E D I TOR ’S L E T TER How many bands even get to their fifth album these days? It’s an achievement that has just been notched up by Hot Chip, and they’ve done it in style. Few have a back catalogue as intriguing or distinctive as theirs, and in their new full length ‘In Our Heads’ they’ve gone and topped the lot. One of the perks of this job is getting to hear new records before the rest of the world. It’s no exaggeration to say that, even weeks after the first play, this one hasn’t left the stereo. From dance to R&B, house to techno, South London’s premier pop scientists have cooked together a peerless formula. Few deserve a cover quite as much. Not that we’re short of brilliant bands this month: Japandroids’ new record is equally awesome, while any month you can welcome back The Hives is probably going to be more fun than most. We talk to a legitimate icon in the form of Sleater-Kinney and Wild Flag’s Carrie Brownstein, get up close and personal with Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino and take you behind the scenes of our party at this year’s Camden Crawl. There’s also the story behind Sigur Ros’ latest, interviews with Peaking Lights and Liars, studio catch ups with newcomers Willy Moon and Theme Park, reports from the ground at this year’s Great Escape, a run through Alt-J’s ace debut album AND we go on a date with Andrew WK. Party hard, readers.
CONTACT For DIY sales: email: rupert@sonicdigital.co.uk tel: +44 (0)20 76130555 For DIY online sales: email: lawrence@sonicdigital.co.uk tel: +44 (0)20 76130555 For DIY editorial: email: info@thisisfakediy.co.uk tel: +44 (0)20 76137249
STAFF LIST Editor: Stephen Ackroyd
Games Editor: Michael J Fax
Deputy / Online Editor: Victoria Sinden
TV Editor: Christa Ktorides
Senior Editor: Emma Swann
Editorial Assistant: Jamie Milton
Features Editor: Harriet Jennings
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News Editor: Sarah Jamieson
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Film Editor: Becky Reed
Jack Clothier
Contributors: Anna Byrne, Aysha Hussain, Aurora Mitchell, Ben Marsden, Colm McAuliffe, Danny Wright, Derek Robertson, El Hunt, George Boorman, Greg Inglis, Jack Urwin, Linda Aust, Leah Henson, Luke Morgan Britton, Martyn Young, Mary Chang, Matthew Davies, Olga Bas, Simone Scott Warren, Skye Portman Photographers: Olga Bas, Sarah Louise Bennett, Skye Portman
Cover photography: Sam Bond DIY is published by Sonic Network Limited. All material copyright (c). All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, in whole or in part, without the express written permission of DIY. 25p where sold. 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 Sonic Network Limited holds no responsibility. The opinions of the contributors do not necessarily bear a relation to those of DIY or its staff and we disclaim liability for those impressions. Distributed nationally.
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W I L LY M O O N
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T H E M E PA R K
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A LT - J
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CITIZENS!
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HOT CHIP
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T H E WA L K M E N
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JAPAN DROI D S
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BEST COAST
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PEAKING LIGHTS
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THE HIVES
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CARRIE BROWNSTEIN
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LIARS
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SIGUR ROS
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A N D R E W W. K . 6
N E W S
R E G U L A R S S
R E V I E W S
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L E T T E R S
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F I R S T
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O N
E X T R A
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F I L M
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T V
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G A M E S
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A L B U M S
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L I V E
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N : E : W : S
IN THE STUDIO...
WILLY MOON
T
o say that we’re a little excited by Willy Moon is an understatement. Ever since he burst on to our collective radar last year, DIY has been enamoured with his sense of style, flair and, to be quite 6 thisisfakediy.co.uk
honest, his raw talent. Having already given us a taste of his musical outpourings with the likes of ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ and ‘Yeah Yeah’, he’s quickly establishing himself as one of today’s more fascinating and engaging pop stars, so it’s unsurprising that he’s already rising up the ranks on daytime radio.
Blending together musical styles is often a tough challenge, but Moon seems intent on continuing to do so. Whether it was from the laid-bare ‘50s sounds running through his debut track, or the slick mix of rock ‘n’ roll meets hip-hop that we heard with latest single ‘Yeah Yeah’, creating the perfect pastiche of genres is something of huge importance to him when making his full-length.
“I think that, partly due to the way that I work, the album will be a collage of different sounds,” he begins. “That’s what interests me. It’s about building a picture from everything that has inspired me. I’m trying to exist in a post-genre world.” With every offering we have heard thus far from Willy being dynamic and wellcrafted, what is it that we can expect from a full-length? “I think any debut album is you introducing a character or an artist to the world. You want to be able to present them in as fresh and exciting a way as possible. There’s not as much pressure in terms of expectation. The expectation is for them to be interesting. “That’s really my focus. I want to make a record that doesn’t sound like anybody else’s record. I don’t want people to hear it and have it sound like a million other people, which is obviously what guitar music is so associated with at the moment. Yeah, a record that grabs people, and pulls them into my world.”
So, how far along in the recording process is he? “Everything that I’m doing at the moment is recording for my record. I have been working on a few songs of which.. for example, the other day, one we just did the horn section for, which was really great. There’s been lots of different things really.” And how has the process been so far? “It’s really on and off. I do a lot of work at home. Sometimes, I find that I can get a few days to work at it, and get done as much as I possibly can but other times, it might just be a couple of hours here and a couple of hours there. It’s great though because that means that I can work exactly how I want.” Usually, it wouldn’t be naïve to assume that creative freedom and lack of time constraints would be something to aid an artist, but for Moon, it seems more of a hindrance. “I think it’s really bad!” he laughs. “I think restriction is important. I think it’s good to have restrictions on what you can do and when you can do it. The freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want is a very bad thing.”
And, as ever, an emphasis on image – an element of the creative process that Moon takes extra pride in – will not be overlooked. “I think that’s something that will grow as I enter into the promotion stage, once I’ve made the record. I think the visuals are essentially a part of the music. It’s through that prism that we listen. Nobody listens to music completely alone. It’s not as though you’re a blind, mute person who can’t read or write and has been living in the forest, who has then had headphones shoved on. It’s all heard within cultural context.” So, when do we expect we might be able to hear his debut? “My record label want it to be done by July, so that’s what I’m aiming for. I don’t really have a specific date in my mind, but it has to come out this year.” Willy Moon’s new single ‘ Yeah Yeah’ is out now via LuvLuvLuv Records. His debut album is due later this year.
THE FUTUREHEADS WO R K I N G O N N E W A L B U M , A N D VA M P I R E M U S I CA L The Futureheads have been rather busy gentlemen recently, with the release of their new a cappella album ‘Rant’. However, things aren't slowing down for the North East band. “We’re in the middle of recording a new album - it’s an acoustic album,” explains frontman Barry Hyde. “The hope is that, by the end of this year, we’ll have released three albums: ‘Rant’, an acoustic companion album, and a live album from the ‘Rant’ tour; we recorded every gig. “We’ve got two festivals happening this year. One of them is our own fessy [Split Festival], and the other is all to do with the Olympic Torch coming to Sunderland.” However, it’s his next revelation that really takes our fancy... “I’m also in the process - I have been for quite a while - of writing a musical, which I hope will be close to being finished by the end of the year. I’m writing a musical about vampires.”
Err... right. “I’m not lying! I’m not taking the Mick! It’s called ‘Malady’. It’s about two sisters - Malady and Melody. One of them’s a vampire, and the other one is a goody two shoes. Each of them have boyfriends, and there’s two bands. There’s a really positive, uplifting, spiritual band, and then there’s a vampire band from Eastern Europe.
They’re murderous and a thousand years old, really demonic musicians. So, it’s a battle between dissonance and harmony.” So, keep watching this space. The Futureheads’ new album ‘Rant’ is out now via Nul Records.
NEWS
CHARLI
S TA R T
XCX
WORK ON SECOND RECORD
DEBUT ALBUM DUE IN OCTOBER We eagerly await any news we can get our hands on from Charli XCX. Having recently appeared at both Live At Leeds and Camden Crawl, we tracked the budding starlet down to give us an insight in to writing on the road, what to expect from her debut, and just when we can expect to hear it. “I do [write on the road]. I find it difficult sometimes, because when you’re on tour sometimes you just want to have fun, see the city and meet up with your friends. I’m young as well! So, yeah, I do write a lot on tour. I think it’s nice because it makes you remember the other side of the music.” So, how's the album itself shaping up? “It’s almost done now! It’s going to be out in October. I haven’t got a name for it yet, because I keep thinking, ‘Oh, that’s really good!’ and then I change it. I’m just totally indecisive! “In my head, it’s very much a pop record, but I feel like it’s got two sides to it. It’s got a more pink, light side. More teen, bedroom, daydreamy kind of side. Then I think there’s a much darker, more emotional, scary and mysterious side. “When I write my music I like to think of it in colours, and I think of it in black and pink and gold. Those are the colours that are on the album.” Charli XCX will support Coldplay in Manchester on 9th June, before appearing at this year’s Blissfields and Bestival. Her debut album is due later this year.
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TWO WOUNDED BIRDS PLAN DEBUT ALBUM RELEASE After unleashing a slew of well-received singles and EPs since their formation in 2010, we’re finally getting a true taste of Two Wounded Birds in the form of their self-titled album, which drops this June. “People may already have an idea of what they think it’s going to sound like but I think they’re going to be surprised,” opens up frontman Johnny Danger. “It’s a lot broader than people will anticipate.” We sit with the four-piece – all of whom are leather clad in some way, shape, or form and ooze that undeniably coveted sense of cool – and speak of their debut in the corner of a Shoreditch bar. “The album’s split into two sides” continues Danger, the obvious ringleader of the operation. “The first half is very Phil Spector, whilst the second half is more things like Mazzy Star and The Jesus & Mary Chain. “It’s been recorded over the last year at different times in a studio in Rochester. I think it’s good to give each track its own time. If you just take it in a block every day, and you’re attacking it every day, it all kind of messes into one." With inspirations such as these, surely there must be some sort of love affair
with the art of sixties pop going on? “I think it’s one of, if not the strongest decade," explains Danger. "I don’t wanna pigeonhole ourselves and say, 'Oh, we just like things from the sixties', but… Some of those things just really hit home.” As for pop itself though, it’s a genre that can come with some troublesome generalisations. “It’s not a dirty word,” states Danger simply. “I think those people are reading too much into it. If a song’s good, who gives a s**t?” And for their debut album, the band have teamed up with Jacob Graham of The Drums, who will be releasing the record through his label Holiday Recording Friends. “He loves music more than anyone else that we had spoken to about putting out an album,” Ally Blackgrove tells us, before Joe Stevens summarises perfectly: “You want to be with people that you have things in common with. When we’ve released stuff with other labels, we realised that we had nothing in common with the people releasing it. Now, with Holiday, it’s about being with people that share your vision and share your point of view.” Two Wounded Birds’ self-titled debut album will be released on 4th June via Holiday Recording Friends.
RIP MCA
It felt like the world came together in collective grief on Friday 4th May as the sad news that Beastie Boy Adam “MCA” Yauch had passed away at the age of 47. Yauch had been battling cancer for three years. A statement was released via the trio’s website (beastieboys.com) detailing both his musical achievements and not inconsiderable charity work. He founded the Milrepa Fund, a non-profit dedicated to raising awareness of injustice in Tibet, and following September 11th 2001, organised New Yorkers Against Violence, a benefit concert raising funds for various charities in the city. He also directed many of the Beastie Boys’ videos using the alias Nathaniel Hörnblowér: ‘Intergalactic’, ‘Body Movin’’ and ‘ChCheck It Out’ were his work – as was last year’s ‘Fight For Your Right Revisited’ starring Elijah Wood, Jack Black and Will Ferrell.
THE CRIBS
TALK NEW ALBUM, WORKING WITH STEVE ALBINI
Tributes poured in across the internet, from the music world and elsewhere – both from those you’d expect, fellow hip-hop stars and those he’d influenced in obvious ways – to the more unexpected. The Beastie Boys’ influence knows no bounds. The Beastie Boys totally mangled everyone's expectations of them. They grew up. And they didn't. And both ways it was cool. - @fieldmusicmusic
Rip dear Adam Yauch. Words can't express the sadness and loss. Ur humor, talent & gentle soul are just irreplacable. Be at peace brother. - @tmorello
Man...that one hurts. Our prayers go out to Adam Yauch and his family. #MCA #BEASTIEBOYS Rest Well. - @DefJamRecords
Mca Adam Yauch RIP... Im sittin in the former g son studios.. Flying the flag half mast today.... Rap/punk hero, philanthropist, legend - @diplo
Rest In Peace Adam Yauch /MCA. 4ever somebody i looked up to & had the pleasure of meeting. Damn this bums me out, we lost one of the best - @travisbarker RIP MCA U are a Legend and a pioneer. #BeastieBoys4life - @SnoopDogg
Adam Yauch #RIPMCA. Thank you for Sabotage bass riff and many other great grooves. Adam also worked for justice and peace consciousness. - @KristNovoselic
A fair bit has changed since we last saw The Cribs. Not only are they back to a three-piece – honorary member Johnny Marr having departed – but they worked on their latest album, ‘In The Belly Of A Brazen Bull’, with both Dave Fridmann and a certain Mr Steve Albini. Granted, Albini may have only contributed his talents to one track from ‘In The Belly...’, but his influence is evident throughout: “['Chi-Town’] was the only song which Steve did," Gary Jarman tells us, "but the rest are the same in their approach, in that we tried to capture the energy of the room as much as we could, not getting too caught up in nit-picking and perfectionism. For a band like us I think it’s better to not get caught up in that. “If you go in there [Albini’s studio] expecting to be recorded by a punk rock guy who’s been in punk rock bands for years, then you pretty much know what to expect. He’s really not as prickly or as cantankerous as a lot of people would have you believe. I think his general attitude just rubs up the straight people at record labels, which I can understand. He was great. We had a really fun time.” So, how does this latest album weigh up in comparison to the band’s older works? “We always tend to react against previous records but this new record definitely has elements in common with ‘Ignore The Ignorant’. Really, we were just enjoying the more visceral elements again, the playing together and trying to record it all as ‘live’ as possible. That was the thing that always got us excited in the first place. We just returned to that.” The Cribs’ new album ‘In The Belly Of A Brazen Bull’ is out now via Wichita Recordings. 9
IN THE STUDIO THEME PARK
IN THE STUDIO...
THEME PARK “We had a funk-off at one point…” divulges Miles Haughton, when we sit down with Theme Park on a visit to their Hackney studio. “There was one line and no one really knew who was going to play it, so we hid in the corner so that Producer Luke couldn’t see us and we each played it. He picked the one which was the best, and it happened to be Oscar.” “I actually didn’t want to play the bass because Miles is a such a superior bass player to me,” offers up Oscar Manthorpe, before Miles reassures: “Above all we want the album to sound really good, so if someone wants to play an instrument in one song, that comes secondary to who can play it best.” Meeting them exactly halfway into the recording process for their debut album, Oscar fills us in on the stage that they’re at now. “We’ve got a lot of quality done, I think! Now is an issue of quantity. Once you get into the pace of making things 10 thisisfakediy.co.uk
that you’re happy with, it’s having the momentum, and taking that to the end.” Inevitably, as with any debut, there’s a lot of anticipation surrounding the album, but what is it that the band would like to achieve with it? “I’d like it to be quite varied and I’d like it to be maybe a marker of ourselves musically for the last four years,” offer Miles. “Obviously, the band hasn’t been around for that long, but we’ve been doing other things. Hopefully, we’ll be able to look back on it in ten years and think that it was an accurate thing of where we were at that point.” “Ultimately, you want it to be a reflection of the various things that you’ve listened to, and the person you are," Oscar concurs. "If it sounds limited as an album, I’d have to reassess what I was listening to and the things that I was doing. When you make music, it’s a reflection of how you want to be as a creative individual or as a band.”
And what was it that drew the band to work with Luke Smith as producer? “Initially, we had just heard some of the other stuff that he had done. He worked with a friend of mine who spoke highly of him,” explains Miles. “He has a really strong idea of how he likes to do things. He does things properly and there aren’t really any shortcuts. He just really cares about the fidelity and the sound quality.” “It’s quite gruelling,” adds Oscar. “And there are times when I feel quite nervous! But I know that ultimately, he just wants the best for the project.” So, when might we expect to hear their first offering? “There’s talk of late August, early September,” pipes up Miles’ twin brother, Marcus. “It’s written in the diary!” Theme Park’s new single ‘Two Hours’ is out now via Transgressive Records. Their debut album is due later this year.
N E WS INBRIEF
BAT FOR LASHES
has announced a one-off headline show at Cambridge Junction. She has spent the last eighteen months working on her third album, and will play her intimate comeback show on the 13th June.
HUNDRED
REASONS will be playing their debut album 'Ideas Above Our Station' in full at this year's 2000trees Festival. The band will make the appearance after their previously scheduled slot at Sonisphere Festival fell through when the event was cancelled.
Conor Oberst's early '00s band DESAPARECIDOS recently reformed to play a secret show at Slowdown in Omaha, NE. The band also debuted some new material – two new songs titled 'Left Is Right' and 'Backsell' - and have since unveiled plans to play four more dates in the US.
ANNOUNCE LARGEST HEADLINE TOUR TO DATE
BIFFY CLYRO have revealed that their follow-up to 2009's
'Only Revolutions' will contain not one, but two albums. The double album offering looks set to be titled 'The Land At The End Of Our Toes' and 'The Sand At The Core Of Our Bones' with an anticipated due date of this summer.
Following on from the massive success of their most recent UK touring run, which took place in April and sold out well in THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM have confirmed that they will advance, Deaf Havana have unveiled plans to leave clubs behind release their fourth album 'Handwritten' on 23rd July. Recorded and take on rooms of a much larger capacity, culminating in a in Nashville, Tennesee and produced by Brendan O'Brien, the huge show at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire. eleven track effort is the follow-up to 2010's 'American Slang' and will be released through Mercury Records. The band will play the following this November: 08 Coventry Kasbah; 09 Leeds Met Uni; 10 Manchester Ritz; 11 Glasgow BEIRUT are set to play three UK headline dates this Autumn. ABC; 12 Newcastle Academy; 14 Portsmouth Pyramids; 15 The band will return to our shores following on from several Norwich UEA; 16 London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire. European festival appearances this June, and will be appearing at the following venues in September: Glasgow Barrowlands (11), The Norwich-based four-piece recently played London’s Electric Leeds O2 Academy (12) and London Hammersmith HMV Ballroom, where they announced details of their forthcoming Apollo (14). dates during their set. Before they took to the stage that night, DIY spoke to two of the band to find out how their latest run Dive have changed their name, whilst confirming details of an had been going: “The shows have been ridiculous!” tells drummer Tom Ogden. “The album songs have been going down better upcoming single. The newly dubbed DIIV made the decision than the old ones.” “out of respect” for the industrial German band they previously shared a title with. You can hear their new single 'Oshin' over at “They’ve been unreal,” adds frontman James Veck-Gilodi. thisisfakediy.co.uk. “People know the words to every song. I could never have expected that. Thanks to everyone for making these shows so phenomenal. They’re the best shows we’ve played in Seriously. The Front Bottoms; why on Earth do you form a band, make some our lives.” pretty awesome music, and then decide you're essentially going to brand yourselves as a pair of <sniiiiiiiiiiiiip - Ed>. Deaf Havana’s new album ‘Fools & Worthless Liars’ is out now via BMG.
GREAT BAND, TERRIBLE NAME: THE FRONT BOTTOMS
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NEWS
HOT WATER MUSIC
VISIT THE UK, PLAY ONEOFF LONDON SHOW Those of us in London, we’re really lucky when it comes to shows. Pretty much any night of the week, there’s a great band somewhere nearby. However, it’s not every day that Hot Water Music swing into town, playing a pub just down the road from DIY Towers. It's a very special evening that sees the Floridian foursome take to the stage in the confines of the Old Blue Last. Having spent 2005 to 2008 on hiatus, the meaning of tonight’s performance is hard to convey. Standing tall as one of the seminal bands for our current generation of punk rock, it's both a breath of fresh air and a trip down memory lane. “We were just going to do these four European festival shows, and thought we should at least come over for a day and do press,” explains Jason Black, when we ask how the gig itself came about. “It just blew up from there." We meet the Gainesville band a day prior. Touching down after four festival sets in mainland Europe, there’s a lingering tiredness, but they still seem raring to go. Getting ready to release their first album together in over eight years, the band’s only UK show also doubles as an opportunity for fans to get a glimpse into
WHO'S JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE'S FAVOURITE COMPOSER?
