DIY, November 2020

DIY

FREE • ISSUE 102 • NOVEMBER 2020 DIYMAG.COM

OUR GOVERNMENT ARE UNDERMINING PEOPLE’S DREAMS, AND THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE.

GORILLAZ

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are taking 2020 into their own hands.

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weLcome listening post

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

QUESTiON! Everyone’s favourite animated musical tinkers Gorillaz grace the cover of this month’s mag, but what other cartoon favourites have a fond place in Team DIY’s inky hearts?

SARAH JAMIESON • Managing Editor There have been some real highlights over the years (Thundercats, Inspector Gadget, Futurama, I’m looking at you) but I’d have to go for Family Guy, purely for how often my best friend would A Level English lessons, set off simply because she’d “just remembered a funny quote”. We’re still sorry about that, Miss Rose.

EMMA SWANN • Founding Editor everywhere, it’s got to be Daria.

LISA WRIGHT • Features Editor Whilst it’s true that saying any answer other than The Simpsons to the ‘best cartoon’ question is like saying any other group than The Beatles to the ‘greatest band’ question, I think I probably love Bob’s Burgers’ ridiculous family more than most real life ones.

LOUISE MASON • Art Director As anyone that knows me will than anything else. But as Lisa has claimed that, I’ll settle for being adopted by Rick and Morty’s family.

ELLY WATSON • Digital Editor Big Mouth not only has love of my life John Mulaney voicing a main character, but also Maya Rudolph as a sexy growling Hormone Monster.

What’s not to love??

THESE NEW PURITANS HIDDEN Before TNP became a full-on, chin-stroking avant garde affair, they released an album of actual bangers (2008’s ‘Beat Pyramid’) and 2010’s ‘Hidden’ - the clever bridge between to. Next month, it gets a 10 year anniversary reboot; as good a time as any to revisit its strange, intriguing world.

VIAGRA BOYS WELFARE JAZZ If you’d always assumed that saxophones and skulking, tattooed seediness were somewhat disparate bedfellows, then Swedish punks Viagra Boys’ 2018 debut ‘Street Worms’ was the grizzly, grotty wake up call you needed. Now, they return with ‘Welfare Jazz’ and the horns are skronkier, the is a wonderfully ‘orrible treat from beginning to end.

PUMA BLUE IN PRAISE OF SHADOWS London jazz lad Puma Blue has been kicking around for a good few years already, but - rejoice introverted headphone listeners of the land! - for his debut LP. A soulful thing that’ll make perfect sense now the nights are getting colder, ‘In Praise of Shadows’ is a well-timed empathetic release for the most miserable month of the year.

Editor's Letter

Well, readers, we’re nearly at the end of 2020: the kind of year no one could’ve seen coming. And while usually, around this time, we’d be fondly looking back on 12 months of fun and festivals, music and escapism, this time around, all that felt a bit more challenging. Instead, we’ve handed over our cover to Gorillaz, one of the most iconic bands ever, and sat down with their leader - and one of British music’s most esteemed voices - Damon Albarn. This month’s cover feature dives into the unorthodox world of the virtual band, gets the gossip on their latest album’s incredible cast of collaborators, and sees Damon talking about the state of the world, just for good measure. It’s one off the DIY bucket list, that’s for sure.

And that’s not all: we also take a trip back down memory lane and remember some of 2020’s brighter moments, catch up with Hyundai Mercury Prize winner Michael Kiwaunka, introduce punk poets John Cooper Clarke and Fontaines DC’s Grian Chatten to each other, and celebrate the hard-earned return of The Cribs. It’s been a strange one, but the future’s brighter. That much, we’re sure of.

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Need a soundtrack while you dig into the issue? Well, funnily enough, we’ve got the perfect accompaniment right here. Scan the Spotify code to listen to our November 2020 playlist now.

Sarah Jamieson, Managing Editor

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CONTENTS

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Founding Editor Emma Swann Managing Editor Sarah Jamieson Features Editor Lisa Wright Digital Editor Elly Watson Art Direction & Design Louise Mason Contributors: Alex Cabré, Ash Cooper, Bella Martin, Ben Tipple, Chris Hamilton-Peach, Dan Kendall, Dave Beech, Eloise Bulmer, Felix Rowe, Gemma Samways, Holly Whitaker, Jack Doherty, James Balmont, Jenessa Williams, Joe Goggins, Louisa Dixon, Max Pilley, Nick Harris, Nick Roseblade, Patrick Clarke, Sean Kerwick, Will Richards.

Cover photo: Eva Pentel For DIY editorial: info@diymag.com For DIY sales: advertise@diymag.com For DIY stockist enquiries: stockists@diymag.com DIY HQ, Unit K309, mThe Biscuit Factory, 100 Drummond Road, London SE16 4DG

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NEWS.

6 SUNDARA KARMA 1 4 H A L L O F FA M E 16 THE KILLS 19 SALEM NEU.

22 TIÑA 2 5 J E A N D AW S O N 26 MICHELLE 2 8 K AT Y J P E A R S O N 4 DIYMAG.COM

FEATURES

30 GORILLAZ 36 MARIKA HACKMAN 3 8 BOY PABLO 40 JOHN COOPER CLARKE & F O N TA I N E S D C 4 4 M I C H A E L K I WA N U K A 48 BIG JOANIE 50 THE CRIBS REVIEWS

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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.

Shout out to: Jamie Hewlett for drawing us our very own bespoke Gorillaz cover most certainly one to frame, Speedy Wunderground for letting us use their HQ for pics, serendipity for bringing Grian Fontaines to our literal doorstep just when we needed him, and all the venues somehow making it work and starting to put on actual gigs, thus making this month distinctly more entertaining than previous ones. Progress!

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Ah, how the cast of Stranger Things have grown.

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Words: Sarah Jamieson.

Photos: Hannah Diamond.

A Grand Unveiling

While many of us spent lockdown avoiding video calls and queueing for the local shop, Sundara Karma obviously did things differently.

Now, they’ve returned with a new EP in tow, and their boldest statement yet.

“T

he true meaning of the word ‘apocalypse’,” offers up Sundara Karma’s Oscar Pollock within the

is ‘the unveiling’, which is super cool. I think, right now, we are in the apocalypse,” he smiles, “because [so many] things are being unveiled.”

It feels somewhat apt for such grandiose matter to be the sentiment with which the singer begins a conversation about the band’s newest and, arguably, most bold chapter to date. An EP that was predominantly written over the last year, but completed during lockdown, ‘Kill Me’ also marks Sundara’s most cohesive work yet - a body of tracks that directly speak to the frontman’s recent lived experience.

See while, for many of us, lockdown was a stretch of endless

David Bowie and Elton John, and trying on different sounds for size.

Ultimately, it was an exploratory time for the band, which proved they didn’t need to play by any rules.

“Musically, our last album was me testing out and experimenting with what I liked and what I wanted to do,” Oscar explains. “That last record, I look back on it and think it was just an honest, pure expression, just for the sake of it. Really there was nothing else on my mind other than experimentation and trying elements, without forcing them. I think of it as a really organic time in terms of my artistic output and my songwriting.” It was also a means for him to try and unpick some of his own sense of self too. “What’s funny about it is that I was unaware of it at the time, but looking back now, I was also really lacking that sense of identity myself, and knowing what it was that I was, and what my voice was.”

“I really admire people who are able to have a very distinct vibe from the get-go, but I just haven’t been one of those types of people, and that’s alright,” he nods. “It’s just taken me

“I think that pop right now is doing something that no other genre is doing.” Oscar Pollock Zoom quizzes and a lack of real concentration, for Oscar and the band, it became a hugely creative period. “Some of these songs are from the collection that I’d just been chipping away at [over the past year],” he elaborates. Yet, having originally begun writing for what he envisioned would be the band’s third album, the global situation shifted that idea. “It was lockdown that became a catalyst for the focus of it. These ideas were there but current circumstances,” he nods.

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undara Karma aren’t exactly strangers when it comes to thinking outside of the box. With their previous full-length - last Alphabet’ - the quartet found themselves trading in the indie-pop hooks of their debut for an altogether more classic approach, pillaging the

this EP is a start to me that, you know?”

And indeed, this time around, the band are broadening their sonic horizons once more. While the opening title offering comes doused in darkly ethereal synths that match the cynical melodrama of Oscar’s lyrics (“From a lost adolescence / I’ve become co-dependent…”), the likes of ‘O Stranger’ and ‘Lifelines’ are altogether glitchier affairs that tap into the more futuristic vision of pop that PC Music, and ‘Kill Me’’s creative director Hannah Diamond, have become so renowned for.

“I think that pop right now is doing something that no other genre is doing,” Oscar muses. With the critical acclaim of artists like Charli XCX and Dua Lipa this year alone, you’d be hard-pressed to argue. “Pop music has always been inclusive,” he continues. “It’s giving artists the freedom to experiment, and it feels as though it’s pushing things along way more than some other things.

We’ve always essentially written

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pop songs, but we’ve just dressed them differently.”

And was Hannah’s own for the project as a whole?

“All the music was done before Hannah and I started conversations about where the aesthetics should go, so I feel like I knew, already in my mind, what kind of world it needed to have,” he I reached out to Hannah.”

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“I really admire people who are able to have a very distinct vibe from the get go, but I just haven’t been one of those types of people.’ - Oscar Pollock

ringing his vision to life wasn’t just about the stylistic side, either. Despite being unable to work together in person, the band recruited producer and artist Clarence Clarity - who’s more recently worked with the likes of Charli and Rina Sawayama - to help put the the process became more about emailing song stems and notes back and forth than hammering it out in a studio, it was one that Oscar found even more rewarding.

“It’s almost better over email, because sometimes in conversation, you just react off maybe what feels right at that moment,” he explains. “You’re looking at that other person and seeing their facial that psychologically or subconsciously. When it’s over email, you’re very much more detached from everybody else’s inclinations, so you’re actually really forced to think about how it makes you feel, which is really cool. I think [the EP] totally evolved

Oscar’s own mind over the past year (he

track “is so close to the bone and I really am baring all”), it’s equally a project that couldn’t have evolved without the collaborative team he’s built around the band.

“That plays such a huge part in the development of a person, the conditions in which they’re surrounded. It feels like a lot of elements have come together at just the right time, which makes me think, ‘OK, maybe this is what I had been wanting for so long’,” he nods. “As much

reliant on what’s happening externally, around you, and the other people that you’re working with.

“In the past, I think I’ve struggled with cohesiveness, you know, and with putting a frame around things,” Oscar admits. “But working with what I want to say. I think it’s maybe a point we’ve feels like a different kind of energy, and there’s a freshness to it.”

And while ‘Kill Me’ - both the track, and EP - is an admittedly personal and introspective dive into

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NAME

Remi Wolf DISH

Weak In The Knees Strawberry Jam INGREDIENTS • 1 lb strawberries • 1 cup of sugar • 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract • Half a lemon, juiced • 1 sprig of fresh rosemary • 1/2 teaspoon salt • Jar (I used an old pickle jar lol) METHOD

As for what he’d like the EP to say about this time back up. “I want to say I’d like this to represent a

Utilising Clarence’s penchant for attention to detail, the pair found themselves building in more sonic textures. “I know it sounds like a subtle thing, but that really can change where it sits in my head. As the sounds changed, the visuals would change, the aesthetic of it would change, and it’d become clearer.”

WHAT DO MUSIC’S GREAT AND GOOD RUSTLE UP FOR THEIR SUPPER? LET US PEEK INSIDE THE RECIPE BOOK… BON APPETIT!

a bolder sense of ourselves, a clearer sense of ourselves.”

‘Kill Me’ is out 24th November via Chess Club.

DIY

• Wash berries. Cut off green tops and quarter the strawberries.

• Smash strawberries in a bowl with a potato masher or fork until they are a liquidy soupy puddle!

• Add strawberries into a pot along with sugar, vanilla, salt and rosemary sprig.

• Stir over medium heat until sugar is dissolved and shit is boiling.

• Add in juice from half a lemon (make sure there are no seeds).

• Let boil for 15 mins, stirring constantly so the mixture doesn’t burn.

• Once jam reaches a nice jammy consistency, TASTE IT. • Add in more salt, sugar, vanilla or lemon if you think it needs it. You are your own queen.

• Take out the rosemary, then take the pot off the heat and pour into jars.

• Cover and allow to cool in the fridge! Ur done! Hell ya brother!

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Dua Lipa worked out how to release an album in quarantine on the fly

If having her album title tattooed on her arm didn’t indicate Dua had big plans for her second full-length, then slamming lead in lockdown and the pop queen faces release week quarantined in her East London Airbnb. What does she do? She bosses it, of course, from very-socially-distanced photoshoots, to video updates with fans and a particularly impressive use of green screen for The Tonight Show in the States. And of course, ‘Future Nostalgia’ proved the precise sonic boost we all needed.

Charli XCX broke the fourth wall for ‘how i’m feeling now’

While Dua’s pop odyssey was all but complete by the time we were locked inside, Charli’s was only just beginning. With her original plan to record two albums this year scrapped, she instead opted to create a record entirely in lockdown, with lyrics, artwork, Zoom calls with producers and even decisions on track listings collaborated on with fans throughout. Best of all? It doesn’t need context to be considered a great record.

The Strokes’ great (brief) comeback

There were multiple happy tears shed at DIY HQ (back when

studio album ‘The New Abnormal’. Later that same month, the group played a handful of small live dates, including one at London’s Roundhouse which was thoroughly excellent, because a) it just was, and b) unlike their 2019 Victoria Park outing, we could actually hear it. The ensuing album was equally as wonderful, though even they must be bored of how prescient its title - originally coined following

Billie Eilish continued to rule the world Last year, she conquered the world’s festival stages; 2020, meanwhile, started with Billie Eilish sweeping the board at basically every music awards ceremony

since the ‘80s to win the four major categories at the GRAMMYs (picking up 5 gongs in total), she then swiped Best International Female at the BRITs, where she debuted Bond theme ‘No Time To Die’ alongside big bro Finneas and the casual one-two of Johnny Marr and Hans Zimmer. Her ‘Where Do We Go?’ world tour was cut off after just three dates, but that didn’t stop the singer breaking the internet via ‘Not My Responsibility’ - a powerful mid-set interlude, then released worldwide, during which she called out judgement on her image.

Hayley Williams went solo

What hope we had back in December 2019. Hayley casually used her birthday to announce impending solo material, the suitably bubbling ‘Simmer’ followed in mid-January, and between then and the release of debut full-length ‘Petals for Armor’, the Paramore frontwoman teased and taunted via horror-like videos (‘Leave it Alone’), zentai suits (‘Cinnamon’), the rightfully righteous, boygeniusfeaturing ‘Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris’. Sure, she didn’t get to give it a live persona - she was due to play this year’s Great Escape! Imagine! - but we don’t always get what we want.

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Paul Heaton: the secret millionaire for music magazines

The Beautiful South’s frontman Paul Heaton is no stranger to socialist gestures. Back in 2017, he offered to nationalise the band’s back catalogue; “This would mean songs like ‘Happy Hour’, ‘Rotterdam’, ‘Perfect 10’ and the rest, every time they got played on the radio, the state would take the money and put it back into improving our living standards.

I felt I’d made enough money from them,” he explained at the time.

The government refused back then, but they couldn’t stop Heaton from taking an equally empathetic stance when Q Magazine closed after 34 years this summer. Making a large behind-the-scenes donation to the magazine’s now-unemployed staff “to make sure people weren’t left on their arse”, when he was outed by the mag hope that there are some truly good eggs left in the world, after all.

Log on, tune in, bop out (aka some artists learned how to use the Internet)

Live streams are not new, readers. We know this. And, let’s face it, they are and will always be a poor replacement for the real thing; few of us would swap an overpriced pint stood behind a 6-foot-plus man for squinting at our phone screen, tinny in hand, when the former means we’re in the same room as the artist. But, desperate times called for desperate measures, and between the early days of propping their phone up on some books for a last-minute Instagram Live, to the full sensory experience of Glass Animals’ latest outing, artists have stepped up. Whether live or nearly-live, there’s been the likes of Robbie Williams’ karaoke, Laura Marling’s guitar lessons, Nick Cave’s Alexandra Palace epic, Dave Grohl’s drum battles with 10-year-old maestro Nandi Bushell, and many more. We salute your efforts.

en one 2020 has be g around it: memor y. The places in tt ge no There’s in living rance or kest years lif t, reassu of the blea when in need of up ed as ever ything r at fo as devast we reach have been escapism portunities stricted op s having re the moments that st ti ar ite it ty our favour - but let’s not forget h the last sh to create out carried us throug l bad’, than a al t ab ‘it’s no have just hope that ss a crass months. Le ok at the slithers of external e lo th ul h ef it w grat ncurrently ual have run co : here’s to some Act d shitshow gs That Happene Good Thin 2020. in

Live music didn’t disappear entirely, though

Of course, as we write, the long-term future of many live venues - and the livelihoods of many more who work in and around them - are still precarious.

But at the same time as campaigns like Save Our Venues and We Make Events continue to highlight the potential devastation that comes without adequate support for the industry, those with the means have been trying to make something happen.

At one end there was the short-lived outdoor Virgin Unity Arena in Newcastle (host to gigs from The Libertines, Supergrass and the like), while elsewhere there’ve been a handful of spatiallyaware festivals including Norwich’s Wild Fields keep the hope somewhat alive. Meanwhile, venues including Dalston Victoria, Hackney’s Oslo and Hamburg’s iconic Molotow have found ways for fans to have a nice time, albeit sat down, distanced from strangers and without a singalong. We even managed to put on a few shows at Signature Brew ourselves!

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And now for something completely different…

Iggy Pop, Tyler, the Creator and A$AP Rocky had a dance-off

A healthy dose of escapism has never been more necessary than now, and who would have guessed that Gucci of all people would be the brand to deliver it. Show us a more joyful clip than a leopard print-wearing Iggy, Tyler in his golf tank top and A$AP with a tiny handbag having a wiggling dance party in the sun and we’ll doff that needs to happen is for the unlikely three musketeers to go all-in for a musical collab.

Come on guys, you know it makes sense.

Some more really great records were (finally) released

We’ve recounted the good, we all know the bad - but what about 2020’s downright unpredictable musical moments?!

on the

‘Gram These days, even yer gran is posting more like. Everyone has it now, including all our fave bands. Here’s photo-taking action as of late.

Those Little Monsters

Okay, okay; no one saw 2020 coming. But what feels even more shocking, in hindsight, is that not out in the charts for the coveted Top Spot, but their debut album ‘Deep Down Happy’ was facing off against… Lady Gaga?! We still can’t believe it, either. Sadly for #indie, Gaga’s Little Monsters really dug their claws in and pipped the six-piece to the post, but let’s remember it’s not always about the winning - it’s about the taking part.

Lynks had taken the preChristmas dieting a little too far (@lynkslynkslynks)

Once the initial hope of a six-week delay meaning instores could actually happen subsided, we got to hear some pretty damn good new albums this year - even if, collectively, we couldn’t tell being released. There was the long-awaited return of The Streets - with a string of pals in tow; Biffy Clyro’s reassuringly epic ‘A Celebration of Endings’; 100 gecs’ ‘1000 gecs and the Tree of Clues’ ; The Killers; Glass Animals; Moses Sumney; Perfume Genius; Lady Gaga; Phoebe Bridgers… Chances are, when it’s all got a bit much, you’ve stuck one of these on…

Miley finally came good on last year’s carrotdangling Glastonbury set

While now, a solid 17 months since we last stepped foot onto Worthy Farm (sob), we would happily sit through a full Rishi vs Fatima improvised dance-off if it meant getting to watch something happen on the Pyramid Stage, back in 2019 we had choices. And one of the more intriguing choices you could have made on Glastonbury’s biggest platform was to catch Miley Cyrus’ Sunday set. Fresh off the back of her show-stealing Black Mirror turn, and having recently released RuPaul collab ‘Cattitude’, Miley - even by her usual standards - could have done anything. Clad in leather, and spending her hour covering Led Zeppelin, Nine Inch Nails and Metallica, the answer, however, seemed to be the dawning of Cyrus: The Rock Years and then… silence. Until August, when ‘Midnight Sky’ - all Stevie powerhouse vocals - and then an internetbreaking cover of Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’ popped up; full LP ‘Plastic Hearts’, meanwhile, lands at the end of this month.

