Dork, May 2022

DOWN WITH BORING.

ISSUE 65 · MAY 2022 · READDORK.COM

. s m o s s o l B

The New Album INcludes The sINgles cAre For, rIbboN ArouNd The bomb ANd The sulkINg PoeT

29.04.22

Index.

Issue 65 | May 2022 | readdork.com | Down With Boring

WHAT'S ON THE STEREO?

ALFIE TEMPLEMAN

Mellow Moon Our indie prince has delivered his debut album, and awwwww, aren’t we proud?

Well done Alfie, you legend.

MAGGIE ROGERS

That’s Where I Am The first single from Maggie’s new album should be dropping the same day this issue hits the streets, so we’re almost certainly now allowed to tell you it’s mindblowing brilliant and well worth all the teasing that’s been going on.

ARCADE FIRE

WE We’re not allowed to tell you about the new album from the Canadian indie titans until ‘a later date’ - but we can confirm we have heard it, and there are things to say.

MUNA

MUNA It’s too early for us to give real indications about MUNA’s self-titled third album, given it’s not out until June. But you can probably guess.

Warraband.

PAYDAY

Big Boy The funnest and sassiest of bops, teen rapper-singer Payday’s 2021 single ‘Big Boy’ is one of those songs where every time you hear it, it somehow then gets stuck on repeat for at least two weeks?! Magic. It’s far from her only must-listen tune, too - ‘Beam’, ‘Vampire’ and ‘Cry’ are also top class.

EDITOR'S LETTER

TURNS OUT THAT Blossoms have been waiting to get their first Dork cover. That’s the news that reaches ‘ver bunker’ from this month’s cover interview with Stockport’s finest. Should have just told us you wanted one yourselves, lads.

Still, making a record as good as latest full-length ‘Ribbon Around The Bomb’ is probably a smarter way to go about things when all is said and done. The sound of a band maturing into their own skin, it’s their most fully realised statement to date, more than earning themselves that slot on the front of this month’s mag.

Even if they did trash the studio on the shoot - check their TikTok and see if you can work out what we’re on about. Box responsibly, lads.

This month, we’re blessed with some truly special album releases. Last month’s cover stars Fontaines D.C. deliver their best yet, ‘Skinty Fia’, while Dork’s adopted weirdo buzz merchants Wet Leg drop a five-star debut that proves we all love a bit of filth and a good, long scream. But it’s Let’s Eat Grandma’s third album ‘Two Ribbons’ that’s setting all the early running for my personal album of the year so far. Remarkable, special, bewitching - pick your adjectives freely. So long as they’re ultra-positive, you’ll be on the money. That it comes out of a period of such turmoil for the duo only makes its achievement all the greater. Truly, a band to cherish.

And if we’re looking for bands to treasure, there’s a whole bunch of them in this month’s edition. From MUNA to Sunflower Bean, Hatchie to Honeyglaze, The Linda Lindas to PUP, Lizzy McAlpine, Daisy Brain and more, there’s a bit of something of every flavour. Dive in!

Ryan Beatty

Boy In Jeans Ryan Beatty’s 2018 debut album ‘Boy In Jeans’ was proper good, wasn’t it? A statement of intent from an artist still brimming with pop potential a decade in.

BAND INDEX. Alfie Templeman

10, 52

The Amazons

11 Love You Later

19

Amyl & The Sniffers

8 Lucius

52

Anorak Patch Arcade Fire Artemas Baby Dave BANKS Beabadoobee Beach Bunny Big Image

50 Lynks 21 Maisie Peters 55 Mitski

Bob Vylan

23 19

8 MUNA

3, 6

21 Muse 23 mxmtoon

11, 18, 64 27

32, 52 Nick Mono

31

19 NiNE8 Collective

26

26, 50 NOAHFINNCE

24

30 Omar Apollo

55

Charles Watson

50 Orville Peck

50

6, 18, 49 Panic Shack

50

Chloe Moriondo

49 Porij

27

CHVRCHES

60 Priestgate

56

Coach Party

49 Psychedelic Porn Crumpets

54

Congee

30 PUP

14

Daisy Brain

28, 55 RAYE

18

Dama Scout

50 The Regrettes

55

Denzel Curry

50 renforshort

18

Disclosure

18 Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever 52

Dora Jar

24 Sad Night Dynamite

ELIO

21 Saya Gray

19

English Teacher

54 Self Esteem

58

Father John Misty

54 SIPHO

26

FLO

30 Sky Ferreira

flowerovflove

21 Soccer Mommy

Foals

18 SPIDER

Fontaines D.C.

51 Spill Tab

The Gaslight Anthem

11 Sports Team

26

16 30 18, 24 8, 16, 20, 55

19 Stand Atlantic

49

Griff

26 Stormzy

62

16, 18 Sunflower Bean

40, 54

Hatchie

44, 50 Swim Deep

56

Honeyglaze

46, 55 Swim School

23

iamkyami

50 Tate McRae

Kae Tempest

50 Thomas Headon

49

Kamal.

24 Toro Y Moi

49

KennyHoopla

20 Unschooling

23

Kid Kapichi

27 Vlure

23

Kill Birds

22 Wallows

49

Kynsy Lauran Hibberd Let’s Eat Grandma Liam Payne Lime Garden The Linda Lindas

7 Walt Disco 27 Warpaint 18 Wax Works 55, 66 Wet Leg 16 Willow 27, 56 Willow Kayne 12 Working Men’s Club

Associate Editor Ali Shutler Contributing Editors Jamie Muir, Martyn Young Scribblers Abigail Firth, Alex Bradley, Andrew Wescott, Blaise Radley, Chris Taylor, Connor Fenton, Dan Harrison, Dillon Eastoe, Finlay Holden, Jake Hawkes, Jessica Goodman, Melissa Darragh, Neive McCarthy, Sam Taylor, Steven Loftin Snappers Andrew O’Connor, Caity Krone, Cheryl Georgette, Driely S., Eva Pentel, Frances Beach, Frank Ockenfels, Haley Appell, Harvey Williams-Fairley, Hattie Neate, Holly Whitaker, Indy Brewer, Jamie MacMillan, Jamie Mourn, Lissyelle, Patrick Gunning, Rory Barnes, Sarah Louise Bennett

PUBLISHED FROM

11, 18

Gemini Aaliyah Harry Styles

Deputy Editor Victoria Sinden

7

Chanel Loren Charli XCX

Editor Stephen Ackroyd

21 22

11, 20, 55 Mollie Coddled

50 The Mysterines

Blu DeTiger

3, 8, 55

16, 55 Malady

Bloc Party Blossoms

20

3, 7, 18 Maggie Rogers

Black Country, New Road

King Princess

‘Editor’ @stephenackroyd

readdork.com

3, 21, 55,58 Lizzy McAlpine

8

49 40 21

WELCOMETOTHEBUNKER.COM

UNIT 10, 23 GRANGE ROAD, HASTINGS, TN34 2RL

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

Distributed nationally.

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This Month. #65. MAY 2022.

Intro.

06 MUNA

Not content with dropping one of 2021’s best songs, MUNA return with yet another landmark bop and news of a third album. We catch up on what to expect from one of the most anticipated albums of the year.

10

12

14

16

LIZZY MCALPINE

Flexing both indie-folk subtlety and alt-rock grandeur, Lizzy McAlpine’s second record ‘five seconds flat’ offers a graphic insight into recent heartbreak.

THE LINDA LINDAS

They might have found viral fame with impossibly brilliant bash at racist, sexist boys in a library, but - as they drop their Really Very Good debut album ‘Growing Up’ - there’s so much more to teen punks The Linda Lindas than that.

PUP

Not just a great band but one with something to say for themselves. PUP’s new album demands attention.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF...

BABY DAVE

You know what’s easier than following around your fave pop stars, day in, day out, to see what they’re up to right that minute? Asking them. Here’s what Slaves’ Isaac Holman - aka Baby Dave‘s day looks like.

18

The best of the latest new tracks, featuring Blu DeTiger, Lynks and an incoming chaos bop from Maisie Peters that’s less a song and more a cry for help.

Festivals.

22

THE GREAT ESCAPE

This May, Dork is off to get rid of the boring by the sea as we gather some of the best new bands on the planet and charge directly for Brighton Pier.

And that’s not all...

26 STANDON CALLING

Introducing The Dive Bar - the new home of the most exciting and emerging acts at this summer’s Standon Calling

27

Dork has a tent, and we know what to do with it.

By which we mean stuff it with two back-to-back stages and some of our fave bands.

DAISY BRAIN

With nods to grunge, punk-rock and Britpop, Daisy Brain takes inspiration from all the biggest and best sounds of the 90s and channels them into huge-sounding hits that are all his own.

30 CHANEL LOREN

It’s both super early days for South- East London born, Sydney-based artist Chanel Loren, and also not at all. She’s always been creative, so much so she’s already spent years putting in the work - refining her sound, picking up new skills and studying at BRIT School. Now, though, after a trip halfway around the world to live in Australia, she’s dropped her promise-packed debut single, ‘Playlist’.

31

NICK MONO

Londoner Nick Mono is a genre-splicing prodigy on a stratospheric rise.

Features.

32

Sunflower Bean have never been slouches, but their latest full-length ‘Headful of Sugar’ is something altogether different.

44 HATCHIE

The euphoria of dance-pop and the introspection of a global pandemic meet on Hatchie’s new album ‘Giving The World Away’. Turns out, it works.

48 HONEYGLAZE

With their debut album about to land, something’s smelling good for Honeyglaze - and it’s not the bins.

Incoming.

50 REVIEWS

The new releases you need to hear - and some you definitely don’t.

51

LIVE AT LEEDS IN THE PARK

Hype.

28

40 SUNFLOWER BEAN

BANGERS

BLOSSOMS

Already firmly established at indie’s top table, Blossoms’ fourth album ‘Ribbon Around The Bomb’ is their defining statement.

4. DORK

ARTIST’S GUIDE: COACH PARTY

Isle of Wight foursome Coach Party are gearing up for a big year - here, they talk us through their brand new EP, ‘Nothing Is Real’.

54 ARTIST’S GUIDE: ENGLISH TEACHER

Leeds up-and-comers English Teacher have penned an EP all about anxiety.

Get Out. 56 SWIM DEEP

100 Club, London, 10th March 2022

58 SELF ESTEEM

O2 Kentish Town Forum, London, 24th March 2022

59 ALFIE TEMPLEMAN

O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London, 16th March 2022

58 CHVRCHES

O2 Brixton Academy, London, 16th March 2022

58 DECENT EXPOSURE

The best live photography from Stormzy and mxmtoon.

Backpage.

62

ANY OTHER QUESTIONS...

LET’S EAT GRANDMA

Yes, Dear Reader. We enjoy those ‘in depth’ interviews as much as anyone else. But - BUT - we also enjoy the lighter side of music, too. We simply cannot go on any longer without knowing that Jenny Hollingworth from Let’s Eat Grandma wants to be mates with Lil Nas X.

“A band that just don’t stand out in the here and now - they’d have stood tall amongst the Smash Hits pop icons of the 80s too” - Dork

the debut album - out now WALTDISCO.COM

THE BEATING HEART OF POP.

Pony up.

THE BI G STORY

WORDS: STEPHEN ACKROYD. PHOTOS: FRANK OCKENFELS.

There’s a better than decent chance that MUNA are currently the BBOTP right now.

That’s Best Band On The Planet, in case you were wondering. If you need convincing, their new single ‘Anything But Me’ should sort you out. Just make sure you’re atop of an appropriately sized horse first. We dropped the t’riffic trio a line to find out more about their stellar selftitled third album, due this June.

6. DORK

→ THINGS ARE FEELING big in the world of MUNA right now. Gigantic, even. Though they’ve always been filed firmly under brilliant - they’re former Dork cover stars, dontchaknow - the last few months haven’t felt simply like a band in good form. If anything, MUNA feel like a full-on cultural reset.

“I think it’s a really exciting time to be us,” enthuses guitarist Naomi McPherson, “and also a scary time!

Quite frankly, the more attention we get, the more I feel my own insecurities are coming to the fore.”

That’s the thing about realising undoubted stellar potential. The plaudits mean the beady eyes of the musical zeitgeist snap into focus, and the expectations head through the roof.

“I’d like to try to be really present and enjoy this new phase we’ve entered because it does feel so hard-earned,” they continue, as open and honest as you’d expect from a band that connects so strongly with so many. “I’m trying not to be too hard on myself. Katie [Gavin], Jo [Maskin] and I have worked so fucking hard for damn near a decade in the hope that people would eventually see the potential we saw in ourselves.

Weirdly, it feels like it’s finally kinda happening, which is a trip. I’m grateful to everyone who helped us get here, including all the fans who’ve believed in us and our music since day one.”

If those people were waiting for a payoff, they certainly saw the dividends last year. Signing to Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records, the trio enlisted their new boss to guest on ‘Silk

Chiffon’, a song so brilliant it became a genuine contender for the best track of the whole damn year.

“It was a song we felt was such a shift from our previous work, tonally speaking - which was a good thing,” Naomi offers. “We make such deeply emotional and, at times, very sad music.

‘Silk Chiffon’ was just purely joyful and not too overthought. It felt like an end credits song from an early 2000s rom-com. People’s reception to it has been really fun and funny. We like all the ironic “Life’s So Fun” memes and TikToks because bitch, we’re depressed too! And sometimes life isn’t so fun! But sometimes it is, you know?”

Not only was it a significant point in MUNA’s musical evolution, but it also turns out it was the first music we heard

“It just felt right.

Self-titled, fuck it” NAO M I M CP HE R SO N

‘FYI’ THE MUSIC NEWS YOU NEED TO KNOW.

ARCADE FIRE ARE BACK!

“WE ARE FUCKING FUCKED”

Arcade Fire have returned with news of a new album, Titled ‘WE’, it’s out on 6th May, and follows a whole heap of typically cryptic teasing. There’s also a new song, ‘The Lightning I,II’, streaming now. The band have been playing surprise live shows in New Orleans and New York - with founding member Will Butler leaving for ‘new things’.

Muse have announced their ninth studio album, ‘Will of the People’. Set to arrive on 26th August, it comes alongside a new track, ‘Compliance’, streaming now. Typically quite something, the album closes with a track titled ‘We Are Fucking Fucked’. Obviously a low key affair, then.

HOLD ON FOR KING PRINCESS King Princess is set to return later this year with a second album. There’s no firm release date set yet for ‘Hold On Baby’, but there is a first single from it streaming now. Titled ‘For My Friends’, it’s about King Princess’ “two best friends from high school”, ‘FYI’.

readdork.com 7.

of their forthcoming, self-titled third album. Starting work on it straight after the release of previous full-length ‘Saves The World’ (“We tend to just keep writing once a record comes out, or at least Katie does!”), the plan was simple; push for the positives while still staying true to who they are.

“We wanted to make bold, interesting, savvy musical decisions with regards to arrangement and production,” Naomi explains. “We wanted it to feel joyful and fun and a bit less heavy-hearted - though, of course, just as emotionally raw - as the last two records. For the OG fans, it was fun to make things we knew could toy with their expectations, but also satisfy them in the sense that it’s MUNA still through and through.”

And that it certainly is, which is why finally getting around to a self-titled album feels so apt. As Naomi admits, it “feels like a right of passage” for the band, “especially after the first record.”

“Beyonce’s self-titled album is quite possibly the best album ever made,” they offer. It might sound like a high bar to set for yourself, but trust us - we’ve heard the album, and it can take it.

“It’s so clever and funny, just like Katie is.

She’s the queen of a cheeky, funny opening line” NAOM I M CP H E R S O N

MUNA

THE BEST NEW TRACKS

Anything But Me

Are MUNA the best band in the world? It’s a competitive field, but nobody is getting more than 60 seconds into their new single ‘Anything But Me’ before they start pondering such lofty suggestions. It’s not just the cooler-than-anyone-youknow synth-pop odyssey – though that doesn’t hurt.

It’s the fact they come with the kind of whip-smart sass of those opening lyrics, conjuring up visions of all those evil exes, sat upon their tiny horses. Giddy up, fuckers.

MUNA are coming through.

Catch up with more of the latest bangers on p.18

8. DORK

“With it being our third record, this sounds woo-woo maybe, but there’s something powerful about the number three. There are three of us. The album cover concept came before we titled it - a portrait of each of us, then the band name - and it just felt right. Self-titled, fuck it.”

That “fuck it” attitude serves MUNA well. Anyone who’s heard the latest taster of the record, ‘Anything But Me’, will know that with great attitude comes infinite power. Take that opening lyric. “You’re gonna say that I’m on a high horse / I think that my horse is regular-sized / Did you ever think maybe, you’re on a pony / Going in circles on a carousel ride?” Iconic, right?

“I bugged out when I first heard that line,” Naomi admits. “It’s so clever and funny, just like Katie is. She’s the queen of a cheeky, funny opening line.”

That’s not the track currently tugging on Naomi’s affections, though. “One of my faves is ‘Loose Garment’,” they admit.

“It’s a style of production I had wanted to figure out how to do for a long time, and we just didn’t have exactly the right song for it. When this came along, and we decided to go the way it went style-wise, I was geeked. It’s such a deep cut, but I

love it. But also, overall, I think ‘Kind of Girl’ is one of the best MUNA songs to date, period. It’s so hard to pick, man.”

It’s something the UK will have to do when MUNA finally return for a pair of live dates this May. With a showing at seaside spectacular The Great Escape planned, they’re also set to play a seemingly intimate show at London’s Garage a couple of days before. We say intimate because it sold out in what felt like seconds, with a multitude of fans desperately bemoaning their inability to score a ticket. Don’t worry too much, though. They’ll be back.

“The UK is one of our favourite places to play,” Naomi offers. “It was the first place we had fans. So yeah, we owe a lot to all of you and will definitely be back for more this year.”

But until then, there’s so much more to come. With one of what’s sure to be one of 2022’s highlights on the slate, MUNA’s time is here and now. Hold your horses, and prepare for one hell of a ride.

■ MUNA’s self-titled new album is out 24th June. They’ll hit the UK this May for shows at London’s Garage (10th) and The Great Escape (12th).

‘FYI’ FLYING HIGH

Tate McRae has announced her debut album, ‘i used to think i could fly’. Set for release on 27th May via Ministry Of Sound Records, the album will feature the previously aired ‘she’s all i wanna be’, ‘feel like shit’ and ‘chaotic’.

EXTRA COMFORT Amyl & The Sniffers have announced an expanded reissue of their most recent album, ‘Comfort To Me’. Originally released last year, the new version includes a live version of the entire record, recorded on the docks in Williamstown – the first time they’d performed it live front to back. It originally premiered last October as a livestream concert film. Set to drop on May 13th, this will be the first time the performance has been shared outside of the stream.

GULP! Sports Team have announced their second album, ‘Gulp!’.

The full-length - following up on 2020’s debut ‘Deep Down Happy’ - is out on 22nd July.

The news comes alongside a new single, ‘R Entertainment’.

You can read more on that in Bangers on p.20.

CREATURE FEATURE Beach Bunny have announced news of their second album, ‘Emotional Creature’. Set for release on 22nd July, the news comes alongside a lead single, ‘Fire Escape’, which follows up on last year’s track ‘Oxygen’.

WE SURRENDER! Maggie Rogers has announced her new album, ‘Surrender’.

The release follows on from ‘Heard It In A Past Life’ and will be released on 29th July via Polydor Records. The twelve-track full-length was coproduced with Kid Harpoon, and recorded between her parents’ garage, Electric Lady Studios in New York City and Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios near Bath.

“I’m a little scared, but I’m speaking my truth” WORDS: FINLAY HOLDEN. PHOTO: CAITY KRONE.

Flexing both indie-folk subtlety and alt-rock grandeur, Lizzy McAlpine’s second record ‘five seconds flat’ offers a graphic insight into recent heartbreak.

L

izzy McAlpine has capitalised on modern routes to listeners’ ears from the get-go – going through the Soundcloud demos stage, uploading YouTube content, and dropping TikTok hits. However, she secretly hopes that such promotional prosperity doesn’t taint a perception of the subdued long-form experiences that she has developed something of a knack for too.

“A lot of people see a song blow up, and then that’s all that they care about from that artist,” Lizzy resigns. “People think that because artists have this big ‘claim to fame’ that must have been their big starting moment. Most of the time, these artists have worked so hard to get to where they are and that viral video is just one moment in their journey.”

Fortunately, the Philadelphia native is not one to let past moments define her, be it unreleased triumphs or a first attempt at a full-length that she now views as a snapshot of a more naïve and innocent version of herself. “With this new record, I wanted to stay as far away from the first album as possible,” she comments. “That felt really easy because I am not the same person I was when I put that first album out.” With flurrying successes exposing Lizzy to a new world of opportunity and the growth points to match it, one distinct step forward carries the most intention: “These songs are way more mature than I’ve been capable of previously.” “[Maturing] is an unconscious thing that happens as you go through life and experience more of what is on offer,” she

10. DORK

considers. “The months of 2022 so far have been insane for me growth-wise; I’ve discovered so much about myself, how I relate to other people and work. There are seasons of growth; sometimes you feel stagnant, and sometimes things just keep coming out of nowhere and making you question yourself.” This album is certainly about the latter, although not much of that road was trodden with ease.

Speaking in the middle of her first-ever tour, she’s found an inspiring musical mentor in dodie – from listening to her songs online to singing them together while baking cake, Lizzy has found a friend in a touring party that she continues to look up to as delicate live renditions unfold every evening. Long car rides and lonely hotels mean that the expedition isn’t all blissful, though. “It’s all a pretty intense learning experience, which I knew coming into it, but it’s hard. It’s hard to avoid burnout, and it can be isolating in some ways, so easing my anxiety is the biggest thing.”

Despite ongoing COVID-safe regulations, seeing faces that aren’t transmitted through a screen remains an encouraging pleasure.

On ‘chemtrails’, Lizzy sings: “Sometimes when I shout it feels like no one hears it” – it’s clear that now this is irrefutably not the case. “I released my first album during a pandemic, so I’ve not been able to put faces to names. It’s crazy to see that there really are people behind the numbers.”

