Loud And Quiet 68 – HEALTH

Zero pounds / Volume 03 / Issue 68 / the alternative music tabloid

A noise fully realised

Health

at Primavera Sound

Plus Jenny Hval Ezra Furman Stuart Murdoch Titus Andronicus Danny Fields Grimm Grimm

contents

welcome

Stuart Murdoch – 12 Danny Fields – 14 Titus Andronicus – 18 Ezra Furman – 22 Jenny Hval – 24 Grimm Grimm – 26 HEALTH – 28

Zero pounds / Volume 03 / Issue 68 / the alternatIVe musIc tabloId

a noise fully realised

HealtH

at Primavera Sound

Plus Jenny Hval Ezra Furman stuart Murdoch Titus Andronicus Danny Fields Grimm Grimm

c o v er ph o t o g r aph y J en n a F o xt o n

Once a year we travel to Barcelona, Spain, to support and be an official partner of Primavera Sound. It’s a hook-up we’re very proud of, and there’s a reason that everyone wants in on it.

On its most basic level, the Primavera lineup needs no spin to feel appropriate to what we do.

Each year almost every act on the bill has either been featured by us before, or they’re people that we’d like to talk to in the future. The strike rate is quite unheard of, because here’s a festival that manages to sell tickets by booking headliners like Antony & The Johnsons over Arctic Monkeys.

That particular booking didn’t excite me too much this year, but once I saw it – and realised what it represented – I couldn’t leave it alone. I wanted to dip in, grab a drink, and go to see Tyler, The Creator. I never made it, and I’m not even a fan.

Antony Hegarty was beguiling and bruised and frail and effortless, which I imagine is the case at all of his shows that I’ve never seen. He was also up there with a full orchestra.This guy hasn’t had a studio album out in five years! Primavera is officially sponsored by Heineken, and this is what they’ve chosen to spend that money on – that’s impressive. The indie world has lightened up on the subject of corporate branding (which remains minimal at Primavera, especially for a festival of its size), and here was the re-routing of capital in full, artistic affect.

We’ve covered the festival in a number of ways over the years, from a shooting-fish-in-a-barrel approach, where we snatched quick interviews with as many new acts as possible, to straight live reviews and online photo galleries. This year, for the third time, we photographed a cover feature there (HEALTH, incidentally, are also only the third act to appear on our cover for a second time); we took our Getting To Know You questionnaire on the road, met Stuart Murdoch and put together an A-Z guide to this special festival. Next year, come.

Stuart Stubbs

Co ntact

Contr ib u tor s

A dve r tising

i n fo@lou dandq u ie t.com

Amy Pe tti fe r , au stin l a ike , Chr is Watke ys, daisy j o ne s, dav id zammitt, Danie l D y l a n-W r a y, dan ke ndall, Danny Cante r , Elinor Jone s, Edg ar Sm ith, F r ankie Nazar do, j ack do he r ty , JAMES f. Thomp son, jame s we st, Janine Bu llman, j e nna f o x to n, joe g og g ins, josh su nt h, le e b u llman, Gab r ie l G r e e n, Ge m har r is, Mandy Dr a ke , Nathan We stle y, Owe n Richa r ds, Phil Shar p , Re e f Y ou nis, Sam cor nfor th, samu e l ba l l a r d, Sam Walton, T im Cochr a ne , thomas may, tom fe nw ick

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10 Years of Loud And Quiet

Did I Love 2005?

Ten years ago, kids raised on Oasis formed bands to bring about a blokey indie rock renaissance that lives on today in Arctic Monkeys and Kasabian. The Long Blondes were having none of it, as guitarist Dorian Cox remembers A s to l d to D a n i el D yl a n W r a y

New Years Eve 2004, this is when the band all lived together and we were trying to have a party but I was getting really stressed because our first gig of the year was headlining an XFM all-dayer at Camden Barfly and I think that was on the 3rd and I was sat in my room all night working out what set we’d play. It was with Mystery Jets and it was on the edge of us being relatively big and I can remember going on stage and for the first ever time we looked at the crowd and the first four rows were young girls dressed in beret’s and neck scarves and we all looked at each other like, ‘fucking hell’.

It was a good start to what turned out to be a pretty momentous year in my life, really.

A giveaway of a golden time is that you never expect it to end. Everything was getting better. We hadn’t signed a record deal at that stage yet and all of us were working. We’d get a bus down to London on a Tuesday night to play a Queens of Noise night in Camden or something – they were brilliant nights; it was such a good scene of indie bands.

There was still an outsider quality to indie music back then. People were disparate but part of the same scene. There was a slight tip over in 2005 when you started to get landfill indie. Bands would come along that didn’t appear to be in it for the right reasons. 2005 was a peak year for those kind of [pre existing] indie bands.

Arctic Monkeys got to number 1 and I remember seeing them for the first time and just thinking: ‘No chance, look at them. No way.’ They asked us to support them at a homecoming show. It was full of proper, proper lads – I’d never seen anything like it at an indie gig and we went on and immediately

chants of “poofs, poofs, poofs” started, followed by “Monkeys, Monkeys.” We did three songs and walked off. People were throwing bottles. I remember saying to Alex afterwards: “Do you know what mate, well done, you’ve done it, because once you get to that level where the knuckleheads get involved, that’s where the money is.”That was a turning point, though, I remember thinking this isn’t what we signed up for – we came from an old school indie background and up until then it seemed like the whole scene was like that until we came across this very laddy environment.

During that year every label in the country would be coming up to Sheffield and we’d be sat in this exact seat [Rutland Arms pub] where they would be buying us drinks. Most of the time we’d be sat thinking who’s going to turn up this time, and some clown would walk in the door and we’d be like, ‘we’re not signing to these.’ I’ve got a distinct memory of a guy turning up in a bit of a mod suit, a really new one that he thought might appeal to us and we just thought, is he going to court? He looks like a fucking idiot.

For us Rough Trade was a label we’d all grown up with and at the end of the day, GeoffTravis is the guy that signed the Smiths. He knows what he’s doing. What swung it was that we had to go down to London to meet them as opposed to them coming up here and we’d been so used to getting to a pub and a label buying us drinks and food, and we got to a pub to meet them and they never even offered to buy us a drink. We liked that.

‘New Yorkshire’ was coined in that year [by NME] and I remember doing a photoshoot for that

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but it was all lads; Sheffield bands like Millburn, Harrisons, Bromheads Jacket. We turned up and they were all lads in Fred Perry’s and I specifically remember Screech [Long Blondes’ drummer] and I going to the toilet to put on more make-up so we could distance ourselves from this as much as possible – which wasn’t difficult. One of the guys from Milburn came up to me and started prodding me in the chest saying, ‘you’re not even fucking from Sheffield, are you? What the fuck are you doing here?’ That localness was not what we were interested in.

We did the NME new music tour with Forward Russia, who were fucking great. The other two bands on the bill: Boy Kill Boy, dreadful. Lovely guys – one of them lent me his shoes one night on stage, bless him – but dreadful; very boring. The other band on the tour I fucking hated and they were all a bunch of pricks:The Automatic. One gig, at a university, we had a large shared dressing room and they were acting like kids and doing our heads in and throwing loads of shit around like tomato sauce and we were telling them not to do it because obviously someone has to clean that up.

Then the best thing ever happened – the janitor for the building came along afterwards and said ‘who’s done this?’ We grassed them in and he forced them to clean it all up.

I was listening to some music from that period on the way here to jog my memory and was listening to a track by the Cribs and the refrain of it is “take drugs, don’t eat, have contempt for those you meet”, and if you wanted to sum up 2005 in a soundbite that’s it to me.

books + second life

Tea Total Reef Younis investigates what rock stars do next No.10: Moby / and he sold-up to focus on reviving a flat-lining music career. But it wasn’t justTeaNY he needed to shift. “About five years ago, I tried to make my life as complicated as possible,” he said at the time. “I started this restaurant, and I started this Little Idiot Illustrators’ collective, and I started a bottled beverage company, and I bought this piece of property upstate, and suddenly I had this very complicated life… so I spent the year basically trying to get rid of everything.”

Now with his life de-cluttered, the next five albums should have registered more than the tired blips on the electronic landscape. Undeterred, Hall threw himself into political activism, and animal rights as ‘Last Night’ (2008), ‘Wait For Me’ (2009), ‘Destroyed’ (2011), ‘Innocents’ (2013) or last year’s ‘Hotel: Ambient’ generated as many hand-wringing column inches as they did struggling sales.

This year, however, he has announced his return to the restaurateur game with new venture Little Pine – a vegan, dinner-only restaurant in LA. With dishes including lemon mint pea pâté, mushroom leek potpie and vegan chilli, you’d presume that the tea menu’s been scaled back, this time.

Before he became a byword for three-star electronic fodder and a permanent fixture on wanky dinner party mixtapes, Moby was the world’s DJ de rigueur. After four albums of inauspicious techno and breakbeat, 1999’s ‘Play’ propelled Richard Melville Hall to unexpected chart, montage, and Sunday morning stardom. Wherever you stand, working with and remixing Michael Jackson, Daft Punk, David Bowie and Brian Eno, and shifting over 20 million albums is no mean feat, especially when you’re also designing and serving a menu with over 90 varieties of loose leaf tea. In 2002, that was exactly what Hall and his then girlfriend were doing.

From part-designing the café’s décor to occasionally waiting tables, Moby helped make TeaNY (you’ve got to give it to him on that name!) the Lower East Side hang out for hipster vegan warriors and Hollywood A-listers. In its heyday, it attracted the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Alicia Silverstone, Susan Sarandon, and Jason Schwartzman, boasted dietary staples like squash-and-pear and nectarine-and-cantaloupe soup, and spawned the Teany Book, presumably full of similarly strange concoctions.

By 2006, though, Moby was ready to step back,

by j a nine & L ee bullm a n

That’s Entertainment: My Life in The Jam

by Rick Buckler

Prestel

Omnibus

Real geniuses in popular music have always viewed the form as a collaborative process. That’s where people like Anton Corbijn come in. In a career spanning almost forty years, the photographer’s collected works now look like a who’s who of visionaries and game-changers. Think of Joy Division and that image you have in your head is an Anton Corbijn photograph; four men and a bleak underpass in a picture that captures not just a band in the early stages of formation but an entire nation crying out for somebody to turn up the brightness. 1-2-3-4 illustrates what a huge and vital contribution Corbijn has made to the cultural aesthetics of the last forty years.

The Jam found their sound in the 1970s, at the flashpoint where punk rock fused with a mod sensibility and created something new, smart and urgent. Rick Buckler played drums in the band from day one, and in That’s Entertainment he describes the ride that took three school friends from Woking to international chart success and sold out arenas. Buckler describes honestly the privileges and pressures that accompany the journey from the suburbs to the mountain top, and, touchingly, despite having been more than a little responsible for their unique and often copied sound, he still manages to remain a dedicated fan of the group he helped form.

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Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story

by Rick Bragg canongate

We’re a long way now from the birth of Rock’n’Roll, from the hellraisers forged from fire and brimstone against the haunted gothic landscape of America’s deep south to a soundtrack of country, blues and gospel. For a while, Jerry Lee Lewis epitomised the danger that jumped-up rhythm and blues posed to the teenagers of America. He was quoting scripture and playing like the devil; he had a teenage bride in the backseat of his Cadillac and was helping to introduce a whole generation to the delights of the shake, the rattle, and the roll. There are reams of books out there about the Killer, but this is the one you want. In it, Rick Bragg tells the warts-and-all story of a troubled man, part saint, part sinner, who helped change the world.

Il l u s tr a tio n: D io go Fr e it as

1-2-3-4

by Anton Corbijn & Wim van Sinderen

getting to know you

l ou d a n d quie t at pr im av e r a

Unknown Mortal Orchestra Ruban Nielson tried to give up music in 2010 when his indie rock group, The Mint Chicks, disbanded and he moved to Portland.

It didn’t work. He’s since released three psychedelic pop albums as Unknown Mortal Orchestra, his latest being ‘Multi-Love’, released last month via Jagjaguwar / The best piece of advice you’ve been given Do it properly and you’ll be invited back to do it again.

People’s biggest misconception about you Because I’m kinda articulate, people don’t usually understand how simple I am.

Your favourite word Petrol.

The worst date you’ve been on I’ve never been on a date.

The best book in the world There’s no book that will always be great in every era for every age. The right book will find you at the right time if you let it.

Your hidden talent That’s private.

Your pet-hate I hate having to prove the same things over and over again.

The worst present you’ve received I must have forgotten about it. Best present was my first guitar. My dad got it.

Your biggest fear Anybody I love in a tsunami.

If you had to eat one food forever, it would be...

Korean BBQ.

Your guilty pleasure Chicken fried steak.

What is success to you?

Food and laughing and sex.

The worst job you’ve had Waiter. I was no good at pretending to give a shit.

I was much happier as a dishwasher. Headphones on just burning through dishes.

What talent do you wish you had?

I wish I was smart enough to understand really intense mathematics.

The film you can quote the most of Probably Pulp Fiction. So basic, sorry.

What would you tell your 15-year-old self?

Favourite place in the world My house. The music and love is there.

The bitter, racist old Dean is wrong.

You’ll end up the most notable person in this whole school

Your style icon My 6-year-old son, Moebius. He has really long hair and always wears a headband and paints his fingernails. He always looks perfect without even trying.

The thing you’d rescue from a burning building My hard drive with music on that people haven’t heard yet.

How would you like to die?

Maybe drowning in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Like Eddie Aikau.

What is the most overrated thing in the world?

Facebook.

The characteristic you most like about yourself I loathe myself. Haha.

What would you change about your physical appearance?

I wish my legs were a just a little bit longer.

The one song you wished you’d written ‘Nature Boy’ by Nat King Cole.

The most famous person you’ve met Probably Cliff Richard. He was nice, I guess.

Jim Carrey and Christian Bale were at one of our shows but they didn’t hang out. I actually don’t try to meet famous people when I’m around them.

I’m too worried they’ll say something that’ll make me feel bad.

Your favourite item of clothing A massive black sweater with Oregon State written on it in gothic font. It’s faded and falling to bits. Looks good inside out too.

Your biggest disappointment People.

The celebrity that most pissed you off, even though you’ve never met them Celebrities are pretty irksome across the board.

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What’s your biggest turn-off?

People who are always dissatisfied with life.

Who would play you in a movie of your life?

God, I hope they don’t do that.

Your best piece of advice for others Whenever possible, use the women’s bathroom.

Tell Me About It

Stuart Murdoch Sam Walton meets Belle & Sebastian’s band leader to let him do the talking Photography: danny north / writer: sam walton

All bands change. Even the ones that don’t claim they do with each successive album cycle. However, some seem doomed to be defined by one aesthetic (often their initial one), no matter how hard they try to re-spot their skin, and retain in the public consciousness a certain unshakable flavour. For better and worse, Belle & Sebastian remain one of those bands, forever associated with their first three albums that are now almost canonical, alongside the mysterious anonymity that they cultivated to accompany them, free from press release biographies, tell-all interviews and officially sanctioned photographs.

Despite those recordings belonging to a different age – a 1990s halcyon period where the nascent internet was used only by nerdy university students and weirdos who blogged for niche satisfaction – Belle & Sebastian’s image persists as that of a twee, shambling, almost parodically indie group that might sing about grazed knees and kittens. Yet in 2015, they appear high on festival bills, sell out arena shows and make records unapologetically full of sheen, disco insouciance and sex, lovingly free of the wilful cackhandedness and timidity that blighted their earlier selves at their worst.

Before their performance at one of said festivals, Barcelona’s Primavera Sound, Stuart Murdoch took a moment to look back, 20 years into their existence, and work out where and why everything might’ve changed.

In the early days, we’d play certain places and people would be like, “really? Them?”

And perhaps that was why it was great.

Back then, we just bumbled along. Our live prowess didn’t get us anywhere, we didn’t suck any media cock, we didn’t play the NME game, we didn’t do any of that. It was the records that were getting us there and our little word of mouth reputation. But it was fun – we’d play

certain places, and we’d show up and people would be like, “really?” And we tried to keep that going.We realised that we could use this opportunity to do something fun and exciting and take our audience somewhere different.

And with that extended philosophy we came up with things like the Bowlie Weekender to try and do something new, and give people an interesting place to go to. That was great fun.

Everything changed for the band after ‘Fold Your Hands…’

In 2001, we left Jeepster, Stuart and Isobel left the band, Bob came in, we signed to Rough Trade, all within about a year. Isobel did actually hang on for longer than Stuart, but philosophically she left the band at that point: she showed up, but never spoke to me for a year and a half while we were playing shows, so it was just a matter of time for her really – even though we tried to accommodate her.

But it was a specific change of philosophy that we had at that point.

The gigs were a disaster, I didn’t enjoy them, and it was tough: it was pretty much a 50/50 shot every time we showed up whether it would be a shambles, and it’s alright bumbling along and having a good time – you can confound expectations and stick your fingers up at the industry – but the real reasons for that behaviour weren’t just rebellion: they were because for the first four or five years, nobody had actually agreed to be in a band. Stuart [David] wanted to be a non-playing member and write books; and Isobel swore that as soon as she finished college she was going to throw her weight in, but then she went and got a job instead! Meanwhile, the other half of the band were trying to be supportive: the likes of Stevie and Mick were pushing for us to get more professional, and they very generously hung on, Richard as well, while the rest of us pissed around with our sedition, with our fingers up at the

music industry. But it was a disaster really: nobody had agreed to do it, while I kept on coming up with half a dozen songs every week.

And so I was absolutely caught in the middle: I think maybe I was trying to be too diplomatic and hold this disparate bunch of people together when everybody’s aspirations were personal and different. And then I got really ill – again: we staggered to the end of ‘Fold Your Hands…’ as this dysfunctional rabble, and I had to take a year off because I had ME again through all the stress of trying to hold the band together.

Then, when I took the time off, I suddenly realised, “what are you doing? This could be so easy” – I had a moment of clarity, basically. And everything after that was like falling out of bed: those guys left, the people who wanted to be in the band stayed in the band, we planned a proper tour, got a proper crew together, Bob joined the band, everything came together and we never looked back. And okay, we’ve become a more conventional band, although we do still try to remain reasonably unconventional and appeal to unconventional people.

I had a premonition at the start that we were going to reach out to a certain kind of person who hadn’t been reached out to since The Smiths

Possibly that relationship with the fans has changed [since ‘Fold Your Hands…’], but the whole thing at the start of the group – and I don’t want to exaggerate too much – it was lightning in a bottle. We were different, and when people started showing up to gigs who weren’t our friends and neighbours, it was immensely pleasurable. From then on we were quietly confident, and we just let it run, and we loved what those guys from the Sinister mailing list were doing on the fledgling internet – they

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were giving two fingers to the press and the zeitgeist of the time, quietly, in the same way we were. But after we played that one tour in 2001, where we started to play properly and all the freaks had been able to come out to see us, after that it was different. They’d seen us, and then we had to earn our spurs as a working band.

That possibly changed the way our audience interacted with us. Right through the 2000s though, personally, I had a really nice relationship with the fans. I wrote my online diary and we had quite a substantial Q&A section that we kept furnishing all the time.