Turns out Christmas isn’t cancelled.

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Might Delete Later

Sometimes, you just can’t help yourself. It’s

“Karen, I do NOT have time to listen to your shit today…” (@_fake_nudes_)

off a social media post and then... kinda wish you hadn’t. And that’s what we can only assume happened when it came to one of this year’s truly unexpected musical feuds. Not quite Oasis vs Blur, or T Swift vs Kanye - no, we’re talking about the big guns here: Beabadoobee vs The Vamps, who’s fans exchanged blows on their social accounts before battling it out in the charts when they released their albums on the same day.

Obv, we were very much Team Bea over here…

Taking Liberties

The clocks have changed, it’s getting darker that bit earlier, the cold nights are drawing in and, well, let’s be honest, we could all do with a bit of self care after this year. Which makes the news that Lily Allen has launched her very own vibrator, Liberty, allllll the better. Forget t-shirts and coffee mugs for merch Lily is paving the way for sex positivity and we’re 100% here for it. Now named as German brand Womanizer’s she’s opening up the conversation around female pleasure and masturbation with, ahem, No Shame.

Take that, 2020!

I think that’s what we call ‘business casual’. (@fkatwigs)

Master Peace 13

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Fame

Robyn - ‘Body Talk’

side. A decade on, it remains a hurricane of emotional intensity. Words: Will Richards.

“I’ve got some news for you: fembots have feelings too,” stated Robyn on the opening line delivered it might have been, but over the next hour the Swedish pop icon went on to prove that statement viscerally true; in fact, it’s hard to think of an album with more lung-busting feeling released in its now-decade since.

She details the endless list of things killing her with robotic monotony on ‘Don’t Fucking Tell drum comes in. The sound doesn’t budge for the rest of the record; every kick and snare hit explodes like thunder and lightning, with a spin of ‘Body Talk’ akin to something approaching emotional whiplash. It’s not coincidental that the kick drum sounds like a heartbeat, speeding up and retreating through an album of stunning emotional intensity.

In her 2018 cover feature with DIY around the release of latest album ‘Honey’, Robyn admitted she “can’t be writing sad love songs for the rest of [her life],” labelling the notion “pathetic”.

Eight years on from ‘Body Talk’, it felt like a reasonable level of detachment for the singer to have - especially when the success of that album rapidly accelerated her star following a

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near-decade in the shadows without a single word from the singer herself. But, back in 2010, these sad love songs felt like the only thing possible, and the only tool with which to smash through the wall of heartbreak. They feel just as vital today.

FACTS THE

Released: 22nd November 2010 Standout tracks: ‘Dancing On My Own’, ‘Call Your Girlfriend’, ‘Indestructible’ Tell your mates: ‘Body Talk’ was originally set to be released as three mini-albums throughout 2010, but after parts 1 and 2, Robyn instead released the best bits - and some new tracks - on this compilation-ofsorts.

Whichever of her characters across ‘Body Talk’ that you related to most - the girl paralysed ‘Dancing On My Own’; the estranged lover of ‘Call Your Girlfriend’ ready to pull the trigger on a relationship gone sour; the romantic willing to forget past heartbreak and fall head-over-heels again in ‘Indestructible’ - your feelings were projected back to you with such colossal power and unguarded emotion that it felt like someone

It was symbolic, then, when every night on the ‘Honey’ world tour, Robyn cut the music in the chorus of ‘Dancing On My Own’ and let the crowd belt out the song themselves. Though she might now feel lightyears away from the person immortalised in that track, it’s that track - and ‘Body Talk’ as a whole - which belongs to the fans now, standing tall as a monument to the power of music in helping you work through the hardest shit life can throw at you. DIY

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looking back on their formative years and all the ‘Little Bastards’ they created along the way. Words: Elly Watson.

After almost twenty years at the forefront of rock’n’roll, The Kills are back with a newly-compiled rarities collection,

For the last time guys, you need a plain white background, keep your face unobscured…

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ometimes a trip down memory lane can have shudder-inducing results - a of heinous fashion choices gone by. But when you’ve spent the last two decades being the coolest duo in rock, even former fashion faux pas are something you look back on fondly.

“I’m thinking of copying some of my old looks, I’m really into them,” laughs Alison Mosshart. “Me too!” agrees Jamie Hince, “I might do the weird haircut and the blue blockers again.”

“Yeah, your old man glasses are so good,” she quips before Jamie shoots back: “I taped a Gucci thing on the side of them.” “It’s so much better than real Gucci, it really is…”

A quick glimpse at the photo collage cover of the pair’s imminent rarities album allows us to join them on their questionable-designer-knockoff walk through the past. Composed of a few of the “zillions” of photo booth pics the duo have taken over their time, it’s a visual snapshot into the early years of The Kills - a time immortalised musically on the record itself, ‘Little Bastards’.

Made up of B-sides and demos from 2002 - 2009, working on ‘Little Bastards’ over the last few months has allowed the duo to reminisce about what it was like starting out, almost two decades ago. “Well Jesus, I feel 100 years old!” Alison laughs. “These are the memories and times that have completely shaped my life and who I am, and to listen to us talk back then and see us play and the way we played and the places that we played and the amps that we were using and all the people smoking in the audience... It was just really special.”

Flowing through multiple different eras - “So many different hairstyles!” - the pair both romanticise about,” Jamie gleams. “Just me and Alison in our little car with all our gear in the back, driving across the length and breadth [of America]; it was truly amazing.

And by the time we got to LA, seeing how word had spread. It’s something that wouldn’t really work in the same way now. There was no such thing as social media. A lot of the gigs were booked by Alison writing letters to the venues.”

“It was so special for so many reasons,” Alison continues. “When I booked that tour, we didn’t even have a band name! These people took insane gambles on letting us come and play, and somehow we cobbled together three months of gigs around the whole country. It was so exciting because it was the beginning and everything was exciting and everything was a surprise. And being with Jamie too, in America: I’d been on tour in America for most of my young life at that point, but to see America through Jamie’s eyes was hysterical!” “Everything was so exciting!” Jamie laughs. “Even the sandwiches were exciting!”

“These are the memories and times that have completely shaped my life and who I am.”

- Alison Mosshart things we recorded or ever wrote. I remember setting up mics in the recording studio opener ‘Superpowerless’ as “one of the songs that [she] feels proudest to have made”.

“It was one of those magical songs that did not want to be harnessed. It just wanted to be whatever it was,” she recalls. “I feel like that magic thing is there in the recording we did the demo of it and there was a mistake in the timing of the drum machine or something and it sounded so glorious and we couldn’t ever remake that mistake. That’s the beautiful thing because some of the most wonderful things that come out of songs are mistakes and you just can’t replicate them..”

Looking back has made the pair even more excited about what’s to come. Despite talking every day on the phone through lockdown, they only recently reunited IRL “Jamie came to my house and slow-motion ran from my gate and then we hugged”

material they’ve been accumulating in the process. “I don’t know how to describe the songs, because I don’t know how they’re going to end up,” Jamie says. “But [Domino co-founder] Laurence Bell said he was ‘deliriously excited’ when I sent him the demos.

So that’s your only description: ‘delirious excitement’.” We’ll take it.

‘Little Bastards’ is out 11th December via Domino. DIY

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U O Y E V A H H E A R D?

AR LO PA RK S - GR EE N EY ES Adolescence is a confusing time for all, not least those searching to understand their own sexuality. Announcing

HOT CHIP FEAT. JARVIS COCKER STR A IGHT TO THE MOR NING that is 2020, the idea of a straightdown-the-line club-ready number is a strange one, not least that the premise of ‘Straight to the Morning’ would be more ‘pub’s closed, off to sleep’ than anything as joyfully suggest. But, here lies Hot Chip’s strength, and with the help of a suitably suggestive Jarvis, they’re at least ready to soundtrack tinnies until the early hours with your preexisting household. (Emma Swann)

on the sublime ‘Green Eyes’, inviting Clairo along for the ride. “Of course I know why we lasted two months,” she reminisces of an impossible romance, one foiled by the impact of the world’s view on the LGBT+ community and the long-lasting effects on the individual. The result is bittersweet yet beautiful. “You’ve got to trust how you feel ed in the realities of coming of age outside of the norm. (Ben Tipple)

ARIANA GR ANDE POSITIONS After triggering a low key pop emergency by announcing that she’ll be sharing a brand new album this month, Ariana Grande has studio album, revealing sleek pop bop ‘positions’. Accompanied by a timely video that sees Ari switching places (or “positions”, get it?) with Donald Trump and taking over the White House, ‘positions’ is a glistening R&B infused sizzler that may not pack as much of a punch as ‘Thank U, Next’ did when era, but still cements Ari as one of the best pop stars around. (Elly Watson)

18 DIYMAG.COM

THE MAGIC GANG SOMEBODY LIKE YOU LYKKE LI BRON Translated as ‘The Bridge’, Lykke 2018’s ‘So Sad So Sexy’ marks the in her native language - a move that

certain kind of personal reckoning.

That ‘Bron’ tackles the deep pain of a break-up (“I will not cry more tears, because I cannot forgive…”) makes her move to her mother tongue an affective one, but no matter the linguistic vehicle, her knack for an emotively soaring melody and tender vocal remains the same. (Lisa Wright)

Whether it’s the opening riff resembling a cut’n’paste of the Stones’ classic ‘Start Me Up’, or the echoes of Billy Ocean in the song’s chorus, The Magic Gang are continuing their ‘70s fm radio vibes in force on ‘Somebody Like You’.

It’s still as peppy as we’ve come to expect from the quartet, of course, and there are still some gorgeous harmonies to be found - just don’t be surprised if the next time you see ‘em they’re decked in dubious shades of orange.

(Emma Swann)

T

hough 2020 has already thrown up its fair share of surprises, one thing that almost certainly wasn’t anticipated was that, just a handful of months after the release of Creeper’s mammoth second record

another musical morsel.

Granted, Salem wasn’t necessarily a project that he planned to see the light of day so soon. But after lockdown saw his day job paused, it felt like the right time to share the band - completed by Southampton punk stalwart Matthew Reynolds - and their work with the world, he explains.

was when Ian [Miles, Creeper guitarist] had been hospitalised and was out of record together, and it was really, really stressful. Every time I was back from America, I’d go for coffee with my friend Matt, who was the guitar tech for Creeper, and tour-managed us through Europe. He used to play in this band Howard’s Alias, years and years ago, and I used to go see his band when I was 15 or 16, and he’s also known as this ridiculous guitar player.

“I was talking to him about the record,” he continues. “I’d written like, 60 different songs and we kept binning them off and writing new ones to try and get the formula right. I was explaining the situation and I said, ‘Some days, I just wish

I could take it all back and make it simple again’. He said, ‘Well, why don’t you just come over to mine and we’ll just bash out some punk songs for fun?’”

And just like that, the band came to be. Having completed the EP’s

pair soon returned to Southampton studio and Creeper’s previous recording base The Ranch to put things to tape with their friend, producer Neil Kennedy. “[The EP] ended up sitting in a Dropbox folder, gathering dust. Then, obviously lockdown hit…” And they decided to get them out of the vault. “It’s been really organic and natural, and there’s been no pressure on it, which is really refreshing,” Will enthuses. “It’s been exciting to do something which had literally no expectations [placed] on it, but it’s blown away my own expectations. It’s really cool that people have responded to it so well.”

‘Salem’ is out now via Roadrunner. DIY

“It’s been exciting to do something which had literally no expectations.”

- Will Gould

Destroy Me, Baby After releasing an ambitious, multi-faceted record like their recent second album, the last thing we expected from Creeper frontman Will Gould was more new music. But think again…

Words: Sarah Jamieson.

19

Anything

but...

In which we talk to some of our faves about anything but music (see what we did there?)... Interview: Elly Watson.

! Will Joseph Cook

While we’ve been spending an embarrassing amount of time on TikTok, we’ve noticed one of your songs becoming quite the trend. How does it feel to be a TikTok star?

It’s hilarious! There’s like 12,000 videos using ‘Be Around Me’. The biggest one has like, a million views or something now, and I think that [that track] on TikTok has been viewed like, 100 million times or something.

Do you have a fave vid that’s used your song?

Well, there’s different kinds of TikTok and I’m now on FrogTok. Me and this Frog Dad guy are friends now; we chat on the reg. I love that . And the frog is so cute! That’s my favourite. There’s one that just makes me laugh, and it’s just this dude singing to his girlfriend and she’s just not reacting and he’s right up in her face. The caption was, ‘I played this to her, gave her no countdown, didn’t tell her what it was, she had no idea what was going on’. It cracked me up because it’s the kindof thing I would do.

Have you jumped on any TikTok trends yourself? Will we be seeing WJC taking on the ‘WAP’ dance any time soon?

I haven’t! To be honest, I’m the trendsetter [laughs]. It’s fun when you come up with an idea for a trend and people start using it. I think I’m better at that than the mimicking thing. I’d rather spend time trying to think of ideas for my fans to copy.

So what’s the next TikTok trend you’ll be starting? Have you got a kind of game plan now?

I do, yeah! My girlfriend is a choreographer, so we’re going to choreograph a bit to this song I have called ‘10X MORE FUN’. I feel like maybe the style of my lyrics on this album seem well, they’re really simple, direct, and a

20 DIYMAG.COM

fun play on words, with really visual lyrics. I have a song that isn’t out yet called ‘Where Is My Heart?’ and it is SO TikTok. The opening line is like, ‘Where is my heart? Do you have it?’ So people could be searching places.

You’re really loving this app, eh?

I feel like I’m a TikTok rep now!

The ‘Be Around Me’ thing is fully becoming, like, TikTok DNA. And especially me being independent now, it’s become such a huge part of this album’s promotion, even in the last few weeks. It feels quite exciting that I’m with that crew of indie artists on there, and it feels right. It feels like the place to be when you’re independent now.

Aside from getting into TikTok, you’ve also been busy podcasting.

How’s your Bad Hotel podcast going?

Funny you should say that, it is uploading as we speak! It was quite hard to get it popping because I was trying to do it over the internet and had two absolutely heartbreaking moments where it was recording and then the audio corrupted. They were with really good guests too, and I felt like I was just ruining the opportunity

I feel like I’m a TikTok rep now!” because it’s silly and less structured and you’re just like, hanging out with that person. The more structured ones and the crime drama shit - I don’t like that. I hate crime drama!

It starts going, any type of mystery, and I’m like, you can summarise this in a minute! Let’s wrap this documentaries. It’s an eight-part series for something that could be 20 minutes… They hypnotise you! The story is so simple and they could just tell it to you!

Got any dream guests you wanna get on the pod?

I would love to get some internet of the TikTok thing is I really want a big name from that on there. I want someone with some serious clout and just to chat to them about the app or what’s their opinion on the rest of the internet right now and people who have given their lives over to TikTok. I

I hate crime drama! It starts going, any type of mystery, and I’m like, you can summarise this in a minute.”

Templeman on it too. I don’t know how he got started and what his

Dear Kenazi,

THE DIY DRAG-ONY AUNT Dear Kenazi, Since my 18th birthday I’ve tried to live an honourable adult life, committing to all things that a traditional adult would cite as typically mature; schedules, voting, even muttering a mild confrontation. One thing, however, has prevented me from realising my true adult self: I can’t stand the taste of mushrooms. I see so many other adults enjoying them, at social gatherings I’m not often invited to. Is it possible to enjoy something so fucking earthy it quite literally tastes like dirt? (Tom Rees, Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard)

Dear Tom, You are not alone my child. I too was afraid of mushrooms for so long until this one time in Portland, Oregon when a mushroom brought me closer to god than I had ever been before. I remember the moment it hit, as eyes fell off the edge of faces. It took me two hours to get out of a portable toilet because I was convinced it was the Tardis and I was the Doctor, with a sonic screwdriver. I saw the light and mushrooms are the answer. I suggest a simple microdosing to wean yourself onto the taste and possibly a camping trip with friends. Reconnect with Mother Earth in a way that you never thought possible. Schedules, 21st Century living, Tom. In the words of Natasha on your skin!” When you get hold of some though,

so young, but I also want to talk to someone who’s on the boundary of millennial and Gen Z - I’m ‘97 - so I have some opinions of the millennial side but then I’m also really drawn to TikTok and I just want to talk about that concept. to speak to people. To be honest though, it’s not like I don’t have other things to get on with, so until we can meet up in person I might put this thing on hold...

Do you have any favourite podcasts you listen to?

Not really. The one I listen to on the regular is the H3 podcast, but that’s more because they’re YouTubers I like. They’re like the mum and dad of YouTube!

Can’t wait to hear it!

‘Something To Feel Good About’ is out 27th November via Bad Hotel. DIY

So you aren’t obsessed with true crime podcasts like the rest of the world?

Nah, nah. I like the H3 podcast

21

NEU 22 DIYMAG.COM

Josh, sporting the George from Rainbow A/W 2020 collection.

!"#$ Speedy Wunderalbum signings, taking pain and turning it into their own positive pink party. Words: Lisa Wright. Photos: Holly Whitaker.

“There’s this bit in a Richard Brautigan book called Sombrero Fallout, where he’s crying into a bin because he and his girlfriend have broken up, and he cries for so long that he loses his perception of time and it feels like he’s been crying into this bin forever.

So then he starts creating a world at the bottom of the bin,” relays Joshua Loftin. “There’s a humour in the surrealness of the tragedy.”

It’s an unusual analogy, but in many fronted by Josh, and completed by bassist Adam Cartwright, guitarist Ollie Lester, keyboardist Calum Armstrong and drummer George Rhys Davies - are very much the sound of a surreal, magical world bin. On one side, they’re a riot of pink and playfulness - a group whose leader is rarely seen on stage without his trusty cowboy hat, and whose aim, they claim, is to create a “pink party” for listeners to lose themselves in. On the other, they’re a band explicitly born out of a breakdown, with tracks that regularly deal in images of suicide and despair, and a just-released LP called - somewhat ironically - ‘Positive Mental Health Music’.

The reality as we meet them at Speedy Wunderground’s second studio HQ in Streatham - the place where they recently recorded said album at the behest of label boss Dan Carey, who picked the group full-length release - is that they are, like many people, a combination of both. Tiña deal in the confusing grey areas between pleasure and pain, where horror and humour are “two sides of the same coin”, and where a vehicle to get out your woes as any. well,” picks up Adam, “it’s so dark,

but then there’s a bit where they keep dropping the gurney and it’s such a weird moment. His wife has almost been killed and then there’s this random comedy bit in there, but it’s not really a juxtaposition. In the most tragic moments, the most stupid, ridiculous things can happen. I don’t think it’s our job as a band to separate those things out when they seem to go hand in hand more often than not.”

Before Tiña, Josh and Adam used to play as members of Bat-Bike - a grottier affair, who hung around in musical circles frequented by Fat like. By the end of the band, Josh had “kind of given up playing guitar” (“Bat-Bike wasn’t doing much, I’d broken up with my girlfriend and wasn’t feeling happy about much,” he says). Yet when he found himself drawn to the instrument again, playing purely as a means of misery-baiting catharsis which then slowly turned into proper songs, the world that he wanted to build around him emerged as a very different one. “The band was called Tina without the ‘ñ’ and we more of a push towards femininity,” recalls Adam of their genesis. “A lot of that [old] scene may have been commenting on masculinity, but it still very much embodied the stereotypes of masculinity. When the band were forming, we were trying to push more into a feminine place.”

party together. I like that.”

