you to win the 2022 Mercury Prize with FREE NOW?
And while she certainly doesn’t take her accolades for granted - the 23-year-old already has two BRIT Award nominations and a spot on the BBC’s Sound Of... poll to her name - she’s still taking things in her stride. “I don’t rely on external validation. It’s just not who I am,” she told us last year around the release of the record. It probably comes as little surprise, then, that Joy seems remarkably chilled when DIY catches her to talk the latest addition to her musical CV: being shortlisted for the 2022 Mercury Prize with FREE NOW. Interview: Alex Cabré.
Was ‘Skin’ influenced by any artists that people might not expect?
ver since she released her debut single aged just 17, South London’s Joy Crookes has been no stranger to hype - something that only heightened in the run up to releasing ‘Skin’, her eclectic, luxurious debut album, in October last year.
The breakthrough hit from ‘Skin’ has been your single ‘Feet Don’t Fail Me Now’. What was the inspiration behind that song?
It’s social commentary. I was really interested in immortalising what I saw in 2020 – not only the pandemic but the Black Lives Matter movement. I was thinking a lot about armchair activism, performative activism, and how in some ways we are all guilty of it. It’s about this character who finds it easier to [blend into] a pack or a group and not have to think individually.
We’re not sure you get the prize money in actual bank notes…
What do you mean?! I thought Annie Mac or someone like that handed you cash in a briefcase. I’d do a George Sampson - singing ‘Skin’ while it’s raining pounds on me. That’s basically what I’m looking forward to. You know who George Sampson is, right? From Britain’s Got Talent? He’s a cultural idol we should never forget.
What was your intention when it came time to create a debut album?
they were all crazy white chicks making post-punk songs. All their videos are of them with these awful perms at the London College of Printing. Some of my favourite indie stuff is that kind of angry chick music.
INSTINCTS.”WITHINTOTRIEDIWOULDRECEPTIONWHATABOUTTHINK“ISKINCROOKESJOYDIDN’TTHEBE;REALLYSTAYTUNEMY
I’d love to have £25,000 in cash, that would be great. Just to hold that in your hands.
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I just wanted to make something I would be proud of. I didn’t think about what the reception would be; I really tried to stay in tune with my instincts. I’ve got really good music taste. I don’t mean that in an arsehole way, I mean I’m really open to listening to everything; I love all kinds of music from different time periods and across the world. I knew I needed my music to match the standard of what I think is great.
[Without her album] I don’t think I would’ve went as hard. The album came out and I was like, ‘Oh, this is what we’re doing? OK, cool. Standard set - I see the bar and I’m gonna reach it.’ So for me, on a personal one, I don’t think I could have made ‘Reason To Smile’ as good as I did if Simbi didn’t drop an album as good as she did. I’ve known Simz since she was 11. For our music to be celebrated at the same time is a big thing for me - I’d love to see her win.
How did your mum feel about her prominent feature on the record?
I think if there was a word better than proud, I would use it. But I feel like that’s the best description for her. There’s an element of pride when any of her children do something positive, make waves and build cement blocks for their future, you know? And to a certain degree, mine probably came with the most risk. There was definitely the most risk in the path that I chose in comparison to my siblings. I get it because I’m a parent now. You just quietly want your children to win. Even if you don’t get it - even if you don’t really understand what it is that they’re into or what they’re trying to do - you just want them to win. She’s gassed man, she’s got her outfit prepared for the Mercury Prize already.
It’s been about four months since ‘Reason To Smile’ came out - have you been able to reflect on the impact that it’s had so far?
I think for anybody that’s been following my journey, the anticipation behind what the album was going to sound like was quite high, and it came with a lot of pressure. So much pressure that maybe when it came out, I couldn’t necessarily see the effects of how it connected with people. For me, I get a large part of that from performing live. So being able to get out there and do the festival run, stand in front of crowds and see what they’re singing along to and what they vibe with, completes the process for me. I think a lot of writers are waiting for that shift when music [goes from] ‘new music out that’s good’ to ‘music that’s really connected and stayed with people’.
rom busking in Boxpark to setting up his own pop-up store in the very same East London spot and now covering Radio 1Xtra slots, Kojey Radical is nearly impossible to miss. If you haven’t come across him already, you won’t be able to avoid his infectious sound for long. Debut record ‘Reason To Smile’ followed a slew of genre-bending EPs that formed fault lines in an established scene, pulling influence from nu-soul, R&B, pop and grime to create a seamless coup de grâce that he takes on tour at the end of this year.
“THE PRESSURE.”CAMEQUITETOALBUMBEHINDANTICIPATIONWHATTHEWASGOINGSOUNDLIKEWASHIGH,ANDITWITHALOTOF
You start the record with the phrase, ‘So what do we do next?’ Can you answer that question from the perspective of future Kojey?
It’s a question that’s plagued me my whole life. ‘What do we do next? What is this? What is next for any of us?’ And nine times out of 10 we don’t know. We have to embark on a journey, you just have to begin. Even if you don’t know where you’re going, even if you don’t know what you’re doing, you just have to begin. And that’s been the driving force behind how I approached ‘Cashmere Tears’ and ‘Reason To Smile’ - I don’t know where we’re gonna end up, but we’re leaving.
SMILEREASONRADICALKOJEYTO
Your contemporary and friend Little Simz was nominated also.
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Having recently been shortlisted for the 2022 Mercury Prize with FREE NOW alongside close friend Little Simz and the likes of Harry Styles and Sam Fender, we catch up with the multi-hyphenate artist to reflect on his career-defining album. Interview: Alisdair Grice.
This isn’t to say that ‘GREY Area’, nor her earlier work, ignored the political zeitgeist. On ‘LMPD’ - the opener to her second album, 2016's ‘Stillness in Wonderland’ - Simz explored police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement (“The people that are meant to be protecting us are killing us”) with her recurring collaborator, Chronixx.
But the widespread acclaim for that album, which did bag Simz (aka Simbi Ajikawo) an Ivor Novello, laid the groundwork for her most ambitious project yet. ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert’ was in gestation less than a year after the release of ‘GREY Area’. Written and recorded between London, LA and Berlin across the 2020 lockdowns, it was a period that proved fruitful for the - quite literally - sometimes introverted Simz, who could knuckle down with few distractions.
LITTLE INTROVERTISOMETIMESSIMZMIGHTBE
I
‘GREY Area’ similarly had plenty to say about the West’s obsession with war intervention (‘Pressure’), gender politics (‘Boss’) and more, but ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert’ better interweaves external ideas with the internal. Simz, at times, relates broader theories on race to personal circumstance. On ‘How Did You Get Here’, she raps: “Nothing in life comes easy and you work twice as hard 'cause you Black / Used to think mum exaggerated 'til the world showed me it's fact” before bringing the UK’s knife crime epidemic into poignant focus when rattling off rhymes about vicious cycles and emotionally relaying her cousin’s near-death stabbing. “We eat from a tree full of forbidden fruits / We all know real criminals live in the suit,” read lines from ‘Little Q, Pt. 2’.
f being shortlisted for the 2019 Mercury Prize for ‘GREY Area’ didn’t materialise into a win for Little Simz, then surely her chances are even greater in 2022. A worthy winner in Dave for ‘Psychodrama’ that year notwithstanding, ‘GREY Area’ was the creative curveball that escalated Simz from a critically adored, underrated MC to rap royalty - even if commercial returns didn’t reflect that.
Better still, ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert’ takes the satiating soul hooks as well as the fluid beats and basslines from ‘GREY Area’ and paints them into a more varied sonic palette. Sweeping, orchestral instrumentals with narration by The Crown’s Emma Corrin (in her Princess Diana voice) weld UK rap, R&B, ‘80s pop, Afrobeat and more into a cohesive whole that imbues the record with a regal grandeur.
Uncomfortable it may be to have a privileged, Cambridgeeducated white woman speaking in platitudes about improving oneself across an album detailing the lived experiences of a Black artist, it could too be interpreted as Simz positioning herself as a queen: Corrin echoing Simz’s inner monologue purely to dramatic effect.
Elsewhere on the song she spits bars on “corrupt government officials, lies, and atrocities” who are “knocking down communities to re-up on properties”. Simz might not consume current affairs voraciously but she knows that amoral policies put herself, her family, her friends and her peers in a constant stranglehold.
A GRAND, CHANGINGGAME-NEXT STEP FROM THE STUNNINGANDMELDSLITTLESHORTLISTEDPREVIOUSLY-STAR,SIMZ’FOURTHTHEPERSONALTHEPOLITICALTOEFFECT.
Again enlisting childhood friend and in-demand producer Inflo, she set about making a “cinematic” record that grapples with much of its predecessor’s uncertainties about a person’s quarter-life moment. With ‘Sometimes…’, however, she also embraces outside politics more overtly for the first time. On the grand, militaristic orchestral opener ‘Introvert’ Simz raps: “I'm not into politics, but I know it's dark times / Parts of the world still living in apartheid.” The North London MC looks outward before turning inward, musing over the internal apartheid of her public and private persona (“Simz the artist or Simbi the person? / To you I'm smiling, but really, I'm hurting”).
These spoken moments, however, are the album’s minor missteps on an otherwise astonishing collection that proves Simz has become even sharper with her pen. “I think I need a standing ovation / Over ten years in the game, I've been patient,” she raps confidently mid-way through the record. It’s time to make this album her crowning glory. (Charlotte Krol)
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Butpandemic.behind
the scenes, London duo Amy Love and Georgia South were already thinking ahead. Beginning with the brassy single ‘Cleopatra’, inspired by the tide of strength and solidarity shown during 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests, they began working on second album ‘Supernova’ while being further away from each other than they had ever been before.
Not many bands from the British alternative scene get shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. What does it mean to you to have broken through that?
together. Then when lockdown happened, we were in different households but working together. Other stuff was going on, and it was such a turbulent time for a number of reasons. The fact that we managed to more than survive, we found solace in what we were doing, and created something that we’re really, really proud of [feels great]. I feel like this album will always be such a special album. And the fact that it now has ‘shortlisted for the 2022 Mercury Prize with FREE NOW’ attached to it, we couldn’t have asked for anything more.
At a time when the world was slow, everything in Nova Twins’ world suddenly sped up. Their debut album ‘Who Are The Girls?’, an eclectic and beautifully confident release melding rock with grime, R&B and more, was released just before lockdown, and became a sleeper hit over the course of the
Amy: Obviously the scene is looking different. Some of the stuff that we’ve been doing is trying to diversify the alt-rock scene. So for us, as two mixed girls in rock music to be shortlisted for the Mercury, that’s such an amazing thing hopefully for other young people growing up [who] will see that and realise, ‘I can do rock too. It doesn’t matter where I’m from, what I’m into, I could do that, too, if I want it.’ We didn’t have that. We’re glad that the Mercury has given them the spotlight on that as well.
Amy: There was so much happening around that album, and there were big changes in mine and Georgia’s lives. It was the first time we’d ever been separated - we’ve always been basically living together and we’ve been on this journey
Looking back at the album, what do you feel proudest of?
We spoke to Amy and Georgia to get the lowdown on what their first ever Mercury shortlist means for them and British rock. Interview: Emma Wilkes.
Georgia: It’s kind of crazy that people are saying that we’re the heaviest band to be shortlisted for the Mercury. It feels amazing to [represent] this scene that is often overlooked in award ceremonies, and generally in the more mainstream media. Hopefully this is opening another door.
You’re also the first Black female rock act to be shortlisted…
Amy: And it’s also a testament to the women before who have managed to squeeze their way through a really tough industry to be able to even exist, and then that’s also pushed us forward for us to be able to exist as well. We have to carry that on.
What have you found that people are connecting with most on ‘Supernova’?
Georgia: It’s so crazy that we’re in 2022 and we’re the first, but someone’s got to be the first so we’re just happy to be here and given this opportunity!
WILLALBUMTHISLIKEFEEL“I SPECIALASUCHBEALWAYS LOVEAMY-ALBUM.”
Georgia: They just connect with how it got us through the pandemic. It’s more personal and it touches on a lot more different subjects and has loads of light and shade. It’s very honest, and I think people could relate to that and bring it into their lives and take from it what they need to take from it to get them through things.
Amy: I think it’s such an all-rounder as well. Whether we’re touching on our culture, or something as simple as a breakup, or just wanting to feel empowered, or just being human or having that kind of rage. I think we all feel those things at some point or another. What we’re trying to drive through the album is self confidence, lifting people up and making people feel good about themselves. That’s all we want for our audience.
NOVA SUPERNOVATWINS
am Fender’s single ‘Seventeen Going Under’ has only been out for just over a year, but already, it feels like it’s existed for a lifetime. Such is the fervour and love with which the track has been received into people’s lives, it immediately felt woven into the fabric of modern British musical culture following its release in the summer of 2021.
LIVES
will hear the lyrics and be like, ‘Oh, that kinda THAT IS CHANGING AND OPINIONS, AND WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO FOR MANY YEARS.
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Not many songs get to that place so quickly, and it’s testament to the sheer power and ferocity of its message and delivery that it has become a bonafide classic so quickly. With the open-heartedness of Springsteen and arena-ready bombast of The Killers both in full view, it took Sam almost single handedly to the big leagues, with festival headline slots and arena shows immediately selling out.
in late 2021, a slightly perplexed Sam was adjusting to his new role as an ambassador for mental health discourse and man of the people. “What I’m talking about in my songs are very, very normal issues for normal people in this country,” he said at the time. “More often than not, a lot of kids
SAM GOINGSEVENTEENFENDERUNDER
Since its release, instantly-iconic performances of the track have come at Glastonbury, Ally Pally, Finsbury Park and beyond, while it’s also started a TikTok trend that is saving lives, based around its immortal line: “I was far too scared to hit him / but I would hit him in a heartbeat now.” In videos soundtracked by the lyric, young fans reflected on past abusive relationships and how much they have grown since, starting vital discourse all spawned from Fender’s own openSpeakingheartedness.toDIY
ALREADY
S
AN ALBUM
I haven't even touched the sides yet in even formulating my thoughts on how much airtime my age has got over the last 10 months [since ‘Prioritise Pleasure’ was released]. You can't expect women to make records that people think are good until… well, without a lot of f**king help, and until they've lived and learned and grown. I can only just make music with the autonomy and power that I now have because it has taken 16 years to learn how to quieten down, not only the industry and the general sexism and constant misogyny, but that background noise, and all those constant worries about female
Your journey feels - unfortunately - quite unique in an industry which can sometimes feel very fixated on newness. Is that difficult to grapple with sometimes?