But even though a lot’s changed now – we’re a decent-sized band playing festivals and all that – I think I do sometimes still feel like an outsider.

The way that I speak to you now, or the way that I address people online, is the same as ever: I’m always writing to the freaks. I’m always addressing the Belle & Sebastian fan, who I know to be super non-prejudiced, super liberal people, and some of the nicest people I know. So when I got called out like that [by a sloppy Pitchfork article that accused Belle & Sebastian of “perpetuating Whiteness through indie rock” and Murdoch’s film, God Help The Girl, as serving “a microcosmic view of what is wrought by racial exclusivity that is omnipresent in indie rock”], it was actually a bit of a surprise to me. It did make me think that no matter what I could’ve said in response, I would’ve gotten abuse. But I got so much abuse: I mean, I put those couple of tweets out [Murdoch replied on Twitter, “I wish I was in a band that looked like the Brazil team in the ’70s, but we formed in Glasgow.” and “God knows I’ve yearned to know and love women and men of many nations, but being a poor sick white boy from Scotland has dashed my ambitions”], and it didn’t matter what you thought of the girl who wrote the article – I was the bad guy because I was the guy in power. There were people calling me a racist cunt, really going for it, for weeks afterwards.

l ou d a n d quie t at pr im av e r a

‘Tigermilk’ I was perfectly happy about, but ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’ caused me so much grief at the time

Because I thought I’d made a mistake in rushing the band when it wasn’t really a band. I wanted it to sound like ‘Tapestry’. I wanted it to sound like ‘Court and Spark’ and I didn’t know that you don’t get that richness or that sound unless you’ve been playing together for a while, and even then it’s all about production and knowing what you’re doing in the studio. So I was struggling with that with the early records. I’m so happy that people seem to like those records so much, though.

I mean, I know the songs are strong – I know that because I remember feeling that at the time. They were so precious to me – I felt that – and I appreciate that the fans felt that too, so I wouldn’t change a thing there. But as with everything in life, at some point you have to move on. If you think about

terrific bands of the past – The Beatles and The Smiths come to mind because The Beatles were only around for six or seven years, and The Smiths were even less – those guys never looked back. Those guys were just hot, they were reinventing the wheel with every record and that’s the important thing – you’re like a shark, you’ve got to keep swimming, as Woody Allen would have it. I mean, we’re 20 years in now and we’re a working band: we’ve never split up, we’re basically the same people, just trying to make better music, trying to take what happens in our lives and putting it on records.

The title ‘Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance’ has something political to it, sure.

But I didn’t plan that title thinking about politics. News and politics make me think inasmuch as it makes

everybody think, because you can’t escape it. But if the record is 1% political then it’s 80% spiritual. I don’t feel like I’m qualified to speak about politics too much – the language of politics is economics, and me talking about politics would be like trying to play chess without knowing the moves. But I feel more qualified to talk about spirituality: I don’t care if anybody criticises me because I know it’s my faith, and it’s a personal adventure through life. You can take any of those new songs, like ‘Cat With The Cream’, or ‘Allie’ and sure, politics is rubbing up against the characters’ lives, but I try to take a step back and see this big cloud of spirituality, whether it’s Buddhism or God or something, that’s having a much greater effect on the character or the way that I see the them. I’m always drawn to art, whether that’s paintings or books or music, that give a little hint that the writer’s thinking about spirituality. It’s a huge dimension for me.

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I was invited on Question Time just before the Scottish Referendum

But at the last minute they realised that my opinions were too close to those of Ricky Ross from Deacon Blue who was already booked. Which is funny, obviously, but also fair enough – I realise how these things work. It was because back in the past I’ve always said I was against nationalism, which I am, and that was enough for the programme-makers to be convinced that I was coming out in favour of the No campaign, whereas, in fact, over the period of the year leading up to the vote I’d changed to supporting Yes. The programme needed a No person – and I’m a Yes kind of guy.

The guy out back Whether you take The Doors, The Stooges or The Ramones as the birth of American punk rock, they all owe something to a guy called Danny Fields writer: daniel d ylan wray

In the email exchange in the week or two leading up to my interview with Danny Fields you get the impression you’re dealing with a real character, an eccentric perhaps. After finally deciding on a city and day to do the interview (Liverpool on a Friday) Danny tells me of his plans to stay up continuously on prescribed upper meds from the Wednesday, when he flies in from the U.S., until Friday for our interview, so he can reach maximum delirium and sleep deprivation for our conversation. He asks for personal details about myself so he can know what to expect of me and inquires what my preferences and leniencies are when it comes to drugs.

I fully expect to arrive in Liverpool to meet a deranged, drug-ravaged lunatic who hasn’t slept in days, who will thrust a variety of pills and powders into my hands, face and nose the second I walk through the door. I envisage dark times and a lost weekend ahead. However, in advance of our meeting I watch Danny Says a new documentary on Fields, the one-time Ramones manager and man responsible for getting The Stooges,

the MC5 and Nico signed to Elektra Records, and I see a pretty genial, relaxed and entirely sane elderly gentleman recalling his life story on camera. Then again, I also find out that he once gave Jack Bruce acid-laced popcorn and was the first ever person to be censored on public access TV for pretending to stick a light bulb up someone’s anus. So, I travel to Liverpool (where he is being interviewed on stage as part of Liverpool Sound City) even more unsure of what, or who, I am about to encounter.

As Fields welcomes me into his hotel room, it’s not the makeshift drink and drug den I had perhaps thought it would be but instead much like anyone else’s hotel room – a half unpacked suitcase on the floor with various electrical items charging and a sterile atmosphere cloaking the air.

Part of me is relieved and the other slightly disappointed. Danny’s voice has gone somewhat from picking up a chill on the plane so his plans for staying up for three days straight until he is barely making sense have fallen by the wayside. Instead he becomes fixated on the lighting in his room,

which is admittedly dark, which he hates. He points at all the various pictures and diagrams of the Titanic that adorn the hotel walls in bafflement, describing it as celebrating a colossal failure, and he gushes of his love of Eurovision, which he intends to watch with glee the following evening. We talk for three hours in a very relaxed and detailed manner about many aspects of his life whilst sharing white wine, Fields sitting calmly in his slippers, not, as it turns out, hanging from the light fittings, barefoot with a head full of drugs, and me fearing for my own life and sanity.

“There’s nothing to cringe about,” he says of the documentary, directed

by Brendan Toller, who also directed the music documentary I Need That Record! – a 2008 release, which focused on the future of independent record stores). Danny Says is littered with complimentary talking heads from the likes of Iggy Pop, actor-director John Cameron Mitchell and Patti Smith collaborator Lenny Kaye, as well as hilarious anecdotes. The film is ostensibly about Fields, but just as much about the fertile explosion of

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music in the late ’60s and early ’70s in New York, of which Danny was at the helm and a significant driving force.

You soon realise where his appetite for uppers comes from – growing up his father was a doctor who operated his practice from the house, meaning a constant supply of different drugs was available. Amphetamine was a household regular back then, in the 1950s. “If anyone came in and had to lose ten pounds because it was summer they would just prescribe them,” he tells me with a voice not dissimilar to that of a modern day Iggy Pop; slow and croaky, rich in texture and resonance and coated with a waxy vibrancy that somehow radiates a feeling that this is a person that has lived hard.

“The salesmen were beating down the doors of the doctors’ offices,” he says. “It makes you all chatty and happy – there was a bowl of them on the dining room table. It was like candy because they came in all different colours.

“I would stuff my pockets with these pills and give them to everyone. I was acing everything at school, just

memorising the stuff. I was zooming through academia with A’s, being smart, plus this enhanced memory from the speed was something else. I’ve been self-medicating my entire life.”

Fields also had a rare insight and knowledge into the drugs he was taking through a “PDR” (a physician’s desk reference), “which was a book containing the pictures and information of every pill available that was not available to the public. My dad had it, so I would read through it just deciding which pills to take.”

The acing through academia led to a place at Harvard Law School, although this was somewhere that Danny felt he didn’t belong. Even though, he was hanging out with openly gay people for the first time in his entire life (Fields himself is gay), he didn’t last more than an academic year before leaving for NewYork, feeling somewhat directionless. “I wasn’t inspired by anything. I was just an aimless 22-yearold faggot in New York.”

Fields ended up working a job at a publication called Liquor Store Monthly and simultaneously encountering Andy Warhol’s Factory scene. Edie Sedgwick was his houseguest for a few weeks when she was kicked out of her parents’ Park Avenue apartment. He then applied

for a job at the teen-focused music publication Datebook thinking that the ‘pop’ they referred to in their job advert referred to pop art, not pop music. Despite not knowing a great deal about the latter, Fields swung the job as managing Editor through a list of name drops and sheer bravado. It was here that he caused a whirlwind of trouble for the Beatles by digging up the old “we’re more popular than Jesus” quote (which had been originally said sometime ago in a London paper but largely ignored in the UK) and re-printing it. On the front cover of the paper was a quote from McCartney about the U.S. (“It’s a lousy country where anyone black is a dirty nigger”) and one from Lennon (“I don’t know which will go first, Rock n Roll or Christianity”) and then pandemonium ensued that could not have been predicted.

“They never played in the U.S. again after that,” notes Fields, “so now I’m the person who broke up the Beatles.

Of course I didn’t, but I kind of wish I had because they were a pain in the ass.

I just wanted to make a bit of mischief; I didn’t want to break up the Beatles.”

Fields went from job to job, seemingly at random. He was fired from Datebook after his clear inexperience as

an editor began to show, and he quickly blagged himself a job as the Doors’ official publicist. Despite Jim Morrison and him not getting along, and there being a tale of Fields supposedly kidnapping the singer and plying him with enough drugs to wipe out a herd of elephants, Fields was so affective in this role in getting

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them press that he was hired by the band’s label, Elektra Records, where he would then convince them to sign both The Stooges and the MC5.

There’s a particularly memorable moment in the documentary in which Iggy Pop says Fields turned him onto cocaine, something that he took such a liking to that three days later he was breaking into Fields’ hotel room and stealing his stash.

“Iggy was funny,” he tells me, “although, first of all, I didn’t turn him onto cocaine, and it was news to me that he was the one who stole it from my hotel, too. I thought it was the cleaning woman or something. I had them wrapped up within a sweater and hidden. Not only did he take the fucking drugs but he took the sweater too! When I see him I’m going to ask him about that – you can replace cocaine but you can’t replace a beloved sweater. He thinks he’s remembering these things – in one of the books about him he talks about me taking him for a haircut and that I was dictating the way it should be done, but that never happened. God bless him but he remembers whimsically, occasionally… Although I did turn David Cassidy onto cocaine.”

Fields was fired from Elektra Records after he was physically attacked by the label’s Vice President and Artistic Director, Bill Harvey, for spreading (true) rumours about his daughter around the water cooler.

“Such an asshole,” he says with a slightly venomous tone. “He was punching me in the head, but it was all build up, he hated the Stooges and MC5 and the Marijuana song – he wanted it to be this classy little folk label.”The marijuana song refers to the ode to cannabis that was ‘Have a Marijuana’ by David Peel & The Lower East Side, another one of Fields’ brainwaves that ended up about as successful as it was controversial.

Around this time in the late 1960s Fields had been a journalist, an A&R man, a publicist, publisher, manager

Le f t: D a nny with Iggy Pop , Lisa Robinson and david bowie PREVIOUS PAGE: WITH NI CO AND THE RAM ONES

and much more, but he tends to be quite modest about his abilities in some of the roles. “Managing?” he says.

“What the hell! I got them off the ground, I got them started or got them in the public but I could never follow through in Svengali-ing a career. What am I going to do? Tell them what to wear? What songs to sing? They were perfect. Am I going to tell Iggy what to do? I want to be surprised every time he performs, too.” Yet Danny does reflect on one particular moment with pride, of working with Nico, who he describes as “a mysterious moon goddess.”

“She was a great songwriter and my proudest achievement is the record she did with John Cale, ‘The Marble Index’. It was a 100 years ahead of its time and still is now. It’s very strange and odd. That album wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t drag her up there and get her in there with Jac [Holzman – president of the label].”

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s the 60’s drew to a close, it wouldn’t be until the next emerging New York scene, CBGB’s, that Fields would take on his next major role, managing the Ramones, a group who he still has a huge amount of time and respect for. “They were not stupid in the slightest,” he says. “They were formidably smart, each of them in their own way.” Fields is keen to set straight the misconception of the group being a bunch of simpletons, and also debunk another myth of the group’s. “Johnny and Joey were millionaires when they died, so I would like to dispel the fact that they struggled until they died,” he says.

He lasted with the Ramones a few

years before being voted out as manager after the band continued to find that ever-elusive pop hit that Fields was unable to bring whilst managing them, although he felt they were doomed never to have one from the off, because of their association with punk.

“The Ramones were killed because their first show outside of NYC, which I really struggled to get them, was in Boston and the college newspaper did an interview and Johnny said: ‘oh, so you were at the show last night? Where were you? I didn’t see you’ – because Johnny could spot someone out of a crowd of 70,000 people – and they said: ‘we were at the back’, and Johnny said: ‘well you should have been up front because that’s where we sound best’, and the guy from Harvard said: ‘we heard you vomit on the audience’, based on John Lydon apparently vomiting on someone somewhere, and from that moment I knew this was going to haunt them. Why would a radio station want to help a band have a hit if they’re going to come up to the station and vomit on your sound board or DJ?” Fields’ departure was, however, apparently amicable. “There was no problem on a personal level,” he says.

“I felt a bit jilted, but it was all very cordial. I was voted out 2-1.” Looking back on the musical legacy they left behind however, Fields remains gleeful in his recollections. “It was onslaught music,” he says, “it led us to hardcore but the Ramones had songs. It was a combination of power, volume, speed and melody as well as lyrics. They were never stupid, they were smart.”

Danny’s personal archive has been explored thoroughly for this documentary and some of the greatest

moments come in the form of unearthed audio recordings. A phone call from Nico is one highlight, and there’s a brilliant moment in which Fields, whilst recording a radio show he did for WFMU, captures Lou Reed hearing the Ramones for the first time. “That thing with Lou listening to the Ramones is so incredible,” he says. “It went viral, it was used in a New York Times online article about my archive going to Yale.

You heard a Lou that people never heard before – enjoying something, being friendly, being enthusiastic.

“Everyone was taping each other, [back then]. Those phone calls from ’68-’71 were a hoot.”

Not all of them, though. Nico would phone asking to borrow money for drugs. “Oh Danny,” Fields says, mimicking Nico’s unique deep voice, “I must have some heroin. Can you give me $10? I must have some heroin – No, Nico!”

Despite a life of self-medicating, heroin is a drug that Fields has largely managed to avoid. “Heroin is a bad, bad, bad thing,” he says, before recalling an experience with it that almost killed him.

“I tried it,” he says. “I snorted it and it was a nice, warm feeling, but I wasn’t especially wanting to do it again, but someone convinced me to do so and I almost died. It was a lot stronger and I had kidney failure. So, I was like, what did I get out of this that was worth nearly dying for and having fucked up kidneys for the rest of my life? Nothing. It’s not worth your life.”

Life is something that Fields [now 74] has seen disappear in front of him over and over again through the years.

Many friends, colleagues and acquaintances from that era have since

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passed, and did so a long time ago and prematurely. “It’s horrible to lose someone and there are so few people left that are okay and smart enough to laugh with and to talk to. It never stops being horrible; I’ve been devastated and paralysed by it. Nobody can take the place of someone that has been in your life for a period of time. I miss my dead friends and I wish I could pick up the phone. It doesn’t get less as you get older, it gets more. Now I’m in the death zone – anyone my age is rolling towards the cliff. In one year [2013] five people died. I have no friends left, my best friends are gone.”

Danny Fields is a unique character in the music industry: omnipresent and important; unquestionable yet impossible to define. “Danny is a connector, like a fuel injector in a car.

He brings all the elements together for an extreme explosion,” says Iggy Pop in Danny Says. He’s a product of the times and the most interesting thing about talking with him, or watching the film, is that tracing his story leads into the story of so many others. By having this ever transient role and working with so many interesting people, and by the sounds of it taking so many drugs and creating so much havoc along the way, he is like a great supporting actor, more noticeable in the tales of other people’s lives than he is a star of his own. However, as Danny Says starts screening in the UK, his rich, historically and culturally significant personal archive has been purchased

by Yale University and he is about to have a collection of his photographs put together for an exhibition. It seems that 2015 may be the year that people begin to know the story of Danny Fields.

As our conversation wraps up, I try to get him to pick out a highlight or two of his time shaping the story of rock’n’roll and punk.

“The Grateful Dead at midnight at the Fillmore, on acid.You’d go in when it was dark and leave when it was morning. They’d play for five hours or so. That was memorable. We were transported.” He says it was almost as memorable as the musical explosions that took place in ’66 and ’67. “Every band and every album sounded different – you were drowning in riches. It was glorious. I think it was a high point – in the next thirty years that I was in the music business there were never years like that. The harder psychedelic drugs were coming in and that period was golden to me. Nothing could ever be that rich. I think it’s going to take another 50-100 years time to figure out why there was such creativity then.”

Good Times Bad Times Titus Andronicus have made a 90-minute rock opera of manic depression.

It’s Patrick Stickles’ reminder that he’s in charge Pho togr ap hy: guy e pp el / wri ter: a lex wisg a rd

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atrick Stickles is two months shy of his thirtieth birthday, but the way he talks falls somewhere between a crotchety grandpa, aVietnam vet, and Henry Rollins. His world weary attitude and Marlboro Man voice makes him sound like he’s Seen Some Shit; the only vocal concession he makes to being in his twenties is the occasional “suresies” when he agrees with you, or frequent “y’know” when a pause for thought won’t do. In conversation and on record he’s selfaware, self-lacerating, and generally funny as hell – Stickles claims the photoshoot which accompanies this interview was a deliberate reenactment of the last photo session the band did, before deadpanning: “that’s called branding, Alex.”

Yet he doesn’t laugh once during our conversation, and it’s kinda disarming. There are also moments when I can’t tell how intentionally funny he’s being. His old soul gives him a tendency to refer to his fans as “the kids,” and himself as “the artist.”

At one point, he asks me wryly to make him “look really cool in the article” so he can “keep doing it for that much longer.”That is the unspoken journalist/musician contract – but an uncomfortable point to make directly, mid-interview.

Stickles is also two months off the release of Titus Andronicus’s fourth album, released (not unintentionally) on his birthday. ‘The Most Lamentable Tragedy’ is a ninety-three minute rock opera, split into five acts à la Shakespeare, and isn’t a work to be taken lightly. Our conversation, his first step back on the promotional treadmill, runs for almost as long as the album.

“This is gonna be pretty crucial, y’know,” he warns me by way of introduction. “The questions that you ask me now, the bearings that they might have on future questions. So let’s be very careful…”

‘The Most Lamentable Tragedy’ isn’t Titus Andronicus’s first endeavour towards full-blown concept album territory. 2010’s ‘The Monitor’ – to my ear, still the best rock and roll record of this young century – charted Stickles’ post-college escape from New Jersey, through the filter of the American Civil War. But an undertaking like ‘…

Tragedy’, along with a coinciding

video for each track, was allegedly a little too much for the band’s old label.