On ‘Positive Mental Health Music’, that sense of togetherness and a warm, safe space comes through in spades: like if The Brian Jonestown Massacre dealt in cuddles and

“Everyone’s taken on this unspoken, wonky, playful, feminine aesthetic that then bounces off each other.”Josh Loftin

bandmates and getting in a strop, Tiña’s party is one that pulls from the alternative music world’s more idiosyncratic corners (Aussie singer Kirin J Callinan is cited as a particular favourite) and then turns it into “a really shit children’s birthday for adults”. The hope, they say, is to take the trauma that comes part and parcel with this thing we call life, and

“It’s not like it solves it; it’s not like, job done, I’m not heartbroken anymore. But it’s good to have a positive thing that can occupy that same mental space. You feel shit, but you also have a good song that’s come out of it,” explains Adam. “If you turn it into a song that’s true then you put ownership on it, because it feels like you’ve taken a bit of control of your life and feelings,” nods Josh.

“I’m just hoping to become the pink messiah.”

‘Positive Mental Health Music’ is out now via Speedy Wunderground. DIY

“I remember seeing an image of this Japanese guy wearing a very pink suit and a black leather hat and I thought it looked really bad in a really great way,” continues Josh.

“And then as we rehearsed it adapted and everyone took on this unspoken, wonky, playful, feminine aesthetic that then bounces off each other. That’s what the pink party thing is too, because a party is everyone together, right? It’s not someone leading the party and then other people following the party leader; everyone’s having a

23

CLAUD

Phoebe Bridgers-approved sparkling pop chops.

Bridgers’ new Saddest Factory label, you sense that things are pretty certain to move up a gear in the coming months. Why did Claud get the golden ticket, you might ask? Recent ‘Gold’ explains it all: an understated, crisp gem that glimmers with emotive warmth.

Listen: Dig back to 2018’s ‘Toast’ EP if you want some ‘I knew them before they were famous’ cred.

Similar to: An alt-pop icon in the making.

%&'())&*+&+

New Yorker Claud has been steadily releasing their strain of shimmering alt-pop for a couple of years now,

Ireland’s newest exciting exports.

Hailing from Galway, NewDad are the latest Ireland natives to start causing a buzz on wider shores. Crafting enchanting indie-rock gems, with luscious pop hooks, their dreamy songs are spearheaded by vocalist Julie Dawson’s effortless laid back vocals. Though the quartet may only have a handful of songs out at the mo, each of them is an absolute gem, and destined to linger in your head for days.

Listen: Latest track ‘Blue’ is the perfect soundtrack to scenic late night soirees.

Similar to: The cool-asfuck group that you low key wish would adopt you.

AUDREY NUNA The coolest new chick in rap.

Audrey Nuna has steadily been breaking boundaries and rising through the ranks. Merging genres with a prowess in pop and R&B, her razor sharp lyricism packs a punch and has rightfully established her

artists to break into the mainstream.

Listen: Her debut EP out later this year is sure to be banger-packed.

Similar to: The kind of music which makes you want to comment

KYNSY Dublin in the rain is hers.

If Fontaines DC, The Murder Capital et al are to be believed, then a youth spent in Dublin is one rooted in confrontational miserabilia and poetic melancholy. Yet, while Kynsy’s Blue Light’ and ‘Happiness Isn’t a Fixed State’ - are far from all sunshine and roses, here that draws far more from the The Strokes than it does some of post-punk’s more dour heroes.

Listen: ‘Cold Blue Light’ is part St. Vinny sizzle, part Speedy Ortiz grunge chops.

Similar to: An Irish heart, with American-sized ambition.

24 DIYMAG.COM

NEWDAD

neu

NATIVE SON An NYC-based creative expert in fusing together styles.

Brooklyn creative Native Son has been carving out his very own niche with a handful of hypnotic genre-bending offerings. Following up his debut track ‘Brown Water’ with the COVID era-inspired ‘Domme Kinderen’, he’s already marking himself out as an expert in creating fresh and dazzling tunes that fuse together all manner of musical elements.

Listen: His infectious new track ‘Domme Kinderen’ Similar to: A musical melding pot that takes one part alternative hip-hop bop, add it to one part jazz jam, with a dash of indie-tinged melody.

“I want it to feel like Manchester and Compton had a baby.

I want it to be like if Morrissey was black.”

,&$*-+$./(* The genreblurring trailblazer pushing for greatness.

Words: Elly Watson.

Putting a debut album into the world is a nerve-racking thing - one often compared to

But at the moment Jean Dawson is slightly preoccupied by his other babies: Dobermann Midnight, French Bulldog Mala, and Oz the English Bulldog. “They’re coming out of puppyhood, but they’re still puppies,” he gleams, introducing them individually over Zoom. “As soon as I have a big back yard, I’m going to get a fuckton of dogs. It’s gonna be bad and beautiful at the same time.”

Hoskins and the 23rd for [2019 single] ‘Napster’ and I was like, ‘I want it to feel like Manchester and Compton had a baby. I want it to be like if Morrissey was black’. I wanted to do something that felt like that,” he pauses, laughing. “I think Morrissey would really hate that.”

“I cried on the way home after I cut this indie track like, ‘I can’t believe I made this, this is so cool’,” he reminisces. “From then forward, I wanted to make something that expands my capabilities. I think that alone got me to be where I’m at musically, just challenging my own potential.”

Blending elements from hip hop, alt-pop, indie rock, emo and more,

Already being hailed as pop’s latest phenomenon, Jean’s debut is only set to further cement his status as a musical innovator. But he’s not done pushing himself just yet. “This body of work is my most beautiful and most thought-provoking to date,” he smiles. “But when you win one championship, you want another one right after…” DIY

The follow-up to previous project ‘Bad Sounds’ - his ode to being 21 - for his debut, he threw it back to when he was 17, drawing inspiration from the songs that meant the world to him in his teenage years.

“There’s a lot of Kanye West, Smashing Pumpkins, Warped Tour shit,” he says stuff that felt really Britpop-py. I remember working with [British producers]

his musical boundaries, creating a self-described “welcoming space” and, above all, challenging himself.

A self-furthering notion he’s always striven for within his music, he remembers making an indie rock record back in college, having previously only rapped until that point.

25

six members of neu MICHELLE were in the same room, their debut album had already been released. “We didn’t meet each other until the day

been locked down.

write on, I think we would all create very different songs,” says Jamee.

in time? “Really, it was just barely, by the drawstrings of our ten year old sweatpants,” laughs Julian. “There was still a lot of post-production to be done afterwards.”

Recent singles ‘UNBOUND’ and

Ku. “We were all strangers!”

Having been wished into existence earlier that year by producers Julian Kaufman and Charlie Kilgore, the collective formed as the result of a crackpot plan to conjure up a record (September 2018’s resultant ‘HEATWAVE’) that would document assembled a group of singers that they separately knew - some well, others more peripherally - and set up a series of homemade recording sessions, with no more than one or two of the four MICHELLE vocalists included at any one time. Songs would often be written and recorded on the same day and, by the end of the fortnight, all of the ten tracks had

modern reality of a city like New York, bringing an eclecticism of interests, upbringings, ethnicities their music with an unconstrained, pan-genre freedom, where slick R&B, cool jazz and angular rock all jostle for supremacy. The diversity of the sound matches the diversity of the six members’ personalities: Julian, they describe as the helping hand - the guy that “brings the sauce” and Charlie as the “mad scientist”, whereas Layla is “the commissioner”, Lockard “the student of the month” and Emma Lee “the triple threat” (dancer, visual artist and singer). “If we were all given the same track to

)"'0&11& An eclectic bunch of New Yorkers, rewriting their own version of how to be a band.

Words: Max Pilley.

26 DIYMAG.COM

glimpses into the group’s as-yetunnamed second LP that’s currently original album for Transgressive (who also re-released ‘HEATWAVE’ earlier this year), the band enthuse that the production is set to be much larger this time around due to the additional gestation time for the writing process.

“We had the time to craft this thing in a way we didn’t before, which will hopefully be rewarding,” says Emma.

A quick straw poll of favourite artists throws up names as far reaching as Karen O, Womack & Womack, Julie London, Kate Bush and Noname, and while there’s a unifying thread of optimistic, summer-ready joie de vivre to their own music so far, none of these reference points seem off. “Each band member has such different pools of genres that they can reach their tentacles into,” explains Charlie. “It’s like only having one type of ingredient in your fridge, it’s just not realistically going to happen.

Everyone in MICHELLE is very jealous of everyone else, that’s kind of what keeps the wheel turning.” DIY

Each band member has such different pools of genres that they can reach their tentacles into.” - Charlie Kilgore

27

28 DIYMAG.COM

2$!3-,-4&$%/(*

neu

“I am the leader of the new country scene!”

The new queen of UK country, inspired by PJ Harvey, the West Country and… her toothbrush? Words: James Balmont.

It’s barely midday on a sunny Thursday in Bristol, but Katy J Pearson is already on the sauce.

“I’ve had a cup of tea, and now I’m having an oat milk cappuccino,” she exclaims animatedly, picking up the phone in the middle of an impromptu coffee meet at lively pub-cafe The Gallimaufry. And, as words stream white, the bubbly singer clearly isn’t stuck for chat ahead of this month’s debut album ‘Return’.

Born in Swindon (“famous for the Oasis Leisure Centre”), Katy was brought up in Cirencester, a market town in the Cotswolds barren of musical opportunity in spite of its lush surroundings and country pubs. It was more of an “Oh, you should go on the X Factor!” kind of vibe, she says, exaggerating her West Country accent to mimic the advice she was given growing up.

Gathering inspiration on yearly camping trips to Devon, where she would spy on Kate Bush’s cliffside house with her dad, Katy did opt to give the major-label route a go in the early stages of her career. But the glitz and the glamour wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and when an early project with her brother “went to shit”, Katy was, frankly, relieved.

“We were sharing a twin room in a Premier Inn, doing writing sessions her early forays to London. But with another West Country girl in PJ Harvey providing some much-needed inspiration (“She went to London and was like, ‘Fuck this, I’m from the West

Country’”), Katy eventually moved to Bristol to start afresh. “We were really happy to get dropped,” she concludes. “We went for a curry after.”

Seeking out producer Ali Chant, known for his work with the aforementioned Harvey, Perfume Genius and Aldous Harding, Katy then spent years cultivating an earthy, Americana-tinged sound rural roots. Originally penned as folk-inspired “rock” numbers, songs like ‘Something Real’ and ‘Tonight’ are enriched with acoustic guitars and Rhodes piano, strings, brass and even electric sitars. Taking cues from the orchestral soundscapes of ‘60s crooner Scott Walker, ‘Return’ ultimately puts Katy’s powerful, lilting vocal front and centre.

It wasn’t just heart and soul that went into the recordings, either. “I kept forgetting to brush before I went to the studio, so I always brought my toothbrush with me. I was brushing my teeth and Ali was like, ‘That sounds great’, so we literally recorded me brushing my teeth on ‘Fix Me Up’. We had a cup so I could spit while we were doing it, it was actually pretty gross.”

Having ditched the well-trodden path and found something closer to what she calls home, now Katy couldn’t be happier about the release of her debut. “I’m buzzing, I feel like I’m about to give birth or something,” she grins. “I am the leader of the new country scene!” We’ve heard stranger things this year. DIY

Want to stream our Neu playlist while you’re reading? Scan the code now and get listening.

!0& 41$31"/! neu

0(.-+;3(8-1"2&!0$!< With highly-anticipated debut album ‘Nightmare Vacation’ on the way, Rico Nasty has given us the latest taste of what to expect from the record, with her brand new track ‘Don’t Like Me’.

The new glimpse of her sugar-trap style, the track features appearances from Gucci Mane and Don Toliver, was produced by BuddhaBless, and follows on from her previous releases ‘iPhone’ and ‘Own It’.

The tracks are slated to appear on her forthcoming debut, which is set

8*'&*/(%&+ Adding to the list of impressive singles from the rising rapper, Coventry’s Pa Salieu has recently shared his new single ‘B***K’.

A poignant and powerful new offering, the empowering anthem is accompanied by a video directed by Meeks and Frost championing Black pride and excellence. Speaking on his latest sizzling track, Pa explains, “The title being censored is to highlight how throughout history parts of society have portrayed Black people and culture almost like a swear word.”

All proceeds from the downloads of ‘B***K’ will go to Black Minds Matter UK.

68==9&&+

All the buzziest new music happenings, in one place.

!"#$%&'!%(861&

amongst the chaos, noting “that the safest place to be was my room – when I get paranoid or anxious or upset, hiding away felt like the easiest thing to do. Which is mad, because then quarantine happened and that literally was the safest place to be. ‘Oh No’ is about being sad but also lockdown, unintentionally.”

believing myself when I say I’m all in, but then falling out of it as quickly as I fall into it. ‘Liahr’ is basically a oneto-one with myself about how I need to chill and stop hurting myself and others ‘cause of goddamn trauma.”

13*2/-5-4&+&/!%"$*-$!-6&/!

When Lynks (FKA Lynks Afrikka) played our online DIYsolation festival earlier this year, his Courtney Barnett cover was such a pingers’o’clock slammer that we probably should have issued a warning to unknowing watchers tuning in before 3pm. So it’s with no small amount of glee that his take on ‘Pedestrian at Best’ - a perfectly-pitched combination of speak-sing, neuroticismencouraging verses and cathartic, fuck-it party chorus - arrives in recorded form. All we need now is a full collab. Please?

78/!$9-5-)"*&

Class of 2020 alumni Biig Piig has shared not one but two brand new tracks, ‘Oh No’ and ‘Liahr’.

“‘Liahr’ is about not trusting myself in recent relationships,” she adds.

“I feel I’ve been running

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

The latest proprietors of angular art rock to emerge from the fruitful group of pals that have already gifted us Bodega, Public Practice and The Wants, Gustaf (fronted by the latter’s Lydia Gammill) clearly share more than a fondness for a pinging bassline with their peers. Part of what made Bodega such an appealing prospect was their knack for a wry, society-skewering one-liner; ‘Mine’, meanwhile, opens with the excellent “You said I’m much too old to still be self-deprecation. Add some deliciously clashing riffs and you’ll be wishing cross-Atlantic air travel was a less ill-advised proposition.

40(&6&-7%&&*-57(1+&*-7"%1 “It’s not you, it’s me; I just don’t have the energy,” sings Phoebe Green innocently on her latest new track ‘Golden Girl’, picking up almost exactly where her previous offering ‘Reinvent’ left off. Oozing with an insatiable sense of signed Mancunian continuing to carve out her own self-assured niche. A set of stripped back verses come backed by a heady chorus which gives the whole thing even more of a shimmering oomph, proving she might just be our golden girl after all.

)(113-4$3!(*-5-7("*70&$:3The song may have been written in the months following Molly’s leaving high school, but if there’s not something in “going out just to pass the time” that doesn’t hit about Summer 2020, we’ll be damned.

It’s “about everyone enjoying being lost together,” the singer says - and it’s every bit as deliciously angst-fuelled as that suggests, with, crucially, a beast of a chorus. What’s more, the track - which features on her newly-released EP ‘Porcupine’ was produced by Dom formerly of forever DIY faves, Superfood.

Hear them both on diymag.com now.

29

P lanet

For his latest trick, Damon Albarn has lined up Gorillaz’ most impressive cast of collaborators yet. But while ‘Song Machine’ might have been born from a playful spirit, it’s

Gorillaz is fluid. It’s modern. This is a very modern band” - Damon Albarn

30 DIYMAG.COM

of the

Apes

also an album that holds a mirror to the modern world’s divisions and fractures, and offers up a far more utopian alternative. Words: Lisa Wright. Illustrations: Jamie Hewlett.

D

amon Albarn might not be a man known for predictability, but there are some rituals he takes seriously. One, it seems, is the eating of cake. “It’s tea time isn’t it? I always have tea and cake,” he says, mouth full, intermittently number in over a 3pm Zoom call. “A little early perhaps, but I’m still on French time…”

Quarantining in his London house after returning from a stint in Paris to perform collaborative opera Le Vol Du Boli (translated as The Flight of the Boli - a Malian spiritual object), Damon’s penchant for a sugary treat, he tells us, hasn’t always worked in his favour. “I developed a very mild eating disorder [when I was younger] because my mum would always put supper on the table at about 6.40pm, and I had to eat my main meal and my sweet before 7’o’clock when Top Of The Pops started because I wasn’t allowed to eat food and watch television…” However these days, he doesn’t have to worry about rushing for the BBC schedule.

Now, with Gorillaz’ latest offering ‘Song Machine’ - a project originally conceived as a string of standalone multimedia ‘episodes’ that’s now evolved into a full record - he’s basically created the greatest new music TV series going.

“We weren’t thinking about songs joining each other or having any connection; it was just, ‘Let’s do this today’. And then three days later, we’ve done [a track],” he shrugs, gold tooth just about visible between bites. “There wasn’t a sense of ‘we’re doing something’, which in some ways helped the very eclectic nature of the people on the record. It didn’t have a selfconsciousness that a lot of albums have because you’re dedicating a period of time to say something and create something with a sense of it strength is in it being the opposite.”

G

orillaz, of course, are no strangers to innovation.

Created back in 1998 by Albarn and cartoonist Jamie Hewlett as a conscious

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commentary on the manufactured bands populating the charts, it’s easy to forget just how ahead of their time the pair and their animated monkey pals were. Though The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper…’ had set the blueprint for before, the notion of a virtual band (at a time when the internet was still one. Add to that their early adoption of cross-genre collaborations, and the result would be a project that pushed the envelope - and still sold millions from the start.

Their latest lands as yet another sidestep: a series designed in a purposefully episodic fashion, released monthly throughout the year, featuring songs, with accompanying videos and skits. Each track involved in the ‘Song Machine’ project, says Damon, is “very much an episode”, highlighting the difference in terminology. “All the songs were made in isolation [from each other], none of it was done at the same time,” he explains. “I didn’t set out to make a record, it was literally make it up as you go along and then we just got to a point where we had so much material that we had to stop otherwise Jamie would have had a nervous breakdown with the endless succession of things to animate.” Yet now, combined together under ‘Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez’, the result is a sort of mammoth singles compilation - a wild hotchpotch of guests and genres, grouped together with no space for backseat drivers.

“You’ve just got to put your foot down and see what happens. If you crash into a wall, then you crash into a wall, but if you narrowly miss the wall and set off on a fantastic highway then that’s great as well,” Damon agrees, picking up the analogy. “It’s accepting that nothing can be taken for granted and you have to really be very aware of the importance of that renewed energy each time - that blind optimism when you get up in the morning.”

It is probably fairly easy, you sense, to wake up blindly optimistic when you have Elton John scheduled in for a Zoom recording session later in the be animated by Jamie, the legend’s turn on recently-released track ‘The Pink Phantom’ was clearly a special one for the band. “He’s very himself, in a beautiful way. Every time he’d start singing, ‘I tried to get to Atlanta… Oh, you fucking old bastard!’,” Damon recalls, doing his best pissed-off Elton impression. “And then he’d go ‘Right, start again’. And this went on for about an hour and a half, just him berating himself, but I absolutely love him. Apart from all his brilliant career and all the amazing things he’s done politically and emotionally, he’s just

32 DIYMAG.COM

a really nice human being: someone with,” he notes with a wink.

Accompanying them on the track, meanwhile, is Baltimore rapper 6lack - not an obvious choice of musical foil by any stretch, but one whose autotuned vocals work to cleverly contrast Elton’s powerhouse performance.

It’s one of many unexpected pairings across the record, and while Damon might cheekily attempt to insist that his appetite for curation merely stems from laziness (“It’s less for me to do! It’s less work!”), in reality the list of names that pop in for a turn on the Machine - from slowthai to St Vincent; Robert Smith to South African singer Moonchild Sanelly; Skepta to Japanese alt-pop band CHAI - emphasise his obvious thirst for

“It’s just more fun. I don’t really wanna listen to myself all the time; I accept that I have to do that sometimes where it’s all about me, but I really like it being a shared experience. It’s more exciting because you get a really interesting conversation if you just let everyone communicate. It avoids stagnant pools which is something the British Isles has to be very wary of at the moment, culturally…” he notes. It’s a very ego-less way of working, but ego, says Damon, is something he’s learnt to brush off over the years. “The whole idea of the ego is something that was imposed upon us, that came out of post-war America, especially in music. Elvis and the birth of the pop idol and all of that, you know? I don’t think there needs to be anything like that,” he continues. “Everyone gets caught up in that net unless they’re very smart and I wasn’t smart enough [at the beginning]. I have wised up a bit though… I’m not doing it for that, I’m doing it because I love music. It’s easy to work all the time and do lots of adventurous things if you’re in love; that’s the whole point of it.”

