**PLUS** YOUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO READING + LEEDS WITH UNDERØATH, WATERPARKS, SUM 41 AND LOADS MORE!
SEPTEMBER 2018 UPSETMAGAZINE.COM
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ALL TIME LOW MUNCIE GIRLS DILLY DALLY FIDLAR IDLES
SEPTEMBER 2018 Issue 36
HELLO.
Generally, we’re used to bands wanting to get away from their home towns. The big pop punk rulebook seems to say it’s the sort of thing you need to escape to progress - a weird sense of self-depreciating pride in where you’re from. Not with Boston Manor, though. To celebrate the release of their new album ‘Welcome To The Neighbourhood’, we’ve gone on a trip to the seaside for this month’s cover. And no, there’s not a kiss me quick hat in sight. It’s a bumper month for ace UK bands - with Muncie Girls, Idles and more all dropping brilliant new albums. Maybe home isn’t so bad after all?
RIOT 4. READING & LEEDS 12. FIDLAR 16. DILLY DALLY 18. ALL TIME LOW 20. ARCANE ROOTS ABOUT TO BREAK 22. PVMNTS FEATURES 24. BOSTON MANOR 36. IDLES 42. MUNCIE GIRLS 48. MENACE BEACH 50. WSTR REVIEWS 54. IDLES 56. SLAVES 58. 2000TREES TEENAGE KICKS 62. THE JOY FORMIDABLE
S tephen
Editor / @stephenackroyd
Upset Editor Stephen Ackroyd Deputy Editor Victoria Sinden Associate Editor Ali Shutler Scribblers Dan Harrison, Danny Randon, Dillon Eastoe, Jamie MacMillan, Jenessa Williams, Jessica Goodman, Rob Mair, Steven Loftin Snappers Danny Payne, Sarah Louise Bennett Cover photo: Sarah Louise Bennett P U B L I S H E D F RO M
W E LCO M E TOT H E B U N K E R.CO M U N I T 10, 23 G RA N G E RO A D, H A S T I N G S, T N34 2R L
All material copyright (c). All rights reserved.
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Riot_
THIS M O NTH IN R O CK ...
FIDLAR
With a new album on the way, it’s time to strap back in with Zac and co.. p.12
EVERYTHING HAPPENING IN ROCK
GET READY TO ROCK. IT’S
READING LEEDS DATE: 24TH - 26TH AUGUST LOCATION: RICHFIELD AVENUE, READING / BRAMHAM PARK, LEEDS WHO’S PLAYING?: FALL OUT BOY, PANIC! AT THE DISCO, WOLF ALICE, CREEPER. SWMRS, THE USED, LA DISPUTE, SUM 41, MIKE SHINODA, TRASH BOAT, DEAF HAVANA AND MORE
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It’s time for this year’s August Bank Holiday of mayhem.
DILLY DALLY
Everything you need to know about the Canadians’ second album. p.16
UNDERØATH T HE LO C K UP // F R I DAY R E ADI N G, SATU RDAY L EEDS
Hello Aaron! How’s it going?
planned for your set?
It’s going great. I’m on a plane to Chicago from the west coast next to a sweaty lady and a newborn.
Obviously playing lots of new stuff from the new album. As far as the stage set up, I have zero clue.
Have you enjoyed 2018 so far? It’s been a whirlwind year. Underoath on the radio for the first time, lots and lots of travelling, lots of firsts.
You’re playing Reading & Leeds this summer, which of your songs typically goes down best with a festival crowd? Honestly, overseas I don’t know. It’s different everywhere.
Do you have anything special
If money and time were no object, what would be your dream stage prop I’m not a big fan of fire and stuff like that. Maybe a giant Mountain like Kanye had?
Which would be the worst possible band you could clash with from this year’s bill? If Bring Me The Horizon was playing, that would be the worst.
ALL TIME LOW
Why are the princes of pop punk sending people birthday cakes? Find out. p.18
Which of the headliners is your fave? Kendrick. True hero and visionary, with as fucked up as our country is currently, he’s standing in the gap.
Who would you like to see headline in 2019? Umm, I dunno. A few years ago I was playing drums for Paramore, and we headlined one night and Queens of the Stone Age the other. I love Queens of the Stone Age.
Do you camp at festivals, or avoid tents at all costs? I love to camp, but festival camping is a no go for me.
What’s your number one tip for surviving a weekend in a field? Beer. P
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READING + LEEDS
WATERPARKS MAI N STAG E // F R I DAY R E ADI N G, SATU RDAY L EEDS
Hey Awsten, how’s it going? I just woke up, and I’m holding a hot coffee on my face. We’re currently on Warped Tour which means I feel like I’m about to die at all times.
Have you enjoyed 2018 so far? It’s been pretty nice for us as a band! I just put out a hair dye with Manic Panic which is the hair dye company I’ve used since before we mattered, so that’s cool!
Which of your songs goes down best with a festival crowd? ‘Take Her To The Moon’ has become a new favourite and pretty much always goes off super hard. I like playing ‘Lucky People’ too. And all our other songs too.
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Do you have anything special planned for your set, like new material or a flashy stage set up? I have things in mind for a stage set up, but we’ll see if that can happen. Stuff can be tricky to pull off overseas.
If money and time were no object, what would be your dream stage prop? Jesus, this is a damn question. I’d make Otto dress up like a cherry, and Geoff dress up like a minion. I’d wear my mom’s wedding dress and instead of confetti, $100 bills would rain from the ceiling, and a riot would start and strobe lights would be blasting everyone in the building. God, I’m a monster.
Which would be the worst possible band you could clash with from this year’s bill? Fall Out Boy because I wouldn’t show up to the Waterparks set.
Who would you like to see headline in 2019? Waterparks.
Do you camp at festivals, or avoid tents at all costs? Oh my god, never. I’ve never even been camping. I skipped school a few times to get barricade at shows, but I’ve never camped for anyone, haha.
What’s your number one tip for surviving a weekend in a field? You’re not allowed to say staying hydrated. 1. Don’t. 2. Don’t go. 3. Get a hotel. 4. Why would you ever. 5. Big mistake. P
DON’T MISS... FALL OUT BOY MA IN STAG E // F R I DAY
RE A D I NG, SAT U R DAY L E E DS If you’ve not seen Fall Out Boy play Reading and Leeds before, you’ve never experienced true joy. Promise.
PANIC! AT THE DISCO MA IN STAG E // SAT U R DAY
RE A D I NG, S U N DAY L E E DS Note perfect and with a side order of drama, Brendon Urie paired with Kendrick Lamar is the stuff of dreams.
CREEPER MA IN STAG E // F R I DAY
RE A D I NG, SAT U R DAY L E E DS They’re making enigmatic comments about The End. Creeper have form for Big Things happening at Reading & Leeds. You wouldn’t want to miss out.
YONAKA
FESTI VA L REP UBL I C STAG E // FR IDAY R E AD ING, SATUR DAY LE E D S
Hi Theresa, how’s it going? I’m really good, thanks! Currently in Switzerland, as we’re playing a festival.
Have you enjoyed 2018 so far? It’s been a great year so far. We’re currently on the European festival circuit, which is a first for us.
Do you have anything special planned for your set, like new material or a flashy stage set up? Lots of new material coming and we’re definitely expanding our show at the moment.
If money and time were no object, what would be your dream stage prop? A huge bubble, so you enter a new world where you get lost
for the time of the set.
Which would be the worst possible band you could clash with from this year’s bill? Kendrick Lamar, because he’s a genius.
Who would you like to see headline in 2019? Die Antwoord.
What’s your number one tip for surviving a weekend in a field? Power naps.
What are you up to for the remainder of the year? Lots more festivals; a London show in October; writer, recording, releasing more music. P
SWMRS RAD IO 1 STAGE // F R I DAY
RE A D I NG, SAT U R DAY L E E DS We’re expecting a new album before too long from our favourite stateside punx. Best get a work in progress update.
BLACK PEAKS THE P IT // SAT U R DAY
RE A D I NG, S U N DAY L E E DS They’ve got a scene stopping second album on the way. Promise us - you don’t want to miss out.
PALE WAVES FEST IVA L REPU B L I C STAG E
// SATU RDAY R E ADI N G, SUN DAY L EEDS The buzziest band in alternative music right now on a tiny stage, mid afternoon? Yeah. You wanna be there. DISRUPT THE NOISE 7
READING + LEEDS
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SUM 41 MA I N STAG E // SAT U R DAY R E A DI N G, S UN DAY L EEDS
It’s been quite a while since Sum 41 last played Reading & Leeds, but Deryck Whibley is ready for the challenge.
W
Words: Steven Loftin.
hen it comes to festival season, one name sticks out every year.
Reading & Leeds, the gruesome twosome, is a right of passage. It’s hard to believe that it’s been fifteen years since Canadian punk rockers Sum 41 have played. But they’re set to return this year, along with the likes of headliners Fall Out Boy, and Panic! At The Disco. “We did Reading & Leeds before, but it’s been a long time. I think the last time we did it was 2003?” Deryck Whibley begins, with an air of disbelief. “So yeah, we’re excited to be playing it again after this long! It’s a lot different now. Like, the last time we did it, it was Metallica, System of a Down, Slayer, it’s a much different bill this time.” The world they inhabit has undoubtedly changed over the nearly two decades since they last graced Richfield Avenue. “We’re just excited to be back and playing again,” he says laughing. “We don’t really care who else is on. We’re just happy to play!” Although they’ve spent the best part of the last two years celebrating the 2002 release of ‘Does This Look Infected?’, that won’t be making an appearance at either Reading or Leeds this month.
“THE LAST TIME WE DID IT, IT WAS METALLICA, SYSTEM OF A DOWN, SLAYER - IT’S A MUCH DIFFERENT BILL THIS TIME” “We’re just going to play a bit of everything. We’re done with the ‘Does This Look Infected?’ album, and we’re going to play bits from every album,” he says. ”I don’t even know how long we have to play yet, but it won’t be just a ‘Does This Look Infected’ set.” When it comes to North American and Canadian bands coming over here, it’s a different game entirely compared to their local events. Sure, there was Warped Tour and Coachella, but no one does them quite like us. “They’re totally different,” says Deryck. “Mostly the reaction. There’s not a lot of festivals in North America, and it just seems the festival thing is so much bigger over there. Like, Reading & Leeds is just so huge. You can’t compare it to festivals in North America. It’s just a different vibe, I guess.” It’s now been two years since they released ’13 Voices’, an album that saw them hitting darker depths than ever before and concerning Deryck’s quest for saviour and sobriety. “Right now, this whole year I’ve just been writing music, and we’ve been demoing songs in the studio, and plan to have
music out in the new year, 2019,” he reveals. “Musically it’s still on the heavier side. Lyrically, I don’t know - it’s hard to say as it’s right in the middle of writing, it’s not all finished yet,” he says. “But I’d say that it’s leaning on the heavier side, probably both musically and lyrically. Usually, if the music is heavy then lyrically it kind of goes along with it, but I don’t know - it’s still fun to me, it’s not angry in any way. It’s hard to explain…” Whatever form it comes in, it’ll always have that Sum 41 spark to it, the same that is littered across their decadesspanning discography. “Whenever I’m working on new music, it just comes out, and I don’t think about it. It just kind of happens on its own. It always sounds a little bit different than the previous record. It retains some Sum 41 sound to it, but it always has something a little bit different - I don’t know why. It’s its own thing I guess. Every time I sit down to write new music, it’s almost as if the past has nothing to do with it.” P DISRUPT THE NOISE 9
READING + LEEDS
PETROL GIRLS T H E LO C K U P // F R I DAY R E AD I N G, S U N DAY L EEDS
Hello Ren! Have you enjoyed 2018 so far?
Last night we played at Kafe Marat, an awesome DIY venue in Munich where we’ve been a few times. Still riding high on that right now!
Which of your songs goes down best with a festival crowd?
Definitely our anti-sexual violence anthem ‘Touch Me Again (and I’ll fucking kill you)’. In a way, it really sucks that that’s the case, because I think a big reason is that so many people, especially women, have shitty experiences of sexual violence at festivals. But it’s awesome to be able to shout “it’s my body and my choice” and “touch me again, and I’ll fucking kill you” together.