SELF PRIORITISEESTEEMPLEASURE
howfor little I was listened to and how little I got to even have a quality of life, until now, within this industry. The shit I put up with and laughed off! It is affirming, and it is amazing, but it has brought up this mad grief.
It’s been one hell of a year for Self Esteem. Formerly one half of Sheffield indie-pop duo Slow Club, Rebecca Lucy Taylor had been quietly sketching out the blueprints for years before eventually taking the leap as a solo artist, and few records this last year have rivalled the seismic impact of her second album ‘Prioritise Pleasure’.
“THE STUFF I'M BANGING ON ABOUT ON THE RECORD HAS OPENED UP GATEWAY.”THIS
From the close-to-the-bone mantras written across ‘I Do This All The Time’s slinking bassline (see: “Getting married isn't the biggest day of your life / All the days that you get to have are big”) to the euphoric cry of self-acceptance that bursts out the heart of the title track’s glitching chorus, it’s an album that takes the kind of vapid statement you could easily find plastered across an overpriced sheet mask in the name of self-care capitalism for a title, before cutting through to the messier core of what putting yourself first - flaws and allactually looks like in practice.
Ahead of the 2022 Mercury Prize with FREE NOW we caught up with RLT
Nodding to the great and good of indie past - from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs scuzz of ‘Oh No’, to the wide-eyed jangles of opener ‘Being In Love’, to the Le Tigreadjacent dancefloor potential of ‘Ur Mum’ - everything about ‘Wet Leg’ felt immediately like a classic indie debut. In turns big-hearted and lovelorn, sassy and sarcastic, and - on more than one occasion - far ruder than the two women wearing cottagecore chic in all their press shots might suggest, it presented a band indebted to guitar music past but filtering it all through
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Both in their mid-twenties and having played in numerous bands previously, it’s not that either Rhian or Hester were particularly green to the music game. Indeed, in their April 2022 DIY cover feature, Rhian noted that Wet Leg’s audible alchemy was likely born from having gone through the mill and come out thinking, f**k it. “It’s funny that the moment you stop trying and just give up on something, it clicks,” she said. Instead - much like fellow shortlisted band Yard Act - Wet Leg were created with a focus on fun rather than (ironically) any initial dreams of big success, and their debut fulfils that giddy brief with aplomb.
excitement because of it.
I
UNDOUBTEDLY THE PAST YEAR’S MOST TALKED SUCCESS.BREAKTHROUGHALL-CONQUERINGABOUT,
Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers has been as vertically skyward as their debut ‘Chaise Longue’ was horizontal. That track landed in mid-June of 2021 as
ridiculousborderlineseems to think that, a mere oftrajectorysuccess,breakthroughall-conqueringtalkedpastUndoubtedlyheardNOW,Prize2022’sonwerebeforemonths13theyannouncedtheshortlistforMercurywithFREEnoonehadofWetLeg.theyear’smostabout,theofIsleWightbestpals
It feels like it’s been about four years… I think I’ve aged four years…
In the middle of an epic run of festival performances, we spoke to James and Ryan about their 2022 Mercury Prize with FREE NOW-shortlisted debut. Interview: Lisa
Ryan: We’ve been so busy, we’ve not had time to dwell on it. I guess we’ve been using working hard as a bit of a distraction technique, but now we’ve started thinking about the last year and yeah, our lives have dramatically changed.
Watch the 2022 Mercury Prize with FREE NOW ‘Album of the Year’ Awards Show live on BBC Four from 9pm on Thursday, 8 September 2022. There will be an exciting line-up of live performances from the shortlisted artists. Playing live are Fergus McCreadie, Gwenno, Jessie Buckley & Bernard
James: The fact it even happened at all! I think the album is a sketch and maybe how ramshackle it is is why people have been drawn to it. Yard Act weren’t fully formed; Jay [Russell, drums] wasn’t even in the band when we wrote it; Sam [Shjipstone, guitar] recorded everything remotely, and we managed to create a debut indie-rock/post-punk record without ever having played in a room together. It was all just ideas that me and Ryan were throwing at each other. Now with the way the songs have evolved beyond the record - Yard Act is the four of us, and how we play it live [has changed] - it feels like everything’s happened the way it should have. I’m just grateful that I made the album with Ryan and that we managed to piece it all together and keep the wheels on.
Butler, Joy Crookes, Kojey Radical, Little Simz, Nova Twins, Sam Fender, Self Esteem, Wet Leg and Yard Act. Harry Styles will be represented by a filmed live performance. The programme will culminate in the announcement of the overall winner of the 2022 Mercury Prize with FREE Now for ‘Album of the Year’.
How have your lives changed in the time since?
James: In places like America you have the same language even though the culture’s different, but even [in non-English-speaking countries], I’ll be rambling between songs and everyone gets the intent and the ebb and flow of the conversation. It makes you remember that language is more than words and you can communicate through performance. People have got behind that whether they understand the nuance and the specific-ness or not. I’m glad we haven’t compromised on any of that [humour] or watered it down. We’ve stuck to our guns and been the idiots we are - I think of us as not very cool, but people seem to think we’re cool now… Little do they know…
Are there recurring things from the record that you find people say they’ve connected to?
James: The main one’s been ‘100% Endurance’: there’s been some overwhelmingly quite moving stuff about that. I’ve had multiple people tell me that they’re battling cancer and it helps them. It’s funny watching it since January because the longer it’s been out, since we released it as a single and did the Elton [John!] version, we’ve watched that song get more and more of a reaction than any of the others. ‘100% Endurance’ is slowly overtaking even the big party mosh pit songs we’ve got now. I love the album, I’m proud of the album; I think it’s fun and we worked hard on it and I agree with the things I’ve said. But I think ‘100% Endurance’ is one of the songs you don’t get to write very often.
t seems perversely appropriate for a band fuelled by wickedly funny character studies and a keen knack for tapping into life’s beautiful oddities that ‘The Overload’ - an album made on the hoof, during a pandemic, without having even played a gig together before - should be the record to turn the fortunes of the Yorkshire indie scene stalwarts that birthed it.
YARD ACT THE OVERLOAD
James: In January I couldn’t really explain that this was my job, and I still felt a bit embarrassed trying to explain that in March, April when we were in the States. It’s probably taken six months to accept that I work as a performer and a writer as a living and that it’s fine and f**king hard work! We’re very tired! But it’s what we’ve wanted since we were teenagers.
So it’s been seven months since ‘The Overload’
How have you found the record’s British humour and reference points have translated overseas?
“I LOVE THE ALBUM, I’M PROUD OF THE ALBUM; I THINK IT’S FUN AND WE WORKED HARD ON IT AND I AGREE WITH THE THINGS I’VE SAID.” - JAMES SMITH
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On one hand, Yard Act as an entity were fresh out of the box (narrowly missing out on a Number One when it was released back in January, their debut arrived barely two years after they formed). On the other, chief songwriters James Smith and Ryan Needham were seasoned pros, having spent the past decade playing the circuit and putting in the hours in other projects. Somewhere between those two ideas, then, came an album that was indebted both to experience and impulsivenessthe simultaneous product of years of graft and almost entirely winging it…
What do you feel proudest of now being able to reflect back on the record?
ALONE, TOGETHER
For her fifth album, pop’s premiere ray of sunshine Carly Rae Jepsen found herself dappled by shadows. Out of the introspection, however, came ‘The Loneliest Time’: a record that finds power in curiosity, self-belief and communal experience. Words: Gemma Samways. Photos: Kate Garner.
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U
For Carly, these moments of communal catharsis have been an integral part of life since finding fame on Canadian Idol back in 2007. Propelled to international megastardom four years
Affectionately known to her fiercely-loyal fans as Jeppo, in person the Canadian pop singer is every bit as warm and engaging as you might hope. Blessed with a glass-half-full outlook and perpetually smiling eyes, words tumble out of her mouth at a rate of knots, with reflections often punctuated by a silvery laugh. Fresh from a day off after headlining Bristol’s Pride celebrations on Saturday, tonight she will turn in a triumphant performance at Somerset House - her last European engagement following a brief run of festivals, and her first UK show since February 2020. Though she’s been intermittently playing live since Coachella back in April, the 36-year-old is the first to admit she’s still reacclimatising to the challenges of life on the road.
“It's a little bit like Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” she chuckles, locking eyes knowingly with her manager across the room. “But with my bandmates and crew, a lot of us have been together for 10 years plus, so we’ve had our fair share of rough and tumble. It’s just so nice to have the whole gang back together. Plus any time that I get that relief of that hour on stage, it does make everything worth it.”
nder house arrest” is how Carly framesjokinglythe experience of living alone in LA at the height of COVID. Still processing a romantic break-up, isolated from friends and homesick for her family back in Canada, she threw herself into an array of hobbies, from solo hiking and cooking to what she cheerfully describes as “a failed attempt” to teach herself audio engineering. In between selfimprovement activities she found herself
Essentially we're all in our feelings, even though we all look for different ways of hiding it.”
default climate. In the foyer of Universal Music, late lunch-takers shuffle out into the sunlight as their clammy colleagues scuttle back in from their breaks, visibly relieved as the wall of icy air-con hits them.
Cutting a glamorous contrast to the sea of summer office wear, however, Carly Rae Jepsen glides through the security gates in a ‘60s-inspired outfit comprised of white, patent, thigh-high boots and a long-sleeved shirt dress dappled with green psychedelic swirls - seemingly impervious to the fact it’s an airless 32 degrees outside. Indeed, when we officially meet minutes later in the meeting room of her label offices, she politely orders a tea while the rest of the room desperately wolfs down water.
later with viral smash ‘Call Me Maybe’, the singer has spent the intervening decade cementing her reputation as pop’s uppermost romanticist, both through the unabashedly heart-onsleeve songwriting on ‘Kiss’ (2012), ‘E•MO•TION’ (2015) and ‘Dedicated’ (2019), and via famously euphoric shows that actively encourage fans to luxuriate in their feelings. To sacrifice the latter outlet entirely during the pandemic proved a real wrench, prompting a period of introspection that would ultimately inspire her upcoming fifth studio album: next month’s evocativelytitled ‘The Loneliest Time’.
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ing’s summer’stotranspiresoonthatheatwavetheaandmid-July,Cross,we’reweekintofreakwillbethe
repeatedly returning to the idea of loneliness, reflecting on it both from a personal perspective and as a wider concept.
Certainly, finding the resilience to withstand the isolation proved extremely difficult at points. When her maternal grandmother passed away, social distancing rules meant Carly was forced to grieve alone, an experience she still struggles to talk about today. “My grandmother is one of the most incredible women I've ever met and I was very lucky to know her,” she says, her voice wavering with emotion. “So it was extra hard going through a grief like that, and not being able to be with my family or be a part of that whole ceremony of saying goodbye properly. It was something we had to figure out how to do from a distance and that was definitely a very painful experience for me.”
Famously championed by Justin Bieber, Carly’s devilishly catchy breakout single went on to win its author a global audience, as well as Billboard, Juno and MTV Europe Music Awards. It’s since achieved diamond certification in the US (a whopping 10 million sales).
Far from the introspection of her latest’s title, Jeppo’s had a career packed with big moments and celebratory successes. Here are five of her best.
andcanWomenhavesillinessdepth,andwecanbesexyonemomentandthenbereallyseriousthenext.So chooseshouldwhyIhaveto ?”
‘Call Me Maybe’ (2011)
“I think when you're at your wit's end, loneliness can cause these extreme behaviours,” she explains. “And I was really fascinated by diving into what those reactions could be. Because the experience from there on in is really dealer’s choice. From my own experience, I can say loneliness can make you feel and do all sorts of unusual things.”
Created in collaboration with Ariel Rechtshaid, Dev Hynes and Rostam Batmanglij – and featuring the singles ‘Run Away With Me’, ‘I Really Like You’ and ‘Your Type’ – the utterly perfect ‘E•MO•TION’ cemented Carly’s status as an alt-pop icon.
Canadian Idol (2007)
Cinderella (2014)
As well as working with Rufus
A self-professed "nerdy theatre kid", Carly took a brief break from music in 2014 to fulfil a childhood dream: playing the lead role in the Broadway production of Rodgers and Cinderella.Hammerstein's
‘E•MO•TION’ (2015)
But out of this period of darkness she also found hope, as she grasped the opportunity to reevaluate her journey to this point and recalibrate - a process that she describes as “a gift, provided you’re ready to handle those thoughts”. “I was just digging further into this concept,” she continues. “Like, what is loneliness and why am I intrigued by it? And why does it have to have a negative connotation to it? Because any touring artist who takes on the
Collaborations
VIBIESTTHETIMES
Carly got her big break as a contestant on the fifth series of Canadian Idol, in which she ultimately finished third. Not too shabby considering she only auditioned after being persuaded by her drama teacher.
Reflecting on the record’s eclecticism, she continues: “I thought a lot about what I wanted from this album, probably more than I ever have before. Having learned some things in my own personal life, I wanted to document that growth while looking for the thing that can connect [with fans], so that it's not just a journal entry of my intense feelings, but feelings that can be universal.
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atest single ‘Beach House’ must surely rank among the singer’s most audacious moments. A tongue-in-cheek bop inspired by previous misadventures in the “rock ‘n’ roll world of online dating” (thankfully, she’s now happily settled in a relationship), the verses detail a litany of terrible suitors while the chorus is built around the hook of “I got a beach house in Malibu and I'm probably gonna hurt your feelings”. By the middle eight, her love interest has gone full Dexter, promising, “I got a lake house in Canada and I'm probably gonna harvest your organs…”
landed on were always surprising. Like, whenever I thought he was resolving a melody, it would instantly evolve into a completely different section of the song. And though I'm from this pop world and he’s more indie-leaning, it worked.”