SEXY BACH
12 thisisfakediy.co.uk
what to expect from the Bill Stevensonproduced 'Exister'. “We’ve all grown as musicians and none of us have stopped playing,” explains Chuck Ragan, when we ask how it was returning to recording as the original line-up. “We’ve just been exploring more music and honing our crafts, so I think coming together everybody was fired up. We knew what we were doing."
“We didn’t want to walk into the studio feeling like we were going to do something that we had already done before,” tells Chris Wollard. “That didn’t seem that interesting. Once we started talking about recording with Bill, and he said he was interested, all of us just knew it was perfect. It was even better than we thought, or hoped, it could have been.” Hot Water Music’s new album ‘Exister’ is out now via Rise Records.
THE MENZINGERS FANS GET BAND BACK ON THE ROAD AFTER ROBBERY
After recently playing alongside The Bouncing Souls in Manchester, The Menzingers had their van broken into and over $10,000 of belongings and cash stolen. Following the news, our good friends at Banquet Records set up a donation scheme, matching some of the total. Within just a day of the appeal being set up, the band had received over £2,000 which enabled them to buy new passports, and continue touring throughout Europe. We spoke to co-vocalist Greg Barnett: “The response was just absurd. We raised back what we lost - the actual physical money - in less than 48 hours. It makes you realise why you do this. There are just no words to thank people enough. The thing that scares me the most is sounding insincere, because I’m so choked up it that I can’t even compose words to thank people enough. It’s like, I have a house to go home to now, because all of these people helped us out. If they didn’t, who knows what would’ve happened.” The Menzingers’ new album ‘On The Impossible Past’ is out now via Epitaph.
VAMPIRE WEEKEND'S
RELEASES SOLO RECORD Chris Baio is usually known for his role in Vampire Weekend, but he's just embarked upon a solo career with the release of a new EP. DIY delves a little deeper. "I've been passionate about DJ-ing and dance music for as long as I can remember," Baio begins, a million miles away in San Francisco. "Over the course of touring the last Vampire Weekend record I probably had around 75 DJ gigs. In playing out tracks, I realised there were certain sounds or styles that I wanted to pursue on my own." So, how did it all begin for his solo project, simply dubbed, Baio? "When I got off the road in early 2011 I immediately immersed myself in recording and production. I'm at a place in life where I can sit in front of my computer for a couple days and make something that satisfies me. That wasn't the case two years ago, so right now I'm really happy. "Like anything it has its positives and negatives, but I realise it's important for me not to get too complacent as a musician. I want to constantly be trying different things, putting myself in uncomfortable places." Baio's debut solo EP 'The Sunburn' is out now via Greco-Roman.
Plus guests
SPECTRALS + FEAR OF MEN WEDNESDAY 2OTH JUNE
LONDON O2 SHEPHERDS BUSH EMPIRE 0844 477 2000 | 0844 811 0051| gigsandtours.com bestycoasty.blogspot.com
A Metropolis Music presentation by arrangement with The Agency Group
SUNDAY 8TH JULY
SUMMER SERIES AT SOMERSET HOUSE, LONDON WITH AMERICAN EXPRESS BOOKINGS: SOMERSETHOUSE.ORG.UK/SUMMERSERIES GIGSANDTOURS.COM | 0844 847 2461 | 0844 811 0051
PLUS GUESTS
FRANKIE ROSE + THE PROPER ORNAMENTS WEDNESDAY 27TH JUNE
LONDON ELECTRIC BALLROOM 0844 811 0051 | GIGSANDTOURS.COM | STARGREEN.COM
A Metropolis Music presentation by arrangement with The Agency Group
NEW ALBUM “DAYS” OUT NOW ON DOMINO RECORDS. REALESTATETHEBAND.COM
NEWS ALT J
TRACK by TRACK
AN AWESOME WAVE
THE WAIT IS FINALLY OVER FOR PREVIOUS DIY FIRST ON-ERS, ALT-J’S DEBUT ALBUM, ‘AN AWESOME WAVE’. DUE OUT THIS SPRING, THE BAND TALK US THROUGH THE ENTIRE OPUS, TRACK BY TRACK.
INTRO
‘Intro’ is an acknowledgement to everything that we’ve listened to in our life as a group of people, and how consciously, it’s influenced our music. We talked about a ‘nod to the canon’, so it’s a bit of a wink to the body of work - music, books, film, everything - that’s been involved in our lives. Just saying thank you for all of that inspiration. 14 thisisfakediy.co.uk
(INTERLUDE 1)
It’s basically about a young woman who wants to live a care-free life, avoiding all the obstacles that you normally face; grief-free and happy all of the time. She basically has a bit of a moan to the people above, and they answer her by a lot of dogs barking. They tell her that, to appreciate the good, you must experience the bad, the rough with the smooth. Like all good fruit, the balance of life is in the
ripe and the ruin, and it’s about finding balance.
TESSELLATE
‘Tessellate’ is about getting over a girl. Then, at the same time, getting intimate with another girl, and maybe that being a good way to get over the experience of the previous girl; by meeting a new girl and tessellating to her.
BREEZEBLOCKS ‘Breezeblocks’ references Where The Wild Things Are and is about liking someone so much, that you want to hurt them. It’s basically based upon the book. So, it’s translating the narrative of the book to a generic relationship, where you miss them so much, you’re threatening to eat them because you wanted them to stay.
(INTERLUDE 2)
This is just guitar. There’s no real story other than, it’s a nice bit of guitar. In the background, there’s actually me and our producer having a chat with the cleaning lady of the studio. We’re just talking about how nice the weather is.
SOMETHING GOOD
‘Something Good’ again focuses on a girl. It’s about distraction and about enjoying your time going out and forgetting about a particular person. "Something good tonight will make me forget about you for now." It also talks about the matador and the bull, and their relationship with each other. In the song, the bull ends up killing the matador and that represents the death of your clinging to a particular person. You’ve gone out, you’ve had a really good time and realised you don’t need that person.
DISSOLVE ME
‘Dissolve Me’ is about two different things. It’s about a friend of mine, but it’s also about my mum. She used to tell me a story before I would go to bed about going to the beach, and she would run through a list of what we had packed, what I was wearing, what people were doing around us. She would do it in a very hushed voice and it would send me to sleep. The song is a nod to that routine that my mum used to do before I went to bed when I was very young.
MATILDA
It’s about a film called Léon by this guy called Luc Besson. The song is about Léon’s last moments before he ends up blowing himself up. Right at the end of the film his arch rival says, “This is from Matilda.” The song is about that moment, and goes a little bit into their relationship and how they needed each other and discovered something special in a very brief meeting.
the relationship that we had, the more important thing is to keep in contact and work things out as friends.
FITZPLEASURE
‘Fitzpleasure’ is about a book called Last Exit To Brooklyn, which, during each chapter, focuses on a different person within the same area. This song focusses on a chapter called Tralala and is about a woman who uses her sexuality to get certain types of low-lives and soldiers into bed with her, before she steals their money. She hangs around gangs and is involved in petty crime, so the song is about her, and more specifically, what happens to her at the end of the chapter. She meets quite a nasty end. So, at the beginning of the song when we sing, "Tra-la-la-la-la," we’re actually saying the character’s name.
(INTERLUDE 3)
There’s no story to this other than just playing piano and me singing along to it.
BLOODFLOOD
The title of the album is a reference to ‘Bloodflood’, because "an awesome wave" is the first line that I sing. That comes from the book American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis, where he talks about "the relief washing over him like an awesome wave." It’s the scene in which Patrick Bateman goes to a restaurant with his fellow colleagues, and he hasn’t booked a table but they think he has. So, he goes up to the maître d' and he thinks he’s going to embarrass him in front of his friends, but to his surprise, there seems to be a table available. We took the idea of that feeling of relief washing over you like a wave and replaced the relief with fear. The song is about the fear of being attacked in a particular area in Southampton called The Common. It just addresses those feelings of fear and adrenaline rushes.
TARO
‘Taro’ is about two war photographers – Robert Capa and Gurda Taro – who met during the second world war. They became lovers and got engaged to one another and were head over heels, then Gurda Taro was killed. I don’t think Robert Capa ever got over it. He died about ten years later in Indochina, when he stepped on a landmine, so the song documents those moments just before, during and after he steps onto it. It’s basically talking about those moments and how he knows that he’s dying, but that he’s going to be seeing Gerda Taro soon.
NEWS
INBRIEF JACK WHITE
recently topped the charts in both the UK, US, Canada and Switzerland with his debut album 'Blunderbuss'.
MICACHU & THE SHAPES
will release their second full-length, titled 'NEVER', on 24th July through Rough Trade Records.
VAMPIRE
WEEKEND have revealed that they hope to release a new album by the end of the year. Frontman Ezra Koenig recently commented that “it would be cool if it was [released] this year.” The band's last album 'Contra' was released back in January 2010. GALLOWS have confirmed that they
have begun work on their latest album; the first for new vocalist Wade MacNeil. The band are working in a local studio in Watford with Steve Sears and Thomas Mitchener, and plan to release the record through their own label Venn Records.
BLUR
will play a handful of warm up dates this summer in preparation for their massive Hyde Park show. Catch them this August at: Margate Winter Gardens (01); Wolverhampton Civic Hall (05 + 06); Plymouth Pavillions (07).
TWIN ATLANTIC
have confirmed details of their largest ever UK headline tour, set to take place across October and November. The run includes a stop at London's O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, as well as dates in Glasgow, Manchester and more.
PARAMORE
will headline this year's Belsonic Festival on 19th August as a warm up for Reading & Leeds. They'll also play Edinburgh's Corn Exchange on 21st August.
ROCKNESS
MS
‘Ms’ is about, again, a friend of mine. It’s basically about not wanting to lose touch but realising that you have let go of the feelings that you once had for that person. Even though there was a hangover from
Alt-J’s debut album ‘An Awesome Wave’ will be released on 28th May via Infectious Music.
EAGLES OF DEATH METAL
will also play a Reading & Leeds warm up show this summer, performing at London's Islington Academy on 21st August. For all the latest music news, visit thisisfakediy.co.uk/news.
DIY LIVE CAMDEN CRAWL
D LIVE I Y
Ta ll Sh ips
gl ish The vic to ria n enb ge nt lem en s clu
CAMDEN CRAWL
WHAT BETTER WAY TO SPEND YOUR BANK HOLIDAY SUNDAY THAN IN THE PUB WITH A BUNCH OF YOUR MATES? AND HOW ABOUT IF WE BRING SOME DEAD GOOD BANDS ALONG FOR THE RIDE? WELL, THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT WE DID AT THIS YEAR’S CAMDEN CRAWL.
Taking over the wonderful Wheelbarrow, DIY brought down a few of our good friends, a couple of copies of the magazine and a dozen or so sore heads to kick off day three of the Camden Crawl weekend. Jo hn ny First up were Big Scary Monsters’ Fo re ign er Tall Ships who played their gloriously loud set to a packed pho tos : em ma out pub full of early risers before swan n shooting off to perform their second festival of the day. We firmly believe there’s no rest for the wicked. DIY Records’ The Victorian English Gentlemens Club were up next. With their setlist painted up behind them, there were
16 16thisisfakediy.co.uk thisisfakediy.co.uk
no surprises in store with this lot. Unless of course you count their custom made clothes, ‘modified’ instruments or telephone mic. By the time Evans The Death took to the stage, things were in full swing. There were more hung-unders than overs and a spot of dancing was definitely in order. The Fortuna POP! five piece belted out a string of songs from their self-titled debut, including singles ‘I’m So Unclean’ and ‘Threads’, causing a pandemic of tapping foot syndrome. Our final offerings of the afternoon were DIY favourites Johnny Foreigner, who brought their usual mix of cataclysmic chaos and chanting to our crammed Camden venue. We couldn’t have fit more in if we’d tried. And we did, believe us. If you didn’t make it down this time, don’t forget you can catch DIY live at a string of festivals across the summer. For details on where we’ll be pitching up next, visit thisisfakediy.co.uk.
60 SECONDS
WITH... EVANS THE DEATH
HOW MANY PEOPLE CAN YOU FIT IN A KITCHEN? WE GRABBED EVANS THE DEATH STRAIGHT OFF THE STAGE, BUNDLED THEM THROUGH THE NEAREST DOOR AND FLUNG A FEW QUESTIONS AT THEM TO FIND OUT.
How was the set? Katherine: I thought our crowd was good and it was fun and the sound was very good. We’re at that weird stage where you can still go to gigs and have like ten to three people turn up and it’s like, “There’s no one here!” and then other gigs that many people show up and it’s insane. You released your debut album recently, how’s that been going so far? Dan: They seemed to like it… Are people starting to know the songs a bit more now that the record’s out? K: I saw a couple of people singing lyrics in the audience and I was like, “Yes!” Apparently, it’s doing pretty well sales wise. Lan: We don’t have any idea. Have you been reading the reviews? evan s the death K: Yes! Most of them are really nice but then you get the odd one like, “Katherine Whittaker moos her way through the songs.” D: Mostly I was really nervous with the album coming out because I knew I wouldn’t be able to help but read the reviews and I thought that I would get really upset for weeks after reading a bad review but it just sort of amuses me. K: As it happens, I get really upset. D: Anyone else’s opinion is invalid. What’s next then, now that the record’s out? D: We’re playing a load of London shows in June, some regional shows as well. We’re doing Long Division festival and Indietracks, and then we’re going to do an EP, I think. We’ll record it in June. K: So that will be out end of August/start of September. D: We’re really excited to record again because most of the songs on the first record are quite old. K: For us, we just want to keep writing new stuff because we have been playing those songs for a long time now. There are a couple of new songs that we’ve started writing when we were recording, just a couple of extra bits that we’d like to make a bit different. But the new stuff is going to be more collaborative as well, there’s all sorts of different writers - basically, not just Dan this time. Anything else you want to add? D: Fleetwood Mac. I really love Fleetwood Mac and no one ever puts that in because it’s really lame. Evans The Death’s self-titled album is out now via Fortuna Pop. 17
TEL
L
DIY LIVE TELLISON
I
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This month, we took a break from the confines of our beloved local, The Old Blue Last to take up home for an evening in the rather more roomy Highbury Garage. Why, you ask? Well, we’re privy to the rather wonderful Tellison, performing their largest ever headline show.
First up, however, are the incredible The Bots. A flurry of fingers, this ludicrously young duo sound huge, commanding the stage, and are nothing short of breathtaking. Blasting through a set that shimmers with hints of the late, great Jimi Hendrix, these are two youngsters performing well above their age.
photo s: Sar ah Lou is
e Be n
Next on the bill are The Front Bottoms. Their brand of honest, stripped-back indie-punk is wonderful. Reminiscing with the sounds of everyone from Say Anything to mewithoutYou, The Get Up Kids to The Replacements, their songs paint witty yet – at times, at least – heartbreaking pictures of their New Jersey lives thus far. Crying out to our days of youthful joy and sadness, theirs is a sound that is catchy, simple but completely intelligent, and entirely deserving of your attention. As for our headliners though? Their set is rather special. Blasting through an array of tracks from both of their albums – debut ‘Contact! Contact!’ and last year’s offering ‘The Wages Of Fear’ – the highlight probably comes with their latest single, one of their more quiet outpourings ‘Freud Links The Teeth And The Heart’. But how did the band themselves find the show? Well, we had a quick word with frontman Stephen Davidson, the day after the night before, to find out how things had sunk in: “Last night’s show was heart-burstingly great for us. We just wanted to say huge thank yous to everyone who came, extra special thank yous to The Bots and The Front Bottoms for playing as well as DIY for putting the whole thing together. Last night was one of our biggest headline shows to date and it meant a lot that we pulled it off with all of your help! It was a joy to see everyone singing along so passionately. We’ll be
ne
tt
back soon!”
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19
FESTIVALS 2012
SECRET GARDEN PARTY S
et in the grounds of a picturesque Georgian farm house, complete with its own lake and river, Secret Garden Party makes a bold claim: that it can "change your life." Whilst we wouldn't want to confirm or deny such an assertion, the four day break in the countryside does offer a refreshing break from normality, with a focus very much on the independent there's no official beer partner or the like here and nature. This year's line up features Alabama Shakes, Kate Jackson, Marques Toliver and Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. Secret Garden Party will take place at Mill Hill Field in Abbots Ripton from 19th - 22nd July.
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HOP FARM F
ewer and fewer music festivals are managing to keep the C word off their line ups these days. Eh? No, no, we're not being awfully rude indeed: we mean comedians. Hop Farm has embraced the change with its very own Comedy Stage, this year set to host sets from the likes of Russell Kane, Patrick Monahan, Phil Nicol, Kerry Godliman, and Andy Zaltzman. This year's event will be headlined by Bob Dylan, Suede and Peter Gabriel. Hop Farm will take place at Paddock Wood in Kent from 29th June - 1st July.
W
hen Bloc Weekend says the venue for this year's event is the "most exciting" they have ever used, they're not kidding. It's properly amazing. Properly properly amazing. The Motor Ship Stubnitz is a converted deep-sea fishing vessel which clocks in at 80 metres in length, weighs 2,541 tonnes, and belonged to the German Democratic Republic before the collapse of Communism. Amazing. This spring the ship will be visited by Orbital, Snoop Dogg, James Blake, Flying Lotus, Nicolas Jaar and Battles, amongst others. Bloc Weekend will take place at Pleasure Gardens in London from 6th - 7th July.
BLOC WEEKEND
O
ne of few festivals to take place on an actual real life working farm (Chickens! Sheep! Cows!), Lounge On The Farm was born in 2006 out of organisers' desire to bring a unique slant to the UK summer festival market. Offering a range of boutique camping and locally sourced food, as well as the music - including Emeli Sande, The Charlatans, Summer Camp and Spector - there's also a host of fun activities on offer, such as the vintage market. Lounge On The Farm will take place at Merton Farm in Canterbury from 6th - 8th July.
LOUNGE ON THE FARM
T IN THE PARK
S
cotland's second best known festival (think about it), T In The Park returns this year with a bill headed up by Snow Patrol, The Stone Roses and Kasabian. Elsewhere on the line up you can also catch the likes of Miike Snow, Pulled Apart By Horses, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Elbow and Bombay Bicycle Club. If that doesn't tickle your fancy, we'd suggest visiting the Charity Village, Fairground or Refresh Pamper Parlour. T In The Park will take place in Balado in Scotland from 6th - 8th July.
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2000 TREES
G
O
ne of the festival sets we're most excited about catching this year has to be Hundred Reasons performing their entire debut album 'Ideas Above Our Station'. "People always say great stuff about 2000trees," says frontman Larry Hibbitt, "so we're looking forward to checking it out." Us too, Larry, us too. 2000trees will take place at Upcote Farm in Gloucestershire from 12th - 14th July.
LATITUDE
iving the herds of multi-coloured sheep a run for their money as the highlights of Latitude this year are headliners Bon Iver, Elbow and Paul Weller, as well as Metronomy, Laura Marling, Bat For Lashes, The Horrors, Wild Beasts and a whole bunch of pretty stellar bookings. The comedy bill also holds strong, with The Infinite Monkey Cage (feat. Brian Cox, Robin Ince and Al Murray), Tim Minchin, Jack Dee, Rich Hall, Shappi Khorsandi, Josie Long, and many many (many) more. Latitude will take place at Henham Park in Southwold from 12th - 14th July.
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TRAMLINES I
t's hard to pick which festivals to attend; after all, they're all so expensive, and you only have so much cash to flash. Thank your lucky stars for Tramlines, then. The Sheffield based event not only boasts a killer line up, including the likes of Alt-J, Charli XCX, Frankie Rose, Future Of The Left and We Are Scientists, but it's free. Yes. Free. At no cost to you. Amazing. Tramlines will take place at various venues in Sheffield from 20th - 22nd July.
W
hile the sleepy northern market town of Skipton probably hasn't been screaming out for its own music festival, there'll be few better settings for an event this summer. At the gateway to the Yorkshire Dales, and with a lineup boasting everything from Wild Beasts through to 2:54, Errors and Patrick Wolf, there's certainly a guarantee of quality on offer. Add to that attractions including 'pop up delights' (don't ask), and Beacons looks set to be one of this season's gems. Beacons will take place at Funkirk Estate in Skipton from 17th - 19th August.