Do you have anything special planned for your set, like new material or a flashy stage set up?
I like trying to share the mic and platform that we get with other voices. We just started figuring out projections at the start of our new song ‘Sister’: people sent us videos of them describing what sisterhood means to them, which we’re using just like samples. I really hope we can make that work during our set! Last year we also started playing vocal samples that people sent us describing their experience of sexual violence at festivals, before we play ‘Touch Me Again’. We’ll do another online call out for that soon, as I think it’s really powerful when we can play them at the specific festivals where shit happened to people. People can send us voice
recordings to petrolgirlsvideo@ gmail.com!
If money and time were no object, what would be your dream stage prop?
Oh man. I dunno like maybe I’d wanna slide out of the mouth of a giant animatronic t-rex or something. And we want a hovering remote control platform so we could fly our drummer around.
Which would be the worst possible band you could clash with from this year’s bill?
Lamar.
Who would you like to see headline in 2019?
War Paint, Grimes, Bjork, Against Me!, FLEETWOOD MAC!! Missy Elliot, Paramore, Tegan and Sarah, P J Harvey, Arcade Fire, get fucking Beyoncé down there!
Do you camp at festivals, or avoid tents at all costs?
I’m dead happy in a tent! Even better though is staying in my partner’s van. I have been known to drunkenly shout “tent wankers” out of the van...
What’s your number one tip for surviving in a field? You’re not allowed to saying stay hydrated.
Papa Roach!! ‘Last Resort’ is my karaoke song of choice. We can’t clash with them because I need to go do guest vox on that.
At the risk of sounding like a massive hippy, just enjoy being in a field and not surrounded by concrete! And more practically, carry your own loo roll.
Which of the headliners is your fave?
What are you up to for the remainder of the year?
Uhhh I’m sorry I can’t even pretend I’m bothered by any of them! I do think it’s cool there’s a hip-hop act headlining, but I’m not that familiar with Kendrick
We’ve had a quiet start to the year because I’m back at uni, but we’re off on a massive tour as soon as I finish in September. We’re going to loads of places we’ve never played before like Poland, Spain and Denmark - can’t wait! Then we’re hitting the studio to record a new album. P
DON’T MISS...
Headphones
When I don’t want to talk to anyone on the long drives (which is most days) I can throw my headphones on and dive into Radiohead’s catalogue or air guitar to Deftones! I always take my studio headphones out cos ya gotta get that full bass range!!! But if I’m not blasting my favourite tunes, you’ll find me deep in a podcast... been loving Dirty John lately.
MIKE SHINODA MA IN STAG E // SAT U R DAY
RE A D I NG, S U N DAY L E E DS Mike’s back at Reading & Leeds, on the Main Stage. It’s a solo set that’s sure to be a genuine moment.
WOLF ALICE RAD IO 1 STAGE // F R I DAY
Ecca Vandal plays Reading & Leeds from 24th-26th August.
RE A D I NG, SAT U R DAY L E E DS Yes, they clash with Fall Out Boy, but if you plan it right, stand in the right places and run, you might just get to see two of our fave bands in one night. Result.
FIND OUT WHAT YOUR FAVE BANDS TAKE ON THE ROAD. THIS MONTH...
DEAF HAVANA RAD IO 1 STAGE // SAT U R DAY
RE A D I NG, S U N DAY L E E DS Will Deaf Havana’s new poptastic bangers work in a beered up festival environment? We’re betting yes, but there’s only one way to find out...
SHAME MA IN STAG E // SU N DAY
RE A D I NG, F R I DAY L E E DS A band with something to say on the Reading and Leeds Main Stage? Expect some fireworks.
DREAM WIFE FEST IVA L REPU B L I C STAG E //
FRIDAY R EA D I N G, SAT U R DAY LE ED S With a brilliant debut album behind them, the three piece are set to bring their punk party to one of the biggest festivals around.
SPRING KING FEST IVA L REPU B L I C STAG E //
SAT U R DAY R E ADI N G, SU N DAY LE ED S With new album ‘A Better Life’ due the week after, Spring King will have the party starting tunes to get your festival cooking on gas.
ECCA VANDAL Sneakers
I’m forever in flats these days. I usually take two pairs on the road, one pair to kick around in while I travel and then I usually switch it up for the show. I like to keep my lighter shoes clean and for stage only rather ran stomping around muddy festival sites in em! These guys clearly need a clean!
Mascara
Tour days are usually makeup free, but if I need to feel half alive I just throw on a bit of mascara! That late night /early morning routine got me looking hella tired. Thanks to MAC for making this mascara, it’s the best!
Book
Most people know that the key to touring is playing the game of waiting! Out of the whole day, there is so much waiting around to be done just to play a 30-60min set! So, thankfully, there’s plenty of time to get stuck into a book! I’ve taken this one for out for a spin lately.
My Band
Oh yeah, these guys are pretty important! They’re usually pretty rad to hang out with too so I guess I show include them in my tour musthave items. Thanks to LEGO for making these tour mascots for us. Take a guess what everyone plays in the band?!
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In the three years since FIDLAR last put out a record, a lot has changed - but a charged up Zac Carper is ready to let the fire burn again. Words: Dillon Eastoe.
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“N
othing amazes me any more. I mean literally every day somebody tells me, ‘Oh did you hear Trump said this shit?’ At this point, nothing amazes me.”
The world has changed in the three years since LA punks FIDLAR put out their last record ‘Too’, and even more so since their 2013 self-titled debut. Having made their name singing about drinking, skating and getting high, ‘Too’ saw them contend with overdoses and death, but also carefree abandon on the magnificent ‘West Coast’. With the band briefly in the UK for a short summer tour, vocalist Zac Carper is forthright about the madness engulfing his homeland, and the effect it’s had on him. “Our community is... America is so fucked up; it’s so fucked up right now. I’ve always thought America has been the laughing stock of the world generally, but it has become so prevalent right now. I’ve totally accepted that.
“WE HAVE HORNS ON THIS RECORD, FUCKING TRUMPETS AND SAXOPHONES AND TROMBONES AND SHIT” Like, yeah cool, you know what? We’re fucked.” FIDLAR haven’t let the fake news dystopia bog them down in their time off, with a new album in the bag, just waiting for sign-off from the higher-ups. Carper admits that despite their reputation as a feel-good band, the American carnage couldn’t help but creep into the writing of the new record. “There are definitely some lyrics about all that on the new record, what we’ve been going through as the members of an American society, and
travelling and touring. There’s even a song where the second lyric is like ‘fuck America’. We’re on a trip of trying to make music that’s reflective of what we’ve been going through the last couple years.” So far the only teaser of the new album is the standalone single ‘Alcohol’, which takes their familiar punky snarl and pairs it with a more seductive groove than we’ve become used to. “That one was kind of like a different approach. We were in a desert in El Paso, right next to
Mexico, so we had an engineer that was teaching us how to do Spanish percussive stuff. We were really into it for a long time, so we just kept doing it. You know how our first record, the last song was ‘Cocaine’ which is like one note the whole song, and this song ‘Alcohol’ is like two notes, that’s how I look at it.” Progress indeed. The band’s other recent release was a cover of the Pink Floyd classic ‘Have a Cigar’, which as is normally the case with FIDLAR, was motivated by more than just a passing appreciation for the tune. “You know that song is about record labels? A lot of it was like, you know Lil Peep died? He OD’d on Fentanyl, and that was a big thing in the Soundcloud rapper world - taking Xanax, Fentanyl, and that shit. It’s a shocking thing, all these kids taking so many drugs and then dying basically and record labels just being okay with that.” Zac’s tone changes notably as he considers the implications of the song and the depressing fact that it’s still relevant forty years later. “That broke my heart. I thought he was going to change the world, and it is still changing the world it’s just it sucks that he had to die. He was 20, that’s fucked. That’s too young.” Young isn’t likely a word Zac would use to describe his own band, being nearly ten years into their existence and on the cusp of their third record. “Uh I think we’re just old now, it’s happened, it’s weird,” Carper states, not denying that ageing has affected the way the new songs have come together. “For me, lyrical maturity - I’m always trying to be poetic, and I’m so dumb in that way. I hardly know how to speak proper English… hence ‘Wake Bake Skate’, ‘I drink cheap beer, so what? Fuck you’.” That image of FIDLAR as a band to drink to, not to think to,
is one that continues to rankle with their principal songwriter. “I think time will tell. Yeah, I think the publications and the press have narrowed us down to being the party punk band, to be honest. “But it’s not just party punk; we’re not NOFX. If we were NOFX... I sometimes wish we were! It would be way more fucking chill for me, just to do that. But we try and get into the deeper meaning of it. I think the music comes across, we’re just musicians writing lyrics, these are our lyrics, and if people want to corner us as a party punk band, then we’re a party punk band. “Our real fans, the people who have FIDLAR tattoos, they’re going to be with us for a long time. If anything is proof [of success], then being a fucking independent band out of this whole world in rock and roll... we’ve been able to do that!” With a devoted fanbase, a frenzied live show and a tantalising clutch of new songs ready to be released into the world, FIDLAR have little cause to be concerned, other than the racist shitshow that’s engulfed the country they call home of course. But it sounds like, in punk rock musical format, FIDLAR are going to have that covered. Not before they attempt to surprise fans and critics alike with what they’ve concocted in their desert studio. “I’d say it’s our most diverse record, 100%, more so than ‘Too’, more so than our first record… It’s been a fucking crazy trip bro; I’m not gonna lie, it’s been a crazy trip. And I think this record is us putting everything out on the fucking line. We have horns on this record, fucking trumpets and saxophones and trombones and shit; we went for it. We just completely fucking went for it, so I’m excited for it to come out.” The feeling is mutual, Zac. P
FIDLAR’s single ‘Alcohol’ is out now.
PHANTOMS OF THE OPERA
Hellions have announced their new album - ‘Rue’ will be released on 19th October via UNFD. The follow-up to ‘Opera Oblivia’, it’s preceded by the singles ‘X (Mwah)’, ‘Furrow’ and a brand new track ‘Smile’ too.
TOUR OF FEAR AND LOVE
Slaves have announced a new headline tour in support of upcoming album ‘Acts of Fear and Love’, which will be released on 17th August. The run will kick off on 7th November, and see them headline Ally Pally in London.
PLAY WITH DAVE
Dave Grohl has put together a new two-part mini-documentary called Play, which aims to celebrate “the rewards and challenges of dedicating ones life to playing and mastering a musical instrument.” It features an epic 23-minute composition, written and played on seven instruments by Grohl. DISRUPT THE NOISE 15 15 UPSETMAGAZINE.COM
CURSIVE WORDS
Nebraska band Cursive have announced that they’re going to release a new album later this year via Big Scary Monsters. Their first new material in six years, ’Vitriola’ will arrive on 5th October, and is preceded by lead single ‘Life Savings’, which you can check out on upsetmagazine.com now.
AIM HIGH
The list of nominees for the AIM Independent Music Awards is out. IDLES are up for three awards, Shame have clocked up two, while Wolf Alice are up for Independent Track of the Year and Zeal & Ardor for International Breakthrough of the Year.
PERFECT TEN
La Dispute have announced they’re going to release a 10 Year Anniversary edition of their debut album, ‘Somewhere at the Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair’. The record will arrive on 9th November. 16 UPSETMAGAZINE.COM 16 UPSETMAGAZINE.COM
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT
DILLY DALLY’S
SECOND ALBUM HEAVEN
“I HAD TO MAKE PEACE WITH THE FACT THAT DILLY DALLY MIGHT END” Toronto’s Dilly Dally are back with their second album ‘Heaven’, billed as a fierce, fiery ode to optimism. I wrote the songs on a white Flying V with lots of distortion pedals
I got that guitar to piss off all my music friends here in Toronto. I knew it was the least “cool” guitar I could start to embrace. And I wanted to show everyone that they were living in a Fender bubble, and it was OK to break the rules.