An intrinsic element of ‘five seconds flat’ is deep heartbreak, a topic much explored but never exhausted. “That will never change; it’s a shared feeling amongst everyone,” she declares. The break-up in question did not leave Lizzy abandoned, as she has tapped into an exciting roster of friends to accompany her cutting words – Jacob Collier, Ben Kessler and Laura Elliot, just to begin with. Elsewhere, a quick DM to none other than FINNEAS resulted in a

bolstered spark of vulnerability on ‘hate to be lame’, a collaboration Lizzy treasures. “I feel like he’s one of the few musicians in his position who really wants to help up and coming artists; he often supports people in a position like mine. It was a really cool thing to experience.”

An overarching vision earnestly embeds listeners within Lizzy’s intimately distressing experience, with fourteen narrative tracks reinterpreted in an accompanying short film. “I love a concept album,” she grins.

“The film and album are both tied into each other. Every album that I write is a journey through a specific period of my life. I put the songs in order so that you can listen through that and see what I went through, how it happens, and the film is just a visual extension of that.”

Precise details manifest a personal pain, leaving the responsible parties explicitly catalogued. “It’s really difficult for me to write about something that’s not happened to me, which is why most if not all of my songs are very specific to my experiences,” Lizzy shares. “I like using specific details – in a weird way, I feel like it makes my story even more relatable. It feels transparent and vulnerable to write without shrouding any details. I don’t think that will ever change.” ‘nobody likes a secret’ is one example of this, recounting a confrontation with insecurityfuelled toxic masculinity that impacted a past romance in which a partner disguised his loving connection by bragging to others about the exaggerated sexual extent of their relationship. Unsurprisingly, penning this ordeal was not a simple choice, particularly when laid bare against a stripped acoustic instrumental. “For me, that song was really hard to write. I wrote it a year after the break-up, very much as a reflection,” Lizzy explains. “I’ve never really been nervous to release a song, but for this one, I almost am; I know he’s going to hear it and know

that it’s about him because all the lyrics are extremely real. I’m a little scared, but I’m speaking my truth.”

Moody album opener ‘doomsday’ is credited with opening a new era for her sound, thematically detailing the feeling of guilelessly relinquishing control, albeit with a heavy metaphor of death and ‘pulling the plug’ that wasn’t too far a reach from Lizzy’s emotional state at the time (“yes, it came easily – is that bad?!”). In an odd turn, the initial kick of inspiration for this came from a TikTok video theorising reincarnation into specific zodiac signs. “This girl said I don’t want to die in June because I do not want to be a Gemini in my next life,” she laughs.

“That concept inspired the first two lines of the song. I connected that to my own heartbreak – your first love hits different. I knew that it was going to end, and I was just waiting for him to do it because I was far too in love to do it myself.”

If you hadn’t guessed already, Lizzy isn’t on too much of a romantic hot streak and admits to partaking in a “silly little daily scroll through the dating apps” and, even if ‘orange show speedway’ describes dating as “racing headfirst towards something that’ll kill you in five seconds flat” – yes, now the title makes sense – she still endorses an attitude of no risk, no reward.

“The whole theme of this album and the film is that human relationships are messy and complicated and confusing. Feelings are so weird. No one really knows what they’re doing. Although love and relationships are so hurtful and hard, we still search for them because they can also be so amazing and beautiful if you give them a chance,” she summarised. “Even though things can be tough, I’m going to put myself through them anyway. Even though it could kill me in five seconds flat, I still want to chase that hope.”

■ Lizzy McAlpine’s album ‘five seconds flat’ is out now.

“Feelings are so weird. No one really knows what they’re doing” L I Z Z Y M CA L P I N E

‘FYI’ SHOTGUN!

Soccer Mommy – aka Sophie Allison – has returned with news of a new album and a brand new track. Titled ‘Sometimes, Forever’, her new full-length is produced by Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never, and is set for release on 24th June via Loma Vista. The news comes alongside a first taster of the record – the brilliant ‘Shotgun’ read more on that on p.18.

WELCOME TO BEATOPIA Beabadoobee’s new album ‘Beatopia’ is set for release on 15th July. Based around a “deeply personal world that was formed in the imagination of a 7-year-old beabadoobee and has been carried with her ever since”, there’s also a new single, ‘Talk’. You can read more about that on p.20..

HEAVEN SENT The Amazons have announced their new album. Titled ‘How Will I Know If Heaven Will Find Me?. the full-length is set to land on 2nd September. The news comes alongside a UK and Ireland tour, and a new song, ‘Bloodrush’, streaming now.

RISING FAST mxmtoon has shared news of her new album ‘rising’, and debuted a new track from it, ‘sad disco’. The full-length is set to arrive on 20th May via AWAL, and also includes previous single ‘mona lisa’. You can read more about ‘sad disco’ on p.18..

GASLIGHT’S BACK, ALRIGHT The Gaslight Anthem are returning to active service.”Hello everyone, Brian here,” the band’s frontman writes. “I hate to disappoint you, but I need to inform you that there will not be a 10th anniversary Handwritten Tour, or a documentary…

However, I am very pleased to announce to you all that The Gaslight Anthem is returning to full time status as a band.

We’ll be announcing a lot of tour dates in the next couple of days.

We’re also beginning to write new songs for what will be our sixth LP. We’re looking forward to the future and seeing you all again. We want to thank you for staying with us.”

readdork.com 11.

The shape of punk to come WORDS: ALI SHUTLER.

They might have found viral fame with an impossibly brilliant bash at racist, sexist boys in a library, but - as they drop their Really Very Good debut album ‘Growing Up’ there’s so much more to teen punks The Linda Lindas than that.

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→ THE LINDA LINDAS went global in 2021 with a live performance of their blistering punk track ‘Racist, Sexist Boy’ at the LA Public Library. Written by Mila de la Garza and her cousin, Eloise Wong, after Mila was informed by a boy in her class that his dad had told him to stay away from Chinese people, it was the ten-year-old’s first proper encounter with racism.

“I wrote it originally to vent my anger. It definitely used to be more hateful,” explains Mila over Zoom. But after connecting with people, first at local shows and then a global audience, that song is now “about bringing people together and being proud of who you are.”

“It’s so important that people who have gone through similar experiences know they’re not alone,” she adds.

“I’ve always liked music that not only sounds cool but really makes a difference by having a message,” continues Eloise before namechecking The Clash, Public Enemy and Bikini Kill. “It’s so cool we can be a part of that.”

The Linda Lindas – Mila and her older sister Lucia, Eloise and family friend Bela Salazar - originally formed in 2018 for a one-off performance at a local festival. A few months later, Bela was asked to play a gig and needed a backing band. From then on, the four-piece played gigs, wrote songs and pushed each other to get better at their instruments. They’d been in talks with Epitaph Records for a few months before ‘Racist Sexist Boy’ went viral, and a few weeks after, the deal was done. Now, they release debut album ‘Growing Up’.

“I hope it shows to people that we’re not just the kids that did that thing in the library,” says Lucia. “I want people to know we actually have something to say.”

Across ten tracks, and clocking in at under half an hour, The Linda Lindas’ debut is a furious punk record that tackles coming of age in the midst of a pandemic, the helplessness that comes from watching

the world tear itself apart via social media and Bela’s cat Nino - gentleman by day, hunter by night. It’s inspired by classic punk acts like The Go-Go’s, Jawbreaker, The Breeders, Sleater-Kinney, Bikini Kill and Blondie as well as more contemporary, rebellious bands like Paramore, Wolf Alice and The Regrettes.

“We’re four different people, and all the songs are going to sound a little different because it’s all our music tastes combined,” explains Lucia. “But it works together really beautifully.”

At 17, Bela is the older member of the group, while Eloise is 14, Lucia is 15 and Mila is 11. Most bands get questioned when it comes to speaking out about real-world issues, but as you might imagine from a band of people still in school, The Linda Lindas are constantly asked what a bunch of children know about life, politics and meaningful change.

“Why does our age matter?” asks Mila, as Eloise adds: “Just because we’re kids, it doesn’t mean that we don’t understand what’s going on.”

And crucially, “If we don’t understand something, then we’ll ask questions and find out about it,” continues Mila.

“We’re so willing to learn and listen to what people have to say. That doesn’t mean that we’re just going to stay quiet in the corner with our mouths shut. We’re just as aware and clueless as everybody else is,” says Lucia.

“You can’t tell us that because we’re this age, we’re not allowed to have opinions. We see what’s happening in the world; we see what everybody is going through. We see it online, we see it at school, and we want to do something about it. It’s not about your age; it’s about what you want to offer the world – and we want to do something positive.” ■ The Linda Lindas’ debut album ‘Growing Up’ is out now. Read the full interview in the May issue of Upset magazine.

“This album is frontto-back my favourite of our releases”

P

UP have always been the kind of band to draw acclaim while predicting their inevitable demise, but on their fourth album ‘THE UNRAVELING OF PUPTHEBAND’, they’re doing both like never before. Recorded in a bat-filled gothic mansion in Connecticut with producer Peter Katis over five weeks, it’s both the most PUP album yet, and also their most expansive and rule-breaking. We dropped in with guitarist Steve Sladkowski to find out more.

Tell us about your new album - what was your starting point? How were you feeling at the time? Did you have any specific ambitions for it?

The starting point was mostly writing for ourselves as a form of therapy and reprieve.

Obviously, with the pandemic swirling around us and the grim uncertainty of the world, we weren’t really sure what our lives were going to be on more than a weekly basis. With that as a sort of backdrop, we really didn’t set out with any ambitions other than getting together to write. Once we began writing, it became very clear that we weren’t writing in the same way we had previously: there was much more openmindedness in terms of arrangement and instrumentation that we likely wouldn’t have embraced had the writing of this record happened any other way.

How did you find putting it together, did

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Not just a great band but one with something to say for themselves. PUP’s new album demands attention.

you come up against any unexpected challenges?

Most of the challenges were self-imposed based on the pressure we put on ourselves to do our best with the songs and timeline of the recording process. Otherwise, we’re not really running up against anything unexpected; there are always frustrations that come in the writing and recording process, but we have grown so much as people over the course of this band that we know when to cede space and when to take it, too.

What do you most enjoy writing songs about at the moment? What are your favourites on the record?

Diving into the deconstruction and rebuilding process through constant demoing really allows us to see songs take shape in real-time. That’s becoming more and more enjoyable the more we write together. As for some favourites, I’m proud of the work we did on ‘Matilda’, ‘Habits’, ‘Relentless’, and ‘Bankruptcy’. But really, I feel like this album is front-to-back my favourite of our releases.

What, for you, makes for a good PUP album?

A perfect balance of melody and aggression that feels like it could fall off the rails at any point.

You recorded the album in quite an

unusual place - at least, we don’t know of many albums laid down in the vicinity of bats. Did the vibe of working in a place like that influence things at all?

Absolutely. The album’s title is a reference to our state of mind while we were recording.

After five weeks in Tarquin Studios – even in the capable hands and elite vibes of Peter Katis – we were making decisions that couldn’t have been agreed upon anywhere else. That feels audible in the record in a really acute and memorable way.

Your debut album turns a decade old next year - what’s the biggest change in the band over the last ten years?

We are definitely more tired, have a few more wrinkles, and get hurt easier. But otherwise, there has been growth through confronting parts of ourselves that we would like to change through therapy, medication, and also recognising that the band cannot be the only thing our lives revolve around.

It’s very healthy to be mindful!

It must be nice being able to get back out to festivals and on the road, did losing that kind of fan interaction for a while impact putting together this record?

You’re a band that’s always put in a lot of time touring, after all.

I think we were more in need of a break from the road than we would have ever let on had the world not forced our hand. It was important for us to reflect on things and

recharge our batteries once we realised that the pandemic was going to stretch on longer, and in more horrifying fashion, than anyone could’ve ever imagined. Broadly speaking, however, we’re not too concerned with fan interaction when writing songs; while we obviously want people to enjoy our music and join us along for the ride, the process of writing itself is one that the four of us do for each other first and foremost. We just so happen to have the immense privilege and good fortune that our very personal pursuit of songwriting has connected with so many freaks out there.

You’re coming over to the UK for 2000trees soon - is there anything you’re looking forward to experiencing while you’re over?

The UK just knows how to put on a festival.

Many of our pals on both sides of the pond have had nothing but good things to say about 2000trees, so surely it will be a great time! Otherwise, we’ll be looking out for Pickled Onion Monster Munch and the many other delightful snacks and confections that the British Isles have hidden in its Services.

What else are you looking forward to at the moment?

The lovely caramelised zucchini pasta that my fiancée is making in our kitchen! ■ PUP’s album ‘THE UNRAVELING OF PUPTHEBAND’ is out now.

PHOTO: HARVEY WILLIAMS-FAIRLEY.

VITAL STATISTICS

9

MUSIC IS A NUMBERS GAME. LET’S SHIFT SOME UNITS.

Bundles and variants available via Sports Team’s website on the announcement of new album ‘Gulp!’.

Chart battle rules insist this number will only increase.

THIRTEEN The number of tracks on Harry Styles’ new album ‘Harry’s House’ - pretty much the only fact that he was willing to reveal upon its announce. Not superstitious, Harold?

You know what’s easier than following around your fave pop stars, day in, day out, to see what they’re up to right that minute? Asking them. Here’s what Slaves’ Isaac Holman - aka Baby Dave‘s day looks like.

8:00 Get up and neck a pint of water.

Have a coffee and listen to the radio. On a good day I run, or get straight on my computer and start working on some music. On a bad day, I get straight on my phone and start scrolling.

8:30 Breakfast in the form of peanut butter on toast, fruit and vitamins.

Breakfast is my favourite meal of the day. Peanut butter on toast would be my death row meal.

Then I sit and watch telly for a bit while my food goes down. At the moment, I’m watching Taboo which is basically Tom Hardy being all grunty and sexy, and it’s set in 19th century London. It’s well good.

10:30 Have a strong coffee and go to the gym for an hour or two. Come

16. DORK

home and have a shower, followed by a cold shower. I like to do at least four minutes in the cold. I never look forward to it, but I feel banging afterwards, and if you do it every day, the health benefits are incredible, mentally and physically.

After this, I usually try and work on some music, but if it ain’t happening, I’ll do something else.

If the weather’s nice, I’m outside all day.

13:00 Have some lunch and watch some telly, unless I’m out and about and I just grab something from one of the local eateries. There are some great spots for vegan munch around here, so I tend to just alternate between them.

To be honest, the rest of the day is whatever goes. Once my morning routine is out of the way, I like mooching about, sitting around

town on various benches, drinking coffee, people watching, writing odd thoughts and snippets of conversations in my notes. I spend a lot of time hanging out with my girlfriend and her daughter.

I’m around theirs basically every evening. Once the little one’s in bed, we just eat and chill. My girlfriend’s a wicked cook, and she feeds me most evenings.

23:00 Go back to my flat and get ready for bed. Nighttime is weird for me.

I have OCD, and it’s particularly bad at night. I don’t sleep much, so sharing a bed isn’t ideal for anyone involved.

00:00 Try and get some shuteye. ■ Baby Dave’s album ‘Monkey Brain’ is out 22nd April.

1.

3,084

Baby Dave

Number of chart topping albums Charli XCX has had, after her brand new fulllength ‘Crash’ hit the top of the Official UK Albums Chart last month.

Well done, Charli!

Days since Sky Ferreira released ‘Night Time, My Time’. Maybe we get something new soon?

Explanations we have for Liam Payne’s accent in that post Oscars interview. Still, “I would rather take the beauty out of the situation than take the Payne” does accurately describe our attitude to post 1D solo endeavours.

ZERO

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF...

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present

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SATURDAY 4TH JUNE TEMPLE NEWSAM GET YOUR TICKETS

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THE BEST NEW TRACKS Disclosure x RAYE Waterfall

OK, first things first ‘Waterfall’ is probably the best thing Disclosure have put out in a hot minute, and RAYE you remain transcendent. All of this comes with a warning, though. Howard. Guy. You’re very close to heading down the ‘NFT bro’ dumper. More songs like this - less of that.

There’s good lads.

Soccer Mommy Shotgun

Produced by Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never, ‘Shotgun’ is every inch the sonic step up from Soccer Mommy. And that’s no small thing to offer up, either. Previous full-length ‘Color Theory’ itself was a revolution in its own right, after all. “‘Shotgun’ is all about the joys of losing yourself in love,” explains Sophie Allison. “I wanted it to capture the little moments in a relationship that stick with you.” With a mix of big emotion and ear-worm brilliance, it certainly does that. Yet another remarkable triumph for Soccer Mommy.

Hear all these tracks and more on Dork Radio, 24/7/365.

Listen at readdork.com/radio or via the TuneIn app for iOS and Android.

REALLY VERY GOOD

renforshort made for you

mxmtoon

All hand claps and sun shards, renforshort feels like she’s an artist on a charge. A vitamin C charged megabop, ‘made for you’ is the kind of song that wishes away the springtime in the hope of bringing the summer heat along that little bit quicker.

Scorchio.

sad disco

A spiritual successor to her song ‘prom dress’, ‘sad disco’ is mxmtoon in full, sparkling high definition. A declaration of growth, experience and the ability to find a way to dance against the crashing waves of emotion, it has both depth and glitterball brightness.

A shimmering, defiant statement, it’s proof that Maia can do anything she pleases, and still make it a total bop.

Charli XCX

How Can I Not Know What I Need Right Now

Foals

Looking High

When - during the other month’s Dork cover feature with the band - we said ‘Life is Yours’ is Foals’ party album, we weren’t kidding.

Third preview ‘Looking High’ is bright, bubbling and brilliant. A strutting, math-rock disco, this is one high horse that’s positively popping off the ceiling.

Festival season simply isn’t ready for this.

Spill Tab Sunburn

Bleeping and blooping her way into an infectious groove, spill tab continues her flawless ascent with the (occasionally) suitably titled ‘Sunburn’. While the weather might be up and down as we head into spring, her ear for a fresh, vital bop certainly isn’t. Hot stuff.

Harry Styles As It Was POP PRINCE ALERT!

18. DORK

Check out all of this month’s bangers on Spotify now. Scan this code to listen.

So, there we have it, Dear Reader. Harry Styles – the new king of ultra-cool bedroom pop indie. ‘As It Was’ might, in parts, echo back to The Strokes driving cool, but it’s in a way that lines up perfectly with some of the most exciting, vibrant, positive voices in alternative pop right now. From Wallows to Alfie Templeman, the fact that Harry’s latest comeback positions himself firmly amongst their pack only goes to prove each and every one of them have something special going on. Add to that the spinning, swirly, self-referencing cool, and ‘Harry’s House’ already looks like a delightful place to lay our heads.

Lauran Hibberd

Still Running (5K) (ft. DJ Lethal) Lauran Hibberd and Limp Bizkit’s DJ Lethal. Yeah.

Obviously. This makes sense. As Hibbo shifts gear for a forthcoming debut album, she’s lost none of her fizzy, ridiculous charms.

Brash and dripping with attitude, the queen of slacker pop never fails to raise a smile, even when she’s taking on the daily grind. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, but ‘Still Running (5K)’ more than makes the pace.

Taken from the deluxe edition of Number 1 album ‘CRASH’, ‘How Can I Not Know What I Need Right Now’ is a direct, two header collaboration between Charli XCX and her supposed current squeeze, The 1975’s George Daniel. Two brains responsible for moulding a decade of UK pop brilliance, it’s no surprise at all it sets a new high watermark. The meeting point between two iconic powerhouses, it takes a little from both and makes each sound even bigger.

That chorus isn’t getting out of anyone’s head all week, either.

ARCADE FIRE The Lightning I, II

Is there any chalice so poisoned as that of the dreaded ‘return to form’? To return to something, one has to have slipped away from a pre-established position.

To use that kind of phrasing around Arcade Fire might be slightly harsh – previous album ‘Everything Now’ had some highlights well worth revisiting – two-part epic ‘The Lighting I, II’ definitely sees the Canadian troupe returning to previously fertile fields. With the kind of rampant, ramshackle brilliance, it’s a track with the same goosebumpon-goosebump energy that blessed their earliest moves. Maybe you can turn the clock back, after all.

Someone start a mysterious poster campaign.

Blu DeTiger: “I’m enjoying finding my voice” With a brand new bop ‘Hot Crush Lover’, and a UK run coming up fast, Blu DeTiger is getting us all set for the sunny months. We caught up to plot out what’s coming next.

I

f you’re going to make a genuinely brilliant bop, you’re going to need a good bass line. All of which means Dork fave and alt-pop fast-riser Blu DeTiger has, quite frankly, an unfair advantage. It’s one she’s using to the full on her latest single, ‘Hot Crush Lover’, which dropped earlier today (1st April). We dropped her a line to catch up after what’s looked like a very busy few months. With more yet to come – yes, she’s got “probably a few albums’ worth” of new material in the bag – there’s a lot to get excited about.

Hello! How are you doing, and what

are you up to today? Are we interrupting anything fun?

Hi! I’m currently in New York City as of today. I just left LA after an amazing week in the studio with the Funk Lordz, aka Chromeo. I’m still coming down from that and think what we made is really special.

It feels like you’ve been really busy lately - signing to Capitol, the collab with Gayle and UPSAHL, playing with Bleachers on SNL - does it feel like things are stepping up for you?

Yeah! In the moment, it always feels like I’m just doing my thing and following the music. I’m so grateful for all the recent opportunities.

It’s not lost on me. What I love is that they’re all different but all still me. Signing to Capitol has been

PHOTO: HALEY APPELL.

↓↓↓ BIG TRACK ↓↓↓

LOVE YOU LATER

Keep In Touch One must understand, Dear Reader, that right now - in this week more than most - if we compare an artist to MUNA, we’re basically handing them the keys to Dork City. It’s not one to lightly break out - and yet for Nashville’s Love You Later, it’s really the only way to go. ‘Keep In Touch’ doesn’t just have the kind of fizzy, emotions-on-theoutside alt-pop brilliance that catches hold on the first listen, it’s got the addictive buzz that keeps us looping round for a second, third and forth go too. The highest of recommendations.

GEMINI AALIYAH

After Hours January’s new track ‘Moonrise’ already marked Leeds’ Gemini Aaliyah out as a genuine prospect, but ‘After Hours’ seals the deal.

