Loud And Quiet 152 – Angel Olsen by LoudAndQuiet

Thank, Sharon Van Etten, The Linda Lindas, Porridge Radio, Gwenno, Enumclaw, Dog Unit, Bobby Gillespie & PVA, Imarhan, HAAi, Fly Anakin, The Odd Future of Odd Future and more

issue 152

IT’S BEEN A LOT

ANGEL OLSEN

OUT 29.04.2022

Contents Contact info@loudandquiet.com advertise@loudandquiet.com Loud And Quiet Ltd 445 Hackney Road London E2 9DY Founding Editor: Stuart Stubbs Deputy Editor: Luke Cartledge Art Direction: B.A.M. Digital Director: Greg Cochrane Contributing writers Alex Francis, Alexander Smail, Andrew Anderson, Charlotte Marston, Colin Groundwater, Dafydd Jenkins, Daniel Dylan Wray, Dominic Haley, Esme Bennett, Fergal Kinney, Gemma Samways, Guia Cortassa, Isabel Crabtree, Ian Roebuck, Jack Doherty, Jasleen Dhindsa, Jemima Skala, Jenessa Williams, Jessica Wrigglesworth Jo Higgs, Joe Goggins, Katie Beswick, Katie Cutforth, Liam Konemann, Max Pilley, Megan Wallace, Mike Vinti, Ollie Rankine, Oskar Jeff, Robert Davidson, Reef Younis, Sam Walton, Shrey Kathuria, Skye Butchard, Sophia McDonald, Sophia Powell, Susan Darlington, Tara Joshi, Tom Critten, Tristan Gatward, Tyler Damara Kelly, Woody Delaney, Zara Hedderman. Contributing photographers Andrew Mangum, Annie Forrest, Colin Medley, Dave Kasnic, David Cortes, Dan Kendall, Dustin Condren, Emily Malan, Gabriel Green, Gem Harris, Heather Mccutcheon, Jake Kenny, Jenna Foxton, Jody Evans, Jonangelo Molinari, Kyle Johnson, Levi Mandel, Matilda Hill-Jenkins, Nathanael Turner, Nathaniel Wood, Oliver Halstead, Phil Sharp, Sonny McCartney, Sophie Barloc, Timothy Cochrane, Tom Porter. With special thanks to Alex Cull, Ben Harris, Chris Cuff, Duncan Jordan, James Cunningham, Jon Lawrence, Harriet Brampton, Henry Evans Harding, Matt Baty, Matthew Fogg, Nathan Beazer, Steve Phillips, Tom Sloman, Stranger Than Paradise Records. The views expressed in Loud And Quiet are those of the respective contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the magazine or its staff. All rights reserved 2022 Loud And Quiet Ltd.

ISSN 2049-9892 Printed by Gemini Print Distributed by Loud And Quiet Ltd. & Forte

Issue 152 The Blue Ridge Mountains: a hazy stretch of Eastern America’s Appalachian spine, mythologised by everyone from John Denver to Laurel and Hardy. It feels fitting that this geological icon of U.S. folk culture provided the backdrop for Angel Olsen’s intensely personal new album, Big Time, which is as intimately entangled with the nuances of the Great American Songbook as it is with her own recent experiences of love, grief and self-discovery. Reading Colin Groundwater’s cover feature with her, talking about the album as they drive along the winding mountain roads, you can almost smell the pines. Luke Cartledge

Gwenno . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 08 Thank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 HAAi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 The Linda Lindas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Enumclaw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Fly Anakin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Dog Unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Imarhan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Angel Olsen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 London’s DIY Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 The Odd Future of Odd Future . . . . . 66 Bobby Gillespie & PVA . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Sharon Van Etten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Porridge Radio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 03

The Beginning: Previously

Since the last edition of Loud And Quiet

RIP Jamal Edwards On 20 February, music entrepreneur Jamal Edwards passed away at his mother’s home in West London at the age of just 31. One of UK music’s most dynamic, innovative and consistently enthusiastic figures, it’s impossible to overstate how important Edwards was, packing so much into a life that was cut tragically short. As founder of SBTV, the school-age Edwards saw the potential of YouTube before the rest of the music industry was paying attention, and used the profile he very quickly attained on that platform to support the still-nascent grime scene, playing a key role in the early careers of many vital artists from that scene and far

beyond. Jessie J, Ed Sheeran, Stormzy, Dave, Bugzy Malone and many more all received formative support from SBTV, helping their work reach an enormous new audience. Aside from SBTV, Edwards consistently championed UK underground culture in a wide variety of contexts, from music to fashion and independent media, and earned global recognition for his efforts; the sheer volume and affection of the tributes that greeted the news of his passing attest to this, with the likes of AJ Tracey, Idris Elba, Michaela Coel, Sadiq Khan and many more all paying their respects. RIP Jamal.

The Beginning: Previously Bad Boy Chiller Crew’s foodbank initiative Bradford bassline overlords Bad Boy Chiller Crew have launched a new initiative to support foodbanks across the country. Fans For Foodbanks first took place at BBCC’s gig at Manchester Gorilla in February, and the band are planning to roll it out nationwide on their UK tour in April, with fans encouraged to bring non-perishable items along to shows for donation to Trussell Trust foodbanks. bad-boy-chiller-crew.com

the region’s burgeoning soul scene. Their events in Newcastle have already been widely acclaimed, showcasing an undervalued hotbed of talent, and they have much more planned for the coming months. @newism__

Swell

As they approach their 20th birthday, UK promoters Eat Your Own Ears have launched a new record label. The first signing to Eat Your Own Ears Recordings is BLOODMOON, the new project from former Temper Trap member Dougy Mandagi, and the launch will also be marked with a celebratory compilation of EYOE artists including Four Tet, Floating Points and Sylvan Esso later in the year. eatyourownears.com

Auntie Flo, aka DJ, producer and sound therapist Brian D’Souza, has really been pushing the boundaries of what music and broadcasting can do since the onset of the pandemic. First, he set up Ambient Flo, an artist-focused 24-hour radio station with expert curation and a sustainable profit-sharing model for its contributors; now he’s launching Swell, a ‘sound wellness’ app developed in collaboration with University of Arts London’s Creative Computing Institute. It uses a machine-learning algorithm named Flo AI to tailor music to certain situations, and D’Souza is exploring its therapeutic potential alongside academics from Imperial College London. swellstudio.io

Sea Dreams at the Minack Theatre

LEISURE festival

Clinging to a dramatic stretch of the Cornish coast near Land’s End, the open-air Minack Theatre may be one of the UK’s most striking venues. To celebrate its 90th anniversary, curator and writer Kirsteen McNish has announced a one-off event called Sea Dreams, which will feature SAY Award-winning songwriter Kathryn Joseph, multi-instrumentalist Anna Phoebe, and Faber poet Rachael Allan responding to and working within the theatre’s unique environment. It’s a little different from the pub backroom DIY gigs we normally shout out in L&Q, and promises to be very special indeed. It’s all happening on 20 May and tickets are available now. minack.com

Independent promoters Bird On The Wire have announced a brand new one-day festival called LEISURE, which will take place on June 24 at Margate’s iconic amusement park Dreamland. Mitski headlines, with Soccer Mommy, Nilüfer Yanya, Sorry, L’Rain and HighSchool also confirmed to appear. More artists are being announced soon. “We’re thrilled to finally return to Dreamland after such a brilliant day there in 2019,” say BOTW, referencing their ten-year anniversary party at the venue, which was headlined by Mac DeMarco. “It’s a line-up that we feel passionately about and we couldn’t have hoped for a better headliner than Mitski for this first edition.” birdonthewire.net

Eat Your Own Ears Recordings

Decolonise Fest Over the past few years, Decolonise Fest – “a festival created by and for punx of colour” – has been a vital force in the UK DIY scene. Since 2017, it has been a space in which people of colour can come together and express themselves through the medium of punk music (broadly defined), run by a collective of “activists, militant community organisers, musicians, and artists”. After a pandemic-enforced slowdown in IRL activities – which has nonetheless included panel collaborations with Supersonic Festival, a series of virtual events and more – Decolonise is returning for 2022, between 16 and 18 September in London. More details are to follow regarding specific times, places and lineup. decolonise.org.uk

North East Women in Soul Music With so much of the music industry and media’s focus trained on the south, it can be difficult for innovative new music and organising in other parts of the country to find an effective platform, especially if you are working with genres and artists whose voices are often marginalised in mainstream coverage. Artist collective North East Women In Soul Music (NEWISM) are seeking to change that, spotlighting the many exciting new voices in

illustration by kate prior

Sounds Like A Plan podcast Music and sustainability podcast Sounds Like A Plan has returned for a third series, exploring how the music industry (and music fans) are adapting to combat climate change. Available on on all platforms now. @soundslikeaplanpodcast

Powerplant Regular L&Q readers will be familiar with excellent London hardcore band Powerplant, from Dom Haley’s equally great interview with them in our last issue. What you may not know, however, is that Theo, the group’s main songwriter and mastermind, is Ukrainian. The war in Ukraine is too serious, complex and fastmoving for us to effectively report or comment upon, but Theo is in a far more authoritative position and is doing great work to raise funds for grassroots relief activity in the country, helping money and resources get to those who need it quickly. ppowerplant.bandcamp.com

The Beginning: You’re the Worst

Surely David Bowie never made a bad album? Well… Welcome back to You’re The Worst, the series where we re-examine some of the lowest, lamest and most laughable albums ever made. This week it’s the turn of one of pop’s most revered artists, David Bowie. “Surely Bowie didn’t release a bad album, did he?” I hear you think*. Yes, you’re right, he didn’t release a bad album – he actually released many. Let’s list them now. His self-titled LP from 1967 is extremely annoying (lots of lyrics about dancing in fields of rhubarb… think Syd Barrett but more punchable). And while I personally love it, a fair number of people think his 1976 effort Station to Station is a bit wanky (he was on so much coke that he claimed not to even remember recording it). Then you’ve got a whole series of whoopsies from the 1990s and 2000s like Reality, Earthling and Hours. And let’s not even get started on his alternative rock “supergroup” Tin Machine. But how do we choose which of these festering corpses is the worst, and therefore worthy of our exhumation? Well, since Bowie is indeed a legend, let’s give him the courtesy of selecting his own lowlight: “My nadir was Never Let Me Down,” he said back in 1995. “It was such an awful album. I really shouldn’t have even bothered going into the studio to record it.” So, there you have it: Never Let Me Down is Bowie’s worst album. You can finish reading this column and get an early night’s sleep. WAIT, STOP! I almost forgot that we should actually listen to this album before making our conclusions. Because – and stay with me on this – what if Bowie was wrong? What if Never Let Me Down actually didn’t let him down and was in fact a good album? So let’s drop the needle (okay, I don’t have it on vinyl, so I’ll just click ‘play’) and hear for ourselves. First impressions are that Don’t Let Me Down sounds very ’80s. Gated drums. Trashy synths. That kind of slappy metallic bass they used on Seinfeld. Now, for some people this would be enough to say “no thank you” and switch off. I get that: when I was younger this style of production would have irritated me more than sandpaper underpants. But either I’ve mellowed with age, or else all the microplastics in the drinking water are killing my brain cells, because I quite like it now. It’s cheesy, silly and brash – exactly as pop music should be.

The production therefore isn’t the problem, and nor is the music itself. It’s catchy, the structures make sense, and you’ve even got Peter Frampton guitar solos. The opener, ‘Day-In Day-Out’, is particularly good and I’m surprised it didn’t get radio play. As for the rest, I’d say it falls into that category of stuff you’d never listen to if it wasn’t by David Bowie, but because it is, you give it a go. Where there are issues, though, is with some of the lyrics, which are weaker than a Mormon mocktail. “Time will crawl until our feet grow small,” squeaks Bowie, before adding that, “our tails will fall off”. Elsewhere he tells a story about a glass spider whose babies cry, “Mummy come back, because the water’s all gone.” Yuck. And then, out of nowhere, you have Mickey Rourke rapping on a track called ‘Shining Start (Making My Love)’. This triggers a flood of hows, whys, whens, whos and whats as the brain refuses to accept it as fact. But it happened. And we must live with this. Before we get to some conclusions, let’s put the album in context, because Bowie wasn’t the only legend of the ’60s and ’70s who struggled in the ’80s. Mick Jagger went solo and looked like a cokedup Spitting Image puppet. Bob Dylan dressed like a trucker on a comedown and then became a Christian. And John Lennon got shot. However, for Bowie the nadir was particularly negative, because he’d actually done some good stuff earlier in the decade. Scary Monsters was a top release, while ‘Let’s Dance’ was perhaps his biggest hit. We even got to see what his cock looked like under a thin layer of fabric in Labyrinth (surprise – it looked like a cock). So, is Never Let Me Down worse than efforts by Jagger, Dylan et al? No, it’s not. And despite what Bowie himself said, it’s not even his worst album; I’ll award that to Reality, based entirely on an album cover that makes Bowie look like a space paedophile. But Never Let Me Down is distinctly average, and ultimately forgettable. Aside from that Rourke rap, which I wish I could forget, but cannot. The search for the worst continues. See you** next time. * Yes, I can hear your thoughts. ** Yes, I can see you.

words by andrew anderson. illustration by kate prior

King Hannah

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Sasami

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The Beginning: Sweet 16

Most people’s careers end in Vegas – Gwenno’s started there, in an Irish dance phenomenon

My teens are a tale of two halves. The first half was completely chaotic – my parents divorce and I go to live with my mum. She’s got three jobs to pay for us to go Irish dancing and stuff. School’s an utter nightmare – I’m getting into all sorts of trouble and just being very angry and frustrated and alone, as all teenagers tend to be. And then I go to Dublin when I’m 15 for an audition for Lord of the Dance [the blockbuster musical and Irish dance show created by Michael Flatley] and I get the job. So I go to London, to Pineapple Studios for six weeks, and then I’m in Sydney Arena. That was my first gig. And then I’m in Vegas. And all of a sudden, everything works out. It was so chaotic before that point, and then everything fell into place as I turned 16. When I get to Las Vegas, the big thing that happens is, I’m in this big group of people. We all lived in these apartments seven miles from the Strip, and a lot of the girls came from Belfast. This is 1998, and they’re coming from a warzone, basically. And they’re telling us about how they go clubbing and how the Protestants and Catholics are all together and they take pills and it’s amazing. And there’s a club in Vegas called Utopia, so we all started going there. We’re working two shows a night, five days a week, and on a Saturday night we’d go to Utopia and techno nights. That was our weekend. I hadn’t been clubbing until then, and having that experience after all the chaos that had come before it, it was like, “Ah! Everybody’s one thing!” It was almost like a religious experience on the dance floor – you’re not alone. It was a very dramatic experience, but it’s like you’re finding the

truth with other people, and music is the binding thing. I was finding truth in the middle of the desert. I was the lead part in the show, with my face on the side of buses. It was interesting and restricting – I was playing a role, and the gender binaries in that show were so old-fashioned and patriarchal. When I think back to the story now, I think, “What the hell is this!?” And it was strict – we had this really horrible choreographer who told us we were all overweight, so everyone had an eating disorder then. I think that’s why the clubbing thing meant even more, because it was such a way of escaping pressure, and feeling bonded, and overcoming boundaries that everyone has as a teenager anyway, never mind if you’re in a professional show where you’re judged on your appearance. But I absolutely loved doing the shows. I love dancing and I love traditional Irish music. I love it to the core. I’ve danced since I was five and I will always love it. There was a combination of reasons why I stopped. Even though I was young, physically it did take its toll. We didn’t even warm up or anything. I’d been dancing on concrete floors in 50p lessons in an old hall, and then suddenly Irish dancing is a profession. So there was no physio – a whole troupe of forty dancers and no physio! Mental! I remember I had a really bad foot because I was putting all of my weight on it, and I remember going to this clinic and this doctor injecting my foot with some herbal nonsense, and my foot went blue. There was that, my eating disorder and really missing home, because suddenly all the music was there. And I really missed green, which is weird because I grew up in Cardiff, which isn’t particularly green. But I missed landscape and… damp. I needed to go home. In ’98, all of our accommodation was paid for, we got £200 per week PDs [per diems], and we got £1200 per week wages. It was mental. And the reason I say it, is because it didn’t matter. If I’d been wiser, I would have put my head down, done the job and bought ten houses like everyone else did. But what I decided to do was go, “Do you know what, I love music more. I’m really curious and I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, but I just need to be near it.” I think all artists are anarchists, because you get bored and think, “Where is the progress here? I was on the dole then, and it took fucking years to figure out what I wanted to do, and I’m still figuring it out. I actually did go back and do River Dance for a bit, before I joined The Pipettes. I did that and I got offered the lead role again, and it was at that point that The Pipettes was getting a bit busier, and I was like, “I can either do River Dance and have a steady income or I’ll stick with this indie band from Brighton who are not getting paid for gigs, but actually it’s more exciting. I don’t really know them, but they’re interesting and funny, and where’s this going to go?” Curiosity always gets the better of me.

as told to stuart stubbs

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Thank

Sexy noise rock and Catholic guilt, by Dominic Haley Photography by Oliver Halstead I realised recently that it’s possible to track my enthusiasm for working from home by the quality of my lunch. Two years ago, my lunches were all baked eggs and artisan bread, but today my meal is simply a couple of slabs of Tesco mature cheddar stuffed between two slices of Hovis. Firing up Zoom to speak with Thank lead singer Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe, I can tell instantly that I’ve found someone who feels the same. Holding up a white bread sandwich, he looks almost crestfallen as he tells me that it’s just cheese with a dash of hot sauce. “Do you remember when we used to make an effort?” he says with a knowing smile. I just nod.

Cliffe’s band is one of the unlikeliest success stories of the past couple of years. Beginning in Scarborough, where Cliffe, alongside fellow long-serving members Lewis Millward and Cameron Moitt first met and played in a variety of noisy punk projects, Thank formed when the trio moved to Leeds straight after uni. Inspired by metal and situationist noise acts like Blood Brothers, initially, they took an unapologetic approach to noise rock. Describing their sound as ‘stupid music made by geniuses’, their first two EPs stuck quite closely the hooky experimental punk formula. That all changed with the release of Please in 2019, which saw the band flip the script, dial down the brutality,

and embrace Day-Glo pop. Now, with the launch of their debut album Thoughtless Cruelty on Box Records back in February, Thank has seemingly perfected this sound, creating what can only be described as a kind of mad melding of Pissed Jeans and Lady Gaga. To find out what caused this turnaround, our story starts at the now sadly defunct Chunk Studios. An old warehouse on the outskirts of Leeds, this autonomous rehearsal space, gig venue, and workers’ co-operative was a proving ground for acts making anything weird, experimental, and noisy. Becoming something of a fixture on house gigs, as well as shows at the like-minded Wharf Chambers, the experience of sharing stages with the likes of Blacklisters and Pulled Apart By Horses introduced the members of Thank to an altogether more collaborative way of making music. Plugging into a scene with a furious appetite for experimentation and new thinking, Cliffe readily acknowledges that Thank owes a lot to this environment. “It was a big help that everyone was super open and approachable. I mean, Blacklisters were a big band for me when I was at school, so having Billy just grab you and pull you into conversations and introduce you to people was a really nice thing to happen; that’s for sure.” Thank have often reached into this mixing pot as they honed a sound that is completely their own. A big part of that was the addition of synth player Theo Gowans; a fellow noise musician from Chunk whose improv project Territorial Gobbing has released an incredible 60 albums since 2014. “It was weird really,” recalls Cliffe when I ask how Gowans ended up being in the band. “When we were a fourpiece I always thought that we needed something else. For a long time, I was really into the idea of getting a sax player, but we weren’t really good enough mates with anyone who could play sax. Then, I remember meeting Theo, who was making this mad, disjointed pop and I thought it would be interesting to invite him to jam. That was the first big moment where I first thought, ‘Okay, yeah, this band makes sense now.’ It just needed this extra thing, and having a feral-looking guy making whooshing noises turned out to be that missing ingredient.” On paper, the addition of Gowans should have made Thank even more unpredictable, yet implausibly the lean towards electronics has added a strange kind of structure to the band’s sound. Plastering psychedelic drone between the cracks made by monolithic-sounding guitars, the result has been to make the band’s more recent work sound relentlessly propulsive and sometimes, downright poppy. The band now bring a club-like energy to noise-punk, with their drone-laden jams landing like a brooding mix of ESG, Flipper and the wail of an angle grinder. “It’s very sexy music, actually,” Cliffe tells me, with a sly smirk as we discuss the band’s indirect evolution from metal to disco. He’s not entirely joking, either. Thoughtless Cruelty fizzes with energy that somehow manages to sound both weirdly sensual and deranged in equal amounts. “I’ve always found the best noise rock to be almost horny music, but I think most people on the scene are a bit afraid of that aspect of it,” he continues. “I’ve always wanted this band to be quite sexy, but in a more of a self-conscious kind of way.

I’ve always thought that was something a lot of ‘sexy’ music was missing – I mean, don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love Prince – but it’s very self-serious. It’s not what you want when you’re getting down to business – it’s like having your shift supervisor watching over your shoulder and checking that you’re doing it right. That’s why with this stuff we’re doing in Thank, while it can be quite sexual, it’s quite comic as well. I think that you need that willingness to laugh at yourself, otherwise it all ends up feeling like a cartoon.” — You can’t always be right — It’s strange then, that Thank chooses to juxtapose the sexiness with a dose of paranoia. Thoughtless Cruelty brims with brutality and groove in equal amounts. The press release describing it as “a stark observation on human cruelty filtered through the band’s grim fascinations”, it is an album that manages to hold contradictory positions on almost everything, with lyrics that can turn from self-aggrandising to self-loathing on a sixpence. Religion, in particular, and the connection between faith and self-worth is a major touchpoint. The band describe opening song ‘From Heaven’ as a partial reworking of the Latin verse from ‘Nearer My God To Thee’, and the writings of Saint Ignatius of Loyola are included in the list of inspirations, alongside more regular punk talking points like ‘business as usual’ liberal politics and the global rise of the far-right. “Don’t get me wrong, my parents weren’t super uptight Jesus freaks or anything like that – but I was brought up a Catholic and went to mass every Sunday,” Cliffe explains when I ask him about the religious undertones that pepper Thoughtless Cruelty. “Looking back, I think I probably took it more seriously than my parents did. As a kid, I really internalised all the guilt and shame. I can remember the first time I swore as a tenyear-old and I ended up having a weeklong-freak out about it. It’s strange how that sticks with you. Even though no one ever pushed religion on me in any intensive way, it definitely has had a huge impact on my psyche, and I think a lot of this record is my reckoning with that and wrestling with the idea of having a more positive relationship with it.” One of the most striking aspects of Thoughtless Cruelty is how it shows how powerful guilt can be, showing how it can manifest in other aspects of a person’s life. Cliffe’s lyrics are an exploration of inadequacy and a documentary of what happens when this is funnelled into toxic performative commitments. The song ‘Good Boy’ is a good example. Deadpanning his vocals over a thudding, neurotic-feeling beat, Cliffe’s lyrics channel the internal monologue of a guy desperate to be seen to be making the right moves but deliberately sneering at the meaning on the inside: “My life got much simpler when I made the wise decision / To only consume art which seeks to reinforce my place as a good boy.” Cliffe is slightly cagey when I ask him about the inspiration for the song. “‘Good Boy’ is about a specific band, but I’m not going to tell you who it is. Let’s just say that there can be very performative approaches to DIY, and I think this is probably the case within the church as well. There are people in both

camps who make a virtue of being virtuous and think that just being seen to have a certain quality is just as good, if not better than actually doing it. It’s the same in all walks of life, there are always people who want to take all of the plaudits and acclaim, but without having to do any of the work.” Understandably, Cliffe is cautious when it comes to being critical of the DIY scene. After all, it’s a tricky beam to balance on. The welcoming, anything-goes atmosphere of the noise scene has been vital to the development of Thank and their recent popularity has been built on the recommendation and support of fellow acts like Idles and Yard Act. On the other hand, and as Cliffe is keen to point out, no scene is perfect, and ‘Good Boy’ is a song inspired by his own frustrations and desire to find ways things that could be done better – and he remains hopeful that they can. “I mean look at Steve Albini,” he tells me. “When he first came out, he was a complete dick and it’s only maybe the past fifteen to twenty years that he’s been what someone might consider a good guy. He’s always been ethical in the way he operates in terms of music, but in terms of his personal politics and things like that, maybe not always, but what has been cool is that he openly admits that as well, I think it’s good that people are open to changing their ways. Scenes can sometimes be overzealous in their willingness to throw the whole person

away, but actually, here’s a guy who’s a testament to the ability to change. He’s doing all the good shit now – he’s a positive force in the world.” As our conversation comes to an end, I ask Cliffe if in some ways Thoughtless Cruelty has actually been an exercise in soulsearching – a way to re-examine beliefs and come to terms with the mistakes of the past. “Absolutely,” he answers, nodding resolutely. “I’ve spent a decade and a bit in the DIY scene, and in the past few years, I’ve found myself questioning my actions. I’ve always thought of myself as pretty right-on, but I’ve definitely been wrong about a lot of things. The trick is to be humble enough to realise that you can’t always be right and brave enough to accept change.”