XL, or “Extra Large Recordings,” as Stickles puts it with an inscrutable mix of irreverence and respect, didn’t even release their last LP in the UK. Stickles professes “a lot of love” for his former paymasters. “I hope we can keep a good relationship together for the kids – and by that, I mean the three records we put out with them, which I have got, like, weekend visitation rights at best. I’m like the fuckin’ deadbeat dad, the record company is the beleaguered mom. Dad didn’t fuckin’ deliver, he was supposed to put bread on the table, it didn’t happen somehow, he was sleeping or fucked up somewhere.”

When I ask where Merge, the indie rock institution financing this grand act of folly, fits into this analogy, he ponders for a moment. “Merge is probably more of like a parole officer or social worker or something like that. The old record company was more like my dad – all business, no fuckin’ bullshit. My mom was more permissive, new age leaning, kinda let me do what I want sort of vibe. That’s more like Merge, I guess.

“I come to them with these plans,” he goes on, “and rather than say all the reasons why you shouldn’t do it, or can’t do it, we’re working together to make it all real. I’m learning to love again, to love a new record company. At first it’s a little bit scary, but they’re very understanding, wonderful people.”

I put this to Merge co-founder Laura Ballance, who is slightly taken aback by the comparison. “I hate to think we feel like parole officers to him!” she writes. “Patrick is very ambitious and has a lot of great ideas. I think he has eventually talked himself out of executing all of them more than we have. We seem to have a very similar sense of… budgetary propriety. Even when he has really grand marketing ideas. He is not thinking we are just going to jump in and fork over half a million dollars to make a video for the entire album. He wants to do stuff on the cheap. This band is DIY and punk rock to their core.”

But so are Merge, whose ethos Stickles has great admiration for. “They were built from the first day on principles about the autonomy of the

artist. It might not set the whole world on fire, it might not create a great consensus, but hopefully, if you have reasonable expectations and you try to live within your means just a little bit, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to reach enough of the right people to make it a worthwhile adventure and investment for everybody.”

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lthough it has a beginning, middle and end, it’s hard to explain what the real “plot” of ‘The Most Lamentable Tragedy’ is. Ballance tells me that Patrick’s initial attempt to explain the record involved “diagrams on a whiteboard,” and “may have taken as long as the album is for him to explain it.”

As far as I can make out, it begins on a morning – the key refrain of its first vocal track, ‘No Future Part IV: No Future Triumphant’, is “I hate to be awake” – and follows its hero through a cycle of his depression, on a journey from being a ‘Lonely Boy’ (“OUR HERO!”, as the lyric sheet would have it) to being a ‘Stable Boy’. The manic side of his depression eventually manifests itself as a real-life doppelganger to the main character (“WHO IS THIS I SEE TRYING ON MY FACE?” Stickles screams on ‘Lookalike’) before overturning his life and disappearing, leaving the hero to try and pick up the pieces.

If this makes the album seem mired in pretention, you’d only be half-right.

Song for song, ‘TMLT’ is probably Titus Andronicus’s strongest set of material, and certainly its most varied. There are instrumental and ambient interludes, thirty-second hardcore blasts, two tracks cracking the nine-minute mark, and some of the band’s most straightforward hooks to date. There is a sense of maturity and assurance to ‘…Tragedy’ which is missing from the band’s earlier records, whilst still being as far-reaching as an album of its size and scale has to be.

Late in the conversation, Stickles references a manifesto by the comic illustrator James Kochalka, entitled Craft Is the Enemy. On reading it, one sentence stands out in relation to

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Stickles’ plans for his band’s new record – “When you’re shooting for immortality, anything less than stunning achievement is a failure.”

There’s even a silent, seventy-sevensecond intermission. “Sometimes, when you’re experiencing a piece of art, you should take a minute and think about what just happened,” he explains.

“You can’t just voraciously consume this stuff – it’s not junk food.You should be thinking about it while you’re doing it. If I, as the artist, think you should just sit and think about it for 77 seconds, then you should trust me.”

Even the length of this silence is mired in significance. “The number seven is a very powerful number in Titus Andronicus numerology. It’s one of those things that I’ve hidden for people who are interested. None of that stuff probably means anything to most of your readers, and maybe it shouldn’t. But if the Rolling Stones had a mystical numerological system, I would wanna know everything about it. Not that it means anything…it means a lot if I say it does, in my little universe, and that’s why I’m inviting you and all the other people that might be inclined to study these kinds of things.

“I’ve got a lot of interest in a lot of different kinds of rock and roll songs, y’know, not just hardcore punk,” Stickles disclaims. “I tried to let the concept guide my decision making process as I went about doing my usual routine of trying to write the perfect…,” Stickles pauses to imply air quotes, “…‘rock anthem’. So in my case, writing a rock opera – rather than saying, “what in the entire world can I say on top of this stupid little riff?” I’m saying, y’know, I have a rock opera that I wanna write, and I know that there needs to be these moments in it – I don’t know what they would sound like, but the action needs to move along, and I need to explore all these different angles of this situation.”

He goes on to list an assortment of unexpected influences on the record: Billy Joel (whose work I plead ignorance to, which Stickles urges me to rectify immediately) inspired him to revise his lyrics for the first time, whilst the Celtic-leaning likes of Big Country, The Waterboys and The Proclaimers loom large over a clutch of tracks which take place as part of a dream

sequence, set in Ireland a hundred years ago. “I probably could have done a better job of pointing [that] out somewhere along the line,” he explains, “but you can help me with it now.”

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he biggest outlier on the record, and which in any other time may even have become something of a breakout hit, is ‘Come On, Siobhán’, a deliriously romantic three minutes which takes more than a few cues from Dexys Midnight Runners. “I definitely spent a little time with their greatest hits,” Stickles admits.

The track then segues into a searing punk rendition of The Pogues’ ‘A Pair of Brown Eyes’ – a surprising choice, given the contentious history between the two bands. Titus Andronicus supported the Pogues on an American tour in 2011, and Stickles berated the band in the press for “never [taking] the time to introduce themselves or watch any of our performances.” It’s a tirade he now regrets.

“Not to discredit my younger self,” he tells me apologetically, “but I’ve learned certain things about the industry since then that have given me a different perspective. A lot of the stuff that I said was true, but that idealistic young guy went away a long time ago.

I can’t answer for all the things that I’ve said in my whole life, because it feels like lifetimes ago. But I’ll say this – they are one of the greatest bands ever, and one of the formative influences on this band, and I would prefer, if the narrative of our two bands needs to

overlap in the future, that that be the thing that people remember.”

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he trickiest part of trying to parse the album’s narrative is how closely interwoven it is with Stickles’ own experiences, no matter how many times he refers to the album as a work of fiction. “Every album that we ever did,” he explains, “the lyrics and stuff was about just whatever the big thing in my life at that time was in the previous year or two years from the time when we made it.”

This time around, The Big Thing was a debilitating bout of depression, which hit around the release of Titus Andronicus’s 2012 album ‘Local Business’, and subsequently “coming to this understanding of myself, flawed as it is.” Depression is a subject on which Stickles is remarkably candid in conversation. “You sorta live two lives certain times out of the year. This one side of myself is the person that got me everything. And that’s given me the only life that I imagine I could fuckin’ stand, where I basically get to do what I want – I’m an artist, and I just have to make art. What a lucky fuckin’ life that is. And there have been times where I’ve been more than optimistic – where I’ve been arrogant, if not completely megalomaniacal. So that is one side of the person that I am. That would really make it seem that this person is really good, if you compare it to the other side of myself, which doesn’t have anything to say, which doesn’t want to do anything, wishes

the whole world would just go away for a good chunk.

“This is the central conflict of my life, because the sick thing about it is the thing that ruins everything is that the person who is able to come up with all these ideas, and puts on a good show for the kids, is also the person who did every fuckin’ asshole thing that I ever did. When that person gets put to bed, you put the artist to bed too. It’s just a fact of life. So I came to realise that about myself, probably about three years ago, and what am I going to do? Write some little trite thirty-minute thing about it like it doesn’t mean anything? Nuts to that.

So I said I’ll write a rock opera about this, if I ever get the will to write another song. And that’s what I did, because life lets you off!”

Stickles talks about this with a deep sense of regret, but he’s clearly worked out how to come to terms with his conflicting selves. Both sides of him are all over the album, with almost every manic track having a depressive counterpart. Even the Irish-set dream sequence tracks serve the theme of mental illness – “beyond being dream sequences, they’re actually past life transgressions…uh, regressions.

There’s plenty of transgressions back there in past lives.”

Stickles describes these dream sequences as “a way to discuss how most people that suffer from those sorts of things can point to a bunch of people somewhere in their family history, or in the history of their race – the Irish race in my case. If you had some sort of crazy relative, you would never ever find out about that, because that person

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would have died, or gone on to live in some kind of awful institute or something. And once they were gone, probably nobody would talk about them. That stuff, even up to this very day, is all just swept under the rug, and it’s not part of life, because people can’t deal with it. They’re ashamed, and they think it’s a real besmirchment on their family and stuff.”

Back in the present, there is the small matter of the album’s lead single.

One of the fastest tracks on ‘…

Tragedy’, and certainly its wordiest, ‘Dimed Out’ has Stickles spitting out what seems like every thought in his head, charting the dangerous peak of the character’s manic upswing. The frontman tells me that that song “says that you can’t have everything in the whole world all the time,” before presenting the duality as Stickles’Third Law of Emotion: “It would be inappropriate to present those sorts of sentiments without equal or opposite sentiments about the other part of life – like, you have to pay for all that stuff.

If you have both of those two things, that’s real life, right?

“It’s like ‘The River’ by Bruce Springsteen – do you have him in England?” he questions, cautious after my earlier obliviousness to the work of W. Joel. “I never liked it that much – now I can sort of see why it’s good.

And the reason that it’s good to me,” a reason which he credits the 33 1/3 book on ‘Born in the USA’ for pointing out, “is because ‘Born to Run’ is just hopeless romanticism, and ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ is nothing but bleak despair – no hope at all. Neither of those is a realistic facsimile of life,

because in life you have good times and bad. On ‘The River’, The Boss created a large enough universe that it could encompass all those multitudes, and put up really goofy, fun party songs next to the same kind of bleak despairing stuff he was doing before, and each one is more powerful because of the contrast.

“That’s where the power comes from, because if you’ve just got one fuckin’ bleak, horrible thing after another, what do you have to compare it to? But when you have a song that is really devastating, and it comes right after the beautiful uplifting feeling of the thing that came right before, it’s that much more devastating. We all live with knowing that the world isn’t like that, but what hurts is when we forget for a second and we think that the world is a nice place. Then that hope gets snatched away from us one way or another, and the world reminds you that you’re still not in charge, and you’re still just a fuckin’ plaything of the benign indifference of the universe, like my man Albert Camus said. That’s it – trying to pull the listener along – classic bait and switch. It would be corny if it didn’t all happen to me. I’m trying to fool the listener the way I fooled my own self.”

If you can bring yourself to sit through ‘The Most Lamentable Tragedy’ in one go, it’s exhausting, but ultimately revelatory. It’s also not for the faint of heart. Such a dense, monolithic work made me think of The Wire creator David Simon’s response to his critics when he was accused of making his show wilfully impenetrable: “Fuck the casual viewer,” he complained to The Culture Show in 2008.

“If you’re a writer, do you want a casual reader? I don’t want those people. I’m throwing them back, like little fish on a hook.”

I put this remark to Stickles, who jumps at the chance to agree, and at some length. “I do wanna put people off. I wanna put off people who think that the band is some kind of hypermasculine-frat-boy-bro-geezer-gang.

What’s the incentive to try and attract these looky-loos, and these people who’ve got the fuckin’ wrong idea, or the people who just wanna get hammered? They’re tangential to the art, at best. And their support is fleeting, and not substantial. Better to get rid of them. ‘The Process of Weeding Out’, Black Flag calls it.

“It’s also a way to get out in front of commonly accepted ideas about what music’s supposed to be in 2015, y’know? People that would pick apart

a piece of art for a fuckin’ arbitrary reason such as ‘Oh, it’s too long, I got bored halfway through it,’ I would love for those people to not apply. So here’s 93 minutes and if you want to say it’s too long, well no shit it is! I’m trying to create a very specific sort of thing that communicates very clearly that the artist is in charge, and the artist isn’t trying to kiss anybody’s ass. That the artist isn’t trying to fit anybody’s mould of the perfect, well-behaved little content-machine that bands are forced to be, if they want to survive.”

And whilst Stickles doesn’t regard the band’s earlier work as mere juvenilia, he does give the sense that there is some sort of line in the sand between his work to date and this new album. “You kinda have to start all over again when you get depressed for a long time – finally one wonderful day, you just have a little tiny bit more strength, and you have to learn how to love life again. It makes me very alienated from my younger self.”

Despite this alienation, Stickles insists that his relationship to his older material hasn’t changed. “At the concert, our songs are just the material

for a celebration that is ultimately, and inherently, joyous. Onstage, even the most personal song to me, most of the time, is not that much more personal than ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ – because I’ve sung it a million times, for one thing, it’s just syllables. The fact that the content is somewhat despairing makes the rejoicing all the more powerful, because of that dichotomy. It becomes more like a mantra, inner peace kind of thing – more like reading from The Bible.”

That divide has always been there in Titus Andronicus’s songs, and it’s particularly pronounced in the most euphoric parts of their music – those rousing singalongs of lines like “You will always be a loser,” “Your life is over,” and, of course, “The enemy is everywhere.” Stickles sees this as akin to lighting a candle over cursing the darkness. “That’s how you ultimately defeat those sorts of feelings, even for just a tiny little moment. Just like we said about the stigmatisation and whitewashing of mental illness throughout history, these are feelings that don’t get discussed. People think that if other people knew about them,

“You can’t just voraciously consume this stuff – it’s not junk food”

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they would laugh, if not beat the shit out of them. So those sorts of things become very poisonous when you keep them inside for too long. But when you can let them out, you’re turning poison into medicine.”

Stickles credits his one-off collaboration with Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo – who also, coincidentally, tried his hand at writing a rock opera as his thirtieth birthday loomed – as a particularly eye-opening stage in his artistic development. “He stops every day at 4pm, because he goes to the gym. Then he goes home and spends time with his family. That’s how you do it when you’re a grown up rock star and you wanna have it all – be an artist and have a stable life at home. It seems like a crazy idea to me.

“The flattering thing about it all is that they recorded like 200 songs for that album, so when I went more than three years without hearing anything about the song, I thought it was just a dream! I beat out 189 other songs, so that feels good. It’s just a reminder that if you really want to be an artist, you’ve got to do it all the time – until it’s time to go to the gym. And I’ll admit with some shame that, for way too much of my life, I slacked in my discipline at being an artist, and forgot what a great gift it was to get to be an artist.

“Lil Wayne is another example. He doesn’t step up to the mic and say, ‘Oh, but I don’t wanna, I don’t have anything to say.’ You’ve got to find something to say every time. If you want to really be the greatest, if you wanna run the game, you’d better be ready to do this. Like me with this interview. On any old Wednesday at noon, do I want to go off on an eightyminute spiel about all the themes and stuff? It doesn’t matter. I have to do it.

If you want to do it at three in the morning, I have to be ready to go. I am the artist. Just watch me, y’know?”

Patrick Stickles sees his work with Titus Andronicus as part of a long lineage, and doesn’t take his artistic responsibilities lightly. There’s no part of him that sees ‘The Most Lamentable Tragedy’ as ‘only rock’n’roll’. “It’s just working to pay the debt to all the people that did that for me. I used to think I was totally all alone in the world, and now the kids do a lot to show me that my feelings are not weird or shameful. They’re totally fuckin’ normal, and I wanna do the same thing for them. I mean, what the fuck else are you going to do to find any comfort in this confusing and scary universe, right? Art, Alex. It’s art.”

No Hard Feelings EZRA FURMAN has come to accept that without his religious beliefs and sexual ambiguity he wouldn’t have been able to make his best record yet

I’ve tried my best, through capital letters, italics, and scattergun punctuation to capture the cadence of a conversation with Ezra Furman. For it can be quite a ride. There are, for a start, a lot of pauses. Long pauses and long stares into space. And yet, each time I start to think that a question has run its course and Furman has given me everything he has to say on a matter, he’ll spring back into life, his rhythm quickened with staccato bursts of forthright views and nuggets of insight. Luckily, it doesn’t take long to settle into Furman’s tempo and I’m glad for it, because there’s an awful lot of wisdom in that 28-year-old head.

While he flits between seemingly contradictory meditations on music, sexuality, gender, it is only because his determination to tell the truth is so deeply entrenched. He often, therefore, discloses everything as he clutches to put into words exactly what he feels. It’s a quality that has begun to feed his songwriting, too, as Furman is slowly morphing into the poet laureate of uncertainty; a champion of the admission that we don’t and can’t know anything for sure.

As he emerges, sweaty, from the sound check for him and his band’s, The Boyfriends, final engagement in a string of European gigs, I start by asking if the tour is going well. A relatively straightforward question, or so I thought. “Yes,” he answers quickly, but something seems to hang in the air. “Are you sure?” I inquire, and I’m met with the first of those pauses. “I’m not sure, no.” He sighs, avoiding eye contact. “All tours are enjoyable and all tours are… hard.” Far from insolence, it’s clear that Furman’s silences allow him to choose his responses carefully and, when he does answer, he does so with an honesty that is disarming and refreshing. “I think most of all not having time alone. I never have time alone. And I need it, I’m just one of those people who need it. In fact, I think everyone needs it, actually.”

It is only when I ask if he lives alone

that he gets coy; understandable for a man who has struggled to deal with his sexuality since childhood. “No. I live with a significant other and a friend. I’m comfortable with my band too but even when I’m at home I close the door.” Aside from the obvious lack of personal space, touring also gets in the way of another important cornerstone of Furman’s life: his faith.

“I pray also. I’m a pray-er. So it’s hard to fit it in when you have to stay up late, get up early and get in the car immediately.” He smiles, and he seems unburdened by any previous baggage he might have felt around his religion.

In past interviews he has been more circumspect about his beliefs, seemingly paranoid about how fans and the press might interpret it. It doesn’t, after all, fit neatly with the rock star narrative.

One thing I note is that Furman fidgets with a flyer for tonight’s gig throughout our conversation and I wonder how seeing himself staring back from every table in the room makes him feel. “I have no… it’s fine.”

He looks down at the picture of himself, clad in what has become his trademark dress, pearls and lipstick, and a smile spreads across his face. “I don’t look too bad! I don’t get weirded out by people seeing me, or I don’t get nervous being in front of a large audience or anything like that.

Numbers of people I’m exposed to is not what bothers me, it’s more fear of failure, no matter how many people are watching.” And it’s then that we hit upon a key driver of Furman’s. It’s easy for artists to wax lyrical about their inspirations, but it’s telling that he is motivated by something altogether darker: plain and simple failure, not doing something as well as he knows he can. “Of performing and also some sort of fear of… well, I’ve got more control over making a good record. It’s more qualitative failure, especially performing when it doesn’t go right, or I’m not fully there or things go horribly wrong. That’s what I fear;

broken strings. I mean, it’s always OK but what really crushes me is if I know it could’ve been better.”

