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FREE. DEC 2019 / JAN 2020 ISSUE 92 DIYMAG.COM SET MUSIC FREE

Class of2020

A feast of new talent, featuring Dry Cleaning

Beabadoobee • Squid Do Nothing • Arlo Parks girl in red & lots more

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Question!

Somehow, terrifyingly, we have reached the end of the decade. So, as we leave the mighty ‘10s and enter the roaring ‘20s, we must ask: what are Team DIY’s ALBUMS OF THE WHOLE DAMN DECADE?!?!

SARAH JAMIESON • Managing Editor

It might mean turning the clock all the way back to the start of the decade, but I’d have to choose Arcade Fire’s ‘The Suburbs’ (2010) those opening chords of ‘Ready To Start’ still fill my heart with joy even now.

EMMA SWANN • Founding Editor Not just because it features a glorious black and white image of NYC on the sleeve (though that doesn’t hurt), but Vampire Weekend’s masterpiece ‘Modern Vampires of the City’ (2013) has it for me.

LISA WRIGHT • Features Editor The album I have loved the hardest is probably Father John Misty’s gorgeous, funny, perfect ‘I Love You, Honeybear’ (2015) but the album that gives me goosebumps for the sheer cultural ‘moment’ is obv ‘AM’ (2013).

I’m having both and you can’t stop me.

LOUISE MASON • Art Director Aidan Moffat and Bill Wells’ ‘Everything’s Getting Older’ (2011) still kills me every single time and I think it always will, it’s brutal.

ELLY WATSON • Digital Editor Play the entirety of ‘I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it’ (2016) at my funeral.

Listening Post

What’s been worming its way around DIY’s collective earholes this month?

MURA MASA - R.Y.C

Still think Mura Musa is just a noodly electronic laptop boy? These days he’s got a load of mates adding some pep in his step (slowthai, Ellie Wolf Alice, Georgia etc) and it’s sounding HUGE. Deal wiv it!.

SLØTFACE - SORRY FOR THE LATE REPLY

Everyone’s favourite Norwegian pop punks are back with a second set of cathartic, hyperactive, mosh-inducing bangers. Don’t be sorry guys, we’re just glad you called at all.

ROBBIE WILLIAMS - THE CHRISTMAS PRESENT

Iiitttttt’s Christmas, and though you might not have asked Santa specifically for a song called ‘Bad Sharon’ featuring boxer Tyson Fury, that is what Robbie has given you. You will listen to it and you will say ‘thank you’. Thank you, Robbie.

Editor's Letter

Christmas trees are going up, advent calendars are being cracked into and with the end of the year edging ever closer, we can officially start to get excited for a fresh new start.

And what a year 2020’s set to be - so tasty, in fact, that we’ve dedicated our entire new issue to it!

Throughout this bumper double issue, you’ll be able to dig into the delectable buffet of new acts that make up our Class of 2020, from the insatiably idiosyncratic Dry Cleaning to the off-the-wall boldness of Squid, via the sweet, grungy stylings of Beabadoobee, there’s tons of artists to take your fancy. And that’s not all: in the spirit of looking ahead to the new decade (!), we’ve tracked down some of our old faves - including The Magic Gang, Creeper and Soccer Mommy - to chat about their impending new albums. Get your chops around all that! Now, off you go - go eat, drink and be as merry as possible.

We’ll see you in the New Year.

Sarah Jamieson, Managing Editor

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NEWS 6 THE MAGIC GANG 8 HALLOWEENS 10 POLIÇA 12 CREEPER 16 DECLAN MCKENNA 18 HALL OF FAME REVIEWS 68 ALBUMS 78 LIVE

CLASS OF 2020 MENU: 28 DRY CLEANING 32 GIRL IN RED 36 ALFIE TEMPLEMAN 38 BEABADOOBEE 42 TALK SHOW 44 ARLO PARKS 48 ANOTHER SKY 50 SQUID 54 WORKING MEN’S CLUB 56 WALT DISCO 58 BIIG PIIG 60 DO NOTHING 64 NASTY CHERRY Founding Editor Emma Swann Managing Editor Sarah Jamieson Features Editor Lisa Wright Digital Editor Elly Watson Art Direction & Design Louise Mason Contributors Ben Lynch, Ben Tipple, Cady Siregar, Chris Hamilton-Peach, Chris Taylor, Jemima Skala, Jack Doherty, Jenessa Williams, Joe Goggins, Joyce Lee, Kasimiira Kontio, Martin Toussaint, Patrick Clarke, Rhys Buchanan, Rosie Hewitson, Sean Kerwick, Tom Sloman, Will Richards Photographers Burak Cingi, Carolina Faruolo, Ed Miles, Jenn Five, Joyce Lee, Phil Smithies, Tom Ham. Cover image: Ed Miles For DIY editorial: info@diymag.com For DIY sales: advertise@diymag.com For DIY stockist enquiries: stockists@diymag.com HQ, Unit K309, The Biscuit Factory, m100DIYDrummond Road, London SE16 4DG Shout out to: All at House of Vans for hosting our big fun Class of 2020 party, and Do Nothing, Talk Show and Walt Disco for playing; Estrella Galicia and 19 Crimes Wine for the party booze; Pines and Needles for decorating our office with tree-shaped Christmas cheer; Jägermeister and all at the Thekla; Speedy’s Sandwich Bar and Espero Studios, and - lastly but definitely mostly - art director Louise for making all the mad foodie shit in this issue and not having a breakdown (much).

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

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BIG ALBUMS of 2020

The Magic Gang With their self-titled debut, The Magic Gang smashed into the Top 20 and proved that indie wasn’t dead. Now they’re broadening their horizons and getting ready to hit the sweet spot once again. Words: Lisa Wright.

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he hype cycle is a fickle thing: one minute you’re in, the next you’re pulling pints at The Old Blue Last, weeping every time your one-and-only single comes on shuffle. Releasing their self-titled debut a solid three years after tickling the public’s eardrums with their first exciting tracks, however, The Magic Gang decided to sod all that and take it slow.

Their reward was an album that narrowly missed out on the Top 10, with an army of longterm fans in support. “When we played the live shows around the record, we got the validation of seeing what we’d built up over a long time. We were playing the biggest venues we’d ever played, and they were all sold out,” recalls guitarist and vocalist Jack Kaye.

“We were hoping for a Top 40, but then to get to Number 12 was way beyond our expectations,” says bass player Gus Taylor.

At a time when it seemed nigh-on impossible for a grassroots guitar band on an indie subsidiary label to make any kind of real dent in the mainstream charts, the quartet - completed by fellow guitarist/ vocalist Kris Smith and drummer Paeris Giles - had done it, and, deservedly, it was with a spring in their step that they began to look towards LP2. “It’s validating. Putting out a record and having it do well in some way totally makes you feel more confident about trying new stuff out,” explains Kris. “We looked back and said, what did we like about those songs? And melodically and structurally, our songwriting was sound,” continues Gus. “But the main thing on this next record is that we were thinking more about lyrical content and trying to be a bit more attainable and relatable rather than just writing vague sentiments of love.”

“We’re not all living together in the same house in Brighton anymore. We’re in different places and dealing with different things, and as we get further into our twenties, so our importance lands on different subjects,” explains Jack.

“I think our characters come through independently now.

These songs sound like our respective diary entries rather than one uniform message.” Does that mean the quartet have all began to hone their particular niches within the band? Have The Magic Gang developed their own Spice Girls-style specialities? “I think we’re all Negative Spice,” deadpans Kris. Noted.

But though a decline in overt romance and a healthy dose of real-life perspective might douse their forthcoming second effort, musically there’s a whole lot more shoulder-shimmying to look forward to. Today, we’re teased two new tracks from the record. One, currently-titled ‘Just A Minute’ (although, as Kris notes, “they’re all changing - most of them are just called like, ‘New Banger’ or ‘Could Be Good Number 3’”) is a more classic MG offering, albeit one with a propulsive bassline. But the second?

“We’ve managed to sprinkle in our influences from all over the shop,” grins Gus. “There’s still those big almost road-rock tunes, but there’s disco elements, Northern soul tinges, hip hop influences. As songwriters, we don’t rely on being a guitar band; we’ve got more than that to us.”

“We’ve managed to sprinkle in our influences from all over the shop.” - Gus Taylor

Heading straight back into the writing room, the band relocated back to Bournemouth to begin penning their next wares - splitting their time between a studio and their parents’ houses (turns out, getting a hit does not make you a millionaire). With nearly a half-decade having passed since they’d written many of the tracks from said debut, they found that what emerged naturally found a different thematic home to the doe-eyed ditties of yore, but that Jack, Kris and Gus’ viewpoints had also started to diverge.

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Recorded during the August heatwave in Atlanta, Georgia - partly at the request of producer Ben Allen (Deerhunter, Animal Collective) and partly because “you’re never gonna turn down going to America,” shrugs Jack. “On a very base level, it’s as good a reason to put out a second album as any” - the result is a record, due before the summer, that takes the building blocks of what you know and love about The Magic Gang, but “decorates the house in a different way”. “It’ll still sound like us, it’s still pop tunes with big melodies, but it’s the flavour it’s been done with that’s different,” nods Gus. “Obviously we’re famous for having songs that are all roughly the same tempo,” laughs Jack, “but there are things on here that won’t be what people expect. It’s definitely not more of the same.”

“We’re trying to be a bit more relatable rather than just writing vague sentiments of love.” - Gus Taylor

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Camera-shy wallflowers, our Justin and Tim.

BIG ALBUMS of 2020

Halloweens The new venture from The Vaccines’ Justin Young and Tim Lanham finds the pair embracing their nuances and throwing their arms around Paris. Words: Lisa Wright.

have these five imaginary bands on my computer with these folders and playlists and every time I write a song that doesn’t feel quite right for The Vaccines I put it into one of these imaginary bands’ albums,” explains Justin Young, on the phone from LA where he’s been penning new songs for his main outfit (don’t worry, they’re not going anywhere). “Halloweens was just the first one that got to the place where we had a body of work that really clicked.”

Beginning life after Justin and keyboardist Tim Lanham wrote ‘Young Americans’ for 2018’s ‘Combat Sports’, Halloweens started off as an enjoyable byproduct rather than the pair’s Next Great Venture. “Every time we wrote together, the songs just had this completely different feel and tone. It felt wrong for the band so we thought, why don’t we keep writing with this imaginary project in mind and see where we get to?” he continues. “When no one in the world knows that your project exists it’s obviously a very liberating thing. Suddenly you’re making music with zero compromise or consequence.”

fancies. “There were a couple of dodgy songs that were an accordion short of a [‘70s singer] France Gall B-side,” he admits. On recently-released debut tracks ‘Ur Kinda Guy’ and ‘Hannah, You’re Amazing’, meanwhile, you can immediately spot the difference: piano-heavy and audibly influenced by the likes of Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman and other classic songwriters past, they’re a whole different kettle of fish to the pair’s day job. “Imagine if the first thing any of us had done outside of The Vaccines was Ramones-esque [punk music]?” laughs the singer. “I feel like that happens so often, where it’s like, ‘This is your side project?! It just sounds like the other guys couldn’t be bothered to make a record so you did it anyway and called it something else...’”

“When no one in the world knows that your project exists it’s obviously a very liberating thing.” - Justin Young

Writing the majority of their forthcoming LP, tentatively slated for spring, during a two-week stint in Paris, the resulting material finds them embracing a “more nuanced, wordy” side to their songwriting, and indulging their French

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Yet, though Justin’s ambitions for the project are more modest than those of his main band (“I don’t think we’re under any illusions that we’re gonna be the next BROCKHAMPTON...”), that’s not to say Halloweens haven’t put their all into creating something that stands on its own merit. “It’s very personal; there are three or more songs where I cried as I was singing them,” he says. “I’m not very serious about life, but I’m deadly serious about my art and I genuinely think the writing on the new Vaccines record is a lot better as a result of Halloweens. It’s all part of this ongoing process - the slow march of refinement.”

VICTORIA PARK LONDON E3

TAME IMPALA CARIBOU

GLASS ANIMALS WHITNEY

ROLLING BLACKOUTS C.F. KELLY LEE OWENS

HOLY F

+ MANY MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED

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BIG ALBUMS of 2020

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Poliça

efore taking a well-earned break a couple of years ago, Poliça had been on the road for seven years. Then, during what was supposed to be a period of rest away from music, the unthinkable happened.

While doing routine housework, frontwoman Channy Leaneagh fell off her roof and severely damaged her spine, leaving her immobilised in a brace for six months.

Unable to do the work that she had taken on as a nursing assistant, and with half of what would go on to become new album ‘When We Stay Alive’ already penned, Channy instead turned her focus back to her art. Retraining herself how to sing in a back brace, against all odds it led to a period of surprising creativity. “A lot of it was mental,” she recalls, “because it was really pushing down on A near-death accident threw Poliça singer Chanmy diaphragm. I just needed to let my ny Leaneagh’s world upside down, but on forthcoming LP ‘When We Stay Alive’, she’s turning the body heal enough so I had the strength and the fortitude to try.” problems into positivity. Words: Jemima Skala.

These efforts remain in traces on the finished album, with the singer’s vocals on both ‘Feel Life’ and ‘Be Again’ recorded while still in her brace. “They had a specific quality that I couldn’t get after that which was this hesitance in trying to figure out how to sing again, getting comfortable with myself again and what my body can do,” she explains.

Out of her physical trauma, however, came a mental lightness and a realisation: the fact that she was still alive was the only thing that really mattered.

Consequently, tracks like ‘Be Again’ and ‘Driving’ are imbued with a palpable sense of hope. The latter, she explains, speaks to a specific vision Channy had whilst lying in bed, unable to move. “I’d be reimagining different stories of my life, and I’d always see this bright green field of grass… Just me running through the grass,” she says. “I’d start cleanse-crying. I wasn’t crying about anything specific, but it would always make me tear up and wash out a bunch of stuff.”

Where tracks such as ‘TATA’ and ‘Forget Me Now’ both written pre-accident - contain an intense sense of anxiety, those penned after form the release from that. “It really felt like I could FEEL it finally,” she says, “and to finally feel that physical pain… to do that physical healing on something that was coming from an emotional place, that in itself was super healing.”

These days, Channy is taking things slower and allowing herself to appreciate the opportunities that come her way instead of always searching for the next goal. Though she’s missed being on the road, the break has also given her a newfound healthy perspective.

“I don’t have that feeling of [disappointment] if it means we don’t get more tours,” she nods. “There’ll be other things.” A testament to tenacity, and a turning point both personally and professionally, ‘When We Stay Alive’ is proof that you can find glorious light even from the darkest of situations.

“I just needed to let my body heal enough so I had the strength to try.” Channy Leaneagh

Channy’s dentistry techniques were somewhat… unorthodox…

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‘When We Stay Alive’ is out 31st January via Memphis Industries.

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BIG ALBUMS of 2020

Creeper When Creeper made their grand disappearance back at the end of 2018, they were all set to dive into a whole new fictional chapter. Reality, it seems, had other plans... Words: Sarah Jamieson.

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hen the last chords of 'Misery' rang out at London's KOKO back on 1st November 2018, no one in the crowd could've predicted what would happen next. But it was with a re-imagining of David Bowie's iconic Hammersmith Apollo speech, the one that dramatically killed off Ziggy Stardust back in 1973, that Will Gould seemingly also called time on Creeper’s tenure as a band.

Then: silence.

Over a year on from that day, the frontman finds himself sat in the group’s label offices, reflecting back on an unexpected last twelve months and the surprises they were thrown along the way. “It felt like the best way to close that first chapter was for history to repeat itself,” he explains of the final show for debut LP ‘Eternity, In Your Arms’. “And for us to do a vanishing act, but this time, in front of everyone's eyes.”

With all trace of their presence wiped from social media, and fans left up in the air as to the status of Creeper as a whole, the band found themselves free to explore an entirely new realm. “Our first record was very much a product of its environment; we recorded it at The Ranch in Southampton, with Southampton-based producers,” begins Will. “Since then, we've spent a lot of time in America, playing shows over there, and a lot of those influences have fed into our palette and what we were interested in writing. I thought there was no better place for a band like Creeper to go and record [than there].” And so they set off to Los Angeles to begin work on their second album. “So many of my favourite records have been made there,” he continues. “We were making music in the shadow of our heroes, so to speak.”

turn. He was soon hospitalised, leaving the band in a state of uncertainty. Yet, with encouragement from Ian's wife, Will still made the journey to LA. Unexpectedly, the new twist in their story would go on to inform the direction of the record itself.

“There was this feeling of being an eccentric Englishman, wandering the streets of Hollywood,” he laughs, “making friends and going to nightclubs on my own. I felt a bit like an alien wandering around these very American places.

There are a lot of feelings of isolation, and being a little bit out of place [on the record]. I remember walking around a Walmart - which you think is just like Asda, obviously - and seeing a woman with a handgun in a holster. You think, 'Why've you brought that to buy your cornflakes?!' Suddenly, I noticed a lot of really interesting cultural differences.”

Though Ian was recovering back in the UK, the guitarist was still very much involved in the process. “Even while he was in hospital, we would write together via FaceTime,” Will explains. “His mum brought an acoustic guitar to his room and I'd have a little piano that I'd take back to my hotel room, and we'd play and chat through choruses and stuff while he was unwell.

“I can’t really stress enough how dark some of the moments have been.” - Will Gould

And yet, for all the characteristic theatre behind their choice, Creeper didn’t know the half of the real life drama that would soon unfold. “There’s quite the tale behind this record really,” Will nods. “It’s about our personal trauma becoming more of an interesting story than the actual fiction I’d been writing all this time.” After a series of visits trying to find a producer - eventually settling on Xandy Barry - it was just as Will and songwriting partner Ian Miles were about to relocate that Ian's mental health took a downward

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“When you go and record over in America, and you're trying to make a very different kind of record but you've got your best friend with you, it doesn't seem quite as daunting.

Suddenly when I was there on my own for a little while, I realised that while there's a sense of magic to this place, there can be something very dark and sinister about it too.

The magic's kind of like black magic.”

And, despite the hardships of the last 12 months, Creeper are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

They’ve got Album Two in the bag and Ian is back playing with the band, who recently made their live return exactly a year since their disappearance. “There was a moment where I did think we'd have to break the illusion,” Will muses. “I was thinking that we might need to put this on a real-life hiatus; I can't really stress enough how dark some of the moments have been.” Having persevered through a truly tough 2019, now a new chapter can begin.

“I think we've made a really interesting record, which is really varied, really different and is definitely going to catch people off guard,” he concludes. “I think our fans are going to follow us down the rabbit hole.”

“They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky. They’re altogether ooky, the Creeper family.”

BIG ALBUMS of 2020 13

BIG ALBUMS of 2020

Willie J Healey The Oxford crooner is settling into his groove with a second album full of confidence and continuity.

Interview: Elly Watson.

What gossip can you give us about your new album?

We had nine days in the studio and we recorded 14 tracks, so it was a real whirlwind. I have quite a hazy memory of it all, other than getting in the studio every day and doing as much as we could until we all fell out. You know when you get that glazed look in your eye? Everyone slowly turned into demons.

