DIY, October 2021

DIY ISSUE 2021 ISSUE111 112••SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2021 DIYMAG.COM DIYMAG.COM

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BIFFY CLYRO POPPY PARQUET COURTS REMI WOLF & MORE

REBEL

WITH

A

CAUSE Pa Salieu on building bridges and becoming 2021's breakout UK star

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- BACK ON THE ROAD Every tour feels special, but this one feels uniquely precious.

To stand on a stage again, sharing our music with a real crowd of people, I can't wait for it. Alex and I were talking about how interacting with a crowd is so fundamental to what we do. What is it going to feel like after being so long away? We are both about to find out…

- Bruce Soord (The Pineapple Thie) The connection with the people is way deeper than the music itself. The shows will be celebrations of life, and we need such cheerful moments now more than ever. At least, I know how much I need it myself.

- Alex Henry Foster

“Sonic Youth meets Slint at a party hosted by Mogwai” - Silent Radio

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“Simply Fascinating” - Rolling Stone

“A swooping post-rock cinematic vision” - Louder Than War

“Shrouded in swells of guitar noise”

“Threatens to redefine the word 'epic'”

Prog Magazine

- Guitar World

“Monumental” - MetroUK

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DSC02062

with

Lights Stretching Over Sorrows Europe & UK Tour Fall 2021

06/10 - Glasgow (UK) @ Saint Luke’s

19/10 - Stuttgart (DE) @ Im Wizemann

07/10 - Manchester (UK) @ O2 Ritz

20/10 - Villeurbanne (FR) @ CCO

09/10 - Amsterdam (NL) @ Paradiso

23/10 - Paris (FR) @ Élysée Montmartre

10/10 - Hamburg (DE) @ Fabrik

26/10 - Mainz (DE) @ KUZ Kulturzentrum

12/10 - Warsaw (PL) @ Klub Stodola

27/10 - Brussels (BE) @ Ancienne Belgique

14/10 - Kraków (PL) @ Klub Studio

28/10 - Strasbourg (FR) @ Laiterie

15/10 - Budapest (HU) @ A38 Hajó

29/10 - Köln (DE) @ Carlswerk Victoria

16/10 - München (DE) @ Technikum

30/10 - London (UK) @ O2 Empire Shepherds Bush

17/10 - Pratteln (CH) @ Konzertfabrik Z7

05/11 - Bristol (UK) @ O2 Academy

TICKETS ON SALE NOW: ALEXHENRYFOSTER.COM 2 DIYMAG.COM

HELLO

OCTOBER

Question!

Pa Salieu repped his hometown on ‘Send Them To Coventry’ and is now embracing his Gambian roots on ‘Afrikan Rebel’. What props would Team DIY throw out to the places that birthed them?

SARAH JAMIESON • Managing Editor You'd think that being a town with a name as ridiculous as Chester-leStreet would be enough, but my personal favourite is the fact that Rihanna once visited. Yep, that Rihanna.

EMMA SWANN • Founding Editor That Milton Keynes is a punchline is in itself an achievement.

LISA WRIGHT • Features Editor To get a sense of Colchester, remember it changed its entrance sign from the actuallyimpressive ‘Oldest Town in Britain’ to ‘Home of Colchester Zoo’ and once had to deal with a

petition from residents because they DID NOT want a new art gallery.

Thank god Colchester also produced Blur.

LOUISE MASON • Art Director So many to choose from - the powerful, exposing documentary Emmerdale Farm, our lord and saviour Alan Bennett, or our latest entry to score no points at all on Eurovision.

ELLY WATSON • Digital Editor Shout out Exhibition Cider, Thekla on a Thursday and drunken chips and gravy from Jason Donervan for making me the woman I am today. Love u, Bristol.

Editor's Letter Having already proven himself as a remarkable force within rap - earning the BBC Sound of 2021 title, as well as being nominated for the BRITs Rising Star award among other plaudits - there’s no denying that Pa Salieu has become one of the UK’s most exciting young stars.

And so, following the recent release of his ‘Afrikan Rebel’ EP, it felt like the perfect time to speak to the Coventry-via-Gambia artist, and discover exactly how he found himself using music to reconnect with his motherland.

Elsewhere this month, we delve into club culture with Parquet Courts, head up to Biffy’s farm studio to talk their unexpected new album ‘The Myth of the Happily Ever After’, and dive into the wonderfully technicolour world of Remi Wolf. Plus, we get the goss on MUNA’s next steps and give you a glimpse at our new digital cover series, DIY In Deep; this month it features the enigmatic star Poppy. Get stuck in!

Sarah Jamieson, Managing Editor

Listening Post

IDLES - CRAWLER We’ve had a sneaky peek into the former cover boys’ incoming fourth and it does not disappoint.

Simultaneously more brooding and widescreen, yet at times softer and more nuanced, it takes a lot of ‘Ultra Mono’’s more tetchy moments and up-ends them entirely. Get excited.

COURTNEY BARNETT - THINGS TAKE TIME, TAKE TIME Three years on from ‘Tell Me How You Really Feel’, everyone’s favourite Australian deployer of acute social commentary returns for a third slice of the pie.

Expect the sort of painfully relatable bon mots that’ll make you feel like - once again - our Court’s snuck into your diary / DMs / brain.

THE HORRORS - STRANGE HOUSE When Madonna once sang “time goes by so slowly,” she was surely not thinking of the baffling vortex of hours that has somehow led to it already being Halloween at the end of this month. Whack The Horrors’ wild-haired debut on, get ghoulish and hark back to a simpler time when years didn’t simply slip into the ever-yawning black abyss.

ISSUE PLAYLIST Scan the Spotify code to listen to our October playlist now.

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C O N T E N T S

NEW S 6 MUNA 8 POPPY 10 TA LK S HOW 16 C HER RY G LAZERR NEU 20 P INK PA NTH ERESS 22 MOLLY PAYTO N 24 DA I NE 26 G US TAF

Let’s all give a big hand to our new cover star!

Shout out to: All at state51 for their continued support (and delicious food), Campus Group for letting us into your office, Signature Brew for hosting our latest show, Jesse Draxler for all your work on our Poppy DIY In Deep shoot, Jillian and Adam for diving headfirst (almost literally) into our Matt Maltese shoot - and the man himself for being the greatest sport we could wish for. Love you!

Founding Editor Emma Swann F EA T U R ES Managing Editor Sarah Jamieson 28 PA SA LIEU Features Editor Lisa Wright Digital Editor Elly Watson 36 PA R Q U ET C O U RT S Art Direction & Design Louise Mason 40 J O Y C R O O K ES Contributors Alisdair Grice, Bella Martin, Ben 42 M ATT MA LT ESE Tipple, BLACKKSOCKS, Chris Taylor, Eloise Bulmer, Elvis Thirlwell, Emma Wilkes, Flo Stroud, 46 REMI W O LF Georgia Evans, Ims Taylor, James Balmont, Jesse 50 B IFFY C LY R O Draxler, Jillian Edelstein, Joe Goggins, Louis

REV I E W S 54 ALBU MS 64 L IV E

Griffin, Louisa Dixon, Ryan Bell, Seeham Rahman, Varun Govil, Will Richards, Yemi Abiade Cover photo and this page: BLACKKSOCKS Photo page 3: Matt Maltese by Jillian Edelstein.

All material copyright (c). All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, in whole or in part, without the express written permission of DIY. Disclaimer: While every effort is made to ensure the information in this magazine is correct, changes can occur which affect the accuracy of copy, for which DIY holds no responsibility.

The opinions of the contributors do not necessarily bear a relation to those of DIY or its staff and we disclaim liability for those impressions. Distributed nationally.

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Three cheers (or one cheer and three middle distance stares) for Saddest Factory’s newest recruits!

In Your

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NEWS

With their last album, MUNA wanted to save the

world. Now, newly-signed to Phoebe Bridgers'

Saddest Factory Records and with queer love

anthem 'Silk Chiffon' reigniting their fire, they 're ready to spread a little more joy. Words: Sarah Jamieson.

A

fter almost eighteen months off the road, getting back into the swing of touring life was never going to be the easiest of tasks. For MUNA - who are currently in the midst of a hefty US tour alongside Phoebe Bridgers - it’s mostly been about overcoming the

lack of sleep.

“

[I’m] at a point in life where I’m choosing to have fun and experience some levity and have that queer joy represented in music.” Katie Gavin

“We’re in Boston and we’re coming off a string of crazy shows,” half-yawns the band’s Katie Gavin. “We were just in New York and we did a day where we did our Governor’s Ball set in the afternoon and then we played a show at 1am. And we’re a couple of old queers who like to go to bed at around 9pm, so…!”

Disrupted bedtime routines aside, life back on the road has been - as Katie aptly puts it - an “affirming” experience all round. “It’s been like, ‘Oh yeah, this is what I do!’” she laughs. “It’s not that I forgot, but I feel like I just didn’t think about [playing live] much during the pandemic because it would’ve been hard. You just didn’t know when you could do it again. Even when we booked this tour, it was like, ‘Is it really gonna be able to happen?’ You don’t really wanna get your hopes up too much.

“But it’s been so affirming; we just love to do this so much. And we said this last night at the show, but we’re really grateful to everyone taking the extra safety precautions, [those who’ve] gotten vaccinated and are wearing their masks so that we can do it.”

As for many artists - and the general population 2021 has been a rollercoaster for the LA trio. While the majority of the pandemic was incredibly tough for the band (“Yeah, there have been many days where we have just cried,” guitarist Josette Maskin says, “and many days where we were like, ‘I don’t know if we can keep going’, but we managed to”), this year also marked the start of a new chapter for them: they became the second artist to sign to Phoebe’s new label, Saddest Factory Records.

“I think that it just worked out in terms of timing in a way that felt like it was very meant to be,” explains Katie of how the relationship came to fruition. “In the pandemic, we got dropped by our last label - we were signed to a major - and we were having that important time where we were like, ‘What are we? Why do we do this? Why do we wanna keep going?’ At the same time, [Phoebe] made it clear that she wanted to work with us and it just made a lot of sense for a lot of different reasons. We respect her a lot and thought it would be cool to have her be our boss, so we signed and it’s been pretty fucking great so far!”

Skin

“I think the other thing that we find really affirming is to work with someone who is also of a marginalised gender,” adds Josette, of working with not just a peer but someone of the LGBTQ+ community. “I think that makes this experience really validating. To have someone that understands us in that way and isn’t going to pressure us in any way; we just feel very understood and supported and we couldn’t really be happier.”

For their first foray with Saddest Factory, the band have just released effervescent pop gem ‘Silk Chiffon’: “a song,” as guitarist Naomi McPherson describes it, “for kids to have their first gay kiss to.” “I think this is the first time we’ve put out a song where I didn’t feel very worried!” Josette laughs.

An addictive, bubblegum offering that celebrates the queer experience and those heady early days of a crush, it’s little wonder the track’s already been met with so much love. “There was just a moment of levity after finishing ‘Saves The World’ because that record was super heavy,” Katie offers up. “I got to work through a lot of stuff with that record.”

After completing that 2019 second album, a fresh burst of creativity soon followed, and the first steps of ‘Silk Chiffon’ were made. “I came back from a concert and the pre-chorus was the first thing I wrote; I just thought it was really funny, kinda like writing ‘Number One Fan’,” recalls Katie. “It feels like a joy that’s not necessarily hard-earned, but it definitely feels like a new choice to just be at a point in life where I’m choosing to have fun and experience some levity and have that queer joy represented in music. You know, ’That girl thinks I’m cute, yeeeeah!’”

As for their next move, the trio are still keeping things a little vague (“We’re not ready to reveal all of our cards yet,” nods Naomi), but the sense of joy from their recent single is set to find its way in. “There was a point when we were working on this next project, where I was a little worried because people know us and love us - to a certain extent - for the pain that we put into pop music,” Katie laughs. “I was like, ‘Is it too joyful?!’

“There’s stuff on this next record that’s in that realm of experiencing love and experiencing joy, and also just being comfortable with your own desires, whether that’s in a relationship, or a desire for freedom,” she continues. “But we’re also doing the very typical MUNA thing… It’s not a bunch of songs that sound the same, it’s a lot of different styles because that’s what’s fun for us.” DIY

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"I feel like I’m always in flux. I feel like I’ll always be bending in such a way, moving and changing.” changing

DIY in deep

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of Out theBLACK DIY in deep WORDS: LISA WRIGHT. PHOTOS: JESSE DRAXLER.

here’s a community of parrots that flock together in Los Angeles. Free from their former lives in household captivity, they squawk merrily amongst their new tribe, peppering our call with the shapeshifting artist known as Poppy with vibrant bursts of noise. Their presence is appropriate, she decides. “They were previously pets but they’ve found a group together, and I feel like there’s a bit of myself in that. I escaped and I found friends outside as well, in the most unexpected of places.”

This idea of escaping could refer to a number of moments throughout her life. Aged 15, the woman born Moriah Rose Pereira in 1995 moved alone from Nashville to Los Angeles to pursue her creative dreams with - as she has previously spoken about - little support from her family. More recently, ahead of the release of 2020’s ‘I Disagree’ - a vibrant, saturated pop-metal hybrid of an album that earned the singer the first ever GRAMMY nomination for a solo female in the Best Metal Performance category - she parted ways with previous long-term collaborator Titanic Sinclair, releasing a statement that highlighted “manipulative patterns” of behaviour that she’d been subjected to during their relationship.

For a long time, Poppy’s output - from her first internet forays that saw her playing with ideas that were more performance art than pop star, releasing stylised, uncanny videos of her interviewing a plant, ASMR flexing a rubber glove and talking to a mannequin called Charlotte - could be seen more abstractly as one huge exercise in escapism itself. The early years of her career seemed intent on subverting the norm to extreme degrees, revealing almost nothing about herself that would break the illusion.

With ‘I Disagree’, however, emotion came crashing down in abundance. Setting fire to her previous era or, as opener ‘Concrete’ began, “bury[ing it] six feet deep” - Poppy’s third LP was one that reported from the trenches. “I disagree with the way you continue to pressure me,” shouted its title track; “When I said that I’m OK/ All the power you had, it just slipped away,” she countered on ’Nothing I Need’. And if that album was one made from the eye of the storm, then ‘Flux’ is one that’s had time to take a step back, assess the damage and start to rebuild.

Not content with giving you one all guns blazing print cover star a month, we recently launched our brand new digital cover series DIY In Deep: a monthly, online-centric chance to dig into a longer profile on some of the most exciting artists in the world right now.

“I feel like I’m always in flux. I feel like I’ll always be bending in such a way, moving and changing. I think Our first DIY In Deep of a rubbery cover star is constantly kind of dancing evolving creative polymath Poppy. Keep reading for man when I an extract, and head over think of flux,” to diymag.com/poppy to she says with peep the full feature… a giggle. “I see it as a positive, absolutely. It’s the exploring of the unknown, and being willing to accept the uncertainty. It can be quite peaceful, actually…”

P

eace, you suspect, is a concept that’s potentially fairly new for Poppy. Throughout today’s conversation she makes references to compassion and people’s lived experiences that you never really can know what’s going on under the surface of what you might see.

Despite her purposeful former artistic detachment, full of robotic references and assertions that she was raised by the internet, Poppy has, of course, always been a living, breathing person - one who, time has gone on to show, has had far from an easy ride.

Speaking of her GRAMMY nomination for ‘I Disagree’ track ‘BLOODMONEY’, it’s the symbolism of being the first woman recognised in her category that resonates the strongest. “There are so many things to overcome as a girl in the industry. And I never want to be the one that’s getting down and out and sad about it, but truthfully it’s still very much an issue, and there are so many hoops that a female artist has to jump through in comparison to a male artist, especially when you have to deal with the politics with record labels and management - it’s never ending and it can make your head spin,” she begins.

“That’s why I go back to [the idea that] I don’t take it lightly that I was nominated, and that I was the first solo female; it meant a lot to me. It’s a really unfortunate world out there, and whenever I see younger artists coming up in it, it kinda makes me a little bit sad when they start out with the stars in their eyes because I just want to protect them.”

‘Flux’ is out now via Sumerian.

Read the rest of DIY In Deep’s September feature with Poppy at diymag.com/poppy now. DIY

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On

‘Gram on the

show WITH THE

London-based rabble-rousers Talk Show have a new Joe Goddard-produced EP on the way, and a pulsing, electronic new direction to match. Words: Lisa Wright.

“D

ance and punk have always rubbed shoulders,” considers Talk Show frontman Harrison Swann. “You see photos of Blondie at Studio 54, and then there were bands like Suicide who mixed electronica and punk, and The Prodigy in the ‘90s. So it didn’t feel weird to try and mix these things, it felt natural.”

Having charged into the ring with a series of antagonistic, bullish clarion calls a couple of years back, the past 12 months have been a transformative time for the London quartet. Having ditched a slew of material written and recorded at the start of 2020, it was when Harrison was drafted in for a writing session with house DJ Eli Brown - eventually resulting in collaborative single ‘Trouble’ - that things started to click.

“We recorded the Eli song with Joe and Al from Hot Chip, and after that we thought we’d do anything to make it work and happen again,” he continues. “I remember coming out of the session being like, THIS is what we should be doing. It’s what we’d always wanted to do but never quite figured out how to get there.” “We had all this material and had come to a dead end, and then it was a ‘right place, right time’ [situation] of being introduced to someone who does something vastly different,” bassist George Sullivan adds. “It was the push we needed to break the framework we had for writing and have the confidence to go for it.”

These days, even yer gran is posting selfies on Instagram.

Instagran, more like. Everyone has it now, including all our fave bands. Here’s a brief catch-up on music’s finest photo-taking action as of late.

“Be a pop star,” they said. “It’ll all be glitz and glamour,” they said. (@selfesteemselfesteem)

Embracing the dance music - The Chemical Brothers, Faithless etc - that they’d always been fans of and pushing those elements to the front, the first taster of Talk Show 2.0 came with last month’s ‘Underworld’ - an homage to ‘Born Slippy’, and a fizzing, pulsing elevation of their previous work. Next up there’ll be a full EP that picks up that mantle and runs with it, prioritising positive mantras and simple but strong ideas.

“Being in a room with [Joe and Al], armed with this music we really love, made me want to work really hard - to prove to ourselves that we could do it and not leave a stone unturned,” Harrison enthuses. “This EP feels hopeful and positive. I wanted it to feel open and big and grandiose; I stopped caring what anyone thought of me or my lyrics and that was the biggest help. When I listen back to old stuff I can hear myself trying to impress other people, and now it’s such a weight off my shoulders and I think we’ve all felt that in the band.

It’s been really freeing.”

Allowing themselves to strip away any former parameters of what Talk Show ‘should’ be, the band’s next phase is set to be just as visceral, and even more fun. “There was definitely some excitement [when we were in the studio],” grins George, “that when things do go back to normal, and you’re at a gig with a capacity crowd, don’t you wanna write something that really grabs that moment?” DIY

The Vaccines’ kissing booth is now open for business: one peck per album download. (@thevaccines)

Thankfully we didn’t pay attention to a young Dream Wife’s demands. (@dreamwife)

“[Working with Joe and Al from Hot Chip] was the push we needed to break the framework we had for writing.” - George Sullivan 12 DIYMAG.COM

Academy Events present

SEPTEMBER

25 EXETER THE LOFT LIVE SESSIONS

NOVEMBER 12

17 18 19 20 23 24 25 26 27 29 30

WORLDWIDE LIVE STREAM BRISTOL LOST HORIZON NOTTINGHAM ROUGH TRADE YORK THE FULFORD ARMS HUDDERSFIELD THE PARISH SHEFFIELD RECORD JUNKEE CULLOMPTON THE CORN BARN PLYMOUTH THE JUNCTION TRURO OLD BAKERY STUDIOS BATH MOLES CARDIFF CLWB IFOR BACH LEICESTER FIREBUG NORWICH THE WATERFRONT STUDIO

DECEMBER

01 LONDON O2 ACADEMY ISLINGTON

03 04 05 06 08 09 10 11 14 15 16 17 18 20 21

BLACKPOOL BOOTLEG SOCIAL NEWCASTLE THINK TANK? EDINBURGH THE MASH HOUSE GLASGOW STEREO HULL THE NEW ADELPHI CLUB STOKE THE SUGARMILL LIVERPOOL ARTS CLUB BIRMINGHAM SONIC WAVE OXFORD O2 ACADEMY2 GUILDFORD THE BOILEROOM SOUTHAMPTON JOINERS READING FACE BAR MILTON KEYNES THE CRAUFURD ARMS CHELMSFORD HOT BOX LIVE WORTHING THE FACTORY LIVE

WILLANDTHEPEOPLE.CO.UK/LIVE AN ACADEMY EVENTS AND FRIENDS PRESENTATION

NEW SINGLE ANIMAL OUT NOW!

VISTAS. JAWS. THE SHERLOCKS. YONAKA.

Discover the Miracle.

THE TWA NG A CHRISTMAS TRADITION PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS

DECEMBER 2021 FRI 03 STOKE THE SUGARMILL · SAT 04 DERBY THE VENUE · SUN 05 GLASGOW THE GARAGE MON 06 EDINBURGH THE LIQUID ROOM · THU 09 SHEFFIELD O2 ACADEMY FRI 10 LIVERPOOL O2 ACADEMY · SAT 11 MANCHESTER O2 RITZ MON 13 NOTTINGHAM RESCUE ROOMS · TUE 14 CARDIFF TRAMSHED THU 16 LEEDS O2 ACADEMY · FRI 17 NEWCASTLE RIVERSIDE SAT 18 BIRMINGHAM O2 ACADEMY · WED 22 & THU 23 LONDON O2 ACADEMY ISLINGTON

Andrew cushin. bad nerves. beaux. blondes. bob vylan. candid. chappaqua WRESTLING. CHERRY CHERRY. COURTING. CROWS. DEAD LETTER. DEAD PONY DECO. DO NOTHING. FEET. GEORGE O'HANLoN. I KNOW I KNOW. JOEY MAXWELL. LADYBIRD. LAWRENCE TAYLOR. LUCIA & THE BEST BOYS. LYNKS. MEALTIME. MILA. MOA MOA. OSCAR LANG. OUTER STELLA. OVERDRIVE. OVERPASS. PANIC SHACK. PARIS YOUTH FOUNDATION. PIXEY. POLICE CAR COLLECTIVE. SFVEN. SHAI BRIDES. SPYRES. SUGARTHEIF. TALK SHOW. THE CLAUSE. THE K'S. THE LOTTERY WINNERS. THE MYSTERINES. THE NOVUS. THE NU. THE ROYSTON CLUB. TTRRUUCCEES.VALERAS. WEIRD MILK.WHITE LAKES. WILL & THE PEOPLE. YOUTH SECTOR.