Settling on songs that explored perspectives on loneliness or that originally stemmed from contemplations on the subject, it’s a theme further developed in the Renaissance-inspired album art, which sees her looking quizzically over one shoulder in a nod to Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. And by liberating it from any stylistic constraints, ‘The Loneliest Time’ arrives as by far her most wideranging record musically, taking in minimal sophistipop and Laurel Canyon-inspired cuts as well as shimmering funk, string-flecked disco and a glorious, ‘80s-inspired synth-pop track that more than matches any of ‘E•MO•TION’’s big singles for impact.That
think we really gravitate to the emotion in that era because essentially we're all in our feelings, even though we all look for different ways of hiding it.”
adventure of this type of lifestyle is gonna have to battle some loneliness along the way, and figure out how to make peace with a lot of nights alone in hotel rooms. And it doesn’t necessarily even have to be a bad thing; there can be real beauty in loneliness. I think that’s why I like to read [Haruki] Murakami’s novels - he really has this beautiful way of shifting loneliness into a sort of poetic solace.”
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notoriously prolific writer who - by her own admission - creates “all the time” simply to “survive life”, Carly began reaching out to potential producers and co-writers to arrange sessions, including regular collaborators John Hill (Sigrid, Muna), Patrik Berger (Robyn), Captain Cuts (Marina, Allie X) and Rostam Batmanglij (Vampire Weekend, Haim). It was with the latter that she created ‘Western Wind’, the album’s utterly gorgeous yet surprisingly subtle lead single. A love story set in California and played out among feather-light brush work, shimmering keys, sonorous guitar and beautifully breezy vocal harmonies, it received its live debut at Coachella.
Back at the peak of the pandemic, Carly began dipping her toe into remote collaborations, actively seeking out fresh voices to work with. Foremost amongst these was Bullion, aka British songwriter-producer Nathan Jenkins, who she discovered via playlists shared by “Ifriends.thinkthere were maybe six different times in a row where one of Bullion's tracks would come on, and I was like, ‘Who is this?!’” she raves with the excitement of a true fan. “I loved that the chords he
This idea of blurring - or simply doing away with - genre boundaries proved key when it came to whittling down a final tracklisting from a pool of more than 100 songs. Rather than settling on a singular sonic palette, Carly looked to lyrical content to create a sense of cohesion.
‘80s influence is no coincidence, it transpires: touch points for the record included Kate Bush, Stevie Nicks and her eternal muse Cyndi Lauper, enjoyed alongside “palate cleansers” like Billie Holiday. “There's so much to learn from ‘80s pop, and the way it really gets to the heart of things,” she enthuses. “I
“Musically I was really trying to fight this idea that these artists are supposed to deliver one type of music. As humans we're a spectrum of different things and I want to be able to play that. Like, women can have silliness and depth, and we can be sexy one moment and then be really serious the next. So why should I have to choose? With these songs I didn’t. And the result is I’m really excited about the colours of these songs, because they’re different to anything I’ve ever done before.”
“First of all, I need to say I’m not just a fan of Rufus Wainwright; he literally had a profound effect on my career choice,” she gushes. “I can remember being 19, taking the West Coast Express from Mission – my home town – to Vancouver, and I would listen to his album ‘Poses’ over and over and over again. And it was somewhere during the song ‘Poses’, where he sings, ‘Life is a game and true love is a trophy,’ that I was like, ‘I think I'm going to make a run at this music thing, like for real, for real’. Because there's nothing that sounds better in life to me than this.
“Like, when I go to a James Taylor concert, and I see him play, I'm allowed to cry for that moment, and it feels good. It’s like I can tap into whatever I didn't know I was actually going through that week. I'm hoping that that's what I can do for other people; create spaces where we can let go of our worries, really connect to ourselves or do whatever we need to do that day. Because if music’s not the outlet for letting your feelings out, then what is?”
‘The Loneliest Time’ benefits from an all-star cast of collaborators - here’s Carly on the fruits produced by two of them:
When we ask what she sees as her biggest success she replies, “My real victory is my happiness. I do feel like there's a lot of people who experience viral success and feel destroyed by it afterwards. But I feel like I've been lucky enough to have some huge factors on my side, like my team and my bandmates.”
“I used to kind of love the idea of indulging in escapism,” she confides. “And don't get me wrong, I still do love that you can tap into music when life is crazy. But maybe because so many things happened while making this album – in the wider world and for me personally – I felt it was also really necessary to have a space where I could safely feel whatever it was that I needed to feel.
BULLION
From the psychopathic hick on ‘Beach House’ to the soft backing vocals on the bridge of ‘Far Away’, male voices are a recurrent motif on the album. For its title track, she pulled off something of a coup, securing a guest appearance from her musical hero Rufus Wainwright. Sharing the story behind the duet today, she still sounds punch drunk.
o this day, the memory of Rufus laying down his vocals in her home studio is almost too joyous for Carly to bear. “From that train journey in Mission to having him in my house!” she exclaims, shaking her head in disbelief.
A new track on the album [Sorry, we’re sworn to secrecy on its name… - Ed] is very much about losing a family member. And I wouldn't have been able to explore that on a regular pop track that somebody sent me. To me, that song by Bullion was the only space that felt safe enough to go there, and to honour those feelings.
‘The Loneliest Time’ is out 21st October via 604 / Schoolboy / Interscope.
I'm thathopingwhatIcandoforotherpeopleis gowherecreatespaceswecanletofourworries and ourselves.”connectreallyto
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“Fast forward 15 years later, and I'm in a writing session and we’re working on this disco-like track with a Rufus-esque melody to it. And I said, imagine if he sang that dream sequence with us. When I went home, I couldn't stop thinking about it. And if I’ve learned anything in my life it’s that you can just ask, and that the very worst that can happen is they can say no. If we hadn't asked, we wouldn't have had Tom Hanks in the video for ‘I Really Like You’. So I wrote him this love letter and it turned out his husband was a fan…”
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That humility is further displayed in her determination to give back. For the Canadian and US legs of her upcoming So Nice tour, a dollar from every ticket sold will go to The Ally Coalition, a charity set up by Jack and Rachel Antonoff to support homeless and at-risk LGBTQ+ youth. And on a broader level, Carly hopes that her music can continue to facilitate fans in exploring their feelings.
“That was so much fun!” she exclaims, after collapsing into giggles at the lyric. “I mean that was definitely an extreme example, but I think there's some truth to it. As women, it’s not just about, ‘Is he gonna be nice?’ or ‘Are we going to click?’ It’s also like, will I get kidnapped?! But that song’s really aimed at the poachers, who go online for the kill.”
If she were a more complacent person, Carly could simply add dueting with her hero to the ever-growing list of pinch-yourself moments, which so far include fulfilling her childhood dream to play Cinderella on Broadway, ‘Call Me Maybe’ being named the best-selling single of the 21st century by a female artist, and the huge critical success of ‘E•MO•TION’. But rather than being blase, Carly remains deeply grateful for each and every achievement.
ROSTAM BATMANGLIJ
'Western Wind' came from a late night session with Rostam. We'd already written a song that day, so it was more like freeform thinking, with me penning poem-like lyrics wrapped up in feelings of me missing home. My family has lots of barefoot, living room dance parties, so there are flashes of nostalgia for that in the second verse.
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Most people don't like thinking about the future because it's Mark Metaverse.”tohowtalkingZuckerbergaboutyoucangoWalmartinthe
“Part of the motivation for this record is that I found myself sitting at home like everybody else, being lonely and depressed and trying to do yoga and
Simultaneously packed with nostalgia and a modern dream cast of collaborators, ‘demon time’ finds Mura Masa concocting a time-spanning party for the ages. Words: Charlotte Krol.
Revisiting the reference points of his formative years clearly informed the sonics of Alex’s divisive second album, stuffed as it was with emo and pop-punk alongside French house influences and other sounds of his early youth. It saw him take lead vocals for the first time, as well as mash up his electronic pop and dance credentials with guitar-driven music. Throughout, the then-23-year-old explored nostalgia for both its beauty and flaws, particularly the idea that we tend to rosily misremember the past.
‘demon time’ excels in combining the retro and futuristic. It’s the connective tissue between the globetrotting electronica of Alex’s early 2010s EPs and mixtapes, the trap, EDM and tropical house leanings of his 2017 debut, and that album’s nostalgic 2020
Spearheadedfollow-up.
by ‘bbycakes’ (feat. Lil Uzi Vert, PinkPantheress and Shygirl) - a cover of 3 Of A Kind’s 2004 UK garage hit ‘Baby Cakes’ - ‘demon time’ retools such familiars with a fresh outlook. Throughout the record there’s nods to the past with samples of dial-up internet bleeps and old school ringtones, with a general plugging in to the more modern zeitgeist scattered throughout. ‘E-motions’ (feat. Erika de Casier) and ‘bbycakes’ play on the UK garage renaissance a la PinkPantheress; ‘Slomo’ (feat. Tohji, and Midas The Jagaban) is spliced-up hyperpop; ‘Blessing Me’ (feat. Pa Salieu & Skillibeng) is an Afro-rap and dancehall-influenced gem, and ‘Blush’ (feat. Leyla) is bathed in tropical house sheen. Elsewhere however, the maximalist electro-rap of slowthai-featuring ‘Up All Week’, the monotonous vocal deliveries of Shygirl on ‘Hollaback Bitch’, and the album’s magpie-like, feature-heavy eclecticism appeal to the post-genre climate.
"The revelatory moment was realising that it would be really fun to imagine music for when that time is a bit looser, where we can be together again. The whole premise of ‘demon time’ is like, ‘Oh, thank god we can go out and snog each other again and go clubbing.’ I want it to be the soundtrack to those moments that we were robbed of. I think it also has moments of futuristic, hopefully forward-thinking music.”
This eclecticism thankfully doesn’t feel forced. “Naturally, there's sounds in pop culture and pop music in general that really resonate well,” says Alex, “and I guess it's just about using [those sounds] as a starting point and then trying to twist it or make
laughing. “But, yeah, I really love that record and I love it as a statement of intent as a second record because now it feels like I can do anything I want rather than being pigeonholed into what I was doing on the first album [2017’s ‘Mura Masa’]. It’s good to annoy people because then at least you're pushing the envelope a little bit.”
whatever else,” he says. “I think there was a lot of music that came out of that time that was very kind of solipsistic. I tried a little bit of that but it just didn't feel particularly true to this project.
NOUGHTIES But NICE
That soothsayer ability isn’t lost on him. “I think [‘R.Y.C.’] was definitely a forecast for the pop-punk revival that's kind of still going on at the moment, where guitar music seems like it's healthier than ever,” Alex says between drags of a cigarette in his Peckham garden.
F
“Maybe I was a bit early to the party,” he adds,
album ‘R.Y.C.’ in January 2020, no one could have foreseen that it would make an apt bedfellow for quarantine. The London-dwelling, Guernsey-raised multiinstrumentalist and producer otherwise known as Mura Masa was already in the habit of spending his free time “playing old video games, watching cartoons and eating cereal, Arrested Development-style,” he joked to Zane Lowe at the time. These kinds of sluggish pastimes would end up occupying many people’s lives for the following endless months.
ast-forward two years and the GRAMMYwinning, Ivor Novello-nominated pop polymath is back with the happy and hedonistic ‘demon time’. For it, Alex’s prescience set in again, with an album concocted ahead of what now feels like a shift from a darker, more introspective trend to the post-pandemic, backto-the-club party energy exercised by superstars including Beyoncé.
When Alex releasedCrossan drenchednostalgia-indebted,noughties-his
Such an excursion came as Gen Z’s obsession with Y2K culture continued apace. ‘R.Y.C.’ preceded many of the noughties pop-punk-influenced and emo revival albums of the new decade, even if emorap acts such as the late Lil Peep had sowed the seeds a few years prior. Somehow, Alex had made a ‘backwards’ u-turn of an album written before the pandemic that he says he “still stands by,” whose sounds eerily complemented the kind of collective attic-digging-for-ephemera taken up during isolation.
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‘Demon Time’ is out 16th September via Polydor. DIY
3 of a Kind’s ‘Baby Cakes’
The 26-year-old musician takes a similarly organic approach when it comes to creating his records. He’s a self-producing songwriter and an award-winning producer for other acts (bagging, among other prestigious nods, a GRAMMY for his remix of Haim’s ‘Walking Away’ in 2019) who has embraced the more contemporary trend of collaboration. It positions him as something of a master curator. Does he ever worry that this waters down his solo artistic identity?
Deeper topics aside, for his third LP Alex has ultimately been focused on creating an album that just FEELS good. “I never really think too hard about what type of music I'm gonna make; it’s more about just the vibe around it. The whole idea of 'demon time' is sort of mischievous. It’s that 1am to 6am ‘little bit too drunk, might be doing something I regret’ feeling, but [when you] don't really regret it. I think it's interesting how reflected that attitude of renewed fun is in the new Beyoncé record or in Drake’s. There's a real emphasis on vibe and that ability to have fun being restored. So hopefully ‘demon time’ makes people feel like they can have that.”
I was born in 1996 so I'm old enough to remember dial-up internet and not having a home computer and a mobile phone. All that stuff like that is very fresh in my mind. But also I've lived through the switch to broadband and the switch to digital TV and the streaming age. I just feel like I've gone from the whole spectrum, like zero to Metaverse.
I'm trying to create a fun playground for an artist to express themselves honestly.”
Tracks such as ‘Up All Night’ and ‘Prada’ touch on themes of materialism, self-indulgence and the daily grind, while ‘E-motions’ and ‘Blessing Me’ are wrapped up in knotty love and lust stories. Elsewhere, there’s pre-technology cynicism
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that again brings conversation back to the Y2K nostalgia wave.
Alex posits a theory about the attention on Y2K (a term he really dislikes) and goes on to explain why it’s fed into ‘demon time’. “Back then when people thought about the future there were kind of limitless possibilities in terms of technology at the turn of the millennium. There was a lot of possibility and excitement around the future. It’s sort of opposite to now, where most people really don't like thinking about the future because it's Mark Zuckerberg talking about how you can go to Walmart in the Metaverse or there’s climate change, and politics swinging right. So I think there's a desire to return to a more optimistic view of the future.