HAAi Listening to the crowd, by Skye Butchard Photography by Ellie Shaw

Teniel Throssell was built for the road, as much as a person can be. As HAAi, she’s steadily earned a stellar reputation for her DJ sets and live mixes, which fuse euphoric strains of dance music with psychedelic sound play. HAAi is a risky performer, switching moods on the fly, unafraid to bring the noise or push the tempo in either direction. She’s playful and skilled, but crucially, she listens to the crowd as much as they do her. If you catch her this summer, HAAi will be bouncing around the booth in her signature sunnies. Her selections are often fantastic, of course, with playful blends of techno, unearthed house classics and new dubs sat alongside oddball selections. But what makes her sets connect is her audience interaction, an ability to know what’s needed, and an aliveness that draws us all a bit closer. “I feel like when you’re travelling, and you’re playing a bunch of shows in a row, you’re mentally ready for it. I feel like I could play at any moment,” Throssell tells me over the phone as she wanders around Soho on a sunny morning. “I just got back from Australia via Belfast and Istanbul. I’m getting life semiorganised to go away again this weekend… I kind of love the adrenaline. It’s helping to fight the jetlag.” We’ve caught her in a rare period of relative downtime between shows, as she prepares to release her debut album, Baby, We’re Ascending. Her year began with a series of emotional and resonant performances, with clubbing back on the cards. First up was an all-nighter at Phonox on New Year’s Eve. Her two-year residency at the Brixton club is part of what has catapulted her to underground stardom. “That felt like a real homecoming. The final residency show there was so magical, so I didn’t want to play there again. I didn’t want to taint that. But then, of course, I went back, and it was just as magic. I got to play for seven hours. For me, the ideal way to bring in a New Year is to play a super long set somewhere that feels like home.” Later she tells me that those long-haul sets are her favourite, for their looser pace and poignancy: “Especially if it’s an all-night thing, you know that people are there to see you. They know what they’re in for, to expect weird twists and turns.” Last month, she returned to her native Australia. When Throssell first left for the UK, she was a psych-rock musician (you may remember her old band, Dark Bells) with only a cursory interest in dance music. Her latest return has her in a reflective mood. “I have a different reconnection with Australia every time I go back home. This one was particularly special, because the tour had been postponed for a couple of years. When it finally got planned, it was postponed for another month. I just sat there with my bags packed in the flat for a month, waiting. It’s kind of a strange way to live.” Still, HAAi is living it. She laughs off recent gig chaos, like a six-hour flight delay that had her arrive just a minute before performing in Istanbul (“There was a blizzard. I’ve never seen snow in Istanbul. It felt like a real Get Him to the Greek moment”), or the tight deadlines of editing her set “in a little corner of Dublin airport.” It’s easy to wonder how she keeps her cool during the

hectic schedule, and how she retains her ability to tap into the energy of a crowd. “It comes from a place of deep care and awareness. It’s trying to work out what people want. I don’t know if that’s fully something that can be learned or if it’s just in you, but you can definitely develop it over time. The part that has developed for me is having more confidence in what the right thing is. Not in an egotistical way, but knowing if we take this kind of chance, people will be excited for it.” — Extreme frequencies — The aliveness of a HAAi set is carried through to her debut album, though it now manifests in more inward-looking songwriting. Though she’s back in tour mode now, the album was written in the opposite environment. “The pandemic changed the direction that it would have gone in. We were existing in a time where people were wanting music to sit and listen to rather than things that make you dance. There were no dancefloors. “Normally, when I make tracks, they’re semi-functional. I would be making them on a plane or an airport because I wanted to make something to play that weekend. It felt too heart-breaking to make something for a dancefloor that didn’t exist. I slowed things down a notch. Once I sunk my teeth into it, it was such a nice thing to explore properly.” While there’s more open atmosphere, like the catharsis and intimacy of ‘Bodies of Water’, the album never settles in one sound for long. It’s a frenetic, freeing record with the same aliveness as her sets. It’s a record of extremes, too, with her former life in rock playing a role. “I’ve always had a real affinity for extreme frequencies. I love having moments of real toughness, something to make people’s kneecaps rumble a bit.” Opener, ‘Channels’, is a microcosm of the album’s wider approach – warm synths, warped samples and blips of noise crash together, creating an alien landscape to explore. The intentionally giddy tone reflects Throssel’s recent self-discoveries. “Six months into lockdown, I was diagnosed with ADHD. Everything made more sense for me, in how I work and why I feel like I’m built for being on the road – and also in how I reacted to being locked in the house. It made sense to me why my music can be quite erratic. I wanted to not cover that up. I feel I spent a lot of years of my life trying to push down the hyperactive side of me because I didn’t really understand it.” In expressing the affirmation that comes with sharing those sides of herself, she hopes to continue that conversation for others. “I’ve had chats with friends who have ADHD who said it was such a relief to finally kind of get to the bottom of it, because in school in the ’90s, you felt like you were a bit stupid, I guess. You couldn’t work out why you weren’t keeping up as easily.” As much as it’s a record for herself, she frequently gushes about her co-collaborators, who provide threads in the album’s wider tapestry – artists like Quinta, who composed and recorded full string arrangements from afar. Or her engineer, Francine

Perry (a.k.a. La Leif) – “When you have someone working in the room with you, they end up becoming part of the creation of the music as well. There are parts to the album that wouldn’t exist if Francine wasn’t there.” One of her favourite moments comes from Kai-Isaiah Jamal on ‘Human Sound’, whose elated spoken word emphasises the cleansing that can come in the form of a kick drum. The two happened to live in the same building – “literally a friendship that blossomed on the stairs” as Throssell puts it. “It was something that just came up so organically. I had to recheck the lyrics for them to be sent off to the label yesterday. It’s one thing to hear their poetry but to read it on a sheet of paper blew my mind.” To hear this and other recent tunes like her glorious rave collaboration ‘Lights Out’ with Romy and Fred Again., you might assume that HAAi is a natural collaborator, but that only started with this project. “One of the reasons was that I felt protective over what I was doing. It was a solitary kind of thing. The other reason was a lack of confidence, because I was only used to working in this linear way. I wasn’t sure if it was conventional or not. There’s this thing you feel as a not-straight-male in music. You always feel like someone’s going to tap you on the shoulder and say, ‘Well, that person was involved, who’s making your tunes?’ That was something that I was extremely protective of. [Collaboration] actually came from a conversation with my manager about the importance of bringing people into your creative circle and presenting opportunities for them.” This communal approach to collaboration started with her close friend Jon Hopkins on the album’s epic title track. That opened avenues for HAAi, including giving her the freedom to use her voice on record for the first time. “It’s quite a vulnerable thing to do. It’s one thing to sit behind a computer and make glitchy techno, and then a whole other to put yourself and your words into something. I shied away from it for a long time, because there was a part of me that felt it was over-indulging. I wasn’t sure if people were ready to hear it.” That decision has led to some of the album’s most gratifying moments, buoyed on by the support of her close collaborators, who HAAi intends to honour on the album’s physical version. “I’m not sure if anyone’s really seen it yet, but the inside of the album is a big collage of everyone who had any kind of contribution to how it turned out. It’s nice to put a face to people who have had input on something. It looks like a big family.”

The Linda Lindas L.A.’s most exciting teen punk band are growing up fast, by Jenessa Williams. Photography by Zen Sekizawa

It’s press o’clock for The Linda Lindas, and they’ve made waffles. Dialling in from their home city of L.A., all four are crammed in front of the camera, jostling elbows as they proudly show off their breakfast, perfectly formed Eggo rounds the size of drummer Mila’s head. It’s an unusual start to an interview, but one that feels refreshingly free of pretence, just like their worldigniting music. Having formed back in 2018 for a performance at Girl School L.A. (an all-female festival championed by the likes of Karen O, Fiona Apple and Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino), The Linda Lindas were mastering their instruments one cover song at a time, rocking out for the sheer pleasure of it. But when the pandemic came, it sparked a new motivation; to use their words to speak out against world injustices. In the grips of an imminent lockdown, a classmate of Mila’s had told her that his father had warned him to stay away from Chinese people, backing away when she tried to answer back. Hurt and confused, she told her bandmates, and together they crafted ‘Racist, Sexist Boy’, a furious takedown that went viral in the spring of 2021. “I think that we were really angry about Mila’s experience, and just oppression in society in general,” says bassist Eloise. “We had the ‘racist sexist boy’ part for a while, but when we actually started writing the full thing – over Zoom, because of the pandemic…” “It was literally like five or six hours, but it all came out in one piece,” nods Mila, finishing her bandmate’s thought. “Initially it was very angry, but now I think it’s kind of a proud song. It’s about bringing people together, like against this...” she stops short, not quite finding the words to summarise her world-weary frustration. “You know, whatever this is.” — Feline approval — Navigating their formative years in a global pandemic, it’s perhaps no surprise that the Linda Linda’s often come across much wiser and smarter than their years. Age is not something that they wish to be their defining characteristic, so we’ll get it out of the way early; 11-year-old Mila de la Garza (drums) is joined by her sister Lucia (frontwoman, 15), her cousin Eloise Wong (bassist, 14) and their family friend Bela Salazar (guitar, 17). Together, their fist-pumping Riot Grrrl rock has become an emblem for a new dawn of guitar music, one of improving inclu-

sivity and representation. Though they’re chipper about the “shockingly low amount of hate” they’ve received on their ascent to public visibility (somewhat saddening in and of itself) they do speak of the frustrations they’ve all felt from being pigeonholed in the press, underestimated because of their age. “That stuff wouldn’t happen if we were boys,” says Lucia. “If we were boys, people would be like, wow, they’re so talented, they’re so cool and powerful. But for us, we get like –” “‘– Oh my god, that’s so cute, you’re in a band with a bunch of other girls?’” squeaks Mila, clutching her hands under her chin in a spot-on impression of a patronising journalist. “Awwwww!” “Yeah. And that sucks,’ says Lucia. “You know, because we feel like we’re not being taken seriously, even though music is something that’s super important to us and is what we’re all about, you know?” “People think that we might not understand things because we’re kids,” nods Mila. “And maybe we don’t understand some things. But we do want to understand. So if we don’t understand something, then you know, you should explain it to us?” “We are able to form our own opinions,” agrees Lucia. “People will say that racism doesn’t happen anymore, and it’s just like, DUDE. As kids, we can’t afford to think like that. We have to be open minded to making the world a better place.” For anybody who has seen the YouTube clip of their nowlegendary L.A. Library performance of ‘Racist Sexist Boy’, it is clear that The Linda Lindas have a serious talent for turning life’s lemons into sparkling lemonade. Forget the adult pretensions of overwrought metaphor and complicated structure – when these girls get an idea, they go straight for it, drawing lyrical inspiration from issues big and small. As a result, their debut album Growing Up is an adventure through the multitudes of the teen experience, pooling their individual songwriting efforts and setting them to joyous three-chord power-punk melodies. While tracks like ‘Fine’ and ‘Oh’ continue the angst of ‘Racist Sexist Boy’, there are moments of gentler catharsis too; on ‘Cuántas Veces’, Bela embraces her Latin American heritage, singing in Spanish as both self-empowerment and shield. It’s really about people making fun of me, and me being tired of it,” she explains. “But then at the end, I kind of figure out that those things that they’re making fun of me for are the things that sets me apart. They write about really deep things”

– she gestures to her bandmates – “but I just don’t like to share what I’m feeling. So singing in Spanish felt like a way to share my feelings but still keep it a little bit more sacred.” Even in more comfortable lyrical territory, the details can be tricky. Describing the hardest song on the record to finish, Bela chooses ‘Nino’, the riotous Joan Jett-esque ode to her beloved cat. “I’d written one already about my Siamese cat Monica which was really easy, but then for ‘Nino’, it was kind of hard, because, you know, I wanted it to be up to his expectations!” she explains. “When he would hear ‘Monica’, he would literally go and grapple her because he was so pissed that he did not get a song. So now he’s got his own one, he’s happy. He was purring when I started playing.” Though they all laugh at the idea of feline approval (“Imagine if Nino wasn’t into it?!”), it is clear that music is helping all four members to come out of their own shells. Their sisterhood is obvious; when they’re not finishing each other’s sentences, they’re waiting patiently for each other to speak, nudging one another encouragingly if they feel another of the group could answer best. It’s a camaraderie that fuels the chorus of their album’s title track, a feel-good testament to solidifying friendship; “We’ll talk ’bout problems we share / We’ll talk ’bout things that ain’t fair…We’ll sing to people and show / What it means to be young and growing up.”

— Funny muffins — Though they’re reluctant to cite any one stylistic influence (seemingly shrewd to how it might pigeonhole them going forward), it is clear that each member is passionate about their individual expressions, fuelling their scrappy, colourful attitude. Bela often makes her own stage outfits, while Eloise is responsible for much of their artistic direction, from the hedges and flowers that framed their appearance on The Late Late Show to the impossibly precise papercutting of their album artwork, depicting all four members as rock and roll cats. Wanting to keep things in the family, they chose to record the album close to home; with Carlos de la Garza, the Grammy award-winning Paramore producer who also happens to be Mila and Lucia’s dad. “He knows us all so well, so it was a lot easier to feel comfortable in telling him exactly what we wanted” says Lucia. “It was so cool seeing what he actually does when he goes off to work each day and to be a part of that, you know? [With him] when we’re recording guitars and we mess up or something, it doesn’t matter; we just call them funny muffins.” With the album done and dusted, there’s nothing funny about their impending schedule. Eloise, the band’s resident old-school music head, is visibly ecstatic to be touring with

legendary punk rock band Jawbreaker later in the year, while all four are stoked about their impending visit to Japan, and to Las Vegas, where they’ll be the youngest members of the deeply nostalgic When We Were Young Fest. “It’s crazy, that line up is just like wow,” beams Lucia. “Paramore’s playing it, Wolf Alice is playing it, Meet Me At The Altar. That one is VERY exciting.” Acting might also be on the cards for the future; their cover of Bikini Kill’s ‘Rebel Girl’ landed them a role as the house band in Amy Poehler’s 2021 movie Moxie, highlighting the revolutionary power of teen feminist activism. “It was fun, because it was a new experience,” says Eloise. “It was the first time we ever recorded in a studio, and filming was super fun; we got to skip school for a few days and they had a bunch of cool snacks.” “We did have to do some studio teaching, because y’know, we’re kids,” says Lucia. “Two hours doing homework was not fun, but we still managed to fit in a lot of Boggle.” Balancing academia and adolescence with perfect panache, to have so much promise at such a young age is testament to the encouraging environment that they have been raised

in, but also the sincerity with which The Linda Lindas make their music. Wherever this thing takes them, they just want to keep learning and having fun. “When we first formed, our original set was ‘Manic Monday’ by The Bangles, ‘Our lips Are Sealed’ by the Go-Gos, and that was it,” laughs Lucia. “Even though they were really easy versions of the songs, there was still an energy there; it was so great to embrace all the imperfections and still feel proud after. Now we’ve got 17 of our own songs, and we all just want to get better by being around each other. Right??” She looks around her bandmates, all nodding enthusiastically. “I feel we’re not super pros yet, but I hope that with each album, we’re still proud of the music that we’re making and the growth we’re having,” she continues. “We take what we do seriously, and we’re really happy to have these memories hold on to.” With schoolwork to get back to, we say our goodbyes, but her enthusiasm remains – “Let us know if you have any other questions!” Mila flashes a peace sign, while Eloise and Bela redistribute the waffles, a reward for a job well done. For both pastry and punk, the future appears to be in very good hands.

“We feel like we’re not being taken seriously, even though music is something that’s super important to us”

Enumclaw Learning to be the best band in the world via YouTube tutorials, by Ian Roebuck Photography by Kyle Johnson

“If you can’t believe in yourself, then who will?” asks Enumclaw’s guitarist Nathan Cornell, doubling down on his group’s ‘best band since Oasis’ self-proclamation with a wink to the camera. It’s pretty rare these days to meet such a personable band with this level of unabashed confidence, but the Washington State quartet have been turning heads with their Gallagherbaiting slogan (they’ve already got it printed on t-shirts) and, quite frankly, it’s refreshing. “I just personally think it’s a worry when you see indie bands who are sick but then they say, ‘We don’t care, we are just making music for friends and don’t want to get any bigger,’” says Aramis Johnson, Enumclaw’s Liam. “Fuck that – this is rock’n’roll, where are the theatrics? I want to see someone pissing on a cop car.” “We grew up listening to guitar music, but then seeing someone like Kanye say ‘I’m a rock star’, we saw him do that and thought ‘Fuck it, what’s the point of doing something if you’re not going to try?’” finishes Nathan. After bonding through Monday night karaoke in local dive bar Bob’s Java Jive, the Tacoma band are relishing the idea of escaping their home. “We live in the Pacific Northwest; it’s beautiful, but I would compare it to most working class cities: very blue collar, and people grow up here and they never leave,” says Aramis. “They work nine-to-five jobs in the schools and local hospitals, and stay for life. Which is totally cool, but we want to be different. Back in the summer of 2019, we started doing this thing where every Monday night we’d go and sing karaoke; Nathan would join along with Ladaniel [Gipson] who would go on to be our drummer and one day I went up to them and said, ‘Hey let’s start a band.’” So with no prior experience beyond karaoke, Enumclaw began to create the rich ode to ’90s slacker rock that we hear today. What were the key tracks that inspired them in those early days?

“Oh man, it’s a tie for me, when I’m doing karaoke, between ‘Aneurysm’ by Nirvana and ‘Close To You’ by The Carpenters,” screams an excited Aramis, his friends already in hysterics. “Mine would be ‘American Boy’, by Estelle & Kanye,” follows Nathan. Ladaniel, who’s been quiet up to this point, finally joins in: “I can’t get past ‘Confessions’ by Usher.” Eclectic choices then from a well-schooled band longing for the limelight faraway from rural Tacoma – although they still clearly love their old haunts. “I heard someone has brought Bob’s,” says Aramis. “It was kind of going downhill after the pandemic, but once they spruce it up we’ll go back there and shoot a music video. It’s such a legendary place; apparently Keanu Reeves wanted to own it sometime and move it to Hawaii, or some crazy shit like that. Check it out, it’s in the shape of a teapot!” At that point Aramis’ younger brother and Enumclaw bassist Eli joins the conversation. “What’s good guys?” he drawls, not batting an eyelid when the brothers-in-a-band jokes start. “We definitely don’t get into it like the Gallagher brothers do. It’s more of a playfight, whereas I feel like the fighting in Oasis is more real,” he chuckles. Aramis is clearly hyped whenever Oasis get mentioned – which is a lot – telling a great story about a fan gifting him a Definitely Maybe vinyl at a recent show, and the jaw-dropping ‘Champagne Supernova’ cover the band have been fine-tuning at recent gigs. “I am not going to lie, somebody said they saw Oasis in real life, and they also saw us and Enumclaw were better. Nathan and I went to see the Knebworth documentary and that shit was insane. I didn’t realise that many cool people were on the bill – they had The Prodigy with them too, who we love. For me personally the ’90s sound was the most accessible, in terms of making music. Before I started playing guitar I was making beats on the computer and the difference between a computer

“Somebody said they saw Oasis in real life, and they also saw us and Enumclaw were better”

and the guitar was really big for me. I much preferred the accessibility of the guitar.” Following an impressive lineage of ’90s noise rock bands like Dinosaur Jr and local Seattle heroes Nirvana, through ’00s standouts like No Age and Abe Vigoda, what’s startling about Enumclaw is the rawness they emanate and their fearless attitude to just having a go. “I don’t really know how to play it but yeah I taught myself guitar,” Aramis admits, with Ladaniel following suit: “I pretty much learnt the drums right after Aramis started the band. I mean, we all watched a lot of YouTube.” Aramis is shaking his head, like he can’t believe he’s letting us in on the secret. “I remember a guy at high school who stole his parent’s car, and it was a stick shift, so he learnt how to drive it on YouTube to get away. It just proves anyone can do anything nowadays.” Not just anyone can write a good pop song though, I suggest. “True, you don’t make something like Nevermind or My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy or any of those classic albums by accident, that’s on purpose. I feel like right now songs are being forgotten in music; people aren’t making songs they are just making things that sound nice – what the fuck is this about? Enumclaw have something to say and I think nobody has had anything interesting to say in a while. If you look back at Nirvana, who happen to be my favourite band, there is this portrayal of Kurt Cobain being a self-loathing loser who didn’t believe in himself, but he was just as self-confident as the Gallagher brothers, just in a very Pacific Northwest passiveaggressive way. Like a lot of my favourite artists he was a fan of rock’n’roll theatre, especially in terms of songwriting and accessibility. I have tried to play Nirvana songs myself and the way he plays guitar parts is really relatable – he lets you figure out what you need to do to play and write a cool song. He used the guitar more as a songwriting tool than an instrument [in itself], which is what I try to do now.” Aramis’ unruffled vocal style echoes the laconic Cobain and other icons of that era. However, in direct conflict with this laidback nature lies his desire to succeed. Ambition is evident in everything Enumclaw do – it’s even imprinted in the band’s name. “So there are only two things I have ever loved a gross amount,” says Aramis. “The first was wrestling, and I was pretty decent. Then I got to high school and everyone got better than me and I didn’t put in the work. Enumclaw High School were the best college at wrestling – they were so filthy. With my other love, music, comes this motivation that I don’t ever want to feel the same way about the band as I did my wrestling career. Enumclaw were the best wrestlers, and we are the best band in the world, so we are Enumclaw. The rest is history.” — Welcome the haters —

around 2015/2016 Soundcloud rap, so Playboi Carti, Lil Uzi Vert and everything else associated with that. That was pretty cool, and I actually met Ladaniel for the first time in real life at the first Toe Jam.” Ladaniel glows at the memory. “It was definitely one of the best things I had been to in a long time, it really shook up the city. At first people were doing just random house parties and getting caught by the police here and there but then along came this big event every month and it took down everything, it shut down the rest. That was where everyone had to be to show off your art and to collaborate with people and I thought that was really cool. I met Aramis at the first one, it was crazy after that.” Now though, it’s the rock songs of Enumclaw that people are talking about. Most notable is recent single ‘2002’, a typically lo-fi piece of grunge-pop that plays on ideas of egotism and puts Aramis and his personality centre stage. “I got called a narcissist, and it honestly was a really big deal for me personally,” explains Aramis. He goes on to bare all. “I had been seeing this girl for like eight months and we finished things; it ended amicably, and then one day her friend had an unprovoked attack on me via Instagram stories, calling me a narcissist and a misogynist, a whole bunch of really hurtful things. I have been in therapy for a long time, and I actively try to be emotionally intelligent and be a good communicator in situations like that. I have done a lot of work to get to that point, so when this person said that, it really hurt. I was upset about the break up as well and that probably didn’t help. “That song has been a real full circle moment. It’s crazy that a thing so hurtful, and frankly traumatising, has also provided so much good stuff for me. Once the song has come out the reaction has been everything we could have asked for. I mean it doesn’t have a million plays but you know, rough with the smooth.” This sarcastic take on narcissism isn’t the only time Aramis confronts his ego lyrically. He remains determined not to be the ‘loser’ in a minimum paid job, endless slogging away for a big break, and writes about this accordingly. “It’s everyday shit we all go through and dream about – but then there are moments where I listen back to some of our songs and think I don’t know what the fuck I am talking about,” he says, cracking up – he’s never able to stay serious for too long. “We have been blown away with the reaction to ‘2002’; I was talking to Eli the other day and he was saying we don’t have no haters yet.” Eli picks up from Aramis. “That’s how you know you’re really doing shit, when the haters arrive. When someone starts to criticise, that’s when we know we really rock.” They all seem to agree. Yet it’s hard to imagine any audience hating on a band who are so damn likeable.