Soccer Mommy Digging deeper and baring her soul, the followup to 2018’s ‘Clean’ is set to explore life’s darkest colours. Words: Rosie Hewitson.

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ue in spring 2020, ‘Color Theory’ is the follow up to Sophie Allison AKA Soccer Mommy’s 2018 debut ‘Clean’. Split into three colour-themed sections, divided by mood, the record moves from blue (representing sadness and depression), to yellow (which speaks of sickness, “both physical and mental” - her mental health battles and her mother’s terminal illness) to grey - focusing on themes of darkness, emptiness and loss. So far, so heavy.

Yet, she explains, the recording itself wasn’t half as tricky as you’d think. “I’ve done a lot of touring since [the first album] and I’ve definitely gotten more skilled as a performer and musician, so the process for this one was really fun,” she enthuses somewhat surprisingly of her time spent recording in her home of Nashville.

‘Color Theory’ has a “slightly heavier” grungy sound in parts to match its darker subject matter, as evidenced by recent single ‘lucy’. “I wanted the record to sound old,” says Sophie. “Kind of like it’s a relic from the past that’s been degraded with age.” And as for following such a widely-acclaimed first step? Having received so much praise for her debut, Soccer Mommy might be forgiven for being a little apprehensive, but conversely, she seems pretty damn chill.

“There’s definitely some pressure, because I’ve got a bigger audience now or more people who care, but at the same time I’m not really worried about it,” she shrugs. “I’m excited for people to hear it.” That’s a theory we can get behind.

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How would you say you’ve progressed since your debut?

My first album was a bit like a Beatles album; there are all different types of songs on it and it’s kind of all over the place. This one is still quite varied but it has more of a definite style. I think I’ve found a happy medium for myself. I’ve found my sound. Overall, I’m a lot more comfortable with myself and confident with my songwriting whereas before I was always maybe drawing on other people quite heavily.

Would you say it’s your best material yet?

Well, without jinxing myself, I think there’s some tracks on here which will resonate with people more than ever. I feel like it’s a much stronger album. I don’t know if it’s peak ‘me’ but, for the sake of my bank account, I hope it is!

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BIG ALBUMS of 2020

Declan McKenna’s new album sees the 20-year-old upping sticks to Tennessee. Inspired by ‘70s troubadours, he tells us about expanding his sound and staying engaged. Interview: Patrick Clarke.

Declan McKenna With ‘British Bombs’ earlier this year, you said you wanted to release something “quintessentially British”.

Would you say the same of the new record?

I mean, I’m not just gonna end up sounding like Randy Newman! With ‘British Bombs’ I wanted a serious tone, to take a jab at our own people. That’s quite a direct approach, so on the new album there’s a bit less of that, but there’s a lot of references to greater suburbia and the world I grew up in.

You once said you wanted to emulate Bowie in terms of progressing your sound, and you called this your ‘Rubber Soul’ album when we spoke to you last summer. Is your music getting weirder?

I’m a big fan of weird art, but I see my music as pop music.

I do like the idea of everything surrounding it being a little bit off kilter, but in the most cliched way possible I’ll see where the music takes me. When I start knowing too much about what I’m getting into when I’m making a record, I’ll probably stop making records.

So then, how does the new one sound?

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I’ve been listening to a lot of old Dylan records, these really raw recordings, and really appreciating that energy. I just wanted to get in a room with a group of musicians and not get it too ‘right’. The sound to me developed in that way.

There’s a lot of ‘70s references, a lot of Waterboys and Crosby, Stills and Nash, but it still feels modern to me. It definitely feels like a natural progression from the first one.

As someone known for political songs, are you dreading all the questions about Brexit you’re going to be asked?

It can be intense fielding a lot of very political questions, especially when you’re on tour and you’re exhausted. But it’s also a political world, and I’ve been open about where I stand. As long as I’ve been making music, I’ve been speaking about the world I’ve grown up in. I don’t think that’s ever going to change.

That said, the new album’s a little bit vaguer and less direct. I want people to take from it what they take from it as opposed to me telling the same direct story, saying exactly what it is I’m writing about.

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Fame

Graham Coxon - ‘Happiness In Magazines’ The moment in which Blur’s reluctant superstar guitarist proved that, beneath the purposefully uncommercial moves of his first solo outings, he did still like writing great pop songs after all. Words: Lisa Wright.

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FACTS

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or all their success and widely-acclaimed brilliance, Graham Coxon’s ride during his tenure in Blur was a rocky one. As the band became more and more successful, the spotlight-avoiding guitarist became more uncomfortable; by 2002, following a stint in The Priory and midway through the recording of seventh album ‘Think Tank’, he quit, having only contributed to one of the record’s finished tracks.

In those latter years, he’d also begun to release under his own name too, offering up 1998 debut ‘The Sky Is Too High’, 2000’s ‘The Golden D’ and the following year’s ‘Crow Sit On Blood Tree’ - a trio of records, from thin, wiry folk to discordant noise, that only served to reiterate how different the musician’s personal taste often was from his main band. Following his departure, 2002’s ‘The Kiss of Morning’ landed as a less frenetic listen, but then came ‘Happiness In Magazines’ - produced by Blur’s longtime collaborator Stephen Street - and with it re-emerged Graham Coxon: indie’s best guitarist.

Teed up by lead single ‘Freakin’ Out’, a fizzing slice of

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Released: 17 May 2004 Standout tracks: ‘Freakin’ Out’, ‘Bittersweet Bundle of Misery’, ‘Bottom Bunk’ Tell Your Mates: ‘Happiness In Magazines’ gave Graham his first solo Top 20 single, with ‘Freakin’ Out’ just sneaking in at Number 19.

propulsive, feckless genius, the difference was immediately palpable. Gone was the frustrated need to veer everfurther down impenetrable tangents; back was the spontaneous spirit and way with a hook. From the opening burst of ‘Spectacular’, with its strangled scream of a chorus, ‘Happiness In Magazines’ was a record that embraced earworm riffs and giddy, silly, fun like a long-lost friend. ‘No Good Time’ lolloped along with easy charm, while even the album’s weirdest moments (oddball rant ‘People of the Earth’, we’re looking at you) were delivered with a sparkle of humour.

Of course, Graham was never going to make ‘Country House’ pt 2 (he famously refused to be in the original’s video unless he could be basically static, and dressed as a milkman), but the producer helped transform his scratchy, lo-fi leanings into something radio-friendly.

With ‘Happiness in Magazines’, Graham proved (possibly to himself more than anyone else) that he could retain his integrity, while still penning hits. And the indie world breathed a collective sigh of relief. DIY

19

HIT LIST Christmas Special

Hey, you! Yes, you, deeply underprepared music fan! Have you left your festive shopping until the last minute yet-a-fuckinggain? Of course you have, you silly billy. Doh! But don’t worry, because Santa’s here, and we come bearing recommendations. Ho ho ho etc.

Drinkable

Functional

Ooh arrr, me hearties! Have ye ever heard the motley tale of old Jack Ratt - the smuggler of Lyme Bay? Back in the 18th century, he’d bring illegal booze in like a bloody legend. Now, however, you only have to go on the internet to get some of his delicious spiced rum. Cheers to that.

You’re walking down the road, listening to a banging new album and - OH FUCK, NEARLY GOT RUN OVER. Introducing Solo Pro with their transparency mode: a midway point between the outside world and inside your ears that means you’re aware of your surroundings. Because nothing is less vibey than being dead.

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Jack Ratt Lugger Rum

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Rogue Wave Vodka

What’s up, Brewdog? Well, actually, quite a lot, because the beer behemoths (beermoths?) have broadened their boozy horizons and stepped into the spirit world with a new vodka. It’s even created using the world’s first triple-bubble copper pot.

AT LAST, AMIRITE?!?!

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The Libertines’ Gunga Gin

If there’s one band that know a thing or two about getting nice and merry, it’s Albion-via-Margate’s own Libertines.

Pop your Gunga Gin in a teacup, and pour one out for Pete’n’Carl this season.

Hungover the next morning? You know exactly the breakfast that’ll sort you out…

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Critically Endangered Socks

Seasonal

Merry Cribsmas Jumper

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Everyone knows that going home for Christmas is essentially an exercise in pretending to be normal in front of your family. Cue Lyle & Scott’s weekender bag: from the outside, you’ll look like you’ve got your shit together.

Cribsmas may come but once a year, but you can rep Wakefield’s finest any day you damn well please with these natty festive threads. You know what would be the best Christmas present to go with it?

A new record! Come on, lads!

Gingle Globe

Have you ever tried to drink a snowglobe? Don’t. It’ll almost certainly put you in the hospital. UNLESS, that is, it’s the Gingle Globe - a glittery dome filled with, you guessed it, gin. We didn’t know we needed it, but now we cannot imagine a life without.

Buy it: popaball.co.uk RRP: £16.49

Sports Team Advent Calendar

OK yes, by the time you pick up this magazine, it will almost certainly be part way through December, if not later. But why must December be the only month that gets its own daily chocolate ritual? Celebrate January, or June with the same glee, we say. Celebrate it with Sports Team.

Buy it: shop.sportsteamband.com RRP: £12

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Socks give your feet a little soft house, and sometimes play a game where one of them fucks off somewhere for a bit before turning up under the sofa. Every pair of THESE socks however, donates money to a charity for an endangered species Well done, socks. Great work.

Lyle & Scott Weekender Bag

Buy it: lyleandscott.com RRP: £95

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2020 VISIONS

This January, we’re back at the Old Blue Last for Hello 2020 raising a toast to the next in line with four free shows, 16 brilliant new artists and one smoking hot ticket.

E

very year, since way back when in ye olden days of 2013, DIY have teamed up with the good folk at London’s Old Blue Last to present our annual Hello series - a weekly set of free gigs throughout January, showcasing some of the most exciting new artists we reckon you’d be wise to keep an eye on over the next 12 months.

Now, as we welcome in a new decade (eek), we’re also welcoming in a fresh set of faces for Hello 2020: some familiar, some brand spanking new, but all with some magic up their sleeves. And frankly, we’ve got good form with these shows. Wolf Alice? Sundara Karma? Girl Band? The Magic Gang? They’ve all graced the Old Blue’s pokey stage for us, back when they were young whippersnappers with half a dozen songs and a bunch of potential.

OLD BLUE LAST: TUE 7TH JAN • HEAVY LUNGS • LAZARUS KANE • TREEBOY & ARC • ROXY GIRLS TUE 14TH JAN • SPECIAL GUESTS TBA • SILVERBACKS • PVA TUE 21ST JAN • WORKING MEN’S CLUB • WALT DISCO • TIÑA • MEALTIME TUE 28TH JAN • SPECIAL GUESTS TBA • DRUG STORE ROMEOS • RUTHIE

This year’s hot tips are a varied bunch, moving from surging punk (Heavy Lungs), to flamboyant theatricality (Walt Disco), dancefloor-leaning twitches (Working Men’s Club) to hazy shoegaze (Drug Store Romeos) and much, much more. AND we’ve still got some surprises left to announce! So put a big DIY-shaped holding mark in your iCals for Tuesday evenings in January: trust us, you won’t want to be anywhere else.

DIY’S PICK OF LNSOURCE

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

Kele Okereke Oslo, London, 11th February

It’s the homecoming date of the Bloc Party frontman’s tour, which follows the release of fourth solo album ‘2042’ back in November.

Dylan

Electrowerkz, London, 22nd January The newcomer will bring her ‘Purple’ EP, released back in October, to the capital’s live stage.

Cage The Elephant Nationwide, from mid-February

The cult US rock’n’rollers play dates in Leeds, Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham before a massive night at London’s iconic Alexandra Palace.

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

22 DIYMAG.COM

23

NEWS in Brief

MAD FER IT

Madrid mega-weekender MAD COOL has announced its first names for 2020 and - spoiler alert - they’re very bloody exciting. Heading to Spain are two of the biggest pop stars in the world, aka Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift, who’ll be joined by The Killers! Foals! Wolf Alice!

Pixies! And literally loads more! Phew, we’re gonna need a siesta after all that.

WAKE UP!

There’s a new London festival in town this summer, and it’s a doozy.

Heading to Brockwell Park on 5th June, WIDE AWAKE has already announced a host of DIY faves including Shame, Dream Wife, Girl Band and Surfbort. Founded by the team behind Field Day, chances are they’ve got this one in the bag.

JÄGER CURTAIN CALL

HEAVY LUNGS

GLASG-UH OH…

Thekla, Bristol. Photos: Tom Ham.

I

t may be a cold AF Saturday evening, but Bristol’s iconic Thekla is filled to the rafters. What better way to shake off the freezing breeze than with a sweaty punk show for Jäger Curtain Call’s final round of the year?

With Milo’s Planes taking to the stage first, the Bristol newcomers bring a huge crash of punk noise to the packed room, weaving smashing riffs with winding melodies. Self-described as “angry music by four friendly boys,” it’s a pretty apt summary as the quartet are all smiles before suddenly descending into their screaming punk. An exciting glimpse at what their future may hold, it’s the perfect warm-up and foreshadowing of the chaos of the night as yet to unfold.

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With a gaggle of IDLES T-shirt-wearing spectators boarding the ship, the audience are champing at the bit to see latest hometown heroes Heavy Lungs step up on stage. It’s hard not to think that their bond with their famous pals may overshine the young band’s undeniable talent, but Danny Nedelko and co are about to prove they should never be written off as just someone’s mates.

Their last show of a European tour, the fourpiece are clearly in the mood for celebrating, and pretty much rip off the roof with a tidal wave of noise as soon as they hop on stage. Bangers from recently-released EP ‘Measure’ go down a storm, with ‘Self Worth’ acting as an undeniable standout, George Garratt pummelling the drums

at the back. Keeping the energy at a high, by the time ‘Unfaithful One’ from February’s ‘Straight to CD’ EP rocks around, pretty much everyone is crowd surfing.

With Danny Nedelko leading proceedings from the front with the kind of snake hips that would make Alex Turner jealous, the group hold nothing back. It’s a triumphant homecoming, and one that shows the Bristolians mean business.

Still only the beginning, if this show is anything to go by, the good ship Heavy Lungs is definitely on course for greatness. (Elly Watson) Catch up on all of the action from this year’s Jäger Curtain Call at diymag.com/jagercurtaincall.

TRNSMT revealed its first artists for 2020, including Liam Gallagher and The Courtneers, but came under fire for only including two women among its inaugural 13 names.

“We need to get more females picking up guitars, forming bands, playing in bands,” said organiser Geoff Ellis. “Umm, hello?” replied the many, many female musicians we all listen to daily…

RETURN OF THE KING

Alongside the release of a short film showcasing four new tracks including ‘Alone, Omen 3’ and ‘(Don’t Let The Dragon) Draag On’, King Krule has announced a big ol’ tour for spring. Archy Marshall will be heading around Europe in March, stopping for a rather large London show at Brixton Academy on the 24th.

Goldenvoice Presents BRITTANY HOWARD

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HOUSE GOSPEL CHOIR

BABY ROSE

YAZMIN LACEY

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10 MARCH COLOURS HOXTON

06 FEBRUARY OMEARA

12 MARCH SCALA

MABEL

ELIZA SHADDAD

12 FEBRUARY EVENTIM APOLLO

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MAN & THE ECHO

CONRAD

MASTER PEACE

CONFIDENCE MAN

TWO FEET

JP COOPER

25 FEBRUARY HEAVEN

EDITORS

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TEMPLES

25

26 DIYMAG.COM

Classof2020

Welcome to 2020: the start of a delicious new decade.

A time to indulge in a feast of tasty new treats; to satiate your hunger for the best new music out there; to consume everything you need to know about your next favourite artists in an easilydigestible magazine format. Well, as luck would have it, we’ve done just that.

Voila! On today’s menu, we bring you DIY’s Class of 2020. Bon appétit!

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Dry Cleaning CLASS 2020

IN THE SPACE OF TWO YEARS, DRY CLEANING HAVE GONE FROM A BUNCH OF MATES MAKING WEIRD NOISE IN A CUPBOARD TO ONE OF THE MOST HOTLY-TIPPED NEW GROUPS IN THE COUNTRY. HUGELY CREATIVE, BRILLIANTLY IDIOSYNCRATIC AND WITH SCANT REGARD FOR TOEING THE INDUSTRY LINE, THEY’RE EXACTLY THE BAND WE ALL NEED RIGHT NOW. WORDS: LISA WRIGHT. PHOTOS: ED MILES.

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CLASS 2020

29

“M

y cat d i e d t h r e e months ago at 17-years-old,” intones Florence Shaw in a deadpan monotone.

“When this song plays I can remember the good old days when I was a kid, how we played together with my cat at home alone with my brother and all the good days I had with her... Goodnight sweet princess.” She pauses, motorik guitars weaving around her. “She said have you ever spat cum onto the carpet of a Travelodge?”

And thus began Dry Cleaning’s debut statement to the world.

You wouldn’t imagine, on listening to the hyperspecific, often-hilarious tales that litter debut EP ‘Sweet Princess’ and its recently-released followup ‘Boundary Road Snacks & Drinks’, that their narrator would be a slightly reluctant one. And yet the band - completed by guitarist Tom Dowse, bassist Lewis Maynard and drummer Nick Buxton - had to dangle all sorts of carrots to coerce their artist friend to join their new musical venture.

“There was quite a lot of reluctance, for a few reasons,” she begins, “because I’d been quite settled doing what I was doing creatively for a long time.” “She quit the band maybe three times before coming to our first rehearsal,” chips in Lewis.

“Tom called me and was like, ‘Look, you can... wear cool clothes?!’” she laughs. “He was scraping the barrel for these reasons why I should do it - although that’s kind of legit, because I do like dressing up. He was like, ‘It could be an outlet for all of your different creative things!’ And he basically convinced me over quite a long phone call. And then Nick text me with some references, a Grace Jones track and some spoken word stuff, which was quite encouraging because I

30DIYMAG.COM DIYMAG.COM 30

was worried they’d want me to belt something out like Mariah Carey.” “When Flo joined we all knew within seconds that her approach would work with the music,” assures Tom. Having clocked up a solid decade in the friend game, though the four pals had never attempted to make music together before, they had built a solid foundation of trust and creative freedom as people. All now in their thirties, each member had been flexing their artistic muscles in various forms

room at Lewis’ mum’s old house (the same Boundary Road early base that would later become eulogised on record). “You couldn’t really see each other because we were so close. It was a glorified cupboard and that made it way less scary,” says the singer. “In quite a crowded space, you almost feel less self-conscious.” “It made everything a lot more minimal,” continues Lewis. “We didn’t have any distortion, because we physically couldn’t. We’re gonna start rehearsing in a smaller room again to

“I FEEL LIKE IT’S POSSIBLE TO BE AN EXPERT IN EVERYDAY LIFE AND SMALL EMOTIONAL DRAMAS, RATHER THAN ANYTHING TRYING TO BE TOO UNIVERSAL.’” FLORENCE SHAW for a long time – in different bands (Lewis, Tom and Nick), drawing and making visual art (Florence and Tom) and lecturing an arts course at university (Florence). Combining all these aspects, meanwhile, Tom still makes music under a solo project called Mr. Blunt Trauma. “He has costumes and he’s got a big trench coat. Lots of spikes and studs,” nods Florence. “He sent me a picture the other day where he’d made a mask out of bouncy balls,” informs Lewis.