BEACONS 24 thisisfakediy.co.uk
FACT FILE LES EUROCKEENNES DE BELFORT
WHEN: 29th June - 1st July WHERE: Malsaucy, France WHO: Justice, Mastodon, The Cure,
BENICASSIM
WIRELESS
New Order, Florence & The Machine, At The Drive-In, The Horrors & More
Metric, Calvin Harris, Santigold & More
WHEN: 12th - 15th July WHERE: Coasta Azahar, Spain WHO: The Stone Roses, Bob Dylan,
CAMP BESTIVAL
WHEN: 26th - 29th July WHERE: Mill Hill Field, Abbots Ripton
WHO: Happy Mondays, Hot Chip,
Kool & The Gang, Rolf Harris, Rizzle Kicks, Jimmy Carr & More
WHEN 6th - 8th July WHERE Hyde Park, London WHO deadmau5, Drake, Rihanna,
INDIETRACKS
WHEN: 6th - 8th July WHERE: Derbyshire WHO: Summer Camp, Allo Darlin', Evans The Death, Joanna Gruesome, The Proper Ornaments, Veronica Falls & More
Alabama Shakes, Jack White, Kindness & More
BILBAO BBK LIVE
WHEN: 12th - 14th July WHERE: Kobeta Mendi, Spain WHO: The Cure, Snow Patrol, Bloc Party, The Maccabees, Radiohead, Garbage & More
F E S T I VA L N E W S UNDERAGE FESTIVAL has confirmed the first few acts
for their 2012 event, including Fixers, Iceage, Summer Camp and Theme Park. Other additions include BIGKids, Dry The River, Maverick Sabre, Outfit, Pulled Apart By Horses, Rustie and Spector. Kasabian have also been added to the line up for BBC RADIO
1'S HACKNEY WEEKEND,
where they'll be playing alongside the likes of Jack White, Lana Del Rey and The Maccabees.
HEVY FESTIVAL has announced an array of new additions, including the mighty Glassjaw and Andrew WK.
The Bees, The Tallest Man On Earth and The Staves are in
this year's READING & LEEDS FESTIVAL.
GREEN MAN
Several new line up additions have been revealed for
tenth anniversary. Details of this year's Green Man boat party have also been unveiled: on Saturday 16th June, a series of bands and DJs will take to the stage during a five-hour cruise along the Thames.
the
The new acts include Marc Almond, CocoRosie, Tenderloin, and Light Asylum.
Emmy The Great and Lucy Rose head up the latest new
Gallows, Sharks and Straight Lines are amongst the latest bands
Graham Coxon, Miike Snow and The Hives have been added to
For more festival news, visit thisisfakediy.co.uk.
the latest wave of acts confirmed to play
FESTIVAL's
additions to TRUCK, which DIY is partnering with this year.
SOUTHBANK CENTRE'S MELTDOWN FESTIVAL, which will this year be curated by Antony Hegarty.
confirmed to play this year's SLAM DUNK FESTIVAL.
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LETTERS Dear DIY My sister and I thought we'd start a band after hearing how well 2:54 were doing last issue. Could you put in a word with DIY Records for us? Elise, Tunbridge Wells We thought you said you wanted to do well, etc etc etc self depreciating humour Ed.
Dear DIY I was wondering if you could clear something up for me? Just how exactly do you pronounce DIIIV? Please help a bro out here or publish an encyclopaedia of band name pronunciations. It's really hard to stay relevant when you can't talk about what's number one on Hype Machine. Matthew, Manchester It's almost certainly div. As in 'you're a right div, Matthew'. We wouldn't lie for comedic effect, promise.
Dear DIY I wanted to get in touch after reading your article about independent record stores last issue. I used to work in my local shop and can't begin to express how much of an education it was. It isn't like in the films, we're really not all a bunch of snobs! Please let everyone know. Long live the independent record store! Jim, Newcastle Jim certainly isn't a snob. Little known fact - One Direction is his album of 2012 so far. That's what makes him beautiful (oh dear - Ed).
Dear DIY Just wanted to let you know that I picked up the mag for the first time last month when I found it in our college. Really enjoyed reading all the stuff about bands, and the films bit is ace too. Please can we have a Zac Efron poster next time though? Sarah, Blackburn While we're all agreed that 17 Again is the Greatest Film Of All Time (we are agreed on this, yes?), erm, no. You can't. Dear DIY We need to talk about bands. I was reading the Temper
Trap interview in the last issue on the site and saw that Passion Pit have a new album on the way while I was there. Passion Pit, Temper Trap, what's next, Tantrum Hole? Are they actually the same band? Please can you have a word with someone and stop this madness before all artists feel a need to name themselves in this ridiculous manner. Jenny, Maidenhead Jenny. Do you know the dangers of sending us letters featuring the phrase 'Tantrum Hole'? We've got court orders we're in danger of breaking here. Think of the children.
TH IN GS P E O P L E ON TWITTER SAID ...I N R E P LY T O Q U E S T I O N S W E A S K E D
We're pretty much half way through the year now. What new albums are you most looking forward to hearing over the next six months? "Frightened Rabbit's new album." - @Amii_Cake
"Animal Collective... going to be immense." - @dickiewalker "The almost- 20-yearsawaited third My Bloddy Valentine album." - @micheletropeano
"The Killers that's rightâ&#x20AC;Ś" - @carkamok
"We Are The Ocean, Album 3! :D" - @ellenbennion
"Tall Ships, Future Of The Left, Japandroids. Schweet." - @tmbrntt
"alt-j - An Awesome Wave! Gunna blow ya socks off." - @darrenpaws
"The Tallest Man On Earth and Right Away, Great Captain!" - @willjrichards "Gaslight Anthem, potentially Pure Love?" - @lukereklaw "We Are The Physics, for sure." - @TheMungKey 26 thisisfakediy.co.uk
"The Walkmen's new stuff sounds fantasticâ&#x20AC;Ś and after tomorrow nights show I'm sure it'll be The xx!" -@tom__rogers
Follow DIY on Twitter at twit ter.co.uk /thisisfakediy
KOS MEDIA
FIRST ON CITIZENS!
HARRIET JENNINGS PAY S KITSUNE SIGNEES CITIZENS! A VISIT TO DISCUSS THEIR DEBUT ALBUM, ‘HERE WE ARE’.
C I T I Z E HARRIET JENNINGS PAYS KITSUNE SIGNEES CITIZENS! A VISIT TO DISCUSS THEIR DEBUT ALBUM, ‘HERE WE ARE’. You might have heard Citizens! without realising it - they had a track, albeit whilst they were still unnamed, on a Kitsuné mixtape a while back. You may have also heard one of the band members in a previous outfit - Official Secrets Act, perhaps. But, if you haven’t, you’ll definitely have heard of the bloke they got in to produce the record, a certain Mr Alex Kapranos. We tracked down the lively bunch for a coffee, a croissant and a bit of a chat about their debut album, the band’s origins and just how you go about securing a member of Franz Ferdinand to work on your first LP. Your debut album ‘Here We Are’ is released at the end of May. Are you excited? Has it been a long time coming? Lawrence: It has been a long time coming. Mike: It’s worth the wait though, definitely. Lawrence: We wanted to make the record first because we knew what we wanted it to be like. That was the focus of the band, making this record and putting down the sound that we had in our heads before anyone could get a hold of us. Tom: Even before that, we’d just been writing songs for long periods at the beginning. You have the idea of starting a band, and then over about six months of writing demos in each other’s bedrooms. I reckon we wrote about 100 songs because we had to write that many just to figure out exactly what we wanted to sound like - and then by the end of that six months, somehow 28 thisisfakediy.co.uk
you’re a band. So was the album already finished before you were picked up by Kitsuné? T: We first heard from Kitsuné because they wanted to put one of our demos on one of their compilations. L: We didn’t even have a name at this point. T: Yeah, they put us on without a name, there was just a blank space and then the name of the song so we knew that they were up for being imaginative. L: That was a leap of faith on their part. You notably worked on the album with Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos - how did that come about? Was he who you always
had in mind to produce the record? T: We were having meetings with different producers, some of which were pretty soul destroying experiences, especially if you’re trying to make pop music. We want to make pop that is interesting and exciting but honest at the same time. Whereas most people they go, “Ah, you’ve got some pop songs here,” and tell you how they can give you the big production treatment and make it sound like something from the hits factory. They’re absolutely certain that that’s what you’ve got to do and those are the hoops that you’ve got to jump through and it’s really depressing. So then we were talking to Alex, who we initially just met in a London Fields pub, just to chat and get some advice because he liked our demos. Gradually, after talking, he just kept coming back about ideas for how it could be recorded. It was a meeting of minds.
How was he as a producer? Was he quite strict with you? L: I think the word is challenging. He wanted us to be as amazing as we could be and he wasn’t going to let us rest on any laurels. He made us question everything we were doing. M: He challenged us sonically. L: He challenged us on what we were trying to express, how we were trying to express it, why we were trying to express it, and that’s really important and really exciting to be a part of. T: He’s a great presence to work around as well. Every day he brings loads of energy, he’s always in a good mood, he’s always positive. We heard there were rules enforced? T: One was a blanket rule of no editing, no nudging, no tuning. None of the things that engineers do on computers. Martyn: No autotune. T: Essentially all of those things that people do that stop your music sounding like it was recorded by human beings and make it sound like some homogeneous thing you’ve heard before. So that was rule one. Rule two was when we were arranging all of the songs and choosing all of the sounds, no two parts of any songs could sound like they came from the same place because we were really keen to always try to find new places where the
!
N S
song could end up. We never wanted to be reviving, because that’s been done. L: When we started this band, it seemed that there were a lot of bands around us that were reviving 1975, like “We’ve got the right guitars, we’ll put a bit of reverb on them and then we’ll start playing gigs and it will be great.” And there were other bands going “We’ve got the MS20, we’ll put a lot of gel in our hair, we’ll get a girl to sing and then we’ll do eighties revival.” And it’s like, “Come on, guys, there are good records like that already. Go and buy them.” So that was one of these rules and we painted them on the window in big red paint so every day you’d walk into the studio and they were there. You couldn’t pretend you hadn’t seen them. Mi: It was like a manifesto almost. A couple of you have been in other bands before - how did you all come together to form Citizens!? L: Well, Official Secrets Act. T: We’ve known each other for different amounts of time. We’ve all known each other for about two years now. I’ve known Lawrence for about eight years, Michael for about five years. We’ve all played in different bands. Ma: Yeah, not to any great success. L: Martyn toured Europe when he was 14. T: For all of us, everything we’ve done up until now was training.
Ma: Even Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings. You guys recently did your first UK headline tour, on which you kept a tour diary for us [find it on thisisfakediy. co.uk]. L: I felt like, two weeks in, how much do people care about the contents of service stations by now? T: That’s the problem with touring, everyone thinks it’s really glamorous but actually it’s really boring. Thom: My favourite day was when you just started taking pictures of Mike. Well, you have another tour to look forward to. Are you heading to similar places? L: We’re going to Southampton for the first time, which is exciting. Ma: There are actually loads of new places. L: We’re keen to get everywhere in Britain. This whole thing to bring a new pop sound is related to getting outside the normal places that bands go to. M: We don’t want to be a goldfish bowl band. We want to get out. We quite want to hop out of the bowl. T: You know what happens to goldfish when they go out of the bowl, right? Ma: Yeah, that’s not a good analogy. Citizens!’ debut album ‘Here We Are’ will be released on 28th May via Kitsune. 29
FIRST ON PROFILES
THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
SWIM DEEP
Three distinct chords sent through a compressor, a sample-driven machine, attached to a memorable beat - what are we left with? One of the best pop songs of the year, hands down. To have two of these within the space of a month is invitation for a hype machine to go into overdrive. The Neighbourhood have announced themselves. There is very little that this California group lacks: Mystery? Check. A glossy, after-party, Weeknd style of production? Check. A substantial amount of hooks? Check Check Check. Add to this a set of "tumblrized" music videos, containing classic film imagery, and you've got yourself a buzz band. Beneath soul vocals capable of stealing the show in an X Factor final, there’s grit, a hatefulness even that turns a standard, well-written pop song into something enigmatic.
"I wanna pretend Jenny Lee Lindberg is my girlfriend" is not the most conventional lyric you’d expect to find in one of a buzz band’s songs. But Swim Deep’s unparalleled adoration for the Warpaint member is just another example of why this lot are somewhat more interesting than the thick, synth-led, chantable choruses they tend to sport. The Brummie band have been pegged together with good friends Peace for furthering an exciting new music scene in their city. Pop hooks are at the top of the agenda, but some of the biggest hipsters you’ll ever see have written them. There’s no arty angle that you can pick holes at; Swim Deep make pure unadulterated pop, and they’re cool as hell. Do we love them as much as they love Jenny Lee Lindberg? It’s hard to say at this stage. But ‘King City’ is a mighty introductory track, plus its video has all the right elements; skateboards, chip shops, arcades, denim jackets and record stores.
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A band citing the likes of Boards Of Canada and Radiohead among their influences: it’s the kind of pitch publications get sent dayin, day-out. But a quick listen to the lead track on debut EP, ‘All Night, Afloat’ and the comparisons to musical greats won’t need to be encouraged. Vocalist Joel Sayers mimics a Bradford Cox style of delivery, creating a fuzzy backdrop to a cacophonous array of glittering guitar sections. So steeped in melody is the song’s chorus that you’re more inclined to draw parallels with the likes of Doves than some avant-garde Radiohead b-side, but the sheer level of atmospherics that circuits in the background is enough to maintain a sense of intrigue. More than just a series of big-name comparisons, then.
MICHAEL A GRAMMAR
ALBY DANIELS
SPLASHH
An abundance of hard-knuckled, fresh-faced punk bands have emerged within the past twelve months. How do you sift through the garage punk pack in order to find the real deal? Ask Art Is Hard Records. The label behind Bos Angeles, Best Friends and The Black Tambourines have a knack for nabbing the finest grain of the crop. Indeed, they first brought this band to our attention through a novel ‘Pizza Club’ release. Splashh found themselves encased in a 5” pizza box, alongside a glamorous sounding delectation: “No sauce to be found here, just a massive slice of bread covered in sausage, bacon, eggs, beans and mushrooms.” The rest is history. Splashh stand out from the aforementioned hoard because they put clear, audible melodies at the forefront of their hard-edged tracks. ‘All I Wanna Do’ is all cocksure and brash, with ‘Need It’ more aligned towards head-rushing sensations. Most recent track ‘Headspins’ is even more steeped in giant riffs and a fuzzy backdrop. "Fuzz" and "Riffs". Yeah, yeah, you’ve heard it all before. But ultimately the end product isn’t at all conventional.
Many an onlooker could be found fretting recently over one singular statement made by Grimes in an interview with journalistic genius Nardwuar. Whether tongue-in-cheek or the product of drug-fuelled optimism, Claire Boucher described herself as "futurepop." What exactly does it mean? Is "futurepop" inevitably going to consist of ambient recordings, made out of the sound our phones make when receiving a twitter notification? It this the post-modern, “postmodem” evolution that’s going to unseat Gaga from her pedestal? Whatever it may be, “future-pop” will still need its popstars, and London’s Alby Daniels is most certainly One Of Those. His voice is entangled in a neverending web of soul influences, but when coupled with a hazy combination of mangled R&B samples and hip-hop beats, we’re in the company of something undoubtedly futuristic. A similar sound has already been given the chart litmus test by Jamie Woon - to mixed results - but this feels more promising, more capable of becoming a dominating force.
When the opening, fluttering motions of a track come in the form of birdsong, you’re bound to have a fair idea of what’s about to emerge. Well, it’s either going to be a nauseating application of tweeness, with lyrics about finding the best organic produce and families teaching children how to ride the jeep; or we might get something special, a timely reminder of how perfect a companion good acoustic music can be to the breaking springtime It’s the latter, when it comes to Wildeflower aka. Max Kinghorn-Mills, who leads a six-piece band. With a penchant for additional, unnecessary ‘e’’s and strikingly posh surnames, Max’s debut track ‘Good Girl’ is reassuringly well-rooted. Refusing to show off, it basks itself in three-part harmonies, with rich, subtle synth parts jostling with fidgety structures, which quite naturally draw Grizzly Bear comparisons, none more so because of Max’s Ed Drostestyle of vocal delivery; softly spoken and wholly intriguing.
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FIRST ON PINS
PINS MANCHESTER QUARTET PINS TALK SHINY CASSETTE TAPES, AMONGST OTHER THINGS.
As we collectively ponder the merits and longevity of a physical CD, and as vinyl sales gradually begin to rise, the cassette tape has stayed relatively outside of the picture. The phenomenon has never quite died out: bands with a DIY aesthetic will always consider them; they’re cheap to make and more importantly, they’re something to grab hold of. But in recent months we’ve seen something of a rise in the tapes, perhaps most brilliantly exemplified by a four-piece band in Manchester, Pins. One swift purchase, having seen the group’s superb debut video for ‘Eleventh Hour’ - a kaleidoscopic flurry of brilliance, to put it succinctly - and in through the postbox arrives a gold tape, with a sharp design encasing it. Pins aren’t anti-internet, but they clearly see value and romance in the physical: singer / guitarist Faith Holgate tells DIY; “It’s always going to be more appealing than having an MP3 stored on my iTunes. That’s not to say I don’t think having instant access to music isn’t great, but consuming music online does take away some of the magic...” Physical is one thing, seeing gold is another. “We’re like magpies, we saw 32 thisisfakediy.co.uk
something shiny and had to have it,” says can only be truly appreciated in the live Faith of the cassette. For a bold, flashy setting: “[Sing] really understood what tape to be considered as an understated we were going for. We wanted a video that first move speaks volumes about the sheer reflected the song and that introduced us level of attention that Pins managed as a band. We didn’t have a budget but to draw in prior to releasing a single we did have a bunch of people with wild track. On a par with fellow post-punk imaginations and big ambitions." thrillseekers Savages, both bands have somehow avoided intense internet hype, Prior to the tape release, did they get an rising to prominence through mere word influx of label offers and favour the doof mouth. Beginning at a night curated it-yourself approach? Faith says they by their own guitarist, Lois McDonald, “flirted with the idea” of releasing the first the band played a show at Islington Mill work with a label but that “nothing was and before long were drawing in regular making sense”. Anna continues; “Putting crowds: “We’ve still it out ourselves meant only done a handful we could maintain of shows but being creative freedom, “WE’RE LIKE in a band like Pins everything else up to MAGPIES, WE SAW is all about the live that point had been SOMETHING SHINY experience,” explains very DIY so I guess bassist Anna Donigan. it just felt natural to AND HAD TO HAVE IT.” continue that notion.” One watch of the Anyone who managed video for ‘Eleventh to invest in the 100 Hour’ will certainly heighten the prospect edition might have grabbed themselves of seeing the four-piece bring their a little chunk of history, considering the energetic C86-inspired garage punk to current trajectory of the band. Tapes the stage. Working with Sing J Lee, a might not be the future, but Pins most series of blink-and-you-missed-it shots certainly are. show the group giving every inch of life to their respective instruments, showcasing Pins' debut single 'Eleventh Hour' is out now the kind of furore and intensity that via Haus Of Pins.
NEWS INBRIEF HOLY OTHER
will put in an appearance at London's XOYO on 29th May. The date will be used to not only perform more well-known tracks such as 'We Over' and 'Tough', but new material too.