The impressive level of passion from Aramis manifested itself in his work as an ear-to-the-ground rap promoter before he found rock music. “I used to throw this party called Toe Jam. It was an underground warehouse thing, and we did it once a month at a different secret location – you never knew where the party was going to be until two hours before. It was centred

When we speak, Fly Anakin has just started his first solo UK tour and is staying in Peckham, gearing up for the next few days on the road. “London is very similar to New York,” he muses. “Seeing these places for the second time now is surreal but it’s very rewarding as well, because there’s a lot that I didn’t see on that first time. I feel like a veteran.” The first time he came over was for a tour with Pink Siifu to tour their 2020 collaborative album FlySiifu’s, a fantastically expansive album set in a fictional record shop over which Fly Anakin and Pink Siifu preside. Skits and interludes punctuate the flow of tracks with humour and lightness, a peek into the synergy that flows between Fly and Siifu. The pandemic and subsequent lockdowns interrupted the duo’s plans to tour the album, so they managed to get across the pond at the tail end of 2021. There’s a marked difference for Fly between this tour, which is promoting his first debut studio album Frank, and the first one with Siifu: “The first tour was more people, and every night I had a chance to do solo stuff, and we also did FlySiifu stuff as well. I found a new comfort on stage, on tour. It was easy to joke around until the lightning captures itself in the bottle. I had a lot of space to learn on that tour – it felt more like research, and this feels like the actual job because I’ve got to close out every night. I guess I’m the main character this time. It was a little easier being the supporting cast, so that’s a shift but I’m enjoying it.” Being, or becoming, the main character is slightly fraught with tension for Fly; he mentions that he always gets a little anxious before a show, but in relation to the album, he himself knows it’s not exactly where he wants to be yet. “It’s a good album, and I think it’s a great body of work and needs to be treated as such, but I also want it to be understood that it will be bettered. There’s always room for growth, but it’s a good representation of who I was at the time. I was, what, 25?” He reflects,

Fly Anakin Sitting in the melting pot, by Jemima Skala Photography by Matilda Hill-Jenkins

“I’m about to be 28 this year, it’s a new world now. I got brand new ideas.” So who was Fly at the time of making Frank? When we discuss it, he speaks in bigger metaphors; the album is called ‘Frank’ because that’s Fly’s real name. “I wasn’t always fond of my name,” he says, “but now it’s just me standing in my purpose and living my truth.” He recorded the album over three years, not with any particular grand narrative in mind except wanting to explicitly make an album, as all his previous work up to that point had been mixtapes and sketches. He consciously went

it’s always leftfield. You never know what music they’re going to make. Half the time, the faces don’t match the sound cos they’ve been sitting in this melting pot their whole life. I also feel like it’s something in the water. It’s something in Richmond that makes people really good at music. I think it’s cos there’s really nothing to do but get in trouble so if you sit down to make music, you’re probably going to make something cool, cos everybody there that makes music is really unique in some kind of way.” Because of how present music is in Richmond, Fly has vivid memories of albums coming into his life. “I have a terrible

“I think it’s a great body of work but I also want it to be understood that it will be bettered” into writing and sessions with the idea of giving songs more structure; the album is also crammed full of collaborations with people that Fly hadn’t previously worked with in a conscious effort to expand his working circle, from the Madlib-produced ‘No Dough’ which is full of warm samples fuzzed with vinyl dust, to the Nickelus F feature on the melancholy ‘Ghost’. Looking at the album with hindsight, it’s ‘Poisonous Primates’, produced by Fly’s friend Foisey, that stands out as one of his favourites. Though the track is beneath two minutes in length, Fly’s flow on it is triumphant, tripping from one bar to the other easily. He calls for accountability on all sides with the words, “I need to tighten up and y’all do too”, tapping into the underlying message of the album as a whole. “Being that most of the songs were done so long ago, it’s hard to form a concept around it, cos it wasn’t formed in any kind of direction. So when I heard it all together, the only thing I could say was ‘Frank’, different shades of me, the true me.” — End of an era — Fly attributes his comfort with the different shades of his musical persona to growing up in Richmond, Virginia. To any old Brit off the street, the US is one big amorphous blob of land with New York on one coast and LA on the other, and down south somewhere is probably Texas. Richmond is the state capital of Virginia, situated slightly further down the East coast and sitting awkwardly between the north and the south of the country. In July 2021, The United States Census Bureau estimated that 46.9% of Richmond’s population were Black, and that 23.2% of the city’s population were living in poverty, with Black people overrepresented within that statistic. Fly reflects on growing up in Richmond, saying, “I always saw music happening around me among the violence and all the other things, all the negativity. You get the bullshit, but you also get the music out of it. “Richmond is top of the south and bottom of the north, so you don’t have an identity. There’s so many different kinds of people, so you’ll hear things in passing, so many different kinds of music from all different areas. There’s no identity, so

memory, but my stronger memories are linked to music,” he says. He remembers playing PS2 and his brother, who’s older than him by 13 years, playing albums like Ghostface Killah’s Ironman or Jay Z’s Reasonable Doubt. But Fly soon started honing his own tastes: “I’m a big Jeezy fan. When Thug Motivation came out, that was one of the albums I heard everywhere, I would hear it on every corner. So I got the album and found out my brother was a Jeezy fan too, but we didn’t talk about it until months later, but I was hip to that, you didn’t have to tell me about it,” he laughs. “Also when Kendrick Lamar first came around I put my brother on to him. The tables have definitely turned cos I know about things before he does. The kids are the A&Rs,” he jokes. Having relocated to Atlanta since recording Frank, it’s the last album of Fly’s to be recorded fully in Richmond. “It’s the last of its kind in so many ways,” he muses. “I’ll never be based in my hometown to record an album unless I intentionally do that. I have to go to different places and establish a sense of being grounded, so my albums are going to sound different now that my circumstances are different.” Reflecting on his own work with Frank and at the same time looking forward to his next project, Fly says, “With this album, I’m happy about it, I like it, I think it’s a great album and I think it’s going to make me a lot of new fans, but I also think my next album is already so much better. Nothing is real to me anymore. I always break my own record. It’s easy to disregard a whole album when you have better things going on, but I also feel like [Frank] is a great precursor for things to come. It’s the end of an era.” The end of an era or a breath between sentences, Frank is a strong statement of intention and identity, and signals big things ahead.

THE BEST NEW MUSIC

MICHAEL HEAD & THE RED ELASTIC BAND DEAR SCOTT

DUBSTAR TWO

The long awaited new album ‘MORE D4TA’ by MODERAT will be out 13th May on CD, vinyl and deluxe vinyl. The group’s fourth album arrives more than six years after its predecessor ‘III’ and showcases a group that’s creatively recharged and fully dedicated to its craft. No matter how far the band ventures into music’s outer realms, they always wind up back in their own unique soundworld, a place where emotive pop and fluttering electronic soundscapes walk hand-in-hand.

Described by The New Cue as “The country’s greatest singersongwriter...his solo masterpiece, as good as any of the life changing records he made with the Pale Fountains or Shack.” Michael Head & The Red Elastic Band’s new album, ‘Dear Scott’, is released on 27th May.

Dubstar return with a brand new studio album called ‘Two’, made with producer Stephen Hague (Pet Shop Boys, New Order), collaborator on their classic ‘90s breakthrough album ‘Disgraceful’.

CALEXICO EL MIRADOR

BASIA BULAT THE GARDEN

MODERAT MORE D4TA

Monkeytown

City Slang

An evocative love letter to the desert borderlands that have nourished Calexico for over 20 years. “Richly cinematic. Both earthy and cosmic, the music sounds almost psychedelic in its lively swirls of sounds.” 8/10 Uncut “More mariachi mystery carefully balanced” dddd MOJO “Superb... Every chorus is imprinted on the memory after one listen” dddd Rock’n’Reel

Modern Sky

Available on limited edition red vinyl at all good independent record shops.

Available on limited edition indies-only white vinyl, and double CD with extra tracks.

GUS ENGLEHORN DUNGEON MASTER Secret City

Secret City

Basia Bulat presents ‘The Garden’: a new album that reimagines songs across her five studio albums with stunning classical string quartet arrangements by Owen Pallett, Paul Frith, and Zou Zou Robidoux. “The results are lovely, while the gorgeous purity of Bulat’s voice glides elegantly above it all.” – Uncut

dddd – Record Collector

Northern Writes

Gus Englehorn presents ‘Dungeon Master’, the cutest, heaviest, strangest rock’n’roll record you will hear this year. An outsider opus that sparkles with Dada spirit — a playful juxtaposition of isolation, alienation and mildish OCD. “I’m addicted to this record already, I just want to live in Gus’s world.” – Limited Addition Records

PEANESS WORLD FULL OF WORRY

ZOLA JESUS ARKHON

“Our debut album ‘World Full Of Worry’ is a collection of songs we’ve written together over the years, mirroring our personal experiences and the wider world surrounding that. We’re super excited and can’t wait for you to hear it. Peas and love.”

‘Arkhon’ is the visceral, welcome return of a voice that can cut through the fascia of reality, cleaving through habit into the raw nerve of experience. Zola Jesus reaches deep inside herself, beyond ego or control to unleash her most provocative and powerful music to date. Out 20th May on Sacred Bones Records on CD, black vinyl, and limited edition sand coloured vinyl.

Totally Snick Records

Includes the singles What’s the Use?, and How I’m Feeling.

DIATOM DELI TIME~LAPSE NATURE RVNG INTL.

Diatom Deli’s ‘Time~Lapse Nature’ is a channel between cerebral ascension and somatic memory, tethered to the micropresent though humbled by a beyond. Dilated by celestial fluctuations and dynamic flutters, the reverberations culminate through airy tests of vocal layering, longing guitar laments, and discreetly sourced sound, compelling Deli’s commitment to esoteric precision and impulse.

Support your local independent retailer www.republicofmusic.com

Sacred Bones Records

TOMBERLIN I DON’T KNOW WHO NEEDS TO HEAR THIS…. Saddle Creek

Tomberlin is Sarah Beth Tomberlin, a pastor’s kid born in Florida, raised in rural Illinois. She wrote the majority of her debut, ‘At Weddings’ (2018), while living at home. On her new album the space feels larger and holier, built to echo. Pedal steel. Old acoustic guitars, freshly plucked. A drifting synthesizer and piano. Chill, brushy percussion. Ambient, expansive clarinet and saxophone. The looseness and wideness of the arrangements conveys a tender regard for their parts, as though each arpeggio, loop, scratch is a found shell or feather in the hand. Then there is the instrument of her voice, which has the endearing quality of being perfectly tuned but reluctantly played.

Dog Unit The self-proclaimed music nerds who make their poppy post-rock for a laugh, by Cat Gough. Photography by Tom Porter Dog Unit are in their respective homes. It’s a Monday evening in early spring, and around half the band are suffering from lingering remnants of Covid. We’re on Zoom to be safe. Hovering up on top above a headset-donning James Weaver, the bassist, and guitar/omnichord player Sam Walton, are guitarist Henry Scowcroft, and drummer Lucy Jamieson. Even via this strange, clunky conversational medium, with its risk of sound clashes and internet freeze-ups running rife, the band’s familial dynamic is on ready display. Sam and James are constantly cracking gags and silly one-liners, with Lucy and Henry adding more pokerfaced, dry-witted quips to the mix. Amongst the insubordinate cheekiness, the chat has equal amounts of considered discussion, and thoughtful collective reassurance running through it. The balance of all three makes for a kind of easy, conversational fluidity that’s not so dissimilar from Dog Unit’s creative structure: non-hierarchical, leaderless. They make it clear they prefer to be received as a unit. Since forming in late 2017, Dog Unit have casually played by their own rules, no design or blueprint in sight. With their

respective earlier music projects petering out and each of them approaching their late 30s, holding down real, professional, grown-up jobs, serious relationships and families, the group decided to get together one “miserable” ( James), “dark and horrible afternoon, rain pissing down outside” (Sam). The aim when they all turned up at the studio in north London, was simply to play. It was a textbook noodling session. I ask if they began taking things seriously from that very first session. “We’re called Dog Unit, Cat!!” It’s a good point from Sam. About four months later, a second noodling session was arranged, this time with Henry’s tape recorder in the room. It was playing the recording after the session to a friend which meant Henry accidentally got the band roped into playing a charity festival. “That’s when we were like… oh God,” Henry admits. “We’ve got to have a name, and tracks and stuff. That’s when it became real.” Skip forward to their first release, 2020 EP Barking to Gospel, a project which saw the band beginning to realise the

broad possibilities of instrumental rock, with playful and adventurous sounds, spanning a broad range of sonic impulses. ‘Dog Unit’, with its explosions of soloing, dark clouds of feedback, at times becomes an almost metal-inflected noise track, full of precision drumming. It sits in pleasing contrast to the repeating, gentle cycles and rituals of guitar and omnichord of ‘Lab Coats’, a track that sleepwalks and veers towards gloom and menace. Self-released, the record was mixed by a very talented old friend of the band, Four Tet, and mastered at Portishead and BEAK> man Geoff Barrow’s Invada Studios in Bristol. Recording semi-live, the band took a modular approach to putting the tracks together. “We’d play for half an hour,” Sam explains, “and we’ll have a big stack of stuff, and we’d all chop it up, quilt it together, in the same way that in a dance record, you’ll have blocks of sound that come together.” It’s a method that helped to refine their ear for arrangement. These themes, of compromise, collaboration and power sharing, pop up often during our conversation about their newly released EP Turn Right and Right Again. Recorded and engineered in April 2021, after numerous lockdowninduced delays, by Audiobooks’ David Wrench (who works/ has worked with an incredible list of artists including Frank Ocean, David Byrne, FKA Twigs), and mixed again by Four Tet, the sound continues the thread of Barking to Gospel, retaining its broad range of sonic influences and approaches. Yet it’s far more psychedelic than the previous EP, recalling such forebears as Cymande and On The Corner-era Miles Davis; there’s a gentle, cathartic approach to the circulation of guitar riffs floating away and back again, a la The Durutti Column. There’s a feeling of sonic intimacy on this record, which, with skilful engineering, can come with the territory of being recorded semi-live. You can hear it in the gradual falling away of guitar riffs on the EP’s final track, ‘Turn Right and Right Again’, when you’re left with the solitary sounds of Lucy’s drumming, her hits so light and fast, the sound so sharp, that it recalls the tones of a wind-chime. It’s this naturalistic approach, Lucy highlights, that allows the listener to hear the humanity in a recording, with its audible imperfections. “The thing I like about other bands recording live is the things you can hear,” she says. “The things you know are mistakes, or when you can hear a song when the drumsticks are put down, and you know the song is being finished. And you can kind of picture that.” — No ego — With Turn Right and Right Again, much like some of the best instrumental bands, Dog Unit have made another release that has driven music journalists to confusion. There’s a curious constant most press coverage has focused on in reviews of Dog Unit’s works: the absence of lyrics, rather than the presence of, well, everything else. Given that the band have always been a purely instrumental outfit, it’s a strange angle. This very magazine called the new EP a “Wordless Rock™ delight”, whilst whynow highlighted that ‘despite’ their music

having no vocals, it was still very good. While it doesn’t annoy the band, when I ask about it, my question triggers an animated discussion on the expressiveness and poeticism that can come with instrumental music. “The fact that people pick it out as a sort of lack, as a band without lyrics, wordless, lyric-less, rather than mentioning instrumental – there’s a double-edged compliment there,” Lucy says, “It’s ‘good’ despite not having words. But there isn’t a lack there – there isn’t for us playing.” “I was just thinking about this the other day,” James chips in, “because we’re a traditional band set-up, [but] without someone at the front, we get this comment all the time. We’re not doing moody, long-winded soundscapes, like some other instrumental music – we’re relatively concise. We’re doing pop music in some respects, we’ve got some pop structures, so people maybe anticipate words to be in there.” Sam is keen to rationalise this impulse. “There’s a sense, when you have pop music, lyrics and singing, even wordless singing, it gives you something to hang on to. There’s an inherent, direct link to some sort of humanity there, that’s far easier to compute.” Throughout our conversation, it’s these kinds of thoughtful asides that highlight who the band really are – selfproclaimed music nerds. They’re people who are entrenched in a deep love of music, each with their own background in other musical outfits, which they’ve been passionately pursuing alongside jobs and families for years. There’s no ego here. It’s all for the sheer love of making music. Anything beyond noodling and playing in front of an audience, they seem to take as a stroke of luck. It’s evident too in the serious levels of excitement and incredulity in their voices when they reflect on being able to get such towering figures to work on their “little EP”. Having someone like Four Tet mix their tracks was “MAD!”, according to James. It’s also clear in their reverence for David Wrench’s skills as an engineer, and what he brought out in them. “He’s just got this tenacity and personality. Not to diminish his ear, which is insane,” Sam explains. “But I think his skill is in generating this real atmosphere in the room. In the same way that the art of interviewing someone isn’t about having a big vocabulary, it’s about getting responses out of people, the art of production is in getting the right recordings out of us.” As Dog Unit prepare to set out on their first UK tour, having only played six gigs over the course of the past three years, I ask how it feels to have that in their sights, setting off in a van to gig across the country, with everything else they have going on. “There’s no avoiding the fact that we’re not a bunch of 19 or 20-year-olds, who can devote our whole lives to it,” Sam affirms. “That’s the nice thing about doing it, I think, because there isn’t that pressure. We can do it for the joy of it, actually.” “This is the cool thing about being in Dog Unit,” Henry smiles. “Like we said right at the beginning, we started this kind of as a laugh. And people like it!” It may be a surprise to them, but not to anyone else. “I think the next thing we want to do is to make an album,” James says, looking to the future modestly. “We’ve got the material, pretty much. It’s just finding the time to record it.”

Imarhan

The Tuareg blues group building an autonomous space on their own terms, by Fergal Kinney. Photography by Fehti Sahraoui

For over half a century, the Tuareg blues – a form of traditional guitar music and folk song specific to the Tamachek language of the historic Tuareg community of north-western Africa – has been in dialogue with Western forms. This might be British rock musicians in the 1970s magpieing Tuareg scales for new sounds, or this might be kids in early-’00s Algeria listening to bootleg Queens of the Stone Age albums and wondering if they could make their historic music sound a little more like this. There is nothing wrong in itself with this kind of cultural exchange; more problematic is the way in which it tends to leave Tuareg musicians at the mercy of the music industry in the Global North. This means that, for generations, Western artists were benefitting from the ideas of Tuareg music whilst Tuareg musicians were unable to capitalise on those same sounds, left dependent on Western hierarchies and structures of music industry ownership. As sounds influenced by historic Tuareg music journeyed through the guitar work of Jimmy Page or the meditative stillism of Four Tet, Tuareg musicians faced problems from the political situation at home to indifference abroad and, even when able to release music in the West, were left lacking for serious creative and economic autonomy. The career of Tinariwen, who formed in Algeria in 1979, was a case in point – their initial success was affected heavily by political instability in the region throughout the 1980s, and it would only be through enduring into the 2000s that recognition (strictly along Western lines) was possible. Now Imarhan, the Algerian five-piece who formed in 2006, have begun to alter this dynamic. The city of Tamanrasset, in the Ahaggar mountains, is the largest Tuareg settlement in the present day, in southern Algeria, near the border with Mali. The Tuareg have existed in the region since the fifth century, and it is these uniquely dry and dusty planes that shaped and inspired the distinctive Tuareg folk sound across generations. Describing Imarhan’s sound, bandleader Iyad Moussa Ben Abderahmane, aka Sadam, points to the celebration inherent in Tuareg music – often experienced across generations, through weddings and other family events – and the deep pain at what has happened to the region across the last century; the pain of colonisation, bloody independence struggles and widespread political failure in the region. Imarhan are but one of a new generation of Tuareg musicians that have taken – and, importantly, have alchemised and altered – their traditional music to a global audience, including Terakaft, Tamikrist, Toumast, Bombino, Kel Assouf. Mdou Moctar’s Afrique Victime was one of the most criticallyacclaimed records of 2021, adopting unconventional interpretations of heavily Tuareg-influenced motifs, whilst Khalab and M’berra Ensemble’s M’Berra record was celebrated for exploring

more traditional, acoustic instrumentation and field recordings capturing the atmosphere of northern Mali. All that creativity, yet still not enough serious autonomy. Via the translation of the band’s tour manager, Sadam outlines how only the construction of a studio in the region could be the first step towards greater and more long lasting creative and business autonomy for Tuareg musicians. Aboogi, released earlier this year on City Slang, is the beginning of a new chapter and the landmark first recording from the studio built by Imarhan in their native Tamanrasset. “We recorded the last two albums in Paris,” explains Sadam, “as we didn’t have any studio at home and we always wanted to record from home. Especially to avoid long and tiring travelling. So when we realised that we could get some help to build a studio, thanks to Africa Express, we started to work on this. We wanted a studio at home for us, but also for the use of the community of Tamanrasset. There is no recording studio in the region and it’s been very important to offer this to young people who can’t afford travelling or just generally recording with professional conditions.” More than this, Sadam also wants to collaborate with the increasing Western artist base energised by Tuareg music. “We’ve also been invited to record in studios around the world, and now it’s our turn. We want to invite international artists to our studio.” Using only materials found in the local community, the five members of Imarhan all worked closely on the physically demanding task of building the studio from scratch, ensuring that the studio was particularly equipped to meet the recording needs of Taureg musicians whilst being sufficiently high-end to attract visitors. They called the studio Aboogi, named after the first semi-permanent structures their nomadic forebears built when establishing settlements and villages. “It was the best for us,” reflects Sadam, “to not travel to record, to record this music in its own environment, in our environment. We could feel the elements, the nature, the wind, the sun, even the heat and the atmosphere of Tamanrasset. We feel it has a very clear impact on the album, the biggest impact… it’s a real album from Tamanrasset, a true one.”

— It’s about hope — Yet Aboogi is not a landmark release for its back story alone – it’s a musical step forward too. Where Imarhan’s previous albums had used a sonic language more closely associated with guitar-based psychedelia, Aboogi returns closer to the original source material; sounds are more likely to be organic, with the arrangements of acoustic guitars and handclaps more closely evoking the landscape of Tamanrasset. The construction of the studio would be just in time, it would turn out, to record a Tamanrasset local legend, the poet and guitarist Japonais. Japonais, or Mohamed Ag Itlale, was a former member of the Tinariwen collective and a personal friend of Imarhan. By the end of his life, Japonais was gifting songs to the band, passing on work that he feared he would not be able to record otherwise. Though plans were afoot for Imarhan to record a collaboration album in the new studio with Japonais, he passed away at the age of 61 in February 2021. “Japonais was very special,” explains Sadam. “That he did his last recording with us on Aboogi is extremely important for us. He’s a very important figure of the Tuareg community, so the whole community was extremely sad to lose him. We are so proud to have his last record on here, to have a shared, very special moment with him at our studio.” Of course, the construction of the Aboogi studio is only one solution. The frustrations of the Tuareg community in postcolonial South Algeria – with the money and political power still concentrated in the northern capital, Algiers – remain, and are expressed frequently on the new album. Its yearning closing track, ‘Adar Newlan’, discusses the struggles of Tamanrasset’s youth population; “The sons of my country are exhausted” sings Sadam, referencing the oppressive laws that imprison many young men in the region forced to work whilst struggling to survive. ‘Tindjatan’, with its insistent call-and-response refrain, is a folk tale of a great defeat suffered by a Tuareg community in the centuries before French colonisation, making specific reference to the imghad social class which was historically subservient to the aristocratic ruling warrior class. ‘Assossam’ is an incendiary reflection on the state of modern Tamanrasset. “There are no medicines, what’s the point of building towns?” asks Sadam. “The roads are all in ruins, the lands are all carved up.” “That pain is part of our music – that we call Assouf,” explains Sadam. ‘Assouf ’ roughly translates to loss, longing, homesickness, or a spiritual pain. “It’s the nostalgia, it’s about missing home. It’s very specifically from the desert, though, and it’s also about hope.”

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MY IDEA Cry Mfer

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MY IDEA ‘Cry Mfer’

Hardly Art LP Col / CD Hardly Art debut by new, NY-based duo Lily Konigsberg (of Palberta, solo work) and Nate Amos (Water From Your Eyes).

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Night School LP / LP Ltd West Australian-based Erasers create hypnotic compositions of synth, guitar and voice, evoking the vast expanse of their native landscape and the shrouded emotions behind the senses.

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Reviews

Albums

Obongjayar — Some Nights I Dream of Doors (september) “I know myself / I’m in charge of my own destiny,” Obongjayar affirms on his long-awaited debut record, Some Nights I Dream of Doors. The mantra of the song, ‘New Man’, hears the London-based artist sing with quiet resolution, “Chasing perfection, no other option / No room for error”. It serves as a declaration of intent that aptly encapsulates Obongjayar’s trajectory towards this instantly captivating body of work. Across a career that’s taken him from lowkey Soundcloud uploads to collecting high praise from critics and revered cultural institutions (his song ‘God’s Own Children’ won Best Song Musically and Lyrically at last year’s Ivor Novello Awards), Obongjayar increasingly appears to be among the most engaging voices of his generation. Even if you’re not in the know of leading Soundcloud stars, there’s still every possibility you’ve encountered Obongjayar’s voice (although it must be said that more than one iteration of Obongjayar inhabits his material). He’s front and centre delivering the silky hook permeating the irresistible ‘Point and Kill’ from Little Simz’s critically acclaimed 2021 offering, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. The reach of that song, in particular, is outstanding given the steady rise to the top for these two exhilarating forces in music. At the time of writing, ‘Point and Kill’ is creeping towards eight million streams, while the music video has clocked up three million views on YouTube. Elsewhere, Obongjayar is a thrilling presence across two tracks on Danny Brown’s 2019 LP, uknowwhatimsayin. On that release via Warp, he was in good company, with the likes of Run The Jewels, Blood Orange

and JPEGMAFIA also featuring on the tracklist. Before we continue to map Obongjayar’s career, let’s take a second to soak in the fact that these incredible opportunities predated the arrival of his debut record. For the six years leading up to this moment, and long before that, too, Obongjayar had been hard at work establishing himself as an authentically unique and vital artist. Born in Nigeria, Obongjayar grew up in Calabar, Cross River State, a port city in the south of the country, close to the border with Cameroon. There, his grandmother raised him and his younger brother, before they moved to London and were reunited with their mother, who had lived there for a number of years. It was 2010, he was 17, and still Steven Umoh. Music was already an important outlet for him and something Umoh had a natural aptitude for. As he began to develop his talent, he also landed upon a moniker for his work, drawn from a combination of both his essence and his aspirations. Sharing his father’s name, Umoh previously adopted ‘Jayar’, meaning junior. Not quite right, he added ‘Obong’ which translates as ‘King’ or ‘God’ as a prefix, and thus Obongjayar was ready to rule his destiny. Listening material for Umoh, before relocating to the U.K., mostly consisted of U.S. hip hop and R&B by artists like Kanye West, Usher and Nelly. Already aware of his vocal abilities, Umoh emulated the rap stylings of the transatlantic stars he admired. However, rapping as a primary medium of expression wasn’t working. He was determined to find a style that felt natural to him. This desire to be distinct, but still true to his artistic vision, culminated in a dynamic vocal arsenal of gorgeous falsetto, gravelly-toned spoken cadence and honeyed tones in his singing. These are all abundantly displayed across Sometimes I Dream of Doors’ equally diverse tracklist. Regardless of his cadence, one of the LP’s most endearing aspects, intentional or not, is how Obongjayar often seems to be in conversation with himself. “Stop trying to please everyone else / Stop trying to fix everything,” he gently

coaxes himself on the uptempo ‘Wrong For It’. Similarly, he builds himself up with more sage advice on the titular track, “I think it’s time I stop running from myself ”. Meanwhile, ‘All The Difference’ and ‘Tinko Tinko (Don’t Play Me For A Fool)’ vibe well off each other as a couplet exploring the throes and woes of young love. The variety in Obongjayar’s cadence does well to separate the different characteristics of his lyricism. He utilises the scratchier vocal style in more impassioned moments, notably ‘Parasite’ where he criticises the Conversative government: “Politician pointin’ fingers callin’ me a leech / When they do all the leechin’”. In those instances where his timbre snarls, as well as emphasising his emotion, there’s a weight of age and experience beyond his years in those performances. In contrast, great warmth and tenderness emanate from Obongjayar on one of the standout moments of the record, ‘I Wish It Was Me’. Heralding an introspective end to Some Nights I Dream of Doors, the song is a heartfelt text to his younger brother, “I pray that you never lose your star / I’m so proud of everything you are”. Umoh’s chameleonic nature in this regard is vastly impressive across the record. Having found his voice, Umoh needed a sonic base to fit his artistic vision. While still in his early 20s, Umoh left London and moved to Norwich for a brief period. Time away from the city was, as it turns out, just what he needed to craft his style. Discussing his musical influences and departure from London in an interview from 2019, Umoh said, ‘If I hadn’t gone, I’d be making drill or rap now… I met DJs who listened to soul, afrobeats, all this Detroit cool shit; I listened to Radiohead, Billy Bragg, Fela Kuti; I fell in love with musicianship.” This breadth of reference is applied economically across his music. Umoh’s appreciation for melody has been apparent since his 2016 debut EP, Home and grew stronger on Which Way is Forward from 2020. Obongjayar’s greatest artistic asset in building his material begins with a confidence to make his words

Albums the central feature with subtly complex instrumentation simultaneously cementing all of the components together and providing interesting embellishments to the final product. From the outset, Some Nights I Dream of Doors presents itself as a texturally intricate work. One that the closer you allow yourself to get to, reveals many layers of subtle but effective touches within the arrangements. Lingering within the enveloping luminous synths on opening track ‘Try’ is a pervading air of melancholy passing like a cloud through the infectious chorus. The album’s title track also thrives on minimalism. The reverb on the tempered keys lures you into the track before being replaced by a sinister drone which becomes the sole sonic component to Obongjayar’s falsetto. Elsewhere the combination of whistle-solo with sophisticated sax on the buoyant ‘Wrong For It’ continues to loop around your mind long after hearing it. It makes for a really successful contemporary take on a pop ballad. As is the case, also, on the aforementioned reflective highlight, ‘I Wish It Was Me’. The deft synth line sounds as though it’s been submerged underwater and in the distance is a faraway quickened melody rippling steadily throughout, gradually entering the foreground before transforming into a truly spectacular central motif as the song progresses and reaches its end. Fela Kuti is often cited by Obongjayar as an important influence; in the past, he has partly described his music as being post-afro. Merging the unrelenting pulse of afrobeat rhythms with contemporary electronic textures and effects, as he does with great results on the claustrophobic ‘Message in a Hammer’ and ‘Sugar’, a denser offering to counter the sparser moments on the record, ‘Sugar’. Elsewhere, Obongjayar follows a typically afrobeat-like cascading meter to establish the hook on ‘New Man’, a track which also incorporates lighter drill beats for a thoroughly gripping instrumentation. Some Nights I Dream of Doors has all the trappings of an excellent debut.