It meant that, when they began writing for Dry Cleaning, the quartet approached the project with this same uncommercial, art-forart’s-sake mindset. In order to create an unintimidating safe space, they rehearsed in a tiny

revisit that kind of writing.

I called up a studio the other day and asked to downgrade our room, and they’re like, ‘OK...’”

Describing their early mantra as aiming to be like “a cheap date” (“We never wanted to soundcheck; we wanted to be as easy as possible, just play a few parties for friends”), Dry Cleaning happily puttered along for a year, penning their strange tales - a combination of sparse, propulsive post-punk music and idiosyncratic storytelling - for themselves. It was only after a friend heard an early demo and offered them a support slot at London’s Shacklewell Arms that the band began to properly entertain the idea of playing live - a development that brought its own preparation. “We

A RIGHT ROYAL PALAVER

One of Dry Cleaning’s first singles - ‘The Magic of Meghan’ riffed on the strange new life of the Royal Family’s recentlyinducted princess.

Not everyone, the band explain, fully understood their point…

Florence: The point of it was just to acknowledge that I was taking an interest and the build up to the royal wedding was entertaining me. I just thought, that’s nice that they’ve fallen in love! In a very fucking straightforward way, skipping out the bit where you get really stressed about the implications of it all. I just like celebrities sometimes, man! It’s not really meant to be political, it’s just thinking about her as a person in the world who something has happened to, and it must be quite hard?

Tom: [But then] on a round table, the first guest said that they weren’t really comfortable with a song that endorses the royal family.

F: There’s something in the air [these days] where people feel like they can’t like something that they feel conflicted about. I’m not a royalist by any sense of the word, if there was a referendum I’d vote to get rid of them in a heartbeat, but I still consume photos and articles about her. It’s one of those things where it’s both.

definitely had a few chats around ‘what gigs are like’, which was for my benefit,” laughs Florence. “Before then, we hadn’t had that much feedback on what we were doing at all. I didn’t have much of a clue how it would go down, or if people would respond to it in any way, so it was nice.

People stayed until the end... they clapped...

“I’m quite pragmatic so I’d thought about it in terms of ‘How do I deal with this

problem?’” she continues.

“I don’t really dance, and I’m not a natural performer in that way, so I was always like, ‘Oh crap’. I had all these problems in my head where I wasn’t traditionally that kind of person, so my main plan was that if I feel nervous, I’m just going to show it.

If I feel worried, I’m gonna look worried; I’m not just going to smile my way through it and be fake. I can just think about how to deliver the words, and just look however the hell I ended up looking.”

I

f there’s a characteristic that epitomises Florence’s style as a frontperson, then this kind of unadorned honesty is potentially it.

Lyrically, Dry Cleaning’s topics of conversation so far veer from trying to avoid dodgy strangers on the street (‘Phone Scam’), to hard work vs luck (‘Dog Proposal’), to the personal wellbeing of the Royal Family’s newest princess (‘The Magic of Meghan’).

Delivered as essentially spoken word, with a dry sense of sardonic wit, they’re disparate subjects on paper, but ones united by their sense of specificity: you won’t ever, to put it simply, find the singer penning the next ‘Shape Of You’. “I’m not particularly invested in committing big, sweeping things to paper. I think it’s so easy to regret being really strident about something later, when you meet someone who’s got a better experience of it than you. But I feel like what it is possible to be an expert in is small things,” she explains. “In everyday life, and small emotional dramas, rather than anything trying to be too universal.

“I used to listen to this track by Buck 65 that’s about a baseball game, and it’s just talking about the things that happen in the game. And it’s not a metaphor, or at least it doesn’t seem to be trying to be, it’s just a

recounting of the game – points scored, and who’s up next. I’ve always been interested in things like that. It’s not an art piece, and it’s not obscure – it’s actually quite a cute little song, but it’s a weird approach to what you’d fill a song with.”

on the peripheries, the quartet simply aren’t prepared to compromise their priorities in order to sidle into the more moneymaking mainstream.

They’re an easy-going bunch, as evidenced by the way they gamely begin smearing candy-pink cake all over the place in the

“I DON’T REALLY DANCE, AND I’M NOT A NATURAL PERFORMER IN THAT WAY, SO I WAS ALWAYS LIKE, ‘OH CRAP.’” - FLORENCE SHAW

There’s an important point to be noted there, too. It would be easy to think of Dry Cleaning, with their art school background and their lack of inclination to play the social media game (“We always try and think, what is this for? Who is it serving? And if it’s basically serving a huge multinational corporation and we’re basically doing some free advertising then that’s something to think about,” comments the singer) as purposeful outsiders. But rather than stubbornly remaining

pursuit of the perfect Marie Antoinette nightmare for our shoot, but they’re also a slightly older band than most newcomers, who’ve worked out what matters to them and know how to stay on their best personal path.

“The sheer logistics of being in a band are crazy. The amount of shit you have to sort out could easily overtake the creative side, if you let it. And I think our mindset is that we’re quite protective of that, and up

for whatever can help us to remain creative with the additional attention that we’ve got,” nods Florence.

“This last year, when things have been picking up, we’ve said we just want to do whatever helps the band’s output progress.

So if someone’s expecting us to tour for two-thirds of the year, which probably won’t help us write stuff, then that’s probably not the best idea,” continues Lewis. “We’re finding our feet with what brings out the best in us as a band.”

Yet, despite – or, arguably, because of – their strong sense of what works for them, Dry Cleaning are pushing rapidly forwards, regardless. At the start of 2020, they’ll headline London’s Village Underground, their biggest show to date, while they’re also hoping to begin work on a debut record around the same time.

It’s all testament to a group of friends who started a project for all the right reasons. “We weren’t ever ambitious, but we’re all people who make things and we take creativity quite seriously,” nods Florence. “We always cared about what we were making a lot – maybe even more because it was our personal thing. We were kind of doing it for each other.” “Now things have become a lot busier, and I wanna say our aims with what we can do with the band have changed, but I actually don’t think they have,” concludes Lewis.

“Now people are saying to us that we could be doing things that are very different from where we were a year ago, but we still mainly just want to impress each other.”

Success on their own terms, with a sense of humour and some of the weirdest, most wonderful music out there? We’d say that’s pretty damn impressive, by anyone’s standards.

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girl in red CLASSOF2020

A QUEER ICON IN THE MAKING, A FORWARD-THINKING ECO CHAMPION AND POSSESSOR OF A 400K-STRONG ARMY OF ONLINE FANS, MARIE ULVEN IS THE MODERN POP STAR 2020 IS CALLING OUT FOR. WORDS: ROSIE HEWITSON. PHOTOS: JENN FIVE.

I

t’s the afternoon before the second date of her European tour, and Marie Ulven is feeling pretty knackered. Having woken up at 5am to catch a plane from Dublin, the 20-year-old Norwegian singer - better known as the capital letter-shunning girl in red - is only part-way through today’s frenzied schedule of interviews, photoshoots and soundchecks, while later she’ll headline a sold-out Electric Ballroom, with hundreds of fans queueing down the road hours ahead of doors to try and get to the front. This monthlong tour, meanwhile, follows six weeks in the USA, the release of her second EP ‘chapter two’ in September and a busy festival season in which she’s performed all over the world, including to huge crowds at Iceland Airwaves and Oslo’s Øya Festival.

Suffice to say it’s been a whirlwind for the singer, who only started recording as girl in red in her bedroom just two years ago, and is yet to release a debut LP. “I would not be sitting here if it wasn’t for YouTube,” she theorises of her rapid success.

32 DIYMAG.COM

“Somebody posted my song there and the algorithm picked up on it. If it wasn’t for social media, I’m pretty sure I’d still be working in the jeans store I worked in last year.”

steps of artists like Christine and the Queens, St Vincent and Janelle Monáe - one of the many things she animatedly professes her excitement about today.

But while fortuitous calculations might have helped to launch her, Marie’s brand of dreamy, candid bedroom pop is keeping things ticking along on its own merit.

She’s been garnering attention particularly from her many queer fans, who

“There are so many [queer singers] around at the moment, and that’s really cool. The new King Princess album is great, I especially like the song ‘Ain’t Together’ because I really relate to the lyrics, and Shura’s new album is so cool,” she enthus-

“IT’S REALLY INSPIRING AND POWERFUL TO SEE STRONG FEMALE ARTISTS FRONTING THEIR ACT AND TAKING UP A LOT OF SPACE.” appreciate the readiness with which she writes about her crushes and relationships with women on the likes of ‘we fell in love in october’, ‘forget her’ and breakout hit ‘girls’. In doing so, the singer follows in the foot-

es. “And I’ve followed Marika Hackman and The Japanese House for a long time. It’s really inspiring and powerful to see strong female artists fronting their act and taking up a lot of space. Now that I’m making my mu-

sic, people are grouping me with them, and I think that’s super cool. I like being a part of that.”

Yet, despite this solid peer group, there’s still something innately confident in being so candid as a new artist. girl in red, however, is taking it in her stride. “My grandpa said maybe I should use different pronouns so more people could relate to my music, but honestly it’s been the opposite for me,” she explains. “When I’ve been honest and true, that’s when people connect to my music; regardless of whether they like girls or boys, it doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t be true to myself if I was thinking about the practicalities before the art itself, so it’s definitely been a conscious decision to be real and to write about how I experience life, which includes writing about girls.”

I

t’s fitting then, that Marie’s chosen stage name is a reference to a girl she fell in love with who was wearing red when they first met which also explains why she herself isn’t today, as we half expected her to be. Instead, most of what the singer is sporting is thrifted from Oslo’s many fantastic vintage

CLASS 2020

girl in red; creepy disembodied hand in white.

33

shops - a decision made partly down to aesthetics and partly because of her commitment to environmentalism.

In this vein, she’s also keen to minimise the environmental impact that a busy touring schedule can have. “I’ve been feeling very guilty about travelling so much,” she explains. “With touring there’s a lot of plane rides, buses, cars and Ubers and that doesn’t feel good. I don’t like that.” For this reason, girl in red is working with Norwegian carbon-offsetting organisation CHOOOSE, which fundraises for renewable energy projects in developing countries.

“My drummer told me about it, so I got in touch with them. My donation goes towards a solar power project in India which provides renewable energy for thousands of people and reduces their carbon emissions.”

Marie admires the growing number of major artists speaking out about

the climate crisis, and in particular The 1975, who released a single with Greta Thunberg this summer and offered fans the opportunity to get new designs printed on their old tour t-shirts, in an effort to be more sus-

America about the possibility of performing at one of their rallies. “I feel like artists or people who have recognition don’t necessarily have more responsibility than anyone else, but people who have a bigger platform

“WHEN I’VE BEEN HONEST AND TRUE, THAT’S WHEN PEOPLE CONNECT TO MY MUSIC.” tainable. “I feel like a lot of musicians talk about it,” she says, “but not everyone necessarily tries to make a difference. So I think what they did with the old merch was such a good idea.”

She’s also keen to get involved with the Extinction Rebellion protests when she has the time, having been in touch with them while she was touring in

should definitely take advantage of that,” she nods. “It’s a great opportunity to spread an important message, so that’s why I’ve chosen to speak up, because everyone needs to do everything they can.”

But with all the touring and saving the world, has she had time to think about her own next album-shaped steps? “My

album is pretty much non-existent right now, but I have a lot of ideas and I really want to realise them,” she concedes.

“Right now I don’t have any full songs, but I do have a folder on my computer called ‘Album 2020’ which is full of random choruses and verses that I haven’t finished yet.” She does, however, have time blocked out to make it once her tour is over. “From January until April, no matter what cool offers I get, I’m going to be like ‘Nope, I’m gonna make my album’. I just got a piano so I’m gonna maybe try playing that.

I’m excited to expand my sound and start playing around, I think that’s gonna be cool. I like touring, but I do prefer making new music.”

You get the feeling that, in 2020, Marie won’t have to choose between making relatable tracks to galvanise the youth and sending them into a frenzy on tour. Get yourself a girl in red who can do both.

CLASS 2020 34 DIYMAG.COM

35

Alfie Templeman CLASSOF2020

YOU’D HAVE TO BE PRETTY STEELY TO NOT FALL FOR THE BOUNDLESS ENTHUSIASM OF THIS BEDFORDSHIRE TEENAGER, WHOSE FERVOUR BURSTS OUT IN INDIE SONGS EQUALLY INFORMED BY R&B AND BEDROOM POP. WORDS: WILL RICHARDS. PHOTO: EMMA SWANN.

S

how us a performer having more fun on stage this year than Alfie Templeman and we’ll laugh you out of the room. There’s an infectious energy and enthusiasm about every second that the 16-year-old spends in front of a crowd, and it’s impossible not to be sucked in.

Along with a rotating cast of friends (“if you can get the time off school, you can play” is the unofficial rule), Alfie’s live show is uninhibited in a way that only someone of his age could transmit. Take his turn at November’s Mirrors Festival in London, where he scaled the drum kit like a climbing frame while living out his Led Zeppelin dream. Two weeks later, meanwhile, on the first date of a tour opening up for Sports Team, he’s teasing the guitar riff of their track ‘Here It Comes Again’ in between songs like a true entertainer, before thrashing out ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ while his bassist tunes up.

Alfie’s hefty touring schedule this year has also largely informed his new EP, ‘Don’t Go Wasting Time’. A genre-melting seven tracks that signal a huge leap forward for the youngster, the new release sees him carving out a sound all of his own.

“Each next release I put

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out is more like me,” he tells us the day after its release.

The singer describes the new body of work as a “light, versatile record”, and the latter is especially evident. From the superb jazz-flecked pop of ‘Used To Love’ to the punk shuffle of ‘First Time’, it sees the groundwork laid on his previous releases come good - ‘Don’t Go Wasting Time’ finds Alfie casting his net wider without spreading himself too thinly, and keeping the personality that’s made him a breakout success intact.

The personality in question is based around a

of the chat around Alfie’s music has predictably been defined by his age.

Now, however, Alfie is ready to cement his status as a Very Good Songwriter, not just a Very Good Songwriter (For A Teenager).

up his mum’s computer trying to torrent albums from Pirate Bay or passing a CD around his whole class at school, Alfie had a world of music at his fingertips from day one, and it informs his loose, genre-shrugging sound.

“The whole age thing you can’t really escape from,” he says. “But that’s just something that I have to live with. Age doesn’t define anything nowadays.

You see these kids that are playing the hardest solos in the world and they’re, like, seven! If you think I’m talented, look at them! I’ve been doing it all my life, so it’s no different to someone playing guitar for seven years

“I grew up listening to indie music, and then got into stuff like Frank Ocean a bit later,” he remembers.

He also fondly recalls how he and his bandmate would FaceTime each other, playing tracks out loud on Spotify before dissecting their merits.

Being part of this playlist culture has had a clear impact on the fluid, varied ‘Don’t Go Wasting Time’,

“AGE DOESN’T DEFINE ANYTHING NOWADAYS. YOU SEE KIDS THAT ARE PLAYING THE HARDEST SOLOS IN THE WORLD AND THEY’RE, LIKE, SEVEN!” deep care for his music and craft, and an absolute refusal to take himself too seriously. “That’s so, so important,” he hammers home. “It’s self-deprecating, but it’s cool. Don’t worry about it! If you can joke about yourself, then no-one else can [joke about you], and nothing’s gonna hurt you.”

Releasing his first two EPs while still at school, a lot

when they’re 20, and then getting really good when they’re 27. I just hope my age isn’t the reason why I’m kind of popular...”

Though irrelevant to his talent, Alfie’s age - and the generation he’s grown up in - does impact his consumption of music. He’s at the age when people discover the bands that will go on to define their lives.

But, rather than fucking

but Alfie Templeman isn’t just a product of his generation. Dipping his toe into a world of possibilities, it’s the infectious personality at the heart of his experiments that turns them into something special. His music is the sound and sight of someone discovering the limitlessness of music and creativity, and proceeding to have the best fucking time exploring it.

CLASS 2020

Alfie Templeman: an eggs-ellent young lad.

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Beabadoobee CLASSOF2020

FROM BEING KICKED OUT OF SCHOOL TO TOURING THE WORLD IN LESS THAN A YEAR, DIRTY HIT’S MOST PROMISING NEW SIGNEE BEABADOOBEE IS LIVING OUT HER TEEN DREAMS, BUT SHE’S NOT DONE REACHING FOR THE STARS JUST YET. WORDS: ELLY WATSON. PHOTOS: SHAM SCOTT.

D

o you ever have d r e a m s that seem so realistic you’re c o nv i n c e d they actually happened?

The kind where you wake up suddenly in the night, sure that you’re a rock star? For Bea Kristi, her whole 2019 has been a dreamlike story, ripped from the pages of a music nerd’s fan fiction. But the difference? Bea doesn’t have to wake up, because this is her real life now.

“It’s like, ‘What the fuck!’”

The Philippines-born, West London-raised 19-year-old giggles over the phone from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Currently mid-way through a US tour with bedroom-pop sensation Clairo, it’s clear that Bea - better known as Beabadoobee - is also aware of how ridiculous the past year has been.

The whirlwind the singer now finds herself in began around two years ago when, aged 17, she got kicked out of school.

Feeling lost and not really knowing what she wanted to do, her dad decided to buy her a guitar because she seemed “really bored” all the time.

Teaching herself how to play, she first learnt Sixpence None The Richer’s ‘90s classic ‘Kiss Me’, and subsequently wrote her first original track ‘Coffee’ - a hushed,

38 DIYMAG.COM

emotional lo-fi bop that ended up going lowkey viral. “At first, I just thought that songwriting was cool and then, when we released it, we had a lot of people saying that they liked it. People were recognising me on Instagram and were like ‘Hey, you’re that ‘Coffee’ girl?’

And I was like, ‘What the fuck, I’ve never worked as a waitress?!’” she

and was approached

by Dirty Hit: they of Pale Waves, No Rome, Wolf Alice, and a little band called The 1975 fame. “I saw it and I was automatically like, ‘Oh my god, this is The 1975’s label, what the fuck?!?!’” she continues. “I had interest from major labels and other indie labels, but I love Dirty Hit and I was obsessed with Matty [Healy] when

“I WAS OBSESSED WITH MATTY [HEALY] WHEN I WAS 15, BUT NOW HE’S JUST A REALLY NICE FRIEND.” laughs. “Then I was like, ‘Oh fuck, they’re talking about my song!’ That was really cool and motivated me more to do it because people were interested and enjoyed it. You know how everyone has a ‘thing’? Well, I didn’t have have a thing and then I realised that this is my thing!”

Though Bea grew up completely obsessed with music, making it her job was never really her full-time plan (“I really wanted to be a nursery teacher,” she tells us) until she released dreamy four-track debut EP ‘Lice’

I was 15, so I was like, ‘Fuck, this is it.’”