We almost broke up
After we toured the first record, the band was a mess. Everyone got swallowed into a deep depression like: On the road, there was no time to grieve anything. So when it was all said and done, there were a lot of grey clouds we had to push through. And we took time apart. I had to make peace with the fact that Dilly Dally might end. That’s when I started writing.
I left social media for mental health reasons
In order to get on a stage and feel like you have any wisdom to offer a large audience, I feel like I have to be good with myself on the inside. And really connected to my soul. Social media is superficial and
vapid, to say the least. It’s fun, but as one old homeless lady said to me one time while I was waiting for a bus: “Social Media is the Devil!”, hahahaha.
Dilly Dally isn’t angry anymore, just emo and mystical
After the election happened in the States, we felt a wave of depression wash over the whole country. Getting on stage every night and yelling about being on my period just didn’t cut deep enough to really capture the feeling of our surroundings. It was time to start writing again.
Everything happened naturally
As I said, the future of the band was a question mark. Dilly Dally started out of real friendship, and it has to continue that way. We’ve never talked about “how are we gonna get big” or “what do people wanna hear right now,” hahaha. We’re just a band, whether people wanna listen to us or not, we just wanna make music with each other every once and a while with no expectations really. That’s why we took our time with Heaven. That’s why we are so proud of it. P Dilly Dally’s
album ‘Heaven’ is out 14th September.
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BIRTHDAY BOYS XTRA XCERTS
The Xcerts are going to release an acoustic EP this autumn. ‘Late One Night’ will arrive on 5th October, as a limited edition signed and numbered 12” Vinyl and will feature five brand new versions of songs from the band’s recent album, ‘Hold On To Your Heart’.
MEET US IN THE BASEMENT
Basement have announced their new album. The full-length will be titled ‘Beside Myself’, and follows up on 2016’s ‘Promise Everything’. Set for release on 12th October via Fueled By Ramen, the band are set to hit the UK in November, where they’ll be joined on the road by Joyce Manor.
CAN’T SWIM
Can’t Swim have parted ways with drummer Andrea Morgan. Writing a message on Instagram, the band explain Morgan will be “exploring different opportunities behind the scenes in a more creative way”. 18 UPSETMAGAZINE.COM 18 UPSETMAGAZINE.COM
Most bands drop bangers. All Time Low - they drop cakes. Cakes, and bangers. We caught up with frontman Alex Gaskarth to find out what the hell the band are up to.
I
Words: Steven Loftin.
magine receiving an entire cake from your favourite band wishing you Happy Birthday. Perfect, right?
That’s what All Time Low thought too when dropping their new track, the aptly-titled ‘Birthday’. “We thought it was time for something fun, something summery. Time to open up the lemonade stand so to speak,” Alex Gaskarth enthuses. ‘Birthday’ is All Time Low kicking up the dust - filled with positivity, fun and a bit of cheek. A care-free bop that gives the sense that maybe, just maybe, everything is going to be alright. “It’s been awesome because I think we caught everybody off guard with [previous single] ‘Everything Is Fine’, and a lot of people didn’t know what was going on,” Alex says on the surprise activity. “They didn’t know if it was a tease to a deluxe album, or if it’s us setting up a new record. It sparked a lot of questions as to what’s going on in the land of All Time Low. “When we followed it up with ‘Birthday’, it just continued to spur on that excitement. What I love about it is even we don’t know what we’re doing. We’re just putting songs out.” The refreshing nature of All Time Low’s approach to this new material proves they’re in a good place. The nature of the stunt in itself was entirely new territory for the Baltimore four-piece. “We’d never done anything like that before,” he starts. “Everything we’ve ever done, as far as releases go, was always tied to a record, or something more official. So being that this felt disconnected, and like it’s
“I THINK WE CAUGHT EVERYBODY OFF GUARD” own thing, it allowed us to do something fun with it. I love the idea of someone getting a cake out of the blue, and it says it’s from a band they listen to. “If it were me, and the roles were flipped, and someone sent me a cake, I’d be more confused than anything else?” he adds, laughing. “All Time Low is going fully into the baking business now! It’s straight to the consumers’ mouths.” “We realised we could do something a little bit detached, and different,” he says of the initial idea. “We have this tightknit group of fans, and through our fan club we have a great way accessing people all over the world, and so that was the premise of it; let’s find someone in every region of the world. “I think we sent two cakes to Japan, a couple to Australia, Europe, the UK and a few in the States. It was a really fun thing, every time one would pop up it was fun to see who it was; what their story was, what was going on in their lives - it felt like a nice way to get direct with our fans.” Keep in touch with their fans has always been important to the band. “We’ve tried to have a more personal relationship with our fanbase, and to try and connect as best we can with everybody that cares about us. The fanbase, and the way it grew so organically over the years is such a big part of why the band has stood the test of time.” Speaking of time, it feels like All Time Low couldn’t have come back so positive at a better time, what, given the current state of the world.
“It just felt like the right moment,” Alex declares. “The last record we put out, ‘Last Young Renegade’, touched upon a lot of dark themes for us [and] was about our dark places. It felt like coming off of that we needed something that went the other way and brought more of a positive spin and had that unique energy that All Time Low delivers in a lot of the music that we put out. These felt like they captured that again. “At the end of the day when you’re trying to go for a sound, which in this case, let’s put something out that sounds high energy, you run the risk of forcing it. Any time we’ve done anything that was forced, it never felt right, and it’s never really stood the test of time for us,” he admits. “The stuff that’s connected with the fans the most is the material we’ve been wholly invested, and these two songs checked those boxes.” With no real plan set in stone, the future is All Time Low’s for the taking, and who knows what baked goods could be turning up at your doorstep soon. “What’s awesome about where we are right now is there’s no pressure on us to deliver any one thing,” Alex finalises. “All Time Low could go so many different directions right now, and that’s what we’re happiest about. It’s figuring out what that next step is, figuring out where the sounds could go, where we want to take it, what we want to do with the future. It feels incredible - and freeing - to have that mindset going in. The future feels wide open.” P DISRUPT THE NOISE 19
DEEP CUTS JUSTIN TIME
Former Motion City Soundtrack frontman Justin Courtney Pierre has returned, with a brand new solo album due this October. Titled ‘In The Drink’, its the first material from Pierre since the band called it a day two years ago.
YOUR FAVOURITE BANDS’ FAVOURITE SONGS
ARCANE ROOTS Andrew Groves delves into Arcane Roots’ back catalogue to pull out some of his fave lesserknown tracks - if you want the big singles, you won’t find them here.
WINTER’S WEPT
SOLEMN (REPRISE)
Also from the ‘Blood & Chemistry’ sessions, this was originally a song in three parts that gradually grew in its production throughout the course of the album, littered in the spaces between each song. Again, due to the restriction in space, we had to adapt it to fit into just two little parts placed after the end of ‘Sacred Shapes’ and ‘Slow’. Quite probably the most personal song on the
‘Melancholia Hymns’ holds the record for the most alternative versions of an Arcane Roots song, and this little reprise after ‘Indigo’ is a prime example. In one of my usual fits of deleting everything and starting again, this beautifully haunting little version fell out of me and subsequently cursed every version since. P Arcane Roots’
From ‘Blood & Chemistry’
GROWING UP
Doe have announced their new album; ‘Grow Into It’ will arrive on 28th September via Big Scary Monsters (UK/EU) and Topshelf Records (US). “Grow into It is an album about the ageing process and growth,” explains singer and guitarist Nicola Leel. 20 UPSETMAGAZINE.COM 20 UPSETMAGAZINE.COM
From ‘Heaven & Earth’
‘Blood & Chemistry’ was originally twelve tracks long, but it ran a little too long to fit onto vinyl, so, unfortunately, we had to lose two songs. Luckily, we were able to release ‘Harboured At Sea’ as a bonus track. The title was inspired by a lyric from ‘The Water’ by Feist, and later became the first dance at my wedding and is now, consequently, tattooed on my arm.
From ‘Blood & Chemistry’
Enter Shikari are playing a tiny Brighton show as part of a charity gig series, Get Loud. The onenight-only series of shows will take place all over the country on 26th September, raising money for Nordoff Robbins.
ENCHANTED BY THE LIGHT This was the bonus track at the end of ‘Heaven & Earth’. Anyone hearing this now, post’Melancholia Hymns’, might see it as the bridge between the two records, and if you do, then you’re correct because it also lyrically foreshadows ‘Before Me’, the first track on ‘Melancholia Hymns’. All of the songs on ‘Heaven & Earth’ started off as quick verse and chorus demos that we then fleshed out in the rehearsal room, but I wanted to keep this as it was, simple, delicate and fleeting.
HARBOURED AT SEA
GET LOUD
record, I saved every dying ember of a past love for the vocals.
From ‘Melancholia Hymns’
new EP ‘Landslide’ is out 14th September.
THERE’S A WHOLE UNIVERSE OF E’S MUSIC OUT THERE TO ENJOY. HER S THI TO G WHAT WE’VE BEEN LISTENIN FIND HT MIG MONTH. CHECK IT OUT, YOU SOMETHING NEW.
TWENTY ONE PILOTS LEVITATE
The latest TØP offering is the genre bending masterpiece you’d expect. FROM THE ALBUM ‘TRENCH’, OUT 5TH OCTOBER.
DILLY DALLY
THE CANDESCENTS
With a pleasing grungy edge, we’re ready to book a stay with Dilly Dally. FROM THE ALBUM ‘HEAVEN’, OUT 14TH SEPTEMBER.
Delightfully sunny janglepop from one of the most exciting new bands we’ve heard this year. STREAM ‘BACK OF YOUR HAND’ ONLINE NOW.
SOBER MOTEL
FATHERSON
CHARM SCHOOL
The Scots rockers are back in fine form with this new cut. FROM THE ALBUM ‘SUM OF ALL YOUR PARTS’, OUT 14TH SEPTEMBER.
BACK OF YOUR HAND
SLAVES
CHOKEHOLD
Slaves have discovered choruses. From here, everything changes. FROM THE ALBUM ‘ACTS OF FEAR AND LOVE’, OUT NOW.
ALKALINE TRIO
YOU ME AT SIX
It’s the title track of a new album - their first in five years. FROM THE ALBUM ‘IS THIS THING CURSED?’, OUT 31ST AUGUST.
You Me At Six describe this as ‘R&B-tinged”. Honestly, it kinda works. Promise. FROM THE ALBUM ‘VI’, OUT 5TH OCTOBER.
IS THIS THING CURSED?
BLACK PEAKS ELECTRIC FIRES
The lads “wrote a song about how our Alien forefathers came here from Mars at the dawn of civilisation”. Yep. FROM THE ALBUM ‘ALL THAT DIVIDES’, OUT 5TH OCTOBER.
IOU
BASEMENT DISCONNECT
The first taster of new album ‘Beside Myself’, it’s obvs brilliant. FROM THE ALBUM ‘BESIDE MYSELF’, OUT 12TH OCTOBER.
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THE BEST NEW BANDS. THE HOTTEST NEW MUSIC.
WANT A NEW BAND CRUSH? CHECK OUT THIS LOT! >>>
PVMNTS
Let’s get this straight - yes, you do recognise one of PVMNTS. And yes, he does look slightly less, y’know, ‘wolfy’ - but there’s far more to this three piece than a genuine superstar. Words: Jessica Goodman
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THE CANDESCENTS
Alternative music’s buzziest label Dirty Hit (The 1975, Pale Waves) have just signed this lot - who are about to drop an EP. From what we’ve heard, it’s solid bangers.
SLIME CITY
Glasgow’s newest noiseniks, Slime City’s debut track - ‘Less Jools More Top Of The Pops’ - offers a message we can all believe in. No more honky tonk!