Crucially, it’s a thorough, earnest and endlessly endearing introduction to the artist. Musically, the songs offer a range of soundscapes that exist like siblings. Born from the same source, but each with their own distinguishing feature to make for a dynamic yet cohesive listening experience from start to finish. Lyrically, too, Obongjayar shares immensely personal experiences and anxieties with such skill that the listener is able to recognise themself in his words. With this assured debut, Obongjayar declares himself as an important artist – from here, the possibilies are endless. 8/10 Zara Hedderman

They Hate Change — Finally, New ( jagjaguwar) “I think at this point we definitely self-define as Anglophiles,” said Vonne, one half of the subversive Tampa hip hop duo They Hate Change, in an interview with L&Q last year and, as if to illustrate their point, then reeled off names of influences from Novelist’s ‘rough sound’ to Brian Eno, India Jordan and happy hardcore. This infectious enthusiasm less feeds into their own music than is the lifeblood of it, and was sufficient to turn heads at Jagjaguwar; Finally, New is the pair’s debut for the storied label. Where to start with a record this gleefully diffuse? It’s important to state that, as amorphous as their inspirations are, They Hate Change evidently understand the importance of coherence; Finally, New flows beautifully, in such a manner that when, say, the breakbeats are introduced on ‘Reversible Keys’ early on, just minutes after the drum-andbass shuffle of ‘Who Next?’, or when the twinkly sampled synth on ‘Little Brother’ then feeds straight into the murky,

horrorcore-inflected ‘Some Days I Hate My Voice’, on which they namecheck Poly Styrene, it’s hard to imagine any listener batting an eyelid – it all locks together so smoothly. For all their talk of UK obsession, meanwhile, the truth is that Finally, New is rooted in a sound that subtly subverts a rich tradition of U.S. alternative hip hop; early Outkast loom large, as do Camp Lo, Digable Planets, and Busdriver. The joy is not in going over this effervescent record with a fine-toothed comb, but instead allowing the British influence – sonic and lyrical – to gradually reveal itself. In that respect, this is an album with more Easter eggs than Cadbury’s HQ – a brand they presumably prefer to Hershey’s. 8/10 Joe Goggins

SOAK — If I Never Know You Like This Again (rough trade) SOAK has a skill for hiding heartbreak in bright melodies, and for twisting familiar tropes with surprising moments of humour. That’s been true since the unspoken sadness and understated maturity of their early single ‘Sea Creatures’, released at the age of 18. That song was written ten years ago, and their incisiveness as a lyricist has only gotten more powerful with each passing release. Now navigating their mid-20s, Bridie Monds-Watson pulls from a wide pool of classic indie rock sounds to create chills, but it’s the songwriting at the core that remains the star. Colin the Caterpillar (other caterpillars are available) is a stand-in for the grim reaper in the existential birthday party of ‘Purgatory’, which also features a brilliant key-change coda that’s typical of their playful style. ‘Get Well Soon’ has sweet harmonies and

Albums jokes about ‘live laugh love’ signs, but is also pointedly about the lingering pain of being touched by death at a young age. There’s balance and levity throughout, like on ‘Gutz’, a touching love song that’s possibly in conversation with The Blue Nile’s ‘The Downtown Lights’. It certainly shares the same magical intimacy. If I Never Know You Like This Again is a rewarding listen, dampened only by its occasionally faceless approach to the indie rock playbook – take the perfunctory guitar solo of ‘Pretzel’, which feels flat and intangible in the mix. The gauzy production is frustrating given how distinct many of the stories beneath the songs are. Highlight ‘Baby, You’re Full of Shit’ gets that across with a sparser approach. It’s a stripped-back character study that starts with our antagonist talking loudly at a gig, and only gets more painful from there. 7/10 Skye Butchard

Batu — Opal (timedance) As the mind behind influential Bristol-based label Timedance, Batu has helped shape the sound of the UK underground. In the wake of dubstep’s international combustion, a distinctly British form of techno (for lack of a better term) was formed over the course of the last decade. By combining soundsystem heft, techno hypnotism and UK grit, the outcome has been widely eclectic, simultaneously club-ready and head-bending, and at its best, genuinely contemporary, neglecting tired romanticism in favour of continued exploration. Besides the label curation, his own productions have played a strong part in moulding the landscape. Following a decade of singles and EPs, Opal stands

as his debut album, and the extended running time allows for a more ruminative approach. Second track ‘Mineral Veins’ in particular asserts its presence with restrained measure, with only a foreboding handpan motif leading the way through the atmospheric murk, remaining endlessly intriguing in its considered simplicity. Elsewhere, Batu’s usual hand for percussive tension is evident, and overall, the whole project is instinctively calibrated for club soundsystems. The exploitation of space, the subterranean bassweight and the antagonistic rhythmic patterns that appear periodically are pure dancefloor puppetry. Tracks like ‘Even Here’ and ‘Squall’ goad you onward, particularly the latter, with its evocative topline percussion shifting constantly and redirecting you sense of pacing. The through-line is one of beautifully-crafted sound design. From the evocative suspense of ‘Mineral Veins’ to the aqueous, free-flowing melody of penultimate track ‘Eolith’, an environment is set, and the project does well to inhabit it. 8/10 Oskar Jeff

Real Lies — Lad Ash (unreal) Lad Ash, the new endeavour by the Londonbased duo Real Lies, is an adrenalised lament, unearthing stories through Kevin Lee Kharas’ intimate lyrics, Patrick King’s afterparty electronics, and their collective hedonism. Unlike their debut release, Lad Ash seems to be cutting ties with the city they were once in love with; a sustained period in the doldrums, the loss of a friend in mysterious circumstances, and a love affair are only some of the anecdotes being painted through-

out this collection of sonic portraits, one that subtly but effectively expands the sombre aesthetics of Real Lies. Undoubtedly, the 12-track album depicts life in a rain-lashed London in what we could call an elegiac way. Via melodic, reverb-heavy anthems, a nocturnal drama gets bigger and lonelier by the minute, with blurry characters emerging from perplexed memories at the witching hour. As the luminous sounds progressively make their way to the centre of the dancefloor on a track like ‘Your Guiding Hand’, the key pieces of the emotional jigsaw that is Lad Ash gradually loom out of the club fog, carving out an essential space for clarity, self-reflection, and euphoria. 7/10 Shrey Kathuria

Porridge Radio — Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky (secretly canadian) If Porridge Radio and Dana Margolin have taught us anything over three albums, it’s that self-doubt can sound as invigorating as it is exhausting. Here, Margolin is as forceful and fervent as ever, questioning and probing with the depth and dynamism that made 2020’s Every Bad such an excavating listen. But this is also the sound of a band that’s scaled up a long way from the DIY, shedrecorded confines of their 2016 debut Rice, Pasta and Other Fillers – as well as the polished ambition of the aforementioned follow-up – to arrive at the big ambition of Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky. “I kept saying that I wanted everything to be ‘stadium-epic’,” Margolin says in the press notes, and you hear that intent straight away in the rousing power of opener ‘Back to the Radio’ but also in a few different, equally bombastic

Albums ways throughout the album. A lot of it is owed to Margolin’s presence as the band’s emotional heartbeat, as she searches, beseeches, endlessly pulls on the threads of disappointment, life and existence in an endearing kind of torment. And when those moments hit, they hit with feeling. ‘Jealousy’ is a wide, sad, sweeping anthem that has Margolin hitting the same kind of open-hearted vulnerability that made Hana Vu’s debut last year such a bittersweet highlight. “And jealousy makes me bad / But nothing makes me quite as sad as you,” she sings as crunching guitar and hammered piano crash around her – one of many biting lines that cut effortlessly deep. On ‘The Rip’, she’s defiant, her voice rasping as she repeatedly shouts “And now my heart aches” over dense, power-pop swathes of tumbling keys and reverb-heavy guitar in throaty, cathartic release. British indie has always had that kind of maudlin magnetism, a sadness that knows where to draw the line before feeling too sorry for itself, and it’s a quality that Porridge Radio have nailed. At the sharper end, ‘Birthday Party’ could easily have been Nosferatu D2, but where their scything misery brilliantly hit with the hopelessness of Peep Show without the humour, Porridge Radio create a scene of almost child-like rejection of affection as Margolin slides deeper into a void, yelling “I don’t want to be loved” to a point of hoarse, tantrum-like exhaustion. Existentialism is hard, but the search is worth it when it sounds as good as this. 8/10 Reef Younis

Warpaint — Radiate Like This (heirlooms) Warpaint have kept busy in the six years since their last album, with

members of the Los Angeles quartet variously collaborating with the likes of Phoebe Bridgers, Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett. This is in addition to undertaking solo projects, motherhood, and cross-country moves. Unlike 2016’s Heads Up, whose more direct approach seemed to be influenced by their extra-curricular work, Radiate Like This sounds like a logical progression of their song-based structures. This is despite geography and the pandemic affecting their approach to writing, having only just completed the foundational tracking sessions when the world went into lockdown. Where once their low-slung bass grooves were developed out of jam sessions, here the members recorded separately and exchanged digital files, building up tracks layer by layer. It’s a tribute to their intuitive working relationship that much here still sounds like it was played by four people in one room. The diaphanous ‘Like Sweetness’, in particular, is so freeform it forgot a hook. Most of the tracks, however, do have the semblance of a pop structure without ever getting as close to the dance floor as 2016’s ‘New Song’. Their gauzy sonic layers, which have risked tipping into brooding dirges the past, are here instantly recognisable yet given a lightness of touch. An added build and release, as heard on ‘Proof ’, gives their sonic collaging a sharper edge. Likewise Theresa Wayman and Emily Kokal’s trademark post-punk guitars are retained while adding fleeting moments of optimism, as captured on lead single ‘Champion’. About “being a champion to oneself and for others,” its rich harmonies are grounded by Stella Mozgawa’s drums. It’s her percussion and the production, which the band undertook in partnership with Sam Petts-Davies (Frank Ocean, Thom Yorke), that provides the album’s most striking moments. ‘Hips’ has the itchy rhythm section of Sault, ‘Altar’ showcases their oft-discussed love of hip-hop, and ‘Stevie’ has the smoothness of classic ’90s R&B (and the standout line, “You are one freaky mother!”).

Not everything hits the mark. The e-piano on ‘Trouble’ promises more than it delivers, despite the sweetness of its harmonisation, and ‘Hard to Tell You’ offers little new to their Cure fixation. But they pull it out of the bag with the closer ‘Send Nudes’, which manages to be simultaneously laid-back and lascivious. A campfire guitar with layered ’80s synth, it’s as sharp and focused as they’ve ever sounded. 7/10 Susan Darlington

Will Samson — Active Imagination (human chorus) Will Samson’s voice was made for somnambulist ballads. A falsetto that floats somewhere between Justin Vernon and Kevin Parker at the top end of his range, Samson’s vocals provide the kind of smooth, shimmering palette that indie dreams are made of. Throw in a penchant for melancholic strings and an album title taken from the work of Carl Jung and it feels certain that the wistful teens of TikTok will become die-hard fans as soon as they lay their ears on Active Imagination. Not that Samson is likely to be concerned with such filigrees of success. The Bristol-based singer-songwriter has been diligently releasing work for ten years now, carving out a niche in that ethereal realm where the acoustic guitar and synthesiser meet. The Bon Iver comparisons are obvious – there’s already been one in this review – but there are also hints of producers like Four Tet and Bonobo on this album, on tracks like ‘Percussive Beginnings’ and ‘Always Meant’, where organic sounds are fused and recreated with digital technology. Yet where his influences push at the boundaries of their sounds and

Albums conventions, albeit subtly in Bonobo’s case, Samson stays contentedly in his wheelhouse of genteel electronic-tinged ballads. It’s all perfectly pleasant enough and occasionally a groove sputters into life – as on ‘Two Flutes’ – but all too often Samson is a victim of his own polished success and the album fades into the background, wispy and vague like a dream you’ve just woken up from. 6/10 Mike Vinti

Toro y Moi — Mahal (dead oceans) The “psychedelic album”. A trippy, drippy rite of passage. Executed well, an off-piste psych adventure can breathe new life into an artist, giving purpose after a mid-career lull. However, quite often, these records signal the start of a midlife crisis, the aural equivalent of buying a bright red convertible to take out on those balmy late summer weekends. Mahal, Toro y Moi’s seventh studio album, falls somewhere between these two extremes. The record manages to avoid pure self-indulgence whilst never really breaking new ground. Baggy opener ‘The Medium’ and the Funkadelic stylings of ‘Postman’ suggest that Toro y Moi would be wise to fully lean into this madness. The tracks threaten a brave new future for the former king of chillwave, one filled with technicolour lollipops and swirling caramel rainbows. Unfortunately though, more often than not, the album falls back on an extremely radio-friendly sound. The faux-pop psychedelia of ‘Magazine’ and ‘Last Year’ offer no real substance, slipping away from funk oddity towards something akin to a decaf version of Jamiroquai. The reliance on the squeaky

clean quickly becomes Mahal’s undoing. For every moment of greatness the listener is met with two or three tracks of airy paisley pop. This creates a lack of a consistent groove, sullying what at times promised to be what the best psych excursions can be: a droopy, floating delight. 6/10 Jack Doherty

Fontaines D.C. — Skinty Fia (partisan) Skinty Fia has two meanings. One refers, via a literal translation, to the extinction of the Irish deer; the other acts as the Irish-language equivalent of “for fuck’s sake”. For Fontaines D.C., the phrase evokes the sentiment and kinship of their culture, and that’s poetic when you consider the band’s success and trajectory; the path that’s taken them to get to Skinty Fia. If their debut album Dogrel was a love letter written in and to Dublin, and follow-up A Hero’s Death a dissociated masterpiece, written on the road as the band navigated being away from their home turf, then Skinty Fia is a selfassured amalgamation of the two. Channelling their achievements so far and combining them with a desire for expansion, Skinty Fia also doesn’t forget where it came from. An ode to Ireland, the record found its inception in the band’s homes, where they spent their respective lockdowns. Their individual experiences created a handful of idiosyncratic ideas, and when added to the creative growth that you’d hope would come two albums in, their third record is an emotional and transformational force. The album opens with the unmistakable ‘In ár gCroíthe go deo’, meaning “in our hearts forever”. A solemn,

hymn-like starter, shrouded in gloom, the track communicates the general tone of Skinty Fia, which is far slower and darker than their previous full-lengths. Lazily, you could pin this on maturity, but the sheer understated grandeur of the album speaks volumes of the talent that’s been inherent in this band from the start. ‘Bloomsday’ is affecting alt-country; the long and winding. ‘Roman Holiday’ is equally as beautiful, mentioning the album’s namesake and a conundrum of “Get along, get alone”. It’s one of the record’s many breath-taking moments, suffused in melancholy, with distorted backing vocals and aching, Cure-like guitar riffs; they manage to capture the emotions of the distant and familiar masterfully. The record’s impressive title track is punctuated with not-quite-there breakbeats, simultaneously reminiscent of drum and bass, industrial music and trip hop, but also not completely recognizable as any of these; topped with Grian Chatten’s intimidating vocal delivery, it’s the band’s most experimental track to date. With ‘Nabokov’ stuttering as the album’s closer with disjointed chords and choral harmonies, the remarkable nature of Skinty Fia really comes to a head. Fontaines D.C. have created an epic that keeps on progressing throughout, pushing way beyond their previous boundaries. 9/10 Jasleen Dhindsa

The Linda Lindas — Growing Up (epitaph) In case you missed it, the rise and rise of The Linda Lindas has been a hot topic in the punkier end of the music industry recently. The Los Angeles band, whose oldest member is 17 and the youngest 11, broke through last

Albums year after a performance of their track ‘Racist, Sexist Boy’ went viral. Landing them right in the middle of the cultural zeitgeist, the four-piece went from hobby band to supporting Bikini Kill and signing to stalwart punk label Epitaph with head-spinning speed. Growing Up is the band’s first full length, and I’m happy to report that there’s a lot to love. Forgetting the protagonis;’s ages for a second, this is an impressively well-crafted pop-punk record. A furious 25 minutes of summer jams, it’s an unironic throwback to a time when jeans were worn three sizes too big and evenings were spent attempting kickflips round the back of the technical college. The downsides mainly stem from the ham-fisted production. Sounding like someone copied the blueprints of an Atari album from 2003, compacting the guitars and bass into a mound of sludge and leaving the cut-glass vocals perched lazily on top. It’s a real shame. If they’d respected the source material, then Growing Up could’ve been the sloppy, fun power-pop record that nature intended it to be. 7/10 Dominic Haley

Wet Leg — Wet Leg (domino) There are enough sardonic one-liners on Wet Leg’s eponymous debut to fill a musical comedy act. It’s a sense of absurdist fun that was showcased on their viral hit, last year’s ‘Chaise Longue.’ With its post-punk guitars and half-spoken lyrics, which casually referenced Mean Girls, it seemed cut from the same cloth as another recent breakout success, Dry Cleaning. The album establishes them in their own right and more than justifies

the hype: from being name-checked by Iggy Pop to being ranked number two in BBC’s Sound Of 2022. It’s quite an achievement for a band that formed at the top of a ferris wheel and had only played four gigs before the world went into lockdown. Suddenly finding themselves with more time on their hands, what started as a hobby became a fulltime occupation for college friends Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers. It was during quarantine that they nailed their sound and agreed on their manifesto: “As long as you’re having fun, then everything will be alright,” they told NME. This has given them permission to experiment with various sounds that are all fed through a love of ’90s indie-pop. Listen to ‘Ur Mum’ and ‘Oh No’ and there are elements of The Breeders, Pavement, and Elastica. This combination makes them reassuringly familiar, and yet their ability to write nagging hooks renders them genuinely exciting. These are tracks that make you want to dance, especially the disco handclaps on the infectious ‘Wet Dream’, while offering deadpan observations about modern life. “I don’t need no dating app to tell me if I look like crap,” snaps Teasdale on ‘Too Late Now’. The duo don’t ignore the messiness or confusion of being a young adult; instead, on their debut they distil the emotions into two-minute songs that are communal acts of joy. 9/10 Susan Darlington

HAAi — Baby, We’re Ascending (mute) Though only just on the brink of a debut album, Australian DJ/producer HAAi has already racked up a career’s

worth of things to brag about. First turning heads with her versatile and genre-busting production, her short but impressive repertoire of an EP and recent Radio One collaborative favourite ‘Lights Out’ with Fred Again and Romy has cemented hers as a regular near the top of festival bills and countless ‘best new music’ columns. Her aptly-titled Baby, We’re Ascending feels like an album of building tension as HAAi looks to personify her journey as one of electronic music’s fastest-rising young talents. Managing to pull off an impressive line-up of contributing artists including the likes of Jon Hopkins and Alexis Taylor, HAAi more than holds her own in such esteemed company. Her effortless merging of techno, house, drum and bass, downtempo and pop-leaning electro is a masterful exhibition of unlikely combinations, with enough twists and turns to leave any would-be late-night raver scratching their head on exactly where to place her. Choosing character over consistency, what her music may lack in cohesion is compensated for by stark personality. These many twitching identities seem to writhe and collide, violently coexisting in some paradoxical cesspit that’s both unceasing and immune to the rules of usual convention. Making sure to offer something for everyone, HAAi is making a convincing transition from breakout talent to fabled club icon. 8/10 Ollie Rankine

TSHA — Fabric Presents (fabric) Allowing this 76-minute mix to wash over you on the first couple of listens, you’d be forgiven for wondering if TSHA really is one of London’s brightest young dance

Albums talents. That’s not because she hasn’t vindicated the hype on this slick release, one that brings her full circle after beginning to make her name three years ago with a memorable turn on Bonobo’s volume in the Fabric Presents series, but rather because for somebody still so short in the tooth, so many of her musical touchpoints are throwbacks; the spectre of acid house hangs heavy, as does oldschool rave. What might otherwise be a retread of well-worn territory, though, becomes something different when you delve a little deeper and consider the connective tissue here; the joy of TSHA’s Fabric Presents is in the way she uses this platform to use tracks from her contemporaries to bind together those from her influences. The segue from WK7’s hardcore mix of ‘The Higher’ into the thoroughly modern techno of Ryan Clover’s ‘Velvet Lace Dream State’ is a case in point, as is having Elkka’s ’90s-inflected ‘Harmonic Frequencies’ follow a real standout in Gallegos’ ‘Sycophantic Maniac’, which conversely sounds every inch the future. As well as repaying the favour Bonobo did her in highlighting fresh talent, though, her own single is crucial to Fabric Presents’ success; ‘BOYZ’ plays like the mix in microcosm, all joy and positivity, mindful of yesteryear but with one foot in tomorrow. A triumph. 8/10 Joe Goggins

Melody’s Echo Chamber — Emotional Eternal (domino) Melody Prochet’s last album, 2018’s Bon Voyage, was overly dense and lacked a grounding identity. In response to its maximalism, the Parisian singer-songwriter claims the sessions for her third album were guided by simplic-

ity. This isn’t obvious when listening to Emotional Eternal. It may have a running time of only 30 minutes but it covers a lot of ground, with the mainstays across the eight tracks being psych-pop and her airy falsetto. Myriad other influences are present from the start, with the title track breaking into jazz-funk. It also features guitars that have been manipulated to sound like a trilling harp; an effect that’s repeated on the chugging ’60s pop of ‘Looking Backward’. These barely prepare the listener for the musical itchiness of ‘Pyramids in the Clouds’ and ‘Where the Water Clears the Illusion’. The former twists from dream-pop into a semi-motorik rhythm before throwing in the heavy psych of Goat. The latter adds a dash of Metronomy’s synth parts and the indie-pop guitars of The Duke Spirit. It closes with ‘Alma_The Voyage’ on which she directly addresses the album’s theme of peace. “I’m so happy,” she heliums at one point. “I’m so lucky,” she adds later, while an easy-listening flute contends with a retro pop beat and a piano line that’s begging for a house remix. There’s a lightness to these musical diversions that succeed in her desire to create uplift. But while it offers more experimentation than most albums filed under dream-pop, its approach can be frustrating and emotionally unsatisfying. 6/10 Susan Darlington