PEACE BIRMINGHAM NEWCOMERS PEACE TELL JAMIE MILTON ABOUT THEIR WHIRLWIND OF A YEAR SO FAR. Sometimes entire cities gain attention, rather than a single band. Acts get pieced together, pose for photoshoots with each other, hanging out in local landmarks. Most of the time, we’re being told about how Manchester is experiencing a resurgence or that all the hipster bands met together in East London bedsits. This time, however, the music press are documenting stirrings in Birmingham; 2012’s chosen hub for exciting new talent. Leather-jacket sporting Peace lead the pack; their hybrid of tropical pop and traditional rock ‘n roll so thrilling, so refreshing, that it’s perceived to have begun an entire movement. As tales of the Grim Reaper knocking on the battered door of guitar music’s flooded home continue to pour in, the flipside of the coin are bands like Peace, bands who sound oh-so familiar but entirely newly woven all at once. DIY speaks to frontman Harry as he scours his hotel room in Berlin and begins to pack for another city, while touring with the Manic Street Preachers. “Nicky Wire’s been asking about my jacket... James has bought us beers every night”, Harry even tells us about how his band got mistaken for Foster The People by a stage announcer on a previous night of the tour. Things might already feel like a whirlwind, but you get the sense that it’s only beginning to kick off for Peace. Following on from the release of ‘Follow
Baby’, things began to take a turn for the surreal. “It’s ridiculous... Who are these people?” Harry asks when we talk about the 85,000 plays the band’s new single has managed to rack up on Soundcloud. “It’s pretty weird - no, it’s totally weird.” DIY asks for a specific turning point for the group - was it the release of ‘Bblood’ last year? “No, ‘Bblood’ was a real slow burner. It took around 9 months after the online release for people to start listening to it.” How about the fluorescent pink fields and cocksure footage put together for ‘Follow Baby''s video? It was the first time many saw Peace in performance mode and it makes for a fascinating watch: “At first I was really turned off by the idea of doing a performance video, but the Director [ Jack Harmer] was really encouraging. It was natural for the location we were in to just do something straight up, and it’s a good demonstration of how we’re feeling.” Peace at least appear to be a confident bunch. But not obnoxiously so; they don’t declare themselves to be the saviours of rock ‘n roll, not even with the praise being thrown towards their home city. “We’re not putting on any overconfidence, masquerade thing. We just know where we’re at. We’re confident in our music.” As our conversation concludes, off Harry sets with his band for another European date with one of Britain’s biggest bands. Peace’s new single ‘Follow Baby’ is out now via Deadly People.
Electronic producer SEAMS has returned with a new track. 'Potential' is a glistening piece of hyped-up electronica, and you can hear it on thisisfakediy.co.uk. Lucky Number signed quartet REPTAR will release their debut album 'Body Faucet' on 2nd July. The band will also support Friends at Dingwalls on 6th June.
CHARLI XCX has announced a string
of new live dates, including shows with Coldplay and Santigold in both the UK and North America. Visit thisisfakediy. co.uk for details. Mississippi's ILLLS have announced details of their debut 'Dark Paradise' EP, set for release through Sounds Of Sweet Nothing on 17th June.
BINARY
have unveiled the video for their new single 'Modern Man', which will be released on 4th June - watch now at thisisfakediy.co.uk.
FEAR OF MEN
have announced details of a new single. 'Green Sea' is due on 300 copies of limited edition white vinyl on 18th June.
COLD SPECKS has not only revealed
the video for her new single 'Blank Maps' (watch it now on thisisfakediy.co.uk), but a third night at London's Hoxton Hall. She'll now play the venue on 19th, 20th and 21st June. Mysterious producer EVIAN CHRIST will release a four-track 12" via his new label Tri Angle. 'Kings And Them' will be available from 25th June.
VIOLET
- aka Pixie Geldof - will be touring with Spector this spring, in support of her forthcoming debut single. Visit thisisfakediy.co.uk for details.
FIRST ON MIXTAPE
NOT CONTENT WITH GIVING YOU A FREE MAGAZINE, WE'VE PUT TOGETHER A FREE MIXTAPE FULL OF OUR FAVOURITE NEW BANDS; DOWNLOAD FROM THISISFAKEDIY. CO.UK/MIXTAPE
2/STANDARD PLANETS SOFT FOCUS
1/LEOPARD OF HONOUR GAS GIANTS
David Roocroft’s sole aim is to transverse the traditional, as he scours the musical world for curveballs and places each one at the heart of what can only be labelled as pure pop songs. ‘Gas Giants’ is a glorious example; the title track of a new EP seeps in and out of consciousness, as futuristic samples contribute towards an overall hazy glow. Give this song to Rihanna and the mainstream would be a more enjoyable, oddball existence.
4/WE WERE EVERGREEN VINTAGE CAR
‘Vintage Car’ is perfectly suited to outdoor courtyards, performed to crowds who can’t resist smiling at the sweet, semi-twee music on show: “You and me under a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g” French band We Were Evergreen chant, against a delicious base of Sujfan Stevens-esque instrumentation. If only all ukulele, toy piano and glockenspiel-featuring music could be as irresistible as this.
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Perhaps one of the most difficult bands to pin down, Brighton’s Standard Planets’ name has a strong sense of irony. This music is indeed rooted in outer space, but it’s somewhere mindblowingly different to anything scientists are currently aware of. ‘Soft Focus’ fuses krautrock influences with an endless supply of genre-defying synth-work and muted guitar lines, all pieced together with little regard for regular shape of form. And yet, it’s unbelievably catchy.
5/ VÄLJASÕIT ROHELISSE
TEINE VALLS
This four-piece accompany their songs with a rush of green mist live. It’s easy to see why; there’s a strange darkness that’s just urging to be explored in Väljasõit Rohelisse’s songs. ‘Teine Valss’ is a mystifying blend of distant handclaps and spaceseeking guitars. At any second, the wealth of instrumentation could burst into a bloom of light, but instead it continues to search, continues to haunt. Hence the green mist.
3/MY GOODNESS C’MON DOLL
Some obvious parallels are going to be drawn towards My Goodness, what with the fact that they’re a two-piece who make smoky blues rock. Pure and unadulterated, with no sour aftertaste, this is the sound of a band who adore the grit and grub of garage rock. ‘C’mon Doll’ is both festival anthem and biker’s bar soundtrack. It’s hard to resist.
6/VIRALS
COMING UP WITH THE SUN
Shaun Hencher’s ferocious riffcentric brand of punk might be familiar, considering he’s best known for his work with cult-heroes Lovvers. With an EP out last May and a 7” preceding it, ‘Coming Up With The Sun’ has all the credentials to find itself being played in London’s sweatiest basements, to crowds of adoring hipsters.
8/YNGVE & THE INNOCENT NEEDLE OF A MAN
7/ECHO LAKE EVEN THE BLIND
'Even The Blind' works just like any other Echo Lake track; you can either allow it to accompany your dazed state as you move in transit, allowing all consciousness to slip away. It works just as well as a harsh, pulsating work, encouraging you to get on your feet and run leagues into the distance. This suits the latter, with its pounding drums and spiralling guitar sections; structures collapsing as it builds its foundations into giant proportions.
Yngve and Demian Wieland hitched themselves off from the West Coast of Ireland, off to London with “the Innocent” on board, and ‘Needle Of A Man’ is a fine example of the band’s folk-led tales of travel. There’s a waltz-like quality to this song and the remainder of their ‘The Sadness Of Remembering’ album - suited for whiskey-accompanied evenings with Conor Oberst records sitting by your side, waiting to be played.
9/XXYYXX
ABOUT YOU
Samples are skewed into the most unimaginable of depths, with synths lulling you into a false sense of tranquility; ‘About You’ is perhaps the most messed-up introduction to the insanely young emerging producer XXYYXX. Barely lifting itself out of a tortoise-pace tempo, it blends R&B vocals with a hypnotic pulse. Suitable for dazed states and late nights.
11/ENJOYED TEETH
10/ DOLDRUMS EGYPT
Airick Woodhead first turned heads under the Doldrums moniker with an ‘Empire Sound’ EP, coupled with a stunning cover of Portishead’s ‘Chase The Tear’ - so good, it won the Bristol band’s seal of approval. “Now I’m over the edge,” he declares on his latest track, and indeed, Doldrums is certainly pushing himself into extreme territory throughout ‘Egypt’, testing the barriers of experimentation and sonic advancement.
London producer Enjoyed sits pretty with fellow electronic producers Seams and Shells, but his midas touch is a somewhat spellbinding use of vocoder. All of this contributes to what has already been labelled ‘Joystep’ - cue the sighs and the heads in hands. Such a blend of dense sonics and fauxfuturistic gadgetry might seem odd initially, but there’s something truly awakening and thrilling about Peter Evans-Pritchard’s use of the oncelambasted piece of kit.
12/FUNERAL SUITS MACHINES TOO
Funeral Suits are on the brink of the release of their Stephen Streetproduced ‘Lily Of The Valley’ album, where by the sounds of ‘Machines’, grand riffs compete for space with grand soundscapes. Vocals are more well-grounded, occasionally jerking into bouts of euphoria/insanity, depending on your perspective. Regardless of its mental state, ‘Machines Too’ will send your emotions skywards.
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W E I R D
FROM INSIDE THEIR SECRET LAB, HOT CHIP HAVE CRAFTED ONE OF THE FINEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR. WE GET INSIDE THEIR MINDS ABOUT ‘IN OUR HEADS’. WORDS: STEPHEN ACKROYD, PHOTOS: SAM BOND
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S C I E N C E 37
Pop is a science. Granted, it’s also the complete opposite: where every emotion, instinct or feeling you’ve ever had can become entwined with the sounds of one particular song. But at its heart, it’s a form of music that requires more smarts than any other. Just like science, there are different strands; different types of scientists, studying different fields. Many are theoretical physicists - those that steal a little from one place, borrow some more from another. Some are chemical magicians, creating the same high again and again, to gradually fading applause, as the impact invariably diminishes.
Then there’s Hot Chip. A group who are at once fantastical and disarmingly real in a genre of make believe; Hot Chip are NASA. If NASA built space shuttles in a shed at the bottom of their back garden, out of odds and ends they’d picked up down the car boot sale last Sunday. In an era of fly-by-night movements and instant gratification, their latest - ‘In Our Heads’ - sounds like a classic after just one listen. In the lineage of the great pop minds, from the Pet Shop Boys to Prince, it’s a record for both the head and the heart. And, as the band’s Felix Martin excitedly proclaims: “It’s the best Hot Chip album by quite a large distance.”
“WE’RE NOT KYLIE MINOGUE; WE’RE NOT JUST GONNA RELEASE THREE OR FOUR MINUTE LONG POP SONGS ALL THE TIME.”
“I like it the most of all the records we’ve made,” frontman Alexis Taylor continues in agreement. “I think the songs on it are the strongest we’ve written, and I think the sound is the best we’ve come up with. The production suits every song; we don’t jump around from one style to another in a jarring way. It works as a whole.” “I think it’s got the best songwriting we’ve ever managed,” offers up fellow founder member Joe Goddard. “It’s full of our love of dance music and pop music, R&B. It’s got things from disco to techno to garage and house influences. It’s got multi-layered vocals and strong choruses. It’s quite accessible, and fun hopefully.” Underlying ‘In Our Heads’ is the impression of a band who are comfortable in their own skin. From the triumphant saxophone line, to the almost wilfully obtuse lyrics (“Remember when people thought the world was round?”) - as introductions go, opener ‘Motion Sickness’ is a definite marking of territory. For over a decade Hot Chip have been making less ‘dance music’, more music to dance to. Personal and experimental, yet intriguing, odd and enthralling, even now there’s a feeling that this is a band who simply don’t bear comparison to their peers. “We do feel more confident in what we’re creating,” Goddard muses. “I feel more confident, as a producer and songwriter, that I know what I’m doing. There’s a lot to learn about record production as you get into it, and I feel I’m starting to know what I’m talking about and understand the concepts. There’s a lot more incidence, and confidence in songwriting ability as well. I think that’s a big part of this album in a way. Doing other musical things helps that, helps to make you feel like you know what you’re doing and you’re confident in your abilities.” Those aforementioned “other musical things” have become more prevalent of late. A supergroup can be a difficult concept: in theory, putting together a bunch of talented musicians - each excelling individually - should be a simple formula for something brilliant. In practice, it rarely yields the desired results. Yet Hot Chip have almost become their own supergroup. From The 2 Bears to About Group via New Build, through to loan transfers
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to James Murphy’s sorely missed LCD Soundsystem and even offers to work with Adele (“It’s not like we were planning to write a whole record with her, there were a few days in the schedule where we were going to try and write a song, but scheduling got in the way.”), of late their various individual creative projects have only gone to strengthen the whole; without, as Joe explains, the inconvenience of egos getting in the way. “I think when we come together to do Hot Chip stuff we kind of agree with each other quite a lot. It’s quite nice really. When you have such a long working relationship, I think we have a lot of respect for each other, and trust in each other, so when we decide to work together we usually find there aren’t too many people pulling in too many different directions. It’s usually quite a good, comfortable way of working.”
increasingly farmed out to a guesting artist, it’s a quality which adds a another level of intrigue. “I’m not looking for an award for poetry or anything,” Alexis explains, “but the words are very important - they always have been. I care about them. I try and make them as interesting and as emotionally direct as possible. And yes, I do play around with language. “I’ve sort of got used to the fact that it’s a surprise for people that anyone would do that, in what they call dance music. For me, that really shouldn’t be a surprise. I like the fact the music is very busy and lively and exciting, and you could almost not notice the words on the first listen. But hopefully there’s a lot there for you to go back to over and over again.”
It isn’t just other musical projects that might add something to the mix, though. Like other good pop scientists, they’re aware of all possible parameters. As prolific DJs, the experience of what works at the coal face surely helps when it comes to crafting their own music? “I think DJing does feed into it,” Goddard agrees. “Even if you’re not consciously thinking about the way DJing influences songwriting, I think subconsciously things are going in, because you’re in the club environment looking at what makes people react or respond on the dancefloor. I think those things naturally feed into writing songs for Hot Chip. It’d be kind of weird if they didn’t in a way, you know?”
“I think we’re all really influenced by Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan,” Felix adds. “People who are really poetic. Language is a really important thing, a really important part of our music. Alexis is really fascinated with different crazes and different words. A track might start from just a strange phrase or a joke or something that he’s heard, and then he’ll turn it into the idea behind a song. Like ‘Over & Over’, or ‘Shake Your Fist’. They’ve all got these funny little vocal hooks in them, which is all part of a general fascination with words and with language. It’s definitely a really important part of the band, and probably an under appreciated part in that a lot of people think of us as being quite a darkly electronic act. I think one of the reasons we’ve been successful is because of the lyrics, and the fact that they make a really direct connection with people.”
“THE WORDS ARE VERY IMPORTANT - THEY ALWAYS HAVE BEEN. I CARE ABOUT THEM.”
Hot Chip’s route to dancefloor fillers stands out from many of their contemporaries. While many have put beats before words, it’s their lyrical content that often sets this band apart. It’s hardly an original feature, but in an era where an uninspired vocal is
When most bands decide to unveil their new album to the world,
39
they’ll choose a nice catchy three and a half minute long number. Something with a repetitive hook line and huge chorus. Not Hot Chip. For them, an eight minute long, dizzying YouTube clip was the way forward. Yet ‘Flutes’ encapsulates the group perfectly: “Something a bit different to what we’ve done before,” as Goddard puts it. “It’s still quite a catchy song,” Martin adds. “It demonstrates a side to our music that’s always been part of what we do I guess, which is something a bit more like a house track or a techno track - quite long with quite a lot of development in it. We’re not like Kylie Minogue or something; we’re not just gonna release three or four minute long pop songs all the time. “I think ‘Night & Day’, which is the first single, is a probably a much more conventional pop song in the sense that it’s quite short and it’s got lots of hooks in it. That’s the first song we’re going to be making a video for, and that we hope is going to get lots of radio play.”
“WE FEEL MORE CONFIDENT IN WHAT WE’RE CREATING.” At the time of press, said video hasn’t arrived. Still, it’s worthy of note. Directed by Peter Serafinowicz - the mind behind the brilliantly mad clip for ‘I Feel Better’ not every band can get the voice of Darth Maul behind the camera, let alone twice. “It’s a really bizarre video,” Felix reveals. “It’s based around a strange religious ceremony. There’s cameos from some unexpected people. It was really funny when we turned up, because when we showed up they were shooting a bit with Lara Stone, the model, as a woman controlling a spaceship. We didn’t really know anything about what was going on, it was bizarre. Alexis’ little daughter was there, she’s about two and a half or something, and she was so excited about all the different costumes and people in make up. She was running around trying different people’s clothes on. It was really funny.” Hot Chip’s new album ‘In Our Heads’ will be released on 11th June via Domino. 40 thisisfakediy.co.uk
41
INTERVIEW THE WALKMAN
HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN WITH PETER
“New York, I love you but you’re bringing me down,” or so the LCD Soundsystem track goes. For The Walkmen, it’s an easy sentiment to echo. Constantly tied to a non-existent “scene” in their formative years, the band tired of comparisons to people they simply shared an area code with. These days, The Walkmen are more than capable of standing on their back catalogue, and with labels Fat Possum and Bella Union at their side, they are preparing to release their finest LP to date. Peter Bauer talks us through their relationship with New York, falling out with ‘Lisbon’ and finally finding ‘Heaven’.
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HARRIET JENNINGS GETS INTO ‘HEAVEN’ THE WALKMEN’S BAUER.
A lot of people are really excited about the new album. Have you been keeping up with the reactions? Yeah, our manager sends us clips of everything so it sounds great. We’re very excited about the response so far. It’s your sixth full-length - was this album more of a personal thing, or one for the fans? We felt like it was good enough, and that we’d finally gotten our act together enough, that we could make it more about ourselves without feeling like that was a put on. People talk about
themselves a lot so we’ve always been very hesitant to because we like to have that distance. We thought it was a little gauche, making something about yourself, but I think we’ve been around long enough so why not make ourselves central to it? Hamilton previously said that ‘A Hundred Miles Off ’ was an album nobody really wanted to make, but ‘Heaven’ feels to sound the opposite of that feeling. Is that a fair summary? I think it’s very fair. This band’s been around for about twelve years or something but we’ve been doing this, all of us in some capacity, since we were kids, so every time we go to make another record, it’s like “should we really be making another record?” This one came together so fast and so naturally; it just sort of happened. The last record we did, ‘Lisbon’, it felt like we were going to record for five years before it came out so it was nice to have this feeling of finality to everything.
done, but to make a third record in the same vein with the same basic spectral feeling and sounds probably wasn’t going to help us. We were trying to just make something that was a bit more immediate and at the same time maybe explains where we’re coming from to more people. How has the process evolved with experience? This is a heck of a lot more efficient. We’re fast. We’re always fast. We do everything incredibly fast. This is the second release through Bella Union/Fat Possum Records. How are you fitting in to your new homes? Speaking about ‘Lisbon’, you spent quite a lot of time writing They seem a lot better than our usual labels! We really burn that album and then scrapped a lot of the material, didn’t you? through labels, we’ve got through like 11 or something. Yeah, we scrapped an enormous amount of stuff. The sound of the record was totally different at the start than at the finish, it You worked with Fleet Foxes a bit on this album, who are also took a long time to see the shape of it. Whereas with this, it felt on Bella Union. Did that move come from the label or was that like immediately it had shape. We knew what was coming, we your decision? knew what was and what wasn’t going to work. We’re just pals with them. We did a tour with them and then Robin, the singer from Fleet Foxes, came and did some backing Do you think the experiences you had with ‘Lisbon’ impacted tracks on our record and then Morgan, who’s another one of the writing and recording this time around? Fleet Foxes, did percussion. We just wanted to have them play I don’t know. Every other record we’ve made has taken a long because we think they’re all just fantastic musicians. time and had those fits and starts so maybe we finally figured it out, or maybe we just got into a surprisingly lucky groove. I think You’ve constantly been linked, despite your objections, to a that Phil Ek helped a lot. ‘New York scene’ with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Strokes. You chose to move in a different direction but do you ever Where did the move to work with Phil Ek come from? wonder what would’ve happened if you’d have gone along with You know, he called us actually. He wanted to do the record, it? which was weird because we had two names on a list and he was You mean make our songs sound like their songs? That’s not one of them. something you can really do, it’s hard enough coming up with any songs. We shared things with them in that we played in the Sonically, do you think it’s less aggressive than older material? same places and we’re friends with some of the other bands and I think it’s more aggressive than they’re doing great, some of them aren’t doing great the last two records. I guess that but that’s just the nature of it. We always wanted to Hamilton did a really great job do our own thing, maybe to a fault, because when “WE ALWAYS WANTED of keeping within his range someone said we were like those New York bands, we TO DO OUR OWN THING, for everything he was writing. just said we were from Washington DC instead so But beyond that, the band are people would stop saying that. We just never wanted MAYBE TO A FAULT.” kicking a lot more ass than we to be grouped in with anybody else. I don’t know if usually do, straight rock and roll that was just being stand-offish for the sake of being drumming and things like that. stand-offish, but it was a stupid thing to do. Did you approach writing this The words ‘mature’ and ‘comfortable’ have been album in the same way you did bounced around a lot with this record. How do you previous records? feel about that? We went into this saying I think it’s fair because this is a kid’s game, you know? that we really wanted to do Especially in this day and age. There’s not a lot of something that sticks in the people do this their whole life and just stick it out, mainstream consciousness, trying to make something sound fresh after five or really put ourselves out there six records. We’re at the top of what we’ve done so and try not to be strand-offish jerks like we usually are. That was there’s a maturity there. We care very deeply about what we do, the idea. We decided that we really liked the last two records but I don’t know about comfortable. I think of comfort as you that we made a lot, we really feel like those are the best we’d ever don’t really care about what happens but I care a hell of a lot about what happens next, we’ve got a little fight left in us. A lot of bands when they get to this stage, around ten years in or so, they just don’t. That’s why we keep doing it. The Walkmen’s new album ‘Heaven’ will be released on 4th June via Fat Possum / Bella Union.