BIRMINGHAM Sat 11 dec 2021

AN ACADEMY EVENTS, SJM CONCERTS, DF CONCERTS, DHP & FRIENDS PRESENTATION BY ARRANGEMENT WITH ITB

COMING THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

TICKETMASTER.CO.UK & ALL USUAL AGENTS 13

In case you missed it (and truly missed out), over the past few months we’ve kicked off DIY IRL a new live series, rounding up some of our favourite new talents and plonking them where they belong, on a stage in front of you lot.

The first installment saw Katy J Pearson and Bull charm the pants off of Walthamstow’s Signature Brew venue, and you can read all about last month’s second show with Pixey, Molly Payton and Wooze below.

SONG WARS! THIS MON TH:

(BITCH) DO KILL MY VI N’T BE

For our next gigs, we’ll be hopping over to East London’s Shacklewell Arms. Stay tuned for more announcements very soon...

Kat y J Pearson

PIXEY/MOLLY PAYTON/WOOZE Signature Brew, Walthamstow

A triple header of new talents, September’s edition of DIY IRL takes in everything from vibrant, Bowie-influenced shimmies, to grunge-flecked indie catharsis to infectious, shimmering alternative pop.

Sigrid VS Kendrick Lamar Of all the words in all the world, sometimes artists just plump for exactly the same ones. But which of these identically-titled songs is technically, objectively the winner? Ready, set, FIGHT!

SIGRID Year released: 2017 How has it aged? The song that launched the career of the Norwegian pop favourite, ‘Don’t Kill My Vibe’ remains one of her best moments - a big, yearning anthem to following your heart.

What’s it saying? “You think you’re so important to me, don’t you?” posits our young protagonist before dispelling those notions with some hearty, sing-along “woah-oh-oh”s and a reaffirmation of her message. Don’t kill her vibe, mate! Didn’t you hear her the first time?!

Banger rating out of 10: A solid 7. If we were directing a teen coming of age film, we would definitely consider this to soundtrack a pivotal scene.

KENDRICK LAMAR

First up are London-via-Korea’s WOOZE, whose sartorial extravagances (core members Theo Spark and Jamie She wear voluminous yellow creations, while their live bassist dons a top hat and tails) are only outdone by their ‘80s-drenched, new wave-esque swaggering allure. They’re an effervescent sight, the likes of ‘Witch Slap (IOU)’ and ‘Hello Can You Go’ accompanied by riffy guitar tricks and some Hives-eque choreography.

Year released: 2012 How has it aged? Still one of King Kendrick’s most famous tracks (a casual 400 million streams, no biggie), this cut from ‘good kid, m.A.A.d city’ remains an understated slammer nearly a decade on from its release.

What’s it saying? “That’s really one big subliminal at everybody getting mixed in a situation where everyone wants to have creative control. That’s the vibe I wanted to kill,” said the Compton rapper at the time. In short, record label bosses step back: Kendrick ain’t taking any of your shit.

Banger rating out of 10: Without ever stepping much past an easy, breezy, mid-tempo drawl, Kenny still manages to score an easy 8.

What New Zealand’s Molly Payton lacks in flamboyance, she more than makes up for in fuzzy, emotive magnetism. With a touch of the Ellie Rowsells to her quietly confident stage presence, recent single ‘When Skies Were Always Blue’ swells from quiet beginnings into a full on cathartic belter, while ‘Honey’ is as bittersweet as you like - think Sixpence None the Richer’s classic ‘Kiss Me’ reimagined with ten times more emotional grit.

Liverpool’s Pixey is on bubbly, excitable form as well she should be; tonight marks the singer’s first ever London headline show, but judging from the palpable stage presence that radiates from the singer, who helms her short-but-sweet set like a seasoned pro, it’ll be far from her last. A cover of Cornershop’s ‘Brimful of Asha’ weaves impressively well into her own material, bringing out the ‘90s swagger of irrepressible closer ‘Just Move’ and the psych twang that nudges the edges of ‘Free To Live In Colour’. Pixey might be over and out in little over 20 minutes, but like any good entertainer, she knows to always leave the crowd wanting more.

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RESULT:

Kendrick takes it by an inch, but the lesson we can all learn here is just not to kill anyone’s vibe. Jeez! Is it so hard?!

Elsa Esmeralda - ”Sculpting Storms” (EP) (Art-Pop) Released by Flick Records, in collaboration with Icons Creating Evil Art

Release date: Oct 15 Pre-save: https://elsaesmeralda.flickagency.se/

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ALT-J U&ME ​ he trio’s first new music T since 2018’s remix album ‘Reduxer’, ‘U&ME’ feels more like a warm up for the main event than a big comeback single proper. The classic alt-J tropes are out in full force - Joe Newman’s immediately recognisable vocal tripping over obscure tongue twisters (“Flashing in the dark, my luminescent tongue…”) as languid, strangely sultry backing dances around him; aside from an instrumental string section burst, we’re in familiar territory. Which is to say that ‘U&ME’ is a solid reminder of why alt-J have quietly become a very big band, but also that after three years away, we reckon they’ve got a few more tricks up their sleeve yet. (Lisa Wright)

LET’S EAT GR ANDMA Hall Of Mirrors Having graduated from purposefully rickety beginnings on debut ‘I, Gemini’ to the more fleshed out, widescreen world of 2018’s ‘I’m All Ears’, ‘Hall of Mirrors’ marks another step forward for Norwich BFFs Let’s Eat Grandma - a dizzying trip through the exciting first flashes of new romance, and one of their most straightforward (a good thing) offerings yet. Where their early steps pushed the quirks at all costs, their latest is a pulsing headrush that channels the feel of the fairground to describe the sensory overload of crushing hard; it’s relatable, evocative and shows that LEG have fully outgrown needing tricks to get their point across. (Lisa Wright)

AMBER MARK - WHAT IT IS Wondering about the meaning of life isn’t exactly new lyrical territory when it comes to songwriting, but there’s something wonderfully liberating about Amber Mark’s fresh new take on the much-pondered question.

A slinky confessional of a track, ‘What It Is’ is a rich and shimmering cut from the singer’s long-anticipated debut, that sees her existential thoughts paired with slick R&B beats and funky guitars. “Feel it in my bones / Oh I’ve got to know / Tell me what it is,” she reasons with the universe. She may not quite have this riddle figured out just yet, but on ‘Three Dimensions Deep’, we’re willing to bet she’s got some wisdom of her own to offer up. (Sarah Jamieson)

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YEARS & YEARS Crave The second taste of forthcoming third album ‘Night Call’, ‘Crave’ is a surreal trip into another world that’s equal parts luscious, moody, and irresistible, Olly Alexander’s vocals weaving and winding around the sultry instrumental, an electrotinged beating heart that palpitates with synth and shimmer. ‘Crave’ effortlessly balances the line between darkness and delight, replete with an appropriately sensual, strange video - Years & Years are back and just as ambitious, and their return is already entrancing. (Ims Taylor)

IDLES The Beachland Ballroom

Heading into their fourth album in as many years, the prolific rate at which IDLES work could be a curse as much as a blessing; progression generally takes time, and time is something the Bristolians rarely seem to afford themselves. And so the fact that lead single ‘The Beachland Ballroom’ is genuinely, markedly different from anything they’ve penned before - a soulful, warm lilt helmed by a vocal performance by Joe Talbot that swaps the belligerence for something altogether softer - feels quite remarkable. ‘Ultra Mono’ might have stoked the kindling of backlash; their return should earn them nothing but praise. (Lisa Wright)

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I have a philosophy to trust my audience, and if I wanna make changes they’ll be ready for those changes.” - CLEMENTINE CREEVY

What’s Going On With…

CHERRY GLAZERR Clementine Creevy talks working with Four Tet, getting back on

the stage and trusting her gut (and her fans). Words: Ims Taylor.

Hi Clem - how are things with you?

Kind of weird, cos it’s been slightly normal? We had a show a few weeks ago at the Greek Theatre [in LA], and that’s my favourite venue ever. I was like, ‘Oh man, I think I might have forgotten how to play guitar’. But you just fall back into it when you start playing the show, like muscle memory.

Your new music has a slightly more electronic skew compared to your older stuff how did it feel playing live?

I think it actually pairs really well with the old material, because it’s just as heavy and very sonically aligned with stuff that I’ve done in the past, but it’s very different production-wise. It’s given the show a nice variation that I actually feel like it was lacking before, now that I’m thinking about it. We played a bunch [of material] that isn’t even released yet, and one of the tracks I’ve been doing with Four Tet went over really well.

Four Tet! Exciting – what else can we expect from your new sound?

I was listening to a lot of alternative house and techno; weird alt-pop, lots of beats-based music, and I just couldn’t help but incorporate that into the new sound. I have a philosophy to trust my audience, and if I wanna make changes they’ll be ready for those changes. I just tried to really follow my muses, and not worry about everything around ‘changing your sound’. I’m having fun with it, it feels really true to my spirit right now - last night I was up until 3am recording a crazy, Deftones rock song!

It’s kind of nerdy but I’ve been watching a lot of movies then

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running to the studio with whatever feelings have come up.

I’ve written songs borne from watching Mysterious Skin, which is this early ‘00s movie with Joseph Gordon Levitt. It’s really heavy but it’s amazing, still really fun and stylised.

What are the red threads that connect your current music to old Cherry Glazer?

For some reason, no matter what, it always sounds like me - even when I try to do something very different! As an artist, you always think you’re doing something so different when really it’s just more of you. I do have this sense of melody and harmony that’s very specific to me, that’s what the north star is across my music.

I think I’ve set a precedent for being the type of artist who is a bit unexpected - I’m always exploring different types of sounds, and I think I’ve guided people to expect that.

You trust your fans and they trust you - does that make it easier to challenge yourself, and them?

That makes me wanna cry because it’s really sweet! I feel there’s a real symbiosis between my fans and I. I think that challenging myself often comes from being as open as I can in collaborations; I can get very specific and tunnel vision about what I want the music to be, so collaboration is where I challenge myself and where a lot of really great stuff comes from. Probably my best stuff. I went through a lot of personal changes that were really necessary for myself recently, and I feel like that’s really opened my music up in a huge way! A lot of it is different, it has a new spirit because that’s just what happens when you change.

Out October 15th. Pre-order now.

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NEWS

of James Blake - James Blake This trailblazer of a debut album from 2011 kickstarted a sound that went on to dominate pop music in the following years. Before long, Beyoncé, Kendrick and Frank were picking up the phone… Words: Will Richards.

T

he true legacy of an album can be judged by the amount of poor man’s rip-offs that followed desperately in its wake. As the well-documented saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

When James Blake’s self-titled album came out at the start of 2011, following a series of hype-building early singles and EPs, it pioneered a new hushed, intimate form of dubstep - often, and somewhat problematically, labelled ‘blubstep’ - that took hold to become the signature sound of alternative pop production in the decade that followed.

FACTS

Alongside a host of people aiming to replicate James’s unique sound, some of the world’s biggest pop stars came to the producer himself to add a touch of his signature magic to their albums in the years that followed. Across the second half of the 2010s, he worked on Frank Ocean’s Released: 4th February 2011 Key tracks: ‘Limit To Your Love’, ‘The Wilhelm ‘Blonde’, Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’, Travis Scream’, ‘I Never Learned To Share’ Scott’s ‘Astroworld’ and more of the Tell your mates: ‘James Blake’ gave the biggest albums around. Alongside a producer some famous admirers. Madonna solo career that continued to blossom, said his music was “the kind of thing that he became the go-to guy for cutting edge makes me jealous,” while Kanye West - in pop and rap, all stemming from the trail the third person, of course - called that he blazed on his debut. him “Kanye’s favourite artist”.

THE

Around the time of the album’s release, James highlighted the trailblazing nature of The xx’s debut album ‘xx’, released two years prior to his own debut - an album that made intimacy and minimalism cool again and emboldened him to present his icy productions to the world. While the influence of that album is undisputed, it was ‘James Blake’, however, that signalled a shift of the sound into the true mainstream.

On that debut record, the sample-heavy dubstep of the producer’s early EPs gave way to the first traditional songs of his career. Even today, when the heavily manipulated voice on opening track ‘Unluck’ gives way to ‘The Wilhelm Scream’’s stunning, soulful vocal, it’s a goosebump moment and a shock to the system; no one believed that THAT voice could come from the dubstep knob-twiddler and blurry face on its iconic cover.

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The record’s greatest triumph is in its seamless blending of cuttingedge dubstep production and more traditional singer-songwriter tropes: something that was replicated over and over by others across the 2010s, and can especially be felt in the music of Billie Eilish, whose ‘When The Party’s Over’ James reinterpreted on his 2020 ‘Covers’ EP. Despite its frosty production and cool exterior, his debut’s most successful song is a cover of Feist’s ‘Limit To Your Love’, while the deluxe edition features a notorious, gorgeous piano version of Joni Mitchell classic ‘A Case Of You’.

By the end of the decade, the musician had moved far beyond the icy textures and shyness of ‘James Blake’ - 2019 album ‘Assume Form’ saw him embracing full-on, loved-up balladry - but the legacy of his debut album still casts a long shadow. This was the template of the 2010s in one perfect nugget. DIY

T I C K E T S AVA I L A B L E F R O M :

SEETICKETS.COM - GIGANTIC.COM - TICKETWEB.UK - TICKETMASTER.CO.UK

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Pink Pantheress The viral ‘Just For Me’ star is finally starting to lift the veil…

Words: Georgia Evans.

“I just want people to listen to my music and not think the person making it is someone that knew or expected all of this was going to happen,” explains PinkPantheress.

“I am literally just a young woman who enjoys making music and isn’t thinking too much about the other elements that come with it.

I’m just a simple music maker, not much behind me, and I’m a big fan of the internet.”

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The 19-year-old is an enigma - whose real name remains currently undivulged - that’s carefully balancing anonymity with being a viral sensation. While she wants to keep her identity private and her social media posts minimal, her music can be heard all over TikTok, with most recent single ‘Just For Me’ featured in over 700,000 videos on the platform.

It all started during a run of sleepless nights at university in London, when she was in a panic about her course and making music as an outlet - secretly at first, and then posting the finished products online. It wasn’t until an oblivious friend sent one of her videos back to her in a group chat that she eventually came clean about her internet fame. “I always wanted to have an audience,” she says. “It felt like a relief to be able to have these songs out, even if no one was listening.

[But] I think even back then, when I was doing that, I still wanted people to listen.”

Choosing TikTok for its reach and instant connection with listeners, she didn’t expect people to like her sound as much as they did. Blending chopped-up melodies stolen from the garage and drum’n’bass tunes she grew up listening to, PinkPantheress very much feeds Gen Z’s appetite for nostalgia. Her high-pitched vocals bounce atop familiar beats that take you back to ‘00s radio shows, with ‘Just For Me’ being a perfect example of this. Working on the track with Mura Masa, she simply said she wanted to sound like Craig David, and the 2-step anthem about obsessive love was made.

“I'd been listening to Eminem’s ‘Stan’ and I just love the way he tells that story,” she explains. “It’s one of my favourite songs

22 DIYMAG.COM

ever because of the lyrics, and I wanted to do the same kind of stalkerish thing. Obviously his song is a bit darker than mine, which is a bit more about love and feels more lighthearted, but I'd always wanted to do something where it's like, ‘Oh these lyrics are nice’ and then you think about it and you're like, ‘Hold on, this is kind of weird...’”

Noting My Chemical Romance as her favourite band, alongside idols such as Michael Jackson, Imogen Heap and Ryan Ross from Panic! At The Disco, PinkPantheress’ musical palette is a broad one. Most audibly, you can hear the immediate influence of Lily Allen, such as in the un-sugar-coated lyrics of ‘Passion’: “They call it sad, but they’re the outside lookin’ in / I mean they can’t understand when they all cope with everything / And when I opened my heart in front of my friends, finally / It was not what I thought, 'cause they're not there anymore.”

While she has collaborated with producers, and even lent her voice to GoldLink’s house anthem ‘Evian’, don’t expect any kind of major shift in PinkPantheress’ sound quite yet. The DIY aesthetic that started as GarageBand experimentation has quickly become a signature that’s hooked in her audience. “If everything sounded too polished, I don’t think people would have received my music as well,” she says. “I think it helped that it ended up sounding a bit shit in some areas, I feel like our generation likes that for some reason.”

Meanwhile, the sense of secrecy PinkPantheress has constructed around her identity (she politely declines to turn her camera on for this Zoom call) extends to not even spilling on new project ‘To Hell With It’. “There's definitely a body of work coming out very soon,” is all she cryptically hints. Of course live shows will quickly follow, where she’ll be able to see the fandom she’s attracted IRL for the first time, but stepping out from her internet persona, there’s only one thing the musician wants her listeners to take from her songs. “I just want them to know that any layman can make music,” she shrugs. “I started this not thinking anything would happen… I can relate, I am one of you, I’m just a music fan who embraced making music. So if you want to make music, make it. And don't even think about the reason why or why you shouldn't, just do it.” DIY

We’ll assume the ripped out pages of DIY are papering all your OTHER walls…

“I can relate, I am one of you, I’m just a music fan who embraced making music.”

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MOLLY PAYTON With her feet firmly back on UK soil after an unexpectedly extended trip to her New Zealand home, Molly Payton is ready to unleash her staggering new mini-album. Words: Sarah Jamieson. Photo: Emma Swann.

Some things in Molly Payton’s life never quite go to plan. Take, for example, when the 20-year-old singersongwriter first relocated to London from her home in Auckland, New Zealand when she was 16, and a stay that was supposed to last a year soon stretched into three.

Or when she finally got the chance to travel back home for a few weeks in late 2020, only to end up staying for eight months.

“I mean, that’s kinda how my life is these days…” she nods, from the Airbnb she’s been staying in since her return to the UK a month ago.

“I’m by no means a chilled person, but I’m just kinda happy to go with the flow now.”

Fortunately, these changes seem to be having a positive impact. It was after moving to her new school in the UK that she met fellow musician Oscar Lang, who’d go on to produce her debut EP ‘Mess’, before meeting producer and collaborator Oli Barton-Wood and completing last year’s offering ‘Porcupine’. Even being in New Zealand for longer than anticipated this year ended up working to her advantage; the geographical distance provided her even more freedom when working on new mini-album ‘Slack’.

“When I was recording my first two EPs over here,” she explains, “I was kinda shy and nervous to make calls on things, just because I hadn’t been in the studio a lot and I didn’t know much at all.” But with ‘Slack’, she was forced to work remotely with Oli on a 24 hour schedule, Molly working a full eight hour day on NZ time, before he woke up and took over. “Because Oli wasn’t there in real life, I was making decisions. I think the songs have ended up a lot more me because I had a little bit more control. I didn’t have anyone listening to it and saying, ‘Oooh, I don’t like that’, you know? It was all me.”

A collection of tracks written over the past few years, ‘Slack’ is an astonishing step up for the singer. “There’s one in there - ‘Like A Child’ - which I wrote with the Aquilo boys like, three years ago I think,” she notes. “There’s everything from that to ‘When I’m Driving’, which is one I literally wrote two months before recording.”

Building upon the intricate and intensely personal lyricism of ‘Porcupine’ - something very much still present here - her newest release melds together the scuzzy leanings of her previous EP with soaring melodies and spine-tingling moments. “I never just wanted to make one sound,” Molly confirms. “I wanted it to have that full spectrum of emotion. To have those ecstatic heavy guitars, and the real joyful melodies of ‘January Summers’ and then the darker sound of ‘In Your Arms’ - that real sadness - as I think that’s what my voice does well. I just wanted to have everything in it.” With ‘Slack’, you can tell that plan’s paid off. DIY

I never just want to make one sound. I want it to have that full spectrum of emotion.”

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THE UMLAUTS Eclectic Europeans, making aggy

RECOMMENDED

electronica you can dance to.

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Like a one-band ‘fuck you’ to Brexit, The Umlauts comprise members from across Europe (Monaco, Austria and more) who’ve now taken up residence in London, creating the kind of arch, knowing, yet fundamentally danceable take on electronic music that nods to the continent with a cheeky wink. Debut single ‘Boiler Suits and Combat Boots’, with its deadpan German lyrics, is both a comment on “how artists fetishise Berlin as being the centre of the ‘cool’ art world and the dystopian uniformity” and an icy, hypnotic strut of a track.

Both sides are good.

LISTEN: Debut EP ‘Ü’ was released back in June.

SIMILAR TO: Duolingo x Brixton Windmill.

KEG

Wild and wonderful rackets from the Brighton septet.

Like their tentacled Brightonian brethren (and recent tourmates) Squid, seven-piece Keg make the kind of controlled cacophony that clearly uses every one of its 14 limbs to its fullest extent. Unlike their peers, however, there’s a sense of silliness to this lot - one that prioritises wild lyrical stories and hedonistic good time spirit, creating a dense and sprawling whack of noise but keeping party-starting fun at its core.

LISTEN: The band’s debut EP ‘Assembly’ lands this month.

SIMILAR TO: Squid after a few Jägerbombs.

STATIC DRESS A fresh take on post-hardcore that’ll have you pining for moshpits in no time.

If you’ve been crossing your fingers for a mid-Noughties post-hardcore revival (because who hasn’t, eh?), the time may finally have arrived.