Dama Scout — Gen Wo Lai (Come With Me) (hand in hive) Nobody likes to be the odd one out; just ask Dama Scout’s Eva Liu. Born in Northern Ireland to parents from Hong Kong, Lui’s

heritage led to a childhood spent being the awkward focus of schoolyard curiosity. A journey from attracting unwanted attention to taking eventual ownership of her identity is what forms the backdrop of Dama Scout’s debut offering – a story of learning to love yourself, and be comfortable in your own skin. Over the course of an EP and a few dotted singles either side, Dama Scout have been building a reputation for the sort of failsafe disjointed indie charm that’s supplied many jangly guitar outfits. But Gen Wo Lai (Come With Me) arrives with sights fixed on something more transformative, this time following the lead of a spellbinding track list that draws inspiration from East Asian pop and cinema, towering noise rock, industrial beats, and yet more jammed in between. Thick walls of distortion on ‘Emails from Suzanne’ become dreamy EQ fluctuations on ‘Dan Dan Bub’ – though routinely ear-catching, these twists and turns do occasionally blur together, making some more memorable than others. But this is no discredit to Dama Thief ’s stylistic ascension. Less regimented and bearing a far greater depth than all that precedes it, Gen Wo Lai (Come With Me) adds clear development to the band’s limited, albeit promising discography. 6/10 Ollie Rankine

Oumou Sangaré — Timbuktu (oumsang) Timbuktu is Oumou Sangaré’s ninth album in a 30-year career which has seen the Malian singer become not only musical royalty at home and in Western “world music” (not our term) circles, but also a UN goodwill ambassador, a charity head, a hotelier

Albums in her native Bamako, and even a car developer. When the pandemic stranded her in Baltimore in mid-2020, however, the 54-year-old was able to shut out her extra-curricular duties and concentrate purely on music-making for the first time since she was a teenager, and the 11 songs here are the fruits of that focus. Those hoping these conditions might produce a masterpiece, however, may be disappointed with Timbuktu – instead, they’ve fostered a record that’s undeniably well written, played and produced, but also frustratingly inwardlooking and samey, in terms of both themes and presentation. No album, for example, needs two separate songs in which the singer implores herself, in the third person, to ignore the haters (‘Sarama’’s lyric, that translates as “Instead of being jealous of someone who is predestined, blessed and lucky, you should make friends with them / Don’t be jealous of Oumou Sangaré, she hasn’t done anything wrong to you” the most egregious example), and while there’s a degree of stylistic variety across the record’s 42 minutes, the vast majority adopts a mid-pace melancholia that is certainly heartfelt, and at times quite affecting, but also, at length, rather deflating. When Sangaré offers respite from the formula, though, things look up: opener ‘Wassulu Don’ has oodles of kosmische groove and loosely undulating pulse, and highlight ‘Kêlê Magni’, all thumping techno texture below a terrific buzzsawing lead line, is Sangaré’s defiant response to the awful civil war in Mali’s north, a genuinely forward-looking piece of music that could easily double in length. An entire album that leant into that side of Sangaré’s personality, full of defiance and musical cross-pollination, would have been challenging, urgent and exciting. Instead, Timbuktu ends up, like so much of the West African music that manages to penetrate the Western mainstream, resembling tasteful, nonthreatening coffee table exotica. For someone with as much to say as Sangaré, that represents an opportunity missed. 6/10 Sam Walton

tive whole. That personality makes Kikagaku Moyo’s imminent demise all the more bittersweet – theirs is the sort that only enriches their music and their performance style, and it’ll be missed. Then again, ten years of madcap experimentation and wig-outs is an excellent legacy to leave, and Kumoyo Island works as an exemplary career full stop. 9/10 Sam Walton Kikagaku Moyo — Kumoyo Island (guruguru brain) Ten years is a perfectly respectable length of time for a band to exist, providing more than enough opportunity to establish a sound, progress it, win a bit of success and not completely fall out with one another. As countless examples from music history will attest, too, it’s entering the second decade that often prompts bloat, stagnation and mutual loathing, and it seems that Kikagaku Moyo are seeking to avoid this particular trap: after ten years together, the Japanese psych quintet are now disbanding, with Kumoyo Island their fifth album and swansong. And broadly, what a way to go out: Kumoyo Island is insistent, escapist, dreamlike and ultimately a whole load of fun, full of blazing, overdriven, heads-down grooves (the first half of ‘Cardboard Pile’), slyly experimental cop-show funk (‘Dancing Blue’ and ‘Monaka’), and undulating forays into kosmische-tinged exotica (their cover of bossa nova hero Erasmos Carlos’ ‘Meu Mar’). There are also ramshackle jams reminiscent of the Beta Band’s playfulness (‘Gomugomu’) and a gorgeously meditative final track, full of nervously explorative textures and timbres that stretches out beautifully, bookending the band’s recording career with a welcome sense of calm after the breakneck pace of the previous 45 minutes. Crucially, though, this isn’t just a genre raid by hotshot musicians playing dress-up. Instead, Kumoyo Island gains its considerable coherence through a consistent group personality of subversive mischief and exploration combined with heartfelt ardour that threads its way through all the tracks here, making the record a rather wonderfully addic-

Sunflower Bean — Headful of Sugar (lucky number) Some really nice sounds scatter Sunflower Bean’s third studio album: a crystal-clear guitar strum is muddied by diaphanous backing vocals, steadily coming-into-focus on ‘Who Put You Up to This?’, low-slung grooves buoy against reed-like synths in ‘Stand by Me’, while vocalist and bassist Julia Cummings’ chorus in ‘Roll the Dice’ recalls her incredible feature on Yves Tumor’s Heaven to a Tortured Mind. The band’s production has never sounded better than on these 11 tracks, but its composition and overreliance on mimicry still hit the same potholes that their debut album Human Ceremony and follow-up Twentytwo in Blue wilfully sunk into. More than before, Headful of Sugar feels desperate to paint Sunflower Bean as New York’s misfits, campaigning against the city’s uber-cool indie scene one run-of-the-mill rock’n’roll song at a time. “Nothing ever changes in this town, the people die or they move out,” sings Nick Kivlen on ‘In Flight’, sounding like a teen-flick version of Low’s Alan Sparhawk before the smug punchline, “Everyone but me.” Songs that espouse the anarchy (lower case “a”) of fast living are locked in clichés, while others that thrill in stating

Albums how different they are sound custommade for a chart run. When they attack commodity culture, it sounds like Ewan McGregor telling you to forget capitalism and book a holiday instead, to revel in your autonomy under the shade of a Radisson Blu beach umbrella. Sunflower Bean have always toyed with imitation, but this time they’re copying more than just Fleetwood Mac. Every style is echoed, from shoegaze to yacht rock to DIY to synth-pop. If you don’t listen too hard, it’s all quite enjoyable. If you do, there’s so much here that three minutes might just stick. 4/10 Tristan Gatward

Pierre Kwenders — José Louis and Paradox of Love (arts & crafts) Canadian-via-Kinshasa multi-hyphenate Pierre Kwenders returns with his third full-length album, José Louis and Paradox of Love. Featuring guest contributions from Arcade Fire’s Win Butler and Regine Chassagne as well as Tendai Maraire of hip hop experimentalists Shabazz Palaces, it’s a genre-hopping, border-straddling record, recorded in studios in New Orleans, Lisbon and Kwenders’ hometown since 2001, Montreal. Rooted in a free-floating Congolese rumba-inflected electronic sound, José Louis and Paradox of Love is full of loose grooves and feather-light hooks. Influences and instruments are able to wander in and out of the record from track to track. Opening song ‘L.E.S (Liberté Égalité Sagacité)’ beeps and burbles over an almost ten-minute runtime with wonky synths and robotic rhythms, while ‘Papa Wemba’ layers joyful horns over a tinny drum machine,

slowly morphing into a sun-soaked jam worthy of the musician it’s named after. Despite delivering his vocals in five languages across the record (Lingala, French, English, Tshiluba, and Kikongo), Kwenders’ easygoing authority on the mic serves as the binding for his borderless approach. Like all great bandleaders, he demonstrates a clear knack for knowing when to take the reins and when to let his voice melt into the grooves. Occasionally the sheer breadth of sounds on display can leave José Louis feeling a little hard to truly get into; but equally, every listen will undoubtedly reveal new depths and influences. 7/10 Mike Vinti

Just Mustard — Still (partisan) ‘Atmospheric rock’. What does that really mean? Too often, groups aim to create a vibe through nothing more than a wellstocked pedalboard, hiding their lack of an authentic voice behind walls of sweeping, unholy reverb. Like many before them, Just Mustard could have very easily fallen into this trap. Instead, the Dundalk group have quickly managed to elevate themselves above the pretenders. Still, their second album, breaks free from the shackles of the echo chamber with ten tracks of superbly haunting, sonically aggressive, neo-goth murk. The hopeless siren call of ‘23’ set things up early doors. The track crawls deep into a cavern of sound before caving in on itself with a moment of careless destruction, prepping us for a lonely old trip into the abyss. The group’s extremely moody disposition continues throughout the album, propelling the listener forward through the darkness. ‘Still’ and

‘Seed’ are so gloomy you can almost hear the dry ice. The former slides around like the soundtrack to your new favourite Scandinavian crime drama, while the latter hurtles towards the hellscape in twisted delight. The track’s furiously hollow guitars slowly disintegrate, reducing noise to mere feelings, in the best possible way. Just Mustard are a band completely at one with their sound, and with Still they have well and truly mastered the art of atmospheric rock. Not bad going for a second album – not bad at all. 9/10 Jack Doherty

Ibeyi — Spell 31 (xl) Ancestral bonds and eternal magic have been a creative foundation for the Diaz sisters since their first release as Ibeyi in 2014, and new album Spell 31 returns to these concepts after years of growth and reflection. In doing so, they posit themselves as musical healers, exploring a mythic birth-right passed down to twins from the Yoruba diaspora. The album refines their groovy and minimal blend of pop, electronic music and soul with confident performances and a sleek percussive backing that’s restrained yet animated. As always, it’s their close harmonies that take the lead, but that steadfast consistency is part of the point. Spell 31 is a short, sharp collection of tracks about rejuvenation through strengthening the bonds you were born with. It’s at its best when Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé allow the emotion to bubble over, or bring in a new voice to cast their sound in a new light. Pa Salieu shines on ‘Made of Gold’, delivering one of his most exciting and dexterous vocals to date.

Albums Elsewhere, the duo take on Black Flag’s ‘Rise Above’ with Berwyn. Ibeyi have already written moving protest songs of their own, and here, they carry on that ability to place their themes in the current moment. At just 26 minutes, it’s a slight collection that feels begging for elaboration. ‘Sister 2 Sister’ shows how great that kind of elaboration could be, exploring their personal differences and their deep bond with honesty and joy, their contrasting vocal approaches demonstrating impressive range. When they’re having this much fun with it, it’s easy to wish Ibeyi cast their spell for longer. 7/10 Skye Butchard

Ben Marc — Glass Effect (innovative leisure) There’s no denying Ben Marc’s musical pedigree. Anyone who can hold their own alongside Jonny Greenwood, Shabaka Hutchings and even Tina Turner is worth paying attention to. But Glass Effect, Marc’s debut album, sounds like someone that might not be quite so ready to step out from others’ shadows. The London-based bassist is really in his element when carving out those sun-drenched beats that echo the likes of Bonobo. ‘Give Me Time’ builds from a simple rhythm and soars with a wonderful airiness over its almost five-minute run time. ‘Mustard’ features a delightful skitteriness to it, like cicadas getting ready to sing to the sunrise. The latter half of ‘Straight No Chasing’, meanwhile, presents a wobbly psychedelia that brings to mind Connan Mockasin’s swirls of slacker sugariness. But oftentimes it feels like his ideas aren’t fully formed yet. The spoken-word vocals and the music in ‘Dark Clouds’

often feel out-of-sync in a way that doesn’t feel intentional, not quite capturing the feeling of a busy mind or internal strife. Likewise, Midnight Roba’s unique vocal style doesn’t always gel with dainty instrumentation of ‘Keep Moving’ as it did so magically on Marc’s earlier ‘Breathe Suite A’. Glass Effect is an album of promise, but one not quite yet fulfilled. There are flashes of brilliance in the improvisations, and yet it too often feels weighed down by a need to walk someone’s else’s path, with vocal accompaniments that sometimes feel out of place. It wears its influences too readily on its sleeve, rarely subverting those expectations. Yet it’s clear that by taking a few more risks as a bandleader and producer, Ben Marc could yet become one of UK jazz’s current greats. 6/10 Chris Taylor

Hater — Sincere (fire) Having the words ‘hater’ and ‘sincere’ side by side could be an oxymoron – or they could be synonyms. They’re also two words that have lost their true meanings in the midst of the online sphere of misinterpreted and misused terms. Hater do capture a certain sincerity on their third release, but they seem reluctant to show their true colours. Made up of lead singer Caroline Landahl, Måns Leaonartsson, Frederick Rundquist and Rasmus Anderson, the Swedish quartet sprinkle elements of noise rock into their restrained indie sound. ‘Summer Turns to Heartburn’ meanders as two guitars criss-cross musically, their players working their way up and down the fretboard. There are flowing elements of shoegaze that make the emotive side of the record

smooth to listen to – ‘Bad Luck’, for example, would fit right in on a Clairo or even a DIIV album, Hater’s comparative lack of West Coast cool notwithstanding. What replaces that golden beach vibe is darkness. Stripped back to bass, guitar and drums, Sincere is a carefullypaced album led by Landahl’s vocals. Her Scandinavian lilt brings to mind ABBA legend Agnetha Fältskog, but what’s more prominent on Sincere is its ’90s influence. Yet the expansiveness that was created by the classic bands of the shoegaze era is absent, with Hater erring on the side of caution. The height of the band’s energy comes with the chorus on ‘Renew, Reject’ which enlivens that track, but it fails to garner any true momentum more broadly. 6/10 Sophia McDonald

Kurt Vile – (watch my moves) (Verve) Listening to Sun Ra as his breakfast settled and his morning coffee began to cool was Kurt Vile’s ritual whilst crafting (watch my moves). As the cosmic jazz artist’s music tapped into the spiritual, Vile too emulates deeper feelings on his ninth album. Utilising psychwarped synths, breezy instrumentals and elements of classic rock, this meditative record feels like a guide to Vile slowing down. A personal reflection, the opener ‘Going on a Plane Today’ consists of simplistic piano chords. Diarylike, Vile describes his day as if speaking to his younger self. Despite only appearing once, the track’s trumpets are striking, making the opening of the record more grand. Vile’s mellow rock feels like something you would stumble across on MTV Classic back in the ’00s,

Albums a hidden gem that sticks in the outskirts of your memory. The introspective atmosphere acts as a perfect soundtrack to a long night time drive; Vile paints vignettes of his Mount Airy, Philadelphia home and the travelling that’s gotten him thus far. ‘Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone)’ and ‘Chazzy Don’t Mind’ are filled with personal wisdoms that fit snugly over basslines that never meander too far and remain captivating. Vile’s solace has seen him build his own home studio and remain static after a decade of movement, and it sets him in a completely comfortable musical groove. His laidback psych is purely him, as natural as it comes. He mentions how he was physically in one place but his mind was travelling; this psychicallypowered journey is the tranquil thread which runs all the way through (watch my moves).8/10 Sophia McDonald

Susumu Yokota — Symbol (lo) Since his death in 2015, there has been a widespread reappraisal of ambient techno producer Susumu Yokota’s work, with albums like Acid Mt. Fuji and Sakura becoming immensely popular on YouTube. Lo Recordings have now started on a series of vinyl reissues, starting with 2004 album Symbol. It’s his most characterful project, an ambient record which samples heavily and brazenly from car-advert classical music. This is unlike other ambient music of the era with similar inspirations, like Deaf Center’s Pale Ravine or Shenzhou by Biosphere, which tended to make a virtue of being as muted and tasteful as possible. Going from a Stars of the Lid

track to the blatant sample of ‘Clair de Lune’ on ‘Purple Rose Minuet’, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Yokota was taking the piss. Reading the new liner notes from a friend of Yokota’s, journalist Tsutomu Noda, will change your mind on that point. Noda describes Yokota as an austere, slightly lonely man, quoting an early interview: “When I was a child, my parents were both working, so I spent a lot of time at home alone. I’d go into the cupboard, rearrange it and make a castle out of bedding [...] and then daydream. Life hasn’t changed much since.” That sense of slight disconnect with the world is the core of the album. Yokota wasn’t joking, but there is no overdone self-seriousness here either. Symbol is a sincere attempt to use the music most people hear incidentally here and there as children to connect with a dreaming past self. If you are still able to look at a pile of bedclothes and see a castle, you might listen to Symbol and hear your own childhood reflected back at you. 8/10 Alex Francis

Tomberlin — I Don’t Know Who Needs To Hear This (saddle creek) Born into the Baker-Bridgers-Dacus school of singer-songwriters, Sarah Beth’s second album as Tomberlin joins a roll call of artists quietly making good the age-old tedium of venting into an acoustic guitar. A groundswell of lower-case letters, dreams, worries, make-your-own Joy Division Closer album artwork and nuanced musicality makes this an immediate highlight in the sad scene, primed for a generation less ashamed and more willing to explore their own vulnerabilities than before. Call it therapy; Tomber-

lin opens a valuable door on I Don’t Know Who Needs To Hear This. Her debut album At Weddings was a timid coming-of-age in 2018; a selfreflection framed through the lens of other peoples’ togetherness, caught in the complexities of comparison between celebrating friends’ achievements and lamenting your own stagnation. Its moments of fortitude, from ‘Any Other Way’ to ‘You Are Here’, hinted at a magic behind her songcraft never fully realised. But while many of the same insecurities are written about here, Tomberlin now offers a steady voice of comparison for others instead of searching for one herself. To butcher an analogy, this is her Clouds to last time’s Song To A Seagull. The jauntier, Americana-tinged lines of ‘Born Again Runner’ and ‘Sunstruck’ deride their own heartbreak, like Cass McCombs riding miserably on a bucking horse, waiting to be thrown off. There’s a fast-paced slowness across the whole record; a quiet organ chirrups over all kinds of impulsion, and a pounding synth in ‘Memory’ is a soft headache backing the otherwise quiet serenade. Tomberlin’s reflections on isolation and loneliness come packaged with solutions and playful philosophies, expressed as proverbs varying in their logic. In ‘Tap’, her pain is aired through conversations about reality television and commodity culture with a self-awareness that never invalidates the hurt of its own expression. Even ‘Collect Caller’ – a juvenile composition in context – sinks into the self-assuredness of a standard, while ‘Happy Accident’ co-opts a Viagra Boys-does-John Prine riff into something both brilliantly analogue and irritable – a devastating, TORRES-like soul-search seconds from eruption (“What’s the point of this if I’m not how it ends?”) The album highlight comes at the close, with an abbreviated title track duetted out-of-pace with Felix Walworth (Told Slant). It was the first song released ahead of this project, resting on a childlike lullaby played back-and-forth as if it were being learnt in situ. Recontextualised to follow the ten tracks before it sounds like gestated wisdom. Tomber-

Albums lin has come a long way in the four years since we met her, and this is her best yet. 8/10 Tristan Gatward

Father John Misty — Chloë and The Next 20th Century (bella union) “What’s the fun in getting everything you want?” asks Josh Tillman on ‘Buddy’s Rendezvous’. If you’re looking for answers, you’re being taken for a fool. Listeners of Father John Misty know all too well that if you’re expecting to arrive at the truth of all the musician’s philosophical questions, you’re going to end up disappointed. In fact, I’m pretty sure he knows this – “I wouldn’t know, but baby you should try,” he replies in jest. Father John Misty returns, four years since the release of God’s Favourite Customer, with a cinematic score which is abundant in its echoes of old Hollywood and the dark romanticism of film noir. Continuing his collaboration with producer/multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Wilson, Chloë and The Next 20th Century is testament to Father John Misty’s art of weaving a tale that is all too familiar, yet seemingly far removed from our present reality – it’s rooted in nostalgia, rumination and longing. The title is drawn from the two songs which respectively bookend the album; each is spectacularly evocative and full of sardonic charm (“I benefit more than I should from her unscrupulous therapist” – ‘Chloë’; “Build your burial grounds upon our burial grounds / But you won’t kill death that way”). Whilst the most important parts of any story are arguably the beginning and end, sometimes the most pivotal moments are those that happen along the way. Between the seductive ‘Kiss Me

(I Loved You)’ and the tortured ‘(Everything But) Her Love’, there’s a plethora of sweet and subtle orchestral flurries which act as watermarks for the scene that was set in the album’s opening moments, but nothing quite hits the mark as distinctly at the namesakes themselves. 7/10 Tyler Damara Kelly

Hatchie — Giving The World Away (secretly canadian) It’s clear that Brisbane’s Harriette Pilbeam, aka Hatchie, has two great musical loves in her life: the fuzzy, distorted aesthetic of ’90s shoegaze, and the euphoric surge of an infectious pop hit. She indulges in these styles in her own music, where she dishes out sugary hooks through a reverb-soaked filter that sounds indebted to acts like Cocteau Twins. Now several years deep into her solo career, the singer-songwriter is unveiling her second LP Giving the World Away, where she marries these influences more successfully than ever. ‘Lights On’ is a dazzling welcome to the record, with the driving rhythm and blissful vocals making it feel like it would be the perfect choice to open one of her live sets with. This energy continues on the irresistibly dreamy ‘This Enchanted’ and ‘The Key’, the latter of which has a thunderous riff that crashes through the chorus, sounding right out of the My Bloody Valentine playbook. But perhaps the most memorable cut of the album comes from lead single ‘Quicksand’, which flaunts Hatchie’s ability to craft an emotive earworm that conjures feelings of bliss, melancholy and nostalgia. Like a pop princess reworking a Slowdive record, Giving the World Away

shows Hatchie flaunting her ability to belt out a great chorus with a pedalboard at her feet. Perhaps she isn’t reinventing the wheel, but she still sounds more confident and catchy than ever before. 7/10 Woody Delaney

Oceanator — Nothing’s Ever Fine (polyvinyl) Nothing’s Ever Fine by Oceanator sounds like everything and nothing at the same time. All grunge-pop melodies, stirring indie and bombastic rock, singer-songwriter Elise Okusami hits all the right notes across the album’s 11 tracks, but it covers so much familiar ground that it never really takes grip. That head-scratching proximity isn’t necessarily a bad thing, with ‘Morning’ hitting on strong ‘Black Hole Sun’ vibes, and there’s also lots to like about the perky energy of ‘The Last Summer’, a happy ode to the carefree simplicity of teenage years. The latter is a brighter step away from the apocalyptic filter she wrote 2020’s Things I Never Said through, but here Okusami’s ability to play in ambiguous extremes also manifests itself in some of her heaviest tracks. ‘Post Meridian’ leans into a thick, snaking bassline before stamping into crashing cymbal drama and crunching guitar. ‘Stuck’ repeats the trick, switching it up with scuzzy bass, accelerated tempo changes and rolling jams, and ‘From the Van’ completes the trio with big, chunky chords that briefly evoke Rage Against The Machine. An album of lightness and dark, sludging half-tempos and clean, bright hooks, Nothing’s Ever Fine spends so much time in the contrasts, a little bit of focus would make all the difference. 6/10 Reef Younis

Albums Live are released, and no longer are we a crowd packed into a large auditorium. For a few hours we’re allowed access into a living room, a kitchen, a favourite studio hangout; it is a glimpse into their private world. It’s remarkable. Lila Tristram

Yeule Southbank Centre, London 5 March 2022

Big Thief O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London 3 March 2022

Big Thief ’s second night of their sold-out run at West London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire begins somewhat surprisingly, with the band walking an 81-year-old man onto the stage. Tucker Zimmerman, who has been making music since the late ’60s, has accompanied the band to London, and is opening all of their shows. “It’s such an honour,” says Big Thief singer Adrianne Lenker. “Tucker’s music is some of my favourite ever. Since discovering it, it’s become some of the music I’ve listened to the most.” After his last chord, Lenker tenderly walks Zimmerman back off stage, arm in arm. Following a short interlude, the band return and begin to play their first song, ‘Sparrow’, from their new album Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You. This slow, melancholic ballad is hypnotic: the crowd falls silent, any residual pre-show unrest evaporating as the show begins. Lenker’s repetitive vocal melody and bucolic lyrics serve as preparation for the moment when she makes an octave jump, rising into a desperate cry. “She has the poison inside her / She talks to snakes and they guide her,” she sings, evoking the tragic biblical narrative of Adam and Eve.