I

t’s obvious from one look at Damon’s storied career to see that he is, undoubtedly, completely in love with the art of making music. But you can also see that he is, perhaps equally, committed to the unifying space that he can create within it. Blur may have made his name, but in recent years he’s spent far more time working with Africa Express and forging collaborations around the world; even The Good, The Bad and The Queen’s 2018 album ‘Merrie Land’, though quintessentially British, shone a lens on the state of the Brexit-encumbered nation and didn’t exactly approve of

So while ‘Song Machine’ has its fair share of global superstar guests, Gorillaz’ (and Damon’s) motivation has clearly never been merely to reel in the A-listers. Here, massive megastars rub shoulders on equal footing with relatively unknown newcomers, and

“[Collaboration] avoids stagnant pools, which is something the British Isles has to be very wary of at the moment, culturally…” Damon Albarn

people that hail from all corners of the world are represented. “It’s more than just the music and the cartoons; it’s what it means to bring young musicians and older musicians together, and to play around with what everyone’s role is and everyone’s sense. This is a very modern band,” Damon nods.

Gorillaz’ universe is a utopian one and one that, written during one of the most unsettled years in modern history, feels far removed from 2020 reality. One person who never quite made it onto a track, Albarn tells us, is Morrissey - who he’d previously asked several years back. “I don’t agree with his politics at all. It’s really weird and off-putting, and it’s I don’t really wanna work with people who aren’t very nice because that’s a counterproductive thing really,” he begins when asked if the invite would still be on the table, before reconsidering the idea: “But I suppose you could, through conversation, change someone’s opinions, and that’s worth doing as well isn’t it? Not to write people off, because this is the mistake the internet makes. It’s so regional, the internet…

“Surely we’ve veered from listening to both sides of the argument whatever that argument is - too many times in the past to know that’s not advisable and that the middle ground is obviously the best ground?” he continues. “It’s the middle of the everyone gets round and talks and sorts out their problems. Take it back to the beginnings of our society and all societies; the middle ground is the place where shit gets done and we’re not inhabiting the middle ground at the moment because [we’re] so polarised.

Look at the internet and everything that’s done on the internet as waves.

You’re lying by the ocean, and it’s just waves and waves and you never get the chance to see the ocean itself.”

jobs has been dire; when Rishi Sunak announced last month that people should simply “retrain”, it felt for many like the last bit of hope for real, tangible support had evaporated in tandem.

“Our government are undermining people’s dreams, and that is unacceptable,” Damon bristles at the idea. “Thatcher did it in the late ‘70s and ‘80s when she tried to get rid of all the art schools in England. There was a point, pre-Thatcher, when every single little town in England had an art school - a school of dreams; a place where people who weren’t necessarily trained or very good at doing anything else could imagine things. And look at all the amazing things that have been imagined

T

he ocean right now, for artists in this country, is a turbulent one. Though certain initiatives are slowly being rolled out, the overriding sense is that the arts sector is being resolutely hung out to dry. With little-to-no certainty as to when any form of ‘normality’ may return, the support for people working in arts

And you thought YOUR family were dysfunctional.

the fabric of our society, and how they world. It seems crazy to not consider

“On every level, undermining young people at the moment just seems to be a really, really stupid policy because at the end of the day, the only reason human society exists is to nurture the young and give them

Gorillaz’ Little Black Book

Season One of ‘Song Machine’ has seen some of Gorillaz most adventurous collaborations to date, but, says Jamie Hewlett, they’re far from done yet...

Do you still get a thrill when someone like Elton gets brought into this world you’ve created?

Jamie: The thing that’s thrilling is when we have conversations about who we’d like to work with. I think we’re at the point with Gorillaz where we can pretty much approach anybody, and people do say ‘no’, but it’s never normally because they’re not into it.

So it’s about coming up with interesting collaborations, and not just the obvious people.

Damon’s already written the track, I think! We had this conversation three weeks ago when he was in Paris, and I spoke to him the other day and he said, ‘I’ve written that one’. He keeps saying we need to start Season Two of ‘Song Machine’ and I tell

Who’s on your hit list?

I suggested working with Dolly Parton imagining Damon would throw it back in my face and he turned around and was like, ‘Are you serious? I fucking love Dolly

six tunes already, and when I say written they’re very rough versions, but he’s got

way of getting in touch with

One yet and he’s like, ‘Well hurry up’. He wants to start mid-December, so I might get about two weeks off.

How much has been written for Season Two?

never stops writing songs; he constantly has melodies in his head. He has a draw in his writing room that’s full of cassettes with melodies on, so there’s a never-ending supply.

What would you do with Dolly?

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Penpal Of course, Gorillaz would not be Gorillaz without the vivid visual world created by artist Jamie Hewlett. He explains what’s gone into bringing the band’s latest opus into life.

How did you aim to visually tie all these very disparate songs together?

Up until ‘Pac-Man’, we were still in the studio when Damon was recording those songs. happened in the studio and then cobble together the footage and add the characters, and it would be a continuing story to place around Kong Studios which is in fact Damon’s studio. But then along came Coronavirus and that was no longer possible, and I ran out of footage and couldn’t shoot anymore so I had to take the storyline somewhere else - so we went to the moon

Of course!

After the murder of George Floyd, and all this other stuff that had started happening in America on top of all the OTHER shit happening around the world, I just thought well, it’s nice to leave the earth, look back and scratch our heads, and wonder what the fuck are we doing and why are we like this?

And then Robert Smith’s on the track, so it just seemed appropriate. If I looked up at the moon myself and saw Robert Smith singing, I’d be very happy.

Turning Robert Smith’s big white face into the moon: where’s the line with how cheeky you can be with guests?

On ‘Demon Days’, I managed to get Shaun Ryder to be a giant severed head which was really cheeky, and in the video he wakes up from a nightmare and he’s in bed with Murdoch.

I got away with that… Robert was really cool actually, he had a lot of input - he was sending back photos of him as the moon with his own corrections. He didn’t want to have too many craters. He wanted to look like a cool moon, but

I suggested working with Dolly Parton [for the next season], and Damon’s already written the track, I think!” - Jamie Hewlett something to live for. The condition is that we are brought up, then we bring up the next generation, and they need to be free to do brilliant things and imagine brilliant things. I don’t know what’s the matter with us. Obviously people who are vulnerable need to be looked after, but people who aren’t so vulnerable need to get on with life You can’t just take away the rug when someone’s retrain - how can you tell someone to do that? And using the image of a ballet dancer - anyone who knows anything about ballet knows if you’re even entertaining having a career, that means you’ve been doing it since you were three or four. How can

“It’s really fucking mean, and I think people will realise that that unfortunately is the malign spirit of Brexit - it’s really mean. And when people really realise what some of the architects of that thing have in their mind - their capacity to dream is very limited, it seems. Hence a lack of empathy with people who DO have a capacity to dream. Great.

Let’s all get fucking drunk and take heroin, you know what I mean? Because that’s what people will do if all their dreams are taken away from them. No

really easy. I sent him a drawing, he made a couple of slight changes and he was lovely.

Where’s the balance between Gorillaz being playful and escapist, but also pointing towards real world issues?

I think Gorillaz have always been a bit political without getting on a soapbox and preaching it; you have to have a bit of humour in there and laugh at yourself as well. Not to come on too strong but say something that resonates. If you look at The Simpsons, they do it very well with their opinions about America and American life, but by doing it in a humorous way.

People listen to that more. You can get away with anything when you’re a cartoon.

Photo: Thomas Chéné

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one wants that. And I’m nearly old as well! Some may say I’m already old! So I’m not exactly blowing my own trumpet here, I just feel really strongly. I just feel for kids. I feel like we need to be really fucking nice and positive with them, and there’s some bad shit going down.”

D

amon Albarn might not be able to single-handedly save the world but, amidst all the bad shit, he is doing as much as one man with a very good ear for a melody can do to counteract the tidal wave. Every day, he says, he “bounces out of bed with blind optimism”. He doesn’t see himself as religious, but he is “tuned in to the universe” and truly believes in the connectedness of humanity that beneath all the bullshit, we are just a globe full of people, particles knocking around together, who have to learn to listen to each other a little bit more.

“You need to breathe deeply. You need to absorb the vibrations of the times. You need to let them

grows,” he theorises. “We think we have this interconnectivity because of the internet, but we’ve always been interconnected. [The internet] is

“The only reason human society exists is to nurture the young and give them something to live for.” - Damon Albarn creating an insensitivity to our innate connectivity it’s blocking it.”

With Gorillaz’ latest, and the project as a whole, this attitude permeates every pore; ‘Song Machine’ points to the exciting, invigorating results that can come from people uniting and working together - exploring that innate connectivity but from different viewpoints and backgrounds. “There’s a lot of information on the record - what’s going on in California, the African diaspora, the phantom voice of Elton John, a sort of strange midwestern quality of St. Vincent, and then CHAI somewhere in a very high building in Japan doing their thing.

Fatoumata Diawara in Lake Como… it’s all over the place,” Damon muses. “Leee John in a garden, shaking off his chains… I was talking to Tame was talking to Australia too. I was talking to a lot of different parts of the world when I was making this record, but that’s always possible at any time.”

“I can go on forever with Gorillaz - I mean forever in the sense that IT can go on forever,” he ponders of the limitless scope of his creation. “I can’t go on forever. I haven’t somehow discovered gold-toothed grin. “Yet…” Turns out maybe you can have your cake and eat it after all.

‘Song Machine: Season One - Strange Timez’ is out now via Parlophone. DIY

BIT OF A BLUR? Gorillaz, of course, aren’t Damon’s only worldbeating, Glastonburya little band called Blur that sometimes pop back into the picture too - so can we expect any updates from Damon, Graham, Alex and Dave soon?

“Well yeah, I’m sure at some point. I mean, why not? There’s a lot of material out there that could be used, and we have been… Oh god, if I say one thing it just becomes… Er, but why not do something like that?

It’s wonderful when I do those shows; I love it. But it is a different thing to where I am now. I try from time to time to bring it up to speed, and [2015 Blur LP] ‘The Magic Whip’ - that was a relatively successful attempt to do that. I worry sometimes whether I CAN do that, but singing those songs and enjoying that moment, I would love to do that again, obviously.

It IS possible, and yet, more than to paper, Gorillaz are still doing it more successfully than most.

Aged “52 and three quarters” precisely, Damon is showing no sign of pulling back any time soon.

forward. I’m happy to go back, but the world was slightly younger and more naive then. It was different.

Blur is a pre-internet band, so it’s kind of weird existing in the internet age in that form; it’s much easier to exist in the Gorillaz form…”

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36 DIYMAG.COM

MARIKA HACKMAN SPENT THE STRANGE SUMMER RECORDING TAKES ON BEYONCÉ, RADIOHEAD AND SOME OF MUSIC’S BIGGEST STARS. “IT GAVE ME A BIG SENSE OF RELIEF,” SHE EXPLAINS OF HER NEW ‘COVERS’ LP. WORDS: MAX PILLEY.

T

his summer, Marika Hackman found herself back in her childhood bedroom. Choosing to take refuge from London’s lockdown claustrophobia at her parents’ home, the sentimental echoes of her past were all around her. Not only was she back between the same four walls where she put together the songs that comprised her debut EP in 2012, she was once again sat at the same computer, recording a new set of songs; to ram the parallels home yet further, on both occasions the songs in question were all cover versions.

After wrapping up touring for 2019’s ‘Any Human Friend’, Marika had originally set aside 2020 to work on new material, but events made that felt really uninspired,” she explains now. “It was lockdown, and I felt this enormous pressure that I should be really cracking on with the next record and having to write twelve tracks’ worth of music. I was sitting down at my desk and I just couldn’t pull anything out of thin air. So doing a covers record, it gave me a big sense of relief. It was a creative way with it and come out with something at the end.”

The resulting album, aptly-titled ‘Covers’, goes for the jugular, with such cultural giants as Beyoncé, Elliott Smith and Grimes among those given the Marika treatment.

Together, they’re bound with warm, intimate production and arrangements that allow her vocals to lure new perspectives out of familiar lyrics.

The process of selecting the ten songs to interpret was surprisingly straightforward. “I always cover songs that I really, really love and have an intense relationship with; it just makes the job a lot easier,” she says. “I was going through playlists that I’d made and looking at the songs that I felt would be a good challenge. You know, taking

on Grimes and Beyoncé - that’s a challenge. They’re very different sonically to me. But what an enjoyable challenge to pick a work of genius that’s so far removed, incomparable to what I do anyway, and to try to translate that into my own language, pulling out those golden threads of what really makes the song special or makes it have an impact.”

The record opens with a version of Radiohead’s ‘You Never Wash

“What an enjoyable challenge to pick a work of genius and try to translate that into my own language.” from their 1994 EP ‘My Iron Lung’, and a song Marika feels was the riskiest of all to tackle. “They’re probably one of the most covered bands in the world, I would imagine.

It’s all about those strange chord progressions and melodies and lyrics,” she says. “A good way of sidestepping that is to go for a deep cut and not go for something a bit more conventional that a lot more people have heard.” The homespun, DIY atmosphere of the track is only enhanced by Marika’s choice to become a persistent interruption to her recording - a testament to the project’s studio-less, improvisational necessity.

MUNA : “They’re the only artist I’ve covered that I know, they’re friends of mine. I didn’t tell them I was doing it, I kept it all quiet until it was mastered. It was after they saw the tracklist that I sent it to them. I believe they like it, which is nice! It makes it sweeter, in a nice, friendly way; it feels nice to be singing the lyrics of someone that I know. I respect them all so much musically, I think they’re such an amazing band, and I fucking love that song. That pre-chorus bit just kills me.”

TRACKLIST • RADIOHEAD - ‘YOU NEVER WASH UP AFTER YOURSELF • THE SHINS - ‘PHANTOM LIMB • AIR - ‘PLAYGROUND LOVE’ • GRIMES - ‘REALITI’ • SHARON VAN ETTEN - ‘JUPITER 4’ • MUNA - ‘PINK LIGHT’ • ELLIOTT SMITH - ‘BETWEEN THE BARS’ • EDITH FROST - ‘TEMPORARY LOAN’ • ALVVAYS - ‘IN UNDERTOW’ • BEYONCÉ - ‘ALL NIGHT’

BEYONCÉ : “Taking on Beyoncé, it’s fucking brave! The challenge with that song for me was always going to be the chorus. That chorus is all about Beyoncé’s voice, that’s the point. She soars above it all, it’s amazing, and I can’t replicate that. No way in hell I’m ever going to even try. So it was a matter of how can I get that expanse? And I love layering up choral voices, so to me that was the natural thing to do.”

Her greatest revelation during the making of ‘Covers’ came, however, when she was preparing to sing The Shins’ ‘Phantom Limb’. “When I was 15, I was obsessed with that song, I would listen to it all the time,” she recalls. “I was looking up the lyrics and found out it was about this secret lesbian romance at a high school. I was like, that is so fucking crazy. I was listening to this as a closeted lesbian at age 15, having it connect really deeply, without actually understanding anything he was saying at any point. It is so relevant to me and it completely makes sense that I was absolutely obsessed with it when I was a kid.”

The phenomenon of inhabiting another artist’s words can be daunting, especially when the subject matter is as personal as it is on Elliott Smith’s ‘Between the Bars’, which he wrote about his own issues with alcoholism. But Marika is clear that it’s not about reinterpreting someone else’s work, but rather celebrating it. “I’ve never felt like I was intruding,” she says. “You’re stepping into someone’s shoes but you’re not deciding to tell their story for them. My aim with a cover is to distil the lyrics and the melody - the song itself - and let that speak the most. It’s more about that channelling of someone else’s message, as opposed to adopting a character. I’m always very careful of that: it’s not my song, they’re not my words, but I can still connect with them and I can still relate to them in a way that hopefully hits with the same kind of impact.”

That impact is keenly felt on her version of Beyoncé’s ‘All Night’, which climaxes with a choir of Marika’s layered vocals to make a dreamy, elegant counterpart to the bombast of the original. She may not categorise ‘Covers’ as her fourth album proper (she points to the fact that it took three months from start to and command of the communicative power of song that has been present in all of her work. Not a bad turnaround for a trip back to your parents, all things considered.

‘Covers’ is out 13th November via Transgressive. DIY

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I

“Hello? Mum? Yeah, you put a red shirt in the wash again…”

to catch hyped Chilean-Norwegian musician Nico Muñoz for a long-overdue natter. The man behind Boy Pablo, it turns out, is a late riser. Stuck in self-isolation at his brother’s apartment in Bergen, the 21-year-old has been taking it easy today, he whispers, so as not to wake the neighbours. “I woke up at like, midday, and I guess I’ve been playing FIFA since then. I play a lot of FIFA...” he shrugs. We’ll give him a pass. Because while his hazy, sun-kissed jangle-pop might sound like the music of a daydreaming stoner, Nico’s no lazybones, having spent the whole of the fantasy video series in the run-up to last month’s stellar concept album ‘Wachito Rico’.

But hold up - how did we get here? Boy Pablo, melancholy indie crooner du jour, has been described as the next Mac DeMarco. He’s got his own fan-made subreddit community dedicated to topics such as ‘how does Boy Pablo do his hair?’, and his three million global monthly Spotify listeners have taken him to stages as far as Brazil, the Philippines, and California. He’s enjoyed a wild three-year ascendency without any kind of major label backing - and with his hotly-anticipated debut further. And yet, you might never even have heard of him.

What’s up with that?

“It was all just luck,” Nico admits, plugging in his PlayStation controller to charge as he sits down for our Zoom chat. After uploading 2017 single ‘Everytime’ to YouTube, the track started worming its way through the video streaming site’s algorithms, popping up at random whenever indie heads across the world forgot to close their browser tabs. This wasn’t something Nico had anticipated. Three years later, in 2020, the video has 34 million plays, and over 70 million streams on Spotify.

history, it’s hard to say that he didn’t deserve a break. “My mum and dad were really poor,” he explains, describing Chilean president Augusto Pinochet when he was just a kid. “We were living in a bad neighbourhood in Chile, and so that we could have a good life.” It wasn’t entirely so that Nico could become an indie heartthrob in his adulthood, though.

“My mum wanted me to be a doctor!” he laughs. But his dad, at least, has been beaming about Boy Pablo’s success. “He was super stoked because I’m basically living his dream.

To this day, he writes down how many streams I have on Spotify so we can see the progress.”

M

oving to Norway wasn’t all plain sailing, however, and

Boy Meets

rainy, coastal Bergen. “I had really shitty friends before I met the band. We went all the way through school until I was 14 or 15 before they just stopped inviting me to parties and everything.” Nico ended up meeting his “brother” - manager and ‘Wachito Rico’ art director Fabio - in church, barely a year later. “I thought he was really, really smart,” the singer laughs. “We hung out every weekend playing ping pong, and then I started making beats, and he was rapping over them.”

The rest of the band fell into place after Nico packed his bags to enrol in boarding school. He recalls sharing a knowing glance with soon-to-be-keyboardist advised by teachers that “this is not a summer camp and we are very strict here”. Before long, Nico’s classmates were “getting suspended for drinking in their dorms” while he and his future bandmates hung out playing soccer, skateboarding, and “playing volleyball completely naked”. “It felt like summer camp,” he notes cheekily. “I was very happy there.”

38 DIYMAG.COM

Having gained a casual 70 million streams for one of his earliest singles, the three years leading up to Nico Muñoz’s debut have been nothing short of spectacular. Now, Boy Pablo is welcoming you into his universe. Words: James Balmont.

“Though I’m writing about difficult things, I try to find a way to make people feel uplifted.”