One of a growing number of new acts seeming to get a noticeable boost from the region’s Launchpad project - which gives emerging artists access to industry professionals - it appears whatever is going on in our more northern outposts is working brilliantly. Still, all the advice in the world does nothing if its not married with supreme talent - and that’s something Gemini clearly has. Not just with music that already sounds like its aiming for the stars, but with a command of all the bits that go around it too. Expect her to burst out big very soon indeed.

amazing. I love my team there.

Playing with Bleachers on SNL was a dream! And I’m so psyched about this collab with badass ladies Gayle and UPSAHL. I’m really excited for my next singles and album to come out, too. And I can’t wait to play more festivals this summer and a bunch of shows. I love having a lot of things going on, and I hope it’s always like that!

Do you have any upcoming plans that you’re especially excited for at the moment?

My next singles and album. This is the most music I’ve ever written and recorded and demoed etc. I’ve loved being in the studio, exploring new sounds and textures, and especially bringing the bass to the forefront in all of this, sticking to my mission but also exploring how I can push the bass as an instrument even further. I’m also really enjoying finding my voice and character.

Do you have a lot of new material?

Yes! So much. Probably a few albums’ worth, which will be narrowed down to one pretty soon.

Tell us about your new single what inspired ‘Hot Crush Lover’?

‘Hot Crush Lover’ is inspired by summer fling feelings, city-biking down the streets of New York City with wired iPhone headphones and the sun on your face. Or driving in a convertible with the top down and shades on in LA. I’ve been learning to embrace the surroundings I’m in and create my own experiences.

The song is about letting go and finding your confidence, to open yourself up to the possibility of meeting another person and just having fun with them. It’s about snapping out of that low feeling,

MOLLIE CODDLED

Blu DeTiger Hot Crush Lover going that little bit extra and letting yourself be free and uninhibited.

The video is meant to reflect this feeling. It’s wild, vibrant, colourful, cheeky, and fun – to the point where eventually I’m dripping in slime.

All great pop songs need a strong bass line, so it only goes to reason that Blu DeTiger has a birrova advantage. ‘Hot Crush Lover’ is a bubblegum bop – a side shuffling, brightly adorned, sugar-spun treat that’s here for a good time. As she continues to drive towards that debut album, Blu’s not so quietly proving a potential pop megastar. No pressure or anything.

When and where do you most enjoy writing songs at the moment? Is there a particular vibe you’re into?

I love writing everywhere, honestly.

Each different place affects what comes out that day. But these days, I enjoy creating when there’s a bunch of basses, guitars, synths and a drum set in the room. I love to play – not only the bass but guitar and also messing around on different synths too. It’s physical, and whatever you capture that day is unique to that moment. Or even just starting a song with me on bass and my brother, Rex, on drums.

That’s how we grew up playing, and it’s been cool to make music again in that way.

before? Is there anything you’re looking forward to experiencing while you’re over?

I’ve spent some time in London. I have family over there, and I’m half Dutch (my dad is from Holland), so I’ve spent some time in Europe.

I was actually just in London for a show right before the pandemic started! Literally, the day before everything shut down. So in some weird way, it will feel like a fullcircle moment when I go back for my show.

You’re coming over to the UK soon for a tour, too - have you spent much time over here

Blu DeTiger’s single ‘Hot Crush Lover’ is out now. She tours the UK and Europe this May.

Burden Pop stars need great songs, sure, but great songs aren’t the scarcest commodity.

Personality is. And matching the two is even more rare.

That’s why, when we refer to Mollie Coddled as a Dork fave, we’re not just on about how mind-fizzingly-brilliant her last couple of tracks have been. Yes, ‘Burden’ might be the kind of fuzzyround-the-edges bop that mixes introspective thought with blissful good time vibes – but also, she sent our Down With Boring hosts Jake and Jamie a really amazing Xmas card, which we can’t show you now it’s March, but honestly – top quality stuff. And really, which of these is more deserving of praise? Yeah.

The music. Good point.

SAYA GRAY

IF THERE’S NO SEAT IN THE SKY (WILL YOU FORGIVE ME???)

Who needs genre? Not us anymore, that’s for sure. And not Saya Gray, either. Freshly signed to musical mecca Dirty Hit, her new track ‘IF THERE’S NO SEAT IN THE SKY (WILL YOU FORGIVE ME???)’ is all over the place in the best possible way. Pulling influence and inspiration from every corner of the metaphorical shop, it’s a composition that finds consistency in vibe more than slavish box-ticking.

Compelling, brilliant and never ever boring, it’s genuinely exciting to see just where she’ll go next.

readdork.com 19.

↓↓↓ ARTIST’S GUIDE ↓↓↓

Lynks

on their new trilogy ‘MEN’

beabadoobee Talk

TOTAL BOP 4EVA

On the strength of new single ‘Talk’, Beatopia sounds like a fun place to chill out. All vibes, all the time, it’s a sonic introduction to beabadoobee’s world that paves the way perfectly from debut album ‘Fake It Flowers’, all scuzz and fuzz. “I was obsessed with Tuesday because I thought it was the best night to go out,” she explains. “Not too much chaos but just enough to have a good time. Generally, it’s about doing things that aren’t necessarily healthy or great for you but you can’t help indulging. It’s like that unavoidable feeling that you get, you can’t get rid of it and you know it’s bad but you love it really and it’s whatever, so you do it anyway.” The perfect summation, really.

Working Men’s Club Widow

Sports Team R Entertainment

Y

ou get EPs, you get albums, you get singles – but one thing which seems to be taking hold of late is the ‘trilogy’. Three tracks that form a little series – more agenda-setting than a four-track extended player, but with less baggage than a longer release.

If you’re looking at setting agendas, you’ll do well to find anyone better than Lynks. With their new trilogy ‘MEN’ just completed by final entry ‘Perfect Human Species’, we asked them to run through each track for us for our latest artist’s guide.

SILLY BOY

I wrote Silly Boy when I was really fucking pissed off with one very specific man. In that moment, I felt he represented every entitled, space-absorbing, toxic straight man I had ever met. The kind of man who still lives his life as if mum will do his washing up. The kind of man who snaps his fingers at bartenders, and forces open the doors on the tube. With the kind of toxic confidence that comes from never being told, or even considering for one second, that his point of view might not be valid. This song is for every person who has ever had the displeasure of dealing with one of these Silly Little Boys.

HEY JOE

Hey Joe (Relax) is about bringing a guy you’ve been dating to meet your friends, and suddenly clocking that he’s a complete twat. It’s about the moment where your entire perspective about a man shifts. And you see him for what he is; a devil’s advocating, button pushing, confrontational, edgelord. And it’s suddenly totally unthinkable that you ever wanted to shag him.

PERFECT HUMAN SPECIMEN

When I wrote ‘Perfect Human Specimen’ I was thinking a lot about the idea of a ‘Perfect Man’. Imagining what that actually means; how tall? How attractive? How funny? Because the instinct is to say that you’d want the hottest, funniest, smartest, most selfless, sweetest man in the world. But in reality that would be fucking stressful. Because, firstly, you wouldn’t be able to help comparing yourself to him and feeling kinda shit by comparison.

But secondly, it might also start feeling a bit much after a while! A bit exhausting, all that perfection and attentiveness. Imperfections and vulnerabilities are kind of important when it comes to actually connecting to someone. So with Perfect Human Specimen I decided to try and write a song from the POV of this hypothetical ‘Completely 100% Perfect Man’, and hopefully in the process reveal that the ‘Perfect Man’ is actually not so perfect after all. ■

20. DORK

Attention! Attention please!

Sports Team are back-backBACK, and they’ve lost none of that chaotic brilliance. ‘R Entertainment’ may be the bridge between ‘Deep Down Happy’ and second album ‘Gulp!’, but that crossing is surely constructed of rope and planks, waving wildly in the winds as hundreds of feral devotees charge across it. Poking at pop’s ludicrously proportioned undercarriage, nothing’s ever boring with Sports Team.

KennyHoopla

DIRTY WHITE VANS//

The days of KennyHoopla being a whispered secret are long behind us – there’s little doubt that he’s on his way to superstardom before too long. Still, if a reminder is needed, ‘DIRTY WHITE VANS//’ more than understands the brief.

Produced by scene lord Travis Barker and Dwilly, it may show a different side to Kenny’s prodigious talents, but it’s one that shines no less bright.

Working Men’s Club are a dangerous band to write about. One wrong turn and you’re planted slap bang in the middle of Woking Men’s Club. And they’re not from Woking. They’re from Todmorden. That’s a totally different place. Regardless, they’re back, back, and quite probably - by the natural order of things - back once more. There’s a brand new track, Widow’, taken in turn from a forthcoming album, ‘Fear Fear’. Pleasingly bleepy and bloopy, one would be expected to describe the first taster of this second record as taut and assertive. That might be what the regulars down at Woking Men’s Club would say. Not us. Bleepy. Bloopy.

Brilliant.

↓↓↓ FUTURE BANGER? ↓↓↓

Maisie Peters is attempting to ruin her life - send help What would posses a successful popster to throw their entire existence into a state of utter chaos? A world class bridge and an addiction to drama, it turns out.

M

aisie Peters is causing chaos. Again.

The beloved popster of this parish has been kicking up a bit of a fuss online over recent weeks. It all started towards the end of February, when - for no apparent reason we can deduce - our Maisie decided that mayhem was her middle name. Taking to Twitter, she posted: “Guys, shall I do something deeply insane? Yes or no?”And then it all kicked off.

WHAT MAISIE DID...

A couple of hours after that initial tweet, Ms Peters returned to Twitter, proudly proclaiming: “I did the insane thing, go and check TikTok.” We’d compare this message to the look a beloved pet gives you, after it has dragged in a ‘present’. It’s very proud of what it has done, but what it’s presenting us with turns out to be Mrs Brown’s from Number 46’s slinkiest knickers, and now we’re going to have to have a very awkward conversation with someone you’d rather not. But actually, this wasn’t a neighbour’s sexy undercrackers. It was much more.. erm... special(?) than that...

Over on TikTok, we’re presented with a new post. “I wrote a song about my best friend’s brother,” the caption starts. Oh no. Oh no Maisie. What have you done? “I wish I was joking, but I’m genuinely not,” she continues. She’s not, either.

Introducing the video, she goes on to specify the friend - Cate - and state that neither she, nor her brother, had heard it yet. Good grief. And then, she plays it, muttering over the intro “this could ruin my life”. No shit.

THE BOP This is where things get really interesting, though. In no way could any sane person suggest Maisie’s previous actions were in her best interests obviously not. But the song. The song is, erm, brilliant. Iconic even. One verse, is enough to get any sensible listener hooked, filled with big 90s pop polish

and stabbing 80s power-pop chords.

There’s a line about ‘his’ name tasting like “violets, rum and summer”. In a later post, sharing more of the track, there’s a pre-chorus bridge that’s for the ages, too. Maisie has done something bad, but it sounds so good.

THE TEASE Maisie Peters, Dear Reader, is nothing if not a cheeky little tyke. After sharing the snippet, she started teasing the track on her North American tour, strumming the first verse then chickening out of sharing the rest.

Someone knows they’re on to a good thing really. Even if she is posting TikToks with captions like “I literally wrote a song about my friend’s brother as a joke but then I posted it on TikTok and now hundreds of people ask me to release it. Meanwhile he and I are complicated with a capital C, and the song still isn’t finished.” We know what you’re up to, Maisie. We all do.

IT’S FINISHED Since then, the track has apparently been finished - we’ve got to hear the chorus. “I actually think it sounds quite good,” Maisie says - like the fact she’s been sneaking it into every second video for the past few weeks doesn’t give away she thinks it’s a solid gold hit. She’s not wrong, though.

WHAT’S NEXT? Well. Let’s just say this. Your favourite pop-n-nonsense magazine (Hi - Ed) recently asked Maisie “written any other songs about a friend’s siblings recently?” - to which she replied “Dork, don’t ask me things I can’t answer please.”

That’s not a no, is it? Oh, Maisie. What will we do with you? ■ Maisie Peters’ chaotic relationship bop is yet to receive a release date. She remains in our prayers.

Alfie Templeman Leaving Today

Prince Alf is a talented chap - so much we already know - but ‘Leaving Today’ shows vast new depths to his abilities.

Not content with crooning and swooning through yet another preview of his much-anticipated debut album ‘Mellow Moon’ - set for release on 27th May he’s even offering up some hot cello action. Who else is doing that, the bunch of amateurs. The closer that first full-length gets, the more Alfie seems like the gold standard, rubber stamped real deal. Was there ever any doubt?

WAX WORKS

Break Up Song Leeds’ Wax Works continues to offer up solid gold alt disco anthems – the kind of stuff that will soon have him joining the ranks of the grand indie princes. ‘Break Up Song’ is part Templeman, part Headon, but all Wax Works. One to watch.

FLOWEROVLOVE

Will We Ever Get This Right?

16-year-old prodigy flowerovlove knows how to write a bop, that’s for sure. ‘Will We Ever Get This Right?’ is a dreamy, driven bop heading straight for the head of the pack. Confident, vibrant and capable of cutting through the noise, it’s yet another marker of something really quite remarkable.

ARTEMAS

I’m Sorry A grungy, fuzzy alt-pop bop, 22-year-old Artemas knows how to make an impression.

Clocking in at under two minutes, the Two inch Punch produced ‘I’m Sorry’ is all anxiety and FOMO, introspective thought and ego checks. Sunny-side up while staring into the gutter, it suggests much, much more to come.

ELIO

Vitamins Just about to hit the road with Charli XCX, ELIO is becoming the kind of future pop prodigy that should have her elders looking over their shoulders. ‘Vitamins’ bubbles with pure potential, hooking onto a passing vibe shift and twisting it to her own ends. Take twice a day with water, and watch it go off.

BIG IMAGE

Something It seems we can all be a bit snobby about music sometimes - go for the challenge of the brain cells above the true desires of the heart. Push for the obtuse, difficult or arch above the things that would get the blood pumping on a Saturday night. None of which is any shade against Big Image - a band who deal in those big, uniting moments that the sneery London media set so often reject for reasons more about themselves than anyone else. ‘Something’ is the kind of megabanger that punches beyond the microbubbles and cliques to draw together a more primal urge.

Gigantic dance-infused indie, let those pints fly.

You’ll be happier that way.

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Festivals.

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PHOTO: JAMIE MOURN.

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EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS FESTIVAL SEASON.

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Pier pressure ↓↓↓ DORK PRESENTS ↓↓↓

What’s the best ice lolly?

Percy: Twister 100%.

What’s the furthest you can swim?

Percy: Not very! As soon as my legs can’t touch the bottom, it’s dangerous territory.

Returning for the first IRL edition since 2019, The Great Escape is back in Brighton, and Dork is heading directly for the pier.

And before that, we’ve got something extra special planned too...

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→ IT SEEMS QUITE unreasonable to say it - but by the time 2022’s edition of The Great Escape comes round this May, it will have been three full years since the annual new music extravaganza last took to Brighton’s multitude of seaside haunts.

After an all-too-lengthy enforced break in play, we’re finally heading back to the south coast’s pebbled beaches - and we’re stoked to reveal the line-up for Dork’s official showcase.

Taking over Horatio’s on Thursday, 12th May - yep, the venue at the bottom of Brighton’s iconic pier - we’ll be bringing along Vlure, Swim School, Malady, Kills Birds and Unschooling for a night of new music and requests that everyone keeps well away from

PHOTO: CHERYL GEORGETTE.

Have you ever had an altercation with a seagull?

Percy: It was the hottest day of the year in 2020 and I was in Margate with a few friends.

Lots of leftover chips knocking about. Flock of seagulls came to claim what they thought was theirs. Chaos ensued.

KILLS BIRDS How big a fan of the seaside are you, out of 10?

Nina: 100/10, seaside forever. I hope when I die, I get reincarnated as a whale.

If you had your own pier, what would you put on the end of it?

Nina: A private club for ocean explorers and sea enthusiasts ONLY. What’s the furthest you can swim?

Nina: Until the point when the water gets too deep to see the bottom. I refuse to go further.

THE LATEST MUST KNOW LINE-UP NEWS

READING & LEEDS

LEISURE

Willow, Beabadoobee, 100 gecs, Bakar, Black Honey, Danny Brown, Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes, Gus Dapperton, JPEGMAFIA, Kid Kapichi, Pa Salieu, Poppy, Role Model, Static Dress and Witch Fever are amongst the latest batch to be revealed for this year’s READING & LEEDS, held from 26th-28th August in - you guessed it - Reading and Leeds.

Mitski, Soccer Mommy, Nilüfer Yanya, Sorry and more are set to play a new festival, held in Margate this summer. LEISURE is the brainchild of promoters Bird On The Wire, and takes place at Dreamland on Friday 24th June.

If you had your own pier, what would you put on the end of it?

Alice: An open music venue - I don’t know what it would be called or how safe it would be, but playing a set in a pier during sunset in summer would be a vibe.

PHOTO: ANDREW O’CONNOR.

What’s your usual order from the fish and chip shop?

Alice: Can’t go wrong with classic fish and chips, but also, love a smoked sausage with salt and sauce. For some reason, you can only get the sauce in Edinburgh, and I have no idea why. Everyone else is missing out.

VISIONS festival has announced its return for 2022, with a line-up featuring Black Country, New Road, For Those I Love, Miso Extra and more. The Hackney-based one-day event takes place on 23rd July, and also features the likes of Mdou Moctar, Keeley Forsyth, Giant Swan, Oklou, aya, deathcrash, Louis Culture, The Golden Regs, Tiberius B, Nukuluk, Sans Soucis, O., Bored at My Grandma’s House and Voka Gentle.

PHOTO: RORY BARNES.

SWIM SCHOOL

VISIONS

VLURE

‘FYI’ FESTIVAL

Have you ever had an altercation with a seagull?

No personal altercations, but Conor did see a boy getting leathered by a seagull outside Glasgow’s Central Station. The seagull came for the chips but left wae beef.

What’s your arcade game of choice?

We’re well versed in Tetris from having to pack this wee van full of backline every night.

How big a fan of the seaside are you, out of 10?

We are all 20/10 fans of the seaside; we love chips and tinnies on the beach.

UNSCHOOLING Have you ever had an altercation with a seagull?

Vincent: Never. I have always had good experiences with seagulls. It’s like with dogs: just a matter of feeling.

What’s the furthest you can swim?

Vincent: I just got back into working out at the municipal swimming pool. I can do maybe three or four laps without being too tired. One day I would like to be able to cross the Channel. readdork.com 23.

↓↓↓ MORE GREAT ESCAPE HIGHLIGHTS ↓↓↓

DORA JAR KAMAL.

the edge.

They’re just five bands from a line-up of over 450 names, including many of the buzziest new acts on the planet. From long-time Dork faves like CMAT, Baby Queen and Thomas Headon, to more established names like MUNA, The Amazons and yes that Rebecca Black, over three days you should be able to see most of the artists that everyone else will be going nuts for in the months to come.

The Great Escape hits Brighton from 12th -14th May. Tickets are on sale now. ■

WILLOW

KAYNE

Fresh from the release of her debut EP ‘Playground Antics’, Ivor Novello winning (!!!) artist Willow Kayne is already picking up well-deserved accolades for her dynamic and fearless take on pop. If there’s any justice, whatever venue she ends up in at The Great Escape will be surpassed quick-sharp. A hot ticket if ever there was one.

NOAHFINNCE

Making his name by racking up fans on YouTube, the multi-talented NOAHFINNCE - aka pop-punk upstart Noah Adams does everything at 100 miles per hour.

Overflowing with irresistible energy, and keen to demystify sticky subjects like mental health, he’s an unrelenting force for good that shouldn’t be missed. There’s a new EP on the way this summer, too.

↓↓↓ PIER WE FUCKING GO ↓↓↓ Before efore we even get to Brighton, we’ve got something extra special planned. On the 21st and 28th April, we’ll be teaming up with The Great Escape and London’s iconic 100 Club to offer up two nights of The Great Escape warm up previews, featuring some of our favourite names on the bill. To find out who we’ll be bringing down, head to readdork.com now.

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SPILL TAB

If we were forced to make a Songs Of The Year So Far list (it’s only April guys, calm down), there’s a good chance Dora Jar’s ‘Lagoon’ would be on it. A cut from her just-dropped EP ‘Comfortably In Pain’, it’s a ridiculously catchy slice of bedroom pop that’s written from the perspective of a lonely mermaid. Perfect for the seaside.

French-Korean-American popster spill tab has a ridiculous roster of super charming and fun bops ‘Cotton Candy’, ‘Grade A’ and ‘Anybody Else’ are probably our favourites, but please don’t make us choose - and she’s making a rare trip over to the UK for The Great Escape. One of our very top tips for this year’s festival, not even rampaging seagulls could keep us away.

If you haven’t already checked out London singer-songwriter Kamal.’s EP ‘war outside’, released last summer, clear out 21 minutes and 38 seconds from your schedule and get it on, preferably with a cup of tea and a plate full of biscuits. It’s a lovely, intimate release that showcases a truly special talent. With further tour dates that include a night at London’s Village Underground, expect big things from this one.

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Introducing The Dive Bar

Standon Calling’s new home for the best emerging artists, in association with Dork → DORK IS TEAMING up with Standon Calling to help bring a whole new stage to this summer’s festival – The Dive Bar. Focused on the best emerging artists, we’re delighted to bring you the low-down on who’ll you’ll be able to catch this summer.

As well as bill-toppers Snapped Ankles, Melt Yourself Down and a ‘special guest’ headliner to be announced in due course, there’s also the likes of NiNE8 Collective, Bob Vylan, Sad Night Dynamite, Scalping, Swim School, SIPHO, Malady, Ithaca, Mimi Barks, Nukuluk, Pongo, Kojaque, Soccer96, Nuha Ruby Ra, Art School Girlfriend, Keg and Banji.

They join a line-up that has just become the first for a mainstream music festival to achieve gender parity by booking more than 50% female and non-binary artists across all their stages this summer.