As ‘Flower of Love’ reaches its climax, it builds to an intensity far beyond that of the recorded version. Lenker’s immaculately executed guitar solo is a beautiful balance of tension and release,of violence and care, her body bending towards the amp, locating the exact point of feedback, picking it up and dancing with it as a fleeting fifth band member. Drummer James Krivchenia raises his sticks high above his head, face distorted, mouth gaping; there is a glint in his eyes, emitting a wonderfully contagious enthusiasm. As they come to the end of that song, Lenker looks over at guitarist Buck Meek. “Do you want to take this one?” she asks quietly across the stage. As his bandmates set down their instruments, Meek takes a solo song, soothing both the crowd and his fellow musicians. Bassist Max Oleartchik lies down on the stage floor to listen. The lights are dimmed, and twirl slowly as Meek sings a delicate and intimate lullaby. “We’re still figuring this one out,” Lenker admits to the crowd with a charming smile, as the band begin to play ‘Little Things’. As the show continues, the musicians relax into a visibly comfortable state. Hints of a grin seeping through from behind the microphone; a joyful dance to a country groove; a playful comment passed between band members. In these moments, Big Thief construct a one-way mirror. Inhibitions

Yeule isn’t just a digital pop star. They’re a pop star in every tangible sense of the world. Playing the Southbank Centre carries a certain credibility to it, and Yeule fits the mould to perfection. A seated concert might not be what you’d expect for a crowd largely made up of Gen Z e-humans, dressed as a chaotic amalgamation of Y2K goths and Westernised anime characters; yet the setting feels necessary on reflection, given the stunning yet unnerving set the Singaporean musician delivers. This is a spectacle which feels more like an art installation or theatre experience than a gig. The stage is dressed in pure monochrome, the set juxtaposed with elements of a bedroom that somehow makes sense; there’s a full gaming set-up with monitor, chair and desk, a hospital bed with duvets and blankets, a grand piano and various plush toys scattered around. The hardcore Yeule fans have even brought their own toys with them, a comfort amongst the beautiful chaos that’s about to ensue. A slender, cyborg-identifying figure (Yeule has described themselves this way as to transcend traditional gender identities, rather than literally believing they are a robot), Yeule is dressed part Sailor Moon, part post-apocalyptic digital warrior, and their stage presence is meek yet mighty. Playing a set of songs from 2019’s debut Serotonin II and this year’s Glitch Princess, the performance has extreme peaks and troughs.

photograph by don blandford

Albums Live From ear-splitting heavy glitch bombshells, hyperpop-tinged belters, and a stunning improvised contemporary classical segment that precedes a passage of poignant indie-folk, Yeule showcases themselves as a strikingly eclectic and talented multi-instrumentalist; a creative visionary for the future. Though moments of reality break through the cracks – missed timings, monitor issues – you can’t help but feel that whilst they try to push the android guise, they remain imperfectly human after all. There’s no question as to why Yeule is so universally adored. Jasleen Dhindsa

Imarhan Exchange, Bristol 15 March 2022

“I’m happy tonight, because I am here with you,” says Imarhan’s frontman Sadam, grinning, three songs into the band’s first gig here since 2019. The feeling is mutual; there’s a collective sense of awe and near-silence in the packed-out Exchange as the south Algerian five-piece file out on stage, draped in vivid silk and traditional white allichu veils. And as Imarhan set out on their first European tour since the pandemic, built around this

photograph by pete woodhead

year’s album Aboogi, for many of these Bristol punters, tonight marks the band’s long-awaited return. Loosely translated as ‘the ones who care about me’, or ‘the very close friends’, Imarhan have, since 2006, played a rockand-funk-inspired contemporary form of the rich, ever-morphing, folkloric traditional music of the Tuareg diaspora, equal parts introspective and wildly energetic. Whilst often there’s a deeply uplifting, foot-stomping beat underpinning Imarhan, there’s longing here too. Tonight, Sadam, starts by gently picking out a circling acoustic riff on the guitar. To his right, Haiballah Akhamouk, has an infectiously potent energy, as he starts to hammer his fists on the calabash drum. “This year, I saw the unimaginable,” Sadam sings, “A child howling, There’s no one left… just a scramble to possess.” ‘Temet’, from Aboogi, is a deeply melancholic track, full of hypnotic, rolling guitar, and call-back chanting. It has the crowd entranced. But on tracks like ‘Derhan’ (‘hope’), as Sadam swaps out his acoustic guitar for an electric, hooks, percussion and vocals build and accelerate rapidly, and the audience properly let go. Strangers dance together, circling around each other, stomping their feet. It feels like Imarhan have well and truly brought their cathartic powers to the outskirts of Bristol’s city centre. Cat Gough

Stormzy O2 Arena, London 27 March 2022

After two years of rescheduled dates, Stormzy came to his first O2 Arena show with a promise: he was going to give it his all. From the second the horns to ‘Big Michael’ erupt, there’s a conviction that the wait was worth it. The high knees are already in fifth gear as soon as he finishes descending from the stage lift, charging up and down the stage as he urgently performs roof-raisers ‘Cold’ and ‘Know Me From’. He then breathes, and proudly announces to the 20,000 fans, “London, I’m home!” A quick scan of the arena reveals Stormzy uniting three generations – a rarity for any genre of music – all here to witness the South Londoner back in his playground and his comfort zone. Throughout the night, Stormzy is equipped with a live band, a crew of singers, relentless energy and meticulous staging, courtesy of the team behind his 2019 Glastonbury performance and Beyoncé’s 2018 Coachella set. A giant crown prop dominates the stage, constantly fragmenting and reassembling above Stormzy during his most vulnerable moments. This is more than just a man with a microphone yelling “Energy crew!” – it is totally theatrical, sequenced act-by-act. Judging by the garden-freshness of each song here, you’d think 2019’s Heavy Is The Head had only just been released. There is also no reluctance to include the deep album cuts. He appropriately takes a detour for Mother’s Day, performing his 2017 ode ‘100 Bags’ as a slideshow of his mum plays behind him, followed by special guest Dave emerging to combine their star power for ‘Clash’. 90 minutes later, everything we’ve known since his iconic Glastonbury set is confirmed: Stormzy is one of the best performers to grace the modern stage, his presence alone worthy of several encores. Hamza Riaz

FilmAlbums and Books

Whirlybird (dir. matt yoka) In 2014, Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler brought to mainstream cinema a culture and profession that’s uniquely American and particularly at home in the city of Los Angeles – the grisly, morally questionable world of ambulance chasers; freelance news reporters capturing on big, bulky shoulder cameras the immediate aftermath of traffic collisions, murders and disasters, with a view to sell the most graphic footage they can shoot to a local news channel in the quickest time possible. Starring Jack Gyllenhaal and Riz Ahmed, it was a horrible film, because how couldn’t it be, as Gyllenhaal’s Lou Bloom became so obsessed with his next excusive, ugly scoop he somewhat inevitably morphed into a sociopath. That’s not quite what happened to Bob Tur, although Matt Yoka’s Whirlybird documentary makes no bones about the fact that in the ’80s and ’90s Tur was not a nice guy, and that his obsession with being the first man on the scene only had a negative effect on his arrogance, his anger issues and his increasing abusive behaviour towards everyone he came across, especially his wife and business partner, Marika. Featuring Ty Segall’s first original score, Whirlybird documents the birth of modern news reporting in America through the eyes (and archive footage) of this unlikeable toxic male at the forefront of if-it-bleeds-it-leads culture. Tur was very good at his job, chasing down pileups and fighting with cops because there was a body on the floor over there with a knife in it and he wanted to sell a tape of it to CBS. It takes a certain type of person, and some of the footage shown here could do with a trigger warning. (Particularly hard to watch is a segment from the 1992 L.A. riots, once Tur had upgraded from car to helicopter.)

Having transitioned in 2014, and now going by Zoe, Tur reflects extremely honestly on the person she used to be in new interviews – a person she can barely stand to think about, who, at his height, tracked OJ Simpson’s speeding Bronco for the eyes of 80 million live viewers. It still wasn’t enough, as we hear from interviews with Marika and the couple’s two children. That Whirlybird exists at all, though, is because of the (often breath-taking) aerial archive footage that so beautifully illustrates the rise of public voyeurism. And that’s kind of it – for a film so full of disaster, and real, personal sadness for the main cast, it’s a distrubingly gentle watch that feels like it’s missing a suitably Hollywood crescendo. Stuart Stubbs

Let’s Do It: The Birth of Pop — Bob Stanley (faber) Across 2013’s supreme Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop and now this title, Bob Stanley – the Saint Etienne musician, journalist, DJ and compiler – has tracked out nothing less than the birth, boom and refinement of the pop song in the UK and US, and indeed pop as an idea throughout the long 20th century. In a varied and omnivorous career that’s lasted 30 years now, this book is arguably Stanley’s crowning achievement. Why? The story of pop in the early 20th century is that there is no pop, just an inchoate set of competing tendencies – ragtime, jazz, folk, the Great American songbook, show tunes – that gradually form a coalition as they hurtle across the pre-war years. Their stories have never before been understood and condensed into a larger narrative in this manner. In what has been a decades-long project, Stanley’s research is exemplary. More than this, Stanley teases out a compelling treatise where the

American popular song stands alongside Le Corbusier, Dada or Christian Dior’s postwar fashions as a specifically modernist 20th-century form. As a Loud And Quiet reader, it may be unlikely that there’s much music from the first half of the book that you’d particularly want to listen to across the first half of the book – personally, the 1930s close harmony trio Boswell Sisters are the earliest act covered here I seriously enjoyed – but it’s extremely likely that it will have you Googling the sad, forgotten faces of musical pioneers who once were the future. Take Reggie Foresyth, a pioneering Black British bandleader; such a loss from history feels bewildering. Or Ina Ray Hutton, the clearly biopic-ready platinum blonde swing star who popularised an all-female big band in the 1940s, had a TV series by the 1950s, and exists now only as a dusty relic for the most hardcore of anorak. Stanley’s book does these figures the ultimate justice, placing them in context, making the case for their often astonishing progressions in prose that is always vivid and sparkling. The names that do hold permanence in the 21st century – Billie Holliday, Judy Garland, a storming chapter on Frank Sinatra – are illuminated as points in the development of archetypes that would endure into the pop world we now know. Stanley is committed also to accounting for how minorities shaped pop and were rewarded often with tragedy. This coded pop, however, with a specific melancholy that it can’t shake off to this day and will forever be part of its allure. A case in point is how Cole Porter’s writing was infused with an ambiguity directly linked to his status as a homosexual in conservative America, which shapes how the pop lyric is written in his wake. This book is a triumph, and this reader can only marvel at the way in which we stand on the shoulders of giants, that every piece of music you are reading about in this magazine is an accumulation upon all of this weight. And that it too will be rendered utterly insignificant. Lost in time, like tears in rain, like the film quote that will one day too be recalled only in distant history books. Let’s hope it’s recalled by someone with the care and diligence of Bob Stanley, then. Fergal Kinney

A LO N G N A R R AT I O N OF MA JOR LIFE E VENTS

A N G EL O LS EN ’S N E W A LB U M C A M E FR O M H E R FA L L I N G I N L O V E , C O M I N G O U T A N D L O S I N G B O T H H E R PA R E N T S I N Q U I C K SU C C ES S I O N. IN HER H O ME TOW N O F ASHE V ILLE, N O RTH CA RO LIN A , SHE TO O K C O L I N G R O U N D WAT E R O U T F O R T H E D AY I N H E R V I N TA G E P I C K U P T O D I S C U S S H O W S H E A R R I V E D AT T H E A P T LY T I T L E D B I G T I M E. PH OTO G R A PH Y BY J O HNN Y AUTRY

Angel Olsen is trying to teach me to drive stick. I am not a good student. Behind the wheel of a ’63 Ford Ranchero, she downshifts and motors through historic Asheville, laying out the finer points of third gear and what the hell a clutch is while deftly navigating the narrow mountain roads of her neighbourhood. If you are uninitiated to the world of vintage cars, let it be known: this is one hell of a truck. You hear it coming and you watch it drive away. At one point, a muscled arm extends from a passing SUV to flash Olsen a hearty thumbs up. Nice ride. Elaborating on the distinction between second and third gear, Olsen glances my way to check that I am absorbing this important lesson. She quickly clocks that I am not. There’s some amusement, I hope, but perhaps some frustration as well. She’s explaining. Don’t I get it? We pull up in front of Olsen’s home. She has lived in Asheville, North Carolina for nearly a decade, but she bought this house after the success of her third album, My Woman. She writes music here and steps away from the demands that come with being a successful musician, recording across the country or touring around the world. Asheville and the house are home in the truest sense of the word. She’s noted in previous interviews that her house is actually across the street from her dream home. After she parks, the dream home’s current resident steps out to compliment the truck and swap notes on the pleasures of Asheville living. It’s all very neighbourly. This is where Angel Olsen spent most of the past two years while we were all confined to our homes by Covid-19. As far as pandemic experiences go, hers has been, in a word, big; replete with very high highs and very low lows. She fell in love. She came out. She lost both her parents. She grew in myriad ineffable ways that come with accepting her rarified status as a Great Songwriter and simply growing older. And she wrote and recorded a new album. Inspired by two intense years and influenced by Neil Young and Lucinda Williams, it’s a warm, moving and personal collection of songs that just might be her best record yet. It’s called Big Time.

THE NEW M U S T-V I S I T M U S I C C I T Y It’s raining in downtown Asheville. The weather hangs close in mountain towns, and today a low fog hovers around the buildings, casting a hazy damp grey on everything for miles around. On days like this, Olsen likes to drive. That’s our plan today – she’ll drive us around the Blue Ridge Mountains, showing me around as she tells me about her new album and everything that shaped it. I’m surprised. Now on the cusp of her sixth full-length, Olsen is a veteran of the music industry who is all too familiar with the rigamarole of a press rollout and music journo bullshit. She has suffered through enough pat and reductive questions about “being a female songwriter” for a lifetime, she has seen the flattening effect a profile can have on her work and her identity.

Yet here she is, welcoming me into her passenger seat for the day. Despite some palpable (and fair) scepticism about the press, she’s talkative, friendly and much more at ease than you would expect from someone about to talk about a deeply personal album with a stranger for seven hours. Experience plays in here – this isn’t Olsen’s first rodeo – but part of it is also a newfound level of comfort and confidence in her music and personal life, which she’ll discuss at length over the course of the day. Another part of it is just being home. Olsen clearly loves Asheville. She jokes with friends that one day she’ll become a tour guide. She’d be good at it. Whipping through the mountains, she points out the river running along the road. “That’s the French Broad. It’s one of the oldest rivers in the world.” So old, I later learn, that it’s impossible to say quite how old it is, though geologists ballpark it at 325 million years. In much more recent history, Asheville has made a name for itself through its outsized cultural footprint. The area has been a fertile creative home to several artists, writers, and musicians throughout the 20th century. Thomas Wolfe and the Fitzgeralds spent time here, and the influential art school Black Mountain College, where artists like Ruth Asawa, John Cage and the Albers taught, is just 20 minutes from downtown. Today Asheville is home to globallyknown artists like Olsen and the genre-bending Moses Sumney, the storied venue the Orange Peel, and a vibrant local scene. Rolling Stone called it “the new must-visit music city” a few years back. Olsen moved here back in 2013, just before the release of Burn Your Fire for No Witness. That album, her second, was arguably her first big break; a critically acclaimed record of lo-fi tunes that drew comparisons to Leonard Cohen’s work and landed on plenty of year-end lists. Her arrival in Asheville roughly coincided with the takeoff of her solo career. But before that, she cut her teeth in the Midwest. She’s originally from St. Louis, where she grew up as the youngest of nine in a blended family. Olsen is adopted and her parents both brought children from previous relationships. “Everyone had a different set of parents,” she notes. “My mom wasn’t the mom of everyone, my dad wasn’t everyone’s dad.” Olsen remembers her childhood as loud, with raised voices and the TV on. A household of 11 generates some serious volume. “My dad used to be a big yeller,” she recalls. “[He] was a hard guy, but he softened over the years.” She was closer with her mother. “My mother was the most hilarious. You never knew what she would say next but it would always crack you up. If ever I’m funny, I have to give her credit for that.” Olsen, for the record, is indeed quite funny, albeit in a particularly dry way. “My family was religious, but like Baptist religious, and I wasn’t,” she says. “I tried for a little bit but I can’t. I simply don’t care for congregating. Or listening to white old dudes tell me how I should connect with God. It’s just not cute.” It comes through in her lyrics, too. On the new song ‘Right Now’, she belts out a wholehearted chorus of “Why’d you have to go and make it weird?” I tell Olsen this made me laugh and she replies with a muted smile, “It’s not your typical country classic.” Eventually she moved to Chicago to break out of St. Louis’s orbit. Her music career began there, writing and playing

in the city’s scene and, eventually, singing backup vocals with Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. ‘Dream Thing’, a song on the new album, is a slight nod to those years inspired by, you guessed it, a dream Olsen had. “I was searching my mind for the words to that ‘Black Captain’ song,” she sings, “I was looking at old you, looking at who you’ve become.” I point this connection out and I suspect that Olsen, watching the road, is rolling her eyes. She gets a lot of questions about this relatively short period of her life from over a decade ago – are we still talking about this, although, in my defence, the reference on the new album makes it difficult to ignore. That chapter of Olsen’s career ended after she toured her first album, Half Way Home, and moved to Asheville, determined to step out on her own. She left glad for the opportunity but equally grateful to be “out from under the hetero, patriarchal, brooding indie rock dude bullshit” that characterized her early experience of the music industry (she makes a point to note that while this is something from which she’s mostly broken free from in her career, it remains a real problem for many). Asheville proved itself to be a necessary haven for Olsen after that first move, and since then she’s returned there between albums and tour dates to reset and recharge. It’s a good town for that. Incredible hiking, friendly people and a comically robust healing economy (throw a stone and you will hit an acupuncturist, herbalist or Transcendental Meditation centre). But because of her career, Asheville was always a place she came back to rather than somewhere she lived. She has estimated that she spent nine months on the road per year. Then, like everyone else in the world, she was suddenly spending way more time at home. Over the course of the pandemic, her fans were spoiled with new music. She released Whole New Mess, an album’s worth of material recorded in a studio/haunted church in Anacortes, Washington (pared down versions of the songs that originally inspired 2019’s All Mirrors), a deluxe combined version of those two albums called Song of the Lark and Other Far Memories, complete with bonus tracks and remixes, and an EP of synthy covers of ’80s hits called Aisles. She dropped an absolute banger of a single with Sharon Van Etten, ‘Like I Used To’, which will undoubtedly bring down the house when the two hit the road with Julien Baker later this year. (Van Etten is “the real thing,” Olsen tells me; hers is the first name she mentions when we discuss rare examples of true integrity in the music industry.) Throughout, she live-streamed shows and shared covers on Instagram. Even though the world stopped, Olsen’s music kept coming. All the while, she was going through a separate process of self-discovery and struggle, coming to terms with her sexuality and confronting the illness of her ageing parents. “I was dealing with a breakup and sorting through the feelings of my first queer relationship,” she says. “And during that relationship, I wasn’t ready to come out. Everyone needs their own time to do that, and because my parents were so sick, I didn’t know how, or when.” That relationship and its end had a profound effect on her. “That was the first time I was really being open with myself,” she says. “In previous relationships I had hidden myself, I didn’t allow people in in the same way.” In the aftermath, she had to reckon with a new sense of identity. She started exploring her neighbour-

hood and beyond, taking long walks and absorbing whatever the world cared to offer. “I like the things, even when I’m heartbroken, that open up to me when I’m alone,” she says. Mostly, she took her time. “Sometimes the hourglass is the best healer.” Then, in late 2020, she met her current partner – also a writer, who, at the time, was doing a writing residency in Asheville. When Olsen talks about them, she relaxes. “When we met, we had a long hug and it was like, ‘Oh God, I feel high.’” It wasn’t long before the two moved in together. “I’m very in love,” she says. You can tell. As we drive around she occasionally gives off that casual Zen you find in those friends who are holding it down in good, stable relationships. Olsen’s partner is responsible for that in a major way – she says they balance out her more serious, cynical tendencies. The personal growth on Olsen’s end in the months and years preceding also played a role. “I feel more comfortable being myself, I can offer a lot more.” And then there’s the fact that in a relatively short period these two have weathered a brutal time together. With a newfound confidence in herself and her relationship, Olsen felt ready to come out to her parents and the world (she identifies as queer). She told her mom last spring. Three days later, her father died. Her mother’s condition rapidly worsened, and she passed away soon after. Her partner met her family for the first time at her father’s memorial, and they sat at her mother’s bedside in the hospice. Olsen’s parents were already fairly old when they adopted her; their health had been in decline for some time. In some way, she felt it coming. “[New track] ‘Through the Fires’ was written before my mom died, but sometimes when I write things, it feels prophetic,” she says. “It sounds stupid, but you feel it – the impending loss.” Expected or not, death in the family is awful. Grief does not respond to preparation. “We never got to talk more about it, but I’m glad I told her,” Olsen says of coming out, and she feels relieved that her mom met her partner. “They’ve really been there for me during all of this stuff in a way that was really sweet and really special.” Does this feel like a jam-packed, laundry list account? A long narration of Major Life Events? It does because it is, and it is because there’s really no other way to tell it. In a few months’ time, Olsen came out, lost her father, introduced her partner to her family, and lost her mother. It was a hell of a lot. Then three weeks later, she flew to Los Angeles to record a new album.

“I T’S N OT J U ST LOV E A N D IT’S N OT J U ST HEARTBREAK AND IT’S N OT J U ST M Y M O M PA S S I N G . I T ’ S J U S T W H E R E I ’ M AT R I G H T N O W ”

BIG TIME In an alternate universe, Big Time was never made. After the deaths of her parents, there was a question as to whether Angel Olsen could or would even want to record. Withdrawal is a common form of grief, and in the following days and weeks she often found herself at a loss for words with friends and loved ones. “I’m a talker, and you really know something is wrong if I can’t talk about it.” But ultimately, the studio time was booked. Olsen chose to move forward with the sessions.

She really is a meticulous songwriter. Consider the process that went into her last two full length releases. She wrote and recorded Whole New Mess, then spent months reworking and expanding the songs into the elaborate, symphonic form that would become All Mirrors, then released the original sessions nearly a year later. Big Time, by comparison, was a more laid back affair. She rehearsed songs two or three times with her band, then she laid them down. A part of that is attributable to her studio experience and the top-notch team of musicians on the album. Olsen recorded this record with Jonathan Wilson, best known for his work with Father John Misty and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters. Speaking of Wilson’s skills as a producer, she notes: “People who are songwriters and producers understand when less is more and when something that’s gorgeous is also unnecessary.” She liked him immediately. The same goes for the other musicians on the record, some old collaborators and some new. She says: “It’s taken me so long to get here, to a place where everyone in the room is insightful and respectful. Doesn’t underplay, doesn’t overplay. Asks questions, is engaged, wants to be there. And it’s good company. You can tell they’ve been through some shit and they still have their wits.” More than the personnel, though, the Big Time sessions succeeded because of Olsen’s mindset. “Part of it is that I showed up without any expectation. I was ready for it to not work because I was not emotionally sure if I could do it.” But once she got in the studio, she came ready to work. There was one major hurdle – she arrived with material, but she needed a few more songs, and the words still weren’t coming. That wordlessness became the inspiration behind ‘This Is How It Works’, the most moving track on the record.

“I’ve never been too sad So sad that I couldn’t share When you can’t find the words Guess it’s time to listen Took a lot to get me here”

The longest song on Big Time, it’s a slow burner about the steady, staying force of loss. Sad songs are Olsen’s oeuvre, or, for better or worse, her reputation. Much of her best work plumbs the depths of sorrow and heartbreak, and has soundtracked tear-drenched, wine-soaked nights of many a fan. When you search her music on Spotify, the first playlist that comes up is titled “sad and angry women.” To that point, there’s an impersonal, meta quality to ‘This Is How It Works’. Here is a Sad Angel Olsen Song. But it also defies that platonic ideal by finding the personal in the everyday rather than the extreme. ‘This Is How It Works’ isn’t about the worst of a feeling. Instead, it evokes the unvaried nature of grief and depression; the low hanging clouds that grey out days and months on end. Musically, it’s no dirge. A lilting ballad that veers into country territory, it floats along a stream of gentle

strumming guitar and pedal steel. “I’m so tired of saying I’m tired,” she sings. “It’s a hard time again.” Written in that difficult period between tragedy and the studio, the song is the emotional nadir of Big Time. In that same period, however, Olsen also wrote the album’s two most joyful pieces. They’re both love songs. One is ‘Chasing the Sun’ – the magnificent album closer that combines the swelling strings of All Mirrors with the simpler approach of this record. It feels like a culmination of the various styles Olsen has played in her career. The other love song from that period is more of a departure. It began as a lark, then it became the title track. To break through writer’s block, her partner suggested they write a song together. If you’ve ever collaborated with a romantic partner on anything, from picking out linens to creating art, you know this can be tricky. “It’s scary to write a song together,” says Olsen, but she was game. “The song was an experiment, an exercise, that started out as a joke. I don’t even know which parts were mine and which parts were theirs. But whoops, it ended up being the title of the record.” ‘Big Time’ is the brightest and most direct song in Olsen’s catalogue to date. It’s a love song, straight up: “I’m living, I’m loving, I’ve loved long before / I’m loving you big time, I’m loving you more.” An homage to the little pleasures of domestic life, Olsen sings about cups of coffee, walks by the lake, and nights by the fire. A deep sense of contentment shines through. It seems like a fitting title for the album. After all, the track reflects Angel Olsen in love and exemplifies the Neil Young-ish, country inflections that show up throughout. Moreover, there’s a warmth to Big Time that stands apart from Olsen’s other records. Despite the tragedy and tumult that led up to it, Olsen seems happier and more self-assured than ever before. For an artist known for songs that could make people cry, it feels like a big shift. I bring up this sense of warmth to her on more than one occasion, and she doesn’t disagree, but perhaps it’s not quite right. Rather, she says, it’s “the first thing that doesn’t feel hesitant.” In the past few years, she’s found some sense of peace in her relationship, her craft, and her identity. “I feel a certain amount of freedom,” she says. “I finally feel like I’ve settled into myself or something.” The phrase “big time”, then, is more than a term of endearment for Olsen. It’s about Big Times – periods in life, long or short, that shape who we are. Duration and transformation are not one to one, and a relatively brief chapter can have massive implications. In the middle of our long, winding tour of the Blue Ridge Mountains, we pull over at a cafe outside of Asheville, where Olsen elaborates. Auspiciously, the spot is called Zuma – it shares a name with a California Neil Young album, also informed by loss. After her parents passed, Olsen had dreams about time travel. Not dreams set in the past, but dreams in which she would suddenly move from one era to another. Here’s one of them: Olsen is in a hotel with her partner. They’re heading down to the lobby in an elevator when she realises – damn, she left something in the room. No problem, says her partner, just meet me in the lobby. They get out, Olsen heads back up. But when

the elevator doors open for Olsen, she’s not on her floor. She’s in a hodgepodge of earth and construction, someplace, somewhen, totally different from when she left the lobby. It’s unclear whether it’s the past or the future. She gets out. She wanders outside for a while. It’s a beautiful place. Eventually she stumbles upon a man and a woman. They chat, there’s a problem, they need Olsen’s help, and there’s a condition. They need her to write a play, but it will take 25 years. But when she goes back to her world (her time), she will only have been gone for five minutes. Will she do it? Of course she will. She spends a quarter of a century crafting an opus for these two nice people. Then she hands over a manuscript, heads back to the elevator and goes down to the lobby. Her partner barely notices she was gone. Who knows what happened to whatever she left in her room. She’s had tons of dreams like this last year. No Freud here, but it seems like a lot can happen in a little bit. A short time can still be big.