Officially signing with them in 2018 on her 18th birthday - “We went bowling after; it was sick” - it soon turned out that her fandom was somewhat mutual and the new DH signee quickly became pals with the chart-topping frontman of her favourite teenage band. “It was insanity,” Bea says of the beginning of their friendship. “And now he gives me so much nice music to listen to, and gives me so many good clothes and he’s just a really nice friend,” she

pauses, chuckling. “It’s so hard to believe that I was so obsessed!”

Y

ou might think that signing to a label full of UK music’s brightest stars and co-run by your teenage obsession would be intimidating, especially for someone who’d only been playing guitar for about a year at the time, but Bea asserts how she’s never felt any pressure. “It’s inspiring,” she counteracts. “I see how great these other bands are - Amber [Bain of The Japanese House] is amazing; I love Heather [Baron-Gracie of Pale Waves] - and looking at them I’m like, ‘Wow, I want to work as hard as you’.”

Doing just that, Bea released second EP ‘Patched Up’ mere months after signing with the label. It offered a more established look at what Bea wants to achieve, translating teenage troubles into poignantly stripped-back musings.

Then came ‘Loveworm’ at the beginning of 2019, marking yet another step up for the young musician - probably a good thing too as, around the time, her Instagram stories were full of tales of going to the studio instead of revising for her exams.

“I just wrote songs in-

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CLASS 2020 40 DIYMAG.COM

stead of revising, it was so fucked,” she laughs. “I wish I was that chick who got three A* and is now on tour, but no. I got U’s because my exams were ungradable.”

ing Mac DeMarco and Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas. Obviously. Safe to say “fucking weird” is probably the correct description of Bea’s current life.

Following it with ‘Space Cadet’ in October, it’s this release that’s seen Bea really evolve into the artist she’s always threatened to be. The five-track record sees her pulling on fuzzier influences, helped by the fact that she now has a full time band with her, and ultimately creating what she describes as “bubblegum grunge”.

“I’ve always listened to that type of [grungey] music and it just kind of happened,” she says of ‘Space Cadet’’s creation.

“I think it was always in me because that’s all I listened to growing up. I fucking love Elliott Smith and Daniel Johnston and Sonic Youth. You can hear inspirations in the songs because I sometimes steal their chords because I’m a dumbass.”

Yet things are only set to get more unbelievable from here, with a debut album currently set to land towards the middle of next year. With three songs penned during her busy tour schedule so far, she’s adamant about taking her time and allowing herself to create her best work yet.

“When I did ‘Patched Up’ I thought it was amazing, and then I did ‘Loveworm’ and thought ‘Patched Up’ was shit, and then I made ‘Space Cadet’ and was like, ‘Well, ‘Loveworm’ is shit now because ‘Space Cadet’ is fucking amazing.’ I want the exact same thing to happen with this album,” she says. Going on to describe how her

Perhaps one of her most surreal moments so far was performing ‘Space Cadet’ standout ‘I Wish I Was Stephen Malkmus’ to the titular Pavement frontman himself in Portland. “He’s one of my idols so that was insane,” she reminisces.

“My manager was like, ‘You’ve got a visitor’ and I see the back of his head and I’m like, ‘Fuck, that’s him’. And then he went for a handshake and I just hugged him. We invited him on our tour bus and I was just staring at him like, ‘Oh my god, this is insane.’ I got to dedicate ‘I Wish I Was Stephen Malkmus’ to Stephen Malkmus!”

If you were thinking that’s the most impressive idol meeting that Bea’s had so far though, you’d be sorely mistaken. “I was at Mac’s house recording and he had a bonfire, and Julian was there and that was so fucking weird,” she gushes. Mac and Julian, by the way, mean-

LP will be a mixture of everything she’s made, Bea is aiming to blend her past stripped-back material with her new-found love of making something heavier. Above all though, she just wants people who listen to her music to connect with it. “If I write a sad song, it makes me feel better, and I want it to do the same thing [for other people],” she muses. “I write these songs for myself but I’d love people to feel the same way as when I wrote it. I just want it to make them feel something.”

For Bea right now, the hype is real. With the music world catching on to her knack for writing about relatable teenage struggles and crafting enchanting melodies, heading into 2020 she’s being tipped for greatness by just about everyone. "It’s so strange!” she says of the undeniable

buzz around her. “It’s the strangest thing ever. I’m used to people not giving a shit about me. I was that ugly kid in secondary school that no one liked and thought I was weird, so I’m really not used to this shit. The fact that people give a shit and care about me and don’t want to see me sad. It’s really nice because I’ve never had that.”

With the hype already at fever pitch, a lifestyle where she can happily refer to superstars-turned-pals by their first names, and legions of adoring fans already obsessed with her (her recent London headline show at The Grace had queues around the block to get in), from the outside it seems like Bea is already living the dream, but she’s not as convinced. “Right now, I still think that I haven’t ‘made it’ and I’ll always

“I WISH I WAS THAT CHICK WHO GOT THREE A* AND IS NOW ON TOUR, BUT NO. I GOT U'S BECAUSE MY EXAMS WERE UNGRADABLE. tell myself that and keep on doing it,” she confides. “I guess I just have a really self-deprecating personality because I’m always like, ‘I’m not there, yet!’” And what would be the clincher for her? “A really sick album and a song with Stephen Malkmus,” she laughs. “Oh, and to meet Tom Hanks!

I’ve DM’d him and his wife and he still hasn’t got back to me, what the fuck?!” Guess Bea’s still got some dreams left to reach for after all.

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Talk Show CLASSOF2020

ARE THE SOUTH LONDON QUARTET ONE OF THE MOST VITAL NEW LIVE BANDS AROUND? QUITE POSSIBLY. AND IF THEY’RE NOT NOW, TALK SHOW ARE READY TO MAKE SURE THEY TAKE THE TITLE SOON ENOUGH. WORDS: ELLY WATSON. PHOTOS: PHIL SMITHIES.

T

alk Show are hungover. Not just a two breakfasts kind of hungover, but a two McDonald’s breakfasts kind of hungover.

However, the after-effects of several double egg McMuffins aside, you can forgive them for celebrating with one-too-many Vodka Red Bulls after the year they’ve had.

Originally meeting at Goldsmiths with the iconic introducing line of “Oh you wanna be in a band?

I wanna be in a band.

Let’s be in a band!”, the South-East London fourpiece - frontman Harrison Swann, guitarist Tom Holmes, bassist George Sullivan and drummer Chloe MacGregor - have had a pretty damn exciting 2019, from the first time they burst into our collective consciousness with raucous debut track ‘Fast and Loud’, released via YALA! back in March.

The story of how the partnership came about is well known by now, with the

tale going that Harrison and YALA! co-founder (and former Maccabees member) Felix White share the same barber/ music-enthusiast, who told Felix about this band that he “must go and see live”. “We played a gig and we’re getting off stage and I can see Felix coming straight through the crowd to talk to us. I was like, ‘Oh shit, cool, you’re Felix White!’” Harrison recalls of their first IRL meeting.

“He was like, ‘We wanna release ‘Fast & Loud’’, and I was like, ‘You can have it, mate!’”

Follow-up single ‘Ankle Deep (In A Warm Glass Of Water)’ then landed via Council Records back in October. Part spaghetti Western soundtrack, part Echo and The Bunnymen-meets-Roxy Music, it was yet another example of their hard sound and post-punk energy, yet with an undeniable groove weaved in throughout a trait in part thanks to Chloe’s unshakeable love of funk. “The first rehearsal we had, we asked Chloe what music she was into and she said ‘funk, soul

“WE’LL CATCH EACH OTHER ON STAGE AND BE LIKE, ‘NO, WE’RE NOT PLAYING HARD ENOUGH. HARDER, HARDER, HARDER!’” HARRISON SWANN 42 DIYMAG.COM

and disco’ and us three were like, ‘Oh, shit!’” Harrison laughs. “It was the one thing we said we didn’t want to sound like. But it’s nice though because it’s definitely seeped into the tunes in a really good way. Maybe now I’ll go full Charles Bradley with it?

Perhaps get a horn section in?”

Though the trumpets are still TBC, what’s already set Talk Show apart from the rest is their quickly established arsenal of captivating on-stage antics.

From stomping about and encouraging sweaty mosh pits, to Harrison’s almost demon-like stare into the crowd, performing is what the group, above all else, want to be known for. “Our thing when we first started was that we’re not going to bother getting something recorded and slapping it on SoundCloud just for the sake of it,” Harrison explains. “We’re going to gig, and that’s how we’re going to start the band, and do it as much as we can; for us it’s the most fun. We just had a mindset from the start that it’s got to be fun and if we don’t enjoy it then it’s not worth it. We’re never going to be one of these bands that stand at the front and act all serious, like ‘Oh yeah, we’re so fucking cool wearing sunglasses’. It’s not us. We’re a bit stupid.

It’s fun to have a big live show and have a laugh with it. We’ll catch each other on stage and be like, ‘No, we’re not playing hard enough. Harder, harder, harder!’”

“From going to loads of shows, there’s nothing better than leaving a gig and being like, ‘Shit that was phenomenal’,” adds George. “Loving it on record and then hearing it be better live, that’s something that we really want to emulate in our set.” “You see bands that get a buzz and then just can’t play their tunes and can’t sell what they’re trying to put across,” says Harrison, shaking his head. “If you can’t sell me your set, then I’m not interested.”

Luckily Talk Show are all set to match their live bark with a notable on-record bite, with their debut EP due for release in the spring. “Everything’s been recorded. It sounds good!” says Harrison.

“We’re still working on artwork and we don’t have a name yet. But we know what tracks are gonna be on it, so that’s good.”

However, though destined to inevitably be full of bangers, Talk Show aren’t too fixated about the record; looking towards 2020, they’re still focussed on firing up their incendiary live show to even hotter levels. “We just want to gig as much as we can and see how far we can take it,” Harrison says of their future. “We want to try and take Talk Show as far as it can go.” We’ll see you for the celebratory third breakfast this time next year.

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It’s OK everyone, 10 second rule!

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Arlo Parks CLASSOF2020

STILL IN HER TEENS, LONDONER ARLO PARKS IS CREATING A LYRICALLY-FOCUSED, SONICALLY-COMPLEX BODY OF WORK THAT’S WISE BEYOND HER YEARS. DON’T TRUST US? ASK HER INCREASING ARMY OF FAMOUS FANS. WORDS: ROSIE HEWITSON. PHOTOS: JENN FIVE.

I

t’s the day before Arlo Parks’ biggest live show to date, and the singer is feeling pretty excited as she and her tour band arrive in London from last night’s Exeter gig.

Tomorrow evening she’ll open for Loyle Carner at the capital’s 10,000-capacity Alexandra Palace, something she’s clearly still trying to wrap her head around. “It’s so crazy,” she explains, “cause the first ever live show I went to was Loyle Carner at Shepherd’s Bush when I was 15. It feels like this nice full-circle moment that’s confirmed to me that dreams do come true.

It sounds like such a cliche but that’s really how it feels.”

Cliched it might be, but it’s a feeling that the singer might have to get used to if the success she’s enjoyed over the past year is anything to go by. With laidback debut single ‘Cola’ having crept onto various end-of-year roundups in 2018, Arlo’s fans already include Jodie Comer, Adwoa Aboah, Amandla Stenberg and fellow West Londoner Lily Allen, who named the track as one of her five favourite songs on Apple Music back in January. Over the course of 2019, Arlo has also per-

44 DIYMAG.COM

formed on the BBC Introducing stage at Glastonbury, joined Jordan Rakei on his European jaunt, released two stellar EPs and announced her first ever headline tour, taking place in early 2020. It’s a pretty impressive list of achievements considering she’s still only 19 years old, though she discusses her vast array of musical and literary influences with an eloquence and maturity that makes it hard to believe she’s still in her teens.

her own sound is hard to pin down, incorporating elements of soul, acoustic indie-folk, dubstep and shoegazey bedroom pop, sometimes in the space of a single song. “I feel like listening to so much music means that what I do is a fusion of a lot of different things,” she explains. “I’ve got a style that I hope is quite unique. And I like that, it makes it harder for people to put me in a box!”

Arlo also draws plenty of inspiration from a diverse

“I FEEL LIKE LISTENING TO SO MUCH MUSIC MEANS THAT WHAT I DO IS A FUSION OF A LOT OF DIFFERENT THINGS.” “I listen to a whole mixture of stuff,” she says, pausing when asked the dreaded question of who she’s been playing in the tour van. “I’ve been playing a lot of Leonard Cohen recently, and also the Berlin techno producer Objekt, Sade, a bit of [Detroit 90s hip hop crew] Slum Village and a bit of Aldous Harding and Julia Jacklin as well.” With this in mind, it’s perhaps no surprise that

array of literary influences too, throwing around references to everyone from the Romantic poet Lord Byron (the inspiration for her song ‘george’) and the feminist Beat poet Diane di Prima to the graphic novel series Judge Dredd, Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and the existentialist writings of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. “When I was younger I was always writing fantasy books with

mad plots,” she explains.

“Even now I write poetry and my lyrics are based on that poetry. If I wasn’t doing music I’d probably be doing English Literature at uni.”

This interest in words and storytelling sets the singer apart from her Gen Z peers, most of whom seem less concerned with lyricism than previous generations. “Personally, it’s definitely a big part of my music, perhaps because a lot of what I listen to isn’t necessarily contemporary stuff,” she theorises. “At the moment it feels like there’s more emphasis on feel and vibe rather than content and what’s being said, but the music I like best still tends to be lyrically-focused.”

Consequently, it’s Arlo’s own lyrics that provide a big part of what makes her music so captivating.

With references to therapy, anxiety and self-medicating with drugs and alcohol, songs like ‘Super Sad Generation’ and ‘Sophie’ offer vivid portrayals of a generation suffering from an epidemic of mental illness, something that Arlo has seen firsthand among her friends and peers.

“I’m not sure if it’s that mental health issues are more common or if we’re just more candid about

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Arlo Parks

45

talking about them, but either way they’re endemic in our generation,” she nods. ‘“I can never speak for everyone, but from what I’ve observed among my friends, social media is setting all these crazy expectations for everyone.

We’re watching these perfect people and perfect lives that aren’t even real, and I feel like it makes us perpetually disappointed in ourselves.” It’s also a pretty tumultuous period to be coming of age in, politically speaking. “The current social climate is really quite depressing.

Politically we’re so divided, people are frustrated and I think you can feel quite helpless and powerless,” she continues.

“Especially when you’re a kid; it can feel like you’re too young to make a difference.”

when it’ll come out,” she concedes. “I love the album format so I really want it to be good. A single can be a great song but it’s still a bit more throwaway than if you have 10 to 15

tracks that really explore a concept. You get a more fully-formed idea of what an artist is about and what they want to say because it takes time and consideration to make a body of

“WHEN I WAS YOUNGER I WAS ALWAYS WRITING FANTASY BOOKS WITH MAD PLOTS.”

work that’s coherent.”

But before all that, there’s the small matter of the next 24 hours and a sold out, rather large gig to get out of the way. How is she feeling about it? “I’m nervous, but also kind of ready.

I mean, I don’t think you can ever really be ready for something like this, can you?” she says, laughing.

“I’m very excited though, I think it’s gonna be a real moment. I’ll probably cry.”

Arlo was not a very stealthy fruit thief.

And having received so much praise for her first few releases, for Arlo herself there’s also the added pressure of living up to everyone’s expectations.

“I do feel like I put a lot of pressure on myself, particularly when I get recognition because it feels like there’s some kind of expectation that you’re going to achieve a lot,” she says. “I wouldn’t say it bothers me massively, though. It’d probably be very different to how it is now but ultimately I’d still be making music if I had no listeners because I love it; I would just go back to making stuff in my bedroom like I did before.

Even though it is lovely to have people say nice things about me.”

All in all, the Londoner is feeling pretty positive about the new year: “I’ll be releasing music early in the year. I’ve got a UK and European tour in February and March which I’m obviously excited about, and I’m playing SXSW too which will be great.” She’s also started work on her debut album, though she thinks it might be a slow process. “I’m writing it now, it’s coming together but I’m not really sure

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CLASS 2020

47

Another Sky CLASSOF2020

HAVING SPENT THE LAST TWELVE MONTHS EXPANDING THEIR DARKLY POWERFUL OFFERINGS, THE POSSIBILITIES ALREADY FEEL LIMITLESS FOR THIS LONDON QUARTET. WORDS: SARAH JAMIESON. PHOTOS: PHIL SMITHIES.

I

t’s not often that an unknown new band finds themselves plonked into the rotating cast of Later… with Jools Holland, in among jazz supremos and charttoppers.

But back in October last year, that’s exactly where Another Sky made their first break into the public consciousness.

Needless to say, it was a bit of a moment.

It’s in the time since, however, that the Londonbased quartet have found themselves growing all the more powerful. While they were quick off the blocks with a series of dynamic and intoxicating tracks - including the tirade against the 1% of the darkly-driven ‘Chillers’ - it’s been over the last twelve months that they’ve spent time building themselves into an even more intense prospect.

“It’s just been non-stop,” reflects frontwoman Catrin Vincent.

“We really had to get down and grind, as they say.

Or no one says!” she laughs. “We’re all still working, so it’s literally been [about] every chance we get, being in the studio, practicing for gigs, going on tour...”

A quick glance across their recent schedule proves as much.

Alongside the release of second EP ‘Life Was

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Coming In Through The Blinds’, the quartet have spent much of their year performing on both sides of the Atlantic. “[We went on] a US tour which was actually quite successful,” she continues.

“We didn’t think anyone would turn up, but then there were people singing the lyrics. That was really, really cool.”

Chatting today after a photoshoot filled with a deceiving kind of ice

been reading a lot, trying to figure out the lyrics, and really make something of them.

“Every time we see another band play, we take inspiration from it,” she continues. “It’s just about constantly being aware that doing music, you have to grow, you have to explore and evolve. I don’t think any of us like staying in one place or getting comfortable.

That’s probably why

“YOU HAVE TO GROW, YOU HAVE TO EXPLORE AND EVOLVE.”CATRIN VINCENT cream - “It looked good!

I nearly had some! It did smell of mashed potato though…” [that’s because it was - sorry guys...] - it’s clear Catrin and the band are already champing at the bit to keep pushing forwards.

Having already made a name for themselves via intricate instrumentation paired with mammoth soundscapes, they’re also hugely focused on creating songs with a message.

“We’ve been doing some of the songs in our own studio and really trying to experiment,” she confirms.

“And I’ve

all of our tracks sound like completely different genres! We like things that excite us and they’re usually things that we haven’t done before.”

As with their releases to date, which have delved into topics including toxic masculinity, social unrest and the possibility of mass extinction, their debut album is set to make an equally strong statement. But, according to Catrin, it’ll also provide an opportunity for her to be more personal with her views.

“Essentially, I’m always

trying to say something, but what I did for the album lyrics was I gathered all of our songs together, and thought, ‘What is the common thread? What am I actually trying to say?’” she offers up. “They’re all quite old songs, so they’re actually things I was saying in 2014, and there’s almost this youthful naivety to it.

What I realised is that it’s kind of about trying to escape your hometown, and then discovering that you never really can.