It reminds me of an interview with Furman that I read after the release of his last album, 2013’s ‘Day of the Dog’.

In it, he was at pains to point out how disappointed he was with the thing that he was promoting. He didn’t think the record was bad but rather that it could have been better. So what about his latest offering? “I dunno. I really like it. I am disappointed, for sure – I wanted to make the greatest album ever made, you know?” He stares, this time straight at me, as if to underline his conviction. “And I don’t think I did that. And yet I think it’s probably the best record I’ve ever made, and I like my other records so that’s positive.” He trails off, eyes flitting around as though they might come across just the right words. “I sometimes like to be positive in public, or proclaim my greatness, just because I think that’s a good thing to do. I like when people fearlessly

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proclaim their greatness. And I am truly, truly great, but in my head I don’t pat myself on the back. I’ve got very high standards, am very competitive and am very discerning. Internally, I dream really, really big – absurdly big.

And so I’m pretty disappointed in this album…” I could count to ten as he searches for the words to wrap it up.

“BUT… I also really like it!”

And so he should. ‘Perpetual Motion People’, due out on 6th July via Bella Union, is not only by far his best work to date but one of the albums of the year. A mix of 50s rock’n’roll and classic ’70s punk with a smattering of ’90s grunge and indie, it is a series of up front confessionals on its creator’s grapples with love, sexuality, femininity, faith and depression.

Crucially, it is the sound of Furman getting to grips with who he is as a human being, and yet he is quick to spurn any praise for its honesty.

“There’s still more dishonesty deep in me, and duplicity. I think it’s more of a

Photogra phy: phil shar p / writer: david zammitt

life long process. It’s probably easier to write about it for you as this guy resolved the contradictions in his life but it’s not like that.”

What is striking about the album’s themes and lyrics is how confident they are in asserting dualities. Sick of trying to be one thing or another, many of the songs play with the contradictions that make up Furman’s character, his life to date and the human nature in general. “That’s more of a recent thing for me. I’ve made some real leaps forward in the past two years in terms of being real, I guess.

Being unafraid to talk about God and to be openly and proudly religious, for example. And then performing femininity has kind of blossomed in the last couple of years. For most of my life I’ve been very closeted and hoping that the fact that I’m bisexual and not very into masculinity would just… go away. I was like, ‘Maybe I’ll just ignore this problem.’” He convulses with laughter at the thought. “Maybe I’ll

just get along with all the bros – all my bro-ey pals. But that was toxic and it distorts you to feel like you’re sort of lying to everyone about… everything.”

He stops, as if coming down from the laughter, and adopts a decidedly more sober tone. “But I dunno. This ambiguity – I’ve always been drawn to people who have this ambiguity who are not totally on one cultural team. I was inspired when I was a teenager by Lou Reed especially because he just seemed radically free of definition. His sexuality was very ambiguous, his status of making art music, he just threw that out and then went very traditional with sweet, straight ahead rock’n’roll. And that’s been me. Even just in mild ways.” He cites examples from his childhood where he refused to let his perceived difference prevent him from being involved in the seemingly conflicting worlds he liked to inhabit. “Like in high school I was really involved in the Jewish youth group, I was super into punk rock and

I didn’t drink or do drugs. I found this way of sliding from team to team. And I remained the same person each place that I went. I didn’t start wearing safety pins, you know? And it’s only recently that I’ve started to feel integrated or whole, and I think the new record’s reflective of that.”

What’s even more prominent on this LP is the self-assurance of Furman’s delivery. Tracks like ‘Ordinary Life’ and ‘Body Was Made’ are almost instructional, warning others of falling into the same traps of uncertainty that marred much of his early adult life. “I have a drive – in times that I’ve suffered to the degree I’ve suffered and struggled with things like social rejection and self rejection and mental illness – and when it’s been really bad, something I keep in mind is that your suffering is kind of what makes you – or can make you – useful to other people in pain. Hard times can produce a compassionate person if you let them. I’ve relied on despatches from people who’ve been through some shit so I’d like to be that to somebody else.”

However, despite admitting to having both good and bad days, Furman is strong in his assertion that he wouldn’t want to get rid of these frictions, even if he could. “It’s true that I’m driven by some unresolved tensions and that’s where these songs come from, I guess. Negative feelings aren’t bad – it’s the way we react to them. If you take your negative feelings or depression and just invite it in and let it have its moment and let go of it, you might not have to drink all week or lash out at other people or freak out and say, ‘Why am I feeling this way?

I’m not supposed to be feeling that way.’ Sadness is good and it’s an indispensable part of life.”

I congratulate him on reaching some kind of peace but he’s quick to point out that those underlying tensions are far from resolved, nice as that thought may be. “Well, yeah. I’m feeling good today, that doesn’t

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mean… In fact yesterday would’ve been a much darker interview.” A little under 24 hours earlier he had been on stage in Manchester and I point out that every review I read was overwhelmingly positive. Still, the feeling of having to go on stage when his mood is low hits hard. “It’s really, really bad. It makes everything else worse. Actually – that’s not true.

Knowing I have to go on stage in ten minutes, that’s the worst thing. But then you go on stage and you know you’ve got a job to do and you know how to do it. It’s something to focus on.” He reveals the rollercoaster of emotions and seesaw of positive and negative thoughts, which follow him with a string of buts. “But then if it doesn’t go so well, it’s a downward spiral.” He lets out a deep breath. “But then you wake up the next day and you go to London!” Finally, he concludes, “But no, Manchester actually went well.”

While he’s looking forward to getting on a plane home in the morning, it’s clear that the tour and indeed 2015 in general has gone well so far. “I already feel successful this year. Preparing for this tour we’ve gotten better as a band. Our shows have gotten better. I’d really like to expand it and make a leap forward as a live band, shaping our performances. I think we’ve gone past, ‘Here’s a song.

It’s done. Here’s another song. It’s done.’ We’re getting a little fancy in the right ways. There’s a little drama.

There’s a little more theatre; just a little bit.” And what if he could have anything at all? “Well, I don’t wanna die… I want to go to services on all the major Jewish holidays!”

Some kind of rawness On her new, fifth album, Norwegian artist and musician Jenny Hval is exploring feminism from a personal angle P hotogra ph y: T ommy larsen / writer: j ames f. t h om p son

“A

t night, I watch people fucking on my computer,” Jenny Hval whispers on the title track of her fourth LP, ‘Innocence is Kinky’. “Nobody can see me looking anyway,” she adds, for added creepiness. It’s an oft-quoted couplet but one that perfectly encapsulates one of the Norwegian’s principal preoccupations within music: the exploration of gender politics and her own sexuality under the unfettered male gaze.

Starting out as the vocalist for goth-metal outfits like Shellyz Raven in her teens before putting out two albums under the moniker Rockettothesky, for the past few years Hval – now using her real name – has released a stream of off-kilter folk, electronica and rock that’s served to

realign perceptions of music as a platform for discussing and dissecting female sexual identity. Unflinchingly confrontational, the 34 year-old deploys direct language, colourful characters and vividly-imagined scenes (“I arrived in town with an electric toothbrush pressed against my clitoris,” she sings on ‘Engines in the City’), to challenge gendered orthodoxies and lazy preconceptions in the bedroom and beyond.

Living in a small town in Norway’s Bible Belt, Hval was confronted by many of these growing up. “I wasn’t from a religious family and I never really was religious,” she says on a call from her Oslo home with a slight, soft Australian twang, the result of a stint studying creative writing and

performance in Melbourne in the mid-noughties along with a concerted effort to lose her natural accent. “So I kind of hated all that.”

Hearing the androgynous music of the likes of Jimmy Somerville (Bronski Beat) throughout her 1980s childhood, Hval soon set up her stall in opposition to the deeply entrenched gender and family roles that she found herself surrounded by. “I would always be different or wanting to be different from the other girls in the group who were discussing marriage, having kids and that kind of thing; stuff that I was very much not interested in,” she remembers. Gospel music and other religious trappings, though, were impossible to avoid: “I had to listen to all these gospel songs even if I really

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hated – or pretended to hate – them. I think they stuck with me though and I guess I was more influenced by all of it than I wanted to ever admit.”

Ironically though, until now Hval has tended to avoid directly referencing her own formative experiences of feminism in her music. ‘Innocence is Kinky’, for instance, instead soaks up influences ranging from the brutal crimes of Norwegian mass-murderer Andews Breivik through to silent film, Paris Hilton’s infamous 2004 sex tape and the local version of American reality TV export Teen Mom. All the same though, the songwriter frequently uses her music as a platform to explore feminist themes and initiate an honest dialogue around them.

“It’s important to allow people to

disagree with your idea of any ideology, because – and I kind of love it – I’m part of a discussion and part of a very plural voice. Sometimes if you say you work with feminist themes, or you’re a feminist or whatever, it means that you have to always speak for everybody. I want my voice to not be for one specific and gendered group. I want to be just one individual in part of a long and fluid discussion with lots and lots of people who will disagree with me, or agree with me, or whatever.”

Later this month Hval releases ‘Apocalypse, Girl’ via Sacred Bones.

“Think big, girl, like a king, think kingsize,” proffers opening track ‘Kingsize’; a rousing call to arms from Danish poet Mette Moestrup. Produced

by Norwegian noise legend Lasse Marhaug and again featuring bandmates Håvard Volden and Kyrre Laastadalong, plus collaborations with people like Thor Harris (Swans), the record couples gorgeous, looped synth and harp melodies with intimate tales of desire and vulnerability delivered with Hval’s soaring, mellifluous voice.

A good deal less abrasive and confrontational than its predecessor (though no more radio-friendly, Hval insists, courtesy of a cavalcade of “cunts” in the lyrics), ‘Apocalypse, Girl’ makes for an accessible introduction to an otherwise slightly intimidating oeuvre.

From the outset, Hval was determined to move beyond the stylistic template established with ‘Innocence is Kinky’. “I actually had, quite early on, a title for a project that I knew wouldn’t last: it was ‘Ruining My Reputation’, she laughs. “The starting point wasn’t so much to change my perspective from ‘Innocence’ as to kind of just ruin what it is to be an artist in terms of identity.

There was this kind of death drive, you know; the death of the artist.”

One catalyst for this artistic Harikiri was Retromania, an excellent rumination on pop culture’s so-called addiction to its own past by British journalist and musicologist Simon Reynolds. In his book, Reynolds warns of the prevalence of retro-fetishism as stymieing pop music’s future. For Hval, the tome was something of a wake-up call: “It made me think a lot about what being an artist is like today and how it feeds into a modern or post-modern capitalist exchange and being part of that machine.”

As a result, she took a radically

different approach to building the new record, eschewing guitars and starting with simple pre-made songs that were bundled with her music software, using these as canvasses for her vocals (“An awful karaoke purge,” she jokes), along with adding layers of additional loops and sounds. Hval also focused on field recordings, capturing the ambient noise of different rooms and outside locations before mixing these into tracks. Ultimately, she and Marhaug clocked up around five months in the studio.

Yet it’s lyrically where ‘Apocalypse, Girl’ represents the biggest step forward from what’s gone before. Hval moves away from character constructions as a means of exploring themes and instead towards an auto-biographical approach that draws far more of the songwriter’s own experiences into the music. It’s a brave decision, albeit one that was probably necessary.

“I think that I got very tired of the essay-like exploration of the ‘gaze’ that I was drawn to in the ‘Innocence’ composition,” she says. “When I released that record I felt like, I have to do something else now. So there’s a kind of emotional core to [‘Apocalypse, Girl’] which is very different to ‘Innocence’ and I would say that to me it feels more vulnerable to perform this album. I allowed myself to do something that I’ve never really allowed myself to do before, which is write myself into the music to a great degree.

“I think the auto-biographical reference framework is something that

I’ve avoided because I’ve learned that it’s a cliché and it belongs to certain genres that I have been kind of afraid of... I’m not the kind of writer that will stop with some narrative voice. I just can’t stay there. When I start playing music and kind of write in this spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness way that I often do when I write, it just doesn’t stay there. I can’t write that ‘photograph’ of myself as a child or something. It goes into different things than it would if I started off with this like essay-like observational mode. So for me [the writing process for the new record] was great; it was some kind of rawness.”

Of all the tracks on the album, ‘Heaven’ is perhaps the most tangibly personal, recalling Hval’s time in a church choir. She marvels – perhaps jealously – at the devotion of everybody around her, before switching to the present. “I’m 33 now, that’s Jesus’s age… I want to sing religiously,” she whispers during the song. I wonder, has Hval’s experience in the church had a more profound impact on the rest of her music than she’s letting on?

“I find this very weird and I don’t know why I didn’t notice this before, but because I wasn’t part of these communities, I thought that it didn’t have an impact on me at all. Which is pretty funny,” she concedes. “But now I find it interesting how I rejected it and how I also maybe envied the collective; the devotional aspect of what the other kids had – and I didn’t – with religion.”

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One might wonder whether that title – ‘Apocalypse, Girl’ – represents another religious incursion on the album. In fact its roots lie at least partially within Safe, a 1995 drama by Todd Haynes that sees Julianne Moore’s unremarkable housewife develop multiple chemical sensitivity, essentially becoming allergic to modern life. Aerosols, exhaust fumes and all manner of other substances are suddenly off-limits.

It’s a far more frightening end-ofworld scenario than any overblown battle or macho narrative, says Hval.

“It’s the story of the ‘soft’ apocalypse – a really beautiful film but one that’s mainly about fear. To me it’s this wonderful mix of portraying a very subdued, very passive American LA housewife in the late eighties narrative of someone who’s living – or almost not living – and having her become allergic to modern life. You take away all the stuff that’s usually inside sci-fi movies but this is just stripped-down and all about fear. I also watched [Lars] von Trier’s Melancholia, which I sort of read very much in the same way. So all these fear and apocalyptic themes I found quite influential.”

Hval was so enthused with her latest filmic influences that she made a film of her own between recording sessions for the new album; a collage of favourite clips from across the web.

But the budding auteur still chose director and close friend Zia Anger to realise the video for new single ‘That Battle is Over’ – a sarcastic valedictory paean to victory in the battles for socialism and feminism. Anger does a fine job of warping scenes of female domesticity with Lynchian tropes like faded, soft-focus glamour and dimlylit rooms to lend an air of dreamy surrealism to proceedings.

The song itself peddles the shopworn idea that the feminist cause is redundant; that equality has been achieved and there’s nothing left to fight for. It’s a notion that infuriates Hval but one that she couldn’t ignore.

“When other people say things and you just disagree with them, you need to do something about it. You can’t just say you oppose it,” she insists. “You need to process it through your own prejudice.

There’s always something to battle in yourself and there’s always something to kill that’s been said out there. So I try to say these things and then kill them with sound that’s very dark… and with a long, brooding ending.”

Timeless Melodies Grimm Grimm wants to make space-folk that speaks to a feeling you once had

“Abandoned buildings make me very emotional,” says Koichi Yamanoha as he thoughtfully sips beer in a busy bar in Shoreditch. “It’s like the past, present and future all existing at the same time, and even though it now has no purpose, this house, office, apartment or whatever still exists. It’s quite brutal the way they are left there, broken.”

Sparse, mournful and in places starkly beautiful, Grimm Grimm’s debut album, ‘Hazy Eyes Maybe’, forms an almost perfect sonic companion piece for a visit to one of the fallen down buildings that its creator is so fond of. It’s no big surprise to find out that the music is at least in part inspired byYamanoha’s fascination with deserted places. “I went to four or five countries to visit ruins” he continues, “I wanted to do field recordings, where I go there and play a toy piano or guitar and try and capture the atmosphere of these places” Yamanoha; who is London-based but a Tokyo native, is probably best known for being one third of cult psychedelic punks Screaming Tea Party.

Deciding to call it a day in 2010, he has spent the last few years running club nights, helping out friend’s bands like Proper Ornaments and The Go Team and perfecting the sounds that would eventually become Grimm Grimm.

“Screaming Tea Party was full of a lot of strong personalities,” he explains when we talk about his former band’s split. “The songwriting was still there, but being in a band for me is almost jumping off a cliff together – you have to completely trust each other in everything. I feel like I’m standing in a different place now, like I’m still jumping off the cliff, but I’m doing it by myself now.”

In many ways Grimm Grimm represents almost the polar opposite to the chaotic noise that put Screaming Tea Party on the map. Due for release on ATP Recordings in the summer, ‘Hazy Eyes Maybe’ represents a much more pastoral and considered take

on psychedelia. A squall of differing and often seemingly contradictory influences, it resonates with the melancholic beauty of Nico and the wide-eyed optimism of The Beatles during the height of their ‘Sgt. Pepper’ pomp, while being held together with the odd baroque flourish and classic pop hook. It’s a collection of songs that seem to warp and mutate every time you listen to them, morphing from Joe Meek to Brian Wilson like the shards of glass in a kaleidoscope.

It may be a radical departure in both sound and feel from Screaming Tea Party, but Yamanocha still sees a lot of continuity between his new work with Grimm Grimm and his previous band. “Screaming Tea Party came from a love of punk, so the music was pretty straight forward but the lyrics were quite abstract and sometimes very personal,” he says when I ask him what he feels are the major differences between the two projects. “I wanted to make something that was a lot more minimal, but even if the form is different, the process is almost the same. I just try to be honest with what I think and what I feel.”

Processes and techniques might stay the same, but it’s hard to deny that going solo is a very big jump from being in a band. Not only do you remove the emotional and artistic safety net that comes from being part of any collective endeavour, it also makes it very difficult to completely separate yourself from the output, with very few places to hide when it comes to questions about the intentions behind your music.

Yamanocha is quite literally in the spotlight these days, but he seems relatively undaunted by the pressure.

“It was a struggle to begin with,” he admits as we talk about how he has adapted to life as a one-man show, “for one thing it’s a lot different volumewise, so when I was I playing at a pub no one would listen. I was quite scared to play just by myself. You can’t hide

behind noisy guitars, and it’s quite worrying to think that every mistake you make people can hear. I saw this documentary about the Marx Brothers and Groucho Marx was saying how scary it was being on stage. Basically they had to make strangers laugh and he didn’t have any musical instrument to hide behind. They were naked and could easily fail. It really made me think, ‘fuck, I need to do something’.”

Another big adjustment that budding solo artists have to contend with is the loss of the positive atmosphere that is part and parcel of being in a band with like-minded people. While it can sometimes be tough to deal with the unavoidable disagreements and compromises, working in a unit does give you a ready-made soundboard for your ideas. You can bounce ideas off your band mates and edit down the things that aren’t exactly working. Even though the songs on ‘Hazy Eyes Maybe’ have been made with the input of various collaborators, including Le Volume Courbe, Serafina Steer and Bo Ningen, I’m still curious to find out how Yamanocha is coping without having the creative back and fourths that come from being in a band.

“It took a while to figure out. In a band, when things are going good it feels like there’s this chemistry, like you don’t know why, but you seem to be riding this wave of ‘magic’,” he confesses thoughtfully. “I found that you can get the same thing as a solo artist. When I listen to Graham, a pianist, even though he was playing by himself I could hear a whole orchestra because each note has lots of meaning.

Bands are the same, even if it’s loud, you have to make sure you mean it or people won’t connect with it.”