“I
t’s pop punk: it’s heavy topics, but for the most part it’s upbeat and happy.” Such
is the ethos of PVMNTS. The burgeoning trio – consisting of Tyler Posey (yes, him out of Teen Wolf), Freddie Ramirez, and Nick Guzman – are on a mission to make the world they live in feel just a little bit brighter. Cue the release of ‘Brighter Days’, a six-track EP that sees the band bare their hearts on their sleeves, forging a sense of strength and paving the way towards empowerment. Laughing and joking about drumming using pots and pans as kids, it seems like music has always been in PVMNTS’ blood. “Music just kind of came naturally to me,” Freddy enthuses. “I always used to come up with these little tunes in my head growing up, playing with my Hot Wheels or my action figures or whatever.” They’ve come a long way since their days of soundtracking miniature figurines. Sure, this might be the band’s first EP, but the group’s history together stretches back nearly a decade. “Tyler and I met in an older band when we were sixteen,” Freddy states. “We played our first show together. We recorded our first song together.” Their first venture into the studio wasn’t just the first time they recorded together, but also with producer Kyle Black, now perhaps best known for his work with the likes of State Champs and New Found Glory. “He was recording anything he could get his hands on
CHAPTER & VERSE
This East London bunch have been turning heads on tour with Dream State and Hellions this year, and at 2000trees. What’s next? No idea m8.
“OUR SONGS ARE LIKE US: THEY CHANGE” because that’s what he loves to do,” Freddy recalls. “The band that we were in, it wasn’t really up to par, I guess?” he laughs. “It wasn’t the best, but we just fell in love with how everything sounded.” Fast forward several years later, and like stars aligning, the pair joined forces with drummer Nick to form PVMNTS and once again ventured into the studio with Kyle Black to make the record they always aspired to. The first taste of what the trio have always been capable of takes shape as ‘Better Days’, a hook-laden venture towards finding strength and striving for what makes you feel good. “If it’s our plan to write heavy songs, for the most part, it’s going to be pretty uplifting and have an upbeat tempo and be pleasing to listen to,” Tyler explains. “I think that we wanted to tackle heavy topic songs,” he continues. “We wanted to write about emotional stuff, but we wanted to do it in a way where it’s still uplifting, and there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel.” With their debut EP finally out in the world, PVMNTS are already focused on the next steps in their evolution, taking any opportunity they get to further their creative prowess. “We always have instruments around, so we’ll end up picking up a guitar by ourselves and
then writing a song,” Tyler states. “Sometimes we all get in the same room, and we write together. Those are really fun experiences because that song is a little bit of everybody. It has the true heart of PVMNTS.” Whatever their methods, PVMNTS are out to create something real. “Our songs are like us: they change,” Tyler enthuses – a statement his bandmates are quick to agree with. “It’s just 100% us,” Freddy expresses. “It’s raw. It’s stuff that we go through.” True to form, ‘Better Days’ is a striking taste of everything the band have grown to be. “It’s PVMNTS, that’s what it is,” the frontman beams. Like the musicians themselves, the band is growing every day. Their future is certainly looking bright. With the promise that their next release is already “definitely on the horizon,” as well as music videos, work with Atticus, live shows, and the promise of further UK dates towards the end of this year, PVMNTS’ time is now. “We’re already thinking about the next album, the next EP, whatever,” Tyler states. “We’re writing songs and already thinking about what we can do next.” Wherever the road takes them, it’s clear that this is only the beginning. P
PVMNTS’ new EP ‘Better Days’ is out now.
DISRUPT THE NOISE 23
There’s no place like home.
24 UPSETMAGAZINE.COM
With a second album imminent, Boston Manor are finding their seaside roots. Welcome to the neighbourhood. Words: Danny Randon. Photos: Sarah Louise Bennett.
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H
enry Cox has spent a lot of time reflecting on his formative years in Blackpool lately.
Although he was born some 112 miles away in Burton-uponTrent, the sprightly lead singer of Boston Manor has proudly called the Lancashire resort home since he was four. “It’s such an interesting place, and there isn’t really anywhere I’ve found that’s quite like it,” says Henry, now aged 25. “There’s this weird culture that hasn’t changed since the 80s – it’s not relevant to 2018, but it’s still there. It’s fascinating. The kind of people you meet here and the aesthetic are unique.” Henry’s unwinding in his parents’ living room in Blackpool, the glass of Shiraz in his hand well earned after wrapping up three consecutive nights of filming the quintet’s latest music video. It was a “fun and a little bit stressful” milestone for Henry – having previously directed music videos for the likes of Jamie Lenman and Weatherstate, the promising young filmmaker took on the helm of a Boston Manor video for the first time. “We’ve just been doing lots of weird shit in Blackpool at night and filming it!” Henry teases of the “film noir-y, trippy journey through the surreal” which he captured over shoots which started at 9 pm and ended at 5 am. “I went to film school, and I’ve been directing videos for a while, and I felt confident enough to the point where I was like, ‘I can do this for Boston Manor, I can direct a video for us’. For every video I can think of, we’ve come up with a treatment for it and worked with the directors quite intensively. “I’m sure I’m a director’s worst nightmare because I’m always peering over their shoulder and asking, ‘have you thought about maybe doing ‘this’’?” he laughs.
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“WE’VE BEEN DOING LOTS OF WEIRD SHIT IN BLACKPOOL AT NIGHT AND FILMING IT”
T
hrough the eyes of a child, Blackpool is a wonderland of amusement arcades and enough sugar to give you diabetes just by thinking about it – a haven of good oldfashioned family fun. Henry
has very fond memories of his childhood and adolescence in the seaside town, but as he has grown older, he has inevitably become more aware of the harsher realities that cast larger silhouettes over the town than its eponymous tower. “I’ve seen what Blackpool is from a young age, but when you’re young you look past the bad stuff,” he says. “You go out, your parents take you to the arcade or to Pleasure Beach, and you ride on the rollercoasters, and then you go to McDonald’s, and it’s a really nice day out. You don’t notice the things in the shadows, but they’re constantly there. All I saw was the bright lights, but in reality, there was all this stuff going on in the background, and it’s tough.” Henry admits that he would be lying if he said that he was raised on Blackpool’s meaner streets, but he has seen enough to know what goes down in the town’s darker underbelly – whether it’s through heroin addicts shooting up in the bus shelter around the corner from his house, or the man who threw himself off the shelter and landed right next to the Cox family car when Henry was just 10 years old.
These sad scenes aren’t exclusive to Blackpool of course, and Henry remains optimistic about his hometown slowly getting back on its feet, but he’s also fully aware of the ongoing struggle for just one of the many dilapidated industrial towns in Lancashire and the North of England as a whole. “The North suffered when industry moved abroad,” he says in an authoritative manner. “Blackpool has that element, but its industry was entertainment, and that entertainment has since gone. It’s unique, but it’s got this constant battle between the fun, sunset-y place that it once was and the totally deprived, uneducated, rough place that it’s become.”
I
t’s those shadowy corners of Blackpool that a young Henry was once blind to which Boston Manor – completed by guitarists Ash Wilson and Mike Cunniff, bassist Dan Cunniff and drummer Jordan Pugh – have explored on their hotly-anticipated second album, ‘Welcome to the Neighbourhood’. Set within
a fictional re-imagining of the town, desolated by crime, poverty, addiction and failure, it’s in serious contention for the most outstanding British rock record of the year, but it’s also the last record you might have expected from a band who were ordained the ‘next big thing’ in pop-punk following their 2016 debut full-length, ‘Be Nothing.’.
VISIT BLACKPOOL Do you like to be beside the seaside? Here are frontman Henry Cox’s top five places to visit in his hometown of Blackpool.
Pleasure Beach “It’s a very underrated theme park, but it’s fucking sick. They’ve just opened a new ride, and I’ve not been on it yet, so I’m gonna try and hit it at some point. The Big One is great too; I love that one.” Woody’s Fish & Chips “They do the best fish and
chips in Blackpool. I don’t eat fish because I’m vegetarian, but if you eat fish and chips, that’s the place to fucking go!”
At any time on any night of the week, you can see a grown man wearing a cape doing air guitar at The Tache.”
Scrooges Bar “It’s the only place where if you’re young and not a chav you can enjoy yourself, it’s a weird little dive bar where they play indie and that, and it’s pretty chill.”
Central Pier “I’m gonna call it; it’s the best of Blackpool’s piers. One summer when I was about 12, me and my friend played House of the Dead 4 every day and we completed the whole thing, it was so sick! Next to playing the Main Stage at Download, that’s my biggest achievement.”
The Tache “It is the rock club where Whitesnake formed, and I met all of Boston Manor in there.
Although ‘Be Nothing.’ is a frenetic, heart-on-sleeve masterclass in the genre, Boston Manor felt like they had outgrown pop-punk even by the time they wrapped up production of the record nearly three years ago. “We’ve often been pigeonholed in the pop-punk scene, and I don’t really mind that, but I would never label us as pop-punk,” says Ash who, having been raised in the suburb of Thornton-Cleveleys, claims to be the only member of Boston Manor that’s ‘100% Blackpool’. “I don’t think any of us listen to pop-punk. I can’t remember the last time I listened to anything pop-punk other than my friends’ bands when they put out new music.” “We found ourselves at a weird point where we came to write the first album,” Henry adds. “We felt somewhat naïve that we had this audience that we needed to not extradite by releasing something that wasn’t pop-punk. At that point, we were still unsure on where to take things, so I feel like we were playing it safe on that album. “We’re very proud and happy with ‘Be Nothing.’ because it’s our first ever album,” he assures. “But it would be a bit overzealous to say we were creatively satisfied with it.” With not a single twostepping, skate-worthy beat to be heard anywhere near it, ‘Welcome to the Neighbourhood’ is a far cry from the frenetic sounds of old, but a slowing in pace does not mean a lessening in intensity. The bop and bounce of a song like ‘Flowers In Your Dustbin’ and the titanic choruses of ‘Halo’ and ‘Tunnel Vision’ have the momentum to push Boston Manor to the heady heights of daytime radio. On the flipside, the likes of ‘England’s Dreaming’ and ‘Funeral Party’ instil a feeling of dread through sinister, sprawling and at times almost Korn-esque guitars. If anything, ‘Welcome to the
“IT’S A BLESSING AND A CURSE THAT WE’RE ABSOLUTE PERFECTIONISTS” Neighbourhood’ is more fired up than anything Boston Manor have previously committed to memory. “Your taste changes in two years, particularly in your twenties,” adds Henry. “Our tastes now are so vastly different, so when it came to writing this album, we were in a totally different world to where we were on the first album.” Their second album is one that prides itself not only on its unpredictability but also in its ability to uncover its layers and nuances with each infectious listen. From the opening titletrack, which subtly spirals down into a series of static bursts and distorted screams, Boston Manor have created a gloriously unsettling listening experience. So determined were the band in creating these ominous vibes that they even scrapped and re-wrote what Henry reckons to be “around 60%” of the album just a couple of months before recording it. “It’s a blessing and a curse that we’re absolute perfectionists,” laughs Ash. “We would write an idea out for a song, and we would just work it to death until it sounded absolutely perfect. It took a while, and there were times where a couple of us would get a little bit frustrated – someone would prefer one idea while someone else would prefer the other, but everyone came to an agreement that it was for the benefit of the song. It has to sound as good as it can, and we
definitely accomplished that.” “We decided that the stepping stone approach wasn’t going to work and that we needed to do something different,” says the frontman. “When it felt the most like we were pushing [on ‘Be Nothing.’], we were only crawling an inch, and even that felt like we were stepping outside of our comfort zone. With this one, we threw all caution to the wind and just went, ‘Fuck it, let’s try stuff’.” When Henry and Ash mentally leaf through the records and discuss the artists that have inspired their changing approach to music in the last few years, they talk enthusiastically about albums like ‘White Pony’ by Deftones and ‘The Downward Spiral’ by Henry’s favourite band, Nine Inch Nails. They detail how the band have “started to go down the rabbit hole with industrial music”, picking up inspiration from Skinny Puppy and Ministry along the way, but then they give a nod to the more cinematic, art-rock stylings of Failure and ‘OK Computer’-era Radiohead as well. As someone who grew up on hip-hop and wasn’t a devout rock fan until he was in his teens, Henry has also been hugely inspired by Californian quintet The Neighbourhood and their infusions of R&B, hip-hop and indie rock. “The Neighbourhood’s music sits very nicely in an open space,” he explains. “There’s a couple of tracks on the record DISRUPT THE NOISE 29
where we kind of managed to capture that and we’re trying to look at how to do that more in the future. That’s definitely a vibe – the hip-hop element of the sound we’re going for is something we want to indulge ourselves in further.” Not only did Henry want to balance out his no-fucks-given vocal delivery with an enhanced focus on the more soulful side of his range, but he also sought the opportunity to take his pride in lyrics and cultivate more of a reputation as a wordsmith. “I look back at the lyrics on the first album and I cringe because I was finding my feet, and I still am,” he says. “It would be arrogant to say that I’ve cracked it, but I’ve written a few lyrics on this record that I’m proud of. It’s a yin and yang of lyrics and melody, and it’s hard to keep them in balance.” When you hear the sheer ferocity with which he belts out the line “Give me morality / Give me a soul / Give me cheap alcohol and put me on the dole”, or even the way he cautiously drawls “Welcome to the Neighbourhood / If you could leave you would,” you can’t deny that Henry has enhanced his profile as one of the UK’s most impassioned bandleaders. “I wrote the lyrics to be duplicitous,” he reveals. “If you wanted to dig, you can find little references and meanings, but at face value, you can make these songs about what you want to make them about. It’s an angry album, and the whole purpose of the album is to channel your anger through it. So, if you’re pissed off at your stepdad or whatever, and you listen to the song ‘Hate You’, and it makes you feel something and allows you to process that, then you process that.”