The reason that we had those physical distortions and fish-eye lenses and things like that [in music videos] is because we were imagining a more exciting future that was weird and kind of alien.
heroes were operating on all cylinders at that time. I think that's where the desire comes from.”
MEMORYBOX
“No, I don’t think so,” he says. “I think that most of it is allowing room for the person or people you're curating to do their thing, and really trusting that what they do is what you wanted in the first place. I think as far as sounding like a Mura Masa record, there's definitely sessions where we do a few ideas and it becomes very obvious which song is more tuned for my record and which ones are for [collaborators] to use. It’s something that emerges naturally out of the session.”
I think a lot of people my age grew up on, like, Koji Kondo who does a lot of Nintendo scores and stuff. And I can't help but notice that idols of mine like Arca incorporate a lot of Final Fantasy stuff into their music. There's obviously some crossover between people who are really into production and people who are super into video games.
He grins: “I’m really feeling the demonic vibe.”
On using video game sounds in his music
Mura Masa’s reference points abound with ‘00s nods. He digs into some of them…
sure that it's forward-thinking and not just a pastiche of something.”
I've got fleeting memories of that period and 'Baby Cakes' was the first song I remember hearing. It was Number One and it was on Top of the Pops. I have a very vivid memory of sitting in front of the TV and thinking it was very catchy.
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“I was really interested in that when I was figuring out what to do on this album,” he continues. “Also, that was such a good time for music. That’s peak Pharrell; some of my production
Y2K visual media
Writing hooks is “kind of my territory,” he adds, revealing that he wrote the melody and structure for moreish deep house track ‘Hollaback Bitch’ but that Shygirl was alone in penning her verse. “It’s really all on an individual basis. I'm trying to create a fun playground for an artist to express themselves honestly,” he notes.
hough ‘demon time’’s guestlist reads like a who’swho of musical trendsetters, Alex stresses that his album’s collaborators are a mix of established and new names that he’s simply most buzzed about. “It’s just people that I think are really exciting or are doing something that matches the aesthetic of the album. There’s no real brief: it emerges naturally.”
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be it. In February of 2017, amid a blaze of hype perpetuating the then-burgeoning South London punk scene, the teenage trio released their debut single ‘Social Experiment’; by October of that same year, they’d called time on the band for good, having fallen swiftly into a wayward lifestyle that was dangerously unsustainable.
I
f there was ever a poster band for doing too much, too young, then the short-lived Dead Pretties and their wild-eyed, JacobcharismaticmagneticallyfrontmanSlaterwouldlikely
“Dead Pretties, part of our schtick was it was kind of throwaway. But the more you do it, and if you do it with a clear head, you think, ‘Well I might as well make it mean something to me and then it might mean something to other people too’,” he posits. “There’s different music for everyone, but I don’t want it to be throwaway anymore. I want this music to stand on its own two feet, or at least try to. Maybe stand on one leg…”
It’s this attitude that elevates ‘Cub’ into the realms of a truly special debut. Across the record, Jacob’s classic influences play out over tracks that alternately bring to mind the dark cerebralism of Radiohead (‘Butterflies’), ‘90s grunge nods on ‘Poppy’ or Springsteen-isms on ‘Teal’; standout ‘Atlantis’ or the lighters-aloft lullaby of ‘Mantis’ with its cathartic crescendo of an ending, meanwhile, feel timeless, built on the sort of instinctive knack for melody that can unite arenas. But it’s Jacob - a wise head on still-young shoulders - that sits at its centre, with a voice and a point of view that only comes from having lived probably a little too much for his age.
“If something affects you like that and it does feel raw and harsh and wrong with a lot of rough edges, it should come out in the writing. From that song onwards, I really tried to just be as brutally honest as I can,” he says. “I think music is crying out for honesty; I think people should try and just put it down. No matter how raw and heart-wrenching it is, or how vulnerable it makes you feel, you should say it how it is. Honesty is needed now more than ever.”
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AFTER THE SWIFT COMBUSTION OF HIS TEENAGE BAND DEAD PRETTIES, JACOB SLATER DID SOME
abandon. “When you’re 16, 17, maybe you can be a bit embarrassed about who you are, like, ‘Ah, I’m not a little softy who likes Neil Young! I wanna smash things up!’” he laughs. “But you can only wear that mask for so long and eventually it fell off.”
One better than that, on ‘Cub’, Jacob has made an album that soars - one that harnesses all the energy and emotion and feeling he’s always had, but channels it into something productive and beautiful. Wunderhorse might sound like a strange name for a project, but as a little slice of magic that could take him all the way to the finish line, maybe it makes perfect sense.
Though giving back the keys to the kingdom might have been a difficult career move, it’s undoubtedly the smartest one Jacob could have made. Not only is the tanned and healthy 24-year-old supping a Guinness today an unrecognisable energy from the twitchy, dishevelled vocalist we first met back then, his solo project Wunderhorse reintroduces a songwriter of considerable clout and substance that signifies a vast sonic step forwards Havingtoo. relocated from the capital to the slower pace of Cornwall, debut album ‘Cub’ seems to echo that change. Where his former outfit were chaotic and frenzied, Wunderhorse’s output allows itself to take a beat; there’s still gritty, raw emotion to be found, but this time it’s rooted in something more substantial than just reckless youthful
‘Cub’ is out 16th September via Communion. DIY
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A collection taken from across the past half decade - some tracks previously deemed inappropriate for his old output, others written more recently - at ‘Cub’’s centre sits ‘Teal’: the sort of rare, blisteringly track that feels cut from the same cloth as Sam Fender’s incendiary ‘Seventeen Going Under’ in terms of pure, raw emotion. In it, Jacob looks back at a former relationship filled with love and destruction and illness with a vocal that sounds ripped from the crux of his being: “One of them said ‘I don't care if this kills you’ / What if it did Katie? / What if it killed her?”
“It was stupid. It got to the point where you’re just starring in your own silly drama that puts you at the centre of the universe: ‘Oh I’m a tortured artist and I’m taking loads of drugs’ but you’re not actually writing or producing much,” Jacob shrugs now, five years down the line. “In the last few months of Dead Pretties I wasn’t even in the headspace to create anything, so who are you kidding? If you’re living a lifestyle that stops you being able to make the music that afforded you that lifestyle in the first place, then you’re just a joke.”
His new album, ‘God Save The Animals’, is undeniably a product of the same prolific mind as his other releases, albeit with a few edges sharpened here and there. There are one or two lyrical touchstones that also feel new, most notably the titular subject, which makes itself known at multiple points throughout the album’s thirteen tracks, not - Alex clarifies - as a direct religious entity, but as a more generalised representation of faith in something, or someone.
‘’Cause it took a while to get used to working with engineers and figuring out a process that worked with the way I write.”
aving first found prominence uploading self-produced tracks to Bandcamp and YouTube more than a decade ago and while still in his teens, Alex Giannascoli has gradually become a quintessential troubadour of the internet age.
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It’s perhaps somewhat ironic, then, that an artist whose name was once so synonymous with the online world, with all of its communicative possibilities, has always seemed rather elusive - distant, even. It also makes it all the more surprising when Alex joins today’s interview with such positive energy, laughing and chatting patiently whilst the connecting Zoom call fights against the forces of feedback and teething problems. He’s at home in Philadelphia, a few days before he heads over to Europe for a run of shows and a couple of weeks after millions tuned in to watch his performance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. With these accolades stacking up, Alex still carries himself with an approachable ‘slacker’ demeanour - a far cry from the jaded persona that could befit a man once dubbed by certain factions of the media as ‘America’s greatest living songwriter’.
Famed for making all of his music in solitude, working with external sound engineers and studios for the first time on his ninth album offered Alex a new challenge to sink his teeth into. “It was kind of weird at first,” he recalls.
Where some artists seek drastic environmental changes or a fresh headspace in which to embark upon their next creative era, Alex has always thrived when working within manageable, controlled setups, with his finger firmly on the button. “I think that’s valuable because I like to let my mind go a little out of control,” he explains. “So, by executing ideas in a physical environment that I’m familiar with, my internal process can be less controlled.” He ponders for a moment whether his explanation might have come off as pretentious: “I don’t know if that makes sense, but it’s how I see it,” he laughs.
Whether intentionally or not, this manageable means of self-production has contributed greatly to the Alex G sound. Writing, recording and producing whole albums, and putting them online in a similar fashion to contemporaries like Car Seat Headrest or Mac DeMarco in his early Makeout Videotape project, put Alex amongst the vanguard of supposed bedroom pop or lo-fi artists: a label that follows him to this day, despite his hefty experience and record deal with indie powerhouse Domino.
It may have seemed unthinkable during those early days of online pickup that these self-sufficient creatives would infiltrate the mainstream, but The Tonight Show, with a regular viewership of between one and two million, is nothing if not a marker of cultural standing. “Yeah, that was a really cool experience,” Alex responds. “On its own, the performance doesn’t
“I guess it bugged me at first,” he says of the tag. “Even at the very beginning, I never understood why people called my process lo-fi, because I was trying my best to make it sound…” he thinks briefly, “... hi-fi, I guess?”
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“I mean, I guess my writing has matured since [2019’s previous album] ‘House of Sugar’, but only in the same way that ‘House of Sugar’ did from ‘Rocket’ before that,” he considers. “To be honest, I’m not even sure that ‘mature’ is the right word. I’m always changing and my songs just reflect that.”
Perhaps the lack of intentional theme or concept throughout his nine albums to date has passively allowed for each to stand as a bookmark - capturing a certain time, place or snapshot of Alex’s life with absolute purity.
In much the same way that early releases like ‘Race’ bottled a feeling of fantastical teenage escapism, and 2014’s ‘DSU’ embodied the kind of indestructible experimentalism that arrives with the early fringes of adulthood, ‘God Save the Animals’ is a portrait of a narrator in his late twenties: more sure than ever of who he is, albeit wise enough to know that he’s not finished learning. Representative of a time in life where you choose your battles, allow for the pettiness to pass you by and come to the realisation - as he sang to millions of viewers on The Tonight Show so recentlythat every day is a blessing.
One prevailing theme throughout ‘God Save the Animals’’ ambiguity is a sense of grounded acceptance within its narrator, as he allows circumstances to wash over him, making peace with where things are headed and who he is. “A love will come in time,” Alex sings on album opener ‘After All’, while final track ‘Forgive’ opens with the refrain: “Forgive yesterday, I choose today.”
’God Save The Animals’ is out 23rd September via Domino. DIY
“Even at the verybeginning, I neverunderstood why peoplecalled my process lo-fi.”
and it’s difficult to decipher whether Alex - who rarely discusses his personal life in interviews - is choosing his words wisely or genuinely approaching the question with thoughtful sincerity. “Like, I’m still selfish,” he continues, “but I guess maybe I’m becoming more aware of my own selfishness as I get older?”
T
And do these accolades go some way towards shaking the DIY tag? “There isn’t much I can do about how people categorise what I do,” he shrugs. “I’m just grateful people are saying things about my music. It’s nice that people give it the time of day, and there’s really no use in getting annoyed about that stuff.”
Whether the prospect of maturity seems like too fine a point to put on the process, these lyrics do point to a new outlook from the writer. Now in his late twenties and cohabiting with his partner, with lockdown having left most people emotionally changed in some form, ‘God Save The Animals’ seems to suggest an author with something of a new attitude to life.
“Actually yeah, I think so,” he responds to the sentiment. “It’s hard to say at what rate these changes happen, but I think there is a selfishness throughout my life that is slowly dissolving.” The point arrives slowly,
his willingness for fans to relabel, re-appropriate and make his music their own has also permeated the way in which Alex G writes, with lyrical ambiguity flowing throughout all of his output.
necessarily mean much. But it felt good to see that people in my life who don’t understand what I do could see me on Fallon, and see that I’m working towards something, and understand it a bit more.”
It’s not unusual for songwriters to avoid speaking about the specifics of their canon, but in Alex’s case, songs and even entire albums have previously been left fully open to interpretation: a process which has arrived by design. “The initial sentiment of the lyrics comes out pretty quickly, it’s like an impulsive thing,” he says. “Then I spend a lot of time reworking my lyrics to try and allow for more angles besides my own angle. I’d rather there was some universality to it that could be appreciated by other people after I’m done with the song.”
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‘I Love You Jennifer B’ is an album of weirdness and whimsy, of technical prowess and nostalgic escapism. At its core sit Jockstrap: two musicians tinkering around in their own curious playground. Words: Louis Griffin. Photos: Louise Mason.
StrangeMagic
The London dance scene in the 2010s turns out to be a key touchstone for both members, with the post-dubstep sounds of iconic clubs like Plastic People proving a common source of excitement. “We both listened to Annie Mac’s radio show and the tracks that she put on compilation albums, which had people like Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs and Disclosure,” Taylor recalls: “Late night Radio 1, rave-y house music, which had a pop tint to it.”
“I think it’s good, always, to try and surroundedstay by inspiredthatpeopleyou'reby.”
T
‘I Love You Jennifer B’ is a peak Jockstrap have been building to for some time. They started recording under the name five years ago, and released an EP - 2018’s ‘Love Is The Key To The City’ - that immediately set them up as an intriguing outlier, even among a thriving London scene of them. All the elements that make Jockstrap unique were already there from the beginning, however: Georgia’s strangely out-of-time, classical crooner delivery, Taylor’s unapologetically wonky electronics, and a curiously ambiguous set of subject matter.
- Taylor Skye
“I
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Georgia is talking about the track in the context of the pair’s debut album, this month’s much-anticipated ‘I Love You Jennifer B’. Across ten tracks, Jockstrap veer from the gorgeous indie-pop of ‘Glasgow’ to the caustic club grooves of ‘50/50’, passing through almost every conceivable sound in between. This is an album with “an orchestra on most of the songs”, according to Georgia, and yet one that also contains breakbeats and 808s.
t’s kind of like The Sims,” begins Georgia Ellery, peering from upside down on the Zoom screen. She’s explaining Animal Crossing for someone who’s never played, having written a song about one of the game’s characters, ‘Debra’. It’s a suitably surreal situation to find her in: as one half of Jockstrap, she and bandmate Taylor Skye make music that could itself be described, at times, as skewed, wide-eyed, perspectively-warped and all manner of other things.