Fast-forward to 2020 and these golden years have been captured in ‘Wachito Rico’’s video series. Narrated by Tiger King’s Rick Kirkham, and inspired by Tyler, The Creator’s “don’t give a shit” mentality, the visual story that runs through sun-kissed ditties like ‘Rest Up’ and ‘Leave Me Alone!’ are dominated by these rose-tinted larks.

There’s ping pong matches, football, showdowns with “sworn adversary” Nacho and, of course, a dreamy romance between the titular “handsome boy” Wachito

But Wachito Rico - the record, the movie, the man - already does what was heartfelt lyrics weren’t a strong enough indication already, Wachito Rico is Nico’s fantasy alter-ego; a means through which to express his realest feelings. “I don’t want everyone to know what’s going on with my personal life, so that’s how I deal with it,” he says. “It’s hard to write about things like my anxiety, but it feels really good because this way I can set out my emotions and sing them out.”

With nods to ‘60s love songs, summery tropicalia and Nico’s own LatinAmerican heritage popping up throughout, ‘Wachito Rico’ is a concept album and self-consciousness on songs like ‘i hope she loves me back’ and ‘come home’, the album reaches its emotional peak on piano-backed album closer ‘i <3 u’. “It’s really personal to me,” Nico admits. “I was having such a bad time at one point during my teenage years, and this special person rescued me.”

But as much as Nico loves sad songs, the album is, ultimately, about positivity. feel uplifted,” he says. And as he comes to a conclusion, you can’t help but feel the optimism runs right through his blood. “Things don’t always turn out the way you want

s World

‘Wachito Rico’ is out now via 777 Music. DIY

INTERNATIONAL ENERGY Nico and his jet-setting band were sending good vibes all over the globe in the days before the pandemic, but the man’s proudest moment was closer to home: “My absolute favourite show was the one we did in Chile, because my whole family got to see me perform. I hadn’t seen some of them in like ten years.”

“There were a lot of protests in the country last year, so you could feel the anger the people had towards the government. But they turned it into something beautiful that night when they came to see me play. They used their energy to spread this positivity.

“Boy Pablo is a very chill project, really.

But I also take it very seriously because, in moments like this, I know I can in a good way.”

39

One’s a stalwart of the scene, the punk poet of the people - the bard of Salford. One’s the eloquent singer of Ireland’s most literaryminded young chart-botherers.

John Cooper Clarke, meet Grian Chatten. We’ll leave you to it…

Interview: Patrick Clarke. Photos: Emma Swann, Paul Wolfgang Webster, Pip.

poetic D

espite the four decades between them, Fontaines DC frontman Grian Chatten and longstanding punk poet John

language is a living thing that constantly evolves, something to be heard, not read. Bringing the pair together over a scratchy three-way phone line today, they trade asides, quotes and one liners, eager to impress one another. On more than one occasion John threatens, tongue in cheek, to steal Grian’s material.

repaying the compliment, is full of admiration for Fontaines. Steadfastly refusing to invest in a computer or mobile phone, their material was played to him the night before our interview by his daughter, and he beams with the exuberance of the newly-converted.

John Cooper Clarke: If I might start this off, I’m a late convert to your work, Grian! I got hold of your stuff last night and I like your style, the overcoat, the look, the voice, these are all the ingredients to make great records. I hope you won’t be offended when I say there were echoes of the late Mark E. Smith, I mean I don’t mind when people compare me to Alexander Pope…

Grian Chatten, Fontaines DC: I never really get upset about that!

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He’s someone who never had any diminishing returns for me. I never got sick of his work.

John’s poetry?

Grian: I was probably 16 or 17, Carlos [O’Connell, guitarist] from the band showed me your appearance on a late-night chat show in the ‘80s.

It was a similar appeal; it was the guttural energy. I have a sort of soft spot for the accent as well because

license I was born up in Cumbria, a town called Barrow-in-Furness. I can relate it to something that’s homely, and at the same time I can really feel the city and the ship-building town of Barrow.

Not many accents can carry that spectrum of emotion.

John: was Sir Peter O’Sullivan, the racing commentator in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, you can get albums of his famous races. And various menus and random lists.

John: I’d rather sound like you! I can’t believe I’ve still got this accent; I’ve been living in Essex for the last thirty years! I’m gonna have to get a refund from that elocution course I went on.

The reason I won’t let go of my accent is that so many people have told me it’s part of my charm and, for me, the customer is always right!

Grian: I’ve got about four songs which are essentially just lists of lines I’ve written on a night out or something when I’ve had a few pints.

I think they should really all be the beginnings of different songs, and I think I just get lazy and compile them all into one song.

Grian: When we played in Boston, because of the amount of reverence they have for Irish people there, I subconsciously ramped up my Irishness by about 20 percent.

John: What a great idea! There used to be a guy called Moondog, a street singer with a long white beard, he did a book called 100 First Lines. You’re in good company there, Grian. It’s very reassuring when that happens,

In John’s new memoir, there’s a great passage about his early and his mother’s Woman’s Own magazine. How do you think non-

Grian: When you say you hear echoes of different people in what I do, that’s why that doesn’t upset me.

Can either of you remember the

“I’ll tell you when a poem’s dead: when it’s in a book.”

- John Cooper Clarke

41

back together.

Alright then guys, ‘fess up, who stole the last biscuit?

writer?

Grian: I started writing songs when I was about nine years old.

We were living in this bungalow in north County Dublin, about 30 miles outside of the city and I was trying to get my dad to buy me a pack of football stickers. He said if I learnt a poem and recited it to him off by heart, he’d buy me a pack.

So I learned about 15 poems and managed to build the book. That sounds like it was just the rewards system, but it was also the fact that I felt like I was part of the poem. You go into a poem when you learn it off by heart, it becomes part of you.

John: Precisely! I’ll tell you when a poem’s dead: when it’s in a book. I mess about with poems night after night. I dismantle them, put them

John, there’s a sequence in your book about a teacher who organised poetry competitions that were almost like rap battles…

John: It was a tough school. Put it this way, we had our own coroner!

The teacher was Mr Malone, he was a tough guy. After the summer holiday he would always return to school with some fresh injury incurred in some daring outdoor pursuit. He had a glass eye, walked with a bit of a limp, a rugged outdoor type, but he also had this other side to his personality. He was in love with 19th-century poetry and he conveyed this enthusiasm to the rest of the class which became this hothouse of poetic activity. It was all very hormonal, a ‘my vocabulary’s bigger than his’ kind of thing. For about something and became good at it. From then on I thought I could make a living out of it. It’s funny you should mention your dad, Grian, because my dad discouraged this course of action at every opportunity.

He’d say, ‘Name one famous poet that’s ever made a living out of it!’. He did it out of kindness really. He didn’t want to see me mugged off. But he gave me something to prove, like yours did.

Grian: I didn’t like poetry at school, we didn’t have a member of the education system to make it feel like it could be ours, we just had a woman whose voice was so dull that she rendered all the poems blank pages. We’d just sit there and the sound of the bell signalling the next class was the most poetic thing we heard all day. But you don’t have to look as far anymore for it not to seem like an elitist pursuit. I think one of the main reasons I don’t think of it as that anymore is because of people like John.

spirits who’d come before you?

John: I used to live opposite a cinema called the Rialto, and they were showing the Roger Corman starring Vincent Price. It scared the hell out of me, but I became interested in the work of Edgar Allan Poe. I went to the library and got everything Edgar Allan Poe had ever written, then I started reading about his life and I discovered that this poet, Charles Baudelaire had put his own work to one side to translate the entire canon of Edgar Allan Poe into French. Then I checked out Baudelaire, and discovered that he was very urban, a man about town with a fractured take on modern life as they would put it today. He was a modern guy, a city dweller, a bit louche, something to aspire to! The idea of becoming a citizen poet acquired this kind of glamour

42 DIYMAG.COM

that we didn’t have an equivalent of in this country. But what we did have instead was the music hall. All these famous music hall guys were the superstars of their day and they specialised in monologues which blue collar people would pay cash money to witness. I felt, why not me?

In the past, Grian, you’ve spoken writing when working service industry jobs, and in John’s book you were constantly working by day and performing by night. Do the working day?

John: The monotony of machinery is a big help. The sound of a printing machine has this really

“One of the main reasons I don’t think of poetry as an elitist pursuit anymore is because of people like John.”

- Grian Chatten

really helpful in the composition of poetry. That said I was still thinking, ‘I shouldn’t be living like this! I should be living at night!’. I did have a job punching out registration plates that drove me fucking crazy. You wouldn’t believe the decibel level.

Grian: I worked in this awful upmarket clothes shop where I had to sell sunglasses. I was overwhelmed with the knowledge that none of them were worth half of what they were being sold for.

It was just the violent shelving of yourself. When you clock in in the morning, you’re really clocking out, do you know what I mean? I think the person that went missing for those eight hours rushed back in and I got a double dose of myself after. I used to work on receipt paper. It created a really nice sense of impermanence. John, when you’re talking about poems being a living thing and poems never being scraps of paper that I’m never going to read again. I like when something really great is said in conversation and then never said again. That really excites me. It makes it feel like everything good is still in the future.

John: Very well put!

Grian: Both of those things made me develop my own style If I could call it that.

John: You’ve got the style alright, kid!

John Cooper Clarke’s memoir I Wanna Be Yours is out now via Picador. Fontaines DC’s ‘A Hero’s Death’ is out now via Partisan. DIY

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This is the only job I’ve ever wanted to have, and if I didn’t get over this sense of worry, I was going to miss it.”

A

Revolut

44 DIYMAG.COM

Quiet towards his preference for the guitar fostered a certain sense of insecurity and burden. It’s a

With his most recent, Hyundai Mercury Prizewinning album, Michael Kiwanuka offered up his most bold, spectacular record yet. Now, as the year draws to a close, he strange one for us all.

Words: Jenessa Williams.

nonsense chat with his production dream-team of for a new approach.

F

or an artist who has spent a lot of his life wishing he was more like someone else, 2020 has treated Michael Kiwanuka better than most. One of the country’s most consistent singer-songwriters, his third-timelucky Hyundai Mercury Prize win was one that felt record upon which he had truly felt like himself.

“Watching that clip back of my face is so funny, but I genuinely was that surprised!” he laughs. “I just hadn’t factored it in at all - I got told the night before that it was basically between three artists, as everyone else. When Annie Mac said that I’d won, I wasn’t ready! By the time all the interviews shut anyway, so I just had a couple of beers in the hotel room before driving back home. I couldn’t do anything massive within the Rule of Six, but I

You’ve Got Mail

Career success tends to bring all sorts of old friends out of the woodwork, but one piece of congratulatory post was a little more special than most…

come as a bit of a shock to Michael. Humble and unassuming, he’s the type to duck his head at a compliment, never quite trusting that the proverbial rug isn’t about to be pulled out. The moment in anyone’s career where they make a bid

“I got a letter from José Mourinho! I still don’t know what to say about it - I was like ‘Flipping hell, how

throw-out the questions that had long hounded his creative process - what will people make of it? And

day there was a tweet from Tottenham Hotspur, so obviously the people that run the Twitter must have told him that I was a big Spurs fan. I got it through getting framed!”

where I realised that this is the only job I’ve ever wanted to have, and if I didn’t get over this sense of worry, I was going to miss it,” he recalls. “So I just stopped! I just realised that this was the time to spin those things as a celebration. When I stopped going straight to the point of what somebody would think, lyrics and melodies just started to pour out.”

Like most personal epiphanies, the support of friends and family were instrumental to his reclamation of self. The son of Ugandan parents, he grew up in the predominantly

ution

area of Muswell Hill, where regular mispronunciations of his name and racialised bemusement

“Lyrically, stuff like ‘You Ain’t The Problem’ came really soon after a conversation with Brian [Burton, aka Danger Mouse]. We were talking about America, and I remember asking him if he thought the music would be bigger if I had a different name. He said probably, but that if I concentrated on the name rather than trying to avoid it, things might change,” he explains. “I had never thought of it like that - to celebrate your name and history as opposed to dismissing it as nothing. And so from there, that planted the seed for the title, and even the intro to ‘Hero’; ‘I won’t change my name no matter what they call me’. Most people would have just tried to make me feel good or not really answered the question, but Brian really helped me see a way around it.” s a mingling of the personal and the political, ‘KIWANUKA’ is certainly a moment of bittersweet beverage concoction pulped from the lemons of life. Tracks such as ‘Living In Denial’ and ‘Light’ use plump, velvety horns and lingering gospel tones to push for positivity, while the weary-eyed blues of ‘Final Days’

A

Although the majority of the record was written in late 2018, its contents have proven to be strangely prophetic of 2020, a time where even those who do not wish to contend with racial politics have been confronted with the COVID-induced realities of isolation, injustice and fallible humanity.

“It’s not the funnest feeling to read those lyrics back in my notepad and be like, ‘Oh, this is all kind of happening now’,” he says. “When I was writing, I was thinking a lot about racial politics in the ‘70s, but it’s almost like history repeating itself. Even ‘Hero’, it’s a song that’s half about me, and half about Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers. I saw a documentary about him - he was 21 when he died, so to have that level of consciousness and leadership at such a young age, it kind of blew my mind. You can’t even imagine the kind of things he would have gone on to say or do, how many people he would have encouraged or mentored.

“With all the news in America, I’m more of an internal processor, so it can take me a while to articulate what I’m thinking. But with social media, I felt a real pressure to say something, you know? I had to realise that it was normal to grieve a little and feel angry before being able to say things the way you want to. Ultimately, I knew that the conversation would slowly die down and life would just get back to ‘normal’, but I’m glad we had a few weeks to

45

have people listen to us and try to understand. Music is a great way to do that, and I’ve felt lucky that I’ve got that form to express my grievances and sadness.”

record be a dancey one? Maybe!

But even when I think I’ve done it, it always ends up coming out too mellow. I can’t leave the mellowness alone!”

Though Michael often deals with feelings of anger or frustration in his work, the audible results are always undeniably soothing, slotting

In some ways, given the stereotypical perception of the ‘angry Black man’, Michael’s commitment to calm is one of the most radical displays of selfownership that one could imagine - a powerful reminder that blackness

category. Does he ever get fed up with being labelled as this kind of inoffensive entity?

“I mean, most of the time I like it, because it’s true,” he smiles.

“Growing up both listening to music and making it, I’ve always gone to it as a type of therapy, an almost healing feeling. In my head that always means some sense of peace and rest, and that’s the music I’m always trying to make, even if it has a harder message to it.

“You’ll always have moments where you come across a favourite artist and go, ‘Oh, I wish I could sound like that’, but it always ends up coming out how you are. I wish I could sound as clear and concise as Kendrick Lamar, or create music that makes you want to move but doesn’t come across too cheesy – someone like Steve Lacy from The Internet. Could my next

46 DIYMAG.COM

of ways. As an award-winning album of the year, ‘KIWANUKA’ makes it clear that you don’t always have to shout the loudest to be heard - often the most long-lasting messages are the ones that are communicated through patient, rational means.

“I just hope it’s a record that says to be proud of who you are,” he says.

“To really celebrate it, and to be excited that you’re alive. You know?

It really is a gift and you only get one use of it, so enjoy it, man. Other people are always going to try and beat that out of you - don’t be the one to make their job easier.”

‘KIWANUKA’ is out now via Polydor. DIY

SPENDING SPREE 25K is a lot of money - how is Michael going to spend his Mercury-won cash?

“It’s all still a bit new, but I would love to have a studio of my own. I’ve always wanted that and for the music I like to make that involves a lot of equipment, it’s never been cheap.

I’d love to make a new record by next year too. Obviously it was harder because of early lockdown, but there are ways to safely get into studios and collaborate now, especially while we don’t know when gigs will be able to come back. I don’t know

Mouse again - the third record in our trilogy...”

When I was writing, I was thinking a lot about racial politics in the ‘70s, but it’s almost like history repeating itself.”

t

Get DIY delivered to your door every month diymag.com/ subscribe

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47

“[These days], people are more able to question things that are going on in the punk scene and demand better.”

- Steph Phillips 48 DIYMAG.COM

London punks Big Joanie have been tipped by every artist in the scene worth their salt. Now, it’s time for the wider world to get to know them, too. Words: Gemma Samways. Photos: Dan Kendall.

If you’ve any interest in feminist punkrock whatsoever,

odds on Big Joanie are already your favourite band’s new favourite band. Consider the evidence: in the past couple of years alone, the London-based trio have been personally selected to open for Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, The Raincoats and Gossip, not to mention the fact they released their 2018 debut ‘Sistahs’ through Thurston Moore’s imprint, Daydream Library, recently recorded a live session for Jack White’s Third Man Records, and are booked to support IDLES next year. Now, they’re following in the footsteps of many of their heroes by signing a US deal with legendary Portland indie Kill Rock Stars, with their second album currently due sometime in 2021.

If it all feels like too much of a dream trajectory, it’s worth remembering that Big Joanie have more than paid their dues. “People act like we’re some sort of new band that’s sprung out of nowhere,” lead singer and guitarist Steph Phillips chuckles today, sat with her bandmates outside a pub in North London.

“But actually we’ve been playing and writing and releasing music for seven years.”

Since then, the trio have established themselves as an indispensable force on London’s DIY scene, not

Ronettes, but through their activism too. Steph and Estella both help run Decolonise Fest - an annual, for punks of colour. With COVID restrictions still in place, this year’s instalment took place online, an experience that Steph describes as “a big learning curve” but “really positive.”

“Because it was all online it meant that we could invite more bands from other countries to participate,” she continues. “It felt quite comforting to hear from other people who have grown up in a different country but still have had quite similar experiences to you. And at a time where people feel quite isolated in lockdown, it was nice to still be able to have the connection that we’d usually have with Decolonise Fest.”

To what extent do they feel

“It’s been an old school trajectory, really, where you’re just playing and playing and playing,” percussionist Chardine Taylor-Stone agrees, before Steph takes over again. “But then, I don’t think we would have ever been one of those hyped bands that came from nowhere because we’re not the kind of band that the industry would necessarily want to hype. When we formed there wasn’t that much conversation about race in music, or even much talk about politics and things like Black Lives Matter.

So [the fact we did] wouldn’t have been a selling quality.”

B

ig Joanie have existed since 2013, when Steph put out a call on social media for female-identifying punks of colour to join her in forming a band. Chardine was the

at a Black, feminist, consciousness-raising group, with the line-up completed by original bassist Kiera Coward-Deyell. Kiera then left in 2017 to move to Scotland and was replaced by Estella Adeyeri, also of Charmpit. Their debut show was at a squat in Hackney as part of First-Timers Fest, an initiative providing a platform for bands featuring novice

shows, we see older Black women in the audience who’ve been into punk for years and it’s almost like, by coming to see us, they’re coming home. It’s like,

musicians and people from marginalised identities

during their tenure, if at all?

“I think the formation of Big Joanie coincided with a wider understanding of what blackness could be, because it was around that time that there were more conversations about race and intersectionality,” Steph says.

“As we’ve gone on, things have naturally changed, and people are more able to question things that are going on in the punk scene and demand better. It changing quite steadily, which is really, really good because before it was really frustrating for a long time.”

“And in general there’s a broader acceptance, not just in terms of being Black in a predominantly white scene, but also within our own community around liking the music that we like. When I was younger it was very much like, ‘Oh Chardine likes white music,’ even though I would literally be listening to Bad Brains. Now people are a lot more open about how diverse their tastes are.”

BIG JOANIE’S BIGGEST FANS The band’s Chardine Taylor-Stone talks us through some of their more famous followers.

Thurston Moore role to us, because he’s been in the industry for a very long time, so he can spot bullshit. And having been in Sonic Youth, he understands the punk culture we come from.”

Kathleen Hanna “We were in our dressing room and we could hear her doing her vocal warm ups. And it’s like, OK, it’s not just an accident she’s where she is: she’s an amazing performer with a big voice.”

IDLES “I think the recent IDLES backlash isn’t really about IDLES. It’s projection. You say you want political bands and that everyone should recognise their privilege, and then when they do, you’re going to have a go at them and say that they’re not doing enough?