Having supported Canadian hardcore band Counterparts, performed at the Download Pilot, and with a Creeper tour in the diary, Static Dress are already getting a bit of a name for themselves. It’s easy to see why: channelling the likes of Underoath, The Bled, with even a touch of early From First To Last, there’s something exhilarating about the Leeds quartet’s fresh take on the genre.

LISTEN: Recent single ‘sweet.’ is a glorious slice of noise.

SIMILAR TO: All your post-hardcore faves from 2004.

NAMASENDA PC Music’s exciting new electro-pop queen.

With alumni that include the likes of Charli XCX, Hannah Diamond and Danny L Harle, when signing up to join the PC Music ranks you’ve gotta be ready to get your experimental pop on, and Stockholm’s Namasenda is more than able to step up to the challenge. Embracing the crystalline pop licks of her predecessors, Namasenda crafts razor sharp pop gems, expertly delivered via icy vocals over pulsating synths.

The result is a burgeoning collection of sizzling electronic-tinged bangers that’ll have you running to the dancefloor.

LISTEN: Upcoming debut mixtape ‘Unlimited Ammo’ is set to be banger-packed.

SIMILAR TO: Her previous self-diagnosis of “cry-in-the-club” anthems.

MODERN WOMAN London’s intriguing new alt-rockers.

After only being able to describe End Of The Road festival in various forms of the word “magical”, it only seems right that the first signees to their new label would harbour those same mystical qualities. Enter London newbies Modern Woman. Concocting an irresistible cocktail of post-punk and indie, what sets the band apart is vocalist Sophie Harris’ jaw-dropping vocals that flow between gorgeous melodies and striking yelps, resulting in a truly hypnotising experience.

LISTEN: Their debut EP ‘Dogs Fighting In My Dream’ is a four-track delight.

SIMILAR TO: If PJ Harvey listened to Dry Cleaning.

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daine

Finding the sweet spot between emo and hyperpop, the Aussie teen is already reaching for the stratosphere.

Words: Ims Taylor.

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“I’d hope that they were an alien,” daine decides, reflecting on how she’d describe herself to someone who’d never heard her music. “And I would show them all of my cover art, and I would just give them the words ‘future emo’.”

She might be aiming to send her hyperpop-indebted genre clash into extraterrestrial realms but, back on planet Earth, the 18-year-old Australian has a fully-realised vision for what’s to come, too. “Music and visuals are equal to me, I don’t think that music’s more important, which is really bad to say!” she laughs, “because I am a musician, and I’m meant to be all about the music, but I’m not. It’s more holistic, for me.

“When I’m writing songs I use visual cues, I never write about personal topics.

Like ‘Salt’ and ‘Bloody Knees’: they’re quite graphic, they’re more emotionally evocative,” she continues. “I want my music to paint a picture. Sometimes it’s just emotional vomit, but my favourite songs are definitely the ones where I’m painting visually with words.”

Apart from the visuals, daine notes that being “super emo” is the red thread that ties her music together. “I think I’ve always written music like that; I’ve always been doing something a bit emo-leaning, even when it’s not super obvious, and I feel so blessed that I have quite an emo fanbase. I wasn’t expecting it at all, but if you know, you know!”

Now, the singer is moving further towards the marvellous meeting point of

emo and hyperpop with every release, helped along most recently by one very important member of her fanbase – Bring Me The Horizon icon Oli Sykes. “I had no idea he even followed me!” she says giddily, “and then we finally did a song, which was really fucking crazy.”

That collaboration - September’s gamechanging ‘Salt’ - marks the beginning of a turn towards the alternative for the singer that’s seen her hailed as a new genre-hybrid icon, taken simultaneously under the wing of 100 gecs’ Dylan Brady and Oli’s rock kings. daine, however, is taking it in her stride. “I forget people gas me up so much! I just wake up every day and walk my dog and watch TV… It’s very insular, launching a career from my bedroom, but it’s kinda cool.

“The goal is to create a little world,” she enthuses. “I don’t really like solid routines, and I always wish that I existed in a fantasy world, so I think music is my space to create that and live that. I want it to be an escapist space for other people; I find it really flattering when people tell me they find my music and visuals really immersive.”

And as she continues her steady real world ascent, what’s daine got coming for us? “There’s definitely a big jump in evolution. I go through eras, so I’ll get back to making crazy shit soon,” she grins, “but some songs are gonna be coming out that feel very nostalgic and teenagery. It’s like, post-hyperpop, very futuristic, but youthful. I think there’s an innocent quality to it.” DIY

“Sometimes it’s just emotional vomit, but my favourite songs are the ones where I’m painting visually with words.”

All the buzziest new music happenings, in one place.

PLAYLIST

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:

TASHA 'PERFECT WIFE'

HIT THE ROAD Ahead of the release of her new EP ‘The Walls Are Way Too Thin’ on 5th November, Holly Humberstone has returned with new track ‘Scarlett’, an ode to her best friend. In the accompanying video - which you can watch on diymag.com right now - Holly sits on the back of a truck being driven by her pal in a visual encapsulation of the song’s themes: drive far away from all the shit in your life.

“It’s a fuck you to the guy that was going out with my closest friend Scarlett and it was written as they were breaking up,” Holly explains. “The relationship was totally one-sided and lasted for years. I wanted to write this one from her point of view. It’s a pretty positive song as it’s about her finally letting go, realising his many faults, and taking back her life.”

THE

BUZZ FEED

The first single from Chicago-based artist and poet Tasha's new album 'Tell Me What You Miss The Most', new song 'Perfect Wife' is an ode to the simple, devastating pleasure of true love. The music - an indie-rock slow dance that manages to pull off both grandeur and intimacy at once - perfectly encapsulates the heady rush that comes with an all-encompassing crush.

PIGLET DAN’S NOTE LEARN TO FLY 12 months after their brilliantly exciting EP ‘BRAINWASH MACHINE SETTING’, and after years of marking themselves out as one of the most exciting emerging punk bands around, Kent trio Lady Bird have finally unveiled details of their debut album. ‘WE’ will come out later this year via Alcopop!, and you can watch the video for first single ‘Factory Fool’ on diymag.com now.

Of the new song, the band say: “‘Factory Fool’ reminds us all of that sound. The ringing of the school bell which tells us when to eat, when to speak, when to work, when to move to the next teacher’s classroom - whose script remains written by his master’s voice, the same as from state schools through to Eton. Ding ding, back in the ring, toe to toe, walk the line…”

BOYS TO THE YARD Following a string of buzzy singles and sold out vinyl releases, Leeds trio Yard Act will release highly-anticipated debut LP ‘The Overload’ on 7th January. Its title track, described by the band as “an overture to the album”, is available to stream on diymag.com right now.

“Lyrically, I think it’s a record about the things that we all do,” says frontman James Smith. “We’re all so wired into the system of day to day that we don’t really stop and think about the constructs that define us.” Sounds like lofty stuff!

Swelling from plaintive beginnings to a full explosion of strings, layered vocals and background twinkles, ‘dan’s note’ is both intimate and dense, the end result a sort of pretty cacophony of ideas firing off simultaneously. The nom de plume of Belfast-born musician Charlie Loane, piglet has already been championed by Porridge Radio, who recently collaborated with him on two new tracks; his latest shows the musician is more than capable of going it alone too.

TSHA I KNOW After sprinkling a couple of tracks throughout the summer to toast the return of clubs, London DJ and producer TSHA has shared ‘I Know’, the final track to round out her new EP ‘OnlyL’. As we've come to expect from TSHA, 'I Know' is a catchy earworm that has one foot in the club and one reaching for the charts. Chopped up, sampled vocals circle around handclaps and a blissful beat.

It sounds like savouring the last drops of summer.

GRENTPEREZ CHERRY WINE

Photo: James Brown

A far classier song than an ode to those potent little bottles of Cherry B you get in the newsagent should warrant, Sydney-based 19-year-old grentperez’s latest places the singer firmly in the lane marked ‘nice boys who listen to Rex Orange County’. Full of lilting rhythms and spanish guitars, ‘Cherry Wine’ is a song to serenade your beau with, ideally on a sunset beach, preferably whilst drinking something much, much more palatable.

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

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GUSTAF The buzziest band in New York City present their funky, fun debut album ‘Audio Drag For Ego Slobs’.

Words: Will Richards.

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Lots of new bands make their mark at Austin, Texas’ new music mecca SXSW, but few literally form the band on the way there.

Back in 2018, Tarra Thiessen recruited Lydia Gamill to drive her band Ex-Girlfriends across the country from New York to the festival, but the band ended up cancelling the shows.

Sitting on a bunch of demos at the time, Lydia - a member of Bodega affiliates The Wants as well as a host of other NYC punk acts - decided to book some shows on the route from New York to Austin, nabbing the rhythm section of Ex-Girlfriends for herself and forming a band on a whim. Gigs were booked before the band even named themselves Gustaf; promo photos were taken and t-shirts made before they’d had a band practice.

“As someone who tends to overanalyse stuff, in order to make this solo project a band, it kind of had to happen that way,” Lydia tells us from her New York apartment, just days before the band head out on a US tour in support of IDLES, with a UK tour alongside Pillow Queens following in November. “It was a case of jumping into the water and seeing what happens.”

After their whirlwind beginnings as a band, Gustaf returned to New York and set about playing any show that would have them.

Over the next two-and-a-half years, the five-piece became the buzziest band in the Big Apple without releasing a single song, relying on an endearingly retro cycle of word-of-mouth praise, with anyone alerted to their brilliance having to get off their sofa and to a gig to actually see what all the fuss was about. The tactic certainly worked in one case; having popped along to an early gig, Gustaf can now count Beck as their biggest cheerleader.

“The internet just publishes something in a way that makes it become very final,” Lydia muses of the long wait for an official first Gustaf single. “What I love about our live shows is that they're very fluid, and it became a very specific, deliberate process to try and figure out how to record it.

“We’d really made a name for ourselves as a live band, which was a little stressful in terms of figuring out how we wanted to make the record sound,” she adds. “We had so many fans who I think had already decided what the record would be like. They assumed they knew how a Gustaf record should sound.”

When the pandemic stopped their breakneck momentum, Lydia decided to finally sit down and work on this month’s debut LP, ‘Audio Drag For Ego Slobs’. Setting up shop in Honey Jar Studios in Brooklyn (“It’s right by one of the most Instagrammed streets in New York City”), original tracking for the record was done in the studio before Lydia took the results back to her Williamsburg apartment with producer Carlos Hernandez.

“The method was a process of dumping and then refining, expanding and contracting,” she says. “We'd have everyone in the band come in and throw it all out there, and then comb through it all after that.”

The album that came from the process is one that does perfect

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justice to the band’s action-packed, fervent live shows, all fronted by the magnetic, sardonic vocals of their leader. “You say I’m much too old to still be lo-fi,” she winks on opening track ‘Mine’, which was also the band’s debut single, released last December.

uncertainty was really useful.”

Backed by intoxicating funk-punk that traces New York’s musical lineage - from Talking Heads through to ESG and onwards towards Parquet Courts - Lydia’s history as an improv comedian informs her vocal and lyrical style: across the album she’s funny, angry, cheeky, nonplussed and beyond. At times, she’s all these things and more at once.

“An ego slob is someone who does a terrible job of translating the world within the context of themselves,” she replies instantly, with the dictionary definition ready to be printed when the album takes off and Oxford comes calling.

“Doing improv comedy was really good training for learning how to be present and comfortable with failure,” she half-jokes. “Audiences are very smart and have good bullshit detectors, but they're also very easily manipulated if you presume strength and competence and calm. Learning how to feel comfortable and be in control with

The album’s one-of-a-kind title, ‘Audio Drag For Ego Slobs’, comes from a self-coined term that Lydia and the band dreamed up. So, what exactly is an ‘ego slob’, we ask?

“I was thinking about it as similar to a filter. The air comes into you and then it comes out a little dirty and messed up,” she expands, accurately describing Gustaf’s slightly messy but vitally human music. “The human being is like a dirty air conditioning filter.

It’s those unsavoury, selfish, boneheaded emotions that live inside of you. You need to pull them out and look at them and say, ‘OK, alright!’ and come to terms with them once you’ve extracted them. Everyone’s an ego slob, and that’s OK!” DIY

“The human being is like a dirty air conditioning filter.

It’s those unsavoury, selfish, boneheaded emotions that live inside of you.”

Photo: Cory Fraiman-Lott

- Lydia Gamill

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Standing shoulders GIANTS on the

of

PA SALIEU

HAS OVERCOME A L M O S T U N FAT H O M A B L E HURDLES TO BECOME ONE OF UK RAP’S BRIGHTEST NEW STARS. CHANNELLING THE LEGACY OF HIS GAMBIAN HISTORY, HIS IS A MISSION TO EDUCATE, UPLIFT AND, ULTIMATELY, CHANGE THE WORLD. WORDS: YEMI ABIADE. PHOTOS: BLACKKSOCKS. ART DIRECTION: LOUISE MASON.

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i

n October 2019, Pa Salieu was still figuring it out. Two months prior he’d dropped his underrated third single ‘Dem A Lie’, a track brimming with a poise and grittiness that had seldom been heard on British shores. Music didn’t come naturally to him, more a hobby that took off and had his name buzzing around his hometown of Coventry. Then, it was nearly gone, for in October of that year he was shot 20 times in the head in the city where he grew up. But he wasn’t supposed to die that night.

His purpose was greater, and he knew it. “Do you think anyone would’ve heard of me if I died that night?” he asks. “Would anyone love me? No. It would’ve been a wrap. But my parents came [to the UK] for a reason, to better themselves and, because of that, I know my purpose. Self improvement.

I know the bigger picture. No box can hold me. I cannot die normally.”

Just over a year and a half after that fateful night, things are different now. The sun is setting on the plush London skyline as DIY meets Pa in an abandoned warehouse nestled in the heart of Shoreditch. It’s the day after his live set at the Love Saves The Day festival, a madness in which he also showed out for collaborators and friends Ghetts and slowthai

during their performances. You would think the 118 mile journey from the festival’s Bristol location back to London would wear on his body, but he’s restless and active as he shoots today’s cover, clad head to toe in a lime green top and trouser set, complimented by a purple designer puffer jacket and a black durag, while he banters with the photographers and stylists. He is present, taking nothing for granted. The whole ‘being an artist’ thing is still new to him; he admits to having nerves before he descended upon the LSTD crowd, one of his first major live sets since the pandemic confined us all to our homes last year. Pa is naturally reserved and quiet in real life, and the prospect of performing is a hill he’s still working to climb over. “I’m a mute,” he admits. “I’m not that person that’s a big speaker; I’ll be at the back in a shubz [party], so [performing] is out of my comfort zone regardless. But I’m learning to be more open, man, I’m learning.”

Despite that, however, Pa is immensely friendly and chatty - a trait levelled only by the considerable weight of his words.

Descending onto a nearby garden patch to begin, instantly he is reminded of home, Gambia, where he spent seven years of life before his return to London aged nine, and where his heart remains. “My grandfather used to grow corn in a garden like this,” he begins, as his fondest memories come flooding to the

“I don’t care who listens [to my music], I care about who it helps.”

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surface. Home is a recurring theme in today’s near one-hour conversation, which is part historical voyage, part stream of consciousness as Pa assesses his 24 years of life, detouring to a brief history of the griots - the West African historians, polymaths and intellectual authorities active since the height of the honourable Mansa Musa’s Mali Empire in the 14th century.

The griot conversation is an apt one; they became the first point of contact for tales on the cultural and spiritual wealth of Africa at a time of untold prosperity in the motherland. Pa carries that spirit in him, seeking to uncover the depth of his existence and that of his people: the people of Gambia, the people of Africa. Meanwhile his music, a fluid inversion of dancehall, grime, UK rap, UK drill and afrobeats, reveals the journey of sounds and cultures spanning decades through the Black diaspora to the melting pot that is the UK, and how effectively they’re funnelled to a contemporary, nameless vibration.

Pa is an extension of this history, tilted towards the present day, but rougher and tougher. “I’m stubborn to the fucking bone bro,” he expounds. “My past has been hidden but I know that it's royal. I know about Mansa Musa, that’s a real guy, the richest man to date, fam, $400 billion. Information is here now and I will find it; this is the time of fucking awareness.

I’m trying to be a bridge to Africa, Nigeria, Gambia, Senegal, Guinea, everything. I come from a country of three million, and the impact I give there will transcend.”

Pa speaks with untold passion, driven by his self-appointed mandate to improve life for his fellow Gambians, or Gambinos as he affectionately calls them. He continually refers to the bigger picture of his purpose in life, likening himself to a vessel for change. Going back home for the first time since he left 15 years ago will be a start. “I’m not leaving this earth until I go back to Gambia,” he proclaims. “I see myself building a lot and everything’s getting planned now.

I want to teach the yutes about trading, how to build houses, how to buy houses, pay tutors to go from neighbourhood to neighbourhood to teach. This ain’t no marketing bullshit because I would die for this mission. I’m gonna do so much good it will be scary for me to go home.”

P

Since his first studio session in 2018, Pa Salieu’s ascent has been nothing short of remarkable. His first major statement ‘Frontline’, released in January 2020, with a wailing siren-like effect reverberating off bouncy drum patterns, sees Pa repping his Coventry ends fiercely on a danceable number that was the most played song on BBC Radio 1Xtra last year. Follow-ups ‘Betty’,

‘Bang Out’ and track-of-the-year candidate ‘My Family’ with Backroad Gee marked out his expansive artistry, in parts steely and other parts celebratory. November saw the release of his first full-length effort, ‘Send Them To Coventry’ - as incendiary a debut as the UK has seen in recent memory, shaking the tectonic plates of the scene in just 15 tracks.

If you hadn’t listened to Pa before it dropped, the opening stanza of opener ‘Block Boy’ would stop you in your tracks as he surmises: “Look my name is Pa and I’m from Hillset, bust gun, dodge slugs, got touched, skipped death”.

The starkness with which he conjures up an image of his neighbourhood is arresting, and with his compelling Gambian twang, the connection between his homeland and his new home is made clear.

His murky milieu of trapping, violence and near-death experiences are enough to leave a normal man paranoid, but Pa keeps himself strong, reading his environment with razor-sharp foresight. On ‘Informa’ featuring Birmingham driller M1llionz, he spits, “Friend of an opp then I’m onto ya”, crystallising the trust-nobody mentality that signals his reality.

Meanwhile on the gritty posse cut ‘Active’, Pa and his crew

“

a mentions often that he doesn’t come from music, suggesting that it wasn’t something he was necessarily born to do, - an intriguing admission when you consider his family’s deep relationship with it. Born in Slough, he was sent to Gambia by his parents at the age of two, where he lived in a village with his grandparents and extended family. His aunt, Chuche Njie, a folk singer renowned throughout the country, would look after him occasionally, instilling a musical tuition and ancestral loyalty that would manifest years later, miles away from home. “She’s fucking sick,” Pa says of his aunt. “She doesn’t even know how much she motivated me. She allowed me to hear my ancestors through her music.” Though known colloquially there as the ‘British boy’, Pa was right where he needed to be, connecting with his culture. He would return to UK shores seven years later, and the coldness of being Black in Britain would dim his Gambian glow.

Growing up back here with a thick Gambian accent, he excelled in performing arts but was a victim of bullying, to which he fought back. This was heightened as he routinely suffered racism both in school and in employment - he recalls opening up his work locker to find the word ‘n****r’ scribbled on it - and the cries of the street life were deafening. Making music wasn’t

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much of a prospect. “I was an active yute, man, music couldn’t have happened back then. Man’s not a verbalist like that,” he explains. “But me and my niggas fucked with grime, and them man would be clashing, and I loved how it sounded. As I got older, all I thought about was spirituality - where is that music from? It influenced my writing at the time. When I first heard a beat in the first studio I went to, I had my Notes app with what I wrote and I liked how I sounded on beats. This music ting came out of nowhere. But it was another unlock in life for me.”

For me, it’s Black History Day every day, whatever the month; that’s why ‘Afrikan Rebel’ is more than a project, it’s a statement.”

a Pa’s really climbing the rungs of success these days.

THE BELLY OF THE BEAST

Despite hailing from Coventry’s Hillfields Estate, Pa sees a mirroring of life in his hometown and the UK capital, London.

“Hillfields is where all the immigrants settled,” he says. “I grew up around Russians, Albanians, Romanians, Afghanis, Ivorians.

I always saw diversity, just like I do in London. People think Coventry is like cunch [the countryside] but it’s a city and it’s compact, it can get sticky. There are more cameras in London and the police are a mazza. So, if I die in London, you’d hear about it more than if I died in Coventry. But there’s no real difference. It’s still England, still the belly of the beast.”;

are exactly that, a coping mechanism for life in Hillfields, the council estate where he grew up.

But there lies a consciousness amidst the wilderness: ‘B***k’ is an ode to the rich history attached to the Black race, while he urges listeners to be protective of their ‘Energy’ by the project’s end, with assistance from Mahalia. For Pa, despite his unique experiences, all roads lead back to being a voice of the voiceless, a connector between cultures. “I don’t care who listens [to my music], I care about who it helps,” he says. “I do my music for me, it’s spiritual. It comes from me being in Gambia, it comes from my family. It can’t be mixed with anything else; it has to be my message. I’m going to speak on my past regardless because what I went through ain’t easy, man. Hopefully it helps the yutes who may have worse problems than I did.”

‘S S

end Them To Coventry’ landed in the UK Top 40 chart upon release while also earning Pa the prestigious BBC Sound Of 2021 title earlier this year, joining the likes of Adele, Ellie Goulding, Sam Smith and more titans of British music in receiving the distinction. Add a BRITs Rising Star nomination and two nods from the Ivor Novello awards - for Best Contemporary Song (‘Energy’) and Best Album - and Pa has now become a fixture in British music in a short space of time. “I’m not a star, not yet,” he says, pondering his adjustment to fame. “I didn’t expect the year I’ve had, but everything is progression; it’s like a video game to me, I’m unlocking different levels as much as I can. Unlocking the Afrikan Rebel within me. I realised when I was at the GQ Awards recently that there aren’t many people around like me, that carry my energy. But I never could have expected being there a year ago bro, and I’m thankful. Everything in my life is a symbol of what’s coming.”