‘Hayley’, from that EP, was told from the perspective of a Las Vegas sex worker, and online the band flirted with strangely distorted videos and photos; throughout, you were never quite sure if the project was a serious proposition or an art-school in-joke. But crucially, their music was always shot through with bursts of sincerity - the emotive cores of later tracks such as 2020’s ‘Yellow In Green’ or recent single ‘Concrete Over Water’ still heartfelt, and often heartbreaking.
hey met at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London - Georgia studying jazz; Taylor, electronic composition. Their unique live performances, with Georgia singing karaoke-like over Taylor’s beats, were initially inspired by James Blake’s early live outings. “His live show was all [performed] without laptops, so that’s something initially we were interested in doing,” she explains. “We're still quite keen on keeping laptops out of things - mainly because they break and they're expensive as well…”
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DIY
‘I Love You Jennifer B’ is out now via Rough Trade.
Georgia stops to consider the question. “If we can give some interesting knowledge on the music, I think that's what we've been doing.
It’s a simple statement for a record so twisting and complex, but maybe that’s the beauty of it. For Jockstrap, it’s the music that’s the key - nothing else matters.
It sums the duo up. When asked what links together the songs on ‘I Love You Jennifer B’, Georgia has a simple answer: “I think the thing that ties it together is the fact that Taylor and I [made] every song.”
The closing track to 2020’s ‘Wicked City’ EP, this statement of intent expands to include soaring synth lines, genuinely huge guitar solos, and… a fake ending. One minute from the end, the track fades away to silence before returning for an entire outro. It finishes the record with a brilliant sleight of hand, a perfect fit for a deeply strange set of tracks.
Jockstrap have made a difficult, brilliant album. But it’s apparent that they care about only that - the music - and feel profoundly uncomfortable digging into everything around it. Some artists thrive when discussing their work, and the discourse around it becomes part of the art itself, but not so much these two. Taylor nods: “I think, often [if] someone's good at music, they're not good at talking about music.” He pauses. “I like hearing Georgia explain the songs, [though], because I learn about things.”
Moving to London, meanwhile, had a marked effect on both members of the group. Georgia grew up in rural Cornwall, and while Taylor was born in the city, his family moved to Market Harborough when he was 11. Once in the capital, both quickly became embedded in its fertile music scene, with Georgia becoming part of Black Country, New Road. They soon found themselves within a much-commented-on South London scene of experimental music and similarlyminded peers.
Taylor concurs: “I think it’s good, always, to try and stay surrounded by people that you're inspired by. And we still do - people that we were inspired by years ago are still inspiring us.”
THE OFWORLDWEIRDELLERY&SKYE
The band wrongfoot us from the very first moment of the album. Where their previous work has been conducted on synths and piano, opener ‘Neon’ begins with pensive acoustic guitar, more suited to a record by The National than to a group once signed to Warp. The delicate fingerpicking of ‘Lancaster Court’ is followed directly by the pummelling vocal warmups that begin ‘50/50’ - full of clashing textures and structures, all coming up against one another in a discordant symphony.
Arca’s really good at talking about her thoughts on trans rights, that's amazing to listen to, and we can't do anything like that, but we can talk about music.”
n fact, it’s when discussing the artists that they find exciting that the duo light up the most. Taylor recently saw a Playboi Carti show, and he suddenly comes to life describing the performance. “He just stood in front of his album, playing off Spotify, and it was one of the most moving things I've seen,” he says, shaking his head. “He just screamed, it was like metal. It was a completely physical thing. His voice on the album is really pure, but live he just screams like the devil, not rapping, just standing there. So we might do that soon.”
“I think it’s important to obscure, [in order] to preserve it. Whenever I write lyrics, they usually start as notes on my iPhone. They're thoughts and feelings that I'm having, that I need to write down to process, or there's been a nice moment, and I want to capture it,” she shares. “For me personally, it's a good thing, being transparent about things that are private, because it's cathartic when you release it. Sometimes you write about things that you
Jockstrap have a distinguished track record of gonzo moments. Here’s just a few of our favourites.
‘CITY HELL’
‘BEAVERCORE’
Both Georgia and Taylor, however, found themselves unsure of the narrative that built up around Jockstrap and their peers. “I think it’s true that you should be a sceptic about that, because it’s very romanticised a lot of the time,” Taylor says. “These days, everyone is away playing gigs [or] is moving away, so you don't see as many people.” How true was the narrative of the scene back at that time? “I think at the beginning, it was good to have a community of bands putting on live shows, being explorative, doing different things,” Georgia explains, “because if you see someone else doing it, you have the confidence to do it yourself.”
Lyrically, however, the record feels like it takes a different line to previous Jockstrap fare. Many of the tracks here feel personal and confessional – vulnerable in a way they weren’t before. Taylor has noticed this shift in Georgia’s lyrics too, noting that “it feels a bit more like a diary to me.” Speaking on the line between opening up and keeping things for yourself, Ellery dances around the merits of both.
“Contrasts, and tension and release are important in music, so we’re thinking about that in a compositional way.” - Georgia Ellery
I
thinking about that in a compositional way.”
can't tell people in real life, that you're nervous to [say], so when you say it, and everyone can hear it, it feels good.”
The brilliantly bizarre second half of ‘Wicked City’ track ‘The City’ finds the previously blissful piano ballad descending into a nightmare landscape of deep fried 808s and a stream-ofconsciousness monologue about a beaver. So, it makes perfect sense that Jockstrap would choose to remix their own EP into dancefloor-ready bangers, and release them under the title ‘Beavercore’.
THE VIDEO FOR ‘GLASGOW’
It hints upon a recurring idea in Jockstrap’s work: that of a nostalgia for something you were never part of. The band exist within the first generation of musicians to have had access to an endless stream of content for their entire lives - all of music history, served up without context. When asked if Plastic People was a formative place for them, Taylor replies, “We never got to go there, so we were doing all this stuff in our bedrooms at 15.” “It would've been cool to be there when Plastic People was doing its thing,” Georgia muses. This feeling of displacement, of attachment to something you never actually experienced, seems key to understanding Jockstrap’s strange romanticism.
To be honest, pretty much any of Jockstrap’s videos could have worked here, from the delightfully surreal dreamworld of the ‘Concrete Over Water’ video, to their forbidden Disney music video (Google it) - but the crown has to go to ‘Glasgow’. As a strangely moving accompaniment to an achingly wistful track, it finds Taylor in full gnome makeup, traversing the landscape to find his way back to his lost love. A wonderfully odd concept, and one that’s never explained or mentioned again.
“It was very formative for us moving to London,” Georgia nods of the time. “We both wanted to do something exciting, [and] we both knew that London was the place where we could do that. We could finally be in a place where we could go and see all the artists that we were listening to on the internet, go to club nights, play with people … I would never have imagined that I would've been doing this when I was in Cornwall; I don't think I even knew a producer to make music with.”
You can see why this juxtaposition might please the pair. On ‘I Love You Jennifer B’, as ever with Jockstrap, they confound and delight in equal measure. Their appeal has long been the tension between their impulse to create something beautiful (see: the crystalline melodies of ‘What’s It All About?’) and to mar that with their chaotic, darker side (the uncanny valley ending of ‘Angst’). As Georgia sings in ‘Concrete Over Water’: “Light and dark, at once”. Do the band recognise that split in their work? “Um, no, I think we like pretty things, and we like abrasive things. So we include them in all the songs,” Georgia laughs, awkwardly. “Contrasts, and tension and release are important in music, so we’re
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Hold The Girl (Dirty Hit)
repressed. The song’s reflective nature sets the pace for the rest of the record, which combines an eclectic palette of bombastic, heart-on-sleeve euphoric pop and angsty dancefloor fillers whose influences range from Garbage to Avril Lavigne; Kacey Musgraves to The Corrs. The tracks rage with emotional depth; the heartfelt ‘Catch Me in the Air’ is a tribute to the very particular relationship between a single mother and her daughter who constantly have to take turns “catching” each other, while the club-ready queer anthem ‘This Hell’ openly embraces being eternally damned (with a nod to Shania Twain in the opening).
‘Forgiveness’ and ‘Holy’ further chart the continuous and arduous path to healing from long-felt wounds, while ‘Frankenstein’ marks one of the record’s darkest moments. It’s an honest and visceral look into more painful moments that come with processing past pain: “I’m trying to be normal, but trauma is immortal… This is so unbearable, make it stop, this is more than medical / All I want is to feel beautiful, inside and out.” Phantom’, meanwhile, addresses the ghost of past selves and the mourning of the loss of innocence: “I’ve been trying to find her since / She gave a little too much away… I don’t wanna do this without you / I don’t wanna do this if you’re just a ghost in the night.”
“It’s just temporary pain,” Rina reminds herself with finality. Rina makes it very clear that the roadway to a better tomorrow takes constant work, but with every three-minute euphoric pop banger, she gets a little closer to it. (Cady Siregar) LISTEN: ‘This Hell’, ‘Catch Me In The Air’
‘Hold the Girl’, Rina is her most candid yet about the experiences which led to her having to grow up more quickly than most. The record is anchored by a certain sense of sadness that comes with mourning the childhood she feels that she lost, but the understanding that life is an ongoing journey - and learning to accept feeling hopeful for the future and chapters that have yet to be written. Rina curated the track listing as a way to guide the listener through the reflective journey of identifying and processing her childhood trauma as an adult going through therapy.
Opener ‘Minor Feelings’ takes its title from the book by the poet Cathy Park Hong that centres on the marginalisation of Asian Americans“Minor feelings are getting me down” - with Rina speaking on feelings of otherness and loneliness she had long harboured, speaking frankly of her want to acknowledge emotions that she had long
Rina Sawayama has always been her own kind of pop star, constantly defining and redefining what exactly the term means for her. The Japanese-born, London-bred musician has carved out her own niche within the pop canon as a new kind of artist, a kind who studied politics at Cambridge before deciding that she wanted to give the music thing a go. As an East Asian musician, she has refused to box herself into one label - and this is especially true with second full-length ‘Hold the Girl’. Her music touches on the struggles she’s faced with integrating herself into the immigrant diaspora and feeling marginalised as a British-Asian, while also covering the unique and profound yet lonely and fraught experience of being a daughter raised by a single mother. All this, of course, is threaded with further themes about embracing her queerness, acknowledging the alienation she felt as a child, and the welcoming of her “chosen family.” Rina has lived many lives, and in her music, reflects on the experiences of each while still acknowledging that her story is still continuing to be written, by her own Acrosshand.
An eclectic palette of bombastic, heart-onsleeve euphoric pop and angsty dancefloor fillers. Rina Sawayama
The metaphors for healing continue with ‘Hurricanes’, in which Rina takes it upon herself to find betterment in growth – “I’m not the girl I tried to be yesterday” – with the emotional arc finding a positive resolution with record-closer ‘To Be Alive,’ where the imagery of storms and thunder are replaced with blue skies and newfound clarity.
Oliver Sim
Albums
‘Hideous Bastard’ sees Oliver take on both these past and present realities with a candour that surprises even him. “I’m ugly,” he laments in the record’s powerful opening track, followed by a poignant pause that defines what is to come. He reveals he has been living with HIV since the age of 17, something he has spent his adulthood coming to terms with. His reality, it becomes clear, has been a potent mix of shame, fear, and isolation alongside his love of art and Thepeople.record follows this journey, from his sensitivity to his confidence. It’s on ‘Fruit’ where he finds some
It was partway through writing ‘Romance With A Memory’ that Oliver Sim decided to commit to a solo album. Removed from the sound that has become synonymous with his band, The xx, the track also immediately presents Oliver’s internal battle between not taking himself too seriously and the weight of reality. It’s the latter that has let him down, he sings over a playful beat.
‘Hideous Bastard’’s expert play on melancholic electronica ultimately fades out as Oliver finds solace in an unholy trinity of serial killers on the cinematic ‘Run The Credits’. It cements the dark uncertainty presented by the record’s opening confession, and the ongoing shame members of the LGBTQ+ community often carry. Its tongue-in-cheek references lift the otherwise crushing mood as the album affirms that things get better, but that the challenges remain. In its closing moments the ellipsis looms both bright and heavy… to be continued. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Fruit’
Oliver takes on both past and present realities with a candour that surprises even him.
Hideous Bastard (Young)
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grounding, in its search for parental approval landing on a semblance of self-acceptance. “If I’ve got my father’s eyes I’ve got my mother’s smile,” he sings over bandmate Jamie xx’s masterful production, followed by a defiant “right or wrong”. It marks a milestone in a record that acknowledges Oliver’s enforced struggles with identity and HIV status, without offering a definitive solution.
I really liked those two words together. When you think of a meadow, at least most people would think of a peaceful, beautiful place or thing. But we talk about cities as being very beautiful as well - we talk about how beautiful Paris is, or London or New York. I enjoyed ruminating on the idea of the beauty of a completely manmade environment. A city is basically in a sense of cities is humankind’s domination of nature, right? I mean, there are, obviously, not a lot of photos, of course, but if you bought a drawings or painting of what New York or Manhattan was, like before, before it was what we know now and it was just a wooded Island, but in the kind of development of cities around the world, you know, we've started we look we think of cities as being beautiful places. I like the idea [that] if you’re high up in a building over a city or you’re flying over a city, a city feels as peaceful as a meadow, because you don’t get a sense of the chaos there.
Death Cab For Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard contemplates the pandemic-fuelled existentialism in the band’s tenth album, ‘Asphalt Meadows’. Interview: Emma Wilkes.
I think my feelings about mortality and my particular path in life has. I would say they’ve certainly evolved from when I was in my 20s, because I’m in my mid-40s. In my 20s, I had a lot more of my life in front of me and I was fortunate enough to not to have any friends die at a young age. But, you know, now in my mid 40s, I’ve had a number of friends die. My feelings about whatever exists after this mortal coil that we’re on have shifted, and I’ve become, you know, more introspective about it, because I wonder if I’m ever gonna see these people again, in any form or fashion. Mortality feels like much more of a lived experience at this point than it did when I was in my 20s, so I think I’m just writing about it a little bit differently. I think [when I was] writing about mortality when I was younger, it was certainly a little more conceptual.