In spite of the challenges,Yamanocha has taken to being a solo artist like he’s been doing it all his life. Freed from the expectations that come from being in a group like Screaming Tea Party, this has allowed him to really rip up the

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Photogra phy: G em Harris / writer: dom haley

“Outsider Art is really pure and honest – like a child’s drawing” blueprint when it comes to making music. Dabbling in field recording, found sound, luscious psychedelic folk and even the odd bit of Baroque, David Bowie-esque pop, he seems determined to push the boundaries to what a solo performer can achieve.

One of the more intriguing elements of ‘Hazy Eyes Maybe’ are the subtle, almost chamber choir-like arrangements on songs like ‘Robert Downey Syndrome’ and ‘Transcript’.

Yamanocha’s eyes instantly light up

when I ask him about it; “I’ve always been influenced by classical music – I used to play violin and cello in an orchestra in Tokyo, but I couldn’t get along with the conductor so I quit and started to play guitar. I still listen to a lot of Bach and Haydn and I think subconsciously they’re always there.”

For all its experimental elements, the thing that keeps grabbing you about ‘Hazy Eyes Maybe’ is the strong sense of melody that seems to run through every song on the record. If

you scratched away at all the minimal noise and bizarre instrumentation, you’d still be left with a collection of pretty decent pop hooks. “I think on this album I wanted to write very straight-up pop songs,” remarks Yamanocha as we try and figure out the reason behind the album’s rich vein of melodic pop “You know, like the kind of songs you listen to when you’re 6 or 7 years old that you can’t ever seem to delete from your brain.

“I think that the strongest thing about a song is the melody – even when you’ve forgotten the words and can’t remember who wrote it, the melody always seems to remain. I remember when I was kid and I was in my mum’s car on the way to my grandmother’s house my mum played ‘Please, Please Me’ by the Beatles, and whenever I hear that song it always takes me back to that time. It’s not happy, it’s not sad, it’s more like déjà vu; a very deep connection. I wanted to make an album like that; one that is connected to a sense of feeling.”

The thoughts, ideas and sense of place that Grimm Grimm is trying to achieve are highly ambitious, but to Yamanocha at least, they represent a relentless and often brutal pursuit of something that is personally truthful.

With both our beers running low, the talk turns to one of the big, unsolvable problems that lies at the heart of a lot of indie music; namely how songs have to reconcile the tension between being having to work as ‘art’ with personal and sometimes very abstract intentions but also having to operate as entertainment that connects with listeners on some fundamental level.

“I think music and art can exist as one,” offers Yamanocha, almost without hesitating, “but it has to be honest when you do it. I saw this Japanese band recently at Cargo. It was amazing – the drummer was playing almost for the world. It was very funny, very intense, and actually quite shocking. When someone is giving

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everything on stage, they almost disappear from the stage and form a physical connection with the people watching. It takes you out of a way of viewing a band and makes it into something that is a lot more profound.”

This begs the obvious question – does Yamanocha always write with an audience in mind? He is quick to clarify that Grimm Grimm taps into something that is much more illdefined. “It’s strange – songs come to me almost at random. When I’m walking down the street or taking a shower, a melody will pop into my head. I have over 800 sound files on my computer and it would take so much time to listen to them all back, but a strong melody will always keep coming back. It’s odd, because when I try and write hooks, I can’t – it’s a very unreliable process, but I think a good song works like that though; it’s an emotional or subconscious thing.”

That is the strange, alluring power that lies at the heart of Grimm Grimm’s sound. There is something reassuringly universal about it.

Whether it’s abandoned buildings or a half-forgotten pop song, the music somehow manages to link you with a shared sense of experience and collective remembrance. “Even though I hate the term, I think it’s almost like outsider art,” explains Yamanocha.

“That stuff is really pure and honest – like a child’s drawing that is spontaneous and unpredictable but designed to be interacted with.

I think entertainment should be like that, if you do it for other people it can be bigger than yourself. You just have to find people that are ready to accept the message.”

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New HEALTH have recorded a new record inspired by modern hip-hop, high-end production and slamming electronics.

It’s a change of direction that certainly more accessible than the group’s atonal work in experimental thrash, but ‘Death Magic’ is also a heavy album that’s been coming since the band formed ten years ago

Rackets

P ho togr aph y: J e nn a Fox ton / wri te r: s tu a rt s tubbs

If you like HEALTH, there’s a good chance that you’ve been trying to push them on some of your friends perhaps since 2007. It hasn’t been easy, has it?

Try again after August 7 and you’ll almost certainly have better luck.

Habitually referred to as a noise band, HEALTH were so ensconced in LA’s mid-2000s DIY scene they recorded their debut album at The Smell – a downtown all-ages/nodrink-or-drugs venue that is to Los Angeles experimental punk music what The Hacienda was to acid house. Eight years after its release, ‘HEALTH’ is a strikingly original record of precise thrash that can only be described by the sum of its strange parts, and vaguely likened to Deerhoof and Japanese thunder drums band Boredoms. It’s a short, atonal album, made up of unidentified noise, occasional, ghosting vocals and what seems to be zero structure, chopped through with half-second silences.

It was recorded at night by a band without a clue but with an exact concept. Rats would run out from underneath The Smell’s stage. HEALTH would have to stop recording when the neighbouring gay bar’s reggaeton would register on their archaic soundboard. Every morning they’d have to step over a fresh turd as they left, which they wrote off as a joke by some local homeless guys. “One time they hid it under the lock and Jake touched it,” bassist John Famiglietti told me when I first met the band in 2008. “That was pretty funny.”

Two years later, HEALTH released ‘Get Color’. A note on its inner sleeve read: This record should be played at a minimum of 90DB. The Smell and its founding manager, Jim Smith, remained the first two acknowledgements on the thank you list, but the band had recorded their second album in a studio with a producer – Manny Nieto. There were more vocals and a noted move

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Please

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towards the verse/chorus structure, but ‘Get Color’ was still a noise record above anything else – Jake Duzsik’s disembodied vocals were still too indecipherable to sing along to; a recurring metallic grind still put your teeth on edge; the record was even louder.

There was an anomaly on‘Get Color’ though, and ‘Die Slow’ – released five month’s before the album – became its red herring. It’s an electronic banger.

Fans heard it following ‘HEALTH// DISCO’ – a remix LP of the group’s debut album that featured reworks from Pictureplane, Nosaj Thing and Crystal Castles – and presumed that HEALTH were sticking with dance music. Many welcomed the idea, too – a whole album of tracks that were just as heavy but made for boiler rooms in industrial clubs rather than DIY noise venues.

Six years later, HEALTH have made that album and called it ‘Death Magic’.

I

n 2009 I interviewed HEALTH for Loud And Quiet’s August cover feature. “There won’t be two years until the next record,” they told me.

“We’re going to shoot while we’re

hot.” Six years later, I arrange to meet the band in the lobby of The Princess Hotel, Barcelona, which lies at the bottom of a ramp near the sea. At the top of the ramp is the entrance to Primavera Sound. Once a year the hotel is block-booked by the festival’s organisers. Conducting interviews here is a blessing and a curse. It’s a convenient and glamorous location, but distracting for it’s proximity to the beach and the likelihood of bands bumping into old friends also on the bill. Most of the people inside are either jetlagged or hungover, and four of those people today are HEALTH. Singer Jake Duzsik is the latter.

He’s already been in town for a week, having spoken on a panel at the festival’s Pro conference – a programme of discussions about almost everything connected to the music industry, with a keynote speech this year from Steve Albini. Duzsik scores a milk of magnesia from someone he bumps into on our way in. The rest of the band (drummer Benjamin Jared Miller, bassist and electronics John Famiglietti and guitarist and more electronics Jupiter Keyes) flew in from Los Angeles last night. It makes for a fuzzy couple of hours, although the band are friendly and accommodating, even when we photograph them on a staircase overpowered by the smell of piss.

Occasionally the conversation slides into delirium, in that way it tends to between sleep-deprived friends, although, from my experience, HEALTH just communicate that way – or at least they do when there’s an outsider present.

As Duzsik says, there’s no good answer to why the band have taken six years to get ‘Death Magic’ together.

“It’s not like I’ve been in jail,” he says.

There have been rumours that the band are splitting up since promo for ‘Get Color’ wound down, but Miller puts that down to an over zealous fan called Logan tampering with Wikipedia and making himself the group’s drummer.

Largely, HEALTH got sidetracked writing the score for third-person video game Max Payne 3 – “A lot of hard work… for a really long time.”

The band say they wrote 67 hours of foreboding ambience for the game in total, all for vigilante Payne to drown out with rapid gunfire and ridiculous bloodshed.

“Ten people needed to say ok to everything,” says Famiglietti. “Like, if one out of ten say no, you’ve got to do it again. So they’d be like, ‘Greg from accounting thinks it should have more of this,’ and you have to do it again.”

“Probably not Greg from accounting…” says Duzsik.

Famiglietti: “Well, no, probably not Greg from accounting, but someone

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not in the music department.”

“Rockstar Games [the creators of Max Payne and also Grand Theft Auto] are like family to us, so we’d definitely do it again,” says Duzsik, “but at the same time we’d also be given these really funny notes. Our favourite one was when they said, ‘yeah, we’d like it to be something more remarkable.’ No shit!

Isn’t that the case with everything?

I guess that’s a euphemistic way of saying, ‘this is no good.’”

Famiglietti says the best thing about writing the Max Payne score was that it “delayed this white elephant of getting the sound right for this record.”

“We were very aware of the fact that we wanted to make it sound really… good,” says Duzsik. “‘Get Color’ was a noisy, punk rock kind of record – we wanted the fidelity of this one to be… we were pretty obsessed about getting the production right,” he says. “‘Get Color’ was not suppose to sound like it did,” says Famiglietti.

“We were trying to make something that sounded incredible. We got kind of burned by that experience – now it’s like, not on my watch; we’re not putting this out until we get it right.”

“Some people love the way that record sounds, because it sounds dirty and raw, but we were trying to make ‘Dark Side of The Moon’,” adds Duzsik. “It came out and it worked

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OK, but this time we wanted to be really happy with how it sounds.”

HEALTH have always been preoccupied with the sonic quality of their work. DIY doesn’t have to mean lo-fi, and even when they were recording their debut album themselves, they’d take a day to nail the sound of a particular snare drum, in the face of their ability to do so.

Producer Manny Nieto, incidentally, is not thanked in the liner notes of ‘Get Color’. It was the first time the band had collaborated with a third party. “We argued a lot,” they told me in 2009.

W

hen I sit down with HEALTH today, my opening question is: What do you think people will make of ‘Death Magic’? Nobody really knows what to say.

“Instinctively, they’re going to love it,” Famiglietti finally says with a laugh.

“I don’t trust my instincts,” says Miller.

Famiglietti: “We’ve said before that we’d be terrible A&R people – most

predictions we make are wrong.”

“I hope people like it,” says Duzsik after another pause.

Famiglietti: “I know our fans will like it.”

Pause.

“Well… you’ve trumped us on the first question,” chuckles Miller.

“Well, you don’t want to be like, ‘people are going to love that shit’, but you don’t want to say it’s pretty bad,” says Duzsik. “We’re proud of the record – that’s the easiest thing to say.”

I’m surprised the band don’t have an answer ready to go, although it’s only at this point that I register the jetlag in the air, and admittedly I’ve worded the questioned badly. Fans.

Not people. I wanted to ask what they think their fans will make of the new album, and of course the reason I wanted to ask that is because I’ve got my own opinion on the matter.

I’m probably like most HEALTH fans – ‘HEALTH’ was a record that fascinated me to obsession, bolstered by the first time I saw them ferociously play it out live. ‘Die Slow’ then turned up and floated the question of something more accessible, yet no less visceral – a heavy, melodious dance track that until then you were hoping might come from Liars. A

“‘Get Color’ was not supposed to sound like it did. We were trying to make ‘Dark Side of The Moon’” whole album of that sounded pretty appealing to me, and now it’s here.

Still, ‘Death Magic’ probably doesn’t sound how you expect it to.

It features two truly pummeling noise tracks (‘Men Today’ and ‘Courtship’) and a brilliantly brutal trap-influenced number of machinegun drums followed by ambient wash called ‘Salvia’. The chances are that the first time you hear the record, though, it’ll be the other nine songs that’ll leave their mark, and ‘songs’, perhaps for the first time ever, is the correct word for them. On more than one occasion Jake Duzsik’s vocals strongly resemble those of Neil Tennant, with the Euro techno of ‘Flesh World’ and ‘Dark Enough’ following Pet Shop Boys suit. Maybe he’s always sung like that, but it’s only now that Duzsik’s vocal is high enough in the mix to fully hear them. The verse/chorus structure has been fully realised, too, and where before you’d struggle to liken HEALTH’s sound to any other group, Depeche Mode join Pet Shop Boys, courtesy of the industrial, quiet-loud-quiet anti pop of ‘Stonefist’, and New York chillwave forefathers Small Black, thanks to the glistening ‘L.A. Looks’, which features the refrain, ‘It’s not love, but I still want you,’ in rather summery fashion.

HEALTH pull all of this off by cloaking everything in unspoken dread and the sound of metal on metal that’s

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become their calling card. Still, it’s quite a shock if you’re familiar with the band’s previous material. There are even two ballads – the closing couplet of ‘Hurt Yourself’ and ‘Drugs Exist’ – and a song that the makers of Made In Chelsea might send back on grounds of it being too commercial.

That track is called ‘Life’, and if you were played it under the pretense of it being the new single from Miike Snow, you’d buy it. Duzsik moons of lying awake at night before reminding every teenager struggling with existentialism that ‘Life is strange / We die and we don’t know why’. And that’s before the chorus drops – a shiny, confused chant of: ‘I don’t know what I want / Know that I don’t know what I want’. It’s a pop hit.

Not an indie pop hit. Not even a ‘We Are Your Friends’ hit. Bigger.

Context could be everything where ‘Life’ is concerned, and you’d have to be a pretty callous bastard to forbid it a band like HEALTH (these guys have touched human shit for you), but no doubt there will be some purists for whom it’ll be a bridge too far. And I guess that’s what I expected them to say when I asked what they think people will make of this record – that the trepidation they felt when releasing ‘Die Slow’ is now twelve-fold.

“Well, we have a different trepidation, I suppose, because it’s been a long time since we released a record, so you just hope people are still interested in what you are doing,” says Duzsik – an uncharacteristically straight response. “There was a little bit of a difference before because we put out that song [‘Die Slow’] that was so different to the rest of the record.”

“It’s a very different situation with this record,” agrees Famiglietti. “The fan reaction has been incredible.”

At the time of writing, HEALTH have only made public one track from ‘Death Magic’ – ‘New Coke’, a second song inspired by trap and featuring slamming drops. The band posted it with an accompanying video that ends with Jupiter Keyes and Duzsik sticking their fingers down their throats and vomiting in super slow motion to an extended serene outro. Famiglietti included his mobile number for fans to tell the band what they think. They liked it a lot.

“I think the vomit video helped a lot,” says Duzsik. “People got excited about that.”

“But now you’ve got to throw up onstage all the time,” says Miller.

“Yeah, we’re hoping it’s going to become like a wave; Stand By Me style.

Hopefully people will start jamming their hands down their throats and if one person throws up on someone everyone will start throwing up, and the virus will spread…”

Miller: “… and there’ll be one guy

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doing the lighter wave, alone.”

Duzsik: “It’s like the natural progression of… gobbing.”

“We wanted it to not sound like anything else coming out,” says Famiglietti. “We didn’t want it to be a lo-fi thing. We just want to be as heavy as possible. It’s like, some pop star chick’s song is kicking our ass. We can’t have a weaker style than some pop singer.”

“We were all listening to a lot of modern hip hop,” says Duzsik, “and saw that they had a lot better production, and we just didn’t want to make another rock record.”

‘Death Magic’ does beg the question of what HEALTH are going to be referred to now. It seems incongruous to call them a noise band, even in relation to their new record’s most abrasive blasts. ‘Racket Music’ – the term typed next to ‘genre’ on the band’s Facebook page – is pretty good.

“We’re just doing HEALTH now,” says Famiglietti. “It’s our thing.”

“Even when we were referred to as a noise band, any noise purist would say that we’re not a noise band,” says Duzsik.

When I ask what type of band people will consider them to be now, Duzsik is dismissive. “Just shitty,” he says.

But this could be a crossover album for them, I insist.

“Hopefully,” he says. “We wanted to make an album that a lot of people like, but not in a cynical way. We’ll wait and see. You’re always rolling the dice with music. We’re proud of those songs, and there’s definitely something on there for fans of our first record.

“I think in a lot of ways the noisier tracks sound how we would have liked them to sound on our first record.

Does that make the new record more accessible? I guess so. I mean, you’ve

listened to it.

“It’s felt like a logical and natural progression. I don’t think any of us were like, ‘whoah, pump the brakes, we’re going to make a fucking calypso record and confuse the shit out of everyone.’” “‘Life’ – that was one of the first songs we had,” says Famiglietti.

“Yeah, so putting it that way, it’s not like we’d finished the record and thought, we need a power ballad on there,” says Duzsik. “It was gratifying to us, without an indicator that it was going to be a pop success,” he laughs.

W

hen it was announced that HEALTH would release ‘Death Magic’ via a new deal with Fiction Records, fans either balked at the idea of the band signing to a major label or considered it an outsider triumph story. On hearing the record it makes more sense. And Fiction’s Jim Chancellor is also the guy who signed Crystal Castles to the label in 2010.

The band say it’s still a small team of people that they deal with, “and it still feels very cottage industry.”

“There’s certainly no guy in a suit,” says Famiglietti. “No Artie Fufkin, Polymer Records.”

HEALTH have relaxed their policy on vetoing material that resembles anything that’s gone before, also.When writing ‘HEALTH’ and ‘Get Color’ the quickest route to the dumpster was for a track to remind them of something else. No band officially sounds like another, but with HEALTH it’s always been true.

“We’re a little nicer about that,” says Famiglietti, “but we still have some aesthetic rules. There’s a lot of

stuff that we try not to do, but we were a little bit kinder; we’ve been a little more chill on that.”

“But we still have to put our sounds on it,” says Duzsik. “Like, if we wrote a melody on a synthesizer, that’s step one, but it sounds like a synthesizer, so we say, ‘right, we’ve got to make it sound like something else.’ That’s a stamp we put on things – if we’re going to use a guitar, it doesn’t sound like a guitar. Or we try to have sounds where people don’t know what the hell they are.

“Referring back to ‘Die Slow’, we wanted to add song structure, so you know that’s the chorus and that’s the verse, but maybe you don’t recognize what’s making the sound. So I don’t think that’s less involved than vetoing anything that might sound like a particular band or song.”

I note that in the last eight years since HEALTH released their first album, and have subsequently become the experimental noise band to drop into hip conversation, I haven’t come across anyone trying to rip off their very particular sound.

“It’s too much work,” reasons Famiglietti. “It’s like we’re really good at doing tricks on a razor scooter.

‘That’s cool, but we’ll stick with the skateboard, thanks.’

“We even go through it – like, why are we bothering. I wish I was in a different band…”

“But we’re already locked in,” says Duzsik.