Despite the fame and accolades, Pa has remained steadfast, refusing to let the bright lights of success dim his overall vision. Things did take a turn last April, however, when he was charged in connection with the fatal stabbing of his close friend Fidel Glasgow (known as AP) from back in September 2018 - the grandson of Neville Staple of legendary Coventry group The Specials. The case is ongoing, but suddenly, the same media machine that was heralding him as British music’s future was suggesting he was

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“I’m trying to be a bridge to Africa, Nigeria, Gambia, Senegal, Guinea, everything.” capable of something unspeakable to a person close to his heart. “I thought I was cancelled or something, it made me think, ‘Fuck the media’,” Pa says. “They were blaming me for my brother’s death. Are you mad? I don’t really care about what the media says.

They praise man one day then try to tear man down the next. Other people may not have been able to hack [the negative press]. Me? I can never forgive that shit.”

Pa is the first to admit he led a wayward life previously, with himself and his friends victims within it, and while he’s successful, the shadows of his past are etched into his story,

SEND THEM TO GAMBIA

Pa’s life changed forever once he landed on Gambian soil as a toddler, and it remains an indelible part of his story.

“There was a certain point in my life where I was hard to control,” he explains. “Luckily my mum was strict. She would always tell me to never speak English at home, only speak Wolof. My grandparents took me to villages in Gambia they never even took my mum.

That’s a sign to me. Gambia’s never left me. I haven’t been able to go back, and I haven’t been able to see my grandparents’ graves since I left and they raised me. I need to go home to come back as a real artist, I won’t be one without going home.”

threatening to show themselves at any given moment. But Pa wouldn’t want it any other way because it forms part of his DNA, the intersection between lived experience and sanctity.

Today, he remains forward thinking. Now settled in London, he released the infectious anthem ‘Glidin’ alongside Northampton nomad slowthai in June: two unique voices in British rap becoming one. Following that came a new project, titled the same name as a phrase he’s uttered throughout today’s chat: ‘Afrikan Rebel’. The three-track release, featuring Nigerian artists Tay Iwar, Zlatan and Obongjayar, serves as the first instalment of what will be a series of drops under the ‘Afrikan Rebel’ banner, serving the purpose, according to Pa, of cultivating “a movement which I hope can allow me to connect with others with a similar mindset and giving a platform for me to experiment with influences and inspirations from my culture and others from the great continent of Africa.”

“I had the idea [for ‘Afrikan Rebel’] even before we dropped ‘Send Them To Coventry’,” he explains. “Anyone can be an Afrikan Rebel, you place that title on your head like a crown and your royalty is there, that’s it. If you understand that, you’re an Afrikan Rebel. For me, it’s Black History Day every day, whatever the month; that’s why ‘Afrikan Rebel’ is more than a project, it’s a statement. It stands for new generations of Africans, stubborn to the fucking bone, knowing themselves and making change.”

Pa is packing heavy artillery to project his defiant message.

He’s been in the studio with UK rap’s golden boy Aitch, alt queen FKA twigs, rap legends Krept & Konan, genreagnostic duo Ibeyi and even Harlem’s pretty boy, A$AP Rocky. A track list of this magnitude would stand out even in the most crowded of release days, but the variety speaks to Pa’s worldly approach, and his hunger for musical growth.

“I’m not a rapper,” he declares. “I don’t like to be boxed into anything. I do what I want, how I want. My definition of music is different, it comes from the griots, history tellers telling you about yourself. I know myself and I know where I’m from. Because of that, I’m always going to keep all elements of myself in my music, I’m always going to keep it spiritual.”

Alignment in his life is key, between the musical and the personal. Just two years after skipping death, and a year after shutting down Britain’s music scene, his journey has yet to reach full gear, but his destination is clear and defined. Music has made it achievable, and fear is not an option. Pa Salieu carries the weight of his ancestors on his shoulders, ready to change the world.

‘Afrikan Rebel’ is out now via Atlantic. DIY

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Big night, lads?

Alive

“AS A ROCK MUSICIAN, I BENEFIT FROM LIVING WITHIN CAPITALISM. I CAN BE CRITICAL OF [THAT], AND I FEEL LIKE I NEED TO BE.” - ANDREW SAVAGE

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&

icking K

&

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU’RE HEADING INTO YOUR SEVENTH ALBUM AND SECOND DECADE AS A BAND? IF YOU’RE PARQUET COURTS, THEN YOU GO OUT CLUBBING, TAKE A LOAD OF PSYCHEDELICS AND CARRY ON YOUR SWEET CONTRARIAN WAY. Words: James Balmont. Photos: Pooneh Ghana.

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or Parquet Courts, the end of 2020 will be remembered at least partially more nostalgically than for most. Marking the 10-year anniversary of their first live show in December, the New York quartet underlined their inaugural decade together with a careerspanning live broadcast from Brooklyn's Pioneer Works. But for the band members themselves, heading towards the latter half of their thirties has meant opening more doors - and definitely not just relying on past glories. 2018 album ‘Wide Awake!’, of course, had brought super-producer Danger Mouse into the fold to deliver one of the band’s most acclaimed records to date. And now, three years on, this month’s ‘Sympathy For Life’ offers something even more ambitious and unexpected.

Built from 40-minute improvised jams inspired, uncharacteristically, by dance music in their hometown and beyond, the band’s seventh album - though grounded in themes and sounds they’ve explored previously - is more groovy and hungry than anything they’ve released before. Parquet Courts have found not only a ‘Sympathy for Life’, but a new appetite for it, too - with psychoactive stimulants and New York nightclubs firmly on the menu. Co-lead Andrew Savage sums it up well: “It’s never too early for a mid-life crisis”. “[We were] spending all our time in the rock music world at these big indie festivals,” begins Austin Brown, the band’s co-vocalist and fellow songwriter.

He’s sat in a dark room in his New York apartment; a rather gloomy environment compared to that of bubbly counterpart Andrew, who is accompanied by a verdant pot plant and some dazzling sunlight shining through his kitchen window. Likewise, Austin is methodical and introspective, speaking in laboured monologues that resonate like drones. He’s surrounded by percussion

and guitars - the kind of set-up you’d expect of a seasoned indie band. But he’s less concerned with the world Parquet Courts established themselves in. “[We were] on tour incessantly and feeling exhausted by the culture surrounding it,” Austin continues, questioning the “uni-directional” concept of the concert, with all people facing the front. So as he sought inspiration for the band’s next chapter, he decided to mix things up a bit. Austin Brown went clubbing.

The Loft was the destination that opened the songwriter’s eyes: a mythical establishment among New Yorkers, known for its premium audio system and eclectic music policy, where rock, soul and disco records intermingle with club bangers. It’s been around for over 50 years, once frequented by legends like Arthur Russell, Keith Haring and DJ Larry Levan of the Paradise Garage, Austin explains in a bite-size New York history lesson. Its legacy as a place of inclusivity - where, historically, Black, Latino and LGBQT+ communities could express themselves without fear of persecution - was tangible for the Parquet Courts frontman. “I could feel that sense of community,” he continues, unconsciously echoing the opening monologue from Primal Scream’s ‘Loaded’: “It was about everyone being there together… where you can feel free to be yourself.”

The Loft put dance music culture in context for Austin, as opposed to the inaccessibility he’d experienced at the raves and techno clubs he’d frequented in previous years. “[It’s] subversive, anti-establishment, progressive, and also the most enriching American psychedelic experience that has been created,” he notes. “This was something I really wanted to carry into the process of creating our new record.”

T

he band decamped to the Catskills in upstate New York to put this vision into action. “It’s an area of sacredness,” says Austin. “A magic and fertile place with clean air, mountain water, and a lot of protected land.” It’s also the area where 2014 album ‘Sunbathing Animal’, and large sections of 2016’s ‘Human Performance’ were recorded. With Rodaidh McDonald (The xx, Hot Chip, King Krule) on production duties for the first time, ’Sympathy for Life’ would be a whole new kettle of fish - inspired not only by subversive and communal recording methods, but also by Grace Jones’ dancerock fusion and the euphoric social commentary of Happy Mondays.

“Roddy’s definitely down to burn the midnight oil,” Andrew explains of the band’s producer, as he describes the marathon improvised jam sessions that took place around the clock. These would be recorded in full, and later edited down from freeform modes to create structured tracks. Such methods often defied sanity and stamina: “I’d go take a nap, and a few hours later I’d come back, and the same song would still be being laboured over,” he continues. “There was an intensity there - that kind of fourth wind you can only get out of extreme energy loss.”

“For some of these, I wasn’t even playing an instrument,” Austin continues, offering further proof of the band’s unconventional approach. “I was playing everyone else’s instruments.” He’d move between echoes, pitch-shifters and distortion while manning a 16-channel dub station, he explains - something akin to the techniques used by the late Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.

Andrew describes his bandmate’s craft across the record in simpler terms: “He was the control master of the jam”.

The song ‘Plant Life’ was a product of such barmy improvisation techniques. Though the wider album

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“IT’S NEVER TOO EARLY FOR A MIDLIFE CRISIS.” - ANDREW SAVAGE

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Court Order Need a recap of Parquet’s catalogue so far? Here you go.

‘American Specialties’ (2011) The band’s lo-fi debut was initially a cassetteonly release, mostly made up of one and two-minute guitar schisms laced with recorders, cheap synths and plenty of fuzz.

‘Light Up Gold’ (2012) The schizophrenic garage rock of the band’s second studio album honed a winning formula, with tracks like ‘Borrowed Time’ and ‘Stoned and Starving’ fuelling their wider breakthrough.

‘Sunbathing Animal’ (2014) LP3 was recorded at the Outlier Inn in the Catskills - the same studio used for ‘Sympathy For Life’.

The title track exemplifies the kind of racket PC were becoming increasingly recognised for, as they continued to demonstrate a boundless energy.

‘Content Nausea’ (2014) ‘Content Nausea’ reimagined the four-piece as ‘Parkay Quarts’, since drummer Max Savage and bassist Sean Yeaton were largely absent this time round. Austin Brown and Andrew Savage recorded this selection of quick-and-to-thepoint punk songs on a fourtrack cassette in two weeks, with the finished package hitting shelves just six months after ‘Sunbathing Animal’.

was crafted by “sending rototoms into a geodesic dome made out of triangles” (sure!) and making the drums “so layered we couldn’t really tell where the sounds were coming from” (OK!), ‘Plant Life’ is straight to the point. Built on drum shuffles, percussion and beats, it also boasts a lo-fi melodica organ that harks back to Gorillaz’s mercurial dub debut ‘Clint Eastwood’. Add in a disorientating, David Byrne-esque vocal and you’ve got Parquet Courts’ most Talking Heads moment to date.

It wasn’t just Austin’s crackpot dub antics and communal songcrafting vision that brought an experimental edge to proceedings, however. An essential creative tonic for Andrew Savage became even more of a catalyst. “It all started one day when I went to the gym on acid,” he begins, nonchalantly. “I just felt like, ‘I’m a fucking machine here, I’m killing it’.

“Something about the psychedelic experience gives you this mind over matter thing,” he continues of what he terms “trippy lifting”.

The psychedelic psyche, he explains, puts physical exhaustion to the side, and enabled him to focus more intensely. “I not only have my wonderful physique to be thankful for, but it also started this songwriting process for me,” he jokes. “I guess it could be considered a performance-enhancing drug to some degree.”

Yet, for all the lunacy that fuelled the album’s composition, ‘Sympathy for Life’ still sounds undeniably like Parquet Courts. Take ‘Trullo’ or ’Walking at a Downtown Pace’. Each strut to the discreet kick-and-clap of a disco beat - the kind you might have heard at The Loft in the ‘80s. And yet both are decorated with enough percussive shuffles, noodling guitars and synths to disguise it almost entirely.

The latter track’s swaggering bass line, meanwhile, is textbook PC, just as the elastic band guitars of ‘Just Shadows’ and the youngand-dumb garage rock of ‘Homo Sapien’ feel like familiar territory re-modelled. There’s a consistent lyrical theme for the band, too, as Andrew gladly confirms. “It’s kind of become a common denominator at this point.”

“We are living in late capitalism,” he carries on, passionately.

“We are a product of it, and we benefit from it. Rock music [was] spawned from capitalism, [and] even at its most severe and underground iterations it is OF capitalism. I don’t see us any

differently. As a white person, I benefit from living in a racist society, and as a rock musician, I benefit from living within capitalism. I can be critical of both of those things, and I feel like I need to.”

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uch like the band’s previous albums, then, a reactionary outlook remains at the heart of Parquet Courts’ work. Electronic jam ‘Marathon of Anger’, for example, places itself at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement, with chants of “We’ve got the power, the streets are walking” calling out over gloomy bleeps and chugging bass. The cognitive dissonance between the words and the sounds speaks volumes of the struggle to achieve change.

The roaming ‘Just Shadows’, meanwhile, is about being unable to escape the global marketplace. It unfolds like a collection of warped haikus: “Amazon Fire, twenty percent off / Global cost, vast species death / Suggested for you.” It feels potent and charged. “As soon as you leave your apartment, it’s all around you,” Andrew rues of the invasiveness of consumer culture. “Advertisements, text, lights. We have this omnipresence of technology, and we’re always in it. It’s a very hard thing to escape.”

‘Application/Apparatus’, likewise, is delivered in an almost robotic rhythm, with lyrical soundbites referring to operating mechanisms, Bluetooth options and an “application, soothing like a mother’s voice”. It’s about the non-stop mechanism of living in a global city, Andrew notes, while ‘Homo Sapien’, conversely, is “your classic ‘everything fucking sucks’ punk song”.

“I think that all of our records are turning points,” he concludes of their latest, with its mind-boggling experiments, perception-altering experiences and socially conscious character. The sentiment is shared by his bandmate. “We’re finding that right line between our influence and our evolution,” Austin concludes. And on ‘Sympathy for Life’, the balance is right.

For Parquet Courts, then, the beat goes on. And as long as it does, the band will keep playing, too.

‘Sympathy For Life’ is out 22nd October via Rough Trade. DIY

‘Human Performance’ (2016) Album Five took the band’s heart-racing art-punk into a more earnest realm, with the brooding title track among a number of highlights proving they were more than just a one trick pony.

‘Wide Awake!’

(2018) The band’s most recent album was their first with an outside producer - Danger Mouse, of all people. A focused affair addressing real world traumas like racial violence (‘Violence’), that was simultaneously more joyful and humour-laced than any of their previous works.

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“I come from a lineage of Bangladeshi women who are naughty and fight back.”

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Debut album ‘Skin’ is a warm, evocative trip through 22-year-old South Londoner Joy Crookes’ journey so far. “Nostalgia is something that gives me a home when I have nothing else to hold on to,” she explains. Words: Seeham Rahman.

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Joy

ince the release of her debut single ‘New Manhattan’, then aged just 17, South Londoner Joy Crookes has been adhering to the mantra that slow and steady really does win the race.

Nominated for the BRITs Rising Star Award in 2019, she’s sold out multiple shows across the UK and Europe, played Glastonbury and drip-fed a trio of EPs. Only now, however, is the 22-year-old readying the biggest step of all.

“All those notable achievements gave me imposter syndrome.

I was so grateful, of course - but I don't rely on external validation. It's just not who I am,” she explains. “If anything, it makes me go the other way and go, ‘Fuck - now, we need something else out of me!’ That terrifies me.”

However, daunting as the prospect may have been, Joy has stuck to her guns, taking the time to fully flesh out narratives for this month’s debut album ‘Skin’. It’s a record that sees the singer tackle heartbreak, self-identity and the pains of growing up with an astonishing vulnerability. Full of openness and depth, ‘Skin’ brims with nostalgia, but delivers it in a manner that feels deeply personal - often to a point that’s almost too close to the bone, such as on the sensitive ‘To Lose Someone’ or opener ‘I Don’t Mind’.

FRIENDS UNITED PT 1

“It's funny, because though lots of thinking goes into the music and lyrics, it's just as important not to think,” Joy considers. “That’s where the nostalgia comes from - when I'm writing lyrics and I’m not thinking, it's my subconscious doing [the talking]. The best thing it can do is flow.”

Joy Crookes on working with Matt Maltese It’s an unassuming way of describing (turn over for Pt 2!) her process, but there’s evidently “It’s funny because he thought I hated him, which I far more going on here than merely thought was hilarious: the moment I met him, I knew I loved channelling the vibes. Her journey him. And the second time we wrote together, we wrote the has been a constant evolution of song ‘Skin’. I walked into the studio in a very fucking certain self-understanding, of slowly piecing way that day; I knew we were gonna come out with a song herself together. “Actually, none of called ‘Skin’ and I knew how I wanted it to sound. But they this has anything to do with music had to listen to what I'd gone through the night before for - it’s to do with myself and my own me to get something like that. I was in a Juicy Couture healing. I think naturally, that just kind tracksuit, crying my eyes out. Because of that, I of seeped into my music because I became really good friends with Matt. He’s one of was taking such a personal angle on my best friends now. From that experience, and everything,” she says thoughtfully. “The to be able to open up to someone that feeling of longing is something that I've much, it’s a very strong bond.” always meddled with. Because of my mixed identity and heritage, but also the people I’m attracted to, and growing up in South London an environment where suffering was such a normal

thing. And I think because my life has always been a little bit polarising in places, nostalgia is something that gives me a home when I have nothing else to hold on to.”

'S

kin’ is a record that blends this core of introspection with a timeless, jazz-infused vocal. It’s also one that gets by with a little help from its friends, recording at the legendary Abbey Road with production from Blue May (Kano, Shygirl) and Stint (NAO, MØ), and collaborating with Matt Maltese for a title track co-write. “I always wanted to have a certain quality of sound with this album, and I was working with someone [Blue] who is incredible and facilitated my madness. So, when we wanted strings, we both said it must happen at Abbey Road!” she laughs. “There was a slight level of ridiculousness that we tried to go for and were allowed to go for, so we took advantage of that. And that overambitiousness actually ended up being achievable.”

The result is a mesmerising soundscape of soul and jazz, with a palpable orchestral atmosphere that rubs up alongside Joy’s old-school inspirations, from Young Marble Giants to Nina Simone. It’s an eclectic melting pot of everything that’s at the centre of the 22-year-old’s curious and music obsessed sonic world.

At the centre, though, remains Joy, who speaks humbly and with generosity about the process that’s led to her longawaited first record. “I think I come across as self-assured because I'm a DIY person; if I can't find someone else to do it, I'll do it myself. But for the first time, I found a family and a community who helped me feel safer - especially when I was going into my brain demons. They believed in me and came together to create this thing,” she says. “More importantly, I fucking stuck by myself when I needed it the most. And then I had my first album in my hands! The only way to describe the feeling of that is the biggest amount of euphoria. It was the first time I ever felt proud.”

It’s been a long voyage to get to this point - one of self and sonic discovery. And now, with a debut that comes good on all those early plaudits, Joy Crookes is determined to speak only truths and break every rule. “Everything’s just a big ‘fuck you’, really - like wearing a lehenga to the BRITs. I knew no one else would be doing it, which is a shame, but I was going to do it,” she beams. “I come from a lineage of Bangladeshi women who are naughty and fight back. And because of that, following rules is not cute to me. It’s not in my blood or in Bangladeshi blood. Rebellion is part of our fucking DNA!” ‘Skin’ is out 15th October via Insanity. DIY

43

Everything in its

*Note - Matt’s right place is probably somewhere slightly warmer/ dryer/ better than here (sorry Matt).

44 DIYMAG.COM

Pl

MATT MALTESE might It’s an overcast day in North London, and be experiencing a wholly Matt Maltese - dressed in a full Italian tweed unexpected surge of viral suit - is gamely submerging himself neck internet fame, but back in the real deep in a slightly sludgy lake. “Is this the world, third album ‘Good Morning, place where coronavirus started?!” he It’s Now Tomorrow’ finds the heckles, perma-twinkle in eye still, thankyoung romantic more grounded fully, present. Likely not (we hope), but it’s and in touch with his true self also not the sort of place you’d normally find than ever. Words: Lisa a Billboard-charting, genuine viral sensation Wright. Photos: Jillian cheerily sacrificing himself to the elements at Edelstein. the behest of chancers like us.

Over the past 12 months, Matt has watched 2017 single ‘As The World Caves In’ go from an early notch on his musical bedpost to an unexpected TikTok megahit. Currently it stands at 140 million Spotify plays, covered by thousands of people daily including, brilliantly bizarrely, Doja Cat. “There are 60,000 songs a day or something put online, so how did that one get mined from the eternal abyss? I just don’t know. But god bless the kids that made that happen,” he shrugs, bemusedly. And yet the 25-yearold seems far more at home cracking jokes and clutching a much-needed post-dip cuppa than leaning into the fame-touching world that he’s suddenly found himself on the cusp of.

It seems fittingly ironic for a singer whose stock in trade has long been shining a light on the more uncomfortable aspects of life that his objective popularity peak has coincided with a time when, personally, Matt seems to be embracing something altogether simpler. Third album ‘Good Morning, It’s Now Tomorrow’ - a tender, warm, and consistently gorgeous record that marks his best output to date - shows an artist more accepting of himself than ever. In his personal life, meanwhile, the singer jokes that, these days, he lives like “a boring 50-year-old” - he’s basically stopped drinking, and become a self-professed exercise addict (“I had a nightmare where I lost my tennis racket. I don’t even play tennis…”).

Right

lace

The Matt Maltese of today, then, is still the same boy we’ve always known, but also notably changed. “Even though it’s quite an odd moment in the world to settle into yourself, I definitely feel more comfortable in my own skin than I ever have,” he nods, “which is maybe growing up, or going a bit far the other way at times and then realising that this life always seems to take you back to where you started…”

F

irst emerging as a shaven-headed, self-lacerating troubadour, playing the lothario in between ragged punks’ sets at Brixton Windmill, Matt’s 2018 debut ‘Bad Contestant’ was soon followed by a split from his major label deal and a follow up - 2019’s ‘Krystal’ - that seemed to swing purposefully in the other direction, prioritising radio-friendly hooks and a more commercial sensibility.