I think people just need to get a grip, really.”

That diversity is further displayed in the band’s choice of covers, which have included a brilliantly combative live version of ‘No Scrubs’ and a powerfullysparse take on Solange’s ‘Cranes In The Sky’, which they had the rare honour of releasing via Third Man in August. There’s plenty more new music in the pipeline too. In November, they’ll be making their debut for Kill Rock Stars with a split 7” with Charmpit, before retreating to the studio to continue work on LP2, which was started during their recent artist residencies in Gateshead and Margate. So, what can we expect from the record?

“We love artists like Kate Bush and PJ Harvey,” Chardine smiles. “Artists who think of an album as a complete piece of work, rather than a series of songs that they play live. We always want to make sure that we’re growing musically, and not just thought of as being a ‘one-two-three-go!’ band.” We can safely say there’s no chance of that.

‘Kluster Room Sessions’ split 7” is out 27th November via Kill Rock Stars. DIY

Chardine continues: “I don’t ever think of us creating a scene around us, but then I sometimes forget we do represent that for a lot of people. When we play

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Broth

s r e

Heading into their 20th anniversary as a band - and following The Cribs

T

he world was a very different place when The Cribs formed back in 2001.

The internet was still in its formative state, social media was but a glint in Tom from Myspace’s eye, and plugging in a guitar was a way of life that came with its own distinct codes.

“In 2001, making recordings was lie and book ourselves into the local college’s studio because there was no digital recording or laptops

50 DIYMAG.COM

or anything. Our world view was extremely narrow; we were recording things on four-tracks and sending things out in jiffy bags. It does make it seem like a different world that we were living in,” muses Gary Jarman, as he and his brothers prepare to head into their 20th year as a band.

“Our value system was forged in something that nobody cares about or recognises any more,” Ryan picks up. “The whole not selling out thing - we’d purposefully turn things down because it didn’t align with our value system, and that’s something that people don’t even think about [anymore].” Gary nods:

“Young bands don’t have anything like the hang ups we used to in the old days, and we were seen as being dogmatic for having that attitude, but nowadays that’s not a thing. It’s very common to see a video of your favourite artist, even if they’re cool, thanking Apple or doing an advert and nobody bats an eyelid. Whereas in the world we were from, that band would have been, to quote Bill Hicks, ‘off the artistic register’ at that point…”

Having fully-embodied the DIY punk rock ethos from the off - whether spouting off against the fakes across ‘The New Fellas’ or turning down

appearances on Top of the Pops so they wouldn’t have to cancel a tiny gig - you would assume that the Jarmans (completed by drummer Ross) would not be ones to taking nature of modern life in 2020.

And yet, in the run up to eighth album ‘Night Network’, The Cribs seem to have found their niche among it all.

Setting up a phone-in fan hotline, sharing behind-the-scenes clips and loading the record’s ‘70s-tinged aesthetic with playful headlines (‘Brothers in pop, keeping it real’ states one poster), they may not Gary wryly notes, but it does seem

Arm s

in Well, now then, mardy bum…

their hardest two years yet - ‘Night Network’ world in a little more as a result. Words: Lisa Wright. like a less guarded band coming to the table this time than ever before.

“Punk rock guilt is not a factor in the modern age and we acknowledge and accept that,” he continues, “so we’ve been less reticent to engage with people directly ‘cause that’s the modern world.”

through the ringer over the last two years, nearly losing the rights to their entire back catalogue and coming close to calling time on the group entirely, the sense of perspective and self-acceptance gained from coming out the other side has shown they’ve really got nothing left to prove.

Partly, the shift seems to have come as a result of the particular isolation born from this strangest of years; “being forced to be creative with how you engage with people has forced us out of our shell,” Gary explains. But partly, you sense the change has come from something deeper - that, having been put

“Because we were removed from the band a little bit, we could see it from the outside and in a retrospective way, and it reinforced how important it was to us,” Ryan nods. “Getting your catalogue back, you get this holistic view on everything you’ve done and everything you are. It allowed us to really see what was

good and special about the band,” Gary continues. “We fought tooth and nail to get our history back and it made us really value it.” hile the backstory to The Cribs’ latest is one rooted in shady industry manoeuvres and undoubtedly the hardest time the trio have ever faced as a musical unit, the silver lining comes from the enforced period of

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“We feel more like a family that plays music than a band that happens to be related - there’s a

a result, ‘Night Network’ lands as two decades in the game. Written recorded in the studio born from

- Ryan

Jarman 51

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We fought tooth and nail to get our history back and it made us really - Gary Jarman

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Speaks Your Name’ both arrive as unguarded, Ryan-helmed musings on love’s pains and pleasures;

“Young bands don’t have anything like the hang ups we used to in the old - Gary

Jarman Hanging On The Telephone The Jarmans haven’t just been busy readying a record, they’ve also been sporadically manning the Night Network hotline, and while they’re at it…

Gary: “We’re normally quite private but the fact that we feel quite isolated and so does everyone else, it was really nice to engage with people on the hotline. This situation is a great leveller in a lot of ways so everyone empathises with each other.

Sometimes it would be shy people [calling] who didn’t expect to get through and just wanted to talk about lyrics and songs, and sometimes it was people down the pub who were calling up to see what would happen and get a bit boisterous. And then sometimes it would just be chatting to people about their personal connections, how they’ve met friends through the band; people would tell you stories about how they felt like part of a community via the band, so it was really personally gratifying in a lot of ways.”

the success of their most beloved teenage heroes and featuring a song (‘Screaming In Suburbia’) have ever co-written lyrics on the same track, it’s an album steeped in personal history.

“Mine and Gary’s teenage years were pretty much spent in our bedrooms watching Nirvana videos,” grins Ryan, turning his attention to the album’s unlikely godfather, “so when Dave [Grohl] invited us out to the studio, it gave us some incentive to keep ploughing forward. His place is basically a Nirvana and Foo Fighters museum with a studio in it. I don’t think we took that [opportunity] lightly at all.”

“The biggest bit of Foo Fighters merch was the Foo Fighters actually being there themselves; they were just wandering in and out all the time,” recalls Ross. “It got to the point where me and the engineer would be hoping that Taylor Hawkins DIDN’T show up because if he did it’d just mean him and Gary and Ryan would end up wasting four hours of the session geeking out about Queen trivia.”

However if a slice of punk history acted as the much-needed carrot to keep the trio going through their period of behind-the-scenes hell, then it’s the Jarmans’ own past and the album. Where, on early Cribs records, the differences between the brothers were noticeable - the aggressive, spitball tracks almost always led by Ryan; the more melodic moments usually by Gary - on ‘Night Network’, the pair seem more cohesive than ever. ‘Deep Infatuation’ and ‘The Weather

Into You’ - an immediate direct hit that lands straight into the premier league of their all-time catalogue, while ‘Never Thought I’d Feel Again’

“It’s ironic because we’ve been apart for longer than we’ve ever been apart, but the reason why the album turned out as it did is because we’ve never now,” explains Gary. “When we lost our team and had to work to get our catalogue back, we realised that we can only really depend on each other, so when we were writing the album we were coming at it from this place of being completely single-minded as to what we wanted to achieve because we had to coalesce. We had to really pull together.

“We wouldn’t have put ourselves through the last 18 months if we weren’t family. The odds were too high,” he continues. “It’s easy to walk away as an individual because you can’t handle dealing with it, but when it’s a family thing you’ll never be able to outrun it - it’d be like a ghost that haunts you forever.” ith guitar music’s most famous brothers providing a none-too-positive, Gallagher-shaped blueprint of what it means to be siblings in a band, the reality for Gary, Ryan and Ross still clearly couldn’t be further away from that idea. Much like the attitude that always kept them from prioritising fame and its trappings in the beginning, the three have always, says Ryan “put [their] relationship as brothers at the top”. “Ultimately we feel more like a family that plays music than a band that happens to be related - there’s a difference between it,” he continues, as Gary picks up: “We went through something of an existential crisis with each other, so when we were writing we were 100% focused. What makes us guys good

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and pulling together; the closer we are, the better the end results are.”

Eight albums and two decades in, with basically all of their original peers having fallen by the wayside, The Cribs somehow sound more invigorated and in love with being in a band than ever. Having nearly lost so much, they’ve had the metaphorical

treadmill of making an album, going on tour, making an album, going on tour. We were put in the position where we thought we might not be able to make a record again, so when we did get to do it we really didn’t take it for granted at all,” enthuses Ryan. “We were doing everything ourselves: we produced it ourselves, we funded it ourselves because we

weren’t on a label at the time, so it just felt like we were making a record because we desperately wanted to make a record.”

And with their socially-distanced album launch shows selling out in literally 21 seconds, it’s clear that surge of love is reciprocated too.

Having grown and adapted, but with their core values as unwavering as ever, in 2020, The Cribs are still the outliers - UK indie’s most beloved underdogs. Just now, having fought the powers and come out on top, and having outlasted almost everyone by merit of truly being in it for the right reasons, it turns out sometimes the underdogs really do win.

“We never cared about fashion trends, obviously, and by extension we never cared about musical trends, which is a good thing because some bands who made records that were so perfect for those moments sound so bad now,” Gary ponders.

“It dates so badly, but we’ve never really changed that much in terms of our viewpoint and our ideology in 20 years.” “That’s why it’s always a negative thing to be part of a trend, record now and to me it wouldn’t sound like a record from 20 years ago. I would think it could exist in any time, and in a lot of ways that’s what we’ve always been trying to do,” Ryan grins, a twinkle coming into his eye.

“Just write stuff that’s timeless…”

‘Night Network’ is out 20th November via Sonic Blew / PIAS. DIY

SOCIALLYDISTANCED ROCK STAR SHIT This month, The Cribs are heading to London for a couple of shows [at least at the time of going to press COVID Ed] that are set to be a long stretch away from their usual sweaty mosh pits. What should we expect?

Gary: “Doing Etihad Stadium or the main stage at Reading is the same for us as doing a small show in a record shop; we’ve always said it makes absolutely no difference to how we play.

Will we get the same visceral feeling of having the crowd in your face? Probably not. But we’ll play it exactly the same and our approach doesn’t change.

We don’t rely on strobe lights or fancy lighting or stage dressing, so it’ll be the exact same gig, the only variable is the crowd.”

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r e v i One of these is a timeless, mythical creature who brings joy with their very presence. The other is a unicorn.

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e w s

Unapologetically giddy good vibes.

KYLIE Disco

(BMG)

Madonna may have snapped up the title of pop’s original chameleon long ago, but over her four-decade career, Kylie Minogue has proven herself more than capable of pulling some unexpected tricks of her own. From literal Neighbour next door beginnings, later came mid-’90s Indie Kylie, complete with Nick Cave (‘Where The Wild Roses Grow’) and Manic Street Preachers (‘Some Kind of Bliss’) collaborations; Futuristic Kylie circa 2001’s all-conquering career reinvention ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’, and even Country Kylie on 2018’s most recent, Tennessee-recorded effort ‘Golden’.

But throughout it all, what Kylie Minogue has always done best is the kind of cynicism-free, pure pop that few can match her on.

Bottle the gleeful energy during the singer’s 2019 Glastonbury legends slot, and you’d have an antidepressant stronger than any professional medic can prescribe; full of twirling, pastel-hued dancers, glitter explosions and a full-on fake wedding scene, it was an hour of unapologetically giddy good vibes and it’s with this spirit in mind that the pop icon’s 15th studio album ‘DISCO’ arrives.

In some ways, despite its evident ‘70s and ‘80s throwback leanings (the smears of powder blue eyeshadow on the cover should latest still manages to savvily read the room of the current popscape. Rather than purely aligning itself with the artists of yore, ‘DISCO’ is, you sense, just as indebted to Dua Lipa’s recent

reinvention of them on ‘Future Nostalgia’ as anything else (‘Real Groove’ in particular comes in like the PG cousin of Dua’s ‘Hallucinate’). But where Dua put a slick, sassy, 2020 coat on her references, Kylie being Kylie isn’t afraid to lean into the camper side of proceedings.

of strings, is sort of like if Boney M and RuPaul teamed up for a space references); recent single ‘Say Something’ bubbles along like a gleaming advert for an all-inclusive beach holiday, while ‘I Love It’ is perfectly-produced, shimmering Minogue 101. If ‘Monday Blues’, with its “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, it’s the weekend” motif, is a little too basic for even Kylie to really sell, then she makes up for it on highlight ‘Where Does The DJ Go?’ - all well-placed handclaps and the kind of pure pop E-numbers that call to mind her own 1990 banger ‘Step Back In Time’. If she doesn’t release closer ‘Celebrate You’ as a Christmas single, meanwhile, she’ll have missed a trick.

The whole package comes imbued with the kind of brightness, positivity and joy that the singer’s been preaching for 40 years now. And if ‘DISCO’ might not be the most progressive or groundbreaking album of the year, it’s certainly up there as one of the most charming. In other hands, these tracks would almost certainly veer into the saccharine, but helmed by pop’s most lovable stalwart, you can’t help but crack a smile. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Where Does The DJ Go?’, ‘Supernova’, ‘Real Groove’

made, impromptu energy.

The Beck-featuring ‘The Valley Of The Pagans’ is a slinky disco stomp

GORILLAZ Song Machine: Season One - Strange Timez

(Parlophone)

‘Song Machine’, Gorillaz’s project which has slowly been revealing itself via a web series, is immortalised One: Strange Timez’. While the framing of seasons and episodes is usually exclusive to the TV medium, they’ve never been one for form.

In fact, the wildly successful group have thrived from wrestling out of any mould they’ve been mashed into right from the start when they emerged 20 years ago.

The initial idea of the ‘Song Machine’ project was to record a song and put it out one at a time. With this ‘make it up as you go along’ attitude in its stride, which can spell trouble more often than not, ‘Strange Timez’ stands its ground in the chaos of 2020. While recording became socially-distanced a few songs in, the

fun at the disciples of internet fads and Instagram posers; “in the valley where you wake up every beautiful day in a world you create where your image is golden”, he sings through a dusty mic. Later, ‘Chalk Tablet Towers’ summons a restless spirit in amongst sparkling synths as Damon and St Vincent howl “I wanna get drunk / I wanna get stoned / I wanna be loved / I wanna go home” in unison ringing out like the four stages of lockdown isolation.

‘The Pink Phantom’, ‘Aries’ and ‘Friday 13th’ make for a wonderfully melancholic mid-section, the former unravelling like a kaleidoscopic fever dream - “I tried to get to Atlanta on a peach blossom highway,” Elton John sings in a ghoulish cadence.

There are plenty of experiments documents the lineage of its own creation, its demo-quality beginnings cut up with Damon’s notes to the studio engineers until it blooms assembling before your very ears. him inhabiting the perspective of the fabled arcade legend - “I’m a mad Pacman living in a levelled world”, he declares.

Often Gorillaz records fall victim to feeling a little disjointed but with many moods and gargantuan guests here, Damon somehow manages to make ‘Strange Timez’ feel like a cohesive whole. Gorillaz can often be a hard band records haven’t always fared well in the context they’re released in - in 2020 though, it all makes perfect sense. (Sean Kerwick) LISTEN: ‘Chalk Tablet Towers’

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SUNDARA KARMA Kill Me (Chess Club)

“There’s so much going on,” says Oscar Pollock of the songs here - the Sundara Karma frontman is not wrong.

Teaming up with Clarence Clarity, it might be the producer’s stellar work on Rina Sawayama’s debut that’s caught most ears, but it’s the co-conspirator’s

Sundara’s knack for a hook, and love of a big chorus is what keeps ‘Kill Me’ from descending into total chaos. On one hand, there’s the relatively straightforward title track; the other, the effects-laden ‘O Stranger’ which, without context

nous to stay on track. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘Lifelines’

LITTLE MIX Confetti (RCA)

If a Talent TV contest in their name wasn’t enough to on the other side of the judging table. Nine years on from their X Factor triumph, their steady ascent is something of an anomaly - not only are they Britain’s best girl group, they’re pretty much the only one left. With that open goal in mind, ‘Confetti’ feels like a proper bid for world domination, front-loaded with strong, Americanised R&B. ‘Sweet Melody’ feels particularly TikTok-ready, a K-Popfriendly trap beat underpinning their always-impeccable harmonies. ‘Confetti’ and ‘Rendezvous’ are the stuff of pure early-‘00s compilation bangers, the sort that demand big-budget music videos that you can act out in your bedroom when nobody is watching. Like always, Little Mix shine best when they’re deep in their millennial sass. Never shy about breaking a fourth wall in the name of female

“I don’t do what Simon says / Get the message ‘cause it’s read”. Softening any true vitriol with a big sunny chorus, the gratitude that has brought them this far remains clear; ‘If I’m a guilty pleasure / I want this life forever’. Jesy, Jade, Perrie and Leigh-Anne - we have no choice but to stan. (Jenessa Williams) LISTEN: ‘Not A Pop Song’

Britain’s best girl group.

A study in elegance in the face of adversity.

THE CRIBS Night Network (Sonic Blew / PIAS)

The last Cribs record felt like the closing of a chapter, and it

cryogenically frozen on the back burner while the trio turned their attentions elsewhere. By the time they made it back to Chicago, they chose to make the return to their roots a wholesale one, playing a host of intimate residencies in support of the album. Afterwards, they were ready to turn a new leaf. The possibilities seemed endless.

band of brothers plunged into legal hell over the rights to their back catalogue and, accordingly, taking an enforced leave of absence that was deeply out of character. Only a chance suggestion by Dave Grohl that they decamp to his Los Angeles base to work on new material made ‘Night Network’ possible, and what’s so striking about it is they could so easily have turned in a febrile, furious punk reaction to what’s been a nightmare couple of years.

Instead, this is the sound of The Cribs putting their best foot forwards, a poprock masterclass that picks up where ‘For All My Sisters’ left off. Like heroes Nirvana, the Jarmans have always been strongest when they were writing hugely melodic, hook-driven tracks that were then dressed up as something noisier and scuzzier - ‘Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever’ the obvious case in point - and they return to that framework in earnest here, particularly on freewheeling lead single ‘Running Into You’ and the brilliantly catchy ‘Deep Infatuation’.

There are, though, signs that they’ve been through the wringer. ‘Night Network’ navigate crises of emotion and identity on ‘Never Thought I’d Feel Again’ and ‘I Don’t Know Who I Am’, the wistful romanticism of ‘Under the Bus Station Clock’ or - most crucially - the album’s standout, ‘Earl & Duke’, a gorgeously low-key paean to quiet heartbreak.

It’s a stirring reminder not just of what we’ve been missing, but what we would have lost, had they thrown in the towel during what was evidently a testing period for them. Thank god they didn’t - ‘Night Network’, far from being the exercise in kicking and screaming that it might have been, is instead a study in elegance in the face of adversity. The Cribs are back. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Earl & Duke’

10/10 would post-holiday quarantine with this lot.

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JAMES BLAKE Before (Polydor)

That the sleeve for ‘Before’ features James Blake’s

four-track is the post-club, DJ deep-dive side of James Blake; the closest to a wistful piano ballad on show is closer ‘Summer of Now’ - and with a title like that, who can blame him. Heady vibes are largely the order of the day (or night), with opener ‘I Keep Calling’ a slow-burning earworm, and ‘Before’ lightly hinting at euphoria before ‘Do You Ever’ emerges with a creeping hook. World-changing? Probably not. But for a pleasant stop-gap release, James Blake delivers. (Bella Martin) LISTEN: ‘Before’

DIZZEE RASCAL

E3 AF (Island)

The warped holler of hit ‘Bonkers’ was once pumped out everywhere, a blast of chart-scaling bombast that saw Dizzee Rascal at his most relaxed, six years following the raw Mercury Prize-winning ‘Boy in da Corner’.