BAC K TO SMALL THINGS “People don’t need to know anything. If people are interested in my life, that’s what happened in my life. If people are interested in the record, obviously I’m always hoping that people can find whatever thing, if they like my music, to lose themselves and find their own meaning.” My time with Olsen is winding down and I have asked her a blunt question – what do people really need to know about the record? We’ve pulled over at a cafe downtown and Olsen bolsters herself for a few final questions. With the recorder between us on the table and the finish line in sight, she’s more circumspect – this is work, and the workday is ending. For a whole day, she has driven me around Asheville and gamely showed me taco spots and scenic overlooks and her bad-ass pickup truck while telling me the story of the past two years of her life. It’s undoubtedly a strange exercise – condensing trauma and epiphany for someone in your passenger seat. She’s explaining. Do I get it? “It’s not just love and it’s not just heartbreak and it’s not just my mom passing. It’s just where I’m at right now,” she says. The miracle of Big Time is how it combines all those big, difficult things in a body of work that feels rooted and whole. Going back to that lack of hesitation, she notes that the record “has movement in it that’s sad, and uplifting, and angry, and upset,” but “it feels like a complete story or feeling.” Maybe that feeling is presence, something hard to understand and even harder to practice. But at a big time in her life, Angel Olsen seems to have mastered it, at least in part, and become a fuller form of herself. That’s most apparent on ‘Go Home’, an extraordinary standout on the back half of Big Time. “That one’s just directly about the pandemic and change and not wanting to go back to the past way of doing things,” she says. “Trying to be truthful, and to be truthful, is to spend time living it and not talking about it.” She sings:

“The world is changing You can’t reverse it The truth is with you you can’t rehearse it Pretend to know it It’s time to live it That’s how you show it baby we’re in it I wanna go home Go back to small things”

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The deeper south By fighting for their own spaces and communities, a new generation of South London artists and organisers are continuing the legacy of Black Midi, Squid and Goat Girl and pushing their scene forward, by Jessica Wrigglesworth. Photography by Sam Walton

In stark contrast to the industrial estates and warehouses surrounding it, the glow of fairy lights and hum of chattering voices as you approach Avalon Cafe makes it appear as a sort of social and cultural oasis in a barren land. The South Bermondsey space, which serves as a cafe by day and a venue by night, also encompasses a record store and studios for creatives of all kinds. Across the board, they operate on a DIY and community-focused basis, regularly holding fundraisers – although their approach is more rooted in mutual aid than charity. On a dreary March night, the Cafe is playing host to one such fundraiser, for the artist Gordian Stimm’s transition fund. Ben Wyborn, who runs the independent record label Sad Machine, and also plays as Baggio, has put on the night, roping in their friends Piglet and Dasa to play. “It’s quite closely intertwined,” Ben says of the community around Avalon. “Everyone knows each other, and plays in each other’s bands.” The ethos is reminiscent of DIY Space For London, which was located not far from Avalon Café until its closure in 2020. DIYSFL was a hub for punk shows, zine fairs, fundraisers and anything anti-establishment; accessibility was always at its core, both financially and literally, with tickets for the low-waged and a ramp installed in the venue. Since the pandemic, the unit it once occupied has been turned into music studios which cost over £1000 a month to rent.

sister midnight: (l-r) sophie farrell, lottie pendlebury, lenny watson

slow dance: (l-r) darius williams, marco pini, maddy o’keefe

The closure of DIYSFL is not an isolated incident. A slew of South London venues have been lost in recent years. There was The Five Bells, where Fontaines D.C. and PVA played early gigs before the pub stopped booking live music in 2019. The Montague Arms, which played host to impromptu shows by King Krule, as well as plenty of other young independent bands and the legendary queer night Passionate Necking, closed in 2018 to be turned into flats, but currently remains unchanged and empty. Sister Midnight, the basement record shop/venue in Deptford which was a hub for local musicians and artists, closed during the pandemic (more on them later). Whilst the idea of a “South London scene” has gained traction over the past few years, following the successes of local bands like Black Midi, Shame and Goat Girl, the spaces which many of these bands grew up in no longer exist. — No sense/total sense — A notable exception to this is The Windmill, the Brixton pub which is largely credited as the birthplace of the scene, and which survived the pandemic thanks to a huge amount of fundraising, including gigs, a Crowdfunder campaign and an auction with items from the likes of Liam Gallagher and Sleaford Mods. Its mythical status was cemented when new 25,000-capacity

festival Wide Awake festival named their main stage The Windmill stage, and roped in booker Tim Perry to help curate the line up, a bill which included Shame, PVA, Idles and Black Country, New Road, all of whom he gave slots to early in their career. “The thing that makes The Windmill such a special venue, and Tim such a genius curator, is the space they give to artists,” Alex Putman, founder of the Untitled (Recs) label, tells me. “He gave Jerskin (Fendrix, who is signed to Untitled) five nights to do what he wanted, and the same for Black Midi with their Sonic BM stuff.” Untitled (Recs) recently hosted their own residency at The Windmill, in honour of their fifth anniversary. Featuring many of their artists (Deathcrash, Rosie Alena, Famous, Elsas) and friends like Glows, Lou Terry and Tyler Cryde, the nights felt like a celebration of the community that the label has fostered, in part through coming to shows in that same room. The Untitled (Recs) roster came about organically, with Putman (alongside co-conspirators Camilla Simmons and Vincent Hasselbach) finding new acts through “a web of chats and recommendations,” although he’s hesitant to describe their approach as DIY. “I don’t know if that fits,” he says diplomatically. “We definitely ‘do it ourselves’, this is true, but I don’t think any of our artists have that aesthetic.” Indeed, the Untitled (Recs) sound is markedly different to the neo post-punk which is often associated with The Windmill. Their artists sit across a spectrum of genres,

united by high production values and a shared creative sensibility rather than a specific style. Slow Dance, with whom Untitled (Recs) share an office space in London Fields, echo this sentiment. “We work with genre clashes that make no sense but at the same time make total sense. We wanted early on to echo the eclecticism that our generation exists in,” says Marco Pini, who alongside Darius Williams started Slow Dance as a zine while he was still at school, before it eventually became a night, a label and a management company. Although they’ve always been based in north and east London, “it’s definitely connected to the mythology around the South London scene,” admits Maddy O’Keefe, who now co-runs Slow Dance with Pini and Williams. “We’re the same age as Sorry, Shame, HMLTD and Goat Girl, and started up when these bands were gaining traction. Everyone was hanging out at the same venues and working together – promoters like Black Cat White Cat (run by Sorry’s Campbell Baum), photographers like Holly

“We’d like to think of our platforms and events as a safe space for creativity where there’s less judgement, less pressure – anything goes really”

Whitaker, artists, filmmakers and designers would just gravitate to South London as a creative nucleus.” Like Untitled (Recs), Slow Dance’s network of musicians and collaborators came about unintentionally. “It often is artists we meet from conversations in smoking areas of venues, friends of friends,” notes Pini. “Most of our artists are signed stemming from interesting conversations and friendship first.” They often refer to themselves as a collective, citing a “desire to bring people together” as a big motivation behind their output. As well as a growing roster of both label and management clients (which includes PVA, Platonica Erotica, Saint Jude and Sarah Meth), Slow Dance release an annual compilation with original tracks from a range of friends; previous iterations have included Lynks, Folly Group, and solo outings from members of Black Midi and Squid. “We’ll always try to think outside of the box, or do something that will enhance the music or whatever the artist is trying to do,” says O’Keefe. “We’ve also on-and-off had our own space [Slow Space] in our studio complex, where we’ve had some really lovely intimate shows, exhibitions and screenings.” The pair speak highly of The Windmill. “I do think there’s nowhere like it really,” says O’Keefe. “I feel very sentimental towards it and think I always will.” Pini emphasises the importance of recognising the people behind the venues, “like Tim from The Windmill and Annie from Bunker Club in Deptford (who sadly passed away recently). They were really what allowed us to do what we do now. They had such care and enthusiasm for

our enthusiasm – it made us feel like there is some hope out there in a city which is usually led by money over creating community.” —“You need a whole ecosystem” — Lenny Watson, Lottie Pendlebury and Sophie Farrell – the team behind Sister Midnight – recognise the need for this care and enthusiasm more than most. Since their original Lewisham venue shuttered during the pandemic, the group have turned their attention towards a much bigger project – turning The Ravensbourne Arms, a disused pub moments away from the old Sister Midnight, into a community-owned venue. “The Windmill is great, but it can’t sustain itself by itself,” argues Watson, who acquired the original venue, saving it from a fate as a wine-and-cheese bar (“fuck that”) in 2018 having worked there for years. “You can’t just have one great venue, you need to have the Five Bells, you need to have the Ivy House, Off The Cuff, DIY Space – you need this whole ecosystem that supports the music scene. We have that in South London, but it’s rapidly disappearing as the areas that these spaces exist in become more gentrified. I think that’s why it’s so important that we start understanding as a community, these tools like community ownership and assets of community value, and all these mechanisms to save important community spaces and hold on to them. Because the culture and the heritage that we have will get pushed out if not” Since beginning their campaign in January 2021, the Sister Midnight team have raised more than £260,000 (over half of their £500,000 target), with high-profile investors and supporters including Beggars Group, Music Venue Trust, Jools Holland, Amy Lamé and bands like Black Midi and Fontaines D.C., as well as plenty of individual shareholders (shares started at £100, with £25 shares available for those on low incomes). Their mission is far from complete, and could be thwarted by a competing offer to buy The Ravensbourne (at the time of writing, they are in the process of trying to obtain a loan to counter the offer) but the group remains dedicated to building a grassroots space in South London. For them, a community-owned venue offers not just stability, but the creative freedom that comes from a truly independent operation. “Without these kinds of venues, we’d be playing at company owned, big branded venues that don’t really hold that same ethos,” Pendlebury, who also fronts Goat Girl, tells me. “So I think what you’ll see are people maybe even like catering to that kind of environment and not really being able to express themselves to their full creative capacity” When I speak to Charlie Loane, aka Piglet, after he plays at that Avalon Cafe show, he agrees. “We just need more cooperatives really, and less… it sounds harsh, but things like Old Blue Last which are owned by Vice. We need things that are not just trying to get a few bands in so they can sell a bit more on the bar. So much of playing music is facilitating the sale of alcohol, but there’s a way to do that that’s not so horrible.” For Loane, who moved to South London from Belfast in 2018, the original Sister Midnight provided an important space to develop as a musician, and build a creative network. “It was

untitled (recs): (l-r) alex putman, camilla simmons, vincent hasselbach

the kind of place where I’d be like, I’m gonna try this new thing out. It always felt really homely,” he says. “It’s such a shame that it’s momentarily gone.” “Losing that was massive,” says Sad Machine’s Ben Wyborn at Avalon. “I met half the people [at this gig] going to shows at Sister Midnight.” — “Covid’s not helped, the government’s not helped – but the scene is still going strong” — For all of these artists and organisations, inclusivity and accessibility is of paramount importance. Building something from scratch offers the possibility of leaving behind the prejudices and inequalities that historically exist in many music spaces and communities. “We’d like to think of our platforms and events as a safe space for creativity where there’s less judgement, less pressure – anything goes really,” says O’Keefe. The Sister Midnight collective see The Ravensbourne Arms as having similar potential. “There’s this incredible sense of social justice and solidarity, and wanting to uplift marginalised communities, and I feel like that’s what unites the scene,” Watson tells me. “And that’s what gives space for experimentation and risk-taking, and, like, hearing new types of music and under-

standing new viewpoints and worldviews – hearing a lived experience through people’s music. And I think that’s what’s special about the scene, not the specific spaces – although those spaces are so important, because they’re the platform for all of that.” Back at Avalon Cafe, the crowd of friends, fans and fellow musicians pile in to watch Piglet’s headline slot. Lou Terry has stepped in to cover for the usual guitarist, who has Covid, but the set is a triumphant one – there’s a running dialogue between Loane and the audience, who enthusiastically heckle and request their favourite songs. The atmosphere is overwhelmingly warm and supportive, a group of people cherishing the ability to get together to watch and play music, something which it’s hard to take for granted after the last two years of lockdowns, and the barrage of venue closures. Against a number of odds, these independent music communities which have blossomed in South London and beyond continue to thrive thanks to a huge amount of determination and commitment from those involved. “Covid’s not helped, and the government’s not helped, these little venues are closing down,” laments Wyborn. “But the scene is still going strong.”

The Odd Future of Odd Future 2

3 1

If you were in secondary school in 2012 and wore a bucket hat all-year round, there’s a good chance you know every verse on Odd Future’s ‘Oldie’. The ten-minute posse cut and its accompanying video underlined everything that was special about the L.A. rap collective at their peak. Released a decade ago on the group’s only major label record, The OF Tape Volume 2, it’s a rare moment that still stands up to scrutiny. Its members will likely say the same. In many ways, you had to be there. Much of Odd Future’s material was juvenile and petulant. They rapped about rape and the Columbine shootings, used slurs like they were collecting them, and made early horrorcore look sophisticated. They were also incredibly talented, and spoke directly to a young audience without condescension – something record execs still can’t do. Their ascension was fuelled by shock tactics, gobbled up by an over-eager music press and a rabid fanbase. But there’s no doubt their DIY approach earned much of the hype. It still gives me chills watching Earl Sweatshirt, Frank Ocean, Tyler, the Creator and Syd Tha Kyd revel in their success on ‘Oldie’, lip-syncing their verses at a chaotic XXL photoshoot while photographers look baffled. Its biggest members outgrew OF by 2016, moving on to more timeless and impactful material. Tyler’s exploration of raw, conceptual R&B has made him a superstar. Frank is as elusive and singular as ever. Earl is the poet laureate of a heady experimental rap movement having its own moment. Syd and the rest of The Internet are keeping the groove flowing. But you know about all those guys. What about the members that aren’t headlining festivals? Who was the white guy on that album cover? Here’s the odd future of Odd Future.

1. Left Brain

When Odd Future splintered in a thousand directions, so did Left Brain. As part of MellowHype with Hodgy, he embodied the edgy and aggro attitude that was part of Odd Future’s larger strategy of drumming up as much commotion as possible. Ironically, it was later that he mellowed, producing more layered and mature music for a host of names in the indie rap scene. Just this year, he formed a partnership with fellow L.A. artist Sahtyre. Single ‘Bat Outta Hell’ is one of his strongest songs in years, entering a woozy, depressive and reflective mood that suits him well. 2. Casey Veggies

This founding member of Odd Future was releasing music even before the collective took off, with his 2007 mixtape released at the age of fourteen. That feels like a lifetime ago for all of us, but certainly for Casey, who’s been at war with record label Epic since the release of his 2015 debut album Live & Grow. Epic wanted hits but weren’t exactly helping him get there. His is a cautionary tale of the way labels can trap young artists in restrictive contracts while they’re still growing. Now releasing independently, with projects like 2019’s Organic, he’s finally making the music he wanted to make. 3. Hodgy

When Tyler, the Creator jumped on Jimmy Fallon’s back ten years ago on Late Night, Hodgy was right there beside him. A few years later, the two had a public falling-out at Camp Flog Gnaw, Tyler’s music festival. Hodgy was upset about Tyler’s perceived abandonment of those who helped him start the collective. He bad-mouthed him on stage. Though they eventually patched it

A decade on from the rap collective’s debut album and subsequent implosion, Skye Butchard logs what happened next for Odd Future beyond the superstars

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up, this public feud foreshadowed the frayed nature of a group that began to outgrow itself in the same way most school friends do. Later, he split up with MellowHype, and he’s been out on his own ever since. Hodgy never found a signature sound like the group’s heavy-hitters. His latest EP, Everyday People Change Into Someone is awkwardly caught between melodic R&B and the bad punchlines of his youth. He sings: “Everyday I’m on my grind like a skateboarder” far too sincerely. He’s still using the word ‘retard’. You remember why you didn’t keep up with everyone you liked as a teenager. 4. Jasper Dolphin

“Hey it’s Jasper, not even a rapper… got a TV show so I guess I’m an actor”. Those cheeky opening lines from Jasper’s verse on ‘Oldie’ are exactly what made OF’s punk-rap ethos exciting. He was mostly goofing around. He and his friends made Adult Swim comedy shows, hypebeast clothing, and weed strains, and had skinny white kids and CEOs alike in the palm of their hand. To this day, he’s still having a blast on the stoner TV circuit, fittingly starring in Jackass Forever, a clear career highlight for a teen who once dreamed of making a show called ‘Blackass’. 5.Domo Genesis

When Domo Genesis featured on Tyler’s Call Me If You Get Lost last year, an alternate reality was opened. It was one where Odd Future stuck together and sharpened their original sound as close collaborators. The results were impeccable. With the new skills and perspectives they picked up with time, Tyler and Domo did their throwback justice.

It also highlighted just how entertaining and consistent Domo Genesis is. I’m sure plenty of fans went back to check out his recent material after listening. Though never selling out arenas or cultivating a ravenous fanbase of his own, Domo Genesis is always reliable for a good feature. 6. Mike G

Joining in the second wave of Odd Future sign-ups, Mike G’s time with the collective leant more on the professional side than the ‘hanging out with my friends’ side. He released music before the group, and plenty more music afterwards. These days, you can find him making Chopped and Screwed remixes as part of The Chopstars collective, battle-rapping in oldschool leagues, and releasing steady solo material of his own. Still, his ‘Mike G.S.I.’ sketch as part of the Loiter Squad – a gloriously awkward CSI parody – more than justifies his time with OF. 7. Vritra

When Odd Future was having its moment, circumstance meant that Vritra was left behind. He was evicted from his L.A. apartment around the time that contracts were being signed, and his move back to Atlanta left him outside conversations that solidified the core members. His success has been forged out of years of graft on his own independent projects while working as a forklift driver by day. After a handful of projects, and a signing with independent label Stones Throw, he’s carved a space for himself. He’s a prolific and dependable musician who perhaps didn’t get his dues at the time.

“It seemed that if it was 2010, you were from L.A. and you wore a pink doughnut t-shirt, you could brag about your connections to Odd Future”

8. Brandun DeShay aka Ace Hashimoto

A weird one. Though collaborating with several Odd Future members, and featuring on the original version of Tyler’s Bastard, there are some in the crew who’ve claimed that DeShay was never an official member. Their Twitter even stated “OF does not fuck with Brandun DeShay” in 2010. For fans, his contributions stand more as an example of the volatile and combative nature of the collective. It seemed that if it was 2010, you were from L.A. and you wore a pink doughnut t-shirt, you could brag about connections to the group. So what is he up to now? After producing key tracks on classic albums like Danny Brown’s XXX, Brandun moved to Japan, changed his stage name to Ace Hashimoto and started singing. His solo album Play. Make. Believe, was released last year. 9. Lionel Boyce

You might know Lionel Boyce (aka L-Boy) as the guy roasting each member at the start of The OF Tape Vol 2, but he had more behind-the-scenes influence than many realise. He was involved in the group’s oddball TV ventures, including co-creating the group’s surprisingly decent animated sitcom The Jellies, which ran for two seasons. He’s also due to star in the upcoming FX comedy The Bear, which has got that guy who played Lip from Shameless in it. It might be good? 10. Matt Martians

Though not a household name, Matt Martians played a key role as band member in The Internet, alongside former OF alumni Syd, Patrick Paige II and Steve Lacy. His beat-driven solo work is

worth highlighting, too. Take [Going Normal], a groovy collection of homemade loosies quietly dropped last year. Having worked with Vritra, Brandun DeShay and a host of other affiliated acts, it’s arguable that Matt Martians is the secret glue that holds many of Odd Future’s separate artistic impulses together. 11. Travis Bennett

Like the rest of the group, Travis ‘Taco’ Bennett has had an unusual and unexpected career since the death of Odd Future. Highlights include voice acting in GTA V and directing the group’s Adult Swim shows. More recently, he’s starring in Lil Dicky’s hit comedy Dave, and co-creating Hanging With Kuz, a series that follows LA Lakers star Kyle Kuzma as he gives fans a look at his life away from the court. “I really didn’t do anything,” he told Complex last year about his time in Odd Future. “I didn’t rap. I didn’t produce.” As he shakes off the ‘Taco’ part of his name, he’s doing a lot more. 12. Lucas Vercetti

Lucas Vercetti is the twinky white guy cheesing on the cover of The OF Tape Vol 2. He basically managed the merch stands, did some photography, and looked cute. Merchandising is an important job, but your merch guy normally isn’t in the group. This strength-in-numbers mentality was of course part of what got Odd Future attention in the first place. If us journalists were gullible enough to take the bait, to the point that we’re still writing about Lucas Vercetti a decade later, then that’s on us. Apparently, there are rumours he’s now dating Bruce Willis’ daughter, so he’s probably doing alright.

Final Third: In Conversation

Common purpose

Final Third: In Conversation

30 years after acid house, innovative young artists are still finding new ways of blending rock aesthetics with club culture. We introduced Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie to London group PVA to discuss this combination’s cross-decade potential, by Ollie Rankine. Photography by Jonangelo Molinari

Indie rock and dance music – an abstract clash or a match made in heaven? Though decades may separate PVA and Primal Scream, each has found a mutual footing at the intersection of these rarely-symbiotic genres. As the bands prepare to share a stage at London’s Wide Awake festival this May, we sit down with Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie and PVA duo Ella Harris and Josh Baxter, to discuss their respective journeys from sticky backroom gig venues to the speaker-stacked dancefloor. Speaking first about his band’s disillusionment with music of the time, Gillespie describes the creative path Primal Scream took to their 1991 acid house classic, Screamadelica. Bobby Gillespie: The rock music around in the late ’80s wasn’t satisfying us. We weren’t getting what we were supposed to from indie bands during that period. But our friends, Alan McGee from Creation Records and Jeff Barrett [now of Heavenly Records] who, at the time, was working for Factory, were both discovering dance music. Alan had got divorced and moved to Manchester with Jeff who was working up there with New Order and the Happy Mondays. Both were taking ecstasy and going to the Hacienda. Before long, these two purveyors of underground rock music were each having damascus conversions to acid house. It was like your best friend going away to the Himalayas and coming back as a Buddhist. They were proselytising for dance music. Pleading with us to take drugs and listen to acid house as though our lives depended on it. We started going to the clubs where I lived in Brighton. The energy was amazing, and the music was even better. Of course, we were taking ecstasy, which was inseparable from the scene at the time. It completely took us. The energy and glamour that we’d been searching for in rock music, we found in acid house and contemporary dance culture. Ollie Rankine: Thirty years on and PVA are coming at things from a different perspective. Currents of electronic music have been coursing through your band’s output since first arriving on the London scene. Ella Harris: When we started out three years ago, the only

route to playing live was with post-punk bands. So we had to work within parameters to get onto the lineups. But gradually, we’ve been able to express more of our electronic and experimental side. Josh Baxter: I used to go to raves growing up, listening to ’90s acid house and albums like Screamadelica. I’ve always had this idea in my head of traditional rave music and how the combination of indie rock might fit into that. We’d go to the Windmill and see post-punk bands but then head to basement clubs like The Bunker in Deptford. We loved going to experience these very different kinds of music, so it seemed obvious to find a midpoint. Why not bring the club atmosphere into the Windmill and vice versa? We’ve been phasing out guitars for a more electronic sound ever since. EH: Although I did recently have a really fun day in the studio, just absolutely wailing on the Gibson. JB: We’re working out which elements to extract from post-punk and electronic music. We like the energy and repetition of synthesisers and baseline sequences but want to retain the liveness of vocals and a drummer. It’s about preserving traditional songwriting but also pushing things in an experimental direction. EH: I think it comes down to bringing as much energy as you can to a piece of music. What’s the point of forcing yourself into a box? JB: We try to push things in different directions to find the middle and create something new. How can we make live drums sound more like a drum machine? Or how can we make this synth sound more like a guitar? Music is more eclectic now than it’s ever been. We can bring in elements of rock, post-punk, dance music… EH: …and hyperpop! BG: What’s hyperpop? EH: The idea spawned from a group of musicians who decided pop music was boring. They wanted to investigate why electronic music had to either be mainstream or avant garde. Why couldn’t it be both?