I feel it’s just kind of an open conversation. These are things that everybody experiences. I mean, I think most people, unless you’re in a fundamentalist sect of some religion, we’re all asking a lot of the same questions, I think. What
In your music, what do you get out of exploring topics as existential as the ones that you’re contemplating on this record?
Albums
ugh this Jockstrap record feels like being dragged through an art gallery by your collar. Colours, shapes, ideas flashing by in an instant. A chaotic adventure that turns the familiar into its own spectacle. ‘I Love You Jennifer B’, the duo’s long-awaited full-length, is no less wild than their previous releases. But everything here seems to click more. A record creaking and groaning under the weight of its ideas in a way that’s more thrilling than exhausting. Opener ‘Neon’ genuinely feels like it’s about to fall apart, taking your speakers with it. ‘Angst’ begins as a beautiful, harp-led lullaby that wouldn’t sound out of place with Joanna Newsom in the seat. But, in classic Jockstrap fashion, even the most beautiful thing must decay a little. The combination of Georgia Ellery’s stunning vocal and Taylor Skye’s Willy Wonka style mind is pure alchemy that comes to an awe-inspiring head on ‘Concrete Over Water’, a track that stuffs so many ideas into its 6-minute runtime while still feeling like a pop song. ‘I Love You Jennifer B’ feels like everything that’s come before has just been a trial run. It’s bolder, more rewarding, and so much more cohesive. But it would be silly to think this is their final form. Like technicolour magicians, they’ve got plenty more up their sleeves. (Chris Taylor)
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It’s been almost a full two years since vocalist and founder Ben Gibbard led the charge in lockdown livestream performances, offering weekly insights into his forced isolation. And we’ve come a long way since; watching the world’s biggest artists in their homes on a tiny screen is all but a distant memory. Yet although ‘Asphalt Meadows’ pushes past those dark days with nods to hope and love - “I’ll never give up on you” the closing moments affirmthe outfit’s tenth studio album is clearly a product of recent times. Having bounced tracks between home studios, each member adding their own stamp, it’s Death Cab’s most eclectic sound to date. ‘I Don’t Know How I Survive’ pairs Ben’s era-defining vocals with a wall of distorted guitars, while ‘Foxglove Through The Clearcut’ lives on spoken word. Each track showcases a different facet of the member’s wide-ranging ability, pulled together by an affinity only a band in their third decade could manage. It allows for the likes of the Metric-esque ‘I Miss Strangers’ to flow into the understated ‘What Like Waves’, and the gentle rise of the final track to exist in the same space as the electronic experimentation on ‘Roman Candles’. ‘Asphalt Meadows’ may not be a lockdown record, but it’s one that finds its voice in emerging into musical freedoms found in separation. (Ben Tipple)
Q&A
Jockstrap
Death Cab For Cutie Asphalt Meadows (Atlantic)
LISTEN: ‘I Miss Strangers’
I get out of it is the catharsis of stewing in it, and asking myself the questions in public,that I feel a lot of other people ask themselves, and what I hope that other people get out of it is when the songs are played live, and they're relating to some of the subject matter and the uncertainty that we all experience in life, so that they feel like they're not alone. I feel less alone when I'm able to express these kinds of feelings and doubts in front of an audience.
This record deals a lot with mortality and the fragility of life, topics that have often come up in your work. How much have your thoughts on that topic evolved since the early days of Death Cab?
What inspired the title choice?
I Love You Jennifer B (Rough VoyagingTrade)thro
LISTEN: ‘Concrete Over Water’Arecordcreaking and weightundergroaningtheof itsideas.
Change isn’t always a bad thing - at its best, it can be an emancipating force. And it’s something Djo - the musical moniker of streaming show superstar Joe Keery - is unsure about throughout the course of this second album. Change is necessary to grow, and on ‘DECIDE’, Djo finds the courage to do exactly that. It’s long been clear that the artist has the musical chops to match his acting prowess and here it’s no different. A deeply thoughtful and yet infinitely danceable collection of songs, it balances honest truths with taunting vocals and bursts of synth-prompted energy. ‘End Of Beginning’ seems to be the best example of this – an ever-thrumming, low guitar line sits amid lovelorn synths, rising ever higher until the vocals become an unbelievably cathartic shout. Likewise, closer ‘Slither’ growls along, but carries that earnest hope in its lyrics. In some way, that light always comes to the surface. ‘Half Life’ begins with a newfound darkness, but as is common with Djo, quickly casts that off. Regardless of how self-analytical or distressed the lyrics become, there’s always a blast of sonic light to maintain never relenting optimism. As Djo discovers the inevitability of change, he also discovers a great deal about who he is and who he may transform to be: ‘DECIDE’ is a soundtrack to working through feelings and history in order to emerge stronger and more assured. All the while, there’s a simmering, hopeful glimmer to the album’s psych licks and layers of impatient percussion. Change has come to pass in the best way possible, and Djo provides the perfect sonic manifestation of that. (Neive McCarthy) LISTEN: ‘End Of Beginning’
DECIDE (AWAL)
demon time (Polydor)
LISTEN: ‘No Bitterness’
Santigold
LISTEN: ‘bbycakes’ Alex G
God Save The Animals (Domino)
He captures a senseof being unstoppable -perhaps because he ishimself. Mura Masa
Those illusive early hours, led by mischief and bad decisions, sliding at full speed into whatever the next adventure may be: there’s something magical about that time where the sun seems to be part of the distant future and the sole focus is whatever is lit under flickering street lights. On the stratospheric ‘demon time’, Mura Masa captures that sense of being unstoppable and on top of the world - perhaps because he is himself. Now three albums in, the producer has consistently shown his unfailing ability to shake things up. There’s no use trying to keep up or guess at what might come next when each of his records have been a genre and expectation-defying masterclass in reinvention. Here, he reimagines beloved garage hits, calls upon a host of big-name collaborators to lend their talents, and refuses to be restrained by following a certain route. He refreshes 2004 classic ‘bbycakes’ by inviting Lil Uzi Vert, Shygirl and PinkPantheress, whilst elsewhere calls upon close friend Slowthai to make the fidgety ‘up all week’. ‘prada (i like it)’ is a spell casting dance moment, filled with glitchy beats and an insatiable hook. By contrast, ‘tonto’ enlists the help of Isabella Lovestory to deliver a lighthead ed, pop-leaning reggaeton track: both somehow blend seamlessly into the record’s breakneck narrative. His is a universe where being up to no good is celebrated and there’s an abundance of over-excited jitters that keep you bouncing to each wildly mercurial moment. ‘demon time’ is an undeniable rush to your systems, and a deliciously futuristic one at that. Its arrival comes delivered with a sly wink: Mura Masa has caught you by surprise once again. (Neive McCarthy)
65 Albums
“How many more songs am I supposed to write before I should turn it off and say good night?” asks Alex Giannascoli, best-known as Alex G, on ‘Miracles’. “… I have fears that I have not addressed.” It’s a good question. On ‘God Save the Animals,’ the Philadelphiabased songwriter’s ninth album to date, he philosophises on the mythic entity that is ‘God’ itself, as less a religious entity and more of a school of personal thought, with questions about the enduring nature of existence and what it means to create art within it. Alex took a different approach to production this time, deciding to take it to a professional studio, but his change in method doesn’t make the album feel more expansive, or far-reaching; instead, it sees him looking inward, asking questions of himself and those close to him. Sonically, the album shares some qualities with previous full-length, ‘House of Sugar’, in its haunting and strange nature. Tracks like ‘Runner’ are growers; highlight ‘No Bitterness’ morphs abruptly into hyperpop mid-track. ‘Blessing’ is a nightmare in audio form, sounding like a cut taken off of his score from the recent indie-horror film We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. It’s a testament to his talents that he can produce an album that encapsulates his weird and beautiful world, which is full of more questions than answers. (Cady Siregar)
Djo
Spirituals (Little Jerk)
The internet’s deep-dive into the ‘00s not showing any sign of slowing down would have been enough, but after an iconic Beyoncé shoutout, that Santigold has chosen now to return after a four-year hiatus could well incite the stroke of luck the artist has so far eluded. After a silver-certified debut in 2007’s then-self-titled ‘Santogold’, despite an enviable list of star collaborators - from Jay-Z to David Byrne via Beastie Boysboth 2012’s ‘Master of My Make Believe’ and ‘99¢’, released in 2016, failed to set charts, airwaves, or even playlists alight. Where ‘Spirituals’ - which both marks a return from a four-year break and Santi’s first release as an independent artist - works best, is as reminder and introduction. The cut-and-paste, mixtape ethos that shone through in the first place is still there - ‘Ushers of the New World’ marries this perfectly with the kind of vocal shifts that bring to mind pop pioneers Charli XCX or Grimes and synths that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Purity Ring record. ‘Fall First’ borrows a Joy Division-esque bassline for a beautifully dirgy indie-rock number, while ‘Witness’ lets Santi’s vocal take centre stage, the skittish beats amplifying the funk in her vocal rhythm. It’s also perhaps the track most straightforwardly ‘on theme’ here (the record having been titled for the Black American music of the same name). Yet when appearing to strive for big pop moments - the build of ‘The Lasty’ in particular bringing to mind endless American radio staples - it all falls flat. Not so much reigniting the spark that drew so many to her sound first time around, but a decent job of drawing a line from old to new and updating it. (Bella Martin) LISTEN: ‘Witness’
She Said (Big Machine)
There’s‘IDGAF’no
(Secretly Whitney’sCanadian)USPhas
Preoccupations have shed their claws. ‘New Material’ showed a band shifting to more melody than the aggressive bite of debut ‘Viet Cong’. And with their fourth album, ‘Arrangements’, the transformation is complete. It can, at times, feel like they’re channelling the bands formed in Interpol’s image - Editors, White Lies and the like; always one step removed from the source material. It’s most acutely felt on openers ‘Fix Bayonets!’ and ‘Ricochet’. While compellingly full of the angst we’ve come to expect, they feel lacking in new ideas. ‘Ricochet’ even seems to pull directly from Blue Öyster Cult. But once over that initial hump, ‘Arrangements’ hits a stride. Cryptic, defeated, and thrillingly oppressive, ‘Advisor’ blooms over its almost eight-minute runtime like a corrupted rose. Guitars fold in on themselves, frontman Matt Flegel lost in the whirlwind. ‘Recalibrate’ takes their evolution to its extreme, with a glittering synth arpeggio that seems to really hammer home this isn’t the new Preoccupations. With Holy Fuck’s Graham Walsh behind the desks, it gives them the confidence to really lean in to something new. It takes a while for Preoccupations to find their new groove on ‘Arrangements’. But, when they hit that stride in the latter half, it’s a terrific one. (Chris Taylor) LISTEN: ‘Advisor’
Starcrawler
Whitney
LISTEN: CONTROL’‘LOST
Cub (Communion)
Preoccupations
Wunderhorse’s Jacob Slater has already lived many lives; not least playing Sex Pistols’ Paul Cook in the recent TV series PISTOL and fronting the over-before-they-began Dead Pretties in a haze of debauchery. Somewhat accordingly, ‘Cub’ sounds more the work of a wizened troubadour than a twenty-something’s debut album: if it were to be revealed as an unreleased work from the post-Britpop comedown in the late ‘90s, doubtful anyone would bat a solitary eyelid. It’s that decade to which the record owes most, from the baggy guitars of ‘Poppy’ to the Pixies-esque ‘woo-ooh’ of ‘Mantis’ via ‘Purple’, which sounds like it’s from a lost film soundtrack of the same era. ‘Leader of the Pack’ somehow marries ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and Suede’s ‘Filmstar’, whilst ‘The Girl Behind The Glass’ possesses Ash-like building guitars and a chorus melody that’s so familiar it’s frustrating. Which is all to say, ‘Cub’ is a comforting, accomplished listen. (Louisa Dixon) LISTEN: ‘Mantis’
Sampa The Great
Arrangements (self-released)
long been a particular warmth; theirs was a sound immediately identifiable, a fuzzy aural comfort blanket, if you will. In a classic case of ‘absolutely do judge a record by its cover’, ‘Spark’ has eschewed this, the metallic sheen of the sleeve that brings to mind ‘90s rave or the pitch-shifting habits of PC Music alumni echoing the pair having delved into dance culture for their fourth outing. It falls flat. There’s a clinical element to the production which feels off - moreso when familiar harmonies seep through, such as on ‘TWIRL’. Yet when the pair do imbue proceedings with a little more funk, as on ‘MEMORY’, it’s not enough to light up any dancefloors. What’s more, for a group so seemingly emotionally attuned, the lyrics feel forced (“You’re the only reason my heart beats” sitting alongside some criminally obvious rhyming in ‘BLUE’) or detached (“We found new ways to live / While the world was burning” doesn’t hit like you’d imagine a group recording in Oregon during the 2020 fires would on ‘BACK THEN’). Sonic shifts are only natural - and these are pages filled with artists having recently reevaluated their raisons d’être, after all - but ‘Spark’ presents a jarring change: not one from that familiar warmth to icy cold, but only halfway, a sort of uncomfortable mild chill. (Bella Martin)
As Above, So Below (Loma Vista)
Albums
Rock appears to be going through its memory boxes at present: emo is back, pop punk’s enjoying a revival, and there are even a few bands trawling back a bit further into history for inspiration. It wouldn’t be unfair to pinpoint Starcrawler as one of these resurrectionists, leapfrogging off the vibes of The Stooges, The Distillers and The Rolling Stones. However, while their songs are solid, there’s something – or rather, things, missing. The LA quintet’s third album doesn’t quite explode as much as it hopes to, though a few songs threaten to, largely the acid-tongued, grinding ‘Roadkill’ and the vintage-sounding title track. The best of the bunch by quite a wide margin, however, is the woozily romantic ‘Stranded’, which might just be the only number here to have enough atmosphere and feeling to create a big, beautiful moment. Elsewhere, while the remaining tracks are slick and pack decent riffs, and they’re cohesive with a clear sense of identity, there’s not enough that’s properly memorable, and not enough that’s truly distinctive. As an album, ‘She Said’ is fine. Still, what’s rock ‘n’ roll about making music that doesn’t frequently get beyond fine? (Emma Wilkes) LISTEN: ‘Stranded’
Wunderhorse
The Great right now. (Adam England) LISTEN: one else quite doing it like Sampa right now.