Two albums since his late-’00s peak, number seven from the Bow-born artist shows no sign of skipping moments and the partially pop-fused strain that cemented his rise. Harsh on ‘E3 AF’, as they did on ‘Raskit’,

THE SMASHING PUMPKINS

HAT’S THE WAY TO DO IT

For a band like the Smashing Pumpkins, releasing an album with a twenty-strong track listing feels more like business as usual than something out of the ordinary; what was arguably more shocking was previous effort ‘Shiny and Oh So Bright Vol 1…’’s comparatively shorter run time. But while the quartet ran things more concisely back in 2018, the album’s follow-up

Ol’ Billy C’s headgear follows a hallowed tradition of rock legends (and, er, people who also happen to play music) donning iconic titfers.

Cyr (Sumerian)

1995’s ‘Mellon Collie’… - more than makes up for lost time.

In fact, ‘Cyr’ is a sprawling, meandering beast that’s all too easy to get lost within. While this new version of Smashing Pumpkins may still boast three of the band’s founding members, sonically they’ve continued their departure into realms that feel worlds away from their grungedup roots. Gnarly knots of guitars have been swapped for slick synths and electronic beats, with the record feeling shinier, and less organic than the albums that made their name. And, granted, it’s refreshing to see that the band aren’t content to solely focus on nostalgia trips, and there are some great moments here - the dark driving force of ‘Wyttch’ stands out - but with to really tap into the heart of ‘Cyr’. (Sarah Jamieson) LISTEN: ‘Wyttch’

MATTY HEALY

The more cynical among us could suggest the 1975’s chief antagonist might have donned sell thousands of the things.

He certainly wasn’t fooling any carrots…

PHARRELL WILLIAMS

The talk of the 2014 Grammys and a staple in the producer’s wardrobe since, fashion buffs might bang on about it being a Vivienne Westwood replica of one of her ‘80s designs, we’re still wondering… what did he keep in there?

HARRY STYLES

At time of writing we’re mere hours from the debut of his effort, but like everything this particular superstar does, it’s already iconic.

MAC DEMARCO

One of the more basic numbers, Mac’s dedication to the humble dad cap knows no bounds. Not least because he’s almost never seen without it. Perhaps it’s in homage to…

FRED DURST

stark shifts in tone. Simmering vibes layer ‘L.L.L.L (Love Life Live Large)’, teaming up with rapper Chip on what represents the most accessible of the ten tracks, while ‘Body Loose’ strikes a warmer, more R&B-leaning stride. An urge to stray beyond the grime moniker persists, with a dexterity that supports the feverish ‘You Don’t Know’; personal identity forms the focus of ‘Eastside’, tackling a sense of beginnings and belonging.

Dizzee remains in touch with the youthful verve of earlier efforts with ‘E3 AF’, a freshness that, for the most part, is carried throughout. (Chris Hamilton-Peach) LISTEN: ‘You Don’t Know’

TIÑA

Positive Mental Health Music (Speedy Wunderground)

To sound both retro and relevant is incredibly hard. Lean too heavily on the past and homage can become imitation, don’t go far enough and you end up being nothing more than a pub rocker in a paisley shirt. It’s Mental Health Music’ manages to land on the right side. Opener ‘Buddha’ sways you into a lowkey frenzy, ’60s keyboards humming along like a particularly wild Sunday afternoon, preparing you for what’s to Age’ prove that there’s more to psych than acid trips and stacked pedal boards. Cleaner-than-clean guitars mix with unnerving vocals to create a disturbingly magical atmosphere,

If you can believe there was a time when red caps meant only the terror of someone’s mega-hit ‘Rollin’’ and not the terror of, well, just about anything.

JOHNNY BORRELL fortune to have no idea who Razorlight ever were (oh how we envy you) but they still might recognise this monstrosity from the endless memes it generated. Yes, it’s real.

album gets a bit too twee for its own good (‘Rooster’, we’re looking at you), on the whole Tiña have managed to create a debut record that quietly paves the way for modern psychedelic pop, and not a loud shirt in sight. (Jack Doherty) LISTEN: ‘I Feel Fine’

PICK of the POPS on p12, among the mire that has been 2020, there have been some Pretty Damn Good records released. What’s been our - and some DIY regulars’ - favourites?

SARAH JAMIESON, MANAGING EDITOR Hayley Williams Petals for Armor A bold but vulnerable portrait of her own journey as a woman, there’s something so empowering about the alchemy of this album that it keeps me coming back time and time again.

DANA MARGOLIN, PORRIDGE RADIO NNAMDÏ - BRAT choosing favourites, but I keep coming back to this album this year and it seems like the obvious choice. It hits really perfectly for me, I can listen to it in any mood and I love Nnamdi’s production.

It’s emotional and intelligent and serious and funny.

EMMA SWANN, FOUNDING EDITOR Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia

Is there a more perfect album in the history of all time? Probably not. Arriving just as the lethargy hit, ‘Future Nostalgia’ has proved the only palpable counter to the misery 2020 has wrought, and is the only record released this year I’ve returned to again and again. With more bangers than most will ever manage, Dua’s a pop visionary.

CATRIN VINCENT, ANOTHER SKY Julianna Barwick Healing Is A Miracle I found this at the perfect time. When life gets too intense, you don’t need words, you need an experimental, distorted choir to soundtrack the unexplainable abyss inside you. Though the textures and chords are constantly moving, the record itself feels both motionless and timeless. I needed to sit still and ‘Healing Is A Miracle’ made me.

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WILL JOSEPH COOK

Something To Feel Good About (Bad Hotel)

Three years on since debut ‘Sweet Dreamer’ cemented him as many a teenager’s summer soundtrack, Will Joseph Cook is back with ‘Something To Feel Good About’, a

PA SALIEU

Send Them to Coventry (Warner) The giant pause button that was pressed as spring took hold could be argued to have affected Pa Salieu more than most; the Coventry rapper was fast-rising to be one of the UK’s most prominent new stars, with January’s ‘Frontline’ one of 1Xtra’s most-played tracks this year. ‘Send Them To Coventry’ is, then, a delayed release - but that isn’t likely to temper the impact the mixtape will have. Imbued throughout with a fusion of Pa’s Gambian heritage, and life growing up in Coventry (“COV,

lyrically-uncompromising rumination on the joy found in Black life - and the racism it faces, while the Mahalia-featuring ‘Energy’ ends the record on an optimistic note with probably the most straightforward hooks on show. There’s still time to get excited about this one. (Bella Martin) LISTEN: ‘B***K’

tracks like the punchy ‘Driverless Cars’ and the delicate ‘21’ showing turbulent times, the latter seeing him question what he’s doing with the lyrics:“I don’t know anyone who’s 21 and knows how to feel.” But, some stuff out, he still knows exactly how to make an irresistible indie-pop bop. With his visual lyrics and penchant for extremely catchy melodies, opener ‘Be Around Me’ has already become a TikTok viral hit, and sunshine soaked ‘10X MORE FUN’ and penultimate track ‘Where Is My Heart?’ are particular earworms, bound to get the viral treatment soon. A fun-packed thought-provoking 12 tracks, Will has but we get the feeling he’s not quite done yet. (Elly Watson) LISTEN: ‘Be Around Me’

SALEM

Salem (Roadrunner) We all know the story by now: 2020 has offered up all manner of unexpected events. But one that’s arguably more pleasant than most is the emergence of Salem, the new project from Creeper’s Will Gould. A collaboration with Will’s friend and Creeper guitar tech Matt Reynolds - which originally began life as a way to blow off steam and have some fun - the duo’s debut EP is a welcome dalliance with the punk rock bands that so inform Will’s day job. High octane from the off, day punk music and then some; opener ‘Fall Out Of Love’’s gang vocals feel glorious while ‘Doomed (For Each Other)’ is an adrenaline-fuelled offering that

melodies here - there’s something rather comforting about hearing the frontman return to his roots, even if it technically wasn’t ever supposed to see the light of day. (Sarah Jamieson) LISTEN ‘Destroy Me’

Richly nuanced, effortlessly cool and beautifully bleak.

BABEHEAVEN

Home for Now (AWAL)

The chemistry that was hinted at on Babeheaven’s previous releases has really been brought to the fore on this debut LP. Full of glitchy trip hop, soulful alt-pop and understated electronica, there are echoes of bands such as Cocteau Twins and Massive Attack here, but ‘Home for Now’ shares as much, if not more, in common with more contemporary acts such as Woman’s Hour. Opener ‘November’ sets the tone perfectly; heady and hypnotic, its sharp, crisp percussion is the perfect tether for Nancy Andersen’s otherworldly vocal delivery. It’s something that continues throughout the course of the record, with tracks such as ‘In My Arms’, or ‘Swimming Up River’ exhibiting a quiet melancholy harboured by not just the duo, but by London. As such, ‘Home for Now’ doesn’t feel like the most optimistic of records. Nor however, does it feel dour. Pieced together over lockdown, there was every chance that what resulted could have been cloying, and claustrophobic. Instead it feels lush and spacious, allowing the tracks, and indeed the band’s chemistry, room to breathe, to evolve. Richly nuanced, effortlessly cool and at times beautifully bleak, ‘Home for Now’ feels like the of uncertainty. (Dave Beech) LISTEN: ‘November’

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PICKof thePOPS LISA WRIGHT, FEATURES EDITOR Sorry - 925

At once sleazy and sweet, idiosyncratic yet also riddled with earworms, Sorry’s debut is one that I’ve returned to over and over again throughout this year.

Full of the sort of subtle, strange moments that go in directions you’d never predict, ‘925’ proved itself equally good for miserable solo headphone walks and blasting out loud and grotty. I’ve got a feeling it might make sense as winter edges in even more.

ORLANDO WEEKS Protomartyr Ultimate Success Today

It has been a companion through the hard times and the good. If ‘it’ were a person and I didn’t have a family, I would happily hunker down with ‘it’ in a generously stocked cliff-top bothy and see out this next lockdown.

ELLY WATSON, DIGITAL EDITOR Charli XCX - how i’m feeling now While the rest of us were wondering what the fuck to do having binge-watched the

Charli XCX was creating a real-time lockdown album, full of the emotional highs and lows she was experiencing moulded into huge pop bangers that further cemented her title as an experimental (and super hard working) pop queen. We have to stan.

HARRISON SWANN, TALK SHOW Working Men’s Club Working Men’s Club with attitude, intellect, and some big hooks thrown in for good measure. It’s Northern dance music, without any of that faff. Plus there’s a track named after the Bard of Salford himself, Dr John Cooper Clarke. What’s not to like. Play it loud.

LOUISE MASON, ART DIRECTOR Moonchild Sanelly, Nüdes Wildly forward, aggressively positive, and a chorus that only has the word penis in it, loads of times.

I listened to ‘Weh Mameh’ for about a week on loop. Darkly addictive pleasure.

PICKof thePOPS OMAR APOLLO Apolonio (AWAL)

MOURN

Self-Worth

(Captured Tracks)

Already part of the LA ‘cool kid’ scene, rubbing shoulders with Brockhampton and the like, Omar Apollo’s not-quite-debut-album ‘Apolonio’ sees the Mexican-American artist establishing himself right up there with his famous friends. Oozing with charm and charisma, ‘Apolonio’ sees Omar delivering on all his early promise. Nodding to his heritage with bilingual bops, the project builds on his previous EPs ‘Stereo’ and ‘Friends’ as Omar effortlessly blends funky melodies, sultry hooks and yearning youthful lyricism. Teaming up with pals Kali Uchis on the mesmerising undulating ‘Hey Boy’ and Australia’s Ruel on the pulsating sizzler ‘Want U Around’, other highlights come on the shimmering soul-sounding ‘Useless’, which features The Strokes’ Albert Hammond Jr. Elsewhere Omar laments teenage infatuations on ‘Kamikaze’ - “I pull over, go to sleep, listen to classics / Think of you, and you and me, ‘cause I’m an addict” - and how far he’s come on ‘Dos Uno Nueve (219)’. A dazzling LISTEN: ‘Useless’

Q&A

The rising star tells us all about his “almost-but-notquite debut” ‘Apolonio’. Interview: Ben Tipple.

What does ‘Apolonio’ mean to you?

Every time I put out a project, I feel like I get better. Just getting back in it, being able to attack it better than you did last time. It’s my best shit for sure though. I’ve been making music for three, maybe four years, and this is just more of my experience. I’ve lived life a little more. I feel like I’m becoming the writer I’ve wanted to become.

Have you had a moment to take stock of everything?

I was out with some friends and I had my headphones in, and I was made. It was so weirdly nostalgic. I just remember my headspace and what was going on, and what I was trying to do with my life at the time.

When those moments resurface it kind of hits you. Compare that to where I’m at now - I was at Electric Lady Studios for a week, which has always been the dream. It’s fucking weird. I’m still not used to it, but I’ve accepted it. This is how shit is now.

Do you approach writing music in a different way to how you did then?

The whole making the beat is the exact same, I just got better at it. I kind of know what I want more, what I’m looking for exactly. When it comes to writing it’s the same. That’s the crazy thing. It’s the same process I’ve been doing since I was 17.

You switch up your sound a lot across the tracks.

Is that deliberate?

It does jump around genres, but there are still little bits of what is in all of my songs, no matter the groove or tempo. It’s not on purpose, it just happens. If I’m feeling a certain way, or listening to reggae or funk, whatever I’m feeling in the moment I just have to do it. I can’t force it. I feel like I did a pretty good job with this record to make it sound cohesive. It all sounds like it was made by the same person.

You also sing in Spanish as a nod to your Mexican roots.

How important is that to you?

It’s huge. I’m a Mexican American. go to school, be in sports and make time, and we didn’t make that much money. It’s a huge part of me. It’s always going to be there. It’s a culture that’s ingrained in my lifestyle, so I don’t have to try and be anything.

I’m proud of my Mexican heritage and I’m always going to represent.

What are you hoping people will take away from the record?

The only thing I could hope for is inspiration; for people to get inspired. It doesn’t matter what kind of inspiration. Whether it’s playing guitar, or doing better in school, or trying harder in your relationship… just to inspire you to do something that turns into something positive. That’s all I can hope for.

“It’s all a mess”, co-vocalists and long-time best friends Carla Pérez Vas and Jazz Rodríguez Bueno brashly declare at the start of ‘It’s A Frog’s World’, before launching into an unrelenting instrumental barrage of messy guitars and ferocious drums. It tone of ‘Self Worth’. Fully embracing the rapid punk that reared its head more gently on 2018’s ‘Sorpresa Familia’, Barcelona-based MOURN emerge from well-documented label troubles, the departure of drummer Antonio Postius, and a global pandemic with a raw, resigned rage.

Outwardly tackling their fear of men, woes and so much more, their fourth album simultaneously searches for hope as it candidly condemns their surroundings. That anger is palpable, from the jarring opening of ‘Stay There’ to the minimalist bass and accompanying cries of ‘Apathy’.

A respite of sorts arrives in the form of ‘House Hold’, yet its comparably subdued melody still provides the backdrop to their visceral wails.

MOURN have embraced the uncontrollable chaos in order to that may be. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Apathy’

FLEET FOXES

Shore (ANTI-) It’s hard to overstate the impact Fleet Foxes’ self-titled debut had back in 2008. Pairing crisp and immersive Beach Boys-indebted harmonies with pastoral balladry, the Seattle singularly holding their own against a tide of resurgent Americana. And Robin Pecknold revisits earlier days on ‘Shore’, binding the band’s signature chamber pop prowess with Fairport Convention-esque hues, wielding a level of feel-good heft lacking on the emotionally fraught sign of slackening the pomp, amping up via the shimmering scope of ‘Can I Believe You’ and ‘For A Week Or Two’. ‘Featherweight’ takes a back from the euphoric highs of the rest of the record - Robin’s confessional vocals powering through, brushing against instrumentals with ease.

This further comes into play on ‘Young Man’s Game’, speaking to the bittersweet acceptance of aging.

Embracing the new while building strength in casting personal trauma through the wiles that propelled Fleet Foxes into wider consciousness - a hopeful return to origins.

(Chris Hamilton-Peach) LISTEN: ‘Featherweight’

WILLIE J HEALEY Orlando Weeks - A Quickening

I was lucky enough to hear some of this album in its infancy, back when Orlando was making demos. I was instantly blown away. I could listen to it on repeat and have been.

JENESSA WILLIAMS, WRITER Moses Sumney - græ

If you’re looking for a double record to really soundtrack the introspection and soulsearching of lockdown, ‘grae’ is it. Serving you melodies, dark humour, complex identity politics and THAT OUTRAGEOUS VOICE, it’s a showcase of exactly what can happen yourself by other people’s expectations. Nothing has clung harder to my headphones all year.

MILLIE KIDD, THE NINTH WAVE Little Simz - Drop 6

Written and recorded in lockdown, it feels like she has stepped inside my head and taken all my thoughts and turned them into lyrics I wish I’d written.

Only the musical parts that really make an impact are included, which allows for so much room to allow the lyrics and delivery to really resonate. It’s the only thing I played for a solid four months of lockdown.

JOSH KAUFMAN, MUZZ Waxahatchee Saint Cloud

2020 has been an intense time for life on earth and the music that’s accompanied it has helped buoy our hopes and keep us company.

Waxahatchee’s, ‘Saint Cloud’ is one of those collections of songs for us. for penning and releasing this ocean of emotion!

SOCCER MOMMY Peel Dream Magazine Agitprop Alterna

I love this album because it’s super nostalgic and reminds me of a lot of great ‘90s music while somehow still feeling new.

ALEX LUCIANO, DIET CIG Becca Mancari - The Greatest Part

‘Lonely Boy’ was one of those songs that always just catapulted me out of a depressive mindset and into a dance-in-myunderwear energy. I feel like the repeating line of “are you a lonely boy?” was very meditative and very soothing, yet made me want to bounce around.

That juxtaposition really describes the whole record’s feel.

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JIM-E STACK

TIM BURGESS

Ephemera (AWAL)

The Ascent of the Ascended (Bella Union)

The head Charlatan continues his ascent from ‘90s hero to national treasure here. The title track is a nearseven-minute prog whopper that ticks more boxes than a buildings inspector before its ultimate launch into glorious cacophony. ‘Yours. To Be’ is the polar opposite; a gently-plucked slice of whimsy that won’t win any prizes for originality, but instead triumphs on sheer understated loveliness alone.

The two new studio recordings are bolstered by four live session cuts, including his own baggy classic, ‘The Only One I Know’. ‘The Mall’ highlights his unexpected emergence as an auteur of sophisticated pop in the Ray Davies mould. After May’s patchy ‘I Love The New Sky’, ‘Ascent of the Ascended’ serves as a great re-introduction to Tim - still very much a force to be reckoned with.

(Felix Rowe) LISTEN: ‘Ascent of the Ascended’

Although you may not know his name, it’s likely that you’re familiar with Jim-E Stack’s work. With songwriting and production credits on tracks by numerous faves - Haim, Charli XCX, Bon Iver, Dominic Fike, to in many outstanding musical pies. So, it’s no surprise that his latest album ‘EPHEMERA’ is an absolute experimental pop gem.

And accordingly, it’s feature-heavy, with pulsating glitchy ‘BE LONG 2’ the only totally solo number here.

Empress Of jumps on luscious soaring opening number ‘Note To Self’, while particular feature gems come in the form of synthy ‘Jeanie’ with Bon Iver, Octavian’s sleek-asfuck vocals on funk-leaning ‘LOST MAN’, and Brockhampton’s Bearface providing his gorgeous R&B sounds on ‘ONE SHOT’. A shape-shifting and stunning record, if you didn’t know Jim-E’s name already, it’s time to wise the fuck up. (Elly Watson) LISTEN: ‘Jeanie’

NOTHING

VIJI Are You In My Head?