“The album’s going to have more of a theme, and it’s how these issues personally relate to me and the things that I’ve been through. I’m really excited to make it more personal because I think that’s what everyone is trying to do when they write lyrics, or make art.”

It’s not just a sense of catharsis that’ll accompany the release of their first long-player, which is set to include “really new material that isn’t actually new at all!

Literally one of its tracks is the second song we ever wrote.” Their first record has a different appeal, too. “It’s been so long, and it’ll completely clear the slate for the second album, which we’re really excited for.

We’ll be able to reinvent ourselves and move on.” An ambitious band through and through, for Catrin and her cohorts, the limits are sky high.

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Squid CLASSOF2020

THE BRISTOL-VIA-LONDON-VIA-BRIGHTON QUINTET ENTER THE NEW DECADE READY AND ABLE TO STAMP THEIR MARK, MIXING THE AVANT-GARDE WITH RAUCOUS POST-PUNK IMMEDIACY. WORDS: WILL RICHARDS. PHOTOS: PHIL SMITHIES.

S

itting down around a table outside a north London pub, the members of Squid are passing around various bottles of vitamins and supplements: they might be one of guitar music’s brightest new hopes, but they’re sensible young men after all. “When I was little, I wouldn’t be able to swallow them,” guitarist Louis Borlase remembers while knocking back a dose of cod liver oil. “So my mum would try and hide them in sandwiches.”

“Like a cat!” singing drummer Ollie Judge howls through barelystifled laughter.

With only a month of 2019 left to run, you can’t blame the five-piece for popping pills at this stage. Between touring relentlessly, recording and releasing their excellent ‘Town Centre’ EP and becoming an ever-present highlight of this summer’s festival season, the year has seen Squid graduate from promising hopefuls to one of the most exciting new bands in the country.

Today, with only a week left of touring before they get some much-needed shut eye and tentatively begin work on their debut album, we’re here to reflect on the momentum that the last 12 months has given them, but make

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“WE’RE ALL INFLUENCED BY AMBIENT, BY JAZZ,

BY ALL DIFFERENT THINGS. IT’S ONLY NATURAL THAT IT COMES OUT THAT WAY.” ARTHUR LEADBETTER no mistake: as they head into 2020, Squid have got their eyes firmly fixed on what comes next.

Having begun the year hot on the heels of their propulsive, krautrockinfluenced breakthrough single ‘The Dial’, Squid have taken their potential to the red line throughout 2019. First, at the end of February, came ‘Houseplants’, the band’s frantic mission statement.

“Everybody’s bored, they’re just too afraid to say,” Ollie shouts over tense, jittery post-punk, pushing back against conventional pressures to settle down with a house, a dog and two-point-five kids. “This is my beautiful house, but I can’t afford to live in it!” he shrieks as the song reaches its apocalyptic climax, before side-eyeing the common and misguided stereotype of millennial apathy: “But maybe I’m just lazy.”

‘Houseplants’ was then followed in September by ‘Town Centre’, the first time that the two sonic sides of the band had been accurately captured on record. In the middle of the four-track release sit ‘Match Bet’ and ‘The Cleaner’ - two spiky post-punk hits akin to ‘Houseplants’.

They’re flanked, however, by ambient, droney opener ‘Savage’ and creepy, tense closer ‘Rodeo’. In just four songs, you get a pretty good idea of what a debut album from Squid might sound like, with everything from freeform jazz to motorik beats, surging punk and roomy ambient soundscapes getting their time to shine.

“I’m glad that we’ve laid the groundwork for [the music] to be different,” says keyboardist Arthur Leadbetter, hinting that the album too could go in all manner of different

directions. “It means we’re not afraid to do anything.”

Despite starting out playing at jazz clubs, the five-piece’s love of pop has also become a key ingredient in their music. Teamed with a penchant for the avantgarde, it makes Squid’s output unusual but entirely unforced. They’re not trying too hard to push their experimental influences to the front for muso brownie points, or stressing the hooky element to get radio play.

They’re just a band who have a remarkably firm idea of who they are. “It’s just there within who we are as writers,” Arthur continues. “I think if we all wrote individually, we’d write a mixture of different things and we are all influenced by pop.

We are all influenced by ambient, by jazz, by all different things. It’s only natural that it comes out that way.”

Despite clearly not making a beeline for the radio, Squid have nonetheless found themselves as BBC Radio 6 Music mainstays this year, with ‘Houseplants’ and ‘Match Bet’ never far from the station’s A-List. Being a band loathe to make concessions in their music, even this small adaption inevitably ruffled a few feathers.

“Making the radio edit for ‘The Cleaner’ caused

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the biggest argument we’ve had as a band,” bassist Laurie Nankivell remembers.

“Someone came up to us after a show once and said ‘I loved that extended version of ‘The Cleaner’ that you played’,” Louis adds.

“No! That just IS ‘The Cleaner’!” Evidently, radio edits aren’t Squid’s bag; to understand the fastrising five-piece, you need to see the whole picture.

Lucky, then, that their debut album is on its way.

T

he initial seeds of what will become their first fulllength came from fiddling about with new ideas at soundchecks, relishing the “three to five minutes” they’d have on stage before the sound engineer was ready for them to try out new ideas.

However, the meat of the

writing is set to follow shortly at a forthcoming retreat to that well-known hideout of creativity: the cabin.

“It’s called The Hedgehog Cabin,” Arthur tells us.

“It’s got a jacuzzi!” “Only acoustic instruments on this album, then,” Louis jokes, with a grin.

Though their frenetic live shows and genre-fusing music have become their calling card, Squid’s lyrics remain one of the most compelling parts of the band’s make-up.

While ‘Houseplants’ sees the band dip into social commentary, Ollie’s words largely weave surreal, dark tales that give the mundanity of the everyday an extra spice. ‘The Dial’ concerns a nurse in a hospital who turns into a bloodsucking vampire,

“IT’S NAIVE TO THINK THAT YOUR WORLD IS ONLY AS BIG AS WHAT YOU’VE EXPERIENCED DAYTO-DAY.” ARTHUR LEADBETTER while ‘Match Bet’ is told from the perspective of a mentally ill Sonic Youth superfan who frequented a shop that Ollie used to work in, with his “manic conversations” about

gambling, the ‘90s rock legends and more melting into a song that’s just as fidgety. ‘The Cleaner’, meanwhile, “imagines the divided work and play structure and thinks about

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OF2020 52 DIYMAG.COM

So hot, they soon turned into calamari.

breaking from it.” They’re strange and surreal paths that he wanders down across the ‘Town Centre’ EP and beyond, and ones that are intriguing to follow.

Many of the stories that have made it into Squid songs so far are borne from the repetition of day jobs. Yet now, with the dream of becoming a fulltime band newly a reality for the five-piece, some of the fundamentals of their existence are changing.

Where, we ask, is Ollie’s new inspiration set to come from? “I’ve got really into sci-fi recently,” he responds, before revealing that his other current obsession is, uh, escape rooms.

WHY DON’T YOU GET A JOB

So far we’ve met ‘The Cleaner’ and the man behind ‘Match Bet’ - have you got any other characters to introduce to us on the album?

Louis: One new song, that I think we’re now scrapping, is called ‘The Painter’.

Is that a sequel to ‘The Cleaner’?

Ollie: It could be! All we do now is put ‘The’ and then an occupation in our song titles. ‘The Plumber’!

‘The Internet Service Provider!’

“It’s naive to think that your world is only as big as what you’ve experienced day-to-day though,” Arthur theorises, riffing on the theme. “That’s why we all escape when we finish touring, because our world is bigger than touring.

Touring can be a bubble, but I don’t think it’s good to live your whole life inside that bubble.”

“I’ve been walking around at awkward times on days off in between tours,” Louis begins of his endeavours to extract parts of a more ‘normal’ life when he isn’t on tour. “Those days when you want to see your friends but they’re all at work and you find yourself doing really weird shit, like walking to the shop to get something that you don’t really need that you think is going to make you feel better... like fish oil...

“I write these things down in my notes and read through them when I’m back in the van again. I think there’s something quite inspirational about the time you have [alone] when you spend so much time in a group and with the same people, or with faceless people like various stage managers every single day. When you suddenly find yourself on your own, it’s quite an inspirational feeling.”

Despite their energetic, gang-like mentality on stage, Squid aren’t your average hell-raising lads with guitars. In fact, they’re far more at home when, well, at home, diving deep into pretension without apology. “My ideal day is turning my phone off, having a smoke and just sitting in a room alone, creating,” Arthur states.

This approach makes itself known in interviews too - while Squid’s on-stage presence paints them as yappy dogs with limitless energy, sit them down and they talk about their music seriously, with precision and level-headedness.

This two-pronged attack is what Squid are becoming masters of though; they’re a shape-shifting band that appeal as much to the muso chin-stroker who shares their love of Arthur Russell as the moshpitting indie kid, and the two are married without limits or boundaries.

“A lot of our live show takes on a different shape night by night,” Arthur says. “If you’re playing in a venue with great acoustics and you can hear what [your bandmates] are doing, you play better. And if you can’t then you tend to play a different character of set, like a really fun punky set in a basement.

It can completely change depending on where we are.”

It’s a clashing of styles that makes their live show a consistently refreshing prospect, even after an omnipresent summer. One that makes ‘Town Centre’ an EP with the scope and vision of a much larger piece, and their debut album one of the most exciting musical prospects of 2020. And it makes Squid a band to treasure.

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Working Men's Club CLASSOF2020

LESS THAN 12 MONTHS SINCE THEIR DEBUT SINGLE, AND TWO MEMBERS DOWN (BUT FAR FROM OUT), SINGER SYD MINSKY-SARGEANT IS OUT TO DISMANTLE THE INDUSTRY, ONE BANGER AT A TIME. WORDS: SEAN KERWICK. PHOTOS: JENN FIVE.

“P

eople are fucking shy of saying what needs to be said,” declares Working Men’s Club frontman Sydney Minsky-Sargeant in a Yorkshire drawl, stooped over the pub table we’re sat at.

“People aren’t saying what they think; people are just chatting shit. Especially in the music industry, people are saying stuff for a reaction - I’m not, I’m saying EXACTLY what I think.”

The frontman is an ardent force to be reckoned with, one loaded with opinions that snowball once you get him started. “I feel there’s been a lack of decent music in general for a long time,” he continues. “I don’t think I could name 10 bands in the past decade that have made me really go, ‘Fucking hell’. I think it’s all really safe.”

When we meet, it’s midtour for Working Men’s Club: a time where bags underscore eyelids and routines fall out of sync with the rest of the working world. It seems a spell Syd is currently beholden to. Unlike most bands on the road though, the rings around his eyes aren’t solely indicative of a booze-infused evening; instead, Syd was up late engaged in a heated debate with a cleaner at the Hare & Hounds in Birmingham about Brexit.

One exchange particularly infuriated him. After explaining the origins of the EU’s formation to bring unity and peace over Europe to said cleaner, she retorted with, “Some people need to be persecut-

54 DIYMAG.COM

ed”. He raises his arms in bafflement, sloshing his pint of Guinness in the process. “Where is that hate coming from?! It’s coming from everywhere man!” he exclaims, armed with a piercing stare which rarely strays throughout our conversation.

“These days / This time / Gets stuck / Between the line” goes the refrain of the band’s most recent single ‘Teeth’, embodying and exuding the feeling of disillusionment that continues to sweep the nation. “Everything‘s a myth / Don’t know what to believe,’’ the lyrics continue as they clamber for answers but ultimately end up falling short; a mutual sensation we’ve all felt over the past 12 months.

When you look at the timelines, Working Men’s Club are still a band in their infancy, with their first official single only released in February 2019. Yet the 11 months since has seen them endure changes that

lost two original members in the process. “No disrespect to anybody who’s been involved,” Syd says, brushing his palms together. “It’s a new beginning really.”

The group - now completed by Liam Ogburn, Rob Graham and Mairead O’Connor - aim, he tells us, to bring darkness to dance music: a formula designed to “make people happy, then fuck them up again.” Despite only having two official releases to their name, they’ve already made drastic sonic leaps within that small canon; while breakout single ‘Bad Blood’ sounds like The Fall having a pop at funk, aforementioned follow-up ‘Teeth’ is a gritty dancefloor banger indebted to techno and the pattering cowbells of LCD Soundsystem. Nothing, it seems, is off limits for Syd, who writes all the material.

While there are a number of topics in his crosshairs today, the one the front-

“SAM FENDER AND LEWIS CAPALDI? I THINK IT’S MASS MURDER OF ART AND CULTURE.” - SYD MINSKY-SARGEANT take most bands a few years to experience; not only have they generated enormous buzz off their early releases, marking them as a serious prospect for 2020, they’ve also

man keeps returning to is major labels. “Everything has to be commercially viable. Fuck that! That’s why there’s a standstill,” he says, prodding his finger on the table in time with

each syllable. “I’m still listening to Kim Gordon: her new record excites me more than fucking Charli XCX, Sam Fender or Lewis Capaldi. It’s garbage. I think it’s mass murder of art and culture.”

With studio time booked in with producer Ross Orton (Arctic Monkeys, M.I.A, The Fall) ahead of the new year, Syd is armed with a bunch of tracks that he’s hoping to break the standstill with. “I’d like it to be weird as fuck,” he says of his vision for the group’s debut album. “I’d prefer people to think ‘what the fuck is that?’ I want it to be different,” he pauses to take another swig of Guinness. “Otherwise I’d feel like I’ve been chatting shit throughout the whole of this interview.”

Later that night, the band take the stage to a packedout MOTH Club, their short set unleashing a handful of tracks destined for said debut. ‘White Rooms And People’ cascades into a blissful psych-tinted chorus via a funk-laced verse, whereas ‘John Cooper Clarke’ is a much fiercer beast that takes on death and mortality with an appreciative nod to the punk poet.

Whether or not Working Men’s Club’s speedy ascent continues into 2020, Syd’s not really bothered.

He’s in it for more than just attention. “I don’t care whether I’ve got hype or not,” he asserts. “I don’t care if there’s 10 people at a gig or 2000 people at a gig. I don’t make music to sell it to people. I’d still be making music if I had nothing.”

CLASS 2020

Pete Doherty, eat yer heart out.

55

Walt Disco CLASS OF2020

THEATRICAL AND AESTHETICALLY-MINDED, WALT DISCO AREN’T JUST THINKING ABOUT MAKING BRILLIANTLY WEIRD POP MUSIC - THEY’RE CONCENTRATING ON THE WHOLE EXPRESSIVE PACKAGE. WORDS: JOE GOGGINS. PHOTOS: JENN FIVE.

J

ames Potter is reeling off two separate lists of influences, and which one you consider more important will probably tell you something about where you stand on the band he fronts, Walt Disco. “The Associates, The Blue Nile, Simple Minds,” he says. “A lot of Scottish bands that were kind of pop.” And then he provides an insight into the inspiration behind the live show. “I’ve always liked performance art.

Musicals, theatre, opera, dance. Drag art as well.

We’re maybe all those things mixed into one.”

As modest as James and equally softly-spoken guitarist Dave Morgan might be about that statement, there’ll be plenty who can attest to its accuracy; opening up for Sports

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Team in the UK earlier this year, the Glaswegian frontman describes the crowds as “mental”. And you can see why people might be champing at the bit for a slice of their particularly flamboyant pie.

With the past couple of years defined by unvarnished punk, Walt Disco are a band operating in

“I think that’s something we’ve probably grown into,” he explains. “I only started singing four years ago, so I’ve been kind of learning on the job.

Especially these days, you need a strong visual aspect to what you do.

I know I’m not really interested in many artists

“I’VE ALWAYS LIKED PERFORMANCE ART, MUSICALS, DANCE, DRAG...” -JAMES POTTER an entirely different realm - one who’ve already secured a reputation for scintillating onstage theatricality, thanks in no small part to James’ vaudevillian transformation in front of a crowd.

who don’t think about the show, about the vision, as a whole.” He does, however, take the opportunity to shoot down a previous suggestion in these very pages from his bandmate that he had “been in more

musicals than he’d played gigs”. “I’ve only been in about two musicals,” he laughs. “It’s just that this is my first band, and I hadn’t been on stage much before this. I always wanted to be, though.”

Though Walt Disco are firm pals with the other bands making a name for themselves from the Scottish city (The Ninth Wave et al), musically, even among as diverse a Class of 2020 as this, they feel without compare. “What we’re doing is pretty self-contained,” says Dave.

“We’re in an era where we can take influence from any area of music, and we’re just trying to experiment within pop.

That’s taken us to our own little place, and people seem to like it.”

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BiiG PiiG CLASS OF2020

FUSING INTIMATE MUSIC WITH BUCKETS OF PERSONALITY AND A MULTICULTURAL BACKGROUND, THIS PIIG’S GOT BIIG PLANS. WORDS: JENESSA WILLIAMS. PHOTO: PHIL SMITHIES.

A

s any K-Pop idol will attest, being multilingual is a pretty good tool to have in your Gen Z pop kit. These days, western audiences are widening their horizons, embracing a wave of new artists who sing across languages. Yet, for Jess Smyth, aka Biig Piig (named after her favourite Biig Piig pizza, fact fans), it’s mere part and parcel of a childhood that saw her move from Ireland to Spain and back to London, allowing her to embody a wealth of different cultures in her music.

“Most of my listeners are in Central and South America, which is bizarre but super cool. Most of the time, Spanish just comes out of me the same way it would writing in English.

But then there’ll be other times where I want to say something that I’m worried someone I like is going to hear, so I’ll put it in Spanish in the hope that they won’t understand it. I mean, unless they use Google Translate, and they’re probably not going to be bothered are they?”

Jess might be surprised at just how many of her admirers may resort to a quick Duolingo lesson in an attempt to decipher her mind, however. Having drawn attention with 2018’s excellently-titled ‘Big Fan of the Sesh’ EP, she’s steadily released small projects that tap into the ever-growing lofi, bedroom rap scene,

58 DIYMAG.COM

dashing it through with her own unique sense of space and place. Newest EP ‘No Place For Patience’ takes her studio experiments to glorious heights, throwing around elements of neosoul in its understated production. For a selfconfessed people person, her music is noticeably laid-back in nature: how did such an extrovert end up sounding so intimate?

“When I moved back to London at 14 I felt really isolated - I didn’t know anyone or really talk to anyone for like, six months, so the only way I could communicate was

with tunes I can be honest about everything.”

Whether she’s nattering away ten-to-the-dozen about someone cool she met recently or filling us in on all the jobs she’s had before settling on music (“I’ve done bar work, charity fundraising, poker dealing, I was a nanny in Switzerland… I’m really shit with normal jobs”), Jess is endlessly funny and disarmingly open, slang and swears peppering her speedy Irish patter. Her lack of filter makes her infinitely likeable, as does her desire to collaborate, both within her London

“MOST OF THE TIME, SPANISH JUST COMES OUT OF ME THE SAME WAY IT WOULD WRITING IN ENGLISH.” by writing and talking to myself,” she explains.

“As much as I feel really connected to other people, when it comes to writing tunes, it’s always more of a diary. I’m pretty bad at expressing my emotions, especially with people I’m in a relationship with. I’m a bit of a dick sometimes, I’m not going to lie! I can be like, ‘Oh you’re my whole world’ and then just get scared and run away, but

“squad,” the Nine8 collective, and beyond.