Confirmed by industry group Keychange to be one of three events to hit the target by a pledged deadline of 2022 – alongside specialist genre events Marsden Jazz Festival and True North Music’s Americana, Country and Roots festival – festival founder and director Alex Trenchard explains: “When we signed up to Keychange back in 2018, we pledged that we would commit to ensuring 50:50 gender balance on our line up by 2022.

“At the time this felt like a huge challenge, but we’re delighted to say that we’re on track to exceed that figure with 54% of acts on our 2022 line-up identifying as female or non-binary. Our lineups are stronger and more diverse than ever.

We’re delighted to be leading the way amongst the industry, showing that gender balance in festivals in 2022 is both possible and a key component of curating an exciting line-up.”

Standon Calling takes place between July 21st and 24th 2022 at Standon Lordship, Hertfordshire.

Headlined by Loyle Carner, Anne-Marie, Primal Scream and Madness, it’ll also play host to Sigrid, Self Esteem, Sugababes, Sleaford Mods, Kojey Radical, The Cribs, Ezra Furman, Kelly Lee Owens, Yard Act, Dry Cleaning, ENNY, Lynks, Olivia Dean, Matt Maltese, CMAT and loads more. Tickets are on sale now. ■

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Nine8 Collective →

‘FYI’ BARN ON THE FARM

Barn on the Farm has announced its line-up for 2022 – and blimey, Dear Reader, it’s a cracker. The Gloucester festival features a weekend bill topped by Easy Life, Griff, Holly Humberstone and Beabadoobee, with James Bay headlining the extra ‘Behind Barn Doors’ Friday night line-up. That’s not all, though – elsewhere on the bill there’s Alfie Templeman, Thomas Headon, Joesef, The Academic, Kawala, Flyte, Maverick Sabre, Lola Young, Vistas, Gracey, Kamal., Daisy Brain, Finn Askew, Viji, Dylan, Noisy and loads more, with further names still to be announced. Barn on the Farm takes place from 30th June-3rd July.

LATITUDE Latitude has added a batch of new names to its 2022 line-up.

Pip Millett, Dylan, Wet, Hope Tala and Kamal. are amongst the acts joining the bill, held from 21st-24th July at Henham Park, Suffolk.

2000TREES

Bob Vylan →

SIPHO →

2000trees has announced the final set of bands for 2022. The rundown reads: You Me At Six, Twin Atlantic (Forest Acoustic), Boston Manor, Nova Twins, KennyHoopla, Angel Du$t, Mannequin Pussy, They Fell From The Sky, As December Falls, Heavy Lungs, Salem, The Hurt Process, Kid Brunswick, Peaks!, cheerbleederz, GIRLI, Petrol Girls, Daisy Brain, Berries, Thrill Collins, The Scratch, ME REX, Grandmas House, Cold Years, Cassyette and more. 2000trees will take place at Upcote Farm from 7th-9th July.

WIDE AWAKE London’s Wide Awake festival has announced more names for its 2022 edition. The new batch is led by Amyl & The Sniffers, and includes the likes of Nation Of Language, Pist Idiots and Veronica Vasicka. Wide Awake 2022 takes place in London’s Brockwell Park on the 27th and 28th May.

KENDAL CALLING Sad Night Dynamite →

Kendal Calling has announced some final names for 2022. The Cribs, The Big Moon, Hot Chip Megamix, ZUZU, NOISY, The Academic and more are joining the bill for the festival, taking place from 28th-31st July.

The Mysterines ↑

Kid Kapichi →

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LIVE AT LEEDS IN THE PARK 4TH JUNE 2022 LEEDS, UK

→ TRADITIONALLY, WE’D BE planning Live at Leeds as our first big festival of the year. The usual calendar would have the northern inner-city, multi-venue event scheduled in for the start of May - the perfect kick-off to the Bank Holiday weekend. But not in 2022.

Post-pandemic, the sands have shifted. We’ll still be getting our usual Live at Leeds fix, but that’s now shifted to later in the year. In its place, just a few weeks after when the original festival would have sat, comes Live at Leeds in the Park.

Exactly what it says on the tin, alternative music’s latest and greatest will all head to Temple Newsam for a one day blow up, packed with some of our favourite names. Bombay Bicycle Club, The Vaccines, Arlo Parks, Easy Life, Sea Girls, Sports team, Holly Humberstone, Alfie Templeman and more are already signed up, and Dork is delighted to be joining them this June.

Yep, make your way to Leeds this summer, and you’ll be able to join us in the Dork Tent. Not just any old festival big top, we’ll have two backto-back stages packed with the best new and emerging acts. That means zero clashes and a constant wave of amazing music throughout the day.

And what a line-up we’ve got.

Topped by Top 10 chart sensations The Mysterines and Hastings’ most rambunctious punks Kid Kapichi, it’s littered with Dork faves. You’ll also be able to catch ADMT, Coach Party, Courting, Finn Askew, Kynsy, Lime Garden, L’objectif, Molly Payton, Porij, Sfven and Zuzu. Result, huh?

Live at Leeds in the Park takes place on Saturday, 4th June at Temple Newsam in Leeds. Tickets are on sale from liveatleeds.com now.

Lime Garden →

Kynsy →

Porij →

readdork.com 27.

YOUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE BEST NEW NAMES.

“I WANT TO PROVE EVERY SINGLE KID I’VE EVER MET IN MY ENTIRE LIFE WRONG” DAI SY B RA IN

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DAISY BRAIN Words: Jamie Muir.

With nods to grunge, punk-rock and Britpop, Daisy Brain takes inspiration from all the biggest and best sounds of the 90s and channels them into huge-sounding hits that are all his own.

D

aisy Brain is hyped. It’s the night before his firstever headline tour, and emotions are hitting in ways he never thought possible. Not only are most of the dates sold out, but it marks the first time he’s able to play his own songs to his own fans at his own shows.

“Like, it’s going to be our fans there,” he states, saying it loud more to confirm it to himself than point out any ridiculous fact, “and the likelihood is that they know all the lyrics. They’re not mates of mate or are just there because I asked them to come to fill the room out… everyone will know the lyrics. That’s the main thing for me. That moment as a kid you dream of is like happening tomorrow.”

If the whirlwind of reaction seems like a rush to Daisy Brain, it’s because it is. Growing up with the constant obstacles that come with having a passion for being creative while surrounded by those who find it somewhat odd, the freedom to now seize such a response and turn it into glorious technicolour has lit a fuse under Daisy Brain, otherwise known as Will Tse. It’s perfectly captured in his self-described ‘claustrophobic grunge’ anthems that feel born to be drawn into tattoos and scribbled across diary covers. That radiates every time Will and his band take the stage and are met with wide eyes and immediate recognition.

“I want my songs to be whistled by bus drivers,” Will states firmly. “I want to prove to people that I’m not just some artist you’re going to like - I want to be your favourite artist. I don’t want just short term excitement; I want in 10 years, a plumber or builder to be in someone’s house, look at the wall and be like, ‘Oh Daisy Brain? I remember seeing that show back in 2022; it was incredible!’ That’s what I want for Daisy Brain.”

If that example feels specific, it’s because something similar happened

to Will with The Strokes. After moving from Singapore when he was 11, and growing up hearing the likes of Kylie Minogue, Snow Patrol and James Blunt being played from his parents’ speakers, it was only when a wave of bands kicked into his vision that he found a whole world to play in.

“I really was living up to that anarchy teenager style by being like, fuck everything you listen to, I want to listen to something that I want to listen to,” he remembers. “My Chemical Romance came out of nowhere, and I was like - this is what I like! I want to wear mascara and eyeliner and eyeshadow. I want a Gibson or a Les Paul guitar. It all started with My Chemical Romance and Green Day.” Secretly playing Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’, which he pinched from his local HMV - “[Mum] definitely would have known that I had to have stolen it as there was no way HMV would sell it to me at my age” - a love of alternative music was born. It’s a sentiment that rings out through Daisy Brain in a striking fashion; debut cut ‘Boring’ feels ripped from a teenage diary, full of angst, crunchy guitars and sticky floor basslines, but with a sugar-sweet Britpop melody designed to be screamed at the highest volume. That sense of defiance is at the core of everything Daisy Brain, both in his darkest of lows and his more in-your-face middle-finger drive. “I’ve been told my whole life that it was never going to work,” he smiles.

Enrolled in a secondary school where there was only one other kid who had any interest in music, Will and his pal Dan would spend hours hidden in a room usually used for pottery, finding solace in the music they loved. That sense of being the outcast and raging against it all provided another added enthusiasm to create and make it no matter what.

“I want to prove every single kid I’ve ever met in my entire life wrong. I had that thought just as I was about to go on stage supporting YUNGBLUD

at Alexandra Palace, about a kid who asked me about what I really wanted to do in my life. He wouldn’t accept that I wanted to be in music and make music, and that was the career I wanted… I was just imagining him in that crowd, looking up and seeing me. I can’t wait for that day when the messages come in, and I can be like… Read. Seen. Bye.” A move to Leeds followed, heading to a music production course where he met key collaborator Dan Hvorostovsky during a time described by Will as “High School Musical meets Skins”.

After a number of different projects, songwriting directions and plans, the two of them decided that moving to London was the best option.

Enter: a pizza shop. Both taking up jobs there, the music they would listen to was ultimately decided by a disruptively loud fan in the shop, their days serving up slices soundtracked by the likes of Smashing Pumpkins, Deftones and more. With their regular tube particularly noisy, too, it was as if the outside world was demanding something altogether louder from Will.

Daisy Brain came to life soon after.

Initially planned to be a full band pulled together with friends in London, the hit of lockdown forced them to create with what they had, forming a more bedroomy grunge feel. Songs came quickly, with that penchant for raging rebellion and devastating emotion perfectly entwined.

“It was the first project I kept to myself for a while,” remembers Will.

“I didn’t tell anyone about Daisy Brain for a while, but ever since we put out the first few tracks and saw those streaming numbers go up and up - it’s been mad.”

It’s only added to the drive Will has to become a very big deal indeed.

After debut EP ‘Let’s Go Camping’, the ‘Disconnected Happy’ EP takes things to greater levels - it feels like Daisy Brain clicking into some serious ambition. From the scuzztastic ‘Digital Atlas’, the strutting ‘Kleptomaniac’

PAPA DAISY’S S PIZZA PICK

↓↓↓

With Will a certified top pizza maker, we had to stop our chat to ask - what’s the best pizza he’s made?

“My favourite, and the one I was best at making, was this slice called Maria Flames. Oh, it was the best… It was pizza base, tomato, ricotta, mozzarella, like three types of sausage/pepperoni on it, and then some mayo, chilli and honey.

Yes, honey! That’s what made it so good!

If you like sweet and salted popcorn, you’d love this. It was the best thing in the world. I’m going to America to find the slice again because the company went bust now.” and the blossoming ‘What Would You Do?’ amongst others, it’s the brightest welcome to the world of Daisy Brain yet, and one that adds more fuel to a fire impossible to put out.

What comes next? With those stadium-sized memories of bands like My Chemical Romance and Green Day, but also bubbling that incredible rawness to the surface too, the possibilities seem endless. Drenched in the brightest shades of every colour, it a stand against those who tell you no from an artist firmly set on becoming your next favourite. “I want to have this relationship with my fans where we grow up together,” explains Will. “As people’s lives grow up, that idea that Daisy Brain is there is one that’s really exciting to me. I want to be that band that people listened to when they were kids, and they point to when the next generation comes along. That’d be cool.”

Would that be a success for Will?

“When a plumber comes ‘round to your house and says, ‘I remember them from 10 years ago’,” he reiterates, “that’ll be the success.” ■ Daisy Brain’s EP

‘Disconnected Happy’ is out now.

readdork.com 29.

Photo: Olivia Repaci.

FIRST ON.↓ “MOVING TO ANOTHER COUNTRY REALLY OPENED MY EYES TO THE EBBS AND FLOWS OF LIFE” CHANE L LO RE N

FLO → 19 and 20-yea-olds Renée, Stella and

Jorja - aka FLO - are the latest girl group to come out of London, announcing themselves with an MNEK produced debut single ‘Cardboard Box’. One of those earworms that sticks around for the long haul, it’s more than capable of echoing back to those 00s R&B pop classics. The trio have spent the last couple of years honing everything about themselves, ready for a shot at the big time. On the strength of their first introduction, you’d not bet against them making it.

CONGEE It’s both super early days for SouthEast London born, Sydney-based artist Chanel Loren, and also not at all. She’s always been creative, so much so she’s already spent years putting in the work - refining her sound, picking up new skills and studying at BRIT School.

Now, though, after a trip halfway around the world to live in Australia, she’s dropped her promise-packed debut single, ‘Playlist’.

What first sparked your interest in music, have you always been creative?

I always had a love for the arts as a child; being able to capture an idea through sound, visuals, body and literature always intrigued me. Growing up, it became apparent that the performing arts was for me because I was persistent in getting better and enjoyed performing.

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It must have been great being immersed in such a creative environment - what was your biggest takeaway from the experience?

A big takeaway was a sense of professionalism, but most of all, great memories with my friends! It was the best time to learn and grow with other creatives!

Moving to a whole new country at 17 sounds like a steep learning curve - how did you approach getting involved with the music scene once you were in Australia?

Definitely life-changing! My approach was really organic, but it was mostly through a mix of friends’ circles, social media and going to events that allowed me to meet everyone I know today.

Did you grow up in a musical household?

I didn’t grow up in a musical household per se, but my parents have great taste in music and supported my desires. On my 14th birthday, I was gifted two CDs: ‘Graduation’ by Kanye West and ‘Back to Black’ by Amy Winehouse definitely influenced the journey of Chanel Loren.

How have you found your time over there so far?

Australia is a beautiful place! It has some similarities to England (the buildings, names of areas and streets), but it also has tropical weather that reminds me of the Caribbean. Although it has been a hard transition, I have met amazing people and experienced cultures I never experienced living in London. Moving to another country really opened my eyes to the ebbs and flows of life and allowed me to observe life as an outsider.

How did you end up at BRIT School?

What was the getting in process like?

The process for The BRIT School was actually just an audition. I loved acting, dancing and singing, so I auditioned for Music Theatre.

You’ve said your debut single ‘Playlist’ was inspired by heartbreak - is that something we’re going to see more of in your music, are you drawn to difficult emotions?

‘Playlist’ was definitely inspired by

heartbreak as I tend to write from a perspective of reflection. I wear my heart on my sleeve, but it sometimes takes me a while to process my emotions. My songwriting is treated like a journal; I talk about past, present and future thoughts and feelings. I would say I’m drawn to difficult emotions because I am a passionate person.

What else are you working on at the moment, do you know what you’re releasing next?

I’ve been working on a handful of songs and can’t wait to release them! My next single is my mum’s fave, so I’m really excited to release it.

What would you most like to achieve during your music career? Do you have a bucket list?

What I would most like to achieve during my music career is to forever be inspired and true to myself and art! I do have a long bucket list of collaborations with producers and other creatives! I would love to explore every aspect of my creativity and see where it takes me.

Who do you think is the most exciting band or musician around right now?

Hmm, that’s a tough one - I don’t think I can answer this question, haha! There are so many exciting artists, but some of my faves atm are Steve Lacy, Sir, ENNY, Knucks, Bakar, FKA twigs, Hope Tala, Arz, Ravyn Lenae, Amaarae, Lucky Daye, BLK ODYSSY and Fousheé... Just to name a few, lol. ■ Chanel Loren’s debut single ‘Playlist’ is out now.

→ Congee - real name Sam Tsang - is

already recognised as a producer and collaborator, working with the likes of Fred again.., Ed Sheeran, Sigrid and Griff.

Now, though, he’s having a shot at things himself. With a debut EP ‘Kwong’ on the way, he’s offering up boundary-pushing alt-pop vibes, mostly produced, written, recorded and performed alone. “’Kwong’ is the start of the world I’ve been wanting to create for a long time,” Sam explains.

“It’s a collection of songs mostly about my family. I’m so excited for everyone to hear and see it all.”

SPIDER → Stans will inherit the Earth. That’s

the logic that has us predicting SPIDER for big things. The 22-year-old alt-pop prodigy started back in the Dublin suburb of Tallaght. Raised in a NigerianCatholic household, she was banned by her family from going to gigs. So she started running pop band stan accounts online, quickly understanding how digital fan culture worked. Moving to London aged 18 to try her hand at music herself, her vibrant, multi-faceted, genre-fluid first steps mark her out as one to watch. Debut mixtape ‘C.O.A.’ that’s ‘Coming Of Age’ - is the sound of a master pulling at every corner of their brilliant web.

N

NICK MONO Photo: Eva Pentel.

Londoner Nick Mono is a genre-splicing prodigy on a stratospheric rise.

but at the same time, I do have a way of making songs that I usually find myself sticking to subconsciously. I typically start with a guitar riff and work around that. So after that, it might be melodies and lyrics straight away, or I’ll start adding drums and keys and shit before I start writing. But more often than not, it starts with a guitar.

Did it take you a while to find your sound?

I’d say it’s just a culmination of all the different phases I’ve gone through as a fan. This is quite a boring answer, but it’s true. When you’re making anything, I feel like you’re always inspired by what’s come before. With the stuff you like, you try and incorporate certain elements of that into what you do and even with the things you don’t like, you know to steer clear of those things. And then it’s about finding a way to make it feel original, which I think just comes down to being yourself and authentic in the process of creating.

You’ve just released your debut EP, ‘The Sun Won’t Stay After Summer’ - how did you approach curating it? Were these songs always destined to be grouped together?

It actually started as another project I had in mind called ‘make a movie’. That won’t ever see the light of day, but it had eight songs on it, and two of them were ‘IDK About You’ and ‘All That You Do’. I also had the song ‘All The Money’, but I didn’t want it to be on that project because it didn’t feel like it fit conceptually.

When I made ‘Rusty’, that was around the time I had just signed, and my intentions evolved, so I decided on creating an EP that was a little shorter and more focused but still felt cohesive. When I wrote ‘Anywhere In The World’ I knew it had to be the last song on the EP, and it felt like it made sense.

The EP was gonna be those five songs initially, but then, quite last minute, I made ‘The Way To My Heart’, and it was my favourite song and still is because I knew it was what the EP was missing. So I would say these songs were destined to be grouped together because they all came around at different points, but to me, it was undeniable that they all had to be on the EP.

N

ineteen-year-old Londoner Nick Mono is already on the fast track to stardom.

With tipster acclaim dripping from his every move, the writer and producer makes music that is perfectly suited for the longer, brighter days. Fitting, then, that his debut EP is titled ‘The Sun Won’t Stay After Summer’. The sound of an artist splicing genres to his own individual design, there’s bits of iconic London acts like Jamie T or Blur, with the breezy, bedroom pop stylings of Omar Apollo. We tracked him down for a quick introduction, ahead of what’s sure to be a stratospheric rise.

It’s getting on for a year since you dropped your debut single, ‘Effy Stonem’ - how have you found that time? Have you learnt a lot? Is being a

“I’M 19 YEARS OLD, AND I GENUINELY WOULD RATHER GO BOWLING THAN GO TO A CLUB” NICK M ONO

musician living up to the hype?

It’s been really interesting. I’ve definitely learnt a lot, and I’d say learning is the biggest thing I’ve been doing since that song came out. Learning about myself as an artist and also about the world I’m a part of as an artist. I think something I’ve realised is that the feeling I get from making music surpasses anything else that comes from being a musician. Any cool stuff that’s happened when I’ve released a song or anything like that. Nothing has felt better than when I’m making the songs, which is cool to know.

You do your own producing, right? Are you selftaught? What’s your set-up like?

Yeah, I’d say I’m self-taught in the sense that I never went to school or college for it. But I did watch hundreds of YouTube videos to learn what I know. My set-up is really simple and minimal, to be honest. I’ve got my laptop, mic, interface for my guitar and then a midi keyboard. I just got speakers recently, too. Before that, I would just work with headphones. I want to eventually have an insane studio set-up with a bunch of analog synths and live instruments and shit, but I don’t feel like I deserve that yet. Gotta be earned, you know? So for now, I’ll keep pushing with what I’ve got!

How do songs come together for you?

I always say I don’t really have a method or specific structure I stick to when making music, which is true,

What’s the best song you’ve written so far, and what’s special about it?

I’d say ‘Anywhere In The World’ is my best-written song. I think it’s very special, and I have a feeling at some point in the future it’s gonna become a classic. I know saying that sounds quite pretentious, but it’s truthfully how I feel. I just think the lyrics are too important for that not to happen, and I think it’ll find its way to more people at some point.

What are you working on right now, do you have a lot coming up?

I’m working on my next few singles and figuring out how I want to go about releasing those. Whether it leads to a new EP, I’m not sure right now. But I feel really excited about the new music I’m making. I think it’s gonna help me show a clearer idea of who I am as an artist.

What do you do for fun?

I think just going out and being outside is always nice because so much of being an artist is being stuck inside working on music or being online, so whenever I’m out, it feels good. I’m also going bowling every week now. I love bowling. I’m 19 years old, and I genuinely would rather go bowling than go to a club.

Tell us a secret about yourself?

No secrets about me, man; I’m an open book. ■ Nick Mono’s debut EP’ The Sun Won’t Stay After Summer’ is out now. readdork.com 31.

COVER STORY

t i r W o t indie’s a d e h s um establi y l m rth alb r u fi o y f d ’ a s Alre lossom omb’ is their B , e l b a The B top t d n u o r nA mentE.NNETT. e t a t ‘Ribbo s g EB definin G. PHOTOS: SARAH LOUIS N YN YOU : MART WORDS

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BLOSSOMS

e t ... n o readdork.com 33.

COVER STORY

“About time!”

laughs drummer Joe Donovan as he learns that Blossoms are to appear on the cover of Dork for the very first time. So, how do we begin marking this momentous occasion? Well, of course it’s with a detailed discussion about the prime sogginess of bread for your beans and toast. “I’m quite an avid beans and toast fan,” says singer Tom Ogden as he explains his breakfast on the day the band had their photoshoot for this very cover. “I’d have the toast around the outside and the beans in the middle, slowly getting the ends of the toast soggy. I don’t mind a bit of that because when you get a really crunchy bit, it makes the whole thing better, but I don’t like it sodden.”