“Yeah, it’s like we’re locked into a time share, like when you can’t admit that you’ve made a terrible mistake in investing in some property. It’s a ponzi scheme.

“That’s actually a fear I have,” says Famiglietti, “ – this band comes along and is massive, like a generationdefining band, and people say, oh they took HEALTH’s sound and just gave it this little twist and it’s perfect. Like when the Cars came out and became huge, and everyone was like, that sounds like Television but that guy can sing – the Cars became huge and Tom Verlaine is sweeping up.”

“I don’t see that happening,” says Duzsik.

HEALTH’s Twitter feed has become more notorious than the band themselves – a darkly comic outlet for Duzsik’s and Famiglietti’s twisted sense of humour, which is, at best, in poor taste, and worst, pure filth. It has led to the band writing a Christmas column for us for the past two years: ‘Health Care’ has been the group’s year review of life on the other side of the Atlantic. Under ‘World Cup 2014’, last year the band wrote: We did OK. Once we get American black kids into soccer you’re all fucked. Another subheading read: You can’t joke about paedophilia at a dinner party in 2014.

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“There’s a comedic, sarcastic bent to our Twitter,” says Duzsik, “so we don’t get much shit for the things we say on there. People know what they’re signing up for.”

“We’ve gotten into trouble with your family,” says Famiglietti to Duzik.

“That was embarrassing.”

“Yeah. We used to link up our Twitter posts with our Facebook feed, and my fucking 87-year-old great aunt saw some shit we put up there…”

Famiglietti: “It was – ‘Why am I taking shit from someone I’m not sexually attracted to? Fuck you mom!’”

“And my aunt just commented ‘Shame on you, Jake.’”

“I got this emergency text from Jake, like, ‘go on Twitter now and delete this one, this one, this one…’ because his family are around the Thanksgiving table and it’s like, ‘you should see what your son has been saying’. It was like, press the red button, go, go, go!”

“My cousin was like, ‘the stuff he puts on Twitter is disgusting,’” says Duzsik. “She ratted me out. I put some stuff on there about having a dream about fucking your mom, and I was trying to push that envelope of there being some fucked up things that happen to all of us but we never want to admit to. But I can never explain that to my mom.”

“I was dating this girl I was really into and then her mom was like, ‘oh, I’ll check out the band,” says Famiglietti. “‘Oh, I didn’t realise John was so vulgar.’”

In 2009, Famiglietti summed up the first two HEALTH records to me in an attempt to poetically highlight their differences. He said: “The first record is you in middle school, punching your bed and shit; this one is you in high school, crying like a bitch.” He went on to predict what the band’s third record would sound like, too, and before the band return to their rooms to crash out ahead of their 2am curtain call tomorrow morning, I challenge him not to recall what he’d said then, so much, but what he’d say now. Impressively, both answers match up, and having lived with ‘Death Magic’ for a couple of weeks, I have to say that Famiglietti is on the money.

“You’re at college, baby. It’s dorm life, and it’s pretty sweet. Girls are there.”

“I got this emergency text from Jake, like, ‘go on Twitter now and delete this one, this one, this one…’”

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Reviews / Albums

0 7/ 1 0

Hudson Mohawke Lanterns war p By s am walt on . In sto re s June 15

When Ross Birchard released his debut LP as Hudson Mohawke in 2009, life must have seemed relatively simple – over the preceding couple of years, his ascent had been textbook: start an underground label (the genre-defying LuckyMe), make some prodigious DJing appearances, put out a handful of hard-to-find EPs, and wait for Warp Records to come calling – which it duly did, releasing Birchard’s ‘Butter’ in October of that year. But what ‘Butter’ – an album of rag-bag attention-deficit maximalism that was sporadically jaw-dropping but too rich for one sitting – couldn’t possibly have foreshadowed was how a 23-year-old Glaswegian bedroom DJ would shortly become the go-to producer for Kanye West and also, as one half of the shortlived TNGHT, momentarily end up in charge of one of the most hyped acts on the planet. In short, Birchard,

purveyor of eccentric electronica indebted to the music of Street Fighter II, went A-list.

But while overwhelming demand for Birchard is the primary reason for ‘Lantern’ being six years in the making and at least three years late, it’s also undoubtedly what’s shaped the album’s central aesthetic. Where ‘Butter’ was a bubbling rookie jumble, constantly coming up on its own madcap sugar high, ‘Lantern’ is a less dense, calmer affair clearly borne of broader collaborative experience: five guest vocalists, placed strategically throughout the record, temper Birchard’s natural tendency towards instrumental histrionics, and even his solo efforts are enjoyably less CAPSLOCK this time around.

The songs are where ‘Lantern’ really shines, revealing Birchard’s unexpectedly tenacious ear for pure

pop: ‘Warriors’ is a full-frontal power ballad featuring a honking gospel chorus that declares “fuck what they say, we are the warriors!” with a brilliantly bombastic #hatersgonhate flurry of righteous indignation.

Elsewhere, ‘Indian Steps’ is tonally the inverse of ‘Warriors’, featuring Antony Hegarty’s quivering voice sleepily seducing a lover while lush horns parp underneath.Twinned with Birchard’s decidedly screwy approach to producing such unashamedly straight songs – Kanye-fied pitched-up vocals, skeletal bleeps all over – the results are gloriously odd, surprisingly addictive and far grander and more subtly expressive than anything he has produced hitherto. But that’s not to say that ‘Lantern’ is necessarily a more mature album than ‘Butter’: Birchard still revels in silliness here, delivering Big Dumb Drops just for

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the lolz on ‘System’ and headacheinducing earworms reminiscent of the PC Music brigade on ‘Portrait of Luci’.

The most unexpected facet of ‘Lantern’ is Birchard’s newfound emotional breadth. The album remains unmistakably HudMo, overflowing with neon blasts of static and lemony keyboard licks, but the most skull-shredding of these have been softened by collaboration, as if Birchard, newly in demand as a Producer Of Note, feels his work now deserves a seriousness to accompany the punky pranksterism.

In most parallel universes, where Kanye never came calling, Hudson Mohawke’s second album would be of interest only to Boomkat junkies and Warp catalogue collectionists; in this one, however, ‘Lantern’ is a major release – something of which it’s all too aware.

Reviews 0 7/ 1 0

FFS FFS D om in o

By Al ex W is gar d. In sto re s June 8

I’m not entirely sure who this album is for. At my least charitable, I imagine Sparks devotees who cry foul at the idea of the brothers Mael joining forces with a bunch of chartbothering whippersnappers. I picture Franz Ferdifans who think it’s sweet that the Glaswegian quartet are helping out these funny looking granddads. This is not a calculated bid for mid-career relevance or latter-day visibility – only if this had come out eleven years ago, when the collaboration was first floated, would this have been classed as career suicide or bandwagon jumping.

The propulsive Weimar cabaret funk of ‘Dictator’s Son’ outlines the tearaway offspring of a despotic

regime, whose interests lie far from the family business – “I’m into Hugo Boss, dental floss…” Mael and Kapranos list in glorious monotone.

“Instagram, bands who jam…”

Elsewhere, the irrepressibly bouncy ‘The Man Without a Tan’ skewers wild western masculinity, depicting a gang of terrified cowboys whose “rugged handsomeness is no match for” the titular pasty out-of-towner.

There are missteps – ‘Little Guy from the Suburbs’ is an ill-advised acoustic Morricone detour, which almost self-parodically rhymes “martyr” with “Sartre”. Likewise, ‘Save Me from Myself’ is the only moment where FFS collapse into predictability – “You could have it so

much better,” it practically screams, “if you Kimono My House.”

That said, FFS is still a savvy move for both bands, merging their respective cult clouts into one sixheaded hydra of decidedly warped pop music.The miracle is that neither act loses anything in translation, their respective arch ambiguities remaining in spades.

With both bands having selfproduced their most recent efforts, the wisest decision FFS made was letting someone else behind the boards. John Congleton, fresh from working on the most recent St. Vincent and Swans LPs, is the perfect middleman between both bands. Sparks hasn’t sounded this

pop-friendly since the late seventies.

Franz Ferdinand has never sounded this wilfully odd.

Your enjoyment of FFS will hinge on how much of the older band’s whimsy you can take – there are bound to be people for whom a collaborative album trailed by an impish multi-part six-minute single entitled ‘Collaborations Don’t Work’ was designed to irritate. Hell, there have been days when I’ve not been able to make it to the end of this album. Nevertheless the project never sounds like Franz Ferdinand aping Sparks, nor Sparks mimicking Franz Ferdinand. For the most part, FFS just do FFS, and on the right day, it’s a joy.

When it comes to the music of Jenny Hval (the Norwegian musician who previously recorded under the name Rockettothesky), there are no half measures; this applies just as much to the listener as Hval herself, perhaps even more so. You need to be prepared, so intense are her compositions, and ‘Apocalypse, girl’, her second solo album, is no exception – it is, in plain terms, a simply stunning collection of work that’s by turns charming, alluring, and deeply unsettling. It demands

attention, and careful scrutiny reveals subtle details and hidden meanings in her fragile, dream-like world. Blink, and as in real life, the important moments float by.

Hval has plenty of pertinent questions, using them to explore her preferred themes of language, sexuality, and gender, and how these are boxed in by cultural boundaries.

“What is it to take care of yourself?” she whispers on several tracks, before defiantly noting how: “Statistics and newspapers tell me I

am unhappy and dying.”

The ten songs here are flooded with samples and deep rumbles, moments of high drama and sad gloaming; the partnership with producer Lasse Marhuag, a noted noise musician, has certainly proved fruitful. But more than the hymnal organs and foreboding soundscapes, the instrument that stands out is her voice and, by extension, Hval herself; she understands the malaise of the modern world, and she’s here to guide us through it.

09/10

Jenny Hval Apocalypse, Girl sa c r ed bon es By der ek r ober tso n. In sto re s june 8

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Albums 08/10

0 9/10

07 /10

06/ 10

Meg Baird Don’t Weigh Down The Light

Jaakko Eino Kalevi Jaakko Eino Kalevi

The Smoking Trees TST

Aero Flynn Aero Flynn

w i c h i ta

we ir d w o r ld

Am ple Pl ay

M e m p h is in d u s tr ies

B y H e nry Wi l k i ns o n. I n s t o re s j une 1 5

By D ani el d y lan w ray. I n s to r es J ul y 6

B y S a m wa lto n . I n s t o r es j ul y 6

Determined to pass the newly assumed crown of most commonly mispronounced name in music back to Todd Terje, the debut album from Jaakko Eino Kalevi opens with a glorious self-proclamation in the not so cryptically titled ‘JEK’. What follows is simultaneously bold and understated; a smooth neo-classical odyssey and utopian vision where mind and machine work in harmony.

“Break the self/and build it again” is the mantra at the album’s core as Jaakko assumes various musical guises and nails each one. Amongst the disassembly is the gorgeous midnight pop of ‘Don’t Ask Me Why’, the immaculate science-fiction funk in ‘Say’, and ‘Room’, which sees the Finnish Kalevi masquerade as Ariel Pink’s more soulful and sensitive cousin. His is a world of strange and wonderful rhythms and few debuts manage such idiosyncrasy without losing focus. Mellifluous, ethereal yet simultaneously earthy, what on first listen may seem ridiculous or egotistical, on second visit becomes an irresistible opening chant that you can’t help but join in with: “Jaakko Eino Kalevi”.

With many of the contemporary ‘psych’ bands doing the rounds these days go down the mind-altering, hurtling-into-deep-space, frenzy route, and others barely seem to go beyond being inspired by a single Tame Impala record, it can often leave the genre polarised by genuine innovation and lazy, aesthetic-based tinkering. With a member called Sir Psych you may think The Smoking Trees lay closer to the former, but they in fact sit more comfortably in the middle. Their blend of Byrdsesque West Coast soft rock and BJM-like mellow psych takes a much more structured and song-focused approach. ‘TST’ feels distinctly Californian too; the songs sparkle and glisten and you can almost feel the sun’s reflection shimmering off the hazy tone. It rests comfortably in mid-tempo throughout the album, riding comfortably along in its own, stoned, journey. The album cover suggests an outer space experience, something otherworldly and sonically far-reaching, but the results are most enjoyable in their directly relatable and elemental brushes with reality.

It’s fortunate for Aero Flynn that neither Radiohead nor Bon Iver have released a note of music for over three years – so indebted is Flynn’s debut to the most recent work of both groups that it makes for an ideal stopgap until Messrs Yorke, Greenwood, Vernon et al administer their next dose of ethereally elegiac paranoid melancholia: across ‘Aero Flynn’’s crisply pressed 43 minutes, the treated keyboards, microblasts of fractured blues and pedal-steel yearning of Justin Vernon mingle among Radiohead’s trademark cutup percussion, cleanly circling guitar lines and fluttering, fragile vocals like mash-up culture reimagined for cerebral post-millennial indie-rock.

On one level, these are unequivocally elegant, intricately constructed and engaging songs in their own right, played with impressive technicality, and Flynn’s ear for a melody and arrangement is enviable. However, no music exists in a vacuum, and Aero Flynn’s transparent indebtedness to such overbearing giants renders his debut like a waxwork: the likeness is uncanny, but the gravitas doesn’t linger.

It’s by no means a rarity for an artist to take a few years and a few records to slowly build towards making their best work, but it’s perhaps less common for an album to feel like such a stark step forwards that you end up wondering whether they’d been holding out on us all this time.

That’s the case with this first Ezra Furman record on Bella Union; ‘Perpetual Motion People’ – the Chicagoian musician’s third solo record and sixth (!) in total – is nothing short of revelatory.

Scored through with eccentricity and with an unrelentingly diffuse range of influences, it’s easily his best full-length to date. At its heart, this is a pop record, just one that’s being delivered in gloriously manic fashion, taking in ballads, garage rock and doo-wop. ‘Haunted Head’ feels like the LP in microcosm, with Furman’s witty, conversational lyrics laid over some offbeat instrumental choices, whilst ‘Lousy Connection’, which pairs his impassioned delivery over a sixties girl group backdrop, is

well representative of the album’s clash of styles.

Nothing here feels rushed or thrown together – even the simpler cuts, like the gorgeously understated ‘WatchYou Go By’, the classic Dylan folk numner ‘Hour of Deepest Need’, and rough punk stomper ‘Tip of a Match’, feel carefully considered, and even if ‘Perpetual Motion People’ runs a tad long, it’s very much a record to get lost in, with new complexities thrown up on every listen.

By h en r y Wilki nso n. In sto re s june 22

Meg Baird’s is a pretty impressive CV. Founding member of Espers, goto collaborator for a host of folk and psych royalty in the way of Will Oldham, Sharon Van Etten and Bert Jansch, member of warped super group Heron Oblivion and now an acclaimed solo artist in her own right, ‘Don’t Weigh Down the Light’ is just the latest addition to an impressive discography. On the surface it may be a gentle and breathy piece of Sandy Denny inspired folk, but throughout its eleven tracks there’s a more electric (and eclectic) underbelly. Snaking guitar solos abound in the style of Kurt Vile, noticeably on ‘BackTo You’, while elsewhere a laid back, Real Estate dreaminess breezes through the more typical folk influences.

‘Stars Unwinding’ finger picks a delicate and intricate web through which Baird’s striking vocals softly navigate, but follow up track ‘Good Directions’ serves up a beefier hook and full bodied guitar sound akin to contemporaries Amen Dunes.

Simple in its beauty, but with much to rediscover on subsequent listens.

08/10

Ezra Furman Perpetual Motion People Be lla Un i on By j oe goggi n s . I n sto re s july 16

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Reviews 0 7/ 1 0

0 4/10

06 /10

09/ 10

Francesca Belmonte Anima

De Lux Generation

So Stressed The Unlawful Art of Greco-Roman Art

Novella Land

Fa l s e I d ol s

Inn o vati v e lei s ure

By Tho mas F en wick. In st o res no w

B y J o e g oggi ns . I n s t o re s J un e 1 5

Si n de r ly n B y Jame s F . Th o mps o n . In s t o r e s j u n e 2 2

Ho no r p r es s By reef yo uni s . I n s t o re s J u n e 2 9

A protégée of trip-hop legend Tricky – collaborating on a handful of his tracks and releasing ‘Anima’ on his False Idols label – Francesca Belmont’s debut overflows with dark, intoxicating pop. Murky pulsations and orchestral stabs fuel ‘Hiding In The Rushes’ and ‘Lying On The Moon’, while singles ‘Stole’ and ‘Are You’ shudder with seductive desire, the dense beats and hypnotic melodies infused by Belmont’s dusky, soulful vocals. But while she may seem most comfortable in the dimmer recesses of composition, when the tone lightens Belmont sounds equally at home; ‘Walk With You’ is a tender moment of purest Bristolian pop, while ‘Daisy’ is an endearing treat amongst the gloom.

If there is a problem, it’s that at fifteen tracks, things start to feel exhaustingly overwrought by the time you reach ‘Driving’ or ‘Your Sons’. Belmont doesn’t want to leave us unsatisfied, but with judicious editing she could have provided a tighter experience. ‘Anima’ is still an ominous cabaret of delights, but there’s something to be said for leaving the audience wanting more.

What’s ultimately impressive about this full-length debut from L.A. synth-poppers De Lux is that they manage to throw so many different ideas at the wall and still come away with something that sounds largely monotonous. It is, at best, a competent modern update on eighties disco-pop, but that’s a market that’s been pretty heavily oversaturated these past few years, and frankly, it’s been done much better elsewhere (Blood Orange’s ‘Cupid Deluxe’ springs to mind).

There are still highlights here that evidence the hype that’s followed the duo from the off – the taut, catchy ‘No One Really Cares Who You Are’ is a standout, and ‘Simba Simba Simba’ is very Talking Heads – but ‘Generation’’s key failing is its catastrophically flat production.

Music like this, by its very nature, is designed to sound lush, but just like the myriad sonic and thematic approaches taken by the pair throughout the record, nothing really seems to have space to breathe.

There’s potential here, that’s for sure, but it feels a long way off being realised.

Barely a second into ‘The Unlawful Trade…’ and So Stressed are coming at you with fists clenched and unhinged heart on sleeve. Catapulted

by Morgan Fox’s vein-popping vocals, and a hefty post-hardcore clamour, tracks like the punk-fused ‘Merv King & The Phantoms’ and the stop-start, fill-heavy ‘Burger Brother’ hit like a high-energy, higher-octane confessional. Hard, hostile, and two years in the making, much of the album’s twelve tracks are a powerful lesson in velocity. Coiled by dense chords and Fox’s pathological screams on the likes of ‘Nervous Around Punks’, there’s a curious edge to the temple-pounding, angstridden weight. The surprising oasis of calm that appears partway through ‘Covered Hair’ aside, the momentum generated from the album’s opening salvo drives ‘Lisps’ into a speakerbusting storm of hissing reverb, gives ‘Sleep Wave’ a juddering, churning turmoil, and pushes unsettling closer, ‘Needs No Chill’, into the dark space between the pAperchAse’s wired anxiety and a heavy drone metal grind.