“I honestly don’t know how solo artists tour completely on their own - I’d literally drive myself mad,” she laughs. “Nine8 is all people of a similar age and ethos creating a safe space to ask questions and help each other out.

This industry moves so quickly and you can end up feeling a bit lost, so to

have a family and a base who don’t care whether something is successful or not is great.”

While a debut album might be a little way off, Jess isn’t short of projects to keep her busy. Determined not to re-use any material, she’s currently trying to avoid “drawing blood from a stone”. Meanwhile, her energies are being thrown into a different project entirely.

“I’m working on a podcast of kids stories, but told in ways that make them aware of important issues like climate change and immigration,” she explains, getting giddy. “It’s going to be called Story On The Farm, and I’m going to hopefully be able to get other musicians in to voice some of the characters.

We’re only on the first draft, but the early recordings are sounding good. I’d also really like to make some clothes – some cool t-shirts with printing and embroidery. Y’know, I’m just thinking aloud, but maybe I could release a line of pyjamas to go with the storytime podcast. Lemme just write that down, that’s actually a pretty sick idea.”

She rummages around for a pen, pausing as she scribbles furiously. “Oh my god, yes. Here we go lads! It’s all starting here!”

A podcast, pyjama line and a debut album, all inside of a year? That’ll do piig, that’ll do.

CLASS 2020

Biig Piig; biigger piizza.

59

Do Nothing CLASS 2020

STRAIGHT OUTTA NOTTINGHAM WITH A WIRY LINE IN DANCEABLE POST-PUNK, DO NOTHING ARE BRINGING HUMOUR, PERSONALITY AND BIG TUNES TO THE TABLE. WORDS: LISA WRIGHT. PHOTOS: JENN FIVE.

It’s like Fyre Festival all over again.

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“T

here are a bunch of different kinds of frontmen that I like equally,” ponders Do Nothing’s resident mic-wielder Chris Bailey, slightly bleary-eyed after an early morning drive from home city Nottingham to the capital, but still determinedly decked in his trademark, ever-present grey suit.

“You can do the energetic, running around sort of frontman, but I also like it when someone can just stand there. I’m still figuring out what balance to get because at the moment I basically just drink loads and then fall about. But that’s probably not sustainable... We’re playing a lot of shows...”

Looking at the singer - sunglasses-clad, tailored and surrounded by er... Hovis for our shoot - it would be easy to chalk him up as another cool kid fronting a hyped indie band, but it’s in these knowing comments that you get a better sense of what Do Nothing are actu-

nods. “We used to play very... boring music? But then we took a year off and figured out what we wanted to do, and now it’s going alright!” Discovering their influences in tandem, from an early, game-changing introduction to Battles (“‘Mirrored’ was our first experience with wonky music...”) to a communal Radiohead obsession, it’s meant that the band are a close-knit bunch - one who’ve spent time and care getting to the point where, despite being in their relative infancy to the outside world, they already feel remarkably fully-formed.

“In London there’s bands everywhere, whereas in Nottingham you can wriggle away in the shadows before anyone notices, just being a little Nottingham band,” nods the singer. “We took a year off, and then it took another year even to find a name for this [project]. We wrote a whole bunch of songs, and then scrapped songs.” “The benefit of being from a small town is

“WE USED TO TRY TO BE CLEVER, BUT NOW WE’RE JUST TRYING TO BE DUMB, DUMB MEN...” - CHRIS BAILEY ally about. Live, Chris is a magnetic, stumbling narrator - part David Byrne, part used car salesman; on record, he and bandmates Kasper Sandstrom, Charlie Howarth and Andy Harrison weave all manner of influences, from tumbling postpunk to taut cowbell-toting pings into a playful patchwork, while today the band spend a self-deprecating half hour telling tales of failed karaoke sessions and calling themselves shit.

Thankfully, however, shit is precisely what they’re not. Having grown up together since their early teens, the band may only be four songs into their current catalogue, but they’ve spent nigh-on a decade getting to this point. “We’ve known each other for ages, and we’d been in various bands so this is a very recent version of what we’ve been doing,” the frontman

you can truck along and make all of those really important mistakes, and learn the lessons from them without it being spotlit in front of everybody,” Andy picks up, before Chris continues: “A lot of that old material was very meandering and trying to be clever, but now we’re just trying to be dumb. Trying to be dumb, dumb men...”

However, with breakthrough single ‘Gangs’ colliding The Fall’s knack for sardonic storytelling and LCD Soundsystem’s leftfield dancefloor sensibilities, and ‘Handshakes’ allowing a slower, more unsettling side to unfurl, Do Nothing’s early teasers actually strike a far artier chord than their assertions might suggest. Piecing together a collage of strange, intriguing lyrics (“I phone home fast to get a hold of my provider / I eat every single thing I own and then

61

catch fire”), Chris might play dumb, but there’s a lot of thought not-so-secretly going on behind the scenes. “I watch loads of stupid shit on the internet, and [the lyrics] all seem abstract because they’re just little phrases smashed together, but they’re actually all really laboriously thought out. I do it on my computer so I can cut and paste it all. People are always on about, ‘Oh I only write with a pen and paper’,” he continues, adopting a snooty voice and an eye-roll. “Fuck off! Why?!

The lyrics all make complete sense to me, but they wouldn’t make any sense to anyone else. It’s sort of pointless for anyone else to listen to them.”

Terrible at selling himself he may be, but it’s these contrary, verbally masochistic tendencies that set Chris up as one of the most curious new band figureheads around. Describing his onstage persona as “sad bloke in a sad suit”, he’s a frontman that seemingly hates the idea of being a frontman, and one who’s doing his

level best to avoid any of the standard ego-fluffing tropes associated with the job. “I’ll get a new suit eventually, but I want this one to get really dirty and gross and work with my whole sad man image first. He’s not lonely, but he’s just lost the house.

‘Oh no, my wife’s gonna kill me!’” he cries, throwing his hands in the air in mock horror. It’s not your standard approach for a 24-year-old with increasingly excited eyes turning in his direction, but it’s another example of why Do Nothing are swiftly carving out their own space among their peers. “Trying to be a cool rock star just gives me the creeps, so doing the opposite of that is more fun to me,” he shrugs.

At least, however, their recent exploits have lived up to their own amusing anti-bluster. After a packedout gig at Hamburg’s hype-creating Reeperbahn Festival, they celebrated by “absolutely bombing” at karaoke; “We signed up for Lionel Richie’s ‘All Night Long’ and I don’t think we knew any lyrics apart

“TRYING TO BE A COOL ROCK STAR JUST GIVES ME THE CREEPS.” - CHRIS BAILEY from ‘all night long’,” sighs Kasper. When they were invited to support Interpol at their most high-profile show to date, meanwhile, they ended up with another disaster. “I was trying to steam my suit and I locked the room with the shower in it and it flooded the whole dressing room,” Chris nods. “They were very nice about it though...”

More interested in taking the piss out of themselves than indulging their own considerable buzz (“We’re trying to make the live shows as enjoyable as possible before we run out of energy and phone it in,” deadpans the singer in response to the idea that their recent gigs have been quite, y’know, good), Do Nothing are, however, quietly serious about what they’re doing. Explaining

that they want their output to be “thoughtfully created and organised”, there’s clearly a lot more ambition under the playful surface than their jokes and self-flagellation might suggest.

“The reason why bands like LCD Soundsystem and The Strokes are so easy to get into is because they pretty much just lay it on you; they do what they do really well without any smokescreens or tricks,” says Andy. “We’re attracted by that, by trying to slim everything down and do what we do in as honest a way as we can.”

Looking towards the most important guitar band and one of the most influential alternative groups of the century for inspiration?

That doesn’t sound like nothing from here.

CLASS 2020

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BEST OF 2019

SHARON VAN ETTEN REMIND ME TOMORROW

BON IVER - i,i

ANGEL OLSEN - ALL MIRRORS

KEVIN MORBY - OH MY GOD

STELLA DONNELLY - BEWARE OF THE DOGS

BETTER OBLIVION COMMUNITY CENTER

WHITNEY - FOREVER TURNED AROUND

SHURA - FOREVHER

AVAILABLE FROM ALL GOOD RECORD SHOPS NOW!

63

Nasty Cherry CLASS 2020

THE GIRL BAND BRAINCHILD OF CHARLI XCX, NASTY CHERRY HAVE BEEN GIVEN ALL THE TOOLS AND A MASSIVE PLATFORM TO SET THEM UP FOR SUCCESS. NOW, THEY JUST HAVE TO COME GOOD ON THE POTENTIAL. WORDS: LISA WRIGHT. PHOTOS: JENN FIVE.

T

h o u g h the artists that make up DIY’s C l a s s of 2020 s p a n s p e c trums of genre, geography, aesthetic and just about everything else, they all have certain things in common. All have made music first and gained attention for it after. All have done their time on the live stage, playing support slots to other people’s fans to hone their craft. All have put in the considerable hours and years it inevitably takes to begin to make it in one of the most competitive and cut-throat industries out there. All, that is, except Nasty Cherry.

A four-piece girl band put together by pop legend Charli XCX, the group – comprised of singer Gabi Bechtel, guitarist Chloe Chaidez, bassist Georgia Somary and drummer Debbie Knox-Hewson – were puppet-mastered into existence a year ago, meeting for the first time the day they also started filming Netflix documentary ‘I’m With The Band’. Literally born to polarise, they’re either a very modern premise, designed to prove, as Charli says at the start of each episode, that these days there’s no clear roadmap to success, or they’re a group who’ve bypassed all the difficult bits and been given a spotlight because of their famous mate and a multi-billion dollar streaming platform. Understandably, when we meet the band on the day the show is released, they’re keen to

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stress its the former. “Charli loves a challenge and it would have been kind of boring to get a bassist and a really great guitarist and drummer and singer and then start a band,” shrugs Gabi. “Where’s the process in that? Where’s the development?” “It’s a punk way of doing it. With Malcolm McLaren it was like, you can’t play? Who gives a shit?” adds Georgia. “Noone cared if the Sex Pistols could play well.” Which is true, but then no-one gave the Sex Pistols a 20-person-strong camera crew and a reality TV show either.

It’s easy to be cynical about the group when everything about Nasty Cherry’s conception seems designed to raise eyebrows. Half the band have spent years in the industry (Chloe as frontwoman of synth-rock band Kitten, Debbie as part of Charli’s touring band), while Gabi, a professional model, had never sung and set designer Georgia learnt bass specifically for the gig. And yet the quartet seem genuinely inspired by their unlikely genesis. “It’s actually really refreshing to work with people who haven’t done it and don’t have the same experience that we have because they bring something that you forget or lose along the way,” explains Debbie. “It’s unfiltered,” nods Chloe. “I think there’s this common misconception that if you work with a great producer, then you’re gonna get a hit song. And I’ve been in those situations, with really experienced musicians and similar level producers, and you don’t get the same thing because the

musicians are overthinking things sometimes.”

It’s points like this where you can see clearly how a recipe like Nasty Cherry’s could prove fruitful - no pun intended. For every comment about the group not having earned their position, there’s an equal but opposite one about the volume of potentially brilliant artists that fall by the wayside because the opportunities aren’t there. “I feel like what’s always been motivating about this project is having reasons to keep going,” Chloe nods. “There are so many reasons bands disintegrate, but it’s normally to do with there not being any next forward step. Most bands break up because they have no reason to stay together.” “Artists tend to get fucked over a lot and people are in development for 3-to-5 years which is crazy, so this is like a ‘fuck that’,” continues Georgia.

“We can push through this and do the shortcuts, and it will piss loads of people off but at the same time I think it paves the way for people to do things a different way.

Maybe we’re manufactured, but there’s also a really honest path that’s being carved out that’s as legitimate [as anything else].”

“HATERS MAKE ME FAMOUS.” CHLOE CHAIDEZ

Lesson: never take Nasty Cherry to a funfair.

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W

hat’s most intriguing about meeting Nasty Cherry is attempting to work out exactly what they want to be. Gabi insists that “none of [them] are here to be reality stars”, and yet the show is both inextricably linked to and, seemingly, as much of a driving force for the quartet as the music. At one point, Georgia tells us how the normal dynamics of a recording session would be interrupted by the practicalities of having a large crew with them at all times. “We were in tiny studios with these massive camera rigs and they’d literally [have to] clear instruments off shelves because they couldn’t turn around. That was funny,” she laughs.

Is it tricky, we suggest, because the conditions that make for a good TV show aren’t necessarily the conditions that make for a good record? “YES,” jumps in Chloe immediately before the others chip in with more amenable sentiments. “But they’re not that different either,” counters Debbie. “You need to be open and honest with one another; you need to champion things that are great but also have the confidence and safety in the space you’re in to say, ‘Well that’s not the best idea we’ve got, actually’. And all of that was documented, but I think it actually makes for a very honest body of work.” As if to blur the lines even further, the body of work in question - the band’s recently-released debut EP - is titled ‘Season One’.

A watch through the often-dramatic altercations of ‘I’m With The Band’ point to these same contrasts. On the show and in person today, Chloe is the most traditionally ‘band-y’ - more focused on the music and most up for taking the piss out of herself. Gabi, as you might expect, is magnetic in front of the camera but is also the quietest in conversation. Debbie seems the most guarded of the four, while Georgia veers between making very valid points about the unstable and constantly shifting nature of the modern music industry and then stating how she’d never previously picked up a bass because she had to get a job. It goes without saying, of course, than many, many musicians before her have managed to do both.

Sometimes you find yourself really rooting for the four-piece and their willingness to put themselves out there and try something new. When Debbie states that “the whole ethos of Nasty Cherry is to just do it, just try it”, you can imagine a legion of teenage girls feeling braver in return. But then you’ll ask about the show and Georgia will reply that she “wants it to have 15 seasons”, which seems to sort of

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“IT'S A PUNK WAY OF DOING IT. NO-ONE CARED IF THE SEX PISTOLS COULD PLAY WELL.” GEORGIA SOMARY undermine the idea of Nasty Cherry as a band ever making music for music’s sake, and emphasise the focus on fame and celebrity.

Still in their formative stages, the band’s current output - a sultry, synth-flavoured, Sky Ferreira-esque brand of pop-rock - is promising enough to prove Charli’s suspicions correct: no matter what their background, the four members of Nasty Cherry clearly have chemistry, potential and a knack for penning earworms that’ll riddle themselves in your brain for days. Now it’s a case of seeing whether, once the hype around their Netflix debut settles, they can continue the momentum and excite without all the behind-the-scenes extras.

How does it feel to be the most polarising new band on the block, we ask, as they head off for another day in their very abnormal new normal? “Haters make me famous,” grins Chloe, with a wink. “Bring the haters on! I want people to talk about it, and I think there’s a lot to talk about. A lot of questions!” she chuckles. “A lot of Qs...” There might be a lot of contradictions to Nasty Cherry, but you certainly can’t argue with that.

Second Helpings

CLASS 2020

Still not full of delicious new music? Don’t worry, we’re not done yet. Here are the excellent artists rounding out our 20 tips for 2020. Nom nom nom.

Celeste

Omar Apollo

LA-born, Brighton-based Celeste makes jazztinged soul music destined to make you feel all the #feels. With poetic lyrics and powerful vocals over seductively sleek sounds, she’s garnered comparison to the likes of Erykah Badu and Adele through her expert ability to tug on the harshest of heartstrings.

Pulling on influences ranging from rap to jazz to the Latin music his Mexican parents played him growing up, Omar Apollo is bringing disco into 2020. With two EPs under his belt - 2018’s ‘Stereo’ and 2019’s ‘Friends’ - and a debut LP coming next, his funk-tinged dance floor fillers are guaranteed to get you bopping along too.

Charlotte Adigéry

404

Earlier this year, tragedy struck Dirty Hit-signed hip-hop collective 404 when founder member and vocalist Mina took her own life. The band could understandably have decided to call it a day, but instead they came back in November with ‘Guild Two: Forever’ - both a tribute to their bandmate and an example that they’ve still got a punk spirit and stirring energy worth fighting for.

Their next steps might be hardfought, but they’ll no doubt be worth the push.

Of French-Caribbean descent and based in Belgium, Charlotte Adigéry’s wonky, leftfield pop is as much of a glorious infusion as her background. Favouring the kind of old school synths Metronomy wouldn’t sniff at, and dropping them under propulsive, cyclical rhythms (‘Paténipat’) and astute lyrics exploring her identity as a black woman (‘High Lights’), the result is a tUnE-yArDs-esque heap of fun.

Dominic Fike

Blending alternative hip-hop elements with pop melodies, Florida singer/ rapper Dominic Fike topped charts worldwide with breakout track ‘3 Nights’ in 2019, successfully soundtracking pretty much everyone’s summer. With his debut album set for 2020, we’re pretty sure it won’t be his last time sitting pretty at the top.

Heavy Lungs

Having first broken into our collective consciousness thanks to IDLES’ infamous pro-immigration anthem, as named after frontman Danny Nedelko, Heavy Lungs’ growth over the past year has been electrifying to witness.

Spending the last twelve months honing their explosive but gritty brand of punk - best shown on latest EP ‘Measure’, which hit shelves back in October - they’re more proof that their mates aren’t the only Bristolians intent on making a racket right now.

Just Mustard

They may have recently toured with Irish brethren Fontaines DC, but Dundalk quintet Just Mustard are cut from an entirely different cloth. Having pricked up ears at the start of 2019 with their shoegaze-inspired noir, ‘Seven’ arrived in the autumn cut with a dead-eyed industrial edge. Here’s hoping 2020 sees them follow that dark path all the way to its noisiest peak; screw the niceties, it’s far more fun down here.

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ILLUSTRATION: JOE WATSON PRICE

A reunited band of brothers. 

BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB

Everything Else Has Gone Wrong (Caroline International / Island)

I

n a year that’s seen more anniversaries and notable returns from more of the class of ‘09 than it’s possible to mention, the news of a Bombay Bicycle Club return was one that felt particularly eagerly-awaited. Their approach to music-making was one that always felt dependably solid, driven by Jack Steadman’s trembling voice and knack for picking out just the right earworm borrowed from dance or hip hop, embedding it in just the right amounts so as to never feel inauthentic. The music that was made was the product of four best friends, and it showed - from record to record, the subtle expansion of their sonic palette has never felt anything other than natural.

While nods are made to the musical explorations of Mr Jukes and Toothless that have kept members busy for the past few years, ‘Everything Else Has Gone Wrong’ is an indisputable ‘Bombaydoes-guitars’ record, with all the emotional light and shade you’ve

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come to expect. The same boys you knew a few years back are still very much present, but the frown lines have furrowed a little deeper, the energy is a little less carefree, and the worries are more complex. In the time they’ve been away, the world has changed: concerns over the girl who didn’t fancy you back are traded with the realisation that romantic bliss doesn’t instantly solve the struggles of mental health (‘I Worry ‘Bout You’) and the desire to stay young forever is tempered with the realisation that ‘growing up’ is actually learning to exist in an often unfair world that is burning through its resources and tolerance, leaving little to distract you from the temporality of your own existence. If this narrative sounds depressing, it’s because it kinda is. But their ability to juxtapose soul-searching lyrics against jaunty melodies creates instant anthems, at one both antagonist and healing.