‘Good Morning…’ sits somewhere more happily in the middle of the two.

Twinkling moments of doe-eyed romance (‘Everyone Adores You (at least I do)’) and heart-on-sleeve swoons (lead single ‘Mystery’) still rub against more unusual analogies (‘Shoe’) and turns of phrase (‘Lobster’), but the whole thing feels settled and cohesive.

45

Matt’s musical niche might be one that instinctively sounds calm and inviting, but it’s been a journey of self-acceptance to truly get to that place. “I’ve been in what I felt was always this middle ground between someone going down a more conventional, no holds barred mainstream [path] but then idolising indie darlings, and being in the middle where I don’t really have an issue listening to Iceage but also listening to Keane. I like both,” he explains. “But that’s not really talked about in this music business. People are one side or the other and I’ve never been comfortable with that.

“I did have to step away from that and forge my own path where like, Warp Records might think I’m pop trash, but I have to wake up and not care. I have to wake up and not care what Steve Lamacq thinks of me, because it becomes like the cool kids at school,” he continues. “And I think the indie music scene in this country can be so toxic, because it can make people so repressed in trying to be idolised by people they don’t even like. And it can fuck up what you’re making, and what you feel about yourself.”

He recalls racking up the sort of plaudits - shout outs from Jarvis Cocker; nods from ‘credible’ media - that he’d long dreamed of, but that never truly satisfied the itch. “I’d rejected all these commercial paths in favour of being respected by certain people and then you get to the end of that

road and it’s like, as if I thought this was gonna make me feel fulfilled and whole?” he says, shaking his head.

“And then realising the thing that makes me feel the best is never thinking about those things, and stepping away. And I’ve maybe ended up where I am now by not really caring anymore what those people think.

And I say that really genuinely, because there are so many times in my life where I’ve said that and wanted it to be true but I really don’t care anymore, and it’s so nice. It’s hard enough to traverse life without all that.”

O

n Album Three, then, Matt is writing not necessarily for himself - “I don’t make music for myself, god knows I don’t. I make music to pay my rent and to connect with people” - but he’s also not writing it to please any lofty musical gatekeepers, either. And of course, because such is the fickle way of the world, the result is a record that will likely end up with a bigger audience than ever before.

Penned during 2020 and all that came with it, writing was an escape and a way to find a modicum of normality within a period filled with “juxtapositions of [living very small] and then these massive moments from the past hitting you like a bus”. “I think life MATT MALTESE ON WORKING WITH JOY CROOKES is in the tiny details, “She’s got an astonishingly commanding presence and life felt so small and I was so shy at first, this spindly bomber jacket in that time as well as white boy. But she was amazing, and we talked for five so big,” he muses. minutes and there was just such a click. She lived three “I’d watch Episode minutes away from where I used to live, so we’d hang Five of Normal People out and go to the gym together, and the third day we and then suddenly be hung out she had this very difficult thing going on in bawling my eyes out her life that we wrote a song about (‘Skin’). I feel so lucky that, in this time, I’ve met someone I feel about something that genuinely connected to. You meet very few happened six years ago.” people where their artistry just bleeds out of them and it really does with her.”

FRIENDS UNITED PT 2

‘Good Morning…’ reflects this duality perfectly. On one hand it is, like always with Matt, an album obsessed with the big theme of love: the having of it and losing of it, and a conscious nod to showing both sides. But there are small moments and lyrics that ensure that, even when courted by the mainstream, he’ll always trojan horse it to some degree. “I found you watching porn today / Maybe you’ll swap it out for me,” sighs ‘Outrun The Bear’; “Can you cook the lovers’ set menu for one person?” muses ‘Lobster’.

Recently, Matt has also been branching out and writing with other people, from Joy Crookes (see sidebar) to a clutch of bona fide A-listers who he’s keeping schtum on for now. Across lockdown, he estimates that he penned four songs a week for nine months for other artists, yet even that has been an exercise in allowing himself to do what he genuinely wants. “Four or five years ago, I’d have days where I’d be a snob about stuff, and cuss people out and never dream of writing with who I am now. But who the fuck am I to think like that?!” he says.

More than ever, Matt Maltese seems to have found his right path and, whether by fate or by sheer algorithmic luck, the universe appears to be rewarding him in tandem. “If this [spike in popularity] had happened on Day One Year One, I might have a very different sense of it all and think that’s how it’s meant to be. But I have no sense of that, and I take every success as it comes,” he decides. You can lead a man to the waters (or muddy lakes) of internet fame, but you clearly can’t make him drink. Matt Maltese is happy just floating in the middle.

‘Good Morning It’s Now Tomorrow’ is out 8th October via Nettwerk. DIY

Matt had started taking drastic measures to hide from his new league of TikTok stans…

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48 DIYMAG.COM

With eye-popping lyrics, an album full of bright and brilliant funk-pop earworms and a perhaps unexpected emotional honesty, Remi Wolf is the 360-degree pop star the

world has been waiting for.

Words: Elly Watson. Photos: Daniel Prakopcyk.

I

t’s not too often that you find a pop song that simultaneously references the infamous Two Girls, One Cup video, horror nightmare The Human Centipede and Chuck E Cheese within the first minute. But then, it’s also not too often that you find a pop star like Remi Wolf.

Raised in California, Remi first got the music bug after she created a pre-teen girl group called Citrus with two of her friends, which went onto become a slightly more serious (and less fruit based) production during high school.

“We would busk on the street, and I think that was the moment where I really started to think that I could do it as a career,” Remi recalls. “We were performing on a street corner at this art fair and were out there for two hours.

We made, like, $180, which at the time was unfathomable. And I was like, holy shit, this is a career! That’s where it kind of clicked for me that maybe people liked my voice and what we were doing.

Before that it was pretty much just our parents being like, ‘Good job, girls!’”

It was upon heading to LA’s USC Thornton School of Music in 2014, however, that Remi’s journey to the

fully-fledged technicolour pop star we see before us today truly began.

Residing in a “bit of a trap house” with 11 other people studying alongside her, she would spend her days surrounded by people living and breathing music for the first time.

“We were non-stop partying for three years, but also non-stop writing music and hosting shows,” she recalls. “I was meeting people through all these parties we were having, and I was writing songs with all my roommates all the time. And we were just jamming for like, six hours a day in our living room! I think that, as much as we were kind of just like fucking degenerates, I also learned a lot through that house and I found that it just really expanded my mind. I had a very limited idea of what the fuck was going on when I went into college, but I came out of it like my world had just been so broken open.”

And it’s these early, all-consuming forays that helped Remi hone the lyrically-wild funk-pop sound that’s now become her trademark. Learning how to push the limits of her songwriting, the results led to the “pretty fucking crazy” tracks that decorate self-released 2019 EP ‘You’re A Dog!’, its 2020 follow-up

“I think people [see] my music as a beam of light. It’s just such a difference to what’s actually going on in my life.”

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‘I’m Allergic To Dogs!’, and her highly-anticipated debut fulllength ‘Juno’, which lands later this month.

A kaleidoscopic pop offering, ‘Juno’ dazzles from start to finish, with so many lyrics designed to stop you in your tracks that it could give you whiplash. From Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie references on ‘Sexy Villain’, to an “orgy at Five Guys with five guys” in ‘Quiet On Set’, back to shouting out Red Hot Chili Peppers’ frontman Anthony Kiedis on the aptly-titled ‘Anthony Kiedis’, you really never know what could be around the corner.

“I’ve always pretty much said exactly what I want and how I feel,” Remi says. “I think I’ve had a pretty distinct writing style since the beginning. It’s obviously something I’ve been crafting for a while now; I’m always writing from a personal experience. I know a lot of people sometimes will write from other views, but that’s not my vibe. I have too much going on that I need to get out!”

I

nspired by her relationships, the “big throughline” of the album, however, is Remi’s experience with her mental health. Even the aforementioned Two Girls, One Cup nod pulls from a moment closer to home. “‘Quiet On Set’ is insane,” she smiles. “I think that’s my most balls-to-the-wall song lyrically.

I just gave no fucks at all; I made a lot of disgusting references in that song. I think I was just feeling there was a lot of weird, disgusting stuff going around me socially and I was really pissed about it.

Hence, the ‘eating my ass like human centipede’ [line]. I think that was the first lyric that popped into my head, and after I said that lyric, we just sent it.”

Though she interprets her struggles through a lyrical lens that’s seemingly bright and vivacious, beneath the witty wordplay and cheeky checkpoints, there’s a flipside. “It’s been the most transitional year that I’ll probably ever have,” she nods. “I went through this entire career glow-up and then I got sober and also like, made my fucking debut album. I’ve had a lot of ups and downs through the entire experience. I’ve had a lot of mental health issues for the past year, and I’ve been really struggling.

“I think people, especially through Covid, saw my music as like a beam of light and will put it on to dance and feel better, you know? It’s crazy that people go to my music for that joy. It’s just such a difference to what’s actually going on in my life.”

Although masked in sing-a-long bops, Remi’s rollercoaster journey is evident throughout her songwriting, and ‘Guerilla’’s lines of “Hiding my mind, smoke away the depression” or ‘Volkiano’’s mentions of “Fought myself in circles / ‘Bout to flip from drinking to sober” hold nothing back.

But Remi’s dedication to open honesty within her lyrics has never been something she’s shied away from. “Everything that I’m saying is really grounded in feeling for me,” she states. “I feel like some people listen to my music and they’re like, ‘This is fun, this is crazy’ which is so great, and I want people to really think my songs are bangers that they can listen to. But also what grounds them for me is that I write from a very honest place. It all makes a lot of sense in my head, and is really me expressing myself and my true emotions.”

50 DIYMAG.COM

“The number one goal for me is [to keep] pushing the boundaries of music forever.”

While Remi’s pop songs might not be as bright and bubbly as they at first seem, ‘Juno’ remains a colourful and vibrant snapshot of her life, and Remi’s undeniable energy will likely see her hailed for pushing pop’s boundaries yet again. Full of infectious vibes, the 13 tracks find her showcasing her shapeshifting pop-funk skills, and she’s not done wowing us just yet. “Now, more than anything, I just want to push myself and always feel like I’m stretching myself in a good way,” she notes. “I want to be growing artistically as I grow as a person. I think that’s the number one goal for me at this point: to set a goal of pushing the boundaries of music forever... I don’t even know what the fuck that means! I’m just gonna keep doing what I do the best that I can. That’s my goal.”

Her tracks so far have sparked a few differing reactions (“Some people were like, ‘This is fucking trash’ and some were like, ‘Holy shit, I love this!’” she laughs of the response to ‘Quiet On Set’). But by continuing to do what she’s doing, Remi has been instantly - and rightfully - ushered in by her lovingly-named Remjobs as one of the brightest, most unique new voices in pop to emerge in a long time, resulting in a rise over the past 12 months that’s been difficult to ignore.

Now, coming out the other side of a wild year and learning to take care of herself, Remi is spending time working out how to balance her new life. She’s bought some crystals that clear out bad energy and enhance creativity and sexuality to aid her along the way.

And she’s hoping that her debut can provide the same comfort to others. “I hope people find a bit of themselves in the album, or just find some joy and something relatable about it,” she smiles. “Something that makes their day better. I hope people feel that in the music.”

‘Juno’ is out 15th October via EMI / Island. DIY

Is that the stem of a fluorescent flower cushion, or are you just pleased to see us?

001 Background 002 Background 003 Background 004 Backg Foreground 003 Foreground 004 Foreground Christy002 Foreground HAMZAA IMOGEN Patricia Lalor

005 Background 006 Background 007 Background 008 Backg + Special Guests

Thu 21 October Laylow London

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Fri 22 October Omeara London

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Wed 27 October Bermondsey Social Club London

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Thu 28 October Courtyard Theatre London

Foreground 006 Foreground 007 Foreground 008 Foreground The Wytches Walt Disco Dylan Cartlidge Grandmas House

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lft 51

52 DIYMAG.COM

In reaction to their eighth album ‘A Celebration Of Endings’, Biffy Clyro spent lockdown holed up in their Scottish farm studio, pouring pandemic revelations into its gorgeously messy, chaotic follow-up, ‘The Myth Of The Happily Ever After’.

Words: Will Richards. Kevin J Thomson.

homeward

bound O

ver the past 18 months, a quite remarkable amount of records have been released that, while written before the world changed in March of 2020, seemed to speak to our collective situation. Biffy Clyro’s eighth album, ‘A Celebration Of Endings’, was completed before the pandemic and released last August, but its themes of triumph in hard times felt almost eerily prophetic.

“We are at the end of something in society, and humanity, at the moment,” frontman Simon Neil told DIY in an interview just weeks before lockdown hit the UK. “We’re convinced he’s some kind of clairvoyant!” drummer Ben Johnston laughs now of his bandmate, reflecting on the subjects of finality and renewal that flowed through the band’s last album.

When the promotional cycle for ‘A Celebration Of Endings’ kicked into gear in early 2020, last year looked set to be like many others for Biffy: a triumphant eighth album followed by festival headline slots and relentless touring. When silence fell instead,

53

the band had to sit still with a finished album in their pocket, the longest they’d been stationary since they formed in 1995.

“I wasn’t ready to sit at home,” bassist and Ben’s twin James Johnston remembers of the early months of lockdown, before settling into a more reflective state, musing on the history and legacy of his band and of a life that has never stopped moving.

Eventually enjoying “the shift of pace,” James says he gained a new appreciation for his life both in and out of the band during lockdown - something he’s taken back into work with his bandmates now he can.

“I didn't always outwardly display some things that I probably should have,” he says of his life before. “I probably looked frustrated a lot of the time, and I'm sure my wife would attest to that. I wasn't always the greatest of company over the last couple of years, and there’s been a lot of frustration, looking at the world and how selfish people are. It's probably been a good thing to have had a chance to raise my head up and take a bit of a breath.”

For bands of Biffy’s size, the next few years are always mapped out in front of you, with very little wiggle room for spontaneity or swerving off script (“We have to have a fucking meeting before a gig if we want to change a song in the setlist so the lighting people know,” James winces). After the initial itch to tour had subsided and ‘A Celebration Of Endings’ was released into the world, the band got to work on tidying up some leftovers from the album’s sessions, looking to make a companion or ‘sister’ album, as they had done in the past with ‘Lonely Revolutions’ in 2010 (following the studio album ‘Only Revolutions’) and 2014’s ‘Similarities’ (offcuts from double album ‘Opposites’).

Shaken (and, it turns out, stirred) by the disorientating, terrifying time, however, a compulsion to keep creating hit the trio. New songs started flowing that felt vital and urgent, informed by the pandemic and desperately trying to learn lessons from it. With their label not expecting another record for years, the band were driven by fury and passion, not deadlines. It all led to the whirlwind creation of ‘The Myth Of The Happily Ever After’, the band’s fiery, messy, glorious ninth album.

F

or the last 15 years, Biffy Clyro have rented a rehearsal space in a working dairy farm in Ayrshire, where they’d convene to get into shape before heading across the planet on tour. When lockdown hit and the chance to go and record in Los Angeles, as the band have tended to do for recent albums, was proving impossible, they turned the farm space into a full-on Biffy HQ, building a studio from the ground up and getting their hands dirty themselves. James describes the finished product as “East London coffee shop chic”.

“Ben and James, they’re a couple of DIY experts, so they went to town on the place!” Simon remembers.

“We were allowed access to lots of stuff from the farm, and so we sealed the windows, made sure the doors closed. We finally got a couple of seats! It made it feel like it did back in the day, with the three of us trying to make a studio and do anything so we could make music together. It was so basic and black-and-white, and really quite an exhilarating feeling.”

Though making music together has always been a vital compulsion for the Johnston twins and their childhood friend, in lockdown it also became a lifeline and a privilege. Securing paperwork that allowed them to meet up in a bubble at the farm to write and record while almost everyone else was locked down at home, their time spent together felt even more urgent and necessary.

“I was driving there every day thinking, ‘I’m gonna get arrested!’” Simon laughs. “It gave the whole process a kind of vitality.” This feeling bursts from every sinew

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“This

record is a bit of a

‘prodder’.

It’s tapping people on the

shoulder

and saying, ‘Eh!’” -

Simon Neil

of ‘The Myth Of The Happily Ever After’, a record that sees Biffy Clyro the most fired-up they’ve been for a decade.

In the album’s opening lines, Simon takes the shape of a character wilfully ignoring the mounting crises right in front of our eyes, reflecting the indifference and gallows humour of a lockdown-weary mind.

“Everything’s great, it’s all been a pleasure,” he sings. “Nothing has changed, life couldn’t be better.”

“I will ignore all of the bodies piled up at my door,” he then warns, before the triumphant rebuttal: “This is how we fuck it from the start!”

A few minutes later on the blistering ‘A Hunger In Your Haunt’, he says his mind is “crying out for stimulation”: “Reason has gone, purpose has gone / All that’s guaranteed’s the fucking state we’re in.” “Can you find any hunger in your haunt?” he roars on the track’s chorus, slapping himself – and everyone else – across the face, and begging for action over apathy.

As the two albums’ polarising titles suggest, ‘The Myth Of The Happily Ever After’ is a fierce reaction to ‘A Celebration Of Endings’. “Some people are living with the idea that things will just go back to the way they were. Keep calm and carry on! That time is just gone,” Simon says. “We don’t live in that world anymore.”

Musically, this chaos and anger is transmitted ferociously. While the album has its pretty moments (‘Separate Missions’ is a synth-led triumph, while ‘Witch’s Cup’ is one of their catchiest songs to date), its greatest power comes from its feral, brutal moments, most notably ‘A Hunger In Your Haunt’ and crazed closer ‘Slurpy Slurpy Sleep Sleep’, which sees Simon roaring “I fear the world!” in a bloodcurdling scream.

“It was our defence mechanism,” Simon says of the time creating the record. “We needed something to help us feel like our feet were on the ground and we were connected to something. It’s what we’ve always returned to, whenever we’ve had any trauma in our personal lives.

It’s always been music, and being together.”

He adds: “When you’ve been doing this for 20 years, not every day is the most exciting day in the world, but to have everything ripped away and to know that the three of us still loved being together and making music, it reminded me why we started the band.”

“We’re all the biggest Biffy fans in the world,” Ben says. “There aren’t many people who love their own band that much, but we genuinely do. We got such a genuine warmth out of making this record, and it’s a testament to our love for this band.”

B

efore they became an arena band following the release of fourth album ‘Puzzle’, Biffy Clyro were a gem of the cult underground UK rock scene, making deliciously weird and incongruous rock music that gave them a handful of devotees, if not the attention of arenas or the radio.

Making ‘The Myth…’ with no outside pressure or major label waiting on the phone took the band back to this mindset: making music with your friends because you love it, and indulging your eccentricities. It’s the weirdest and most feral Biffy album since 2004’s ‘Infinity Land’, the last album in their ‘early years’ trilogy before their big break arrived. Fittingly, they’ve named their farm HQ Infinity Land Studios.

“This album was as close to making a record as ‘Infinity Land’ was,” Simon reflects.

“That was probably the last record we did where, in the nicest possible way, no one cared about it until it was finished, and no-one was asking to hear it.

“This record is a bit of a ‘prodder’. It’s

ON THE ROAD AGAIN Ahead of the release of ‘The Myth Of Happily Ever After’, the band played a handful of huge outdoor gigs to mark their return to the stage. How were they, chaps?

Simon: Did James tell you that he fell over during a video shoot and absolutely fucked his hip? He’s been hobbling like an old man for the last week! After sitting at home for a year, suddenly our bodies are being flung around all over the place again!

James: It was just such good fun. The last 18 months, we’ve been trying to get used to a more ‘normal’ life - staying at home, sleeping in the same bed - but now we’re going back to this weird thing, going on stage standing in front of thousands of people. That was our normal before, and it felt beautifully familiar to do it again. It just felt right.

tapping people on the shoulder and saying, ‘Eh!’” he cheekily adds, with a wink that delights in subverting expectations. “‘Infinity Land’ was a prodder too, a little bit arrogant and precocious, and this album feels the same. It’s not an apologetic record.”

Apologetic it certainly isn’t, but what ‘The Myth…’ is is a reconnection with what matters, both to the band themselves and everyone else in the storm outside the doors of Infinity Land.

“Life is a sad song, we only hear once,” Simon sings at the end of ‘Slurpy Slurpy Sleep Sleep’ to close the album. “Please give it all that you’ve got, before the rhythm stops.”

‘A Celebration Of Endings’ closed with the mammoth track ‘Cop Syrup’ and its immortal final line: “Fuck everybody, woo!” On ‘The Myth Of The Happily Ever After’, the script is flipped as Biffy Clyro realise there’s no going back, only a better path forwards. To close the album, Simon sings: “Don’t you waste your time, love everybody.”

‘The Myth Of The Happily Ever After’ is out 22nd October via Warner. DIY

Ben: I woke up the day of our Cardiff show and had an awful chest infection, which I still have now. For the entire show though, I felt great and could sing fine and play fine, and I actually had a really good show. Adrenaline is an amazing thing!

“I was driving [to the studio] every day thinking, ‘I’m gonna get arrested!’” Simon Neil

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Photo: Ben Bentey

It captures life in all its wonderful messiness, its ugliness and glory.

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

FRANK CARTER AND THE RATTLESNAKES Sticky (International Death Cult)

SELF ESTEEM

Prioritise Pleasure (Fiction) On her 2019 solo debut ‘Compliments Please’, Rebecca Lucy Taylor set out the stall for her project Self Esteem as an assertive but nuanced pop star.

It’s with ‘Prioritise Pleasure’ that she’s upped the ante considerably. A powerful and potent look at - quite simply - the experience of being a woman in the present day, this is an album that encapsulates the fear, anger, dread and exhaustion that has become so commonplace in so many female lives. And yet, it’s a record that still offers comfort and levity; there’s a wittiness and dark humour that traverses the likes of ‘Moody’ - its opening line being the iconic “Sexting you at the mental health talk seems counter-

productive” - and ‘Fucking Wizardry’, all the while remaining honest and raw, but free of judgement.