Very wise words there from the singer, however Joe has a different, more maverick opinion. “Here’s a controversial one. I don’t like beans,” he reveals. On the cover for the first time and already going in hard with the hot takes, it’s taken a few years but Blossoms’ ascent to pop legend cover status is worth the wait.

It’s been a steady rise for the Stockport five-piece since they released their self-titled debut album in 2016, marking them out as an indie band with something special about them. Sonically diverse and unafraid to take risks while firmly staying true to themselves, the band are now established as some of the finest songwriters in the land. They’re looking toward a future filled with promise, exemplified by their stunning fourth album ‘Ribbon Around The Bomb’.

“It’s been a whirlwind,” says Joe of the last six years. “With the lockdown, it’s the only time that we’ve had a bit of time to sit down and realise what we’ve done. You go into an album, and you’re constantly moving; this time, everything stopped to a standstill, and we’re reflecting back. We always said we wanted longevity. That was our biggest ambition as a band. We didn’t want to put an album out, have it do well and then just disappear

34. DORK

and struggle afterwards. We always wanted to be on it and have that longevity as a band. We’ve always strived towards that.”

With longevity assured, you can begin to piece together and unravel the threads that make up the tapestry of Blossoms’ world and chart the evolution from effervescent upstarts to supremely assured songwriters.

For singer Tom Ogden, the band’s journey can be split into two eras.

“I see the first two albums together and the third and the fourth album together sonically,” he explains. “That represents the growth. Like Joe said, the lockdown gave us time to reflect and hit a little bit of a reset button.

We still kept busy through it doing the lockdown covers, and I ended up writing another album, so it’s not like there was much time that passed.”

It’s striking how casually Tom drops in that he ended up just writing a whole album like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Perhaps, though, he finds writing songs and making albums as easy as making beans on toast. Songwriting is in his blood, central to his very being, and his songs and passion for words and melodies are the core of Blossoms’ DNA. “I’ve

always written at home. When it was lockdown, it was like, well, this is where I always write songs, so I just cracked on with that,” he laughs. “The majority of the album was written during the lockdown,” he continues. “’Care For’ was the first song written for it. I wrote that just after I wrote ‘The Keeper’ on the last album.

Those songs sit together because I wrote them quite close together. We’d already finished recording ‘Foolish Loving Spaces’, and ‘Care For’ was this other song I had sitting about.”

The grand swelling piano burnished epic of third album highlight ‘The Keeper’ is a central song in the Blossoms story and is one of those intriguing threads that leads you to something else. “That song is a bridge,” says Tom. “The last album and this one sit together. It makes sense because ‘The Keeper’ was the last song written for that album. You’re always evolving as a songwriter. The earlier stuff on the last album like ‘Your Girlfriend’ and ‘If You Think This Is Real Life’ are more together.

They were a new thing I discovered as a songwriter with a Talking Heads influence, and then ‘The Keeper’ was a year after that but obviously still on

BLOSSOMS

“In the early days, when you’re experiencing love and heartbreak for the first time - songs fall out of you.

You’ll never get that time back again. You don’t realise until afterwards” - Tom Ogden the same record, and that set the tone for what would become this album. It makes perfect sense. You could put ‘The Keeper’ on this album, and it wouldn’t sound out of place.”

For the rest of the band, it was apparent that Tom was taking things to another level. “Tom’s songwriting has got broader,” says Joe. “At the beginning, you were just focusing on your life, but now you can branch out with songs like ‘Your Girlfriend’, for example, where you can write about other things.”

“That’s not by choice necessarily,” responds the singer. “It’s more of a need or a must. In the early days, when you’re experiencing love and heartbreak for the first time, songs fall out of you.

You’ll never get that time back again.

You don’t realise until afterwards when your life’s quite in place, and you’re in a stable relationship; I’m married now!

You’re not in the back of a tour bus experiencing these things for the very first time.”

Seeking new inspiration, Tom looked for different ways to express his feelings in his songs. “You’ve got to find different things to write about and challenge yourself because for me personally, no one wants to hear ‘Oh, yeah, I stayed in and did the washing,

cooked tea for my wife’, that’s fucking boring,” he continues. “You need to challenge yourself, and that’s what I did with a song like ‘Your Girlfriend’ where I just had to make up an idea and was like, oh, what if someone’s in love with their friend’s girlfriend. That was a breakthrough for me as a songwriter to get me out of writing about myself. I felt like I needed to try to find things.

“With the lockdown songwriting, it was a bit more personal in terms of feeling a bit down and having a bit of imposter syndrome over the success we’ve had and the pressures of being a songwriter. This album was about achieving everything at such a young age and then going, where do I go now?”

‘Ribbon Around The Bomb’ is a more reflective, considered and emotionally rounded Blossoms, but it is still packed full of the playful, idiosyncratic and fanciful flourishes that make their songs so good. “It still sounds quite bright because a lot of our songwriting is quite upbeat,” explains Tom to dissuade any worries the band have embarked on an odyssey into the depths of darkness.

“The lyrics on the last album are more playful and about falling in love and are a bit more tongue-in-cheek, whereas on this album, it’s a bit more serious,

and I’m talking about things I’ve never talked about before. Lyrically it shows another side to us; it digs deeper in certain areas.” “You pushed yourself more, didn’t you?” asks Joe, before Tom continues: “I definitely had more time to keep writing and think no, we need one better, we need to refine things.”

Refined is a good way to describe the album as it sees the band lean into a kind of musical lushness and graceful beauty that lifts the songs to another place. For Tom, the vision for the album started to come together as soon as he wrote the first song. “I work quite closely with James Skelly from The Coral because he’s produced all of our albums, and he’s kind of a mentor for us. Because the other lads in the band don’t write songs, I don’t really have anyone else for advice. Early on, James heard ‘Ribbon Around The Bomb’; I loved the title, and I already knew that was going to be the fourth album title,” he says. “I didn’t know anything of what the rest of it would be about. I do that quite a lot. I have all these song titles on my phone. It’s different for every song, but some days you’ll sit down at the piano and think, ‘there’s a reason why I never returned your calls’, and it’s just bang from the heart - right, yeah, it’s a great

title it works.

“Sometimes, though, you’re not feeling dead inspired, and you want to just try something. So, you’ll have a little bit of a melody going and look for your song title and go ‘do do do do ribbon around the bomb’, and work backwards from that. What’s ribbon around the bomb? Alright, you’re covering something up; you’re hiding something.

I liked the imagery of it. I sent it to James Skelly, and he said great title, and I was like, I want to call the album that. I had literally written one song at this point,” he laughs.

As he wrote more, Tom began to formulate the broader vision for the album, which illustrates the depth of Blossoms’ ambition. “I thought it should be like the soundtrack to a film,” he says. “We talked about it being a bit more cinematic. Strings came into the conversation quite early, which are all over the record and tie it together. James was very aware because he’s grown with us as a band and said, you need to do something different on your fourth album. You can’t just do the same. It’s not a concept album, but it’s a lot more thematic. There are a few key songs that bring it all together.”

The album became something of readdork.com 35.

COVER STORY

a meta-commentary on Tom’s life filtered through the prism of a writer documenting their life. “I had a song called ‘The Writer’, which was about me as a songwriter and how I felt about that,” he explains. “Another song called ‘The Sulking Poet’ is talking about being a writer as well. It started to play itself out as an album through these songs. Me and Skelly worked together and decided this is what it’s all about. It’s more serious and looking inwards. There’s a song called ‘Visions’ that has the lyric, ‘was I complete at 23?’ That was when I met Katie [Donovan, his wife] and just had a Number 1 album. I thought I had achieved everything. James said that’s what the album should be about.

You’ve achieved everything at such a young age; where do you go now? I pieced the rest of the album around that.”

Some of the songs on the album, like ‘Visions’, are overtly personal.

Like the gloriously fun ‘The Sulking Poet’, others see Tom gently poking fun at himself through an exaggerated

36. DORK

character. A character that the deeply devoted Blossoms fans playfully dragged on the fan page that gave the song its title, proving that there is nobody on the planet better equipped to talk about pop music and lovingly drag their idols than the fans. “There was a Blossoms fan page on Instagram called Ode to Ogden, and the bio referred to me as the sulking poet because my face is sometimes quite frowny on photographs,” laughs Tom. “I thought fucking hell, that’s hilarious, but then I thought, what a great title. It’s also tongue-in-cheek because I’m obviously not calling myself a poet, but I thought it was quite funny.

“It’s not necessarily about me as such. Elements are, but it’s about someone trying to make it and reflecting. ‘I’m just trying to write some words through the bars of a rhyme this time’. ‘Through the bars of a rhyme’ is from ‘Romeo and Juliet’

by Dire Straits. I liked that line and crowbarred it in there. To me, the song has a bit of a Dire Straits vibe to it. So

it’s a nod to that. I was pulling in all the influences. ‘Let’s have a toast to the sulking boy’. It only says boy because ‘let’s have a toast to the sulking poet’ doesn’t fit, and I couldn’t get the word in,” he laughs. “It’s kind of about me when I was younger and trying to make it writing songs, but then the Juliet thing was what this person’s idea of what a love song should say, and it’s kind of throwaway. ‘Ooh la la Juliet’, that’s the most basic love song you could write. It’s all very conscious of why it’s in there.”

Another key song on ‘Ribbon Around The Bomb’ is ‘Care For’, the album’s heart-swelling grandiose centrepiece. In an age of cynicism, it could be considered a risk for Blossoms to release an unabashed, wholesome, heartfelt love song, but for Tom, it was a heart on your sleeve statement of intent. “’Care For’ is even more honest. If I truly believe in it, then I’ll put it out,” he says confidently. “If someone slags you off, you’ll think, at least I was honest.

If you put out something that’s half-

arsed or were coerced into a different idea, I might think, oh fucking hell, I shouldn’t have released that, but when I’ve come up with it, I’ll back it to the hilt. I don’t give a fuck what people say on that level. That comes with years of experience. If I tried to write a love song like that seven years ago, I might not have had the balls to put it out.”

Musically you can most clearly hear the album’s spirit in the glorious sweeping strings that give the song a timeless feel. It was the realisation of a long-time ambition for the band to fully explore the musical arrangements that their songs deserve.

“We’ve always wanted real strings, but on your first album, it’s a bit too far to have strings, and we’ve never had the money to do it,” says Tom. “On our earlier song ‘Blown Rose’, strings would’ve been great, but we had synth strings on it. We’ve always wanted to do it. We’re big fans of songs with strings. It was Skelly really; he said on the last album you had gospel singing which tied it all together, so we need something on this album that ties the

BLOSSOMS

COVER STORY

Style guides. ↓↓↓ Pop music is - obviously - all about hair, and Blossoms have the most luxurious hair in ‘ver biz’.

songs together. We said, let’s go for real strings. The songs seemed to lend themselves to it, so we just went for it. I love it.

“The string intro to ‘Ode To NYC’, I had loads of fun writing that because you get the chance to feel like you’re soundtracking something for a film.

Rosie Danvers did the strings. We wrote the strings on keyboards and sent it to her, and they did it in RAK studios. She’s done stuff for Kanye West and Noel Gallagher. She did ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’ by Sophie Ellis Bextor. Her repertoire is amazing. She brought it to life.”

If it’s hard to visualise the impact of the strings on the record, then Tom has an even more simple answer that we can all relate to. “Rosie did all the bits that go ‘do do do do do dooo’ - all those fancy runs and stuff that make it sound like it’s done by proper musicians,” he laughs.

‘Care For’’s louche disco groove is redolent of a time of huge musical excess and ambition in the 70s, both in terms of sound and fashion.

38. DORK

Blossoms are already a band much loved for their sense of style and pizzazz, and it’s a direction they’d be open to exploring further in the future. “We’ve got a few velour suits already,” laughs Tom. “I love all that music. I’d love to go further in that direction if we can, more disco.” For now, though, perhaps we can imagine Blossoms with an orchestra on stage soon? “Glastonbury would be nice.

We don’t have the budget to do it everywhere; you can’t really do it at Rock City in Nottingham, can you?

But the big ones, we’ll pull it out. I’d love to do that,” says Tom excitedly.

That’s the thing with Blossoms.

They recognise the importance of always trying to create something special, of building a world beyond the music and that sits alongside their core albums. They’ve constantly been documenting their lives on tour and beyond through hours of filmed footage as well as their acclaimed podcast, and extramusical undertakings like their isolation covers project and their

One thing that makes Blossoms stand out from the crowd is their sense of fashion and style, blessed with collectively the loveliest hair in all of pop and a desire to dress up for every occasion. “My wife does my hair, so she’ll take pride in that.”

Big shout out to Tom’s wife, Katie, for keeping those lustrous locks in pristine condition.

Would Tom ever consider doing the unthinkable and cutting his hair off? “I wouldn’t do it; I’d look like a dickhead. I wouldn’t put anyone through that,” he says resolutely.

Now we and the rest of the world can rest easy.

The general look and vibe has always been a part of the Blossoms aesthetic. “The image has always been conscious to us,” says Tom. “Even in the earliest stages, we all wore turtlenecks.”

“I love that side of it all,” adds Joe. “With the turtleneck thing, we did that because: 1) we all had a turtleneck, and we were like, mint, and 2) there were so many bands,” he laughs. “We’d get to Night and Day and venues around Manchester, and there were so many good bands, but we needed something else to set us apart, even if it’s something like ‘that’s the band with the turtlenecks’.

“When we get to a gig, we’ve got wardrobes that we tour with where we shove all our stage gear, anything you think is smart and cool. These big wardrobes come round before gigs, and most of the time, we’re having conversations and somebody, usually Tom, will go, I’m going to wear this tonight. As soon as he picks an outfit, everyone goes back to their hotel thinking, oh right, that goes with it. It’s a conscious effort. It’s just another thing, so use it. It’s a show at the end of the day. We care about that.

Some bands don’t care about it, and that’s great as well, but it’s just something we like to do, even for ourselves.”

“It’s like getting in character,” laughs Tom. “Gucci should put us on summat.”

From the cover of Dork to fronting a Gucci billboard? A natural progression.

recent shows playing Smiths covers with Rick Astley. All this helps forge a strong connection between the band and their devoted fans. “Since the pandemic, that’s reiterated the importance to us because you get set in your ways. When you get successful, it’s easy to take your foot off the gas, but you shouldn’t take it for granted because people appreciate a little reply or getting a photo after a gig,” says Tom. “We know where they come from, and we know how important it is to have that relationship with fans.”

For Joe, it gets to the very heart of why Blossoms are so special. “We’re fans of bands anyway. With a band like Arctic Monkeys, if they did stuff like that, we’d be like, that’s fucking mint,” says the drummer. “If we were a fan of Blossoms, what would we buzz off? That’s something we always try and do. The podcast is a good one because I’m really inspired by it. I listen to podcasts all the time. At the time, I couldn’t really think of any other band who were doing one that wasn’t just about music. Our podcast isn’t about our band, really. If we weren’t in a band, we could still do the podcast. Just chatting shit and eating pizza. It’s a cool thing. If a band that I love were doing it, then I’d love to listen to it. I like the idea that it shows a different side of the band.”

The bond between the five band members is what has propelled them to such great heights. In Joe’s case, it goes beyond the music to something more fundamental. “You get people who love music and love tunes, but musically they’re not really into it.

I’m a bit like that,” he says. “Charlie [Salt, bass] or Tom would always be doing something in music, while if I wasn’t in this band, then I wouldn’t want to be in a band. I like that we’re a gang and a group of mates.

That’s a good side for us to show. We can always break down a demo or something, and I get why people find that interesting, but I’m not into that - I’d rather hear you talking about an argument with your missus.”

BLOSSOMS

Six years into their success, there’s a sense that Blossoms haven’t reached anywhere near their peak, and the possibilities are endless. They already have a number of potential bangers in their back pocket strategically left off this album, ready to go. “I can see a bit of an album taking shape in the demos we’re writing now for the next one,” says Tom. “Some bands will break America; we haven’t touched the surface there. You don’t know what’s around the corner. I could write a fucking massive tune that goes massive there when we’re 40. Who knows? If you’re hungry and you want it, you can achieve anything.”

Indeed, the extraordinary global success of Glass Animals and their song ‘Heat Waves’ has given inspiration to other similarly progressive and dynamic bands like Blossoms that they could equally blow up at a moment’s notice. With genre barriers and global boundaries completely blown apart, a band as visually engaging as they are musically arresting like Blossoms are perfectly placed to embrace the new social world. “It had been two years since we last released an album, and it’s taken

over. No one had TikTok when we last released an album,” says Tom. “We had to get on board with it. We rated ourselves enough. We’ve got enough content. We’ve always been good at putting that sort of stuff out. Knowing what it’s like and how powerful it is these days has given us a little reminder to consciously keep putting stuff out every week. We’re very capable. We just need to make an effort to do it. Glass Animals’ success is wild. I suppose that shows the power of it. If you’re not even on there, you’re not in with a chance of getting anything like that, so you might as well be on there trying to do stuff because you just never know.”

They have already reached the summit of mount pop multiple times with their albums and now comfortably sit at the top table of Britain’s best bands, but you get the feeling Blossoms’ journey is only really getting started. As they reflect on where they have come from and enter a new era, Blossoms are older and wiser, yet more creative and fun than ever, with an ambition that knows no bounds. ■

“If someone slags you off, you’ll think, at least I was honest” - Tom Ogden

Blossoms’ album ‘Ribbon Around The Bomb’ is out 29th April.

readdork.com 39.

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Roll

th 40. DORK

SUNFLOWER BEAN

Sunflower Bean have never been slouches, but their latest full-length ‘Headful of Sugar’ is something altogether different.

WORDS: NEIVE MCCARTHY. PHOTOS: DRIELY S.

he dice. readdork.com 41.

FEATURES

on’t be deceived by the soft strumming that introduces Sunflower Bean’s third album, ‘Headful of Sugar’. They’re not here for tenderness. No, they’re here for a riot.

And they want you in the centre of it.

‘Headful of Sugar’ acts as an explosive invitation to embark on a night-long full-pelt rush of an adventure with the trio. All neon-lit corners and breathless pounding on pavements, it’s a pleasure-seeking reflection on how nothing is certain.

You may as well embrace reckless abandon. Begun in May 2020, when that apocalyptic feeling was at its peak, there was a resounding sense that the opportunity to tour or release an album would potentially not come again. With the possibility that this may never see the light of day rampant, the ability to completely let go and push the boundaries of what they might make naturally came to pass.

“The hedonistic thing is funny because we were just quarantined together,” says Nick Kivlen, the band’s guitarist and vocalist over Zoom. “We weren’t going out and partying and doing a bunch of stuff with a bunch of people. It’s this curated anarchy that we made within our own home.” Next to him, bassist and vocalist Julia Cumming chips in: “The record was the party!”

It’s a difficult balance to strike: one in which that need to go hell for leather is

“Recording studios now are just where creativity goes to die” NICK KIVLEN

42. DORK

adequately captured while maintaining meticulous care. In striving for that elusive middle ground, they found themselves working more and more intimately. “It became very small,” Julia explains. “It became the three of us recording at our home studio and working with Jake Portrait, who we had worked with before. I think the fewer people that are involved actually means it’s the truest you can get to what you and your little collective are trying to do. It became very old school and cool in that way, even though we were definitely trying to make different choices that aren’t based on typical or trendy indie stuff.”

The band have never been one to be pigeonholed into a genre in that sense and especially not on ‘Headful of Sugar’.

It absorbs a wealth of influences and spits them out in an undefinable form: regardless of how they might vary, every track is bound together by the thematic high they chase. The album is fundamentally fearless: there’s never any diffidence or reluctance to try something new. Instead, they embrace the thrill of pushing the boat out and hit you hard, something that is reflected in the album’s whirlwind 35-minute runtime. “It’s supposed to come at you, and the lengthening of the experience might take away from the power of the experience. I think a lot of the record is influenced by where music is at right now and how people listen. 35 minutes of tight, powerful music feels like the right thing. We wanted everything to be in place, and if it wasn’t there, it didn’t need to be there,” Julia asserts.

In part, they achieved that by having their recording process mirror the impulse that their lyrics pay heed to.

Drummer Olive Faber muses: “The whole recording process was just letting your inhibitions go. It was a lot of one-takes and not mulling over things for too long and letting the feeling get sucked out of it. There are so many actually magic, special takes on this album. I think it’s the first time we’ve achieved that in a larger way.”

“We tried to be really in tune with capturing magic when we felt we had it rather than trying to force the record into being something we didn’t want it to be. Our priority was the feeling and the energy,” adds Julia.

This was also aided by Olive’s newfound skillset – stepping up as engineer for this album, she allowed ‘Headful of Sugar’ to come to life in an environment that facilitated its freeing

nature. “I think it’s the most personal Sunflower Bean record we’ve ever made and the most personal to us three,” Olive reflects. “Sometimes I say this record was produced twice because we would write, record and produce a song that is just totally us three in our own insular world. Then we’d send that to Jake [Portrait, the band’s producer], and he’d filter through his brain and curate it like that. I think we’ve always wanted to do this – I know I’ve always wanted to do this. It felt strange. Being able to write but not record is like being able to speak and not write. Now that we can actually capture what we’re thinking on our own terms, it opens the door to much truer music to us.”

Recording at home proved to be nourishing to the trio’s creativity. Being able to walk downstairs and have the opportunity to create immediately at your fingertips and have the capacity to play around without any restraints clearly leant itself to more explorative, instinctual sounds. “I feel like recording studios now are just where creativity goes to die,” Nick laughs. “There’s too much gear; there are too many people.

There’s a ticking clock because you’re paying for every single hour that you’re in there. Everyone’s on high alert, and

SUNFLOWER BEAN

it’s high emotions. Whereas when you can just wake up and have all the gear set up in your living room, you can sit and think for two hours before you have to do anything. That’s a better place to create.”

While eventually finalised between other studios and notably the esteemed Electric Lady, that added autonomy and pressure-free space to innovate was crucial in making of ‘Headful of Sugar’.

The help of Jake Portrait, too, allowed the band to focus on what they were trying to achieve – “he really was a huge part artistically in that happening” - and the result is a thematic wonder.

It’s tight and expressive and revels in its own liberating energy.