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INTERVIEW JAPANDROIDS
T H A R D R YO L O F O 44 thisisfakediy.co.uk
E S E E T H E O I D S U ’ R E O K I N G R
INTERVIEW JAPANDROIDS
VANCOUVER DUO JAPANDROIDS ARE BACK WITH A SECOND ALBUM. YET ‘CELEBRATION ROCK’ COULD EASILY NEVER HAVE BEEN RECORDED. IN FACT, MUCH OF BRIAN KING AND DAVID PROWSE’S SUCCESS MIGHT NOT HAVE HAPPENED: AS THEY TELL EMMA SWANN, THEY’D ACTUALLY SPLIT UP BEFORE THEIR FIRST FULL-LENGTH ‘POST-NOTHING’ WENT GLOBAL... “Nothing like that had ever talked about actually using happened to us before,” any of it to make an album.” begins Brian, on the phone to us from Canada talking about The pair’s motivation was the unexpected online success clear, too: they couldn’t of the band’s debut. “So we continue to gig on just one decided that we’d at least album. “We got to the point temporarily get back together, where we couldn’t do it any to start practising and playing more until we had a new shows again.” record. I don’t want to say that we were reluctant to do And it wasn’t until late 2010 it necessarily, but to us, it was - after they’d been touring the just to facilitate having new album for eighteen months songs to play more shows. So - that the idea of following we had to write a bunch of it up came into being. “We new songs, which we did, and were concerned that when we record those.” came home, when we stopped touring, that would be it. For Just as with ‘Post-Nothing’, us it was already sort of over, the recording was done in this was just the icing on the Vancouver with friend and cake. We played our final engineer, Jesse Gander. As shows on New Year’s Eve and Brian explains, while they New Year’s Day in Chicago, were given the chance to use and it wasn’t until that time a better-equipped studio and that we decided we were producer, they were keen to going to try and do a second stick with what they knew. “In record. That was the first time between the time we recorded we really talked about it. We ‘Post-Nothing’ and recording hadn’t been working on any this, Dave and I had played songs, we had recorded somewhere between twosome stuff throughout and three-hundred 2010, but it was all shows, so we had “ T H E going to be for gotten so much B A N D 7” singles. better at WAS TOGETHER W e playing hadn’t FOR THREE YEARS
BEFORE ANYONE OUTSIDE OF VANCOUVER EVER HEARD OF US.”
together. And, in that time, More of a punch in the face. Jesse had been recording And then remember just how bands constantly. So I think brutal the debut sounded we felt that with Jesse’s in the wilds of the sound improvement in recording of 2009. Plus, it starts with since we last worked with fireworks. A statement of him, and our improvement intent, or nod to those New in playing together since we Year’s celebrations which last recorded, if we just got marked its conception? together and basically tried to do the same thing as before, it It’s not only the recording would inherently be better. I process which seems to be a think that’s pretty obvious constant for Japandroids when you listen to the in 2012: take one look two records back to at the artwork for "WE back. You’ll hear ‘Celebration DON’T a band who Rock’. The are a lot band ’s MESS WITH better a t OUR SOUND, JUST
TRY AND GET BETTER.” playing; the drums and the guitar and the vocals are just better. And it’s a stronger recording: it sounds better, and is better mixed. It was a very conscious choice. That’s one of the ways we preserve our sound – not to mess with it, to just try and get better.” Without deliberately sounding sycophantic, he’s right: put ‘Celebration Rock’ on immediately after ‘PostNothing’, and you get more of the same – just stronger. It’s clearer, more immediate.
signature monochrome minimalism is no accident. “If you actually saw the finished record, you’d see it’s more elaborate this time,” Brian explains on the record’s packaging, “but it’s the same stylistically and aesthetically. I design all the band’s artwork, all the LPs and CDs and tour posters and merch and all that stuff. I like having a consistency in that look. I like the idea that people who buy our records feel like they’re buying something that all goes together 45
together and represents some kind of collection.” Like Penguin Books, or the Motown sleeves of old? “Yes. When you have it on your shelf, it represents something greater than any of the individual pieces. I like that element of it, so we have one specific cover for our albums, one for our compilations, one for our 7”s. They all stay the same, I just change the photos.”
they buy, the shows they come to or the websites and stuff they look at online.” By the time you read this, Japandroids may well have finished their short run of tiny London gigs. If you missed them, all’s not lost: the band might miss the unique connection with the audience found in small rooms – but they prefer it when you A two-piece recording in one particular room with only one know the songs. “A critical part of our shows is the audience outsider, doing all the artwork themselves: are Japandroids a participation,” Brian begins. “When we toured ‘Post-Nothing’, closed circle? The DIY ethic certainly appears to continue to people got to know the songs, they really got in to singing be important to them. “The band was together for three along and being a part of the show. That was pretty difficult “WE years before anyone outside of Vancouver ever heard the first time [ Japandroids played new material], last of us, and in that time we did everything ourselves. year and earlier this year, it was the first time we’d G O T We recorded with our friend Jesse, we pressed ever toured where we’d been playing a lot of stuff TO THE our own records and put them out, we put that people didn’t actually know. They know on our own shows and made our own the first record so well and they sing out POINT WHERE WE flyers. No matter how much success every word, then all of a sudden you COULDN’T GIG ANY MORE or popularity, we have a hard play something they’ve never UNTIL WE HAD A NEW RECORD.” time letting that go, so we hold heard before and they don’t on to it as much as we possibly know how to react in the same can. Luckily the label that we’re on, Polyvinyl, have embraced way. But I’m confident once the record comes out and people get that element. They’re really keen for us to maintain as much of to know the songs that it’ll be just like it was. And I’m looking that DIY spirit, and retain as much control over what we do, so forward to that.” that no matter how many people discover the band, they still have that connection with us. Because we’re still involved in Japandroids’ new album ‘Celebration Rock’ will be released on 4th everything they see, whether it’s the t-shirts they buy, the records June via Polyvinyl Records.
INTERVIEW BEST COAST
B e t h a n y Cosentino talks Harriet Jennings through the c h r o m ato g r a p h y of Best Coast.
P AINTING THE BIGGER PICTURE S
ometimes things just go to s**t. It’s a fact that we like to ignore but a fact nonetheless. And for Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino, it’s the subject of her band's new album. “Music, for me, works as a kind of therapy,” she begins, shuffling along a sofa in her East London hotel and signalling for a waiter to bring her a drink. “It’s easier for me to get my feelings off my chest by putting them in a song than it is to journal them or tell somebody how I’m feeling.” 48 thisisfakediy.co.uk
She’s very matter of fact about it all. She’s matter of fact about most things, it seems; a trait that’s occasionally landed our protagonist in a spot of bother. “Sometimes it does feel like people are always asking me about my personal life because I do write about it and sometimes I do wish people didn’t know so much about me,” she confesses. “But then, I also think that because I write such personal music, that’s why people like Best Coast. It’s because they can relate to what I’m saying.” And relate they have. Best Coast’s debut album ‘Crazy For You’ saw the band celebrated internationally by fans and critics alike, picking up some celebrity admirers along the way. An album about being lazy, being in love and being lazily in love, the record soars through the
dozen-track long escapade shrouded in lo-fi fuzz and mystery before winding up leaving us feeling surprisingly positive about the whole thing. “That’s just how I write,” she murmurs when we ask her about the unusual juxtaposition of desperately sad lyrics and their signature upbeat surf-pop sound. “I don’t intend to write something sad but melodically, I hear these poppy upbeat melodies and when I start writing, the lyrics just come out to be more down than the melody. I think it’s just because I get more inspired when I’m in a downer mood. A lot of it has to do with my influences like Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles, they do the same thing.” And whether Bethany realises it or
not, Best Coast have been an influence themselves, taking the lo-fi trend to new heights following their debut’s 2010 release. “I wanted it to sound lofi because I was very self-conscious and didn’t really want people to hear what my voice sounded like and I wasn’t confident with the way I played the guitar,” she explains of the earlier record. “I have confidence now as a musician and I think that’s because I toured for two years and I played every single night. On this record, I wanted guitar and voice to be something you could hear, as opposed to just burying it under a bunch of different sounds.” Cosentino’s lyrics have also had a bit of a once over, with the latest record focusing more on the frontwoman’s relationship with her home, her job and the outside
world rather than an unnamed individual in particular. “I was extremely stressed out,” Bethany says, her face never changing. “My life went from being a college dropout and working in a soap store to being a musician who travels the world professionally, and when this happens over night, you don’t know how to act. Most of the songs are just about me feeling insecure and me feeling stressed and me feeling like my life is really hectic because it was at that point in time when I was writing.” With such personal lyrics, it’s no surprise that
Bethany’s private life is pulled into the promo run, but did that ever cross her mind when making the record? “Yeah, I knew when making this record,” she smiles. “Bobb and I would joke in the studio about, ‘Oh the questions you’re going to get!’ So I was aware but it didn’t really matter to me because that’s naturally what I write about so I just have to deal with it.” It’s obvious from the offset that her relationship with the press is a little bit love/ hate with the phrase “that was taken out of context” batted around quite a lot during our
"I have confidence now as a musician.”
49
time together. “You have to watch what you say and sometimes I don’t because I’m just blatantly honest about things,” she sighs. “I try really hard a) not to read any press about myself, and b) when it’s negative just to not really care. But it is difficult to see someone say something negative about you, especially when you’ve put so much of yourself into it because then you feel that it’s you they don’t like. I’ve learned from the past and with writing this record and talking about a lot of the stuff I’ve talked about, it helped me get over it. Now I’m at a point where I’m a bit more like, 'Oh, you don’t really like the record? Well, I don’t really care because I like the record.'” Tracks like ‘How They Want Me To Be’ illustrate Cosentino’s conundrum. She’s unequivocally honest with her lyrics and yet because of that, the whole world thinks that they know her, deserve a say in how she should behave, and have the right to dissect her mental health, so much so that she was left questioning whether or not to continue with the band, apparently. “I was never unsure that I wanted to – again something taken out of context – I was questioning whether I could,” she explains. “Because of how stressed out I was and because of how anxious I had become, I was just like, 'Can I keep doing this? Or is it just going to wear on me too much?' And I actually got really, really sick. We were supposed to go to Europe and do a bunch of festivals last summer and we had to cancel half of it. My doctor was like, “You have extreme exhaustion and an ear infection and a nasal infection. What have you been doing?” And I was like, “Well, I’ve been touring for two years and I haven’t been home and I haven’t been taking care of myself.” “It just got to the point where I was questioning whether this is something that I can handle. When I talk on the record about throwing away bad habits and changing stuff, I’m mostly talking about changing in a way where I’ve learned to deal with stress. Now I just take a deep breath and I’m like, 'This is my job, I’m extremely lucky that this is
50 thisisfakediy.co.uk
my job.' People irritate me sometimes and journalists will misconstrue things but that’s just part of the job. I’ve learned to just deal with it better.” And like all jobs, being in Best Coast has its ups and downs. “You can have a dick boss sometimes, just someone who’s mean to you and talks down to you so that’s kind of what it is, especially with Twitter because it’s so in your face,” she continues. “Someone will just tweet at you like 'You’re a bitch, I hate you!' and you’re like, “You don’t even know me!” And you want to defend yourself but at the same time, you have to remember that it’s just some kid in the middle of nowhere who has nothing better to do.” Despite their bumpy past, Best Coast are a band at the height of their game and for Bethany in particular, things show no signs of slowing down. Collaborations with the likes of Wavves, New Found Glory and Drew Barrymore, who directed the band’s feature-length video for ‘Our Deal’, have put Cosentino firmly on the radar of people you might not quite expect. “I love to do stuff like that,” she says of teaming up with NFG. “Sometimes people give me a hard time for doing things like that but I don’t want to get anchored down in just one thing, I like to do different creative projects. If I like a band or I like a song and they want me to sing, I always say yes.” Taking ‘The Only Place’ out on the road must be a daunting prospect, given the subject matter but for Bethany, it’s a challenge she’s looking forward to overcoming. “I’m excited just to go into it with a new mindset,” she says. “I’m also excited to play some new music because we toured for two years playing the same record over and over and it just started to get so, 'Oh my God, I’m sick of playing these songs!' We’ll probably play most of the new record and we’ll still do ‘the hits’ or whatever and then probably some of the earlier things as well because we have a much longer set now that we’re playing
bigger venues.” But fans needn’t expect that Best Coast will be working on a new record just yet, the idea of writing on the road horrifies Cosentino. “I’ve tried to write on the road and I’ve taken a guitar to my hotel room but it just doesn’t flow for me. When I started writing, I was probably about
“I’m blatantly about
just honest things.”
thirteen or something, I remember I would go to my bedroom and write there too. “The Only Place’ is in reference to my home, Los Angeles, California. My specific house where I live is my safe place,” she explains. “It’s where I feel the most comfortable and confident and so I do most of my writing there because it’s the place I feel the most inspired and creative. It’s just this closed off space where it’s so personal to me because it’s my bedroom, my things, and I think that’s just a place that I’ve found it very easy to write these songs.” Without their unfathomably open frontwoman, Best Coast wouldn’t be making the same songs we’ve grown to love them for. There’s definitely something in that honesty lark. “It’s just like [the line from] that Beach Boys song [‘In My Room’], ‘There’s a world where I can go and tell my secrets to, in my room.’” Bethany pauses, smiling, “Maybe if I stopped writing them in my room, they wouldn’t be so personal, you never know.” Best Coast’s new album ‘The Only Place’ is out now via Wichita.
"My life went from being a college dropout and working in a soap store to being a musician who travels the world."
INTERVIEW PEAKING LIGHTS
BETTER THE DEVIL YOU KNOW
PE AK I N G L I G H T S TALK TO JAMIE MILTON ABOUT THEIR NEW ALBUM ‘LUCIFER’, AND THE INFLUENCE OF THEIR ONE YEAR OLD SON When a band find themselves at a crossroads, where opportunities beckon, the usual questions arise: Should they sign a deal with a major? Would it be worth quitting university for this? Should one of their Dads be allowed to drive the tour van? For Peaking Lights, things are a little different. Most dilemmas centre around how to fit their one year old son, Mikko, into the picture - when’s his passport going to arrive? Does he like our new songs? It seems Mikko is working part-time as Peaking Lights’ new producer. Indra, one half of the pair who recently found critical 52 thisisfakediy.co.uk
acclaim through ‘936’, so much so that the record had to be rereleased, claims; “We watch his reaction to gauge how good the song is a lot of the time. So if he starts bobbing his little head along to it we know we’ve got a good tune.” Mikko actually assumes a starring role in his parents’ new album, ‘Lucifer’, taking to the mic on ‘LO HI’ to deliver a flooring vocal. Indra and Aaron were both very encouraging in getting their son to explore his developing creative side: “He would suddenly get in a really happy mood and start laughing and we were like ‘oh my god, oh my god,’ we’ve got to record this! Although we did have
a few times where we tried to get him on a nice professional microphone and he would just try to eat it...” This musical prodigy of microphone-eating, diva-like tendencies is actually the focal point of what has been the busiest, most extraordinary 12 months of Aaron and Indra’s career. DIY speaks to the pair on the brink of Mikko’s 1st birthday, and they’ve just settled into a new home in California, having spent the best part of the last year touring the world with their new son in tow. “It’s been a pretty wild year, actually,” admits Indra, before a typically cool Aaron downplays any signs of stress: “But it’s a good hectic, it’s not like a bad kind, it’s just a real busy balance.” At the centre of this busy balance is the fact that ‘936’ careered skywards at the tail-end of 2011, taking off through word of mouth recommendation and professional praise. “Having ‘936’ getting the attention that it did was really huge for us. We signed record deals, we got a manager. A lot has happened for us,” says Aaron, trying to maintain conversation while entertaining his very much awake son. Surely recording ‘Lucifer’ must have come with its pressures; it would have been totally unlike making previous records because this time round, it had a huge audience waiting to hear it. “There was a little bit of a sense of ‘oh wow, people really care about this record’,” admits Indra. “The first time when we did ‘936’, we really weren’t thinking about who was going to be hearing it, it was just a case of doing what we loved doing. That definitely changed a little bit. But I think once we got into the studio and we were actually getting into the zone of creating the music, all of that stuff drifts away.” To be releasing another album, almost immediately after all of this, surely shows evidence that Peaking Lights really are enjoying their new pace of life. And follow-up ‘Lucifer’ truly is an album of continuation; the spellbinding experimental jams that circuit ‘936’ have barely ceased, with a new " E V E R Y T H I N G array of instrumentation characterising an already CAN BE established sound, a sound that barely anyone knows how PERCEIVED AS to describe without sounding like a lunatic. You can almost DARK OR LIGHT." hear the both of them keeping their cool as a baby rocks in the corner; seemingly immune to the perils of stress. Songs continue to sneak above the seven-minute mark - and this ease of length almost feels apt for a pair who clearly formulate things through intuition. “We kinda prefer to feel it out, rather than stay with a normal parameter,” Indra tells us when speaking of a typical song’s length. And you can draw parallels between these organically evolving songs and the very natural turns that Peaking Lights have taken within the past year.
Was the album’s title, ‘Lucifer’, a simple decision that came through intuition? “When we make decisions, a lot of it has to do with intuition, or maybe something comes to us in a dream,” says Indra, before Aaron reveals that Mikko Lorenzo’s name
comfort. They detail their current task: setting up a new studio in Long Beach, California. Anyone who’s watched the band’s documentary, ‘Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out’ will have seen the mass of
"IT'S BEEN A PRETTY WILD YEAR"
actually emerged from a dream. But why ‘Lucifer’, a title which many might associate with darkness and sin? In this case, it refers to “Venus, bringer of light. That’s the original meaning before it got bastardised,” says Aaron. “I kinda like the idea that it carries the two meanings at the same time, it’s sort of life as a whole: Everything can be perceived as dark or light, however you choose to interpret it.” Quite deep thinking, from two people who awkwardly admit to DIY that they’re “kind of into New Age stuff...” They list numerology and astrology as pasttimes, both of which contributed to ‘Lucifer’. Such a hobby suits the pair - they’re both so unbelievably relaxed that you can’t help but feel a slight tinge of amazement at how they’re coping with raising a newborn and taking on a fledgling musical career. Agreeing to interviews is probably the last thing on their mind, but they’re both extremely kind and willing to talk candidly about their son, their interests and the challenges they’ve had to face in balancing career with
instruments which help make up their home studio in Wisconsin, which they’ve had to replicate. Half jumble sale, half intricate set-up; it's the location where both ‘936’ and ‘Lucifer’ were recorded. “We’ve only lived in this house for like two months - it’s really an apartment, a duplex. So we’re still setting things up. But we’ll get there." So in between building a studio and taking off for another dozen or so months of touring across the world, Peaking Lights will simply continue at their own, calm pace. ‘Lucifer’ won’t come to dominate the charts - God knows that might make life stressful - but it’ll cement the band’s position as inventive, distinctly likeable musicians who make music from the soul but produce something that always sounds like it’s from another planet. Considering how relaxed they manage to keep themselves amidst the busy life they lead, maybe Peaking Lights really are from another planet entirely. Peaking Lights’ new album ‘Lucifer’ will be released on 18th June via Weird World. 53
INTERVIEW THE HIVES
L
E
X
H I V E S T H E H I V E S T A L K S E L F - R E L E A S I N G A N D S T U D I O C H E A T I N G W I T H E M M A S W A N N
54 thisisfakediy.co.uk
“Self-released, self-produced, self-played, selftaught, self... everything!”