When the record’s opener ‘I’m Fine’ closes with a voice note of a woman in her early twenties explaining that - if approached by a group of men - her friends’ reaction is to begin barking like a dog - because “there is nothing that terrifies a man more than a woman who appears completely deranged” - Rebecca’s response is to begin howling herself. It’s also an album that sees Rebecca continually pushing herself to explore new sonic avenues; eclectic instrumentation and bold sonics are the backbone of the record, with tracks switching from spoken-word manifestos (‘I Do This All The Time’) through to more traditional R&B pop formats (‘Still Reigning’) via gigantic gospel-backed offerings (‘Prioritise Pleasure’), and back again. Most importantly, though, this is a record that doesn’t compromise. An uncomfortable and unnerving listen at times - as any album dealing in this level of openness arguably should be - it’s also an absolutely necessary one. Through her own personal stories and those of others - ‘Prioritise Pleasure’ manages to challenge accepted norms and help to exorcise longburied demons; it’s powerful to the last drop. (Sarah Jamieson) LISTEN ‘How Can I Help You’

A record that doesn’t compromise.

Photo: Ed Miles

“We all lost a year to the doldrums,” laments Frank Carter late into his band’s fourth album. It’s a line that feels disturbingly relatable and uncomfortably real, but Frank is not reminding us of the ubiquitous loss practically everyone on earth has encountered in recent times to be depressing. Instead, he’s revealing the fuel to his fire. Lockdown has made him into a coiled spring, overflowing with pent-up energy, and it’s all released into listeners’ ears in a beautiful burst of scuzzy punk.

‘Sticky’ captures life in all its wonderful messiness, its ugliness and glory, and does so with an infectious sense of fun. Even when he’s at his angriest, launching tirades against government failures on ‘Rat Race’ and the patriarchy on ‘Off With His Head’ (harmonising with guest Cassyette’s hair-raising high notes), he relishes in the release and never lets the mood dip.

Ultimately, however, the only serious business he is undertaking here is the business of celebrating life.

‘Cupid’s Arrow’ and ‘Cobra Queen’ rejoice in the dangerous thrill of falling in love, the latter with a sense of drama reminiscent of fan favourite ‘Kitty Sucker’.

The subject matter isn’t always deep and serious, mind, and that’s no complaint. In fact, there’s a real quirkiness that he’s never really displayed on ‘Go Get A Tattoo’ and the hedonistic rock ‘n’ roll number ‘Bang Bang’, which somehow gets away with almost switching genres in its middle eight in time for a slickas-anything verse from Lynks full of witty one-liners – “Partial gasterectomy / Absolutely quality, what a G!” It’s a pleasantly surprising evolution, and one perfectly suited to the current moment, where the order of the day is cramming as much fun as possible into life to make up for everything we were denied.

It’s a sentiment that is amplified by ‘Sticky’’s sonic template, where the guitars bite and bounce concurrently, tuned to the extent where they almost buzz in an electronic fashion. It makes this perhaps the most accessible record Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes have put their name to, but this doesn’t go to say that ‘Sticky’ ever panders to its audience - it is an incidental but rightfully rewarding bonus for a band who remain as distinct as they’ve ever been on a record full of wins.

The phrase ‘an album for our times’ is often only bandied about in relation to releases that are topical yet serious. But, even though this is a record that’d rather start parties than discourse, it more than applies. ‘Sticky’ is music for living life in full colour, and until you listen, you won’t know how much you needed it. (Emma Wilkes) LISTEN: ‘Bang Bang’

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Coming Up

Photo: Jesse Draxler

Deliciously frantic in all the best ways. 

POPPY

Flux (Sumerian) Last year’s ‘I Disagree’ saw Poppy flit between saccharine pop vocals and full-throttle metallic riffs on a whim, pushing each facet of her style to its extreme. A compelling, and often euphoric combination, the industrial influences echoed what still remained of her robotic internet persona. Eighteen months on, and having fully stepped away from any such pretence - breaking the fourth wall by using her real name at times - we find the artist forging a whole new space for herself, with raw, distorted riffs matching the more human Poppy. That’s not to say ‘Flux’ doesn’t go hard: the title track is an electrifying disco-tinged number that sees Poppy giving it her best Karen O yelp towards its end, and punk rager ‘Lessen The Damage’ is deliciously frantic in all the best ways. But where last time around hard and soft took turns in the spotlight, here it’s all woven together. ‘Her’ reminds us that producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen was behind the desk for Wolf Alice’s ‘Visions of a Life’ with its wiry grunge, while ‘As Strange As It Seems’ taps right into ‘80s goth, and ‘So Mean’ leans towards playful pop-punk (with a wry lyrical nod towards Poppy’s controlled past to boot). And when it does threaten to go a little soft - in the loved-up ‘On A Level’ or closer ‘Never Find My Place’ - we’re swiftly and emphatically jolted out of our comfort zones, with stabs of industrial noise and a gloriously cacophonous climax respectively. To put it simply, it’s a great rock album. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘Flux’

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KANYE WEST

DONDA (Def Jam) Things are rarely simple with Kanye West. It’s this fact that makes him one of the 21st Century’s most interesting and frustrating creative forces, and for the past ten years or so now, a Kanye album roll out has never failed to be an event; often as exciting as it is infuriating. Deadlines, release dates, leaks and listening parties came and went since its original 2020 due date, however when ‘DONDA’ finally arrived, it was at 27 tracks long and approaching a two hours run time. Upon seeing the stats, your first thought may be that not even someone with Kanye’s potential can maintain a standard to justify the volume. And you would be right.

‘DONDA’ is predictably bloated and unnecessarily uneven and, though his albums have often teetered on being overblown, it fails to master the art of maximalism like ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’ or revel in chaos as successfully as ‘The Life of Pablo’ did.

And thematically, it’s not the focused machine you would expect after 18 months in the pipeline. Kanye is scattershot, bouncing between bars that tackle relationships, grief, God and everything in between, but he doesn’t dive in deep, instead letting the vast array of features often steal what could have been his most personal release away from him. For all the potential and intrigue of Kanye titling the album in tribute to his late mother, whose influence on him in both life and death cannot be overstated, ‘DONDA’ at times is disappointingly impersonal.

Like most of his recent output, it’s a mixed bag, but when it does work it works well. ‘Jail’ features thumping guitars and a verse from

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Jay-Z worthy of inclusion on its own merit. ‘Off The Grid’ features a relentless drill beat and fiery vocals from Playboi Carti and Fivio Foreign who force Kanye to match them. The Lauryn Hill sample on ‘Believe What I Say’ provides some light relief in the form of the bouncy, almost summer-ready groove which contrasts nicely against the brooding tone. Though hits haven’t been his thing for some time now, ‘Hurricane’ is the closest thing Kanye has to resembling one here, thanks to a smooth hook compliments of The Weeknd, and an atmospheric beat with an ominous gospel inflection.

It’s in the middle where the album begins to sag, thanks to some monotonous backings and noticeably weaker hooks (‘Remote Control’ / ’Tell the Vision’) which lead the runtime to become alarmingly apparent. He also almost derails it completely with four alternate versions, the most notable for all the wrong reasons being ‘Jail 2’ featuring two of music’s most condemned figures of late: DaBaby and Marilyn Manson. For an album with such a namesake, ‘DONDA’ is already disappointing in its relative lack in female representation, and so to also have Kanye join forces with Manson on the hook “Guess who’s going to jail tonight” - bearing in mind the array of allegations he faces - leaves a particularly acerbic taste in the mouth. What Kanye intended by their inclusion isn’t immediately clear; perhaps it’s a poorly-calculated comment on “cancel culture” (to which he is no stranger), a further exploration of his complex relationship with faith via sin and redemption, or most cynically of all - a gross stunt in the knowledge of guaranteed publicity. Either way, it’s his most baffling act of self-sabotage since he donned the red cap. ‘DONDA’ is certainly no masterpiece, and as ever, things are rarely simple with Kanye West. (Ryan Bell) LISTEN: ‘Hurricane’

ALT-J - THE DREAM Previewed recently with single ’U&ME’, the charttopping trio’s fourth album is set for release on 11th February.

LANA DEL REY BLUE BANISTERS After what feels like a lifetime of announcements, teasing and silence, ‘Blue Banisters’ is out on 22nd October.

SNAIL MAIL VALENTINE Three years on from debut ‘Lush’, Lindsey Jordan’s second will be relased on 5th November.

ORLANDO WEEKS HOP UP The ex-Maccabee’s second solo record will be released on 14th January.

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MATT MALTESE Good Morning It’s Now Tomorrow (Nettwerk)

By now, Matt Maltese knows his beat. Crisp, vintage melodies, accompanied by arrangements that could have been recorded anytime in the last century, but with the kind of lyrical witticism that earns him favourable comparisons to Jarvis Cocker. Sure, he might lean more into synths here, and more into piano there, but at the core, the ingredients of his music remain the same. This has never been truer than on third album ‘Good Morning It’s Now Tomorrow’. Following up a lockdown EP, ‘Good Morning…’ is really Matt at his most escapist; there’s barely a mention of world events across these 13 tracks. Instead, there are syrupy pop tracks and lovelorn ballads, but nowhere does Matt really say anything. And actually, that’s OK. There are one or two moments where he doesn’t quite carry off a hook (the almost comical chorus of ‘Shoe’) and those where the lyrics feel slightly overwrought (‘1000 Tears Deep’ and its “fellowship of sadness”) but on the whole, these tracks do what Matt does best: they comfort. Nowhere here is a grand overarching message, or a career-defining track, but there doesn’t need to be. As he says on opener ‘Good Morning’, Matt is here to help “you push your demons away”. And 13 beautifully-constructed ballads might just be the ticket. (Louis Griffin) LISTEN: ‘Good Morning’

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TIRZAH

Colourgrade (Domino) It would’ve been a fool’s errand to have made any predictions about the direction in which Tirzah would move in following up her debut, 2018’s ‘Devotion’, the influence of which continues to reveal itself with every new experimental R&B release. Increasingly, it looks as if that album redrew the landscape for the point at which alternative pop and R&B intersect; a mercurial work impossible to pigeonhole, it was a bracing opening statement from an artist revelling in her sense of creative freedom. The backdrop to this follow-up, ‘Colourgrade’, is that the Londoner largely penned it whilst on tour in support of ‘Devotion’, which was also around the time she gave birth to her second child.

The results are similarly unpredictable and, in places, surprisingly austere; the warmth of her last record’s textures have given way to murky industrial soundscapes like the ones on the title track, also the opener, and the thickly atmospheric likes of ‘Recipe’.

Elsewhere, there’s discordant lullabies to her newborn (‘Sleeping’), off-kilter pop (‘Sink In’) and trip hop references (‘Send Me’), and a dichotomy begins to emerge; there’s a clear juxtaposition between the brooding soundscapes and the emotionally-charged lyricism, with motherhood the thematic axis.

This is a record with a deep commitment to experimentalism - not least on six-minute centrepiece ‘Crepuscular Rays’, a deeply strange voice-and-guitar exercise - and that’s bound to throw plenty of those who loved ‘Devotion'. That, in itself, is exactly what you’d hope for from such an artistic non-conformist.

(Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Recipe’

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REMI WOLF

Juno (EMI / Island) Trying to carve out your own niche within pop’s saturated market is never easy, but Remi Wolf's debut arrives as a thoroughly modern proposition. From musings on catatonic American suburbia on 'Liquor Store' and growing older (and more jaded) on 'Grumpy Old Man', the singer takes the driving seat on 21st Century life and lets the passenger ride with no seatbelt. Soaring and musically rich grooves flood each track, ranging from thick Pond-esque synths on 'Guerilla' to the kind of smart sampling and patchwork instrumentation reminiscent of M.I.A. The album settles from its technicolour assault in the second half to a smoother ride, swaying instead of galloping and allowing space for howling fuzz box guitar screams and some neatly placed phaser action. 'Anthony Kiedis' and 'Sexy Villain' are laden with Remi’s token pop culture quips, sometimes overbearing, emphasising her complete immersion into her surrounding cultural landscape. 'Juno' buzzes brightly with Remi's vibrant delivery. Her street-smart poetry is jarringly relatable and is only deliverable by her ultra-versatile voice. Accompanied with her scatter board samples and untold charm, 'Juno' is a resounding celebration of existence and Remi Wolf is the MC. (Alisdair Grice) LISTEN: 'Guerrilla'

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BIFFY CLYRO

The Myth Of The Happily Ever After (Warner) That Biffy Clyro’s ninth studio album proper arrives billed as a sister album to 2020’s ‘A Celebration Of Endings’ carries the risk of doing it a disservice. Far from a collection of previously disregarded material, ‘The Myth Of The Happily Ever After’ is no mere afterthought. In part a completion of unfinished concepts, and in part deliberately crafted new tracks, the record presents the Scottish stadium fillers at their most free flowing. With that, Biffy Clyro fully embrace the epic and grandiose, which is largely what they do best. Vocalist Simon Neil has already described the record as an “emotional response to the turmoil of the past year.” Unable to tour, and with itchy creative fingers, ‘The Myth…’ combines this urgency with abundant creative freedom. It’s evident in the musical expanse of ‘Separate Missions’, the understated frivolity of ‘Haru Urara’, and the affirming balladry of ‘Existed’. The impact of the pandemic plays out in the immediacy of rousing opener ‘DumDum’, and the punch of ‘Errors In The History Of God’. Biffy have taken turmoil and constructed a collection of eleven tracks that brilliantly capture the turbulence and dysfunction of the past eighteen months. In removing creative restrictions and stepping away from the technical in favour of emotion, ‘The Myth...’ balances perfectly between loss and hope. “We all get it wrong sometimes,” the frontman notes on ‘Existed’, “doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.” On closer ‘Slurpy Slurpy Sleep Sleep’ he implores listeners to embrace love and friendship before it’s too late. It’s the biggest lesson learned - life is too short to waste time. ‘The Myth…’ expands from this vital message, allowing the record to emerge as Biffy Clyro’s most emotionally powerful in years. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Errors In The History Of God’

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PARQUET COURTS

Sympathy For Life (Rough Trade) On 2018’s ‘Wide Awake!’, Parquet Courts drifted closer than ever before to the mainstream. Joyful, danceable tracks, vintage pop melodies, even football whistles got a look-in. So on ‘Sympathy For Life’ the band had a choice: continue their ascent towards accessibility, or double down on their cult appeal. Suffice to say, ‘Sympathy For Life’ is not a pop album. Indeed, in their efforts to distance themselves from general appeal, Parquet Courts have also abandoned conventional structures. Tracks like ‘Marathon Of Anger’ and ‘Plant Life’ aren’t comprised of verses and choruses, but rather layers of sound, switching on and back off, rising and then falling away.

These minimal, stuttering tracks are a glimpse of a very different kind of Parquet Courts album, but they’re bookended by the garage rock that is the band’s stockin-trade. ‘Zoom Out’ and ‘Homo Sapien’ are fine additions to the group’s canon, but don’t add anything here, just muddle the record’s message. One exception can be made for closer ‘Pulcinella’. The band have a history of ending their albums with earnest, gut-punch closers, and this is no different. Andrew Savage sings of masks, and asks who he is when he’s not “a clown”. It’s a rousing ending, and one of the few mesmerising moments on the album: it’s just a shame that the band don’t commit to one route or the other. (Louis Griffin) LISTEN: ‘Pulcinella’

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LIL NAS X

Montero (Columbia) It’s strange to think that two years ago, no one had any idea who Lil Nas X was. Then, suddenly, he was everywhere. After ‘Old Town Road’ became Billboard’s longest-running Number One single in history, the then-fairly-unknown-name began picking up awards all over the place; since then, Nas’ celebrity has skyrocketed. But not content to settle with one-hit-wonder status, the star has spent his time since proving he has more hits in the bag, moving things forward as a trailblazing figure in hip hop and stepping forward as an inspirational game-changer within the LGBTQ+ community, all the while remaining true to his tongue- in-cheek nature by cementing his meme empire online. His unrelenting grind is one of the core points of ‘MONTERO’. There’s the Kanye West-produced ‘DEAD RIGHT NOW’, which directly references his past struggles: “2018, I was at my sister house the whole summer / Songs wasn’t doin’ numbers, whole life was going under”, while the reflective moments of ‘SUN GOES DOWN’ sees him referencing his difficult earlier years, “Always thinking, ‘Why my lips so big? Was I too dark? Can they sense my fears?’ These gay thoughts would always haunt me”. Above all, though, ‘MONTERO’ finds Lil Nas X revelling in the triumphs of his journey. Not only visible (and measurable) in the high-class features - which include Elton John on keys for ‘ONE OF ME’, Megan Thee Stallion dealing a fiery verse on ‘DOLLA SIGN SLIME’, Doja Cat popping up on ‘SCOOP’, and yet another Cyrus, this time Miley, shining on closer ‘AM I DREAMING’ - sonically ‘MONTERO’ also thrills with excitement as Nas dances between pop, rap and trap. He may know damn well how to deliver a banger, but also when to tone it back a bit too. Though it may not all hit hard and there are some sonic kinks that could’ve been ironed out, when it does hit, it’s impossible not to be swept up. Title track highlight ‘MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)’ has already proven itself to be a huge hit with a magnetic chorus and a legendary music video, and Jack Harlow-featuring ‘INDUSTRY BABY’ might just be one of the biggest belters of the year. It’s hard not to root for Lil Nas X, and this is a triumphant debut that sees the once-considered one-hit-wonder proving he’s got what it takes to prolong his musical journey and cement his growing pop phenomenon status. As he says in ‘DEAD RIGHT NOW’: “My dad and I had a face-to-face in Atlanta / He said, ‘It’s one in a million chance, son,’ I told him ‘Daddy, I am that one.’” (Elly Watson) LISTEN: ‘Industry Baby’

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JOHNNY MARR

Fever Dreams Pt. 1 (BMG)

Recent events would appear to confirm that Johnny Marr has little time for nostalgia. His less-than-impressed response to Blossoms covering The Smiths with Rick Astley as frontman, suggested as such; that he equates looking backwards with moving backwards. And, on the face of it, ‘Fever Dreams Pt. 1’ is an exercise in progressive creative ambition. The first chunk of what will eventually be a double album, it sees him forging full steam ahead with his solo career whilst still maintaining his reputation as a prolific collaborator, most recently with Billie Eilish on the theme for No Time to Die. This first taster of ‘Fever Dreams’, though, also reveals that he remains in touch with his musical foundations; where last album, ‘Call the Comet’, harnessed his melodic mastery of jangle-pop, lead single ‘Spirit Power & Soul’, which opens ‘…Pt. 1’, harks back to his work with Electronic, all swirling synths and programmed percussion. ‘Receiver’ follows a similar framework, although finds room for bursts of freewheeling guitar, while the panoramic reflection of ‘All These Days’ brings to mind the stormier side of his solo debut, ‘The Messenger’.

Perhaps most striking is the degree to which he zeroes in on big choruses on the EP, something especially apparent on both ‘Receiver’ and breezy closer ‘Ariel’. For now, it’s hard to know whether ‘…Pt. 1’ is indicative of the overall direction of ‘Fever Dreams’, or merely one facet of it. Either way, it’s the polished sound of Johnny Marr putting his best foot forward. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Receiver’

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GUSTAF

Audio Drag For Ego Slobs (Royal Mountain)

Hailing from the same New York circles that birthed the likes of Bodega, Public Practice and scene starters Parquet Courts, it’s not that Gustaf are necessarily trying to reinvent the wheel; full of angular jerks and pithy one-liners, ‘Audio Drag For Ego Slobs’ is very much a product of its environment. What the band - helmed by magnetic, bullish vocalist Lydia Gamill have done, however, is find a way to reflect an oft-mined style in their own image.

From the opening withering salvo of ‘Mine’ (“You said I’m much too old to be lo-fi”), via the sarcastic gang chants of ‘Best Behaviour’, through to the exaggerated, theatrical “oohs” and “aahs” that respond throughout ‘Cruel’ like a sarcastic take on Grease’s ‘Summer Nights’, the band’s debut is one that rings with a playful sense of humour. It should come as little surprise that Lydia has spent time on the standup circuit, and it’s this ability to send up any notions of seriousness that’s Gustaf’s greatest trick. Add some suitable spiky, metronomic riffs and ‘Audio Drag...’ is anything but. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Cruel’

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JOY CROOKES Skin (Insanity)

Nearly two years after receiving a BRITs Rising Star

A triumphant debut.

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nomination and placing fourth in the BBC Sound of 2020 poll (a title that, in retrospect, she’s probably more than happy not to have been crowned with), South Londoner Joy Crookes’ debut arrives not as a rushed product of the hype machine but a rich, varied and considered body of work that audibly benefits from the time its had to breathe. Close and justified comparisons will obviously be drawn to Amy Winehouse, but it’s not just a similarity in old school warmth that Joy draws with her fellow Londoner; like Amy, there’s a timeless quality to ‘Skin’ that pulls equally from more nostalgic orchestral flourishes (‘When You Were Mine’) and slicker, more modern influences like the Massive Attack-echoing ‘19th Floor’. ‘Trouble’ slinks along on dub rhythms, previous single ‘Feet Don’t Fail Me Now’ pairs string flourishes with lyrics about retweeting, while the album’s title track - written alongside Matt Maltese - is a piano ballad as fittingly affective as you’d expect from the pairing. ‘Skin’ is an album worthy of elevating the singer into the realm of Britain’s classiest chart-bothering talents. It does everything a debut should, dipping into multiple pools but uniting them all with a consistent outlook and a clear voice. Joy Crookes, by rights, should be riding ‘Skin’ into the big leagues. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘When You Were Mine’

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DEERHOOF

Actually, You Can (Joyful Noise)

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BLACKSTARKIDS

Puppies Forever (Dirty Hit) If it wasn’t immediately obvious from its playful title, ‘Puppies Forever’ is, for the most part, a breezy slice of carefree pop. The follow-up to last year’s album-but-not-an-album ‘Whatever, Man’, it sees the Kansas City trio take cues from just about anywhere: ‘Fight Club’ mashes hip hop with ‘90s computer games, ‘Piss Drunk Kids’, despite its name, makes like a teen movie soundtrack. ‘I Hate Being In Love’ owes no small debt to the atmospherics of Joy Division, while bratty standout ‘Jimmy Neutron’ is right up there with the current pop-punk resurgence.