Following an inauspicious threeyear silence since their first EP, Novella have pitched up out of nowhere armed with this fantastic debut album to confound cynics.The Brighton-based fivesome tend to pivot around breezy, sixtiesinfluenced jangle-pop melodies, albeit played through overdriven amps and propelled by motorik rhythms that carry the band up the autobahn away from the Summer of Love towards the likes of Stereolab and Spacemen 3. The best moments on the record, like the languid shoegaze of ‘Sentences’ with its flanging guitar leads, also showcase Novella’s secret weapon: gorgeous, gossamer-light vocal harmonies courtesy of the band’s four-fifths female contingent. Ironically, lyrics seem to be of secondary importance, which actually works just fine; these are hypnotic, raga-like songs not to be overanalysed. In fact, perhaps the best thing about ‘Land’ is how well its 10 tracks – from febrile opener ‘Follow’ through to the woozy ‘Sky is Open’ – work together as an immersive album experience. A blissed-out sonic sojourn.

There is a childlike sense of wonder, innocence and purity at the heart of Koichi Yamanoha’s music. It’s no surprise that the London-based musician hails from a Japan, a country noted for its obsession with youth, or that he was inspired by long lost memories and dreams of living in an amusement park; one track here, ‘Last Word Is Mine’, even has a fairground organ riff at its heart, the soft, shuffling beat recalling the gentle turn of an old-fashioned carousel. And that loveliness, a late-

summer sheen of freedom and lazy afternoons, is baked into this, his delightful debut solo album.

Perhaps it’s a reaction to his time as frontman for psychedelic-punks Screaming Tea Party (an abrasive noise trio who were prone to screeching through their live sets in sinister gas masks), but there’s a languid, unhurried air to Yamanoha’s compositions, like a man casually exploring the musical ideas floating through his mind.

Only occasionally does he up the

tempo and the urgency from his spacey take on the Canterbury folk sound, and subsequently these provide the record with its weakest moments; ‘Knowing’, a stop-start, awkward dirge, really adds nothing to the collection, while ‘Walk Into The Cold Water With You’ has a jauntiness that scans as forced.

But picking away at his guitar, his tender voice dipped in reverb, Yamanoha locates a sweet spot that’s wistful, introspective, and achingly beautiful.

0 7/ 1 0

Grimm Grimm Hazy Eyes Maybe AT P

By De re k r obe rtso n. In sto res june 22

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Albums 05/10

0 5 /10

07 /10

09/ 10

Wolf Alice My Love Is Cool

Alpine Yuck

Leftfield Alternative Light Source

Elvis Depressedly New Alhambra

Di r ty H i t

Iv y L eagu e

In fe c ti o u s

Run for cover

By alex wi sgard. I n sto res june 22

B y S am C o rnf o rt h . In s to res j une 1 5

By r eef yo uni s . I n s to res j u ne 8

B y t om fen w ic k . I n st o r es j u ne 8

Wolf Alice have made their name supporting indie big leaguers like Alt-J and The 1975, honing themselves into an allegedly relentless live act.You wouldn’t know it from listening to their polished debut album. The London quartet have claimed they wanted ‘My Love Is Cool’ to be eclectic. At this, they have definitely succeeded. ‘Freazy’’s breezy R&B mission statement shakes the record up for the better, and when they take the time to straighten out their sound on tracks like ‘Lisbon’ and the oddly Cranberries-ish ‘Bros’, it’s a fleeting revelation. Otherwise, the band’s grab-bag approach is what lets them down; the album’s more profound moments are never as deep as they aspire to be, and its rockers sound decidedly defanged. ‘Swallowtail’ tries both in the space of six minutes, its noisebomb coda sounding like a tacked-on afterthought. Ultimately, you come away from ‘My Love Is Cool’ with absolutely no idea what Wolf Alice actually sound like.

Worse, you get the impression they’re may not even be sure what they’re good at.

Melbourne indie pop band Alpine laid a promising foundation of sparkly pop with their 2009 debut album, ‘A is For Alpine’. Its standout moments – ‘Gasoline’, ‘Hands’ and ‘Villages’ – were infectious, but aside from the star attractions there was a rather one-dimensional and forgettable quality to their output.

On this second album, the icy cool production is pristine once again while Phoebe Baker and Lou James’ trademark harmonised vocals are just as angelic as on their debut.

Lead single ‘Foolish’ is effortlessly likeable with its hazy twangs and charming chorus, ‘Damn Baby’ is impressively bold, and the intricate ‘Crunches’ shows the expert songcraft the six-piece group are capable of conjuring up. Elsewhere though, the electro pop flies past in unremarkable fashion like a bird hidden away amongst a flock, as they stick to their tried and tested formula. ‘Yuck’ unforgivably makes the same shortcomings as the Aussie’s first album with its predictable and calculated nature, but on their debut album it hadn’t worn quite as thin.

Twenty years ago, Leftfield’s 1995 debut, ‘Leftism’, emerged as one of ’90s dance music’s defining albums.

In 1999, ‘Rhythm and Stealth’ bludgeoned a powerful path through the noughties with the sonic boom of ‘Phat Planet’. Sixteen years after that release, and a founding member down, ‘Alternative Light Source’ represents Leftfield 2.0. Some of the raw, seismic power of those anthems has dissipated but there’s still depth to the swimming dubstep of ‘Storm’s End’ and a satisfyingly nostalgic backbone to the slashing binary beat of the speaker-rattling ‘Shaker Obsession’. And where ‘Universal Everything’ drives towards familiar big beat ambition, it’s the collaborations that grab the interest.

Where TVOTR’s Tunde Adebimpe provides the low-frequency menace to ‘Bad Radio’, and Poliçia’s Channy Leaneagh adds a sultry touch to the Higher State… build of ‘Little Fish’, Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson’s turn on ‘Head and Shoulders’ feels at odds with the track’s subterranean Flat Beat wobble. It doesn’t work this time but it’s the only misstep on a resoundingly welcome return.

Despite having quite possibly the worst band name since the advent of Catfish and The Bottlemen, North Carolinian duo Mat Cothran and Delaney Mills – aka Elvis Depressedly – have produced an album of spare beauty. This, their second album, is a nine-track collection that heaves with gorgeous lo-fi aesthetics. ‘Thou shalt not Murder’ and ‘Bruises (amethyst)’ set the tone, with distant percussive flurries and gentle guitar refrains listing against subtle oscillating samples, Cothran’s vocal sweeping across the album with the delicacy of taraxacum seeds on the breeze. “If we fuck up it’s alright, there’s so much more to life than all these wastes of time,” he intones on album closer ‘Wastes Of Time’, the beauty of his sentiment echoed in the simplicity of his delivery. Barely scraping the twenty-minute mark, it might feel like a fleeting taste. And yet ‘New Alhambra’ manages to convey more emotion in the blink of an eye than many albums strain to achieve in treble the time; mirroring the fragile nature of existence in all its ephemeral splendour.

A process of distillation seems to have been taking place with clunky drums and bass duo Prinzhorn Dance School, who were a very spare-feeling band in the first place; their self-titled 2007 debut was a disparate sixteen-track document, 2011’s ‘Clay Horn’ dropped to a more standard length, and here they are in 2015 with the six-track ‘Home Economics’. So every song must count.

Opener ‘Reign’ is like an early demo of New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’

– stripped back, lazily cool, and curiously soft in its impact, the fournote bass line is tethered to a paperthin drum track, while vocals drip over the whole thing like thin syrup.

It’s a strong template for the album.

Music this contained and concise requires a strong aesthetic to sustain itself, and PDS have definitely achieved that; listening to the record is like walking through a stark, empty landscape, where here and there vividly green shoots of growth are visible.

‘Battlefield’ sees the duo exchanging almost spoken-word lyrics over a sparse backdrop, and ‘Education’ has odd echoes of Elastica.The band’s approach almost consumes itself though on ‘Haggle’, which really does come across like a confused-sounding demo and could have been discarded. While the album is swiftly over, the songs themselves feel unrushed, but the pared-down style can drift towards un-engaging and this happens too often on so short a record.

06/10

Prinzhorn Dance School Home Economics DF A By c hr is wat k eys. I n sto res june 8

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Reviews 06/10

0 5 /10

07 /10

07/ 10

Gengahr A Dream Outside

Fist City Everything is a Mess

Princess Chelsea The Great Cybernetic Depression

Trembling Bells The Sovereign Self

Tr an g r es s i ve By davi d zammi tt. In sto re s june 15

tr ans g re s s i ve B y Sa m co rn fort h. I n s tore s j une 2 2

T in A n g el B y C h r is Watk ey s . I n s to r es J u n e 2 9

Fl yi n g nun

By Ja me s We s t . I n s tore s J u n e 8

There’s been a buzz building around Transgressive’s latest group of North London hopefuls. A support slot on Alt-J’s European tour has definitely helped raise their stock over the last 12 months, but ‘A Dream Outside’ is our first chance to analyse them up close. Unfortunately it’s a mixed bag, and the LP feels like a band who have rushed out their debut album before fully fleshing out a coherent sound. At times it can be a fun ride; ‘Heroine’, with its fistpumper of a major-minor chorus, is somewhere between the chamber pop of Here We Go Magic and the space-punk of early Ash, and demonstrates the evident musicianship the group possess (Danny Ward’s motor-like work behind the kit deserves a special mention) while providing a platform for the fragile splendour of Felix Bushe’s Conor O’Brien-esque falsetto. The psychedelic art rock of ‘Fill My Gums With Blood’, ‘Trampoline’ and ‘Lonely As A Shark’ apes early Grizzly Bear to decent effect and is, perhaps, a pointer to something more substantial further down the line.

The tracklisting for Fist City’s second album reads like an angry teens diary entries. ‘Fuck Cops’, ‘Bad Trip’, and ‘Let’s Rip’ are the most eye-catching titles that hint towards a rousing and destructive listen from the Calgary-based punk band. Unsurprisingly, over the course of ‘Everything Is A Mess’, the band try to juggle between grungy and chiming guitars, as well conjure up the explosive energy of their producer’s (Ben Greenberg, formerly of The Men) old band. Sadly, the Canadians’ sound loses its identity by trying to channel its influences; the music is neither exhilaratingly unhinged or charmingly jangly, instead invoking a confused noman’s-land that plods along like a battered old van spluttering away, trying to get up into third gear on the motorway. ‘Surf’s Up’ is an exception, with fuzzy guitars that splash away hypnotically, but that momentum is soon lost amongst a number of pointless interludes. Contrary to the provocative title, Fist City have made an album that may well have been born out of rage and frustration, but remains indifferent.

Princess Chelsea has seen the future, and it is fantastical. ‘The Great Cybernetic Depression’ imagines a future laced with nostalgia, drawing as much influence from The Neverending Story as it does Kraftwerk. The album’s stand out track, ‘No Church On Sunday’, is a sci-fi dream of synths and echoing vocals. Chelsea has been described as ‘space pop’, and in this case there is no other adjective – ‘No Church on Sunday’ sounds like the music-box hymn of a galaxy far, far away. It returns to earth through its lyrics, which carry the disorienting near-realism of a child’s nightmares. Likewise, ‘We Were Meant to Be’ blends otherworldly melodies with a painfully human tale of missed connections. This is the other end of the spectrum, past youthful imaginings and into the disappointments of adulthood. The contrast feels even-handed rather than gauche. Here is an album seeking to recapture lost magic. It is a welcome break from reality, in any case.

‘The Sovereign Self’ opens with a vocal so pure, strong and high it’s almost startling – prefacing a song infused with drama, shreds of trad folk, in places a vaguely eastern feel and in others slices of expansive seventies rock. It’s something of an epic, medieval tapestry of richness.

Only Trembling Bells could be this bold and get away with it. They’re an oddity, a band unselfconsciously out of time and place, and in this otherness lies their appeal. ‘The Sovereign Self’ is an album of richly realised, multi-part mini-epics, almost operatic in design, if not in style. Few other bands could conjure the gloriously ludicrous line “Lou Reed and Lauren Bacall defeated Asterix the Gaul on the Cornish coast”. ‘Killing Time in London Fields’ is akin to Moon Duo on amphetamines, ‘Bells of Burford’ sounds like it could soundtrack some kind of debauched courtly gathering in the sixteenth century, while ‘I Is Someone Else’ is a strange fusion of Fleetwood Mac and Iron Maiden, and I bet you didn’t expect to hear me say that! This is a fantastically vivid album.

Just when you thought Sam Dust would remain a shadowy figure, most fondly remembered for his contribution to cult noughties almost-heroes Late of The Pier, he emerges from the wilderness with new album ‘Inji’, his debut release as LA Priest. In it he finds himself lost in a musical Bermuda Triangle, rambling between groggy laptop lofi, expansive Sun Araw prog and straight up flamboyant funk.

Opening track ‘Occasion’ creeps in on an otherworldly, reptilian bass

line before unleashing some unashamedly gaudy vocals and a thrusting guitar riff that Prince would be proud of. ‘Lady’s in Trouble With the Law’ is soulful, though with a hint of Connan Mockasin oddness amongst the sweeping falsettos, while ‘Oino’ resurrects early house influences. In between these tracks Dust taps into some fairly cosmic sounding energy streams in moments of musical séance, establishing himself as some sort of electro-magnetic medium. It’s an

intriguing blend of old and new, of experimental and tried and tested, offering a few playful surprises along the way – not least the heartfelt album closer ‘Mountain’.

Some of this unpredictable nature can be attributed to the fiveyear writing and recording period, making the album a curious collection rather than cohesive statement, but the strength of glitch dance piece ‘Party Zute/Learning To Love All Over’ alone though shows that ‘Inji’ is well worth getting lost in.

0 7/ 1 0

La Priest Inji D o mi n o By h en r y wi l ki nson. I n store s June 29

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Albums 08/10

Sauna Youth Distractions u p s et th e r h y thm By ja mes f . th om pso n. In sto re s june 8

“When you write, you just write,” explained Sauna Youth singer and drummer Rich Phoenix in an interview with Loud And Quiet last month. “It’s only when you look back over that you start to discover that there are common threads running through everything.” Phoenix and his bandmates might not have conceived ‘Distractions’ as a concept album but with the benefit of hindsight, the art-punk foursome have chosen a marvellously apposite title for their second LP. The London-based Brighton transplants have spent the last three years since their debut getting swept up in any number of side projects.

Bassist Christopher Murphy also

makes t-shirts, Phoenix runs a community project while singer and keyboardist Jen Calleja edits an arts magazine and writes for The Quietus to boot. Oh and the band have switched labels since last time too. It should come as no surprise then that at its core, ‘Distractions’ is an album about escapism; about wanting to be somewhere else, doing something else and with someone else. “I try to leave but I couldn’t go through with it / I try to leave; distraction was never enough,” Calleja and Phoenix lament on ‘Try to Leave’. On ‘New Fear’ the pair sing about submitting to the path of least resistance, while ‘Monotony’ comes off like a straightforward, one-riff rant against

boredom. At times, it actually seems like Sauna Youth want to escape themselves, or at least the band’s occasionally conflicted sense of identity. “These abstract notions have no place in pure thought,” Phoenix shouts on ‘Abstract Notions’, an 89-second Ramones pastiche that immediately follows a rather abstract spoken word introduction (another moody spoken word piece, ‘(Taking a) Walk’, follows later).

Take a step back, though, and it becomes apparent that the foursome have managed to parlay all these doubts, distractions and selfcontradictions into a remarkably cohesive statement; 14 tracks of art-

damaged pop-punk in similar vein to their first record, only considerably more immediate and energetic.

Where last time around Lindsay Costorphine’s guitar was obfuscated by a layer of scuzz, now it buzz saws its way through virtually every track.

There’s also much more focus here on straightforward riffs and songwriting, as opposed to the hazy dissonance of the group’s previous release. Mostly though – and perhaps ironically, all things considered – ‘Distractions’ showcases a band pulled in dozens of directions but one whose identity is stronger than ever; a smart punk outfit with literary proclivities who haven’t forgotten how to have a good time.

On ‘A Paradise’, the ex frontman of Golden Silvers trades quirky psychfunk for something altogether more introspective, aligning himself closer to the Canterbury Scene than modern indie pop. The stakes, you sense, have been raised, as he moves into the artistic hinterland of his thirties. Luckily, Gwilym Gold’s experiment works. It appears he just needed time to mature, though possessing a voice that seems to be able to plumb the depths of bass in one breath and the upper reaches of

falsetto in another also helps.

The highlights are myriad, and it’s clear that Gold’s skill as songwriter, musician and producer have all been bolstered. He loves to develop a chord sequence and the hands of Glass and Reich are felt throughout (‘Evergreen’, ‘Uninvited’), while ‘Triumph’ balances pummelling, early Aphex percussion and gentle, measured vocal interplay with incomprehensible dexterity.

‘Flex’, which draws on the same quasi-monastic choral sounds that

James Blake played with on his second LP, is another standout as it gradually grows into a melancholy neo-soul anthem, Gold setting his meditation on the human form.

‘Greener World’ and ‘Breathless’ both take post-OK Computer Radiohead as their template but, unlike countless other pretenders to that piano-driven, jazz-infused crown (think Coldplay), Gold manages to fashion something genuine and new out of a tried and tested sound.

0 7/ 1 0

Gwilym Gold A Paradise Br i l l e

By Davi d Zammi tt. In sto re s June 22

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Reviews

E

J

Spain does food very well, and I’m sure by their standards the restaurants onsite were serving third rate slop at inflated prices. But we’re not from Spain, and a majority of British people can go to Primavera and eat healthier there than they do at home.

You’ve come a long way, Blakey: playing a headline slot on the festival’s biggest stage could’ve swamped James Blake’s fragile blubstep posturing, but instead he pulls out one of the weekend’s surprise successes, full of muscular throb and engagingly weird arrangements.

is for Eating

F

is for Fair That’s record fair. Primavera’s merch stalls are all in one place, neatly by the entrance, and free from jester hats, inflatable aliens and shit sunglasses.

Each dedicated to a different store or label, from Rough Trade to the local Boston Pizza Records, they exclusively sell records and the odd T-shirt. We’re here for the music, don’t forget.

G

is for Golden Circle

A

is for Antony & The Johnsons Anthony & The Johnsons headlining a festival? In 2015? It doesn’t sound so good, does it? I mean, we’re trying to have a holiday here. You’d be surprised (or maybe not) of the magnetism of a full orchestra dressed in white, fronted by the effortless, always real Antony Hegarty, though, who performs in front of a completely bizarre and somehow harrowing video projection of Japanese performance artists clowning around in the forests.

B

is for Breakdown?

Foxygen’s big stage performance on the final day of the festival is definitely the weirdest. There’s about a hundred of them up there, on a colossal amount of uppers, which gives their hippy homages a manic fear. It’s like the messy end of the sixties all over again, as the gaunt Sam France flails and slurs.

He storms off. The band storm off.

But it’s a joke! Haha. It’s not really, though, is it?

C

is for Caribou Caribou play Primavera every year, and yet it never gets dull. This time round, as the final band of the festival on the massive amphitheatre stage, Dan Snaith et al keep it banging, reaching for the lasers with their live-drumsplus-synths simplicity and, of course, a huge, winding singalong apt for closing this particular edition of the festival. All together now: “sun, sun, sun, sun, sun…” (see ‘W’).