“We’re happy to be back!” The Hives’ frontman may not be “We're happy to be back!” The Hives' frontman may not be shouting this from the rooftops as his stage moniker suggests he would, but the grin on Howlin' Pelle Almqvist's face speaks volumes. 'Lex Hives' is the first we've heard from these iconic Swedes since 2007's 'The Black And White Album', and, as they're keen to tell us, it's all them. “Self-released, self-produced, self-played, self-taught, self... everything!” In the five years they’ve been away - a time which, according to Pelle, seems longer to us Brits because they “didn’t play here that much on the last album” - they “stayed at home,” had “a year of bad luck,” and, chips in bandmate and guitarist Vigilante
Carlstroem, “a year of laundry.” In fact, it wasn’t just their crisp white shirts they spent time on (and they did: “we talk about what looks cool, and then we decide to wear it,” says Pelle on the band’s outfits) - there was the small matter of learning how to produce. Plus, as Vigilante’s keen to point out, it was over three years after ‘Tyrannosaurus Hives’ that ‘The Black And White Album’ came out. Learning to self-produce wasn’t easy - “this time we had to make all the decisions ourselves,” muses Vigilante. But, as Pelle adds “there’s five band members, so there’s always someone else to ask. We all produced it, so there was always someone who had an idea.” Then, there’s the small matter of the band’s own label, Disques Hives. “It’s a little scary,” explains Pelle. “[But] everyone’s doing it now. Record labels aren't as powerful as they used to be, so there’s less of a difference self-releasing, and they’re more used to it now, they’re OK with you having your own label.” ‘Lex Hives’, the finished product of this autonomy, is twelve blistering tracks, all riffs, hooks and singalongs: even from the very start, via opener ‘Come On!’, there’s no doubt who you’re listening to, ‘Lex Hives’ couldn’t be the work of anyone else. Yet, there are notable differences: ‘Without The Money’ isn’t afraid to take things down a bluesy notch, and the whole record feels less ‘punk’ than its predecessors. More traditional rock ‘n roll. And Pelle is very happy about that. “I would think we were known for playing rock ‘n roll, it’s all we ever do. There are still a few fast songs in there that are fairly punk, but it’s more rock ‘n roll in the sense that it’s less modern. On the last one there were synths and drum machines and things going on, and here it’s all real instruments played by real people. That organic recording process – spending brief periods of time in various Stockholm studios (“it’s fun to change scenery”) was also something they cherished, especially following those electronic influences which permeated the making of ‘The Black And White Album’. Vigilante in particular is no fan of ‘new’ recording techniques. “In the old days, you recorded stuff and what you recorded was pretty much the end result. These days, people record music on to the computer, and can sit for a year and move stuff around and 55
make everything super tight. We wanted this record to be more The Hives in a room playing the songs. If you moved everything around so it’s perfect, you’d lose a bit of The Hives. It’s supposed to be what we sound like – without cheating!” His frontman agrees. “The reason AC/DC don’t sound like The Rolling Stones is because there are these subtle differences, between when the drummer hits the snare drum, or when the guitarist hits the strings. It’s what makes the band sound like the band. Since people started making everything perfect, you can’t hear the difference between which song is which band. The only difference is the singer, basically. “The best rock ‘n roll music is just played and recorded. It doesn’t have to be a big studio affair where you record the kick drum first. The best rock ‘n roll albums are made by a bunch of guys standing in a room playing, and you just record that really well. We’re basically just recording what we do – like taking a photograph as opposed to photoshopping it.” In the past, they’ve even gone as far as re-recording a track because it sounded “too tight.” As both explain, it’s less about tempo and more about feeling. “There’s no right or wrong,” begins Pelle. “There’s no ‘this is correct, now you’ve played it correctly’.” Vigilante continues. “You can play a song ten times, and one of the takes will feel better than the rest. It has nothing
56 thisisfakediy.co.uk
to do with if it’s tighter, or better played. It’s just a feeling you get from it. It’s hard to describe it. The mojo, I guess!” It’s not even just digital recording perfection they’re not fans of. Live takes a bashing, too. Pelle admits “there were a few songs on ‘The Black And White Album’ that we never really played live, because of drum machines and stuff, and we didn’t want to dabble! The show is its own thing, and we need it to be organic, to be able to change things on the fly. We think it’s lame when people have programmed music or backing tracks.” Calling The Hives’ live show ‘its own thing’ is somewhat of a humble understatement: anyone who’s caught them at a festival will assert that they’re nothing less than the ultimate live act. Never has the word ‘show’ seemed so appropriate. And, thankfully, they’re planning to return after this all-too-brief trip – first a return to Reading & Leeds this summer, and then a “proper tour” in the autumn. We’re happy they’re back. The Hives’ new album ‘Lex Hives’ will be released on 4th June via Disques Hives.
“The best rock 'n' roll music is just played and recorded. It doesn’t have to be a big studio affair.”
INTERVIEW CARRIE BROWNSTEIN
WILD
CARRIE BROWNSTEIN FORTHCOMING MEMOIR,
TELLS AND
FLAG
SIMONE SCOTT WARREN THE LIKELY RETURN OF
ABOUT HER SLEATER-KINNEY
ighteen is a pretty impressionable age when you’re discovering new music. Those bands that you fall in love with, believe me, they stay with you long after their tapes have worn themselves blank due to excessive playback. Back when I was that slip of a girl, the airwaves were dominated by Nirvana, and in the wake of their success, pretty much any other band of boys from Seattle, who could rock a plaid shirt. Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Pearl Jam (who to this day, can still incite a high level of disdain from these quarters, purely based on Eddie Vedder’s hair extensions), all blazed a trail for the noisy boys that for a time seemed unstoppable. But what happened after that; well that was the part of the story that any self respecting teenage girl started to feel some semblance of excitement over. When the Riot Grrrl movement started up, it both empowered and annoyed me (why, oh why, would you spell ‘girl’ like that?). For the first time in what seemed like forever, women in music were no longer merely pop-strumpets. Instead, we had bands of women who didn’t seem interested so much in lipgloss as axe wielding guitars, and in their musicianship. L7, Babes In Toyland, Bikini Kill, they were kicking it for the girls, at a time when it felt like no one else was. 58 thisisfakediy.co.uk
But this, dear reader, is 2012, and if we’re to claim any progress at all, then surely by now, the sex of a band should have no bearing on their description. We don’t find it necessary to point out that the Arctic Monkeys are all men, for example, and women have carved a rightful place in the rock family tree to an extent where gender ought to be irrelevant. So, when Wild Flag made their way into our record collections last year, the least interesting thing to read in their reviews was about how they were a group of women. Perceivably, it’s even more tiresome if you’re Carrie Brownstein. Having spent over a decade honing her crafts (acting, writing, musician), still being defined by her gender must get wearing. “I think that for me, it’s not an interesting or descriptive way of describing our band,” Carrie agrees, when we put it to her one evening, over a transatlantic call, “It doesn’t say anything about the music, and it can be a little bit tedious, and a little lazy, when there are plenty of other adjectives that are more pertinent to the sound of the band. It makes me roll my eyes, more than anything.”
"YOU DON'T KNOW HOW
PEOPLE
ARE
GOING TO REACT TO ANYTHING YOU DO." In the years that followed 2006’s ‘The Woods’, when Sleater-Kinney for all intent and purposes appeared to call it a day, and prior to forming Wild Flag, Brownstein had kept herself ridiculously busy, with writing about music for NPR, acting and writing in the cult American series Portlandia, and, perhaps more surprisingly, in a nine to five day job, working in an advertising agency. The latter role was a short lived attempt at normality; “There was just something attractive about being in the same place for a while,” Carrie tells us, “and working more traditional hours. But then I didn’t end up being that good... and I’m usually self employed, so it was harder to have a ‘Boss’.”
However, with the NPR job lined up, Brownstein began honing her skills as a writer, writing “essays about the notion of fandom, and what it means to be a listener, a collector, a fan, how all those things change and transform as they get to be more and more mediated by technology. Not in a bad way, just that they change.” Having built a solid reputation as a music journalist, the recent announcement that Carrie was about to undertake the task of writing her autobiography, well, it wasn’t a huge surprise. After all, whilst it must be harder for Brownstein to figure out what to put as her occupation on her passport application that it is for most of us, the common
"I
ALWAYS
LIKE
TO
LOOK
FORWARD,
RATHER THAN DWELLING ON THE PAST." thread of her work appears to be writing, whether that be music, prose or for the small screen. So what inspired her now, to pick up the pen, and write about her own life? “I basically had another book I was working on, and then realised that I was writing about my own life a little more than some of the more academic, music journalism topics that I was meant to be writing about.” “Really I’m just getting started, figuring out the timeline, so I really won’t start on it until Fall. The actual task, and the act of writing is not that strange to me. I guess, parcelling out the specific memories and stories that I want to write about takes a little more deliberation and thought. But to be honest, I’ve just finished six months of touring with my band, and then I go right into writing and shooting Portlandia, so the bulk of the book will be started this Fall.” Having brought Wild Flag over to the UK during that six month tour for a series of dates, Brownstein and the band found themselves with a level of success that perhaps eluded Sleater-Kinney on these shores back in their day. Wild Flag’s eponymous album was placed high on most of the obligatory 2011 end of year lists, and they quickly earned themselves a reputation for being one of the more exhilarating live acts on the circuit. But with such a rock pedigree behind them, it might have seemed to us like the expected reaction, but Brownstein admits the band themselves were caught a little off guard. “You don’t know how people are going to react to your music or anything you do. People seemed to get it right away with Wild Flag, which was exciting.” But with two thirds of Sleater-Kinney in the band, the thought of just reforming that band must have crossed their minds? After all, reformations are big business these days. “I think with Sleater-Kinney, we just kind of went on hiatus, so we probably will do something and it won’t be a reunion, we will just start playing music again.” Carrie tells us, seemingly picking her words carefully, “I think, I always just like to look forward, rather than dwelling on something in the past, so at the time, it was like I took a couple of years off from playing music, and then it just felt more interesting to try to do something new as a challenge. I don’t think it would be easier to just go back to being Sleater-Kinney, but I do think there’s an innate chemistry and a shared 'thing' that the three of us have that I’m sure we’ll explore again.” With so many facets to her career, it’s difficult to know what’s next, whether that be for Sleater-Kinney or Wild Flag. “I feel like I’m planned ahead for the next two years, actually.” Carrie laughs, “I mean I have to plan ahead, otherwise I lose track of what I’m doing or can’t fit anything in. We’re [Wild Flag] going to have some shows this summer, just a handful because I’ll be busy, and then I don’t know what’s next for us, we’ll figure that out soon I guess. Definitely, I’ll be doing music again in the Fall, though.” What that music is, for this writer at least, we await with baited breath. Wild Flag’s debut album ‘Wild Flag’ is out now via Wichita.
59
INTERVIEW LIARS
Danny Wright sits down with Liars’ Angus Andrew to discuss ‘WIXIW’, introspection and not wanting to do the same thing twice. When I ask Liars’ lead singer Angus Andrew what the band’s next album will bring he pauses, then laughs. “Samba?” It’s a joke but it could easily not be. Liars’ whole career has been defined by restless and boundless invention and a refusal to use the same idea twice. Indeed, Andrew says he will “never settle on the same formula.” He’s not lying. From their art rock debut ‘They Threw Us In A Trench…’, taking in a concept album about witchcraft and the tribal ‘Drum’s Not Dead’, through to the equally astounding but more (loosely speaking) conventionally rock previous two albums, the band have ceaselessly moved forward, experimenting with new sounds and creating some of the best records of the last decade. They now return with ‘WIXIW’ (pronounced ‘Wish you’) that’s unlike anything they’ve done before – an electronic, sample heavy album that’s completely detached from previous record ‘Sisterworld’. They’ve always been a band who put a lot of thought into naming their work (not to mention wit: remember ‘If You’re A Wizard Then Why Do You Wear Glasses?’) and ‘WIXIW’, a title which reflects the themes and preoccupations of the album, is no different. “The fact that it’s a palindrome is really interesting, especially in relation to the creative process, where you start somewhere, go through a long process and end up where you started. A lot of people view that negatively but to me it shows you were on the right track from the beginning. I also like the duality. ‘Wish You Were Here’ is the normal Pink Floyd thing but it could equally be I wish you were dead.” Andrew talks repeatedly about not wanting to do the same thing again. “On the past couple of records we’ve been preoccupied with being in a band and trying to refine those skills and doing a verse-chorusverse thing. I lost interest in that. I realised it’s not that important to me to become a quote unquote ‘better songwriter’. What interests me is sounds.” With ‘WIXIW’ they’ve created a record that beckons you in with its hypnotic grooves and ends up immersing you. At times beautiful, at times unhinged, it’s the sound of a band comfortable not being in their comfort zone. So, how did this new electronic sound come about? It was in part inspired by listening to dance music. “I found these mixtapes and it’s cool 'cause it’s this anonymous thing where you’re not caught up in who the artist is.” There was
WISH IS FATHER 60 thisisfakediy.co.uk
also another, perhaps surprising, influence. “Aaron and I love the Underworld record ‘Beaucoup Fish’. I think that’s where it started.”
a ton of these sounds but no songs. We had to figure out how to make a song from it, which is really difficult.”
A change in how the band worked together also helps explains the sonic shift. “We decided we wanted to be a lot more collaborative. Aaron and I started out by going to this cabin in the woods to live and forcing each other to show each other even simple sounds that we had come up with.
If you listen closely you can hear some pretty strange sounds on the record. “I wanted to say we’d tried everything, whether it was putting a mic to a flickering fluorescent bulb or mic-ing the car engine. We did so much of that and maybe fifty percent of that stuff made it on to the record.”
Diving into this electronic way of making things within the computer, the majority of the time was focused on making sounds and experimenting. The result was at the halfway mark we just had
Despite all this electronic experimentation what has emerged is still a uniquely Liars sounding album. “At first it was really electronic and more dance oriented but we needed to make it more our own. It was a case of melding those two styles.”
"WHEN WE MADE THAT FIRST RECORD WE HAD NO IDEA WHAT WE WERE DOING - I STILL FEEL LIKE THAT."
The result is the most personal and introspective record they’ve created. “We let this album develop a little more on its own and very naturally it started to turn more inward. It ended up with this play on contradiction. I feel throughout there’s this feeling of wanting something but not really wanting it.” Now the record is done the band are set to head to the UK to play live shows. It’s something that Andrew is looking forward to, but with trepidation: “It’s really hard to play the album live. Within the computer there’s 100 instruments with 1,000 presets with multiple ways to manipulate it. A big part of the process of even starting to play it is going back and figuring out how to make those sounds." Yet constantly challenging themselves seems to be what keeps the band going. “I don’t think we’d be a band anymore if we stayed in one spot. I mean I admire a guy like Jack White who seems obsessed with the guitar and all the different ways to use it. That’s interesting from an outsider’s perspective but to put myself in those shoes I don’t think it would stay interesting to me. I’d wanna see what it’s like to smash the guitar and use a flute instead.” As the interview draws to a close I ask him whether he recognises the band he helped start over 13 years ago? “It feels the same. When we made that first record we had no idea what we were doing and no real expectations – and I still feel like that. You’d think after making several albums that you’d feel more comfortable and they’d be easier to make but I don’t feel like at all. I think that’s what keeps it interesting.” So, get ready for the tribal, samba concept album. Liars’ new album ‘WIXIW’ will be released on 4th June via Mute.
TO THE THOUGHT 61
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EXTRA TECH
T EC H THE GIZMOS AND GADGETS WORTH GET TING E XCI T E D ABOUT THIS MONTH
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REVIEWS BACKSTORY
KCAB s to ry
VALTARI K E Y B OA R D I S T K JA R TA N SVEINSSON AND BASSIST G EO RG H O L M T E L L S A R A H JA M I ES O N T H E S T O RY B E H I N D S I G U R RO S ’ N E W A L B U M , ‘ VA LTA R I ’ .
You're getting ready to release your new album 'Valtari'. How are you feeling about it? Kjartan: We don't really feel that much actually. That sounds really boring. "I don't really feel anything." Do you try to distance yourself from the record before the release? Georg: I think usually when we finish a record and get ready to release it, at least I feel excited, and, "Oh, what's going to happen?" I can't wait for the day that it actually comes out, but this record has been so strange. It's been a strange process, and everything about it has just been different from everything else. So, we're kind of just sitting and waiting to see what happens. There's not really excitement… It just is. Do you think there's a reason your feelings are so different to previous experiences? K: I think it was the process. Usually when we make an album, it's a year or two of intensive work. With this one, it was so much on and off. It's a bit like giving birth, you know? You're working so much on it and you're working so hard, and then, it's out there. It's a big relief and you're really excited about it! But this one is 66 thisisfakediy.co.uk
not like that… The album itself seems to reflect that, and feels quite slow burning. G: Yeah! That’s a very good way to describe it actually. It’s just come about. K: It just happened. G: It wasn’t until the last session that we did last year, to finish the record, that we went, “Ooh, this is a record!” Do you think that this a more intense record? G: With the music, if you’re not us, and you listen to it, I would understand how you would hear it as intense. It’s just that the creative process of it was not as intense as it sounds. If that makes any sense. The beginning of this recording process apparently began in 2009, but you scrapped the demos? G: We didn’t scrap them, we just left them. Put them to one side. So, when did you begin the original recording sessions? G: We did record a couple of songs. Bits of songs, at the same
time as we were finishing ‘Takk...’. Then we recorded in London. It’s been all of these little bits and pieces, added to it and taken away from it. It’s been kind of schizophrenic. There’s always a lot of natural imagery used when it comes to describing your sound. Would you agree with that language? G: We don’t really use those words very much, but it is used a lot. When people write about it, it is easy to associate the music with words like ‘landscape’. Ktarjan: We’re not really in the describing business. G: We’re very bad at describing music. It is very difficult for someone to describe, or analyse their own work. You would never ask the painter who painted that, “Why did you do that?” So, what would you like people to take from ‘Valtari’? K: Anything they like. G: If they take something from it, that’s good. Whatever it is. It’s quite boring to make meaningless music. Some people have said that this record is less accessible than your previous effort; it’s more minimal. K: That’s just how it happened. This is what we ended up with. G: We don’t really decide before we make something, “Oh, there has to be a hit song on this record.” It just is what it is. I always like best the albums that you have to listen to a few times before realising, “Oh, that is really good.” Was it ever frustrating to have so many separate sessions? K: No, actually, the process, it wasn’t hard at all. G: I was going to say too, even when we were working, it was usually always fun. It was great fun doing this. You’ve also been quoted as saying ‘Valtari’ is the only album of your own that you’ve been able to listen to. Is that true? G: I said it, and what I meant was… [to Kjartan] I would imagine that you don’t go home and listen to any of our records? K: No. G: I don’t either, you know. I don’t think any of us would. But, there’s something about this record that I like. On the train the other day, I put in my headphones and listened and it was quite nice. It has many layers to it, and elements, that can surprise you. There’s also been reports that this new record bears quite a few electronic elements. Whilst that is true, it’s probably not the kind of electronic that people expect. Are you ever concerned that a comment like that will be misconstrued? K: It doesn’t really matter. They can interpret it in any way. G: It happens quite a lot! We’re not worried about it, but you’re right, there are more electronic things in there, but they don’t necessarily sound like something electronic. It’s not like a dance album! It’s an organic thing. You also worked with Alex Somers on this album. How was that? G: For the first time, yes. We’d never worked with him before. He was quite necessary to the finished product. K: And he was more enthusiastic than us. G: Yeah, he pushed us! Finally, we’ve discussed the idea that people believe your music to be very intense. However, you’ve openly stated you’re just “four guys in a band.” Does that still ring true? G: I think we’ve said this before. We’re not very serious people, but we are very serious about our music. Not serious when we’re doing it, or making it, but we think seriously about the end product. Sigur Ros’ new album ‘Valtari’ will be released on 28th May via Parlophone.