Sure, it might have the tendency to go a little soft in places (opener ‘So Sweet’, the chorus of ‘Revolt Syndrome’ two cases in point), but there’s more than enough charm throughout its 12 tracks to make up for it. (Louisa Dixon) LISTEN: ‘Jimmy Neutron’

Having spent the best part of 25 years incanting mystic spells of high-concept, experimental rock, Deerhoof adopt a more paredback approach for this, their 18th studio album.

Starved of live performance, a deliberately simplified ensemble of guitars, bass and drums ventures a more immediate feel to 'Actually, You Can', culminating in one of their more conventionally textured records of recent years - ‘conventional’, if only by their wildly ambitious standards. 'Actually...' delivers a fairground of gleeful unpredictability populated by usual Deerhoof tropes: elliptical song titles, a whole gamut of biblical references, and disjointed rhythms that prance majestically between tempos and motifs.

Lead single and album highpoint ‘Department Of Corrections’ - set at the Last Supper and described tantalisingly as “Judas going Electric” - demonstrates all this gloriously, representing the band’s uncanny ability to execute the most thunderous of distortion with the daintiest, petal-tender touch. Despite standout moments such as this, a clutch of cumbersome tracks, drained of that Deerhoof sparkle - the far from epic ‘Epic Love Poem’ amongst them sees the album limp to its conclusion. Nevertheless, by this point, the group have already proved their unique virtuosity, if any more proof were needed. (Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: 'Department Of Corrections'

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MOLLY PAYTON Slack (The Orchard)

Q&A With their (kinda) debut album ‘Puppies Forever’ out this month, Kansas trio BLACKSTARKIDS are the shiniest new stars on Dirty Hit’s roster.

What makes this album different to your previous projects?

TheBabeGabe: It’s more open. I feel like it’s one of our most real albums. Also the production is amazing.

It’s top tier.

Deiondre: We were going through a lot of lows during this pandemic, and it was cold as fuck so we couldn’t do much, and it was just seasonal depression type shit. A lot of that worked its way into the songwriting, but it contrasts with the production as well. We wanted something that sounded bright but still had more of an impact.

Where did the name ‘Puppies Forever’ come from?

TyFaizon: I look at these albums as like a scrapbook of our youth. Like, we’re documented by these times in our life forever. So it really means, youth forever. I feel comfortable knowing my youth is out there, it’s in the world, and it always will be no matter what. That’s what we mean by that. And also, just maintaining the good parts of your youthful spirit forever.

What do you want your musical legacy to be?

TyFaizon: They came through and just fucked shit up and had fun the whole time and went down as the GOATs!

Honest, reflective and hopeful, 'Slack' sees Molly Payton taking responsibility for her own faults in the breakdown of a relationship. In lead single ‘You Cut Me So Much Slack’ Molly sings of the frustration and desperation of wanting to admit your feelings to someone, but not knowing how to. A mini-album that's more reflective than previous project 'Porcupine', it features instrumentals ranging from the thick electric guitar of ‘Honey’ to the haunting piano of ‘How Things Change’, Molly takes her listener by the hand, guiding them through the ups and downs of heartbreak, all while speaking openly and vulnerably of her flaws as she sings in a low drowsy vocal, “One second I need you then I’m running away again.” Similarly, the lamenting backing vocals of 'Like A Child' and the gentle introduction of 'In Your Arms' are as primed for listener introspection as they are showcasing Molly's own. Toying between dense and sparse instrumentals, it's with a bang she opts to end 'Slack', the cacophonous climax of 'While You're Driving' a suitably compelling end to a promising early release. (Flo Stroud) LISTEN: 'Honey'

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WOOZE

Get Me To A Nunnery (Young Poet)

Following 2019’s delightful 'What’s On Your Mind?', this second EP from British-Korean duo WOOZE lifts their already-trademark art-pop chic to cosmological heights. True to the etymology of their name (it roughly translates the Korean for ‘space’), and doubtless aided by the shamanic presence of The Horrors’ Tom Furse on production duties, 'Get Me to a Nunnery' is a supernova of salacious sexiness and catwalking debonair. Each track is a mosh of shimmering noise, executed with the New Romantic pout of a Duran Duran or a 'Scary Monsters'-era Bowie (the dry baritone vocal displays are lovingly in the latter's debt), one which sets its gaze on igniting dancefloors with an unequivocal cool. From their penchant for charmingly daft lyrics - “Asteroid Freud with his congregration / Cephaloid void of our generation” to quote the euphoric ‘Mighty Cloud’ - to their mischievous impulse for shredding scandalous guitar riffs - just indulge in the Metallica triplets of ‘Witch Slap’, or the nape-cracking, head-banging exhilaration of the EP’s eponymous track - there’s very little in the means of vapid pretension here. WOOZE have set their stall on crafting a stylish and riveting brand of indie-disco, and they have achieved just that. (Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘Witch Slap’

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SURFBORT

Keep On Truckin’ (Inner Freak)

The three years since 2018’s ‘Friendship Music’ has seen the star of Surfbort protagonist Dani Miller rise stratospherically: one week she’s fronting the Brooklyn-based punks at showcase festivals, the next she’s plastered on billboards worldwide as part of various high fashion campaigns. A cult figure with A-list access. But what ‘Keep On Truckin’’ shows us immediately is that it’s had little to no effect on the singer’s art. Sure, the production is a little more polished, but the outfit’s ramshackle punk spirit remains. It’s musically boisterous, with all the fun that entails. It’s a glorious stumble through the gamut of emotions, from the deeply-felt - opener ‘FML’ with its refrain of “I can’t eat / I can’t sleep / Might as well go die” is inspired by both Dani and friends’ lowest points and the suicide of her aunt - to the optimistic. “Things will be so good today,” repeats ‘Youth Group Therapy’.

And then, there’s the masterstroke that is rhyming “tiny dancer,” “Tony Danza” and “love is the answer” that crowns ‘Life’s A Joke’. (Bella Martin) LISTEN: ‘Life’s A Joke’

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HAYDEN THORPE

Moondust For My Diamond (Domino) Hayden Thorpe’s first solo LP, ‘Diviner’, was a stately slice of art-pop not a million miles from his old outfit sonically, although lyrically he became more inscrutable. And on this second full-length from the former Wild Beasts frontman, there’s evidence of real progression. The fairly austere palette that he embraced on ‘Diviner’ is swapped out for warm, burbling synths on ‘Moondust For My Diamond'; if that record was his personal ‘Two Dancers’, then this is his ‘Present Tense’.

From the electronic foundation that he’s built for himself, he’s able to launch himself down different stylistic avenues, whether that’s slowly simmering synthpop (‘Parallel Kingdom’, ‘Rational Heartache’), airier, more melodic territory (‘Golden Ratio’, ‘Metafeeling’) or, on perhaps the album’s standout, spiky dance groove (‘Suspended Animation’). Hayden Thorpe is still feeling out the next leg of his musical journey, but has the distinct advantage of making every left turn he takes sound assured. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Suspended Animation’

Art Attack

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KACEY MUSGRAVES

star-crossed (Interscope / Polydor / UMG Nashville) It’s fitting that Kacey Musgraves launched her latest with its understated title track: it sets the scene for a record that unfurls the breakdown of her marriage. Laying out the album’s theme, it also nods to Kacey’s increasingly unique position in pop. Kacey’s journey to this point has travelled various paths, shaking up the Nashville scene with debut ‘Same Trailer Different Park’. 2015’s ‘Pageant Material’ began to blur boundaries, finding itself on a number of end-of-year lists outside of her traditional genre. Led by the energetic ‘High Horse’, 2018's ‘Golden Hour’ cemented her wider appeal. Although ‘star-crossed’ presents itself as a gentler listen, it continues this drive to disrupt convention. Despite its steady tempo, it learns from retrospective and contemporary pop to explore new directions. In tone, it pulls together both of her worlds with ease. It provides the space for Kacey’s personal storytelling; the record deliberately split into three chapters. ‘star-crossed’ mirrors the pain of a breakup, from turbulence through heartbreak to hope and self-acceptance.

It’s here where she fully embraces Nashville storytelling. Far from spinning distant, third-person tales, each track feels incredibly personal. All who have suffered heartbreak will associate with the emptiness of ‘Hookup Scene’, before being hit with the final four empowering notions. Even if the message might be built on cliche, in Kacey Musgraves’ delivery there really is a light at the end of the tunnel. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: 'Hookup Scene'

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POND

9 (Spinning Top) Taking its cues more from the lip-smacking passion of their own ‘Sweep Me Off My Feet’ than the tight-lipped rock of 2019’s ‘Tasmania‘, Pond’s swaggering sixth studio album delivers a dose of camp, doe-eyed, psych-pop escapism. Peacocking its absurd levels of pomposity across a nine-song sequence, it’s hard not to raise smiles at its tongue-in-cheek forces. Take ‘Pink Lunette’ as a case in point: deranged beats are treated to lunatic yelps (“Screaming! Screaming! Screaming!”) to near comic intensity.

Overflowing with glamour and sass, '9' takes nothing by halves. From its pulsating chemical beats, gun-blast drums, sky-scouring riffs and vocal histrionics, every aspect is produced to cavernous proportions. It’s only at the record’s final hurrah that Pond reach for any restraint - the plaintive romance of closer 'Toast' rolls out a rarefied laid-back groove and dashes with remorseful reflection, most notably referencing last year’s Australian bushfires.

Among its mix of roistering anthems and melodramatic balladry, '9' exudes a supple confidence throughout, engaging in some of the most enthralling Australian psychedelia to emerge from 2021 (of which there is plenty).

(Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: 'Pink Lunette'

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METRONOMY

Posse EP Volume 1 (Because)

Can you explain the artwork?

The album sleeve is an artwork called Every Piece of Dust by Broomberg & Chanarin. It was created after the Freud Museum commissioned the artists to make work using Sigmund Freud’s actual London office. They got a forensic team to analyse the famous chaise longue. The artwork itself is an ultra-close-up image of a hair found on the rug that covered the couch. It could have belonged to a patient, or it might have been Freud's himself.

Why did you choose it?

Oliver Chanarin is a dear friend of mine, he inspires me and has a gift of converting day dreams into actual tangible things. Every Piece of Dust was a work that I was looking at a lot while making the album. For me it speaks of the wonder of science and how the far reaches of technology bring about an unlikely beauty. Excuse the pun, but it’s mind-boggling to consider that this artefact represents the beginnings of the science of the mind. A lot of my record is about the meeting point between science and spirituality. The psychedelic light waves in the image felt so fitting for the luminous sound I was reaching for. Designer Matt Cooper and I were pretty meticulous in getting the spectrum font right. Matt is Domino Records' go to guy, his inventiveness and knowledge of the album format is second to none.

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Collaborations can often fall foul of being more fun for the artists involved than the listener.

Just because two musicians get along doesn’t necessarily mean that their combined efforts will be more than the sum of their parts. But although it sounds like everyone is having a decidedly good time on Metronomy’s first collaborative effort, ‘Posse EP Volume 1’, the music is still excellent too. The cast list reads as a who’s who of the most exciting acts from right across the spectrum of UK alternative music, a genuinely thrilling roster of everything from Sorry’s wonky pop to Pinty’s confessional bars. The EP has the air of a celebration – and indeed, perhaps the start of Metronomy as something wider than the band itself. Crucially, this is all backed up by 18 minutes of taut, considered songwriting. ‘405’ pairs a classic Metronomy synth line with Biig Piig’s effortless delivery - it’s a match made in heaven. ‘Uneasy’ (with spill tab) has a loose, jazzy feel, and ‘Out of Touch’ nails Sorry’s warped production style without feeling like pastiche. The “Volume 1” of the title implies we might be treated to more excursions through Joe's address book in the near future, and if this EP is anything to go by, that’s a thrilling prospect. (Louis Griffin) LISTEN: ‘405’

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PINKPANTHERESS

To Hell With It (Parlophone) They say the perfect length for a pop song is 3 minutes. For PinkPantheress, on debut mixtape ‘To Hell With It’, the perfect length is way under that. Finding fame on TikTok might have something to do with it. But this isn’t a sign of yet another marketing department trying to put together the next viral superstar. PinkPantheress feels genuine in a way that only someone brought up on a diet of emo and jungle can. The video for the Mura Masa-produced ‘Just For Me’ looks like an early00s Taking Back Sunday video, while the track sits closer to Artful Dodger. And her breakout status feels genuine too. Her impressive ear for catchy melodies is all over this short-but-sharp mixtape. Hit ‘Break

It Off’ turns Adam F’s classic ‘Circles’ into a tale of late-night yearning. ‘Reason’ beautifully uses more drum and bass beats to capture her restless, spiralling mindstate. Elsewhere, she wields UKG nostalgia like a weapon to bring you into her world of possibility and missed opportunity, like on ‘Pain’, which brings to mind playing Sweet Female Attitude’s ‘Flowers’ on shit speakers. While it all seems wistful at first listen, there’s healing in among the tales of obsession and hopelessness, delivered like 3am voice notes. Delving into the same Gen Z minutiae that Olivia Rodrigo did on ‘Sour’, “Did you ever want me? / No worries if not”, she laments over a Noah “40” Shebib-inspired beat on ‘All My Friends Know’. ‘To Hell With It’ is a heady mix of '00s genres and references that only seem to work together because it’s delivered with just the right amount of earnestness. PinkPantheress’ viral success is much more than one created by an algorithm. As this mixtape shows, it’s driven by pure talent and charm.

(Chris Taylor) LISTEN: 'Reason'

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LIILY

TV Or Not TV (Flush)

Turning up the chaos, Liily seethe with a new found riotous energy that dictates every twist and turn on 'TV Or Not TV’. ‘The Suit That Sold Itself’ echoes the discordant post-punk infusion of IDLES - a distinct talk-shout cadence paired with a tipsy drawl creates a blurred landscape of bar fights, stolen glances and broken teeth. 'Man Listening To Disc' barks and jives, echoing a more RATM-meets-the-Specials bop, and album opener 'Mr. Speaker Gets The Word' slowly approaches a tense saxophone blowout with frontman Dylan Nash manically screaming “He’s the man, he does what he can.” Where Liily once blended into the curated playlist heaven of radio rock, the unbridled intensity of this can’t help but exhibit a new band surfacing, one with far more bite, and one that is far more confident in its own footprint. (Alisdair Grice) LISTEN: 'Man Listening To Disc'

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THE DRIVER ERA Girlfriend (BMG)

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404 GUILD

Guild Three: Open Water (Dirty Hit) As a snapshot in time, or a quick glimpse into what 404 Guild are about, ‘Guild Three: Open Water’ - the outfit’s third EP release - does a pretty damn good job. Each facet of the group’s sound is showcased: there’s bristling menace in stellar opener ‘SHORTWAVE’, which becomes almost industrial in its cacophony. As direct counterpoint, ‘BREATHING ROOM’ is emotionally raw, its repeated lament “she don’t wanna talk about her heart” becoming increasingly more curious as the track weaves on. Previous single ‘Substation’, meanwhile, amps up the peril yet further, while ‘Nice Film’ is almost hypnotic in its subtlety. Where they’re headed sonically next could be from any of these paths, but every which one would remain just as exciting. (Bella Martin) LISTEN: ‘SHORTWAVE’

ABSOLUTE (BEHIND THE) SCENES! A snapshot of what went down when 404 Guild recorded ‘Guild Three: Open Water’.

If you’d ever wondered what The 1975 would have sounded like had they grown up in the sprawling outer-edges of a large American city as opposed to its Manchester equivalent, ‘GIRLFRIEND’, the second full-length from sibling duo The Driver Era, would go a long way to provide the answer. It possesses a slinky line in R&Btinged, ‘80s-indebted pop. It’s peppered with funky basslines (see ‘Heaven Angel’ in particular), matter-offact lyricism and a reasonable earworm count (‘A Kiss’ makes like Metronomy’s ‘The Look’ as reimagined by Pharrell). And yet it’s impossible to shake a nagging feeling that it’s all a little too two-dimensional, not least thanks to ‘cray z babe e’, a track on which the piano stabs veer so litigiously close to ‘Bennie and the Jets’. If it was a desperate ploy for Frank Ocean comparisons they were after by doing so, put it this way: they’re not likely to be bringing creepy dolls to the Met Gala any time soon. (Bella Martin) LISTEN: ‘A Kiss’

Sonny and Bathwater recording trumpet.

Sonny learnt to play the trumpet in Miami in the early 1980s.

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TOM MORELLO

The Atlas Underground Fire (Mom + Pop) If ‘The Atlas Underground Fire’ proves anything at all, it’s these two things: Tom Morello is excellent at networking, and has some serious musical balls.

Few others could get away with covering AC/DC’s inimitable ‘Highway To Hell’, but when you’ve provided the riffs for Rage Against The Machine, you can do anything – including asking Eddie Vedder and Bruce Springsteen (who’s still got it in spades) to guest on it. It’s an early standout on this wildly eclectic record that crams tracks of every popular genre in, from the stomping rock of ‘Let’s Get The Party Started’ (where Tom makes an excellent sixth member of Bring Me The Horizon) to the glitchy dubstep of ‘Charmed I’m Sure’ (featuring Protohype). In less controlled hands, this record could have felt extremely confused, but it instead feels more like a diverse musical circus where Tom is the ringmaster. For all its ambition, however, it occasionally leans a little too heavily on the cliched conventions of certain genres, particularly pop and dance. Meanwhile, on the likes of ‘Driving To Texas’ and ‘Night Wish’, Tom’s own presence isn’t quite felt consistently to the point where he comes across as absent. Nonetheless, its ambition and creative concept can still be applauded, and there are some hidden gems to be found. (Emma Wilkes) LISTEN: ‘Highway To Hell’

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cigarette after Sonny enjoying a well-earned y started a long recording session. Sonn 1980s. smoking in Miami in the early

404 Guild enjoying climbing to points of elevation. We began climbing tall buildings in Miami in the early 1980s.

In this picture we see Devenny conducting the string quartet that sits just out of shot. Devenny began composing string arrangements for pop records in Miami in the early 1980s.

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GRANDMAS HOUSE

Grandmas House (Brace Yourself) Across five tracks - that in true punk fashion - last approximately two-minutes-and-change at most, this selftitled debut EP from Bristol-based Grandmas House sees the powerhouse voice of vocalist Yasmin Berndt coming together with bassist Zoë Zinsmeister and drummer Poppy Dodgson to form a unified front of refreshing wit and blistering rock. While songs like opener ‘Golden’ take directly from the fast, in-your-face tradition that many anti-establishment guitar bands pull unashamedly from, the three-piece are able to breathe fresh air into the style through a refreshing breadth of sounds on this EP. The trio’s unique penchant for charm comes out in full, domineering force on bubbly love letter to queer womanhood ‘Girl', which melds straight into the Minutemen-like ‘Never Out Of Luck’. Not slowing down for even a second on the magnetism or the mettle, the band round out the EP with the pairing of gritty, hangover inspired ‘Feed Me’, and ‘Pasty’, an ode to a local pasty shop owner, showing that no matter how quirky the subject matter, Grandmas House can write a blindingly good song about it. (Varun Govil) LISTEN: 'Never Out Of Luck'

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True Love

Damsel In Distress

HOVVDY

GIRLI

(Grand Jury)

(AllPoints / Believe)

“You comfort me,” repeat Hovvdy

Avril-meets-Britney in a hot-pink explosion of angst: out comes GIRLI. ‘Damsel In Distress’ sees the singer cementing this persona, with a heavy dose of reality. GIRLI isn’t here to do nuance, and her lyrics are straightforward and punchy: navigating crushes in ‘More Than A Friend’, selfimage in ‘Dysmorphia’ and ‘I Don’t Like Myself’, and reclaiming rage for power in ‘Ricochet’ and ‘Ruthless’. They’re all familiar topics, handled in a familiar way, so while it isn’t exactly fresh, it’s definitely fun. Lyrical moments like “Hate myself / It’s a full time job” could have been snatched straight off the pages of any teen girl’s diary, confirming that GIRLI’s authenticity is intact, and the sparky electro-pop instrumentals inject the moody lyrics with a bit of buzz. It might not be pioneering, but thanks to its bubbly relatability, it definitely deserves its spot. (Ims Taylor) LISTEN: ‘More Than A Friend’

on the title track to this fourth studio album. It forms the heart of a record built around love, romantic and otherwise. Yet what could have become overly sentimental instead presents as subtle and sincere.

The sincerity is elevated by their understated tones, harking back to the beauty of Elliott Smith but swept into now by crisp production and experimental flourishes. For every gentle indie moment, ‘True Love’ counteracts with delicate surprises.

Take the electronic glitches on ‘Hope’ for example. It’s all enough to both cement the album as a soundtrack to a sun-kissed evening, and as a genuinely engrossing listen. ‘True Love’ exists on its unashamed positivity, even in its more melancholic moments. Album closer ‘I Never Wanna Make You Sad’ wears this in its title. It's a beautiful and comforting experience. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘True Love’

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HALSEY

If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power (Capitol)

Halsey does not do things by halves.