The Great Dismal (Relapse)

(Dirty Hit)

The debut EP from the recent Dirty Hit signing is a vibrant foray into grunge-leaning indie-pop, with a couple of appearances from a vocoder for good measure. ‘Are You In My Head’ mediates on the kind of questions that emerge in adolescence: ‘Unfair’ ponders people with wealth but no idea what to do with it, while ‘Ghost Song’ sees Viji adopt the perspective of a ghost lingering in this realm, rolling her eyes because “I see you cry but you never

moving between choral harmonies, sighing guitars and glitchy synths, each track drawing from a different sonic palette whilst maintaining an overall cohesiveness. Every track here has a magic about it which sounds completely effortless. There are beginnings of greatness tucked into this EP, tinder collected and waiting for the match to drop. (Eloise Bulmer) LISTEN: ‘Ghost Song’

Remember back in April when a lockdown was optimistically unveiled as only for a few weeks? Remember when the States hadn’t really come into contact with the virus? So does Nothing’s Domenic Palermo, who - with the band’s characteristic cynicism – quite literally laughs at the proverbial different time on standout ‘April Ha Ha’. “Isn’t it strange watching people trying to outrun rain,” he asks rhetorically, turning his eye to the fantasists and securing ‘The Great Dismal’s crushing realism. Holed up with producer Will Yip for an extended period of isolation, the band encapsulate the claustrophobia opener ‘A Fabricated Life’ gives way to the dense guitars of ‘Say Less’, opening up a continuous unsettling juxtaposition of the two. On a record that outwardly calls for the end of us, there’s plenty to live for, even if it’s simply the subtle beauty of Nothing.

That’s not so dismal after all. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘April Ha Ha’

PVA Toner (Big Dada)

PVA’s 2019 breakthrough single ‘Divine Intervention’ showcased the London-based group’s punky take on dance, and while Ella Harris’ dramatic vocals helped to deliver the group’s opening statement, on this EP’s lead track ‘Talks’, it’s Josh Baxter’s croon that shines through as plinky enveloping percussion and slices of funk guitar step intricately into frame. The song orbits around a fantastic house-y organ breakdown that’ll have you pining for the sweaty trappings

guitar pattern before giving way to a glitchy synth groove which becomes interrupted by shimmering chords that sound as if they’ve been cast straight from heaven. While ‘Divine Intervention’ was undoubtedly a standalone streak of greatness, ‘Toner’ expands PVA’s universe and ultimately turns in more evidence that this is a group to keep a close eye on. (Sean Kerwick) LISTEN ‘Exhaust / Surroundings’

LAUNDROMAT Green (Brace Yourself)

Toby Hayes has worn many hats throughout his music career, from math rock in Meet Me In St. Louis to acoustic balladry in Shoes And Socks Off. And once again, with Laundromat, he’s settled on a new name and a new face. ‘Green’ marks the second of three promised EPs (following ‘Blue’, no prizes for guessing the next), and continues in much the same vein. The three tracks bass with as little of anything else as possible. Sometimes psychedelic, layered vocal harmonies; sometimes stabbing, Superfood -tinged guitar bends; rarely both at once. Toby

A group to keep a close eye on.

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sleeve: ‘Nein’ calls the Breeders to mind, while ‘Bureau De Fatigue’ joins the fray of the post-punk resurgence, rubbing shoulders with Do Nothing.

The key take away from Laundromat, though, is that he’s is developing a – he has picked his hat, and now he shall wear it. (Nick Harris) LISTEN: ‘Nein’

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SONGHOY BLUES Optimisme (Transgressive)

Anybody who’s seen Songhoy Blues play live will know how utterly

MASTER PEACE

sound is, so it’s a concern to pick up this third record, ‘Optimisme’, and have the promising title immediately rendered void by the name of the only English-language song on the album - ‘Worry’. Has 2020’s relentless grind even managed to chip away at the ironclad ebullience of Timbuktu’s proudest musical exports?

“Don’t worry, you’re gonna be smile’s gonna come one day.” Not even the unremitting bleakness of 2020 can put a dent in the permapositivity of the Malian four-piece, apparently, and that’s something that’s echoed across ‘Optimisme’’s eleven tracks; in the face of adversity, Songhoy Blues offer up a succession of stirringly upbeat antidotes, from raucous opener ‘Badala’ to the pointed swagger of ‘Gabi’ and the communal war cry of ‘Korfo’. Underscoring everything ‘Garba’ Touré’s guitar, faithful to his blues roots one minute - see the swaggering ‘Bare’, for instance, or the intense riffery at the heart of ‘Dournia’ - and exploratory the next. especially on the uncharacteristically downtempo ‘Pour Toi’, but in the main, this is the band bringing us precisely what we need them to.

‘Optimisme’ is a short, sharp blast of buoyancy, delivered as only Songhoy Blues can - with verve, and palpable joie de vivre. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Badala’

JW FRANCIS

We Share A Similar Joy (Sunday Best)

With We Share A Similar Joy, JW Francis manoeuvres the pitfalls of future indie classics that reek of tremolo-tinged ‘Good Time’ oozes like a late summer daydream, one and barbecues. Warm keyboard reminding you that, no matter what’s going on, everything is going to be is present throughout, JW managing to keep his cool without breaking a sweat. Even when things are taken down a notch, it works a treat.

‘Everything’ and ‘Loving Nobody’ take you so far away from the monotony of modern life that you might even

You can’t ask for much more than that. (Jack Doherty) LISTEN: ‘Loving Nobody’

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Love Bites (EMI)

As the weather gets colder and the nights darker, we all need some good vibes to cling on to, and Master Peace’s debut EP ‘Love Bites’ is full-to-thebrim of ‘em. Radiating charm with his sunshine-soaked indie melodies and irresistible pop hooks, although he’s only been in the game a short while, this EP shows just what a promising artist he is. ‘Eyes On You’ opens with luscious guitar sounds and a sing-a-long ready chorus, while ‘PNE’ and the funkleaning ‘Regular Feelings’ are classic indie tunes ready for festivals (whenever they’ll return). ‘Ruelia’ is a delicate instrumental soundtracking a loving phone conversation that provides an interesting moment of pause in the upbeat record, while ‘Never Wanna Be’ follows as a slow and stunning ode to falling Watson) LISTEN: ‘Regular Feelings’

MARIKA HACKMAN Covers (Transgressive)

What have we all been doing in lockdown if not clinging to the songs that make us feel something?

Marika Hackman knows a thing or two about the cathartic release of musical escape, and on ‘Covers’, she rummages deep in her playlist of favourites, pulling out a range of tracks that she can coat in her own special layer of dark-pop frosting. might be cheesier than the sandwich you forgot you left in your desk drawer pre-work from home, Marika’s ability to truly make each song her own is her biggest strength, giving her selection here a reassuringly even sonic energy. A way to stretch her musical limbs without the creative pressure of crafting new material, the soft rounded edges that she uses recall the colour palette of her debut, ‘We Slept At Last’, diving deep into the gentle undulations of A run at Muna’s ‘Pink Light’ recalls The Japanese House with its subtle waves of vocoder effect, while ‘Between The Bars’ shines new light through the cracks of the Elliott Smith classic, imbibing it with a sense of crisp winter hopefulness that feels true to the original without completely losing itself to the melancholy. Best of all are the glacial synths and stacked harmonies that turn Beyoncé’s ‘All Night’ into a Caroline Polachekworthy 2am jam, an avenue that would certainly be fun to see Marika

satisfaction of her original work, but as a fun, thoughtful way to ground oneself during quarantine, ‘Covers’ is an audition that is guaranteed to see her through to the next round.

Marika Hackman, you’ve got four yes’s! (Jenessa Williams) LISTEN: ‘All Night’

Q&A

The Londoner summer, and debut EP ‘Love Bites’.

The last time we saw you, you were entertaining viewers on our DIYsolation live stream; what did the rest of the summer bring for you?

Summer was a really weird one for me, I had a lot of highs and lows mentally. There’s been a lot of uncertainty within the lockdown such as when I would get to put my EP out, so. I think me accepting to let things be as they are and enjoy the process really got me through the lockdown.

I never imagined releasing like this in the current climate, but we move and I feel stronger again! And towards the end of summer I felt like I got my mojo back. I know what I want and how to get there.

Where did you record ‘Love Bites’?

‘Love Bites’ is a compilation of a lot of the work I’ve done in the last three years, and being in a long-term relationship helped me write it. I wrote

it with my producers Manuka, George Reid and Shor. It was very interesting to see my development in the writing and singing stage. I recorded it in Conor’s [1/2 of Manuka] room, and also got a helping hand from my friends Gina Kushka and Twyla Bailey with backing vocals. And the other tracks I recorded in Shor’s back garden, he has a studio there.

What do you do to keep vibes up?

I’ve been in the studio working on my album, trying to stay positive and make the best music I can make.

I’ve also been spending a lot of

me too.

What’s next for you?

My album, which I’m currently writing now. It’s fucking hard to do in current circumstances, but I’m trying, and currently sitting on a few hits if you’d

BACK TO THE

DRAWING BOARD WITH JAWNY

Q1: Where did you record ‘For Abby’?

JAWNY

For Abby (Interscope) Opening with a tape-recorded intro to his pissed-off beau (“I’m not even a bad guy… I made your mum that alfredo sauce! You loved that shit, man!”) before launching into the loose-limbed slacker funk of previous single ‘Sabotage’, ‘For Abby’’s doting title may bring to mind Bon Iver’s melancholic ‘For Emma…’ but don’t go expecting anything like the same levels of moping. Instead, on his latest ‘project’ (because artists really

Q2: What’s a ‘Super Bad Mantra’?

on hip hop - and the more radio pop leanings of ‘4Tounce’. The sun-drenched block party swagger of ‘Super Bad Mantra’ featuring newcomer Christian Blue, meanwhile lands as an irrepressible slice of heady fun that encapsulates the free-spirited, uncontainable enthusiasm of the record: while it’s no new thing for artists these days to pluck from various genre pools, Jawny’s selections land him in a far more exuberant place than most. That viral hit and album closer ‘Honeypie’ (think Mac DeMarco gone funk pop) is far from the best track here says a lot about the singer’s potential. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Super Bad Mantra’

OCTOBER AND THE EYES Dogs and Gods (KRO)

Wavey (Blue Flowers)

and booming vocals that evoke all the emotion of PJ Harvey one second and the skittish yelps of Karen O the next. Opener ‘Playing God’ makes like a lost Kills track, its playground beat amplifying the grimy atmosphere; ‘You Deserve It’ takes on the kind of Western hue Mattiel shines with. But

The London-based songwriter has been bubbling under for a few years now - from debut track ‘Comet’ released in 2018 alongside a self-titled EP to this summer’s ‘PWR’. New three-track ‘Wavey’ is proof there’s still promise in Grand Pax’s brand of low-key, mellow pop. The title track is the most immediate of the trio here - ‘Wavey’ by both name and nature. Closer ‘Trip’ deftly hints at menace throughout, her whispered vocals layered to eerie

Dog’ dragging on - and drag it very much does and after the entirely forgettable mid-point ‘Wander Girl’ passes, there’s the unfortunate sense that this six-track release is too one-dimensional to make the newcomer’s name stick. (Bella Martin) LISTEN: ‘Playing God’

in style - not a million miles from a more melancholy, resigned Japanese House. They’re all growers - it’s not a release likely to send Grand Pax stratospheric - but as an exercise in ticking along nicely, ‘Wavey’ should do well to keep the buzz on ice. (Louisa Dixon) LISTEN: ‘Wavey’

At its best, ‘Dogs and Gods’, New Zealander October and the Eyes’ debut EP,

Q3: How would you cook a ‘Honeypie’?

GRAND PAX

PARTNER

Never Give Up (You’ve Changed) Q4: What does a ‘Trigger of Love’ look like?

as ‘Canadian Queer Post Classic Rock’, it harbours a handful of combined aesthetics, the synergy of which - though at times questionable - makes for a record that’s bold and brave. When it hits, it’s also bloody good fun. It does, however, take some time to hit, though opening number ‘Hello and Welcome’ introduces the band’s aesthetic instantly, combining off-kilter indie-pop with classic rock-inspired riffs and a country bent. And while the potential is there, iffy execution only serves to stymie any early pace that could be picked up. Thankfully things fare better in the record’s second half as Partner’s more poppy side is brought to the fore. Tracks such as ‘Here I Am World’ or ‘Good Place To Hide (At the Time)’ bring to mind bands such as Diet Cig or Hop Along, while providing the record with some much needed buoyancy.

That doesn’t mean to say the second half is without noise. ‘Roller Coasters (Life is One)’ for instance, features arguably the strongest riff on the record; its upbeat optimism making it an obvious highlight.

Fittingly titled, ‘Never Give Up’ is a record that exudes potential but tends to canter as much as it gallops.

As such, it struggles to maintain any real sense of consistency, particularly in its early stages. That doesn’t mean to say it’s a record without positives; the latter half in particular really can shine. It’s just a shame its inconsistencies outweigh those moments, though only just. (Dave Beech) LISTEN: ‘Here I Am World’

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Coming Up THE WHITE STRIPES GREATEST HITS 26 of the pair's tracks, as picked

by Jack himself. Literally, name a more iconic duo. Spoiler: you can't. Out 4th December.

ARLO PARKS - COLLAPSED IN SUNBEAMS One of the most anticipated debuts since forever, the buzzy Londoner is set to make good on all that promise on 29th January.

HEATHER TROST Petrichor

(Third Man)

It’s not by accident that Heather Trost has named this second full-length after the term for the aroma produced by dry soil after sustained rainfall. The record itself is similarly evocative. With it having been recorded over the course of the last two years, there’s no way Heather could have known what 2020 would bring, and that somehow lends ‘Petrichor’ an additional emotional weight; it’s there in the eerie, Twin Peaksy doo-wop of ‘I’ll Think of You’, and it’s palpable, too, in the epic, spacey electronic sweep of ‘VKO9’. Worthy of note, also, is a panoramic take on Harry Nilsson’s ‘Jump Into the Fire’ that recalls The Velvet Underground; that Heather chose it as the lead single is proof positive the Hawk and a Hacksaw mould. On that front, she’s succeeded. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘VK09’

BENEE Hey u x

(Island)

Already a superstar back home, BENEE’s one of the few artists this issue who’ve been able to fully show off their new release with a live show: she recently headlined Auckland’s Spark Arena - at capacity. Another New Zealander with her shit together then, ‘Hey U X’ follows singles ‘Supalonely’ with NYC gem Gus Dapperton and ‘Night Garden’ with Kenny Beats and Bakar - and ups the ante. ‘Snail’ and ‘Kool’ are bouncy bops; opener ‘Happen To Me’ has echoes of The Japanese House’s introspection, and the acoustic nature of ‘Same Effect’ and ‘A Little While’ bear more than a passing similarity to Billie Eilish’s quieter moments. Add to that the cosign of alt-pop foremothers Lily Allen (‘Plain’) and Grimes (‘Sheesh’) and BENEE’s on to a winner. (Bella Martin) LISTEN: ‘Snail’

TV PRIEST Uppers

KATY J PEARSON Return

(Heavenly)

Much like how Julia Jacklin’s country-indebted beginnings and enlivened the age-old genre with a new guise for the modern alt-indie fan, so does Katy J Pearson’s debut manage to make the oldest sound of musical heartbreak somehow seem, if not fully modern, then at least fairly timeless. There’s a Stevie Nicks-esque quality to her vocals on the yearning ‘Hey You’, while ‘Something Real’ builds from tender, affective beginnings to an all-out yell the sparse acoustic balladry of ‘Return’’s title track allows for Katy’s changed like the weather, I’ve changed for the better…”), while bones - strings and keys coalescing into something tenser and more urgent. Whichever mode she’s in, humanity in every moment. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Miracle’

(Hand in Hive)

ZAND GOAT GIRL - ON ALL FOURS As seen in the October issue, the Londoners quite literally switched things up for LP2. Out 29th January.

since Mark E Smith departed in 2017, the sheer volume of bands indebted to his speak-sing, sardonic ranting has skyrocketed. Joining the crew come TV Priest, and while in isolation (not that kind of isolation…) the sneering, society-shunning post-punk of tracks like ‘Decoration’ and the motorik, aptly-titled ‘Journey of a Plague Year’ are full of conviction, the fact remains you could probably hum a fair approximation of ‘Uppers’ without actually listening to it. Jumping into a saturated scene or simply victims of timing, TV Priest’s debut is good but not necessarily enough to poke through the maelstrom quite yet. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Decoration’

ALAN POWER Songs to Break America (self-release)

THE KILLS - LITTLE BASTARDS Alison 'n Jamie have assembled B-sides and rarities - including the new-to-us 'Raise Me' - for this retrospective, out 11th December.

Alan Power is continuing in the well-worn tradition of crooning cowboys, but he’s not even a cowboy. Or from the US. Still, his brand of country ballads - via the classic songwriting of Leonard Cohen and Bruce Springsteen - made debut album ‘Greatest Hits vol. 1’ an instant classic. Follow up, ‘Songs to Break America’ is an album of beautifully-crafted songs of love, loss, and redemption, which peaks with closer ‘Breathe In: Breathe Out’. Its slow, laconic guitars are reminiscent of JJ Cale playing at half-speed; Alan’s droning vocals - as throughout - are glorious, laced with droll punchlines. There’s a hopeful fashioned songwriting with a country twang. (Nick Roseblade) LISTEN: ‘Breathe In: Breathe Out’ Good to see someone’s still keeping Cyberdog in business...

BLACK HONEY - WRITTEN & DIRECTED The retro-obsessed Brighton outfit release their second fulllength on 29th January.

Coming Up 64 DIYMAG.COM

UGLY POP (self-release)

‘UGLY POP’ hitting update on your PC. It’s the new vibe all your friends are on and have been alerting you to for weeks on end. ‘UGLY POP’ is a clear manifesto for ZAND. Opener ‘bald bitch’ is not only a banger, but tells us exactly who ZAND is, and how we’re expected to respond: if you don’t play by the rules, they’ll “cut your hands off”. The UK has been gagging for an artist who wears their pop on their sleeve, who provides a refuge for the ostracised and an education for the uninformed, and they fall neatly into that hyper-pop world led by Dorian Electra and 100 gecs. Yet, as with all updates, there are teething problems: ‘UGLY POP’ has the necessary vibes, but is missing any moments of relief.

Still, ZAND has made their stamp on UK pop - the next step is how they pull together their art now their update is complete. (Ash Cooper) LISTEN: ‘bald bitch’

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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: NANCY ANDERSEN, BABEHEAVEN

Where: London. Drink: Tea. Price: Free - Nancy’s own brew.

Specialist Subject: Cooking What is the French name for sliced potatoes baked in milk or cream?

Dauphinois?

Very good! That’s one point.

Yep! Ummm, I have no idea what the others would be.

OK, we’ll give you a half point because

What was the title of Nigella Lawson’s

- the others are fennel seeds, peppercorns and cloves.

was released back in 1998?

Um, was it Simply Nigella?

It wasn’t - it was How To Eat, but Simply Nigella is one of hers!

Yeah, I think that’s one of her more recent ones.

According to Delia Smith, how long should it take to cook the perfect hardboiled egg, once your water has hit boiling point?

6 minutes?

6 - 7 minutes is the answer, well done!

What are the

What three ingredients go into making an italian soffritto?

Onion, carrot and celery.

Nailed it!

traditionally go into Oh my god - star anise?

Uhhh… That’s a really Maybe cinnamon?

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General Knowledge What is the capital of Iceland?

Is it Reykjavík?

Yes it is!

What is the most sold crisps?

Salt and vinegar?

It’s cheese and onion.

Cheese and onion? I feel like cheese and onion is one where you love it for a point in your life, but then you realise you’ve had enough cheese and onion.

Can you name the characters played by David Mitchell and Robert Webb in Peep

Show?

Mark and… Oh god, Mark and… I can’t remember.

A half point for that one - the other is Jeremy!

In what year was pop icon Madonna born?

1957?

So close - it was 1958!

I know she’s the same age as my dad so that’s why! Argh.

How many keys are there on a piano?

I have no idea.

It’s 88!

How many? 88? Wow, that is a lot.

1.5/5

FINAL SCORE:

3.5/5 3.5 /5

NO BROUW GHT TO YO U VIA ZOOM !

5/10

Verdict: Better than most! “I’m actually so competitive…”

“Dripping with exuberant charm.” - DIY rd osnic a e h As C 6 Mu BB

Available Now

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