SIGUR RÓS Valtari
It’s become a running joke of sorts, that with every touching shot of a polar bear raising her infants, trudging across miles of newly-landed snow; or for every dramatic visual landscape that graces our HD television sets, there’s room for a Sigur Rós song. Nature programmes and their kinship with ‘Hoppípolla’; it’s a norm of wildlife footage and heart-stopping montage; a standardised accompaniment for all things beautiful. In a way, it’s also sapped away at the appeal of Sigur Rós - we’ve almost forgotten just how capable these Icelandic giants are. A running battle remains among fans of the band; one embittered camp suggesting that 2008’s ‘Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust’, alongside Jónsi Birgisson’s own full-length, were equal convicts to the nature programmes in terms of undermining everything Sigur Rós had put their name to previously. ‘( )’ and to a greater extent, ‘Ágætis byrjun’, were masterful works of unbelievable detail. The group’s most recent album, however, leaned more towards immediacy, with lead track ‘Gobbledigook’'s tribal percussions and sheer lack of length spelling out an entirely fresh, at times unconvincing approach. It’s as if we’re witnessing a return to methods of old with ‘Valtari’. Don’t label it a retreat: it still remains starkly different to ‘Takk...’ and its predecessors. But in come the seven minute-long songs, the sparse arrangements, the breathtaking strings. There’s great synergy to these songs, and while the likes of ‘Varúð’ and ‘Varðeldur’ can’t disguise their accessibility, each song is desperate to showcase beauty, the unique kind that sets Sigur Rós apart. Bar the driving crescendo of ‘Varúð’, this record is almost completely stripped of percussion. Thumping drums and grand orchestras helped to produce ‘Hoppípolla’ and friends, but said components are nowhere to be seen here. From the outset, sleepy, lullaby-like pieces flow into one another, creating a grand body of work that rarely breaks out of its comfy shell. Lead single ‘Ekki múkk’ is an undoubted centrepiece; a goosebump-inducing composition of great subtlety - it constantly flirts with the possibility of breaking into a clamourous surge, but the steady musicianship instead opts for a vow of peace. While previous records are steeped in triumphant ascensions and hairraising climaxes, ‘Valtari’ basks in the very essence of prettiness. Not since the dreamy opening half of ‘( )’ will you feel so close to Jónsi’s alien commands. This is perhaps Sigur Rós’ most human-sounding album to date, too. Prepped for intimate nights with loved ones and exhausting journeys home; it’s an album that ditches the dramatic and brings in the calm. Beautiful landscapes will have to wait for another ‘Hoppípolla’. ( Jamie Milton). 67
REVIEWS ALBUMS
SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO
HOT CHIP
In Our Heads
Hot Chip have always been able to effortlessly mix multicoloured melodies with just the right amount melancholy. Alexis’ lyrical musings, focusing, as he does, on the boundless possibilities of love, invest the album with wide-eyed wonderment. That this is backed by some of the most inventive music the band have produced means these oddly eccentric electro-romantics have, five records in, created another joyous triumph. (Danny Wright)
Unpatterns Simian Mobile Disco have long been the UK’s foremost techhouse act. While that may not sound all that impressive to some, they are deservedly attributed this title, with ‘Unpatterns’ coming as further proof of their pedigree. Take lead single ‘Seraphim’, for example. A kinetic, bustling track which flourishes into an undeniable statement of intent for SMD. Following a break to focus on their ‘dancey’ Delicacies project, Simian Mobile Disco now have their sights firmly set back where they belong; on the dancefloor. (George Boorman)
HUSKY
Forever So
BEACH HOUSE Bloom
If 2010’s ‘Teen Dream’ honed in on immediacy and bursting choruses, Beach House’s returning effort, ‘Bloom’, is a little more subtle in approach. Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally’s exploratory side comes to light once more, recalling the Baltimore band’s first two albums, rather than their grand, pop-inclined magnum opus of old. That’s not to say the likes of ‘Wild’ and ‘New Year’ aren’t fit to explode with hair-raising hooks and melodies. It’s more a case of a subtle blending of old and new. The result is another addition to the duo’s expansive, spirited catalogue of near-perfect records. ( Jamie Milton) 68 thisisfakediy.co.uk
For a debut album, Husky's 'Forever So' is polished like a fine gem, yet somehow manages to maintain self-confidence with no pretension whatsoever. It’s a beautiful collection of rustic songs, whether singer Husky Gawenda is playing the role of old man looking back at life changed by the visit and leaving of one woman (‘Animals And Freaks’) or he’s saying ‘Farewell (In Three Parts)’ to a dysfunctional relationship. Their brand of indie folk, written around love and love lost, has a pleasant dusky quality, with the slightest bit rough-and-tumble. (Mary Chang)
LAUREL COLLECTIVE Heartbeat Underground
Laurel Collective’s frenzied take on experimental pop has established them as one of the UK’s more idiosyncratic and progressive bands, ‘Heartbeat Underground’ seeing their talent distilled into a breathlessly creative energy. Vocalists Martin Sakutu and Bob Tollast subtly complement each other, particularly on the glorious harmonies of the languidly insidious ‘Sunshine Buddy’ and ‘Fax Of Death’. Valued above everything in music is ambition and ideas, two attributes that LC have in spades. A very fine debut album.(Martyn Young)
GIANT GIANT SAND Tucson
‘Tucson’ is a sprawling album, steeped in country workouts with mariachi flourishes and a timeworn, husky drawl. This works best on the likes of the half-spoken ‘Slag Heap’, a languid shuffle which threatens to collapse beneath its casual approach before picking up brass and shards to guide it on its way. Similarly, ‘Caranito’ is a playful jaunt through Mexican country pop while ‘We Don’t Play Tonight’ is a gentle shimmy replete with percussive stabs and charming male-female harmonies. This approach however lapses into indulgence, becoming tangled in a mire of loose ends. Giant Giant Sand are capable of much more. (Colm McAuliffe)
RICHARD HAWLEY
Standing At The Sky's Edge
After six albums, there must come a point at which the prospect of attempting something markedly different really isn’t so pleasant. The careful balance of fulfilling musical desire, exciting yourself as a performer, remaining true to a style cultivated over a number of albums and an extensive career, all whilst moving forward creatively, has proved too tall an order for so many songwriters in the past. Hawley seems unfazed however, his new album 'Standing At The Sky’s Edge' sounding like a mega arena-filling space rock record, out with the grand string sections and in with the distortion. Another triumph. (Anna Byrne)
YNGVE & THE INNOCENT The Sadness Of Remembering
While the title of Yngve & The Innocent's new album may suggest yet more heartbroken laments, this debut is in fact full of up-tempo, rollicking folk vignettes. On the fast paced numbers such as 'You'll Be Mine' the band really succeed; Wieland's vocal on a race with the quick-fire drumming and piano flourishes. At times, the band seem less together, soldering on their talents to the frontman's songs. Nevertheless, there's a playful spirit throughout ‘The Sadness Of Remembering’ which infuses the band's performances with a lightness of step and ignites them with a beguiling charm. (Colm McAuliffe)
BOXES Stickers
On 'Stickers', Athlete bassist turned one-man band Carey Willetts comes at us with his blend of electro-indie pop. ‘Don’t Look Down’, ‘Silent Alarm’ and ‘Throw Your Stones’ saunter along pleasantly enough with the squeaks, pings and guitar, whilst ‘Sharks’ is the real gem here, building slowly and beautifully. Unfortunately, sometimes you can’t help but think the electro elements have just been piled on, producing a number of so-so tracks. Other times it works so well, but only when working with the strengths of the soothing qualities of his vocals. Although it is a very well produced, slick affair, 'Stickers' somehow has the ring of heard-it-all-before. (Aysha Hussain)
METRIC Synthetica
There was a point, back in 2005, when Metric should have become huge. We should have seen them headlining festivals and dancing around on TV. We didn't, yet it doesn't seem to have held them back. 'Synthetica' may not take any huge strides away from the established formula, but in Emily Haines the Canadians possess one of the true remaining iconic voices in alternative rock. With an FM radio exocet for a title track and an old fashion stomper ('Youth Without Youth') in reserve, by any scale Metric remain awesome. (Stephen Ackroyd)
ALT-J
An Awesome Wave
For the most part 'An Awesome Wave' is an album of futuristically off-kilter grooves; even in softer moments like ‘Bloodflood’ or pretty ditty ‘Toro’ there is still plenty of rhythmic tomfoolery to keep things interesting. The slinking ‘Breezeblocks’ is a beauty, and the album continues to surprise and delight with ‘Fitzpleasure’. While it might take a couple of listens to fully embrace the indecipherable tribal howls and quirks of Newman’s dancing falsetto, it’s well worth the investment. With far more substance than any of our violent first impressions might suggest, this debut is firmly about the music, and Alt-J succeed quite comfortably. (El Hunt)
LIARS WIXIW
Constantly shifting art rock beast Liars return with the richly textured 'WIXIW', where amid the electronic gadgetry, wetted rags dripped on tin pots and deflated balloons are just some of the sounds you’ll hear. Yet this is the most overtly human and personal record they’ve created. Opener ‘The Exact Colour Of Doubt’ shows skittering, haunting beauty as Angus sings "I’ll never let you go." At times it brings to mind the tribal sounds of ‘Drum’s Not Dead’, leaving room for ‘His And Mine Sensations’ and ‘Brats’ – dancefloor bangers from a parallel universe. Unpredictable, in the very best way. (Danny Wright) 69
SLUGABED
THE TEMPER TRAP The Temper Trap
The one thing you probably didn't expect to hear on The Temper Trap's second album was David Cameron. Certainly, it's the post-riot 'thinkpiece' 'London's Burning' that will get people talking about the self-titled follow up to the chart bursting 'Conditions'. Elsewhere the Aussies are in typically epic form; from the soaring 'Trembling Hands' to standout 'Rabbit Hole', while there may not be another 'Sweet Disposition', there are rewards aplenty for those willing to invest with their ears. (Stephen Ackroyd)
Time Team Time Team' opener ‘New Worlds’ draws you in with its hip-hop beats and swirling chords before ‘Sex’ takes you for a dirty, Chromeochannelling spin onto the dancefloor. By way of contrast ‘All This Time’ whisks the listener into ethereal dreamlike territory while cleverly fusing abrasive stabs with trance-like undertones. Slugabed's sound is best akin to a futuristic twist on those old school jams you used to slow dance to before R&B was pillaged by the likes of Guetta and Harris. A hugely rewarding album that delivers rich emotional-laden music with a human heart. (Greg Inglis)
Celebration Rock
Titles like 'Album Of The Year' generally are best awarded with a degree of hindsight; it's not a tag you want to dig out without consideration. Yet, when it comes to Japandroids' second full length, we can't see any way it won't be in the shake up come the cold winter months. Raucous, rambunctious and ruddy well brilliant, from the touches of The Boss through to perfectly brief track listing (for once, eight tracks seems less stingy, more perfectly pitched), 'Celebration Rock' is almost certainly the most thrilling ride of 2012. (Stephen Ackroyd)
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Words And Music By Saint Etienne
An air of nostalgia hangs over much of 'Words And Music By Saint Etienne' as the band work through melodic dance pop, electro and sweeping disco all with a classy swoon. ‘Last Days Of Disco’ features symphonic string sections and a lovely mellifluous chorus while the pop rush of ‘Tonight’ is an ode to the joy of going out and seeing the stars that you are so enthralled by in the flesh. There is perhaps no band with a greater appreciation of the sheer joy and thrill of pop music in its purest form than Saint Etienne. (Martyn Young)
BEN KWELLER
2:54
After four moderately successful albums that established him as the anti-folk leftfield prince of loner pop, Ben Kweller sounds less daring and experimental on his new album; like he’s close to a full-on midlife crisis. He seems to have lost much of his youthful joie de vivre, which has been replaced by tales of suburban boredom and mundane relationships. The second half of the album is definitely a ray of light, and 'Go Fly A Kite' is a likeable album, but with a tendency to sound like an American alt-rock band past their sell by date. (Linda Aust)
The Thurlow sisters have been making waves since their 'Scarlet' EP dropped last year, and now that their self-titled debut is here, it’s easy to see why. Blending influences from the darker reaches of rock, punk, and shoegaze, they’ve concocted a potent and heady brew full of mystery and intrigue. Guitars howl and swirl around pulsing grooves and hazy, layered vocals, a motorik wall of sound crashing relentlessly against your brain. Like two fallen angels back to steal what’s left of your soul, they lace their tales with a bewitching mood and tension. It’s sultry, it’s mischievous, and it’s damn near magnificent. (Derek Robertson)
Go Fly A Kite
JAPANDROIDS
SAINT ETIENNE
2:54
THE WALKMEN
Heaven 'Heaven' is a marked departure from the downcast pessimism Walkmen fans have become accustomed to. Once again the powerful tone of vocalist Hamilton Leithauser steers each song, through the understated guitars and reserved drumming. Not since Cold War Kids’ debut has there been an album so rich with emotion; engaging, intelligent lyrics, every syllable delivered as though Leithauser’s life depended on it. But that represents only half the proposition as it is combined with thirteen tracks of inch-perfect, stunningly resolved instrumentation. ‘Heaven’ represents a high point in the era of the guitar band. (Matthew Davies)
PEAKING LIGHTS Lucifer
FRIENDS Manifest!
If they were handing out awards for excitement, Friends' early offerings would have a clean sweep on glittering prizes to place on their mantlepiece. A perfectly formed pop gem with enough cool swagger about it to sink a hipster battleship (hipsters do still travel via battleship, right? - Ed), maintaining that kind of standard would take a herculean effort. As it turns out, debut full length 'Manifest!' struggles to hit those highs consistently, but that's only a problem when you're setting the bar by their own standards. (Stephen Ackroyd)
Peaking Lights have said that they consider ‘Lucifer’ to be a nocturnal version of their sound. Opener ‘Moonrise’ is a cacophonous mesh of xylophones accompanied by a simple two note organ refrain in the background; closer ‘Morning Star’ has clarity as an echoed organ pattern persists until eventually it echoes out into silence. Throughout, there’s a strong feeling of love and that’s what is so endearing, making you want to search deeper into their secluded bubble. ‘Lucifer’ mixes accessible pop with lo-fi dubpsych experimentation; giving old and new fans something to enjoy. (Aurora Mitchell)
O.CHILDREN
THE GHOSTS
On 'Apnea', O.Children reintroduce much of what made their debut so good: the claustrophobic, moody post-punk, a sense for a killer track, anthemic and infectious. ‘Red Like Fire’ is 'Disintegration'-era Cure with the chorus from ‘Black Hole Sun’ by Soundgarden, and it’s still a fair bit better than that combination looks on paper. Lead single, ‘PT Cruiser’ proves worthy of note, a swaggering garage rock jaunt with its irresistible echoed vocals and driving riff. ‘Apnea’ is not without flaw, but compelling as a whole. Sometimes it may not be how you want O.Children to sound but rather how O.Children most naturally sound - and there is a lot to be said for that. (Matthew Davies)
It'd be easy for those who care too much about such things to dismiss The Ghosts; their brand of synth pop isn't exactly the flavour of the month with the lofi cool kids, what with it having actual choruses and more than a passing acquaintance with a tune. Somewhere in between mid 90s indie 80s pop, 'Enough Time' and 'Ghosts' stand up to closer scrutiny, while at times 'Scared' echoes the Longpigs' Crispin Hunt. At least for those with less of a transient take on musical trends, 'The End' might just be the beginning. (Ben Marsden)
Apnea
The End
THE HIVES Lex Hives
It would have been ambitious to expect true experimentation of The Hives’ sound on their latest, as they've successfully ploughed a fairly narrow furrow since the opening bars of ‘Hate To Say I Told You So’. Howlin’ Pelle and co. haven’t returned with their ‘OK Computer’ but have returned with the pomp, charisma and contagious sense of fun they’re known for, with a surprising variety. ‘Lex Hives’ notably has high points in quality that greatly outshine the rest, begging the question - are those moments the last embers or the sparks for a whole new Hives inferno? Let's hope it doesn’t take another five years to find out. (Leah Henson)
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REVIEWS LIVE
CAMDEN
2012
Camden Crawl has been ‘a thing’ for many a year. Originally born in the mid-nineties and returning with the resurgence of live music half way through last decade, it’s always been subject to its critics (nobody likes queuing), but anything which puts so many bands in one place at one time has to be good, right? For once, the waiting to get in to a packed venue seems to be reduced. If that’s indicative of a smaller turn out or a scene where the buzz is more evenly spread is arguable, but when it
comes to bands like ICONA POP, it really doesn’t matter. Swedish pop music has given us much over the years, with the current vintage showing a fine line in electronic wizardry. Alongside Niki & The Dove (more on them later), this duo seem to pack the heavy weaponry in their arsenal required for a proper assault on the mainstream. Both disarmingly likeable and unfathomably catchy, they manage to combine a gloriously bratty attitude with almost no pretension whatsoever. Their aforementioned comrades fall in to a similar category. More concerned with the artistry than the flat out hook, there’s a touch of the Kate Bush to Malin Dahlström’s stage presence. It’s Gustaf Karlöf's wizardry, though, that seems to be the heart of NIKI & THE DOVE. When their expanded live line up really gets going, Koko is more than aware there’s something almost primal afoot.
If Scandinavia is packing more than its fair share of talent recently,
FEAR OF MEN
show that we’re still capable of growing our own. At their best, this is a band who sound genuinely iconic - ‘Ritual Confession’ the kind of song that has every hallmark of a classic written through it like Brighton rock.
niki and the dove
The rebirth of EUGENE MCGUINNESS is another plus for the home side - from his first album we’d never have expected such immediate, angular pop. Though he may have been hanging around on tour with Miles Kane, it’s the classic tones of Kane's Last Of The Shadow Puppets bandmate Alex Turner that seem to have taken hold.
As Camden Crawl has gone on, it’s attempted to expand out its genre base from four men with guitars from North London.
KIDS IN GLASS HOUSES may not be that big of a
jump, but a promise of ‘the rock’ seems to bring a crowd. It might not be quite what the band is used to (they seem to yearn for more interaction), but it works.
CYMBALS
would be a contender for the Most Packed Performance At The Camden Crawl trophy, if there was one. The Monarch seems to stick to the well traveled formula of busy bar plus good music equals dancing. Who knew? Camden; once the centre of London’s musical map. Though that title is debatable now, there are few other places capable of putting quite so many venues of such varying sizes and shapes in such a concentrated area. And for one weekend a year, making use of all of them for a single festival, Camden Crawl still has a part to play. 72 thisisfakediy.co.uk
Gu inn es Eu ge ne Mc
s
It may be Friday 13th, but Wembley Arena holds no superstition tonight: just optimism for folk pop’s finest, Frank Turner, playing his biggest ever headline show. Support comes from Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, who turn the mood with their hip-hop electro beats, and Billy Bragg who puts the crowd through their paces, declaring “Once you get that punk rock in your bones, it never really goes away.” When the man of the night takes to the stage, it’s ‘Eulogy’ that kicks us off, whilst the audience soon come into play with ‘Reasons Not To Be An Idiot’, Turner belting out whimsical charm with the help of his band, The Sleeping Souls. Also helping out tonight is Emily Barker and the Red Clay Halos, playing their part on ‘Long Live The Queen’. With their quaint vocal charm, violins and cowbell, the aura of the performance is poignant. It’s fair to say Turner’s voice is not something
photo: Skye Portman
WEMBLEY
ARENA, L O N D O N his albums do justice; live, his teasing vocal and raw emotion captivate the entire arena. A short solo acoustic run sees the wordsmith in his essence, but the clear pivotal performance is an unexpected duet with his Mum. Handing her a harmonica in a moment of spontaneity he declares, “You’ll know by the CD I bought you for Christmas.” ‘Dan’s Song’ easily achieves the biggest cheer of the night, with all praise going to Turner's mother. Through the encore interval, the Arena screens give fans of what Turner was doing backstage - getting a tattoo, of all things. When Turner returns, he’s joined by Billy Bragg for a cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’; a reminder of folk-pop without the frills. Twenty-four songs in, after a performance that will be remembered for a long time in Frank Turner history, the audience slowly leaves the plastic cup strewn floor, fulfilled and somewhat giddy. Once punk rock is in the bones, does it go away? No, no it doesn’t. (Skye Portman)
photo: olga Bas
PULP
R A D I O C I T Y M U S I C H A L L , N E W YO R K
After ramping up the audience with a string of questions lasered across a mesh curtain screening the stage -- do you want a drink? feeling alright? are you? do you want to see a dolphin? -- Pulp take the Radio City stage with ‘Do You Remember The First Time?’ The better question is: do you remember the last time? Pulp haven’t played New York City since their Hammerstein Ballroom gig in 1998. No wonder the hall is packed with both old and new fans, some had been waiting a lifetime to see the magic in person. Decked out in corduroy trousers and heeled boots, Jarvis Cocker hurtles around the massive stage, posing, throwing candy to the audience, and slinking with his signature hip wiggle. Radio City hasn’t seen this many high-kicks since the Rockettes last Christmas! Jarvis intersperses The Great Gatsby quotes and fun facts between hits like ‘Disco 2000’ and ‘Babies.’ Just your normal rock show. But it isn’t all highbrow intellectualizing. After scaling the side steps leading to the mezzanine, Jarvis shows his appreciation for the “beautiful” Radio City by giving it a
full-bodied dance, wall-to-face, while softly crooning ‘This Is Hardcore.’ In an even stranger turn of events, a dance troupe mime a stiff ballet during 'F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E'. The set list relies heavily on Pulp’s (arguably) best album, ‘Different Class’. After ‘Bar Italia,’ a soft, ballad-type song, Pulp close the set with crowd (and all-around) favourite ‘Common People’. But after a 14-year wait, an encore is inevitable. ‘Like A Friend,’ about the same friend that inspired ‘Common People’, starts off sedately, but bursts into frenzy at every chorus. ‘Party Hard,’ which hasn’t been seen live in ages, rounds out the two-hour set. It feels like minutes instead of hours - just to leave you satisfied enough to want more. Mr. Cocker’s solo efforts may have been a nice interlude. But Pulp’s reunion shows that many talented people in one band is just plain brilliance! (Olga Bas)
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REVIEWS LIVE
weird dreams
GREAT The Great Escape has come a long way in recent years. Though any claims to be Britain’s SXSW may be somewhat ambitious, ignoring its industry panels and networking sessions, it’s hard to think of any other festival with such an impeccably picked line up of new music. Taking place across Brighton’s many and varied venues and bars, from the sea front to the top of ‘that bloomin’ hill’, the annual multi-day event has become one of the better ways to catch some of the buzziest bands around.
maximo park 74 thisisfakediy.co.uk
2012 You don’t get much buzzier than SAVAGES right now. Added to the Corn Exchange as a last minute replacement, they’re not given the easiest of tasks. An audience unfamiliar with their material, playing quite possibly the biggest venue they’ve been challenged with to date, still they manage to show that certain something missing from many of their peers. If The Great Escape is about finding your next big crush, then this lot are worth keeping both eyes on.