Nowhere on the record is this exemplified as well as on ‘Good Day’ - as a one-two punch against lead single ‘Eat Sleep Wake

(Nothing But You)’, it taps into their strongest asset - the ability to break your heart and heal it in the time it takes to move from verse to chorus.

Although musically very little has changed, clues are left throughout the record as to its Stateside recording. Opener ‘Get Up’ sounds the horns of a Beychella-themed Thanksgiving parade, and the album’s title track is a stand out, capturing a nervous energy in its low-register, chanting verses - the world-weary brother to ‘Dust on the Ground’. One suspects the influence of producer John Congleton, who also helped Wild Beasts find their radio-rock energy on ‘Boy King’, but again, it never feels forced - just the slow seeping spread of their musical exploration, a gentle nod to their mission statement to create a call-to-arms record that you can turn to in a crisis. The relief they share at having found this for themselves, a reunited band of

brothers, gives the music a secondary energy.

A very subtle progression from what has come before, it remains to be seen whether 2020-era BBC will capture the hearts and minds of a new generation. But for those who’ve held on in hope of their return, the rewards are fruitful. Heck, if you met your ‘one’ as a floppy-fringed teenager at one of their early gigs, a whole heap of these songs could accompany your nuptials, or maybe just soundtrack the firey inferno of the final days on earth that threaten as we try to make the best of a bad situation. In the spirit of the album’s title, there is hopefulness in despair, a peace in accepting the unknown. The same blues of ten years ago are still very much in evidence, but Bombay Bicycle Club remain a band who are more than capable of shaking them loose. (Jenessa Williams) LISTEN: ‘Good Day’, ‘Get Up’, ‘Eat Sleep Wake (Nothing But You)’

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 EASY LIFE

Right where they need to be.  THE BIG MOON Walking Like We Do (Fiction)

It would have been far too easy for The Big Moon to have simply built on their trademark Elastica-meets-Pixies rock that made debut album ‘Love in the 4th Dimension’ so beloved. Instead, they wanted a challenge. With ‘Walking Like We Do’, Juliette Jackson writes against the backdrop of disillusionment with modern society. Trading their signature guitars for keys, and a more ’80s inspired sound, The Big Moon show that they aren’t afraid to stray from their comfort zone and challenge themselves as musicians, songwriters and people. ‘Walking Like We Do’ is expansive lyrically, thematically and sonically, touching on social inequality and frustration with the current political and societal climate. In ‘Dog Eat Dog’, inspired by the Grenfell Tower fire, Jules laments the injustice: “Around here, they say it’s dog eat dog but / it’s more like pigeon eating like fried chicken on the street”. She continues to navigate her frustrations with more metaphor and simile: “We just hang around like a haircut growing out” in ‘Your Light’. But though Jules sings about her disillusionment - touching upon her anxiety about growing older in ‘Barcelona’ - the sound never reflects her state of mind. It’s during ‘Your Light’ that ‘Walking Like You Do’ reaches its crescendo. Amid all the darkness of the political turmoil, light can be found in the relationships in your life. For some people, that’s The Big Moon - and they’re always right where they need to be. (Cady Siregar) LISTEN: ‘Your Light’

Ain’t no mountain high enough to keep The Big Moon from releasing more bangers.

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Junk Food

(Island)

Over the last two years, Leicester five-piece Easy Life have carved out their own unique path, blending elements of indie-pop, hip hop, jazz and soul into refreshingly modern bops that have seen them hailed as some of the UK’s shiniest new hopefuls. While 2018 mixtape ‘Creature Habits’ and this year’s follow-up ‘Spaceships’ glistened with promise, it’s ‘Junk Food’ that shows the group exercising their true exciting potential. Led by vocalist Murray Matravers’ sharp and heartfelt lyricism, the grooves are sleeker and the ensemble is tighter, resulting in a mixtape that leans even more towards meticulously crafted chilled out vibes than their previous releases.

The Arlo Parks-featuring ‘Sangria’ is the undoubted standout, her delicate smoky vocals playing off of Murray’s confident rap-like delivery to stunning results. ‘Nice Guys’ and ‘Earth’ are infectiously groove-heavy earworms, and piano-led ‘Dead Celebrities’ is sure to become a new fan fave. Although people may be gagging for the debut album, ‘Junk Food’ shows you shouldn’t knock another Easy Life mixtape just yet. (Elly Watson) LISTEN: ‘Sangria’

 GENGAHR Sanctuary (Liberator)

 MURA MASA

R.Y.C (Polydor)

Producers can often enjoy careers that retain a slither of anonymity unlike the singers and rappers up front. That’s not a path that seems to interest Mura Masa second time around.

Instead he’s injected himself front and centre on ‘R.Y.C’, taking up vocal duties on the lion’s share of tracks. It’s a bold move.

Fortunately Alex Crossan’s voice sounds pleasant against the more lo-fi compositions scattered across the LP, which when positioned next to his debut doesn’t make a whole lot of sense; it may as well be a different artist entirely. Gone are the house influences that underpinned his 2016 debut, and in are scratchy demo-sounding guitars, crisp production and gorgeous flourishes of string arrangements. Take the driven instrumental of ‘No Hope Generation’, where the spidering drum pattern intertwines with the chugging guitar line to stunning effect, or the splashes of funk guitar that lap against the four-on-thefloor beat of highlight ‘Deal Wiv It’; a track which finds slowthai doing his best Mike Skinner. ‘Today’ is a beautifully melancholic acoustic-led ballad, and the epic ‘Teenage Headache Dreams’ features an emotive vocal collage at its centre before Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell carries the track through to a dramatic climax. Whether this new direction alienates or alights his fanbase, it remains to be seen either way, ‘R.Y.C’ bills Mura Masa as a different prospect entirely. (Sean Kerwick) LISTEN: ‘Deal Wiv It’

Gengahr’s second LP, ‘Where Wildness Grows’, showed a band refreshed; colourful, confident and full of swagger. ‘Sanctuary’ isn’t quite the same artistic masterstroke, but it does show a band focused on pure fun, with the rollicking groove of ‘Everything & More’ and laidback shimmers of ‘Atlas Please’ leading the way. Their new secret weapon, it seems, is producer Jack Steadman. His voracious musical appetite, most effectively displayed in the last two BBC records and his own Mr Jukes project, helps to add new textures to Gengahr’s established style. When the album begins to lose a little steam in its latter half, it’s these that keep it interesting. ‘You’re No Fun’ threatens to spill into by-numbers territory, losing the Gengahr identity in a sea of their peers. But the little flourishes, like that track’s middle-eight that sounds like it was recorded underwater, bring something unusual to the table. Overthinking things and really knuckling down worked for Gengahr last time around. But, with ‘Sanctuary’ it turns out that the right guide can make the path a little bit fun too. (Chris Taylor) LISTEN: ‘Everything & More’

 GEORGIA

Seeking Thrills (Domino)

While M.I.A is away, Georgia will play.

With a similarly deft hand at combining global influences, her approach to music-making is one that feels broadly intuitive, dipping a drumstick into cauldrons of party juice and lucid liquids like some kind of indie Willy Wonka, pouring out a larger glass of whatever feels right. While 2015’s self-titled debut laid quiet foundations, ‘Seeking Thrills’ sees Georgia lean in much more eagerly on the late-night grooves that have been supporting her breakthrough. ’Started Out’ and ‘About Work The Dancefloor’ make for solid, established openers, but there’s no shortage of other ideas that make complete sense in the soundtrack of modern lives - ‘I Can’t Wait’ zooms along the rainbow road of a particularly jubilant round of Mario Kart, ‘Feel It’ and ‘Mellow’ blast comfortably out of the stereo before a naughty night out, and ‘Never Let You Go’ has the same modular, kawaii drive that made a star out of Grimes, full of the energy captured in the album’s art. As an embodiment of where one of the UK’s most exciting voices is currently at, you couldn’t ask for much more. (Jenessa Williams) LISTEN: ‘Never Let You Go’

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An artist coming to life. 

HARRY STYLES Fine Line

(Columbia / Erskine)

Has there ever been an artist quite like Harry Styles? Thrust into the limelight as a young teen, becoming part of an industry machine with the economic might of a small country overnight only to emerge the other end as a deft singer-songwriter with a perfect rock star identity? It took even closest compatriots Robbie Williams and George Michael some time to find their sound, whereas Harry’s 2017 self-titled debut emerged as precisely the sum of its protagonist’s parts - whether in the Stones swagger of ‘Kiwi’, the Elton strut of ‘Woman’, or even the Beck-like ‘Carolina’. He’s an unrepentant boybander who’s unafraid to milk sacred cows old and new. He’s got a sideline in legitimately serious acting roles and the sartorial flair of ‘80s Bowie having raided Elton John’s vault. He’s possibly the only man Stevie Nicks actually wants to spend time with.

That Harry has fully located himself in LA is immediately evident, not least as opener ‘Golden’ is far more suited to a trip down a sun-soaked West Coast highway than a literally soaking M6. Similarly, the plucked guitars of ‘To Be So Lonely’ (with the wonderfully tongue-in-cheek delivery of line “I’m just an arrogant son of a bitch”) and the Americana strum of ‘Canyon Moon’ with its campfire handclaps evoke warmer climes. Elsewhere, it’s a joyous study in classic songwriting, whether using Beatleslike rhyming couplets to tell Britpop-style quotidian stories on the gloriously epic ‘She’, the Vampire Weekend-like rhythms of the confusingly-named ‘Sunflower’ (it’s not a cover), the wonderfully kitsch ‘70s Motown stomp that is ‘Treat People With Kindness’, or the Mark Ronson-esque brass funk of ‘Adore You’. Add to that the claustrophobic ‘Cherry’, its folky plucked guitars becoming almost motorik in their repetition, the anxiety-fuelled ‘Falling’ (“What if I’m someone I don’t want around?”) and the impeccablytimed tension of the six-plus-minute closing title track. Not unlike having watched his earliest moves week-by-week on TV way back when, ‘Fine Line’ is a compelling document of an artist coming to life. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘Fine Line’, ‘She’

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



When We Stay Alive

Deleter

POLIÇA



SLØTFACE

Sorry For The Late Reply (Propeller)



FRANCES QUINLAN Likewise (Saddle Creek)

With 2017 debut ‘Try Not To Freak Out’, Sløtface made good on their promise and managed to channel their live-wire brand of pop punk into a breathless, freeing 32-minute ride. On its follow-up, ‘Sorry For The Late Reply’, it takes all of about 2 seconds for the Norwegian quartet to slam on the accelerator and get right back in the listener’s face. An explosive start to a record if ever there was one, Haley Shea’s opening rally call on ‘S.U.C.C.E.S.S’ is antagonistic in the most glorious way possible and shows the band stepping into an even more confident realm. It’s not all scuzzy guitars and fizzing energy here though; ‘Stuff’ is a slicker but crunchy offering that dissects the leftover mementoes of a relationship, while ‘Laugh At Funerals’ is a frank exploration of grief.

‘Sorry For The Late Reply’ is an album that’s taken the playful spark of their debut and refined it into a bolder beast. (Sarah Jamieson) LISTEN ‘Sink Or Swim’

Delving into the multiple facets of love, ‘Likewise’, Frances Quinlan’s first solo album released under her own name, glides through the discovery of familial and the revelations of romantic relationships. Depicted by the self-portrait adorning the cover, it looks at community through Frances’ distinctively autobiographical storytelling.

But here she pairs this with an array of instrumentation, from the jubilance of ‘Rare Thing’ to the atypical ‘Detroit Lake’, blending subtle electronic experimentation with tasteful harp sounds and theatrical strings. That Frances has stepped out on her own to create a record about togetherness may initially appear contradictory, yet taking a step back has allowed her to propel forward. The pop-infused ‘Now That I’m Back’ and the dramatically distorted ‘Carry The Zero’ present Frances like never before. That’s the power of a new perspective.

(Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Your Reply’

HOLY FUCK

(Memphis Industries)

(Last Gang)

Where 2018’s teaming up with Berlin collective s t a r g a z e, ‘Music For the Long Emergency’, was chaotic and fragile, Poliça’s follow-up and fifth studio album ‘When We Stay Alive’ is vividly human. Half written and recorded after singer Channy Leaneagh slipped from her roof while clearing ice leaving her almost unable to move, it’s clear this is a record not about a tragic event, but more of acceptance and moving forward. ‘Driving’ may kick things into darker territory - claustrophobic synths, overwhelminglyurgent bass and just-out-ofreach vocals feeling like an unexpected knock on the door late at night, but ‘Feel Life’ and ‘Steady’ resolve this darkness, euphoric and knowing - and beautiful sonically. Meanwhile ‘Blood Moon’ addresses feeling disappointed in yourself, and what you need to do to push through and make things right. Emotionally raw, elegantly presented and at many parts a real tear-jerker.

(Martin Toussaint) LISTEN: ’Steady’

Arriving at a time when we’re constantly forced to reconsider our relationship with technology, Holy Fuck’s fifth studio album ‘Deleter’ is a timely polyrhythmic investigation into the coexistence of the two. Highly danceable throughout, ‘Deleter’ is a free-flowing invitation to embark on a search for the organic and allow oneself to be immersed in sound. Featuring guest vocals by Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip, Angus Andrew of Liars and Pond’s Nicholas Allbrook, it’s a rapturous and highly-nuanced amalgamation of throbbing krautrock elements, woozy guitars, deep house dreamscapes and motorik percussion. Filled with joie de vivre, the album’s saturated sound is both playful yet tumultuous from the stark minimalism of ‘Luxe’ all the way to the hauntinglythunderous ‘Ruby’. ‘Deleter’ successfully blurs boundaries between time and space while gifting the listener with opportunity for total sonic catharsis. (Kasimiira Kontio) LISTEN: ‘Ruby’

 FIELD MUSIC

Making A New World (Memphis Industries)

‘Making A New World’ gets rolling on a slightly peculiar note with two short instrumental tracks; a cold but calming piano build-up bringing to mind the stark fragility and assurance of Bowie’s Berlin years. As the somewhat serious tone would suggest, there’s a concept going on. Field Music’s seventh is an exploration of the after-effects of WWI. Although it’s not your conventional yawn of a concept album, instead shifting focus onto some interesting cultural moments, including the Dada movement, ultrasound, the German treasury and gender reassignment surgery. Still, it’s musically pretty much business as usual for the Brewis brothers - they’re back on their usual left-of-centre course. Still, aside from a few great moments like the warm ‘Beyond That Of Courtesy’, this record does feel slightly hard to grasp due to its disjointed nature. There are enough ideas in the tank here, but ultimately it’s not one to rush out and buy. (Rhys Buchanan) LISTEN: ‘Beyond That Of Courtesy’

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

TORRES

Silver Tongue (Merge)





Have We Met

Power

DESTROYER

TWIN ATLANTIC

(Dead Oceans)

(Virgin EMI)

‘Have We Met’ is full to the brim with carefullyconstructed atmospheres.

Dan Bejar rarely projects himself or the listener into the words he creates, he just builds a sense of place and lets you explore it at your leisure. Like every Destroyer record, there’s a lot going on, but there has been a musical shift, one alluded to on ‘Cue Synthesizer’ (“Bring in the drums / queue the fake drums”). And much of ‘Have We Met’ does away with the classic Destroyer band approach in favour of the digital. ‘Have We Met’ seems brighter and more airy than his previous records, which were dripping in sleazy noir.

Dan’s outlook on the world is no happier than it was before, but the lack of a bigger band brings out a fresher sound in the Destroyer canon. It loses some energy in comparison to 2011 highpoint ‘Kaputt’ in that regard, but it does show that, with 13 albums under his belt, Dan Bejar still has plenty to say and even more fantastical ways to say it. (Chris Taylor) LISTEN: ‘foolssong’

While never the strongest lyricist, ‘Power’ sees Twin Atlantic’s Sam McTrusty roll out an unending series of lines that are overt to the point of self-suffocation.

‘Novocaine’’s “In New York City, you tried to play guitar / Your strings were broken, you tuned it to my heart” is, despite it being one of the better tracks, a prime example of the kind of empty metaphor lurking around every corner. Where a major shift has occurred, however, is in the use of driving synths.

Unfortunately, the decision is a poor one. ‘Oh! Euphoria!’’s breathy intro is anything but, and ‘Barcelona’’s brooding turn is, despite Sam’s best vocal attempts, limp and uninspiring. Interlude ‘Mount Bungo’, meanwhile, is a tuneless and abrasive piece equivalent to a child hammering on a keyboard’s preset. ‘Messiah’ and ‘Praise Me’ are stronger cuts, though as with much of ‘Power’, they’re lost amongst the plethora of untidy songwriting on show. (Ben Lynch) LISTEN: ‘Messiah’



...AND YOU WILL KNOW US

BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD X: The Godless Void and Other Stories (InsideOutMusic)

It’s been four years since the last Trail of Dead record. ‘X: The Godless Void and Other Stories’ sees the band return to a focus on the two-handed partnership between core members Conrad Keely and Jason Reece, and accordingly, there’s a softness of touch that’s been missing in action for some time. Suddenly, the group feel accessible again. ‘Don’t Look Down’ is positively poppy, while ‘Children of the Sky’ and ‘Gravity’ both prove that it’s possible for the duo to summon up genuine atmosphere without bogging down the songs with overcooked compositions. There’s still the odd experimental misstep - the meandering ‘Eyes of the Overworld’ in particular - but for the most part, ‘X…’ is endearingly light on its feet in a manner that suggests a real rejuvenation in Conrad and Jason’s creative partnership, just as they were looking as if they might be condemned to the nostalgia circuit. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Don’t Look Down’

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Following the modest success of 2017’s ‘Three Futures’, her departure from 4AD and enlistment with Merge Records, the last three years have proved a cathartic experience for Torres’ Mackenzie Scott.

Fourth album ‘Silver Tongue’ represents an act of renewal in some sense, an entirely self-produced release that finds her piercing through the gauzy gusto layering her previous work to reveal a blistering mash-up of quirky keys, tearing guitar and bold drums - more nimble and ethereal than ever. She soaks each track with a kind of fluid dreaminess spun in a ghostly web of glitchy synth, vivid examples of which include the spectral ‘Two Of Everything’ and the chugging throb of ‘Good Grief’. Re-emerging with off the grid mystique, Torres retains the grit of her past efforts while doubling down on off-kilter charisma, securing a slick slice of alt-pop; her most complete and consistent yet. (Chris Hamilton-Peach) LISTEN: ‘Two Of Everything’

 LÅPSLEY

These Elements (XL)

Låpsley dials-up the tempo on her first new material since her impressive debut full-length back in 2016, her retreat from the spotlight failing to dampen a knack for smooth neo-soul sheen. The placid piano-driven R&B that pumped through ‘Long Way Home’ continues to guide the Merseysider’s ambient armoury, with growing reliance on brooding synth rhythms lending a subterranean twist to the EP’s fifteen-minute length. A surge of electronic embers storm through the stirring ‘My Love Was Like The Rain’, a lead single that ignites a quasi-disco dappled driving pulse, while the tender refrains of ‘Drowning’ act as an evocative, if downbeat, bookend. Låpsley nails down an, at times, powerful and emotive display, albeit without truly moving beyond the formula sported on her first record. ‘These Elements’ offers a snapshot of Holly Fletcher’s current creative waypoint, subtle hints of an eclectic future direction shining through - enough to hook and sate interest.