After spending most of the 2010s based in Australia, the pandemic saw Sampa The Great relocate back to her native Zambia. It’s a move that makes ‘As Above, So Below’ a musical smorgasbord: sounds from Zamrock and kalindula woven seamlessly alongside those of contemporary Western hip hop and soul. Denzel Curry and Joey Bada$$ coexist here alongside Afropop legend Angélique Kidjo, Zamrock staples W.I.T.C.H. and Sampa’s sister, Mwanjé. But Sampa’s unique vocals remain front and centre, from the psychedelic Zamrock of ‘Never Forget’ to the groovy ‘Bona’ - inspired by her upbringing in Botswana - a riveting end to the first half of the album. W.I.T.C.H. appear themselves on the funky ‘Can I Live’, while Kojey Radical makes an appearance on penultimate track ‘IDGAF’. It’s followed by ‘Let Me Be Great’, featuring Kidjo, which is a near perfect blending of classic and contemporary with an electric atmosphere and West African influences. This blending of location and genre isn’t new territory for the 29-year-old, but ‘As Above, So Below’ feels more refined. It’s fair to say there’s no one else quite doing it like Sampa
SPARK
67 lafayettelondon lafayettelondon.com
ArchivesSudan
LISTEN: ‘Hard To Fake It’
(self-titled)(Island)
LISTEN: ‘Prior Warning’
Autofiction
Albums
Guitar Music (PIAS)
LISTEN: ‘Uncanny Valley’
If(BMG)itweren’t so
Richardson revels in 20/20 vision on ‘Smiling Like An Idiot’. The album - which follows the timeline of a relationship - takes as much from the healing powers of time and reflection as it does from the starry-eyed heat of the moment. The immersive first act leans into poetic denial, with its rose-tinted sound brightest on ‘Spotlight Television’, at first glance a gooey love song, yet one that jars once you realise the lyrics are “I’ll keep getting smaller for you / Anything that I can do”. This self-aware indulgence makes the eventual shift to tentative happiness all the more appealing. ‘Hard To Fake It’ revels in allowing itself to brood; ‘Holiday’ comes full-circle with lyrical realism. These subtle changes in tone keep ‘Smiling Like An Idiot’ from feeling too repetitive, and place her learning curve at its core. (Ims Taylor)
Sorcha Richardson Smiling Like An Idiot Sorcha(Faction)
Courting
From the jarring electronic soundscape generated by opener ‘Twin Cities’ through to the bombastic, maximalist rhythm of ‘PDA’, Courting - led by a deformed vocal from frontman Sean Murphy-O’Neill - take listeners on a thematic and sonic thrill ride. Observing their surroundings with an audible sense of horror, the outfit describe their ongoing mental journey with a disjointed but ever more relevant tone of trepidation. The epic eight minutes of ‘Uncanny Valley’ attempt to find solace in relationships, but when this reclusion is torn apart, the band walk out of the scarring venture with a forced, barelyheld-together grin. Producer James Dring facilitates this step forward and captures a sense of excitement in the group, distorting their message while somehow increasing its potency; the record makes no attempt to shroud emotional reactions to the modern world, and it results in a thematically poignant, lyrically sharp and sonically surprising statement piece that redeems what was once used as a dismissive label. (Finlay Holden)
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deliberate, it would be easy for ‘Autofiction’ to feel like little more than Suede donning a musical costume of their early days. Instead, we’re getting a retelling. The veteran outfit’s ninth full-length is saturated with their wellhoned symbiotic onstage energy: closer ‘Turn Off Your Brain And Yell’ rings with absent audience noise as Brett Anderson’s voice reverberates around an imaginary arena; ‘Personality Disorder’ shudders with intensity and performance; tempo shifts and hints of improv inject the title track with vital urgency. There’s not so much luxurious orchestration or dark flamboyance underpinning ‘Autofiction’’s construction, but Suede maintain their magnitude through emotional craft - single ‘15 Again’ is the perfect microcosm of ‘Autofiction’’s ups and downs, its euphoric chorus built around painstaking regret. In essence, ‘Autofiction’ finds Suede still fiercely in motion. (Ims Taylor) LISTEN: ‘Turn Off Your Brain And Yell’
Suede
Natural Brown Prom Queen (Stones Throw)
Marmite. An overused term, yes, but also one it’s far too easy to apply to Marcus Mumford. Here’s another: a man is known by the company he keeps. That Marcus has chosen now to release a solo album in place of revving up the Mumford & Sons’ juggernaut for a fifth outing is almost definitely linked to the - let’s say‘extracurriculars’ of his banjo-wielding progeny. And while his former bandmate falls further still into the far-right cesspool, Marcus has managed to bag himself collaborations with the likes of Phoebe Bridgers, Clairo, and alt-country darling Brandi Carlile. They aren’t a focal point, though, on a record which largely sounds as one might assume a 2022 Marcus Mumford solo might: the Clairo-featuring ‘Dangerous Game’ is largely forgettable, and while Phoebe provides a ghostly vocal counterpoint to Marcus’ gravel on one of the album’s better numbers, ‘Stonecatcher’, anyone with the right pitch could do the same. ‘(self-titled)’ is Vegemite: the same, but different. When he strips it right back - ‘Prior Warning’, with its bleak reminiscing reflected by a sonic hark back to the London scene in which he made his early name, and the stark ‘Dangerous Game’, where Marcus’ voice allowed to linger for just the right amount of time - there’s a warm quality to his songwriting that seeps through. Opener ‘Cannibal’ begins this way, too, while also recalling The National’s influence on 2015’s ‘Wilder Mind’. For a good three minutes it’s so far, so ‘this may surprise yet’. But then in everything crashes, kitchen sink and all, as if years of headlining arenas trigger a fear response if too long passes before the ‘epic’ is switched on. The drivetime-destined ‘Grace’ and bland ‘Better Angels’ sound as if penned to create specific fist-pumping moments, the former a confused mess of US radio rock tropes: a blues guitar solo bulldozing its way through while Marcus adopts a Transatlantic twang for the hollow refrain of “Grace / Like a river”. In essence, then ‘(self-titled)’ is just Marcus leaving the kids at home for an evening, only to do the same exact thing just without a chorus of “are we there yet,” “I’m bored,” and “well, actually…”. (Emma Swann)
Sudan Archives has always been about confidence, from her unconventional use of the violin right down to album titles. ‘Athena’; now ‘Natural Brown Prom Queen’. But if ‘Athena’ was otherworldly, ‘Natural Brown Prom Queen’ is much more down to earth, painting a picture of a headstrong woman of the world. ‘Home Maker’ sets out the stage early, a dreamlike vision creating a comforting centre for someone in even their most emotional times. ‘‘ChevyS10’ captures the lush romanticism of Frank Ocean with perfection, halfway between heartbreak and hope: “We can leave tonight / Or we can die this way”. Closer ‘#513’ takes the journey full circle, back to her home town of Cincinatti with a reference to Biggie. But what made Sudan Archives so fresh feels to have fallen by the wayside a little. Her violin, though always used in interesting ways, is rendered to little more than cameos. On ‘Confessions’, it was the star, itself becoming a delicious hook. But there’s nothing quite like that here. Instead, she aims for the woozy soundscapes of contemporaries like Kelela. ‘Natural Brown Prom Queen’ is Sudan Archives’ most accessible record to date. An unashamedly brash and confident one, but much more subtle and realistic. Rumbling beats, smooth R&B grooves, with just a touch of the experimental. Yet, in opening itself wider, it loses some of the sharp idiosyncracies that made the early material so exciting. (Chris Taylor) LISTEN: ‘ChevyS10’
Two ClubCinemaDoor
When indie mainstays Two Door Cinema Club returned in 2019 with fourth LP ‘False Alarm’, they seemed like a band reinvigorated. Sporting a slick new pop art aesthetic and pushing their established earworm formula into stranger territory, it seemed to herald a new era for the trio: a more stylised version of the band who could nod to Devo as much as the ‘00s indie disco. ‘Keep On Smiling’, then, keeps on keeping on - which is to say, its wares pick up where its predecessor left off but without adding too much extra to the mix. Second time around, the bouncing ‘80s synths of ‘Blue Light’ still land but feel familiar rather than fresh; some tracks - the peppy bounce of ‘Lucky’ or lead single ‘Wonderful Life’ - meanwhile just sound like classic Two Door with a different Casio setting. In the pockets where they do deviate from the formula (be that the old or more recent one), there are nods to next steps. ‘Millionaire’’s shoulder-shimmying verses have an aura of ABBA (a good thing), while ‘Won’t Do Nothing’ pits a funky Metronomy bass line with warped, affected vocals and deadpan chants. But Two Door can’t help but explode into a chart-friendly chorus, and as long as they populate almost every song, there’s only so much variation that can occur. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Won’t Do Nothing’
Marcus Mumford
Keep On Smiling (Lower Third / PIAS)
YEAH YEAH YEAHS COOL IT DOWN
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ARCTIC MONKEYS THE CAR
LISTEN: ‘Kids’
Miya Folick
THE 1975 BEING FUNNY IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Kynsy
“Do I need God? / Who is God? / I’ve never had God” ruminates Miya Folick on ‘Oh God’, the opener of EP ‘2007’ – the California singersongwriter’s first release since her 2018 debut album ‘Premonitions’. From Starbucks cold brew to trashy TV, ‘Oh God’ reflects the humdrum reality of 2022, and perfectly encapsulates the all-too-common feeling that, while still being young, you’ve not quite done enough with your life yet. ‘Bad Thing’ is livelier, almost HAIMesque, while ‘Nothing To See’ is a little slower again, with a noughties-style sound. Miya moves from indie pop (‘Oh God’) to pop-rock (‘Nothing To See’) to dreamy, soulful folk (‘Ordinary’), and she proves more than adept at everything she puts her hand to. Altogether, this is a solid collection of songs that wear their heart on their sleeve and capture the zeitgeist too. (Adam England) LISTEN: ‘Bad
...but while their automobile days might be over, this foursome's fifth album is released a week before, on 14th October.
AdeptThing’ at everything she puts her hand to.
Having spent the last 12 months winning followers with a raucous and chaotic live presence, the release of KEG’s second EP ‘Girders’ bottles their increasingly manic brand of kitchen-sink post-punk into a whirlwind 6-song set. A-brim with splintered guitars and Squid-esque scream-vocals - inflected by colourful keyboard swirls and trombone slides - KEG come across like Dexys Midnight Runners headlining the Windmill; jerky and jet-propelled; ripe for a boozed-up dance, with a quaint whiff of middle-class British suburbs taking it home. While ‘Kids’ shows the band at their most irreverent“Daddy! I want an itsu!” - there is plenty of sophistication hidden up their collective sleeves - a tender lyric or melody striking at an unforeseen moment; thunderous surges that are frankly orchestral. Though there are formulae at play here we’ve certainly felt before, there’s an undeniable freshness here in Keg’s debonair. But most importantly, with tunes that are as catchy as they are direct, they are also insanely fun. (Elvis Thirlwell)
Manchester four-piece Porij have a terrific knack for making club tunes packed full of emotion, transporting UK garage energy into the ‘20s. Laying everything out on the ground while laying down addictive beats. Their influences are worn on their sleeves and in their lyrics: ‘Lose Our Minds’ namechecks Katy B while feeling the darker twin to Jayda G’s ‘Both Of Us’. ‘Automatic’ feels somewhere between the jitteriness of early Foals and the lush house of Disclosure. But this EP is still distinctly Porij. ‘Figure Skating’, with its propulsive beat, drags you with it as it speeds along. About to lose control but always saving your balance just in time, Porij are all about seeing where they can take a pop tune emotionally and sonically. Sometimes that means smashing together genres. Sometimes it’s about baring your soul over a 130BPM kick-snare beat. Sometimes it’s just about making something with a real groove. Their third EP, ‘Outlines’ shows they’ve still got plenty of places they want to take it. (Chris Taylor)
LISTEN: ‘Figure Skating’
The NYC indie legends continue their triumphant return with this, released September.30th
Kynsy’s world is one bursting with colour and brimming with authenticity. The Irish newcomer’s second EP is a boisterous collection of tracks, vivid and playful - an intoxicating glimpse into her artistic vision. Opening with the swirling electronics of ‘Point Of You’, she’s dispirited by past lovers - their rejection leading Kynsy to reevaluate her priorities. “Oh I could say please / Be my baby / But what’s the point in that?”. Its punky tension is infectious, leading the listener hand in hand into her emotional turmoil. Written on the cusp of 2022, ‘New Year’ is a barbed, charged anthem. Crackling guitar melodies crash off one another in a frenzied fashion, capturing the flurry of thoughts and potential resolutions scuttling through the brain on the cusp of a new year. Working with alt-J regular Charlie Andrew throughout the project, you can hear Kynsy’s wide range of influences pouring through the pores of the project. David Bowie’s eclecticism, the Beatles’ romantic gestures and The Strokes’ raging riffs - it’s an amalgamation of the old and the new. (Bryony Holdsworth) LISTEN: ‘New Year’
2007 (Nettwerk)
KEG Girders
(Alcopop! / BMG)
In any other year, the Sheffield lads' seventh would be the eagerly-anticipatedmostof the month. Out 21st October.
ComingUp
TAYLOR SWIFT MIDNIGHTS
And then this one went and put a spanner (or wrench, since, er, she's American) in the works. Tay's tenth is out 21st October.
Porij Outlines (AWAL)
Something To Do With Love (AWAL)
EPs, etc
Damon and co’s ability to craft a glowing headline set welcomes Flow back with a bang.
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T
hree years since Flow last took place, the Helsinki festival’s gates open once again to welcome a crowd eager to make up for lost time. Taking place at a defunct power plant, the event hosts acts spanning all genres, with some of the biggest names in pop playing alongside the buzziest DJs in the world.
bops, including recent release ‘True Romance’.
Suvilahti, Helsinki. Photos: Emma Swann.