I
n September 2017, Boston Manor decamped to Hopatcong, New Jersey – once a popular summer getaway destination for New
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“I’VE SEEN A LOT OF HATRED BUT EQUALLY A LOT OF MISREPRESENTATION, LAZINESS, RACISM, SEXISM…” York yuppies, it is a modest town with a population falling short of 15,000 – to start pre-production on what would eventually become ‘Welcome to the Neighbourhood’. “It was really nice and sunny,” Ash recalls of his first experience of Hopatcong. “When we were jet-lagged one day, me and Henry got up at 6 am, took two kayaks out onto the lake and just paddled around for a few hours. “After that, we couldn’t wait to go back and take those kayaks out again, but then fast forward to January, and the whole lake was frozen over. There were people on motocross bikes bombing it down the middle of the lake and pitching up tents and fishing. It was mental; I’d never seen anything like it. “I used to have an app on my phone which, instead of telling me what temperature it was, would just tell me if it was ‘fucking freezing’ or ‘pissing it down’. [The temperature] was probably always under ‘fucking freezing’! There were days where we would get snowed into the studio, so we just decided that we might as well camp it out and write some stuff.” The band were in esteemed company at the Barber Shop Studios with producer-engineer Mike Sapone – a man whose
CV name-checks the likes of Taking Back Sunday, The Xcerts, Mayday Parade, Motion City Soundtrack and even Public Enemy. “Mike is an absolute genius,” Ash gushes. “He is super into electronic music, and he likes to do a lot of things on the composing side. That was awesome for us because we’d give him an idea or a demo of a melody or sound of some sort and the next day he’d bring in about seven different synths that we’ve never heard of before. He’s a god when it comes to finding sounds that he thinks are suitable for the record.” “The process of making [the album] was just so fulfilling and enjoyable,” Henry adds. “I’ve listened to the album almost every day since we got the masters. I love it so much, and we’re all just so creatively satisfied with it.” The shivering climates of your average winter in the Garden State, combined with what Ash calls the “Twin Peaks-esque” nature of Hopatcong, almost lend themselves to ‘Welcome to the Neighbourhood’’s more chilling and unsettling moments. “If we were somewhere that’s as hot and awesome as California, I think [the album] would definitely have a different
Upset
BOSTON MANOR
vibe to it,” says Ash. “This is going to sound outlandish, but in America, you’ve got East Coast hip-hop and West Coast hip-hop. East Coast hip-hop is kind of industrial and it resonates with cities like New York, and then you go to the West Coast, and it’s all super chilled and mellow. I feel like Blackpool is the New York for us in that we’re just trying to implement the surroundings and make it work like that.”
D
espite the backdrop it is presented against, Boston Manor are reluctant to call ‘Welcome to the Neighbourhood’ either a concept record or a political record.
“I’m not an expert on sociology, politics, economics or even popular culture,” Henry shrugs. “I can only really write about my experiences, and a lot of those experiences are literally about Blackpool and what I’ve seen, and the metaphor is for things I’ve seen travelling the world in the last two years.” “It’s a weird time for anyone to be maturing and growing up,” he adds. “I think there’s been a bunch of reasons in the past three years that have caused a great divide in our country – it’s been a socio-economic divide, but it’s also been a generational divide. I’ve seen qualities come out in my kin that I would’ve never expected to see in my neighbourhood, and it’s very ugly and dissatisfying, and I felt disenfranchised.” Unlike a lot of people, Henry refuses to pin the blame solely on his parents’ generation. “We’ve all had a part to play in where we’re at, and we’re all digging ourselves further into a hole,” he argues. “My personal anger is aimed more at my generation, because I’m just seeing this real nastiness coming out, and a lack of education as well.” There’s a resentful tone to Henry’s voice which slowly
intensifies as he talks. “I’ve seen a lot of hatred but equally a lot of misrepresentation, laziness, racism, sexism… But my main issue is just stupidity. I cannot abide people swallowing the fucking pill that they’ve been given, and that is what is happening to our generation. It’s easy to point the blame at older generations – yeah alright, we’re economically fucked, and we can’t buy a house, but is fucking sitting there watching Love Island and scrolling through Instagram so important?” Ash also knows all too well about how his hometown has been moulded by complacency in recent years. “Everyone’s still here not knowing why they’re here, and everyone’s like, ‘Well I could go and do this or do that’ but no-one ever really does,” he sighs. “A lot of my friends that I’ve grown up with are still here and still doing what they’ve always done. I’d bump into them at Christmas, and they’re saying about how it’s so cool to see me doing all of these things with the band. I just want to know about what they’ve been doing, but then they’re all in the same jobs that they’ve been in for seven years. I ask them if they enjoy it and they say, ‘no’, so I tell them that they could just quit, but they’re like, ‘Nah, I don’t wanna quit’. I’ve had that conversation a thousand times!” “We want everything for nothing, and I didn’t grow up like that,” Henry adds. “We spent the best part of a year writing and recording this album – not all bands spend that long, but a lot of bands spend at least a month writing and recording an album. To do all that work in one month, or one year in our case, and for someone to skip a track after 30 seconds and go ‘nah’ is part of a wider problem of how we process culture, how we don’t respect art and how throwaway it all is.”
W
ith the Olympiccalibre leaps that Boston Manor have made both forwards and upwards in the last two years, what was once a pack of five snotty Northern punk upstarts is now one of the most exciting propositions in British rock. In ‘Welcome to
the Neighbourhood’ they have crafted a stunningly frank – and frankly stunning – depiction of the state of the world and how we’re all to blame, and their UK tour in September will take them to the biggest venues they’ve headlined yet. The band have already made a running start by making the most of festival season, and it was with that spirited attitude that, back in June, they opened the Main Stage at Download with all the confidence of a band who felt like they deserved that honour. “It felt so right,” Henry chuckles, shameless in confessing that he made full use of the Main Stage’s vanity ramp when he walked out into the hallowed fields of Castle Donington. “Without sounding arrogant, I didn’t feel particularly intimidated. I felt at home, and we had the best time. We’re a band that suit being on big stages – we’re performers at the end of the day, and we have every aspiration to take this thing as far as it can go.” “One of the most beautiful things about this band is the fact that we all started at the same level,” says Ash. “No-one was better than anyone else, and we’ve all grown side-by-side as musicians and as performers and as people in general. “We’re so far away from where we thought we would be when we started this band. It’s only going to keep going from there, and I’m just excited to see what else is going to happen…” P Boston Manor’s
album ‘Welcome to the Neighbourhood’ is out 7th September.
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No false
Idles are important. We won’t be the first people to tell you, and we certainly won’t be the last. With new album ‘Joy As An Act Of Resistance’ imminent, though, there’s more to the Bristol punks than a weighty message. Words: Jamie MacMillan.
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Idles
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hile an oppressive heat rages over a field in rural Suffolk that sends most people scurrying for shade, IDLES frontman Joe Talbot, as usual, does the opposite. “Can we sit
in the sun?” he asks politely. “I spend too much time in the shade,” he adds as way of explanation. Just a couple of hours before he is due on-stage at Latitude Festival’s BBC Music Stage, he sits down to discuss IDLES’ second album ‘Joy As An Act Of Resistance’, the triumphant follow-up to last year’s sleeper hit ‘Brutalism’. That debut seemed to arrive fully-formed from out of nowhere, a state-of-thenation record presented in a series of savage, darkly sarcastic takedowns. The follow-up, some of it written even before ‘Brutalism’ was released, channels that rage into something positive, lifeaffirming, and yes, joyous. But before that positive outcome could be reached, personal tragedy struck as Talbot and his partner grieved following the death of their child. While they dealt with that earthshattering event, he underwent counselling. “One of the things I learned was that I had to show more vulnerability to my partner, talk to her more about my feelings,” he explains quietly, “and while doing that, I realised that it was something you could do in a band too. Be vulnerable to your audience. Because with that comes a self-confidence, and then that, in turn, can breed open-mindedness.” That realisation slowly manifested into an album themed around celebrating differences, challenging views without lambasting opposing ones, unity over disharmony. It didn’t come together easily, however. “We were secondguessing ourselves, writing to 38 UPSETMAGAZINE.COM
“IF YOU CALL SOMEONE A RACIST, THEY JUST CLAM UP, STAY INDOORS AND VOTE TORY” please other people instead of ourselves. We just didn’t sound like us,” Talbot admits. “We had to get rid of any feeling of having to write just to sustain success or revenues.” Twenty songs were scrapped, with only ‘Rottweiler’ and ‘Alcohol’ surviving the cull (the latter then dropping off the album due to a potentially litigious scrap with Disney over lyrics). “We won’t be doing this forever, so getting to a second album is a great opportunity to grow as artists,” is Talbot’s honest appraisal of the situation, and that re-evaluation, alongside the new-found emotional openness, has resulted in one of the finest albums you will hear all year. Somehow amidst all of the doom and gloom of the UK in 2018, Talbot found an approach that lives up to their ‘All Is Love’ mantra. Pro-immigrant banger ‘Danny Nedelko’ you already know. “People are thinking so defensively these days. If you call someone a racist, they just clam up, stay indoors and vote Tory. We want to show them the other side, show them what’s important,” he says. “It’s not just those immigrants; it’s people, it’s their families. We’re not attacking those who voted for Brexit or who are antiimmigration, it’s a reminder of how they are real people, real families, and all the love involved with that. We want to
open minds.” ‘Samaritans’ is set to follow in winning over hearts and minds, a song based on battling toxic masculinity that prompted Wolf Alice’s Joel Dilla to claim on Twitter later that day that “I’ve rarely been as moved as I was right then” after hearing it during the Latitude set. ‘Great’ tackles this preBrexit country, while ‘I’m Scum’ speaks of labels like ‘lefties’ and ‘snowflakes’. As big and weighty as the subject matters may be though, they are all injected with the same wicked sense of humour that have made IDLES stand out since their earliest days. “People expect us to be hard, and dark, and gnarly and all that shit,” says Talbot, “and I realised that there’s a lot of fun to us, and a lot of love in our music and I wanted to celebrate that.” Love itself even gets a lookin on ‘Love Song’, a heartfelt track that perfectly captures the plurality of the band. “I’m quite a violent man to look at, I have a resting bitch face,” he laughs when asked if the song is earnest or sarcastic. “But this song is a perfect example of how you can misconstrue our music to be violent or sarcastic. In truth, I write my partner a lot of cards and notes. It’s a strange thing to do nowadays, but a lovely thing to do too.” Once in the recording
“PEOPLE EXPECT US TO BE HARD, AND DARK, AND GNARLY AND ALL THAT SHIT. I REALISED THAT THERE’S A LOT OF FUN TO US”
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studio, the same fierce sense of energy guided the band as on ‘Brutalism’. Drummer Jon Beavis later describes the process as: “Three takes max, leave the mistakes in and don’t worry”. “We write songs with the atmosphere of the live show in mind” Talbot explains. “The theatre of it all.” That theatrical element is on display during their Latitude set, a set bordering on insanity even by their standards. At one point, the guitars are played by two audience members while regulars Lee Kiernan
and Mark ‘Bobo’ Bowen cheerlead or sprint around the pit with a cymbal stolen from Beavis’ set respectively. That’s immediately before the band break into a cover of Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas’, and all in the first half of the show. It is yet another example of how their live show has become legendary, pivotal to the word-of-mouth nature of their success. “The only problem with success,” Talbot admits. “Is it means more time away from
your partner or your family. So you’ve got to make it count every time.” Staring Upset intensely in the eyes, he adds: “But you can build something stunning with that, something really important.” Talbot returns to those themes of community and unity repeatedly. IDLES have now inspired a huge online community Facebook page where open conversations about mental health issues abound. These are important topics, perfectly summed up by their cover of Solomon Burke’s
‘Cry To Me’, the penultimate track on ‘Joy As An Act Of Resistance’. “It’s one of my favourite songs, and I thought it fitted the album perfectly,” Talbot shrugs, before adding: “It’s a response to ‘Samaritans’. I’m here if you want to talk.” With that, our time together is at an end, and Upset leaves Talbot still seeking the sunshine, a fitting wish for a man who has returned from a period as dark as it can get and now basks in the light of day. P
Idles’ album ‘Joy as an Act of Resistance’ is out 31st August.