At the other end of the spectrum comes
MAXIMO
PARK.
Already with chart topping albums under their belt, the Dome is certainly onside when it comes to their back catalogue; ‘Graffiti’ in particular drawing a rapturous reception. New material is always going to struggle in comparison, however. Though there’s every sign forthcoming full length ‘The National Health’ may follow the path of its lofty predecessors, for now it suffers the same fate any fresh meat would at the hands of a festival audience. If you’ve heard much about VIOLET, it’ll be that their front woman is a Geldof. The kind of baggage that could break a new band, it’s refreshing that - actually - she’s properly brilliant. They may have one hazy, blessed out trick, but in the confines of the aptly named Haunt they
do it well. NOVELLA, on the other hand, have already become the kind of promise it’s easy to get excited about. Exciting without ever seeming too excitable, there’s a sense of effortless brilliance about their set that bands twice their vintage fail to match. The issue, of course, with a multi-venue, inner city festival is that - on occasion - the city is a bit bigger than one would like. Brighton may not be exactly labyrinthian, but it’s sizeable enough to make the trek up
Violet
to Psychosocial a considerable commitment. WEIRD
DREAMS are certainly worth it, though. With a debut
album still fresh in the mind, their hazy lo-fi proves one thing once and for all; at least this weekend, it's far from boring by the sea.
savages
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REVIEWS FILM
ILL MANORS
6TH JUNE 2012
The directorial debut of Ben Drew, aka Plan B, is a grim, unsentimental ensemble drama with his forthcoming album of the same name serving as the soundtrack. Drew's script follows the despair of intertwining characters in London's Forest Gate, featuring the worst that humanity has to offer: gang violence, forced prostitution and drug addiction. For his first outing as director, Drew shoots with kinetic energy and high tension, beautifully framing the best and worst of the capital. What's most remarkable is how he captures nihilistic despair, without resorting to glossiness or glamorisation. Riz Ahmed is the heart of the film as a petty drug dealer, who endures his scumbag acquaintance forcing a drug-addicted prostitute to trawl kebab shops for pitiful business in one of the film's many distressing scenes. There's much to be said about the senseless cycle of despair, societal apathy and a lost generation before iLL Manors heads towards an all-too-neat dramatic climax that doesn't match the miserable, no-hope tone of the film overall. The cast are uniformly excellent, with Natalie Press in a subplot that could've come from A Serbian Film, and newcomers Ed Krein, Anouska Moud and Lee Allen among the many great prospects. (Becky Reed)
THE INNKEEPERS 8TH JUNE 2012
Following his marvellous retro chiller The House of the Devil, Cabin Fever 2 director Ti West brings us this deadpan comedy horror that doesn't fully deliver on its premise. Sara Paxton and Pat Healy are the slacker employees of a historic, haunted New England hotel that's set to close down. The last two on duty, they take it upon themselves to investigate the ghost stories surrounding the building, helped by Kelly McGillis' paranormal specialist (there's also a small role for Girls and Tiny Furniture writer Lena Dunham). While it's intermittently wry and clever, the scares are repetitive and ineffective, plus Paxton and Healy's performances as the camerawielding ghostbusters - while initially endearing - border on the irritating side of quirky. (Becky Reed) 76 thisisfakediy.co.uk
RED TAILS 6TH JUNE 2012
The meaty true story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American pilots in the US armed forces, and their heroics during WWII is brought to life in this fictionalised drama with The Wire and Treme director Anthony Hemingway making his feature debut. Therefore it's a surprise Red Tails has such an unashamedly corny, feel-good, matinee vibe - albeit one with superb dogfights, courtesy of George Lucas' involvement. A brilliant cast do what they can with the cheesy dialogue: David Oyelowo, Nate Parker, Tristan Wilds and Elijah Kelley are a delight as the tight-knit group of pilots finally given the chance to battle the Luftwaffe in outdated aircraft. Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr lend a bit of star power. (Becky Reed)
CASA DE MI PADRE 8TH JUNE 2012
A wholly bizarre confection filmed entirely in Spanish and featuring a tangoed Will Ferrell as a dumb rancher who becomes involved in a drug feud between his brother (Diego Luna) and local drug kingpin (Gael Garcia Bernal), whilst thinking impure thoughts about his brother's beautiful girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez). It looks like a technically inept, low budget film within a film with 1970s style technicolour and performances from some hugely skilled actors trying - and succeeding - to play poor actors in a trashy Mexican soap. Add a frankly gloriously weird and cruddy animal puppet and copious amounts of furious smoking and you have one of strangest and funniest films you're likely to see this year. Absurdly brilliant. (Christa Ktorides)
FILM THE RAID
'THIS IS MY BITCHY PERIOD' T O C E L E B R AT E T H E FAC T T H AT O N 1 S T J U N E U K C I N E M A S W I L L B E T R E AT E D T O T H E P R E S E N C E O F T WO E XC I T I N G F I L M S S TA R R I N G C H A R L I Z E T H E R O N , W E TA K E A LO O K AT W H AT T H E O S C A R - W I N N I N G S TA R W I L L B R I N G T O B O T H M OV I E S .
PROMETHEUS
In Ridley Scott's new sci-fi, which takes place in the same universe as his seminal 1979 classic Alien and effectively acts as a prequel, Theron plays Weyland Corporation rep Meredith Vickers. On board the space exploration vessel Prometheus, she leads a team that includes Noomi Rapace and Idris Elba, answering an "invitation" from a distant planet. We all remember how untrustworthy the Weyland-Yutani suits were, and the first impressions of Vickers are of a hard-hearted woman, doing push-ups after hypersleep and casually asking if any of her crewmates died during the trip. Theron said at the recent press conference: "She's just causing a lot of red tape and she's not a believer, she's not a scientist. But then she's actually there for a very personal reason, of which I cannot speak." Theron revealed who inspired this introduction. "There was this amazing performance that Tilda Swinton gave in 'Michael Clayton' and Ridley and I were talking about how when you see her, she doesn't say anything in the beginning of that film. The kind of panic that is instilled in her says so much without her ever having to say anything. Ridley came up with that idea to put me in a physical position where physically I'm saying ten times more than I could verbally."
SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN
When the first images and trailers appeared for this epic action take on the fairy tale, they all centered on Theron's evil Queen Ravenna. We know the beautiful star can do malevolence pretty well, whether it's tragic serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster, or the immature, marriage-wrecking prom queen who can't grow up in this year's Young Adult. As the actress pointed out at her recent BAFTA talk, "I went from Young Adult, to Prometheus to Snow White, and they're all, how do you say, bitchy? This is my bitchy period - I'm getting it out of my system." After her little chat with the magic mirror, Ravenna sends Chris Hemsworth to kill Kristen Stewart's Snow White, but the huntsman takes pity on the girl, and trains her to become a fierce warrior in this brooding adventure. Theron is doing her first British accent for the film, and revealed director Rupert Sanders initially thought it would be interesting if Theron used her native South African accent - she was forced to point out that Afrikaans is only a hundred years old, and the film is a medieval fantasy. And her inspiration for this film? None other than Jack Nicholson in The Shining, which grounded her understanding of Ravenna.
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TV GIRLS
GIRLS: DAVID BEDWELL CASTS HIS EYE OVER LENA DUNHAM'S HBO SHOW, SET TO AIR ON SKY ATLANTIC THIS SEPTEMBER. it is funny, but there are people that just won't get it. Simon Adebisi. Tony Soprano. Ari Gold. The Fisher family. Omar Little. Hannah Horvath? If there's one thing HBO is known for beyond the sex, violence and bad language, it's delivering some of the best characters in television history. Girls gives us a glimpse into the lives of - you guessed it - a group of young females, looking to find their way in the world, but it is no Gossip Girl or Sex & The City. This show falls more on the side of awkwardness, lacking in the sense of self-belief that other more positive shows might deliver. Think of that moment Karl Stefanovic on Australian TV tried to tell the Dalai Lama a joke, and was met with complete confusion and bewilderment. That's the vibe Girls aims for - it's real,
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As Hannah Horvath, creator, writer and director Lena Dunham (Tiny Furniture) delivers a performance that walks a fine line between naivety and ambition. She's a young girl who wants to do something special with her life, yet is almost unaware of the harsh reality of what's out there. That is until her parents cut her off and she's forced to make her own path. Hannah, along with the other girls Jessa ( Jemima Kirke), Marnie (Allison Williams) and Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) are all clearly influenced by the ideas of a Sex & The City-esque lifestyle yet their experiences are far more grounded in truth. Between strange sex sessions, drug use, and conversations on the toilet, Girls may have more in common with the BBC
drama Him & Her than any other show in recent memory. Whether you're male or female, you'll find moments in the pilot where something will click. The true appeal of Girls is that, while these characters might be in slightly unnatural situations and circumstances, the thoughts and feelings are ones we've all been through. It won't be for everyone, but if you appreciate a show that dares to not only touch a nerve but grab it and twist it around a few times, then Girls is for you. Many moments are treated with a sense of irony, with some laugh-out-loud comedic touches, but it never loses heart. This is HBO through and through - strong from top to bottom, and memorable for all the right reasons. Having Judd Apatow on board as executive producer certainly doesn't hurt either. Girls is painfully smart in the best way possible.
7878
SANTIGOLD
MASTER OF MY MAKE-BELIEVE
THE NEW ALBUM F E AT U R I N G T H E T R A C K S ‘ B I G M O U T H ’, ‘ D I S PA R AT E YO U T H ’ A N D ‘ FA M E ’
OUT NOW @SANTIGOLD
SANTIGOLD.COM
REVIEWS GAMES
OUT NOW & COMING SOON
PROTOTYPE 2
(Activision) – Xbox 360, PS3
The sequel to 2009's shape-shifting and devastating action game ushers in new levels of shape-shifting and devastation. Unfortunately, it doesn't bring with it much of an engaging story and you'll spend the majority of your game levelling up new protagonist Sgt James Heller as he effs and mother-effs his way through a contrived tale of revenge and revenge. Still, it plays like an absolute dream and there's a real sense of power to Heller as he upgrades and mutates throughout the course of the game, content with ripping the city a whole new set of a**eholes rather than concentrating on why he's bothering. Very little can compete with jumping on a tank, ripping off its gun, then punching a helicopter out of the air. Fantastic fun, but very little charm.
LOLLIPOP CHAINSAW
(Warner Bros) – Xbox 360, PS3 Release Date: 15/06/12
Take on hordes of the undead as Juliet Starling, cheerleader zombie-slayer, in this tongue-in-cheek hack 'n' slash extravaganza! With the help of your decapitated boyfriend, Nick, you'll find yourself chainsawing the faces of rock 'n' roll zombie lords and infected classmates alike. It's just like an episode of Skins, except more realistic.
CH-CH-CHECK OUT
SLEEPING DOGS
(Square Enix) – Xbox 360, PS3, PC Release Date: 17/08/12
This gritty open-world drama set in Hong Kong sees you in the boots of Wei Shen, an undercover cop sent to take down a Triad organization known as the Sun On Yee, which is Glaswegian for a nice, warm day. Expect unbridled melee combat, tyre-churning car chases and unrelenting violence!
JEWEL MASTER: CRADLE OF ROME 2
(Rising Star Games) – Nintendo 3DS Sick of blasting fools with a vast array of guns?! Why not match tiles in order to rebuild an empire to its former glory? The slick, addictive puzzle series returns to suck up all your hours as you struggle from rags to riches gathering gold and materials to craft magnificent palaces. And this time it’s in 3D. And, just like most films in 3D, it doesn’t really make much of a difference. It’s an awesome time-eating puzzler regardless.
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TESTAMENT OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (Focus Home Interactive) – Xbox 360, PS3, PC Release Date: September 2012
So it may not be Benedict Cumberbatch jumping off a London roof-top, but ye olde Sherlock Holmes still has a lot of life under his deerstalker in the first Holmes game to be designed for Xbox 360 and PS3. You'll play the super sleuth himself in London 1898 (when preparations began for the 2012 Olympics), helping him uncover clues to prove his innocence for a crime he, obviously, didn't commit. Originally scheduled for release in 2010, there's still, as of writing this piece, no solid release date yet! Somebody solve that.
DRONE WARS!
RETRO G A M E O F THE MONTH
CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS
TAPPER
(Coleco, 1984) – Commodore 64
This iconic beer-chucking brain-melter of a game was originally crafted by Midway for coinops to advertise Budweiser beer, but its transition to home computers saw genuine moustachioed panic become a household staple. Your role is to serve rampaging patrons in your gloriously understaffed drinking establishment glasses of beer/root beer/Mountain Dew (delete as appropriate) from barrels by sliding them across one of four bars that fill the screen. Customers arrive at the opposite ends of the bar, demanding liquid satisfaction (or the dirty thrill of Can-Can dancers), slowly making their way towards you. Once served, they'll leave – with the glass like thieving bastards – or have a drink and send the glass spinning back your way across the bar. If a customer reaches the end of the bar, or a glass isn't collected and crashes to the floor, the game is over. Your head will hit the wall – quite literally. Tapper is a frantic and frustrating number that belies its simple design, never ceasing to be entertaining regardless of what level of rage you're operating at. Ploughing through the levels will have you serving cowboys, toffs, punks and aliens before the game dramatically loops and doubles the speed.
Treyarch's sequel to 2010's Call Of Duty: Black Ops has just been announced as we write this piece. And, although much of the content unveiled is no surprise, there's been an uproar amongst some of the fans. Of course there has – fans do being offended better than anyone else. And it's all down to this – Black Ops 2 is the only game in CoD's long history to have a 'completely futuristic setting and feature future warfare technology'. Cue furore! Set in 2025 in a new Cold War, Black Ops 2 features the son of Alex Mason, David, in a storyline that – gulp – may feature various moral dilemmas and decision-making, as well as the inclusion of robot walkers and flying drones turned against your fleshy, human protagonist. This is not only the first CoD game to feature branching storylines, but also shift the setting to a sci-fi robo-b**tard battleground - it looks like some of the die-hards may be crying into their retro early 21st century rifles right now. But, is this development a 'good thing'? Should Activision evolve the CoD universe and storytelling, or stick with the slick, arcade shoot-
a-thon we all know and love? Don't we want it to take risks? Oh, and there's zombies... Call Of Duty: Black Ops II is set for release on 13th November for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. SO IF THE HALLOWED MACHINATIONS OF COD CAN BEND TO SUPPORT A SCI-FI SETTING, WHAT ABOUT OTHER GAMES?! HEAVY METAL RAIN A dark interactive tale where forty robots fall from the sky and kidnap your son. Kinect support allows you to truly get into character with the ability to yelp 'Jason' at your screen. THE SIMS SIMS Set in the year 4019, The Sims themselves have become self-aware and have created a Sims simulation to simulate themselves. When you play an endless loop occurs, crashing your computer. L.A.S.E.R. NOIRE A 1940s LAPD detective accidentally enters a time-warp portal hidden in the gunshot wound of a victim that whisks him into the year 2128. The cop must investigate the murder of a metaphysical victim all the while struggling with the shock of a world where humans fire lasers from their genitals.
BE SURE TO PICK UP
Its fairly recent release on Xbox LIVE Arcade as Root Beer Tapper has proven the game still holds strong, and its design has given birth to some modern classics such as Plants VS Zombies. And to top it all off, it's also the most accurate representation of bar-work ever. Especially the bit where an alien slides you head-first across the bar and into the wall, which happened to our friend last week in Glasgow.
THE WITCHER 2: ASSASSINS OF KINGS ENHANCED EDITION (CD Projekt RED) – Xbox 360
Geralt of Rivia's debut on consoles is a welcome one, easily standing his ground amongst Skyrim and Dragon's Dogma in a complex and winding tale of regicide and political betrayal. With fluid combat combining spell-casting and swordplay, The Witcher 2 becomes a bizarre and immersive obsession that falls victim only to its excessive use of anachronistic swearing and the eye-rolling amount of boobs on display. All this aside, this is worth all the time you'll end up dedicating to it. Simply brilliant. 81
BACKPAGE ANDREW WK
A DATE WITH...
photo: Emma Swann
L U K E M O RG A N B R I T T O N W I N ES A N D D I N ES S TA R S O F T H E M U S I C WO R L D
people “leave the room” as soon as we tell them we’re a 22 year old male. Andrew W.K. is well known as someone who parties hard. Heck, when we arrive he is even wearing a hat that specifies exactly that. ‘Party Hard’, like it’s a nametag for his soul or something. It’s a life that’s a far cry from the one us music writers and bloggers lead, alright. Someone has to hold up the online world when the rest of you are out gallivanting and having fun. We spend our evenings with our eyes fixed on the news feed because “that is when Pitchfork is awake.” We lie to our flatmates that we’ll go to bed after Twitter finishes, all the while knowing that it never will. And so in between the album announcements and tour date releases, we play the odd game of online chess with whoever else we can find on our Facebook chat list at these unholy hours. If that fails, we resort to playing strangers who only seem to care about knowing our age, sex, location and what we’re wearing. It doesn’t help our loneliness in the early hours when 82 thisisfakediy.co.uk
Meeting Andrew W.K. in the lobby of a West London hotel that hardly screams ‘R Kelly Afterparty’, we decide that this feature won’t involve a drug-fuelled orgy as you might imagine but instead a different kind of fun. And so with all the board games we can find at short notice, we meet Andrew in the bar, just metres away from what is a clearly a member of Westlife. On arrival, one out of the two of us is already nursing what seems to be a glass of whiskey. No prizes go to guessing the correct answer of which of us it is. But just as soon as I set up the chess set, Andrew looks up from his mobile momentarily – having broken the first rule of dates for the past two minutes (i.e. Never look at your phone unless it’s to tweet that you’re with the other person, which everyone knows is a clear indirect flirting tactic) – and decides he doesn’t want to play. “Dude, chess is for intelligent people like you, not me” he says, looking
back down at his mobile. We settle on Simpsons Monopoly instead but we hit a fork in the already rocky road when I ask which Andrew’s favourite character is. “Are you the type of person who thinks like that? Do you pick favourites in life?” he questions, as if interrogating me with a torch light about my sexual past. “You have to enjoy the good and the bad in this life, my friend” he preaches as I collect all the ‘Chance’ cards. Despite the suspected levels of inebriation of my counterpart, it seems to work. While I pick and choose my purchases carefully, the whiskey has inspired a gung-ho strategy of buying anything and everything in Andrew, like a drunk kid who’s sneaked a swig of his grandfather’s scotch and then walked into a candy store. It works to his advantage this time, but we probably shouldn’t adopt his strategy to any other dates. I don’t think it would end so well. Andrew W.K. is currently celebrating the tenth anniversary of his debut album ‘I Get Wet’.