Having those resources at hand also proved fruitful in getting those more difficult feelings lingering in the band’s minds into a turbulent track.

For Julia, it offered a chance to work her way through those moments. “I’ve definitely felt a lot of times in my life that there was something I needed to say, and words didn’t make sense to do it, or when I tried to explain it, I never got the point across. When you’re able to make music about what you’re experiencing and how you feel, it’s a privilege and a way to express part of

your soul. ‘Otherside’ came about when I was dealing with these really, really bad feelings of loss and pain for a bunch of months through the pandemic. I went downstairs to the basement one day, and Olive was playing on the keys.

I picked up an instrument, and within thirty minutes, all the words were there.

The melodies were there, the concepts were there. I never really felt like I had to explain it again. Once the song was made, I was like, ‘that’s me, that’s how I feel’, and that lives forever. It was like closure. Writing and being a musician is certainly a way to reckon with life, and I feel lucky that I’ve been able to be a musician and in love with it for this long.”

The track in question is a spacey, muted moment where those feelings take precedent. It’s questioning and seems to take place at a distance, with Julia’s vocals completely enthralling for every beat. It’s a rare pause for tranquillity on the album when everything else is so high-stakes and pressing. If the majority of the album is a rapid plunge down a water slide, ‘Otherside’ is a hazy jaunt down a lazy river.

‘Roll The Dice’ quickly follows, dialling up the vehemence on a

track that feels like the epitome of the album’s mission: it’s relentlessly ambitious and seems to ignite a fire that continues to blaze throughout the rest of the album. The indignant need for risk the album dwells upon repeatedly lays the blame on late capitalism and examines how that fallout impacts the people living through it.

“We had a really amazing week where a bunch of really important songs for the record happened super quickly,” Nick elaborates. “’Headful of Sugar’ and ‘Roll The Dice’ all happened in the same week. ‘Roll The Dice’, we finally realised that the song has this really grey zone of where the sincerity in it is. It’s extremely hedonistic; it’s extremely in the mindset of capitalist grind – do what you got to do to survive.

But it also has this layer of cynicism. I think that’s the coolest thing about the song – it makes you grapple with the fact that you can on paper believe all these things and be a socialist or a Marxist, but in your heart, you still have to live within whatever confines you’re put into. You have to compete with other people, you have to make money, and you have to do what you gotta do. The part of you that is such an overachiever and wanting to win and competitive –

that’s the power of the song. It gets into that psyche of the right way to live your life and the wrong way to live your life and trying to make what you can of it.”

It adopts true classic rock forces to deliver that elaborate message, cementing the band as some kind of rock star figures for a new age. They have the effortless cool and thrilling guitar licks, but they’re tuned in, politically and personally. There’s a vulnerability, a much needed and valued chip in the mask of impenetrable sophistication. “We wanted it to be a personal thing, the lived experiences and all these personal anecdotes that play into this bigger picture of what’s going on in the world,” Nick illustrates.

Through that lens, the need to get lost in that wild, audacious streak feels more important. As everything shatters and fractures into varying levels of disarray, an album to give you a wellneeded push through to the other side is undoubtedly necessary. It may lyrically grapple with some pressing issues and symptoms of society, but needless to say, it offers the opportunity to find pleasure and release. ‘Post Love’ is a synth-heavy venture into 80s-style dance-pop that is completely electrifying and creates an insatiable need to move.

“I think we just wanted to make something that was fun, and primary and visceral, instead of something that was ornate and serious. We wanted to peel everything back to what feels good.

Hopefully, we ended up with a record that’s fun and enjoyable to listen to, that you can put on and get pumped,” Nick reasons.

That’s precisely what ‘Headful of Sugar’ lays on the table – it’s a hypeman in itself, every devious bassline and raucous percussive section offering you that boost. Leaning into what they might’ve once shied away from, there’s no fear on this album. It’s a gunsblazing demand to be heard. As those neon-lights flicker and the album leaves you in darkness, you might find yourself gasping for breath as the weight of its realisations hits you.

“This album was a lesson in letting go in so many ways,” Olive concludes.

“Letting go is really hard, but it’s also so freeing. Once you learn how to do that, you can do anything, I think.”

Sunflower Bean have relinquished control and embraced the capricious.

Now it’s time for you to do the same. ■

Sunflower Bean’s album ‘Headful of Sugar’ is out 6th May.

readdork.com 43.

FEATURES

he pandemic taught Hatchie the value of a good party.

While she obviously wasn’t spending much time socialising over the past couple of years, some big do’s beforehand and the promise of a blowout to come inspired half of the new record ‘Giving The World Away’.

The other half is based on the lull in between, the solitary moments spent at home contemplating life. It was there in Brisbane – where she is today, arriving at her laptop screen just before bedtime after helping a friend host a trivia night – where she created the record.

“I was quite antisocial when making the first releases,” says Hatchie (non-pop-star name Harriette Pilbeam). “The music I was listening to was more like the music you listen to in the car by yourself or in your headphones. In the lead up to this record, and while I was recording - I mean, obviously not during COVID lockdown, but in general - I was a lot more social.

I was listening more to music that you listen to when you’re having fun and partying with friends and sharing the experience with people.

I think that affected my music.”

She notes that the last gig she attended pre-lockdown was a New Order one, supported by Confidence Man, which spurred a desire to make dancier music.

That show, plus a 2019 summer full of festivals seeing a plethora of different bands play live, left Harriette wanting a piece of the pie.

“I wanted to write music that’s really fun to see live; that’s not just about being sad and alone with your feelings,” she continues. “I wanted it to be more of something that you share the joy of with people.”

So writing commenced shortly

after the release of ‘Keepsake’, the minute Harriette got a chance to breathe after touring. The major lightbulb moments came the February before everything went down, in the form of two brighter, bolder songs: ‘Lights On’ and ‘This Enchanted’. Created during a writing session with producer Jorge Elbrecht, they saw Hatchie step out of her shoegaze bubble and delve into what else the 90s had to offer.

Where her sound was previously indebted to the work of Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine, this time around, the references span Madchester, acid house, ‘Ray of Light’ era Madonna, and ‘Impossible Princess’ era Kylie Minogue, all of which find their way onto reintroduction single ‘This Enchanted’.

It’s a delightfully bright bop, grounded in distorted guitars and decorated with an intro reminiscent of ‘Step On’; it’s the bang she intended to come back with. Coupled with her most recent single and opener ‘Lights On’, they pick up where she left off on ‘Keepsake’, taking the top-line melodies from ‘Obsessed’ and the electro groove from ‘Stay With Me’ and cranking it all the way up.

“It was really a big moment for us because I was feeling a little funny. I was unsure about what direction I wanted the album to go in because I knew I didn’t want to do the same thing again. And then when we wrote ‘This Enchanted’ and ‘Lights On’ back to back, it was like this huge moment where I was like, okay, this can be something really special.”

But as luck would have it, the minute Harriette started mingling more, the pandemic came along and put a stop to it. That’s when she turned inwards.

“I felt like I didn’t deserve to feel sad because on paper my life was amazing” HATC H IE

44. DORK

Like most of us, Harriette found locking yourself up for a year led to a whole lot of introspection. If she found herself questioning her life choices before the pandemic, she absolutely was as it went on.

“I went through a lot of changes with my confidence, and outside of music, I discovered a lot about myself. I’ve changed so much in how I process my thoughts and feelings, approach friendships and my romantic relationship and even my sex life; things like the clothes I wear and my self-esteem have all really shifted. It was really important for me to address all of those things because I felt like I was doing a disservice to myself by just writing about really vague topics earlier.”

These topics manifest in ‘Quicksand’, an existential crisis anthem that embodies Harriette’s career anxieties and creative blockages. Written with Dan Nigro (whose collaborators span Olivia Rodrigo, Caroline Polachek, Carly Rae Jepsen, Sky Ferreira and Conan Gray), she held onto it after finishing it in early 2020.

“I was really struggling with a lot of things, and I was feeling awful about it, especially because I felt like I didn’t deserve to feel sad. Like, I felt guilty for being so ungrateful about my life. Because on paper, my life was amazing.”

It sits beside the titular track ‘Giving The World Away’, which literally questions our life’s purpose as she asks, “What is it that makes us feel so invincible? Could you regenerate all you’d hoped for yourself? Could you start again?” in succession.

Between the singles, the album tracks slide between both sides of this spectrum. There’s the pure euphoria of ‘The Rhythm’, an enormous synth-driven dance track that feels as confident as its lyrics, there’s ‘Take My Hand’, where Harriette addresses the selfesteem issues she found herself battling, ending on the sky-high ‘Til We Run Out Of Air’, it’s the point of the record that pushes our post-pandemic dread aside to make way for hope.

“The album starts off really excited, and then it goes through this rollercoaster, and you’re not sure where it’s going to end up whether it’s going to end on a sad note - but then it picks back up with ‘Til We Run Out Of Air’. It’s a really hopeful song; I think we are trying to convince someone that there is more to life than how awful they’re feeling and that things can get better.”

The love songs she became known for writing aren’t gone for

good, though. Created at home (hard to believe considering how huge the record sounds, but really it was, hop over to her TikTok to see footage of them recording in the ‘fancy studio at home’) with long time collaborator Joe Agius, who she married at the Graceland Chapel in Las Vegas last year, tracks like ‘Sunday Song’ feel obviously dedicated to their relationship.

“It’s cool. It’s definitely amazing,” she says of working with her now-husband. “Living together means everything gets done really quickly, and you can do it in the moment when you really want to do it. We just understand each other so well because we’ve known each other for nearly a decade that we almost have a shorthand. We get the references each of us is making, and we understand what each of us wants to get out of a song.

“We have a really similar work ethic when it comes to motivation to work on the project. It means everything to both of us. You can feel quite exposed sharing personal lyrics with somebody, but I don’t feel that way because we know each other so well. I feel like I can say anything to him. I can write any lyrics and not feel weird about it.”

Although Hatchie is largely known as Harriette’s solo project (although she admits she doesn’t know whether it’s a solo project or a band), it becomes apparent that ‘Giving The World Away’ is a collaborative effort, Harriette noting that this time around they just wanted to do what was best for every song.

Joe also takes the reins on the visual front, which are stronger than ever. Retro-futuristic music videos and a fairly obvious nod to Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet on the album cover make for a darker, more grown-up version of their past work. Much like the record, the visuals are mostly DIY’ed, but you’d be forgiven for thinking they had a main pop girl budget. When Harriette is in the back of a stretch Hummer singing about her quarter-life crisis in the ‘Quicksand’ clip, she’s every bit a pop icon.

“I thought it was important to show that dichotomy, I guess, and just accept that I’ll always have both of those parts of myself. I’ll never completely erase the anxious version of myself, but I can have that confident version of myself as well.”

Amidst all of the uncertainty, Hatchie has never felt more in control. ■ Hatchie’s album ‘Giving

The World Away’ is out 22nd April.

orlds

HATCHIE

The euphoria of dance-pop and the introspection of a global pandemic meet on Hatchie’s new album ‘Giving The World Away’.

Turns out, it works.

WORDS: ABIGAIL FIRTH. PHOTOS: LISSYELLE.

away. readdork.com 45.

FEATURES

Uh

With their debut album about to land, something’s smelling good for Honeyglaze - and it’s not the bins.

WORDS: CONNOR FENTON. PHOTOS: HOLLY WHITAKER.

huh honey...

46. DORK

h,

HONEYGLAZE

“We met at circus school” ANO USK A SO KO LOW

t’s a lovely Wednesday evening, minutes after London trio Honeyglaze have dropped their most recent single at the time, ‘Female Lead’.

After all the Zoom introductions, bassist Tim Curtis gets straight down to business, addressing drummer Yuri Shibuichi. “Yuri, you got a new smell?”

“I went out of my house, and I smelled something really nice,” Yuri explains. “This, like, barbeque? I look around the corner, and there’s a garbage truck.”

We’re already being welcomed into the club as a fellow sufferer of phantom smells, while Tim describes a ghostly pong that has followed him around since a nap he had earlier.

Through some masterful segueing, we’re quickly past the odorous conversation and onto their broody, brilliant self-titled debut album - something the band have jumped straight into without taking that industryapproved standard route of releasing an EP first. Lead vocalist and guitarist Anouska Sokolow confesses: “That was Dan!” “We self-produced an EP, and then we were gonna get someone to mix it,” says Tim, “but then he was like ‘I saw your live set, let’s just make an album.’”

The Dan in question is Speedy Wunderground producer and indie-rock svengali Dan Carey, who picked up Honeyglaze after seeing their live session for FarmFest on YouTube.

It was a big step for the band.

“We were fucking terrified,” Anouska laughs. “We were like,

‘We only have like seven songs, how are we gonna do that?’” Of course, they pulled it out of the bag, ending up with an eleventrack debut that flows with the cohesion of a live set.

“We were gonna do it a couple of weeks after he met us at first, so that was really scary,” Tim explains. With the band having formed not long before the first lockdown, things were moving with breakneck speed.

“We managed to postpone it after another wave of Covid, and then we had a few months.

Then it wasn’t so scary.”

Their origins remain enigmatic, with previous interviews suggesting a fateful encounter on an ice rink in which Yuri removed Anouska’s larynx with an ice skate. When we indicate the story seems a little far fetched, Tim is insistent, “That’s how life is.”

“That’s actually a common misconception. We met at circus school.” Anouska clarifies, which would explain their proficiency in juggling pensive tones with playful lyrics on the album.

Straight out of clown college and with a few months of live shows under their belts, Honeyglaze were quickly plunged into lockdown in 2020. “We’d only just got into the swing of things, really,” Anouska recalls. “It didn’t feel too crazy because it was almost too good to be true.” However, Yuri seems more optimistic, describing it as an opportunity to hunker down and write music, working on a solid foundation that they would lay down live when things opened back up.

Where most bands hone their craft with a live audience, Honeyglaze worked in reverse, refining their sound in isolation. The benefit is crystal

clear in the record’s intimacy, where each song plays almost like a confession of a hidden feeling or embarrassing story.

It’s the same energy as the whispered conversations of a sleepover at 2am.

That might be thanks to their rehearsal and writing process, which saw the band playing for eight hours a day in the dark to set the tone. Tim sums it up nicely, “We’d get food and get really, really silly.” “Eat loads of sweets, get really hyper,” Anouska adds gleefully.

It makes for an album packed with fun. For every ounce of drama, there’s an equal measure of levity, too. Even when touching on co-dependent relationships in ‘I Am Not Your Cushion’, there’s an air of playfulness that comes from its casual delivery and hazy bass noodling.

Like so many bands that weave between genres leaving the resulting sound is almost impossible to categorise or define, Honeyglaze have occasionally found themselves dumped into the post-punk blur. “I do find it funny when we get put with the Speedy bands.” Anouska posits, “People hear ‘Speedy’, and they’re like ‘Ahhh, Black Midi!’” As they put it, genre isn’t a concern when making an album. You just go with the sound.

“Someone did a review of ‘Creative Jealousy’ and said ‘the newest in guitar music’, but there’s no guitar on that track,” recalls Tim. Anouska laughs, “I forgot about that! Not a single guitar on it!” When asked what they would call their music, the band pause before Anouska offers “Epic” with absolute confidence, quickly followed by an embarrassed, “What the fuck…?” from Tim.

With the album recorded in a flash over just five days in April 2021, Honeyglaze haven’t sat idly by waiting for its release. They’ve just finished a UK tour with Lounge Society and are gearing up for a slew of dates supporting Wet Leg before a headline tour of their own in the summer. Not to mention Green Man, which Yuri exclaims when asked what they’re most excited for. “It just happens to be one of the best festivals around,” Tim insists.

It’s hard not to admire their fortitude while things move into hyperspeed, but after waiting a year for the album to be released, they’ve gone through every emotion. “The first two months after we did it, it was like, ‘Come on, I want it out now!’ It feels weird that it’s finally happening,” Anouska says. With the release looming ever closer, Yuri’s feeling the excitement. “Thinking that ‘Female Lead’ is out today and in less than two months the album is gonna be out, it’s such a great feeling.”

Honeyglaze continue to grow and develop. Even in the run-up to the record’s release, they’re recalibrating their creative process. “Before the album, I was writing the songs and then bringing them to the boys and arranging it together,” Anouska explains, “but now we’re doing a lot more stuff more communally.” You can’t help but get excited for more “epic” music that could be on the way after Honeyglaze’s debut.

Whether you fancy their heartfelt bangers, light-hearted lyricism or their fiery passion for new smells, Honeyglaze are bringing the best of all worlds.

■ Honeyglaze’s self-titled

debut album is out 29th April.

readdork.com 47.

ALL THE RELEASES YOU NEED TO KNOW (AND SOME YOU DEFINITELY DON'T)

WHAT DO THE SCORES MEAN? ★ Rubbish ★★ Not Great ★★★ Fair ★★★★ Good ★★★★★ Amazing

Wet Leg

WET LEG ★★★★★

Out: 8th April 2022. → There’s nothing as exciting as potential. It’s a refrain you’ll find repeated often around these parts, but Wet Leg are the proof in pop’s plentiful pudding. When the Isle of Wight duo first burst through with debut single ‘Chaise Longue’, it was impossible not to go a little OTT. And if there’s ridiculousness going around, you can bet Dork will be head of the queue. Instantly crowning them The Most Exciting New Band on The Planet after twenty-four pre-release hours where they remained on solid loop in ‘ver bunker’, can anyone really say we were wrong?

Still, it’s easy to make an impact with one whipsmart, saucy banger. To do so over a whole record is something else entirely. As each new track from their self-titled debut emerged, any suggestion Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers were the owners of one impressive but lonely trick pony soon flew out the window. Quite how far it’s been flung, though, is something only their first fulllength statement can prove.

It’s definitely gone way past Portsmouth, put it that way.

Opener ‘Being In Love’ proves that, even when dealing with the more traditional topics, Wet Leg still feel a little weird and wonderful. Confirmation that what we all needed was a little bit of odd, Rhian’s razor-sharp tongue remains the star of the show. Never more than a quick hop, skip and jump from another brilliantly delivered, eminently quotable line, Wet Leg manage to take the bits of indie and alt-rock still fit for purpose and forge them into a cultish, ramshackle chaos engine. From the Pavement slacker charm of ‘Supermarket’ to the electric scream of ‘Ur Mum’, that nagging worry that they were just too strange to ever be really massive is condemned firmly to the scrapheap of bad takes. Believe the hype - Wet Leg really are everything we said they were.

STEPHEN ACKROYD

48. DORK

Chloe Moriondo

PUPPY LUV EP

★★★★ Out now.

RECOMMENDED RELEASES

ARTIST'S GUIDE.

COACH PARTY

MAKE SURE YOU CHECK OUT THESE ALBUMS AND EPS.

NOTHING IS REAL EP

Isle of Wight foursome Coach Party are gearing up for a big year - here, they talk us through their brand new EP, ‘Nothing Is Real’.

FLAG (Feel Like A Girl)

When we wrote and recorded ‘FLAG’, not one of us thought of it as a single.

It does a thing that we’ve never done before, so even when all the people close to us were saying, “that’s the single, right?” we were thinking, “no, of course not, what’s wrong with you?”

But maybe in retrospect, that’s why it stands out and was a good single: it came as a surprise.

Shit TV

On most days, we’d all agree that ‘Shit TV’ is our favourite track on the EP. The guitar riff had been hanging around for ages, and we must have written

NOTHING IS REAL EP

★★★★

Out: 29th April. → Three EPs in, and Coach Party have definitely graduated from their indie-rock apprenticeship with flying colours. ‘Nothing Is Real’ is five tracks of driven, direct hits - from the raw frustration and righteous anger of ‘FLAG (Feel Like A Girl) to the slightly stalkerish salted saccharine of ‘3 Kisses’. It’s closing title-track ‘Nothing Is Real’ that really stands out, though. Shining through hazy, shimmering fog, it’s a scuzzy, shoegazey twist on Coach Party’s chosen formula. As that debut album approaches, it promises exciting things still to come. STEPHEN ACKROYD

3 Kisses

For our first two EPs, we’d been rehearsing and even gigging most of the songs before we thought about recording them. But for this record, the only song that follows that suit is ‘3 Kisses’ (if you saw us on tour last year, you’d have heard it). Jess [Eastwood] brought these sinister but also pretty funny verses into the studio, and we just kept playing it for a couple

of days while it gradually turned into a song. Not sure exactly how many times it says “I wanna be your girlfriend” from start to finish, but it’s gotta be enough to make a decent drinking game.

Weird Me Out

This song wasn’t part of the plan for this EP. We had all the songs decided on and were halfway through making the record, but whilst on tour in December, we wrote a few songs, including this one, and knew that it had to be on the EP. Turned out it also had to be a single ahead of the EP release, so we ended up with a mad sprint to refine & record that track, which with hindsight was a

CRASH → Tight, focused and moving with dangerous intent, ‘Crash’ is Charli XCX’s main character moment.

great thing for the feel of that recording. It has the same non-stop energy we needed to get it finished (more or less) to schedule.

Nothing Is Real

It’s more than four minutes long, which for us basically makes it our ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. We were really particular about how we put this song together we’re totally aware of who we are as a band and that we kind of have a thing which makes us us, but sometimes a song like this one comes along that challenges those things and it can be really rewarding to see it through. We’re really proud that this one names and finishes off our third EP.

Thomas Headon

VICTORIA EP → Fast pushing through the pack of main alt-pop boys, Thomas Headon’s new EP ‘Victoria’ is a lesson in how to play the game to perfection.

Catchy, immediate and packed with joyful abandon, its youthful exuberance spills out.

PHOTO: HATTIE NEATE.

Coach Party

Toro Y Moi Charli XCX

about four songs around that riff before we figured out what direction we wanted to take it in. But once we did finally figure it out, it must have taken us about five minutes to write the lyrics and even longer to record it.

→ Everyone loves dogs, don’t they?