Final Third: In Conversation BG: I think the ’70s found a good middle ground. ‘Magic Fly’ was a huge track in 1977 by a band called Space. They all wore space helmets, sort of ripping off Daft Punk before anything like that existed. It was in the charts at the same time as Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’. That was probably influenced by Kraftwerk, taking that early electronic thing and putting an American soul singer over the top of it. EH: That impulse to create something new is definitely coming back. Looking at hyperpop and PC Music, you have mainstream artists like Charlie XCX pushing things to an extreme. Listening to it is like putting candy floss or sugar syrup in your ears. JB: It feels like artists today are more conscious of keeping that essence of authenticity in music. BG: People need to be more aware of that word. Artists need to be authentic to themselves. It’s easy to feel like you have to do things in a certain way to be authentic, but actually end up cutting your head off in the pursuit. My band certainly made some of those mistakes in the past. JB: It’s interesting because it’s easy to view a photoshopped image as hyper modified or artificial, but if that’s the version of yourself you’re trying to present, why can’t that still be authentic? If you listen to PC Music, where the production and vocals have been tuned to fuck, that image is an accurate representation of what your doing. It’s this idea of pulling something genuine from something that’s been totally warped. BG: Would you agree that your generation’s tastes are more sophisticated? Artists these days are making things that would’ve been considered totally avant garde thirty years ago. I was listening to Young Thug recently, some of the arrangements are fucking wild. But my teenage kids seem to think it’s completely normal. EH: I think the process of making music has become more accessible with the advent of different software, especially within underground music. BG: It’s good because it’s taken things out of the hands of ‘musicians’ and democratised what it is to be an artist. JN: It’s made things more intuitive. This idea of making something and hearing it fundamentally for how it makes you feel as opposed to some preconceived idea that follows a certain way of doing things. OR: This intuitive way of thinking is filtering through independent labels too. Seeing bands like Squid signing to Warp, and PVA sign to Ninja Tune; more and more, labels that typically cater to electronic music are embracing this intersection between indie rock and dance culture. BG: Certainly in the ’80s, it felt like most labels had a distinct sound. There were all these outposts of independence,

but all were tributaries from the great river of rock music. I don’t know what the entity was for dance music at the time. The indies just weren’t clued up on it. JB: I guess because they were all just starting out back then? BG: Yeah. That started through the ’90s, when techno and acid house labels began to materialise. I don’t think anything existed before that. If you wanted to buy dance music, it would’ve been through American imports. Whereas now, those shoestring operations from the ’90s have grown to become your generation’s culture. OR: Perhaps technology needed to catch up a little before electronic labels could be viewed on the same footing as indie rock? BG: To give a quick history lesson: in 1990, we built a makeshift studio in an industrial unit towards the bottom of that road. [Gillespie now beckoning down the street] BG: It’s where we recorded the demos for Screamadelica. Our guitarist, Andrew Innes, managed to get hold of an Akai S1000. It was like a little computer with its own screen and keyboard which allowed us to start sampling and making loops. Other than that, it was just pianos and guitars. That was our equipment. Have you got your own studio? EH: No, but I think in the future, it would be nice to have our own space. But it’s a bit of a pipedream. London rent is mad. BG: That’s the big problem nowadays. I can’t remember how much the rent was down the road. We essentially just used it as a place to write and demo our music. But it felt amazing to spend five days a week there and just work things out. EH: I think that’s partly why so many people have turned to computers for making music. Actually getting studio space to record a live band has become inaccessible. It’s easier to begin producing music from your bedroom. That’s why everything now feels more naturally swayed towards electronic music. You don’t need to be a tech head to make music, you just learn to develop ideas. BG: All you need is imagination. It’s what really makes someone an artist. I’ve met loads of people that can work the machines, but can’t make music. JB: We used to play on stage with just a laptop and a MIDI keyboard. I’ve now got something called Hydrasynth. I can move it in a way that I can’t with a guitar. I like to push it to make things feel alive and unstable. EH: The way that synth works is like trying to ride in a rodeo show. It can be difficult to stay on top. There have definitely been moments during shows where I’m looking at Josh and he’s really fighting to tame it.

“Those idyllic, utopian moments might come and go, but it’s important to remember what was great about them” 72

Final Third: In Conversation

BG: It sounds like a true beast. Have you got a name for it? JB: No, but I should really think about giving it one. OR: Where do you think dance culture is today in comparison to the heyday of acid house? BG: You’re asking the wrong guy. I can’t say I go out that much anymore! JB: Obviously we weren’t around and going to clubs in the ’90s. But there are definitely some cool scenes happening within smaller communities and subcultures in London. EH: I think the LGBTQ scene is a big part of it. A lot of really good queer focused nights have begun to come out the woodwork. Sometimes going to watch a DJ in some overpriced London club can really miss the mark. But queer nights seem to consistently feature some of the best electronc dance music around. JB: I think any club night that can bring people together, whether that be underground or in popular culture, to celebrate who they are is really special. BG: Whatever happens, there has to be a scene. Whether it’s a style of dress or certain type of music, that’s what creates a community with people there for the right reasons. JB: I guess these are the situations that end up fostering good music because people are there to egg each other on. BG: I think if people are there because they love what the DJ brings out each night, it’s that unified interest that will eventually materialise into a scene. Whether you’re there to hear rock, hip hop, jungle, industrial, psychedelic, soul, or country

music, without even speaking to the person next to you, you know everybody’s there for some common purpose. That’s how it felt when I was going to the acid house clubs. Everybody was there to dance and have a good time. It’s about a shared love of sound, rhythm and music. But all of it happens in the moment. Whatever you guys are digging now, in five years’ time, it will be something different. Scenes are not built to last. JB: Those idyllic, utopian moments might come and go, but it’s important to remember what was great about them. It gives people perspective on whatever might be waiting around the corner. BG: We saw all those changes in acid house. We were there at the beginning in ’89, but by ’92, aspects of it had already moved on. I remember Andrew Weatherall adapting his set to a much harder style of techno that was almost inhuman. There were no feelings in it. It went with the drugs. When things began moving from ecstasy to cocaine. The rhythms became faster, and the music felt more insular and closed off. I could appreciate it, but I couldn’t enjoy the experience in the same way as before. When I think about all the different subcultures that spawned from the early ’90s, it’s as though they’re the veins in my body, but my heart is acid house. There was a lot of great music, but it felt like that great utopian moment had passed, for me at least for sure.

Final Third: In Conversation

This too

shall pass

A raw expression of personal and societal tumult, the new record from Sharon Van Etten is a testament to resolve. One of America’s most beloved contemporary songwriters speaks to Gemma Samways about motherhood, persistence and pain as she prepares to try something a little different. Photography by Tom Porter 74

Final Third: In Conversation What with the release of standalone singles ‘Porta’ and ‘Used To It’, a contribution to Ben Gibbard’s Yoko Ono tribute record, and the announcement of this summer’s Wild Hearts Tour – a 23-date jaunt across the US also starring Angel Olsen, Julien Baker and Spencer – the first quarter of 2022 has been anything but quiet for Sharon Van Etten. Now she’s taking things up another gear entirely with the surprise release of her stunning sixth studio album, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong. Written in the context of Covid, civil unrest and the wildfires in her adoptive home of L.A., the self-produced collection sees Van Etten digging deeper emotionally than ever before, confronting past trauma, her own mortality and the perpetual emotional tug-of-war that is motherhood. But for all the darkness – and it gets pretty pitch-black on ‘Born’, which begins, “I was never like her, I laugh as I am knocked down” – there is defiance. You can hear it in the celebratory chorus of ‘Mistakes’, which finds Van Etten declaring, “When I make a mistake, turns out it’s great,” over a synth-driven melody that’s as close to pure pop as anything the New Jersey singer has attempted yet. It’s there too in her fantastically droll choice of title – purloined from a schmaltzy kids movie – and in one of the record’s most minimal moments, ‘Darkish’. “It’s not dark, it’s only darkish,” she consoles over acoustic guitar and the gentle flutter of birdsong, firmly wresting hope from the ashes. “I do believe we will get past this pain,” she told me at the beginning of March, thoughtfully sipping coffee in the restaurant of an East London hotel. “But it’s only by seeking connection with other people that we’ll get through it.” As Van Etten knows all too well, there are no quick fixes for moving past trauma. But viewed as part of a continued dialogue, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong serves as a very strong opening gambit. Gemma Samways: Last time you spoke with Loud and Quiet, you and Angel Olsen were joking about the possibility of doing a collaborative tour. Did you actually already have it booked? Sharon Van Etten: No, we were trying to figure out if it was even possible. Because we’d talked about making a record together, maybe even writing together, but we all know the realities of the world. Like, we weren’t even sure if we’d even be able to tour separately, let alone do a joint one. GS: But it’s happening this summer! Are you excited? SVE: Yeah, it’ll be great! With Julien Baker and Spencer too. We still have to figure it out but I’m sure it’ll be a little bit of a band camp on the road. GS: Have you known Julien long? SVE: I saw her first New York show! It was pre-baby, so maybe around 2015/16. We’ve kept in touch ever since and just seeing her thrive and learn how to dictate the things that she wants in her career has been so nice. But, you know, she toured so much, and then she did the Boygenius stuff [with Lucy Dacus and Phoebe Bridgers]. And I had a kid. So we hadn’t reconnected in a while until recently. GS: How old is your son now? SVE: He’s gonna be five in a week!

GS: How’s he getting on? SVE: He’s great. He’s very driven, and likes to consume everything: he’s super into music and movies and skateboarding. He’s learning how to read. You know, he’s thriving and learning how to miss his mom. GS: Mum guilt is real. SVE: So real – oh my god. And they change so fast. Like, as soon as you feel like you get used to a stage they wake up and they’re a different person. I swear his head is bigger some mornings or he’ll add words to his vocabulary in 24 hours. GS: You discuss that guilt on ‘Home To Me’, most explicitly in the opening line: “I need my job, please don’t hold that against me / You are my life.” SVE: Yeah. And I know he won’t understand it now but I put these secret messages in there that maybe years from now he’ll look back on and see. Hopefully it feels like an apology or an explanation of some kind. GS: Later in the song you say, “So I take my time so you can say to me, what makes it right isn’t an ending.” Can you tell me about that? SVE: Sometimes you do things you need to do because you have the conviction in your soul that it’s what you need to do. And you don’t have an explanation all the time. People ask me all the time, “When did you decide music was what you were supposed to do?” My partner and I have a joke where it’s like, I don’t know what I’m doing: I’m just doing it. You know, I had the drive and I had this passion in me. And I still don’t really know what the right thing to do is but I feel compelled to share in this way. GS: Does your son have any concept of what it is you do? Or how cool it is? SVE: It’s funny, I feel like he is going to rebel against it at some point. But at the moment he loves music. He plays drums so he idolises my drummer, Jorge [Balbi]. And my partner was a drummer before, so maybe it’s just in his soul. He came on tour with me in 2019, when I was supporting Bon Iver. I’d come off stage, give him a big hug, wash off my makeup, put on my real clothes, and I would ask him if he would want to go see a part of the show. He was like, “Yeah, sure.” And, you know, these are huge shows for Bon Iver. So I’d take him into the house, and we’d get to these seats up high, and after one or two songs he was like, “It’s too loud. There’s too many people.” So I didn’t get to see their set the whole time, but I got to go to bed every night at a decent hour. [Laughs] GS: Speaking of touring, in a 2019 interview with The Ringer you said, “One of the things that made me want to take a break from the road, is that I was singing all these really dark, intense songs about relationships I was in, and I was reliving a lot of the pain, constantly.” Have you figured out a way to balance that now? SVE: I mean, I feel like a lot of what I wrote about before was past relationships. And I started feeling self-conscious about going through a breakup and writing about it, and then I’d have to perform these songs. Like, on the surface, it just looks like I’m an ex-girlfriend complaining, when actually – for the

Final Third: In Conversation most part – I have come to terms with a lot of it. I’m not resentful and I’m not angry, but I was hurt, and I wrote these things and I feel better. But also, do I sound like a spiteful person by performing these songs? But, you know, I feel like I’ve made amends with most of that past and most of what I’m writing about now has nothing to do with that. I’m reflecting on who I am and what I’ve been through, but also in the context of this universal crisis that we’ve all experienced. So it’s not as simple as an ex anymore. GS: Would you say you were feeling more vulnerable writing this album than you had felt on previous records? SVE: Oh my gosh, well, on which level, you know? I moved to Los Angeles from New York in September of 2019, when I finished the Bon Iver tour, and we finished the studio that we were building out in the garage in January of 2020. And then Covid hit. It was like the universe was calling my bluff, like, “Oh, you wanted to move to L.A. and figure out how to work from home? Here you go.” The rug was pulled out from under all of us, you know: I’m not unique in having all these feelings. But at the same time, [it’s hard] when you’re a parent and you’re trying to answer questions about what’s happening. Because our kids are at an age where they can’t be scared. There’s no bad guys, there’s no war, nothing is gonna hurt you. But at night when I’m sitting in bed and everyone’s asleep in the house, it’s like, I really hope that’s fucking true. Like, I’m doing everything I can to protect my family, but what if it’s not enough? But all you have is right now, and you protect them to the best of your ability. You can’t afford to second guess yourself there. GS: Speaking of second guessing yourself, on ‘Mistakes’ you talk about the joy of embracing failure. Has that been a recent realisation for you? SVE: I mean, yes, but actually that song is kind of a joke. It’s about my dance moves, and how bad they are. [Laughs] I’m just not a good dancer, but now I’m older I’ve learned not to care. After a really intense day, we just put on music and have a family dance party. And it’s nice to not care about what you’re doing. I remember years ago, when I first moved to New York in my early 20s, I’d go out and be panicking, like, I can’t be here, I don’t know how to dance! But I feel like now I’d just be able to lose myself. GS: Can we talk about the album title? Who is the ‘we’ in We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong? SVE: [Laughs] It’s funny, because I actually stole the line from The Sandlot, this feelgood, coming-of-age baseball movie for kids we’d watch as a family through the pandemic. There’s a scene where the kids lose their last baseball over a fence, and they use a vacuum cleaner to get it back. And when they finally manage to pick the ball up with the vacuum, this dog chomps it and the vacuum cleaner blows up in the boy’s face. And he looks at his friends – and he’s covered in dirt – and says, “We’ve been going about this all wrong.” I was laughing and crying while watching that scene, because you know that feeling where you feel like you’re over a hump and then something else happens, and you get through

that and then something else happens? Like, how many times have we experienced that? This last couple of years I’ve been going through this on so many different levels, between Covid and work and protests and fires and earthquakes. But that sentiment is just so simple: sometimes you’ll fall in your face, no matter how hard you try. GS: In spite of this, the album has quite a hopeful arc to it. SVE: I mean, I’ve tried to put that in there. You know, my mom always said, “This too shall pass.” You just have to take a deep breath, be your best self and keep going. That’s the best I had to work with. And even when I felt most out of control, I had this album; this whole little world that I was able to create, in the midst of everything. GS: Can you tell me more about that arc, and the sequencing? SVE: Between the key changes and mood changes, I tried to give space if space was needed; to give people a breath from intense songs. Like, if the emotion’s too much, give them ‘Mistakes’. But I tried to begin and end with light. So it starts ‘Darkness Fades’, which is about dealing with depression and this collective weight, and trying to let people know that those feelings will fade. And the middle part of the album explains why I’m feeling this way. ‘Darkish’ is actually an older song that I never found a place for because it was kinda apocalyptic-sounding. So when it suddenly felt like the world was ending, I was like, “Oh, actually, this could fit…” [Laughs] And then it ends with me looking at my life and my family from a distance on ‘Far Away’, just hoping for the best even when I’m not around. GS: Tell me about your decision not to release any singles from the record? SVE: As a fan, I get bummed when you’ve heard half the record before it even comes out. And I made this record in this time period that represents a narrative, and I took time with the sequence. I want to give fans the opportunity to be able to engage in it in the way that I intended, which is listening to it front to back, experiencing that rollercoaster of emotions. People will engage with it in their own way, of course, and I realise it’s a lot to ask of people to listen to the album in one sitting, because who has that kind of time? But, for the superfans, I want them to be able to listen to it without having heard all these singles that my team thinks will get attention because of their immediacy, but that never could represent the whole album. GS: It’s a bold move. And slightly at odds with streaming culture. SVE: Yeah. But I want to challenge my audience, and I want to challenge the people that I work with. However it plays out, I feel like it will be informative of who my fans are and how they engage with my music. At the end of the day I just wanted to try something different, because I have been doing the same thing for so long now.

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29/03/2022 21:02

Final Third: The Rates

Porridge Radio Each issue, we ask an artist or group to share three musicians they think have gone under-appreciated, and three new names who they hope will avoid a similar fate. This time, Dana Margolin from Porridge Radio discusses her selections with Jasleen Dhindsa

Final Third: The Rates

Young Marble Giants

Since their inception in 2016, Porridge Radio have slowly but surely established themselves a cult-like status within indie rock. Their debut Rice, Pasta And Other Fillers was very much a creation of what you’d expect coming from their native Brighton DIY scene: a scrappy indie-folk-punk opus. Its follow-up, 2020’s markedly different Every Bad, propelled Porridge Radio to new and well-deserved heights, receiving critical acclaim from all angles. Lauded for being conscientious and emotional with just the right amount of ego, Every Bad truly earned its praise, streaming success and Mercury Prize nomination. This May sees Porridge Radio release their third fulllength, Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky. Building on the firm foundations of their predecessors, the new record is a considerable shift, one that’s needed and one that you’d expect from a band that delivered a record that made such an impact not so long ago. Staying true to their lived experience, Waterslide… sees front person Dana Margolin navigate the complexities of life in her late 20s. She’s taken her already-sharp wit and propelled it with further insight. It’s Porridge Radio expanded; although in the first instance it may sound familiar, as the album progresses, new horizons are reached, most impactfully so on its second half. Whether it’s the monolithic climax of ‘Jealousy’, or ‘Splintered’, where multi-faceted vocal deliveries take centre stage (think choral harmonies and speakerphone muffles), Dana is increasingly defiant. Penultimate track ‘The Rip’ is an epic amalgamation of kinetic, extraterrestrial electronics, full of palpable lyrical relatability. Porridge Radio have never existed as one-dimensional – they’ve always had a wide array of musical influences at their disposal. However, the expansiveness of their interests is felt more than ever on Waterslide…; the album’s shifting moods are reflected in its musical core, a conscious decision inspired by touchstones as diverse as the kaleidoscopic work of BritishArgentinian collage artist Eileen Agar, and the story of Jacob’s Ladder, symbolising the swings and roundabouts of morality. With Waterslide… all emotions coexist and embrace one another. In spite of her successes, it’s clear to see how integral Dana’s beginnings remain for her as an artist; on the new record, she pays homage to her roots, asking her sister to direct the video for latest track ‘Back To The Radio’, and to paint the artwork for her albums. For her instalment of The Rates, Dana’s choices range from the sort of thing one might easily have anticipated – experimental post-punk, DIY electronics – to more unexpected selections, yet the majority circle back to links with her coastal hometown.

Dana Margolin: I first heard them when I just moved to Brighton and started uni. I remember I was in my room in first year in halls, and listening to [Colossal Youth] on repeat for days and days on end. There’s one song on it called ‘Music for Evenings’, which I actually just had on repeat over and over and over again. Georgia in my band, she’s really obsessed with them, her dad is as well. Josh, my manager [too]. I just heard this album and was completely bowled over. They’re Welsh, from the ’70s. The songwriting is incredible. To me, it’s a really perfect album, it’s not underrated, but maybe more people need to hear it. Jasleen Dhindsa: You said you came across the album living in Brighton. Do you still listen to the album now, or is it more of a memory from that time in your life? DM: It’s a very formative memory from that year, but I will come back to that album every so often and remember how good, how amazing [it is]. I really just love the instrumentation and the songs feel like they flow so naturally.

Final Third: The Rates Case/Lang/Veirs

DM: I first found this album [the eponymous debut from the supergroup of Neko Case, K.D. Lang and Laura Veirs] a few years ago. I think I just kind of stumbled upon it [through] listening to something else. I don’t even know how I found it. I love it when you get people who have their own songwriting projects, and then they come together and they write songs together. When I have delved into their back catalogue individually I’ve enjoyed [it], but not as much as I’ve loved this album. It’s really unique and beautiful. It feels like it captures a moment in time where I assume three friends or people who were in each other’s circles came together and wrote a really incredible album, this one-off, beautiful thing. JD: Do you like to collaborate a lot with other artists? DM: I have done a few collaborations. I did a song with Lillie from [Chicago indie band] Lala Lala. I did two songs with my friend Charlie [Loane] from Piglet and Speed Training. I’ve done a bunch of covers, crossing over to other artists who are my contemporaries. I love writing songs with Charlie, I’d love to do more with him. Every time you collaborate you learn something new about how someone else’s brain works and how other people write songs. Collaborating has really drummed in that there’s a million different ways to make a song. I don’t think it’s particularly changed how I write, but it’s definitely opened my mind a bit. Garden Centre

DM: Garden Centre was the project of my friend Max. He’s been making music since he was about 16 under various different names. I was actually in his band for two years and was on the album A Meaning For Digging. I love playing shows with him. I also love his songs so much so it was an incredibly fun couple of years learning them and playing them live. Before I joined his band I was obsessed with his music and met him in Brighton when we were gigging and doing a lot of shows together. I think that his songwriting is incredible. There’s something so bizarre in the way he writes songs, but it’s so interesting and so well-devised, and so thought through in such an interesting way. He captures something really powerful in his music. Every single song is just so different and interesting. I really love the way that he writes and performs; the songs all have really chaotic structures and move really quickly and are often really short so playing Max’s songs made me way better at guitar.

Casiotone For The Painfully Alone

DM: I’ve always really loved Casiotone. I love toy keyboards. I’ve got loads of Yamaha Portasounds, and I love that tone. I love those toy keyboard drum machines as well. Casiotone For The Painfully Alone [the solo project of Californian musician Owen Ashworth] utilises that in an amazing way whilst also having these really intense lyrics and vocal delivery. I really love [2006 album] Etiquette. I think Josh actually introduced it to me; I love wailing, [and] sad, sad vibes with the kind of upbeat, almost-playfulness. I always love lyrics and vocal melodies, and they are what I’ve always gravitated towards when I listen to music. I find that words and voices very instantly captivate me across genres. Maybe because you can hear emotion instantly through words and voices, and maybe that makes me feel closer to the artist.

Final Third: The Rates Kaho Nakamura

DM: We’re always sharing music with each other as a band and I’ve found out about so much music on the road through my bandmates’ recommendations. Kaho Nakamura is unbelievably good. She’s a credit to all the best artists who I’ve found in the last few years. I found her because I was listening to Sen Morimoto. I was listening to his self-titled [album] in the car and Sam, my bandmate, was falling asleep next to me as I was driving to Brighton. The album finished and so Spotify just auto-played random stuff. One of [her] songs came on and I was just in shock and Sam woke up as the song was playing. It was incredible. We immediately listened to that whole album [2018’s AINOU]. We both became really obsessed with it and learned how to play one of the songs. I just absolutely love her. I think she’s incredible – her music is really good and instantly hit us as really exciting and different. I really love how she sings, her melodies and her English/Japanese/scatting mash-up. There’s so many layers to the songs and so many moving parts happening at the same time. All of us in the band like really different things that converge in complementary ways, as well as loving a lot of the same stuff. We also sometimes really don’t like things or get things that someone else really loves. It definitely really informs the way that songs come together, especially if we’re all coming from having been listening to a lot of quite different sounding music. The main important thing is that we are all open to trying out different ideas and listening to anything and everything.

Audiobooks

DM: [Astro Tough] came out a few months ago, and it was so great. The energy that they have is so weird and good, it really sits perfectly with me. It captures this hyperness. It’s so dark and so strange, but you want to just dance to it. My friend sent me one of their songs, ‘LaLaLa It’s The Good Life’. That was another song that as soon as I heard it was on repeat for ages, because it’s so manic. My friend sent it to me at a time where I was particularly miserable but I was really high-energy and running around all over the place, and it really perfectly fitted. JD: In your selections, you’ve got quite an eclectic mix of genres. That’s reflective of the music that you make – do you feel drawn to different moods equally? DM: I listen to things across a really broad spectrum of moods, because I have a really broad spectrum of moods. Sometimes I want to listen to Bill Callahan talking really slowly over some long instrumentals. Sometimes I want to listen to some really manic hyper-pop. I’m really interested in songwriting, and melodies and lyrics… the poetry in it a lot of the time. So it can really be anything.

You’ve probably heard a lot of people talking about how Get Back is the best music documentary they’ve ever seen. Or the second best, if they’ve also watched the unfortunately titled After the Screaming Stops, about Bros. I mean, during Get Back, did Paul McCartney at any point look down the camera and say: “I think the letters ‘H.O.M.E’. are so important, because they personify the word ‘home.’”? Did Ringo confide: “I made a conscious decision because of Stevie Wonder to not be superstitious.”? Did Lennon become his most animated in a fiery address about conkers (“Now you can’t even play conkers in England. Can we start a petition please!? Can we start a petition on how ridiculous it is that you can’t play conkers, and if you do, you have to wear goggles? That is the biggest problem.”)? Naturally, the sleeve of Matt Goss’ new album plays hard and fast with logic and makes little to no sense. The guy is a total renegade, and quite possibly our last true punk. Here, he flexes in full-on Gucci and then adds a Ministry of Sound compilation CD filter to saturate the colour. He rolls out a new massive MG logo, which appears to have been inspired by polo shirts you only ever see in TK Maxx. The font below it doesn’t even match! And don’t get me started on the rockets, on an album called The Beautiful Unknown. If I had a piece of paper I’d be ripping it up and throwing it in the air right now. Matt Goss, you have slain me. I know that this sleeve is not very good, but can’t be completely sure that it is not the invention of something completely new... It’s not about conkers, is it?

Former Beady Eye singer Liam Gallagher (49) spent April saying that U2 aren’t naughty enough to be rock stars, and sticking up for his son, Gene, who was caught fighting in a Tesco Metro. “If ya can’t steal from Tesco’s, where can you steal from eh?” said the ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ singer. But sources say that the wild man of Britpop is himself a “considerate and gentle” shopper, after onlookers allegedly watched him refuse to put a sourdough roll through the self checkout as a morning roll, despite encouragement from a friend and nearby elderly customer. It would have saved him 15p on the purchase and the bother of calling over a shop assistant, whom he then thanked.

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illustration by kate prior

A monthly record club from Loud And Quiet and Totnes record store DRIFT 10 new LPs with 10% off for L&Q Members in April’s collection

Find this month's collection at driftrecords.com/loud-and-quiet

the debut album out now