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Perfume, Politics and
Fixed Ideals
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Muncie Girls never really thought about their debut album being a success. With second full-length ‘Fixed Ideals’ here, they’re happy just being themselves. Words: Ali Shutler.
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‘F
rom Caplan To Belsize’ saw Muncie Girls standing up to the things they disagreed with.
Written over two and a half years, the band made it up as they went along, following a gut feeling and the loosely trodden path of what their friends’ bands typically did. Created within the community bubble of Exeter’s The Cavern, their debut album saw them grapple with feelings of escape, uncertainty and unease while feeling distant from the world at large. “All my life I’ve felt let down, and that’s perhaps why we feel safer underground,” offered ‘Learn In School’, but still, Muncie Girls never turned away from the spotlight. After its release, the band went everywhere. Playing shows and bringing that carefully crafted sense of home turf community with them, their fizzing anthems protested giving in or accepting the way things were by singing songs of the normal, everyday struggle. There was a belligerent flicker of hope. A roaring belief that your quiet, unspoken worries weren’t alone, and neither were you. “At the time, we just took it day by day and had a great time travelling around and having nice things said to us. Looking back, I realise how lucky we were with that whole album. People were so nice, and we had so many opportunities,” says Lande Hekt. Before they released their debut, the band carried themselves with this naïve, shiny, optimistic shrug. This sense that “we’ve made some songs and we think they’re good. We haven’t really thought much beyond that, but we’re just going to put them out, and we’re just going to see what happens.” “We didn’t know that anyone would even care. At that point, we had so many friends, and people that play in bands and go to shows in our the scene,
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“WE DIDN’T KNOW THAT ANYONE WOULD EVEN CARE” who we knew would support us and be nice about it. That was kind of why we were doing it because that’s what being in a band meant to us. It still is the main thing, going to shows and operating within a scene, but it was just this bizarre thing of people who we didn’t know caring about it as well. That’s weird, but it was awesome.” ‘From Caplan To Belsize’ is a driving, relentless record that refuses to look back, needs escape and wants change. ‘Fixed Ideals’ is more reflective, less concerned with the horizon and instead, is just trying to make it through the night. If their debut was Muncie Girls Versus The World, album two is perhaps what happens when the world wins. Maybe it comes from “getting older and more miserable,” maybe it comes from seeing things as they really are. You don’t need us to tell you that a lot has changed in the past two years. The Cavern, the venue that first connected the band and always gave them a platform, a community and served as a home base for the group and their friends, burnt down. “The year leading up to us recording this album, The Cavern was just a hole in the ground. That was a strange time. Our band formed there, and I worked there since I was 18. For a lot of people, it is a scene, not just a place,” starts Lande. That loss, and all the others has fingerprints across the record. ‘In Between Bands’ is mournful, full of nostalgic wit and quivering disbelief but as the band ask: “Take me back to before that smell. Before buried
hope and a burnt out shell. Before the rubble and the ‘time will tell’,” they’re not just talking about that one fire. ‘Fixed Ideals’ isn’t afraid of the world. It never tries to bury its head in the underground. It’s seen the world. It knows the score. Still, Muncie Girls aren’t backing down. Last time we spoke was Reading; the band had recorded nineteen songs, and it had been the sort of gruelling experience Lande dubbed “hell on earth.” Now, “It’s been a long enough time, so I’ve had my brain in survival mode and forgotten the trauma of it. Now I just have positive feelings towards the record.” There’s a lifetime in ‘Fixed Ideals’. Written over a long space of time, the songs fray and knot together. “With the first record, it was obvious what it was about. Each song had one theme, and it stuck to it. This record is a little more, not complex, but it’s harder to pinpoint what each song is about. It’s almost just documenting my more manic thoughts.” Songs about friendship also deal in mental health and the lack of funding for the NHS, with a hint of expectation, ownership and self-care. There’s the ignorance of family alongside toxic masculinity and daydream aspirations caused by our role models. Money worries share a space with the refugee crisis, victim blaming and slut shaming on one side of the scales, loneliness on the other. “I felt like I kind of said everything that I wanted to say really obviously with the first record,” offers
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Lande so for this one, they look at how those politics fit into living. The title once again comes from Sylvia Plath. “I wanted to call it ‘Perfume, Politics and Fixed Ideals’ but that’s too long. It’s about how politics affects your personal life and how it’s not something that you just decide to think about as and when. It’s how it’s always there. ‘Fixed Ideals’ is a little bit of stubbornness and not backing down from your opinions.” The band have always written personal, intimate songs but on ‘Fixed Ideals’, there are no barriers. There’s nothing to hide, and nowhere to bury it. The opening song is about absentee fathers, (“maybe I think it’s weird; five kids with four different women. Of those five, I’m the only child you chose to keep hidden”) and “that’s the one song where I was a bit like, ‘Oh god am I really putting this song out?’” before pushing back her shoulders. “’You know what, I am putting this song out’. That’s why it’s the first track because if I’m gonna release it, then it’s got to be the first one. I’ve got to get it out the way and be confident with it.” Muncie Girls have a lot to say on ‘Fixed Ideals’, and there’s no fear in saying it. But, as with everything the band do, there were no firm intentions going in. There was never a meeting between the three of them to discuss political leanings, topics of debate or what they want to stand for in 2018. The band don’t do plans. They just sorta know. “It’s hard to know what a lot of the lyrics are about because I’m not looking at the lyrics as I write them. It’s like when a kid draws a picture in class, and it’s all about death,” but they didn’t do it with any intention. “I never know exactly what the songs say or are about but I think writing about how you’re feeling is helpful. We’ve always just written songs because it felt good.” That feel good fray is what gives the band their neon edge.
There’s a lot of music that deals with The State Of Things And How Awful It All Is And Maybe We’re Doomed, but Muncie Girls stand with their friends. Wearing a grin as armour, they’re impenetrable together. They have a back catalogue of empowerment, but they know there’s no shame in feeling hopeless. On ‘Fixed Ideals’ they allow themselves to be powerless. “It’s a little bit darker. On the first record, I remember making an effort to be more positive. ‘Right, this whole song is ridiculously negative, let’s round it off with a positive ending’.” This time, like they sing on ‘Falling Down’, “I’m gonna stop smiling when it doesn’t feel like the right thing.” There’s a loneliness to ‘Fixed Ideals’. From the closing line “I grew up powerless, and I’ll die just the same” to all the friends that have been lost along the way, the band know being alone. And sure, it gives the record a sense of bleak abandon, but it also means those connections are treasured. The energy between Lande, Luke and Dean is fierce. There’s a search for satisfaction in the music. It stomps about, making a bid to reclaim joy. Every song does something different, from the soapy chirp of ‘Bubble Bath’, complete with straw and glasshalf-full blow to the twinkling mania of ‘Isn’t Life Funny’ and the scratched fury of ‘Locked Up’. There’s excitement and inspiration behind every twist “In ’Clinic’ which is all about going to see a therapist, there’s the line ‘I woke up early that Tuesday as I did then every week and the more times I did that, the less I felt like a freak’ which is kind of positive.” Then there’s the leaning vulnerability of ‘Picture Of Health’. “When you’re feeling low, it’s hard to look after yourself. Just cooking or doing your laundry can be difficult and even if you’re feeling quite savage, it’s a lot easier to do that for your friends because you don’t want to see them sad and not coping so you kind of just
rally and do it for them, even if you wouldn’t be able to do it for yourself. It’s about friendship, and if you can do that for each other, then you can both get through the tricky times.” The band know that shared burden, and 45 degrees lean well. “What keeps us going as a band is just the fact that the one thing that we all want to do the most is to be in a punk rock band and keep doing it for as long as we possibly can. We’ve got lucky in the fact that we’ve each found two people that we care about and share our ideals with and wanna do exactly the same stuff and are nice, who value being kind and decent. That’s been a huge thing. I’ve seen bands split up; bands have been and gone since we’ve started. We’ve been going for a while now, so I think we’ve just got really, really lucky and it’s kind of easy to keep it going.” So while the band have had a quiet year on the front line, they haven’t pressed pause on being Muncie Girls. There’s no time for holidays when there’s work to be done. “It doesn’t feel like we’ve had a break from Muncie Girls, in eight years. Or ever, really, but it’s great.” ‘Fixed Ideals’ sees them pushing forward through the mire and the band are matching that pace. They’ve got new visas for their first US headline tour which are good for a whole year, so they want to tour over there as much as possible, the economical, practical dreamers that they are. But other than shows in new places, “What else do bands do? I don’t know. What is the next thing? We’ve already done everything we’ve wanted to do so I don’t know. We’ll just do it again I suppose. We’ve already played to a lot of people but if we could play to more people that’d be insane so obviously we’d love to do that. We’re just going to keep going and see how it goes, but we’ve always said that.” P Muncie
Girls’ album ‘Fixed Ideals’ is out 31st August.
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Menace Beach are one of the UK underground’s best kept secrets. With ‘Black Rainbow Sound’, they’re holding on to the title. Words: Jessica Goodman. Photo: Danny Payne.