D

is for Dance Tent Expanded this year with a surroundsound PA that reportedly cost a bazillion Euros (and sounds like it, too), this is Primavera’s go-to venue for locating the hipster you fancied from that Sven Väth Boiler Room clip.

Also, and not particularly compatible with the aforementioned chirpsing, is its status as the only stage at the festival whose PA system induced vomiting in one unsuspecting dipsomaniac, during Raime’s spleen-rupturingly dubby Friday night excursions.

For the second year running, Primavera installed a golden circle on it’s two, facing main stages. It’s nothing to worry about, but it’s worth remembering – one half of each circle is first-come-first-served, the other is for poshos with VIP wrist bands, which you can in fact buy, whether you’re very important or otherwise.

H

is for Hip-Hop Primavera’s hip-hop programme tends to be small but unmissable – it’s hard to lose your shit to Electric Wizard in quite the same way you can to Tyler, The Creator, but it’s Run The Jewels who really put the chin-stroking on hold, as a wheelchair is crowd-surfed in the pit and the ATP stage reaches its wildest peak of the weekend.

I

is for Interpol As usual, there is nothing remarkable about Interpol’s lengthy Saturday night set beyond the tunes themselves, which are played with the complete seriousness they demand, to a huge crowd. Interpol have never been great ‘performers’, but, then, they’ve never needed to be.

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is for James Blake

K

is for King’s Cup Watching football might not feature high on your priorities at a music festival, but watching Barcelona isn’t like watching what passes for the (not so) beautiful game over here. Screening in the food court on Saturday evening was the final of the King’s Cup (Copa del Rey), between Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao – two clubs from regions of the country that crave independence from Spain. Of course the place is going to erupt into boos whenever King Felipe VI pops up on screen, but nothing – music or otherwise – is quite as powerful as the reception given to a complete wonder goal from Lionel Messi. Youtube it.

L

is for Launch Parties Primavera have always hosted a launch party the night before the festival begins in earnest. They used to be a ticketed event, though, on the other side of town. They’ve still got some of those going on, but they also now open a portion of the site on the Wednesday, this year for a completely free show by Albert Hammond Jr. and OMD, for anyone who can be bothered to go along. It’s just a shame that ‘Enola Gay’ couldn’t be a highlight of the festival proper.

P HO TO GR A P HY: D a n i C a nto da n n y n orth / E ric P a m ies

A–Z of Primavera Sound 2015

Live

l oud a nd quiet at pr im aver a

M

P

T

X

Jokes are, of course, abound at Demarco’s main stage set (a massive upgrade from where he played in 2013), but they come from his ridiculous wing men, Piers and Andy, rather than Mac himself. Piers covers Coldplay’s ‘Yellow’ at one point and gives a shout out to Moby; Andy answers back with spoken word improv and grandly introduces Anthony Kiedis (“We’ve been hanging out with him all day – he’s actually really chill”), who is in fact their friend who just happens to have long hair.

Yeah, you had to be there.

It’s next to the record fair, of course, and that really is the end of the shopping experience at Primavera.

Records, the occasional T-shirt and a hell of a lot of illustrated, screenprinted posters, clearly from some very talented people.

The most likeable man on site, Jesso Jr. flips Antony Hegarty’s setup on its head and performs alone, at a single grand piano. Unless you’re down the front, you literally can’t hear a thing, yet there are plenty of people happy to cock an ear in complete silence to will the smiley guy through it. I mean, people are missing Patti Smith for this.

Continuing the trend for punned band names (Chet Faker, Joanna Gruesome, Joy Orbison – erm, Ryan Adams?), even if in their case it’s an unintentional one, Ex Hex nail one of the plum spots of the festival, in the evening sunshine on the stage that looks straight out to sea. Hurtling through the kind of fun that’s forever soundtracking John Hughes houseparty scenes as a massive crowd of kids in Wayfarers look on, Mary Timony’s punchdrunk stage-stagger and ‘My Sharona’ shredding is pure, unaffected joy.

is for Mac Demarco’s Band

is for Poster Convention

Q

is for “Quiet!”

One of the drawbacks of city festivals is that eventually The Man’s gonna show up and get you to turn it down.

And while a quieter site this year was an obvious bonus for the likes of Tobias Jesso Jr. (see ‘T’) and Torres, whose intimate set didn’t have to compete with neighbouring stages, the limited volume also reduced the impact of some bands who thrive in high amplification: Sunn O)))’s normally earth-juddering thunder became more of a passing storm, to the extent that we were shushed during their set, five rows from the front.

is for Noise It’s not all jangly sunshine bubblegum goodness at Primavera this year – indeed, the back-to-back pairing of Spiritualized and SunnO))) on Friday evening was very much influenced by Super Hans’ motto, “the longer the note, the more dread.” Add a ruthlessly abrasive Pharmakon, a grandly fuzzed Ride and a 150-minute-long Swans set, and a Catalonian beachside festival starts to feel, unexpectedly, like quite the place to realign one’s eardrums.

is for Underworld

Primavera’s bookers this year scheduled a continuous Friday evening run across various stages that comprised Ex Hex (see, erm, ‘X’), Patti Smith, The Julie Ruin and SleaterKinney, making for a festival-within-afestival of Riot Grrrl on day two. Smith delivered ‘Horses’, faithfully and in full, Kathleen Hanna cartwheeled and caterwauled with impunity and Sleater-Kinney turned in the set of the weekend, career-spanning and effortlessly convincing. Add a second Patti Smith show and a comeback for Babes in Toyland on the Saturday evening, and now L7, Huggy Bear and Bratmobile are frantically refreshing their inboxes for next year’s invite.

We all want to look our best at festivals, don’t we, but it’s quite the trial at Glastonbury when you smell like you’ve fallen in the long-drop and you’ve washed your hair with wet wipes. Primavera’s Pitchfork-y crowd are so fashion conscience I saw a woman wearing a leather bum-bag and two hats. Seriously. A tip: stand out from the crowd by having a shave. And what’s with all the brown hair?! Don’t blonde people like music anymore?

S

Not including Andy Bell and the reformed Ride, there’s just one fleeting reminder of Oasis’ legacy, when we walk past a small group of British guys stood in a circle singing the chorus of ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ with impressive conviction. Book the wrong festival, lads?

The appeal of The Strokes in 2015, it transpires, is both nostalgia and voyeurism. Accordingly, witnessing five men in various states of long-term disrepair who all appear to hate each other rattle through almost everything off ‘Is This It’ with precision insouciance is a queasily compulsive delight.

is for Strokes

is for Ex Hex

Although Underworld’s brief here of playing the whole of ‘Dubnobasswith -myheadman’ restricts their set-list somewhat, there’s still enough power and thump to show how startlingly contemporary that album still sounds.

The record’s arc – slow-build start, big middle, comedown close – isn’t quite right for a festival crowd desperate to go mental, but the central pairing of ‘Dirty Epic’ and ‘Cowgirl’ remains the best 25 minutes of dance music performed in the whole weekend.

V

O

is for Oasis

U

R

is for Riot Grrrl

N

is for Tobias Jesso Jr.

is for Vanity

W

Y

is for Youth We’re not as young as we once were, but it turns out neither is anyone else.

Youth was in short supply at this year’s festival, onstage and in front of it.

Come on, kids, The Strokes are on!

From New York. Y’know, Julian Casablancas? No, not the film.

is for Weather

Z

European festivals represent some sort of sun-blazing Shangri-La in the British festival-goer’s mind. In reality, however, past Primaveras have suffered the kind of meteorological misfortune normally reserved for Glastonbury, so this year’s dose of PERMANENT SCORCHIO was long-awaited and duly lapped up: lobsterfied Brits added colour, early-evening bands got to wear their sunglasses with intent and even the most tepid opening acts (I’m looking at you, The KVB) seemed improved by the warmth.

Polish noise-techno artists aren’t exactly big-ticket summer festival fodder, but the fact that one such act, Zamilska, was closing the tiny Pro stage at 4am on day one, in the same company as festival titans like Andy Weatherall and Richie Hawtin, to about 50 dedicated gawpers, is a testament not just to Primavera’s impressively all-embracing booking policy but the open-heartedness of its attendees. No, we didn’t actually stop to watch, but you find me a better ‘Z’.

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is for Zamilska

Live

Skinny Girl Diet Sebirght Arms, Hackney London

Belle & Sebastian Westminster Hall, London 1 2 / 05 / 2 01 5 w r it er : a m y p et t if er

15/ 0 5/ 20 15

Pho togr a p h er : Da n iel Qu esada

wr i ter : Edga r sm ith

I spent the first five years of my Belle & Sebastian fandom convinced they were not real people. But yet here they all are again. a little older and wiser, in the grand surrounds of a Methodist hall. They play with comedic and choreographed projections and engage in warm chatter while burning through a classic set sprinkled with new songs that mark their own electronic renaissance. Stuart Murdoch is still irresistible armed with bongos and a keytar, taking his jacket off for new disco stomper ‘Party Line’, which properly goes off thanks to the remnants of an enormous stage invasion. A Beatle-booted Stevie Jackson lets loose on ‘Perfect Couples’ and songs from ‘Tigermilk’ and ‘Sinister’ – that are pushing 20 years – swell and sparkle like new, much to the delight of the cool set in London.

In a better world, these gutter punk teens would have their ownTV show, maybe their own multiplatform media conglomerate. As things stand, they can’t even vote and teeter on the edge of appropriate recognition.

Delilah’s drawled, castrating putdowns and a skyshattering howl from bassist Amelia suggest they do not care. Newer songs push past the influence of Nirvana and Bikini Kill to heavier terrain: the breezeblock riffs of Wipers, Melvins sludge and The Pixies’ brutal dynamic shifts.

Containing the atmosphere somewhat is a London audience, mostly their senior. A fresher-faced crowd would complete the picture. Indeed, if Jazz Coleman is right, and Videodrome kitten vines have brain-horned their generation into slavish devotion to the corporate state, SGD’s raging groove might be their only hope.

Stealing Sheep XOYO Old Street, London

Ride The Roundhouse Camden, London

Unknown Mortal Orchestra Islington Assembly Hall Islington, London

Gwenno The Social Fitzrovia, London

0 7/ 0 5/ 20 15

24/0 5 / 2 0 1 5

21/05/2015

2 0/ 05 / 2 01 5

wr i ter : am y pettife r

wri te r: e dgar s mi th

wri te r: J a me s W e s t

w r it er : ja m es F . Tho m pso n

Stealing Sheep are celebrating the end of their tour and the release of their second album with cava in plastic flutes. Appending three heads and neon spandex-ed limbs to an already mind-bendingly complex setup, they weave a curious magic and create a very different ‘other’ space to that of their earlier, folkier output. Tracks from ‘Not Real’ shimmer with spacy distortion, analogue synths and woodblock drums.

Their own, ethereal harmonies are backed – at the gig’s crescendo – by all girl choir ‘Deep Throat’ and the tiny stage becomes their own particular universe. The transformation music they make is hard but as performers they are effortless; it’s all confirmation that Stealing Sheep are one of the most beguiling and intricately talented bands in existence right now. You’re not imagining it. It’s real.

Tonight, Roundhouse plays Riyadh to the paunchy, white and middle aged of London whose Mecca is the urinal stall, bordered by a Red Sea of piss and lager. The law forbids them to drive, so the two or three women here have to get everyone home. With ‘Cool Your Boots’, the engine of all Ride’s songs – rolling drums, spangled chords – chugs into life.Two-thirds in they peak with the ultrastoned ‘Paralyzed’ and ‘Vapour Trail’ from 1991’s ‘Nowhere’, before ‘Furthest Sense’ and ‘Taste’ from the early EPs, and fan favourite ‘Leave Them All Behind.’ The sound is impeccable. Even MBV’s decibel limit-breaking show here in 2008 didn’t hit the back of the room in the same, even way, and if comforting nostalgia is your bag, Ride peddle that more reliably than the Mary Chain.

No longer niche purveyors of Nuggets-esque psychedelia, as on their eponymous 2011 debut, Ruban Neilson and band are all about kaleidoscopic funk pop and hedonistic holler-alongs this time around and there are nods to a host of greats – Stevie Wonder bubbles under the fuzz on ‘Like Acid Rain’ before a solo of Prince proportions, while the smooth strut and throbbing bass of ‘The World Is Crowded’ sounds like Al Green on a graceful, billowy trip. Better still is a handsaloft ‘Stage or Screen’, which could be T. Rex doing ‘Hey Jude’, and ‘Multi-Love’, the new record’s Metronomy-ish title track, which brings honky tonk piano and hooks, hooks, hooks. As you’d expect from the much-lauded Portlanders, their magnificent live show is more than a match for their game-changing new record.

Gwenno Saunders is a one-woman whirlwind of subversive electro-pop feminism and militant Welsh language reclamation. Formerly of the Pipettes, nowadays the Heavenly signee rails against the patriarchaeth amidst billowing synths and pulsating motorik rhythms. Tonight, the stuffy basement venue perfectly accommodates the claustrophobic productions from ‘Y Dydd Olaf’, her latest album. The songs are in Welsh – naturally – but Saunders translates the title of each one for the mostly clueless London crowd. “This next one is about how shit the patriarchy is. It’s fun though,” she jokes, introducing ‘Patriarchaeth’. Later she’ll talk about media manipulation, revolution and, er, writing anthems for robot clones. Really though, it’s the music that’s key here: a fizzy cocktail of the Human League, Gary Numan and Broadcast.

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Singing Pictures

W r i te r : A n d re w A n d er s on

Spice World (1997)

It is easy to forget just how big the Spice Girls were; from our vantage point of twenty-years later they can sometimes seem – to use nineties parlance – a bit naff. But consider this: their first six singles went to number one, they each made millions of pounds every year from merchandising alone (setting a new standard for how a band could be branded) while radio, TV and press followed their lives with obsessive detail. As a result, the Spice Girls became household names in a way that no band had been since the Beatles.Then, like the Beatles, at the peak of their powers they made a film: Spice World.

In the eyes of most people that is where the similarity ends. While people heap praise on the knockabout nature of A Hard Day’s Night – and it is a good film – the traditional thing to do is give Spice World a critical kicking. On Rotten Tomatoes it scores 29 per cent; on Metacrtic 32 per cent; while a quick Google of the term ‘Spice World’ turns up millions of results that can be summarised in four words: this film is shit.

However, I am not going to do that because a) my editor wouldn’t be pleased with a four word feature and b) because Spice World is – wait for it – actually a good film.

Now, let me put some politician speak on you here and first say we need to define what ‘good’ means (stick with me on this). Just as you wouldn’t judge a school nativity play by the same critical standards as a full theatre production, so we

shouldn’t be pitching Spice World against Apocalypse Now. Instead, we should judge it to the same standard as A Hard Day’s Night… so, let’s do that.

We open on the band performing ‘Too Much’ on Top of the Pops. It’s not the greatest Spice Girls song, but it is does have a certain sway, and the obligatory warbling bit at the end from Mel C. No, the Spice Girls might not be a musical match for LennonMcCartney – though contrary to popular belief, the girls did write most of their own lyrics and melodies – but numbers like ‘Spice Up Your Life’, ‘Stop’ and ‘Viva Forever’ (all featured in this film) are about a million times more memorable than anything from the equivalent boy bands of the era.

We then plunge headlong into the world of the Spice Girls, riding the wave of fame in a Union Jackcovered bus.To celebrate and cement their status, the band’s manager, Clifford (Richard E Grant in a suit so garish it would make Jonathan Ross think twice), has booked them for the biggest gig of their career, which will be broadcast live all over the world.

Meanwhile evil media tycoon Kevin McMaxford (played to overthe-top Aussie perfection by Barry Humphries) wants to spoil the party, and sends out his satanic paparazzi photographer Damien (Richard O’Brien) to get the dirt on the Spice Girls. Combining the arseholearrogance of Rupert Murdoch and the you’d-piss-in-his-face-if-youweren’t-so-sure-he’d-enjoy-it-ness of Piers Morgan, McMaxford’s

negative energy makes the perfect foil for the girls’ upbeat attitude.

As the McMaxford-led media backlash begins the Spice Girls start questioning the merits of fame, reminiscing about a simpler time when all they had to do was sing.

However, unlike the Monkees’ film Head, this existential crisis is never turned in on themselves: the Spice Girls are self-aware, but not selfcritical – probably the film’s single major failing.

As I was sat on my sofa watching Spice World, one thought kept flashing through my mind: the nineties were cool! Whether we’re talking Emma Bunton’s platform trainers, Halliwell’s mini dresses or the bright red parka worn by Alan Cummings, it all just seems to fit.

These, we must remember, were the dying days of a unified media; a time when almost everyone saw the world through four and a halfTV stations, a dozen newspapers and the pages of Melody Maker or the NME; a time before the world fractured into a million memes, trends and niches.

The Spice Girls also do a great job of sending up their own over-the-top images, whether that is Mel C wistfully looking out of window while cuddling a football, Victoria tottering through an army assault course in high-heels or Mel B being…well, Mel B, which is pretty funny and/or terrifying. There are plenty of good one-liners, too, like when McMaxford hires Damien and describes him as ‘the man who got the Teletubbies having a poo.’

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Another thing Spice World has going for it is a veritable deluge of guest appearances. Even if you don’t like the Spice Girls’ music, even if you find the bit where they meet aliens lame, you can still play count the cameos and, if you turn it into a drinking game, there is a good change you’ll suffer irreversible liver damage. Some notable ones not already mentioned include Meat Loaf as their bus driver, who at one point says: ‘I would do anything for the girls…but I won’t do that’; Stephen Fry as an out-of-touch judge; and Michael Barrymore – the ultimate nineties man – as an army drill sergeant.

Without giving the end away, the whole story suddenly ties together very quickly and cleverly in a fashion that – dare I say it – might almost be described as post-modern, and the film leaves you feeling that all is well in Spice World. Of course, that really wasn’t the case: Geri Halliwell left the group shortly after Spice World’s release, the cool nineties became the crap noughties and before we knew where we were Tony Blair suddenly turned into the world’s biggest bell-end.

In conclusion, Spice World is as cool, comic and clever as A Hard Day’s Night; a film the nineties should be proud of. It’s got great guest appearances, a ton of memorable tunes and never makes the mistake of taking itself too seriously. So, here’s to Spice World: not as crap as everyone says it is (and actually quite good).

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How is this man still smiling?

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Cider

Relentless

Converse

“God, I hate V Festival!”

“Tell you what would make this even better...

MUSE!”

Air guitar

Wizards

Make up

AC/DC T-shirts

“DAN!” (still)

V FESTIVAL

GLASTONBURY

Royal Blood

The Darkness

“It’s not like it used to be. I’ve been coming here since 2009!”

Wellies

Weed

Cocaine

“I don’t really come for the music.”

“My shower was lovely!”

Jamie Oliver

Alex from The One Show

Camp chairs

Juggling

Grazia “Can you even get ones that aren’t Hunter?”

“Milo, please give Millie her brioche back, sweetheart.

You’ve had yours” Silent disco

Crocs

Hummus

LATITUDE

White wine

Toms

Disclaimer: The representations of the persons herein are purely fictitious

Photo casebook: The inappropriate world of Ian Beale

Oh God! You’re thinking about it again, aren’t you!?

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