Chloe Moriondo does - especially her best canine bud ‘sammy’. The opening track to new fourlegged EP ‘puppy love’, her ode to her little chum is packed with saccharine charm. Elsewhere, ‘nice pup’ mixes clipped guitar tones with a more traditional dogbased metaphor for relationships that deserves its own day in the sun, while ‘my dog won’t miss u (dead 2 me)’ is the kind of bratty blast to an ex that should be celebrated. ‘Puppy Luv’ might be more side-dish than full bowl of Pedigree Chum, but there’s enough there to keep us going until it’s time for dinner. STEPHEN ACKROYD

MAHAL

★★★

Out: 29th April. → With many of his peers having long since put their feet up, uncontested chillwave king Toro Y Moi has kept the torch going, albeit held at a distance. His latest, ‘Mahal’, sees him bringing together the carefree garage rock of Weezer with the woozy melancholia of Tame Impala and the basslines of something like Funkadelic.

It’s endearingly experimental, with spaces that you can sink into or groove through, and strong, funky production, here elevated by a larger live accompaniment. Sadly, it’s let down some by songwriting that can feel a bit basic. CHRIS TAYLOR

Stand Atlantic Wallows

TELL ME THAT IT’S OVER → Wallows have an innate ability to make any day that little bit sunnier just for hearing one of their songs, and it’s a trait that runs right through the centre of their second album.

Walt Disco

UNLEARNING → With their debut album ‘UNLEARNING‘, Walt Disco prove they always go big. Lavished with pomp and bombast, there’s no chance of slipping past quietly.

F.E.A.R.

★★★★

Out: 6th May. → Unable to tour their excellent 2020 record ‘Pink Elephant’, Stand Atlantic poured all their pent-up energy and frustration into a thrilling follow-up. ‘F.E.A.R’ (aka, Fuck Everything And Run) is an idiosyncratic, frenetic mixtape that bounces across genres, hosts a number of features and shows a band who are supremely confident exploring whatever rabbit hole a song sends them down. With all the recent talk of early-00s pop-punk being “back”, Stand Atlantic don’t need to look to the past: they’re too busy writing the future. DILLON

EASTOE

readdork.com 49.

Hatchie

Warpaint

Anorak Patch

★★★★

★★★★

★★★★

GIVING THE WORLD AWAY

Panic Shack BABY SHACK

★★★★ Out now.

→ Cardiff’s Panic Shack have run up a bit of a buzz rap sheet well before their debut EP lands - produced by Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard’s Tom Rees, ‘Baby Shack’ has seen the band score radio play and column inches from many of indiepunk’s most storied gatekeepers. Not that that’s something the band would entertain. A reaction against the members-only-club mentality of the music industry, ‘The Ick’ in particular drips in rambunctious attitude. Everyone’s paying attention now. STEPHEN ACKROYD

Dama Scout

GEN WO LAI (COME WITH ME)

★★★

Out: 22nd April. → Hatchie’s 2019 debut ‘Keepsake’ hit the sweetest of indie-pop sweet spots and marked her out as a pristine songwriter.

‘Giving The World Away’ seeks to capitalise on that success by aiming even higher and making everything even bolder and brighter. The record moves her sound on from dreampop drenched retro vibes into something that is even more emotionally resonant; the songs here are simply sublime, for example the gorgeous melody of ‘Sunday Song’ and ‘Quicksand’’s modern alt-pop rush. This is everything great about Hatchie on a much bigger scale. MARTYN YOUNG

RADIATE LIKE THIS Out: 6th May. → It’s been six long years since Warpaint last released an album and how have we missed them. ‘Radiate Like This’ features all the hallmarks of the Warpaint sound with vibes to the foreground and a gauzy haziness that offers a woozy kind of attraction: see for example the sparse dynamics and atmospheric groove of ‘Like Sweetness’.

Warpaint excel in making a little go a very long way and their delicate approach to melding their clever instrumentation and gorgeous harmonies together gives something distinctive and compelling.

MARTYN YOUNG

Out: 22nd April. → The wait for a debut album from London/Glasgow art-rockers hasn’t been insignificant - but then, like many, they have a global disaster to thank for the pause on a pre-pandemic rise. Finally here, ‘gen wo lai (come with me)’ recalls exactly why the trio became so highly rated in the first place. Mixing, producing, writing and recording everything themselves, creating all their own artwork and videos - this is more than just a band embracing DIY culture, but weaving their own universe. A cathartic creation, it’s been worth the wait. ANDREW

Out: 22nd April. → Bob Vylan are a band doing things on their own terms.

Independent and proud, ‘The Price Of Life’ is a vibrant mix of influences, unafraid to mix wholesome community with anger and frustration at the world around it. A full and frank account of modern life, social issues, racism, culture war and more, all push through with an urgent cry yet there’s so much more to Bob Vylan. Where so many can feel like they’re reading out the battle lines drawn in the right broadsheet, ‘The Price Of Life’ has done the hard miles - and it shows in the best possible way. DAN

THE KENNY KLUBHOUSE EP

YES

★★★

Out: 29th April. → Sometimes, it takes time to truly be comfortable being ourselves.

Be it age or the development of a relatively new solo career, Charles Watson’s second album post-Slow Club shows a more direct, brighter feel than its predecessor. ‘Yes’ and its positive title indicate a desire to lean into the affirmative. From the classic mix of ‘Beauty Contest’ to the warm glow of ‘Figure Skater’, this is an album of progression, quiet confidence and easy charm. A journey, not a destination, but a welcome one nonetheless. ANDREW WESCOTT

50. DORK

MELT MY EYEZ SEE YOUR FUTURE

★★★★

★★★★

Charles Watson

Denzel Curry

BOB VYLAN PRESENTS THE PRICE OF LIFE

iamkyami

ACKROYD

Out: 29th April. → A short, sharp burst of expressive weirdness chock-full of looming overtones, Anorak Patch’s debut EP is an enticing offer. The Colchester-based group are quick to immerse you in their dark world, franticly building scenes of cohabiting locusts and mad cats (‘Pairs Will Be Paid For’), or howling “Simon Says, what is in your head?” (‘Irate’) enough for you to respect the rules and have a proper root around.

Intended to both unsettle and welcome, a task they’ve achieved with bells on, Anorak Patch are going to be sticking around for a long time. STEVEN LOFTIN

Bob Vylan

WESCOTT

Out: 29th April. → Manchestervia-Upstate New York newcomer iamkyami understands how to mix the different elements of 2022’s pop culture touchpoints.

A bit of Avril, a touch of D’Angelo, a sizeable slab of SZA - they’re all influences that go to make ‘The Kenny Klubhouse’ an EP slip down with consummate ease. Cool and fresh, yet blessed with a velvety warmth, this is modern alt-pop at its very best. STEPHEN

BY COUSIN SAM EP

HARRISON

The Linda Lindas GROWING UP

★★★★ Out now.

→ It could be the first time you heard The Linda Lindas was when they were hitting out at stupid racist boys in a library. It might be it was when they were ripping up a Netflix movie, before they’d even got round to really releasing much of anything at all. Whatever way the introduction came, it’s likely that two revelations arrived with it - ‘bloody hell, they’re young’ and ‘blimey, they’re amazing’.

Forming as members of a new wave cover band of kids for Girlschool LA in 2018, and quickly recalibrating as their own garage punk gang after,

sisters Mila de la Garza (drummer, now 11) and Lucia de la Garza (guitar, 14), cousin Eloise Wong (bass, 13), and family friend Bela Salazar (guitar, 17), The Linda Lindas are a band for whom age really is just a number.

‘Growing Up’ isn’t an album with caveats or disclaimers. There’s no ‘... for a band so young’ about it. By any measure, it’s remarkable. A record that doesn’t just hold its own amongst peers, but barges past them with unerring confidence, The Linda Lindas are proof that rock’s old boys’ club’s time is up.

STEPHEN ACKROYD

★★★★ Out now.

→ Denzel Curry has always switched between raising hell and intense introspection. In contrast to his adlib-heavy mumble rapping alums Lil Uzi Vert, 21 Savage, Lil Yachty, and Kodak Black, Denzel has felt like a bridge between the old and the new; crisply enunciated and tightly technical, but still at his happiest mobbing out with his Soundcloud rap peers.

With his fifth album, ‘Melt My Eyez See Your Future’, we’re met with a far more grounded Denzel, one who rarely amps up to anything resembling the sweaty bangers he once seemed destined to be defined

Orville Peck

Bloc Party

★★★★

★★★

BRONCO Out now.

→ Saddle up, everyone’s favourite rootinest, tootinest masked cowboy is back.

Having been drip-feeding us pieces - or chapters - of his follow-up to 2019’s ‘Pony’, ‘Bronco’ picks up where its predecessor left off. The rollicking ‘Daytona Sand’ gallops into view, before relinquishing the pace up and settling in for a long canter through Orville’s im(Peck)able storytelling.

Once again he effortlessly paints visions of the lonesome, the lost, the forgotten and all the feelings that tie those states together, with a toothpick toting grin.

STEVEN LOFTIN

ALPHA GAMES

Out: 29th April. → After a gap of six years, the sixth Bloc Party record arrives thanks, in part, to a renewed focus on their first. Born out of the ‘Silent Alarm’ anniversary shows, the influence of that album can be felt all through ‘Alpha Games’ - the same breathless race through gears, the same ragged, urgent and surging guitar sounds that helped define the band in the first place.

Thankfully ’Alpha Games’ isn’t a repeat for nostalgia’s sake; the angst and anxiety that has come with those two decades lends it a deliciously spicy edge that saves it from being a safe path. JAMIE MACMILLAN

by. If that sounds like a refutation of the breakneck tonal flips of Denzel’s breakthrough ‘TA13OO’, or the out-and-out punk punch of ‘Zuu’, it’s not – it’s an evolution. Despite the fact Denzel never hits his black metal screeching highs, if anything he sounds hungrier for his barely-held-together restraint. Laying out the personal journey he’s been on in album opener ‘Melt’, you can practically hear the breaking point being pushed through. This is the sort of cohesive artistic statement he’s been aching to make for years. BLAISE RADLEY

Kae Tempest

THE LINE IS A CURVE

★★★★ Out now.

→ Their fourth album, ‘The Line Is A Curve’ sees Kae Tempest explore the complexities of life and love with a fresh finesse. From the danceable ‘More Pressure’ to the deeply beautiful ‘Grace’, each new track conveys fierce emotion aided by a varied cast of talented musicians, such as Lianne La Havas and Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten. A celebration of resilience, the record explores the dark and light of life with all the passion Kae Tempest has become so well known for, creating a beautifully melancholic commentary on our modern world. MELISSA DARRAGH

Fontaines D.C. SKINTY FIA

★★★★★

Out: 22nd April. → Fontaines D.C. have always been open about the inspiration they draw from their surroundings. ‘Dogrel’, their debut, was a portrait of a fast-disappearing Dublin, while follow-up ‘A Hero’s Death’ was shot through with the dislocation of a life on the road.

New album ‘Skinty Fia’ sees the band in a fresh setting once more, having moved to London during the pandemic. But instead of a metaphorical walk through the London smog, this is an album full of the remembered Ireland of a diaspora community, deeply embedded in the city, but distinct from its native population. It’s an album about what it means to be a foreigner in a country that has historically been incredibly hostile to your homeland.

Nowhere is this more clear than in the seething anger of opening track ‘In ár gCroithe go deo’. The title is Irish for “in our hearts forever”, a phrase that a family were not allowed to put on a grave without a translation lest it be seen as a “political statement” due to “the passions and feelings connected with the use of Irish Gaelic”. It feels tailor-made as a response to those who would say discrimination against the Irish is ancient history.

On the flipside, ‘I Love You’ is heartfelt and beautiful in a way that it would have been hard to imagine the band making when they first kicked in the door of the ‘South London Scene’ back in 2018. ‘The Couple Across the Way’ is also a departure, skirting closer to Irish trad music than anything they’ve previously released.

More striking than the individual tracks is how they all fit together, contextualising and playing off each other in a way that few albums manage. Lead single ‘Jackie Down the Line’ is still the most impressive standalone offering, but even this is deepened by how it rubs shoulders with the songs either side.

With their third album, Fontaines D.C. have grappled with weightier topics, experimented with more genres, and pushed themselves further than they have in the past. What’s even more impressive is that in doing so they’ve made their best album yet. JAKE HAWKES readdork.com 51.

Lizzy McAlpine FIVE SECONDS FLAT

★★★★ Out now.

Blossoms

RIBBON AROUND THE BOMB

★★★★

Out: 22nd April. → Give a band enough time and space, and if they’re worth a damn, they’ll evolve into something greater.

That’s certainly true of Blossoms. Though they arrived as a fully-formed, chart-topping concern, in the six years since, it’s credit to both the band and those around them that they’ve grown quite so much.

With each album, the Stockport quintet improve, honing their craft and finding confidence in their own voices. While previous full-length ‘Foolish Loving Spaces’ might have felt like a lightspeed jump forwards, the self-assured comfort of ‘Ribbon

Around The Bomb’ is arguably even more impressive.

Opening with the lush instrumentation of ‘The Writer’s Theme’, much of its twelve tracks find frontman Tom Ogden taking stock of just how far the journey has taken him and his mates.

Using a forced pause to refocus and step back, there’s a warmth and charm that feels unique to Blossoms amongst their peers. Three early singles - ‘Ode To NYC’, title track ‘Ribbon Around The Bomb’ and, best of

all, the autobiographical ‘The Sulking Poet’ - set out a strong stall, while the seven-minute-long ‘Visions’ is a delight, not overindulgence.

For a band with two Number 1 albums behind them, and a third still hitting the Top 5, Blossoms perhaps don’t always get the critical acclaim their undoubted success deserves. ‘Ribbon Around The Bomb’ should - by any sensible measure - be the point that changes. A record that looks both inward on its authors and their past,

but outwards towards the future, they may not be as flashy, bombastic or loud as some of the bands around them, but Blossoms have something few others possess. As closing refrain, ‘The Last Chapter’ provides an atmospheric prologue; four albums in, there’s a classic permanence to Blossoms. A band that don’t just connect in the here and now, but who are now making records to last for the long haul.

That writer has come a long way fast. STEPHEN ACKROYD

→ Lizzy McAlpine’s ‘five seconds flat’ is all flashes of clean white sheets, sunlight streaming through the blinds, the first stir of your coffee on a morning. Over the course of the album, the 22-year-old finds herself traversing through gutpunching heartbreak: each track feels like another step on tentative feet. ‘ceilings’ is a particular standout, the heartache transcendent. It’s a retreat into herself, and as the album progresses, those stages of grief manifest until strength comes to the surface with final track ‘orange show speedway’. A brighter future awaits.

NEIVE MCCARTHY

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever ENDLESS ROOMS

★★★

Out: 6th May. → Never the flashiest of bands, Rolling Blackouts have been quietly building a reputation as one of the biggest rock successes to come out of Australia over the last few years - crafting highly polished albums that have gained plenty of critical and fan love whilst still keeping the band flying somewhat under the radar. ‘Endless Rooms’ continues in that vein, building on all their familiar elements whilst expanding and extending things in every direction. It is a decision that mostly, but doesn’t always, pay off.

JAMIE MACMILLAN

Lucius

SECOND NATURE

★★★

Out now. → ‘Second Nature’ is everything you didn’t expect from Lucius but turns out it be everything you always wanted from them as the duo of Holly Larssig and Jess Wolfe break free from their previous more singersongwriter country-tinged sound with a dancefloor explosion. There’s no messing about here. It’s all about the groove and each track has its own vibrant swagger and endearing sense of release. The massive highs are slightly tempered though by a couple of earnest ballads, but when this album hits the heights it really soars.

MARTYN YOUNG

52. DORK

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Psychedelic Porn Crumpets NIGHT GNOMES

★★★★

Out: 22nd April. → On fifth album ‘Night Gnomes’, sonic sorcerers Psychedelic Porn Crumpets come into their own not through flights of fancy, but with both feet firmly on the ground. This might seem like a strange conclusion to draw with a title-track named after mythic creatures that frolic under the light of the moon, but the band have never been afraid of a little contradiction. ‘Night Gnomes’ carries all the hallmarks that made their previous records so well received while remaining their realest offering to date. JESSICA GOODMAN

Father John Misty

CHLOË AND THE NEXT 20TH CENTURY

★★★★ Out now.

→ With a full orchestra at his heels, Father John Misty’s fifth album is likely going to be the classiest record of the year.

There are nods to The Beatles, Glen Campbell and Sinatra, while the opening number has the sort of swing that would get Fred Astaire back on his feet. It roots the album in the middle of the last century and feels as though it has been captured on black and white film in a smoke-filled speakeasy with a single spotlight on the crooning singer, with his usual cynicism and dry wit pulling it all into the (near) modern day. ALEX BRADLEY

ENGLISH TEACHER

ARTIST'S GUIDE.

POLYAWKWARD EP

Leeds up-and-comers English Teacher have penned an EP all about anxiety.

Polyawkward

Sunflower Bean

HEADFUL OF SUGAR

★★★★★ Out: 6th May.

→ This third album from Sunflower Bean is a real testament to what can happen when you roll the dice and take your chances.

A record of freedom, both in theme and in execution, it’s as terrifying and exciting as walking out of your front door with no plans but set for an adventure. Spinning off in multiple directions, ‘Headful Of Sugar’ is as far removed at times from what was expected as it gets, the band shaking themselves loose of expectations gloriously.

It’s clear things have changed right from the start, as the soft groove of opener ‘Who Put You Up

54. DORK

To This?’ shifts flawlessly into the lo-fi and dreamy ‘In Flight’. Julia Cumming has rarely sounded better as she warns on the former “In another life I was a bitch, in another life I was your bitch”. There are hints of St. Vincent drifting through these early parts, where the band are running at the opportunity to do the least safe option.

‘Headful Of Sugar’ is a pure thrill ride of exhilarating speed: a record to be cranked up loud, packed with anthems for these times of flux and risktaking. This latest roll of the dice has beaten all the odds. JAMIE MACMILLAN

I often make two jokes about my sexuality: that I have a kink for wordplay, and that I have no sexuality at all - I just feel awkward with everyone. Awkward like a man with an extra testicle. ‘Polyawkward’ is a play on the word ‘polyorchid’: - the title of the poem in the bridge, about a man with an extra testicle. I discovered this word Christmas 2020 as the answer to a particularly funny round of Trivial Pursuit. This song is about loneliness at its heart, though, not testicles.

A55

I remember when Douglas [Frost (drums, vocals)] showed me the guitar riff on his little nylon-string acoustic, and I fell in love with it and paired it with lyrics that I wrote in bed to try and cathart away my hangxiety. It’s about the rise and fall of the ego as it becomes affected by what one puts in their body. We decided to keep teasing a chorus and then cruelly pull it back to a verse to mimic

the violent leaps in emotion and behaviour that can be experienced with drinking, drugs, sex, etc.

Mental Maths

You guessed it! Yet another song about anxiety, except this time: supermarkets.

My social phobia rears its bashful noggin once again to discuss the trials and tribulations of doing the weekly shop and feeling like a fish out of water like Sophie Zawistowska picking between her children except the children are brands of tinned tomatoes, like a kid who got distracted by the middle isle and now Mum’s nowhere to be seen and has potentially left her in Aldi to fend for herself. All this, over an angular guitar line our Douglas wrote in one sweet voice note, that was meticulously adapted by the whole band into ‘Mental Maths’.

Yorkshire Tapas Like Yorkshire puddings stuffed with patatas bravas, this track is a combination of two very

separate creations. The first: a poem I wrote about going on a date after lockdown; I overheard the phrase “Yorkshire tapas” used to describe bar snacks from a man in the Angel Inn in Leeds and absolutely loved it. The boys’ background improv leaks into the second half, an instrumental that began as a bass riff from our Nicholas [Eden (bass)] and developed into one of my favourite pieces of music on the record. Fun fact: the first half was all done in one take and was the first time I spoke properly while at the studio (I had lost my voice).

Good Grief

I loved the phrase “good grief”; a brilliant oxymoron that we wanted to emulate by pairing sad lyrics with Nick’s upbeat, wonky bassline, leading up to Lewis [Whiting (lead guitar)]’s guitar, crescendoing into the chaos of the phrase as a complete. Having lost three grandparents in 2020, grief and the pandemic was a topic I really couldn’t avoid

English Teacher POLYAWKWARD EP

★★★★

Out: 22nd April. → There’s a fresh pot of gnarly postpunk on the boil in Leeds and its name is English Teacher. Their new fivetrack EP, ‘Polyawkward’ plays with all the cool debonair of longestablished artists while brimming with potential. As well as referencing a poem about a man with three testicles, the titular track is an ode to lead singer Lily Fontaine’s social discomfort.

Every cut is chockfull of disquiet; whether reeling with beer fear in ‘A55’ or the giddy butterflies of a first date in ‘Yorkshire Tapas’, Lily has expertly translated anxieties into bangers.

CONNOR FENTON

in my lyrics - so ‘Good Grief’ follows the love story of Track and Trace as they navigate the absurdity of 2020, but personally, it’s my way of saying, if things were handled better by the government, some of our loved ones might still be around.

COMING SOON.

ALBUMS TO MARK ON YOUR CALENDAR FOR THE NEXT FEW MONTHS...

Alfie Templeman MELLOW MOON Out: 27th May 2022

Beabadoobee BEATOPIA Out: 15th July 2022

Sports Team GULP! Out: 22nd July 2022

Maggie Rogers SURRENDER Out: 29th July 2022

BANKS

Daisy Brain

Omar Apollo

★★★★

★★★★

★★★★

→ Four albums in, and those 2010s blogpop sensations are generally expected to fade away. Not BANKS, though.

‘SERPENTINA’ is an album that continues to push beyond expectations. If anything, it’s her most dangerous sounding record, casting aside measured control for wild, free expression. ‘SERPENTINA’ is BANKS without limits.

Opening one-two ‘Misunderstood’ and ‘Meteorite’ are packed with primal emotion. ‘Holding Back’ could be right up there with the best things BANKS has ever done, while the gospel swell of ‘Spirit’ hits in a way that surprises as much as it enriches. Like a snake shedding its skin, ‘SERPENTINA’ is a fresh new start to celebrate.