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hen they started working on their debut album, Menace Beach set out on an ever-expanding voyage of discovery. With the release
of ‘Black Rainbow Sound’, the group are at their most addictively intangible yet. Built from vivid soundscapes grounded by addictive hooks, this is Menace Beach as they always meant to be heard. “I had a synth way before I got an electric guitar,” Liza Violet states. “I had to learn electric guitar pretty quick when we did our first record,” she laughs. “I’ve kind of slowly snuck synths back in.” Building from the deliciously fuzzed up sounds of ‘Lemon Memory’, they quickly set about crafting their latest effort from the ground up, resulting in their most electronic offering yet. Delectably lo-fi and appetisingly distorted, with ‘Black Rainbow Sound’ Menace Beach took their capabilities to a brand new level. “Because the last album went in a bit of a different direction, it gave us a lot of new ideas,” Liza recalls. “We tried to break the formula a little bit,” Ryan Needham agrees. Having built the songs on ‘Lemon Memory’ around their live setup, for their new record the group set about crafting their sound in a completely different way. “On this one, nothing’s live at all. There’s
“THERE’S A LOT OF HOPEFULNESS IN THE LYRICS, AND A BIT OF WEIRDNESS” nothing,” Ryan laughs. “We hadn’t played anything live before we went in,” Liza states. “We built it all in the studio, left ourselves a lot of time to experiment.” Recording at The Nave with producer Matt Peel (Eagulls), entering the studio gave the group the opportunity to craft their own sonic world around them. “There’s no sitting down with an acoustic guitar,” Ryan describes. “That doesn’t really enter our world. We’ve definitely never...” he trails off, lost on the thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t know how to do a jam,” he concludes, laughing. “I always think maybe I’m kind of missing something?” he questions. “I’m quite selfish when it comes to writing music,” Liza admits. “I like to get lost in my own brain.” In characteristic fashion, that’s exactly what their new album offers: vivid tapestries of sound distorting, evolving, and unravelling to paint a picture purpose made for getting lost in. “We are like that in the writing process,” Ryan affirms, “but when it comes to going to the studio, anyone can do what they want,” he enthuses. Open to any possibility, ‘Black Rainbow Sound’ presents the band at their most freewheeling yet. “There was a little attic room where Matt has got the most prized possessions, like modular synths,” Ryan recalls of the studio they worked in. “I think Liza and Matt were just up there for two days, then came down
all bleary-eyed and [album centrepiece ‘8000 Molecules’] was pretty much done.” “It’s something that I can just get stuck into for hours,” Liza chuckles. “My limit is how much time we’ve got left. I’ll just keep working on it for days.” “You two are like crazy professors,” Ryan teases. Producer Matt Peel wasn’t the only one to have a hand in the making of Menace Beach’s latest record. ‘Black Rainbow Sound’ sees the group team up with Brix Smith of The Fall. “We just got chatting online after she played our song on the radio one time,” Liza explains. “She’s got this amazing energy, and she’s really positive. She has this amazing way of describing things as well.” “Spoken word stuff just sounds way better, because it’s more romantic, if it’s spoken in an American accent,” Ryan laughs, referring to Brix’s dialogue on the album’s opening and closing tracks. “I don’t like my singing voice particularly, but my talking voice...” He ponders the sound for a moment. “It wouldn’t be delivered with the same impact.” As it stands, ‘Black Rainbow Sound’ is a tour de force of intricate melodies, richly woven sound tapestries, driving hooks, and an enduring sense of wonder. “There’s a lot of hopefulness in the lyrics,” Ryan portrays, “and a bit of weirdness.” And really, what more could you ask for? P
Menace Beach’s album ‘Black Rainbow Sound’ is out 31st August.
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what a
WSTR
Having taken on the UK pop punk haters and come out the other side swinging, WSTR are ready to show their true face. Words: Steven Loftin.
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“I
don’t think we’ve ever really fit in. I don’t know if we will now, but this is us unmasking ourselves.”
WSTR frontman Sammy Clifford is very well aware of what some have been saying about him and his band. Don’t get him wrong; he’s thankful for it. The drive of being an upcoming band in one of the most jarring and cutthroat genres for comparison, pop-punk, has meant that WSTR have broken from the leashes of their stumbling history. One which saw them self-release an EP (2015’s ‘SKRWD’), get signed to a label before ever playing a live show, and then put out a full-length album - all in such quick succession that there was never really any time for them to figure out just who they were. “I didn’t think this way before, but I’d rather be a band someone hates, or someone’s favourite, rather than one where people think, ‘Oh, they’re alright’,” Sammy carefully admits. That’s not to say flack they received from certain
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“THIS TIME WE REALLY WORKED ON THE SCIENCE OF SONGWRITING” quarters wasn’t painful, especially when they were first starting out. “When we first wrote music, we were excited to put it out, and we didn’t have any expectations or any pressures. But when everyone started slagging it off we were a bit upset, and we were a bit like ‘Oh...’, and then-” He pauses. “It was a weird one because it seemed to work?” After signing to Hopeless Records earlier this year, WSTR are back, and fighting fit, with an album that is unashamedly true to themselves. It’s poppunk through and through, laying all their cards firmly on
the table. The title, ‘Identity Crisis’, takes on a double meaning. First up, the obvious take on a band trying to find itself. “We’ve had to take that on the chin and roll with it. I feel like WSTR has always been forced into having a ‘fuck you’ attitude. Being like, ‘We’re going to do what we want, and this is who we are anyway’,” Sammy declares. “Even at our shows, it’s ‘This is WSTR, and we don’t care if you like it’. “It was never planned to be that way, but I feel like it was forced upon us by the public. We’re not angry at anyone calling us out or slagging us
off. People talking is still a good thing. They still must’ve taken the time to at least listen to some of your songs, or know who you are. In this world that’s everything, so we can’t be angry at it.” “We never really tried to have that attitude, but it’s spurred us on. There’s a bit of pressure there for us to prove everyone wrong and to silence the haters.” As for the grander concept, Sammy quickly gets into that too. “People are too scared to be just normal. People feel like they need however many followers on Instagram. People seem quite false and not voicing themselves; they have online personas. It’s scary. It’s searching for your identity. You have two lives. “People want their attention, their five minutes of fame, and with the internet it allows them to have it a lot of the time, even if they have to do something horrible to do it,” he muses. “As long as people are getting what they think is getting their identity, and their niche, and their five minutes of fame on the internet then they don’t
care, which I think is an identity crisis within itself, to be honest.” It’s an album that is constructed around selfawareness and social commentary. It’s also a product of their influences - which wasn’t always a good thing, says Sammy. “I was around for the first wave of pop-punk, and this new wave - which I do love and I’ll never slag it off, it’s great what it’s done for the genre it’s revived it. It’s quite niche though, and it tends to have to make things sound all pretty. We did it on our EP, and our first album, where everything was a metaphor. It was overcomplicated. “On this one I sat back and thought, I don’t think we need to do that anymore. We made it a lot more simple, and it’s more universal in a way - it’s easier to relate to. On the first record, we felt we had something to prove, and we had to litter everything with angry singing, and it wasn’t very comfortable. We did it for the shows really, but this time we worked on the science of songwriting a lot more.”
In staying true to their roots - taking the world of pop-punk, Sammy grew up with and chucking it alongside their snarling newfound confidence - WSTR are catching up to the bands that they started out alongside. Now taking every moment in their stride, it feels like they’re are a band born out of their frustration, passions, and most importantly striving for evolution. “Bands we started out with, playing shows together and stuff like that, like Trash Boat and Boston Manor - they’re all going in different directions. Everyone’s trying to shake off the UK pop-punk sound, which I think is great,” Sammy muses. “It was a great stepping stone, and it was very fun, but people are trying to be themselves now. They’re all writing - you can’t say ‘better’ music - but they’re evolving. Everyone’s maturing, and it’s cool to see, and I hope that we can with this record be seen as evolving with the rest of them.” P WSTR’s album
‘Identity Crisis’ is out 31st August.
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Rated_ THE OFFICIAL VERDICT ON EVERYTHING
** ALBUM OF THE MONTH **
I IDL ES
JOY AS AN ACT OF RESI STAN CE PARTISAN
eee ee
IF YOU LIKE THIS, YOU’L L LIKE... BANDS WITH SOMET HING TO SAY, BASICALLY.
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t can be hard to be human sometimes. When things
are really bad, it can feel like a long, cruel joke, ricocheting between an uninspiring 9 to 5, the openmouthed despa ir of the daily news cycle and the consta nt fear of loss, heartbreak and morta lity that so often clouds our consciousness. To temper that, there are the good parts. A kind act from a stranger, a job well done, a piece of art created out of the darkness that reaches out like an old friend. IDLES are a band who have never minded showing their scars, and on their second record,
‘Joy As An Act Of Resistance’, any remaining fourth wall crumbles to dust at their feet as they celebrate their stark intent to thrive, held up by the support of their community. Any album that opens with the relent less juggernaut that is ‘Colossus’ is one that is unlikely to come quietly, but while the hefty riffs and comedic turns of 2017’s ‘Bruta lism’ are still very much in place, ‘Joy…’ is the sound of a band who want to use their voice for a greater good. While ‘Never Fight A Man With A Perm’ ruminates on Love Island, Topshop Tyrants and past boyhood with the
ALKALINE TRIO IS THIS THING CURSED? eeee
A lot has happened in 18 years for Alkaline Trio. Now veterans in their scene, in between today and 2000’s ‘Maybe I’ll Catch Fire’ - the record they describe new fulllength ‘Is This Thing Cursed?’ as the companion to - more than the music has changed. Five years since their last fulllength, and with Matt Skiba’s Blink-182 call-up sitting large in the background, it’s reassuring to find the three-piece still in fine form. From the introspective to the worldweary, there’s a trademark thread that runs through every move. In a more sinister, scarier world, Alkaline Trio are battling the darkness to the bitter end. P Dan Harrison
IDLES blend of wisdom and silliness that made their name, ‘June’ is somet hing else entirely, a heart-stabbing memory of a still-born daughter that worries away in your head days after listening. It’s the softest thing they’ve ever done, and all the more haunt ing for it. Telling the tales of immigrant friends (‘Danny Nedelko’), the demonization of council estate occupation (‘I’m Scum’) and the true cost of toxic masculinity (‘Samaritans’), over break neck, spitba ll melodies, it would be easy to peg IDLES as gobby left-w ing punks on a soapbox, but what they offer is so much
more than that. Admitting their flaws but hoping for better, they lay out every thing that it means to be a man, to be a minority, to be a huma n in a screw y world, to be flesh and blood with real feelings and fears and hopes and anger. Vulnerabilit y has never been so imminently loveable, inspiring, and best of all, presented in a manner that means just as much alone in a quiet bedroom as it does in the middle of a moshpit with all your best friends. If joy is indeed an act of resista nce, then this is the band you want at the helm of the new age. P
Jenessa Williams
MENACE BEACH BLACK RAINBOW SOUND eeee
Menace Beach’s brand of fuzzy slackerpop has always felt like it might break its earthly chains and blast into space, and on ‘Black Rainbow Sound’ they deliver on that promise. Alongside the familiar buzzing guitars and laconic vocal lines, the band have beefed up their synths and there are some truly eerie alien sounding effects across the album. When paired with extraterrestrial lyrics as in ‘Satellite’, the record finds its own space, sounding like the video game arcade music on the first punk cruise to the moon. Coupled with smart use of film samples, the album displays a confident identity, with dual vocalists Liza Violet and Ryan Needham totally at ease. It’s every inch the real deal. P
Dillon Eastoe
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MUNCIE GIRLS FIXED IDEALS e eee
Mixing punchy indiepunk hooks with the personal and political to significant effect, like its predecessor, ‘Fixed Ideals’ displays a deftness of songwriting that belies the heavy themes. There’s no sloganeering here, just sharply-observed lyricism by Lande Hekt that paints a colourful, sometimes trying, picture of life spent in opposition to fascism or dealing with mental health challenges. It’s funny, too; the use of gammon-faced airbag Jeremy Clarkson as a punchline in ‘Jeremy’ is delicious. No-one is above reproach, and it’s glorious to see the Muncies using their focused anger in such a way. P Rob Mair
NOTHING
DANCE ON THE BLACKTOP e eee There’s a certain quality in layers upon layers of fuzzy guitars that few - if any - other instruments can provide. It’s a thick, lush camouflage under which Nothing hide. Their third full-length is a cross-Atlantic scrapbook of inspirations, gloriously projection into one complex but perfectly lit landscape. From all-encompassing drone to soaring euphoria, Nothing’s bar is set consistently high - never more so than on the near eight minute epic ‘The Carpenters Son’. Drifting and swirling, it’s rock music, but on a whole other plane of consciousness. P Dan
Harrison
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CUT AND RUN If ever you thought you knew what to expect with a band, it was Slaves. But in reality,
And Run’, the combination of fuzzy guitar, lo-fi sound over deceptively simplistic lyrics they’ve never quite fitted into sounding ever more like ‘13’-era the “two Blur. ‘Magnolia’ angry punks” swaggers in like pigeonhole peak-Suede, that was chucking in assigned to some jaunty them following “woo-hoo”s at their 2015 its climax. This debut ‘Are You is the sound of Satisfied?’. Slaves with the After a rapid punk shackles follow-up that removed. managed to The gentle chuck both rhythm of hip-hop and ‘Daddy’ and the Baxter Dury vulnerability ACTS OF FEAR into the mix, shown on AND LOVE VIRGIN EMI their lean album highlight eeee third, ‘Acts ‘Chokehold’ IF YOU LIKE THIS, Of Fear And show a real YOU’LL LIKE... JAMMIE Love’, throws evolution of DODGERS, PARTY RINGS another sound. Doing curveball by something dialling down completely both the volume and the political different to what you expect rants, turning instead to matters while still sounding utterly of a much more personal nature: like themselves is a trick many ‘Acts Of Fear And Love’ is far bands attempt, but few pull off from business as normal. That as successfully as this. Lots to dying-days-of-Britpop vibe still love, nothing to fear. P Jamie washes all over early single ‘Cut MacMillan
SLAVES
SPRING KING A BETTER LIFE e e ee
Spring King’s debut album was held together by gaffer tape as they hurtled through the city, looking for answers and trying to find something to believe in. ‘A Better Life’ starts with the same search as ‘Static’ flicks through ideas and influences before the band find everything all at once with ‘Animal’. Sleek, determined and sure of itself, its gritty march and relentless attack see Spring King breaking free from whatever demons haunted them in the past, safe in the knowledge that nothing can stop them now. This is a record of unbroken promises and unwavering grit. P Ali
Shutler
THE FRIGHTS HYPOCHONDRIAC eee
Following on from the snarling, smirking pushback of ‘You Are Going To Hate This’, The Frights have once again teamed up with FIDLAR’s Zac Carper for ‘Hypochondriac’, but they’re
doing things differently this time around. Trading punk rock abandon and that fuck it dog, life’s a risk attitude for something more vulnerable, the record skips between fury and tranquillity. There are quiet realisations and tricks for a better life sat next to rampaging defeats and hopeless impotence. The Frights pay their pound of flesh and even leave a tip. P Ali
Shutler
WSTR
IDENTITY CRISIS eee For their second album, WSTR are scared of nothing. Comfortable with who they are, they’re taking everything they learned from debut album ‘Red, Green or Inbetween’ and distilling it down to the perfect formula. In realising that identikit pop-punk alone will never win the day, the Liverpool mob have pushed every fader to maximum. From the infectious opener ‘Tell Me More’ to the flippantly self-aware ‘Silly Me’, each moment is soaked to the skin in history, but also fizzing with the potential of something new. That identity crisis looks more like confidence from here. P Dan Harrison
DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE THANK YOU FOR TODAY e e e ee
Now nine studio albums into their career, ‘Thank You For Today’ is the sound of a band calmly navigating a path forward through troubled waters and a changing world. Considering the background turmoil, it could have been a messy, halfbaked return but, reassuringly, Death Cab For Cutie have barely skipped a beat. The future for one of America’s outstanding indie bands looks brighter than ever. P Rob Mair
BOSTON MANOR WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBOURHOOD e e ee e
It feels like we’ve been saying it for years, now mostly, because we have. There’s a bunch of impossibly exciting bands forming a British rock scene full of endless promise, each just waiting for that moment where it all sparks off. For Boston Manor that place is here, that time is now. The band’s second album, ‘Welcome To The Neighbourhood’ pulls and pushes between ideas and genre, turning the bleak into something more. Not so much a step up but a leap into the unknown, it’s a brutal, difficult and yet endlessly rewarding endeavour. P Stephen Ackroyd DISRUPT THE NOISE 57
TREES
UPCOTE FARM, CHELTENHAM. 1 2 .07.18-14.07.18 ENTER
SHIKARI,
MARMOZETS, AMORÉ,
AT
BOSTON
NERVUS,
THE MANOR,
DREAM
WIFE,
Words: Ali Shutler, Dillon Eastoe. Photos: Sarah Louise Bennett.