To preview ‘If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power’ she shared not tracks, but a feature-length film in which she starred in the lead role, a film which tapped into her impending motherhood before dropping her latest creation all at once. The result: an otherworldly, disconcertingly immersive listen. Across all three of her previous albums, Halsey has proved herself a master of concept, be it dystopia, director Baz Luhrmann, or a fictionalised self. Her modus operandi up till now, though, has been the medium of a more shimmering kind of alt-pop: ‘Badlands’ was ethereal and wide-eyed, ‘Hopeless Fountain Kingdom’ came from a more ambitious pop star, and then ‘Manic’ took the same ingredients and packaged them more intimately. On ‘IICHL,IWP’, though she reaches her most intense mode by breaking new musical ground. Halsey blends her trademark cinematic drama with a mixture of alt-pop and reborn punk, guided through sonic density and darkness by producers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Nine Inch Nails) that feels almost totally disparate - and yet like ground she's been waiting to break for ever. The lyrical introspection and sensual poetry of her lyrics are familiar: “She was sweet like honey / but all I could taste was the blood in my mouth” (‘honey’) and “One eye broken and one eye bruised / ‘cause I gave myself away for you” (‘Easier Than Lying’) are fairly standard Halsey cuts. But her newly-crunching delivery, a noisy belt and an instrumental rattle, is something else altogether – on tracks like these, there’s almost no sign of the same pop star who lent her voice to Chainsmokers that one time… this is a new Halsey, feral and formidable, and the influence of her NiN heroes is evident. Even the poppier tunes are industrial and dense: on a previous album, ‘Girl Is A Gun’ could have felt glittery, but here it’s barbed. That’s not to say she’s abandoned everything that once characterised her sound – the logical progression from ‘Manic’ to here is evident in the softer timbre of acoustic number ‘Darling’, the hooky, haunting ‘Bells In Santa Fe’, the sweet murmur of closer ‘Ya’aburnee’. On ‘IICHL,IWP’, we hear pure Halsey, adjusting to herself and her place. It’s intimate and messy at times but fiercely deliberate. (Ims Taylor) LISTEN: ‘Girl Is A Gun’

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WET

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Letter Blue (AWAL)

PIP BLOM

'Letter Blue', the third album from plaintive New Yorkers Wet, is a predictably pretty listen, full of delicate melodies, languid piano and whispered synths. 'On Your Side' layers harmonies and choral pads to be later joined by a gentle acoustic guitar: the track moves but never really goes anywhere in particular, and even the addition of bass and a feather-light drum beat can't change its course. Creaking synths and chiming loops mark out 'Clementine', and there's insistent piano and pitch-shifted yelps across the Blood Orange-featuring 'Far Cry'.

Yet for all these differences the tracks meet smoothly, blending into one another and making for a mesmerising listen. This isn't to say it's boring, though: there's a playfulness that runs through, even when the lyrics don't mirror it. 'Only One' surprises with a garage-inspired beat, sounding at odds with the track's mournful vocals, removing them from centre-stage.

'Letter Blue' is the sound of a band enjoying what they're doing and having fun with it, and despite the occasional misses you can't help but enjoy it right alongside them. (Eloise Bulmer) LISTEN: ‘Far Cry’

On second full-length ‘Welcome Break’, Pip Blom master a balance between growing up a little, and maintaining the innocent charm that won listeners over in the first place. The record situates itself gorgeously in the easygoing transcience suggested by its service-station-inspired title: Pip Blom follow their sunny guitars and breezy lyricism wherever they may lead, and it’s all about the journey rather than the destination. Pip’s instinctual knack for a melody dominates the album. She lets herself sparkle without having to tussle with the instrumentals; rather, every layer feels built up with the same humble assuredness of its own role.

When the sprightly guitars do get their moment in the sun, it’s all the more effective: late highlight ‘Easy’ is one of the punkier cuts, and packs a fitting punch, ‘I Know I’m Not Easy To Like’ is riff-pop and gang vocals galore, and down the other end of the spectrum, the moody likes of ‘Holiday’ employ lilting melancholy instrumental lines in a powerful change of pace. Pip Blom haven’t changed their sound, but they do feel like they’ve got to know it better.

(Ims Taylor) LISTEN: ‘Easy’

Welcome Break (Heavenly)

FESTIVAL FOR NEW MUSIC THE FESTIVAL FOR NEW MUSIC THE FESTIVAL FOR NEW MUSIC THE FESTIVAL FOR NEW MUSI

LONDON + BRIGHTON

LIVE + ONLINE

FIRST FIFTY 17TH - 19TH NOVEMBER 2021

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LIVE + ONLINE LIVE + ONLINE LIVE + ONLINE LIVE + ONLINE LIVE + ONLINE

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LIVE FESTIVAL-AGEDDON!

The August Bank Holiday is usually the final throes of summer, the bookend to a summer that began running between inner-city venues in May. 2021 is, as we’re now all-too-aware, no ordinary year: this time, the weekend marked the full kicking off of festival season.

I

t’s still never quite possible to tell whether or not Sports Team take themselves entirely seriously or not - and as they strut onto Reading's newly-christened Main Stage West, underneath an inflatable blimp emblazoned with their band name and phone number, today is no exception.

Disconcertingly magnetic and bedecked in a big white bow-tie and dungarees like an indie-rock Luigi, Alex Rice, everybody.

His coolly-delivered vocals which characterise the tongue-firmly-in-cheek swagger of Sports Team are thrown away as if they’re ad libs, but the choruses are received as anthems.

Not many people can pack a punch big enough to follow a secret Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes set, but if anyone can, it’s Nova Twins. The punk’n’bass duo’s command is effortless as they blaze through tracks from last year’s ‘Who Are The Girls?’, that have only seen the light of day once before. Every one goes down a treat.

To say it’s Ashnikko’s breakthrough year would be an understatement.

Tonight she returns to the

READING

EMILY, LONDON

Richfield Avenue, Reading. Photos: Emma Swann.

Pit after playing an afternoon slot last time as royalty - the tent is the most full it’s been all day, and her acerbic lyrics reverberate around the whole thing. It’d be hard to top ‘Slumber Party’, but Ash unlocks all her punk power for ‘Cry’, a dizzying high point bolstered by her dancing teddy bear vulvas (weird, yes.

Brilliant? Of course).

Heading up Friday is Stormzy. He gets the pyros, he gets the fireworks - he brings on current chart-topping comrade, Dave, but straight away it’s clear he doesn’t really need all the bells and whistles - he’s on top of his game, and he knows it. His performance is immaculate.

The moving hush of ‘Rainfall’, delivered from behind a curtain of water and the gospel-led glow of ‘Blinded By Your Grace’ feel even more transcendent when they’re followed by ‘Big For Your Boots’. As he leads into ‘Wiley Flow’, Stormzy tells us “take all the bullshit, all that fuckery of the last eighteen months, take every negative emotion and pour it into this iconic moment right now.” It’s a majestic end to the day.

KennyHoopla is up early on Saturday, and THIS is a crowd that knows how to move. There’s so much energy radiating from the stage, Kenny diving, jumping, and positively levitating throughout the set, that the crowd couldn’t possibly not match it. His music may be a better fit for the Pit than the Dance Stage, but there’s no way it could have contained him, or the mammoth mosh-pits that open up almost continuously. When Kenny bounces, the crowd bounce with him; when Kenny pauses between songs, the crowd make up for it by chanting his

YOUR READING HIGHLIGHTS

name till he starts playing again.

Fave act of the weekend: IDKHOW.

Sandwiched in between Beabadoobee’s grunge-pop and Sigrid’s breezy anthems, the Pit truly opens up for Bob Vylan. Skip to the end of the set and the crowd are literally pissing on and tearing apart a Union Flag, but how did we get here? Bob Vylan’s politically-charged lyrics are roared back at deafening levels, sizzling with rage and righteous frustration. The Met Police, the Queen (“kill the Queen, she killed Diana!”) and Tories are subject to their vitriol today, and though obviously the band are preaching to the choir, it’s still a fierce release of emotions.

Dallon Weekes is an amazing frontman, he can charm just about anybody in listening distance, he knows how to put on a show!

Fave thing about being back at Reading: The energy! Everybody is shiny and glittery and living their best lives!

I love just yelling into peoples’ faces and not having to be like, ‘Sorry!’

The rowdies crowd (and contender for Reading’s biggest) goes to slowthai.

His hat could easily make him look like a cuddly bear, but it’s instantly obvious that this is no teddy: those aren’t ears, they’re devil horns, and he’s about to give a show that’s downright beastly. He does not care one bit what people say, bawling out “Reading, how you gonna cancel ME?”, defying critique and daring critics to challenge him all at once. Cuts from the back catalogue and this year’s ‘TYRON’ go down equally smoothly, with a spoonful of sugar in the form of slowthai’s dark chatter in between songs - he knows he can get the crowd to say anything (even if it’s unprintable), so he does. Fair play.

ETHAN, CWMBRAN

It’s a bittersweet kind of excitement that emanates from the first gang through the gates this Sunday morning - yes, everyone’s buzzing for today’s bands, but this time tomorrow it will all be over.

FUR’s blend of poppy hooks and retro

Fave act of the weekend: Easy Life,

because the energy Murray gave was amazing: stage diving, breaking guitars! The music they make is so chill but he was insane.

Fave thing about being back at Reading: All of it! The amount of energy that comes from this crowd. You have to be here to experience it.

BECKY & MAISIE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE Fave act of the weekend: Holly Hum-

berstone - she’s so good live! The atmosphere is amazing, it’s just her on her own and she connects with the crowd.

Fave thing about being back at Reading: Being with people, being in the crowd and being able to embrace the music with everyone.

CARA, NORTHANTS Fave act of the weekend: Wolf

slowthai

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Wolf Alice

Alice! It’s our first time seeing them, it was just everything I imagined and more. Absolutely incredible - Ellie is just so fucking cool!

Fave thing about being back at Reading: Being back in this atmosphere, seeing live music, everything.

Ashnikko

ALL POINTS EAST Victoria Park, London. Photos: Emma Swann.

R

ounding off a triumphant weekend that saw London’s Victoria Park host Jamie xx, Kano, Jorja Smith, London Grammar, Bicep and more, All Points East's Monday has big shoes to fill, but fast rising newbie Holly Humberstone is more than ready to step into them.

Raising the bar early in the day, she has the crowd hooked instantly, dazzling with hits including Matty Healy co-write ‘Please Don’t Leave Just Yet’, ‘Falling Asleep At The Wheel’, and unreleased newbie ‘Scarlett’ that threatens to be the rising star’s biggest smash yet.

Over on the Firestone Stage, Glasgow’s Medicine Cabinet might have precisely zero released songs to their name, but their burgeoning reputation as a live force to be reckoned with is already reaching across the border. Dressed in a punk school uniform (and looking distinctly chicer than AC/DC doing it), frontwoman Anna Reeves lands somewhere between Amyl and the Sniffers’ Amy Taylor and Debbie Harry - part frenzied firecracker, part effortless cool.

guitars is an excellent fit for the early afternoon crowd, serving as a reminder of how good a few riffs and an infectious melody can be.

On Main Stage East, just as the day starts to turn to evening, Wolf Alice take to the stage to give one of the most powerful performances of the weekend. Ellie Rowsell’s command is second-to-none - as she declares in opening track ‘Smile', this honey bee definitely stings, and here it’s in the form of wild screams. The likes of ‘Giant Peach’ and ‘Moaning Lisa Smile' are joined by new favourite ‘Play The Greatest Hits’, which firmly stomps its way into being a moshpit staple. Equally stunning, though, are the softer songs from ‘Blue Weekend’ - ‘The Last Man On Earth’ conjures an atmosphere that’s sheer beauty, glittering over the overcast evening with its swirling piano and of course, Ellie’s silvery vocals slipping as easily into crystal-clear melodies as they do into rowdy yells. They close with ‘Don’t Delete The Kisses’, and it sees the crowd lose it in the most beautiful way: singing along and sparkling back at a band so clearly in their prime.

Biffy Clyro were a late addition to the weekend’s line-up, jumping in to fill a QOTSA-sized gap, and fill it they do. Reading’s rock roots are out in force as the hordes throng towards a sunset-backed Main Stage West, soundtracked in by the thumping chords of opener ‘North of No South’. Biffy play to their strengths – a big chorus, the sheer magnitude of their sound totally fitting with the mammoth stage, crowd, and fireworks to boot, and storm through a set without a low point. ‘Biblical’ is as much of a highlight of you’d expect, especially for the crowd waiting to see Liam Gallagher, who’s practically patented the word. Biffy are masters of commanding this kind of crowd, be it on the anthemic side (‘Wolves of Winter’, ‘Many of Horror’, ‘Mountains’), or on the denser, heavier side.

And just to knock out a special moment, for closer ‘Machines’, KennyHoopla they’re backed by a violin section, just to add gravity to a set that was already magnetic.

Finally. It’s the closing set of the entire weekend, and who better to send us off than Liam Gallagher: for a lot of the people watching, it’s not even just their first time seeing the big LG, it’s maybe their first festival ever, so before he comes on there’s a sense that something slightly surreal is about to happen. And he greets us fittingly, booming out a pair of Oasis classics to start things off – ‘Hello’ leads straight into ‘Rock and Roll Star’.

There’s a teasing three encores, because everyone knows that no one’s going home until we’ve heard ‘Wonderwall’, and when Liam finally comes out for his last return, the payoff is exactly what everyone’s been hoping for.

The fireworks go off, the volume of the audience rivals Liam, and Reading draws to a close for another year. What a way to go off: as Liam tells us, “you’ve fucking started it! So come on and finish it.” (Ims Taylor)

Over to the big tent and seasoned summer fest staples The Magic Gang are bringing their sunshine-soaked bangers to a crowd overflowing out of the tent's seams. Delivering the indie goods via cuts from recent album ‘Death of The Party’, big hitters ‘Think’ and ‘How Can I Compete’ remain set standouts and have the huge crowd jumping on top of each other, and loving every minute.

And if the night wasn’t already gearing up to be one of copious pints and partying, then Bombay Bicycle Club really get the celebration started. Applying liberal use of the confetti canon, their set sees the beloved band performing bangers from their fun-filled discography, wowing with debut classics that still slap just hard as they did a decade ago, and more recent gems from last year’s fifth album ‘Everything Else Has Gone Wrong’. By the time the chorus of ‘Carry Me’ rolls about, the dancing shoes are well and truly on, only subsequently entirely worn through as the London School of Samba join for the triumphant closer of BBC classic ‘Always Like This’.

Back in August, Foals’ Yannis Philippakis told DIY that tonight’s All Points East headline spot had “the potential to be one of the most powerful shows [they’ll] ever play”, and from the opening influx of ‘The Runner’ the next 90 minutes acts as a confirmation of their frontman’s premonition. A career-spanning setlist deploys lighters-aloft anthems (‘Spanish Sahara’, ‘Neptune’) and heavy juggernauts (‘Inhaler’, ‘Black Bull’) at just the right moments, and the catharsis of the last 18 months’ shitstorm is palpable. God, it’s mighty good to have Foals back. (Elly Watson, Lisa Wright) Foals

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IDLES Foals

Little Simz

WIDE AWAKE

Brockwell Park, London. Photo: Luke Dyson

“D

o you hear that thunder?” Joe Talbot demands of the crowd in London’s Brockwell Park. “That’s the sound of strength in numbers.” IDLES have just fired the opening shot of the inaugural Wide Awake, and a sense of joy is palpable as the sun beats down on South London.

This gig is only a warm up for the band – their early afternoon stage time is thanks to their hometown set tonight at Bristol’s Clifton Downs - but they still hit the ground running. A furious setlist, evenly divided between last year’s ‘Ultra Mono’ and fan favourites, is only slightly derailed by Joe’s vague ramblings between songs, and the swirling moshpits won’t be beaten for hours to come.

At the Windmill Stage, Black Country, New Road emerge to rabid anticipation. The eponymous venue is the backbone of the lineup today, with so many of the bands on show forming there. The post-rock seven-piece initially struggle to make a mark, with workin-progress material not quite landing, but the crowd singing along to a goosebump-inducing rendition of ‘Track X’ proves to be one of the standout moments of the day.

The early evening sees another Windmill group, black midi, take a very different approach to a main stage set. The band’s improvisational chops are impeccable, with white-knuckle renditions of ‘953’ and ‘Near DT, MI’ present and correct, but when singer Geordie Greep and keyboard player Seth Evans start a theatrical play fight, the band slip into pastiche.

Luckily, over at the other end of the site, Self Esteem is starting a show that’s just as choreographed, but one that resonates. Her pop anthems stick out like a sore thumb amongst the post-punk on display everywhere else, but Rebecca Taylor silences any doubts from the moment she launches into an imperious set.

Finally, revellers flow back through the festival site to the main stage for headliners Shame. Charlie Steen looks out in disbelief over Brockwell Park. “We used to play here as kids!” The South London natives are a welloiled machine, even after a year off, and cuts from their second album ‘Drunk Tank Pink’ sit alongside earlier material with ease. Muscular guitars ring out through the night, building with barely a pause to set closer ‘Station Wagon’. He fixes the crowd with his gaze: “With you as my witness, I'm gonna try and achieve the unachievable”. At a commanding homecoming show, Shame do just that. (Louis Griffin) Shame

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END OF THE ROAD Larmer Tree Gardens, Dorset. Photos: Burak Cingi & Louise Mason.

I

f you’ve ever wondered what peacocks think about antagonistic Canadian art punk, then the tufty-headed blue bird casually watching Crack Cloud’s stand-out afternoon set on End of the Road’s Garden Stage suggests that, seemingly, they’re pretty down with it.

Though most of the line-up errs towards the alternative, a sunny Friday afternoon spot from Teleman is followed by an altogether bigger hitter in the form of special guest Damon Albarn. Largely drawing from forthcoming new solo LP ‘The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows’, Damon’s natural command of the stage swells these delicate songs on record into something altogether larger and more exultant tonight - recent single ‘Polaris’ in particular growing into a crowd-engaging cathartic highlight. A trip through memory lane via Blur’s ‘Out of Time’ and a final ‘This Is A Low’ as the sun sets is almost too pretty to take.

John Grant later conjures up an altogether more twisted disco at his Garden headline slot, pink lighting and a set that veers from wonderfully bitchy anthems (‘Queen of Denmark’) to twitchy oddities (‘Rhetorical Figure’), cementing his relatively peerless place as a complicated entertainer of clout.

Onto the following day, and the same arena is bulging at the seams for Squid, who draw a crowd so large they have to fence off the space and start a one-inone-out policy. Crashing and yelping his way through the likes of ‘GSK’ and ‘Narrator’, singing drummer Ollie Judge is still a multi-tasking pleasure to watch - only usurped by the small child waving a crocheted squid toy in tandem.

If Saturday headliners Sleaford Mods provide a satisfyingly antsy way to end the day, then Jerkcurb makes for a far more swoonsome way to spend an hour. Like a smoking jacket in musical form, the likes of ‘The Last Night on Earth’ and ‘Voodoo Saloon’ are music made for the cover of darkness.

Sunday starts shakily. William Doyle first overcomes a self-described “ghost in his laptop” to triumph with the joyous one man band of recent LP ‘Great Spans of Muddy Time’, while Girl Ray have less of a get-out for their shonky set on the main stage - at one time restarting a song four times with no real excuse except they should probably have been billed on a much smaller tent.

Later on the same stage, Little Simz - triumphant after the release of ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert’ two days before - has no such problems, her star quality ringing out for all to see across a set that suggests she’ll be headlining events like this within the year. Over on the Tipi Tent, Yard Act know it too; “I was expecting this to be empty while Little Simz is playing,” notes singer James Smith in a rare moment of seriousness. Elsewhere, their set is a riot of snarky one liners, word-perfect spoken word monologues and bass-heavy punk.

As King Krule closes out the main stage, a temporary power cut of the lights only leading to a special moment as the front rows stick their lighters and phones up to come to Archie Marshall’s aid, there’s a tangible feeling in the air that we’ve all just gone through the kind of weekend that doesn’t come very often. (Lisa Wright) Damon Albarn

THE NEW ALBUM

OUT NOW

71

IT’S YOUR ROUND A big inter-band pub quiz of sorts, we’ll be grilling your faves one by one. now brought to you via zoom!

THIS MONTH:

DANI MILLER, SURFBORT Where: Her apartment, NY.

Specialist Subject: Spongebob Squarepants 1. What is Mr Krabs’ full name?

Damn! What the…? Well, it’d be rude to say because he told me to just call him Mr Krabs. I don’t know!

We like your logic, but sadly not correct. It’s Eugene Harold Krabs.

Oh dang, I knew his name was Eugene!

2. What symbol is on SpongeBob’s white Krusty Krab hat?

An anchor?

Correct!

3. Which famous actor returns Spongebob and

General Knowledge

Patrick to Bikini Bottom in the Spongebob movie?

Uh, it’s the Baywatch guy. I’ve watched that movie so many times!

Half a point for Baywatch guy - it’s David Hasselhoff!

4. What sound does Gary the snail make?

Meowwwww, like a cat sound.

He does meow!

5. What are the first names of Spongebob’s parents?

I’ve never thought of their real names. I don’t know but they’re so creepy-looking!

It’s Harold and Margaret.

2.5/5 2.5 /5 FINAL SCORE:

72 DIYMAG.COM

5/10

1. In what film franchise would you find the character Katniss Everdeen?

Is this a UK thing?!

Um, it’s pretty worldwide!

Doctor Who?!

It’s The Hunger Games.

2. What is the largest country in the world?

Hmm…. Damn, I’ve not looked at a map recently. Russia?

Yes, it’s Russia.

Yay! 3. How many sides does a heptadecagon have?

What the hell is that? Like, fourteen?

Close - it’s seventeen.

4. The Continental United States has four time zones, can you name them?

Like Pacific, Eastern… Umm, I only know the East Coast and West Coast! The middle time?

We’ll give half a point for getting two - the others are Central and Mountain.

Mountain Time sounds cool.

5. What was the name of Britney Spears’ first single?

Oooh, dang, I was still little then. The one I saw a lot was ‘Baby One More Time’?

Correct!

2.5/5 2.5 /5

Verdict: “I’m like, what is a hexa-donal-thing?! That was weird.”

IN PRINT. EVERY MONTH.

DIYMAG.COM/SUBSCRIBE

73

JAMES BLAKE

THE NEW ALBUM PRE-ORDER NOW JAMESBLAKEMUSIC.COM

FRIENDS THAT BREAK YOUR HEART “HIS MOST BEAUTIFUL WORK TO DATE”

THE NEW ALBUM OUT 8TH OCTOBER 74 DIYMAG.COM

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