(Chris Hamilton-Peach) LISTEN: ‘My Love Was Like The Rain’



WIRE

Mind Hive (pinkflag)

Not many bands can legitimately claim to have invented a genre, but back in the heady days of 1976 Wire managed to do just that, pioneering a post-punk sound even before punk had itself really started to get going. Since their reformation in 1999 the group have continued their quest for the new, taking a deep dive into the dirge on the way. Gone are their trademark angular guitars of old, in their place sitting grinding psychedelia that drags the listener on a journey through music’s past and present.

‘Mind Hive’ sees the veterans develop this even further, adding elements of metal on opener ‘Be Like Them’ and skewed pop on ‘Off The Beach’ to push things forward. While the days of inventing genre may be long gone, with ‘Mind Hive’, Wire have once again shown that it’s possible to stretch possibilities through the introduction of outside influence. Youngsters take note, the past can be your friend. (Jack Doherty) LISTEN: ‘Off The Beach’

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DAN DEACON

BASIC PLUMBING

Mystic Familiar (Domino)

Keeping Up Appearances

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ALGIERS

There Is No Year (Matador)

It’s been nearly two years since the tragic passing of Patrick Doyle but reminders of his talent for creating nimble, at times febrile, jangle-pop continue to resurface. His final album, released under the Basic Plumbing banner, further showcases the pared-down prowess that earned the Scottish songwriter kudos.

With collaborative input from bandmate Helen Skinner, ‘Keeping Up Appearances’ excels in the kind of skittish haziness that could have issued from the vaults of alt-‘90s acts like Pavement or Dinosaur Jr. Buzzcocksesque ‘Bad Mood’ and the scrappy sweep of ‘It All Comes Back’ revisit a bygone age of frayed plaid-draped fare that feels peppy, fresh and honest; a genuine, playful yet complex zeal running throughout. Patrick is found confronting familiar ideas of inner contentment alongside upbeat surface shine on this bittersweet work.

(Christopher Hamilton-Peach) LISTEN: ‘Bad Mood’

COMING UP GRIMES

Miss Anthropocene Grimes, ‘c’, or whatever she’s calling herself will release her fifth LP on 21st February.

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SQUIRREL FLOWER

I Was Born Swimming

(Basic Plumbing)

Dan Deacon causes headaches. Lovely, lovely headaches. The Baltimore musician has spent the best part of two decades creating album after album of batshit future-pop that hops from genre to genre and back around again - like Roger Rabbit on speed.

He can be fun, but also on occasion tiring. Thankfully with fifth studio album ‘Mystic Familiar’, he’s decided to take things a little slower, and in the process has created his best, and perhaps also most coherent, album to date. This newly-found focus is no more apparent than on both ‘Sat

By A Tree’ and ‘Fell Into the Ocean’. The tracks’ crystal synths and floating keys allow the listener time to really appreciate the technicolour world their protagonist has created. A universe full of robots, balloons, and laser beams. Lots and lots of laser beams. ‘Mystic Familiar’ is beautiful, mad and disturbing in equal measure. Just like the real world, but better.

(Jack Doherty) LISTEN: ‘Fell Into The Ocean’

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(Full Time Hobby)

After 2017’s widely-praised ‘Underside of Power’, Algiers have returned with the forebodingly-titled ‘There Is No Year’. The group’s third LP is a continuation of its predecessor’s rage and politics but with a far wider palette. There are blasts of no-wave synths and blaring horns on standout ‘Chaka’, haunting drones on the powerfully elegiac ‘Wait for The Sound’ and wall-of-sound production on ‘Nothing Bloomed’. It doesn’t do things by halves, which is commendable but often to Algiers’ detriment.

Subtlety is often traded for power, making listening to the album feel like a draining experience. Franklin James is blessed with an incredible, force-of-nature voice but sometimes the sheer power of it threatens to derail the dynamics of the songwriting behind it. The album blossoms when his delivery matches the tone of the music. Algiers are at their best when they opt for eerie subtlety over pure sledgehammer power. (Tom Sloman) LISTEN: ‘Chaka’

The first thing that hits you with ‘I Was Born Swimming’ is the brutally honest nature of it all. There’s an overriding sense that this is going to be a wholesome, riveting and warm record from the opening guitar notes of ‘I-80’. Hunches have a habit of being right. Squirrel Flower’s debut very much feels like a commentary or a dialogue rather than anything overtly preconceived. The gentle guitars perfectly tee up each song and its overall ambience, and ‘Red Shoulder’ packs a beautiful, leafy and autumnal style along the lines of Kurt Vile, Phoebe Bridgers, or Snail Mail. There’s a real sense of space, Squirrel Flower already showing herself to be an artist comfortable in her own skin. They aren’t all hushed ballads though, the instrumentation even verges on grungy at times, but make no mistake, there’s an absolute flow here. An accomplished first full-length.

(Rhys Buchanan) LISTEN: ‘Red Shoulder’

TAME IMPALA The Slow Rush

After what feels like forever (and then some), Kevin Parker’s latest will be out 14th February.

THE 1975 Notes On A Conditional Form The November cover stars unleash the second half of ‘Music For Cars’ hits on 21st February.

PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS

PLUS SPECIAL GUEST

WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE

THURSDAY 25 JUNE

BY ARRANGEMENT WITH PRIMARY TALENT INTERNATIONAL

BY ARRANGEMENT WITH PRIMARY TALENT INTERNATIONAL

JACK SAVORETTI

PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS

PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS

FRIDAY 26 JUNE

SUNDAY 28 JUNE

BY ARRANGEMENT WITH PARADIGM AGENCY & SJM CONCERTS

BY ARRANGEMENT WITH PARADIGM AGENCY

WITH SPECIAL GUESTS

AN ALL DAY EVENT DOORS OPEN AT MIDDAY

PEAT & DIESEL GAZ BROOKFIELD & THE COMPANY OF THIEVES PLUS MORE ACTS TO BE ANNOUNCED

SATURDAY 27 JUNE

BY ARRANGEMENT WITH DMF MUSIC

CANONS MARSH AMPHITHEATRE BRISTOL HARBOURSIDE T I C K E T S AVA I L A B L E F R O M

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SUBJECT TO LICENCE

A CROSSTOWN CONCERTS PRESENTATION

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Setlist ST. PERCY IF YOU PRAY RIGHT ZIPPER BOY BYE I BEEN BORN AGAIN BLEACH GOLD GUMMY LOVE ME FOR LIFE QUEER 1999 WILDFIRE SUGAR BIG BOY HONEY HOTTIE DISTRICT J’OUVERT BOOGIE NO HALO SWEET

After a hard day at the fire station, BROCKHAMPTON put in a solid second shift at MSG.

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BROCKHAMPTON Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden, New York. Photos: Joyce Lee.

K

The entire floor feels as though it’s about to fall through.

evin Abstract arrives onto a sombre stage tonight in New York City, a single spotlight shining on him as he breaks in to the opening verse of ‘ST. PERCY’. BROCKHAMPTON bandmates Matt Champion, Dom McLennon, Bearface, and Merlyn soon follow to deliver their verses, while finally Joba appears to round out the orange-suited troupe. After ‘IF YOU PRAY RIGHT’, the group moves into the lighter ‘ZIPPER’ from 2017’s ‘Satura-tion III’; it’s during this trio of songs, the entire floor feels as if it’s about to fall through. Bangers ‘GOLD,’ ‘GUM-MY’, ‘J’OUVERT’, and ‘BOOGIE’, arguably some of the collective’s greatest hits, incite a dizzying amount of circle pits. And when the beat drops for ‘BOOGIE’ and during Joba’s angsty ‘J’OUVERT’ verse (“Fuck what you think, and fuck what you heard /I feel betrayed, you can keep the praise / and all of the fuck shit need to get away”), the crowd screams along to every second, electrifying the entire room with endless energy.

There are also some quieter moments, like the verse from ‘BIG BOY’ where Joba laments “Lost cause and a lost child / lost my way tryna change for the wrong crowd / I’m weak and I’ll say it proud / built me up, pull me down / let’s air it out”. A backdrop ceiling adorned with three massive crosses hangs above the band and perfectly marries the spiritual undertones of the show and the group’s tracks like ‘IF YOU PRAY RIGHT’ and ‘I BEEN BORN AGAIN’ from ‘GINGER’.

Every classically hip hop track is met with an emotionally-charged counter-

part. But it’s the elements of the show that make BROCKHAMPTON’s songs into performances are the members’ distinctly charismatic deliveries of each of their respective verses. The goggle-clad Merlyn sprinting sporadically around stage, Bearface kneeling with his head in his hands during emotional numbers, Dom and Matt hyping the crowd, Joba singing Justin Timberlake-esque falsettos, and Kevin leading them all.

‘NO HALO’ caps the groups first of two sold out nights here, but just as Kevin Abstract starts thanking everyone for showing up, the crowd unrelentingly shouts for an encore.

“You wanna hear ‘SWEET’? OK, let’s do it,” Kevin happily gives in. As the beginning drum beats from the song fill the room, everyone starts bobbing their heads and jumping to the funky throwback from ‘Saturation II’. In Merlyn’s verse, he raps, “Everywhere I go is the Woodlands,” which seems to juxtapose the exact moment in which he raps. Looking out to an endless sea of fans (including Paul Rudd and Chris Rock, no less) in NYC may not even have seemed possible to the Texan boys who wrote that song long ago in their downtown LA ‘BROCKHAMPTON Factory’.

A self-labeled boyband of unorthodox proportions, BROCKHAMPTON have been delivering solid live performances since the band first played in NYC to 300 in the stuffy Highline Ballroom three years ago. Then and now, by the time the last song rolls around, one can tell there’s nothing left because each member has given their all.(Joyce Lee)

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Triumphant and joyful.

VAMPIRE WEEKEND Alexandra Palace, London. Photo: Emma Swann.

N

ine years since their last show at London’s Alexandra Palace - and six years to the day since they performed at the O2 Vampire Weekend return to the iconic North London venue to showcase hits from their decade-spanning discography. The band’s two hour-long set has everything. Sometimes it sparkles with elements of a hard AF rock show, complete with crashing cymbals and huge guitar solos led by recent-ish live addition Brian Robert Jones during tracks like the mid-set Ezra-featuring SBTRKT number ‘New Dorp. New York’; at others, they flow effortlessly between sunshine soaked indie-pop bops that have soundtracked summers since their debut hit in 2008.

Ezra Koenig leads proceedings with the kind of confident flair that comes with being at the top of your game for over a decade. After making their live London return back in March at Hackney’s EartH, Ally Pally is certainly a

larger affair, but Ezra and pals manage to make it feel like the same intimate sing-a-long, albeit this time with 10,000 of your mates. As he gleams at the crowd, it genuinely feels like the night is a “yeah, I was there” moment.

They throw in a little something for everyone. There are classics ‘Cousins’ and ‘Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa’, the breakout ‘A-Punk’ that sees pints thrown in the air, and ‘Hannah Hunt’, from 2013’s ‘Modern Vampires of The City’, which offers a moment of heartstring-pulling calm.

Songs from this year’s ‘Father of the Bride’ sit effortlessly among their older material. ‘Sunflower’ is a particular huge highlight, before the gorgeous piano-led ‘Jerusalem, New York, Berlin’ sees the group walk off to adoring screams.

Emerging back on stage to ‘How Long?’, Ezra cheekily smiles at the crowd as he asks the front row, “any requests?”. Diving into ‘Contra’ gem ‘Diplomat’s Son’, a girl in a handmade Peter Gabriel top asks for ‘Ottoman’, a self-described VW “deep cut” recorded for the film Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, before the band jump back onto the setlist to finish with ‘Worship You’ and ‘Ya Hey’.

It’s a triumphant and joyful return to Ally Pally and further proof that Vampire Weekend aren’t giving up their place at indie’s summit just yet. (Elly Watson)

SPORTS TEAM Baby’s All Right, New York.

Photo: Joyce Lee.

B

efore opener ‘Margate’ even kicks in, Sports Team’s Alex Rice is already heartily beating his chest and swinging his arms back and forth to summon the Baby’s All Right audience’s undivided attention in his now-customary fashion. The-too-cool-for-you NYC crowd reciprocate his energy - surprisingly enough, moshing quickly ensues.

The stage isn’t big here at Baby’s, but Alex, guitarists Rob Knaggs and Henry Young, drummer Al Greenwood, bassist Oli Dewdney and keyboardist Ben Mac still make the show feel theatrical.

On the one hand there’s the frontman catapulting himself atop every surface and corner, and on the other, there’s the indoor-sunglasses clad Ben stage left, chewing gum to the beat of the music while playing the tambourine with zero expression. It’s not unlike a weird sitcom with damn-good guitar music.

The band’s bombastic songs make the 250-capacity venue feel so much larger tonight. ‘Fishing’ with its bright, bursting guitars at every turn, and the sing-song verses and snippy drum beats of ‘Here It Comes Again’ that beckon everyone to bob their heads at the very least. As the frenetic ‘Stanton’ signals the end of their set, one would think balloons and confetti were about to fall from the ceiling at Baby’s to thank band and audience alike just like it’s done for Broadway musicals. Sports Team have long-cemented their place as one of the UK’s indie darlings. Tonight’s crowd almost made one forget they’d made their NY debut just a few months back. If this is any indicator, they’ll be back doing bigger and as-bombastic things stateside very soon. (Joyce Lee)

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SHURA

“I

Roundhouse, London. Photo: Burak Cingi.

love you,” declares Shura to the Roundhouse, bathed in neon lights, oscillating to the first notes of 2016 single ‘Nothing’s Real’. Her words are received by a cacophony of excitable shouting and laughter that fills the room with an infectious sense of elation.

The sincerity of her words manifests as tears, and the kind of endearing awkwardness that you experience when you’re on a first date with someone that you really fancy but you’re not sure if they feel the same. Tonight, the feelings of affection are undoubtedly mutual as Shura courts the audience with a delicious, electropop-driven set filled with immaculate pop concoctions like ‘Indecision’, ‘Forevher’, ‘Touch’ and ‘2Shy’. Serving a balanced medley of tracks from both her debut as well as this year’s follow-up ‘Forevher’, Shura’s live show is a rapturous celebration of awkward first loves, missed opportunities and everything that makes us human – including those late-night texts fuelled by the hazy unplanned midweek pints at your local (we’ve all been there). Much like pop confrere Lorde, there’s a vulnerability to Shura’s lyricism that encapsulates the oddity of love and its fucked-up web of emotions. Halfway through she breaks into an unexpected slacker rock jam which quickly transforms into a throbbing hybrid of jangle pop and intense ’80s guitars gravitating towards an ‘Edge of Seventeen’-like vigour that Stevie Nicks herself would be proud of. Shura’s Roundhouse performance confirms her place as one of the most captivating pop stars in the UK. Spreading the sermon of irresistible bangers, Shura may just be the only leader this country needs. (Kasimiira Kontio)

FIRST FIFTY The Old Blue Last, London. Photos: Emma Swann.

W

hile the festival itself is still some time away, Brighton’s Great Escape uses venues across East London each November to preview the first handful (or, to be specific, 50) of names for the following year.

First up at our hosted stage at The Old Blue Last are post-punk outfit The Cool Greenhouse, who take to the stage for their fourth ever (!) show as a group. Weaving humorous lyrics with repetitive, captivating riffs, the group’s set includes a handful of highlights from recently-released EP ‘Crap Cardboard Pet’.

Next up are more seasoned players Girls In Synthesis. With what looks like a double microphone stand on stage à la Pete and Carl, the punk three-piece, led by vocalists John and Jim, and completed by drummer Nicole, spend about 0.3 seconds actually using it before diving into the crowd.

Do Nothing see off the night in style - as if there was any doubt.

The Nottingham newcomers have been staking their claim as one of the most exciting new bands around for quite sometime now, and it’s clear why. Their shimmering post-punk sound and frontman Chris Bailey’s Jarvis Cocker-slash-Alex Turner-performing-in flares-at-Glasto swagger has the crowd hooked instantly. Forthcoming new song ‘LeBron James’ - inspired by Fyre Festival’s chief conman Billy McFarland - is a romping banger, whereas previously-released ‘Gangs’ continues to be a sizzling standout, and ‘Handshakes’ and ‘Waitress’ - their other two released tracks - bring their melodic style to the forefront with sleek effortlessness. If this quartet aren’t on your “mustsee next” list, it’s time to stop sleeping on them.

(Elly Watson)

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

THIS MONTH: MATT MALTESE

Location: Tufnell Park Dome, London.

Drink: Organic semi-skimmed milk.

Cost: Free (on the rider)

Specialist Subject:

General Knowledge

‘00s Romantic Comedies 1. What colour is the soup that Bridget Jones makes for her dinner party?

Green. Orange?!

Blue. But a bonus point if you can say why it’s this colour.

She…. I’ve never seen Bridget Jones.

The string she uses dyes it that colour.

2. In Love Actually, what kind of pie does Keira Knightley’s character offer Andrew Lincoln’s character when asking about her wedding video?

That’s a good question. I’m gonna say apple.

It was banoffee.

3. What does Ben have planned for his and Andi’s third date in How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days?

I haven’t seen that film! Netflix and chill.

It was to watch the Knicks game at his apartment, where he cooks her lamb - she then pretends to be

a vegetarian.

That’s basically Netflix and chill, the noughties equivalent.

4. In The Holiday, what character has Jude Law invented to entertain his kids?

Oh! Er… I’ve seen this film a lot!

It’s some really posh guy, a posher version of Jude Law. Is it a funny little muffin man? What was it?

It was Mr Napkin Head.

Of course it was.

5. What Shakespeare play is She’s The Man based on?

What’s the one where he turns into a donkey? No… A Tale of Two Cities? Is that even a Shakespeare play?!

No, that’s a Charles Dickens novel.

Oh mate, this is bad. Really, really, really bad.

Twelfth Night.

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1/10

2. Which bathroom fixture takes its name from the French word for pony?

Bidet.

Yes! 3. What was Desperate Dan’s favourite food?

0/5

FINAL SCORE:

1. “Love one another” were the final words of which musician?

[Laughs] Oh god, Lou Reed?

It was George Harrison.

Ahhh, that makes way more sense. Lou Reed never would’ve said that.

Who is Desperate Dan? He was a character in the comic The Dandy.

Tiramisu?

It was cow pie.

4. Which is the only British county with two coastlines?

Southampton?

That’s not even a county! It’s Devon.

5. Which company first introduced the tea bag to Britain in 1953?

Yorkshire.

It was Tetley.

Oh, I was gonna say Tetley!

1/5

Verdict: “This is why I didn’t want to do a pub quiz. Let that be said.”

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