→ Sometimes you have to look backwards to move forwards. Not that there’s much negative about the rise of Daisy Brain. New EP ‘Disconnected Happy’ is a throwback delight. A mix of early-00s Brit-rock grot and kitchen sink storytelling drama, opener ‘Kleptomaniac’ is all sticky floors and two-for-one drinks deals at a Tuesday night student indie club, ‘Digital Atlas’ winds its way round World of Warcraft like a great big fuckin’ nerd, while ‘Down’ is slacker rock so disconnected from the grind it’s unlikely to be found out of bed much before dinner time. Some might find Daisy Brain’s retro-mania reductive, but there’s a freshness to it too.

Youthful, bubblegrunge indie has still got it after all.

STEPHEN ACKROYD

STEPHEN ACKROYD

→ Pining falsettos, heated funk, a vulnerable kind of seduction: all hallmarks of an Omar Apollo release. A bilingual exhibit of soulful, shape-shifting musings, on ‘IVORY’, the MexicanAmerican artist manages to weave everything from his heritage to loneliness, sex, love and toxicity. It’s a mammoth effort, and one that bridges the gap between his earlier releases and who he is now. It’s a world in itself: billowing shirts, candle-lit rooms, careful contemplation in the midnight hour, the strain of trying to discover who you are. Unpredictable and deeply transformative, ‘IVORY’ is poised statement from someone possessing absolute multitudes, and extending them out with every track. NEIVE

The Regrettes

Baby Dave

Honeyglaze

★★★★

★★★★

★★★★

ACKROYD

→ Honeyglaze feel like they’re in one hell of a hurry, another ‘lockdown’ band arriving with a polished debut album seemingly about five minutes after first appearing on the Windmill scene. But this self-titled record is anything but rushed, and it’s easy to see why everyone is falling head over heels with the trio. Wet Leg have already snapped them up for one of the most sought-after support slots around, and you can see why - Honeyglaze carry that same dry sense of humour and air of living their best lives through their music.

The band do a neat trick of making everything seem very simple when it is far from it; the record full of poetry, of empowering moments weaved together with ease. What an exciting start. JAMIE MACMILLAN

SERPENTINA

DISCONNECTED HAPPY EP

Out now.

Out now.

FURTHER JOY Out now.

→ Band releases music. Band tours world.

Pandemic forces band to stop.

Everyone has time to think.

Stuff happens. Band reforms. Band tackles stuff.

Band emerges anew. Sure, the concentrated story of The Regrettes’ last few years may not be unique, but their response is anything but cookie-cutter.

‘Further Joy’ is the sound of a gang regrouping from an enforced pause and hitting the fallout head-on, and they’ve ended up with a record heavy in content but bright and optimistic in tone. Vulnerable but united, it’s unafraid to be honest but doesn’t think that should preclude hope for the future. From coolerthan-you LA punks to altpop superstars, The Regrettes are stronger than ever. STEPHEN ACKROYD

MONKEY BRAIN

Let’s Eat Grandma TWO RIBBONS

★★★★★

Out: 29th April.

→ Let’s Eat Grandma’s second album, ‘I’m All Ears’, was a revelation. The kind of landmark future pop record that gets cited as a pivotal musical reference point for years to come, its follow up should have been a lap of honour.

Life doesn’t tend to work out that way in the real world, though. In the time between then and now, Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton have experienced the full gambit. Personal losses, evolving relationships, broken hearts and new horizons ‘Two Ribbons’ is a remarkable album forged in the difficult moments, but one that never fails to provide fresh hope to come.

Continuing their previous

record’s high-sheen pop master class, ‘Two Ribbons’ is far from more of the same.

As the internal relationships that shape the band change - Rosa and Jenny needing to find more space for themselves to process and progress - so does their songwriting style. Writing more individually focused tracks, vocal duties more often tend to fall to one or the other. It brings a new emotional clarity, one that befits the increasingly organic instrumentation that accompanies it.

The grief of ‘Watching You’ avoids becoming morbid or morose while never betraying the raw, desolate pain of loss. At the other end of the spectrum, ‘Levitation’ dares

to escape into a world of imagination, reconnecting through the comfort of creativity.

It’s the closing title-track that really stands out, though.

With the shine and sparkle stripped away, it’s not just the best thing Jenny and Rosa have ever put their names to; it’s the sort of song that stops time still on every play.

Generational talents letting their deepest thoughts bleed freely; while it’s an album that might pose more questions than it answers, its inherent quality is never open to debate. On the biggest of stages or in the smallest, most introspective moments, ‘Two Ribbons’ is nothing short of a masterpiece.

STEPHEN ACKROYD

Out: 22nd April. → The music of Baby Dave perhaps isn’t what you’d expect from his real-life alter-ego, Isaac Holman. It’s not that it’s from another stratosphere to Slaves’ gritty, direct, in-yourface thrust, though it’s very much not more of the same, either. It’s the fact that ‘Monkey Brain’ is so open, honest and - in a good way deeply, unashamedly strange. Emerging from a tough period of mental health for Isaac, it feels as much like a form of therapy for its author as it does music for the rest of us.

Supported by Damon Albarn, who co-produces and appears throughout, what at first shocks soon delights.

Celebrating mundanity and the everyday, there’s deeper stuff happening beneath the surface. It’s difficult not to be charmed. STEPHEN

IVORY

Out now.

MCCARTHY

HONEYGLAZE Out now.

readdork.com 55.

THE BEST OF LIVE MUSIC STRAIGHT FROM THE FRONT.

Swim Deep, Lime Garden and Priestgate – plus an extra special guest – bring the best of indie-pop brilliance to Dork’s Night Out 100 Club, London. 10th March 2022 PHOTOGRAPHY: Indy Brewer.

→ AS YOU’RE WALKING down Oxford Street in Central London, you’ll see a lot of things. That big department store is there (for now, anyway – Ed). The guys trying to sell you all the London merchandise are there. What you didn’t find until now is the biggest and best in new music as approved by your friends here at Dork (that’s us!).

Tonight – well – the streets of London are well and truly ours.

Our biggest Dork Night Out yet, we have our Indie Icons, beloved Hype List favourites, and one of the most exciting new bands on the planet. At the legendary 100 Club, it’s the talk of the town.

Opening up a night like this would phase many, but Priestgate aren’t just any band.

Mixing a knack for intoxicating The Cureesque melodies and in your face punk ferocity, they’re a band everyone should be rushing to see. As a wonderful tip of the hat to their upcoming’ Eyes Closed For The Winter’ EP, they’re both commanding and vulnerable.

A band that draws the listener in from the first note, no matter the surroundings.

Frontman Rob is a presence of his own, diving into the crowd at one moment and throwing himself across the stage the next.

Bedtime Story’ is a new-wave banger of the highest order, while the impending EP’s title track is a tangible call to arms. See them live. If you don’t, you’ll regret it – as they leave The 100 Club fully signed up to their growing gang.

Lime Garden are a band firmly on the tip of everyone’s tongues. Not just on our Hype List 2022, but at every show going. The packed 100 Club in front of them is a testament to that, as tracks like ‘Clockwork’, ‘Sick & Tired’ and ‘Pulp’ perfectly bounce and flow with all eyes firmly fixated on what they’ll do next.

‘Marbles’ may be their most joyous to date.

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Recalling stories of seeing Swim Deep for the first time when they were 14 makes tonight even more special. They aren’t asking us to just wait and see what they do next; they’re saying “come with!”. Don’t mind if we do…

Swim Deep‘s return feels like a genuinely celebratory moment. With nearly two and a half years in the rearview mirror since their last London headliner, there’s an added reality check of just what a unique band they are. A force in modern guitar music that doesn’t just rest on their (impeccable) laurels but continues to reinvent and pave a new path. With a new lease of life, thriving with creativity in a way that few can match, from opener ‘To Feel Good’ Austin Williams and the gang rip through a greatest hits set. Wide-eyed daydreaming of cuts like ‘The Sea’, ‘One Great Song Could Change The World’, ‘To My Brother’ and ‘Happy As Larrie’ crunch, groove and fly in a way no other band would. ‘Honey’ erupts like a national anthem, and by the time ‘She Changes The Weather’ twinkles, there are tears of joy.

It’s not all about what came before, though. ‘Big Green Apple’ and ‘On The Floor’ – both taken from the band’s new ‘Familiarise Yourself With Your Nearest Exit’ EP – point to an equally bright future.

The latter stands as a swirling indie banger of the highest order, with fellow Dork’s Night Out alumni Phoebe Green joining the band on stage. As they round out their set with ‘King City’ blaring and Austin surfing aloft in the crowd – it’s a statement of intent. A band of undeniable importance, they remind us that there’s a whole lot more to come.

Now, does anyone know what time the giant American Candy store opens?

Anyone? Till the next time, 100 Club…

JAMIE MUIR

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Self-Esteem is the hottest ticket in town O2 Kentish Town Forum, London. 24th March 2022 PHOTOGRAPHY: Patrick Gunning.

→ THE HOTTEST TICKET in town is a phrase that gets thrown about a lot, but tonight’s headline moment from Self Esteem is precisely that. There’s something different about the place – something that only comes when one of the most talked-about artists of the past 12 months comes out to play.

And not talked about in passing, here and there – actually leading the conversation. Tonight is the celebration of an artist living the moment she was destined to own.

“Fucking big room this.” That confidence is something embraced by tonight’s support Phoebe Green.

Taking to London’s Kentish Town Forum like it’s second nature, her presence continues to grow and grow. With an ease to every moment, that raw potential we saw when she headlined the very first Dork’s Night Out back in November is only getting bolder. No matter the stage, cuts like ‘Reinvent’, ‘Grit’, ‘So Grown Up’, ‘IDK’ and new single ‘Make It Easy’ are perfectly paced in a set that’s accomplished but also a sign of ambition still to come. At one moment hypnotic and psychedelic, the next banging down the doors – Phoebe Green live sets her own mood and pulls everyone

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in. It becomes more evident with every show that she’s unlike anyone else.

Self Esteem was born for big moments. The screams that ring out when the lights go down feel like they’re intended for the arrival of a so-hot-right-now boyband or global superstar. In a way, they are. What follows is a set both purely uplifting and euphoric – a cathartic party impossible to resist.

Illuminated by bright lights, cowboy hat in place, tonight is nothing short of a spectacle. The opening one-two of ‘I’m Fine’ and ‘Fucking Wizardry’ are practically drowned out by the crowd who switch from calm to chaos the moment Rebecca Lucy Taylor makes her grand entrance. It’s a set dominated by ‘Prioritise Pleasure’. Bold, direct and rich in every department – it’s a record with more than a lot to say, but also one that’s immediately inviting too.

‘How Can I Help You’ beats its way across the Forum, ‘You Forever’ is unstoppable, and the title-track has arms aloft and the aisles crammed with people. Self Esteem has become a voice that everyone can feel a connection with.

‘In Time’ is a perfect snapshot

– a defiant anthem of self-love and moving past heartbreak, it’s a release that rings out across Kentish Town. A chance to step into a world surrounded by friends to simply scream and shout. The impact isn’t lost on Rebecca one bit – regularly pausing, surrounded by an incredible group of singers who drive that party atmosphere even higher. There are lengthy standing ovations that seem like they’ll never stop – they’re not misplaced.

A big, bold and fun pop show – the high-energy dance routines for ‘Moody’, ‘Hobbies’ and ‘Favourite Problem’ leave the Forum in no doubt that this is Self Esteem’s time. What she represents now is something even more significant.

The two screens on the side of the stage clearly display the message, “There is nothing that terrifies a man more than a woman that appears completely deranged.”

The fundraising at the show for the Schools Consent Project. The overflowing world of emotion that comes from main set closer ‘I Do This All The Time’ – they all stick in the memory long after the show has finished. Done on her own terms – that’s what you call a pop star.

JAMIE MUIR

Alfie Templeman is heading for bigger things O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London. 16th March 2022 PHOTOGRAPHY: Patrick Gunning.

→ O2 SHEPHERD’S BUSH EMPIRE in West London is drenched in history. Some of the biggest names have graced its stage, from thrilling new sensations putting an exclamation point on a celebratory run to acts with decades of bangers. For an artist to pack its hallowed hall without an album out?

Well, that’s something special.

It’s no surprise Alfie Templeman finds himself here, though. Even with one member of the band down, there’s no stopping this path to the very top – fellow pop big deal Lewis Capaldi sneaking a view for himself of the hottest new firework in town. A historic stage? Yes, but for Alfie, it’s a proving ground for the sheer size his tunes have always teased at.

His set is not just about immediate celebration but ambition that’s impossible to sum up in one sentence. From the opening swagger of ‘Shady’, the room is Alfie’s for the taking, and that

energy ripples through his every move. For every guitar swoon, the screams ring out – early favourite ‘Stop Thinking (About Me)’ drowned out by singalongs.

It takes one glimpse at the masses gathered to know how much of a chord he’s struck. ‘Wait, I Lied’, ‘Circles’ and ‘Obvious Guy’ are just a few of his ridiculous arsenal of bangers to trigger pandemonium. A night out with Alfie is about having fun and celebrating just how joyous things can be. If there’s ever a crowd to be in, it’s this one.

In front of a glowing moon, teases of debut album ‘Mellow Moon’ (see what he did there?) showcase a world of influences. There’s the shiny 80s neon gleam of ‘Candy Floss’, as sweet as it sounds, to ‘Colour Me Blue’, which sees giant blue balloons fall from the rafters in all its swirling indie majesty. It feels like now is the moment where Alfie Templeman locks his sights on the

chart-smashing potential he’s had for many a year now.

It’s never been more evident than on a track like ‘3D Feelings’, which first debuted at the Camden Assembly and now feels like the landmark moment where the next chapter of Alfie Templeman began.

That meld of frenetic energy alongside an unstoppable creative drive sets him apart. ‘Broken’, the latest tease of ‘Mellow Moon’, is born for the biggest stages and, when played tonight, sees rapturous devotion.

As Alfie gazes around O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, it’s clear that such a reaction touches something deeper within. “This is the best gig I’ve ever experienced,” he declares, rounding out the evening with ‘Happiness In Liquid Form’. His eyes are set on things just getting bigger and bigger from here – and wherever Alfie’s heading, you’d be a fool not to follow. JAMIE MUIR readdork.com 59.

CHVRCHES are still getting better a decade in O2 Academy Brixton, London. 16th March 2022 PHOTOGRAPHY: Frances Beach.

→ IT MIGHT BE over a decade since CHVRCHES first emerged from the DIY punk scene of Glasgow, but the trio have always carried that same scrappy spirit with them. Sure, 2018’s poptastic ‘Love Is Dead’ might have been co-produced by eight-time Grammy winner Greg Kurstin but that unexpected polish was as defiant a statement as any, while their live shows have always focused on songs rather than spectacle. Even headlining London’s Alexandra Palace in 2019, the band relied almost entirely on their impressive back catalogue of bangers.

‘Screen Violence’ changed that, though.

Inspired by the melodrama of horror films, it was over the top, direct and saw the band properly embrace their more cinematic leanings. Likewise, tonight’s sold-out show at Brixton Academy is more theatrical than CHVRCHES have ever dared to be.

From the ominous doom of their entrance music and the flickering static of a huge video screen that leans into a pulsating ‘He Said, She Said’ to the blood-soaked encore of ‘Asking For A Friend’, the band have never looked more confident. There’s even a costume change.

CHVRCHES play seven tracks from the brilliant ‘Screen Violence’ tonight. The melancholic ‘California’ is a moody, sunsoaked anthem of longing and escape, while both ‘Final Girl’ and ‘Good Girls’ see the band cut arena-ready pop anthems with a punk swagger. Elsewhere the soaring ‘Violent Delights’ gives Lauren Mayberry a chance to show off her impressive vocals.

The band apply their new comfort to

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older material as well. There’s no shame about the face ‘Forever’ is a gleaming burst of 80s-inspired pop while the menacing tech-whirlwind of ‘Science/Visions’ is transformed into the beefy apocalyptic rave track it’s always threatened to be.

The Cure’s Robert Smith appears onstage during the encore for a run-through of their emo collab ‘How Not To Drown’, and a cover of the iconic ‘Just Like Heaven’.

He then sticks around, adding gloomy guitar to celebratory turns ‘The Mother We Share’ and ‘Clearest Blue’. It takes a lot to not be upstaged by a legend, but this is undoubtedly CHVRCHES night.

For as long as they’ve been a band, people have struggled with CHVRCHES’ push and pull between punk and electropop. Throughout their career, even the three-piece have made sure their live shows are never too much of one, but tonight’s show at Brixton Academy is an all-out spectacle delivered with the sort of confidence that’s seen the likes of Paramore, Wolf Alice, and The 1975 transcend scene and genre.

For all the new, though, the band remain the same emotional, relatable force they’ve always been. “What pays for all these sequins on my dress is my sadness,” grins Lauren at one point before telling a story about the time she travelled to Brixton to see Death Cab For Cutie, and spent a chunk of the evening crying in the toilets over an ex. “If I cry this time, at least I know it’s at my own gig.” Ten years after their first live shows, CHVRCHES are still getting more exciting and more impressive. ALI SHUTLER

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PHOTOS FROM THE FRONT LINES.

Stormzy brings the spectacle The O2, London. 29th March 2022 It’s no shock to anyone that Stormzy knows how to put on a show.

Having topped the bill at Glastonbury and Reading & Leeds in recent years, there’s very little left to prove for an artist who has pretty much confirmed himself as a national treasure. Still, finally able to get on the road following pandemic-related reschedulings, his ‘Heavy Is The Head’ tour has now become the build-up to a third album. As-yetuntitled and arriving later this year, if it shows even half the scale and spectacle of this run, we’re in for something special. cont PHOTOS: Patrick Gunning

»

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THE BEST PHOTOS FROM THE FRONT.

↓ MXMTOON

Omeara, London. 25th March 2022

It has been quite the month for mxmtoon. Not only has Maia dropped a Really Very Good new bop, the brilliant ‘sad disco’, but she’s also announced the release of her new album ‘rising’ too. Not bad going. To finish up, she headed to London’s Omeara to deliver a short solo set to an audience of adoring fans.

Photos: Patrick Gunning

↑ STORMZY 64. DORK

(CONTINUED)

Any Other Questions?

Let’s Eat Grandma.

Yes, Dear Reader. We enjoy those ‘in depth’ interviews as much as anyone else. But - BUT - we also enjoy the lighter side of music, too. We simply cannot go on any longer without knowing that Jenny Hollingworth from Let’s Eat Grandma wants to be mates with Lil Nas X. WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST MEMORY? Eating triangle cheese sandwiches at nursery.

WHICH DEFUNCT BAND WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO REFORM? Cocteau Twins.

WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU BROKE? I guess not technically me, but I dropped my in-ears out the van door on tour, and our front of house engineer Lee reversed over them.

WHAT’S THE WEIRDEST THING YOU’VE EVER EATEN? Sandwich with Vegemite, peanut butter and leftover McDonald’s fries.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN ALIENS? Not in the traditional sense.

WHAT IS THE MOST IRRATIONAL SUPERSTITION YOU HAVE? Touch wood.

WHAT’S YOUR STANDARD ORDER FROM THE FISH AND CHIP SHOP? Curry and chips.

IF YOU COULD LEARN ONE SKILL INSTANTLY, WITHOUT NEEDING TO PRACTICE, WHAT WOULD YOU PICK? Ice skating.

WHAT FASHION WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO MAKE A COMEBACK? 70s platform boots or t-bar heels.

HOW PUNK ARE YOU OUT OF TEN? Less than I like to think, probably a 3.

IF WE GAVE YOU £10, WHAT WOULD YOU SPEND IT ON? Going to the pub.

WHAT DO YOU DO FOR FUN? Go to the pub.

WHAT’S YOUR BREAKFAST OF CHOICE? Toast with peanut butter and strawberries.

WHAT DID YOU LAST DREAM ABOUT? My pet rabbit looking after a group of baby hedgehogs.

IF YOU HAD A PET TORTOISE, WHAT WOULD YOU CALL IT? Can I change this question to “pet frog” because I’ve always wanted to name a frog Swampy.

WHAT WAS THE FIRST RECORD YOU BOUGHT? Rihanna - ‘Good Girl Gone Bad’.

WHAT’S THE MOST EMBARRASSING THING THAT’S EVER HAPPENED TO YOU? Some of my crowd surfing attempts have been pretty embarrassing.

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WHAT’S THE UGLIEST LIVING CREATURE YOU’VE EVER ENCOUNTERED? Honestly, I like nearly all creatures (even the “ugly” ones) but maybe maggots.

IF YOU COULD ONLY USE ONE WORD FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, WHICH WORD WOULD YOU CHOOSE? Maybe.

WHAT’S YOUR WORST HABIT? Losing my card and keys constantly.

WHAT’S THE STUPIDEST LIE YOU’VE EVER TOLD? That Rosa [Walton, bandmate] and

I aren’t actually twins.

WHAT’S THE BEST WAY TO COOK A POTATO? Boiled then mashed with lots of butter.

IF YOU COULD HAVE A SUPERPOWER OF YOUR CHOOSING, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Invisibility.

WERE YOU A REBEL AT SCHOOL? In a quiet way, maybe.

WHAT HAVE YOU GOT IN YOUR POCKETS RIGHT NOW? Women’s clothes pockets aren’t big enough.

IF YOU WERE ONMASTERMIND, WHAT WOULD YOUR SPECIALIST SUBJECT BE? Skincare.

WHAT’S THE LAZIEST THING YOU’VE EVER DONE? You’d have to ask my mum.

IF YOU HAD TO LIVE AS AN ANIMAL FOR ONE YEAR, WHICH ANIMAL WOULD YOU PICK? One of those wild hamsters that eat candle wax off gravestones.

WHAT’S THE LEAST AMOUNT OF MONEY YOU WOULD TAKE TO EAT A DEAD WORM? Way too much.

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN BANNED

FROM SOMEWHERE? Next door neighbour’s garden.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE MIDNIGHT SNACK? Crisps, hummus and peanuts.

IF YOU COULD BE BEST FRIENDS WITH A CELEBRITY YOU DO NOT KNOW, WHO WOULD YOU CHOOSE? Lil Nas X. WHAT’S ONE THING PEOPLE DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU? I practically live in my dressing gown.

Let’s Eat Grandma’s album ‘Two Ribbons’ is out 29th April.

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