Finland’s own Vessala kicks off the fun on Friday with her Poppy-esque blend of thrashing guitars and pop melodies, before Sigrid returns to the Main Stage for her first time since 2018 urging the crowd to dance along as her stellar vocals power through hits including ‘Don’t Kill My Vibe’ and ‘Stranger’. Over in the Black Tent, it’s a slightly different style of on-stage dancing as Aldous Harding robots along to her compelling folk, but the party truly starts when Nigeria’s Burna Boy hits the Main Stage.
Gorillaz close out the Main Stage’s first night with a huge headline set that sees Damon and co. lead the crowd through nearly two hours’ worth of their huge discography. Recent track ‘Cracker Island’ sounds vibrant, while ‘On Melancholy Hill’ has the whole crowd waving their arms in the air. Marking the band’s first time in Finland, the
Flow
BURNA BOY
Armed with pyrotechnics which light up almost instantly, his Afrobeats-inspired sounds conjure an immaculate vibe as the sun sets, and the crowd in front loves every minute of it, with Burna Boy returning from high-fiving the front row at one point with a newly-acquired bra. Heading on over to the Red Arena, Jarvis Cocker prances about the stage as JARV IS… begin their set with a take on alma mater Pulp’s ‘She’s a Lady’, before performing new track ‘Proceed To The Route’, and closing proceedings with a sing-a-long of the frontman’s own iconic ‘…Running The World’. Later on, whose birthday coincides with her midnight stage time - wows the same arena with her electro-pop
London DJ Sherelle starts off our Saturday with her golden hour rave-ready set at the Resident Advisor stage before it’s over to the Red Arena to watch the iconic Bikini Kill. Though the tent’s sound seemingly can’t quite handle Kathleen Hanna’s riotous voice, the band still have the crowd lapping up their riot grrrl stompers, albeit a bit quieter than most would wish for.
PRINCESSAGAIN..NOKIA
71 FRED
the Machine returns to Flow with a triumphant second night headline show. Sprinting across the stage as she belts out her hits that span the last decade, the front row - all decked out in flower crowns, of course - scream along to every word. “You’re now all a part of the cult of Florence and the Machine,” Flo will grin later in the set, having urged the crowd to put away their phones and be present in the moment. ‘King’ and ‘Ship To Wreck’ provide early highlights as she commands the crowd while performing under the full moon (both literally in front of her and enlarged behind her on a backing screen), before she further conjures utter devotion from the crowd with a run of ‘Never Let Me Go’, ‘Hunger’, ‘Shake It Off’ and epic closer ‘Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)’.
It's
While he may not have climbed to a main stage headline spot just yet, Fred again.. showcases in the Red Arena why he’ll be there very soon. Performing to a rammed tent that hangs on his every drop, he wows with his effortlessly compelling electronic beats, and the packed tent’s hands don’t go down for the whole set. Delivering up huge tracks including ‘Kyle (I Found You)’, the Baxter Dury-featuring ‘Baxter (These Are My Friends)’ and a remix of Frank Ocean’s ‘Chanel’, any Sunday lulls are fully pushed away as he launches into new track ‘Turn On The Lights Again’ featuring Swedish House Mafia and Future, giving us a taste of his upcoming project ‘Actual Life 3’. With last month’s Boiler Room set currently going viral, IRL Fred lives up to the hype and then some, closing Flow Festival in the most perfect way possible. (Elly Watson)
ALDOUS HARDING
Sunday afternoon, and Goldlink is lighting up the Red Arena playing Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and urging the crowd to mosh while otherwise impressing with his own flow, before Black Midi take to the same stage with a raucous showcase of their experimental rock that flits from jazzy influences to screaming choruses. Michael Kiwanuka aptly gets into the spirit of the sunset Main Stage slot as he soothes any Sunday hangovers with his effortless folk-infused tracks, but the majority of the crowd are already amped up to see final night headliners Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. Surprisingly starting five minutes early, Nick’s already launching himself into the adoring crowd within seconds, as he impresses with gems including ‘Jubilee Street’ and ‘Red Right Hand’. Someone at the front holds up a sign asking Nick to dance with them, which he obliges, bringing them up on to the stage for a slow dance, although another audience member who hands him sunglasses has a slightly less warm reception, as he sings “these sunglasses are shit” with a smile. By the time they close with ‘Into My Arms’, ‘Vortex’ and ‘Ghosteen Speaks’ though, any eyewear slights are long forgotten.
YARDSELFACT ESTEEM
Opening with the anthemic ‘I’m Fine’, wherein she embraces a “deranged woman” persona by barking into the open field, the audience succumbs to her berserker pop record ‘Prioritise Pleasure’ as she joyfully sings her way through the universal constants - pain, heartache, ex-girlfriends, menand invites the audience to open their wounds too. It’s an unforgettable performance.
command. Anticipation enriches the atmosphere. Deer Shed has fully begun.
ILive
ShedDeer
And as Deer Shed’s Sunday draws to a close against the technicolour backdrop of Django , the crowd remains awestruck. It’s not the upturn in weather that’s done it; it’s because, over a drab weekend, inspired, kaleidoscopic musicians painted the air, stood firm against setbacks, shattered constrictive genre pigeonholes, and in turn, connected dampened crowds once again through music. (Otis Robinson)
It’s not smooth sailing to begin with, though. On Friday, Lime Garden have car trouble and don’t make it to their slot. Crowds struggle to form as unpitched tents resist their owners. But as evening hits, things look up. The sun beams through grey, people gather at the Main Stage as Yard Act bring a real buzz. Their rich strokes of guitar
SELF ESTEEM
Baldersby Park, Topcliffe.
the same name, the pulsing trap cutting through the indie sensibilities of Deer Shed. “We’ll show you how to get things done.”
The odd weather-related issue persists into Sunday, but things round off nicely. Dry Cleaning Pip Blom slide in to wind the festival down with their infectious scuzz-pop.
A rejigged schedule allows for Lime Garden to squeeze in their cancelled set a day late, and the Brighton four-piece spiral into the cerebral matrix and Blondie-on-shrooms nature of their sound. ‘Marbles’ feels like an alien odyssey that splices colourful Scandipop with crisp Fleetwood Mac vocals, while the Kasabian-like ‘Clockwork’ and dry ‘Surf N Turf’ harken to the Britpop backdropping the festival. Chameleonic, the band are perhaps the most vibrant, effortlessly suave performers at Deer Shed. It whets the appetite for the pre-headliner-who-could-be-a-headliner, Self
Fans are soon sloshing their drinks into the air at James Smith’s command. Anticipation enriches the atmosphere. Deer Shed has fully begun.
t wouldn’t be a British festival if the silence wasn’t drenched in small talk about the weather. It’s pissing it down one moment, scorching the next, before it’s pissing down again. But Deer Shed’s first full iteration in two summers wasn’t going to let rain get in the way.
Asmelody.dark approaches, fog machines and threadbare lasers introduce Nadine Shah. Her baroque post-punk concludes the opening day on a high:
Photos: Kendall Wilson.
“It was a long journey, but we got here,” summarises Katy J Pearson. Long journeys feature endlessly across an inventive, undefinable set. Standout ‘Alligator’ is an inventive blend of dark Britpop and dreamy pop, while ‘Confession’, a high-octane track, works in antitheses via gentle soft-pop vocals and an adrenaline-rush soft-rock
tessellation – “I’m loving her scent and she loves my sound/And every time that I lay her down/It feels like Sunday/Feeling okay.” The sun-deprived Derbyshire crowd don’t need an excuse to boogie, but the Leicester quartet sure as hell give them one.
Saturday kicks off in fine (albeit drizzly) style with Deco’s tonic of 80s wonky-pop opening up the Main Stage and Clear Vinyl proving an early highlight down at the Quarry. Over at the Giant Squid stage, meanwhile, the rain has failed to dampen Pixey’s spirits. “We’re gonna bring the sunshine back to the tent today,” she beams, ushering soggy punters-by into her intricate psych-pop wonderland with jams like ‘Life in Stereo’ and ‘Just Move’.
Easy Life are feeling the Sunday vibe - they conveniently have a song about it. After opener ‘pockets’ lays down the gauntlet for a giddy, hazy soiree, Murray Matravers’ blissed-out tones send the Big Gin crowd into
Running the gamut from indie past and present to future, The Vaccines intersperse generational hits with dirty disco newbies to leave Y Not on a high. After a brief interlude to announce that football has indeed come home, the band lurch into a bastion of the former, ‘Post Breakup Sex’. With its languid chorus and daft lyrics, it shouldn’t be such a mover, but the nostalgia factor makes it one of the festival’s knockout moments.
Over on the Big Gin stage, peroxide mullet jostling in the wind, Oscar Pollock commands Sundara Karma’s return to Y Not with startling nuance and subtlety. While spring-loaded hits like ‘She Said’ maintain lessons from the cream of 2000s indie, fizzing hyperpop choruses on newer cuts like ‘Oblivion!’ introduce the Pikehall crowd to an emboldened reinvention. Though it’s difficult to tell whether they’re loving it or the boxed wine has just hit.
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Defying questions of enjoyment, however, are Sports Team whose pandemonious pageantry threatens to cave the Quarry stage in on itself. Fronted by Alex Rice who today dons a royal mantle, they treat their loyal subjects to “all the hits”. Opener ‘Here It Comes Again’ wastes no time in inciting commotion, all crunchy guitars and deadpan delivery, whilst ‘The Races’’ staccato, Pavement-ish delivery feels more confrontational in a live setting. By the opening
Just a hundred meters away, Dream Wife must have missed the mellow memo. Opening with fast-paced tirade ‘Hey Heartbreaker!’, the octane endures as the band rattle through a brief but bursting set. During the pouty single ‘Sports’, lead singer Rakel Mjöll disappears to the back of the stage, leaving guitarist Bella Podpadec and bassist Alice Go in a battle of the strings, before returning with a money cannon and a leery smirk. Unfortunately, the machine fails her and the singer resorts to lobbing wads of fake cash into the crowd. It’s witty, immersive, and fabulously entertaining.
chords of ‘Happy (God’s Own Country)’, Alex has stripped off to his usual white vest, presumably to better facilitate bounding around stage and dancing like he’s trying to pull a hamstring.
Kicking off Friday’s proceedings are South London trio Honeyglaze and their selection of brooding, proggy bangers on the Giant Squid stage. Combining the slow, mechanical rhythms and sparse, simpatico vocal performances of their debut record with ample on-stage shoegazing.
EASY LIFE PIXEY SUNDARAKARMA Live The ontodiscohitsgenerationalintersperseVaccineswithdirtynewbiesleaveYNotahigh.
Do Nothing are up next. At first the turnout looks light, but by song three, a steady stream of campers - bucket hat brims tipped over eyes and arms folded over anoraks - have flooded the tent. The track in question? ‘LeBron James’: a chugging tirade on con-men, fraudsters, and the like, that placed them at the heart of 2020’s sprechgesang renaissance and sounds just as enigmatic two years down the line.
To the punters’ delight, ‘Nightclub’ makes a rare mid-set appearance and inspires a rapturous singalong; good news for a sheepish Justin Young who confesses to having a bit of paper with the lyrics on. “They’re printed off Google so they’re slightly wrong, but let’s give it a go.” As usual though, it’s a faultless junket, reminding fans why the band are still a festival mainstay over ten years since their debut.
(Olivia Stock)
ince a house party in 2005 spilt over into a nearby field, indie bigwigs and emerging gems have been descending on the emerald valleys of the Derbyshire dales for one weekend in July. Though this year they’re more of a shade of scorched brown (cheers, Global Warming), a fine bill of bands and some long-awaited drizzle manage to perk things up a treat.
It’s Spain.
3/5 IT’SROUNDYOUR72
It’s actually Boris Johnson. Boris did just over three years, and Brown just under three years.
In arefolklore,Scottishfaeriesdivided into two Courts. What are they called? I have no idea. Seelie Court and Unseelie Court.
A inter-bandbig pub quiz of sorts, we’ll be grilling your faves one by one. Now brought to you via Zoom!
Oh the guy that tured the heads into horses. What’s his name?! Oh no. Does it begin with an O? I don’t know... It’s Puck.
Deportivo La Coruña is a football team from which country? Brazil?
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“I feel like going back to school wouldn’t be a bad idea...”
The Museum of British Folklore is based in which UK city?
General Knowledge
Which chemical has the symbol Na in the Periodic Table? Sodium? It is!
It’s got to be Gordon Brown, right?
FINAL SCORE: 4/10
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Ooh, I don’t know. Shall I guess? Edinburgh. Sadly, it’s London.
Who served as Prime Minister for longer: Boris Johnson or Gordon Brown?
Oh god… seven? Yes! There’s Cardiff, Swansea, Newport, Bangor, St Asaph, St Davids, and Wrexham. Oh!
Where: At the hair salon. Drink: Lucozade Sport.
Verdict:
Which band pulled out of headlining Reading & Leeds festival in 2022? I know this one! Rage Against The Machine! Yes!
Mari Lwyd is a folkloretraditionalcustom from which country? I’m gonna go for Wales… Correct!
What is the name of the mischievous sprite made popular by William Shakespeare in Midsummer Night’s Dream?
SPECIALIST SUBJECT: Folklore
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Wrexham was awarded city status in May 2022, but how many cities are there in Wales in total?
What is professionthe of a leprechaun? I thought they just give you wishes? And they also make shoes! Oh.
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JOIN US FOR A DAY OF MASTERCLASSES, DEMOS AND LIVE PERFORMANCES, OPENING YOUR EYES TO THE WORLD OF LOOPING. An opportunity to learn about the art of looping, exploring a range of BOSS’ latest loop stations. Artists and product specialists will be on hand to support you as you create your own loops, and we’ll come together for performances by three of the leading looping artists in the industry. The artists will be talking you through how they use looping to open up a whole world of creativity, layering up vocals, guitars, synths, percussion and more to create new and innovative sounds. STUDIO 9294, HACKNEY WICK, LONDON DIY 13LoopInthepresents&THOctober2022 Daytime Session 2.30 - 6.00pm (limited to 50 places) Product demonstrations and trial sessions with specialist trainers Evening session 7.30 - 10.30pm (limited to 150 places) Expert performance and masterclasses from three artists free Tickets from DICE