W
hile most festivals have spent the summer bringing in little chunks of everything to their line-ups, 2000trees knows exactly what it is. For two and a bit days on a farm in the middle of Nowhere, Cheltenham, the festival brings together a whole bunch of bands who share a common ethos. Bands who celebrate community, know the power of other people and will happily have a chat over a pint of warm cider. While it doesn’t say it at the gate, it’s an (almost) dickhead-free zone. Because everyone is on the same level and seeing eye-toeye, it lets the bands be who they really want to be for an afternoon. Arcane Roots fully embrace their cinematic edges, blending moments of stadium indulgence, big riffs excess and crowd-pleasing promise with something more delicate. There’s empathy and quiet beauty in blockbuster scenes, a desire to connect from title card to end credits. Elsewhere, Black Honey are more than happy to star in a movie of their own lives. Rattling through twisting anthems of swaggering heartache and desert adoration, they let their beating chests lead the way into the
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DRIVE
IN,
BASEMENT, BLACK
TWIN
ATLANTIC,
CREEPER,
FOXXES
AND
TOUCHÉ MORE.
spotlight. Brutus don’t even look up, as they crash through the best of ‘Burst’. The record sees the band play with the trick of the light and live, all that shadowy promise and blinding dash feels welcoming, mesmerising and otherworldly. Boston Manor are weeks away from releasing ‘Welcome To The Neighbourhood’ and that potent excitement charges through their set. Older songs of longing and despair are flecked with refreshed hope, but it’s the new songs that are already stealing the show. Black Peaks are in a similar boat. After a year away, the band are back and on the road to ‘All That Divides’. Of course, ‘Glass Built Castles’ and ‘Saviour’ still sound gargantuan, trembling with the same raucous energy that took your breath away the first time you heard them, but the likes of ‘Home’, ‘Can’t Sleep’ and ‘Electric Feel’ distil, dissect and re-imagine that brute excitement as the band toy with magic. Marmozets are still on the victory charge following the release of their ‘Knowing What You Know Now’. All those electric risks making perfect sense on the big stage, all that everyday belief connecting in the pit, the band seem more unstoppable than ever, and they’ve never really been a gang you’d willingly stand in the way of. Label mates
DISRUPT THE NOISE 59
and fellow difficult-second-album-deniers Turnstile are just as driven as they crash onto The Cave for a set that’s probably the most powerful, visceral and wonderful the festival sees all weekend. We say probably because Nervus challenge the title the following morning. There’s something glorious about the band’s bare-boned honesty, their resilience as the world burns around their feet and the way they turn every defeat into a victory. Today is pure celebration though. Packing out their stage several times over, Nervus feed off the energy, and the excitement is undeniable as roaring tracks from ‘Permanent Rainbow’ and fizzing champions of ‘Everything Dies’ soundtracking a band embracing greatness. After playing a heart swelling, skin-prickling tribute to Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchinson, Fatherson return to the comfort of the Main Stage. With a new album on the way, the busy crowd are treated to a few new cuts including booming new single ’Making Waves’, which rides on a Pixies-sized riff and gets heads bobbing ahead of The Dirty Nil, who aren’t fazed by their drizzly mid-afternoon slot. Despite the rain sending a lot of punters scurrying for the tents a faithful few reward the Canadians’ efforts who combine Weezer’s thick guitar solos, Green Day’s showmanship and Brandon Flowers’ flamboyant style. There’s a miniature mosh pit, a human pyramid and a mimed boat race, with birthday boy vocalist Luke Bentham acting as the cox. Jesus even shows up at the end to shower the audience with $100 ‘United States of Awesome’
FOR TWO AND A BIT DAYS ON A FARM IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, CHELTENHAM, THE FESTIVAL BRINGS TOGETHER A WHOLE BUNCH OF BANDS WHO SHARE A COMMON ETHOS
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bills. It’s not as easy for Mallory Knox who are back at 2000trees since the departure of lead singer Mikey Chapman. What they lack in the crowd work of a dedicated frontman, they more than make up for in energy, with new vocalist/bassist Sam Douglas putting everything into his new role. The crowd don’t seem to mind either way, throwing themselves around, hurling inflatables and holding their arms aloft to the bands electric emo. There’s more of a focus on their punkier tracks than some of the atmospheric rock they showcased on the Cave stage last year, with new material sounding more Billy Talent than Thirty Seconds to Mars. Sløtface seemed to spend 2017 playing every festival going, and while this summer is a little quieter, they’re still a force to be reckoned with. Lessons learnt on and off the road have transformed the band into something special, embracing the spotlight and toying with the audience, the gang are ferocious and fun. Playing their most colourful songs, the set trembles with snarling glee and forthright demand, as the band ask for more and get it every time. It’s the same for Dream Wife who have been nonstop since the release of their self-titled debut (and for a long while leading up to it). Their bubblegum pop-cum-furious punk is a dashing mix of entertainment and importance, as the band blend pointed promises (‘F.U.U.’) with anthems of solidarity
(‘Somebody’) and encouragement. Hellions are the band My Chemical Romance wanted to inspire. Sounding like nobody else and everybody all at once, they flick between drama and hardcore emotion with no time for breath. ‘X’ is a nineties boy band song with added venom and we’ve still for the whole of ‘Smile’ stuck in our heads, weeks later. Ragged, dangerous and full of joy, their music is larger than life but oh so relatable. It’s a comic book world that Creeper know well. As The End of The Callous Heart (probably) approaches, the band are still determined to make every show feel special. Tonight there’s a haunting intro before the band launch into the high-octane, high emotion, high-reaching show we’ve come to expect from them over the years. There are throwbacks to the band they used to be with airings of ‘VCR’ and ‘Gloom’, reworked showings of just how far this punk band can stretch with the tease and embrace of ‘Hiding With Boys’ and a rare glimpse into who they are behind the masks with a cover of Meat Loaf’s ‘You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth’ that sees them trading grins and breaking character in the best way. Somehow, despite everything 2000trees stands for, despite championing the best and brightest of the alternative and celebrating home-grown talent at every opportunity, this is the first time Enter Shikari have ever played this festival. They waste no time in making themselves feel right at home. After the outpouring emotional resonance of their arena tour last year, tonight’s set is more about quick-fire hits and strobe-lit abandon. The opening swings so hard that an engagement from the crowd gets lost in the chaos before being dug back up a few songs later at Rou’s request. This band know that every voice should be heard. ‘Shinrin-Yoku’, ‘Undercover Agents’ and ‘Airfield’ are quiet and potent, digging deep and whispering truths before bursting forth with renewed belief while ‘Mothership’ mixes with a cover of Faithless’ ‘Insomnia’ for a moment of pure, unadulterated joy. Later on the hyperspace attack of ‘Arguing With Thermometers’ and ‘Rabble Rouser’ clears the lane for the big finish of ‘Redshift’ and ‘Live Outside’, all emptied lungs and full hearts. P
WITH...
THE JOY FORMIDABLE
Everyone has those formative bands and tracks that first got them into music and helped shape their very being. This month, RITZY from THE JOY FORMIDABLE takes us through some the songs that meant the most to her during her teenage years. Beach Boys - Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)
I was obsessed with ‘Pet Sounds’ as a kid and I’m still in love with it. All the layers that come and go and the simplicity of this song, is it a lovers tiff or are they comforting each other?
Elvis Costello - The Beat
One of the first songs I learnt to play on guitar. Full of energy and sneer, and it sounded like he was taking the piss out of Cliff Richard.
Super Furry Animals - The Man Don’t Give A Fuck
I got fired as school DJ for playing 62 UPSETMAGAZINE.COM
this at the end of year dance. It was worth it.
Radiohead - Let Down
Memories of sitting in my bedroom in North Wales and playing this over and over and dissecting every inch of it and then hating them when they never played it live! Oh, the teenage angst.
Daft Punk - Around The World
I got lost at Glastonbury one year when I was a little whippersnapper, and I couldn’t find my tent at all. I remember dancing to this track on my own as the sun was coming up, think it took me about three hours to find the fucking thing.
The Clash - Should I Stay Or Should I Go
I wore this vinyl record down to the grooves, playing it over and over and probably playing some really bad air guitar at the same time.
Manic Street Preachers - 4st 7lb My favourite track on ‘Holy Bible’ at the time. I don’t know if I appreciated the meaning & the gravity of this track when I was younger, but I was definitely drawn to Richie’s lyrics and the atmosphere on this record.
The Pretenders - Don’t Get Me Wrong I saw the Pretenders in concert when I was just starting to play guitar and I’d not really seen a female frontwoman like Chrissie before. She got me ticking.
Christy Moore - The Reel In The Flickering Light There was a lot of music in my household growing up and Christy Moore was one of my favourite folk singers. This track is a really pretty example of a traditional structure with some lovely fantastical lyrics. P The Joy Formidable’s album
‘AAARTH’ is due 28th September.